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| The Prompt |
#15 "Gybralltyr" (Part 1)
It’s a nightmare I see again and
again, each time as fresh and real as if it were true.
I am sitting in the backseat of the
family car. I can feel the springy foam underneath me, the seatbelt
rubbing against my collarbone. Mom and Dad are talking, but I can’t
hear them. They are looking straight ahead, but neither of them
notices the car coming head-on. I scream as loud as I can, but they
can’t hear me either. My voice never makes a sound. It’s like
being forced to watch the same slow-motion crash test again and
again, on mute. I feel the jerk as the two fenders collide, crumpling
like tinfoil. For a split second, we are all weightless, floating in
a stationary car while the world all tumbles and crashes around us.
When it stops, all I see is blood. On Dad, on Mom...
The moment I
realize that, I usually wake up.
The terrible thing is, everything about
the dream is conjecture, based on what my psyche guesses what
happened. I wasn’t even there when Mom and Dad took that trip. I
stayed home, committed to keeping my grades up and not missing a
single beat. I still remember coming home that afternoon to find the
phone ringing as if it would never stop. On the other end was my
mom’s coworker, her emergency contact. She told me about the crash.
I felt it as if something had been
physically scooped out of my insides. My high school principal called
as soon as she heard, to tell me I would be excused as long as I
needed, and if they didn’t see me before the end of the year, she
would mail the diploma to my house. For all intents and purposes, I
was a high school graduate.
That was four weeks ago, and I still
feel it every time. The only human contact I had was the neighbors
dropping off mail, or well-meaning church ladies with casserole
dishes. I went through the motions of living, but between the dreams
and the emptiness I felt, I might have been a ghost of myself,
lingering on after my body died in that car.
Sunset. I opened the door to collect
the pile of mail. More pretty, flowery envelopes inscribed in
swooping cursive, each containing a heartfelt condolence message from
the writers at Hallmark, with a bashful, rushed signature at the
bottom. Not even anything personal.
Except one, this time.
It didn’t even have any addresses.
Just, “Our Daughter, Nyella” on the front, and, “From Her
Parents” on the back, under this amazing wax seal. I could feel
something small and angular inside.
I stared at the name. Nyella was my
real name, but by the fifth grade I was so self-conscious and tired
of getting teased or people misspelling and mispronouncing it that I
went by Noelle in middle school, and nobody minded. Now here was a
letter, with my real name written on it, supposedly from my parents?
I broke the seal and opened the
envelope. The only thing inside was a key, etched with the
alphanumeric sequence FNB-103. FNB—the bank? I looked up their
number and called.
“First National Bank, this is Carrie,
how can I help you?”
“Yes, hi—I think I might have a key
to a safe deposit box, from my parents.”
“Okay,” Carrie murmured, “describe
it to me?”
I told her about the numbers.
“That is the way we label our safe
deposit keys. Where did you say you found it?”
I rolled my eyes. On second thought, it
probably did sound like I randomly picked it up off the street. “It
was given to me by my parents—“ Dammit, Nyella, do NOT lose your
cool! “Steve and Pearl Beaufort.”
“I see.” Carrie was doing her best
to safeguard the information like a true professional. “Would you
happen to know the account number for either of them?”
I crossed the room to grab the list of
confidential information my dad’s lawyer had given to me, in case I
needed it. I read off Dad’s bank account number, and answered his
security questions.
“Do I need an appointment to come see
what’s in the box?” I asked.
“No, you can come in anytime during
business hours,” Carrie answered.
I thanked her and hung up.
Why did my parents arrange to send me a
safe deposit key, under my real name? Whom had they trusted with it
this whole time?
I drove to the bank, asked to see the
safe deposit box, and got right in.
Two minutes later, I stood over a table
surveying the haul: a vial the size of my palm filled with a fine
dust that sparkled in the fluorescent light; three gold coins with an
ornate crest on one side, and strange symbols on the other; some kind
of certificate, with the name “Nyella Alabehta T’zen”—Or
“Noelle Elizabeth”, as I told everyone. Was this my birth
certificate? I read the other information, squinting to decipher the
flourishing cursive.
My parents’ names were changed, also; “Steve
and Pearl” became “Stevan” and “Pierelle”, again with the
strange “T’zeti” afterward. My “Realm of Origin” was
apparently “Gibraltar” (if I was reading the sloping, spotty
script right) and most puzzling of all, under “Race of Origin” in
the certificate, it just said “Human.” As opposed to what,
exactly? What did it all mean?
There was a letter in the box, but
after the words “Dear Nyella”, the curling script I recognized as
mom’s handwriting dissolved into some kind of crazy code, or a
foreign language I couldn’t make out.
My gut sank. This was my legacy? A
birth certificate that said I was a human from Gibraltar, three gold
coins, a letter I couldn’t read, and a bottle of dust? I could feel
the sobs rising in my throat. The last thing I wanted was to have a
meltdown right there in the bank! One of the tellers brought me a
small cardboard box and I put the things into it, leaving behind an
empty box.
When I got home, I spread the things
out on the counter. The evening had faded into dusk, but even under
the kitchen lights, I received no further insight. I even tried
pulling out my old reading glasses to see if that made a difference,
but it still made no sense. The “Human” designation bugged me; it
made me feel like an alien, out of place on Earth itself. More than
ever, I wished my parents were still here, to explain these things to
me.
The coins were fairly straightforward.
Probably left over from wherever the heck they got the birth
certificate from, and maybe the metal was worth quite a sum. I hadn’t
heard anything about a will, not even from the lawyer—how did they
expect me to survive on my own?
The dust, now... I pulled out the
stopper and poured a little on my hand. It glistened on my skin, but
it felt weightless. I held the bottle up to my face and sniffed
gently, detecting a faint odor. Of course, a few of the fine grains
ended up in my nostril and I sneezed, sending a fine dusting over the
papers and my glasses on the counter. Shoot! What if it was
important? I tried to brush it off, and a little stuck to my finger.
My skin tingled where it touched, like getting fiberglass slivers in
my hand. Involuntarily, I licked my hand to dull the pain.
A burning sensation spread from the
crease in my tongue out to the edges.
“HOT!” I wailed, hacking as tears
welled in my eyes on my way to the sink. I tried running water in my
mouth, I tried numbing it with ice—but after five minutes of agony,
it went away on its own. I plugged the vial and set it aside.
Whatever; I may have just ingested a poisonous chemical, for all I
knew.
I looked back at the letter, with my dusty glasses resting on
top. My eyes registered the words “dust” and “taste”
a moment before I realized that I had seen those words through the
lens of my glasses, while to my naked eye, the rest of the letter was
still in gibberish.
The heck?!?
I put on the glasses and looked at the
letter. It all made sense now!
“Dear Nyella,” it began.
“If you are reading this, we are
dead. I am sorry to leave you alone like this—my hope is that your
father and I will have the chance to show you the contents of this
box in person, and explain the circumstances, rather than leaving you
to figure them out on your own.
“By now, you should have figured
out the pixie dust. I hope you didn’t mind the taste! Your father
never did, though I cannot stand the stuff. Unfortunately, it will affect the way things taste for a
while. In my case, it took a whole week before I could taste normally
again. But trust your mother, Nyella—the fairy dust is far more
useful than the old tales would have you believe. Putting it on your
tongue will allow you to speak with the creatures that fairy dust on
your eyes allows you to see.
“It is now time to explain your
realm of origin. Yes, dear daughter, I am going to tell you about a
place far from the world you know. You were born there--and you are destined to return someday, so if we haven't had the chance to tell you, this letter will explain everything you need to know.
"This place is called Gybralltyr...”
<<<<<<<<<TO BE CONTINUED>>>>>>>>>>
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