Diamond Eyes by A. A. Bell

Author:A. A. Bell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780732291365
Publisher: Voyager
Published: 2010-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

Tears bled from her eyes as a golden light filled the room, but she turned away from it.

‘That was the day your mother flew away?’ Ben asked.

Mira nodded, clenching her eyes shut against the torrent of details.

‘Take your time,’ Zhou said.

‘That’s a repressed memory,’ Sanchez said sympathetically. ‘Let it out, Mira.’

‘I don’t want to let it out! I want to curl up in a dark place and forget it!’

‘It’s already forced you into a black corner,’ Ben said. ‘And you know how much you hate being forced to do anything. Why not let it out and let it go, so it can’t hurt you anymore?’

‘Hurts if I do and hurts if I don’t,’ she argued.

Her temples throbbed with worry and she rubbed them, wishing the pain away. Then she realised how much better her life had been since she’d listened to Ben’s advice. She huffed in resignation and searched the darkness behind her eyelids.

‘Eyes open, if you can, please?’ Zhou reminded her.

She opened them and the memories hailed down in chilling fragments.

‘Papa sent me for a shower … to freshen up after my nightmare, he said, but now I suppose it was to stop me from seeing Mama’s body … My pyjamas fell on the wet floor, though, so I went to fetch dry clothes from my room. My vision was patchy back then, still coming and going … and as I hurried around the verandas, I passed him in the lounge … I heard him crying … It was late, so when I looked in, I couldn’t help but see the TV over his shoulder. It was the only light in the room. He turned and saw me then … Blood on his shirt. But he wasn’t angry.’

She read his lips again: She flew away!

‘He ran to cuddle me — trembling — terrified that I’d fly away too. Or worse, that others would find out what she’d done and come to take us both away …’

Mira saw her father again on his knees, his blue-moon eyes filled with tears, and his dwarfish gnarled fingers clutching her so desperately.

‘He’d been watching the war movie for courage, I think, so he could do the awful thing that might save us both … if the guilt hadn’t killed him eventually.’

‘How?’ Ben asked. ‘You told me he drowned.’

‘Yes. He did!’ She saw him again, hanging upside down from the mango tree with his head submerged in a drum. ‘He bound his legs with leather strips and hung himself upside down in a barrel of his homemade liquid fertiliser — the same drum he’d used to dispose of my poor mama’s body.’

Gasps echoed in the room.

‘Why?’ she said, fighting back her tears again. ‘I loved him and he loved me! Why did he leave me too?’

‘We can never know what went wrong in his head,’ Sanchez said sympathetically. ‘Mental ill-health seems to have run a marathon in your family. Unfortunately, our records are only sketchy because you’re the first to receive ongoing treatment. Take comfort in that,’ she said, patting Mira’s shoulder in time with Ben.

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