Outrun the Moon(96)

I am pulled off Winter and unceremoniously dumped on the ground, along with a snicker.

“Now then, my parents are waiting for us,” Marcus tells Francesca. “We’ve all been dying for you to make us some of your pasta.” With a sinking heart, I watch the four horses take off, Francesca twisting around one last time to watch me as they ride away.

I wish you well, my friend. May I see you again, one day.





44



THE SURGE OF ENERGY I FELT TOWARD Marcus drains away, and all my hurt rushes back with a laugh.

There is the pain of rising. I brush the gravel from my bloodied palms.

Mrs. Lowry says failure is not in the falling down, but in the staying down, and, Ma, I’m still upright.

There is the pain of forward motion. Joints crunch painfully together. Each step lights a fire in my knees.

There is the pain of memory. My eye sockets pulse, as if my brain is an overflowing vessel of injury.

His little fists grab me so tight. Why do you have to go?

There is the pain of dying.

Noble father, I’m sorry I wasn’t there.

And there is the worst one of all. The pain of surviving.

I stumble forward, searching for a reason in the treacherous, broken earth. I hardly notice the people around me.

“—flew by. Never seen such a thing.”

“—saw it all the time back in Virginia.”

“—enough hot air here to keep him aloft for hours.”

Hot air? It takes me a moment to process what they’re saying. I frantically look about. The same squashed houses, the same desperate people. The same gray sky swimming in ash. Somewhere in my mind, a little boy points up and says, “Blue.”

Bah-loo. Balloon.

I grab the arm of the nearest man. “Did you see a hot air balloon?”

He shakes me off, brown eyes peeled wide. “What the Sam Hill?”

“Did you?” I plead.

“It’s not there anymore, but yes. Went that way.” He points. “I hope it didn’t meet a bad end.”

I set off, not daring to hope. Past a crumbling church, over a nest of cables, through a corridor of houses that look like someone took a giant baseball bat to them.

People watch me hobble by, a strange parade of one.

“Did a hot air balloon pass this way?” I gasp more than ask a woman juggling two babies.

“I haven’t the foggiest. Who has time to look at the sky?”

I ask a man the same question, and he shrugs. Onward I push, anxious for what I will find and dreading I won’t find anything at all.

After another block, I fall onto my knees, panting. Nothing flies overhead but confused specks of earth, maybe wondering how they became part of the sky.

Tom, are you here?

A woman packing a suitcase on her front lawn brings me a cup of water. “Here, child.”

A blossom among ashes. “Thank you.” I glug it down in one long swallow.

My gaze falls to an object on the sidewalk a hundred feet ahead. I push the cup back at the woman, not sure I believe my eyes. It’s the basket that bore me to the clouds a lifetime ago.

The Floating Island. And beyond it, two men fold the silk like a bedsheet.

Tom looks up. He is covered with the soot that baptizes us all, and his sleeves are rolled to the tops of his strong arms. His face tightens at the sight of me.

He says something to the other man, who looks up and drops the silk.

It’s Ba.

As if in a daze, he walks toward me. His head is bare, and his face crimps with new lines.

I run toward him, not stopping until I feel his solid form in my arms. I catch a whiff of laundry soap and old cigars.

“But . . . I saw you . . . how are you alive?”

His graying eyes constrict, trying to keep the tears from spilling. His cracked fingers clutch at my arms, as if afraid I will disappear. “The morning of the earthquake, I heard dogs barking all at once. The birds were flying in all directions. I knew something was wrong. So I left the cart and went home, but it hit before I could . . .”

His voice grows hoarse, and he licks his lips. He shakes his head. “I am sorry I was delayed. I had to help the firemen. So many of our people were hurt.” He taps me on my bossy cheeks. “I was on my way to the park when a balloon dropped from the sky.”

My gaze wanders to Tom, quietly standing behind my father. His usually clear eyes are bloodshot and puffy. I let go of Ba and fill my arms with Tom. It is not appropriate to show affection like this, especially in front of one’s father, but for every rule, there is an exception.

Tom squeezes me close, and my emptiness leaves me.

“How did you—?” I gasp.

“Captain Lu decided to visit your ma after all. She told him Monday would not be a propitious day for travel and to wait for Wednesday, so we overnighted on the ship.”

Ma. I stare into his watery eyes, stunned. Did she know she was giving this last gift to me? Like Ba, I always viewed her fortunes with a certain skepticism. But she was always right when it counted.

I imagine her in heaven, staring down at Ba and me with an ironic grin on her full moon face.

“Ah-Suk is okay,” I tell Tom. “He misses you.”

He blows out a shaky breath. Gathering up the silk again, he folds it briskly, hiding his emotions in the task. He removes his collapsible dolly from the basket, and lifts the Island onto it. Then he and Ba roll it along the street toward the park. I drift beside them, so light, it feels like my shoes are floating.