Shae stood with lazy, feline grace and looked up at him. She was impossibly small and exquisite. Her eyes were a greenish-gold like sunlight through pond water. He could see her better since she was close to the door and under the sunlight. He observed that her hair wasn’t quite white–where the light hit it, hues of green, orange, and violet shimmered like the surface of an opal. The volume on the song in his mind turned up suddenly, and for a few seconds, his head bobbed. “Yeah, let’s go inside.”
Ben tried to gauge her reaction to the house when they entered the living room, but if she was surprised or disturbed or interested, he could not tell. “Here.” He walked through the den from the back door towards the kitchen. He held out a chair at the kitchen table for her, which she quickly climbed up and stood upon. Hammer rose at the sight of her and waddled over. Shae lifted a hand and massaged behind the dog’s ears. A little sound came from her throat—something between a purr and a sustained chirp. “That’s Hammer. He’s a good boy. Aren’t you, Hammer-man?” Ben squatted down and roughly rubbed Hammer on the side and patted him, silently thanking him for not barking.
“Um so . . . are you hungry or thirsty or something?” He made motions of eating, feeling ridiculous, and resentful towards Andre for not being there. Before Shae replied, he poured her a glass of water and placed it on the table. “Here.” He nodded, forced a smile.
Shae grasped the glass with her tiny hands and drained it in two impossibly huge swallows. She set it down, her eyes half-lidded in obvious relief. He refilled the glass and set it down again, but Shae shook her head. “It is bitter, but thank you. I was thirsty.”
He realized he was trembling and forced himself to stop. “Are you hungry?” He went to the fridge. “I’m not sure what kind of food you eat, so I guess I’ll show you a few things and let you pick.” Andre did most of the shopping at the Chestnut, so they were usually stocked with healthy food. He was going to start taking things out of the refrigerator but saw Shae’s eyes widen at the jar of honey sitting in the center of the table. She grabbed it, opened the lid easily, and began drinking it. Ben texted Andre: “Get more honey.”
“You want anything else?” Ben asked when she set it down. When several seconds passed without her replying, he said, “Okay, well, just let me know if you get hungry.”
He almost texted Andre that Shae could speak, but decided she’d find out soon enough. He made toast for himself and sat down at the table with his toast on a paper towel and held the phone out. “It’s a cell phone.” He was feeling pleased with himself as if he could take credit for the existence of this object. Still sitting at the table, Shae leaned over and stared. The screen was dark. “Here, see.” He tapped the button on the bottom and dragged his finger across, waking it up. “It’s got everything—games, the Internet, pictures, music . . .” He tapped a few icons to show her. “But it’s a phone. You use it to communicate with people far away.” He cleared his throat. “Here, go ahead. You can play with it.”
She hesitantly tapped on it. He noticed something peculiar about her hands and suppressed a shudder. Her delicate fingers had three joints instead of two. She went to his pictures and swiped through a few. “Strange,” she said simply.
God, her voice. He ate quietly, wondering what it would be like to encounter a cell phone for the first time: a glowing screen, tiny pictures, and video . . . it would be insane. Or maybe it was primitive to her. But he didn’t get that impression. Maybe because Andre thought she was a faerie. She did look like one, and the images of them were usually in a natural context: forests and meadows, dainty beings communing with plants and animals, flitting through the trees. They were from another time as well as another place, somewhere devoid of technology and pollution, a quasi-medieval fantasyland.
After a minute, she lost interest in the phone, climbed down from the table, and went up to the window, putting her hand against the glass. He put the phone back in his pocket and glanced at the flat-screen TV in the living room. Would it frighten her if he turned it on? The coffee buzzed in his head, and Ben experienced a sharp moment of clarity. That creature is right there in front of me. Oh, fucking Christ. His mind scrabbled for an explanation.
Perhaps it was some quirky disease—some genetic, exceedingly rare, but still documented condition. There were so many strange diseases out there. He’d seen a special about primordial dwarves on TV once. There were conjoined twins, giant people, those super-hairy people, the poor beasts that filled the Mutter Museum, folks who could pop out their eyeballs, hold their breath for twenty minutes . . . all manner of talented and tragic freaks. Perhaps once they contacted whatever authorities handled missing person situations, an explanation would surface, and he and Andre would look foolish. They might even be in trouble for keeping her any length of time before alerting anyone. Why were they keeping her? Why had they both just assumed she would stay?
When Shae turned back and looked at him, those thoughts evaporated. She was not deformed. She was not ill. There was nothing wrong with her. He could not alert the authorities. In the best-case scenario, she would become a celebrity of sorts, maybe a political pawn. In the worst, she would disappear, and he and Andre might, too. Who knew what the powers that be—those people in white coats or black suits and sunglasses he imagined—were capable of? Perhaps they were all that stood between Shae and vivisection. A headache loomed in his temples, but then the song rose within him and pushed out pain and worrisome thoughts. It rejuvenated him and provided a dramatic soundtrack to the conviction he now had to protect her. She came to our home for a reason, he thought. We’re supposed to keep her safe. Now . . . what to do with her?
He tossed away his paper towel and brushed crumbs off the table. “You want to go back outside?” Ben looked out the window and winced a little at the bright day. He grabbed his sunglasses and baseball cap from the small table next to the front door, went to the back door, and turned to her. She went ahead of him, and he saw she had a strange way of walking. There was too much time between her steps.
Ben felt a flicker of annoyance at the state of the yard. He hadn’t considered that he’d have to make multiple trips to the dumpster and thrift store to get rid of all the stuff in the shed. It was a decent yard when it wasn’t cluttered with crap. The bougainvillea that grew in along the edge of the house provided a colorful, pink border, and their little lemon tree was full of the sun-yellow fruit. There were a few potted succulents on the porch.
Hammer snuffled out from behind them, trotted over to his doghouse, and went inside. He reappeared a second later with an ancient gray baseball in his slobbery mouth. He padded up to Ben, panting. For the next few minutes, Ben played catch with Hammer while Shae walked around the perimeter of the yard, keeping close to the fence. He tried to get a glimpse of her bare, narrow little feet.
When he sloppily threw the ball a few feet from her and Hammer got a hold of it, the dog went to her, tail wagging, and dropped it at her feet. “Hey, boy!” Ben clapped his hands. “Leave her alone. C’mere!”
Shae picked the ball up and turned it over in her hands. Then, with more force than Ben would have thought she had in her arms, she chucked the ball over the fence. Hammer toddled over, turned back to Ben, and barked. Shae looked at Ben expectantly.