The Indigo Child: Part Three Of Four

Neveah Fay

I see the stars as they shine,

Pockets of light beneath the sky,

Glittering and bellowing,

With undeniable glow.

I am the witness,

Of the moon,

As it blinks in the night,

Grasping at its turn

To rule

The sky.

I am the one,

Who is called by the portals,

The gates,

The souls,

As they scream for me

“Come back to us.”

“To our universe.”

Soon.

Chapter Eighteen

   I walk back into the bakery, where Neveah has planted herself down on the floor, tapping on the waxed surface with her small feet. Next to her are our bags, neatly organized in a uniform pile. Claudio strides out from his counter, and hands me a note. It’s his address, scrawled out and printed in a black pen. “Please write.” He says, his voice almost a whisper, “I want to see where you go next, Viaggiatore girl. Traveler.”  I feel my eyes start to sting, heated in the presence of this. I close my eyes, trying to press the time into my brain. I’ll never be able to remember all of Milan, all the stone and beauty beneath it, ready to break out. But for now I want to just know this place, this time.

   “I will.” And he firmly shakes my hand, asking if I need help carrying our bags. I pick up the suitcase, curling my hand around the strap. I have to strongly go, and I tell him no. “But, I hope that we, see each other again.”

   “Me too.” He says quietly.

   I shuffle next to Neveah, who has walked outside. One last look, I go too.

   “Bye.”

   And then the Rossi family is no longer ours to be with.

| | |

        I fold my arms, trying to keep out the algid air. It leaks through my sleeves though, and burrows into my skin, chilling me thoroughly.  Neveah rubs her eyes, blinking and diminishing her springy attitude in each breath she takes in. She’s neglected herself, the dancing stars inside of her beginning to slow down, and die out. How can she already be acting like this, when we still need four more memories?

   “Where are we going next?” I ask, suddenly curious on the subject. She touches my hand, her soft fingers flooding warmth through my cold ones. My vision begins to fade into a milky picture, but then stills into a sepia frame.

    Neveah is sitting on a small rock, hands clutching a salt stained clam shell and squealing. Her body is chubbier, and she appears to be around three. Behind her, her fake parents sit in low, fold beach chairs staring out at the sea beyond them. A sky of rosy clouds fills, but because of the sepia, they are a striking, stupendous brown color. The sand buries between everything, decrescent as the tide pulls it’s dry, fragile grains toward it, a mass of salt and bluish green.

   The world shatters back, and I slowly draw out, “The beach? Which one?” Neveah chuckles, and balls up her fists, remembering something as it flashes behind her eyes.

   “Plum Island…” She says foggily, almost as if she is in dubiety over it, “They call it that because of the-the beach plums! Sorry, I just don’t feel so good…”

   I tap my fingers nervously against the side of my jeans. She’s not feeling okay, and her face pallor has decreased to a gray color. I sit her down on a bench, where a man is playing a lulling accordion song. She clutches the side of her stomach and thinks out telepathically, We need to go. The grayness of Milan is making me sick, I need to be somewhere with color.

   I hurry her up through the streets and almost carry her. As we stop at a street, she throws up on the cobblestones. I cringe, the smell of upchucked glaze intoxicating the air. A man points a leather shoe at it, and warns a woman to avoid it. Neveah ducks her head down, embarrassed.

   We finally reach the area of where the planes arrive. I pause, to ask Neveah where we’re heading to, and she looks up, her sunken face barely conscious. Her voice croaks out, “Massachusetts.” And she points to her wallet, so we can buy tickets. We’ll have enough, with none of our money even spent. I pull out the clutch, and crumple the money into my hand, anxiously waiting for the white, hovering plane to come.

   A man standing near us swallows, and a droplet of sweat rolls of his forehead. I watch, as his Adams apple bobs up and down. He looks into his clock, and mutters something in Italian, stomping his foot. I suppose the plane is late, but I stay quiet and wait.

    A black shimmer in the sky dives downward and onto the tar runway of the road. I tousle Neveah’s hair, waking her so we can board and fly to the air. She grunts, but eventually moves up. I smile, and hold out the money. “Let’s go to the Island.” And she slightly nods. Her shoulders droop down again, and she coughs out a wad of spit onto the ground.

    We make our way to the plane, pausing at the steps. A guard with a scanner stares at us, waiting for a ticket to be drawn out. “No ticket, no entrance miss.” She says firmly.

    I look helplessly towards the inside of the plane. “Please, my sister, she’s sick and I have money. I can pay how much the tickets are. Please.” She knits her eyebrows together, a coarse look forming across her tan face.

    “Pay up.” She says, and I thrust the money into her hands, receiving back a ten euro note. I thank her, and carry Neveah onto the plane.

    The plush seats are cozy on my tired legs. I fall into it, the light stinging my eyes as I close them. The shining light of the carmine tainted sky blurs through the darkness, burning on my eyelids. Neveah falls right asleep, so weak from the grayness. When we arrive in Massachusetts, she will be flooded with the colors. Pink and flashing yellows of sunset, salty, blue water, and warm golden sand. The opalescent mixtures of shells will form her strength, creating strings of memoir for us to return to the blank universe.

    When Neveah gets home. I have not put much thought into it. We’ll somehow float off to her drifting world, the procedure making us whole, I am Indigo Child, and wiser than any on Earth. But I won’t be able to live with Neveah. Life will become a hollow shell, blank and blurred until the day, when the hankering has stopped, and I visit Neveah.

    But for now, I force away the thought, and look out to the sky, striking in a blue and pink, and observe that we are our own angels, spreading sets of wings and soaring off to some place above the clouds.