For A Star To Fall

Chapter 15: Dear Child

Chapter 15

The front door swung open, letting a long streak of reddish yellow light in, like some kind of unfolding carpet. Dust mites swirled in the cool air of dusk. Then there was a dark shadow cast over the floorboards. Sturdy, no-nonsense boots made deep clacking sounds on the ground. Emyle rushed forward from her place in the shadows near the door and threw herself at Father. She hugged his knees, as her head did not even come up to his waist height. Even though she was still a toddler, Emyle could form coherent, short sentences easily enough, this most likely the result of her being the daughter of two incredibly intelligent ex-scientists. “You are home, Father,” she said, and looked up at him, her two big brown eyes filled with that kind of naive, innocent happiness that was characteristic of little children. Emyle looked around, noticing that there was no other dark shadow of another person. “Where is Mother? I know that she left with you.”

Father’s face was in shadow because of the backlighting. He sighed and picked her up by the waist, swinging her up and hugging her to his broad chest. Emyle giggled and clapped her hands. “Father! What are you doing?”

He brought her into the living room, kicking the front door closed as he moved. Setting her down on the couch, Father paced in front of her, walking restlessly around the coffee table. Emyle was old enough to understand that Father and Mother did not have jobs, but they had enough savings from their previous occupations that it could tide them over till their goal was accomplished—to stop the evil people from doing the bad things they were doing. Today, Father and Mother had gone out, leaving her alone in the house, which she was perfectly fine with because she could take care of herself, and they went to gather more information about their enemy, scouting out their headquarters. 

Emyle frowned, knowing that Father was acting out of character. He had told her some time ago that when a person acts strangely and not being himself, it would mean that he either had something to hide or something had happened that caused him to be flustered and nervous. Father continued to pace around, like a lion trapped in a cage. “What happened?” Emyle’s tone was quiet and her words straight to the point.

Running a hand through his black hair, Father gave a terrible, shuddering sigh that wiped any trace of innocence off his daughter’s face. He shook his head, as if to himself, and said, “You mother was taken when we got to the border of the headquarters of their facility. Armed guards came to get us. They appeared out of nowhere, and there was nothing I could do. Your mother and I put up a fight, but they overwhelmed us. I managed to get away, but Katherine was in their grasp already. I tried to follow them, but they took her into one of those trucks that they have, so I could not keep up with them.”

“Is she alive?” Emyle’s voice was as cold and hard as the thick ice on the North and South poles of the earth, even more emotionless than Father’s. It was becoming natural to her, cutting off her feelings, like untying a tether and letting them float off into the darkness of her mind. They could only come back when she let them, because she shut the doors, so that they were unable to come to the forefront of her consciousness. Better to be practical and logical rather than emotional and brash. If there was a stranger nearby that only heard her voice and not glimpse her appearance, they would not have known that she was only a toddler. Toddlers her age were not supposed to talk, much less form entire sentences. Toddlers were supposed to giggle and laugh and be cute and full of childish emotion. Even at her age, and homeschooled, Emyle was perfectly aware of the fact that she was different from other children her age. But this did not bother her. In fact, she was gratified for this difference, as it gave her an advantage in the mission that made up her life. 

“I am not sure, my precious star,” Father replied, grimacing as if the words hurt as they came out of his mouth. “But our enemy is ruthless and cruel. I would not put it past them to kill your mother the minute they saw her. However, they did not kill her on sight, so the guards must have had different orders from that. Perhaps the enemy needs her, but I won’t be surprised if Katherine is dead by the end of this week. Yes,” he nodded, looking resigned, “I’m sorry, my precious star, but your mother is most likely dead.”

Emyle looked up at him from her position on the couch. She had cut that cord tying her emotions to her mind quite some time ago already, and she now felt nothing. It would be disorientating to anyone not used to it, to suddenly feel a type of blank emptiness where your feelings should be, but to Emyle it was already normal. Slowly, knowing that Father was watching her closely for her response, Emyle nodded, strands of her still-short ebony hair falling forward a little. Mother was dead. It was a definite, hard truth now, because Father was always correct. She stood up now, uncurling herself from that cross-legged sitting position that she had relaxed into while Father had been speaking. She said, “Mother is dead. What shall we eat for dinner, Father?”

“Are you all right, Emyle?” Father moved around the coffee table and knelt down in front of her, placing his large hands on her shoulders gently and Emyle felt like he was enveloping her with his strongly protective presence. He looked into her eyes and realised that they were no longer that warm hazelnut brown he loved as it reminded him of Katherine, but almost everything about Emyle reminded him of Katherine. And now she was gone, and he could not follow her to the place where she had gone, so Emyle was all he had now. He had to keep her safe. But now the brown had become a flat black, and her face was expressionless.

“Yes, I am all right,” she said, and nodded. Seeing that Father was still not pacified, she forced a bright smile onto her face, but that only made his frown deepen. However, he still released her and patted her on the head before standing up. 

He said, hands clenching at his sides to form fists, “Your mother is gone, but we must continue with this, to complete our mission and achieve our goal. Katherine would not want us to give up on this. We shall devise a new approach to this, something that will make use of the two of us, since one in our number is gone. You will have to train, my precious star and it will be filled with hardship and pain, but in the end you shall succeed and we will be able to stop the bad people at the facility once and for all. We shall need...”

Emyle blinked away the memories of that day. It was clear now that Mother had died only months after she was taken from Father and her, but Jordan had been right. It did hurt a lot, and the pain was mostly concentrated around her chest area, making it difficult to breathe properly. But Emyle sensed that this was more than simple physical pain, it was of the emotional kind, something that she had never experienced before. On second thought, ever since she had been taken to this facility by Dr. Valin, she had been exposed to and learning new, extremely and disorientating-ly unfamiliar things, which were mostly introduced to her by Jordan. For this she was grateful, but to be honest experiencing this particular thing—an emotional breakdown, it was called—was rather unpleasant. 

When Father had told her that Mother was dead, she had not cried. At that time, it had been easy for her to simply not feel emotions, and she also had absolutely no inclination to let herself do so. Emotions were complicated, useless things that she did not require to function properly and effectively. Emyle did not need them. And why should she, if all they did was cause tragedy and inconvenience in others’ lives?