Wild Whispers

Map of the Stars

The night she said goodbye, Mama whispered in my ear, "Hush now, chikno. Take this amulet for good luck and remember that I'm always with you."

She tucked the object into my hand and folded my fingers around it. I can hear her husky Romani accent as if she were still kissing me goodnight for the last time. As if the bounty hunters didn't take her away from me. As if she didn't leave me alone in this world with only an amulet for protection.

I can still see the man with the broken nose pressing his gun to her temple. Her headscarf is torn; her dark eyes are wide and desperate. I don't know why the bounty hunters wanted my mother. We are nothing but poor gypsies; no one cares about us. They taunt us and make fun of our clothing and our amulets and our magic.

We are nothing, and yet they still took my mother.

Is she dead? Is she alive? I don't know.

I reach for the amulet she gave me, the black obelisk I keep in my pocket. I need to feel it to remember that she's still with me, but when I try to move my hand, I realize that I can't move. I force my eyelids to open, but they're as heavy as a sack of flour. Cold seeps through my thin clothing.

Where am I?

Panic races through my bloodstream. I can't move. I try to wriggle free from the monster holding me down, but metal cuts into my skin. When I force my eyes to open, a fluorescent light overpowers me and I shut them again.

That's when I hear the voices. They sound thousands of miles away, but I force myself to listen as I try to open my eyes, squinting against the bluish light.

"Is he waking up?"

The man speaking has a strange accent as if his words are tilted sideways. It doesn't sound like the lilting Parisian accent I'm familiar with or Mama's Romani accent. Who are these people that have tied me down to a metal bed? What do they want with me?

Then a thought hits me: Are they the people who took Mama?

My eyes fly open and I fight against the shackles binding my forehead, wrists, and ankles. The metal gurney beneath me rattles but the bands around my body don't relent; they only cut deeper into my skin, and I feel blood trickle down my forehead and into my eyes.

I blink it away and try to search for the voice. I see a man approaching me in a white coat buttoned up the front. He peers at me through black wire-rimmed glasses, and his eyes are curious, not hostile.

"Ah, the child awakes," he says, gesturing with one hand.

A woman and an older man approach us, all peering at me with the same frank curiosity. "So this is him," one of the women says, a dark haired women with ruby lips. "I never thought he really existed."

The older man with a gray goatee huffs. "Don't get your hopes up. Liam Arquette wouldn't have led anyone escape, much less some gypsy woman with the map and a kid."

My mind sputters as I try to understand. None of these words mean anything to me, but I assume Mama is the gypsy woman, and I am the kid. I open my mouth to speak and find it dry as if someone cleaned it with a cotton swab.

"Please," I croak through cracked lips. "Mama, is she alive?"

"So, he speaks!" the goateed man says with a laugh.

The man with the glasses and the dark haired girl trade a look, their eyebrows knotted. "We haven't been able to recover your mother yet," the woman says. "We're still looking. Do you know where she went?"

The hope that started to grow inside of me crashes at their words. I thought they'd saved her, that maybe she would reappear and kiss my forehead and tell me everything will be okay. But no--she is still gone. Tears well in my eyes and I try to blink them back. I don't want these people to see me cry.