Unexpected plot twist

I hadn’t expected that Grace’s life would be that changed by having come back from death. Silly me.

Grace Silverstein is the protagonist of Prodigies, and she’s generally a detached, sardonic young woman. Her past experiences include being discriminated against for her Black/Jewish ancestry, a childhood spent in residential schools for the arts with few visits from her parents, and her parents’ death in a plane accident. She has recently learned she has an inborn talent to manipulate feelings with her music, and this talent is why she, her fellow prodigy Ichirou Shimizi, and his former instructor Ayana Hashimoto have been pursued by members of an international cabal.

At the time of this scene, Grace has been recently killed and resurrected by an acquaintance, Grzegorz Kozlowski. The four of them flee to decide what to do next. I didn’t expect to write this scene:

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It was a little over an hour to Mackinaw City and the bridge that connected the lower part with the Upper Peninsula. The UP was its own world, I remembered from my high school trip to Mackinac Island in high school, which seemed so very far away. I remembered trees, forests much like those we had traveled through, and a concert on the grounds of the Grand Hotel, which made the Palac Pugetow look like a mid-price family motel. I think I sighed aloud.

We stopped at a small independent coffeehouse with more atmosphere — offbeat and settled-in — than I expected in a small town. We wandered in, the four of us, and I wondered if the owners had had much experience meeting with a black woman, two Asians, and a man with long, fiery-red hair. They were nowhere to be seen, nor were any customers. To my relief, I noticed an isolated table sat in a back corner that looked as if it was designed for clandestine Internet use.

“Allow me,” Greg pushed past us to inspect the corner. Ayana snorted, and I admit that my eyes bugged out a little from the moment of intrigue. He waved us back, and I noted that the nook wasn’t only unoccupied and secluded, but abutted the back door.

We settled at the back bench, and Greg took our orders — coffees for me and Ichirou with cream and sugar, green tea for Ayana, black tea for Greg; and an assortment of breakfast pastry. “I’m not vegan enough to check the ingredients,” Ichirou assured.

Greg returned with the drinks and two Danish, three scones, a handful of biscotti, and what looked like scrambled eggs in a mug. Greg handed me the mug and growled, “You need more protein.”

“I just want a biscotti,” I growled back.

“We have those too, Miss Grace,” he muttered as he handed me one — and smiled, a fleeting smile that felt as if the sun had come up, no matter how briefly.

As we worked our way through breakfast, Ichirou pulled his laptop back out and set it on the table. We looked around —we were still the only ones in the store. Ayana pulled out a couple notebooks, and I wondered what was in them. Greg pulled out what looked like a thumb drive, then another thumb drive, and my curiosity was piqued by the depth of intrigue the objects on the table carried.

Ichirou had his computer, Ayana her notebooks, Greg his thumb drives, and I had nothing. I suddenly wondered if I had been kept in the dark for some reason. Did they think I was delicate? Just a girl? Were they afraid to depend on me because I had recently come back from the dead?

“Grace, I’d like you to try something,” Ayana said with her usual calm.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Do you have a song in your repertoire that says ‘This is not the table you’re looking for’?”

Hmm. I thought about that. There’s a whole range of moods that go with the message ‘go away’, and not all of them would be appropriate to a family-run coffeeshop with a Northwoods-meets-1940’s look.

I liked Ayana’s idea of ‘Nothing to see, move along’, but what song could be used to carry that?

What if the song had no w
ords at all? Just feelings, maybe directions?

“You’re on, Grace,” Greg murmured as a short, stocky blond man wandered toward the back table.

I took a deep breath and began, pianissimo, with a whisper of a note which grew more solid as I crescendoed, then dropped back accarezzevole. The man stood still for a moment, as if something called to him, and he turned paler than I thought he could. I had no words, only emotion that gave him as if it were the most important gift I had, which it was. It was the first moment and the last moment I had spent in heaven.

The man looked at me with tears when I finished again in that caressing tone, remembering Ichirou’s graphics that had given me unconditional love. He had not moved, he had not fled. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and grabbed my hands in his. “Thank you,” he said. “I needed to know that.” Before I could explain, apologize, anything, he said, “I will block the doorway to this section. I will not throw my guests to the mob.”

********

Foolishly, I had thought that the topic of Ayana’s death experience would diminish in two days. Instead it has given her more power, but there will be a price for her to pay for it.

From the sequel of a book I haven’t finished

Last night, I had a vision of looking out a window at a muddy sky at rain sheeting down upon the tops of buildings. I felt like I was waiting for someone, and that if he arrived, there would be an intense conversation. The room was a chunk of the top floor of an old brick building, spacious and dark but for the light from the window.

When I tried to write a poem about it, I realized that I wasn’t the person looking out the window. I told my husband, and he pointed out that I was Ayana (from my book Prodigies) waiting on Grzegorz (another character from Prodigies) that would happen in the next book. (I have visions and Richard interprets them — we’re spooky around here sometimes.)

Maybe I better keep writing.

***********

Reader from Poland — I need your help with the highlighted portions below. The XXXXs are where I need the Polish phrase for the English phrase that is also highlighted.

*************

Ayana stared out the window of her garret apartment, hardly noting the amber-grey clouds dumping sheets of rain on the tarred roofs of the shops surrounding her. It had been a week since Greg had left the apartment with nothing but the clothes he wore and what he could stuff in the worn military backpack he carried.

She had made a mistake, she had intuited in the aftermath of the argument that broke their relationship. No saving face there — the bout had scoured civility away. She couldn’t figure out how the fight started, except that he had said one word — “xxxxx”. Marriage. And then he had said he’d take care of her and the child she carried low in her body. She had panicked, fearing the loss of her autonomy. And out of her panic, she had lashed out at Greg. And he had lashed out at her. She couldn’t tell if it was her rejection of his offer or the words she used. She didn’t remember what she has said except that it was in his native tongue.

The knock on the door startled Ayana. She stood from the chair by the window, feeling the discomfort in her back as the baby’s weight shifted. “Who is it?” she called out both in English and Polish as she plodded toward the door.

“XXXXXXX,” she heard Greg’s low, rough voice say.

We need to talk.

She flipped the light switch and a soft but inadequate glow bathed the room. She gazed out the peephole to see Greg, wet hair straggling around his face and down his shoulders, his coat soaked. The peephole distorted his wild-eyed looks so he looked like an oni, a demon, and the expression on his face did not bely his seeming.

“Yes, we need to talk,” Ayana murmured as she turned the locks on the door.

Greg stepped in, and he didn’t look any less frightening. His eyes looked shadowed, his skin bone-pale. He bent and tugged his boots off at the door. That was oddly the custom in both their cultures, odd because those cultures were otherwise so different. Ayana watched him, her heart aching at the familiar scenario.

Ayana stood frozen, speechless, because she wasn’t prepared to cut all ties with Greg. She wasn’t ready.

“I brought blackberry syrup,” Greg twisted his mouth. “We can’t make the baby unhappy, can we?”

“Why do you feed me?” Ayana seethed as the two of them walked to her couch that folded out as a bed. “I think I can fend for myself.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever done anything nice for you?” Greg muttered. “I want to do for you and the baby like I never got to do for Anna.”

Ayana felt a hint of what she feared, being trapped by Greg’s solicitousness. “Where is Anna, anyhow? Tell me she is not with her mother!”

“Anastasja will never be with her mother again. She would be always in danger of her life if she were. No, I have taken her to Shemisław’s. She happens to think of Shemisław as her grandfather. She’s safe while I go through this madness.”

“Madness? Is the PTSD with you again?” That would explain the hollow eyes, the beaten down demeanor.

“No. I was mad when I last left you, and I was mad when I didn’t come back sooner. I walked around like a zombie –“

Ayana studied Greg’s Medusa locks. “I thought you were a demon,” she smirked, feeling a bubble of optimism, then sobering again. “This food thing — is this part of taking care of me? Will you keep me small and harmless? Will you make me stay home with the children and not work with you and Shemisław?”

Ayana glanced again at Greg, and he looked as if he was stifling a laugh. “It’s hard to picture you being small and helpless when you can swear in — how many languages?”

“All of them,” Ayana shrugged. “Including ASL.” Again, the bubble of amusement tickled her mood. “Don’t forget my skills of evasive driving.”

“I don’t know if Iwanow Jr. will ever forgive you for what happened with his Varsovia outside Wroclaw,” Greg grinned, and Ayana remembered her joy in Greg’s fey moods, his quirky sense of humor, and his daring. She had become daring, a spy against the Renaissance movement because of him.

“When you said you’d take care of me, did that mean keeping me shut up inside the house and not working with you?” Ayana hadn’t spoken so clearly in their last argument, choosing instead to use the subtle language of her homeland. She heard the sharpness of her voice, and wondered if she had lost her Japanese communication style forever.

“Oh, you don’t know how much I’d love to,” Greg’s face fell into grim lines. “My whole family died in the bombing of my parents’ house, and I think now and again that I could have saved them if I had only been at Sunday supper instead of busking downtown. Especially now that I know my talent, although I would have exposed myself — and possibly killed myself — resurrecting five people. I would die to keep you from getting killed.”

Ayana noted that Greg had scooted closer to her. She felt his warmth, and it was welcome. “I would die to keep you from getting killed as well,” Ayana sighed. “And I want to work with the others, the Renaissance Children, and to do that I would have to carry at least some of the load and use my talent — and my skills — to help with our forays into Second World Renaissance and their compatriots.”

“I should have taken that into consideration. I warn you, though, I am going to try to protect you from danger from time to time, and feed you whatever you want when you’re pregnant, because I’m a bit of an old-fashioned chauvinist at times.” Greg took her hand in both of his.

“And I’m going to have to tell you to back off, because if you were expecting me to be submissive, they failed to teach me at the orphanage.” She waited a beat or two, and asked the question that sucked all the air out of her lungs when she thought of it. “Are we still together?”

“Would the thought of marriage scare you — that is, if I make my best effort not to make you small and harmless?”

“Could we not do a Catholic service? I’m not willing to convert.” Her Buddhist/Shinto roots kept her from being totally assimilated into a Western culture that more openly courted violence.

“As I’m sure my talent would send me to Catholic perdition when I die, I think I should avoid the Catholic church myself. Can I tell you I love you? I’ve tried to tell you, and you’ve not been receptive to that.”

Again, the bubble of happiness, the effervescent feeling of joy filled her.

P.S.: An excerpt from today’s work:

Of course I dreamed again after Ichirou left. Of course, I dreamed about being shot. And, of course, I dreamed about Greg:

I experienced the dream as if I was outside myself and inside my body at the same time. I saw the sniper level his gun. I heard the shot, and I felt the tearing pain from the bullet. This time, I looked down at myself as the bullet tumbled out of me, and there was a tear in my shirt and a blossoming of blood.

I collapsed, and everything happened in slow motion: I felt my heart stop; then I felt every cell of my body yanked backward by a second, maybe two seconds. I wanted to scream from the pain, but it was over almost before it had begun. I peered down to see the hole in my chest mended. Greg dropped to his knees, exhausted, and muttered, “O mój Jezu, przebacz nam nasze grzechy …”

When I awoke again, the barest tinge of sun could be seen through the trees from my window. Greg stood over me, his long hair falling into his face. He pushed it back with one hand in a gesture that had long become habit, revealing his long, homely visage. I noticed his eyes looked hollow in the sparse light.

“Are you an angel?” I asked in a parody of awe. Joking was the only way I could encompass what he had done.

“Definitely not,” he muttered. “I’ve done a couple things in my life that might actually keep me out of heaven.” He bent down by my side and inquired, “How are you feeling today?” Unlike Ayana, Greg spoke English in a definite accent, with rolled r’s and subtle accent differences.

I sat up. “I can sit up without help. I’m hungry — are you sure I can’t eat anything but chicken broth and rice? Don’t I have red blood cells to build up or something?”

“We could make you some befstyk tararski. That should set you up good.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Which is — ?”

“Raw beef with a raw egg in it.”

I uttered a long sound that resembled wretching, then managed to choke out, “Gross!”

“You’re missing a treat, let me tell you.” Greg shook his head. “It looks like you’ll be eating some of Ayana’s rice porridge again. Yours will get a little spinach.”

The porridge, it turned out, wasn’t bad at all. Certainly better than that raw beef Greg was talking about.

I whiled the time after breakfast trying to guess the implications of being resurrected. Nobody had come in to visit; I fretted about what they discussed in my absence. My viola was, as far as I knew, still packed in the truck, and I was pretty sure Greg was guarding the front door. I was ready, if not to run, to at least venture as far as the living room and eat lunch there. When I suggested the venue change to Greg, he scowled at me from the doorway.

“Why not?” I snapped at him. “I’ve got enough energy to —”

“Yell at me, it sounds like,” he smirked in his oddly accented English. “Maybe you are ready to come out and visit with us.”

“You mean — have tea, and talk about the weather?” I inquired.

“Not exactly. We’re having a debate about what we should do from here — running appears to be no longer an option.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok, stand up so I can help you out to the living room.”

“I don’t need help!” I snapped. I stood up and promptly felt my knees give out from under me. Greg glared down his nose at me.

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“Ok, so maybe I do need help,” I sighed. I was an emancipated minor, with all the responsibility that entailed — which was very little up to this point. Even now, I relied on Ayana and Greg to keep me safe. I stood again, this time supported by Greg, and we ambled into the living room.

Returning to a work in progress

I’ve decided to write on Prodigies again, and it’s been at least three months since I’ve touched it, because I’ve been working on my NaNo book, Whose Hearts are Mountains. I’m being drawn back to that book because of a few things:

First, the mystical sense of the book. One character survives a fatal shooting, and another can bring the freshly dead back to life. Discussions . We have a character who dreams. Characters have to deal with their religions, their morality, and where these change.
The group of four main characters are in close space a lot, and they’re being pursued because of their talents. They get on each other’s nerves.
There’s humor. I wasn’t aware of how little humor there has been in Whose Hearts are Mountains, as if nobody laughs after the collapse of the United States. People laugh in even the worst of circumstances. I don’t know what I was thinking. I think some of the best situational humor I’ve written is in Prodigies.
I love the characters — two teens and two slightly older adults: Grace, who is by turns blunt and guarded, denies her talent; Ichirou, an odd introvert, is so interested in the effects of his mind-influencing art that he doesn’t consider the moral implications; Ayana, Ichirou’s teacher, holds secrets that may endanger their lives; while Greg’s talent disturbs their sense of what is possible.
It’s a coming of age story from the viewpoint of Grace, an emancipated minor who spent her childhood in boarding schools.

I’m going to have to re-immerse myself into the characters, their conversations, their goals and purposes. I’m going to work back into feeling their voices in my head and heart. And then, hopefully, bring that attachment back to finish Whose Hearts are Mountains, which I feel has been lacking the humor and the heart that I’d been developing in Prodigies.

OMG, a close close call!

I organized my computer today. It’s running out of storage, and I hate iCloud and am moving my cloud storage back to Dropbox, which works more like a backup system.

The reason I hate iCloud is because it has a tendency to take forever to sync. I cannot reliably get to it as a storage medium. It’s not a backup medium. And, sometimes, I wonder if it loses my files in the ether.

Like today, when I’m moving files back to Dropbox, zipping photo files and getting rid of the originals, because I have almost no storage space left on my 5-year-old Mac. I have a really good filing system for the most part — I always keep photos away from everywhere else, and I always keep Scrivener (writing software) files in either my Scrivener folder or my writing file. But then this happened …

One of my Scrivener files went missing. This is how I learned iCloud’s uselessness as a backup.

I checked everywhere — on Dropbox, on my Mac, on iCloud, on every possible place it could have been. All I found was a 3-chapter sample, while the document I remembered was eight chapters long. Prodigies, one of my works in progress, had vanished. (Mr. Borowiec, this is the one I asked you to provide me with some Polish dialogue for. No, don’t feel guilty.)

So I panicked. Richard, my husband, did not. While I was getting weepy, he looked through his Dropbox account to see if he’d read a draft in progress. Sure enough, he had the full eight chapters. I went from anguished cry to happy cry (just as drippy but not as red-eyed miserable).

Thank you, Richard. You’re the MVP today.