The Many Things You Cannot Reach (TIG 1)

There was beauty in darkness.

It takes time for anyone, even an adult, to agree with the statement. Even I doubt it, during my worst days. Cecilia Crest realized it from a young age, being locked up in her own home. The summer of 1985 was no season for albinos, not in London, nor in Glasgow nor Aberdeen, and certainly not in Devon. The recent drought led the farmlands into devastation, but if it did matter to any eleven year old, it didn’t matter to Cecilia. All that pierced through her limited scope of thought was the sun, as it waltzed through the windowpanes like a party invitation sent to someone else.

Light is pain, she scribbled, mindlessly into her sheet music while a bald man teaches her piano. Shade is relief. She had a masochistic nature to herself. It was an innate thing, a desire to watch butterflies flap burnt wings, to feel her skin burning under the scorching light. The shade was the safe place. She never wanted to be safe.

“I’m running away,” She told her brother as she knotted the final ends of her blankets, tightening the bond. “Far, far away from this place. It’d do us both good if you stayed here.”

“Cecil, please,” Cyril climbed up the ladder on the bunker bed, their fathers’ bright blue eyes gleaming back at her. “This is too much. We can’t climb out the window and scurry off into Dartmoor, Father will have our scalps.”

“And who's saying we have to?” she shot back, suggesting no unfair tone. “You don’t have to do anything, little brother. Go back to mum, spoon feed her muddy porridge and shove pills down her throat, lick at our father's boot if it’s what you like. But even gilded cages aren’t for me, and I have the unfortunate duty to stride away into the sunset. You know, like in the telly.”

“You shouldn’t play under the sun.”

“I’ll live.”

“How do you expect to go off without packing any food or water, then?” He inquired, stubbornly. “You’ll either starve or start eating yourself.”

Cecilia shrugged, pouting. “Phileas Fogg and his French servant only packed a few sets of clothing on their trip around the world. I don’t see how I can’t perform the same trick.”

“Phileas Fogg had money.”

“Does it hurt you so, little brother?” she said, smiling sardonically at the boy. “Does it hurt you so I’m doing something dangerous without endangering both our wellbeings?”

“I recalled we were twins,” he clambered onto the bed, grimacing. “Why is it you insist calling me ‘little brother’?”

“Because you constantly act like one,” she crawled past him, climbing down the ladder. “Now you either join my little adventure or stay here. If you need guidance in that decision, stick to what you know and keep from my way.”

She dragged the rope to the window sill, jumping on the study desk. She slid it open, glaring down. A comfortable stock of bushes lay at the bottom, calling her like a siren. The drop was short since they were only in the second floor, but perhaps not as short as she'd prepared for. She hummed to herself. Eyeing the bronze latch on the sill, she wrapped the blanket roped to it, tying it into a dead knot. She threw it over, watching as it slapped against the wall of the building, before hanging solemnly.

It was a narrow gap. Minor bruises, she theorized. Cecelia inhaled, gathering the strength to take the jump—and slowly going down the vine-like support.

Her shabby pony slippers scaled the wall next to her, leading her downward into safety. A rustle sounded from the bushes. It felt like an ant was at her arms, but she didn’t dare let go to slap it away. Her slippers tracked dirt on the mansion walls, until it left itself in a small corner between cement and safe ground. She sighed, dropping her feet. Easier than she imagined it would be.

“Incoming!”

Something slammed her face into the ground, sitting at her back. She scrambled to stand up, spitting out filth from her teeth. Cyril was murmuring apologies in a sped voice, patting her pale hair. “Get your bottom off my back,” she growled, pushing her brother off. She stood up, brushing off the brown spots on her white summer dress. “How is it you manage to ruin everything I try to do, little brother? Do I really need you around to foil every single evil plot of mine?”

Cyril glanced back at his shoes guiltily. “I—I didn’t mean to,” he drummed his fingers together nervously, biting his lip, “I just—I just didn’t want to be alone, is all.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I--” he paused. “If you don’t come back, I wouldn’t know what to do. I mean, I don’t want to hurt anybody, and I certainly don’t want to hurt myself, but I’d rather take the chance than wonder in the night if you’ll return safely or if I—if I find you in some ditch.”

Cecelia wrinkled her nose, chuckling. She rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she offered her hand, smiling. “You numbskull.”

He stared blankly at the hand, as if it might’ve killed him at touch. He stretched his other hand, taking hers lightly. She drew him up, slapping away the dirt from his cheeks. “I swear, Cyril, if you weren’t as fluffy as a bunny I’d throw you off a bridge,” she said, attaching her fists to her hips. “I imagine that was supposed to be a compliment.”

“I’m allergic to bunnies,” he whispered.

“You’re allergic to everything,” she chuckled. She turned to the open field, drawing the bushes away with a wounded hand. “Now, we’ll have to go off and--”

She stopped midway, staring out into the open air. The ghost of a ‘woah’ echoed in the cave of her mouth, her eyes scanning the sky above her head. Stars glittered the black blanket, peeking behind curtains of transparent gray clouds. The field beyond was riddled with dried grass and barely thriving wild flowers, closer into the first set of trees leading in the woods. Little tinges of light flew in the distance, like falling stars trying to get back into the sky.

Cecelia walked towards the light, unable to close her lips. “Cecil?” her brother called after her. “Cecil, what are you doing?”

The starlight was but inches away from her face now, daring her to go closer. One almost touched her nose. She took a step back, covering her mouth, as if she was about to scream something uncivil. But her curiosity easily overpowered her fear. Don’t go under the light, her mother whispered in her ear. A brief image of filthy duvets flashed in her head, empty pill bottles with silly names. Coughs. An abundance of coughs. You weren’t born for it.

She let the light touch her, though, and basked in it like a forbidden love. Fireflies. One twinkled at the edge of her nose, and she giggled. Bloody fireflies. “Cyril, look,” she laughed, pointing at the tiny lights like a former blind man pointing at the colors of leaves. “Light. It’s all light.”

Her brother was gaping at her audacity, her newly found courage. A faint smile picked at the corners of his mouth. She looked over her shoulders, chuckling maniacally. A mechanical halt. Oh, I forgot, his eyes seemed to hint, though not in malicious intent. It’s your first time.

She flushed, angrily at first, but she could never stay angry at him for long. “No use standing around,” she said, waving the fireflies away. They seemed frightened by her shame, and the almost invisible warmth that blessed her face vanished, instantaneously, scrambling towards the trees. She watched them retreating into the trees, finding herself walking towards them. Don’t, she wanted to say, as she always did in her mind to the sun as it disappeared under the horizon behind glass walls. Don’t leave me here. “They know where to go,” she screamed, without looking back. The fireflies dove deeper into the woods. “They know where to be.”

“Cecilia, wait--”

If there was anything else he would’ve added, Cecilia didn’t hear it. The grass scratched at her ankles as she rushed towards them, whispering wait, wait, please, her dress clinging onto dead flowers and insects as she moved farther away from the mansion. Cyril followed her, reluctantly, his screams and footsteps growing louder by the second.

She rammed into the trees, slapping sharp, needled branches away from her vision, cobwebs spinning in the ends of her hair. His brother yelled something after getting hit by a branch, and she chuckled. They were hers, now. They shone brighter than the full moon, and they were hers for the taking.

Stop. Halt. Dead silence. The trees that surrounded her like a crowd in a subway ended, only one daring to latch roots onto the cliff on the other side, entering into a steep, lush valley.

The Tree That Dared dropped leaves over her head, whispering apologies through the wind. The fireflies darted away, joining their relatives of the night in the sky. She stood.

Rage bashed at her heart in waves, and she could almost listen to the shattering, to the explosion. But what was supposed to be a shout, a curse to the beings that slipped her into this oversensitive skin, translated into silence. The energy she’d used to chase the only source of outside light she’ll be allowed to bask in without being hurt vanished, gradually having her body go limp. She sat down on the grass, staring back at the light as it slowly fades away.

Pain, she’d write on her notebooks and on the walls. Pain, like fireflies.

Cyril finally came to, dropping to his knees and huffing. “Did—did I miss anything?” he breathed, glancing at the weak Cecilia. She shook her head, uncertain how to face him.

“I think--” Pause. The final light flickered into the distance, teasing her one last time. “I think I’d like to go home now, Cyril.”

He looked to her, confused. “I thought you weren’t going to come back,” he said, feebly. “You said you didn’t like gilded cages. You said you wanted to go out into the world. Like Fogg.”

She chuckled, closing her eyes. Her mother was there now, staring blankly at the walls while she turned to the windows with pitiful glee. Don’t go under the light, darling, she’d say, choking on her own words before coughing it out. You weren’t born for it. “Some other time, brother,” she said, looking at the empty spot where the starlight was. She found herself wishing she had wings. “Perhaps some other time.”