Authors: Clara Ward
“Can you teach me some gymnastics now?”
“It’s Tuesday. Don’t you have school?”
“It’s electronic. Most chats are in the afternoon, when it’s too hot outside and everyone’s awake. I always do dance in the morning. The senior troop practices here Tuesday and Thursday nights, too. And sometimes Aliana comes by other nights.”
“We’ll need a mat to even do tumbling.”
“I’ll ask Pop. Would a mattress do for now?”
“Too springy.”
“How about a futon?”
“Yeah, that might work.”
“Back in a minute.”
“I need to eat first.”
“No dedication,” Emma sighed sarcastically, then bounced off to collect a futon.
By Friday, they had two real gym mats and Emma managed to do a back walkover. When Sarah finally climbed home and settled down to sleep, Reggie was on the phone again, presumably to America at this hour.
“Do you still have the project key off-line on a secure machine? And you’re sure no one’s had access to it?”
There was a pause while he listened.
“Possibly, but it can’t hurt.”
Another pause.
“We haven’t had due process since the early aughts.”
Sarah fell asleep realizing she’d barely spoken to Reggie all week.
The next morning she was up at dawn. Dance Diaspora was hosting a Maypole dance for all of its members, contributors, and volunteers, and Aliana had asked Sarah to help set up. The two of them drove out with a rented ladder, tables, and tablecloths. After Sarah helped carry everything across the park to a giant flagpole, Aliana handed her two coiled ribbons.
“Climb up and tie them to the ball at the top. I’ll hold the ladder.”
Sarah started climbing. The sun baked her uncovered hair and at the highest point, slight shifts of air passed through her woven top. She tied the satiny ribbons then started to creep carefully back down, unreeling as she went.
“Just throw them!” Aliana yelled.
Sarah felt herself smile and relax. She threw the first one, which was yellow, and watched it skitter as it unrolled its way to the ground. The second ribbon she threw as hard as she could, feeling it release from her hand, watching with sun-watering eyes as it arced up then fluttered down. It was deep purple.
When she reached the bottom of the ladder Aliana moved it away then caught Sarah by the hand. “Now, you must learn the dance.”
“I thought I’d just watch, only the dancers –“
“You are a dancer, and I can teach you easily enough.”
She handed Sarah the yellow ribbon and showed her how she must weave with a circle of imaginary people to decorate the Maypole. Their ribbons didn’t form a fancy weave, with only two of them dancing, but by the time they reached the bottom, Sarah felt part of the ritual.
“See, you’re a dancer, just like me.” Aliana smiled and kissed her on the cheek.
Sarah felt tingly and warm as they danced the pattern in reverse and unwound their ribbons. When Aliana sent Sarah back up to attach the other colors, Sarah felt she could fly with each color she threw down.
A week later, Emma and Aliana could both do front and back walkovers, handstands, and dive-forward rolls. It was time to design a tumbling routine the troop could practice while incorporating new aspects of dance. The project was so absorbing that Sarah had stopped looking for a real job. What James had paid for viewing her DNA could cover a couple years if it had to.
Aliana spent her days managing Dance Diaspora and teaching tap to young children, but she came by every night to teach Sarah and learn gymnastics. Aliana also arranged a few other dance lessons, in the hope Sarah could join the senior troop someday.
At the end of an evening session Sarah was exhausted but felt radiant. Searing joy filled her inside and the urge to create burst through her mind like fire. She was stretching on a cool gym mat in the studio as Aliana left up the stairs and Emma sat down beside her to stretch.
When Emma stopped stretching and curled up with her arms around her knees, Sarah pointed her legs into a pike position and paused to look at the girl.
“I don’t think I should be saying this,” Emma said, brow wrinkled with teenage tension, “But you realize Aliana is a lesbian?”
“I figured that out.”
“Did you figure out anything else?”
“She knows I’m with Reggie. She’s just teasing me.”
“She’s serious.”
“How old are you?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t hurt Aliana.”
Sarah was taken aback and wondered if she’d been sending messages she shouldn’t have. Then she looked at the tensed body in front of her.
“Emma, are you –“
“It doesn’t matter. She’s not interested in me. She’s interested in you.”
“You know, it’s all right to feel whatever you feel.”
“Thank you Miss-ever-so-knowledgeable-about-what’s-going-on-here. I’m fine with what I feel and whoever I feel it for. I’m even dealing with being in the same room as you two. Just thought I might save you from causing too much trouble.”
“Okay, I’ll try to make things clearer with Aliana.”
Emma tilted her chin down and looked up at Sarah, one eyebrow raised.
“Without hurting her,” Sarah added.
Emma rolled her eyes and shook her head, then flounced away.
May 21-23, 2025 – Bangkok, Thailand to Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Reggie was sweaty but triumphant, ready for a shower and siesta, as he returned from a day of shopping in Bangkok. Taking the last step off the springy pseudo-stones and opening the door of the glass house, he could see Sarah moving around inside, like a bird building a nest. She was piling clothes all over the bed.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked.
Sarah sprang forward, grabbing his hands, still bangled with bags. “We’re going to Angkor Wat! Tom’s doing some business in Cambodia and said he’d take us Friday if we can meet him at the Grand Hotel.”
Reggie disengaged his heavy hands and set all the bags on the glass dining table. He remembered his unease when Tom mentioned Angkor Wat over dinner.
“You’re not excited?” Sarah grew still, and Reggie realized he had too. The decision was made, and he shouldn’t spoil it for her, but somehow he just couldn’t play the cheerful sidekick yet.
“Let me take a shower. Then we’ll talk.”
The next day, Reggie jolted along on a bus to Siem Reap. Cambodian roads made him appreciate Thailand’s economic success. He imagined himself on a Mars rover. They swerved around a crater large enough to swallow their transport. Then bounce, bounce, bounced over smaller craters covering the planet’s dusty surface. Now a long section of road like shattered crystals vibrated his spine through strange harmonics. But it wasn’t such a bad road, for Mars.
The musky, gritty air on the bus became the recycled air in his spacesuit. The scrap metal shacks they sometimes passed could be space debris. But then what of the thatch and bamboo dwellings up on stilts? Only British astronauts would deploy such shambling specimen collectors. And the chickens squawking in pens on the roof? There was never a rational explanation for poultry.
Reggie tried to make the best of the bus ride. Sarah was chatting warmly with a German tourist seated in front of them. They talked about women travelling alone and about traveling by bus rather than air. They talked about landmines still scattered across Cambodia, amputees, and poverty.
The shacks here were wispy, fly-away shelters compared to those they’d seen on the Thai side of the border. Never mind that they’d traveled two-hundred and fifty miles through Thailand in the time it took to cross forty miles of Cambodia. The roads in India had never been so varied in their bone shaking deformity as this supposedly major thoroughfare. Still, Sarah seemed to float along oblivious to the heat and ragged roads. Scenes outside her window or people on the bus absorbed her attention like a small child at carnival. In that moment she was like a Martian to him.
Reggie was bone sore the next morning as they waited for Tom in the lobby of the Grand Hotel d’Angkor. They’d spent the night more economically in Siem Reap, in an unpretentious hotel where every spring in the mattress displayed unique personality.
If Reggie hadn’t been struggling with intangible misgivings, he might have insisted they splurge and stay a night at the Grand. Built a century before, the luxurious mansion, surrounded by gardens and hung with silks, had once been occupied by the Khmer Rouge and then the Vietnamese “liberators.” Now it was fully restored, the best hotel around, and of course the only place Tom would stay, which was why Reggie had merely read the brochures then stayed someplace else.
Their escort for the day strode into the lobby like a Thai prince and ushered them out to the glossy, black jeep he’d rented. Tom’s hair had been shaved almost to his scalp, and his natty tan explorer ensemble looked more Hollywood than tough guy. Sarah sat in front as Tom drove. Reggie couldn’t hear their conversation over the roar of the motor. He just sat attentively in back with his arms crossed.
When the audacious temple with five towers loomed above its man-made lake, Reggie knew it must be Angkor Wat. By the time they closed in and parked, he’d lost some of his misgivings. No wonder Sarah had always wanted to come here. The building had presence.
At least a kilometer wide, with carvings and bas-relief on nearly every surface, the compound engulfed Reggie as soon as he wandered into the concentric enclosures. He recognized Hindu epics, Buddhist images, boats with eyes, and shrines full of flowers, fruit, and incense. He wandered through a series of stone doorways, all complete, in a line, but with no roof. The sun rose higher, bringing out details, adding to the dazzle. The sounds of gathering tourists speaking diverse languages created a sort of discordant, jangling music, which vibrated in his ears without reaching his thoughts.
Then Sarah was beside him, slipping an arm around his waist, light and seductive even in the still heat of noon. His mind swam back from the awe and intensity that had absorbed it.
“Guess you like it after all?” she asked.
“I should have done more research. I had no idea the temple was so—It’s like I was discovering it myself.”
“I want to stay longer, too; maybe we can come back tomorrow. But Tom is ready to move on. He wants to drive to Ta Prohm, says it’s cooler in the heat of the day.”
Reggie suddenly realized it was witheringly hot and his head was beginning to ache. He drank some water and rummaged in his pack for trail mix as he followed Sarah out.
At Ta Prohm, Reggie wandered again, examining plants as much as pillars. This temple, just a couple minutes drive from Ankor Wat, was half wild. Vines traced their way around corners; old trees blocked the sun. A repeated whoo-oo-oo-oo-oo sounded amid the more standard cackling of birds. Reggie climbed to a higher point, to see how the parts fit together.
Though less awesome than the monument they’d just left, Ta Prohm was soothingly beautiful and almost devoid of tourists at present. Reggie sat at the highest point he could reach and gazed down as Sarah and Tom bent over some carvings on an interior corner.
Approaching the temple from some distance was a group of squat Asian men in dark trousers and white shirts. Reggie stared at them, mistrusting them for some reason, not wanting them to invade the pleasure of his afternoon. Then he realized what his eyes were telling him.
“Elves!” he yelled down at Sarah, loud enough for her to hear but hopefully not to attract the men’s attention. As Sarah began to rise and look toward him, Reggie saw Tom reach quickly into his pocket. Tom manipulated something with both hands, then began to pull his right arm back.
“Tom!” Reggie yelled as he hurtled himself down into the ruins, knowing he’d be too late to save Sarah.
For a moment he couldn’t see her, didn’t know what was happening. There was a muffled sound like a gunshot, passing near him, but not too near. It came from outside the temple, the men approaching, not near Sarah.
Reggie sped around a corner to find Sarah snarling like a military commander into the face of a statue-like Tom. In Tom’s rigid right hand a sharp needle glistened.
“You set me up. Why?” Sarah demanded with tight, controlled tones.
“I can’t hear them. What have you done to my mind?” Only Tom’s mouth moved, the rest of him, even his chin, held rigid like petrified wood.
Sarah’s tough façade faded into confusion, “What?”
Reggie felt himself slide into the role of soldier. “There’s a bunch of teeps coming, maybe Chinese.” He thought back to his instinctive cry of “elves,” was that some strange race memory or had he been speaking in code, like a sentry, even then?
“What’s in the needle?” Sarah asked Tom.
“Just a tranquilizer, a peaceful capture. What have you done to my telepathy?” Tom’s voice trembled with terror despite his unnaturally still face.