12 - Cello

I don't know how some people would respond to being told that they were born to be a slave, but I don't like it. Risa has a mobile phone and it chirps in her pocket. She veers away to answer it. I take this opportunity to scramble to my feet, leaning over I help Fellin to stand up.

"Are you alright?" I ask him, keeping my voice low.

He shrugs. "Are you?"

I shake my head in reply. "I'm not sure." A moment ago, standing at the gate with Risa and Fellin, I felt more or less happy. But now a surge of homesickness overtakes me. The city feels like a cage, a prison for innocent people. It's beautiful, but a man-made beauty that could never surpass the fresh and icy wildness of the mountains of my home. My mother's eyes swim in my memory for a moment and I wonder how her day went yesterday. How does it feel to be the person left behind?

Risa finishes her conversation. "Fellin, if you don't leave now you will be missed," she says. "I'm sorry about what I did to you."

"Well, no, actually, it was interesting. So that's what it's like?" He smiles widely at her -- I should take a leaf from his book and learn how to be this easygoing.

"I think green would be best for you Fellin," Risa says with a smile.

"You think so? Oh well, I really should go." He nods at me. "Bye."

"See you at lunch."

"Yeah, good idea," he says as he leaves.

Risa turns her attention to me and sighs. "If only you weren't an Undefined, people would be much less inclined to try and challenge you." She shakes her head. "Whatever am I going to do with you?"

I don't have anything to say. I feel like telling her that I can look after myself, but that's a blatant lie. In the free world of my youth, I was my own lord, but here, in the Zephyr, if the past 24 hours have demonstrated anything to me it is that I am helpless.

"Teach me to do things like you just did."

"I can't." Her eyes are filled with sorrow as she lightly taps the diamond on my forehead. My body starts to tingle again. "Undefined are like an empty box without a lid, nothing to hold the power in, nothing to keep it contained. You're the greatest mystery of our world, the biggest question we ask ourselves, why does the Zephyr need you? Why so many of you? That's what everyone will tell you."

"Everyone, except you?" I ask hopefully.

"Except me and a few others," she agrees. "But they won't listen to me. If what they say is true, if you're nothing but baskets like they call you, why then do you always surprise us with extraordinary things? Why do Alprines only ever choose from among the Undefined?"

"Maybe we're meant to ride the Alrpines and visit distant lands like in stories?"

Her eyes shine, and I realise one thing about Risa Medrick.

She's a lunatic.

Maybe I like that.

*

A stream of visitors suddenly arrives at Risa's study and she has to attend to several things. She casually asks me to put things back in order and for the next twenty minutes I'm placing books back on shelves and stacking papers. It's rare to see books outside a library today, so I shuffle through them. They're all old fairytales and fantasy novels. The papers are all handwritten, poems and stories, she has hundreds of them.

"Those belong in the drawer, don't read them," Risa yells at me from the door, for a moment sounding like an anxious teenager. I smile and quickly stuff them in one of the already overcrowded drawers.

Then it's time to go to the meeting. We're already in the main dome, we just have to walk down the round corridor and enter the meeting room. It's a large round room with a big oval black glass table at its centre. Most of the chairs are already filled on the far side of the table and Risa tells me to sit on one of the two red chairs on the opposite side.

So I sit alone in front of twelve other Blacks, and twelve Jewels of different colours. There is only one Undefined besides me in the room; he's an elderly man with a drooping, wrinkled face. He doesn't look very well, his spotted skin is yellowish and sagging and he's fast asleep with his chin against his chest. They say that exactly half of the Jewels are Undefined, and they are represented here by one person with one leg in the grave.

"Is everyone here?" asks a Black who's in his sixties, he's got a thick grey moustache and there's something very odd about his eyes. One of them is black and alive and the other is pale blue, the pupil frozen in the centre and reminds me of a dead fish's eye. It's a glass eye.

"Where is the girl?" asks a Black-Jewelled man with bleached hair two people to the left of the glass-eyed man. He's looks thirty or so, but his hair is long and he's wearing thick ebony eye make-up.

"I'm here." Syianne's voice comes from the door; it's steady, level and clear. She doesn't have to be told where to sit; she approaches, slipping into the red chair next to me. I look at her, but she's looking straight ahead so I watch her profile for a moment, hoping to see her eyes and what she's thinking – is she still cross? But she doesn't turn her head, so I look back at what I assume are "the higher ups."

"Now we are ready to begin," says the glass-eyed man. "After the discussion last night, the Core has found that it cannot proceed with a decision concerning the two of you without having a few matters addressed." He turns to his tablet, and then looks at me. It's as I thought, they wanted to clear this matter without us. "You are Cello Riles, sixteen years old, born in April 5th '66 in the Darabin outside the western border of Meda?"

"Yes." His finger taps the tablet.

"Your mother is a Medanese citizen, named Ira Riles whereas your father is a Darabin nomad? Divorced in Lebrix Court eight years ago?"

I feel defensive all of a sudden. I've never had reason to speak up for my father — the moment he left he stopped being part of my life. "They're not nomads," I say. "They have villages and towns there." What I don't say it that they have to move around a lot, that they're a people born restless. For every inhabited town in the Darabin, there are two ghost-towns. For some unknown reason, everyone has the urge to leave at some point, the ghost-towns fill up gradually and eventually the inhabited towns become the ghost-towns.

"And his name?" asks the glass-eyed man.

"You don't have it?" I ask, surprised.

"His name is missing from all the records. What is your father's name?"

His name is missing from the records and it's missing from my memory too. I always called him father, in Tagrin that's aiyu. I try to conjure up a memory of my mother calling his name, but either she never did, or I just can't remember. What kind of twisted person forgets his own father's name? I open my mouth to admit it, to admit that if I met my father today, I wouldn't even recognise him.

But it hurts my pride, so I say, "Aiyu."

"And his surname?"

I close my eyes and my grandmother's worried round face jumps into my mind. I saw them only a few times in my life before I was eight years old -- I had been shy and hardly spoke to them. I should call my mother and ask her, but will I be able to talk to her? My insides twist about into a dark mess. I never knew that I didn't know my father's name. "I can't remember." I release these words with a sigh, feeling so ashamed.

In front of me, heads are turned, glances meet glances, and the ruling expression is worried.

"Yesterday at approximately 8:30 you encountered team-trainer Risa Medrick and had absorbed Zephyr energy of more than 5.2 LUs. Following this you experienced a complete Overflow. Am I correct?"

I open my eyes and turn to look at Syianne, whose looking straight at me and doesn't seem mad at all. "Is that what happened?" I ask her. She gives a light shrug of her shoulders. I look back at the glass-eyed man. "I don't know," I say, my emotions concerning my parents safely stowed away.

"How did you manage to absorb 5.2 LUs by mere touch?" asks the glass-eyed man as if he didn't hear my previous answer.

"I don't know," I say again.

"Have you experienced anything like this in the past?" asks a thin lady with trimmed grey hair and vibrant red Jewel at the centre of her forehead. Her voice sounds genuinely curious.

"No," I answer flatly.

"You're possessed by an Alprine, aren't you?" asks another Black, a young man who couldn't be any older than twenty. He's got spiky brown hair and striking, handsome features. I also notice that he's got a black earring in each ear, is chewing bubble gum and seems to be wearing black eyeliner.

I lift up my sleeve in reply and show the scar on the back of my right hand. "That was going to be my next question," he says with a smirk.

"You have no farther information to provide the Core concerning this issue, Cello Riles?" asks the glass-eyed man.

I shake my head.

"Then we will be moving on." He turns to look at Syianne. "You are Syianne Locke, sixteen years old, daughter of Elemyst Rassi and Neimel Taeyd. You were adopted by Neil and Enid Locke when you were nine months old?"

"Yes," she replies. I stare at Syianne, I can't swallow my own surprise. Those names are not Medanese names, exactly like Syianne is not a Medanese name or word. I suddenly have a million questions I have to ask her.

For example, what masochistic parents would adopt a Jewel as their daughter?

"You were born in the Darabin in the 5th of April '66?"

"Yes," she replies.

"Where are your birth parents?"

She moves uncomfortably in her chair and doesn't answer at first. After a moment of silence, she mumbles, "What?" as if she did not hear the question.

"There is no record concerning the reason they had given you up to adoption."

She swallows, she's looking at the table, "I don't understand."

"Are they dead?"

She stares at the table and says nothing.

"Answer the question," the glass-eyed man demands. "Syianne Locke, are your birth parents dead or alive?"

"I – " she whispers. Her eyes are downcast, but they're dancing from side to side, as if she's searching for an escape.

I jump to my feet — not quite angry, just disgusted. I can't take it anymore. "Hold on, can't you see you're disturbing her?"

"Miss Locke, please take your time." The glass-eyed man ignores me. I look at Syianne, her small hands are clutched strongly into fists on her lap, she sits very still. Whatever it is that happened to her parents, she knows, but she won't answer, she wants to keep it to herself. She's afraid of these people, but she's willing to endure to keep her secret.

I glare at the people in front of me, "Hey, Why are you interrogating us?" I demand. "What crime have we committed? Look at what you're doing to her. If you plan on torturing us, at least tell us why."

I notice how a few of the people in the room – the members of the Core as they call themselves – smile, but my gaze is fixed on the glass-eyed man. His mouth is pursed into a tight frown. "Sit down, Mr. Riles, and please control yourself," he says coolly. "Torturing you? What are children made of these days that a simple request for information would be seen as torture?"

"They are probably made of something that will not agree to meet you on your terms alone, Sagastus." I look towards the source of the voice, the ancient Undefined had opened his eyes and his gaze is dark and clear. He is looking directly at me. If he is here, an Undefined among colours, then he must be remarkable. As I look at him, I notice another set of eyes gazing at me from around his shoulder. Two black orbs, large and bottomless, eyes I recognise with my heart before my mind.

The eyes of an Alprine.

"Please answer my question," Sagustus says, looking at Syianne. It is one thing to disregard me, but he disregards the elderly Undefined as well.

I'm still on my feet and I feel angry. This is wrong, whatever is going on here, I can't trust these people with my fate. I'm not here to be anyone's slave, I wasn't born to serve these people. I didn't come here to come to this. That superiority that streams off the glass-eyed man in bucketfuls is only there to hide his jealousy – he's jealous, they're all jealous, because they can never be chosen by an Alprine. "I told you to stop." My voice is pitched so loudly it's almost a yell.

Sagastus is unfazed, he addresses me calmly, "And I told you to sit down."

"I am not your thing to be commanded," I feel a wave of heat rise to my face, "and neither is she."

"Enough of this!" barks a middle-aged woman with a green Jewel on her forehead. I recognise her — she's that woman Fellin talked to yesterday, the one that said we had to keep out of everyone's way. "You stand before the Core of the Zephyr, whatever the members of the Core say is the law."

"The law? The Core?" I smirk. "Sounds made up to me." Someone is sniggering and I don't know who. Risa peeks out of my pocket and swells as she climbs onto my shoulder. She reacts to my anger and defiance. "Discussing us behind our backs? Well, you can continue your discussion without us. See if I care."

Syianne turns her head to me; she meets my gaze and nods before she rises to her feet. She pushes her hand into mine, I glare at Sagastus, at the middle-aged woman, at Risa Medrick who has done nothing or said anything for our sake –

And then we leave and walk away from the Zephyr.