Read The Child Goddess for Free Online Page B

backhanded her across the cheek. She slammed to the ground, the pastel sand of the beach grinding into her face, her hair. Mamah had screamed, a high keening that stopped abruptly, as if someone had put a hand over her mouth.
    Oa was too shocked to weep. Papi had never struck her before. He pulled her up from the sand and shoved her into the canoe next to Bibi. Stunned and silent, she gazed back at him as one of the elders rowed the canoe out of the bay. Papi stood on the beach, his back to the water, refusing to watch his daughter disappear.
    When the canoe reached the island of the anchens, the elders made Oa and Bibi climb out. The girls stood together on the beach as the boat bobbed away through the surf, leaving them. Oa remembered how the waves washed their ankles with foam, and how her cheek stung from Papi’s blow.
    Not till the canoe disappeared into the darkness did the anchens—the other anchens—come down to the beach. They led the newcomers into the forest, Oa rubbing at the circle of purple fingerprints on her arm, Bibi weeping great gulping sobs. Oa never saw her papi again.
    And now the woman called Isabel sat in the not-wood chair with her hands together in her lap, her pale face drawn. When Oa held out the cross, she smiled, and little lines curved around her mouth and wrinkled her eyelids. “Thank you, Oa,” she said.
    Oa sniffed. She detected no scent of anger or fear rising from Isabel.
    Oa wanted to touch her, to see if her skin was as smooth as it looked, her white hands as soft. Oa hadn’t touched anyone in a long, long time. Doctor had touched her, at first, but his hands had been hard and cold. And he had worn gloves. Isabel didn’t have gloves.
    It occurred to Oa that Isabel didn’t yet know about her. Would she be the one to understand what Oa was, to figure it out? And what would happen then?
    Oa laid the cross carefully in Isabel’s open hand, then dashed back to her bed. She put her back to the corner, and clutched the fuzzy toy to her chest. She waited.
    *
    THERE WAS NOTHING for Isabel to do but wait, as well. She didn’t look into the mirrored window again, or try to call anyone through the door. She put the cross around her neck, and sat absently gazing at the wall, where a framed print showed varicolored horses galloping across a white field. Her eyelids drooped, and she let them fall.
    She startled awake at the crackle of the speaker. “Excuse me,” a voice said, one Isabel had not heard before. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I have your valises.”
    Isabel stood up with difficulty, finding her muscles stiff from travel and tension. Her voice was scratchy when she spoke. “Do you have my equipment cases, too?”
    “I don’t, but I think I can get them for you.”
    “Can you? That would be a great help.”
    “I’ll just put these in the bubble, and go back for the other things.”
    Isabel crossed to the mirrored window, where she could see only her own tired face. “Who are you? I would like to say thank you.”
    The silver of the mirror dissolved, deliquescing to clear glass. The window became a real window, showing the corridor beyond, the external windows facing into the Multiplex and the darkness of the early evening. Oa gasped.
    A longshoreman faced Isabel through the glass, the friendly face she had seen at the airfield, with long, heavy-lidded eyes and a slow smile. “I’m Jin-Li Chung.”
    Isabel smiled back. “I’m Isabel Burke. Thank you, Jin-Li.”
    “You’re welcome.” The longshoreman’s black hair was very short, and streaked with silver. “Mother Burke. Jay Appleton is on guard now. Tell him to call me if you need anything else.”
    “Thank you,” Isabel said again. “I will.”
    Just as the glass silvered, becoming a mirror again, Paolo Adetti loomed in the corridor. The speaker was still on.
    “You, there!” Adetti rasped. “Are you the one who brought Dr. Burke’s things? Who gave you permission to clear the glass?”
    Isabel closed her