From Light to Dark (26 page)

In all this time, Miss U. couldn’t remember a single student who’d managed to meet her eyes before hearing her story. Sisgene must have been remarkably kind to be this sweet.

It reminded her of someone. All at once, Miss U. felt homesick.

But that was long ago.

Once everyone was settled, Miss U. cleared her throat and started.

“Let me tell you about the world we call the Safety,” she said through her crooked mouth. “Once upon a time….”

The students leaned in automatically. No child could resist a story.

She spoke, knowing the students pictured the events as if they were happening right in front of them. Miss U. had learned to tell a good tale in eight hundred years.

The children imagined two worlds. One brighter than the hottest day. The other as black as sleep before a dream.

There were people. Some were tall and black: a little like Fere, but taller still, and darker, with eyes as clear as glass. Some people were short and white: like Erac, but smaller and lighter, with eyes the color of jet.

Two heroes entered the picture, and the students envisioned a tall, dark man and a small, light woman fighting together for their lives, and for the lives of others.

The children were enthralled. They leaned forward in their seats and listened to Miss U. speak, forgetting her appearance, forgetting their own fears.

A fiery battle ensued in their imaginations. Flamethrowers and magic stones were tossed around, and the heroes struggled to survive.

Miss U. loved this bit. The students, especially the boys, couldn’t get enough details of the weapons and the fight. Every time she told it, this part of the story got longer and longer.

Sisgene raised her hand, and Miss U. stopped to call on her.

“Yes, Sisgene?”

“Is that where you got hurt?”

The class burst into laughter, and Sisgene blushed. Her gray skin turned a light pink below her hazel eyes.

Miss U. smiled. No student had ever asked that before.

“Yes, Sisgene,” she said.

The room fell silent.

“Caer and Eref were my friends. My scars are from that night. The world we live in now, the Safety, was created for us by them.”

The students turned to one another in confusion.

“In fact, Sisgene, Caer and Eref
are
the Safety.”

Sisgene smiled, but the rest of the class seemed perplexed.

“No way,” Erac muttered.

“Erac,” Fere whispered from across the room. “Shut up.”

“The Liber Flower you’re cutting doesn’t exist anymore,” Miss U. said. “But it used to. It was a beautiful flower with petals as soft as rain and colors more beautiful than you can imagine. The night Caer and Eref became the Safety, Liber Flowers fell and covered Dark World in color. Then they disappeared forever.”

The students looked at their construction paper.

“That’s why it’s important to cut these pretend flowers, even though they aren’t real anymore,” she said. “I want you to remember Caer and Eref and I want you to be thankful for what you have.”

The room remained quiet for another few seconds before she said, “Now get back to work.”

The students cut and pasted diligently from this point forward until the end of class, each one trying to make a better Liber Flower than his or her neighbor. Miss U. enjoyed the change in their attitudes.

Later in life, they would take history lessons and hear about the lives of Caer and Eref, textbook boring and devoid of personality like any old legend, but Miss U.’s students would know better.

To them, Caer and Eref would be real people with fears and loves and strengths and weaknesses. Miss U. wanted the students to feel that Caer and Eref were their friends, because that’s what they were to her.

When class was over, Miss U. made another announcement.

“The Liber Flower represents freedom and love. Now that you have made such beautiful creations, I want you to give your Liber Flower to someone who is special to you. This can be your mother or father, your best friend, or someone whose company you value. Remember, the Liber Flower is a gift you can give to say, ‘I love you.’ That is the most important thing a person can ever say.”

The students filed out with their flowers in their hands, and they smiled at Miss U. Next class would be less frightening for them, she thought. After the story, her students always warmed up to her.

But this was the first time the class had realized she was part of the story, too.

Miss U. thought of Sisgene and wondered how she had known.

In her office the next day, Vul went through her paperwork and thought of Caer and Eref. She hadn’t been there at the Pyre the night they had become the Safety. She’d been in the cave with the Exile, watching him die as she tried in vain to give him enough healing herbs to hang on.

“No,” he’d sputtered. “Save those for yourself. You need them. I’ll be gone.”

Eventually, scared and alone, Vul had managed to put a few healing herbs on herself, but she’d missed some of the worst burns. Now she was a walking freak of nature.

The other faculty didn’t much care for her company, and sometimes Vul still felt as alone as she had in the cave. Sometimes she wished she could have been there with Caer and Eref to become part of the Safety itself, or at least that she could have witnessed the last shower of Liber Flowers.

Instead, she passed down their story to as many little ears as she could, vowing to keep their memory alive as long as she was alive herself.

It made her a little less lonely.

There was a knock at her office door, and Vul stood up from her desk. Outside, little feet were running away.

Another prank from Mr. F.’s students
, she thought.

There was no telling what he said to them year after year, but his classes always got a thrill out of tripping her in the hallway or leaving bags of dead insects at her office door.

He swore every time that he discouraged such behavior. “Especially for a cripple,” he’d said to her face one day. “They should know better than to mistreat those less fortunate.”

Jerk. Well, she’d have no qualms about helping him out this semester in his science lab. It was so easy to mistake the ingredients for “headache remedy” with those for “three hours of severely enlarged nostrils.”

Vul limped around to her office door. She’d clean up the mess and get back to work. No use tracking down the kids; they’d be long gone by now.

But when she opened the door, there was no bag of bugs waiting for her. Instead, Vul found a box filled with hundreds of tiny envelopes, all addressed to her.

She opened one.

Inside was a paper cutout of a Liber Flower.

It was blue and green and purple, with tiny waves cut into each petal. This was the one Sisgene had made yesterday.

She opened another envelope.

Another Liber Flower fell out.

This one was pink and covered in white glitter.

Another envelope had a blue Liber Flower.

There was a black one with white spots. There was an orange one with hearts cut into it. There was a yellow and red one with gold glitter.

All of them were Liber Flowers. Some from her class, but not all. In eight hundred years of teaching, Vul knew each Liber Flower her students had made. Some of these were new.

Vul’s good hand shook as she stood in front of the box of flowers. Who had done this?

Sisgene peeked out from around a chair in the office lobby.

“Miss U.? You like your flowers?”

“Sisgene,” Vul said, her voice barely a whisper. “Where did these come from?”

“Everyone,” Sisgene replied with a sweet smile. “We told our friends in our other classes about you, and they told their friends. We told our teachers. We told our families.”

“What?”

“You said to give the Liber Flower to someone important to us.”

Vul stared. “Sisgene—” but she stopped. What could she say?

Sisgene ran forward and hugged her.

“We wanted to thank you, Miss U. We wanted to say we love you.”