Ference had always loved the sky. That great, perfect expanse that stretched over the desert village’s mud brick houses.
“It’s like water,” she had told her mother when she was little. “The sky and water and bellflowers. Those are the only things.”
“The only things?” Her mother had asked. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. They’re all the same. Somehow, they’re all the same –the water, the bellflowers, and the sky on a warm day. I don’t know how.”
Her mother had scooped the little girl into her arms and brushed Ference’s soft hair with her gentle fingertips. “Your father would know what you mean,” she had whispered. “Your father would understand. He told me about the sky. And about flowers and grass and what happens when the sun leaves the sky at night. He told me all about them.” She had hugged the small girl tight and rocked her back and forth. “I wish I remembered the words he told me. The words that you need. Because you’re different, Ference. You’re different. Just like your father was. He knew what it was called – that similarity between the sky and the water and the bellflowers. I wish I understood. I wish he were here to tell you.”
Ference knew the story. Her father had left his own village and traveled through days of sand dunes, ending up in the desert village – the blind village. He knew it was forbidden for people to enter the place, but the first person he met there was Ference’s mother. She was too sweet and gentle to leave. So he had stayed. Viewed as an exotic from the north, he was partially welcomed into the desert village when he and the girl’s mother announced they would be married. Only three weeks after the marriage, the large men from the north came searching. They found Ference’s father the day they arrived and arrested him for having entered the desert village where no outsiders were allowed to come. That was the last day her mother ever saw her father.
Nine months later, Ference was born. Her mother told her that she knew, when her little girl was placed in her trembling arms, that Ference was like her father – different. She knew because of the way the baby’s eyes moved, the way her eyelids opened and closed, and the way her soft lashes brushed her mother’s wondering hand. She was like her father.
The village children liked to tease Ference and leave her to curl up against a mud brick wall, crying and wishing she knew how to tell them. But there were no words to explain how she knew a girl was crying, even when she hadn’t felt the wet tears or heard the shaky breaths. Why did she think that lips and roses and blood had anything in common. How did she know what a book said before her fingers read it?
It had something to do with her eyes. She knew that much. Something about her eyes was different. The other children didn’t open their eyes all the way. They didn’t turn their eyes toward movement. They didn’t use them.
“What are our eyes for?” she desperately asked her teacher.
“For tears,” she was told. “We have ears to hear, and hands to feel. We have noses to smell, a mouth to taste, and eyes to cry.”
“But we can sense things with our ears, and our hands, and our nose and our tongue. We can sense things. I can also sense things with my eyes.” She swallowed. “I can.”
The boy standing behind her in the classroom had laughed and run out of the room to let his friends share in the ridiculousness of Ference’s words.
The morning that the new boy arrived, Ference was crying, pressed into a corner of her one-room house, begging her mother not to send her to school.
“I can’t go today. Please don’t make me! I’m so tired of pretending to be like them, and failing, and being mocked, and trying even harder to not be so strange. I don’t want to go!”
Her mother held her in her arms, whispering into her hair, “You don’t have to be like them. You are different. Just like your wonderful father. Be glad with who you are, Ference. Don’t mind what they say. You have a blessing. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t try to be like them.”
Ference dragged each foot through the dust as she made her way to the small, thatched-roof schoolhouse. She wanted to be like them. She didn’t want to be like her father. She didn’t want to be different.
The girls were all gathered at the door of the school, pressed in around a tense boy that Ference did not know. He was exotic. His hands were hard and square, his shoulders broad and strong. The girls brushed their fingers across his defined cheekbones and felt his loose hair that almost covered his ears. His hair reminded Ference of sand dunes.
He turned so that his face was towards her, and his eyes – like the sky, like water – pointed straight at her. It felt as though her insides had been doused in hot water. She gasped and turned away. No one’s eyes had ever done that before. She didn’t know what it was – what ever the boy’s eyes had done. But it had made her feel as though she were exposed. Like he knew who she was, through her eyes.
He was different. Just like she was. The same sort of different. She knew it.
She turned her head toward him just a little, to know what he was doing. His face was still towards her. Slowly, he extracted himself from the puddle of giggles that had collected around him, walked across the small dirt yard toward her, and extended his hand.
“I’m David,” he told her.
She took a step back from his hand. “I’m Ference.” Her voice was tight.
He dropped his hand, still seeming tense, and stood still in front of her for a moment, his eyes pointed directly at her. Unable to let her eyes do the same, she reminded herself to breathe.
“You can see, can’t you?” he said.
“What?”
“Were you born here?” he asked.
She hesitated.
“Are you from up north?”
She returned a question rather than an answer. “Is that where you came from?”
The teacher rang the loud brass bell and Ference darted around the new boy – David – and into the classroom. Her breaths were fast, her lungs feeling too small to draw in enough air. Sliding into her seat, she covered her face with her hands so that everything seemed like night. She didn’t learn much in the lesson that day.
David was leaning against the side of the schoolhouse when she emerged in the afternoon. She turned her face away from him, feeling her cheeks get warm, and hurried up the path leading home.
Catching up to her, he asked, “How long have you been able to see?”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Ference kept her face turned away from him.
He was silent for a moment.
“Did you come from the north?” she asked again.
“Yes, I did. Did you?”
“No,” she replied. “I was born here.”
“But, your eyes work like mine do. You’re not blind. Up north, they told us none of you could see. We thought you were all blind. But you can look at things, just like I can.”
Ference stopped walking.
“I don’t think there’s anyone else in this village who can see,” David continued. “How is it that you can?”
Still unable to raise her eyes to meet his, she kept her face toward the path, but her heart had begun to beat harder. “What does it mean?” she asked. “To see? Is that what I can do? Is that what it’s called? Being able to sense things with my eyes?”
“You don’t know this?”
She waited.
“Yes.” He shifted his weight. “You can look at things. You can see.”
“I can see…” She breathed out the sentence. “I can look at things…” Ference’s chest was burning. “What about the sky?” she demanded. “Is there a word for it? For whatever is the same about the sky and bellflowers and water? What’s it called?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The sky!” she gestured to the expanse above them. “It’s perfect, and it changes, and no one understands. And when I crush bellflowers and rub them into my dress the fabric is different. Then my dress isn’t like sand and mud anymore. It’s like the sky is sometimes during the day.”
David laughed. “You have never heard these words before? It’s blue. That’s what is the same about the sky, bellflowers and water. They’re all blue.”
“Blue?” The word tickled her mouth and she smiled. “They’re blue!”
“Yes, it’s one of many colors.”
“Colors…” She turned her face right towards him – she looked at him. “How about the sand and mud and people’s skin?” she asked.
“Brown,” he replied.
“And lips and roses and blood?”
“Red,” he told her. “And now I have a question for you. There was a man who left our village in the north for several months. When he came back he said he’d been to the blind village and married a woman there.”
Ference felt prickles across her skin, like hard wind in the first moments of a sand storm.
“His name is Lyon,” David continued. “He still talks about the desert village and the girl he met there. Do you know if he’s your father?”
Ference took in long breath. “I don’t know. My mother doesn’t talk about my father much. But he might be. The story sounds the same. The men from the north found my father here and took him back right after he married my mother. I don’t know much else about him.”
David shifted his feet. “I’m sorry.”
There was a pause.
“What about plants and leaves and some people’s eyes?” she asked. “What is that?”
“Green.”
She wrote down every word he taught her so that she would never forget. She knew that no one in her village would understand her if she told them the sky looked blue, but it didn’t matter. She suddenly had words for everything she had wondered about, and it felt good and powerful. She wanted to be different.
Ference flung open the rough wooden door of her home that evening.
“Mother! I know what it’s called! I know the words! The sky is blue! And I can see!”
Ference described David – his brown hair and blue eyes – and tried to explain the words, even though she knew her mother couldn’t understand, exclaiming over them again.
“And,” Ference hesitated a moment before going on. “I think David knows Father.”
Her mother started from her chair at the table. “Why do you say that?”
“David said there was a man who left the village up north for several months, and when the man was brought back, he said he had been to the desert village. The man said he had married a woman there. David said the man still talks about that woman.”
Her mother began to pace the one small room of their house, trailing her hand along the wall to guide her. Swirls of dust rose off the dirt floor in her wake.
Ference cleared her throat. “David said his name is Lyon.” Then she turned her face away as she saw tears begin to streak down her mother’s cheeks.
The next morning, Ference woke without the smell of breakfast. Detangling herself from her scratchy blankets, she looked around the small room of the mud house. It was empty. Sweat was trickling down her back – her mother had forgotten to open the door that morning to let in a breeze. Rubbing her eyes, Ference made her way across the room to the closed door. A piece of paper lay on the floor in front of it. The writing was bumped out of the smooth surface.
Ference- I know this is sudden, but I am traveling north to find your father. I don’t know when I will be back, but I know you are able to take care of yourself well. I will miss you terribly, yet what you told me yesterday has caused a hope to rise inside me that I cannot disappoint. I do love you. Stay safe. –Mother
Ference found David at the village well, drawing up a bucket of water for a threesome of laughing girls. She thrust the note into his hands.
His eyes were large when he looked up from the paper. “She can’t go.”
“Why not? She already has.”
“It’s too dangerous. She’ll get lost in the sand dunes. Or she’ll be caught and arrested. No one is allowed to interact with people from the blind village.”
Ference snatched the note back and then smoothed it in her palms. “If she’s arrested,” she asked quietly, “what will they do with her.” Her eyes wetted with tears.
David softened his tone, and laid a gentle hand on Ference’s shoulder. “Probably just bring her back here, to her own village.”
Ference looked at David. “What if they find you in our desert village?”
David wiped away a stray tear trickling down Ference’s cheek. “What if they find you?” he asked very quietly. “A girl who can see? I don’t know if they’ll believe you were born here.”
Ference stared at him.
“Fire!” The cry came from the village center.
David and Ference turned. The three laughing girls who had been whispering while David spoke with Ference froze at the cry and backed away from the direction it had come.
Ference’s eyes grew large. Grabbing the bucket of water David had drawn up, she began to run toward the cry. David ran beside her, trying to take the bucket from her, but she held on.
People were streaming past them, hurrying away from the source of the flames, crying and calling out to one another. Black smoke began to rise, licked on the edges with orange. Ference gasped. She had never seen anything as violently beautiful as her first sight of fire. It was like the sky when the sun went down – red, orange, yellow. Maybe the sky burned.
“Are they running to the well to get water?” David asked above the cries of the villagers.
“No. They’re running away, abandoning the village until the fire dies,” she told him. “No one’s seen fire since the year I was born. I’ve only ever heard of it. Everyone is terrified of it. It’s so dangerous. Last time the whole village burned. It took months to rebuild. People starved.” She ran harder. “I’m not going to let that happen again!”
“Ference! You can’t stop the fire by yourself!”
“Then help me!” she shouted back. “I’m the only one in this village who can see. Anyone else would be in too much danger. I’m the one that has to do this!”
They had reached the source of the smoke, and Ference coughed, but did not slow her pace. Flinging the bucket of water on the burning roof of the building, she stumbled and stopped running. The water fizzled, and then the flames closed in around the dampness again.
Only then did Ference realize how powerful the bright flames were. How useless one bucket of water was. How useless she was. How useless it was to be different.
“We need more water!” David shouted.
“I can’t carry it there and back again in time! I can’t carry enough!”
“No, not by yourself you can’t. But everyone in the village can.”
“They’ll get hurt,” she cried.
“Tell them to line up and pass buckets of water along. They know you. They’ll listen to you more than they would to me. Most of them don’t have to be close to the fire at all.”
A small piece of burning wood crumbled away from the building and fell, scorching Ference’s hand. She gasped and put the burn in her mouth, tasting smoke and ash. The pain flared inside her hand. She didn’t want this for her village. And she was the only one who could stop it. She was the one who was different.
“Come on!” Grabbing David’s hand, she pulled him towards the well. “Wait!” she cried to the last of the fleeing people. “We can stop the fire!”
She grabbed the nearest woman, thrusting the bucket into her hands. “Draw up some water! And you,” she clasped a boy’s shoulder. “Find more buckets. We need them all.” He stood there listening and hesitating. “Hurry!” she shouted. “We don’t have much time!”
She ran through the crowd, shouting orders and pulling people to the well. Buckets were soon dumped into a spilling pile. David began hauling up water and thrusting heavy buckets into people’s hands. Ference organized them into a line. No one objected. Soon the line was long enough to reach into the village center.
The flames were spreading, catching on the thatched roofs of the shops all pressed in close to one another. Ference grabbed the bucket of water that had reached the end of the line, sloshing water down the front of her dress. Darting toward the smoke, she dumped the water on the fire, feeling its close hot pressure. Handing back the empty bucket, she took the next full one.
Again and again she emptied buckets of water, struggling not to tip them so that every drip of the precious substance would help in extinguishing the orange flames that danced and taunted her. The front of her dress where she had sloshed water began to steam and her skin ached, but she knew she had to keep going.
The flames had almost ceased to spread, surrounded on most sides by burned-out ash. One path was left for the fire to burn – along a line of houses that spread and circled the rest of the village. Ference stumbled forward, clutching a bucket of water, sliding on soggy ashes and coughing, trying to reach the flames before they reached the houses. She flung herself at them, emptying the water onto the fire, and slipped. Her side hit the hard ground. The drenched bucket tumbled away from her, and she saw it be consumed in the dwindling fire, choking the fire and steaming as it was taken. Ference heard a crunching noise and tried to push herself to her feet. Someone from the line of people shouted. The blackened frame of the burning building gave way above her, and a fiery beam fell, turning her world into darkness and pain.
“This is what happens when people leave or enter the desert village.” The man’s voice sounded distorted and too loud to Ference.
She blinked her eyes, then rubbed them, shaking her head and letting burning tears fall down her cheeks. The blackness wouldn’t leave. It was like midnight without a moon, or being choked by endless ashes. She blinked more rapidly and groped around her, trying to find something that made sense.
A soft hand grabbed her own, pulling her to her feet. She was encased in a safe hug.
“Mother!” Ference sobbed.
Her mother did not let go. The man’s harsh voice continued. People’s murmurs around her softened his loudness.
“It is strictly forbidden. I trust none of you will ever leave again, nor let any foreigners into your village after seeing the destructive consequences that occur on such occasions.”
Her mother hung on more tightly to Ference and whispered, “I saw your father.”
David touched Ference’s shoulder. “Is she hurt?”
Ference’s mother finally released her.
“I can’t see.” The darkness was oppressive. Her eyes hurt. “I can’t see anything!”
The man’s voice was coming closer, followed by several sets of hard footsteps. Ference felt David’s hand leave her shoulder.
“Your name?” the man demanded, and Ference guessed he was addressing David.
A hush fell over the people of the village.
“David.” His voice was loud and clear.
Ference strained her eyes, trying to penetrate the blackness, yet she could see nothing.
“Where is your family?” The man’s voice was rough.
“Dead.”
“What color does the sky look?”
Ference’s heart pounded against her chest. They knew he could see. They were going to take him away. Just like they had taken her father. She reached out blindly and found David’s arm, then his hand. Wrapping her fingers in his, she squeezed his hand tight.
There was a moment of silence.
“I didn’t understand the question,” David said.
“What color,” the man repeated, “does the sky look?”
Another pause.
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m sorry.”
The man cursed and turned away. “Blind idiots! All of them. Let’s go!” The group of heavy steps retreated. “Remember this last warning though!” he called to the desert people. “If we hear of another person leaving or entering this village, we won’t be so kind again. Fire is the least of what we could do to this village.”
Silence descended as the man left, and Ference’s mother pulled her into a hug once more.
“Only the shops burned,” her mother told her. “None of the homes are gone.”
Ference sighed. “How was father?” she whispered.
She felt her mother’s tears as they wet her own cheeks.
“He was alright. It was so good to see him one last time.” She hugged her daughter more tightly. “Ference? I think I will have another child.”
Ference could hear David’s voice as he organized the villagers into groups to begin cleaning and rebuilding the center of their village. The men hadn’t taken him away.
Maybe the little child her mother would give birth to would be different – like Ference’s father, like David, and like Ference had been. Maybe Ference would hold the child in her arms, and feel the flutter of the baby’s lashes against her palm, and whisper words to her about what David’s eyes and bellflowers and precious water have in common. And maybe Ference would teach the child to look at and know all the words for the perfect colors of the sky.
