in the best possible way. Animals that hadn’t been there in years were returning—cautiously, but they had come back. Because they came back, the ecosystem was thriving, improving the conditions of the surrounding woods.
Walking slowly and without making a sound, she could enjoy the songs of the birds, one of her favorite things. She loved all the different early morning melodies mixed with the night birds calling out to one another before they began or ended their hunt for food. Inevitably, she came to the point overlooking the stream. She didn’t go near it, because that was where the animals drank. The overlook was the best place to observe them.
Jonquille settled into a small depression above the stream and waited in silence. It was still relatively dark, although the sky was beginning to be streaked with gray. She could tell a storm was brewing just by the way her body reacted, but it was still a distance away. The stream sparkled at times as the moon shifted through the slow-moving clouds. Something about the way the water looked like diamonds and then would go almost black coupled with the drone of the early morning insects and mournful notes of the male frogs as they gave up calling for their ladyloves made her smile.
Suddenly, a chilling shriek, sounding all too like a child’s cry, cut through the night and then faded away. She rarely allowed the doors to her childhood to unlock. Perhaps just talking with Rubin had cracked open the door enough to allow another recollection to slide out. In any case, that cry, she was certain, had been a bobcat, which brought another memory to the forefront of her mind.
She was younger than the other girls and very, very small. Even they treated her like a little doll. Her diminutive size tended to annoy Whitney. He was aware, even then, when she was three, that energy collected in her body. But she was so small, he didn’t think it was enough to do the things he wanted, like draw lightning to her. She needed to be tall so that when he put her out in a field, she would attract the lightning. He ignored her for the most part, telling the nurses to find a way to make her grow.
She heard the muted cry of one of the girls down the hall and knew immediately it was Iris. None of the other girls called her Iris. She was always Flame. She defied Whitney at every turn and he despised her. He experimented on her and told her she should be happy to suffer for science. He repeatedly gave her a form of cancer and then put it in remission to see if it could be done. He couldn’t care less whether she lived or died. To him, she wasn’t human. She was a laboratory experiment. It didn’t matter how often she got sick or her hair fell out. It only mattered to him if he was successful in stopping the cancer.
There were cameras in the hallway. Eyes on them at all times. Guards were stationed, although the guards were usually bored and detested watching a bunch of little girls they thought harmless, especially one vomiting in her room. Some of the guards felt sorry for her and would sneak in to try to help her. Others were indifferent. Some moved down the hall to avoid hearing her.
Jonquille covered her distinctly blond hair. It wasn’t even blond. It was white. Just as Flame’s hair was bright red, Jonquille’s was as platinum as could be. Due to her looks, the guards called her “freaky” looking. The other girls were protective over her. Jonquille did her best not to cry at the hurtful things the men said, because they said the things to all the girls and seemed to hold them in contempt the way Whitney did. She wanted to be like Flame.
Being so small, she could secret herself in the tiniest cracks, or the smallest vents. She’d found that out when she was barely a year and a half. Now, she took off the grate and pulled herself up into the small hole, sliding into the pipe that connected her room to Flame’s. The pipe was extremely narrow and she had to round her shoulders and push with her toes and fingers, but she did so, no problem.
She had tiny hairs or setae embedded in her palms and fingers as well as in the soles of her feet and toes, so