Diaz Orphanage
, said the website’s home page:
A haven for children
. Seb’s lip curled. He’d seen many orphanages over the years; few could be described as “havens”. But he’d only found out about this one yesterday, and he needed to check it – who knew, it might turn out to be the place where he’d finally find what he was looking for. His heart beat faster at the thought, though he was only all too aware by now how unlikely it was. Taking a piece of paper from the woman’s desk, he carefully wrote down the address and stuck it in his knapsack; it was around a hundred miles to the east, in the foothills of the Sierra Madre.
Then, on impulse, he brought up a map of Mexico, gazing at its familiar shape and mentally tracing the lines he’d travelled up and down it for years now. He’d started in Mexico City and since then had rarely spent more than a few weeks in one place. Currently he was in Presora, not far from Hermosillo, with its white beaches and throngs of tourists. Presora was quieter, though; a smaller town that had still taken him days to search, checking out every person he passed on the street, entering every building he was able to, sending his other self into the ones he couldn’t.
There’d been nothing. Nothing at all. It wasn’t really surprising – in his whole life, Seb had never seen even a hint of what he hoped so much to find. But he had to keep trying. It was all he could do.
Enough of this; he’d gotten what he came for. He turned off the computer and stood up, swinging his bag over his shoulder – and then his glance fell on the woman’s bookcase, and he was lost. He drifted over to it, squatting on his haunches as he gazed hungrily. A lot of the paperbacks didn’t even look as if they’d been opened, and for a heartbeat Seb was tempted – he’d almost finished his current book, and didn’t know when he’d next find a used bookstore to trade it for another one. He touched the cover of a thick historical novel. It would keep him going for a week.
But no. He hadn’t broken in here to steal, even if in the past he wouldn’t have thought twice. With a sigh, Seb straightened up.
As he started for the stairs he saw a hallway beside the kitchen, with a shower room visible. He hesitated, then went and looked inside. The white-tiled room was almost bare: just a hand towel and a bar of dusty-looking soap, as if the shower in here was rarely used. Which was probably true – the woman lived alone; the pristine pink bathroom he’d seen upstairs was the one with all her potions and powders in it. A mischievous smile began to tug at Seb’s face. Okay,
this
he couldn’t resist – he hadn’t been able to get really clean in days. His clothes were cleaner than he was; it had been easier to find a laundromat in this town than a bed at the hostel.
He entered the small room, locking the door behind him. There was a tube of shower gel in his knapsack; he dug it out, then stripped off and took a long shower, relishing both the hot water and the privacy. Even after so many years, it still felt as if he could never take either for granted. His body was firm and toned; as he bathed, scars he barely noticed any more gleamed from his wet skin – some white with age, others newer, puckering redly. He hated not feeling clean almost more than anything; it felt wonderful to wash away the grime of the last few days.
Afterwards, Seb dried off as best he could with the hand towel and glanced in the mirror, scraping his wet hair back. It curled when he wore it too short, irritating him, and so he kept it slightly long, shoved away from his face. A loose curl or two always fell over his forehead anyway, just to torment him.
His jeans and T-shirt clung to him when he got dressed again, but the heat of the day would soon finish drying him off. He glanced around the shower room to make sure he’d left it the way he’d found it; then he jogged back up the stairs, eager to get going towards the Sierra Madre and the address in his knapsack. In the green and frilly bedroom, Seb paused at the window, glancing around him.
“
Gracias,
” he murmured to the absent woman with a smile, and then nimbly swung himself out.
Hitch-hiking to the orphanage took a while; it sometimes did. Towards evening, a trucker was giving Seb a lift the final stretch of the way, talking non-stop about his girlfriend. Smoking a cigarette the man had given him, Seb sat leaning back against the vinyl seat of the cab with one sneakered foot resting on the dash, only half-listening as he savoured the familiar taste. He didn’t often have the money these days to waste on cigarettes.
“And so I told her,
chiquita
, I’m not having this – I told you twice already. You have to
listen
to me when I talk to you. Take in what I’m actually saying, you know what I mean?” The trucker glanced at Seb for confirmation; he had a broad face, with heavy eyebrows.
“Yeah, you’re right, man,” said Seb, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Good for you.” He’d far rather be reading than listening to this crap; unfortunately there was a sort of etiquette involved with hitch-hiking. Making conversation was the price of the ride.
“But she never listens to me, does she? No, off in her own world, that one. Hopeless. Beautiful, but...” The man went on, talking and talking.
Seb watched him idly, noting the angry red lines that had appeared in his aura, like lightning flashes. When he’d first gotten into the cab, he’d shifted the colours of his own aura so that they matched the trucker’s blue and yellow hues. He knew the man wouldn’t be able to see them or tell; it was just a habit left over from childhood, when blending his aura in with those around him had made him feel safer. More hidden.
But the more Seb listened to this jerk, the more he really didn’t want to share his aura. He shifted back to his natural colours as he got an image of the man standing in a kitchen shouting; a dark-haired woman looking frightened. Not exactly a surprise. The trucker didn’t feel like he’d be a danger to Seb, though; he seemed strictly the type to bully those who were weaker. Seb knew he’d probably have sensed it if he had anything to worry about – and there was always the switchblade he carried in his pocket in case there was trouble. You didn’t travel alone in Mexico without a weapon, unless you were terminally stupid.
“Now, take you for instance,” the truck driver went on. “How old are you – seventeen, eighteen?”
“Seventeen,” said Seb, blowing out another stream of smoke. He’d be eighteen in less than a month; he didn’t bother volunteering that.
“Yeah, and I bet you don’t have any trouble getting the girls, do you?” The man gave a guffawing laugh; his aura chuckled along with him, flickering orange. “You look like a rock star, with that face and stubble – like all the girls would have you up on their walls. But take my advice,
amigo
, never let them...”
Mentally rolling his eyes, Seb tuned out, wishing he could snap on the radio at least. People often commented on his looks, but looks couldn’t get him the one thing he wanted.
“So where are you from?” asked the man finally, stubbing out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “Sonora? Sinaloa?”
“
El DF
,” said Seb. The
Distrito Federal
; Mexico City. It was almost dark now; the traffic heading towards them was a series of lights swooping out of the gloom. “My mother was from Sonora.”
“Thought so,” said the man, glancing at him again. “French, I bet. Or Italian.”
Seb couldn’t resist. “Italian,” he said, keeping a straight face. “Venice, originally. My great-grandfather was a gondolier – then he immigrated here and there weren’t any canals, so he became a
ranchero
.”
The truck driver’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Seb, leaning forward to tap the ash off his cigarette. “Over ten thousand head of cattle. But I think his heart was always with the canals, you know?” He could have gone on in this vein for some time, except the guy was such an idiot that it was too easy to be much fun.
The truck driver went back to the endless subject of his girlfriend, outlining her many failings and the ways in which she was going to have to improve. A few more flashes of the woman being bullied came to Seb as he droned on, so that by the time they reached Seb’s destination and pulled over to the side of the road, he could have happily choked the guy. Instead, he filched the pack of cigarettes and lighter from the trucker’s jacket pocket as they shook hands. He hadn’t picked a pocket since he was a kid on the Mexico City streets, but it gave him a certain satisfaction – though really, he should let the
cabrón
keep smoking, since it was bad for your health.
As the truck pulled away, Seb gave himself a quick shake, freeing himself of the unpleasant energy like a dog shaking itself dry of water. He was almost in the Sierra Madre now, standing on a hill in the gathering dark with the shadowy hulk of mountains rising up from the horizon. He focused briefly to make sure there weren’t any angels nearby, then sent his other self searching. As he soared he found the orphanage easily; it was about half a mile down the road, a sprawling building with a barren-looking playground. He pulled on a sweater from his knapsack and started walking, letting his other self keep flying as he did. The feeling of stretching his wings was nice; it had been a few days since he’d flown any distance.
Thinking of what he’d told the truck driver, Seb smiled slightly as he walked. Actually, where his mother had been from was almost the only thing Seb knew about her – she was dead now; the last time he’d seen her was when he was five years old. From the few memories he had, he knew that he looked a lot like her. Light chestnut-brown hair with a curl to it; high cheekbones and hazel eyes; a mouth that women sometimes called “beautiful”, which made him inwardly roll his eyes even more. It was a distinctly northern face; Sonora was a state where European immigrants had mixed for generations. On the streets,
gringo
tourists were always assuming Seb was one of them and asking for directions in English – clueless to the fact that millions of Mexicans didn’t look like the ones in westerns on TV.
As for his father, who knew? But Seb figured he couldn’t have been unattractive. None of them were.
As he crested the hill, the orphanage came into view, and he stood staring down at it for a moment, his grip tight on the strap of his knapsack. Now that he was here, he was almost afraid to look – the continuous hope, and then the inevitable let-down, was becoming so much harder to bear. Yet he had to go through with it. The last hour of his life stuck listening to that
cabrón
in the truck would have been completely wasted if he didn’t do what he’d come for. And besides, this might be the place. This really might be the place where he finally found her.
Despite himself, Seb felt a stab of anticipation so sharp it was almost painful – the hope that he couldn’t ever totally quench. He left the road and lay down flat in the grass on his stomach, with the orphanage in view below. Concentrating solely on his other self, he closed his eyes.
He glided down the valley towards the run-down building, his wide wings glinting in the dusk. With barely a ripple, he passed through a wall of the orphanage and flew inside. As usual, his muscles tensed to be entering one of these places. Unwanted, the memory of the room came, with its total darkness that had pressed down on his five-year-old self like a weight. But the room had turned out to be a blessing in disguise – because it was there that he’d first realized what he really was. It was the only thing that had kept him from going insane in that place.
No one saw Seb’s other self as he glided noiselessly from room to room. He saw immediately that this orphanage was one of the few that weren’t too bad – it was clean, if depressingly bare. And the auras of the children and teenagers looked healthy enough, once he found them all sitting in a dining room eating their dinners with the staff; they showed signs of boredom, rather than abuse. Circling overhead, Seb scanned them, noting all the colours. A dull blue, a flicker of lively pink, a gentle green. None had even a hint of silver, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything; he’d been shifting his own aura since he was a child. As he focused on each one, he opened his senses, checking out the feel of the energy –
listening
almost. His whole being craned with anticipation as he touched each person’s energy with his own. They were all completely human.
He checked again, just to make sure, but his heart had gone out of it. Then he forced himself to explore the other rooms, though he knew already that he wouldn’t find anyone else in them, and he didn’t.
She wasn’t here, either.
The disappointment tightened his throat like someone was standing on it. Opening his eyes, Seb brought his other self out of the orphanage and lay motionless, still gazing down at the stark building below.
She
. He snorted slightly. He didn’t even know if there
were
any others of his kind, much less what sex they might be. Yet somehow he’d always known it was a girl around his own age he was looking for. He could feel her so strongly. Even though he had no idea of her name or what she looked like, he knew
her
. For as long as he could remember, Seb had had a sense of the girl’s spirit; who she was. He thought he could almost hear her laugh sometimes; catch glimpses of her smile. Not being able to actually see her, or touch her, was a constant ache inside of him.
Roughly, Seb pushed his hair back with both hands. Why wasn’t he used to the disappointment of not finding her by now? How many cities had he searched? How many orphanages and schools; how many miles spent walking how many streets? Suddenly he felt tired – so tired. Somehow this latest failure felt like the last straw.
It’s never going to happen,
thought Seb.
I’ve only imagined her all these years, because I wanted so much for it to be true.
Rolling over onto his back, he watched his angel self as it soared in the night sky, snowy wings outspread. For once, the sensation of flight didn’t soothe him. He’d been searching for his half-angel girl for so long – first, for years on the streets of Mexico City after he’d run away from the orphanage, checking out every aura he passed. Then, when he was eleven, he’d been thrown into a young offenders’ facility; he’d broken out at thirteen and soon after had started his quest in earnest, travelling up and down the country, searching every town, every city and village.
Everywhere
, for almost five years now, without encountering a single other aura like his own. Without once catching even a hint of her energy, except in his thoughts.