Displaced

Just me

Edam bows his head and departs so quickly I don’t even have time to admire his retreating form before he’s rounding the corner. Mom never misses a beat, so I can’t moon over Judica’s boyfriend or she’ll notice immediately. I ruffle the fur on Cookie’s head and jog over to the small dining room where we always have breakfast. 

Mom takes her usual seat, and I drop into mine next to her. “How’d the party planning go?” 

Mom rolls her eyes. “I told Angel no lemon cake, but did she listen?” 

I lift my eyebrows. “Really?” 

Mom sighs. “Technically, she says she did. She made an orange cake with chocolate frosting, which is basically lemon’s first cousin.” 

“Oh,” I say, “but that’s my favorite.” 

“And if it were your birthday, that would make sense.” 

I watch as my mom picks up her napkin. Tomorrow she’ll be nine-hundred years old, which is old, even for us, but you’d never know to look at her. Her chestnut hair shines, her light golden skin luminesces, and her nearly violet eyes sparkle like she’s only been alive three or four centuries. 

Today the world’s human rulers who report to her are coming to pay their respects: The United States’ President, Senate and House leaders, the British Prime Minister and the President of Mexico to name a few. Not many humans know about us, but obviously the ones we use to administer the government as our figureheads do. Tomorrow, the heads of the other evian families will show up for her real party. She’s a little stressed over all the details. Sometimes when she’s anxious, she focuses a little too much on things that don’t matter.

“Eat your eggs, Chancery,” she says, because she always says that. 

I never do. 

I need to distract her so she won’t notice I’m only pushing them around on my plate. “Speaking of cakes, Angel and I spent a while yesterday on it, but no matter how many times we tried, we couldn’t get the nine hundredth candle lit before the first hundred candles melted down to the frosting line.” I pull out my phone and show her a photo of the melted goo on the left side of an enormous tiered cake that resulted from our fourth attempt. “Guess we’ll have to use those big numbered candles this year instead. You know, a clunky number nine and two zeroes.”

Mom’s eyes crinkle. “You know very well we won’t have any candles on my cake. It’s beyond tacky, and a human tradition in the first place.”

“You always put candles on my cake.” I frown.

“That’s because you’re a child. Seventeen little flames look cute.” 

“Eighteen this year.”

Her eyebrows crinkle in consternation. “Yes, you’re getting quite old.”

I point at her with my fork. “You’re the expert on old, so I guess you’d know.” 

I love mornings in Ni’ihau with Mom. We live on the only desert island in Hawaii, and while I’ve occasionally wished we lived on nearby Kauai instead, at least I have a nice view of the lush, tropical island from our breakfast room. My mom doesn’t seem to care about the view, since she always sits at the head of the table with her back to the windows. The sunlight streams down through her hair, just as bright in March as it would be any other month. The seasons don’t really impact Hawaii like they do the rest of the world. The light illuminates her face in a sort of halo. I look past her toward the abundant vegetation of Kauai and sigh. In a moment the world will intrude, but for now she’s all mine. 

“Alora can’t make it to my party,” Mom says. 

“She told me.” Evian gatherings make my much older sister claustrophobic, but nine centuries is a big deal. I’m annoyed she’s not coming to support our mom. She’s not the only older sister who isn’t coming, but she’s the closest one to me, and the one I’ll miss the most.

“She’ll come visit sometime next week. We can celebrate together without all the political nonsense.” Mom scrunches her nose. “Wait, when did she tell you?” 

I try to act like it’s no big deal. “She called me yesterday.” 

Mom’s eyebrows rise slightly. “Alora did? When?” 

Mom and I are usually together. “I stepped out to talk to her during the Military Council, remember?” And I don’t really want to talk about Alora right now, or what I ducked out to ask her. I want to wait until after Mom’s birthday so she’ll be in a good mood when I make my request. I change the subject to the one thing I couldn’t care less about. “Did I miss anything in the Council meeting?”

Mom shakes her head. “Not really. Judica petitioned for incursions against China again.”

“What’s her obsession with that?” 

“She wants to make her mark. It’s the only part of the world that isn’t under direct evian control. That makes it an attractive target for all six families, but Judica’s plagued by the burning desire of youth to prove her aptitude.”

Poor China. I wouldn’t wish Judica on anyone. “It’s so hard, it’ll be difficult to effectively administer. It’s why we’ve failed in the past.”

“True,” Mom admits. “But our American branch owes the Chinese quite a lot of money currently. Judica may have mentioned that if we invade, we wouldn’t have to pay it back.”

“What’s her plan this time?” Last month she wanted to bomb them, and the month before that, she suggested an alliance with Vela, whom no one would suspect. 

“She’s proposing trade sanctions to soften the area. Divide it among all six, but heavily in our favor, of course.” Mom chews and swallows more of her omelet. “She’s learning.”

“Why bring that up during Military Council?” I ask. “Seems like an economic initiative to me.” 

“If the US defaults on its debt, China will react, and that means military force. It would mostly be human lives at stake, but that still has an economic impact on our bottom line, and our strength in relation to the other families.” Mom takes another bite and then glances at me sideways. She has realized that I distracted her. “What did Alora call about?” 

At least she hasn’t noticed that I’m not eating my eggs. A tiny win, but I’ll take it. “Nothing much. She misses me. She called to invite me for a visit in New York. I still haven’t seen anything on Broadway, and you promised.” 

It’s funny that my sister feels closed in and unsafe here, on our tiny, mostly uninhabited island, but completely at home in New York, which is teeming with humans. She loves Broadway and theater productions, packing into a room full of people like sardines in a can. But the vast majority of humans don’t know what we are, or even that we exist, which means she walks among them as a veritable goddess, and they have no idea. Very different than interacting with hundreds of other evians, all of whom want something from you, and all of whom are analyzing your every word, breath, and heartbeat. 

Mom leans back in her chair with less relief than I expected. “Between my party tomorrow and yours in a few weeks, I’ve fallen behind. I doubt we can take a trip until late summer or early fall. Sorry little dove.” 

I’ve just stuffed a big bite of fruit in my mouth. I wait to swallow it before responding. “I think she meant just me.”