Humbert 1 Umbra By: Storm Humbert Part I Prologue Xin Lee looked up at Aryana’s big eyes that were as blue as the ocean behind her. Those eyes were a rare thing in China, especially in his small village near Linyi, in the Shandong Province. The village was about forty miles south of Jinan. They didn’t get nearly as many exchange students as the cities, but it was early and the beach was beautiful and not too crowded yet. She was the only one he wanted. She was tall for a girl, at least a local girl, with long legs and a face for smiling. Her black hair curled as it fell, and she always moved like she knew everyone was watching. He could only piece together the bare meaning of her sentences, but she seemed to think that it was nice that he tried so hard; just as he appreciated her patience with his broken English – though they had both decided that his should be called “shattered” English. He did not mind; the world should learn Chinese anyway. There were more of them after all; more than once he had suggested, to his English teacher, that it should be put to a global vote. His classmates always laughed and he was always disciplined. “You look very,” Xin said as he flipped through his mental English dictionary. “Beauty, today.” Aryana smiled and blushed a bit. “Thank you,” She said, running her finger, almost quickly, from the base of his neck to his bellybutton. “Handsome, quite, you are yourself today, Xin Xin.” He smiled and blushed much more than she had; thinking for a second that he should point out her mistaken inversion, but this didn’t seem the best time, and something in her calling him Xin Xin made him almost not notice it anyway. They had decided that she would speak Chinese to him and he would speak English to her in the hopes that they would both learn the languages. They sat, looking sometimes at each other sometimes at the ocean. The sand was hot under his feet and he was glad for the towels they were sitting on. It seemed like hours of uncomfortable silence even though it had been only moments since they had blushed. His mother did not like Aryana, none of the older women in town did. They didn’t like her tight clothes. They thought she should dress more like local woman, but Xin liked how she dressed. It made him want to kiss her and hold her and not care who saw. When he felt her hand move on top of his, his breath stalled a second. He scrambled to think of every romance movie he’d ever seen or book he’d ever read, focusing on the American ones. He must have taken longer than he thought because she was smiling big and bright when he turned to her. He smiled back and brushed her dark brown hair behind her ear, but let his hand linger a bit on her cheek, his fingers barely touching the back of her neck. He pulled only slightly and she brought herself the rest of the way to his lips. Humbert 2 Xin Lee had imagined this moment for weeks, their first kiss. He did not want to stop. They kissed for a moment before they heard the little girl scream, and even then, she had to scream twice before they finally ceased. They smiled into each other’s eyes before turning to see what was the matter. The little girl sat on the ground, rocking and holding her foot to her chest. Xin put his sandals on and ran to see if the girl was hurt. She had probably just stepped on a jellyfish. As he got closer, he could see blood running down her arm. He quickened his pace. Once he was within a couple meters, something cracked under his foot. There was glass everywhere. The girl sat in a pile of shattered glass. He kept walking, but with every step more glass cracked. Up and down the wet sand at the water’s edge, it all looked to be covered in the thinnest layer of unbroken glass, like a glaze. “Let me see your foot,” Xin said when he got to the girl. He turned her so she was not cut by the glass she sat in. He saw that there was a big gash in the bottom of her foot where a heavy shard was sunk deep. He looked at the girl, confused, but she was not looking at him. She had spun as far as she could to cry out toward the ocean. It was then that he finally heard Aryana shouting, “Xin, bring her back. Xin, the water. Look. Bring her back.” He followed the girl’s stare out into the water. Nobody was swimming. Nobody was splashing. Everyone just floated, face-up or face-down. Aryana was shouting again. “Xin, bring her back. Come here.” He scooped the girl into his arms and ran back to Aryana, careful to run through places where he’d already broken the glass. He set the girl down on his towel. “What happened?” He had tried not to shout at her, but he was sure he did anyway. The girl answered swiftly in Chinese, “I was on that cliff, using the viewers to look for dolphins.” Xin looked up to the outlook where the girl was pointing; it was a long hike down. “I looked down and saw a lot of shadows coming toward the beach, some were white, some were shadows under the water. I ran down to warn the lifeguard about the Man ‘O War.” Xin looked up at Aryana whose eyes were frantic with confusion. “Man ‘O War,” was all he had to say. She reached in her bag for her phone. She turned to him, clearly annoyed and frightened. “No service.” Xin scrambled to grab his from his pants pocket at the far end of the towel. He had no service either; Aryana threw her phone into her purse and started lacing up her shoes. Xin felt a static shock as he touched the girl’s shoulders to turn her toward him, and he heard glass crack under Aryana’s feet as she went to run for help. She froze and looked around as they watched the sheen of glass slowly creep up the beach. She was about to continue for help when the little girl screamed again. She screamed until she had no breath left, inhaled, and screamed some more. She pointed toward the water. Aryana screamed too when she saw them. Xin just sat silent, stunned. Walking shadows appeared from out of the water. They looked ferociously human, but smaller – like burnt children though on some parts you could see a shimmering white. They had brought the floating people out of the water. Up and down the beach were piles of the unconscious surrounded by congregations of these things. Xin wanted to tell the girls to be quiet, but he envied their screaming. He was frozen, sweating in the beach heat. Humbert 3 When the things started to come up the beach toward them, Aryana ran toward the steps to the parking lot. “Xin, come on!” He could not move. The little girl smacked his chest. “Carry me, I can’t walk!” Xin sat in awe. He could not move, he didn’t know if he wanted to. “Xin! Come on! Move your ass!” Her voice was further away now. The little girl had stopped shouting and hitting; now she was curled in his arms against his chest, burying her face so deep it was as if she was trying to hide inside him. When they finally stood over him, he could do nothing but stare into their faces. They had no eyes, but he could feel them looking back. He turned to see if Aryana had gotten away. She was frozen on the parking lot steps, one hand on the steel guard rail, shaking very slightly. She must have been crying. Xin knew she wouldn’t want to leave him. He looked back at the figures in front of him. They seemed to be trying hard not to be scary which frightened him a little. “Hello,” He said, once in English and once in Chinese. They seemed to hear him, and Xin thought he saw one nod in reply. His phone rang and they seemed to be waiting for him to pick it up. He disentangled one arm from the little girl and grabbed his phone. The words No Service were still in bold on the screen, but when he flipped it open he read a text that had apparently been sent by nobody. It said hello in both English and Chinese. When he closed his phone, it still said No Service on the front. He looked back at Aryana, now slumped on the steps. A couple of them were carrying her back to the piles of the other unconscious on a bright metal cart with tank-like treads that somehow managed not to break the glass. When he looked back at them, the one in front was smiling with a mouth full of too many tiny, pointed teeth to count. The smile seemed like it was meant to be comforting, but Xin’s sweat nearly froze on the back of his neck. When it began to reach down for him, Xin leaned back a little and it withdrew, but then it reached again.