Chapter 1 Miracle

“There is a Sun in a Bottle who grants a wish to all who could find it. They call it Cintal. It has very simple rules, it will appear only to one carrying metal, one may only make one wish, and one should not ask for a wish that has been asked before, one certainly can, but they would not enjoy the effects. A person will be forever changed by the wish, as will be their descendants.”

Wendy awoke to the smashing of a bottle.

She cringed, crumpling deeper into her bed, even as she became cognizant of what was happening just a few feet outside. Shouts. Angry, angry, shouts. Punctuated by things being thrown, more shattering noises, a chair clattering against a wall. Wendy winced as she felt her bruises again. She didn’t know what her parents were fighting over now, she just knew she desperately didn’t want to be a part of it. She just wanted to lie there on that bed forever, ignoring the fighting, ignoring them, ignoring the purple mottling on her skin.

But her stomach rumbled, and she could not ignore hunger.

Wendy slowly crawled out of her bed, carefully putting on her clothes, flinching everytime she pressed her bruises. Her parents were fighting in the kitchen, she could not go there, so she checked the time. Ten A.M. Shecould go to school. They gave her free lunches there. Quietly, so very quietly, Wendy tiptoed her way out of her room. She shut her ears at the arguing. The hallway was filled with trash and garbage, including some of the food boxes from the fast food store they had named her after. Thankfully her parents were loud, and did not notice her opening and shutting the door.

The trek to the school was miserable.

Wendy’s legs felt weak, her feet hurt- the old shoes did little to cushion things, her clothes were too thin to keep the cold out, and her stomach grumbled like an angry beast, beating at her stomach, demanding she feed it. She kept her eyes down, barely perceiving the world through sound, yet that too was dwarfed by the mantra in her head.

Just keep walking… Just keep walking… Just keep walking…

She only looked up when the sound of the school bell rang through the neighborhood. She was close, she dragged her brick like feet, inching ever and ever so closer. The voices of kids and teenagers filled her ears as they came out for lunch break. Finally she made it to the school, eyes still cast down, and followed the crowd of students into the cafeteria. Mechanically, she took a tray, even as her arms felt so weak she could drop it at any moment.

Wendy counted the seconds, waiting, begging for her turn to come faster.

And heaven came when it was finally her turn.

She finally looked up, holding her tray out expectantly. The lunch lady also had her hand out, palm open, as if waiting for something. Wendy looked at her confused, not knowing what she wanted.

The old lady grumbled, “Money.”

Confusion must’ve shown on her face because the lady quickly added, “New rules, government ain’t paying for your lunches anymore, pay up or leave the line.”

Wendy stood there, almost shocked still, barely even noticing when the lunch lady ripped the tray out of her hand and another teenager shoved her out the way. She fell, and was left there, sitting on the dirty cafeteria floor as students and teachers passed by her, none of them ever noticing her.

When the bell rang again and the students left, a teacher came to her.

“No students in the cafeteria,” he told her, “Get up, and go.”

Wendy let the teacher herd her outside, the older man slamming the door behind her, but not before saying,

“Smelly shit. Kids these days don’t know how to fucking shower.”

And so she was left outside, alone.

Her hunger still beat at her stomach, demanding to be sated, her body felt so weak, so very very weak. She felt something warm and watery build in her eyes, tears, but she can’t cry. She can’t ever cry, mum told her she hated the sound, and hit her more when she cried. So Wendy blinked, she blinked desperately and quickly, wiping her eyes to smother the tears. But her mum wasn’t here, so maybe… maybe she could cry. Just this once, cry without being hurt.

So, outside on that cold winter day, Wendy fell to her ground crying. Her knees scrapping the stone cold pavement underneath.

No one came to comfort her, no one even looked at her, no one seemed to notice.

As Wendy wiped the tears, the tears that just wouldn’t end, she saw something on the ground, a glint hidden under a nearby trash can that anyone not kneeling could not see. She reached out and pulled out a glass bottle. One that had a spherical bottom with a straight cylinder, reminding her of the flasks in the science room. It had a faded label on it with the motif of a sun. Words were written there:

Speak a wish into the bottle.

Opening her mouth, a rasping voice not used in months, Wendy spoke, “I wish for a place where I am loved.”

Nothing happened. Of course nothing would happen, it was a stupid bottle. Why did she ever expect anything to happen? Why did she ever want anything, when nothing would ever be given to her?

There was a loud crunch of a boot on gravel.

As Wendy looked up, she saw another student, an older boy, carrying a large duffel bag, muttering something under his breath:

“I’ll show you all… I’ll show you all…”

The boy saw her, and pulled out something straight and dark from his bag.

There was a loud sound that pierced her ears, and she fell limp to the ground. Wendy couldn’t move her body, she could barely feel anything at all as she laid there.

It doesn’t sound anything like that in the movies.

She knew death, she knew it in the same way a person might know what a capybara is. She simply didn’t expect to ever meet it, and not so soon. Useless thoughts passed through her mind as screams and gunfire sounded out behind her. Wendy realized the bottle had broken, she had dropped it when she fell.

On the back of the faded label, was written:

Break to grant.

Wendy floated alone in the darkness.

She no longer felt hungry, she no longer felt pain, she felt nothing and it felt comfortable. She didn’t know how long she was like that, until she felt a gentle tugging, a warmth to the side. She turned to look at it, before remembering she couldn’t see anything, not even darkness. She tried to swim towards it, an awkward frog stroke, the warmth got warmer, so she figured she was getting closer, until finally she saw something. A cobbled road, a path she could take.

She swam harder towards it, trying to get closer, until she could almost touch the path.

And the path moved as if it were a living thing.

She recoiled back as the cobbled road rose as if it were a serpent, no… it was too segmented, tiny, smaller paths peeked out from underneath the larger one, as if it were a massive centipede, but as the front rose to meet her, it unfurled into a bunch of different appendages. Two stalks ending in mossy stone bulbs, two claws pointed down as if praying, like a mantis, and four long and thin antennae.

It wasn’t a centipede, it was a mantis shrimp. And as she looked, she could see that its back was a carapace of cobblestone that stretched back into infinity. Splitting off from its infinitely long abdomen, were just as many legs, each stretching into the distance, going until they disappeared somewhere far away in the horizon.

It was larger than anything she had ever seen- just its head was bigger than her house, and each beady eye regarded her with a strange alieness.

“Who are you, little soul?” the creature asked.

She gasped. It could talk!

I’m Wendy.

“One sees that,” the creature replied, “why are you here?”

I felt a warmth, she thought back. I don’t know why… but I want to find the warm place. Who are you?

The creature turned its head, its antenna reached behind her, feeling the way she had come. “One is Quogal Wode.”

What are you, mister Quogal Wode? She asked. Are you an angel?

“One is not that,” its eye stalks lowered to face her, “One does not believe there is a word in your language that can describe this one.”

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Are you god? God being a mantis shrimp wouldn’t be the strangest thing.

“One can be considered a type of god, but not the type you are thinking of. One is not almighty, nor all knowing.”

But you are a god of something? She asked excitedly.

“Roads, paths, the journey one takes, if one is ascribed godhood, then that is what one is of,” Quogal Wode answered. “One tasted your path, and sensed the Bottled Sun in your tracks. Tell me little soul, did you make a wish of the Star in a Jar?”

She remembered something, something she had kept at the back of her mind, something terrible, something she never wanted to remember again.

Quogal Wode’s body slightly withdrew. “You repress the memory of life, understandably so. It is a hard path you have walked.”

She felt the overwhelming urge to cry, she didn’t remember why, she didn’t want to remember why. She just knew she shouldn’t, otherwise someone would hurt her.

A single, solitary claw, larger than she was, gently rested on her shoulder, rising and falling as if patting her, and she broke. Fat, warm wet tears streamed down her face, globules of snot fell, and her breathing became heavy as her heart tore at itself.

Quogal Wode let her cry, waited for her to finish, however many eternities it took, it had all the time in the world after all. When she finally, slowly, stopped, it spoke.

“You desire the warmth the Bottled Sun gives, to walk this path is to be born amongst its kin, but one should stop you, for you represent change and anomaly.”

She tried to speak, and it came out more like a croak. She wanted to beg, to plead, she didn't want to go back.

“But one is not a creature of roads closed, though one knows some roads should not be taken,” Quogal Wode told her. “If you wish to continue, know that the road is long. You may not emerge at the end the same person, many would consider that death.”

Please, she thought, reaching behind the god, yearning for that warmth that thrummed gently just behind the horizon.

“Then walk,” Quogal Wode said as it lowered itself. “Walk on your own two feet, and do not look back. You have one’s blessing. You shall never be lost again.”

Quogal Wode placed its claw in front of her, and she stepped onto it, letting it raise her until all that was in front of her was the god’s bare carapace back. The infinite road.

And she took her first step.

Jasha Dorgenda Oyen craved metal in the fourth month of her pregnancy.

It was one of the many odd things she was told to expect after marrying a metalborn, the people born of wishes, and Kenthad Oyen certainly looked the part. His body was of pure silver, literally so, from the ends of his hair to the tips of his toes. He had abilities that normal people didn’t have.

But the warmth he emanated as he embraced her was so naturally human.

“I can feel it,” Jasha said softly to him. “I can feel the metallic craving.”

Kenthad hadn't reacted the way someone would expect when told their child would be magical. Instead, he looked worried as he tightly clutched her hand, and tenderly stroked her stomach.

“We are lucky aren’t we?” Jasha murmured, “They will be like you.”

“I’m more worried about you,” Kenthad said. “You will have to eat metal, most will be absorbed by the baby, but some of it will still end up in you.”

“Silver is not that terrible a metal,” Jasha replied.

Kenthad sighed, “I worry, my mother is a leadborn, what if the child takes after her? What if you need to eat lead just to ensure the baby survives?”

“Then we check,” Jasha told her husband.

Kenthad nodded, and got out of the bed, rummaging through the cupboard to find a small ingot of silver. He placed it in front of Jasha.

Jasha frowned. “I don’t feel the craving for it.”

And Kenthad turned pale.

“It is not lead,” Jasha said, Kenthad sighing a heavy breath of relief. To the side, covered completely in clothes and wraps, was her mother in law, Elin Oyen, who quickly spirited away the small thumb of lead metal into her sleeves. It was not that hot a day, but Jasha knew Elin should be sweltering underneath all that cloth.

“You need not cover yourself for my benefit, mother,” Jasha said to her.

The heap of cloth furiously shook her head, and a muffled voice answered, “Metalborn are immune to metal poisoning. You are not.”

“You are my mother now, you deserve to be comfortable,” she argued.

“Not in exchange for someone else’s shortened life,” the old woman sternly replied.

“What is it then?” Kenthad asked, “If neither silver nor lead… Mother, is there anything about the family you never told me about?”

Elin scoffed, “Plenty! Your father snored terribly for one! However, he was- as far as I know- a pure silverborn line. To neither crave his silver or my lead must mean Cintal has blessed us.”

“So this child can be of any of the metals?” Kenthad asked, his voice suddenly giddy with possibility. “That means the child could be of copper, right? A safe metal that also means twins!”

Elin grabbed Kenthad’s ear, pulling it, “Spoken like a person who has never needed to push out a baby!”

Jasha smiled, chuckling slightly as Kenthad tried to pull away from his smaller mother. “We need to test all the metals then?”

Elin nodded, “Indeed, I have a sample of all the metals prepared just in case.”

She reached into her robe, removing four bottles each with different metallic flakes in them. Gold, copper, iron, and tin…

Jasha paused awkwardly, staring intensely into each of the four glass bottles.

“I don’t crave any of these.”

And both Kenthad and Elin Oyen froze.

“That just leaves…”

Elin silently took out two more bottles, one with metallic flakes, nickel, she knew. Dangerous not because of the metal, but of the ability nickelborn had.

“It’s not nickel.”

All three fixed their gaze on the last metal vial, where instead of a small pile of flakes, it was a drop of silver metallic liquid.

Mercury.

It was Kenthad who first broke the silence.

“No, I won’t accept this, you won’t be drinking any mercury.”

“I feel the craving,” Jasha said, “our child will be a mercuryborn.”

“I still don’t accept it.” Kenthad’s face hardened. “You’re not like us, you aren’t immune to metal poisoning, drinking this much mercury might kill you.”

“But not drinking it will kill the child of malnutrition,” Jasha calmly replied.

“You may be mistaken, maybe the child isn’t a metalborn after all, you’ve never had one. You can’t be sure of the signs,” Kenthad continued. “It will be a catastrophic mistake if the child isn’t metalborn.”

Jasha gently shook her head, “I know the signs, I have heard them repeated to me for months and months by many different women who have gone through with it. I know what I am feeling, and I am sure of it.”

She raised her hand, and reached for the vial, but Kenthad stopped her, his own silvery hand holding her outstretched wrists.

“Are you sure Jasha?” he asked, his voice tender.

“I am,” she replied.

“Promise me something.” Kenthad kneeled by her bed, his hands squeezing hers tightly. “Promise me you won’t die.”

Jasha’s hands returned the squeeze, just as strong. “I will, if you promise me one thing as well.”

“What is it?”

“Love the child even if I do.”

And Jasha took the vial of mercury and downed it.

Jasha drank her last drop of mercury.

Her hands, weak and shaking, almost dropped the vial, she could barely feel anything with them but numbness and tingling. Still she continued, until she forced the entire thing down. The bead of mercury fell into her tongue, down through her throat. She felt it warm as if igniting into a flame until it burned itself out. Most of the mercury was absorbed by the baby, she knew, but small amounts of it have been accumulating in her. Her limbs felt weak, her eyes… they were clouded. She felt so tired, so very very tired.

Jasha wondered how much of her sickness was because of the mercury, or because of the pregnancy. Whether or not there was any distinction anymore, as both mixed and worsened the other.

She wasn’t expecting the moment she went into labor.

Elin was within the room in an instant, despite spending the last five months with her, Jasha had yet to see a single inch of skin from her mother in law. The woman still dared not to touch her, instead calling another woman, Rihan, a tinborn, to attend to her. Helping prepare her. Kenthad was called from his office, crashing into the room heavily panting.

Jasha barely registered his return. Her vision was getting more and more clouded, her body felt weaker and weaker, she felt tired but could not sleep. What was she doing again? Yes, she was pregnant, she had to give birth.

Elin called more and more women in, some of them were physicians, she faintly registered. Though she could not bring herself to care about the thought. They attended to her, held her, prodded her, all done with the gentleness of handling fine porcelain. Their faces blurred together, she could barely recognise them. Strangers, strangers surrounded her, was Kenthad there? Was Elin? Why did they need so many people? Why were they doing this? Why did they bother?

Then came that final push.

She barely remembered what happened, only after she registered the sounds of crying. Kenthad, he was crying tears of joy as he knelt beside her, pushing a small bundle into her hands. She barely registered what it was, even as Kenthad spelled it out for her.

“It’s our daughter.”

Jasha could barely see her. Her eyes weren't working properly, not seeing properly. But she had the same metallic silver coloured skin Kenthad had, but it was slightly lighter on her, making her look pale instead. Mercury was a liquid, she faintly remembered. So unlike other metalborn, it took the place of the blood, not the flesh.

The baby was crying, she realized as she raised her hands to hold her, her daughter, but her arms, they were too weak, too numb, they shook even when she tried to hold them still.

Elin’s gloved hands clasped around hers, steadying them.

Jasha hugged her daughter, she hugged her crying husband, incoherently muttering something.

“The physician says you’ll be ok,” Kenthad cried as he hugged them back. “You gave birth to a metalborn, Vuld will give you resistance to metal poisoning now… You’ll be fine… everything will be fine.”

Jasha still felt weak, she still felt tired, but it was a tired contentment now, the quiet proof of work well rewarded.

“What will we call her?” Kenthad’s eyes were wide with awe.

“Mira,” Jasha whispered, having long decided the name. “Mira, child of miracles.”