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The tall lighthouse that once guided so many ships to a safe harbor now stood a great dark mass against the clear sky. Below its dull, dusty windows, the sole occupant of that once-loved monument trudged through the deserted streets of St. Canard. The brightly-colored suit he wore bore no resemblance to his innermost ponderings, though the deceiving costume cast an aura of light as its colors shone on the damp, shimmering pavement. Darkness, for the time being, could not touch him.
This wandering spirit had no destination in mind, though he sought to find some haven in which to escape himself, or to find the elusive thing he searched for. What was this strange object? What longing could eat away at his hardened heart so? Perhaps it was some long-forgotten memory, or a need too long suppressed under the tough exterior of villainy.
He walked on, not looking where he was going, nor seeing anything but the pavement beneath his hunched shoulders. He was not alert to the subtle tugging of his instinct. He merely followed where his subconscious chose to lead him.
Fate dealt its cards, and the villain’s subconscious led him right into the path of another lonely wanderer. So closely were their two paths linked, and so careless was the manner in which each trod them, that they bumped right into each other.
The girl was sent sprawling backwards, more out of surprise at being suddenly jolted out of her melancholy reverie than out of weakness. She turned a prideful glare at the stranger.
“Watch where you’re going!” she hissed.
Megavolt had also been startled back, though not enough to be knocked over. “You watch where you’re going!” he answered out of habit. Then he looked at her, and was shocked yet again to discover that what he had run into was not, in fact, a lamp post or stray prostitute, as it often was. The object that had so inconsiderately gotten in his way was a way-worn female child, approximately 12 years of age. Stranger still, her face and figure bore a strange resemblance to his own. Without fully knowing why he did so, he offered his hand to help her up.
The girl accepted his help hesitantly. Once on her feet again, she clutched her neon-pink backpack to her chest, watching the villain curiously. She, too, noticed how alike they were.
“I know you,” Megavolt said.
“Oh.” A statement or a question? In any case, the girl was not afraid. Megavolt found that somehow unsettling.
“What are you doing out on the streets so late at night?”
“Same thing you are, I suppose.” Her answer seemed almost to mock his need to ask. She added, in a slightly softer tone, “Searching.”
“For what?” The villain was becoming intrigued by the mysterious sprite.
“For…” She stumbled over her own thoughts in search of a way to express them. What came out surprised them both. “For a man who is lightening and thunder in one, and a place that is sunlight once night has begun. For a life filled with metal (not silver or gold), and a story long after all stories are told.” The rhyme had bubbled up from some deep abyss of memory. The girl was sure now more than ever that this was no chance meeting in the night.
Her stranger was even surer. His eyes widened as he asked a question he hardly dared to utter: “Mina?”
“I… I do know you…” Her head whirled with indecision. To be frightened and on guard, or grateful and curious? She could not know. So she pushed the question from her mind and studied the face that mirrored her own in expression. Her eyes narrowed as she strained to reach back into the far-off box that had held that childhood rhyme. Colors and shapes shifted through, each as strange and haunting as the next. The answer came to her all at once.
“Elmo!” she exclaimed, her voice dancing with joy she was reluctant to express. “Elmo, is it you?” His smile was enough to answer. She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Elmo, I’m so glad it’s you! I was so afraid… it’s been days… maybe weeks… since I…” She seemed ready to burst into tears, but Megavolt would have none of that until they were safe.
“Shh…” Megavolt put his hands onto his young cousin’s shoulders. “Come on. The streets are no place for you.” They walked hand-in-hand back to the lighthouse.
CHAPTER 2: Night Begins
Megavolt carried his cousin up the steps that led to the main room of the lighthouse. She was asleep before they had arrived, of course. Now he laid the fragile figure gently on the battered couch he used as a bed. The rusty springs squeaked even under her slight weight.
As soon as she was out of his protective arms, Mina curled up, clutching her tail tightly in her hands. A sharp pain stung the villain’s heart as he watched the lost soul sleeping among the torn threads and electrical debris that littered his home. He wondered what had brought here, and whether her parents – his aunt Lindsay and uncle Earnest – were worried about her.
Slowly, he lowered his tired body onto the rug beside her. He wondered if they missed her. He wondered if his parents had missed him when he disappeared. It was difficult to say. He could hardly remember them. Convinced as he was that he didn’t care whether his parents thought a thing of him, knowing that he didn’t care for them – nor even remember them – pierced him sharply. With a saddened heart, Megavolt curled up on the rug beside the child and fell asleep to the tune of an ominous lullaby crashing on the waves below.
Their picturesque contentment lasted but a few short hours. As the city clocks ticked the time of 3:24 in the morning, Megavolt was awakened by the sound of quiet singing and the realization that Mina was no longer near him in the strangely bright room. With the perfect silence learned from years of stealthy thievery, he crept towards the sound of the song.
He found his cousin leaning against the rail outside in the cold autumn wind. She was humming softly to herself as she gazed wistfully at the black waters of Audubon Bay. She wasn’t startled when, in his typical fashion, Megavolt tripped over the step in the doorway and tumbled onto the walkway that circled the tip of the lighthouse.
“I thought you’d come,” she murmured softly. The music had gone from her voice, which now sounded strained despite the clarity of the air. Megavolt stood shakily.
“How could you tell?” he asked, joining her at the rail.
The girl shrugged. “Feminine instinct.” Her voice laughed though her face remained mournful. Megavolt studied her in the dim light from the window. She was a small creature. The villain guessed her age to be about 12 or 13. She wore an outfit similar to his own. Her suit was a faded color not unlike an overripe banana. Her gloves and boots were blue as midnight, her fur like a storm cloud at dusk. A tuft of yellow fur sparked brightly on the tip of her tail, and more of the same gold caught the light from under the green handkerchief she tied over her head and around her ears. In her belt, a single crystal of rose quartz caught the light in its four facets.
“Style must run in the family,” he chuckled to himself. “Now, tell me, Mina, what are you doing in the city?”
“I ran away.” She gave a casual shrug. “No big deal. I just need to find…” She stopped, leaving the uncertain pause hanging in the air.
Megavolt knew that the ‘right answer’ was to tell the girl to go home, to convince her that her parents were worried about her safety… that he was worried about her safety. But he knew in his heart that she didn’t need to be told that. She knew that answer as well as he did, probably better. So instead he asked, “Do you want to bunk with me until you figure out… you know… what you’re doing?”
“Can I really?” Her eyes gleamed as she smiled at him.
“Sure. No big deal.” He returned the smile.
“And you won’t tell my parents where I am?” She asked.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re with me now, kid.”
“All right!” Mina wrapped her arms around her cousin. “I’ve missed you, you know. It’s been years since anybody’s seen you.” Her hands recoiled suddenly and clasped each other. “We were worried about you. I was, that is. My dad said you were never any good at anything but your books anyway. And aunt Miriam…” She stopped herself, suddenly aware of what she was saying. She looked instantly back to the villain’s face, but was met with strange indifference. Awkwardly, she turned. “I’m going back inside… it’s too cold out here.”
And she was gone, leaving Megavolt to wonder what that was about. Females, he knew, were an unpredictable species. Children were even worse. Yet he felt an understanding between himself and his young cousin. He wasn’t sure he wanted to feel it. It hurt him in a way he’d never been hurt before.
He followed the child into the warm lighthouse.
CHAPTER 3: Mina's Story
Perched on a strong arm of the battered couch, Mina Sputterspark rocked herself slowly back and forth, back and forth to the rhythm of a foreign heartbeat. The heart clocking her perfect movements came to stand beside her.
“I have my reasons,” she whispered, answering an unasked query. The second troubled heart hoisted himself onto the back of the couch. There he sat, resting his feet on a lumpy pillow while he waited for her to continue.
“I left because I was alone,” she continued obediently. “That in itself is not a bad thing. I’m used to being alone. I even enjoy it at times. But being alone when you know you shouldn’t be… it gnaws at your very soul in a way. Have you ever sat in your house and wished with all your might that you could go home, even though you **are** home?”
Megavolt nodded. He wondered at the accuracy of her description of the feeling. She went on:
“Well I feel like that all the time now. I want to go home, but I don’t know where that is. So I’m looking for it. I need to find a place where I’m understood… where people won’t judge me because of what I seem to be.”
“What’s that?” Megavolt asked.
“This…” The crystal in her belt began to glow. Megavolt knew the look on her face, but she was too quick. She zapped him before he had time to duck out behind the couch.
Instantly the room spun out of control. His head was filled with a noise comparable only to total chaos. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, for he saw the same thing either way: swirling, flickering images with no rhyme or reason to them.
The spell, or curse, passed quickly. When he regained his senses, he was lying on the floor.
“What… was that?” he gasped, pushing himself upright.
“Piezoelectrically transmitted radio and television waves,” she sighed. “Not much, but enough to put any unsuspecting obstacle out of the way long enough to find somewhere to hide.”
The villain marveled at his cousin. “How did you…?”
“…develop my talents?” She turned her sad eyes to him. “I was born with it. You know, of course, how bones have a certain amount of piezoelectric charge? Well I happen to be supercharged. It was just a matter of developing my skills.”
“And that’s why you ran away, isn’t it? Because they think you’re some kind of a freak?” His inquisitive eyes pierced her from the floor.
“Yes,” she admitted. “And no.”
“And no?” Megavolt climbed over the back of the couch. He sat beside her, listening.
“Well, they don’t seem to think anything of me. Maybe if they thought I was a freak, at least I’d know they thought of me. But they just ignore me. I’m nothing to them. Not good, not bad. Only once I heard my mother speaking on the telephone to someone… she said I was just like you, and I’d probably amount to even less.” The words were delivered with perfect indifference, but Megavolt knew well enough to see past that.
“They talk about me?” he asked.
“Now and then. You’re the black sheep of the family… someone nobody wants to be.”
“Probably just as well,” said the villain. “It’s not like I care much for them either.”
“But I do,” Mina whispered. “I used to want so much for them to love me, or to need me, or even to hate me. Now… this is the last road I can take. I’ll be another black sheep. Then at least they’ll have someone new to make an example of.” Resentment dripped from the young girl’s voice. Megavolt knew the sound too well, for it was the sound of his own thoughts. The lullaby of the waves, that sweet sound he heard each night, sang in the same tone of lost childhood. But those were only waves. Now, personified in the voice of his cousin, it was a much darker thing.
“You’re welcome to be a black sheep,” Megavolt said. “But don’t be alone. That’s not much better than being an outcast in their presence.”
“It can’t be much worse.”
“You would know?”
Mina looked at her cousin. The expression of harsh scorn drained from her young eyes and was replaced by bright tears. “I would know,” she whispered, “Only too well.”
CHAPTER 4: Moonshower
How many children are there in the world who suffer the fate of being forgotten? How many, Megavolt wondered as he held his cousin in his arms, don’t even have the courage to try to solve their problems? How many don’t even know they want love, but suffer more because they cannot put a name to what they lack?
Megavolt could feel the girl sobbing in his arms, but she was as quiet as a still summer night with no waves in the bay and no wind in the air. This, too, was no strange thing to him. Long ago his tears also came with the silence of a child who is used to hiding them in the night. How well he remembered being carried by the feathery arms of dreams through long days after a night filled with sorrow… How well he remembered the feeling of dried tears on his sleeves, the burning salt below his unfocused eyes, the isolation of watching the world through stained glass.
And how well he knew that these memories were shared by the child in his arms.
He could say nothing to ease her pain. To speak would be his undoing. Already his heart yearned to join hers in mourning for the thing that was lost, but was never truly there to begin with. Stronger and stronger grew the pull of such thoughts, until at last a tear fell from his glowing eye, then another. Soon he too wept for the love he had never known.
He could not fully recall the magic that silenced his cries of grief, nor did he understand why his cousin’s arms drew him closer to her. Never since he was little more than a helpless toddler had his sorrow been given any compassion or understanding. The same was true for Mina. Though neither knew how to receive such love, or perhaps because they did not know, each gave it freely.
Their tears ceased when the dawn rose over the sparkling bay, for sorrow was not made to be held in the heat of the shameful day. Sorrow such as theirs was formed in the hands of the lost souls, and given to those who could hold it and savor it in the cool of the sacred night. As this new dawn came, they both knew the end of their time together was approaching.
“What will you do now?” Megavolt asked.
Mina drew her knees up to her chest. She shivered slightly and leaned closer into her cousin’s sheltering embrace. “I will go home,” she said simply. “Knowing that you care about me is enough to give me strength.”
“It shouldn’t be enough,” he said sadly. “But it is for me, too.”
“Is that how it will always be for us?” Mina asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we.”
“I guess so.”
With those as their parting words, they exchanged one final embrace and parted. It was a happy parting, since they knew they would see each other again as sure as the sun rose. But now was a time for holding the past that, to both, was dearer than their whole lives. Tomorrow was the time for tomorrow.
…end…
"Moonshowers" is © Mainecoon, 2000
