To Be Free

She was underwater, dark miles beneath a rippling surface. Salt seeped into her lungs but did not choke her; it cradled her. It rocked forward and backward, mimicking the rhythm of the great waves far above.

Malaya’s sight had never been clearer. Her eyes widened in wonder as she looked out at the ocean enveloping her. Hydrophytes grew taller than sight could follow, their leafy branches swaying lazily to the currents’ rhythm. Through the cerulean water floated innumerable blooms of bioluminescent plankton, illuminating schools of vibrant fish like chandeliers born of the rarest fantasies. Yellow fins rippled, amber tails undulated, all mesmerizingly synchronized. A dance of unheard beauty.

Malaya discovered that she could walk, that her legs could once more sustain her body’s weight. She savored the golden blanket of silken sand beneath her feet. Algae licked her limbs. Swift fish swam through her fanned-out hair. She had not let it loose in so long she had forgotten the feeling.

Step after step, following her invisible Ariadne’s thread, Malaya sought her freedom. She knew it was close. She felt it.

With trembling hands, she brushed aside the vast leaves obstructing her path.

Shadows, spirits, men and women frolicked around the clearing, swaying from one of the market’s colorful stands to another. Their smooth voices travelled through the water as clearly as through warm air.

The people were astounding, more so than the glade. Difference was the norm–not one resembled another. They possessed everything from uptilted eyes to fanged mouths, pointed ears, and horns of all shapes and sizes. The women wore shells and pearls woven into shimmering hair, into locks of all hues, from burgundy to lavender no color was unseen. Necklaces adorned their bodies, drooping all the way down to bare stomachs. Some walked, some swam. Some had legs, others tails.

Malaya, unsure of her whereabouts but somehow at peace, approached one of the most crowded stands. It held shelves upon shelves of little glass bottles, inside them swirling liquids whispered tempting promises.

“Just a tear for that one, dear.”

Malaya jerked away from the green liquid she had been contemplating. “I’m sorry, what?”

An old woman with eyes too big and dark to be human smiled softly. “We haven’t had a newcomer in years.” She adjusted the golden spectacles resting on her miniature nose and handed a pink ampoule to a finned customer without once looking away from Malaya. “I believe I have what you are searching for.”

Malaya was not sure she was searching for anything. Though a little voice in the back of her head whispered one word, almost too softly for her to hear. Freedom.

The woman knelt behind her stand. When she emerged once more she held a red vial. It was not adorned with golden swirls and pretty pearls, nor did it boast a wondrous shape of swells and narrowings molding together in a seamless dance. In such a world, it stood out in its simplicity.

Malaya reached out a hand to take the vial, but the woman snatched it back.

“It will cost you.”

She frowned. “A tear for this too?”

The woman smiled. “I am keeper of secrets, custodian of all knowledge. I am a link between worlds, but even I can only grant you freedom when you are ready to receive it.”

Malaya clutched her chest. She blinked. Something burrowed deep inside her had awakened, opening one gargantuan eye it had grasped her mind with rotting claws.

Her eyes clouded with shadows, with a darkness so terribly unpierceable. She ached for freedom. She needed it. Her bones trembled and throbbed, threatening to let her fall, to crumble to dust inside her own flesh. A tired heartbeat echoed through her pulsing head, every second slower, feebler, on the verge of yielding. Something was sucking her dry, drinking the blood from her ravaged veins. She would soon be depleted, empty, nothing but an ailing spirit drowning in a too-large body that had long lost its vitality.

Malaya opened her eyes with a gasp. She clutched the wooden stall, doubled over and heaving as tears prickled her eyes.

“Oh, how you suffer, dear. Let me help.” The woman hobbled to the other side of the stall and rubbed soothing circles on Malaya’s back. Other people had stopped their meandering to stare; some sang, others prayed. A horned child clutched his mother's leg tightly.

“Your deepest fear is what I ask in exchange for the vial.”

Malaya clutched her stomach, nausea clenching her insides in a vice grip. She did not understand what was happening. She was scared. "Dying. Dying is what I most fear.”

“Hush, child. Don’t ramble.” The woman was still tracing circles on Malaya’s back. Her steady rhythm soothed the stinging pain long enough for Malaya to think.

“Why do you want to know?”

The woman laughed, golden spectacles bouncing on the tip of her nose. “It is not I who must know. It is you.”

Malaya was suddenly aware that there was much she had forgotten. She felt a leviathan absence, a great gorge in the depths of her soul. Yet, the void was not entirely amorphous: its jagged edges were tinted yellow.

A yellow cottage with red tulips overflowing from terracotta vases hung beneath wide glass windows. A yellow sundress rippling in the breeze as the young girl wearing it ran barefoot through the grass, as carefree as the robins chirping around her. A yellow tablecloth, decorated with hand-painted lilacs, atop which the girl’s mother kneaded dough whilst whispering tales of love and monsters.

Malaya’s eyes prickled. Memories flashed before her, a torrent of love and emotion. She now understood where the pain came from. She also understood that forgetting it was not worth forgetting all that was good.

"Pain," Malaya whispered, the word tasted of surrender. “My greatest fear is pain.” She wrapped her thin arms around herself as she trembled, offering her body what little comfort she could muster. “I’m afraid that physical pain will erode my sanity, that I will succumb to it as a zealot to their god. I fear that it shall deprive me of my independence, my ability to walk, to see, to be free.”

“But that’s not all”. Malaya took a deep breath, the words were stuck in her throat, begging to be freed. “I fear the pain of disappointing expectations, of my difference so clearly evident in the eyes of others”. She clenched her hands into defiant fists. “I despise the pity etched on passersby’s faces for I fear that one day that is all that will be left of me. I'm afraid that the pain will consume me, that there will be nothing left of who I used to be”. She exhaled. “I don't want to be a shadow.”

“Then stop hiding,” the woman whispered, popping off the red vial’s cork and handing it to her.

Malaya threw her head back and drank. It tasted metallic, a mouthful of shriveled blood. Then, the girl looked around. Shimmering figures surrounded her, smiling and waving from all over the clearing. They urged her forward, onward. Her journey was not yet over.

Beep… Beep… Beep.

Malaya’s eyes shot open.

“Baby, are you okay?” her mother asked, a worried crease appearing between her dark brows. She absentmindedly rubbed circles over her daughter’s sunken stomach.

Malaya smiled, her eyes bright as they hadn’t been in ages. “I had a wonderful dream.”

Her mother’s sight was a little too clouded with worry for her to notice the courage now animating her daughter’s face. “Your doctors said the fever dreams should stop after the last round of chemo. Hold on a little longer, baby.”

The young girl wrapped her hands around her mother’s wrinkled one. “Perhaps we should take a walk in the park today?”

The mother stood to fetch a wheelchair without uttering another word. Her daughter had not wanted to step outside in three months. Perhaps God had finally answered her prayers.