The Others By Lauren Stone

She grew up lacking control, and although her wings were there, they did not work well enough for her to fly like the Others. It was as if they were too weak on their own, too broken to really do what she wanted them to. When the Others realized this, they took her to a place called the Carving with its sterile white walls and glossy floors. There, she would spend years attempting to be fixed, to be molded in the way that the Others wished to see her.

You convinced yourself that they were right and you needed to be repaired. You let them hurt you because you believed they would make you beautiful.

But nothing they did worked, and when the Carvers finally admitted that they had failed to make her like the Others, they put down their chisels and hammers and finally let her go out into the world. It was strange for her being with the Others, and she realized that compared to them she was still broken and unable to fly as high. With that, she traveled for days, step by step, to an Irish sorcerer who could help her. There was no one there when she arrived, only a voice echoing into the breeze.

“I will give you what you seek, but know that it will fade over time,” the voice explained. “I cannot tell you when. Just know that it will come, even if you don’t want it to.”

“I’ll do anything,” She told him desperately.

A small creature no higher than her knees suddenly appeared behind her, waiting as she turned to journey home. He stared at her intently with his little black marble eyes, taking tiny steps toward her. There was a hole the size of a pinhead on his chest where sand seeped. His name was Rialú, made from burlap sewn together in a mismatched array and filled with sand. His skinny arms and legs looked frail compared to his bulbous head and curved grin.

From that day on, he would nestle himself between her two withering wings, using his arms to flutter them mechanically when she needed to fly. The sorcerer had granted her wish. Because of Rialú, she was now like the Others.

“Keep writing,” He would tell her, “I won’t always be around.”

“Don’t be silly, Rialú! You’ll always be here with me. You’re my greatest friend.”

Even in her denial, she still listened to the little creature. She began to write what she wished to be, and so the more sand Rialú lost, the more she would write. As time passed, she wrote more and more and more. These worlds she would create were of her heart’s sincerity, as if it did not inhabit only one body but many. The heart was not monogamous in its desires, for it too dreamed of control and adventure and love, things that its host could not provide.

Even so, her reliance on Rialú soon spilled out into other dominions, from the numbers her teacher would stamp on her papers to the fear of the invisible germs that lurked on every surface. He would turn her face away from the contaminated air and tell her to do her assignments. Rialú reminded her that if neglected, the grades could falter or the germs could inhabit her. Both outcomes caused her great anxiety, and so she made sure that neither slipped from her completely.

“Rialú, where are you?” She would scream, checking everywhere for his little black eyes to reflect the light back to her like mirrors. “Please don’t let them hurt me.”

The burlap creature would go away sometimes, not because he wanted to, but because that was what the sorcerer chose to happen. Without Rialú, the numbers were not be in her favor and the invisible bugs would use her body as their home for a couple weeks, doing things to her that she could not stop nor escape. He would return hours later to comfort her for his absence, but not before the numbers and bugs could get to her. These times made her write more. They made her stories darker, and the characters more like herself: each fearing the loss of their own free will.

For a while she stopped writing, possibly to enjoy her time with Rialú. At least with his help she could flutter her wings and move and fly so that her body would leave the ground. She became appreciative of the little she still had, even if Rialú’s strength began to weaken as more sand drained from his arms. So, she retired from writing, believing that she was like the Others, that maybe she had misjudged what normalcy entailed. From then on there was no need for words on a page or an alternate universe to knit herself into. For some time, she felt at peace, even if looking back it was simply an illusion. She was content, and the Others felt it wrong to distract her from this acceptance.

“Why don’t you write anymore? What will happen when I’m gone?” Rialú asked one day. Unbeknownst to her, he was so much thinner than he had been the first day they met. Sand still spilled from his chest, yet so slowly that no one could really see. Fabric pooled around him, but his little marble eyes only saw her, and to Rialú that was all that mattered.

“Rialú, I can’t imagine a world without you,” She whispered, hugging him tightly against her chest, “Please don’t leave me.”

As promised, however, Rialú slowly withered away with time. She could feel him slip away on certain mornings when her wings felt different or when it seemed that the way she flew was too odd to be normal. She could feel it in the way the Others looked at her and she could feel it in the way she looked at herself. Rialú was just a pile of burlap when she cradled him one final time in her arms. The creature stared up into her eyes as she softly sobbed.

“Where did all your sand go, Rialú? Please. They’ll take me back t-to the Carving if they know I am broken. Oh, Rialú.”

“I was only but a crutch so that you could find me within yourself…I’m in there. Write. Just write until you find me again.”

And with his last breath, the last bit of sand trickled from his chest. Within moments, she could feel the Carvers’ hands grabbing at her. She couldn’t fly from them, not without Rialú, and so she let them take her in defeat, still holding onto Rialú with all the strength she had. Between the screams and pleas, someone had finally torn his lifeless body from her hands, throwing him on the ground.

“Rialú,” She cried in panic, reaching out one last time, but his eyes were lifeless and dull.

Heartbreaking sobs echoed for miles as they dragged her to the Carving to attempt to fix her once again. Maybe they had received complaints from the Others or maybe the promises of full control over her body subconsciously yanked her back to that horrid place. Instead of granting her such luxury, they immobilized her, took her apart, broke her, maimed her, and left her with nothing at all. She begged the sorcerer for more time, more choices, more grasp on her life, but nothing could be done and the magic had dried up until nothing could be salvaged.

You could hear the chisels--feel them. You lay there too pained to move, and with tears streaming over your temples you smiled. Maybe this time you would fixed. You held onto that belief for so long...for too long.

Without Rialú, she began sinking into the depths of darkness, soon becoming a shell of her former self. The Carvers worked to reassemble her, but the pieces did not match up, nothing seemed to work anymore, and eventually they dropped their tools and threw their hands up in defeat. She begged for them to return her to who she was before, but they left her there, simply telling her that her open wounds needed time to heal. Even her body knew something was not right. It did not like the pieces being mismatched and so it too fought her, trying to kill itself in protest. Exhausted, broken, bruised, and completely helpless, she thought of Rialú’s last words. Finally, after so long she picked up the pencil and began to write again.

Your fingers were trembling in anticipation, like they had been waiting forever. When you began to write, you could feel the pain melt away, and a piece of your soul being pulled from the wreckage that was you.

She returned to the world that provided her no limitations. She chose what the world looked and felt like. She chose the characters and every aspect of who they were. She chose their battles and she chose whether or not they overcame them. She chose when they smiled and when they cried. She chose when they died and when they murdered. Only on paper was she free. Only on paper was she like the Others, and only on paper was she truly the person she felt on the inside. The Others liked that.

There you were hooked up to machines, needles prodding your skin, chisels chipping away at your body, but you were no longer a part of it. That body on the bed was not yours anymore. Your mind became someone else, and when you now opened your eyes this alternate universe would be what you saw. In it, you could fly, fall in love, smile, and choose. Your hair was no longer matted and your skin no longer scarred. You could fly again. You were perfect and radiant and able.

You left your failing body for another, for many bodies. You now woke beside a man who loved you, mysteries that only you could solve, and a world that treated you as a hero rather than a broken being. This was your elysium, and as your hand moved to write, you became what was written. The Others begged you to come back into the world where your body lay waiting to be fixed, but you were not willing to sacrifice your freedom for a place which had always oppressed you. As the pain serum would spread throughout your veins, you felt yourself drifting again, and you would smile because it was as if you were going home--to the only place you had ever truly belonged.

Novel after novel came from her, and the Others read them and felt enveloped in her stories. They could relate to the pain of her characters because that pain was indeed her own. Every emotion felt so real because those emotions were hers, and the Others were able to twist them to fit their own experiences and fears. They wanted more, and so that’s what she gave them. While the Carvers tried to reassemble her dying body, she wrote and wrote and wrote until her tear ducts had run dry and her fingers felt numb from typing with so much grit. The more she expressed her anger, her disappointment, and her hopelessness through writing the less she felt them weighing on her heart. She began to forgive the Carvers, she began to accept her destiny, and most of all, she began to accept herself.

Bleak days still came and went, but she overcame them. Even Death liked to call to her on occasion, on the nights when she was too weak to write, let alone cry. He would taunt her every time she threw up and every time the pain in her head was so intense that it was as if the Carvers were electrocuting her as punishment for being broken.

“You haunt my stories, you know,” She would tell him. “I talk about you a lot in them.”

“I’m aware.”

“But I won’t let you take me. I decide when I go. It’s me who chooses. I dare you to try and take me. I dare you. I may not be able to fly from you like the others, but I can fight. I’ve spent all my life fighting and now my heart is too strong for you to take.”

“Even after these long eight months, you would prefer to live like this...wallowing in hopelessness? Let go for just a moment and you won’t feel anything, I promise. You get to control letting go. You control that.” She would feel her skin prickle and her mouth grow dry.

“As long as I have a pencil and something to write on, Rialú will be there. I refuse to give him up,” She would cry. She would clench her eyes shut, pull at her hair, and scream, “I AM IN CONTROL.” Then like a ghost, he would disappear into the night.

You weren’t afraid of Death. You weren’t afraid of anything except losing your will--losing who you were. Those nights would have scared anyone, but not you. Resilience was what the world had carved into you from the day you were born.

Not long after the last of those bitter days, when they taped her back together just enough for her to resemble the Others, the Carvers reluctantly granted her a hovercraft, one that could fly higher and faster than the wings of the Others. They had wanted so badly to fix her, or whatever they believed fixing meant, that handing her the hovercraft was an admittance of their defeat. Even she had wanted the complexity and beauty of wings; her heart too begged her to be like the Others, but once she sat inside the hovercraft she realized that her mode of freedom was far better, far more beautiful than it had ever been.

“Look Rialú...I’m...free,” She whispered under her breath.

The Carvers looked at one another and smiled, handing her the keys. Maybe they were okay with being wrong. Maybe they knew that this was who she was meant to be. They waved to her as the hovercraft started up, tears in their eyes.

She flew away that day, way beyond the clouds, and for the first time in so long, she was truly free. And no, she was not like the Others, oh no, she was herself, and that was just the way she wanted to be. She finally felt that she had become something greater than anything the Carvers could have given to her, and this sudden power over the way she saw herself translated into her writing. You see, all along, through the pain and turmoil and hopelessness, her words had been her wings.

To the girl with no name,

I remember your story books when you were so small. Even as a child you realized you lacked control, and so you used your gift of imagination to fill it. When we met, you didn’t realize it but my name means control in Gaelic. I became your greatest friend, your most beloved companion, and yes, over time you lost me like the sun chasing a drifting cloud on a windy day. My darling, you wrote, not just because I told you to, but because that’s what your heart knew you needed after my departure. These stories were rarely happy accounts of imaginary characters’ lives; I guess you’ve always been a little morbid. In the 5th grade, I remember you wrote about something as poignant as cancer and read it to the class. The girl in the story did not die from cancer, no, she died at the hands of another after her triumph. Why was that? You gave her the control to overcome her illness, but not the control to overcome the actions of what others did to her. Before you even realized how much control meant to you, your stories already reflected it.

I know that your dream is to share your work, to relate your pain to others who understand in some capacity what it feels like to be helpless. For years you gave up writing, until that control you craved left you again at the age of fifteen when I died in your arms. Writing became your medicine and it healed you. You were angry, you were sad and hopeless and confused. Eventually it all became too much and you begged to write. I remember how it felt to lose yourself in these worlds. They distracted you from the pain and the despair each time the Carvers told you there was nothing left they could do for you. But, you know, if it hadn’t been for all your battles you may have never found your way back to writing. It is a part of you like your heart is; it is anchored there, and without it you would not be who you are today. You are in control, my darling, I promise you. When it slips from you again, that pencil on your desk is patiently waiting. For now, just fly--higher than you could have ever imagined, and do not let the Others stop you.

Sincerely,