Stolen

You can live your entire life with someone, but the moment you know they might leave you forever, that is when you take the time to memorize their face. I love my father and he is the only parent I have ever known. How could I ever forget his face? And yet I am trying to memorize the lines around his eyes. They should be much more pronounced for a man his age, but I know that we are not 'normal'. Father does things he should not be able to, but here in the bayou, it is expected and everyone knows better than to bring attention to it, let alone question. It is the safest place for us. A place among the strange and different. I was the same, but how different I have yet to truly learn. I thought I would learn it with my father, but he has always refused and now he threatens to leave me entirely to my own devices. Alone. In search of a person who was taken from us many years ago.

"Look at me, Masruq!" My father gripped my shoulders, tight, but with a plea rather than anger. But what was he asking? "Please. Know this. I have to go. I have waited as long as I could. I had to wait until you came of age and could fend for yourself should something happen."

I stared at him. His eyes look black, but if you look close they are truly brown, but such a brown I have never seen outside of my father. It looked black. Black like the depths of an abyss. He turned his head and looked down. He always did that when I looked into his eyes. As though he did not want me to peer into his soul. What could he possibly have to hide? He raised me and cared for me in a safe and loving home despite my mother gone.

He raised his head and looked at me. He smiled. "You have your mother's eyes." He tells me that all the time. "Is that why you always look away when our eyes touch?" His eyes darted to me with shock written in their depths. Just as quickly, he looked away and let me go. He ran his hands through his obsidian hair. It was dyed. I know because he always dyed it. I have no idea what color it was normally, but the grey hair is showing more and more.

"Masruq... there is so much I want to tell you, but there isn't time." "What are you talking about? There is plenty of time. I am not going to the university for another month." He shakes his head. "That's not what I mean." "Then what is it?" He looks at me and then turns away, clearly remembering that he can't look at me.

I follow his gaze out to the drooping trees with the moss that is familiar to all in Louisiana. I have always liked it. It makes everything seem wistful and romantic. But my father says it is what keeps us hidden from what took my mother.

There was much involved when I decided to leave for college. Most of my friends left years ago, but I could no longer stay here and tend farm with him. This isn't who I am. I am not yet sure, but I just know and have always known I don't belong here. It is more than just my eyes that have no defined color. A boy once called them 'iridescent' and I thought it the most beautiful and accurate description. With my eyes and deep-toned skin it was clear that I was the image of my mother.

"Papa?" I asked him in a voice that sounded more meek than I wanted. But how do you address your father who is going to leave? He turned back to me and pulled me into his arms. "I am sorry, Mas. I can no longer wait. I have to get her. I couldn't risk it knowing you were so young and I had hoped that she would return if nothing else to escape and find you, but she hasn't and I must go to her." He pulled back and held my face in his hand. I was taller than my father by a couple of inches (again likely from my mother) and he looked up at me with such adoration and love I smiled back. "You will be fine, Mas. Please trust me and trust in what I have told you to stay safe." I nodded and swallowed my tears. I showed him the ring I always wore and never took off. He told me it keeps me safe from those who would take me and as a child, the stories were enough to keep me wearing my ring. Always.

"Where will you go?" "I will go to where your mother is and demand for her return. If she cannot return with me, then I cannot return to you." My heart stopped and I could not mask my face. He immediately began the platitudes and reassurances, but I heard nothing. It was all buzzing. All I knew was that I might not ever see my father again.

I wake up in my bed and I slowly open my eyes. I think about breakfast with my -- suddenly I remember! My father said good-bye. I jump up and ran through the house calling and then screaming his name. It isn't a large home. It is modest with two floors and a yard that is mostly flat with many trees that do not hide anything in the morning sun shining high in the sky. I stop at the back porch having gone through all the areas of the house. It is clear to me that my father is gone. But more disturbing is I have no recollection of what happened. How did he leave? Did I say good-bye? Where did he go? I go to the garage and see his car still there. I go to the office and search for documents of travel, anything. I freeze when I see his passport sitting there inside the top drawer, along with his wallet. I reach for it and I don't realize my hand is shaking until it is in front of my face. I open it and see his driver's license and his credit cards. Where could he go that he would need no identification or credit cards?

I fall back into his chair behind the desk and stare out the window wondering. I watched the tree that I was forbidden to play under or approach. It was the only thing that would incite rage from my father. I knew not why. He told me something lives in the tree that was dangerous. Was it a child's tale? I lean back into the chair and close my eyes, thinking about where he could have gone. I keep seeing the tree in my mind. I open my eyes and see it there. It is the only tree that grows no moss. None. It had moss yesterday. But today, the tree is bare. How is that possible?

I get up slowly and exit the house, back to the back porch I found myself in a frantic frenzy, but now I am calm. I deliberately walk to the tree and look at it. It looks like any other tree. I walk around it and I am baffled as to what was so special that my father would insist on my distance from this tree.

As I stared, suddenly etchings appeared on the tree bark. As though a magical hand was carving a message. "10 pm". I frowned. "Who is there?" I called out and looked around, but I saw nothing and no other movement happened. I thought about it. Clearly, it was meant for me and a time was requested. I had no way of responding, other than carving into the tree, but I wasn't sure what I was going to say, so I turned and walked back into the house and decided to wait until the time of my appointment with whom, I have no idea.

Nightfall came at a snail's pace. The anticipation was the worst. Trying to remain busy was hard with the distraction of hypothesizing who was contacting me. Where were they contacting me from? How did they send a message on a tree? was my father the one sending the message? was he returning? how did he know to send the message as I stood under the tree? So many thoughts filled my mind and then the potential scenarios of my father and mother erupting from the tree laughing and holding hands with the love my father has been keeping for the last two decades. It was unfair to him and I hoped that this would be the blessing that fate gave him for being such a good and devoted father.

I was standing at the tree from 9 pm watching the clock. It was worse than watching the grass grow in the bayou. But 10 pm came and went and nothing happened. I frowned at the tree and waited. 10:30 and I felt my heart sink. What if something happened to my father when he was trying to escape with my mom? That thought made me angry and afraid. I ran up to the tree and punched it. "Give me back my Dad!" Nothing happened, so I hit with both fists and kept hitting and screaming at it until the back chipped and my ring made contact with the inside bark. It sparked and then I was pushed back in the air landing on my buttock. Hard. I looked up, breathing hard and noticed I was 30 feet from the tree. What was that? I looked at my ring and then the tree. My ring looked like a moonstone and my father said it protected me. But what if if keeps me from finding him? Slowly and with a lot of effort, I pulled off the ring. My finger felt completely bare and too light. I slowly walked to the tree and breathed in. There was a scent there now that wasn't there before. It smelled of sand and ocean. It smelled like clean air and freshness. I looked at the ring I left on the ground and then back at the tree. I touched the tree and suddenly a door was there. I breathed in and wondered if I should enter. But then it opened and a small child-like person was on the other side.

"Greetings Maat. Welcome home." I stared at the creature. It was just barely 3 feet tall with tan skin, dark clothing, and eyes that appeared... iridescent. My voice didn't sound like my own when I spoke, "I am sorry, but my name is Masruq." The small person tilted it's head with confusion. "Strange to adapt such a name, but you are who you are, Maat. Name changes nothing." The person opened the door wide and I entered. I turned back as the door was closing to ask about my father, but the person was gone and within seconds, so was the door. I was staring at a wall in front of me. I went to it and could not find any seams. I looked in the only direction I could go and saw the stairs. They appeared to be brand new and made entirely of dark wood. With no other place to go, I climbed the stairs. They were wide and circular and within less than a minute I didn't have to wonder how far it would be because I heard voices.

"Where is my daughter?" I stopped on the stairs. That wasn't my father. "You have no daughter. I have a daughter." That was my father. My heart leapt with such joy I couldn't fathom a time when I felt so elated. I practically ran the rest of the way, but a voice stopped me. "I have a daughter. I birthed her and she was taken. How could you do that? To her? To me? A child needs her mother." I stopped. My mother? I thought she was the one taken.

"I had to be father and mother to her because you wouldn't come with me to raise our child." I could feel the tears falling, but a voice boomed shaking the stairs that I had to reach out and grab the walls to keep from falling. "You are not the father! It is the child I have with my wife! You forced yourself on her when she had my child in her womb, you disgusting snake!"

The ground stopped shaking, but that was when I started. What was happening? I don't even know how or remember doing it, but I must have walked the rest of the way because I rounded the corner of the stairs and I saw my father strung up as though on an unseen cross. His body shredded as much as his clothing. He looked beaten and defeated. I spent two decades with him and never saw him look despaired. it was shocking and it provoked an anger that I could not contain. "You take him down now!"

I turned to stare into the iridescent eyes of the person who was my mirror image in every way except gender. He looked at me with a kindness I did not show him. "Finally, I have you here, daughter."