So she gets up. She’s in pajamas again, but this time she takes the time to put on a heavy terry cloth bathrobe, even though it’s hot. While she does this, bright light flashes outside, nearly blinding even through the curtains. Someone—a young woman, sounds like—screams in a voice that is high-pitched and revolted and more than a little hysterical. Someone else with a deeper voice shouts—rhythmically but breathlessly, like she’s reciting poetry while running—“But once on the scene / we start killing kings!” There is another of those house-jolting thuds as Aislyn finally runs out of her room, and the bright light beyond the blinds fizzles out. Something—huge and inhuman, with a voice like a high-pitched bus horn—shrieks, and the sound of this is enough to make Aislyn cry out and cover her ears as she stumbles against the wall hard enough to dislodge an old family portrait. (Her and Mom and Dad, and a teddy bear to represent Conall.)
Sudden silence. Everything outside has gone still. Her mouth dry with fear, Aislyn hurries to the front door and eases it open.
In the front yard are four women and an older man. The man, who is maybe Japanese, is picking himself up off the ground. In one of his hands is a strange, bright red envelope covered in gold foreign characters, which he’s holding like a shuriken from one of the anime shows Aislyn used to watch. His glasses are spiderwebbed on one side. Of the women, the stocky short-haired Mexican-looking one stands with her feet planted, crouched low like she’s about to do a wrestling move, even though she’s old enough to be Aislyn’s grandmother. She’s also wearing the biggest, ugliest old boots Aislyn’s ever seen. The tall, stately Black lady is vaguely familiar, though Aislyn can’t place her face. She’s in a skirt suit that is covered in dirt all along one side, and she’s barefoot. On the curb nearby, neatly positioned next to her sensible heels, is a pair of small gold-loop earrings. The third woman, who sits shaking on the ground, is Indian and plump and young enough to be Aislyn’s own age. She seems all right despite the shakes, but she’s brushing at her own arms as if frantically trying to wipe something away.
And above them all floats the Woman in White, who glows as if a white sun shines through her skin. There are other things in the front yard, too, moving at the edges of Aislyn’s vision, other things that—She shudders and resolutely does not look at them again.
The Woman beams over her shoulder as Aislyn steps outside. “Lyn, my dear! Sorry that we woke you. Did you sleep well?”
“What the hell?” Aislyn stares at the strangers in front of her house. They’re mostly in the driveway and on the lawn, though keeping well away from the big white tower. But all at once, Aislyn recognizes them—even though she’s never met a single one of them before, she feels certain. She knows them without sight or name, as well as she knows herself. The big Black woman? Can’t be anyone but Brooklyn. The mean-looking old lady, The Bronx. The nervous-looking Indian girl. Queens. They are her, and she is them. “We are New York,” she murmurs, and then flinches. No.
They’re missing one, because the old Japanese guy definitely isn’t Manhattan, though Aislyn senses at once that he, too, is a city. Another substitute. Who’s standing, or trying to remain standing since he seems unsteady on his feet, in the flower bed. In Aislyn’s flower bed, where she grows herbs and chamomile for her tea. She can see his filthy, foreign foot planted square on the dill.
The anger comes on faster than Aislyn’s ever gotten angry in her life. It is as if Conall has broken a dam within her, and now every bit of fury she has ever suppressed over thirty years just needs the barest hair trigger to explode forth. She steps out of the house and onto the walkway, and there is shimmering, terrible light around her as she summons forth every drop of belonging that her island can give her, which is a whole heaping lot. The foreigner and her other selves all turn to stare at her, eyes widening at the manifestation of her power. They are awed by her and it’s delicious. She bares her teeth.
“Get off my lawn,” she says.
What happens next is instantaneous. One moment, they’re trampling Aislyn’s herbs and the grass that her dad works so hard to keep neat. Next moment, all four of them have been picked up and flung backward by some invisible force, hurtling them away from the grass and driveway onto the street. The Woman in White, who isn’t technically standing on Aislyn’s lawn, remains where she is; the rest of them land on the asphalt of the street with cries or groans or curses. The Woman claps in delight when she sees what Aislyn’s done.
The other avatars look shocked, except the Japanese guy, whose expression is unreadable as he picks himself up. Queens, grimacing and stumbling a little, helps up the one who is the Bronx. The Bronx rubs her hip, then picks up each of her booted feet and then puts them down, carefully, as if she cannot believe they have been moved without her volition.
“That’s what you did to Paulo,” says the Queens girl, sounding both astonished and horrified. “My God, why are you attacking us?”
“Because I don’t know you,” Aislyn snaps, “and you were standing on my lawn.”
“You know who we are,” says Brooklyn. She’s frowning, and favoring her right wrist. “You have to, by now. And you know what that is.” She nods toward the Woman in White.
“Yeah,” Aislyn says, offended now. “That’s my friend.”
“You’re crazy.” The Queens girl is shaking her head in disbelief. “Oh my God, you really are batshit crazy. You know what she’s going to do to you? To the whole city, if she can?”
Aislyn hates being called crazy. Her father says it all the time; all women are crazy, as far as he is concerned. She loves him, so she does not protest when he says it, but these are strangers, so now she feels free to hate.
“She doesn’t want to,” Aislyn says coldly. “She has to. Sometimes people—” Aislyn’s father. Her mother. Herself. She flinches with this thought, then sets her jaw. “Sometimes people do bad things because they have to. That’s just life.” Aislyn folds her arms. “And there can’t be anything there, in her world, that doesn’t already exist here. It’s just that there, people try to be decent. So maybe…”
She falters at the looks on their faces. They’re just staring at her as if they don’t understand. As if she’s wrong. Who the hell are they to judge her, though? Yes, maybe they’re the destiny she’s spent her whole life yearning for, but it has shown up on her front lawn and trampled her herbs and slapped her in the face with insults and disrespect, and now that it’s here she’s pretty sure she does not want this destiny. Destiny is rude and ugly, and maybe—
“Maybe I don’t want the rest of the city to be okay,” Aislyn snarls. “Maybe it should all go to hell.”
Eyes widen; there are gasps. The Japanese guy’s mouth has set in a hard, resigned line. Then the Black lady’s face contorts with anger, and she starts forward. “Now, see, what you’re not gonna do is leave my daughter to die because you’re a selfish xenophobic little heifer. Come the fuck on here.” The Bronx, obviously having reached the same conclusion, also strides toward Aislyn. Both of them plainly intend to force her to go with them.