THE OMEN GIRL | Wattys 2020 Winner

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ꜰᴏᴜʀ ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ

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In the gentle haze of morning, in the open courtyard of low clay roofs, burnished verandas, and manicured bonsai trees, a boy in white falls from the sky.

His skin is staining black.

That's what does it. That's why nobody moves. Everyone knows, after all, what that staining over his skin could be.

I push through the numb crowd, but am too far, too late.

The boy lands shoulder first against the stone of the courtyard. The snap of his bones echo. His eyes roll white from the pain, and then his body slides down and away, to sink into the black mouth of the pit behind him.

It's the training pit – a concrete bowl gouged deep into the earth, curved enough to catch the wind. Some days, on windy days, all it does is howl and howl, like a hungry thing.

Still no one moves. We're all here for our morning exercises, dressed in our school's white and grey training robes, in our single-toed socks and bamboo sandals, to warm up and to wait our turns to fly. But now, no one knows what to do.

Something bitter twists through me.

In the matter of a single fall, the people here have drawn a line between him and them. But all I know is that a boy like me is down there, and that boy is hurt.

I leave the crowd. I cross that empty stretch of courtyard alone.

Behind me, the boys and girls — from as young as seven to as old as seventeen — stay huddled and watching and waiting. They are afraid some monster is going to claw its way up and out of the pit.

"Did you see?" one of them hushes. "His skin bruised all black."

"The silhouette of the sun," someone else answers.

"The sun's not even up that high yet."

"And he fell. It's so close to the Joining now. No one should be falling."

"He's dead," someone wails, someone much younger. "I bet he's dead. Or the stain's overtaken him and he's a monster now. We should go get the master. We shouldn't be here."

Some of the people murmur, and nod, and pull away. Some others laugh and say things like, don't be silly – only stupid babies believe omen stains turn people into monsters.

No one stops my going. No one stops me because they are curious, and because I have by now a reputation in this school. The infamous Sozo, the girl that grew up on the streets of Tall Titan. The unfriendly girl who never smiles. Bump into Sozo in the halls of the school and she'll bite your ear off, they say. Look at her wrong, they say, and she'll bite trenches into your skin.

I don't correct anything they say. The rumours about me keep all of them at a distance, after all. It keeps all of them from looking too hard and seeing the truth of who I am.

I step to the edge of the drop and peer over it. In that dimness, the first thing I notice is the white of his robes, like a messy smear of sunshine.

The boy is sprawled on his back. He is clutching his arm and whining. He writhes and writhes in pain, but is alive. He is still just a boy, not a monster. When he sees me, he sobs. The arm he is clutching is bruised, but not only from the fall. I know that colour. I've seen it many times in the mirror, on my back, when no one else is around.

To the gasps of those behind me, I slide down into the pit.

The training glider he was flying on is beside him, splintered in two. Its engine is shattered open, along with the gears seated inside. In a real glider – or anchor, as they're called – that engine is where the star would sit and shine.