Lumen

1. In the Beginning

When I started school I had to draw a picture of my family. I drew my parents, my older brother, the dog and the tortoise. Naturally, the only difference between the dog and the tortoise was that one was a brown blob with legs and a tail and the other was green.

This picture was remarkably similar to what most of the other kids in the class produced but it had one definitive difference. A difference that made my teacher question me. She crouched down next to me. I was colouring a butterfly.

“Helena,” she said, “What are those?” She tapped the yellow scribble on each of our chests.

“The light.”

I carried on colouring. My chubby child hand clutching my crayon, my tongue poking out from the corner of my mouth, my soft brow furrowed; concentrating on staying in the lines.

“What light, Helena?”

I huffed. I put my crayon down.

“The light inside, Miss James.”

And that was that. I started colouring.

“And what is this?”

I looked up. She tapped the yellow blob above my parents. It was joined to the blobs on their chests.

“The happiness Miss James,” I told her. “When my mummy and my daddy are really happy the light comes outside. Everybody has the light but sometimes it is not very bright.”

Miss James had a funny look on her face. She was a very pretty woman, old by my child’s reckoning but young to anyone else’s. She had shiny hair the colour of newly shelled chestnuts and eyes that were not quite green but not quite brown. She towered over us but others towered over her. Her light was dull but her smile was bright.

“Your light does not shine Miss,” I said solemnly. “You are sad.”

I didn’t know it at the time but Miss James’s fiancé had just broken off their engagement.
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By the time I reached my eighth birthday I realised that I was different. Not vastly different. Not so different those other children made my life hell. Not so different that my destiny was to save the world. But I was different.

I live in world that is full of light. Sometimes it is blindingly bright and other times it isn’t too bad. When I was little I thought others lived like this too but I was wrong. Our lessons mentioned nothing about the light shining from people’s chests and the softly lit orb that can hang above them; connected by glowing tendrils to their upper body. Not once was this ever mentioned.

The day I explained my drawing to Miss James, she spoke to my mum. My mum spoke to me. They thought I had an over active imagination. I knew I didn’t but I kept quiet about how I see things from then on.