Some children were born disasters. A spectrum of calamity, solitude and ruin awaited them throughout life; it was their one absolute guarantee. Then there were the demi-disasters, different enough to cast them from normalcy, but falling just short of the powers a true disaster could harness. There were very few opportunities in society for these unfortunates and most ended up in menial jobs, gutters and solitude. It was impossible to hide the identities of either type from the social order. The initial giveaway was a thirteen-month gestation period, a far stretch longer than children of the non-disaster type who spent just nine months in the womb. Attempts had been made in the early days of the Tassurian government to hide the true gestation length of disaster babies. Within a year, harsh and invasive measures were introduced to pregnancy screenings to ensure no outliers would ever slip through again. Their records were marked with a word in a lost language few cared to remember. Dhaherite. It meant disaster. 

Eric Blake happened to father such a child. His eldest. The younger sister – she too was dhaherite, but Eric had learned to trick the system and raised her as non-Dhaherite – and infant brother were perfect, unmarred by impending misfortune, but their older sibling may as well have been another man’s offspring. She threatened to ruin them all, not because she existed – this was troublesome enough, however not the cause of Eric’s greatest concern – but because she was weak. Ellie had a slight, unremarkable stature and an even more unexceptional mind. The world, Eric knew, had no room for another demi-disaster. 

On an overcast day that matched his daughter’s mediocrity, Eric returned from work to find Ellie praying in the centre of the kitchen. Alone. The five-year-old had taken the living room rug and folded it into a triangular shape. Knees folded over the thick fabric, eyes closed, fingers woven in an intricate clasp. She looked the image of her mother. She had skipped school. 

Ellie was impressionable. The only way she could have known the exact hand gestures that went with his wife’s prayer rituals meant she had watched Klara mid-worship. This meant his wife had become lazy in appropriately hiding her paganistic tendencies. 

‘Klara,’ he called. 

Ellie glanced at him. Though her pale hair shadowed most of her face, the bruise-like crescents under her eyes were visible from across the room. She quickly returned to her empty prayers. Perhaps she was praying for sleep.

Eric left her. 

A silence saturated the house in the absence of Ben and Lily. They were at a baby and toddler playgroup with the nanny, which was meant to provide Eric some quality time with his wife. Ellie tended to keep to herself when she was home, more shadow than child. Klara’s absence filled the rooms with a syphoning vacuum. As he passed from kitchen to living room, he noted the missing rug and the pale imprint left on the wood in its absence, but nothing else was amiss. He peered through the conservatory windows. No sign of Klara on the patio or by the vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden. She went digging when she needed grounding. It was convenient for her that she had married into the Blake estate. There was plenty of room for digging.

Eric took to the stairs, tackling the steps two-at-a-time with practised finesse. The hallway normally swallowed sunshine and heat through the glass-panelled ceiling, but a chill seeped from the white walls and forced Eric to keep his hurried pace. Klara wasn’t in the nursery – mint walls – tidying Ben’s soft toys. She wasn’t in Lily’s newly transformed room – rose walls – shuffling furniture about. She wasn’t in Ellie’s room – white walls – ogling over the girl’s average artwork. 

As he began to pull Ellie’s door closed, Eric hesitated. His eyes snagged on something. Crimson, small and shining, vivid against the muted beige and sand theme Klara had chosen for their eldest. He stepped into the room and wondered if this counted as trespassing. It was in that moment he realised he hadn’t been inside Ellie’s room in two years. Since Ben was born and claimed the nursery. Klara had allowed the girls to choose the wall colours in their new rooms a few weeks before Ben’s arrival, despite Lily being barely three and Ellie showing no interest. On the oak desk, between sheets of scribbles and pencils, lay an enamel disc. 

‘Klara,’ he called, louder than before. Eric braced himself as the frigid bite from the hallway caught up with him and the emptiness that accompanied Klara’s absence threatened to pull him down. 

The disc was half the size of his palm, and thin as the wedding band on his finger. If he ran his shaking fingers over the surface, it would meet his skin with soft ridges and gentle lumps. But he would not touch it. 

‘Klara!’

‘Dad?’

Eric spun to see Ellie peering round the doorframe. She dropped her gaze to the ground after a couple of seconds. She never displayed any sign of the might he had expected of her. He had always hoped, believed there would be some late awakening, just a spark of something more.

‘Where’s your mother?’

‘She went out, I think.’

‘Where did you get this?’

Ellie eyed the table, then took a few tentative steps into the room. ‘I found it in my schoolbag.’

‘I thought you stayed home today.’

‘I did.’

The growing tension in Eric’s head spread from a soft pulse to a persistent ache. ‘When did she go out?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Your mother.’

‘Oh…’ Ellie wandered to her bed and sat on the edge. She suddenly looked very weary. As if the bed sheets might consume her like quicksand, or maybe she’d sink in on herself before any outer force could do the job. She was five, but at times like this, Eric was sure she had already lived ten mundane lifetimes.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked.

Her sapphire eyes sparkled. ‘I am!’

‘Have you slept?’

A shrug.

‘Have you eaten?’ He would bring her downstairs, get her to eat and call Klara to find where she’d disappeared to this time. They could deal with the crimson disc later, together. 

‘I had some cheese.’

Eric had always found her quite alien, but never more so than now. He didn’t understand how to interact with her, never knew what she wanted or how to deal with her oddities. This was the first time, Eric realised, he had ever been alone with her for a prolonged amount of time. 

‘You should eat something more,’ he said. 

She nodded. 

They watched one another for a few seconds. For Eric, the time bled out slow and deliberate, like measured drops of morphine through a catheter. He found himself wishing he was back at work, in the lab, everything calculated and thrilling.

Neither of them moved for the door. 

‘Why were you praying?’

‘I put the mat back.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘I wanted to see why Mami does it.’

‘And did you see?’

‘No, I closed my eyes and it was black,’ she said as her little shoulders slumped. ‘Did I do it wrong?’

The look of disappointment on her face was so foreign to him it took some minutes before he could respond. He walked to her, and when standing felt too awkward, he knelt in front of her. ‘There’s nothing to see. Your mother is...well, she’s just a little confused. You know, our place here in Alturica is very important. So, you can’t show or tell anyone what she does. Do you understand?’

Ellie shook her head.

‘Praying is not allowed.’ Eric had told her this already, after catching her at it the first time. Shouting at her then had only led to a fight with Klara. Ellie was delicate and needed subtle response to wrongdoings or she fell into states of prolonged insomnia and mutism. 

‘Okay. I won’t do it again.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘Because Mami is confused.’

‘Because it’s not safe, Elisabeth. Your mother could be taken from us if anyone found out what she does, okay?’

A sudden splurge of tears trickled from her eyes. ‘Mami might be taken from us?’

‘Not if we keep her praying hidden, okay? So, you can’t do it anymore either.’ The repetitive clarification tugged at the ache in his head, but he waited until a shift of understanding crossed her face. 

‘I won’t. I promise.’

‘Good girl.’

She beamed and bounded toward him with such force it almost sent both of them to the floor. Her skinny arms encircled his neck and she buried her face against his shoulder. 

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