Kostia sleeps, small fingers wrapped
around carved wooden blocks. They are like dice,
with scrawled handwriting on all six faces—Greek
letters, simple tracings of animals, Kostia’s favourite words—be it size or shape or composition—and
stick figures gripping swords, knives, crossbows.
He drifts away above the burning world, equipped
with everything a human could ever need to grow.
He is only twelve years old.
He wakes in a chamber of white. His blocks
are nowhere to be found, and his hair is on end—
cold or nerves, he doesn’t know. His bed is gone.
He lies on a ground that feels like sand, each grain
white and indistinguishable from the next. He
buries a hand beneath the sand, then a foot, but he
can see no indication of where he is. There are no
shapes in this place, no shadows, no light.
There is a girl above him. Her eyes are
wide, pale, and gray. waves of black hair curl and
halo around her
eyes.
They stay in silence—him sitting on
the sanded floor, her staring down at him, looking
apologetic and courteous at the same time. Kostia
isn’t sure what to say.
“My name is Cerise,” she says. Her hands
are clasped behind her back politely. There is a
smile creasing her face that is as wide as an orange
wedge. “You are one of my endlings.”
“What’s that?”
She turns away from him and he hears a
door creaking open.
A shape emerges, the formation of a snout
the colour of browning autumn leaves. Stripes
wrap around the creature.
Thoughts whip around in Kostia’s mind. A
coyote, a zebra, a shiba? The creature rises, pushing off the ground and into the air, standing on its
hind legs for a moment before settling back down.
“Felix is one of my endlings. He was the
very, very, last Tasmanian tiger.” She pronounces
both words carefully—Tasmanian, tiger.
“Tasmanian tiger?” Kostia recalls something, vaguely. It looks nothing like the tiger in the
picture book he had once glanced at. For one, he
had coloured it blue—he had colored that entire
book in all his brightest colours; it had seemed
fitting for a book in black and white.
Cerise wonders whether or not to tell him.
“The last of their kind,” she explains, slowly—she’s being careful. There is no note of sadness
in her voice.
“Why is he with you?” Kostia asks.
“I take care of him, of all of my endlings.”
Kostia doesn’t realize what that means. He
wonders where his blocks are. He wonders where
this girl has come from. He shakes his head.
“Where am I?”
“Come with me. Here. Hold on to my
hand.” She holds out her splayed fingers but he
does not reach for them.
Hopelessness dawns in his eyes. He wants
to leave, to go back to his lonely ship coasting
among solitary stars.
“I—” Kostia’s voice fractures. “I want—”
Cerise’s hand remains outstretched.
“I want to go home.”