Something Old, Something Blue

Sacha is almost halfway in the elevator ride up, eyes closed and one foot tapping out the beat to Stayin’ Alive, when she feels her arms lose control. The metal tube buzzes against her back and her spine sings back in shivers - she can’t feel her arms, why aren’t they moving, why aren’t they moving, why can’t she feel anything but this sudden surge of dread.

You’ll be okay. It’s okay. Just breathe. She forces herself to breathe until she feels her heart even out, her arms starting to regain feeling, and keeps her eyes closed until the elevator jolts to a final stop. The ceiling slides open and she sees the bright scope of sky, the pink and orange intertwining in a warm hello. All brides see the sky for the first time before they are handed through to the Paridae lab for their preparation procedure.

At thirty, she is the last of four daughters, the last to leave their home in the subterranean colony and set foot above ground. She had always been the loudest in childhood; the messiest, the fastest, the most restless. Always interrupting at dinner, in classes. Always sifting through the plastic boxes at the back of her mother’s wardrobe, trying to unearth pieces of life from before the Renaissance. Always the one to have the last word whenever Vanessa picked a fight from the top bunk.

Always - she wonders if this could be true - the challenge Dr. O'Moore had dreamed of. She remembers his inquisitive figure in their home, elbows sprawled wide on their kitchen counter, paying their parents the customary pre-marriage health check appointment for Zia. He had seen her standing in the hallway, her fingers wrapped around the newest treasure from the wardrobe - a poster of four men with mop-top haircuts on a monochrome stage. He had said hello to her in a soft cooing voice, the kind she used to use on Julian the cat when she wanted to make him love her. She remembers nodding and slipping away.

The guards standing outside the elevator grip her arms now and steady her off the platform. Their hands have the warmth of the sunlight, but they do not speak to her, and she does not try to look at them. All interactive contact, as the kindly nurse who came for her pre-marriage appointment two weeks ago said, endangers the purity of the state one is in when the serum is injected.

‘And you don’t want the procedure to fail, darling,’ she had murmured. ‘You’ll be one of those lonely girls, all bottled up with feelings but without anyone to feel them for.’

There are things that she needs as a bride - traditions the Renaissance considered safe to keep for its new generations - and she had not been surprised when the nurse had given her the list of them at the door.

Something old. She shifts her weight from foot to foot and looks down. Old Italian leather shoes, circa Mom’s teenage years. She had found them under her parents’ bed on her sixteenth birthday.

It was true that she had always been the messiest of her sisters, but she was also in a strange way the most organised. Organised chaos, Dad poetically called it. Of the mountain of treasures in the room she used to share with Vanessa, she knows where every last thing she has ever found is, every penny and bauble and toy. She used to hoard things like an animal - not just things from the past in the wardrobe, but from everywhere she went in the colony: stray socks from the gymnasium’s changing room, guitar picks from music class, blue pens from the supermarket’s customer service desk and perfume sample strips from the department store.

In her room, she used to build castles with her treasures.

Something new. Well, that was taken care of. No woman had ever needed to bring something new with them. They’d get it in the serum in the lab, everything: new feelings, new husband, new life. The Paridae lab procedure could make you feel any way it wanted. Make you sweet, calm, docile. Make you excited. Make you fall in love, just like that.

Something borrowed. Everything she owned was borrowed and stolen. For this most special of occasions, she had chosen to bring Mom’s old red notebook. It’s all blank, but it still smells like her perfume. Sacha takes a breath.

Something blue. She touches her throat, finding the tiny bird-shaped pendant. Zia’s - a goodbye gift.

Everything was there. The old rhyme itself, proudly embroidered on a silk handkerchief, had been one of the first treasures she had found. Back then, she had still believed in good luck.

Ha. Why should it matter how her heart churned now.

The guards lead her through the doors of a light blue building to a white room with a navy blue chair and an array of sparkling glass and metal instruments. She looks at it and feels as though she is just going to have her teeth checked. A doctor and a fleet of nurses stand by the chair, watching her walk in. She finds her mind unexpectedly calm, devoid of terror, wondering only how it will feel. She is prepared for all kinds of pain, all kinds of insanity.

She remembers the letter Zia sent to her three months after her marriage.

‘I love him. Really. I can’t control it and I know no one can, and all I can do is love him. It’s making me go crazy.’

The doctor smiles at her, shakes her hand. ‘I’m Dr. Breuilly, Sacha. I’ll be carrying out the procedure for you today.’

She grips his hand briefly and sits down, closing her eyes. The air is so quiet around her.

‘Wait.’

The man striding towards her is confident and familiar. He holds something in his right hand and stops in front of her, unsmiling. ‘Hello, Sacha.’

‘Hello, Dr. O’Moore.’

‘I see it’s your time.’

‘Yes.’ Why must her voice be so small, her heartbeat so loud.

Dr. O’Moore holds out his right hand out to her, motioning for her to look. It is a small, blue heart-shaped locket, an S embossed on the outside.

‘I’d like for you to take this as your “something blue” instead,’ he says softly. ‘It has pictures of all of your sisters on the inside.’

He gestures for her to take it and she does, understanding.

There was never to be a challenge in her procedure - she would be just like all the others, numb and blissfully, uncontrollably, in love. But in every pure and beautiful love, every love worth living for, there must be a fragment of pain.

This was to be hers.

‘Thank you,’ Sacha whispers, and closes her eyes.