The Aurora Borealis Keeps Its Lament novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Luz
A live TV host holds up Iker's school shirt with Alba's name in a heart, he says one word, and Alba finds his name on the Wastelands list dated before the proposal.
On the big screen in our lobby, a television host lifted a white school shirt out of Iker Montalvo's closet.
Twenty of us were standing under it with our coffee, watching the live home tour the press office had promised would be short.
The host turned the shirt toward the camera.
It was covered in ink, with names and jokes and drawings from a whole graduating class.
"There's one name here inside a heart," she said. "Doctor, who is she?"
The camera pushed in on the left cuff.
Alba Quiroga.
It was my name, in my handwriting, small as a fingernail, written with a pen that was almost dry.
I had never drawn a heart around it.
I would have died first.
Beside me, my friend dug her fingers into my arm.
On the screen, Iker took the shirt in both hands and lowered his head.
"What does she mean to you?" the host asked.
He answered: "Luz."
The lobby went silent, and then twenty heads turned toward me.
Somebody began to clap.
My friend Paloma screamed into her scarf.
I stood there with my cup shaking, because I knew exactly whose sleeve that was.
On graduation day he had stood in a circle of people signing it, and I had waited at the edge with a dying pen.
I had said, "Good luck, genius."
He had said, "Luck with what? With never seeing you again?"
That was the whole conversation we had in eight years of school, and I had carried it ever since.
I had followed him to the Capital.
I had given up two promotions to be his assistant.
I read him his data aloud every morning, I answered his mail, and when he was kidnapped last May I walked into the warehouse alone.
The night they got him out, he said we should bring our parents together and set a date.
I saw his face when he said it, and I knew it was guilt.
Now a man on television had said "Luz" in front of the whole country, and I could not tell if it was love or a good answer for the cameras.
Sabina Lorca came across the lobby and put her hand on my shoulder.
She was the Institute's deputy director, and for four years she had been the one person upstairs who remembered my birthday.
"That is the most romantic thing I have ever seen on television," she said. "Go up and see him. He is so careful about what he lets anyone see."
I nodded, and I went.
His lab was at the end of the sixth floor.
Iker stood at the window with his back to the door, a page of data held an inch from the side of his face.
"Did you see it?" he asked the glass.
"The whole building saw it."
"I told them they could film the hallway. I didn't know they would open the closet."
I stopped beside his desk.
"Luz," I said. "What did you mean by that?"
He kept his eyes on the window, a little to the left of where I stood.
"It's what your name means," he said. "It was the word I had."
"You've never called me that."
"No."
I waited, and he did not turn around.
"Alba," he said. "I owe you everything. Since the warehouse, I owe you more than I can pay. I would like us to keep the wedding quiet and get on with it."
I owe you.
I had waited eight years for him to say something to me, and he had said it to the window.
"Quiet," I said.
"It's easier for you. The press will be everywhere."
He still had not looked at me.
So I took the transfer form out of my bag, the one I had signed on Monday and carried around all week.
I went back downstairs without another word.
The director's office was empty except for the director himself, who read the form twice and then looked up at me.
"The Wastelands Branch," he said. "Two years of polar night, Quiroga. Your wedding is in two weeks."
"Please add my name to the list," I said.
He pulled the list across his desk.
There were nine names on it.
He ran his finger down the page and stopped.
"Well," he said. "You'll have company. Doctor Montalvo's name has been on this list since March."
I read the date next to it.
In March he had put his name on a list that would take him a thousand kilometres north.
In May he had asked me to marry him.
He had never once asked me to come.
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