Innocence Read online

  Innocence

  Samael Wolf

  Dragon Eyes – Book One

  Innocence, first book of the Dragon Eyes series

  Copyright 2017 Samael Wolf

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favorite ebook retailer to purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dragon Eyes cover art provided by AziSpaz.

  This work contains both real and fictional locations. Please be aware that even where locations are based on actual places, the details given in this work may not be representative.

  Version 1.05, last updated 1/24/2018

  Distributed by Smashwords

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  Words from the Author

  Chapter One

  I’ve learned to dread being recognized by people I don’t know. I used to think it would stop when I grew up, as if losing the baby fat in my cheeks and putting on a few more inches would be enough of a change that people would stop recognizing me through the preteen girl I’d once been. I probably could have helped the process by cutting my hair and wearing colored contact lenses. For that matter, I also could have kept my dark glasses on and pretended I needed my cane more than I did, but at the end of the day, I’m the one who has to live with me and I don’t think I could stand to put on a constant charade like that.

  My name is Sanmei Long, and yes, I’m completely blind, although I could probably fool you into thinking otherwise if you didn’t know my secret. Unfortunately, a lot of people already know the trick, which is why I wasn’t entirely surprised when I noticed the boy staring at me and recognized the expression of dawning realization that I’ve come to regard with no small amount of vexation. But that’s getting a little ahead of myself.

  It started out like any other workday. I work part-time at a coffeehouse—one with the amusing misnomer of a name: The ‘No-Name Coffeehouse’—near the university three days a week, more to keep myself busy than for the money. My foster father is an architect who designs upscale homes, even mansions, for wealthy clients. While we’re not rich, I probably won’t be nearly as far in debt as other students by the time I finish medical school. All right, so I feel a little guilty about that. I like to feel like I’m earning my keep too, and not just through the quarterly check I get from a certain publishing studio. The fact that I don’t really have to work unless I want to is a privilege I’m very conscious of and try not to take for granted.

  Today I was celebrating my seventh month at the coffee shop and feeling pretty good about the microbiology exam that was coming up Friday, the tapping of my cane keeping a pleasant rhythm in time to the sounds of the suburbs as I tread the familiar route to work. It was a sunny August afternoon and I didn’t mind spending it indoors; the customers were usually good company when the weather was nice and I could leave the door open for fresh air. Ours was a science-fiction themed location with posters and figurines from various franchises with which I’m not exceptionally familiar, but I tended to get on well with the ‘geeks’ who frequent the shop and they seemed to have collectively decided that they could put up with a cute Asian girl in their midst, even if she’s usually never even heard of Mobile Suit Gundam or The Vision of Escaflowne or whatever else is trending.

  Well. I don’t know about cute, and I’m actually Chinese, not Japanese like the animations they tell me about, but I could handle being their part-time mascot as long as they didn’t make too big a mess at their tables and didn’t get too rowdy on Sci-Fi Movie Saturdays. I like their enthusiasm and I never get over how many women I meet who share it. I always thought science-fiction was more a male interest, but the numbers don’t lie. Especially the phone numbers.

  I descended stairs, tapping each an instant before my foot came down. I barely needed the aid to find my footing, but the tapping helped me tell whether there was something on the steps that I might slip on. I’d been making this walk often enough that I knew exactly where I was and turned left to skirt the edge of parking lot and ignore the misleadingly unhelpful sidewalk that would, if I tried to follow it, lead me around to the ramp entrance which I would have to cross to reach the next sidewalk. The No-Name Coffeehouse shared space with a drug store, a book store and an import shop, so there was a good chance I’d have to cross two lanes of traffic and hope they paid me enough mind to let me across. No thanks.

  I circled around the lot the long way instead and approached the door, which swung open at the touch of a young woman I recognized from one of the monthly socials. She held the door for me as I tapped my way in, pausing a moment to smile and thank her. She used a nice shampoo, one which didn’t thicken to a cloying chemical scent as I passed next to her. I resisted the urge to linger in her presence and drink it in, but she wound up following me inside anyway, rigidly keeping pace at my right side. I bit back the urge to grin. In this building was a larger concentration of people who knew my secret than almost anywhere else on Earth, but clearly I’d just found one who didn’t. She must not have noticed me behind the counter before. I appreciated the courtesy, but it was completely unnecessary.

  “Thank you; I know my way around from here,” I assured her, smiling up at her perhaps a few seconds longer than necessary. I’m terrible at flirting. I mean, I can’t do it to save my life, but put me around a pretty person and see if I don’t try. Fortunately, she spared me the embarrassment by gracefully excusing herself and returning to her table by the door, where she must have seen me coming. It was no problem and I said so, but I remained tickled as I fielded my way past tables to the tiny room that served as our employee lounge, bidding friendly hellos to the few people not so engrossed in their drinks, sandwiches or laptops that they couldn’t greet me as I passed by.

  The lounge was cramped, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, but I only needed to squeeze in far enough to fetch one of the aprons hanging behind the door. Still, I nearly managed to bump into my coworker as she jumped up from the computer desk crammed in the far wall. Her lithe form somehow managed to flit around me in a complete circle despite the close quarters before settling in front of me with an excited chirp that seemed entirely out of proportion for a workday. It put to mind a cat weaving around my legs and I had to stifle a sudden urge to pat her on the head. It helped that she was five inches taller than me.

  “Good afternoon Sanmei! Need me to clock you in?” Sae asked in a breathless rush. I got the feeling I’d interrupted something that wasn’t work-related and tried to give her a stern look to show my disapproval, but the urge to grin was irresistible this time.

  “If you would be so kind,” I acknowledged with a nod, hovering in the doorway as I tied the apron, then set about putting my hair in a simple braid. We have a screen reader, but Sae could do it for me much quicker than I could unassisted. It’s one of the few places I don’t mind asking for help. “Were you making an order?”

  If Sae was even slightly embarrassed to be caught negligent in her duties, she gave me absolutely no indication of it. “Oh, no, I was falling down the wiki hole. It started with Vanessa-Mae and was on shoe fetishism when you walked in. I never realized how many uses there are for a good pair of stilettos.” She paused. “I was keeping an eye on the door!”

  “If you think that’s the only
reason I’m aghast, I’m not even sure how to go about explaining it to you,” I replied tersely, feeling my cheeks burn. I took a minute to finish braiding my hair to let them cool, knowing there wasn’t much point in scolding Sae. I didn’t know much about her outside the time we spent together at work, but I knew two things for sure. The first was that she was completely shameless; secondly, she was also technically my boss. While she didn’t own the coffeehouse, she was looking after it for the person who did. I’d never even met the person who made sure my paycheck got deposited into my account every other week, although there was theoretically an e-mail address I could use to get in touch with them if the need arose. This didn’t seem like an occasion to utilize that privilege, but…

  Finally I just sighed. “At least make sure and do whatever it is that keeps people from seeing what you’ve been looking at,” I said, smirking resignedly. “Imagine if I went to clock out and the reader started narrating whatever page you left it on.”

  Sae made a rude noise. “Pfft, the BDSM munch is tonight. They’ve heard lots worse.”

  I gave up.

  Usually only one of us was present in the shop at a time, and today was no exception. Before long I was behind the counter by myself and Sae was gone for the day. It looked like today was going to be a slow afternoon, which wasn’t unusual during the summer, but that wasn’t why I was allowed to be there by myself. Sae was the one who’d hired me and she had already known my secret at the time. I was treated the same as the other employees. There was a time when I was nervous about this, but seven months later, it hardly bothered me at all anymore. Taking a long, deliberate breath, I folded my cane into sections, collapsing it into a bundle and laying it aside on a part of the counter I wouldn’t need. Then I picked up a carton of lentil soup and went to work preparing a fresh batch for the afternoon customers. Another day in paradise, except I actually do enjoy myself.

  I’ve have never had the benefit of eyesight of any kind. I was born completely blind and grew up utterly reliant on my other four senses. The common narrative for such stories is that my senses adapted to compensate for my lack of vision, and that’s not untrue. In the process of being diagnosed, the doctors ran fMRI and EEG scans on my brain and determined stimulation to any of my senses triggers much more activity in my brain than most people’s, and further testing did prove that I am incredibly sensitive to even tiny amounts of stimuli. There’s a lot that could be—and has been—written about how well my senses work, but that’s not really the secret.

  I took orders, dispensing coffee, mocha, chai and tea. I mixed steamers and poured soup and assembled sandwiches, making small talk and chatting with the regulars. Sometimes customers seemed uncertain about my serving them, probably because of my dark glasses, but the ease at which I moved around our little kitchen dispelled concerns. Remember when I said I could fool you into thinking I wasn’t blind? That’s what I was doing to them, never intending to deceive, but simply making no effort to disguise my capabilities. I didn’t have to constantly test water levels or verify my grip on a cup or trace my hands over the counter for guidance before I sat something down. I knew where everything was, how full the milk container before I poured from it, how hot the drip coffee was before I put a lid on the cup and handed it over the counter. I pass very well for a sighted person, but I’m not.

  At some point the young woman who’d been so eager to help me approached the counter after I’d finished an iced chai to go for a customer coming in from the heat. I’m not very good at reading people, but I thought she seemed embarrassed. “You really do know your way around here,” she said with a little laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be—“

  “It’s fine,” I assured her with as bright a smile as I knew how to perform. After some more awkwardness, she requested an iced mocha to take with her on her way out and paid for it with a five dollar bill, leaving me with the change as a tip. Our fingers brushed as I collected the bill from her, a little jolt of electricity running all the way up my arm and straight to my cheeks, where it apparently burst into flames. Did I mention my sense of touch is extra sensitive too? I don’t know if it’s just me, but there’s something so intimate about touching another person that it actually flusters me a bit when it happens by accident. My turn to be embarrassed, I put the bill in the register, counted out change automatically and put it in the tip jar before making her desired mocha. I probably beamed like a fool the entire time.

  The next couple of hours passed uneventfully, as slow as predicted. Between customers, I listened to a reading of my microbiology textbook on my phone to study for Friday’s exam and filled the brewers with fresh grounds, fetched boxes of soft drinks for the refrigerator and signed for a box of flavored syrups which went into the storage room for later. My good mood never had reason to falter. I like helping people and I like cooking and making meals, so it felt more like hosting for my friends and their friends, hardly a bad way to pass the time.

  It was nearing 6:00 PM according to my smartwatch when a woman and young boy came in, walking with the hesitant, mildly overwhelmed air of people unused to the ‘geek’ theme. I’m used to fielding questions about the various spaceships and action figures decorating the counters and the posters of movies and television when ‘mundanes’—like myself—come in and I waited expectantly, projecting as much welcoming friendliness as I could. I wasn’t disappointed. Concluding that I must be the resident expect since I was at the counter, the boy bombarded me with questions and declarations that everything was ‘awesome’ and ‘super super cool.’ While I’m not and probably won’t ever be a major fan of science-fiction, I’ve picked up enough from the regular patrons that I could answer a few basic questions—‘What’s this? Who’s that? Is he a bad guy? What does this do?’ Oh yes, I had this!—and I was happily planting seeds of future fandom while his mother hung back, presumably reading the menu.

  “What’s that?” the boy asked, pointing at a replica of a vision-enhancing visor worn by a character I suspect I’d like if I had the mind to watch television. I smiled and took off my glasses, putting the visor over my head to demonstrate their usage. Needless to say, the plastic lattice failed to let me see into the electromagnetic spectrum, but the vastly simplified explanation delighted him, so that was a win for me. Walking back over to the counter with the visor still over my eyes, I gently prompted his mother to see if she was ready to order.

  “Do you have any questions about the menu?” I inquired, and was surprised when she jumped as if I’d spooked her.

  “Oh, n-no, sorry, I think I’m ready,” she replied hesitantly in a small voice, and then repeated, “I’m sorry,” hunching her shoulders as if expecting me to yell back at her.

  I wish I was more perceptive than I am, but I just don’t always get people. Her reaction to the question was all out of sorts, and I definitely picked up on the undertone, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I dropped out of my good mood immediately, confused and alarmed. What had I done to upset her? Did she feel guilty for interrupting while I showed off for her son, and if so, why, when I was just doing my job? It made no sense for her to be sorry for anything, and somehow this twisted around in my head and made me out to be the villain. All I knew was that she was reacting negatively, and I assumed it had to be my fault. Before you ask, no, I don’t have the best self-esteem.

  So instead of asking what I should have—what’s wrong, are you all right?—I went into damage control mode. I took off the visor, emoting professional contrition, and waited as she corralled her son and got him to pick something off the menu. I think that was when he started to figure out who I was, looking up at the menu on the wall behind me while I waited, still squirming internally and wondering if I should apologize or whether I’d done enough harm already. Maybe if the boy hadn’t recognized me just then, I might have finally tipped in favor of asking whether there was something else amiss.

  It was my eyes, I’m sure of it. Maybe he’d been harboring suspicions until then, bu
t it wasn’t until he was looking just past my head, now bereft of both glasses and visor, that suddenly he got that expression, the one that makes my stomach sink and my shoulders slump, and instead of picking out a sandwich, he asked, “Hey, um, have you ever been on TV?” and suddenly I had a fresh distraction to keep me from acting on my inner turmoil.

  Oh, bother, I thought with resignation, but I wasn’t about to be rude to a child, so what I said was, “Yes I was. If you’re curious, you pick out what you want and then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” He seemed to think this was an acceptable compromise, because in less than 15 seconds, he’d selected a plain turkey sandwich and his mother eventually put in a request for two toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and a 16 ounce drip coffee. Having put my foot in it, I wasn’t at all surprised when the boy started in immediately, his first question being ‘are you a superhero?’

  Okay, that was pretty cute and not the usual sort of question I got asked. “Yes I am!” I declared, just because I could. A superhero who was using a toaster oven to toast ham and cheese sandwiches.

  The show was called Mutants Like Me. The show’s premise was to explore the lives of medical marvels, including living and historical persons and more than a few who were probably nothing more than folklore. There were three seasons, each 18 episodes long, and I appeared in episode 14 for all of about five minutes. It wasn’t a very good show to say the least. They displayed a few still shots of me while the narrator proclaimed ominously how I had ‘powers of perception beyond belief,’ interspersed between excerpts of a ten minute interview I had with the local news shortly after my diagnosis. I was nine years old at the time and didn’t explain my condition very well, and their editing made it sound more like I had psychic powers. Dad got about $250 for the episode and used it to buy me an eBook reader with a screen reader. It was a hack job that I was embarrassed to have participated in, but that could have been the end of it and it would have faded from memory soon enough.