Sky Tongues by Gina Ranalli Page B

sweat had developed on my brow but I pretended it wasn’t there and waited for Lavinia to open the envelope. Together, all three of us read the winner aloud and then acted ecstatic over it. The winner came up and we casually faded back, waited for him to finish his speech and then escorted him off the stage.
   Once we were backstage, chaos ensued. I had about half a dozen people screaming at me while my cast mates burst into hysterical fits of laughter (including David, who was there to present an award with a little Uni kid.) I began to laugh uncontrollably myself, but it wasn’t real laughter. I was acting and secretly mortified. I just wanted to go home and forget this night ever happened.
   But I couldn’t do that. The night dragged on for another hour, during which time we were permitted to sit in the audience and wait to see if we won Best New Drama series, which was one of the last awards given. We didn’t win, but Dove did and David went to accept the award on his behalf, saying that Dove sent his apologies for being unable to attend.
   Then the show ended and the media frenzy began. I don’t even know how many times I said how thrilling it was just to be nominated. I was making myself ill. And of course I kept getting asked about my presentation performance, which I insisted was all part of the plan to add a little humor to what was always a tense night. In fact, our whole cast and crew would be asked about what I did for an entire week to come and by the end of it, they were as displeased with my stunt as the show’s bigwigs were.
   And that was how I became to be known as a drunk at the age of 22.

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   It was shortly after the Emmy fiasco that I became a favorite among the rag-mag crowd. To read those things, you’d think I was drunk or stoned 24/7, not to mention having sex with everyone in Hollywood. I did my best to ignore the crap they were printing about me, refused about a million interviews and tried to concentrate solely on my job.
   Relief finally came during our seasonal hiatus when I was offered a supporting part in a feature film that was to be shot overseas. I jumped at the chance, packed my bags and bought a ticket for the first plane out of the states.
   The movie was called The Queen is Dead and was to be shot mostly in London, but my character didn’t come into the film until the middle portion and so I was sent to a remote island in the middle of the South China Sea.
   I was there earlier than I had to be and stayed longer than I had to, living it up, lounging in the sun and reading trashy bestsellers. I loved being somewhere where the people had no idea who I was and even if they did, they didn’t care and remained completely unimpressed.
   I always had plenty of dipping bowls for my tongues at my disposal, ate exotic foods and met exotic people.
   And then it was time to get to work on the film.
    The Queen is Dead is a very apt title for a movie that is about—you guessed it—a dead queen. Or, more appropriately, an assassinated queen. The hero and heroine are assigned to find the drug lords behind the assassination and, after traipsing around England for an hour or so, follow a lead to a remote island where they meet my character, a missionary teaching the native children English and mathematics.
   The film is very much a thriller and was a good deal of fun to make.
   The best part of the entire experience however, wasn’t the actual film at all but a special someone I encountered during the making of the film.
   It was there that I met Rabia.

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   Rabia was a technical advisor on the set, having spent time as an actual missionary, working with actual native kids.
   Because the native people live in such a remote part of the world, mostly untouched by the rest of humanity, their home is very unspoiled. They have almost no pollution to speak of and very little chemical contamination of their foods and water