∗ ∗ ∗
What am I thinking? When has this ever not ended in a mess? Aoi's mutinous hand crawled toward its mighty quarry while his eyes slowly rolled back behind their lids. It's been forever, I'll be quick–
PAIN!
He plunged his teeth into his lip, tasting blood though not hard enough to soil the bedsheets his altruistic healer had so lovingly sewn for her late war-hero son. He forced his hands to cover his erection, his face freshly flushed–both symptoms of health, ironically. Though he avoided the man's eyes, Aoi rallied a disgraced wave in recompense as he cleared his throat, readying himself to grunt an apology.
"Perfect time for the privy, if you'll just..." His face burned with absurdity as he leapt from the bed, his feet landing softly on the yielding floor. Woven with exquisite skill, the mat's true artistry remained hidden. Even under the full moon.
He crept through darkness toward the bedroom door, scuffling ever so slightly with each step. As he crossed the threshold, the sudden wave of nostalgia could've caught his breath. Brilliant moonlight burst through the latticed windows, illuminating the earth beneath his feet. The floor felt remarkably warm, molding itself to the contours of his toes like a solid sort of sand, smooth and swishing gently with his gait.
The room was a geometric marvel—a perfect square flanked by four beechwood doors. Two occupied the wall to his immediate right, while the remaining walls held their own. Cast-iron cookware hung from the sturdy stone walls, while the perimeter of the floor was lined with earthen pottery and hand-woven baskets. In the center, three short wooden stools sat lonely around a matching beechwood table. Along the furthest wall lay a large, ornamented porcelain tub scintillating under a delicate, bright column of moonlight.
Wow tub–No! Closed doors! He strained his eyes to collect details from his position in the room, and began a silent soliloquy.
"The room next door was most likely Mita's given her attachment to her son and theoretical ease of having a patient nearby in case something went wrong." He mouthed the words as he constructed a mental plotting board tracing clues with his fingers in the air. "The door closest to the bath…but its position within the door's swept volume." Licking his front teeth, still tasting of iron, he decided the door closest to his host's bedroom on the other side wouldn't be suitable as an entrance or exit. "She is small and fragile, hmm." But what of security? "She could want the bathroom close by…but no, the smell." He smiled, tracing his final clues and extracting the solution as he waltzed toward the room on the wall to his left. "I'm coming for you." Aoi pressed a hand to the door and it creaked open. I was raised by a definitive genius and probable serial killer.
A single slatted glass window, angled open, had welcomed a flood of plenilunar glow. Though Aoi could physically see the shapes of furniture he was too distracted by the dark mass–a giant black gravestone centered in the boy's room–to read into anything else. That thing? It shone, a frozen ocean in the dead of night, reflecting the night's majesty. An obelisk? Buñuelito what are you into?
Aoi turned to exit, solemn. I really shouldn't. Hovering at the threshold he let out a child-like whisper."But I'm already here..." And without making a sound, Aoi feigned a maniacal cackle and slipped into the bedroom.
∗ ∗ ∗
Regret.
It was the only feeling he had once he crossed the threshold into Benito's bedroom. The warmth of Mita's lovely hand-made home was not present in this room. Neither was the warmth he'd worked so hard to bring back to his own body, not in this room. Not near that thing. The seductive moonlight dancing atop the mass of black minerals was so cold it took his breath away.
Frigg!
"Okay, yikes." He side-stepped into the room, keeping his distance. His eyes strained up and down its length, its corners were highly faceted, almost scalloped. Deep, deep black, and even darker still, he attempted to note the markings inscribed along its edges. Squinting his eyes, he stepped further into the room, throwing caution aside, his curiosity properly piqued. Why am I so weirdly confident in my safety? The shining black surface, ice, as he stepped toward to receive its full inscription, moonlight reflected from the slab and struck him directly in the eyes. Is this a– is this a mirror? He was momentarily blinded. I don't even remember the last time I saw my reflection, I think I just…
His sight cleared slowly at first and then all at once only to reveal a spectre meeting his gaze. Haunting, harrowed, hollowed, and horrifying. A gaunt cryptkeeper, or animated skeleton with some pallid flesh. Eyes and hair to match. This ghoul was inside the mirror, standing in the way of what should be his own reflection. He clenched his fist, closed his eyes…and braced himself. Steel.
Aoi opened his eyes. I'm the friggin' ghoul. He bit his lip, likewise did the creature in the black mirror. If only for posterity he lifted his right hand bending his pinky and ring finger to the tip of his thumb, while his index and middle fingers were proudly erect. The ghoul was just a paltry mimic. When tears fell, it was from both their faces.
No way! No, nope. This thing is some kind of fuck house mirror, very obviously cursed.
"NO!" His hands desperately raced over his body finding sinewy muscles where he remembered hardened muscle protected by a healthy coating of his own damn cooking. His heart throbbed against his ribcage; it was the only thing he could hear.
FUCK! What the hell happened to me?
∗ ∗ ∗
Where is it?
"This can't be right." Clutching his right ear, he was sweating, drenching the borrowed clothing he was gifted. "Master Oru's…" He was distraught, the flames dwelling within him licking against their boundaries threatening escape. He tore flesh and gnawed on his own lip as the monster looking back mimed his performance. He moved his hand, feeling around his jugular, the spot that burned in his last dream. It had felt so real, he was expecting a mark. Focusing instead on the carvings while refusing to look at the terror reflecting back at him–watching him through a gaunt face, stalking him. Mocking his every movement.He leaned in closer, ignoring the moon-skinned hellion but his footing was unstable. He fell, catching his weight with his palm against the structure. Friiiiiiggg! The mirror fogged with more creatures. Their skin touching and melding as one. Aoi felt his stomach drop, the knot was back. Arms writhed through the fog, legs followed while bones cracked. Hands seized the creature from behind; he couldn't look away. Eight masses of bodies crawling along as legs. Magically sewn together–
"Fulgarek."
His voice was soft and calm, controlled somehow by his time in the dungeon. Aoi's hand was just a finger's length away when the array directed itself into being. It was angular and black, deepened by the contrasting whites of the skin, hair, and eyes that watched him. The spell released in an instant, struck the mirror and vanished. The mirror deepened its color. A lake, at midnight in the dead of winter, after a blizzard where warmth simply will not dwell.
Aoi threw his hand up in frustration then held his own ghoulish gaze for a moment. Those were the people...corpses. He tapped his fingers on his chin. This is no obsidian, at least not in the geological sense. He swallowed back his avoidance like blades. It's…drawing mana into it? No. Side note possible soul patch.
Covered in goose bumps, he gnawed at dried lip skin while ruminating on the rather outré inscription that he couldn't be sure wasn't some kind of damage to the surface. "I need a break."
The room's walls were covered in dark wood paneling. A single bed was made up identically to the one he'd been living in for the past however many months. Her grandson's room held fewer Goddess icons than his, and a child's painting of a frog hung above Buñuelito's bed.
"Aye!"
Ume!
Aoi spun, ready for the fight, hand level with the frail woman's forehead.
"Niño! Are you alright?" She was trembling in the doorway, curiously without a magical tree, or at least a sprout by her side.
"Mita! You scared me!" He watched as her eyes traced the contents of the room.
"Mi Buñuelito is the best dancer."
"Mita…is this a mirror?"
"You like it? Mi niño! Beans are soaking, you want a little sanduchito?" She called as she shuffled herself to the kitchen.
"Mita…" It's a mirror. "Yeah, I could eat…where is your bathroom?"
She would kick my ass. Aoi stood in front of the mirror one final time, at first to grieve. The hundred pounds he had lost somewhere along the way here. His muscles, his ability to take command and control over his life.
No friggin way!
In the mirror he stood firm. Shame, injustice, scarcity and fear; he needed to vanquish all of it. Clinking and knocking of sugar cane, the peaceful call of the ocean through the opened window. He could taste the salt spray in the air as he spoke.
"I will be getting it back." The words were so resolute, so commanding they felt like an incantation. He stared at the adversarial monster that was his reflection. Aoi only smiled as he looked up through his brow to a sight more frightening than the genuine skeletons from his past clamoring for him in the background fog.
"All of it."
Resolute in his convictions, he went to find the friggin bathroom.
∗ ∗ ∗
Privitradhana (pree-veet-rah-dana): the spell to cleanse away bodily waste.
∗ ∗ ∗
Can't believe it's already been two months of this…
The ocean hissed in the wind, spraying salty air to coat his long disheveled hair while his toes dug their way into cool damp sand. The sun threatened to rise over the endless horizon, fog thick, and the air smelled of sun-baked coral, crushed shells and dried kelp. He was grounded in the moment. He listened to the call of distant gulls, and the soft crash of waves until they fell away. He spread his consciousness as far as he could. He pushed his magical exteroception beyond Mita and her house, past the small beach. Aoi was a stone thrown into a pond. He was the ripples across its surface. He strained himself until he hit a wall, a barrier more accurately, smiling at his progress.
Aoi bent at the shore filling a massive bucket with placid turquoise seawater. It was warmer than the chilled pre-dawn air. He watched the bucket fill and he swept his locks aside. I really should cut my hair. Almost entirely confident in his ability, he drove his feet deep into the beach, bear-hugged the bucket, squeezed his glutes and hoisted the many gallons above his head before trudging along the short path back to Mita's house.
Didn't need magic this time!
Aoi was equally dedicated expanding the range of his mana detection and to Mita's list of chores. Scraping the stove with dried gourd, collecting the ashes to be spread in the cane fields. Working mostly simultaneously to stretch his magical exteroception further and further and analyze the mirror and that giant barrier; collecting buckets of sea water for Mita to purify, failing to analyze the magic she herself used. Themagic of the Goddess is incredible and astoundingly implausible. Twisting out laundry and setting it on lines to dry in the sun, burning the muscles in his arms.
She spoke of the nearby village often, fondly. The ladies all loved her son, and grandson who was off a journey of some sort, or at least that's the impression Aoi received through the fractured bits of story he could decipher in his time as her kitchen porter. He chopped root vegetables, ate, chopped herbs and cleaned and washed pots and pans, plates and bowls as she cooked, then as he ate. Cyclical, daily.
Mita was of the mind that her Goddess and her aguapanelita were to blame for his speedy recovery. He had absolutely no reason to argue and so he became a leviathan, devouring everything she brought him, gulping down mug after mug of aguapanela as the moon became dark, to then show her face again…
Twice.
∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi wiped the sweat off his brow before swinging the oversized cleaver of a machete toward the forest of sugar cane. Heavy, rusted to hell but sharper than any blade he had ever held before. His feet were too wide, cane. His legs were too straight, cane. His hips were asleep, cane. His body was too loose, he needed to be organized, cane. His body was too tense, he needed to loosen up, cane. Shoulders needed to hang, elbows were locked, grip too tight, breathing out of sync. Cane, cane, cane, cane!
They didn't hurt, he couldn't understand why she was using this method, it was actually annoying. Every time he felt he got into a rhythm, it was interrupted with a swift whack. Rhythm. I need to find my own rhythm. He timed his breath with the wind blowing through the stalks. He felt solid and planted into the earth yet light on his feet and ready to shift with precision. His blade became an extension of himself, low to the ground, he was spry and focused. He found confidence in his movements. He reared back to swing the machete— CANE!
FRIGG!
He stood square with a patch of hard stalks, closed his eyes and swung, slicing a perfect 45 degree angle near the root of a stalk. Without opening his eyes he continued. Set up, breathe, strike, repeat. "No." She hit him over the head with a dried cane. "Stop. Look at the mess, mi niño keep your eyes open, focus on the movement around you. And listen, mi niño." The winds raced through the stalks bringing with it the smell of the ocean and a new arrangement of sounds. "Listen."
Mark your space. Connect with the sounds. Step your right foot out and slide your left to meet it. slam your heel into the ground quickly, listen for the beat. Swing. Step your left foot out, slide your right to meet it. Listen, slam heel. Swing.
"You hear that. You must dance."
Low center of gravity. Firm on your feet, spring in your knees. Stalk centered, always centered. Listen. No unnecessary movements, fluid. Don't reveal the path of my blade, always keep my target in my sight.
"Dance with the sound." She spoke slowly, the wind slowed and the sounds did too.
Right foot anchor. One. Left foot step forward. Slice. Step back center. Two. Bring blade up high, guard. Three. Step backward, defensive retreat. Slice, clear space. Four. Return center guard.
"Incorrect." She smacked him with her cane. "Mi niño, cut the sugar cane. Que es eso?"
He spent the day honing his precision, ensuring absolute zero waste of product. The first week Mita sat next to him hitting him with her cua every time his cuts weren't precise. He adapted quickly.
"When will I know I'm done?" He asked, staring between the harvested cane in a neat pile on the ground and the space–already filled in by rapid regrowth– he had harvested it from.
"Mi niño, you'll know when the machete falls from your hand."
"For real?"
"Yes, and then you chop for one hour more."
Brutal
And she walked off, though conveniently appeared here and there to hit him for a particularly rough attempt. But from there on out it was smooth sailing, Aoi had managed to put on a good thirty pounds, he was looking healthy, working out and eating, nonstop.
"What, are the people in the village crazy, is that why you don't live there?" Aoi asked, kneeling as he ate gallo pinto and chewed on a stalk.
"Mi niño, we do not judge those, especially not those in their worship." She spanked him over the head with her cua.
"La caña is not for eating! La caña is for machete." Her smile held just the bit of tension, which tore at the back of Aoi's throat.
"I'm sorry about your son, I lost–" The words were knives. "I'm trying to find my way home."
"Benito," She looked into Aoi though he wasn't sure he was who she saw. "Pastor Smeiter mijo. Go see him for me." Her hands were trembling as she wiped tears from her eyes and placed them on his cheeks. "Oh mi niño."
∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi was locked into his own gaze reflected in the cursed cenotaph. Aoi, a man of incredible beauty, was adorned in fine, gifted hand-me-downs; an unblemished white linen tunic with cropped sleeves, breathable and roomy. He had already spilled Pastelon on himself; the large red, oily tomato stain sparkled and disappeared as drifting shimmers. Deep green, mossy pants dyed with marigolds and onion skins, then bathed in water and iron.
The man looking back, handsome and well defined. His snowy manicured locks swept back and moisturized with coconut oil. Brilliant eyes and hair, the same stark white but for the fragment of wine stain in his left iris. His cheeks no longer sunken, skin no longer sallow but a glorious deep golden brown, baked by hours of reaping under the hot sun.
"Niño, you take this to Pastor Smeiter, in the…" She was holding a wrapped package, and pushing it with all her might into his newly muscular chest. He was smiling at her cunning. Ahh, the fancy clothes and the lunch indoors. What a shrewd little old lady.
"Mi niño." She sighed deep. "I know, as does my Goddess, that you will be the man I know you to be."
"Mita, what is in this package and what–"
"Lo bendiga, blessings of the Goddess on your journey mi niño. Remember just keep walking."She opened the door and guided it to gently rest upon the porcelain tub.
Bright light broke into the kitchen to reveal a small opening within the forest of sugarcane. Cane grew across the threshold, giving off a fine mist that spilled into the kitchen. The wind was halted, and the path smelled of crisped sugar on a hot day. Aoi couldn't help but crack a toothy grin as Mita grabbed his hand.
"Before you go, mi niño, here for you." Her gnarled, sunkissed papery fingers opened and dropped nine silver coins, glowing as they fell into his hands. I saw it…barely sensed...magic? And finally a small golden hoop, sparkling and polished.
"Where'd you find this?" Don't cry, don't cry. He fought the lump in his throat. "I can't take your money!"
"What? Una cosita. For working so hard! Niño, get a pint and a room at the Sisters' and take a bath. Mita's tub is not for you."
"I...Mi–"
"Afuera, mi niño. Chao pescao! Besos."
"I have no map–"
"Niño, remember to keep walking."
"Mita, wait I'm serious I have no idea where I am going."
"Mi niño, the Goddess will guide you. Goodbyes are short."
"Who are the sisters?" He fixed his teacher's golden hoop into his right ear where it had been for all his life. Most of it anyway. Mita guided him through the threshold to the beat of a distant drum. Ducking into the space between stalks, his path was unfolding before his eyes. Mita's warble, long gone, lost in the surrounding fog. A swelling of gulls calling, a crashing of waves. A scent so sweet it coated the back of his throat. His feet were moving to the percussive collision of stalks, the wind whistling through the cane a hushed birdsong.
∗ ∗ ∗
He was on the shoreline, staring up at the walls of a massive canal with no recollection of having gotten there. He looked behind him and only saw the vast, beautiful ocean. Pretty cagey for a little old lady. And before him, rickety stairs, crystallized with salt, climbed an impossible hill whereupon his destination lay, painted white all the way to its steeple.
Here it is. Aoi walked toward the conceived facade to inspect the masterful work closer. What a barrier. It's so warm…and scary.
"Weird." He passed through the obstacle that wasn't an obstacle. I don't know what I was expecting but…Aoi made his way toward the stairs.
"Here I come."
∗ ∗ ∗