Vastian

Secret Santa.

Indebted to Goblin Brainz

A Marus Draven story.

1. THE BOULDER KING

Plague vapors rose from the crow-leathered tome, my fingers buckled under its spine—or rather, the weight of incantation. Glyphs: fern green wisps twisting into the impression of a language, but with no legible curve from their beginnings to their ends, they were as useful out of existence as in. I used to think I wasn’t alone. The library is dark enough that the walls crawl with the shadow of an eclipsed sky. Here, shade fell over our heads like blossoming petals. But the terrible things—the hiss and clack of bones crackling, the fire that drowns the pages, sound and smoke sinking upward in verdant haze—never catch attention. The clerk cups her forehead, daydreaming an afternoon where a blaze runs up the bookshelves, and the librarian removes one more book from the fiction section, as if it wasn’t balding enough already, and the only readers are the ghosts no doubt haunting the research catalog. But no matter the guttural shrieks or fading whispers that leaked, the disasters silently screaming themselves into this hall, not one head turned.

“DRAVEN.”

Rolling heads tumbled together, polishing the voices, for a moment, into sole tone, before fracturing into echo once more. An undivided ray of mountain sunrise; a choir’s harmony; an only child’s birth: singularity is handsome.

“THE SEED?”

“Planted. All of them.”

“VA. T. IN.”

“Vatis, invetica.” The steam flared, floating in streams to tomes tucked within spiral shelves, each an island in the sea of gray fumes. The fog swirled, reeled back to the shifting skull in the shape of doves. It seemed to swell.

“KOKOMA REMEMBERS ALL.”

“Yeah. Can I get it now?”

“...”

“May I be granted this blessing.”

“KOKOMA REMEMBERS YOUR FAILURE.”

“Funny you mention that. I feed you mountains, and you certainly don’t leave any for later—really, I doubt there’s anyone better than me. Have I not proven my devotion? Do you really need more?”

For a moment, silence. A pleasant hum resounded in the hide clutched between my fingers. That peace was as wonderful as it was deceptive.

“THERE IS ALWAYS MORE.”

2. EVERYTHING AN ARTIST SHOULD BE

I never greet someone I’ve met. There’s a sort of distance once you get to know a person, crystallized the first time you can make eye contact and not be the first to look away. Of course, I also never look away—meeting strangers, I can do—making friends is something I never do. There’s no shame in it. It’s the way I am; when I used to spend money, I had a biweekly harp… teacher. He was more inspector than instructor: we could never quite finish a scale, or long tones (is that what they are?) before—tangent on the other day with this horse-cart merchant, what a stingy haggler he was, why was the SELLER haggling? Talking the price up doesn’t get you any patrons: it only talks your bones into poking through your flesh. My teacher might have been his only customer. Because that was the kind of person he was.

I never wear the same thing twice. This is a sensitivity thing: each morning, I rip a thread in my netted sleeve. Every night, when I’m assured of my total blindness, I tie two ends together (whether they become a knot, bow, or tangle doesn’t matter. I do it for the principle of it. I used to feel that there was something wrong with the world. I could never put any words to it, my thoughts were too big for my head, and any stroke of the pen would only betray that vision. If my thoughts diverged in any way from their origin, it would be failure. What’s wrong with this world is a question: the people confused by my torn fabric. After all, why would I make something so beautiful so ugly, so worn, so horse-brush? It isn’t massacre, but metamorphosis: after any change, I’ll still be me. I’ll never be anything but perfect.)

I have never been cruel. Hateno is as benign as it gets: hills that spill down mountains, avoiding steep inclines in increments of green. For the most dangerous bend, a bush poised to catch a child whose pivot sent her falling. The sounds of life: pitchforks nipped with rubber corks in the farmer’s shed, plugged and unplugged by the radish plot every morning, and a dyes factory banishing its fumes into the skyline, swords and spears rounding the village perimeter (the soldiers who wield them eat alone, with the families they had lost or never had), and, of course, the invention of onyx lenses to blot out the “experimental fashionistas” waddling around. Everything as it is, the beating and unbeaten hearts of this sanctuary, inherits a secret past. Every mother’s hug or neglect is a reflection of the first sacrifice: the apocalypse, in which it was this settlement that had been humanity’s last bastion. It wasn’t the calamity that was the disaster, but the fact that it took every life to protect one. And now, everything that everyone does is a form of protection.

“I’ll tell! I mean, really tell them!” A little pigeon squeaked atop her head. “REALLY!”

I wondered how many birthdays it would take her to learn: nobody cared about us enough to get angry. “Yeah. You do that.” She cried, tears infused with the liquor yellow sun. My sister bobbed up over the emerald mound and disappeared, beyond the uphill fence. Bubbles rose in my throat.

“That was a little…”

“Little.”

“Well, mean, Maru.”

“Because you’re an angel.”

“Oh, don’t give me that shit.” Lighn took the bottle, blowing dust from the mouth. “It can’t be that hard-”

“Don’t have so much faith.”

We clinked glass under an orange sunbeam—my third toast that evening, and ever. This time, without a Millica to sober me up.

“To be nicer to her.” (You only get one family.)

“Duly noted.” (Let me play the bad guy just a bit longer.)

“I’m serious.” (I’m serious.)

I took a deep swig, melting against the wooden bars of the balcony. I learned it early. When you speak, there are two conversations going on: the loud one and the silent one. If there’s not a silent one, there’s nothing.

“How was the sermon?” (Does the family know about me?)

“Consider not skipping.” (Please, never come.)

“Come on. At least let me see your notes.” (Duly noted.)

In the distance, Lanayru’s surface flickered sunset. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to break our eye contact.

“And the father?” (I want to be just like him.)

“Handsome as ever.” (I hope you never turn into him.)

“Why do they call it a church?” (I only believe in things that are real.)

“Money reasons.” Lighn downed the last sip. The alcohol fogged her eyes.

“I’ll go next week.” (I think I’m going to try to tell them.)

She laughed. “I’ll be in the back with a diamond circlet.” (I’m proud of you.)

“I will!” (I’m scared.)

“Sure.” (And I’m proud of you. Maru, or Marus.)

“I… will.” (Why?)

(I’ll always be your best friend.)

One final shot. That was the last time I drank with someone.

(Give up on me.)

I will never be the kind of person he was.

3. THE NEED FOR LEGENDS

Nobody comes in when it’s stormy; it’s either children busy rolling in the filth, or fathers wrangling said children into the bath, or mothers wrangling said fathers into the bath for ‘quality time’. The scientists stop working. That about says it for you, the ‘engine of industry’ thwarted by some drizzle, how irksome, how pesky, how scary. At least you get to be alone with your thoughts. What more could anyone want? That would have been my afternoon: messing with the bookshelves, the patter of droplets against the window, the crinkling embers of a fireplace—admittedly, the only time I loved Kakariko was when it tucked itself away, hidden under gray skies. And then… because it’s always something.

She stumbled into the dim lobby, tracking mud and rain on the welcome rug (whom libraries mean to greet, I’m not sure either). Her knees folded, hands clutching a staff (a beaten heap of bark, not unlike driftwood) driven into the ground. To be optimistic, it looked like the sea spat her up after fifteen years of chewing: her dress (assuming THAT was a dress) was caked with so much dirt that it was hard to tell where it began or ended, although flecks of white glove avoided suffocation, and the rain bleached her hair silver, and an eye of night ocean blue shone through her otherwise haggard appearance.

“HACK! KOFF! COUGH COUGH COUGH! COUGH!!!”

Yeah, she said cough. Four times, and I have an inkling she might have been looking in my direction, but you have to understand, this chapter on the… bolden goddesses was too good to pass up. This book, “THE CULTURE OF AGE” (perhaps more aptly titled with the nouns reversed), survived the great fiction purge—or maybe it didn’t: the RELIGION bookshelf shoulders FICTION. I like to think myself clever.

The librarian wheeled a cart, stole a glance at swamp monster, and kept wheeling. The clerk shot a death stare from the front desk:

Ask for help, talk to me, or so much as BREATHE, and I’ll set fire to the shelf.

I opened the book—why not give it a whirl? Eh, that page was too drab. Too draped. Too.. golden. Ah.

Historians believe that, at the advent of the millennium, a site known as “The Forgotten Temple” suffered a devastating earthquake. This disaster, dubbed the “Mindrakon”, stands as the only of its kind in the entirety of known history: its fault lines contain crystallized ash, dated to be thousands of years old. It took the first sample a painstaking one hundred and seventy eight hours to be extracted: an immeasurably thin strand, exactly 32.24 meters in length. The following samples didn’t prove any less sadistic, but from that grueling effort rose the leading theory: the Mindrakon was a product of magmic buildup beneath Aea (Death Mountain’s ancestor).

The temple sank 5,000 meters under the surface, where it sits today at the bottom of the Tanagar canyon. Within its two accessible floors (an estimated ten in total, most buried under impenetrable bedrock), hundreds of artifacts were retrieved: teams found scores of statues, ornaments, paper. However, the mentioned articles had to be reconstructed: from bits of granite, liquified metals re-hardened, and charcoal-stained pages chemically treated to take a peek beyond the dark surface. All of our idols, treasures, and words were fragile as guesses—mostly because, well, they WERE guesses. A glass cage that we couldn’t free ourselves from, but could be shattered easily at the pang of knowledge; it wouldn’t matter, since there are an infinite amount of cages.

Ten years ago, our cage was shattered. A week after all that could be moved was recovered (save for a monumental statue of the goddess, weeping slices of its face onto the ground with the passage of time), it appeared. Yellowed cloth, with an unnatural rise to it: when I grasped it, it bit into my fingers. I turned it over. Shards of glass had been weaved into a canvas, some extending the whole length, others ground to dust, in order to create the illusion of color, shadow, and lack thereof. Two diamond pupils burned onto a mosaic face, bordered by cracks fragmenting the sclera, branches of a gradual sprawl. The further from the eyes they went, the less lines there were, the bigger the pieces got, the less colorful. I bled a little trail into the cracks: below the face, my red stream outlined a hand reaching toward us. It was a painted corpse.

It’s our fault.

Contemporary doctrine is in the midst of cultural fission. Our discovery sparked revelation: fathers set fire to the altar, ministers minced holy pages, bishops brandished their fists and joined bar fights—it all came to a front when one day, a priestess no older than twenty approached the Spring of Power. Stormwind plucked leaves from above, hearts of gold and Akkala red gliding over the water. Her robe uncoiled the length of her body. She drooped, head craned to her shoulder like a pillow, wilting under the muddy sky and gray breeze, falling and falling… there was still time… and then there wasn’t. To the witness of twenty clergymen, she offered her blood—all of it—in the name of all that is holy.

So what was it? Some hidden truth, finally understanding something about the world, about ourselves? What wealth did we inherit from the death-painting, its soul broken eyes pulsing out of their jagged sockets; what was captured in death that we could not see in life?

As with all tragedy, two distinct philosophies emerged: the Vijilo and the Muerdim. The Vijilo are convinced of life’s sanctity: that, at any cost, it must be preserved. If a girl announced a prophetic dream, that the blood of Din surged through her heart, that she had a burn in her sleep nostalgic of the holy crest—the painter collected his red. If there was a flood, sweeping from the mountain to the village and with it everything, and a woman ran back: to save her child, collect tears in her skin, draw blood from her toes, to be carried away lifeless, but with a life still preserved—the painter donned blue. If there was a vacation: some warm cabin retreat under a blanket of snow, or a highland summer picnic with an army of thieves picking up lost crumbs, or a lover’s retreat by the coast, feet dancing over pearly sands—well, then the painter had to whisk away to his green. All that happens in life, be it blessing or breathing, must not be forgotten, couldn’t be let go, or it would be lost.

When I looked up, the girl wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Maybe she had left. That would be too generous: I turned my head and saw her, cooped up two chairs to my side and four chairs too close. She was reading something. I couldn’t see her face. I continued:

A speech delivered by Fygir Tolle in the Muerdim’s secession from the Hyleniam (last surviving church of Hylia). It should be noted that Tolle was illiterate, and a maudlin drunkard.

MY DAUGHTER COULD BE A PATRON SAINT. THERE’S BEEN WORSE, APPOINTED FOR LESS, SOMETIMES NOTHING AT ALL—NEED I REMIND—SORRY—SORRY FOR YOUR HERESY!—I’LL REMIND YOU THAT THE LAST FORTY SAINTS WEREN’T EVEN DEAD BEFORE CORONATION!

(No rules were ever broken. The last saint is four hundred years old.)

ANYWAY, THAT BITCH. MY SWEET BABY, TRAMPLED UNDER THE STEPS WE KEEP TAKING, THE STAMPEDE OF ROUTINE, MUSH OF THE CALENDAR, SAID ONE WORTHWHILE THING IN HER ENTIRE LIFE, BLESS HER SOUL. FORGIVE ME, BUT I WILL NEED TO IMITATE HER VOICE. COVER THE EARS OF YOUR CHILDREN NOW. OR DON’T IF THEY’RE BASTARDS. ART IS TO MAKE THE THINGS THAT ARE UGLY. IF AN ARTIST PAINTS A SUNSET—WHICH NO FREE MAN WOULD DO—PUTS THEIR BACK INTO IT, BRIDGES THE GREAT VIOLET AND GOLD WHICH MEET AT THE HORIZON! MOLDS A CLOUD FROM THEIR DEAD DAUGHTER! STREAKS SWEAT OR TEARS INTO THE CANVAS, PINCHES OF LIGHT FROM THE SUN TO TRY AND SHED THE STAIN OF ARTIFICE! THEY’LL LOOK UP FROM THE BRUSH AND IT’LL BE OVER.

Fygir Tolle was a genius. A raw mouthpiece that blew his tone in the Muerdim’s hour of need, an illiterate who broke free from his mind and into the world, made heard the half exiled by Vijilo. That life is precious. Time spent away—in the musings of literature, the untethering of art, the depiction of song—was time wasted, time chewed and spat up, time burned in the pursuit of something that was not there. Because capturing the sunset in a painting is as possible as drinking the sky, sunsets are alive. Rivers also live. Colors. Thoughts. Bottles didn’t, but bottles with love letters did. All of these living things… Tolle would breathe the names into his palm: sunsets, rivers, colors, thoughts, love, fire, even if he was dancing around his burden, tongue trying and twisting itself when he verged her name, those five letters locked inside him like a bleeding spring, his last years (weak with a grief charged heart) would give birth to something. His chapels rose in pairs. First, a crystal cathedral: halls carved of marble bone with elegant branches, warmth coursing through those veins in the dead of winter. He mounted portraits—each frame having an individual shape best suited for its segment of wall—on moonless nights, it was imperative that nobody disturb him, and if they did, that they could not understand him, or what he was doing, or that it was him doing it, or that anything was being done at all. Most were of his daughter. Plenty were of elk—he had never seen elk, with the exception of his dreams (each was different, but none were brown, none had antlers, and none had eyes)—and some were of butterflies. Birds. Dogs. Bees. Tolle lived in the cathedral for a time. Some biologists speculate that a Tolle’s diet, in its late years, consists of little more than paint and the dust under its nails. He toiled and toiled, and each day he left later and entered earlier, the weeks a series of labors, his exits and entrances converging to an atom’s distance until he entered for the last time: abandoning the performance of a life altogether, he never left his creation again. He slept in his filth. And one day, he titled a self-portrait—after his daughter.

The death of Fygir Tolle: tragedy, comedy, mystery. It occurred either after his final ceiling painting or floor painting, with a third possibility of both if droplets fell from above and splattered onto a low canvas. His footprints littered the ground in a mix of dirt and pigment, and his handprints still touch some of the walls—whichever he leaned against to support his limp, downgraded to a hobble and a crawl on a really bad day. In a sea of damsels and mammals, he farted, collapsing for the last time.

Perhaps a day, or a week, or a month after his soul’s departure, a line carved itself down the middle of the cathedral. A trace of void, left in the wake of a goddess’ visit: the Muerdim claimed that she loved Tolle more than any man. It was untouchable. The fracture widened, warping the space around it, breaking the halls in half and making them too small to be called a cathedral, that was the birth of the first chapel. It got worse. The line branched, a cancerous split that sliced a hall into two, four, eight. It went on and went on, until a boy discovered the seventy two chapels at the foot of the mountain. Until this point, they had been unseen and untouched. He opened a door:

Sunsets, rivers, fires, painted armies of nothing that lived. This was the touch of a goddess: the rapture, life evaporated from the page, made to never have existed in the first place. The father of Muerdim was the father of sin: a warning, a model of what NOT to do, damned for his insolence—an attempt of resurrection, life is sacred, and must be protected at all costs, and life must not be confused for art, and so art of life cannot be allowed to exist.

The painting of Tolle survives.

Sniff

She was crying. I got up, scraped my chair against the floor, and

4. THE WAY I AM

Sat next to her.

“Hey.”

I could hardly see my own hands. Stars pricked the ceiling glass—somehow, that almost-light was darker than nothing at all.

“You’re spilling all over the table. I don’t care. But I think she might.”

For all I knew, the clerk had locked us in. I dragged a finger, closer and closer to the girl’s breath; I touched her. Where I expected foul viscosity, I met velvet silk. Now that I think about it… she smelled rather, well, GOOD for a pig in a mud bath. I squeezed her shoulder.

“AH!”

“There we go. First test. CAN YOU HEAR ME!”

“STOP! YES!”

“OW! STOP KICKING!”

“OKAY! Okay. One last one. For good measure.”

“Have a good night.”

“Wait! Please don’t leave.” She touched me.

Not like I could. “Sure. But only if you answer a question for me.”

“...”

“How can you read like this? This is the darkest corner I’ve ever seen.”

Silence. And then a little breath, a mixture of disbelief, bewilderment, and a question: is he stupid?

“You can’t see them?”

When she said it like that… “I can see them just FINE.”

“Hehehehe! Yes. Stay still.” A warm spot melted into my forehead. Her gentle whisper carried to my lips—the half-kiss of movements, cradled by delicate fingers over my nape.

“And now?”

A sapphire pulse shot through my eyes. As the blast died, I saw them: royal hearts, flapping sight into the darkness. Blue streaks over her face—the bridge of a soft nose, a hard crack through the lip, snatched points at her ears. Her eyes flashed brilliance. A crest and trough of light, iris emptying into the morning’s darkness and filling with the wind of moonrise. I had read this color, once: glowing rays sweep the night ocean, a cerulean tide slicing through midnight waves. The first man to observe them must have been very, very lonely.

“Wow.”

“Is this your first time seeing magic?”

“I’ve never seen magic.” I swat one of the wisplights, hushing it from existence. “Because it doesn’t truly exist.”

“Well, could it falsely exist?”

“People lie.”

“Liars don’t exist.” Her book puffs closed. “Because lies aren’t realities.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Well, it’s true!” She giggled—the warmth carried to my ear in a weird way, sending sparks over my skin. I felt a strange compulsion: keep talking, get it to rise above a whisper, her voice electric.

“It’s not. Magic is something you can’t understand.”

“How do you know you understand something?” I could feel the cogs in her brain—or rather, hear the subconscious hum of her throat. “Teaching?”

“Teaching is proof. You understand when you can undo. Watch.” I uttered a destructive sutra—mutters I could understand, but fail, always fail, to describe. Currents of formless noise brushed my ear: the twisting of space into pockets of nothing. My shut eyelids darkened.

“Hey! You just waved them away!”

“That’s just a part of the chant. It’s how the rules are. You understand.”

The butterflies sighed back to life. Judging by her expression, she didn’t seem… particularly happy after my stunt. It’s just a joke, you know.

“Just a joke? They’re alive!”

Great. Either she’s a mind reader, or I’m losing it. I swiped the sweat from my forehead, studying the fragments of face her wisps granted me. Something to smooth things over… something to sate the storm.

“...So what are you reading?”

“Morpho killer.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Apologize.” I catch a wrinkled nose at the next gleam.

“Come on—you can’t—seriously—are you kidding—”

“Have a good night.”

“Where are you gonna go?!”

The marine cloud began to tuck itself behind a bookshelf. Crickets croak between the floorboards—I’ll admit it, she knew how to keep her silence.

“Alright! I’m sorry!”

A cobalt orb floated beside the frame. Her fingers melted into the glossy finish—skin shining, she called into the darkness:

“Sorry for what?”

“For… your pets.”

Heels splashed against the floor, sound reeling back toward my side of the table.

“Sorry? Could you repeat that again?”

“Don’t push it.”

“Hahaha! Forgive me for enjoying the sound of your voice.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that one.

“Tired yet?”

“Not enough. I still wanna know what you were reading earlier.”

Her head whipped to the clerk’s desk, in the off chance someone had been poised to pounce. No silhouette.

“It’s called Darkisst.”

“Darkest?”

“No, like Dar-kissed. Well, hold on—” She scribbled into the desk. Her ghosts fell into the depressions:

DARKISST

“I think it’s supposed to be a play on words—well—it could also be… agh, now that I have someone to talk to about this—”

“Bold assumption.”

“Now that I HAVE SOMEONE TO TALK TO ABOUT THIS, it’s harder than I thought it would be.” She tapped her chin, applying her sleek thumb to skin like an ointment. “Because there’s just so much to it. It’s like… there’s so much to love about it, it’s the best title ever for so many reasons, and you kinda have to understand the story to understand the beauty. Do you mind?”

I flitted another blinking moth from my nose. Apparently, that was invitation enough:

“So there’s this girl, like yours truly.” With itch-scratching satisfaction, she batted her lashes. “Um… well, she’s a princess, and goes to this royal—spelled with an e—academy with other royales, but she’s not a true princess. More like adopted. And the other girls bully her for being poor, and it’s pretty sad. My favorite scene is the meeting between her and the crow prince.”

“Crow prince?”

“Dreamy, I know.” I wouldn’t say THAT. “But the academy is a colossal palace at the center of the noble territories, since the individual ownership of any family would result in an eternal war. Power corrupts all, and stuff. The girls steal her—Stella, beautiful name, but I can’t articulate why. Anyway, they stole Stella’s locket, which has the only picture of her late mother, which is her breaking point: she just can’t take it anymore and runs off to an overhang bridge between the top floors of two of the school’s wings. It’s midnight, and a cloud in the shape of her mother drifts by. She tries to hold it in. But she can’t: she cries, sitting on the moonlit railing and raining tears into the abyss—I was crying, but also afraid? But it’s okay. The crow prince comes from the science wing, sitting beside her, taking her into his arms as if to wordlessly say:”

“Let me guess. It’ll all be okay?”

“No. It wouldn’t be. But for that night, she could forget herself, because he understood her beauty, even if nobody else did.”

“Seems like your typical ‘beautiful all along’ trope. May I see it?”

“So that’s what it’s called…” Was she too DENSE to understand sarcasm? She seemed GLAD to have had this conversation. “Prepare to have your mind blown.”

“Not counting on it.”

She lowered the novella into my hold, needlessly cupping the back of my hand with her own. As her fingers withdrew, lights collected over the page: words sparkled like stars, probably a cheap trick to charm me into liking this garbage. The moment was as she described, nothing particularly special happening, but… it was like the words formed a clearer world than reality itself, parting curtains of skin to unsheath pure human rawness. Stella was both drama and divine, stress-ball and star—beneath the cringeworthy musings of adolescence was, at its core, something layered: facets of personality breaking infinitely away into vast potentials. And yet, the smallest humanities were grandest—a fractal of character. People can write like this?

“It’s nothing special. I could write better than this.”

“You can?”

I had almost forgotten how hope sounds.

“I’m sure.”

The first man to lie must have been very, very lonely.

5. I LIKE TO THINK MYSELF CLEVER

I’ll find a way out one day.

6. THE IMPOSSIBLE FIVE LETTERS

“You gonna pay for that?”

Truth be told, I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. It seemed like my hands weren’t mine, commanded by the veins strapped to my body but detached from my mind, fueled by imaginary blood. My lips parted to bare a set of numb teeth. I couldn’t stop now.

“HEY! GET OUT OF HERE, RAT!”

Chased out of the lunch hall with the business end of a ladle, I dusted my skirt. My eyes shifted to the entrance I’d been evicted from: in my peripheral, I caught the chaos I managed to inflict upon the floor and counter, a carnage of soup from end to end—kitchen boys swooped over the mess to begin their work. Faint sorrows:

“But some MANIAC—”

“No excuses. Not like that’ll feed the children, anyway.”

“But we can’t… donations are scarce as it is, and now this?”

“I worked too damn hard to clean up your MESS. You’ll break the news.”

The sliding doors crashed shut; an exasperated sigh managed to escape the bamboo frame. The windowlights dimmed to silence—from my inner breast pocket, a familiar, exhausting surge.

“Getting real tired of this.”

Nothing. It didn’t care. Maybe I would end up burning this stupid book.

“I AM TOO LARGE. NOT YET SMALL ENOUGH.” Its face rose in page-molded clouds, folding into narrow mouths as the smoke flew. Kokoma’s sole baritone broke into a discordant, sky-bound choir. “THE SEED BURROWS INTO YOUR ROOTS. LET ME RIPEN. MAKE ME FRUIT… AND I WILL FALL FROM YOUR MIND.”

“You can hear my thoughts, now?”

“I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THOUGHTS.”

“Right. And what if I burn you?”

The fog swirled over my nape, scalding the air in my throat.

“A FLAME DOES NOT BURN.”

“Paper does.”

“THE SEED.”

“If I smothered your fume?”

“THE SEED.”

“I’ll undo the commandment.”

“I AM NOT A SEED, CHILD.”

Kokoma’s tendrils clawed into my skull, ensnaring my mind to release it, only to come again like a nauseating tide.

“I WILL SURVIVE IT. YOU…”

Its hands pierced my heart.

“YOUR VESSEL ACHES.”

It went. I fished for the book, parting it with tremulous hands and stinging tears. On the page—all the pages—sounded an unfeeling, impenetrable hymn:

NO PRICE TOO HIGH

Kokoma left a sole commandment for its disciples: vatis, invetica. “No price is too high.” Any sorcerous phrase is meant to be muttered, it originates from the vocal—or rather, the verbal is the manifestation, and the origin is a conviction. Creed: I am worthy, I am deserving, I am powerful. Total devotion is unwavering, infinitely righteous, always convinced of itself, for belief is the only means of enacting will. If a priestess cannot hear the goddess, she is devoted to her weakness. If a volunteer chef cannot reverse his spilled soup, and thus reverse the poverty of his children who will starve without him, his lack of imagination has ruined them. If a man named Fygir Tolle paints seventy two chapels into existence and a legion of portraits, and devotes his existence not to the scrutiny of faith, but his daughter, and remains deaf to the occult, even when he names his self portrait after her, a resurrection where the warmth doesn’t return to her body, it’s because he was a good man. Only the evil are capable of magic.

I closed the tome—engraved into the leather, I could never break away from its title fast enough. If I could, maybe I would be free:

THE BOULDER KING

The ugliest name burned itself into my mind. And so I tucked the words beside my heart and did the only thing I could do. I went to the local inn. The room was fresh with sleep—unable to see my hands in front of my face, I slinked between tightly packed beds with even tightlier-packed sleepers, the air rising and falling, my heart wrung dry by the silence of their breaths. Where’s the annoying comfort of a snore when you need it? I steadied myself on a knee, eyes cold with the breeze of unconscious exhale, hesitating. What’s going to happen when I move? The knife slipped from my thigh, snaking upward in a sightless maneuver, with one twirl for good measure, two twirls because I almost went for it and caught myself, and it stopped an inch from the man’s wrist, squeezed so hard I could begin to feel the skin peeling from my palm. Why was I here? If he opens his eyes here, I’m dead. If I open my eyes here, I won’t be able to go through with it. This wasn’t worth it. And then.

It wouldn’t kill you to be nicer to her.

Wood creaked, grass whispered, and then I could see my hands—clean, cold. I worked the red dampness of my boot into the dirt. When it was all buried, blighted radiance seared beneath my coat: the remains of an eldritch feast. For a moment, I hoped the fabric would burst into flame, melt THE BOULDER KING and its doctrine with me, but it didn’t. ‘No price is too high.’ Maybe the prayer was mine all along, because I folded it, carrying those words into the night.

When I shattered the windows of the northmost house:

VATIS INVETICA

When I snuck into Ms. Yoni’s, tore the floorboards east to west, twisting a knife into the tender belly of a barely surviving nursery:

VATIS INVETICA

I wasted the night wondering how much more waste I’d have to lay, what the silent disasters meant, or if they meant anything at all. The weight of Kokoma’s words, how they dragged me through its ruthless tide, voice splitting into voices—even the memory of it shot from my chest outward, pumped vigor to my heart and scraped the life from me. When my mouth went dry from breaking and breaking and breaking, the baker’s stolen dough and the pumpkin roots ripped from their soil, the fire set to a painter’s collection, the fractured glass of an orphan’s photograph. Crime in a sleeping village: I had yet to be caught stealing dreams that had yet to be realized, and while I blazed a path of bloodless carnage, running until my toes turned blue as a ghost, my bones caved under the pressure of my sins…………………………………..and then. She always won. And so I did the only thing I could do, said the only words I could:

“No price is too high. No price is too high. No price is too high.”

“Vah-dis… inve-di-ga?”

The beautiful girl cocked her head, eyes prodding me with their playful attention. The kind of look that said, knowing would be cool, but I wouldn’t mind being in the dark so long as you kept talking to me—a softcover book wrapped around itself in her absentminded grasp. Capital letters warped around the paper scepter, carrying an unfinished ‘ISST’ into sight.

“So… uh… still on that book, library girl?”

“I’m library girl?”

“What else would you be.”

“I don’t know. Something cute. Like Stella.”

“Interesting choice. She was quite annoying.”

“So you don’t like that kind of girl…”

Somehow, I found myself in the library. I could hardly believe I hadn’t been caught yet, much less that I still had my mind—‘vatis invetica’ the name of my headache—and now I managed to land myself here, here of all places. The here I have to hear Kokoma screaming from the books, its words shelved between novels and scriptures, epics and cookbooks, travel guides and plays, tomes and textbooks. I found it strange once. That he wanted me to come here. Recite two words, two easy words, two easy, stupid, simple words, and I’ll give you everything you want, it said, the things that you know you want in the deepest, easiest, stupidest, simplest part of your heart, the word you can’t say. That’s how I know, it said, I can hear it: it killed you, trying to say it, and being unable to do it is killing you. Your eyes burn with her letters. I know what it was trying to do. It’s the crudest form of trickery, the simplest, easiest, stupidest, deepest form, and it works on the lowest of people. And so I hid THE BOULDER KING—hundreds of it—in the library, copies that chirp louder than the birds waking me in the morning.

“Hey! Velvet!”

My eyes stung with readjustment. I needed a few blinks to bring myself together.

“...Velvet.”

“I’m still working on it. Better than ‘red-hair’, don’t you think?”

“Eh. Could be worse.” I hadn’t even told her my name. What kind of person am I?

“I don’t mind not knowing your name, red-hair. So stop turning your gears so hard.”

I wanted to know her name, and I couldn’t have even bothered to lead with mine. My mouth went drier.

“Really, it’s—ah- AAAAAH- choo! Choo! Sorry. I’ve been kinda sick lately.” She took a cloth to her nose, eyes on me the whole time, the stars in them hanging like a dust cloud.

“So… how’s Stella and the crow prince doing?”

“Marus. And-”

“His name’s Marus?”

“Yep!”

Secretly, this made me smile. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. To be honest, I needed some time anyway, because… well… um…”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah. It isn’t good.”

“Does she die?” I scratched my chin. “Does he?”

“No! Nothing like that. That’s not the kind of story it is.” She unrolled the book, trying to iron it out with her flattened hands. “It’s… kind of… KIND. OF!!!” Determination left her muscles in a sigh, head drooping to the furled pages.

“Hahahaha! What the heck.”

Her lips curled like the paper giving her so much trouble a minute ago. “Well, I’m happy you enjoy my suffering, dear Marus—”

I wondered how she would have felt to know that, by sheer coincidence, I happened to share a name with the crow prince.

“Really, it’s a great tone setter for our relationship. Anyway. It’s kind of complicated, what’s going on—Stella and Marus… well, how do I put it?” Her boot bumped my shin under the table, gaze rolled to the side trying to decipher the image in her head. “He’s real hung up. On a girl. From his past, a commoner from the Modim kingdom—his kingdom, a girl he fell in love with named Yihnn-”

“Sorry, YIHNN?”

“Yep, his names are pretty weird. Authors, right?”

“I think Marus is pretty cool.”

“Sure, Marus. Anyway… it’s pretty sad. I feel like I say that a lot whenever I talk about this book, but I wouldn’t be saying it if it wasn’t true. Stella got pretty mad when she found out about it—even though they weren’t DATING—and blew up at him pretty bad about it. I kinda really hate her.” Another shin kick. “I take it back. I don’t hate her, it’s just, STELLA, SHE’S DEAD! Oh yeah, forgot to mention that little detail. I know protagonists should have flaws, trust me, I do. I just think… the author isn’t AWARE that this is a flaw. It doesn’t seem to have any real consequence in her story, you know?? It feels like the original author who knew what they were doing just up and quit and then his little niece took over… I swear the first half was better than this.” She smiled—her face lined with a cat-tempered mischief. “I bet you could make something better than this, Marus.”

“Maybe.”

“You just blow me away with your thoughtful responses.”

“Hey, what can I…” Breeze. Then a pang, and then a legion: intangible vapor snaring my lungs, plague green lights began to melt into my clothes like rain, and whispers bite into my skin. Its noiseless choir wrapped around my head—an unreal nail that slid the length of my body, tracing a frigid residue that I had to remind myself was not truly there. Admitting it was to make it a reality. I should have heard its voice… I could hear the crickets under the floorboards: it donned an uncharacteristic silence. And then I realized.

“Marus? Hey—HEY!”

Rightleftrightleftrightleft, it should have occurred to me—of course, that was the WORST place I could have been. The darkness of the library gave way to the crickets of the night sky, gave way to torchlights, gave way to a bench on the side of the path… gave way to me sitting on said bench, catching my breath.

“DRAVEN.”

NO. CLEAR YOUR MIND.

“THE GIRL…”

It was watching her. I shut my eyes, flushing library girl from my mind: stolen dough, pumpkin roots, fire, glass—I remembered what I am. Memories: fathers, sisters, wine, the only friend I could have ever had. I was complete. In a breath, I opened my eyes, met with the front of the funeral parlor. I did the only thing I could have done:

“Hey, Mrs. Maudi.”

“Marus!” I caught the full force of wet lavender as she smothered me in her arms. “How have you been, dear?”

“I’ve had better nights.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, darling.” She continued wiping at the counter with a handkerchief, wringing murky water into an unseen bucket. “You could help out some. It never hurts to have an extra hand, and when things get confusing, there’s nothing more honest than soap.”

I’ve never been good at chores, but the smirk on her face told me I was too far in to get out of this one. “Fine. Toss me a rag.”

“Not a rag.” Her hand sweeped under the counter, surfacing to pitch a mop. “You’re on floor duty.”

“And… the bucket?”

She kicked a bucket to the side, imparting a challenge with our final instance of eye contact: get to work. For real. I brushed the tip along the bucket’s rim, varnishing the wooden planks with soapy film.

“Sometimes I imagine I’m the one who changed your diapers.”

“Okay, WHERE is this coming from?”

“KEEP cleaning.”

I resumed. “Jeez…”

“Maybe it’s the gravestones, or the caskets, or just my nature. I have false memories.” A swipe on the wall, clean darkness running in teardrops. “When we met, you were at that stage you begin to think you hate your parents. And rules. And yourself. But I was there. I watched as you became able to remind yourself of the truth.” She pressed sponge to the water like a kiss. The dry silhouette revealed two lovers in an embrace, bubbles lining the contour of their romance. “The truth is, parents need their children more than children need their parents. Especially in the middle years. And especially adoptive parents.” Sponge spine twisted over the bucket, crying dirt. “You didn’t need me.”

“But I did.”

“You didn’t.” Her bones sighed. “I imagine what it would have been like to raise you. My husband…” She twisted her ring—amber suspending a radiant thread. He had taken a hair from her head, and she from his. “We needed something we couldn’t have. Everyone has something like that. Love, understanding, freedom. For us, it was a baby… I hope you never understand what it’s like to need.” Wipe, dry, squeeze. Rain fell from her fingers, drops in the metallic abyss. “It was my husband. Every so often, a man in his family wouldn’t be able to have a child. They suggested I leave him, I was still young, still naive, so much of the world out there for me and I could just forget about him.” The sound of ‘forget’ rang thick in her throat. “I’m many things, Marus. But stupid is not one of them. We had picnics and dates. Silences over bridges. Moments at the end of the day, sitting at a pond when the water strikes golden, and my heart fell like a sigh. I married him. And every day I spend in love.”

That ring haunted me. Memories swirled in that amber—embarrassments, shyness, laughter—trapped in the last surviving remnant of the only man she could have promised her life to.

“And so I imagine what it would have been like to wean you. That my only failures were not getting you to sleep on time, or burning cookies, or not being able to hold your hand when we walked outside. I may very well have been the reason you got sick: babies aren’t used to ailment, and adults are only ever dirty. But I may very well have been the reason you overcame it—spices in chicken broth, wool blankets and a fireplace, reading books to you before you went to sleep, or spent the night trying to sleep. That I spent my life learning how to love instead of loving, losing, and learning how to live.”

It’s hard not to be sad in a place with a history.

“But raising you… even if it wasn’t from the beginning, and even if my husband didn’t live to do it with me, was a learning experience. I learn every day when it comes to you.” She slung the cloth into the bucket, breaking our silence with a splash. “You must be hungry. Set it against the wall, and I’ll get you a plate—consider it your well earned rest. For helping an old lady out.”

“Oh, really, I couldn’t-”

“Come on. I need SOMETHING to do around here.” She began to walk off.

“Wait!”

“Yes?”

I stumbled up to her, returning the hug from earlier with my lesser strength. “Thank you.”

“For what? Parents and children, Marus.” She whisked away to the kitchen.

When I was sure she was gone, I slipped out the front door. I’m not sure how far I walked that night. Mud crusted my boot, the dryness of a mouth that beat the soil into submission. I kept going and going, hungrier with each step, and that’s the reason why I couldn’t stop. I thought about need. My sister, did Millica need me, or was that something I had convinced myself of before I knew what it meant to need something? No. She didn’t turn out like me, and so she didn’t need me. Library girl? Don’t make me laugh. It was just a thought, but probably the simplest, easiest, stupidest, and deepest thought I’ve ever had. I didn’t even ask for her name. Of course she didn’t need me. But I needed to keep her safe. My best friend? I can’t even write her name anymore. I thought about our talks, our small rebellions, that, at the end of the world and everything we as we know it, she would have stayed with me, our first and last toast together, the wine in the glassware we stole, coasting the rim like the float of a dream. Of course I need her. No price would be too high.

At the foot of the mountain, when my feet would take me no farther, I slumped against a boulder. My fingers unfurled—exposed in the first rays of sunrise was the ring I stole, a strand of soul scorched gold within. A cloud oozed from the amber, trickling from my hands to my sleeve to my breast to the book. Kokoma burned to life.

“IT SEEMS SHE MET HER HUSBAND.”

7. YOU COULD SAY IT’S TOLLE SYNDROME

Diagnosis: a collection of absences. Let’s count the things I’m not. I don’t sleep anymore. I count whorls in the wood stain of the bunk bed over my head, fingertips reaching for me, unaware that I’m buried, and thus, am unable to reach back. I used to run my hands on the bedpost, digging into the nooks and holes of those rigid pillars. A bad habit enabled by my father, who folded little diamonds of paper with illegibly tiny writing on them, he said they had been written by fairies. So I looked for the fairy letters in just about every small hole I could find, you could imagine the trouble THAT got me into, but for the while I was child enough to trust him, I reveled in my scraps and ‘fairy dust’ (dust dust). I remember this, which I remember among other things, because you never just have one memory at a time. Breaking bread with a stolen loaf. Rolling emerald hills and two little girls chasing each other. Two girls sharing their first and last toast together, clinking glasses in the evening glow, feeling beautiful for the first time in their lives. Each recollection burdens me a little more, I hear the bed wheeze into my ears. They pile on me until living becomes little more than thinking about living, thoughts sag under my eyes a little more, and before I know it, I’ve lived the day away. The five letters fall asleep around this time, and I give it a good few minutes before trying to move my head, and then another for my arms, and then another for my legs. Okay, I think, so I can still get up. And once I’m up, instead of going on a milk run, or a midnight date, or to rinse my face by the mountain pond, I go to the one place I’d rather be anywhere but.

I don’t read anymore. Correction, I don’t enjoy reading anymore. I can ‘get happy’ if I need to, jokes still rouse laughter in my bones, but I’ll never get happiness confused with enjoyment. It’s the same thing with sadness, kick a puppy once or twice and my heart’s a puppet, write a kid who wants his brother and I’ll start to need him too, but it’s a teary-eyedness I kick back to, let the moisture roll around in my eyes, man, it feels so good that I can still feel this way, it makes me whole, makes me human, and then they’ll go dry. I enjoy the feelings, sure. But what’s left? If I’m lucky, I’ll get a second kick out of the words. Reading them a third time yields nothing, no dawn of artistry, muse, or other kind of beauty. I’ve absorbed it already, understood all it has to offer, and so it becomes worse than nothing: beauty is that which is unable to be grasped, and so it doesn’t exist.

I’m not tactful. Now, we get to the absences that always have been. If we liken people to pottery, then the deformities are spun first, and the virtues, no matter how beautifully made, are defined by what they’re missing. It’s not that there’s one ugliness for every hundred beauties—one ugliness is responsible for one hundred blemishes. My laughter rings in my head, too loud and too terrible to be real, but my happiness always springs up at the worst times: a little kid landing face first, when someone gives it their all in the name of something they love, and fails regardless, when a man named Fygir Tolle worked himself to the bone, whether to honor, or to resurrect, or to try to love his daughter, and the only thing he earned was the love of a goddess. When a library darling takes the slightest interest in me—simple, small, stupid me. Some laugh when they cry. The tears run down my throat when I laugh.

Maybe what I really need isn’t THE BOULDER KING, or Kokoma, or the errand disasters—the misery of a librarian, the despair of an orphan, the blood of a sleeping carpenter, the life of my widowed mother—but to never laugh again. If I could just bury my laughter, maybe the weight would be lifted, I would stroll through Kakariko and point to two loaves of bread, pay double the price and earn the smell, I could peek behind the door of the funeral home and see Mrs. Maudi, grieving, but learning how to live, and I’d leave one of the loaves on the kitchen table: I could be the kind of person capable of silent kindnesses. I’m always thinking about how much would be possible if I never laughed again. How I’d make a great friend, the kind of person you couldn’t imagine your life without. How I’d pick a few flowers for the kid who fell, and how she’d smile with two less teeth than I remembered. How, even if nobody else, I would applaud for the one who gave it his all, cry at how moved I was and share the love with my whole heart. Who would want to be friends with an illiterate drunk? I would, much as it pains me to admit it (I would be the kind of person unashamed to do so)—we could share our arts and burdens, and no doubt would his vision inspire mine, even if my thoughts are completely worthless, I would at least entertain him with my ramblings, get him to laugh at a joke or two. And maybe we could admit the two names we carry to each other. My five impossible letters, his five entirely different, but no more possible: if we couldn’t say them to ourselves, maybe it would be possible to say them to each other. His daughter, my friend.

I’m not an artist. Really, everything I’ve written spells this out. The cardinal sin: more than a person, I’m a collection of webs around the absence of artistry.

I’m not a writer. Loose assortments of poetry leave my fingers in a small little journal which, honestly, could have used a bit more loving in the past. The cover’s edges are battered, one having suffered the misfortune of a dog’s teeth, the others blunted from a tendency to throw my belongings—one of my most endearing qualities, if you think about it. But the important thing is that it’s not much on my part: I just sit there, really, while the work… just, well, does itself. There’s not much to say. I don’t ‘let’ anything happen, no inspiration burning to make itself exist, it’s not a need of mine. It just happens. I go to the library, make the inevitable eye contact with library girl if she’s there, smile, tuck myself behind a bookshelf, and sneak into the loft. I like the loft, or at least the feeling it gives me: warmth juxtaposed by the draft of the rest of the building, warm candlelight, the smooth patter of rain over the glass ceiling, and how I can hear the rounds the librarian makes, stocking new research, each footstep like a heartbeat wrapped in velvet. Most of my poems involve animals. Crow, dog. Elk—a recent surge of mine. I wonder if it’s the ghost of Tolle breathing through my hands, the way his daughter breathed through his, the way that Mrs. Maudi’s husband breathed through hers: compassionate hands, their warmth tempered by something impossible, that, when you experience a kind touch for the first time, shocks the veins. It’s grief. That’s all it ever is. Cruelty is only possible if, by some miracle, you don’t know loss. The romantic touches a person, longing for the flavor of sadness that’ll come with their loss, eager for departure. It will make them noble. Beautiful. Snuff out the blemishes with the tainted, fig sweet stench of sorrow, proof that they have cared and been burned for it, each smile of theirs wistful and kissable, until they fall in love again, their heart growing large enough for the hole AND the whole. That’s not how love works. That’s not how anything works: I come here every night, laying against the pitch black window, writing into a book I can’t see. I’m writing poems about birds and boys, girls and goats, does and daughters, fires and friends, transcription of the mental, words I’ve memorized, whose positions I must remember lest I write over myself. It’s usually poems with me. Fifty pages I can whittle away in a night, for the most part coherent despite my total blindness. Lately, I’ve begun to write a story. About two girls. That’s one of the important parts. They’re friends—BEST friends—who bathe together, brush each other’s teeth, fight—kind of a lot, but not in a too-concerning-kind-of-way—steal, survive. The other important part is that they stole three chalices, one for a little sister they thought might want to join, but of course didn’t, and so the two of them broke wine and toasted against the sunset, enjoying the only good to ever come out of their lives. That’s how loss works. That’s how it all works. I title this story the same as all of my work:

LIGHN

Link to part two: Here