Spirit Invictus Complete Series

by Mark Tiro

  I was able to lift my head up enough to see my blood running down onto my clothes and the equipment strewn all around me. That’s when the door imploded, crashing to the floor. Committee troops poured in.

  Revolutionary Guard.

  A sea of guns came into focus, and they were all pointed at me. I didn’t move. Behind then guns—behind the Committee thugs pointing the guns—I couldn’t see. But I could make out a voice. An unmistakable voice. It was the Committee chair. The one. She was the fifth Committee person who’d been missing when we’d taken the Committee room.

  “Rhys!” the voice called. “Bring me their commander. I want Rhys!” the voice thundered.

  I heard the name. Rhys. I heard his name, and something in me just let go. I’d been straining to hold up my head. Now it crashed back, onto my already bloodied equipment. ’Rhys’ I thought. My heart leapt, at the thought of him. After he’d abandoned us. After he’d run off with that little hussy. After he’d left us all here to fight alone. But if he was here, it means—he came back! For me—Rhys must’ve come back to be with me! My heart fluttered, then raced.

  If my eyes had been opened, I would have cried, tears of joy. But they weren’t open. And then Rhys was there, kneeling down in front of me. Holding me. And everything was alright. We were together. My Rhys and me. We were together at last. But… but…

  “Where is he?” the voice boomed. Someone was in my face, screaming at me. I opened my eyes. What ha—was I out? Where is Rhys? He was just… just… This was the Committee chair, now. Kneeling down in front of me. And she was yelling at me. Shouting at me. “Where is he? Where is Rhys? We know he was here—we traced his command orders back to this room.” Then she leaned in and shouted, the loudest yet, “where is he??!!!”

  She was practically foaming at the mouth as she screamed at me in a rage. “Where is Rhys? I will tear his head off with my bare hands! And yours too—you hussy!” she screamed at me, derisively, with spit spewing unintentionally out of her mouth in all directions as she talked. “And who the hell are you?”

  “I’m… I’m… not the hussy.” I was gurgling blood now.

  “I’m not the hussy,” I struggled to repeat as my voice trailed off.

  I wasn’t entirely sure if I’d said the words out loud, or had just thought them in my head.

  I could see blood—my blood—seeping out from my head, onto the floor around me now. And I was drifting off. Slower, drifting, slower.

  He had abandoned me after all… Rhys had abandoned. Me. Us. But not me. I did not abandon anyone. I mustered all the strength I had left and said, “I am Rhys.”

  “I am the commander here,” I said. “I am responsible.”

  “Little girl—you’re sure as hell not Rhys!”

  The network feed crackled and blared. I heard the general’s voice. The Committee was gone now. All dead. The nation was free. My head cleared, just like that. My head cleared. I went to look at the Committee chair, but I couldn’t turn my head. No matter. I opened my mouth.

  ‘No, I am not Rhys,’ I struggled to say. But not a word came out. I tried again. I thought—I tried to say, ‘I am not Rhys. I… am…’

  “Sabine?”

  Elias rushed in the door, a full team behind him. And that was the last thing I heard. I listened, expecting the room to erupt in gunfire.

  I never heard it.

  The Revolutionary Guard closest to me raised his gun. And then he put one last hole in my head, to go with all the others holes in the rest of me, where my blood was already spilling out onto the floor.

  Love is all that matters. If he just would have loved me like I loved him.

  But he didn’t.

  I would’ve given him everything he could have ever wanted, all the love in the world.

  If he had only loved me like I loved him.

  The funniest thing happened when I died. Love didn’t leave when Rhys did.

  I thought it would, but it didn’t.

  I was dead, but the love was still here. All around. In me.

  It had been with me when I stayed with the fighters, and when we broke into the Committee room. It had been with me when I lay there, bleeding out on the floor. And it had been with me when they put a bullet in my head.

  It was obvious as cake now, the love had always been there with me, the entire time.

  It wasn’t in Rhys, and it wasn’t in me. It wasn’t anywhere… It was everywhere. Even though I wasn’t now. Love still was.

  I was fading away; I was no longer me.

  Now only love remained. Nothing else.

  I closed my eyes, even though I no longer had eyes to close. I closed them anyway. And then I lay back and rested.

  And resting, I dreamed.

  Roasting Chestnuts at Osaka Station

  Osaka station.

  I’m in between lives. Again.

  Osaka station is a special place for me. It always has been, ever since I was a little girl. Even now, as I walk down, into the maze of stores and restaurants that line the way toward the trains, I feel a warm contentment in me.

  When I was a little girl, I used to go every summer, and every school holiday to see my grandpa and my grandma. To get to their house, we had to change trains at Osaka station. When I was really young, my mom would come on the trip with me and my sister. The first memory I have is the smell of roasting chestnuts from a small stand that Mr. Yoshi had, just past the newsstand that sold the cigars. The old men would sit around some tables outside the newsstand, smoking their cigars. To me that was like a rite of passage: we had to walk past them to get to Mr. Yoshi. Because of the way the train platforms ran, the cigar smoke went off in a completely different direction from Mr. Yoshi’s chestnut stand, so that once you rounded the corner, all you could smell were the wonderful roasting chestnuts.

  My mom was horrified that as soon as my sister and I got off the train, we’d run up to where the chestnuts were roasting. “Mr. Yoshi, Mr. Yoshi, Mr. Yoshi, can we have one? Please, can we? Please? Please?” My mom always did the best she could to keep up with us, but everybody knows that it’s impossible to keep up with a six year-old who is running off towards the smell of fresh roasting chestnuts.

  “I am so, so sorry, sir,” my mom would apologize, bowing deeply. “Sir, eh…” she’d hesitate, waiting for him to tell her his name. Calling this gentleman by his first name was most certainly not a proper way for children to learn to address a respectable storekeeper. My mom always did her best to redeem our family from me and my sister’s bad behavior. Mr. Yoshi would have none of it. He would just stand there, happy as ever.

  Mr. Yoshi’s roasted chestnut stand was a happy place.

  “Mr. Yoshi,” he said to my mom, smiling gently. “Everyone calls me Mr. Yoshi. I hope you won’t be the first person to insist on calling me something else?” He smiled again, and quickly got out three chestnuts. He pulled out three crisp pieces of white paper, and delicately wrapped and folded each one separately, in its own piece of paper. Then he bent down to make himself just about as tall as I was, and held out his old, big hands with two chestnuts. One for me and another for my sister. Once we had taken them, he stood up, bowed slightly, and held out the third for my mom. She, I think, was still mortified at her little girls. But the whole thing was too quick, and before she could say a word, he had already placed that third warm, white paper-wrapped chestnut in her protesting hands.

  My little sister always had trouble unwrapping it. So of course, being older, I helped her the best I could: I ‘demonstrated’ how it’s done by opening up hers, and making a big show of putting it into my mouth, eating it, and showing her just how good it tasted. “See, that’s how it’s done,” I would say (or something like it), which would, of course, make her cry, because she was only four or five at the time, and she really believed I was really going to eat her chestnut.

  Mr. Yoshi was kind. I don’t ever remember talking much to him when I was little. What I do remember though—other than that wonderful chestnut
smell—is that I always felt like I had just stepped into a bubble of warm air when I was there. For a few minutes, everything in the world faded away. For a few minutes, everything was perfect. Everything was okay.

  When I got older, it was just my sister and I who would stop by. My mom was working by then, and my sister and I were old enough to go on our own, to visit grandpa and grandma. Mr. Yoshi was still there, of course. He didn’t seem to get older. His hands seemed thinner, smaller maybe, when he would give us the chestnuts. But his gentle, kind smile never changed.

  When I was even older still, I started passing though Osaka station on my own. I was almost twenty by then. I had to take like three trains every day, from my hometown, to get to the university where I was studying. And of course, to get there, I had to pass right through Osaka station to change trains, and then right by Mr. Yoshi, to get to the other platform. Some days, I was in such a rush, I didn’t even stop. I would just smile and wave as I'd rush by. Mr. Yoshi would always stop what he was doing and look up with his kind eyes. No matter how stressed I was, this always seemed to make me feel better.

  As I got older, things became more serious. I wasn’t doing well in school, I got a boyfriend. Sometimes, a lot of times, we would stay up late, going out and drinking. Then I’d sleep just a few hours before rushing off to school the next morning.

  That’s around the time I started staying on the other side of the walkway when I’d pass by, on my way to the train. It was as far from Mr. Yoshi as I could walk and still get to my train. I walked, hoping he wouldn’t see me. I tried to sink down, to make myself invisible as I passed by. I would only look quickly out of the corner of my eye in his direction, so he wouldn’t see.

  But he was always there, and still, a kind happiness seemed to hang in the air as I’d walk past. This made me feel even worse, and so I tried to sink deeper into myself. I stopped looking as I passed by, not even out of the corner of my eye. I tried to think about serious things, school, getting a job, whether to stay with my boyfriend. We’d fight when we went out drinking, which was like every night now. I was barely hanging on in school.

  That went on until I broke up with him. Not too long after, I finished school and took up an internship in Kyoto, so I didn’t go by Osaka station much anymore. Except when I would go see my grandparents on holidays.

  Which is how, one week in early May, during holiday, I was going up to visit them. I hadn’t thought of Mr. Yoshi in as long as I could remember now. I had a new job, and I’d made new friends. I walked by and he wasn’t there. It had been a long time since I’d stopped and talked. But he needed to understand I was no longer that little girl. I was also no longer that scared student clinging to a bad boyfriend. I was older now, stronger. He shouldn’t be always smiling at me, being kind like I was still a little child. And I meant now to go over there, to tell him that.

  And I did walk over there. I walked over there, and then I raised up my eyes… to let him know. But he wasn’t there. Mr. Yoshi wasn’t there. That was probably normal, of course. Everyone goes on vacation from time to time, and this week the country was on holiday. But when I came up to the place, it was gone. Mr. Yoshi’s little chestnut stand was gone, and Mr. Yoshi was gone too.

  All at once, it hit me. I walked over to where it used to be, and breathed in a deep breath, trying to smell the chestnuts. I could almost smell, but… no. I tried. I breathed in again, closing my eyes, trying to remember how it had smelled. A tear welled up in my eye. Then another, and then another.

  I broke down. I got dizzy.

  I sat down against the wall where Mr. Yoshi’s chestnut stand used to be. I don’t know if it’s possible to faint while you’re sitting down, but that’s what happened. I think. Because the next thing I knew, I looked up, and Mr. Yoshi was standing right there. He put out one of those now-old, but familiar hands of his, but this time, there was no chestnut in it. “Get up,” I think he said. And so I took his hand and did as he asked.

  “Mr. Yoshi?”

  He put his hands to his lips, a gesture to be quiet that could be either menacing or kind depending on those intangible things that are invisible to the eye. With Mr. Yoshi, the gesture was unmistakably kind. Just like I remembered.

  Those years when I was a teenager, then in college, then after, I had slunk past that spot, my eyes cast down to avoid him seeing me. I’d been afraid he’d somehow see me. Or see into me—that if I looked him in the eye, it would betray my dark, buried secret: that I wasn’t that innocent little girl anymore. That I had grown into a desperate, sometimes mean, sometimes manipulating, sometimes cold—but most of all, sad—young woman. It took every bit of courage I had, but I took my cast down eyes and forced them to look up. To look into Mr. Yoshi’s eyes. And when I did, what I saw was… well… well… well…

  The guilt, my sadness—the heavy burden I’d been carrying… I knew he could see straight into it all. All my life, I had braced myself against someone ever coming this far, lest they get a clear glimpse of the terrible, mean dark little girl I really was.

  But something happened. I looked up, at Mr. Yoshi, expecting to be crucified. To be killed for the truth: that I was the home of evil, darkness and sin. Instead though, Mr. Yoshi looked at me. Just looked, and smiled the same gentle smile he always had.

  It melted. I melted. It was nothing. I forgot just a second all about it, and I forgot all about me. The terrible thing in me I had been afraid to ever look at—Mr. Yoshi had looked at. He had looked, and he had seen—nothing. No terrible darkness, no evil sin. Nothing more than a little speck, not even big enough to hide an ant.

  It was like Mr. Yoshi looked at all that guilt, all that pain I had carried past his stand, so many times for so many years—everything I had tried to push down, to keep hidden deep inside, so that no one could see who I really was. Mr. Yoshi saw it all. And he didn’t see any of it—he looked straight past it. He looked at me. The little girl, eating chestnuts with her mom and sister. I am still here, innocent, and pure and whole. The rest was just nothing to him. Just… nothing.

  I was still worthy of love.

  Mr. Yoshi smiled. Same smile as forever, kind and innocent and gentle. Unchanging.

  I looked at Mr. Yoshi now, excited with innocence and joy I had barely remembered even existed.

  Then I cried.

  They were happy tears. They filled my eyes, and now I couldn’t see anything else.

  I felt that old, familiar hand reaching out to mine.

  “Come with me,” he said. He took me by the hand, helping me up.

  We started walking, down the long familiar corridor of Osaka station. It was empty now.

  I could barely see through my tears. When we passed a window, on the other side of the hall, I thought I saw a reflection. It was Mr. Yoshi, and he was walking down the long corridor, holding the hand of a little girl. Just an instant, then the reflection was gone.

  “Oh, of course! How forgetful of me,” Mr. Yoshi laughed. My tears were dry and I could almost see clearly now. We stopped and he reached behind his back. There, in his hand as if he’d been holding it the entire time, just waiting for this moment, Mr. Yoshi produced a warm, roasted chestnut. It was perfectly wrapped in crisp white paper.

  I started crying, all over again.

  Then I reached my hand out to take it. I held it, the warm chestnut, and inhaled its smell deeply.

  In the distance, still obscured by my tears, I think I saw my mom and my little sister. They were walking off, into the distance. Nothing more than wisps. I couldn’t quite make their forms out. But it was them.

  And then they were gone.

  I looked back up to Mr. Yoshi.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  I knew where we were going. To his chestnut stand, I think. And then, I couldn’t remember anything. It didn’t seem important anymore, and it just drifted out of reach. My name, my life. It was all little details, not important. I let them all float lazily away until they drift
ed out of reach. Nothing more than wisps. Just like my mom and my sister.

  And then, they were gone too.

  But I looked up, and Mr. Yoshi was still there. He was still walking gently by my side.

  “Okay then. What should I call you? And where should we go?”

  He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. We kept walking, in silence. That was okay.

  I listened now. Like a child listening to a sensei explain something they didn’t understand. I listened. He didn’t talk, and yet I still heard. This time, I didn’t look over. I didn’t need to. I just listened, and in the silence, everything was okay.

  I trust you, implicitly. Mr. Yoshi, I have known you forever.

  We walked.

  It reminded me of times I had gone running on the shore as a little girl. When the wind was just right, it would give you a push from behind. You’d feel like you were almost flying faster than your legs could keep up.

  That’s how this was now. Not quite floating, but not quite walking anymore either. Just easy, no effort.

  But I was forgetting… what? What was I forgetting? I looked up. Mr. Yoshi was still there, still holding my hand. This I knew, though I couldn’t see him anymore.

  I trusted him implicitly, but now—I couldn’t remember his name.

  At last, we came to that place where you put your ticket in the machine, to get onto the platforms where the trains leave from.

  “Here we are,” I heard. The voice was more quiet now, distant.

  Still infinitely kind.

  I looked down at my hand, and saw now that I was holding a ticket.

  What am I forgetting? I thought. I can’t remember, but there’s something I’m missing here.

  A boy. Is it a boy? I love. Him. Do I love him? Yes, I love… him? It’s this boy I don’t want to leave.

  But I can’t remember who…

  My thought trailed off. I was missing something. There was something I had left behind, and I couldn’t remember what.