WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1)

by Fowler Robertson

  The Mirror Bin

  She placed the box in the closet, to deny, to forget. It was such a long time ago, a period of confusion when she could not withstand what life required of her. She had been in and out of the sanitariums, more times than she wanted to admit. The shadow imps were intense, grueling in their mistreatment. Maw Sue could do nothing but turn away. In her present state, she felt the burden of life crush her. She felt unworthy of love, of light, and therefore went her own way, dealing with life as she could without the gift, or its requirements. She was filled with resentment that she had to bear it at all. Her only choice was to put it away. She tucked the mirror bin under a cloak of darkness, inside the cedar closet, where the shadows hide and multiple. Out of sight. Out of mind. No reminders of failure, no reminders of unfinished tasks, and no relics of regret. And this is how it would be, that is, until…I was born. Willodean Hart would enter the Imperium realm. Another seeker would fulfill the quest and do what Maw Sue could not do. There would be great enlightenment and great danger.

  Hours after I was born, Maw Sue was still inside her closet holding the corners of the ancient box, unsteady and trembling. She began to panic, as usual, wanting to flee, take a bottle of tic-tacs, forget it all, make it go away but her love for me, stayed her hand. The gift sat inside the wooden box, unfulfilled and waiting. Her fingers felt the magic of its power and the warmth of the light she abandoned. The box came to life and only for a minute, her vision was restored to remember. It was lovely and then it was loss. It was the most vibrant, vivid, heart breaking, soul coming apart moment of her life. A thousand stars spewed outward from the silver toned mirror made from antique pewter, attached to the mirror bins surface. The ancient wood of its shell vibrated like a bell clock in her hands, shaking her inner core, and stirring up old demons and a terrifying light. It racked Maw Sue spent and lifeless until she drooped forward across its hard surface. She tried to remove her hands but the mirror bin was not done. What was meant to be—shall be—always in the end. It is written. The Rector spirit appeared to strengthen her, glowing and providing warmth and reminding her of words written ages ago. She thought of the old ritual, the rite of passage, decades old, and its mission to finish to the task. She was a descendant of the seventh tribe, where seven sisters started it all, and passed it down. Maw Sue was not one of those women, but in that moment, she felt their strength bound together in her blood, ancient blood that would not flow without her. She surrendered and closed her eyes to speak the ancient words that would transfer the gift and change my life.

  Birds of the air. Lilies of the field and the bright stars of heaven. Take her God and make her seven. Send her crumbs that she may consume, and make her life a beautiful bloom.

  Maw Sue said the room likely spun out of orbit for all she knew because in that second she felt captured within its brilliance. Her mother spoke the same words in her last dying breathe. She knew the well. Joy and sorrow filled her body as she remembered the bitter and sweet days. The mirror bin took back its power like a suction cup, pulling everything out of her, taking back what was unused, leaving her house an abandoned building. It left her a ghost, an unused vessel, a life stored away on a shelf to gather dust. Whoosh. And just like that..it was done. The gift released her from the task. A mission she refused to fulfill. The mirror bin sat on the floor, full and fat. It waited to receive me, the new vessel, the compromise, the southern sap.

  Consumed with tears and sorrow like a fury, each wet drop of Maw Sue’s tears unleashed a crumb she had forgotten, the ones she loved and hated, received yet denied. Mistakes stored away, crumbs of light and dark, crumbs of herself, and her soul. The stone inside her had long ago, lost its luster, turning a blackened hardened chunk of weight, bagged she carried daily. She remembered the most important part of being a Cupitor, one her mother reminded her constantly. If one denies the horrible, terrible memories, our tragedies, blackened childhoods—is to also deny our wonderful, beautiful, poignant memories of childhood. The light and the lesser light are tied together in the inter-realm like an intricate design. Woven together they form who we are and who we are to become. We are blended and created by life’s pleasures and pains. We are our past. We are our present. We are an accumulation of both. It is only when we accept each, as they are, that we touch the pain and become what we should. Cupitor. Seven. Whole. Complete. A beautiful bloom. To love and be loved is pain. Loss is pain. It is in this that we make lovely our losses and our lives become a joy to live and to suffer because ultimately they are intricately one.

  “The mirror bin.” Maw Sue cried. The adult and the child cried out, their voices wounded and broken. Unfilled. Maw Sue felt two parts of herself, separate but together. She took in the energy of the mirror bin, breathing in its regenerated oxygen, a breath of pure, unpolluted air of which she’d been denying for many years, air from another realm, air that didn’t suffocate, air that gave renewal and redemption, purity that frightened and alienated her. In those few minutes of restoration, a sense of duty and purpose emerged for which she hadn’t felt in ages. Maybe not ever.

  “All gifts truly divine come with attachments.” She remembers her mother’s words when she gave her the mirror bin.

  “But what is it mama?” Maw Sue said. She was filled with marvel and awe.

  “It’s called the mirror bin.” For months she listened to her mother tell her the stories as old as time itself, on the banks of the Mississippi river, one year before her mother would be tragically removed from her life. One year before her life fell apart. One year before she would fall into the darkness and never recover.

  From what Maw Sue shared, she too was a fragile child born at 3:13 on March 3, 1903. Her mother, a sage by old tradition passed the ancient stories down as did her ancestors before her. She taught her the ways of her people, a generation of seekers started with seven women, long ago, long dead and gone, yet their stories lived on, their lives lived on, their traditions lived on, one after another in the telling.

  When her mother died, she obsessed over the mirror bin carrying it everywhere, never setting it down. It was all she had left of her mother as if she existed in the grain of wood, the stories with it. And from all her mother told her—she believed it. She’d see her face melting in the mirror reflection on the outside retelling her stories, and talking to her as if she was still alive, just inside the box, another realm away. She read the journals, the scrolls, the old stories over and over. Her fascination with the box and the epic tales grew more intense each day. It was the only substance for which she could gather strength to wake up in this hell hole of a world in which she lived and hated, by the minute. Out of nowhere, one day, she noticed her mother’s face grow faded and dim, as if it was going away. Her voice that calmed her in her dreams, a symphony of sleep gradually faded as well.

  She could barely hear the symphony of her mother’s voice in her dreams to calm her anymore. An army of unrecognizable voices replaced the soft maternal voice and drove her mad, unstable and displaced. The Dumas of Umbra upon which her mother warned her, left her undone. Her eyes appeared wet all the time, her teeth set on edge, and excessive manic energy poured from her. Highs and lows tormented her soul, she was unable to sleep, the voices loud and terrible, as she grew more tormented by the shadows Amodgians. Even in the desperation she could see the bright light of the Rectors nudging, directing and making demands of her. She felt pulled in every direction, going nowhere but crazy. Tonics didn’t help—the mirror bin didn’t help—the old stories didn’t help—prayer didn’t help—Jesus didn’t help. Nothing and no one could help. Maw Sue was trapped inside a dark shell of herself, a shadow prisoner of other dimensions, of mind wanderings of which she could not control. After her mother died, her father unable to handle the burden of a girl, especially a troubled one, left her with her Aunt. Abandonment swelled in Maw Sue’s bones. Unwanted, screamed the shadow imps, Unwanted.

  Maw Sue lived with her mother’s estranged sister, Aunt Raven, who I was fascinated wi
th. Aunt Raven was a tall, lanky woman with black silk hair in a bun and bulbous ears. Her wardrobe was as limited as her lifestyle, three black skirts, gypsy round with beads that clattered and signaled her whereabouts like cat bells. She rotated shirts, a gray stretchy sweater for winter, or a dirt colored poncho. She wore a green scarf all the time, either around her waist, tied up in her hair or around her neck. Maw Sue said she never took it off. Maw Sue hadn’t heard her mother mention her sister at all, so it was a shock to know she had an aunt. She wondered what her story was and why no-one bothered to speak of her. Aunt Raven was solitary and secretive which could have been the reason, she wasn’t sure. She kept to herself most times, rarely with friends. She was well in her seventies, but looked as if she was still fifty. She had never married and neither did she regret it. She remained overly content with a solitary lifestyle much like a hermit, if it hadn’t of been for Maw Sue staying with her, she might have simply talked to birds or wild animals. She rarely left the boundaries of her house, taking refuge in her wild garden which consisted of five acres of torrential vines, mass cascading trees and an abundance of wild perennials and evergreens. No one came to visit. The doorbell never rang, no knocks at the door except for the groceries and household items delivered weekly and prepaid.

  She reminded Maw Sue on a daily basis, that it was perfectly fine to be single and content with oneself, the more merrier one would be, and the less they had to meet others expectations, lest they only fulfill their own. Whatever that meant. She could barely hear the words, much less live a life of that nature. Maw Sue yearned for love. To be without love, without a person in her life, a man, a parent, someone—was an unbearable, unthinkable burden. Never.

  Over time, Maw Sue learned Aunt Raven was different, evolved in her a world of her own making, a lone wolf alienated from people and pleasures. She did, however teach her to learn things. Maw Sue learned to sew and fell in love with the loft library upstairs stuffed with walls and walls of old books. They became her friends. She absorbed books and developed a love for words which perfected her art of storytelling later in life. When she spoke of the library her eyes would light up. She read Hemingway, Plath and Wolf. It was there she discovered a tribe of people like herself, those who suffered mind illnesses, people often labeled by society as crazy, unstable. Their works garnered an enormous impact on society and inspired their creative genius, for without the mutated gene, none of the masters would have created the masterpieces of art, so popular in novels, in paintings, in sculptures. Their differences, made them stand out from the crowd. As Shakespheare wrote, from the lips of Romeo, “So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows.” They stood out from the crowd, a dove amongst crows. Their greatest works came through their sufferings. Maw Sue began to wonder if they too, came from a line of Cupitors. It was a relief to know that those who suffer greatly in the mind could create such great works. This inspired her to read more. Vivien Leigh depressed most her life also wrote Gone with the Wind. Charles Dickens, the same. Vincent Van Gough had bipolar disease, a mind altering Doctor Jeckel and Hyde complex but look at his work. Incredible. Depression followed Tolstoy and Nash, Churchill and Donizett and even our President, Abraham Lincoln had his moments of clinical depression and thoughts of ending it all. Each one honed and chiseled and made their suffering into their best work. They were willing to touch the pain and thereby create genius. It was mind bending for Maw Sue considering her mind, how dark and depraved she knew it could sink. But it did, engage her, fuel her and yet in the same breathe, it scared her to death. Touching the pain of her own heart was vast, wide and unthinkable. How did they do it?

  One morning after reading A Far Country by Winston Churchill, she trounced into the oversized den, book in hand, and mind full of questions. She found Aunt Raven asleep in her chair. Maw Sue tip toed closer but with each step her vision changed. She saw a dark ominous cloud hovering above Aunt Raven's tight black bun like stirred up gnats, black horrible gnats. She knew before she knew. Before it could confirm itself, sink from her mind, to her heart, she knew the horrible, terrible had happened. She stood in one place, frozen in fear, her mother’s face forming in the cloud of gnats. Her thumbs rippled the pages of the book in her hands making a dreadful flapping noise. Her mind went to the place of the dead. Like a lifeless zombie, she stepped in front of her hoping it wasn’t true. Hoping she’d raise her hand or rock her chair, or blink her eyes or something but in the place of the dead, no one moves, no one stirs but the shadows.

  Aunt Raven sat stiff and lifeless in the same position Maw Sue remembers from the night before, when she told her goodnight. Aunt Raven replied with a smile, as usual and then Maw Sue would rub the ends of her green silk green scarf around her neck. Aunt Raven had never been the touchy-feely type to begin with so when Maw Sue came to live with her, her clinging nature became a bit overbearing. So instead, Aunt Raven would let Susannah sit beside her and touch the ends of her green silk scarf, rubbing it tenderly, to soothe her troubled mind. It’s as close to Aunt Raven as she could get.

  Finding Aunt Raven dead was the crack that split what was left of her in two. She collapsed beside her on the cold plank floor and between her fingers, she kneaded the scarf and wept. In that moment, she did not want to be alive. Alone in the world. She felt the trauma of her mother’s death again and again and again, blending and converging with Aunt Ravens, more than she could bear. She rubbed the silk scarf until it felt like sandpaper, no longer silky and no longer soothing her mind. It was like rats scratching at her brains, as if they were trapped and trying to find a way out. It was hours, or days later, she did not know. Time simply lost—fading in and out into the dark of the house. The ravaged mind thoughts had their way, leaving her in a catatonic state of being, loss of feelings, numb to all. Her fingers were raw and left holes in the silk scarf but she did not let it go. She stood up with the scarf wrapped in her fingers, the house inside her, frantic and disturbed, chanting with restless voices, a multitude of unfamiliar lips occupying the rooms. Her nostrils lingered with the smell of death. She stood in front of Aunt Raven, weaving on bare feet, and feeble legs wearing her white thin gown. She held the scarf and leaned down to touch her head and move it to the side so she could unwind the scarf. Instead of turning, it flounced downward in an ugly flop. The wretched sound made her stomach lurch. She shook limb to limb but she had to get it. It was a lifeline to all she knew. All she had left in this world. In that moment, she saw her life in scratches and claws, trying to hold and keep something precious but it always slipping away. She gently leaned her head upward and to the side, fighting waves of nausea. Aunt Raven’s eyes were diminished like aged glass marbles. She closed her lids as to not stare into the bitterness of a passed soul for fear it would take her and she would not fight it. She unwrapped the scarf from her neck, and slipped it around her own. For a mere second, she felt it tighten like a noose.

  “I will take my hug with me Aunt Raven.” She said with a cracked voice. It was then she saw the red pulsating beat of the stone necklace. She had noticed it before, many times since it was the only jewelry Aunt Raven owned and never removed. But it looked different, faded like a heart slowing in beats, as if it was crossing over to the otherworld following its owner to the other side. Without thought, she unlatched the necklace and put it inside her pocket. She bent down and kissed Aunt Raven on the cheek. “Goodbye Auntie. You’ve been good to me. I will miss you.” And she ran upstairs, retrieved her favorite books from the library, and packed what little belongings she had, changed clothes and walked solemnly downstairs for the last time.

  Before she walked out, she went to the kitchen and collected the stash of money Aunt Raven kept for emergencies inside a mason jar. She stuffed it deep into her bag. She heard a rattling noise coming from the living room. Spooked, she crept inside. A shadow of Aunt Raven appear ghostly, barely there, and floated above her corpse holding a solitary white rose. Maw Sue’s breath left her. She backed up towards the front door, unable to take her eyes
off the apparition. She wasn’t sure it was real or imagined. A rapid thump pulsed against the inner folds of her bag where she had placed her nightgown, with the red stone still inside the pocket. Before she ran out, never to return, the ghostly apparition of Aunt Raven spoke loudly in her cursed ears. “See…in the end it is better to be alone. No attachments, no pain.”

  Maw Sue turned and ran wildly through the maze of gardens, fighting thick overgrown shrubs and briars but on impulse came to a halt in front of a rose bush. The lump in her throat nearly choked her and without knowing why, she clipped off a long stemmed yellow rose. She ran and never looked back. Fate with its curses and gifts intervened shortly after. Days came and went without recognition, simply vanishing from her memory, great lapses of time gone. And then, one day she woke up inside a hospital ward. She had no recollection of how she came to be there or the days past. Doctors at the clinic said she checked herself in but she implied she would have never done that. Months later they released her. Her frame of mind no longer altered and she was a peace. The doctors put her on medications to help her mind wanderings, the visions and the voices silenced. A woman at the clinic even helped her find a job at a sewing factory so she had a good start. She found the mason jar still inside her bag and had enough money to find a small room to rent that was close to her job. She walked to work, day in and day out. Just when the loneliness sought to sink her in despair, on her walk home after work, she ran into her first husband and it was literally a run into, a crashing of two bodies on the corner of third and Bryant Street. Jefferson Starbuck Adams came to the same corner every day to run into her again and again, and pursued her endlessly until Maw Sue accepted his proposal.