Flecks of Gold

by Buck, Alicia

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just really confused.” I suddenly remembered my backpack. I had my American government book in there as well as medical anatomy, chemistry, my notebook, and a ton of random worksheet papers. I shrugged off the bag and felt as though my shoulders would float away. I hadn’t realized how much my bag was weighing me down. I unzipped the top and rummaged. I pulled the gov. textbook out and opened the hard front cover. On the inside was a map of the United States. I turned it around and shoved the book toward Ismaha.

  “See this? This is my country. Have you ever seen it before? Do you know where the nearest airport is or where I could find a phone?” I stopped short at the sound of “airplane” and “phone,” which came out in English.

  Ismaha didn’t seem to hear me; she turned the pages of my book reverently, and studied the many pictures. “This is amazing. I’ve never seen its like. Where did you get it?”

  “I had to buy it for class.” I shrugged and flipped the pages to the back to the map, pointing. “Have you ever seen this country before?”

  “I have never seen any of those countries nor that continent. I am sorry, but you must have a very poor mapmaker. There are no continents on Esa like that.”

  “It’s only one country, and not even the whole continent is shown on that map, but that’s not the point—” I stopped, struck by something. “Esa?” I asked.

  “The world, all the continents reside on Esa.”

  “You mean Earth, right?” “Earth” came out sounding just as foreign as “phone.”

  “I don’t know the word ‘Earth,’ ” she said.

  I couldn’t understand why that word hadn’t translated. I was pretty sure she meant the same thing, but a terrible suspicion was encroaching on my thoughts. It was too much. Traveling from one place to another in a vortex was far-fetched enough. There were limits to what a girl could blindly accept.

  “Ismaha, would you say you have a good knowledge of the world? I mean, you said you’d traveled before. Did you only travel in Iberloah or did you go all over?”

  “I’ve traveled to many places outside my own country.”

  “Did you ever run across places with cars, or airplanes, or even telephones?” The words all came out sounding English.

  “I am sorry. I do not know these words. What do they mean?”

  “Um, cars are these machines that take you places. Well, you have to drive them, but they can get you to places a whole lot faster than walking or even riding a horse.” I didn’t go any further in my explanations. I felt the strangeness of my words, and Ismaha’s look confirmed what I suspected.

  She shook her head. “What you speak sounds like a dream. There are no such things in any of the countries where I have traveled.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I whispered. I couldn’t accept that no technology had touched this part of the world, and I refused to believe I had ended up not only in some other country, but on a whole different planet. My reasoning wasn’t making much sense, considering that I had just zipped from Arizona to who-knew-where in the space of a few minutes, but I couldn’t abandon all faith in the laws of physics. Ismaha was just ignorant, that was all. She was probably bluffing about all her “travels.” I was confident in the thought that the modern world extended almost everywhere. There weren’t many places on Earth that hadn’t been infiltrated by the Peace Corps or anthropologists or something. I would just have to find them.

  “You’ve been really kind, and I’m very grateful, but I have got to go.” I stuffed my book back in my backpack and slung it on my shoulders.

  “Where will you go without supplies? The nearest village is 30 kenars away,” she said.

  She made sense. I needed supplies, but I didn’t know how to get them. Maybe Ismaha would be willing to help somehow, though I didn’t want to bank too much on that. The only food I had was a smashed granola bar in my backpack’s front pocket. Just thinking about it made my stomach rumble. I hadn’t eaten lunch in school, and that’d been ages ago. Despite the bright sun outside, my stomach told me that dinner time was hours past. This day had been the longest one in my life. My insides clenched and growled again, this time loud enough for even Ismaha to hear. I blushed.

  “There is no need for you to leave yet. Come, I will give you something to eat.” She stood, went to the funny, round-shaped hearth, and stirred the coals into life. She swung the pot hanging over the fire away from the coals, a thick, cloth mitten over her hand. Lifting the lid, she smelled the substance within and replaced the lid.

  “You are fortunate. It is almost done.”

  I caught a whiff of the soup, and my mouth watered.

  She glanced at me and added, “Do not be concerned. I only wish to help.”

  I slowly sank back down onto the rugs, feeling awkward. Waiting for the food to finish cooking took only a few minutes, but my appetite was suddenly uncontrollable. I clutched my stomach in an effort to make my rumblings less, but it only grew louder. Finally, she got out two clay bowls and dished out the soup.

  “Thank you.” I closed my eyes for a second in heartfelt thanks, and then dug into the strange stew. I had no idea what was in it, but I would have eaten anything at this point. After I had inhaled nearly the whole bowl, I looked up to see Ismaha watching me curiously.

  “You are far from home.” It was a statement, not a question. I nodded anyway. Her words were a trigger, and I instantly felt on the verge of tears. Adrenalin had kept me going so far, but now my stomach was full, and fatigue seeped into my aching body. I sagged and concentrated on counting in threes—my usual method of keeping my eyes dry since I would rather die than be caught crying in public.

  Ismaha tactfully tried to turn my thoughts to more constructive matters. “Do not worry. I think you must go to the king with your problem. He is a good king and will help you if he can, especially if I write a letter to him saying he must.”

  “You know the king?” I asked incredulously. This village didn’t seem like the kind of place where someone who knew a monarch would live.

  Ismaha smiled. “I live humbly now, but once I was quite famous.” Her green eyes twinkled mischievously.

  “What were you famous for?”

  “Why, for my skills as a magician. Not everyone has the talent that you and I have. I am very glad that you have the gift also, or our language lesson would have taken a lot longer. You would have had to give me your permission to switch your own language lacing, and we would have had to work that out the hard way.”

  “Why would you have had to ask?” I was completely fascinated. My body forgot how tired and sore it was in my eagerness to find out more about this new power that had disrupted my entire existence.

  “There are rules to everything. For example, I could not do any lacing that would change your inner self without your consent. No magic can impede free choice.”

  “But at school I couldn’t think of anything but Kelson, even though I didn’t really want to,” I burst out before thinking.

  “Tell me of this ‘Kelson.’ ”

  I explained the events of the past three days, and Ismaha sadly nodded. “Unfortunately, there are some magicians who try to twist the natural laws as far as they can be twisted. Kelson wasn’t directly changing you; he was trying to influence you to choose the change. Did you ever really try to think of something else besides Kelson?”

  I blushed. “I guess I didn’t really try to stop thinking about him most of the time, but there were a few times I got him out of my head.”

  “Good. From what you have said, Kelson was putting the first stages of an enchantment on you. Though you are still free to choose, the first stage of an enchantment seeks to befuddle your mind to sway you into giving your will to the magician. Once that is done, your free choice is lost forever. Well, I shouldn’t say forever because there is always a way to choose, even in so dire a situation. It takes great inner strength to break such a terrible enchantment.” She paused. “That, or a really strong reason, such as a deep
love, or something of that magnitude. Bound-will enchantments have rarely been overcome.”

  “Oh.” It was a relief to know that there would be no more mind control or anything else without my permission. “Kelson tried to get me to say that I would be his before he took my mother, but I said no.” I had come very close to acquiescing though. Now that I knew what would have happened, I shivered. Then my thoughts shifted. “What kind of things are possible with these magic lacings?”

  “Everything in the world has a pattern: living things, nonliving things, even concepts can have a pattern to them. When you know these patterns, you can change them in some ways. Take, for instance, this thread.” She plucked a string from the end of a tasseled rugs and held it up. “Most people have to be shown the pattern for each object, then they must carefully memorize it before being able to change that pattern. I gather you knew nothing about lacings before you came here?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I showed you how a pattern is taught to a student when I made the language lacing. It is difficult to draw most lacings because they are three dimensional and are often too complex to be seen well on paper, so a teacher must project the lacing for his student.” Slowly another pattern of green lines appeared. This one was much simpler than the language lacing, and I was able to copy her with no hesitation. She studied my pattern with care.

  “You are quick; most students have a hard time forming an unknown lacing. Do you ever see snatches of a golden image when concentrating on an object?”

  “Yes!” It felt wonderful to know that my strange inner vision had not been a figment of my imagination. In my weaker moments, I had wondered if it was one of the first stages of insanity.

  “I would like to try something with you, if you don’t mind. Concentrate on the paper of this map. Try to catch those hints of gold that you see within your mind to see the pattern of the paper.”

  I looked hard at the old parchment as if I were about to draw it, but this time I actively sought out the golden threads I had only ever noticed on the edge of my vision. It was kind of like looking directly at a sunspot behind closed eyes. If you looked directly at the sunspot, it moved out of view, but if you looked slightly to the side, it stayed where it was and you could study it. Instead of just a funny yellow splat, I saw the paper’s magical pattern. It was amazing.

  I was so excited, I turned to other things in the room to see if I could discover their lacings. It was kind of like getting the hang of those “Magic Eye” pictures that you have to look at cross-eyed to see. At first, it was difficult for me to see the 3-D images, but once I got the hang of how to focus my eyes, I could breeze through them. It was the same with seeing lacings. Ismaha cleared her throat.

  “Sorry, I got a little carried away. I never knew such a thing was even possible.”

  “Show me the pattern of the paper.”

  I formed the pattern before her, and she studied it for flaws.

  “You are blessed. There are not many who can discern a lacing without first being shown. Most magicians must study for years to learn just a few of the many millions of lacings there are to know in this world.”

  “How many see it like I do?” I asked.

  “Only one or two every few generations see as clearly as you. There are more who can see parts of the pattern, not the whole.”

  I wondered why I, who was from somewhere far away, would have an ability that few here had. It was a little scary. I still didn’t know exactly what I was dealing with here. So I could see patterns—what help was that? Sure, Kelson had inadvertently shown me where to tweak the lacings he’d made, and Ismaha had shown me purposefully, but there were many joints and lines on each pattern. What if I twisted the wrong part? Would I accidentally blow myself up?

  “How do you know what part to change in a pattern to do what you want? How do you know what will happen?” I asked.

  “Ah, that is a part that may give you a bit more trouble. Though you can see lacings more clearly than many, the magicians who study the patterns for years are also more able to determine which patterns are similar, which can connect, and which, if changed, will cause disaster. Teachers also show the students as they learn.” Ismaha again held up the thread. “You have seen the string’s pattern, and the paper’s pattern. What can you determine about the two?”

  Oh great. I felt like I was in some surreal high school class. I sighed and studied the two different patterns. They were both fairly simple, but the paper was more complex with extra swirls and cross weavings, so I studied it longer than the thread. I noticed that there was a section of the paper lacing similar to the thread’s and told Ismaha this.

  “What else?” she asked.

  I looked again, but my eyes were starting to sting. I just wanted to sleep. It had been a long day, and my brain was on overload. “I don’t know,” I said a little sharply. I immediately felt bad about my outburst. Ismaha had been nothing but nice to me, but I just couldn’t handle any more today.

  “You are tired and have a long journey ahead of you. Sleep now and I will help you get the things necessary to travel to the king on the morrow,” Ismaha said.

  “You’ve been so kind, but I couldn’t ask you to do more. I don’t have anything to pay you with,” I protested weakly.

  “We’ll discuss that tomorrow. I hope you do not mind sleeping on the floor here. I have only one bed, and my old bones will not allow me to sleep on floors any longer.”

  “No problem. I’m a regular granola babe.” The words “granola” and “babe” didn’t translate. Ismaha gave me a strange look, but before I could reword my statement, she shrugged and went into the back room.

  I curled up on the floor rug and stretched one arm over my Jansport backpack. It gave me an sense of comfort to touch it, as if my green school bag were the only thing left of my childhood and my old comfortable sense of home.

  I dreamed of golden patterns. They floated before me; some merged and made new patterns. Others morphed by themselves or disappeared completely. I kept trying to figure out what it all meant. It was like the math dreams that I sometimes had where I kept struggling to calculate an answer, only to have the original problem become confused.

  I woke near dawn, my bladder uncomfortably full. My arm ached from acting as my pillow, and my hip felt more bruised than ever.

  Ismaha showed me a small metal pan to use as a toilet, and then retreated back to her room. I stared at it for a moment, perplexed. I won’t go into details but I will say for that one moment I was jealous of what boys have that girls do not.

  When I finished, I called Ismaha back. I stood directly in front of the pan in an attempt to avoid further embarrassment. But Ismaha went straight to it.

  “Watch,” she said. She looked at the urine, then a flash of green went off in the back of my head, and it was gone. Even the acrid smell vanished. I reviewed what she had done and noticed what part of the pattern she had changed to make the urine disappear. Quite a useful trick, I thought. It would certainly cut down on disease if others could do it too.

  “Did you see the lacing of what was done?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then let’s get you ready.”

  We walked out of her house. The chickens were out and pecking at the ground. There were villagers out now as well, even though the sun was just rising. The village was bigger than I initially thought. After a few houses, the road sloped steeply, revealing a lot of buildings and activity.

  “The view is deceptive from your house,” I said.

  “I don’t like to feel crowded.”

  We headed to an open market. Many of the stalls were just opening, but everyone we met seemed glad to see Ismaha. They gave her friendly waves and hellos while eyeing me with curiosity. I stared covertly back, remembering Ismaha’s reaction to my eye color. But it was hard not to gape at the villagers. Everyone had varying shades of skin from a slightly darker olive than mine to a deep sepia, but hardly anyone had brown eyes. All the pe
ople I saw had eyes that were different shades of blue or green. The colors were startling against their rich skin tones.

  Ismaha moved us briskly from one stall to the next, getting a blanket, food, and water. She bought me an outfit similar to hers, but with fewer hanging parts. I measured the blue pants against my legs to see if they were long enough. They weren’t, of course. I was about half a foot taller than everyone around me.

  The beige shirt was sufficiently large, however. It was loose in the arms and looked like a long peasant shirt. She bought me a vest to go with the shirt so it wouldn’t flap all over the place. The vest was blue with neat circular designs sewn into it. The neck fell diagonally, like a karate gee top, and buttoned on the side.

  Finally, Ismaha bought me a small knife. By the time we finished, I was worried. How could I possibly pay her for the supplies? Why was she helping me so much?

  We stacked our purchases in her main room, and Ismaha turned to me. “Now we will discuss payment,” she said.

  “But . . .”

  She held up her hand. “You said you have nothing, but you showed me a great treasure last night.”

  “All I showed you was my book.”

  “Exactly. May I see it again?”

  I unzipped my bag and handed her the government textbook.

  “I will take this as payment if you will allow it,” she said.

  “But it’s not even in your writing. What good will it do you?”

  “You have already forgotten our lesson from yesterday. There is a pattern to everything. I will simply have to study your writing to find out what it’s pattern is.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Years probably. Unless you are willing to help me.” She smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back at her.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I took the book. I opened the text to a random page and stared at the words. Nothing happened. I looked up at Ismaha in confusion.

  “Seeing objects is different than discerning the lacings of concepts. Concepts are much more insubstantial, and harder to contemplate in a pattern. Try reading the writing while concentrating on the pattern of the language’s sentence structure.”