Caitilin felt it burn within her, she had to tell him the truth. No, it must pass until the times are brighter.
“Anyways,” Gibbs said, “how did you procure this curse? Tell me where you were when you received the mark on your hand.”
Ethan told him the story of the driving exam that went wrong. He spoke in great detail about the ugliness and nastiness of the old lady and her cat.
Gibbs grabbed onto Ethan’s chin and followed his eyes, still in his personal bubble. “Did this old lady look like she was very ratty and torn up? Did she look like a dirty Elfin was chewed up by a drudge beast?”
Ethan thought back: she had had missing teeth, brown scaly skin, and ratty hair clumped in long strings. Maybe?
“Kalhari!” Gibbs screamed out. “Ethan, my lad, you have met your first Kalhari. They are evil, scum-based creatures that hate all things flowery and flighty. You do know they are invading our homeland?”
Gibbs shrugged his shoulders as if he had just seen his own tombstone. “I don’t think I have the strength to deal with this Kalhari invasion.”
Caitilin fed right off his thoughts, “What has the Daysun told you? The Daysun would talk to you. Has he promised victory yet?”
Gibbs motioned for her to calm down. “One problem at a time, Caitilin. I’m sure this boy doesn’t care about our struggles. Plus, we are not at liberty to share them. Let’s get rid of the curse.”
“But...but…,” Caitilin struggled.
“Not now,” Gibbs motioned with his hand for her to sit. “There’s a time to talk about Faeria’s state, but not with Ethan here.”
Gibbs’ statement was more than true. Ethan did not care about what was going on in Faeria, he did not want to be here. He just wanted to go home and forget he’d ever seen a Phaenix. His life—school, family, and friends—was at home. Home was in Litchfield where the malls closed at 8 p.m. on the weekdays and the elderly were put into retirement homes and not mountain caves. Then he remembered the girl Kioko, the fiery red head. She was somewhere in Litchfield. He could be missing some great conversations with her about movies or salmon in salad. What if she had found another cursed boy to flirt with? That was inexcusable. Yes, he definitely needed to go home.
Gibbs put the book back on the shelf. “You are suffering from what this land calls the Dreadinato. It is a damnation curse, which means it continues to haunt its victims until they arrive at the Garden of Life. It was invented by Kalhari artists during the war of Kylie Forces. That was the war when the Nivites tried to charge the Bangor border, but instead, received a barrage of Dreadinato. It was the goriest massacre in battle history. The Kalhari are only known to give the Dreadinato to Magi creatures, which is why I am perplexed as to why one came to the Earth. My only guess is it was a mistake and it has no bearing on Kalharis’ mindset. The Kalhari have had little or no contact with the other world.”
He thought for a second. “You said the Kalhari had a cat. Was it silver?”
Ethan remembered the dead cat under the wheel. Beside the wheel marks, it had been silver.
“Interesting,” Gibbs said, pacing. He went and got another book. “The presence of a tattlekat changes everything. They are mostly used to record messages and events. When a cat is used it means business or a mission was completed, so the Kalhari had been fulfilling a mission on Earth, and they were recording their progress. But what did they desire? They hungered for something.”
Caitilin shrugged. “Phaenix come to Earth to heal and Elfins come to Earth for rum. Do you think that the Kalhari are interested in the other world?”
“No, the Kalhari only want nice, large places. The other world reminds them of a poisonous version of their swamp.”
Ethan felt insulted, but Gibbs continued, “The tattlekat means the Kalhari were probably looking for someone or learning something. The curse tells me they were delivering a message. Let me see your hand again.”
Gibbs rubbed his thumb over it and felt a shockwave move through his body. A shadow moved into his mind, hungrily looking for the curse. Then his mind flashed with tents, fire, ashes, bodies, Kalhari faces and blood, imploding with every negative image. Flash after flash of inverse light flooded Gibbs’ brain until he felt like his thoughts were a swimming pool of darkness draining from his head.
Caitilin caught her master before he hit the floor. “What did you do?” she begged Ethan.
“Nothing,” Ethan defended himself. “He wigged out.”
It took a moment for Gibbs to recover. His face was flush and the serious desperation came back into his voice. He rubbed his hands over his head repeatedly. “This is not an ordinary curse.” He repeated this a few times until the composure came back to him. “We need to get rid of it immediately. I saw them, Caitilin.”
She brought him to a cushion. “Saw who?”
“I saw the army of Kalhari. They were in the curse. It is my belief that whatever this curse is, it is somehow connected to the war effort. It might not be an accident.”
Ethan got nervous. “But you can fix it, right?”
Gibbs struggled to stand up on his weak legs. “Yes, but I will need to put you in soul sleep. That way I can remove it from you. We need to do this post haste.”
Gibbs grabbed a strange yellow fruit from a bowl. “Think of your soul like a piece of fruit. They still have those on Earth, right? Anyway, this fruit has layers just like your soul. These layers represent your ethical choices, your kotoma, your beliefs and convictions. The curse, in its nature, goes to the very core of your soul. It dismantles the part of you that interacts with kotoma.”
“Kotoma? I keep hearing that word.”
Gibbs nodded. “Kotoma is essentially fate, but it is guided by a higher power. When you pray, the kotoma part is affected. When you fall upon great luck, your kotoma changes; these are all things affecting your soul. Anything that ties you spiritually with things unseen impacts your kotoma. Now, I know Earthians don’t often believe in kotoma, but it is how our Daysun interacts with us. When we do good, he sees us and communicates with our kotoma. When we do bad, our actions affect our kotoma with him. The curse is a way to make the kotoma always bad. The consequences are always against your favor. Loved ones are taken, accidents happen, it’s all an expression that the core of your soul is cursed and unconnected with the Daysun.”
Ethan thought back to his philosophy class. He remembered the unit teaching about dharma and karma. The teacher told him if he did good things, good things would happen and the opposite was true.
“It’s not like that at all,” Gibbs said. “The kotoma isn’t some way to get good fortune or bad fortune, instead it is a communicator that links us with the Daysun. We do good, it affects our relational status, sometimes changing our fortune. What you have is a cursed kotoma, a kotoma that cannot be tolerated, and in exchange the Daysun’s world is acting against it.”
Ethan didn’t understand. They didn’t teach this in philosophy, “So everyone has a kotoma in their bodies, which communicates with this Daysun? And you are saying that mine is cursed, permanently disconnecting me from this Daysun, which is causing the world to act against me?”
“All of nature hates you because they sense you are in bad kotoma. Kotoma is the one thing that holds us together.”
Ethan shook his head; none of this was taught in any class he had taken. His parents didn’t bother telling him this. All he had known was that he was made of flesh, blood, and nerve endings.
Caitilin felt incredibly uncomfortable. She could see Ethan squirm over this.
“You can get rid of it, though?” Ethan asked.
“Yes. There are only two ways to get rid of your Dreadinato. The first is to kill the one who made it. That would be a dark artist or whomever commissioned it, probably somewhere in Bangor, the swampland along our border. The more practical way is for me to hold it for you. As a high priest, I have authority to hold curses and spiritual diseases. Your kotoma will meld with me and my kotoma will meld with you. Since a positive
kotoma is more favored than a diseased one, then my good one will be favored over your bad one. We will be sharing the same kotoma.”
Gibbs peered close at Ethan again. “Be warned though, when I die, the curse goes back to you. So you need to pray that whoever commissioned this curse will die before I do. Do you understand this, Ethan?”
Ethan excused himself and went outside. He was dizzy, disoriented by the barrage of facts. Even the cooling day and beautiful sights couldn’t take his mind off his troubles.
Could he trust these kotoma details? It all sounded like a bunch of hocus pocus, cleverly made up to get him to believe something. But then again, his life had been radically changed by these winged people.
This was not his schooling. Nothing was planned; there was no kotoma and no destiny. In philosophy, life was all about what you made it. He had sat through countless hours of hearing the theories of Nietzsche and Freud. Those guys certainly didn’t have room in their views for a Daysun.
Ethan looked at his hand. Nietzsche and Freud never got this curse. He looked inside the house to see Caitilin talking to Gibbs. No one had ever told him about Phaenix. It was time to face what his life was about. It all had culminated into this event and there was no going back.
“Count me in,” Ethan said, walking back into the house.
Caitilin bounced up excitedly.
“Glad we understand each other,” Gibbs said. “It’s time to get you well again, and then you are going home.”
Gibbs came over into Ethan’s personal space and licked his face, then chuckled like a hyena. Ethan was incredibly put off, shrinking back from Gibbs.
Gibbs spoke to a laughing Caitilin, “It’s true what they say, Earthians taste like meat.”
Yes, Ethan preferred the silent Gibbs.
“They do not know good and their ways are always wicked. Though they have been warned, they continue to desecrate the Faerie race. Seek no mercy toward a Kalhari.”
- From the scroll “Tactics of the Enemy”
IX: Do You Know Who You Were?
The soul sleep procedure went perfectly as planned. Gibbs laid Ethan down on two mats. He sprinkled the boy with Phaenix dust and said the prayer of kotoma. There was no hesitation in the high priest at all. He felt like he could merge with Ethan’s soul with ease. When he himself moved into soul sleep, he asked Caitilin to keep praying for a safe return; sometimes an inexperienced priest could get stuck inside the soul of another person for days.
Gibbs was not worried, though. He felt himself slip from consciousness and all he had to do was merge with Ethan’s kotoma. It felt like having a body hitched to another person and then instantly breaking off in a million pieces; a feeling that Gibbs could never prepare himself for. For all the cursed souls he had merged with, he could never fully grasp the fact that he had shared his kotoma with others. He was not just merging with a part of the body, but he was also merging with another’s beliefs, desires, thoughts, and feelings.
Gibbs focused. He was not a material being inside of Ethan’s soul. He was a spirit traveling the highway of an Earthian mind. The trick to navigating the soul was to push the immaterial elements into physical representations. Otherwise, the abstract feelings, thoughts, hopes and fears could drive a visitor into an endless maze.
Gibbs imagined that Ethan was a beach. A wave of restless water began to push him to and fro. Those were his emotions, Gibbs thought. They were wild and unpredictable. A wave rose up and tried to crush Gibbs. He imagined himself out of the water.
Next Gibbs envisioned putting his feet on the sand. His feet immediately started sinking. The sand was not stable to walk on. He realized this was Ethan’s sense of security. His beliefs about himself and his confidence were unstable.
The fastest way to find the curse was to compartmentalize it within the soul sleep. Gibbs began to look out on the endless beach and see if there was a shelter. He found a tent. Stepping inside, Gibbs was not prepared for what he saw.
A long row of mirrors came into view. Each mirror had Ethan in the reflection. Some reflections were curvy making him look taller, while others made him look very small. Gibbs touched a mirror.
“You don’t understand me!” the reflection barked.
He touched again. The reflections started speaking.
“You are not better than me!”
“Mom, why did you leave me?”
“Of course I can do it!”
“I am the king of Litchfield!”
Gibbs retreated back.
He felt something different within Ethan’s soul. It wasn’t the usual hitching feel; there was something else there. A black crack was in each reflection. He touched it.
He checked his mind repeatedly, but Gibbs knew he was in the Drift Space. Grass and horsetails filled an endless expanse. It was a field linking the North, West, and East together. The sharp grass carpeting the field was as real as the baby blue sky overhead. Gibbs checked his clothes; he was wearing the priestly robe. It hugged his body like it always did.
Beside him was Ethan, but it wasn’t the Ethan Gibbs had just met. He was wearing the battle gear of the Phaenix army reserves. From the wooden helmet to the fur boots, Ethan stood decked out in Phaenix warrior armor. In his left hand, the shiny piece that completed the outfit: Ethan held the wooden hilt of the sword with an eagle’s grip, holding it out in a defensive pose. His legs were bent in the warrior stance of a trained soldier of the regiment. The boy’s shoulders perked up and his foot stepped forward. The blade pointed toward the East forest.
Gibbs wanted to ask why, but he couldn’t get the question out. His attention was distracted by the ruffling of the trees in the distance. The Drift Space was endless field, but Gibbs managed to see a forest nearby. The trees stopped swaying, and like a dark flood emerging, the Kalhari army burst forth. Every sword, artist, and archer troll ran for the Drift Space. Their faces shone with ardor for pure battle. With a war scream, they pressed forward, sabers in the air, wanting to kill anything in their way. The sound of their hellacious screams were deafening to the priest.
Gibbs went still and white like a ghost. He had seen many wars, but not like this. His fear overcame him and he wanted to run. He turned to Ethan, but Ethan was no longer there. Ethan was running toward the enemy, sword outstretched. With a war cry of his own, he shouted in perfect Phaenix, “Shunya La tiu!”
He began to tremble, and his body shook violently. An earthquake erupted inside him. The sky zinged sideways. The ground melted. The trees turned black. Everything was being washed away and he slipped.
“Master, are you awake? Wake up, master.”
Gibbs eyes sprung open. The world was coming back to him, but it wasn’t what he expected. He rolled over on the ground and saw his trusty deaconess watching over him. She heard murmuring from him all night. Being laid out on a cushion, he realized that he had been in his house all along. There was no reason to fear the Drift Space, it had passed away.
“Where is the boy?”
“He woke up earlier. He has been joyful ever since. I’ve never seen him like this before. He said he wanted to take a walk. You made him a new man, master.”
Gibbs swatted the air frantically. His stomach sank to the bottom of his feet. He knelt back on the cushion and buried his face into it.
“What is the matter, master?”
Caitilin had never seen her master so distraught. It was like him to be optimistic and life-driven. He was the one to turn to when life seemed hopeless, because he always spoke with fervent wisdom. Now, it almost looked like he had been wiped clean of all life. He sat slumped on the cushion, gray and listless.
“The Daysun has given me a prophecy about the battle.”
Her eyes sparked. “Oh, what pleasant tidings have been delivered?”
“Not an ounce in the world,” he said gloomily.
Ethan could not have felt better. He looked down at his hand; the “X” was missing. Rubbing his fingers on his knuckle, he gleamed in ecstasy because it didn�
�t hurt anymore. Then he raised his hand against the warm sunlight in victory. Nothing could stop him from living the life he once had.
Fearlessly, he hiked back to the forest. He took the stairs Gibbs forbade him to climb. Nothing in the forest made him afraid of death. It just wasn’t an option anymore. He had time to admire the red patches of sod and weeds intermingling along the forest floor. The rainbow-colored birds and the stone-textured lizards also caught his relaxed attention.
“Nothing could ruin my day!”
“I didn’t reveal the whole curse to Ethan, master,” Caitilin said, dropping her voice. She was sitting downcast on a cushion. She hated to change the subject, but this heavy rock of a burden drilled into her mind.
Gibbs poured her some tea and she gladly accepted it. “It’s a deaconess’s duty to tell the whole truth, Caity. We give all light, so all shadows may be pierced.”
She nodded and coldly accepted the truth. “It’s been gnawing at me for the longest time. It was a heavy weight hanging from my soul. I couldn’t tell him. He was so down-trodden and I just wanted to be a helper.”
The high priest seemed to understand. He got very close to her and took her hands, rubbing his thumb over her fingers. “Sometimes the truth is what we need to hear, even if it makes us cry rivers. Not everything that makes us cringe and cry out is bad, it’s just painful.”
He was free, that was the truth. Ethan ran barefoot through the soft dirt, laughing along with some singing birds. When the birds flew off, he found some leopard-spotted spiders to ogle at. One of them was creating a web, but it wasn’t Earthian shaped. Ethan put his face closer to see. Suddenly the spider scrambled over the web, moving its legs frantically. Ethan almost ran off, thinking the spider was protecting its territory. But when the spider finished moving, he saw what it had really done. The spider had created a perfect likeness of his face in web form. His hair, his eyes, and his mouth were portrayed. He sat back in the dirt and sighed.
The Boy and His Curse Page 10