by Tatiana Vila
“Once upon time there was light in my life, but now there's only love in the dark,” Comus started singing. A Bonny Tyler's song if I wasn't mistaken. “Nothing I can say, a total eclipse of the heaaaaart,” he ended with a hand over his chest and laughed. “Yes, yes, music stirs intense feelings in us, the same way movies, books, paintings and sculptures do. For how long we wish to remain in that cocoon of emotional freedom, it's up to us.” he said. “The problem is…some people need to stay more time than others. Some people don't wish to come back even.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, not entirely sure if I wanted to know.
“Your sister,” he said cautiously, seeming to know he was touching a sore wound with this. “She used to read a lot of books.” It didn't sound like a question, but more like an affirmation.
“Reads a lot of books,” I corrected, not liking the past tense he'd used.
“Yes, she likes reading,” he said, taking in my silent message. “From what I can see, that's her personal escape. Something must've pushed her to grab that book and made her fervently wish to stay in that world she was holding between her hands. Have you any idea of what might've inflamed that desire?”
My throat tightened, as if big, invisible hands were squeezing my wind pipe. “Maybe,” I finally said, with a fierce pang of pain in my chest.
He nodded in understanding. “You don't need to tell me the reason, she-fledgling. I can see regret and sorrow swirling in your eyes. But you should know one thing.” I looked at him. “You're the only one who can bring her back.”
“Bring her back? From where?”
“Chimera.”
“What?” Was this some kind of joke? I'd been expecting something like 'bring her back from her slumber' or something along those lines, but never bring her back from a place that, until now, sounded completely unreal. A place that only he seemed to know.
“All these comatose people that are believed to be unresponsive in this world are, in fact, very much responsive in Chimera. I don't know the reason behind this mass departure of humans into Chimera, but I know that they are indeed there.”
“How can you be so sure?” Even if all this sounded like something straight out from a sci-fi movie, I had to ask.
“Smooch,” he gave me as an answer. “He told me the citizens of Chimera have never seen the Garden of Wandering Souls as multicolored and in full bloom as it is now.”
“What does the Garden of Wandering Souls have to do with this?” I said, unable to rub out the sarcastic shade coloring my voice.
“You see, my dear,” he began to explain, “The garden belongs to Intork, the great crystalline tower in Chimera that serves as a conductor. It distributes the collected energy in the garden throughout the four lands of Chimera—Tacca, Sakura, Calypso, and Salix. Each land—”
“Hold on.” I held up my hands to stop him. “What do you mean by collected energy?”
He licked his lollipop with a deep sucking sound. “The Garden of Wandering Souls is where all humans go while sleeping, is where all the pristine energy of a human dream flows.” He paused to take a big sip of his pop, and then, whirled it around his mouth like a washing machine. He swallowed it with a sigh. “The garden has crystals that absorb this energy and steer it into the tower for distribution. It's this energy that is collected that keeps Chimera going.”
“So…you're saying that this place, Chimera, feeds off of human dreams to be alive?”
“Not only dreams, but our imagination as well.”
“Okay, that's it,” Ian snapped and stood up. “This man is nuts. Don't tell me you believe all this Hollywood crap!” he said, staring at me with incredulity and pleading in his face. “I wanted to give him some time to explain but—I mean, come on! The Garden of Wandering Souls? Intork, the crystalline tower of conducting energy? Oh! And Tacca, Calypso, Salix and…whatever the other name was? Really? The last thing we need is him saying you must travel through time to save Buffy.”
Comus gave a small cough. “Not exactly travel through time but through dimensions.”
“Big, freaking difference,” Ian said, fixing his eyes above, as if exasperated and looking for an escape.
“You mean Chimera is in another dimension?” I asked Comus, intrigued. I could feel my eyes wide open, like two saucers.
He nodded and directed his stare at Ian. “You might believe all what I've said is hogwash, but it is not. Astral projection is widely known—your etheric body does leave your physical body while sleeping. Several have experienced it consciously; it's what we call an out-of-body experience,” he said. “Common belief is that your spiritual body leaves to travel in another plane, but what people don't know is that plane has a name.”
“Chimera,” I said, taking a good guess.
“Learn from her, he-fledgling,” he told him, waving his finger at me. “You're too quick to judge.”
“My name is Ian,” he shot Comus an annoyed look. “And I'm not quick to judge. I'm just being reasonable, and logical.”
“Your mind is filled with too many potholes, he-fledgling. You better listen to what's within your chest.”
“I said my name is Ian—and how can you accuse me of having potholes in my head when you're the one who's all—”
“Comus,” I cut Ian off, wanting to stop a discussion that was navigating into tumultuous waters. Besides, knowing Ian as I did, I knew Comus was fighting a lost cause. “You said my sister wanted to break away from this world, and that she used the book to do so. Was that the case for the others, too?”
“Most certainly,” he said, turning to look at me and releasing Ian from his stare. “Though others have not only used books as their vehicle. From what I saw in the news, several were watching movies or listening to music—a couple of them were in museums and art galleries studying paintings and sculptures, as well.” He untangled his legs from the sofa and brought his feet to the floor. An aura of seriousness bordered his entire body as he placed his elbow on his knee and propped his chin on his raised fist.
“It all comes back to what we talked about before, she-fledgling. All these means of entertainment are being used to escape a world that feels no longer a place of merriment and gathering, a world where power has substituted humbleness and empathy, a world where money has switched places with love and family, a world where people are defined by labels and not their heart. A world,” he sighed, “that cages people's soul with every new technological invention. We humans don't know what true freedom really is, and whether consciously or subconsciously, a part of us is always seeking for that winged ecstasy—especially when this world spins a bit more out of control each day.” He turned to look at me with a sad sparkle in his eyes, reminding me of two dying stars. “Do you still wonder why people seek to escape this reality?”
A whisper of a clutch threatened to dig its fingers around my heart. Dad always had said it was a pity that a world as beautiful and blue as ours was being treated so poorly. That we humans had so much potential to evolve into something bigger and greater, but we were messing up our chance with trivialities that only made us go two steps back. “Be conscious of what surrounds you,” he'd often said to me. “And if you always keep an open mind to everything, there won't be a holding you back.”
Keep an open mind. Perhaps that's what I needed to do with Comus, listen with no judgments crowding my head.
“Okay so…let's say Chimera is real,” I said, directing my piercing stare at Ian, trying to shut him from further criticism. “Why is the Garden of Wandering Souls so full of human energy right now? Why are people falling into a coma all of a sudden? We know the situation is pretty bad here, but this sudden mass departure…it looks like something major triggered it. There's something more behind all of this.”
“Yes, it's what Smooch thinks.” He took another sip of his pop and did the same whirling thing with his mouth. Had anyone shown Comus some simple etiquette in his entire life? “But like I told you before,” he continued, “we don't know th
e reason.”
I frowned, deep in thought. Images of Buffy and I flashed through my mind—both joking about each others' Batman and Bat Chick costumes, both laughing at the top of our lungs after a chocolate ice cream fight, both smiling as we made snow angels in Gran's yard, both screaming when we found a fat cockroach in that old hotel room in Kentucky, both running away from that crazed turkey in a Maryland farm, both holding hands after promising we would always stay together…
Buffy.
“How can I bring my sister back?” I asked him, feeling as if a horn was stabbing my heart.
Comus smiled a wicked smile. “That, my dear she-fledgling, I know.”
“Now this is the part where he says he'll kill you so you can go into Chimera's dimension,” Ian said cynically, touching something above the fireplace. Something that looked like some kind of eerie troll holding a spear.
Comus looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “He doesn't have your delightful sense of humor, I see.”
“Tell me about it,” I held back a small smile.
“Yeah, just go ahead”—Ian made a motion with his arm, as if willing me to carry on—“and conspire against me with the king of weirdos.”
I rolled my eyes.
Comus paid no heed to his words and said, “I will tell you how to get your sister back after dinner, and if my biological clock isn't wrong, that time has come already. So if you please follow me.” He brought himself to his feet and waltzed out of the room with the half grace of a ballerina.
We followed him with no questions, Ian walking close to me. After passing the vast foyer, two torch-lit hallways and several stone columns, he bent to the side and whispered in my ear, “I wonder where Comus and that teeny butler got that idea.”
“What idea?”
“Of you and me being together.”
My stomach clenched. I wasn't expecting that and didn't have an answer, so I decided to change the subject as fast as I could. “What was up with you wanting to have a beer, huh? You're not legal yet.”
“I'm nineteen and a guy,” he said, pointing his thumbs at him. “To my standards, I'm legal.”
I scoffed. “Whatever, you shouldn't be drinking this early in life.”
“Yes, Mom.”
CHAPTER 13
It turned out dinner wasn't ready. So it ended up with Comus excusing his biological clock dysfunction and Midlo asking us for more time to set up the table and finish cooking food. A swift look of reprimand might've crossed his face, but it went away as fast as it came, not giving me time to see if he was, indeed, as frustrated with his boss as I thought he was.
Personally, I didn't know how Midlo handled living with Comus tewnty-four hours a day, especially in a house where darkness crushed down on you like a big, black octopus. It must've been exhausting and suffocating. And we still hadn't seen his schizophrenic side pop up, something I truly wasn't eager to see.
Our rooms were the next step. Comus decided to take us there so we could get acquainted with our chambers—I swear I would never grow used to his old fashioned way of speaking. He was a joy to look at while walking through those torch-lit hallways, and I felt grateful for having him there to make me think of something other than vapory, floating bodies. The colorful outfit he was sporting and the grim surroundings clashed hilariously, the contrast too broad and deep to not light up a warm, flapping feeling inside of me. I didn't know whether to join him along with his loud, cheery humming or to crack a laugh. Seriously. This house and Comus couldn't have been on more opposite sides of the spectrum.
“Here it is,” he announced, opening a thick, carved door that led to a spacious room. “Your very private haven of peace and relaxation for this night, she-fledgling.”
I had to admit it wasn't that bad with all those tall windows offering a glimpse into the night. Above the dense coat of fog, a strip of dark velvet with diamond-bright stars embellished the view. Inside, clear colors permeated the room, which was good because it pushed away some of the darkness threatening to cross the threshold. But the center piece had to be the beautiful four poster bed with the sheer canopy. Drapes of a whispery cream ivory fell down to the sides, inviting one's hands to touch and feel as one imagined them wrapping around one's body while a salty, Saharan breeze brushed by. The solid bed posts guarding the golden-clad mattress had silver twirling around them, ending in an intricate spray of flowers at the top. Romanticism dripped from this bed. It was something a princess would've slept in.
“It's beautiful, thank you,” I told him, staring all around me.
Comus smiled with a satisfied nod and turned to Ian. “You, he-fledgling, will be staying next to this room.” He slid out of the room and into the hallway to show him where exactly he would be staying.
Ian followed him and I didn't stay behind. I was dying to see if his room was as cool as mine or just not cool at all. Honestly, a wicked, little voice inside of me whispered pleas that it would be the latter. I restrained myself from drumming my fingers together and saying in a low, deep voice Mwuahahaha.
Comus was about to open the door to Ian's room when a low and deep, growling roar split the air.
I turned. “What the hell was—” My breath stuck in my throat with the pressure of a thousand silent screams. I tried to move but my body seemed to be on the same unresponsive track as my voice was. And I needed to run, fast, because the four hundred pound beast climbing up the grand staircase had surely nothing more in mind than to eat me whole.
Without thinking, Ian jumped in front of me and splayed his arms out to the sides, as if to shield me from the razor-fanged danger moving toward us. It moved with the languid pace of something that savored fear.
“Get that thing away from us!” Ian snapped, stepping back to close the distance between my body and his back—a back that had never felt so sturdy and big, making me feel like a wee-thing.
At the sound of Ian's alarmed voice, the beast’s ears perked up and it veered its massive body toward the cowering heap of shaky limbs and legs that we were. I fisted Ian's shirt and pulled him closer in a desperate attempt for protection, but there was nothing we could do against an animal that size. Nothing. It was one of those moments where words like “it was nice to meet you” or “I'm sorry for everything I've done” sounded right. But there were none. My throat was too busy dealing with the lump of dread blocking the air passage.
Gran used to tell me that one should fear living beings and not the dead ones, because what could they do to you besides spook you in the night? I'd always disagreed with her, though, because dealing with living things was easier and more predictable. You could get physical with them and even stride out victoriously. With the dead, everything was unpredictable. For starters, you could never get physical with them. That was a hell of a disadvantage. Two, you never knew how they would react or what they would do, because the Limbo's rules were as mysterious to us as the Mona Lisa—and uncertainty was pretty darn frightening. And three, there really didn't need to be a third reason. Ghosts were the scariest thing in the world, period.
In that moment however, with those searing, blue eyes fixed on us, my view on the matter was definitely changing.
“Ah, Nero, you sweet thing, don't scare our guests,” Comus said calmly, as if this wasn't a matter of life and death but a jovial encounter between the house pet and the unknown visitors. “Here, kitty kitty…”
To our surprise, the beast turned its head at the sound of those words and walked back to Comus, where an expectant hand was waiting to brush its white fur. The animal rubbed its head against Comus' hip in pleasure, moaning and purring like a big cat. No, scratch that. More like releasing a soft, gentle growl.
That's when I noticed the purple collar wrapped around its thick neck. I took a small step around Ian and asked in astonishment, “Is that your—”
“Pet?” Ian finished for me.
“No,” Comus smiled, looking down at it with warmth and love. “He's much more than that. Nero is my best friend.”
<
br /> The thump of shoes clomping against the floor reached my ears. I turned to the side and spotted a panting Midlo climbing up the wide staircase in a rush. “Sir,” he breathed out and bent to rest his hands on his knees. “Nero wanted to…come and…look for you, but I told him…not to,” he said, directing his accusing glare at the four-hundred-pound pet, “That you were busy, and he still decided to dart away and interrupt you, sir.”
Incredibly, Nero lowered his head as if ashamed and hid behind Comus.
“But he's a tiger! A full-fledged tiger!” Ian said, shocked.
“A white tiger,” I added in a soft and whispery tone, still too shaken to fill my lungs to their full capacity.
“Yes, isn't he beautiful?” Comus said, filled with glowing pride. Now that he wasn't growling and a tad of calm had settled in, I could see how beautiful and majestic this animal truly was. His fur was white as snow, with pitch-black stripes. His nose was tipped a lovely pink and cute, white whiskers were about his mouth and chin. The aquamarine color of his exotic eyes though, had to be the most striking part of him.
Figuring he'd been forgiven, Nero walked around Comus and started licking his leg.
“Yes, my friend, you haven't done anything wrong,” Comus told him, petting his head and the spot behind his ears. “I'm glad you joined us, in fact. Let me introduce you to our guests.” Comus looked at us.
Nero stopped his loving caresses and laid his stare on us.
“Don't let him come near us,” Ian said immediately, pushing me behind him with his arm.
“He's friendly. You don't need to fear him,” Comus said, cocking his head to the side as if amused of our wary reaction.
“He's a tiger!” Ian said, as if that was reason enough. “Is it even legal to have one?”
“I assure you,” Midlo suddenly said, “that Nero is very docile and welcoming.”
“You people are crazy!” Ian shook his head. “That tiger is probably bigger than you on his four legs!” he told Midlo. “He's wild in nature. You can't keep him inside a house.”