“Your hair is the least of your concerns...”
“How so?”
“Do you want me to make a list?”
Edgar narrowed his eyes, but the sentiment behind it didn’t make it to Sono in one piece.
“Or maybe a long beard?”
“A beard? Oh yeah, go for it, that’ll make you look less like a deranged cannibal. How old do you think she is?”
Edgar stroked the cropped whiskers on his chin tenderly. “Why does her age matter?”
Sono shrugged his shoulders, surrendering his inquisitiveness openhandedly, partly because of the creeping shame he felt for not willingly answering his grandpa’s question. After all, her age was impossible for Edgar to know, unless he knew her, which, unfortunately, didn’t seem to be the case.
“The shadow must ripen before its fruit can cast a shadow.”
Sono glanced surreptitiously to his left and right, before glancing up as well. He even looked over his shoulder, very carefully. “What? Who are you talking to?”
“You.”
“Me? I didn’t ask you anything. Not about, uh...whatever weird shit you just said. Shadows and fruit.”
“It wasn’t an answer.”
Alarm tried to pierce his flesh, but apathy had already blanketed it. “What…what are you doing? What are you talking about Grandpa?” He turned his upper body toward his grandpa.
“A way, possibly.”
“Really? I didn’t know that…” Sono, stiff with bewilderment, watched him closely. “You’re fucking delirious. Have you been toying with the circuitry up here?”
Being about a head taller than his grandpa, Sono tapped the top of his head with his knuckles. He didn’t even flinch, persisting to peek out probingly from under his loose-fitting eyelids.
“No. That would be brainless,” his grandpa said and stuffed his puffy smile chockfull of delight.
“Very funny, Grandpa. Maybe you should rinse it at least…gotta be pretty stinky in there.”
“It doesn’t change what she is.”
Though she had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, not until now did he seriously entertain, however gingerly, the possibility of her being something else than human.
“Yeah? And what exactly is she?”
“You should ask her.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I can’t just call her and she appears. Or should I just start mumbling nonsense to myself and hope she’s intrigued?”
Edgar didn’t in the least mirror Sono’s concern.
“There are other ways.”
“There are? Like…”
His grandpa remained silent.
“No, no, I’m not letting you do any of your shaman shit on me. I’m too old to start wetting my bed.”
“I had no intention of doing anything of the sort you’re suggesting.”
“And I’m not smoking your pipe either…”
“I don’t want you to ever smoke this pipe, you hear?” Edgar fired back immediately and glared at him. “Never! Sono, listen; this pipe could cause you tremendous harm…iiiii.” Edgar appeared to be chasing away unspeakable horrors scurrying across the insides of his shut eyelids. With urgency he popped them open again and leaned forward, staring rabidly at Sono. “Haven’t I told you this?”
Sono shook his head nonchalantly. His grandpa might’ve mentioned it once or twice in the past, but nothing that had really made a lasting impression.
“These ingredients are mixed especially for me. No one else, not even my grandson. It took years to perfect the blend. Imagine what it could do to you!”
Sono couldn’t grasp the consequences his grandpa fretted about, simply because he made no such attempt.
“The smoke carries my breath. It’s a bridge, and a translator of sorts.”
Sono glanced up with skepticism at the sky. “For what? Truckloads of nonsense?”
“Possibly, yes.”
His guileless demeanor deflated Sono without much effort at all, and subdued the likelihood of a caustic follow-up. He locked his teeth and lips together somberly.
“You never know who or what responds. I’ve been taken aback myself a few times. It’s not always fun. For it to go through you without proper training…I don’t know what could happen. I…I don’t know.”
His grandpa’s eyes remained widened as he stared into the ground. Whatever unfolded within the confines of his skull was kept there, duly sequestered, far from Sono’s reach.
“What I’m trying to say is that smoking it could harm you. Do you understand, Sono, it could harm you?”
“Yes, I do understand; it could harm me, big time. But what about the fumes? They don’t?”
“No.”
Sono threw his hands apart in wonder. “Why not?”
“It can’t.”
Sono clenched his teeth and pouted in dissatisfaction. “All right, professor, if you prefer me blind…hand me a stick. And sharpen the point.”
“There are powers involved that…it’s too risky when you’re not initiated. But please, trust me, the smoke won’t harm you. I wouldn’t let it. The smoke that oozes out of the blend is too weak, and the smoke I exhale is changed. It’s pretty much harmless. But don’t ever smoke it pure, out of the pipe. Never suck it in like I do. That’s when it gets dangerous, when it hits the liquid and fuses with your spirit. Understand?”
Sono nodded loosely. “Don’t worry; the way that shit smells, you’d have to force me.”
“Good.”
Standing perfectly still, Sono stole a quick glance of the glass jar in his grandpa’s hand, before lifting his gaze to his face and, finally, he looked the other away, taking a deep breath as he enlivened his bodily stillness.
“You could go look for her…” Edgar suggested casually, abandoning the somber tones prevalent just moments ago.
“Around here? I don’t have time for that.”
“Why not?”
“I work.”
“Stealing is not work.”
“Yeah, and being a shaman is?”
“I’m appreciated in the community. People come to me with all kinds of ailments, physical as well as spiritual.”
“Your closest neighbor is like five hours away, so I wouldn’t call it a community…but hey, I’m appreciated in my community too.”
“That’s a very dubious appreciation…”
“Dubious? I’ll tell you what’s dubious, Grandpa,”
With fingers spread wide, Sono lifted his left arm, displaying the sentence he received from the Core at age eleven, not only carved into his radial bone, presumably with some kind of laser, but the flesh wound then filled with bright green fluorescent ink. The scar tattoo glowed so strongly in the dark that few garments could mask it, the two rows of text like melted plutonium rods on his skin. Even in the muted daylight it read clearly:
Maliciously Subverting the Financial Harmony of the Glorious Capital
9 (NINE) Years Deducted from Lawbreaker: SONO CORAL ISANN
“That’s fucking dubious.”
Edgar grunted some ambivalent syllables.
“Nine years for putting a few bugs in my mouth. Nine years. Hoo-ray to that humane cesspool. I’m glad that you’re out here, Grandpa, away from it all. And I don’t mind the time it takes me to get here. Who knows that they’d do to you in the city…you’d be locked up way before me, that’s for sure. A funny old man is the last thing they’d call you.”
“Why would it be awful if they took me?”
“Why?” A muffled laugh escaped Sono’s twisted lips. “Are you fishing for compliments? Because, if so, it’s kind of a slimy way…”
“No.”
Sono peered suspiciously at him.
“Well…you probably wouldn’t make it out alive. That’s why. They’re not exactly tuned into our frequencies. Definitely not yours anyway…”
“It’s the same with the insects we eat. Do you miss them? Show them respect for sacrificing their lives?”
“What? How is that
the same?”
“Think.”
Sono did, for about five seconds, but only managed to furrow his brows since nothing substantial materialized but simmering animosity. “We don’t imprison them.”
“We do, and then we eat them. What’s worse?”
Sono tried to assess his assertion quickly. “So? Should we starve instead? They’re not human and especially not related to me like you are. Even though you might share a lot more traits with them than the average human…”
“If they could formulate their feelings in a way we understood, do you think we’d be eating them? The caterpillar or cricket will have other caterpillars and crickets that’ll miss them.”
“Are you equating me to a cricket?”
“Depends whether you take it as a compliment or an affront.”
“Definitely not a compliment.”
“Because you consider yourself more worthy than a cricket?”
“Uh…yes.”
“They cherish life just as much as you do.”
“Let me guess; you stuck a cricket inside your ear and it told you? Did you let it nibble on your earwax too?”
“It’s alive. If it wouldn’t want to live, it wouldn’t move. It’d be dead. It’s simple.”
Sono looked sternly at his grandpa, wearing innocence with satisfaction. The only thing that moved was his stomach, rising and falling. Edgar didn’t even blink, not for a while at least, and then suddenly he discharged a dozen blinks in a flash. Sono took his eyes off of him.
“Hey, so…what is she?”
“What she is?”
“Yeah. Turn. Because…”
Though embarked on rather flippantly, a distraction, his leaps back in time swiftly pushed aside everything else currently tiptoeing through his mind.
“It doesn’t matter what she is.”
Edgar snapped his fingers blithely.
“Aww, come on, don’t get all blue on me now…”
“I haven’t, I assure you.”
“Not even a little bit? Like turquois? You could use some color on those grim cheeks.”
“It really doesn’t matter what she is.”
“All right, it doesn’t matter…but if you know, can’t you please just tell me, and we’ll be done with it?”
“Dead and alive.”
Sono’s surprise at his grandpa’s conceding turned sour the very moment he was about to alter his expression, realizing it wasn’t any better from before. He did ultimately alter his expression, but in the opposing direction. “Awwwaah…another riddle.” Sono sighed softly. “How’s that possible…”
“Do you think you’re any different?”
Peering at his grandpa, he tried to establish whether the miscommunication had happened naturally, or if it was a ruse. His efforts quickly proved fruitless.
“I meant the riddle, but…haaw, shit. All right, you don’t want to drop it, fine. I’ll bite; hook, line, and sinker. Yeah, I do think I’m different. I’m right here, alive and speaking. I don’t feel the least dead. Or what do you say; has my soul left me? Is it fighting rabid unicorns?”
Edgar stared at him austerely, not in the eyes, or even his nose, but at his forehead.
“Why are you looking at my forehead?”
“A single breath. We’ve taken billions of them. But just one, narrow it down to one single breath; when is it born, and when does it die? Birth isn’t the beginning, and death is not the end.”
“But you just said that she’s dead. She’s both dead and alive.”
“Because we all are Sono. No matter what you encounter, it all follows the same loop. It’s simple. Transformation, all of it. Energy. How could one exist if the other didn’t? It’s all connected.”
“It being what? I never know what you’re talking about. It’s like pushing a button on you and random words just comes flying out. At least give me something to fend them off with, you know, some context. Don’t you have a filter or something to sort that shit? A decency filter, for us less shamanian?”
“No.”
Veiling his disappointment by firmly pushing his lips together, Sono gazed out over the gray plains. For a few moments, neither one said anything.
“In a way, this desolation land is perfect for you, isn’t it?”
“That wasn’t very kind of you to say, Sono.”
Annoyance assailed him immediately, stemming from Edgar pointing out his rudeness, and also realizing his own part in said rudeness, which was, in all fairness, uncalled for.
“Why do you have to fight it?” his grandpa asked him.
“I never said I want to fight anything. You did.”
Edgar scoured the ground before them, his entire face below his eyes drooping. “Fend them off, you did say that.”
“Yeah, but that’s not fighting.”
“Why do you want to fend them off?”
“Because I want to keep my sanity, the little that’s left after all the time I’ve spent with you...”
Sono flashed a manic grin and a finger-gun at Edgar.
“Are there yellow butterflies?” his grandpa asked.
“What? Are you for real?”
“Are there yellow butterflies?”
Pressing his freshly moistened lips together, Sono kept increasing the pressure instead of letting up.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me Sono, that’s impolite. I’ll try once more; are there yellow butterflies?”
“This is dumb. Do I really have to answer that?”
“Just tell me what comes to your mind; it’s not any harder than that.”
“I don’t know...there’s you answer. Fondle it all you want. I’ll even give you two some time alone if you want.”
Edgar tilted his head sweetly.
“Play along. You’re too young to have lost your imagination.”
“Imagination? This sounds more like insanity to me.”
“Do you think you know the difference?”
“Yeah, I know the fucking difference. They’re separate.”
Recognizing that he might’ve overstepped, again, but this time coming to the realization all by himself, Sono peered humbly into his grandpa’s face. But he had not anticipated him to look so tired. He looked exhausted. He looked frail; he looked well beyond his years all of a sudden. Very seldom did Sono spot frailty in his grandpa.
Against his wishes, his eyes latched themselves onto the lavish folds under his grandpa’s lowered eyes, and would not let go.
“I haven’t lost my imagination; I just think this is dumb. But you’re a great shaman, Grandpa.”
Out of nowhere, Edgar slapped his thighs and then performed a very brief dance, something that looked like a startled sleepwalker’s version of line dancing, making his colorful pull tab necklace bounce and jangle. Just as abruptly as he had initiated it, he stopped it.
“Are there yellow butterflies?”
Exhaling vehemently through his nose, Sono reluctantly gave in. “Holy…yes, they’re everywhere. Oh, it’s beautiful, marvelous. I’m eating one as we speak. Mmm, njam njam, history’s delicious.”
Edgar quickly carved himself a disapproving grimace in response to Sono’s vigorous munching of saliva and gas.
“I’ll ignore that one. So, if there are yellow butterflies, then there are black butterflies as well. It’s simple Sono.”
Baring his teeth in frustration, Sono shut his eyes briefly.
“Yeah, simple…but I don’t get it. And do you know what else? I don’t care either.”
He widened his eyes and then shook his head to further substantiate his claim.
“You don’t care about her?”
One face, and one face only, swept through the underground chambers of his sealed mind.
“About Turn? How is this about her?”
With a strange tranquility, and above all, an affected smirk that bordered on mockery, Edgar seemed to silently gloat in his defeat, one Sono himself was unaware of until that very moment. Nevertheless, the feeling
accompanying it was not pleasant, and he sought to end it, even if meekly.
“So why butterflies, and not, I don’t know…squirrels? And how is black the opposite of yellow?”
Sono didn’t face him, nor did he look away, pretending to be unaffected by it all.
“What did you think the opposite of yellow was?”
“Uh…” Sono tried desperately to come up with a color. “Purple.”
“Bees?”
“Bees? Bees what?”
Sono met Edgar’s gray eyes with vigilance.
“Have you ever seen them? I mean the old, original pollinators. The ones that humans were forced to replace when they died out. It was long before you and I were born. Have you?”
“What do you think? No…shit. Despite my unearthly good looks, I haven’t traveled from some magical past; I was born here, I guess partly thanks to you. Did you forget about the shriveled antenna between your legs?”
“I meant holograms Sono, videos or pictures. And there’s no need to be so hostile. Or crass for that matter.”
Sono looked away and inhaled deeply, inflating the weight that had appeared in his chest in the hopes of it taking flight. “Have you eaten? I bought some corn.”
Edgar smiled privately. “Ah…yellow.”
“I can drop it in the fire and char the shit out of it if you want to. Dead and alive, just the way you like it.”
“What did the corn ever do to you?” Edgar asked reprovingly.
“Can’t you just respond normally once in a while?”
“Like you do? There’s a lot of anger in your speech Sono, for no reason but to sap you of strength. I don’t like it…you shouldn’t either. Muse over it. Promise me.”
After a soft snort, releasing all cognitive functions of merit along with it, Sono walked into Edgar’s dim home with the corn kernels in his backpack, leaving a cloud of dust behind as he threw the cloth door aside forcefully. He slumped down beside the fireplace, an ample pit with charred bricks stacked in a circle around it, where currently two little pieces of smoldering charcoal lent some color to the predominant gloom.
As always, pots, plates, and cups were stacked beside it in a pile, and this time the perforated plastic box was filled with dead crickets. Edgar persisted on giving them air, despite being lifeless. The Core prohibited anyone from breeding their own insects, coming down hard on anyone that set up their own shop, but the Outsiders often outsmarted them. If insects could be considered a triumph…
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