by N. I. Rojas
“So… how many of those plastic cards I need to make two hundred dollars?” -He asked as if she hadn’t walked away already. But the question was kind of interesting to Kyra. It was there, stuck in the back of her brain, calling her attention too bad. This was not something easy for Kyra. She wasn’t something easy for Kyra as she wasn’t accustomed to being amused by people’s interests, doubts or choices. But, why Mackenzie’s sudden interest in money if he never used it? Why his insistence?
“Why are you asking this?” -She inquired, stopping in her tracks. She arched her right eyebrow more than usual. That was probably the only thing that gave Kyra away when she felt interest in something. Beyond that, her facial expression was made of stone.
“For no reason.” -He answered, reeling back and forward in his shoe heels.
“Well, in that case I don’t have to answer right now. I can tell you some other time. Maybe the weekend or next month. As I see it, you’ll be my shadow for long time.” -Kyra answered, resuming her walking.
“No, no, no, no… Don’t talk about shadows. Mine can be near and I need it back. You are ruining this.” -Mackenzie lost it, the little sanity he had left. Kyra opened her eyes bigger. This boy was a real cuckoo. He shook his head from side to side, as trying to shed away this impotence.
“Oh, stop it, Mackenzie. You are weird, sorry to let you know, and I think you need to look for another tutor-guide-nerd to bother with your nonsenses. I’m not the right person for this job. You need a psychiatrist.” -Kyra declared.
“It is easy for you to let people down. What a soldier to a cause you are! You were planning all this, right? Just like when you abandoned me yesterday in that place. I didn’t know my way back. Just tell me how much two hundred dollars are and I won’t bother you anymore.” -Kyra’s cheek turned red as chili pepper. For that instant she felt ashamed for having escaped the day before, but she needed her own air, she needed to think, she needed to heal.
Although Mackenzie didn’t want to accept it, as cruel as all this could be, he was at the mercy of Kyra’s knowledge. He could go to someone else, but he knew what would happen. Everyone will know he can’t read or even count his own money. He had no other choice that to trust or beg or maybe kneel in front of Kyra to get her help. He won’t do any of those things anyway. He was too proud, just as she was. - “I need it to pay for a game.”
“Quite expensive game, Mackenzie.” -Kyra snapped back twisting her mouth. She grabbed her hair and tousled it to the other side. She felt suffocated today. The DAYS were nothing easy for her as she felt her knees as weak and lame as jam and jelly.
“What I need to do to make you answer this single question?” -Mackenzie asked exasperated. He was trying to wash away the facial dumb expression he knew he was wearing, because that was what Kyra’s sweet scent do to him.
“In the first place, you should learn to talk correctly. There are words as “please” or “thanks” that are universal. People had been using them for centuries now, but you seem to lack good manners. No harm is done to you if you are polite.” -Kyra answered sarcastically while walking to her classroom.
“I’ll do everything, Fairy Girl, except using those words.” -He said defiantly.
“Grow up, Mackenzie. See you on class.” -Kyra answered back while rushing to her seat, and Mackenzie stood there, confused, trying to bring sense to all this. This girl could smell delicious, she could be an artwork, but she was rash and grumpy… As a troll.
Mackenzie tried again in each class. He sent Kyra papers with funny faces, symbols, drawings, but he couldn’t bring any words to be written. “ This is strange. ” -Mackenzie said to himself. - “ I don’t remember writing the note I sent Kyra the first day, but I’m clear, as clear as the Merm Lagoon, that I did it .”
“How’s your boyfriend, Rouge?” -Irving, the muscular boy, asked while passing by Kyra and Mackenzie in the cafeteria at lunch time. He kept walking. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting an answer.
“Are you still wearing dirty granny panties?” -Kyra shouted. Everybody heard Kyra’s words, and everybody laughed harder than the first time. Kyra felt proud of herself, because there was no reason in the world for her to allow being bullied by Irving again. Mackenzie laughed harder and his laugh was contagious as a rotavirus. Kyra couldn’t help but join him in the adventure that this joke has brought.
Soon, Mackenzie remembered the first and only time he was the center of a mockery. That happened way before the Bird Girl had arrived to Alter Land. He and his fellow friends were coming from a normal people village after watching a ball game. They were laughing all the way before setting foot in Alter Land. There, Bubbu pointed at his own tummy. His belly button was peeking out from between the hem of his shirt and the frayed belt of his pant.
“I can see my belly button now.” -He said proudly. The others joined him, as every one of the other boys suffered from the same embarrassing situation.
“That’s weird.” -Mackenzie remembered saying. - “Your clothes shrank, that’s it.”
“I think we have grown.” -Bubbu said, and all the others agreed with him. - “That’s why Beardly has a baby beard in his face. It’s not a spell from fairies as you told us!”
As Bubbu was always the nosy knows-it-all, all the other boys started mocking Mackenzie.
“As we are growing and you are not, maybe it is time for us to rule for a while. We will be considerate of you while you too grow.” -Twinkie snapped.
During the following days, Mackenzie hid from those he used to call his friends because they started ordering him around to clean the tree trunk and to search for food, and hunt, and to rescue the skunks from the saber tooth tiger. All the jobs Mackenzie had given them, they were paying him back with the same risky or boring duties. Mackenzie wasn’t happy been ordered around as if he wasn’t important. He considered being the one that brought them to Alter Land in the first place, and the only boss to follow, the only leader worth honoring. Mackenzie chose to hide until his friends could forget their crazy behavior. Days passed by and the boys came looking for him. When Mackenzie let himself be seen, he assured the boys that a plague so bad that causes hallucinations had bitten them, but he had gone looking for the antidote deep into the forest and now he was back to save them all. Grateful for the healing potion that was- in fact- just honey and breadcrumbs and seaweed, the boys followed Mackenzie as if nothing had ever happened, as if they hadn’t changed or grown. Their belly buttons ended forgotten for a while. That was until the Bird Girl told them the truth.
Soon, all this joke and laugh and mockery were not funny to Mackenzie. But watching Kyra laugh in madness made him forget it all again.
“Can’t say I didn’t teach you something! So… show me how much two hundred dollars is.” -Taking advantage of the opportunity, Mackenzie told her while cleaning a tear of joy running down Kyra’s cheek. This felt too intimate to Kyra, too close to a relationship that made her skin shiver with the simple contact. Suddenly it was hard for Kyra to resist Mackenzie’s special face. It was better not to let him know he was doing it because he would stop, and it felt extra special for her.
At the end of the lunch, the boy with the PCS came to Mackenzie’s table. He already had four gift cards of fifty dollars each in hand. Kyra had told him he could get a better deal for that amount of money, and warranty in a store, but Mackenzie was stubborn enough to avoid listening her warnings. Mackenzie gave the cards to the boy and took the PCS. He was happy, jumping like a small boy with new toy, but his happiness was not going to last forever. Ten minutes later, it ran out of battery. Mackenzie’s happiness faded away and the uncertainty took power of him. He gave it to Kyra so she can make a diagnosis and she told him he must charge it again. But the boy who sold it to him didn’t give him the power cord or anything else.
“Those things will cost more.” -The boy answered when Mackenzie went asking for the accessories.
“I told you.” -Kyra recited, and she couldn’t hide a smile of satisfactio
n as she said the words out loud. -I hope I taught you something!”
Chapter 7: Dreams and Reprimands
Thursday
Everyday seemed unfinished. There was no magic. No grateful noises. No familiarities apart from the same pain in the neck. There was no place like Alter Land, the one Mackenzie had considered his house for so many years. Minutes before sunrise, a sweet voice caressed Mackenzie’s ears. It was a soft humming, a distant sound coming from the depths of the ocean. Clearly, he could see the seaweeds, the shells, the colorful swans playing in the riversides. The smell was unmistakable. Mackenzie had never felt such a fresh, natural scent as the roots and the mud from Alter Land. The frogs were making chorus to the melodious hum and the green grass danced softly with the wind. The leaves of the trees swayed with the breeze as their colors changed. Colorful as parrots’ bodies, elegant as peacocks and orchids dancing with the softness of the spring. Warming as sunflowers in the summer, with the brick paths covered in petals and the first falling leaves. Amber leaves, coppery brown as autumn. Nearly naked trees sheltered with just a fluffy frosting, white as winter snowfall.
How powerful was the soft melody Mackenzie was listening, it made his eyes cry without him wanting it! He could recall the first time he flew high in Alter Land's sky. The freedom he experienced at such young age; the few times he fell hard against the uneven ground and the way the creatures laughed of him and advised him about flying powders and magical artifacts. But he wished more than just a power he could eventually lose. Mackenzie wanted to do it on his own, to achieve what every man wishes to conquer. He believed that as he ended in a place like that without any help, then he could fly by himself as well.
The mountains were moving from side to side, opening a path, blocking another. Stars were clearly visible although the sun was dancing high in the sky, and the moon was gracefully casting a love spell over her eternal lover: the sun. The hum grew stronger as Mackenzie smiled unwittingly. It was obvious now that Sirina was behind this entire mirage. She was powerful as a witch. Stronger than any other of her kind, even stronger than her father, the King of the Seas and Waters. A message was being delivered in Sirina’s sweet language; maybe a petition of returning home, but it was hard to decipher when Mackenzie was unconsciously thinking of Kyra. Although Sirina’s song was meant just for him, Mackenzie was blocked, much more than a writer with time and paper, ink and wishes, but without any word or idea to create a new world.
Kyra’s face came in front of this awesome dream as a powerful hallucination, and Sirina wasn’t happy to discover that Mackenzie had found another human girl, another one to replace the Bird Girl she hated so bad. Sirina couldn’t fight against this, a human girl who can accompany Mackenzie to fly the skies, to touch the freshness of the clouds or to sink the tip of the toes into gold bathed caves. It was an excruciating mortification what Mackenzie was causing her.
She hummed harder now, her bad feelings took power of the vision and Mackenzie could only see piranhas, panthers, and hyenas. Trolls from the mountains and wicked elves from underground were now chasing him, grunting disgustingly while their noises startled every living creature.
“Wake up, Mackenzie… Are you there?” -Fortunately, he opened his eyes before the tic-toc crocodile joined the savage party to eat him from a single nibble. - “Were you sleeping there? Please, tell me you fell and ended unconscious on the floor.”
Mackenzie thanked all the good pirates and Indians he could recall in favor of finishing with that dream. It wasn’t completely awful, but the last part wasn’t what he expected. Obviously he’ll choose the crocodile over Sirina’s wrath any time. Standing up, he noticed his favorite green pants- as thin as stockings- were at full display. The wide legs of his jeans were rolled up to his knees, leaving not too much of him to the imagination. Kyra simply made a grimace of disapproval and antipathy and left before Mackenzie could start to explain. She didn’t need excuses, as she knew it will be something stranger than the boy itself.
During the first classes, Mackenzie just thought about going back home. There was no reason to stay. He had ended there by mistake and it was obvious he doesn’t fit in a school with guys and girls that were growing and getting older every day. What Sirina tried to make him see was his reality, his house, a paradise that belonged just to him. Maybe that night he’ll fly back home. No goodbyes were needed as no one would truly miss him. These four days will be with him as a great experience, but nothing powerful enough to make him really grow old.
Along with Kyra, he moved from class to class in a mechanical way. No familiarities - he said to himself- She won’t miss me either .
The entrance to their next class was a chaos. The rabbits' burrow in Alter Land, -the one where all thirty-five rabbits lived together -, was lonelier than the classroom door. Miss Valence started her class as rapidly as she was allowed, but Mackenzie’s mind just wandered outside the window and even farther away... back home. Minutes later, when the professor started the roll call, Mackenzie noticed Kyra hadn’t come to class. He tried to leave the classroom but Miss Valence wasn’t as easy and sweet as he expected her to be. He had to endure the whole Math class until two minutes after the ringing of the bell when Miss Valence had the decency to finally release them with a homework so long not too many kids had the opportunity to fully write it in their already full notebooks.
Mackenzie knew something was not right as Kyra had never lost a class in her whole life. She was the perfect student, the most likely to succeed after graduation, the best-over-the-top-brilliant-soon-to-be-pro-honor-student. Mackenzie searched the entire school with difficulty. It was lunch time already and the halls were full of students chatting and walking at leisure pace. Some girls- the chic divas- were retouching their make-ups. Right in front of them were the sweaty athletes, pumping their biceps and triceps and talking about the abs that started to appear. The nerds, or the most technological guys, were sitting on the floor with their cool gadgets and their long hairs covering their eyes, yet they managed to see perfectly the display screen and the right button to press. The normal, ordinary kids were everywhere, excepting Kyra.
There were only two places she could have gone if she wasn’t in school, Mackenzie thought. Her house or the library. He opted for the last one as Kyra loved books more than anything. Mackenzie ran out of the school and into the street. The day was feeling humid and strangely cold. The clouds began to swirl in the sky, as mills powered by storm winds.
Inside the library, he walked through the long and silent hallways, fearing to even sneeze with the dust of the bookshelves. Mackenzie knew that one sneeze like his, so indelicate as Troll farting, was sworn to ricochet in every corner of that old edification for hours. A big wooden desk was resting in the center of the library, and a huge visitor log was in a corner of the desk. A woman, old enough to have visited Alter Land like sixty-five years ago, looked at Mackenzie with an interesting toothless smile.
“I’m looking for…” -Mackenzie started to say.
“Your girlfriend?” -The old woman guessed, interrupting Mackenzie.
“No. My friend.” -Somewhat displeased, Mackenzie corrected the old woman. - “A red head girl.”
“For information write your name there.” -Said the woman pointing at the visitor’s log. Mackenzie walked to it. It was useless to try to explain the old woman he didn’t know how to write; she won’t believe a single word. He could invent any kind of excuse, arthritis, or a broken finger, but the woman won’t believe it either. The letters written in the pages of the book danced indifferently in front of Mackenzie’s eyes. Astonished, he looked back at the old woman, who watched him amused. He had only seen this kind of trick in Alter Land, where histories were written over the clouds and the soft wind swayed every word to be read by fairies and to make babies laugh. - “Saw something?” -She asked not surprised at all. Mackenzie took the pen and tried the best he could to write something. Doodling some familiar symbols: a star, the sun, a snake, a teepee. The, he releas
ed the pen.
“The redhead should be the only one in the history section. Second floor at the end. Last row. She was moody, but she never forgets her manners.”
“Okay.” -He said decided to go after Kyra. - “By the way, nice smile.” -Mackenzie said without thinking. He started to walk faster this time. The old woman took the hand to her mouth, thinking what she had said to put this boy in such a bad temper.
The bookshelves stretched over Mackenzie’s head up to touch the ceiling. Searching between the endless rows, he heard a sob. He opted to follow the sound, a soft song, a sad but beautiful melody. At the distance he saw her rebel red hair. Her smell was all over the place now. It wasn’t soft as any other day, but still delicate. Mackenzie sat next to crying Kyra, considering what he should do. Kyra saw him from the corner of the eye. Surprised, she tried to control her anger and tears. Too bad she failed, her eyes were now flooded with the fattest salty tears she had never had. The image of her was sad, yes, but Mackenzie made a mental picture of it anyway, as he considered it the sweetest thing he had ever seen.
“I knew I could find you alone in here.” -He said. Sadly, every time he tried to sound sincere, a funny laugh made company to every one of his words, making them sound cheaper and fool. He rebuked himself for the first time ever. - “What happened?”