Divine Madness

by Harmon Cooper

  “And your ability allows you to slow down time, correct?” Jigme asked, pulling this bit of information from the explanation I’d given him earlier.

  “Yes, but as I said previously, I can’t control it. It just happens.”

  Jigme nodded. “Good to know. Then you will be staying with Saruul?”

  “Yes,” Saruul said, “and my mother will train him in the meantime.”

  I heard Roger nearly choke on his biscuit.

  “Your mother?” I asked, looking to Saruul.

  “I told you I would see to your training, and while there are other people that could train you in the village, I believe she would be the best.”

  “I agree,” Jigme said, echoing Saruul. “Dohna has trained a good many of the village’s strongest men. Are you opposed to her training?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I said, “she just didn’t tell me it was going to be her mother.”

  “All the men in our village are trained to fight by women,” Saruul explained. “The mothers start when they are young, and while you are no longer young, I’m sure she will be able to teach you something.”

  “Hopefully,” I heard Roger say from the ground.

  “But not with my sword, right?” I asked.

  “If you truly want to control your power, it would be best to learn to control your fists first,” Jigme suggested. “You mentioned that you have the Fist of Force power, given to you by your ring, but do you truly know how to use it?”

  I bit my lip. “Not exactly…”

  “Then you will benefit from training, as we all would. There isn’t a person alive in this world that couldn’t get better at doing something they’re already an expert at, from an enlightened monk to a seasoned mosquito. And I agree with Saruul, Dohna will teach you things you have never learned before. She will give you a finer appreciation for your abilities, allowing you to truly cultivate the Power. Perhaps you can mix your training in with meditation practice here at the monastery, which will keep you busy, especially as the festival kicks off. It can get a little rambunctious around here during this festival. What better time to focus on your body and mind?”

  Jigme slowly ate one of his biscuits and took a sip of his tea.

  “And do not worry about your friend,” he assured me, “we will do our best to take care of him here, as well as the two monks, and the spirits, if this is where they plan to stay.”

  “I would stay with you, Nick,” Tashi said. “If that is possible.”

  I nodded at the fire spirit.

  “You know where I’m going,” Roger said as he flapped up to the table. “But remember, I want a jacket.”

  “Thank you again,” Lhandon said, bowing his head at Jigme. “I believe our time here in Dornod will be quite fruitful.”

  Jigme returned his bow. “Yes, I’m grateful and humbled that the Eternal Hermit sent you in our direction.”

  Chapter Nine: Snow Lion Hospitality

  I followed Saruul out of the temple. Tashi was in his bottle now, and Roger was tucked under my robes to keep warm.

  The beautiful lioness walked a few steps ahead of me, and while we hadn’t discussed it yet, I could tell that we probably weren’t going to be parading around Dornod holding hands and acting affectionately.

  The lion people seemed even more suspicious of me now that I was wearing white robes. Anyone we came across as we moved away from the temple stared me down, a few trying to stop their mouths from falling open. Some of the men’s ears perked up, their eyebrows narrowing at me.

  “Friendly folks,” I said, waving at a woman with a child on her back. The child hissed at me. A snow lion ran past, ignoring us completely. It still had me on edge, and it took every ounce of concentration I had not to jump out of the way of the beast.

  Saruul smirked. “They will get used to you… Hopefully.”

  “Have you thought about buying a pair of ears?” Roger asked. “I’m sure whoever’s making me my jacket can also craft you a pair of floppy black and white ears. You could get a tail as well. Just clip it to your underpants and make a hole in your robe.”

  “They would know,” Saruul said, her nostrils flaring open.

  “He smells that bad? I thought it was just me.”

  “I’m planning to bathe tonight,” I told the two of them, suddenly feeling insecure.

  “Yes, you are,” the lioness said as we took a left turn, circling around a merchant who was selling religious objects, a few children perusing them. One of the kids looked up at me and saw Roger’s head peeking out of my robes.

  He pointed, his friend laughing.

  I stepped back as another lion ran past, the man roaring, startling me to the point that I placed my hand on the hilt of my blade until I saw him morph into a human and hug another man.

  The two patted each other on the back, hugged again, and continued into what was clearly a pub, the building marked by a mug of chung carved from wood, the sign beating in the breeze.

  I couldn’t help but look back and again see the tops of the clouds, the setting sun painting them a barrage of colors, from gold to peach, ripe cherry to lavender.

  I felt like we were on top of the world, like if I ran in any direction I would fall off and tumble back down the mountain, past the crackly rocks, eventually landing in a gully, where a stream would carry me to the foothills, from there to the jungle, and finally back to the beach from whence I came.

  “Is that a market?” Roger asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  I looked left to see a long stretch between a row of buildings that was covered by an awning, which used to be blue and was now a pale turquoise, icicles hanging from the awning’s support beams.

  “It is indeed,” Saruul said, turning to me. “Shall we find a jacket for your friend?”

  “It’s probably a good idea to get it ordered now,” I said.

  “You may need one too. It gets pretty cold at night. Although my home can be quite warm.”

  “Let’s just see how the first night goes,” I said as I followed her to the market. We stepped around a man crouched in front of an enormous scale, boulders piled on one side.

  “What’s that for?” I asked her.

  “To check your weight,” Saruul explained as we moved by a woman carrying a huge slab of meat on her shoulder.

  There were two booths selling garments to my left, one manned by a young girl chewing on something, eyeing me curiously. The clothing got me thinking about how Saruul even wore clothes to begin with, considering she had morphed from a snow lion into her current form.

  Her outfit resembled a modest bathing suit with a slit in the back for her tail. It was black, and I was surprised that wearing it didn’t make her cold. Then again, most of the women in the market that were around her age wore similar outfits, some with more layers, a few more revealing than the others.

  The men had similar tights on, although theirs had leg coverings. There were people in jackets too, but the snow lion people seemed not to be affected by the cold, and upon paying closer attention, I saw that it was only my breath that was visible, no one else's.

  I watched Saruul closely as she came to a tailor, wondering again at how her clothing worked.

  It was something I would have to ask her.

  The tailor wore a loose tunic, his muscles visible underneath, and a fur scarf that featured the head of a snow fox with hazel eyes. As he listened to her, his eyes naturally shifted to me, the man raising an eyebrow. “Let me see the bird,” he finally said after Saruul had explained what we were looking for.

  “I don’t like the way he said that,” Roger mumbled as he shuffled his way out of his warm spot. He moved up to my shoulder, shivering as the man looked him over.

  “Well, come on then, if you want to be measured you need to come to me to do so.”

  “Nick, I know you said you would go after my reincarnation, and if this guy tries anything, I still want you to go after my reincarnation, but first I want you to kill him,” Roger said so
only I could hear.

  “Don’t worry.”

  I grabbed Roger and handed him to the man.

  “Hey, hands off!”

  The tailor took Roger from me and placed him on the table, ignoring Roger’s wings as he tried to fight the man’s grip.

  “Relax, bird.”

  “I feel so vulnerable, so humiliated,” Roger said as he went limp. The man started measuring his body.

  “You’ll be fine,” I told him.

  “Don’t look at me, Nick, it’s cold out,” Roger said, now with his beak turned to the side, his eyes closed.

  “That should do it,” the tailor told Roger after flipping him around and quickly measuring his back. “I’ll have something for you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Saruul said, extending her hand to Roger.

  He jumped right into her hand, Saruul allowing him to come back under my robes. His body was cold now, and I could feel his talons gripping my clavicle.

  “Don’t tell anyone about that,” Roger said as we made our way out of the market.

  As we approached the exit from the market, the man that we had seen earlier at the city gates, the big guy is known as Champa, took a step forward, sizing me up.

  “Robes aren’t going to change what you are,” he said as I passed, ending his statement with a snort.

  Roger started to laugh. “Look, everyone, we found the village virgin.”

  “What was that?” Champa asked, trying to locate the sound. His nostrils flared open and he narrowed his eyes at the lump on my shoulder.

  “He didn’t say anything,” Saruul told the big lion, her tail tapping on his shoulder as she passed. “You’re hearing things again, Champa. Perhaps you should visit the shaman.”

  His ears flitted back, but by this point, we had passed him. He didn’t make a move on us, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t have my hand on the hilt of my sword the entire time.

  It was only another block or so until we came to a modest home with a large, flat space behind it that wasn’t occupied by any other buildings. There were a couple barrels in front of the home, and a well off to its side.

  “I should go in first and tell my mother that you will be staying, and that you’d like her to train you,” Saruul said. “Please wait here, and try not to get into any trouble.”

  She entered the home through a door the light color of driftwood, lightly shutting it behind her.

  “I have to admit,” Roger said, “I wasn’t planning on watching you get your ass kicked by her lion mother for the next couple weeks, but if I can do that while wearing a fur jacket, which may end up looking more like a vest in the end, I’m good.”

  I laughed. “You sure have gotten mouthy since you returned from the dead.”

  “Seeing the other side really changes who you are,” he said with a shrug that lifted my robes, “but all kidding aside, I do plan to do a little meditating myself at the temple, to see what the fat monk gets into. I suppose I should not call him ‘fat’ if I want to cultivate good karma.”

  “You aren’t wrong there.”

  “Then again, it’s not like he can understand me anyway. If one isn’t offended by another person’s statement because they can’t understand the language, is it still negative karma?”

  “Nice try,” I told the bird as I turned back to the street, watching a lion man limp by.

  He was clearly drunk by the way he was dragging his legs, his back hunched over, the man looking over his shoulder at me. His face started to morph but then he hiccuped, the man cursing and moving on.

  Roger shook his head. “Goddamn, there are a lot of sketchy fuckers in Dornod.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself. About the only ones that have been nice were the ones at the monastery.”

  “That’s because they’re supposed to be nice. Seriously though, I have a plan for the next however long we’re stuck here in Dornod.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Let me ask you like this: are you familiar with Tantric practices, Nick?”

  I shook my head. “You have to be joking.”

  “It wasn’t me who said something about there being beautiful white birds here with red beaks. That’s what your lioness said, right? Was it red beaks?”

  “I didn’t hear.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, you did. Anyway, since you apparently do know the definition of the term, then I shouldn’t have to explain what I mean. I just want to see how it plays out. The odds could be in my favor.”

  “Maybe. Wait a minute, didn’t you mention something to me once about your species only having one mate?”

  “Yeah, I might have. And that still applies. I’m not trying to womanize up here, but a little Divine Madness never hurt anyone.”

  “Are you referring to one of the paths?”

  “I am. It’s a real thing, you know. We can talk about it another time, but the Path of the Divine is but one of the paths dictated by the Immortals. Divine Madness is another.”

  I nodded, recalling Lhandon mentioning that once. “It’s the path that just shuns everything, right?”

  “Shun isn’t the right term. It just looks at everything as bullshit and argues that one can reach a higher state of enlightenment through sin. Nalropas are the name of the people who practice this path. I’ve never personally met one.”

  “So that’s your aim?”

  “No, but it’s definitely something I may use to my advantage.”

  “And you learned tantric sex in bird school, right?”

  “No, bird college, and I didn’t learn it,” he grunted. “A friend of mine did.”

  “Does this happen to be the same friend who liked the heavier birds?”

  “How’d you know?” Roger cackled. “And there’s one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I need a new knife.”

  I smiled as Saruul stepped out of her home. “I’m sure that can be arranged as well.”

  Saruul’s mother, Dohna, had similar features to her daughter, aside from added muscle along her shoulders and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

  The woman had the same white hair, hers tied off into a ponytail, and she wore a black leather jacket that stopped at her midriff, the rest of her clothing similar to the bodysuit her daughter was in.

  I sensed the power coming from her almost as soon as we locked eyes, which went along with something I had already figured out: the women in Dornod ran the roost.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you,” she said, neither bowing nor taking a step forward. She simply placed one hand over the other, offering me a smile.

  “You should probably bow,” Roger whispered to me, nudging me by squeezing his talons.

  I did so, bowing in the way that I had seen Lhandon bow at the Exonerated One and the Eternal Hermit.

  “My daughter tells me you have a bird and a fire spirit with you.”

  “I can speak for myself,” Roger said as he shuffled out of my robes. He flew up into the air and landed on a side table near the door. Roger bowed, and as he did so, I noticed him flash a yellow circle in the space where his wings met, something I’d never seen him do before.

  “How majestic,” Dohna said, glancing at her daughter. “Flattering, even.”

  “Don’t get too excited,” Saruul told her mother with a smirk, “he’s just practicing for the white birds.”

  “Nonsense!” Roger bowed again and performed the gesture, the yellow circle appearing. “I always try to show as much reverence and respect as I can to a true woman, one defined by both her beauty and her power.”

  Dohna chuckled. “That is quite enough, Roger. And the fire spirit?”

  I brought the bottle out of the front pocket of my robes and Tashi emerged from it. He stopped growing when he was about a foot tall, flames licking off the space where the back of his neck should be.

  “We appreciate your hospitality,” he said to Dohna, also offering a bow.

  “It has been ages since I met an elemental
spirit,” she said, nodding her head at Tashi. “You’re welcome in my home.”

  After a brief conversation with her mother in hushed tones, Saruul started up the tour. “As you can see, this is the entry hall,” the lioness said, motioning toward the place where I was supposed to leave my boots.

  Once my boots were off, I took a step down and found that the rock floor was warm, almost hot, confirming what I had surmised earlier: an underwater spring heated the entire village.

  From the entrance, we made our way into a small living area that featured large floor cushions, elaborate tapestries of geometric shapes, and a dining area. There was also a kitchen island made of polished rock.

  My eyes fell upon a slab of charred meat on the rock. A few slices had been cut out of the slab, the meat blood red on the inside.

  “For dinner,” Dohna said, “I thought we would spoil ourselves with some meat, cheese, and berries. Your stomach may not be ready for the diet of a snow lion, especially the way we eat meat.”

  “It looks pretty rare,” I said as I went to the island and took a slice. I tasted the cold piece of meat, noticing that it was salted in a very unique way, a hint of spice came into my mouth as I swallowed it. “It’s really good, though.”

  “It would be best if you warm it for him before we eat,” Dohna told Tashi.

  “Certainly.”

  “We don’t want you to have an upset stomach, Nick.”

  The spice at the back of my mouth continued to grow in potency as we were led up the stairs into an even more comfortable living space, featuring windows that looked out to the back yard of the house, a space defined by flat stones that stretched into the distance, clouds dipped in purple visible on the horizon.

  “It’s beautiful,” Tashi said, now floating to my left, albeit in a more portable size. “Do you mind if I step out to enjoy the view?”

  “By all means, fire spirit,” Dohna said as she opened the back door, letting him out. She turned to Roger. “You don’t want to go as well, do you?”