by T. Wyse
"Ivan took the egg away from the borders of the land, and used its power to take the lands of his home and make them plentiful. He used the magic to help him avoid sickness and weakness, to keep his larder stocked and his house warm. He wanted little else in his life, and he paid regular homage to the great wolf who had shown him mercy. He saw the wolf many times in his life, each time the wolf would repeat the warning about the artifact, renewing Ivan's devotion to the promise. The wolf would tell him tales of the neighboring land's descent and the misery of the thieves within it."
"Finally the wolf came into Ivan's shack in the dead of winter. Ivan had finally been seized by weakness and could barely move. His house was warm but lonely. 'You gave the egg away, friend.' The wolf sat down beside his bed, his face was sad rather than angry. 'I did old one, to one who was as modest and deserving as I. I have lived a long life, a comfortable life. I will meet whatever punishment you desire.'"
"The wolf's expression did not change, only growing sadder. 'I will miss our talks, Ivan. I will mourn your passing from this realm. I will wait with you until the morning.'"
"Yet in the morning the fire in the house had grown cold, the winter had come inside. When it had come time to collect their taxes once again the men found nothing but a ruined shack, inhabited by a pack of grey wolves who chased them away. The land was never worked again, and the wood turned to stone. The first house of the Copper Egg in a thousand years had fallen and passed on."
Amelie had opened her eyes again, though the night had since come. Her hand rested under the pillow, the mercy of sleep clouding her mind. "But isn't that wrong too?" She asked, sleepily. "Shouldn't he have used the egg, and its power, and had a family, passing its secrets onto his children? Isn't that how these things work?"
"No." Kokopelli answered from the darkness.
"I've read a few like this, and usually he'd have three sons and test them, then pass it on to one of them. Something like that." She mused. "You tell strange stories, little creature." There was no reply, and Amelie thought of the things a while, wondering why the man did not seek out the things that others would have.
"I guess, because he was content with just living, having seen death?" She whispered, her mind drifting off to sleep. She couldn't discern the reason for the creature's story. Without knowing it, the story had distracted her mind from the crows, enough for her to drift gently into sleep.
5
The Absent Garden
Her dreams were not of crows and pain, but of visiting the lonely man in his tiny cabin, and speaking to him. She shared a meal, the words lost in the slurred dream speak, and then she left his abode by his side, walking in the vibrant forest bordering his land.
Then, sometime in the timeless reckoning of the dream world, she became aware. It wasn’t a happy sort of lucid awareness, only the awareness that the images presented to her had been a mockery, a shadowplay. She was again inside the warm golden glow, blades of angular grass waiting in still anticipation. Her hands had been moving with such a hummingbird’s blur that they had become invisible, and the visions of the dream had simply been her manic hands shaping the pen’s wall to fit them.
Her hands stilled, she looked at her work, the disturbed grass bowed in awe of her passing. She saw the shapes: the great wolf, the faceless man, the shack, and even herself depicted there.
It felt wrong. Somehow she felt a trespasser in her own dream, looking upon a tapestry of her own subconscious reshaped for the evening’s whimsy. It wasn’t that though, she realized, feeling the gentle tugging.
Along the golden halo were little pinpricks, like the hooks of lung buds wherein the air was absorbed into the blood. They were tiny, and fine, and only served to give a linear halo, the burning needlepoints disappearing amongst the grass.
Curiosity led her to bend, to follow one of the pinpricks as best she could. She moved gingerly that the golden glob would stay as still as possible. Curiosity had led her there, and dread locked her in place.
Little droplets of tar shivered amongst the stems of the grass, a great jungle that dwarfed their miniscule bodies. Yet they were hungry, and they gnawed the golden glob with the shivering unsureness of an infant tasting candy for the first time.
They were featureless little things, only bending inward to form a kind of mouth. The ringing began in her head again, becoming a throbbing and relentless buzz. She pulled away from the things in furious disgust, but the ringing came to a cracking crescendo.
She found herself awake, again fighting to retain the image that had shocked her here. There had been something, again, something beyond those little tar tadpole creatures, but the expression melted away and turned into steam in the dawn’s first light.
The canopy’s side either pouted with incompletion, or the light of the day hadn’t quite become intense enough to bring it to a glow.
The cat’s fable still remained in her mind, and she retained the vision of carving it upon the bleached white wall. The ringing dimmed into a contained silence, content in whatever ugliness it had quashed.
Still, there wouldn’t be any further sleeping today.
Flopping down on the floor and emerging from the canopy, a prowling beast on all fours, she made her calculated path to the window, and rose ever so slowly until her eyes poked up over the sill’s cover.
She pulled a tiny section of the drape flat over the window, focusing her attention to the branch of the hunched tree. There were no black blobs to be found, and she allowed a wash of relief to cool her, at least until her arms decided that they had some abrasion to catch up on. She collapsed into a cross legged beast, coming just short of gnawing on her impishly itchy arms.
Back to the window, she sat there in silence, itching more slowly as she regarded the little lump still on the bed. His breathing rattled and crackled and rasped, yet his lungs were glowing and flawlessly bright. His comforted sleep betrayed the rising and falling of his breath, and made that loose way his skin moved even more apparent. It almost seemed as if he was something else, something merely wearing the pelt of a cat.
She banished these thoughts quickly. Contemplating illusions would either waste time, or worse: might lead to them being dispelled.
There was a soft knock at the door, and an unprompted entry, though Meldice slipped through the door with an intentional quiet. She was in her soiled work clothes from before, her bow still neatly fastening her hair.
“Oh, you’re already up.” She strode to the closed canopy. “Hope you got some decent sleep. It’s kind of stale in here. Smells like old books n’ all.” She shot back a smile, and in doing so missed the ties on one of the canopy’s sides, letting it loose, the cloth swatting at her ribbon.
“Rgh,” she muttered, and roughly tied the offending cloth. “There.” She growled, staring at the asymmetrical knot.
“So, are you feeling well enough to get moving today?”
“Yes!” Amelie rose quickly, and staggered back, thankfully catching herself before she brushed the drapes. “I’d love to.” She grinned.
“Ah well, enthusiasm’s nice, but let’s show you around and we can see how you feel from there. Sound good? “
Amelie nodded in a quick bob, and moved to follow Meldice.
“Hold on. Need to make the bed first.” Meldice gave a quick motion with her eyes. Amelie presumed it was aimed at her mother, somewhere.
The two of them squared the bed, or at least did a rumpled attempt at it. Whenever Meldice pulled the covers taut it seemed to simply create more wrinkles. The cat had also been caught under the blankets in the first flurry, and had slithered down the bed, spilling onto the floor with an annoyed grunt.
“Oh.” She motioned at him as he gave a stretch that audibly popped his loose bones. “His name’s Kokopelli.”
“Weird name.” Meldice held a finger to her cheek in pronounced thought. “But it fits, I guess. He’s a pretty weird cat.” Meldice regarded Kokopelli, who had set to meet her gaze. In their locked gaze Meldice had
leaned on the covers, causing a cratered dent to form. “How’d you come up with it?" She apparently had lost whatever it was that had puzzled her so.
"Oh my father had a cat named that…in his younger days." Amelie reached, and Kokopelli gave a half amused snort in response.
“Ugh, good enough.” Meldice muttered, giving a final frustrated tug at the cratered mess. This only served to dog ear one of the corners and loose the frustrated knot she had tied on the canopy.
“Good. Enough.” She gave a friendly growl, and grabbed Amelie, who had turned to attempt to fix the loosed side. She led them both out the door, with Kokopelli now in tow.
She released her grip as they passed down the hallway, and paused at the nook, which was bathed in the morning’s sun. “Basically, uh, just don’t break anything and leave things as you found them. General rule. Probably best just to stay out of the rooms you aren’t explicitly invited to.” Meldice shrugged. “Mother’s got a sharp eye.”
She turned to the stairs, and stopped abruptly enough that Amelie bumped into her back.
Meldice whipped around, and her eyes shot down to Amelie’s reddened feet. “Shoes! Right! This way.” She turned Amelie towards the far hallway, giving an ushering tug.
“Forgot about it, sorry.” They arrived at the furthest door at the hallway’s edge. “Er, you don’t need to use the bathroom badly or anything? This might take a second, but mother would probably be mad enough to bite you if you were outside in the dirt without shoes.”
“Mostly because then you’d be tracking dirt in.” Meldice muttered, grasping the knob, grinning.
“I’ll be okay.” Amelie nodded, and with that the door opened.
“Will try to be quick.” Meldice ushered her in.
Easily three times larger than the room of books, Meldice’s room lead Amelie to question her impressions on the dimensions of the house. The room featured three large windows, each of them covered with a finely obscuring cloth, a heavier set of thick blue curtains pulled aside. The space had a much brighter and more cheerful atmosphere than Amelie’s temporary quarters, making the latter seem like a darkened and surreal dream world.
Amelie drank in the room, and a feeling of familiarity wafted over her. The walls stood an easel of utter chaos, posters and pictures all of them chopped or ripped with some kind of artistic intention. They spread outwards like a leafy and sometimes peeling mosaic, a thickly clustered hive of them radiated around the bed.
The bed stood tall. Aged wood carved into finely detailed bestial feet supported the frame. The sheets and canopy glowered in darkened hues of purple and blue.
She rotated around, almost able to feel her mobile once more as she traced the mosaic to the far side of the room where it thinned out and lonely grains of picture-sand jutted out against the faded pink of the paint behind.
“It’s a bit… weird, I know, but…”
“It’s beautiful.” Amelie smiled softly. “Really,” she added, recognizing the look of skepticism.
Kokopelli leapt up on the cratered, but made, bed and curled up with pointed disinterest.
The bed stood with prominence between the two windows on the wall opposite the door. To its right and left were stands of immediacy, holding sets of magazines and books, a desk cluttered with meaning lost in the new light of the world. Opposite them stood another desk, holding the trappings of electronics passed, a television stood beside it, standing broodingly silent.
Meldice ushered her over to a set of double doors far from the entrance, and opened them into a room perhaps a third the size of Amelie’s loft at home. The shadows pooled inside making sight recognition hard, but the escaping air and indeed the smell betrayed it to be slightly short of a warehouse full of clothing.
Meldice slipped inside the shadows, and rummaged furiously through the lower shelves. “We might as well get you some outdoor clothes while we’re here.”
"Nope." A pair of pants appeared from the shadows, held about waist high before whipping back into dark. "Nope." Another one presented itself before her, and flew back to meet its compatriot that hadn’t yet finished its fluttering landing. They both gave a weary puff as they collapsed into a pile.
The flurried movement allowed her a peek at the textures beyond, and this gave anchor to her sight in the dim space. The lowest level seemed reserved for shoes of various shapes and sizes, of colours and purposes.
"You really have a lot of clothes." Amelie said in awe.
"Not really." Meldice dismissed, holding up another pair of pants, giving a nod and handing it to Amelie. "These are all my old things, at least mostly. Mother insists I keep them for some reason, might as well let you use them." She held up a shirt against Amelie. "Good enough." She nodded, satisfied.
"Shoes." She mumbled a moment, then began holding up pairs against Amelie's feet. "Not quite.”
“Your shoes, um,” Meldice’s voice slowed from its pace a moment, catching on reluctant words, and then made the ugly correction. “Your shoe, didn't have the number inside it, so I had to guess." She produced another single, and another.
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you actually. My mother handled that sort of thing, I had running shoes, but they were terrible.” Amelie knelt down and felt the smoothness of a pair of black shoes, shining even in the darkness.
"Not those ones." Meldice said without much discourage in her voice. "Those are 'Sunday' shoes." She chuckled. "Mother wouldn't want to see those out in the fields."
"Oh, I didn't mean..." Amelie started, losing the words.
"These good enough?" Meldice smiled, holding up a pair against Amelie's feet.
“Oh, well.” Amelie looked down pensively. It was a pair of running shoes, faded green, whatever logos they had once born since sanded off by time. She slipped her feet into them and tried to ignore the tickling barbs that had enveloped her feet.
“Hm, a little loose, Just a little though.” Meldice pinched the toes. “Well, we’ll just have to double up on socks. Speaking of which…” She trailed off, and produced two pairs. “They’re a little itchy, but they’re tough.”
“No, they’re perfect.” Amelie beamed. They were coarsely textured, and proudly declared on the store’s label “100% wool.”
“Well, get changed. Losing time and mother’s patience I bet.”
Amelie changed with a frustrated haphazardness, shedding one set of prickling skin for another. Despite the looseness of the pants she managed to tumble back into the shelves twice while putting them on, igniting some chuckling from Meldice. The socks blessed her chilled feet with a natural warmth, and did almost nothing to tickle or grate. With the two layers the shoes fit well enough, but most importantly, she walked without daggered fangs in them.
“Is that about right?” Amelie adjusted the neck of the shirt. It was too large, of course, and jangled around wildly like a cowbell.
Meldice turned around, and that chuckling became a stifled, affectionate snort.
“Is something wrong?” Amelie tried to approximate her mirror pose, arched back and squared shoulders.
“It’s nothing.” Meldice grinned. “Just now I guess you’re the ‘punk.’ We’ll need to tuck it in though.
Amelie did so, and only then realized that upon the front of the shirt it boldly labelled Amelie “Punk” in a deep hue of purple rimmed with black.
“Don’t feel bad. It’s good enough to work in.” Meldice smiled apologetically. “Maybe if mother warms up to you a little she’ll let me give you one of the Sunday dresses from when I was younger. For now, just be your green pajama self when we’re indoors. No punks in this house, young lady.” She nodded, another happy snort following.
“I’ve had to wear my brother’s old stuff. None of my usual things are fit to work in.” Meldice gave a broad and sincere smile. “So don’t feel too bad about it, promise?”
“I don’t mind. It’s good.” Amelie nodded, though stole another glance at the label. They were loose at least, and not terribly itchy regardless.
>
“Now, I have a spare hairbrush, here I think. I haven’t looked yet.” Meldice began towards her dresser.
“No, it’s okay. Just let me get outside.”
“Oh, okay. I did say it would take a minute. Let’s show you our facilities and then breakfast time. Nobody’s going to wait for either of us punks. We’ll get you the brush later. “
Neither of them rustled Kokopelli as they passed, but the moment the door was touched he was again by their side.
“Here, gimme.” Meldice grabbed the bundle of pajamas from Amelie as they reached the top of the stairs, and she shot down the hall, returning empty handed. “If she complains about them being thrown into the room, tell her it was me.” She grinned impishly, and ushered Amelie downstairs.
The tiles of the entrance hall flowed under the stairway further, and into a step upwards, where the tiles were replaced with the deep roan hardwood floors seemingly common to the house. To the left and right were rooms, the transparency of their glass bodied doors was defeated by the complete lack of illumination inside both of them.
The main floor of the house seemed to simply be a pass through of sorts. The end of the path featured a room shaped similarly to the artistic nook above, with a few differences. Where the central window stood above, there was a pair of ornate doors of glass, rather than the sturdy wood of the entry's landing. The ceiling featured additional glass in the form of a skylight awning, stretching out from the support columns that signaled the nook's floor above them. The windows, rather than being of plain design as the ones above, were of stained glass sibling to the ones framing the entranceway. The pattern suggested dual trees in full bloom, their textured colours sparkling in the sun like precious gems.
The place featured a large table, or rather two tables pushed together, central to the room and blocking the path from the doors to the yard beyond. The table featured twelve chairs of stark wood, free of upholstery. The table and seats were arranged in such a way as to best view the yard beyond the glass, most of them on the side that Amelie and her host now stood.
