by Coral Walker
Ornardo picked out two Sanseed cakes and the woman selected a small box for him to put them in. Ornardo stopped her.
“This one.” He pointed to a light blue box among all the other colours and added, “Tie it with a matching blue ribbon for me, would you?” Then he breathed to himself, “That’s the way she used to like it.”
Putu chuckled, stretching his neck like a turtle. A few guttural sounds came from his throat.
“She’ll like it if I give it to her,” Ornardo snapped, as if he understood Putu’s indecipherable sounds. Guarding the box with both hands, he negotiated his way out between the door and Putu’s bulging waist and left Putu to pay the bill.
“Rich people never carry money themselves. They think it’s dirty, and their servants always follow behind and pay all the bills,” he chattered quietly in his mind voice with crystal clarity and controlled slowness, as if he were taking every moment one at a time, savouring it, polishing it, and making it shine.
For Jack, it was exhausting to watch. There was no doubt that Ornardo was enjoying himself — re-enacting a picnic that had ended mysteriously and tragically — and dragging him along. He was doing it with such conviction and vigour, almost as if he believed deep inside that, if he repeated the event with the utmost optimism, he could rewind the past to a certain instant and then head forward on a new path.
+++
“It was a date.”
— Alright.
Jack stifled another yawn — if only he could draw the curtain — and then a thought rippled across his mind.
My body is having a date, even though I have never had one myself!
For a while, he was amused.
Well, he had to admit that he had once cycled, in good faith, to a date with a JJ assuming she was Jojo J, a sweet-faced girl with her hair braided to one side. Of course, he knew perfectly well there were two JJs in his year: the plain-faced and straight-talking Jessica J was the other one. When he saw Jessica J standing by the low gate to the quiet churchyard where he was supposed to meet his date, he sped up instead of slowing down. As the path sloped steeply downwards passing the gate, he lost control of the bike and crashed into a tree. As a result, he had sprained his ankle and hobbled for a month and a half.
“That was awful. What did you call the thing — the one with two wheels?”
— Bicycle. I rode it to school every day.
“I wish I could have one. I had to walk to Mr Yulago’s every day for lessons. It was quite a walk.”
“But when I came back,” Ornardo continued, and his mind voice lightened, “Cici would be waiting for me upon the hill. On that particular day, I took a detour to the market to buy the Sanseed cakes. They were my mother’s favourite. She used to make them herself but hadn’t been able to lately because she was unwell. I thought if I could bring some home, it would cheer her up. I bought a few of them because they looked fresh. I put all of them in a big box, except two, which I wrapped in a small blue box with blue ribbons, just like this one, for Cici and me.”
His gaze dropped down to the blue box on his lap and dwelt on it for a while before sweeping up, back to the view out of the window.
“Look, that’s the hill. I can see her lying there on the grass, just like I always used to when I came back from Mr Yulago’s. How the grass has grown.”
The carriage trundled up the hill and halted a few yards from Cici. Under the shadow of the Charleea tree, half-buried in the tall grass, she was lying still on her back as if asleep.
Ornardo jumped out of the carriage holding the box securely in his hands. The carriage wheeled down the hill leaving them all alone.
“I know what she’ll say,” Ornardo murmured.
Quietly, he walked to Cici’s side, knelt down and placed the blue box neatly against the trunk of the Charleea tree. Cici’s hand was right by his knees, and when his hand touched hers, she opened her eyes and gazed at him smiling.
The instant that Cici parted her lips, Ornardo articulated in his mind voice, “I’m going to blindfold you.” His soundless voice knitted into Cici’s.
“I told you I knew. We used to do it every time,” sitting up, he explained to Jack, “She blindfolds me, and I try to catch her.”
Giggling, Cici scrambled to her hands and knees and stationed herself behind Ornardo. Before long a pleasantly scented silk handkerchief was placed over his eyes. Everything went creamily blank. He heard rustles as she scurried away, and then it all went very quiet. Ornardo turned his head straining for a sound.
There came the sound of singing, in a voice crisp and fragile like the autumn leaves.
The body hurried towards the voice and nearly fell over on account of the legs lagging behind.
The singing broke off, only to resume somewhere behind him.
Promptly Ornardo turned and plodded towards it.
The singing stayed put as if she were resolved to be caught this time. When the tips of the extended fingers felt her soft garment, she skipped to his right like a bird. Without a thought, Jack lunged as if the body were his own. The outcome stunned him as much as it did Ornardo.
“Did you do that?” he heard Ornardo’s mind gasping.
Cici was sprawling on her front groaning, her legs in his grip. He had tackled her like they were on a rugby pitch, and he couldn’t believe that he had made his body do exactly what he intended.
“Are you alright?” Ornardo was concerned.
Cici gave a half-suppressed laugh and kicked her legs free. Instantly he was pushed backwards and tumbled onto the thick grass. Before he could wiggle away, her weight fell onto his chest.
Jack shied away while Ornardo took the lead. Arm in arm they rolled down the hill giggling like children.
When they came to a stop, sitting up on their knees, Ornardo took off the blindfold, and Cici’s face popped into the eye frame, fresh and flushed. How bright and vivacious her eyes were!
It was Ornardo’s turn to place the handkerchief over her eyes. She sat rigid, no longer giggling, but waited in silence, mesmerised, perhaps, by the peculiarity of the situation. The knot was tied, and her shining eyes were safely behind the handkerchief. She smiled blankly into the air. The wind picked up, and the long grass swayed and beat against her. Some of it reached up to her chest. She looked suddenly dainty and frail, like a flower swaying in the wild wind.
“Stay here, Cici. I’ll fetch something.”
Ornardo stood up and ran towards the Charleea tree. As he drew near, he faltered as his glance swept down the hill and fell onto the site below.
The sprawling ghost of his old house.
“That was my home, my family. Everything I had in this world, all gone.”
For a while, Jack listened to the heartbeats as if they were funeral bells.
“Lizi was screaming, so loud. Down the hill I ran, as fast as the wind blew. Lizi was there, by the well. The bokwas had got her, coiling around her, biting and tearing her apart. She screamed and screamed, and I ran and ran. But I couldn’t reach her.”
Jack listened nervously in the background and was transfixed by a weird feeling, as if the hill underfoot was crumbling away, and he and Ornardo were looking over the ruin like a pair of floating ghosts.
A hollow sound escaped the throat. Dropping to his knees, Ornardo sank his head into the hollow between chest and lap and sobbed.
“Ornardo.” Cici’s voice quivered in the wind.
For a while, Ornardo didn’t move.
Finally, he stood up again and trudged towards the Charleea tree. The body was stiff and awkward and was so cold that Jack flinched uncomfortably.
He watched as Ornardo took the blue box by the Charleea tree in one hand and grasped it so tight that the ribbon flower crumpled and the box caved in. He lumbered clumsily forward, stumbling with every step of his numb limbs.
Jack had never felt so powerless, as if the world inside his body were frozen over and he was petrified, crippled and now dying.
With laboured breath and joints
cracking like ice, Ornardo fell to his knees. His view of Cici was no longer focused but was a misty image of her lifted face, with eyes covered, looking anxious.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
In reply, he uttered a faint sound.
She frowned, and her head lowered as she sniffed the air. “Do you have something for me?” she asked, her face brightening a little.
With trembling hands, Ornardo tore the box apart and took one of the green-coloured cakes. The cake wobbled, and the fragrance of cinnamon filled the air.
“What is it?” She sounded alarmed, and her nose twitched a little.
“Sanseed cake. It’s always been my favourite,” he whispered, swallowing hard.
“Then I should have some,” she smiled again opening her mouth.
She flinched as she took a small bite, but chewed it eagerly all the same. The taste of the cake didn’t seem to be agreeable to her, and she tensed up to sustain the smile. The smile, however, faded quickly away, and her face turned grey.
All of a sudden, she slumped to the thick grass, her body writhing in agony.
The cake dropped onto the ground. Ornardo sat as still as a stone, oblivious to Jack’s scream.
She squirmed, moving her body with her hands and elbows as if her torso was immobilized and her legs were rigid. With effort she dragged and pulled herself along, hands on the grass and nails in the ground, desperate to get away.
A yard off, she stopped suddenly. Her back hunched up into an odd bump, like the shell of a giant snail, and instantly sprang open.
In the place of Cici, was a large, blue-skinned, big-eyed bokwa, twisting and wriggling under Cici’s scarlet dress. As soon as it slithered out of the clothes, it turned towards them, its head raised.
“Run, Ornardo, run!”
Jake screamed in vain — Ornardo was no longer responsive. He had a peculiar feeling, as if someone were whispering amid the sighing of the wind.
“Good-bye …”
The bokwa leaped onto him and in a flash coiled its slimy body around the torso and threw the body to the ground. Its long neck drew back as its round glassy eyes looked into his face with a cold glare. The grip tightened.
There was barely time to register its opened mouth and razor-sharp fangs before their tips sank into the flesh of his neck.
Hands clenched, he twitched weakly as everything descended rapidly into darkness. But then he saw the glaring lights, the burning fire of the house lighting up the darkening sky, and a dark figure, slender and sturdy, standing against the brilliance of the fire. He heard the screaming and saw the little girl helpless in the claws of the bokwas.
Ornardo was running down the hill as fast as the wind. But there was no wind, and he wasn’t running with a body.
The body was here, where he was lying, upon the hill, near the Charleea tree.
Further away, at the top of the other hill, under the other Charleea tree, they stood, hand in hand.
Lizi and Ornardo.
His hands stopped clenching.
7
Visit
For attacking Ms Upright, Brianna was locked away in one of the basement rooms. Peter was annoyed when he was called later in the afternoon to go to Lord Shusha’s castle to attend to a boy who had been injured by a bokwa. He grumbled, but nevertheless took his medical bag and followed Shusha’s giant man, Putu.
It didn’t take him long to see that the blue-skinned boy was critically ill, or dying in fact. He did all he could. Antibiotic injection, blood detoxification and prayer.
In the small hours of the morning, he felt his patient ebbing away. For a long while, he was sunk in silence letting his mind drift.
Putu, who had stayed with him in the dimly lit room, walked noiselessly out and left the door ajar behind him. He heard the rustle of a woman’s floor-length gown and saw the slender shadow slanting through the open door and projecting onto the floor.
Then came the muffled sobbing of a young woman.
He rose, picked up his bag, gave another glance to the lifeless body and walked towards the door. The young woman must have been waiting for him to leave so that she could come in and grieve alone.
Before he reached the door, he stopped dead.
There seemed to come a cough, quiet and indistinct, from the direction of the boy.
The bag almost slipped from his hand. He turned and gasped.
The boy’s chest lifted slightly upwards, and his hand was twitching.
He rushed back.
The cough became continuous and vehement — something was choking him.
Flinging his bag to the floor, he scooped up the boy’s shoulder, and the next instant the boy retched all over him. The stench, the foetid stench, his stomach heaved and churned and his body clenched tight as he fought nausea himself. He endured holding the boy in his arms a little longer and laid him down the moment the vomiting bout halted. In wild disgust he looked at his vomit-stained tweed jacket — he didn’t have a spare one to replace it. Hastily he scanned the room, took the first rag he set his eyes on and started rubbing the spew off the jacket.
A whisper from behind drifted into his ears.
“I am sorry, Dr Pentland.”
+++
“No, no, no, don’t even touch my bed!”
Nevertheless, Peter slumped onto it, sank his head into the soft pillow, and sighed with relief. He was tired after a sleepless night. The bed, much softer than his own, was just the place.
“What happened? How did you get that foul smell?” Nina asked, fanning her nostrils with her spread fingers, wincing in disgust.
Eyes half shut to rest his bleary mind, he heard himself asking. “Guess who I’ve seen?”
“Who?” she said, with obvious lack of interest. Standing tall, her hands in the hip pockets of her jeans, she gazed down at him like an Amazon woman.
“Jack Goodman.”
“All right,” she said, stifled a yawn and turned.
Irked by her indifference, he propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her incredulously. “He was nearly killed.”
“How?”
“Some large bokwa. A venomous one it was. He was without a heartbeat for more than two minutes. I thought he was dead. Then he came back. Click — just like that, and he vomited all over me.”
“So he is alright now?”
“That was the impression I had when I left him. He was still weak but seemed to be recovering at warp speed. Strange that they painted him all over with that dreadful colour. I took him for a blue-skinned Baran boy until he called my name.”
“Was Lady Cici there?”
“Curious you should ask about her. There was indeed a young woman waiting outside, and I heard her crying when we thought the boy was dead. It could have been Lady Cici as Lord Shusha’s giant man was with her. She’s a peculiar woman. After Jack came back to life, she didn’t look much pleased.”
“Like father like daughter, she must be guilty of something.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just think. She might have the same power of controlling bokwas as her father does.”
“You are suggesting that somehow she ordered the bokwa to attack Jack? That’s ridiculous. She looked like she was heartbroken…”
“Or pretending to be heartbroken,” sneered Nina. “Whatever, now we know Lord Shusha has all three children.” With that, she slumped into a chair, drew out her silver pen and yawned.
Lying sprawled on the bed, Peter let his eyelids droop, yielding to a growing drowsiness. But a peculiar feeling, as uncomfortable as his subconscious expectation of the irritating clicks of Nina’s pen, disquieted him.
Shusha has them all. What will he do with them?
He shifted his head to sink it deeper. Why should he be troubled by the lives of the three children when people on Earth were in despair? Before it is too late, before the wars broke out over the pathetic remnants of fossil fuel, they must get the stones.
“You should leave, Peter. Go ba
ck to your room, have a shower and sleep,” said Nina, and at last, started to click her pen.
“How’s Brianna?” he asked suddenly.
The clicks stalled and then resumed again after a couple of seconds.
“She’s fine,” she said flatly, lolling back her head. “Ms Upright insisted that, after the dark basement room, Brianna must spend some time with Bo—to learn her lesson. So she was taken straight to the observation box after the basement, and left there alone for a whole hour to watch her young brother in his life cylinder.”
He felt his heart squeeze as he imagined her, confined in the small featureless room like a box, staring helplessly through the one-way glass, watching her young brother, like a preserved biological sample inside the cylinder, rotating, twitching his hands and now and then changing his skin colour.
An hour was a long time to spend alone watching the suffering of a loved one.
“It was quite terrible.” Nina gave a small cough and continued, “I have to admit that it gave me such a headache to think about it. But I’m glad we have tried. She was then taken to the test room and was shown a video of Bo crying in his dream. She was shattered to the core and at that moment, I could feel she would do anything to save him. Then we told her that to help Bo she must exert as much healing power as she can and make the treatment a success. She was shown the picture of Prince Mapolos again. She was trying, almost too hard. The green bar skyrocketed, but only for a brief time and then guess what …”
She licked her lips and quickly answered the question herself. “The glass box she was in burst and shattered into pieces, just like that. She was hysterical and started screaming. We had to inject her with a sedative to calm her down.”
“Did she get hurt?” Peter raise his head.
“Well, cuts and bruises. I’m sure she can fix herself. She is a fairy, isn’t she?”
“Where is she now?”
“In her room, I guess. I left straight after she was sedated. They must have taken her back to her room.”
