by Brindi Quinn
At that moment she says something that stops my words from coming: “I’ll try again,” she says.
Mid-turn, I halt. “Excuse me?”
“If you return here and investigate with me, I’ll try feeling up your chest again or whatevs.”
If I help her figure out the symbol, she’ll try again? Without complaint? An appealing offer. A terribly appealing one.
“I’ll consider it,” I tell her, restraining myself. “Now let’s go. I’m getting hungry.”
She seems pleased with my response. A smirk forms on her upper lip as she follows me away from the doorway. Hand in hand, we move through the graveyard the way we came.
“You’re in luck; Mom’s making mac and cheese hotdish,” she says.
Great. Cheese with noodles. Because THAT dreadful concoction never gets old.
“Aw, don’t make that face, demon boy. You know you always eat seconds of it. Although, I don’t get why. You won’t touch milk, yet you love cheese.”
Love is a strong word. And I hardly consider ‘cheese product’ to contain more than trace amounts of milk. “What I truly prefer are foods of the sea,” I explain. “The bones of fish and sea snakes especially contain a desirable pliability.”
“Do they really?” Sil says absently. “Huh.”
Vacant twit.
But at least she’ll try again tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be the day she admits her love for me. I have that to look forward to, at any rate.
And if she doesn’t?
I might just have to kill her.
Chapter 3: Enter Squishy Friend Keek
There’s a thing or two to be said about a man that lives not for himself.
Or so I’ve heard.
If ever there’s been a person to live for the sake of another, it’s Sil’s squishy minion. The one called Keek.
Sil’s underling is a thick, plushy boy with a voluminous head of hair and skin even darker than Sil’s. Emerald-eyed, soft-voiced, and with a mouth so smug it could make a narcissist cringe, he’s one person I’d like to smite.
Well, he’s the one I’d smite first anyway.
The minion is rude and boisterous and constantly lurks around, but even more annoying than all of that is his obsession with my mark. Their friendship is a thing indigestible and imbalanced. In a most pestering way, he’s far more concerned with her than she is with him. Many days since my arrival have I been forced to cope with the minion’s presence. At Sil’s home and at school. During his absence yesterday, I’d been hoping for the worst. Slow, painful decline or sudden respiratory distress. Either would do just fine. Unfortunately, after only a day’s respite, he’s back to his pratful self.
“Sil! Sil!” Per usual, the plushy boy chases us down after class in the hallway huffing. “Did you see it, Sil? Mr. Henson rested his sketchbook on his belly for a full two minutes and thirty-six seconds!”
“You were counting?” I say dryly. Dryness is warranted whenever speaking with the minion.
“Oh,” says Keek. “Hello, Tran. Didn’t see you there. You just sort of blended into the wall. I guess that’s what happens when you’re ghostly pale.” He budges between Sil and me. “You saw it, right, Sil?”
“Sure did,” says Sil. “Only my count was two minutes, thirty-seven point five seconds.”
“What? Really?” Keek taps his digital watch. “Suppose I might not have started the count right on the mark. Did you include when his hand was still ON the sketchbook? Because I didn’t.”
“Nope,” says Sil. “I started just when his hand lit from the –”
Their prattle is abrasive. Too abrasive.
“HONESTLY WHAT DOES IT MATTER?!” A screech that has just come from me cuts through the hallway, loud enough to make even the other prattling humans stop and look edgily back at us.
Perhaps it was a mite uncalled for.
“Whoa, Tran, whoa,” says Keek.
“Yeah, demon boy, whoa,” says Sil.
Keek matches Sil’s lazy saunter and the two mosey ahead without looking back. I murder them in my mind. First through strangling. Then via rusted pipe. And lastly using a creative assortment of kitchen utensils. It does little to cure my rage.
Paying no attention to my disdain, and therefore failing to realize exactly how much danger he’s in, Keek continues to engage Sil. The squishy human is more enthralled with her than mortally possible. “So can we go see it right from here, Sil? This mystery thing you found in the woods?”
Sil responds, “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it? I don’t want you puking on me or anything.” She pantomimes gut-wrenching vomiting, which, although I find unnecessarily moronic, sets her minion guffawing.
“Naw, I’m all good now,” he says. “Got it out of my system yesterday.”
“Oh great!” Sil brightens up. “The thing I want to show you is not really in the woods, though, so much as through them. You know that old cemetery way back behind my house? Well, I returned there yesterday for the first time since you-know-what, and you’ll never believe what I found! There was this grave, and . . .”
Thus, Sil enthusiastically proceeds to recount the events from the previous day. The dug up grave. The heptagonal symbol. And yes, even the dead bird. Of course she mentions a thing like that.
I look on in quiet observation. I pick up on the things she doesn’t.
Sil doesn’t notice the way Keek’s green-born eyes hungrily scan her face as she speaks. Likewise, she doesn’t realize that he’s carefully timed his arm’s swing to move opposite of hers so that every once in a while their hands graze ever so slightly. And when we reach outside? She doesn’t see it, but Keek stares at her with blatant lust, for her eyes have been lit to sexiness by the temptress sun. He stares at her the way I try not to stare at her.
The minion has his eyes on my mark. Odin be damned if I’ll let him have her.
><
Contrary to popular belief, the underworld isn’t dark or foul or murky or vile. It isn’t a place filled with pain or sorrow. It’s bright. Brighter than one can imagine, with a light that, without source, floods through everything. Different from the sun that casts, Dhiant’s light exists through the entirety of the material plane. It simply IS.
My skin isn’t pale from a lack of sunlight, as Sil has suggested, but from a constant state of being wrapped in a white under-light most pure. That under-light is what I miss most about Dhiant. That’s why, while on the edge of dream last night, as I lay craving that light of home, a thought occurred to me. A revelation if you will, and I understood for what reason I previously felt such comfort in the graveyard.
It is because the remnants of finished lives – the lingering auras of the dead – give off a sensation alike the light of home.
Knowing this, I am eager to return to the forgotten building in the center of the clearing.
When we reach there, the cemetery hasn’t changed since yesterday. While Sil and Keek snap photos of the heptagonal symbol with their cellphones, I take to the far side of the graves so as not to be bothered by either of them.
For some reason, the day is cloudy within the graveyard, though the world was sunny just minutes before. Maybe there is also some sort of atmospheric mysticism associated with a place stained with the memories of the dead. Or maybe there isn’t. One can’t be sure. Either way, the lost lives flitter about in the air, infusing my mind with reminiscences of home’s light. I am at peace.
But not for long.
Although I try not to hear the chatter of the others, their antsy, childish voices reach me where I stand, and I am forced to eavesdrop on their merriment.
“Naw, I can’t make it out either,” the minion is saying.
“It is script, though, isn’t it?” responds Sil.
“Yeah. Think so. And I think you’re right. It probably has to do with that disturbed grave.”
“Right? That’s what I told Wayst! You just get the feeling this symbol has to do with some kind of dark ritual or something.”
“It’s more than that, though,” says Keek. “This paint . . . it looks like the stuff they use to paint those Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls. See?”
I can’t see what the minion does to show her his theory, but whatever it is, Sil lets out an, “Aha!”
“It wipes right off and even tastes sweet,” says Keek.
Oh. Apparently the lug has just sampled a bit of the stuff.
To which Sil is annoyingly impressed. “Wow, Keek! I never would’ve even thought to try that! How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess,” he triumphs.
“What’s lucky is that it must not have rained since they painted it,” analyzes Sil. “When was the last time it rained?”
The minion counts, “Uh, week and a half ago abouts?”
Wrong. It’s been more than a week and a half. It rained the night of my arrival. I won’t correct them, however. Why bother?
But Sil remembers even without my assistance. “No, the last time it rained was when demon boy showed up,” she says, thoughtfully. “So that would be around two weeks ago. Know what that means, Keek ol’ buddy, ol’ pal? We can assume that this mark was painted less than two weeks ago! And judging by how few leaves are in that hole, I’d say it was more recent than not.”
“Demon boy, huh?” Keek’s abhorrence is evident. “You still haven’t told me why you call the transfer kid that.”
Kid? Ahem. If anyone’s a ‘kid’, it is the minion who has yet retained his baby fat.
“No reason,” says Sil. “Just something to call him.”
“That so?” Keek doesn’t sound entirely convinced. “Hmph.”
Hmph, indeed.
“Anyhow,” Sil says, “will you show the pictures to your dad? He loves stuff to do with Halloween and Day of the Dead. He’s bound to know if there really is a connection. So will you ask him, Keek? Pleeeeease?”
“Sure! Sure I’ll ask him!” Keek is far, far too livened by the thought of pleasing her.
Keek is far, far too alive in general.
It’s up to me to deaden the mood. I’m perturbed. Because of them, I’ve been hardly able to enjoy the under-light. In, what I’m ashamed to admit, is a sulk, I go to where they are. Keek’s crouched over in the doorless doorway – a thick nugget of a silhouette – while Sil’s looks on over his broad left shoulder.
“If you two are quite finished, I’ve got business with Sil,” I drawl.
Despite my lack of ‘demon’s’ advice, she must still keep her end of the bargain. She must still try again. At least I have that to look forward to. The more she tries, the better the chances are that it’ll work. The better the chances are that I’ll be allowed to return home.
“Butt out, Tran,” the minion offers his regards.
But straightening, Sil comes to my defense. “No, he’s right, Keek. He and I’ve gotta get going.”
Hah! Take that, minion! The minion glares at me a glare Sil can’t see. I give him one she can.
“Stop it, Wayst.”
Oh? So easily she uses my proper name? She usually only does so when she thinks I can’t hear.
“Of course, Siiiil.”
Keek cringes at the way I purr her name. He cringes even more when I slip an arm invitingly around her waist. “Shall we be going now, Siiiil?”
“Knock it off, demon boy.” Sil elbows me in the stomach, forcing a drop of my hold on her hip. Keek hisses a self-satisfied gloat.
Infuriating!
But not to worry; I’ll hold her even closer than that in just a short while. Sil reads my thoughts. It’s impossible, I know, but it seems as though she does, for her shoulders begin to judder faintly. Anticipation, dear Sil? Anticipation it is.
“S-so, I’ll see you later, Keek?” she stammers.
Keek is suspicious. Naturally, he’s suspicious. Thanks to her nervousness, Sil’s behaving incredibly suspiciously. At least she continues to urge him along.
“But, Sil!” the minion protests. “You expect me to just leave you alone out here with freaky, grouchy Tran?!”
Tch. He’s concerned about leaving her alone with me? He does know we LIVE together, doesn’t he?
“Sorry,” says Sil, “I promised I’d help him out with something personal.” Giving it a second thought, she adds, “Something personal and also homework related. Truth is, demon boy’s hopeless on his own. I’ll call you after dinner, though, ‘kay, Keeker?”
The blub of a boy frowns. “Seriously?”
Seriously, minion. Seriously.
“Afraid so,” sings Sil.
“Erg. Fine.” With great strain and strife, Keek eventually says his parting. “See ya, then.”
We wait for the sounds of his moping footsteps to disappear, and then we are alone. Again alone in the cemetery.
“Well?” I pull up the bottom of my shirt.
But as quickly as I raise it, Sil pushes it down. “Not so fast, demon boy. First I want a little insider information from you.”
“What?” I eye her up and down with staleness. Her outfit choice today is something chaotic. She’s wearing pants that are tight at the ankle and baggy at the hips and held in place by striped suspenders she most likely acquired from Cousin Stache. Beneath the straps she sports a blue short-sleeved shirt over a clashing long-sleeved shirt. Sil is alike a sideshow clown.
Under my gaze of scrutiny, Sil is awkward. Her arms gangle in a loose fold. She turns in her feet and furrows her face.
Heh.
“What ‘insider information’ are you talking about?” I ask, making sure to keep my appraisal all the more intrusive.
“I want you to take another look at this.” She points to the painted symbol. “I brought . . .” She shuffles about in her rucksack – “Ta-dah!” – and ends by holding up a large, chipped magnifying glass.
“Are you mad? I told you I don’t know anything about your little symbol, Sil.”
“Yeah, but you couldn’t really SEE it clearly yesterday, right? I figured maybe if you used this,” – She shakes the magnifier before my face – “you might be able to pick up something else.” She beams at me with a mixture of pride and hopefulness.
Bet she’s pleased with herself for thinking of something so clever. Can she not see it isn’t clever in the least?!
“If I look at the damned thing through the glass, you will, without any other hesitation or preliminary, try again? Is that what I’m to understand?”
Sil bobs her head in agreement.
“Very well.”
I tear the thing from her flimsy hold, bring it to my face, and lean over the symbol. Sil stands by in apprehension. She’s vulnerable just there. A human toy that will someday die. There is a lack of things to play with in this existence. Thus I will play with the thing most accessible.
“Hmmm. Now that’s in-ter-est-ing,” I tell plaything Sil. “I wonder . . .”
My false interest does the trick. It captures her attention. “What?” she breathes. “What do you see?”
“Come closer,” I tell her. I point to the top right point. “See this part here?”
She examines the spot, which is no different from any other part of the symbol. “Yeah! What about it?!”
“It’s that . . . the thing is . . . this marking . . .”
“Go on, demon boy! Spit it out!”
“It looks the same as yesterday.”
Sil smacks me in the back of the head.
“What?” I ask, coy. “What do you want me to say? It’s just a heptagon surrounding a nonsense scribble. There isn’t anything unique or otherworldy about . . .” But I am moved to stop myself, for I have just noticed something through the glass. “Oh.”
“Oh?” repeats Sil. “Oh what? If this is another of your tricks –”
“Quiet, would you?” Now I really am intrigued. Enlarged, the scrawl still looks like nothing but garble. However, there is something about the shape that I hadn’t noticed before. “Your dwarf claims this is used in the making of candy?” I say.
Sil nods.
“And what brought him to that conclusion?” I ask.
“He tasted it.”
“Did you?”
Sil cocks her head. “Huh?”
“Did you taste it?”
“No, I . . .”
I take the liberty of sampling a bit of the stuff myself. I recognize the texture. My findings confirm what I’ve since guessed. “It isn’t candy, Sil. And it isn’t paint. It’s white ash.”
Sil crowds in next to me and smears a bit of the heptagon’s exterior. It leaves a chalky, powdery smudge of white. “Ash?” she says. “It can’t be ash, demon boy. If it were, it would have smeared black. Plus, the fact that someone made it into paint . . . well, if it were ash, it wouldn’t have stayed white at all. It would be black. Or at the very least gray. And it wouldn’t look this smooth. It would be more powdery and less smeary, you know?”
Sil is rambling senselessly about the qualities of ash.
“I said white ash, stupid girl. And it’s been mixed with liquid to make it easier to spread.”
“White ash?” Sil wipes another bit of substance onto her thumb and begins to bring it to her mouth.
I grab her wrist. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Why not? You did.”
“Trust me.”
Her guarded eyes convey that it’s a heavy thing to order, but in the end she submits. She lowers her thumb and squints at the powder. “What’s white ash?”
“It’s an ingredient used in certain spells.”
“Spells? For reals?” She mulls it over. “Huh. Go figure. Know what kind this one was for?”
“I don’t. But I do know that white ash comes from bones ground and burned over a shadow-brought fire.”
“Shadow-brought?” Sil begins there, but quickly realizes the former part of my statement – “Hold on, bones?” – and when she does, she hurries to clean her fingertips on the sleeve of my shirt.
