Into the Furnace: Chapter 8
I remember waking up for the first time, Vunjia burned vividly into my eyes. My body aching as if fallen out of the sky was too burdensome to rise from its rest. My first blink was at the edge of a city called Jico. A red-soiled ominous colony of the Emerstine Empire. It wasn’t much, but it structures looked like eggs sat on specks of blood. It was blasting hot due to it being at the west edge of Calypso, so the sun was nearest throughout the days. It was poor, like many Emerstine colonies, are and they were mining something called philosopher stones which turn mercury into gold and other magical, I suppose alchemical abilities. The empress’ discovery of philosopher stones in the red desserts of the west part of Calypso were how she rose to power. Just a simple passionate gemmologist continuing her love in the afterlife, discovered something that would change the whole currency of Calypso and put her in power. People there live with no sewage system, no electricity and homes made of repurposed materials. My head was spinning and the world was still a blur of lines and colors. Confused and lost, I didn’t know where I was, all I did know was my name, Emelda. I hope it’s my real name but does it really matter?
I sat up and tried to sooth the pain at the back of my head, the pain in my back and generally my entire being. As all sense kicked back into me, I heard someone groaning. A sweet raspy voice, like the juice of an orange. Behind me a woman sat on the dessert sand looking back at me. Her hair was long then and colored a faint orange at the tips and back as result of the sand. She had blood on her black boots, old and dried. Her blue eyes were a still navy-blue ocean, dead and nearly empty. The freckles on her cheeks were like black stars on a bisque sky and her lips the blushing insides of a watermelon yet cracked and thirsty. Her eyes were heavy, bags beneath and the way she looked at you made you feel her history weighing on you, except she had no clue where she was too. Who she was either. She got to her feet. Dusted herself clean and gave her hand to me. She was dressed way too warmly to be from around here, she wore thick black cargo pants and a dark olive-green turtle neck shirt. The star was scorching and I was burning in my tank top and shorts. “My name is Penrose, what is yours?” she asked kindly, she had an accent I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“Emelda,” I replied, my voice scratching it’s way out of my throat. I cleared it as I wondered how long I was out.
“Beautiful.” And I felt my cheeks warm up.
Penrose analyzed me as she helped me up. Watching with a meticulous eye, my eyes, my lips, my neck, my stomach, my thighs, my feet but not in a way a wolf looks at a rabbit but with wonderment.
“Where are we?” I found it suitable to ask.
“I do not know,” she said looking around confidently.
“I don’t even know who I am or where I was before here, do you?”
She bit her bottom lip and meditated on the question.
“No,” she replied.
And that’s how we met, two lost souls in the furnace. We happened to meet a brown demon inside Jico who took us to the Bureau to get into an induction program that took five days. We were sort of introduced to the furnace. We even had a geography class which I hardly paid attention to. Learned about the existence of witches and magic in the furnace, curses and demon kinds. Brown demons are the only demons we share a circle with. They were entrusted by Lucifer to keep us safe in Calypso and prevent us from leaving. Angels exist here too but we can never see them. Brown demons are like the policemen and guides of Calypso. Then there are normal, self-orientated demons like Osiris who just live here.
We lived in their dome shaped homes of thin, almost paper like material. The cold of the night didn’t reach there the way it does in the middle. And there was no wind, so night or day, these dried fabric homes were pretty stable. Problem was, there was no audio privacy. We could hear the neighbors talking, having sex, the forks cutting too deeply into food, all of it. What made it worse was that we shared the dome with four other people and had to get comfortable with each other’s idiosyncrasies. Six per unit, two bedrooms, a bathroom and fire pit which worked as both the living room and kitchenette, a place of community. We ate meat from the soil like Indigo worms, snakes, torniques and so forth and they grew a few vegetables in their greenhouses which was most of our diet there. That was the last time I truly felt human in the furnace. We went to sleep with full stomachs and good company, we had understanding roommates. Penrose and I shared the bedroom with a woman named Rhodesia. She didn’t mind that Penrose and I preferred to share a single bed than to sleep with ample space alone in our own beds. Having her beside me every night was always enough. She didn’t mind that Penrose and I would stay up all night sharing the little memories we still had in our minds. Penrose remembered that her entire family died before her, that it made her ache like a headache throughout her body. That it made her so mad she could not see the right or the wrong, just fury. She hoped that she could be someone else in the furnace, perhaps someone better than before. She said she remembers a rage that left a trail of bloodshed behind her. I knew deep down I was supposed to be afraid of this ex-murderer but that’s what she was an ex-murderer. Penrose has never killed anyone since she died. She had been nothing but kind to me, letting me tag along with her as we both discovered this world. One night as we recollected our times, spilling news we had piled up during the day, I recalled a memory. A single prominent memory from my life back on earth. I may overthink things but it could be possible I dreamt this memory up rather than it being a truthful documentation of an experience.
I was a little girl, maybe reaching puberty, my face-less mother gave me money, green and orange notes. Enough to buy a loaf of bread. She said she made sure she gave me the right amount because I had a tendency of not returning change when there was. I took the money and went to a small shop that was down the road. The streets were dusty and polluted, kids played with wire cars they pushed on long wire sticks, running around giggling and joyful. The people of the neighborhood knew me, waving at me or greeting me, asking how my parents were, if my little sister could speak now. I had a little sister. But I do not know her name or face for this is the only memory I have that includes her. At the spaza shop with a red board with a name on it, a south Asian man sold me bread behind the metal bars of his container shop and gave me some gum for free. I remember this giving me so much joy, I skipped all the way home. After I got home, I gave the bread to my mother and she put it in the bread tin then I went to my room where my little sister cried the whole time in her crib. My mother never came to help and I couldn’t stand my sister’s crying but I didn’t want to stop it either. When I looked for my mother, she wasn’t in her room, she wasn’t in the house or the streets nearby. She was gone. Where… I don’t know and my father was a human statue that always sat in front of the television, when I called to him, tugged him, it like I wasn’t there or he wasn’t.
From then on we were made to leave, with a 100 rhunas from the Empire each to keep us alive until we found purpose here. Rhodesia had the pleasure to know what she wanted to do, become a chef and she got a restaurant job elsewhere. Penrose and I realized we were both aimless women who had no clue where they wanted to go but all we knew was that we had to go.
As we go higher and higher in Drenja the day turns humid and tiring, I feel myself slipping into a sleep. I don’t get it because according to Osiris I slept for over 12 hours. When Casper walks slowly and we aren’t running like we always are in Lamplava being on his back is relaxing and calming. I pat my cheeks and blink myself awake.
“Where are we going to meet up with Osiris again?” I ask Casper and know that he will not reply. We find ourselves near a man-made river that streams down to an end I cannot see. Casper keeps going sniffing around. This area is far more deserted than anywhere I’ve ever been. There is no commotion behind house walls, no one calling out or anything in the form of sound. Only the whistle of the wind and Casper’s snout.
I suddenly feel like we should go back.
“Let’s go back to Osiris,” I tell Casper and try to pull him in another direction but he keeps on moving forward. I keep on tugging but he does not listen.
“Casper!” I half shout and whisper, in this silence I feel too loud in my normal voice. I pat his head but he keeps on going, sniffing growing more aggressive. I want to go back because I’m scared and alone and I only have one arm. I’ve never been this alone since Penrose left and I’m vulnerable. Like something bad is about to happen. I’m mad at myself for letting my fear grow larger than my desire to find her. At least I can now kick myself out of a situation but I still kick like a little boy. I still wouldn’t be strong enough to fight of Green and her men.
His steps quicken like he’s chasing something. My stomach tightens.
“Can you smell her boy?” I ask, a smile growing on my lips. I stop yanking and let him follow his nose. My head twists from left and right trying to spot her before anyone else can. Casper takes a turn into a quiet residential street, it’s a cleaner and more reserved. I pick up a smell and I suddenly know what we are chasing, braaiing meat. I pull his reins and he comes to halt. Over a garden wall, smoke pipes up and meat sizzles on a stand. I cannot see anything over the wall but the house’s brown rooftop.
“Come on boy, you already ate,” I tell him and rub the side of his head. His tongue hangs out of his mouth and I let him savor the smell longer. Who could have known he was still hungry? Was it that Osiris didn’t know how much his dog needed to eat or we were too broke to afford it? I take it to be the latter, he loves Casper too much not to know.
I hoist him away but he stays stagnant. Something flares up in me, a pressure ticking to combustion. Impatience, anger, annoyance. I don’t know but I can’t stand the dog’s disobedience.
“Come one boy, Penrose,” I remind him and wonder if he still remembers her smell. As we stand there and he does not take his eyes off the smoke rising, the comfortable chatter of domestic life resonates.
“Can’t believe I have to go in on Potem,” a male voice says. The other two voices laugh. They sound so at ease and safe. A woman’s voice replies.
“At least it’s not the first day of the week.”
“I just having to be away from the kids for so long,” he says.
“Oh Matt, why stress?” another woman’s voice says, her voice is more honeyed, it reminds me of Penny’s. “They aren’t really your kids.”
“He’s just so in love with his wife and life he hates what we use as escapes from our spouses,” says the other one. They all laugh, the first woman’s laughter is more amused than the others, her husband must love her. It’s funny how people can forget the purpose of Calypso and get married. What a luxury. Not that I wouldn’t wed Penrose in a second but it seems like a symbol of comfort, comfort in the furnace, comfort in Calypso. For a time dispersed in miniature moments I did get comfortable in Calypso. On nights and days when we had enough, that which wasn’t ours, we truly relaxed and got to know each other. I too am guilty of what I judge. What did I do to deserve to be in this world? What did I do not to gain God’s favor?
“Even if things aren’t so permanent here, we should put ourselves to nurturing young unfortunate souls,” the man replies tartly.
They sound like a cult. “Come on boy.”
“Excuse me,” a wobbly voice calls. An old lady has snuck up behind me in wrinkled trousers, a dark grey head scarf tied under her chin and a loose fitted shirt. In her hand a plastic of several apples, a crimson red, some marked in fading oranges and yellows. They look so quenching and full. Under her feet, brown sandals, her toes are dusty. Casper regards her.
“Yes?”
“Excuse me young lady, my name is Melinda am looking for my granddaughter, her name is Amani.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Please help me find her. She disappeared and I see you have a tracker dog.”
Her arm shakes when she raises it to point in the direction her granddaughter went. Her face and features are pruned like my hands in a long bath, her poor posture makes me feel bad that she has been wondering around looking for a child. I must help her for I know what it feels like to lose someone you care about.
“Do you by chance have something of hers?” I ask holding out my hand. She walks closer with the assistance of a cane. On a narrow road, she makes it swiftly to us, and smiles kindly, handing me a scrunchie she takes out of her handbag. I take the band of frills and get off Casper, his reins in my hand so he doesn’t get funny. I hold it up to his nose, holding it back from being sniffed in. The old lady waits patiently and I smile at her — that smile you do when it’s silent and you have nothing else to do with your face. Casper stops sniffing and looks sharply to the right. It’s pretty convenient she had this in her bag.
“She must be that way. Casper boy, will you take us to her,” I try to sound as excitable as Osiris does when he speaks to Casper. Casper nods and stomps his two front feet. The lady claps in quicker than I expect her too and skips curtly off the ground. Her excitement is nearly infectious.
“Can you climb him, have you ever been on a malumas?” I ask her.
“No no, dear, I can walk beside you. It’s good for me. My granddaughter and I were actually on a walk before she ran off.”
I wish for her to climb and travel with ease but she seems very firm about her choice. I ask her again and she sweetly declines. She says her daughter ran off but didn’t she say she disappeared?
“Apple?” she asks, already handing me one from the see-through plastic.
“Thank you,” I beam. She smiles with her lips closed and eyes narrowed. It was the cutest thing. I get on Casper and I click my tongue twice. Casper begins walking and I slow him down to the old lady’s pace. If only she could walk any faster but I take a deep breath and calm down. Biting into the apple, the juices leak from the corners of my lips. It bursts as it crunches in my mouth. I suck and suck until it’s dry and swallow. Taking another bite. I have never had an apple in Calypso, it is so much like an earth apple, I am sure.
“Why did she run off?” I ask her.
“Children can be so untamed. You try to tie them down and they go crazier.”
I wonder what she means and she says, “she was angry with me.”
“Why?” I hope I am not prying.
“Uh, she wanted to go to a friend’s party and I said no.”
“How did you know she was your granddaughter?” I question. People don’t know each other in Calypso, I have possibly passed many people from my life on earth but I wouldn’t know, we have scarce memories. The only people who recall their pasts fully are…
“I am a witch,” she confesses. My heart skips a beat. A witch, in the flesh. I’ve never met a witch before but it is best to never show fear or questioning.
“Witch of what?”
“Disease.”
I swallow hard and look down at her and her frail body. She seems harmless and friendly. If she wanted to hurt me, she would have done it a long time ago.
“So, you can make people sick?”
“Humans, demons, souls, all of it. I can make anyone sick with the manipulation of what they already have in their body.”
We keep on going and she tells me more about witchcraft. She tells me that not all witches know they are witches right away, that it takes some years to recall their life and powers and abilities. Once witches know who they are they are granted the ability to travel between circles and meet Lucifer himself. That is when he grants them a special power, for lovely old Melinda it is the ability manipulate and craft diseases. Melinda confesses that she hardly uses her powers, she understands why she is in Calypso, to become a better person and how can you do so when all you can do is make people sick. She took long to learn this. She’s cool for holding so much power and using it wisely, I find it aspirational. It is nice to speak to someone other than Osiris. Osiris can be so serious all the time. Since I’ve asked him to train me all we do when we get the chance is kick each other’s asses and I’ve never kicked his. He tells me over and over to never wait for him, to never wait to be attacked but to attack first. He tells me to feel it in my gut, to feel hostility like one feels love for another. I feel it sometimes as he stands opposite me with his eyes searching for weakness in me but hardly do I ever land a kick. When I kick, he blocks, he says I make it too obvious. Every time, I eat dust.
We walk on and out of the quiet area and onto a road that leads to the dark castle. The road is long and tarred. Again, I ask if she would prefer to get on Casper and she declines. As we get closer and closer, the castle looks like a mix of a giant rook or queen chess piece, it’s base is the same size as the top but it curves in the middle like the waist of a woman. Many windows and arch shapes circling it up to the top and it is a black marble darker than charcoal. He keeps going and we wander off the road to the side. What could have this little girl been doing so close to the castle. Did she wonder into the woods? Casper quickens his pace and the old lady falls behind. I try to slow him down but he goes faster, we are almost running when he abruptly stops. I look back at the old lady and she didn’t even try to keep up.
“Melinda,” I call out and wave but she stands still and keeps looking at us. In the distance her expression can’t be read. I look down at what he has stopped on and right below us is a white circle of many symbols, stars and triangles an inscription that looks like hieroglyphics. A magic circle. It’s perfectly drawn onto the side of the road like it’s part of the pavement. When Casper licks its powder, he disappears beneath me and I land on the ground. Before I can let the pain say anything I call out for him and hurry up to my feet.
“Casper! Casper! Where are you!?”
The area is emptier than before, I am truly alone. Melinda is gone from where she was. I jump out of the magic circle so I do not disappear as well.
“Casper! Melinda… Amari?”
Has he disappeared into the forest beside us? No, it’s a thicket, I would see him if he was there. Besides he went poof, he didn’t necessarily walk away from under me. Did Melinda run into the forest or did she disappear, it’s more likely for her since she is a witch. Was the apple poison? Am I hallucinating? What’s happening? Where did they go? Osiris will kill me. I’m spinning around and bolting around trying to spot Casper. His name cuts halfway out of my mouth and in the distance, on the ascending side of the road I see him appear out of thin air.
“Casper!”
He looks back and disappears again. I run to where he was, I give it all I’ve got as I scale the hill that gets steeper as I climb. “Casper!” I scream, louder and louder until I can feel my voice come out of me. My legs are already tired but I have to keep going. When I reach the place where I saw him appear another circle is there, identical to the first. Same position of the symbols and all. I keep running up and as I predicted he appears again, further and closer to the castle. As I try to make it to him, running faster this time I get close enough to realize someone behind the large onyx gates of the castle. When I feel myself get so close enough to touch him, he disappears again and I grab onto nothing, landing on the palms of my hand.
“Casper!”
Nearing the gate, I get a steady look at the lady behind it. There are those wrinkled trousers and peach loose fitted shirt. That dark grey scarf over her head, her wrinkled eyes and lips. Toes ashier than before.
“What the hell is happening? Give me Casper!”
She smiles a closed smile. Her smug face changes, her sunken cheeks fill up youthfully and round. She becomes shorter. Her clothes change shape and color on her body and the scarf disappears around her face. The short brown hair grows longer until it’s darkened into a jet black behind her. She is no longer an old lady, there is no resemblance between the woman I stand before and the one she once was. Involuntarily I stagger back from the gate. The black makeup on her face is heavy, her eyeshadow spills over to her temples and cheeks. Her pale fingers are black at the tips. Her clothes have gone black and she looks a like water spirit in her layered lace dress. Her hair is cut on the sides and all that’s left is put in a ponytail. Eyes a contrasting yellow that matches the many chains on her chest and wrists. Casper appears in the circle behind her and before he can sink his teeth into her, she turns around and waves her hand over his face, muttering something inaudible. Casper falls to his side, unconscious.
“What are you doing?” I shout, gripping the gate’s bars again. Swallowing quickly to quench my dry throat. I hold on to the gate with a strength I never knew I had; with an anger I never knew I had. Life has been angering lately.
“Was he yours?” the woman asks. Her voice has a fry in it, like it’s peanut brittle. Even her voice has changed, she doesn’t sound like a younger version of the old lady at all. A shapeshifter. The skin-walking witch, Matilda.
“Yes, bring him back! Matilda!”
“Oh, and she knows my name, I must be notorious.”
Suddenly the bars are too hot but I am not necessarily burning. I let go because I’m afraid I will.
“Bring him back!” I demand and the warmth in my palms cools. Then I bang the gates over and over. She smirks, chuckles.
“He is now the queen’s.”
Then like that she fades away with Casper.
