Spots and Speed

All desire the torch in Kamar’s hand. He runs with it. The flame cannot burn, but quenches the fire in hearts. Hold it, experience the sapping of power. Kamar must take it far away, carry himself beyond civilization. His energy drains. Panting, he endures.

He comes across a lion. The lion asks for his flame. Kamar considers weakening King of Beasts, decides against it, for who doesn’t deserve a proper ruler? He carries on.

Next, Kamar comes to a cheetah. It asks for the flame.

Kamar has no time to consider. It snatches the flame. Forever on, it sprints, tires.

Mother of the Year

The mug slid across the table. The trouble was that Ryu wasn’t holding it, and no one else was either.

“No, don’t,” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure who he was talking to. “Please, don’t.”

As if on invisible strings, the mug continued its slow trek across his kitchen countertop, making a scream like a witch’s nail against a chalkboard, leaving a water smear instead of a ring. If it kept going it would soon meet the counter’s edge and tumble over, shattering into a million tiny daggers. Ryu couldn’t bear to touch the mug for fear that his hand would accidently touch the one he couldn’t see, then the awkwardness felt from the same thing happening in mushy movies would occur; he’d pull back his hand, but still remember the tingle that penetrated his skin. Still, as much as he couldn’t fathom making contact with a phantom, he also wouldn’t be able to tolerate the hurt in his mother’s eyes when she saw the decapitated mug, dead and not put-back-together-able.

There was no doubt she’d blame a six-year-old rather than a vengeful spirit . . .

The mug was at the edge now, still moving inch by inch. When it was see-sawing on the counter, half on and half off, just waiting to take the plunge, courage swept through Ryu and he took action. He launched himself across the kitchen nook and caught the mug in midair, his little index finger feeling the weight of the Mother of the Year keepsake in its entirety. He sighed as he placed the mug in the cabinet where it belonged, out of sight but sadly not out of harm’s way.

The spirit had a habit of opening the cabinets too, pulling open the drapes and cracking open the windows. He didn’t know what it wanted, what it had in mind.

“Ryu, what are you doing still in the kitchen,” his mother said, entering in her kimono-styled night robe. “You should have been in bed ages ago.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “I got up for a glass of milk.” He wiped the evidence that he had indeed had a drink from his upper lip and white-mustached-old-man Ryu reactivated his boyish youth.

His mother laughed. “Well, you better get back to bed. You have school in the morning.”

“Okay, mommy,” Ryu responded, marching right off to his bedroom without another word. He wished he could mention the spirit, but trying would make him seem crazy or bratty or . . .

The door to his bedroom was swinging open on its own, inviting him in. The dark waited in the threshold, attempting to beckon him with the smell of cozy blankets and the sounds of cicadas playing their stomachs just outside the bedroom window, but Ryu wasn’t falling for it. He couldn’t go in there. Something wanted him to go in and so he couldn’t. Couldn’t.

But mommy will be mad, a voice licked at his ear. She’ll think you’re a baby, that you’re a trouble maker, that you—

“No,” Ryu whispered. A lion roared within him and set him in motion, bravery seeping through his pores. He stood just inside the room and stared at the dancing shadows, willing his eyes to adjust to them and start to form the shapes he was familiar with. But instead of catching his desk and his bed and his giant plush puppy, he saw a figure standing just in front of him, in the dim moonlight from the window—himself, but . . . not himself, older.

“I tried to warn you,” the older boy said. About thirteen, he wore the same pajamas Ryu wore now, blue cotton shirt and bottoms trimmed in red. He had the same haircut, had the same scar on his face from Ryu’s first bike tumble, everything was the same . . . expect for his expression. He looked sad, but not too sad, like his goldfish got flushed, something he knew would happen because fish don’t live long but still felt bad about because it was alive.

“What do you mean?” Ryu asked his older self.

His older self didn’t speak again, only pointed back towards the hall.

Ryu felt a chill that had nothing to do with his other self’s ghostly presence. He retreated back down the hall, to the kitchen. His mother lay there on the tile, not moving. Ryu’s eyes shook with tears, the lion in him diminished to a kitten.

“I tried to tell you, to warn you,” the ghost teen said behind him. “I thought you would understand when I tried to destroy her “Mother of the Year” mug . . . This was her last year to live.”

Sing Me a Fish

They said Tara’s voice could raise the dead, so why not resurrect her goldfish that her parents had sent down the commode?

Tara stares into the still water of the porcelain bowl, caught in the thought of her fish taking a final swim down there before batting its little fins like wings and going on to fish heaven. She doesn’t care what her friends said about losing a dog or cat taking more out of you than a fish going belly-up after a week, doesn’t care that none of them could keep interest in a pet you couldn’t touch for a good minute without it choking on air.

Tara’s fish mattered to her for all the hours it allowed her to invest in TV or books or video games without it begging her to be fed. It was special to her because it listened to what she had to say. When Tara’s parents took her to an animal shelter to pick a pet, the cats walked out on her words and the dogs craved her attention and affection as well as anyone and everyone else’s. Only her fish saw her as an individual, singular and vital. And that was how Tara saw her fish, beyond important, because it shared its time with her and no one else, and more so since it could talk back to her.

“How is the ocean?” she asked it one night, staring into one of its bubbly eyes.

The goldfish flipped and spun about, reflecting Tara’s nightlight with its scales, yellow hues morphing into liquid gold. Then its ‘O’ of a mouth worked, saying, “The ocean is but drops of water, little teardrops grown big. It is small. It is large. It is life.”

Tara couldn’t quite get her head around her fish’s monologue, but she stored it to memory as she would a teacher’s lecture because it sounded important.

“Are fish important in the ocean, where there are so many of you?”

“All is important,” Tara’s fish answered, “little or large, few or many.”

Tara understood this. Coach bashed this lesson into her head everyday during afterschool soccer practice. Kids are like ants – alone they appear feeble and lost; gathered together ants can get food from the picnic and kids can get goals on a field or sweets from unsuspecting parents’ cookie jars. Teamwork.

One night, Tara asked her fish one more question, just before it began swimming the wrong around, before its never-closing eyes closed out visions of the world. There was still one thing she couldn’t understand. “Am I important?” she asked. “Even if I’m not all pretty covered in bright-colored scales, or smart like you?” Anxiety was building up in Tara, though she didn’t quite have a name for it, anxiety over leaving elementary for middle school, childhood for almost-adulthood. Her fish couldn’t have left her at a worse time, but it did give her a few more words of wisdom prior to doing so.

“All are smart, in their own ways,” the fish spoke. “All are beautiful, to someone. Remember: All is important. Important is all.”

Tara swallowed her fish’s words, forced them down as she would cold medicine, so bitter. At the moment, they were hard for her to take because she couldn’t quite believe them. Tara couldn’t see the beauty in her dirty blonde hair and eyes colored swamp-mud brown; she couldn’t see her intelligence after having to repeat third grade for lack of computing multiplication and division. To her, she had no importance.

Tara stands alone now, her mother out with her baby sibling, her father in another world while his body lays a husk on the couch downstairs. She’s a squash-able little ant on her own, but perhaps she needn’t be. Perhaps she could be another sort of bug when not in a crowd: a bee that could sting and cause welts if harmed, or a butterfly, still squash-able, but only if caught mid-flutter and bottled up. Now was her chance to make herself important.

Water in commodes isn’t blue like the ocean and, momentarily, Tara wonders why. Unable to hold in hope or the air in her lungs any longer, Tara begins to sing or screech or caterwaul.

A miracle does occur immediately – her father starts to snore peacefully despite Tara’s disrespect for his rest. Eventually, when Tara has sung so hard and from so deep down that her toes are curling against the cold tile floor, she stops. Nothing seems different to her. She is still alone, no people, no fish, and the commode water remains static.

Tara growls as she clenches her fists and stomps her foot like her face is under it, she’s so mad at herself. That’s when the water decides to change. Bubbles pulse through the water like it’s about to boil, but rather than bursting on the surface, they collect and float in air, forming a sort of transparent honeycomb.

The honeycomb begins to play, like someone’s given it the command by remote control, and shows a video of the ocean, the ocean from deep, deep below. Anemone glow among seaweed and other sea grasses flitting back and forth like waving green and purple and bluish fingers. Fish cover every surface from the wide open blue to the sand floor where crustaceans occupy their fancy. Tara’s eyes tear up when one particular fish catches her eye, one that knew her contorted face and the tenor of her voice – her goldfish.

It looks at her, and she looks at it, though neither of them can truly see. One of them has misty vision and the other is but an illusion. Tara isn’t sure which she is, the girl dreaming of fish or a girl a fish dreamed.

The honeycomb shatters and the water droplets rain back into the bowl providing Tara with the short shush of an April shower. All is still again with the water replaced – the air, the bowl, Tara’s mind. She is satisfied. Her voice didn’t raise the dead. Her voice raised pleasant memory, regardless of its lack of tune.

Rabbit Moon

Usagi expected to burn. An old rabbit such as himself didn’t have long to live, and the beggar man didn’t have long either if he was only to eat the fruits the monkey gathered or the fish offered by the otter. Usagi knew what he was doing when he threw himself into Beggar’s fire. Everyone knew rabbits possessed a sea of luck in each foot and Beggar would need luck as well as sustenance to revive his blessedly weary bones.

Usagi expected to burn, but he did not. Beggar was astonished at the rabbit’s luck that spared the creature even death. Now it is said here that Beggar was actually a Ruler of Heaven and that he drew a likeness to old Usagi on Tsuki, the brightest and biggest orb in the night sky, but sadly that didn’t occur. Nothing so grand could ever happen to old Usagi.

Monkey and Otter returned and heard of Usagi’s grandeur, his attempt to brave flames, his resolve to offer his life and luck for the beggar. Beggar was thankful, but he was also greedy. Hearing the other animals boast Usagi’s courage and humility, Beggar got an idea, a dirty one that he would later regret but could never take back.

Beggar couldn’t doodle on Tsuki, no, for his arms couldn’t stretch that far, but he could throw. Beggar told Usagi about all of the ingredients stored on Tsuki, enough to make an infinite amount of mochi, sweet pounded rice that quenched hunger and revitalized spirit.

“You can make some for yourself too, Usagi-san,” Beggar assured him. “With your luck you can pound enough to bring youth back into your old tired paws. With your luck you can come back to Earth with energy enough to set the world at a faster pace by running it, run backwards and set back the clock for everyone.”

Usagi agreed that it would be great to give everyone youth even if he may never gain his own. He resolved to pound mochi on Tsuki and to send it down as snow until Beggar and his animal friends had enough life in them to stay young forever. So Beggar threw Usagi to Tsuki and the pounding began.

Years and years passed with Usagi doing as promised, making mochi and sending it snowing down. Beggar, along with Monkey and Otter and other animals on Earth, grew more youthful with each passing day. Usagi grew older. He wouldn’t eat the mochi because he felt others needed it more than him. And, although he never let on that he knew, Beggar hadn’t fooled him in sending him to Tsuki.

It was later discovered that mochi from Tsuki didn’t give immortality, but a longer, more fulfilling life. Usagi still works today, in Tsuki, what some now call Moon or Luna. He still works hard and long with his tired paws, his pace slower but no less diligent. And when he is able, he sends down the snow. You may notice that snow is no longer sweet and sticky mochi, but powdery ice. You see, Usagi has run out of mochi ingredients since they weren’t as everlasting as Beggar claimed. His sightless eyes can’t see that he is only pounding frozen water to a light flurry. And that is alright because Usagi still has luck and the snow still channels it. The snow touches all creatures with life as the mochi did. Usagi still has purpose, and so he keeps pounding.

Wish Egg

“That egg will be the death of you, son,” my father says. Old and dry as the dirt in our garden, he sits at the dining room table. He frequently sits there, even though there is rarely anything there to eat. Perhaps he expects the food to materialize if he sees how loyally he waits for it. I’d be glad if that were the case. “Thieves will be on ya like flies if you walk into town with that thing. Trust the good fortune of finding a golden egg to bring me misfortune in the death of me only son.”

“That’s why I don’t plan on taking it with me, Papa,” I say, rolling the smooth oval in my hands. It shows me my distorted reflection, my eyes thinner than they should be and my lips too round and pursed; my nose is bulbous on the egg’s face, and though exaggerated, the egg is right in that it is my largest facial feature. “It was on the branches of our tree, so it is ours and has as much right to be here as we do. I’m leaving it in your care until I can figure out how to get our wish from it. Most think that the value of a golden egg comes from the material that builds it, that the eggs are solid and worth their weight in money. But the real value of the eggs is in their core, their hollow center where a fairy resides. Guard it, but not with your life. Understand?”

“Why not use my life on it?” Papa asks. “I don’t have much longer on this green earth anyways. My boy’s wellbeing is seas greater than my own.”

“Right, Papa,” I say. There’s no arguing with him. I place the egg in his trembling palm and head for the door. “Remember, it’s our secret. Keep it hidden.” My old man nods and I return the gesture before greeting the sunlight.

#

“You must heat the thing down to soup, that’s what I’ve heard,” merchant Robby informs me, stroking the red stumbles on his chin. He has been my mate for years and I trust the good of his intentions, just not their accuracy.

“Just seems to me you’d melt the fairy down with the gold,” I say, masking my uncertainty with curiousity.

“You would think that, wouldn’t ya, Jack?” Robby asks me like I was the one with the preposterous suggestion. “I don’t rightly know how you’d go about it then.”

I didn’t think so.

“Well, thanks for trying, Robby. You’re a right helpful chap.”

“Aw, go on, Jack,” Robby says, giving me a friendly shove. I do leave as he wants but not before seeing the red blush of his ears. No kind comment could go without setting Robby’s ears aflame. He’s the only one I can confide in about the egg, the only one who wouldn’t attempt to rob me and my father blind in the night, so I travel the dirt road of town back on home.

#

I arrive at my cottage and see the egg glowing in my father’s hand, positioned just as I’d left it. Papa is staring at it listlessly as if hypnotized; possessed by the light or by something I can’t see.

“What’s this, then?” I ask, running up to him. I cup my hands before the egg, not eager enough to touch it, but somehow trying to keep the light contained. “What have you done to it?”

“Done?” Papa scoffs. “The shell was rather dull so I restored the sheen with a scrap of cloth and a little elbow grease.”

Rubbing? Was that all that was required to gain our wish?

The glow surges into a blast sun-worthy, sending out shards of brightness so powerful that I have to not only close but shield my eyes by turning away; I slowly open them again, ease back around and see . . . nothing.

The egg is still in Papa’s clutches, black as coal now, all brilliance gone. Anger stabs me. All our hopes and dreams blacked out by a simple polishing. I don’t truly blame Papa but the fury burns and I don’t have the strength to blot its flames.

“You had to be reckless, didn’t you?” I roar. “You just had to work on the thing before I figured out how to use it!”

Papa pays me no heed. I get not one word from him. He is still gazing at the egg, his expression unchanged since I walked in on its blaze. “Papa?” I question him, studying his eyes, waiting for a blink.

None comes and closer and closer still I notice that his eyes match the egg’s new shell, gone from sapphire to onyx.

I recall his words earlier, his tone when he described what he’d done to the egg. He’d sounded . . . muffled, more ancient than he was, tired . . . Had his lips even been moving?

Hesitantly, I touch Papa’s shoulder. I feel a shudder and then all crumbles. Like a tired stone structure Papa slumps over and vibrates, flakes of him falling away. Shaking and shaking he reduces into a sand figurine, a sad-shaped mound and then, finally, a pile of dust.

The egg nestles in his ashes, and in them its golden layer is restored. If not for its bed that still smelt of flesh, none would know what had happened. Well . . . none but me.

Stolen Heart

Her heart was stolen from her chest during surgery. A man guised as head cardio surgeon seized the pumping organ and ran. Turns out he was the desperate relative of a young girl he called his sister, a girl with red strands of hair and skin sickly pallid on the waiting list for a new part to pump life through her veins. The man was reprimanded and told that he’d lost access to the hospital. She shouldn’t have known this, the girl with the missing heart, but miraculously while under anesthesia she could still hear. She heard the man’s fire, his passion, mingling with his weakness and growing in intensity. When her heart was replaced, reconnected, she still heard his shouts, his screams, a year later he’s still inside her.

“I’ve got to go back to the hospital,” Ava said to her mother who was busying herself preparing a simple cup of tea as if it were a chemistry experiment (which Ava supposed it was, but not one to take so seriously). “You know, for tests and things.”

“That’s fine,” her mother said, still not turning from her cup after she’s added a dash of sugar to it, tasted it, added a drop of milk, tasted again. With spoon still in mouth, she added, “Just don’t expect anything.”

Ava didn’t ask her to elaborate. She knew what she meant. It’s what everyone said, their words lingering in her mind, on repeat. “Don’t expect anything.” “Don’t expect that that man will be there, the one who stole your heart.” She’d told the story to just about everyone, friend and relative. And, surely, some thought it all fabricated, too much like something in a medical drama; others didn’t believe the man, kicked out, would ever return to the hospital. Certainly the person he was trying to save would have expired by now. What reason would he have? And even still, all she had as a way of recognizing him was his voice. No face, nothing that had specific coloring or style like hair or eyes or even gait, just a voice.

But she couldn’t relinquish the thought, the hope. She walked swiftly, as though getting to the hospital faster increased her odds, as though it was still the day of her surgery and he was still running through the halls with her heart. She took no time for the birds flitting overhead, ‘happy sprites’ she liked to call them, singing everyday of their lives, blessing people with their gift. Any other day she’d stop to watch them flap and flitter, carefree, but not today.

She took no time for passersby, though she enjoyed watching them on ordinary occasion, guessing where they were headed, those who walked back towards where she’d come, those who sped ahead of her, assuming a spectacled girl with a stack of books tucked under her arms was bound for the library, a boy with a baseball glove to the park, a fidgety man in a trench coat too long and dark for the heat to a risqué engagement. She never discovered their true destinations but she liked to think she’d won when these same people passed by with evidence that she was close if not dead on – the girl with a new stack of books and a smile, the boy sweaty, grass smeared, the man still shifty but oddly pleased looking around the eyes, lips, where a lipstick stain dyed them pink. Truly, figuring what exactly someone had been up to would be a whole new game.

But today she hadn’t the time.

She was close to the hospital when something finally gave her pause. A man slumped against a light pole, clothes tattered and dirty, face shaded with overgrown shag. “Don’t go harassing strangers,” her mother always told her in this situation. “Meddling with one of them is like handling a stray dog, don’t know if it’ll bite, and it’s not worth tetanus.” Ava pushed this despicable warning off.

“Excuse me, sir, could you use some change, or food. I don’t have food on me, mind you, but surely I can get you something from the hospital there, soup, a sandwich, jell-o.”

The man didn’t answer, didn’t move. Perhaps he was asleep, Ava assumed. She turned to leave, then felt a brace on her ankle. She gasped, looking down to see the man’s hand gripping her. Rather than screaming and causing uproar, she asked quite calmly despite her heart’s newfound drumbeat, “What is it? What do you want?”

He didn’t answer, the man. But he eased his grip, slowly, and finally released her. His eyes cast down, Ava could still only see his hair, cheeks and chin hidden, but she sensed a blush, as though the man were embarrassed. A normal person would still run after such a startle, “a close encounter,” her mother would call it, but Ava wasn’t normal; she fancied herself extraordinary. So she stooped beside him.

He was mumbling, too low to hear. “What was that?” Ava asked, bending closer. The man’s stench was strong, but not unbearable. Her niece’s diapers, now those were nose-pinch worthy. The man still mumbled, so she asked again, “What are you saying?”

“A heart,” he said. “Get me a heart, if they’ve got one. My sister, she might still need one, in heaven.”

Ava’s breath hitched. His voice, she heard it now. Tears spangled in her eyes. And she smiled, “How about I get you some food first, water. Then we’ll talk hearts.”

Words Paper-thin

I stand before a bookshelf, listening to the whispers. When a person says that they hear voices in their head, most would think them mad. And most of the time, I guess, the majority would be right. But I hear them, voices from objects inanimate but very much alive in that they can tell a story to just about anyone. But they speak, plain and clearly to me. I hear the voices of books.

“Why must you frequent the library during socials, Miu?” my mother asks. It is Father who caters to the large social events held in our manor.  If you ask me, Mother and I are mere figureheads, antiques or collectibles to be gawked at behind glass. “Look, don’t touch,” our elaborate clothes scream at our patrons. I just can’t tolerate the empty comments of people who don’t really care what I think or feel.

“Would you prefer that I give the dirty old goats and gossipy hens false smiles and absent nods, Mother? You know it doesn’t matter whether I’m amongst a crowd or not. I’m invisible to them, all the same.” I twiddle the thin diamond bracelet manacling my wrist, a perfect complement to my white dress, the sort a marriage-bound American girl would desperately covet, in my opinion. I can’t find comfort in Western clothes myself and would much rather be in kimono, but right now, during the Meiji era, Japan is consumed with staying modern by incorporating Western influences into our culture.

Mother sighs in exasperation, places a gloved hand on her brow. She’s getting one of her migraines. Like me, she’ll wind up suffering through her pain without a single complaint to Father. “These parties aren’t to make best friends in, dear,” she says, face still buried in hand. “Your father is the proprietor of a very prestigious company and he must flaunt his capabilities if he is to keep his position.”

I don’t know why she feels a need to remind me of such things. It’s not as if I could forget my own family’s obligations. Mother masks her pain and turns on a quick heel, leaving me with no more words. I’m expected to follow her out shortly, but before that . . .

My hands meet the warm spine of a book, so tender I’d expect to feel a pulse beneath it. I close my eyes, and listen.

No knowledge is gained without searching . . . Words die on deaf ears lest they are felt through emotion. Use wisdom wisely.

A book’s voice can seem random, completely irrelevant to its contents. Fairytales can spout very true history, and bibliographies frequently blurb fabrications. That’s the mystery of it all; along with the question of why I’m the one granted with such a beautiful ability, a girl so plain on the outside. I’ve looked for signs that others in my household and out might share this gift, but whether my parents, a housekeeper, or a guest, all pick up a book like a thrift trinket, flip furiously through the fragile pages, and replace it to browse another. Like me, the most marvelous of books is looked over and forgotten.

This one that has gained my attention, this book of guidance, appears to be older than any of its brethren. I gently un-tuck it from its resting spot and give it a sniff. If its yellowing pages weren’t a sign of its advanced age, the stale aroma it offers is a dead giveaway. Somehow dust has managed to cover the pages that I’ve opened up to. I stare at the clouded symbols for a moment then give the dust layer a blow.

The powdered covering takes off but, to my astonishment, so do the symbols. Kanji characters find their way to the floor, dissembling and reassembling into black scratches of nothing. Nothing like this has ever happened before, not in my wildest dreams. Distraught, I grab at the symbols, try to replace them where they belong. To my relief, the figures act as stickers and don’t fight adhesion. My fingers jitter as if I were in the middle of a heinous act or engaging in indecent behavior and I can’t help casting nervous glances over my shoulder to be sure that no one is entering the room. I don’t know why anyone would care for an old book in this house but it’s the bizarreness of it all that I can’t imagine another soul witnessing, just another odd act to paste on my dysfunctional being.

I work and work, not at all focusing on the sentences I’m creating, just attempting to fix what is broken. I didn’t get a good look at what the book read before I distorted it so there is no way that I could properly reconstruct it anyway. When I’m done, I’m surprised that the result is coherent, entirely readable and meaningful despite my rushed artistry. I study the new words that I’ve written and soon drop the book in response, seized by disbelief.

I’m not sure if it’s the tight clothes across my bosom or my own lungs constricting my air, but the only sound in my ears is my haggard breathing and my vision appears to be going, black decorating the fringes. As if in a dream, I pick up the book and search for the title. The front cover is but a bare burgundy leather skin, devoid of writing just as the spine, I remember. Tentatively, I flip to the first page. Five seconds of denial pass and then I’m flinging the book as if it has my hands on fire.

The title page reads: The Past, Present, and Future of Tachibana Miu.