So Hide Your Eyes

Chapter TWO - Scattered Cards

Chapter TWO

_____

My mama told me when I was young, "so hide your eyes when they come."

_____

_____

  I DASHED TO THE mirror in my mother's room. I had to look, to know it wasn't another lonely dream.

  And it wasn't. 

  It was the first time I'd stood in front of a mirror. I've always avoided it, mostly because mama seemed to avoid everything but it. She'd always avoid our problems and our neighbours - they were one and the same - and deflect my nosy questions with the deft skill that all pretty ladies like mother had in order to ensnare rich, prying tourists who thought they were doing you a great favor by being your lover for a night. Even though really, they're the ones who were paying for mama's company. 

  But unlike everything else, the mirror - she'd stand in front of it for hours everyday. Usually either primping or staring at her reflection.

  I never understood what scary sorcery the mirror possessed, to have bewitched my mother into these silly acts, and I tried my best to avoid the mirror to ensure it remained so. 

  I smiled.

  My reflection smiled widely. It was just as he said. I did have red eyes. Pretty, I thought vainly, feeling foolish, but not as vivid as his. 

  I tapped my finger on an eye in his likeness, in an attempt to recall the nice, warm tingle I felt. It didn't work. But nevertheless, I was content because it meant his touch was unique.

  I laughed and spun to the kitchen, shivering in my too-thin skin. I couldn't help the instinctive feeling that this - this magnificent joy was wrong. It felt a stranger. Probably because it was. Happiness is always an unwelcome stranger in this sad and bitter house.

  In the kitchen, Mama was at the only table in the house, viciously slamming her blade through the vegetables.

  "Quiet!" Mama spun around to screech. I stopped. She glided over and pinched my ear, twisting it a little before she was satisfied and released it. She disliked joy, especially when she wasn't part of it. Years ago, she was one of the emperor's concubines, living splendidly pampered in his palace.

That is, until she was knocked up by my father and exiled to a miserable existence, caring for the child that didn't even have the decency to die even after an attempted Lilit-Sap abortion. I felt quite vindictive about her near murder, so I was always glad to be alive; if only to spite her.

I flinched and scuttled away. She had a chopper in her hand. It was the one I'd bought with my pick-pocketed money several years back, because she was complaining of her nails staining when tearing meat.

Mama skimmed over my expression and sighed. She put down the chopper and hugged me, but I was rigid. I dared not look into her eyes, for fear of feeling sympathy towards her. Of course, it was too late. I'd known that I'd liked - if not loved - her ever since I gave her that chopper which she could use at anytime she wished, to finish what she'd started the day she tried to erase me.

After a minute or so, Mama seemed to notice she was embracing a wooden doll. She frowned and stepped back. I did the same. Away. We gazed at each other from a distance. A tense stalemate. A beat. Then Mama shooed me off to school in a huffy as she teased back behind her ears, a curl of her silvery blonde hair.

I went out he door and walked across the wooden planks that link all the boathouses and boat shacks to one another.

    Mama and I lived many planks away from the rest of the village. So I had passed a blue boat, a red one, a white one, and eleven more unpainted and rotting ones by the time I reached school.  

The biggest boat was a silvery metal trap five times the size of our plain wooden boat shack. It made frightening guttural grunts when travelling, so none of the children ventured close. I heard that a mean old man had sold his soul to the Devil to own it. I decided they were lies since I never recalled trading boats for souls.

________

  On the School-boat, a group of boys from my class were playing cards, careless and carefree. Resentment swelled in my chest. The boat creaked and they glanced up in my approach.

  They froze. I knew they were thinking of how they'd had held me captive yesterday. On this very boat. Of what fun it'd been, and how the adults had probably praised them for defeating the devil. I wondered if they thought me a ghost. 

  Or maybe I was forgotten so quickly that they don't even recognize me now. Though it isn't true, I indulge myself and imagine that they probably forgot me not because my murder was insignificant, but because of the opposite; that they wanted to forget that great, unspeakable deed.

  The atmosphere felt awkward, so I tried to creep past them, in vain. 

  Then one of the boys stared into my face.

I looked up and met his eyes defiantly. My hands flew to my eyes. They burned.

Then he gasped. He choked, and his body writhed like a pink worm, as if being drowned by a stronger entity than he. Like I had yesterday. He continued convulsing.  The boys darted away and flung their cards behind at me. They fluttered ineffectively.

They scratched at the door and hurriedly scurried through and slammed it. I heard the knock of a deadbolt falling locked.

A moment later, he was inert. The dead boy seemed peaceful, unlike the cackling beast he and all his other cowardly friends had been. His face was smooth like expensive bronze, and his eyes were wide in shock but empty. Serene.

A shiver down my spine jolted me to close his eyes. I traced his hairline in curiosity, and imagined I'd already found the boy with red eyes. That he was lying on my lap, sleeping, vulnerable. But by his own volition, not because he was too dead to object. Warmth was fading from the dead boy's head. Maybe the red eyed boy would enjoy a sacrifice. Or maybe he would berate me for murder, even though I'm not even sure how I'd killed him. Only that it had something to do with my red, burning eyes,

I sighed. To be friends with a god. I laughed, my voice cracking. I sniffed a little and swiped at my eyes. What a delusional hope that I clung to.

The crack of Teacher selecting a whip came from behind the door. The boys hiding there must've told on me. I gave a strangled squeak in surprise.

I didn't think I'd be learning anything except pain today either, so I scrambled up to run away from school before Teacher could gladly whip me.

_________

I went home. The village had been scorching and unquiet, but the house was silent. Only the rush and ghostly 'wooosh' of waves could be heard now.

Mama was out pursuing her previous career. Just on a less glamorous scale than when she lived in the palace, and served only one man. She was working in the brothel, and attending to the tourists who were sufficiently curious to travel to Khoel. The only village in the sea that was made entirely from imported planks and boats.

How was I going to find Demon? I knew neither his village, nor where in the vast sea my own village was located. School had never taught me any of this. Then again, it hasn't taught me very much at all. I bit my lips. I would have to ask him myself. I nodded, determined, though I was not.

I walked to the kitchen and grabbed Mother's chopper. My breathing grew short and chest heaved with labour. I felt my heart pulsing curtly in my throat and wondered if I would revive afterwards.

 If they would miss me.

 If he would.

  But I lifted the blade to my neck and cleaved before I could second guess myself any further.

  Death was as easy as falling asleep after a nightmare. Slowly, painfully, as my eyes crept close and the false dawn that the candlelight allowed, extinguished.

  I opened my eyes.

  The world had become a yawning dark.

  I was back in the sea.

________