Chapter 23
“Her body is so heavy,” said Marcos trying in vain to drag Mother’s sunken body into the centre of the room.
The Pudgy Old Lady on the other hand was on her knees, shaking her dear friend wildly trying to snap her back into her conscious state and away from the endless night but it was no use, her eyes were like glass and her limbs were becoming like the branches of a grand oak; impossible to bend and ponderous to hold and maneuver.
“We have to be fast. If Nature ends, all will be as it is for an eternity” said The Pudgy Old Lady.
Marcos imagined that this must be some metaphor, that he was lucid dreaming and so he questioned nothing of what The Pudgy Old Lady said or asked of him, for, in dreams, the strange was more common than the linear. He finally managed to drag Mother’s body away from the surrounding Facers and lay her on her back with her arms out right and her legs spread.
Following her orders, he took; from a near wooden block, some white chalk and drew a circle around Mother so that her body met at five points. In the space between each point, he drew elemental symbols and as he did, a sense of familiarity, of knowing, washed over him. He paid no mind and continued to scribe and paint as The Pudgy Old Lady instructed while she herself, chanted in a low hum; into the air of her dear friend, a spell of invocation to return an element to its earthly vessel.
“It’s done. What now?” asked Marcos turning to The Pudgy Old Lady.
“You have to remove your face,” she said.
“What?” he replied, thinking in the literal.
“Undo your clips and remove your face,” she said.
“What clips? What are you talking about?” he said.
Just at that moment The Pudgy Old Lady realized that she had a problem and that she would have to give unto her prisoner herself as the solution. She had not the courage, nor the training to deface a man on her own. She had the strength, of this she was certain but she was unsure of her smarts and she only knew of these rituals from stories and lessons having never herself taken practice.
She had to give away her trust to this man, the same man she had spent an entire day hunting to tear off his face. Luckily, that same man who was swimming in delusion, dancing with fantasy and drunk on Famine was unknowing of what was real or delusion. And in his conscious moments, he had been escaping into memories far more entrenched the ones that he had only just made, waking from a black plastic bag on an old river bed, screaming and running for his life.
If she didn’t swallow the sun, Nature would become void and all things as she said would stay as they were. Mankind would live out its last century strangled by conscious entanglement; a victim of The Famine. The world in which they governed would go unfed and be left to the spoils of absent domestication and the elements; of which her dear friend The Fat Old Lady was one, would exist as Nature would; as nothing, filling a vacuum of void, the dead space that existed as a theory between existing and not.
And worse still, if Nature were to sneak between the cracks of existence, she would spend an eternity on this godforsaken planet, alone.
And worse yet still, should Pudge swallow the sun and assume the vessel of Mother Nature, she would live an eternity with existence in her heart and at her breast but never at her sight or at her touch. And for this, she would give eternity again, to her dear friend; her love, but she would never spend another moment by her side for the vessel of Nature attended only to birthing of the sun as the course of its purpose and of its being and never again would she hold the hand or walk in the shadow of the dear friend of whose love had defined her existence for the eternity she that had lived until now.
“You want me to take off my face?” asked Marcos.
“No,” she said, “this is a sacrifice that only I can do.”
The Pudgy Old Lady left her dear friend still on the floor placing her hands gently over her chest for should she never return to her vessel, then let her vessel await homogenously.
She leaned forward and pressed her lips against the still lady’s skin; kissing kindly, the bridge between her eyes and whispering, “I love you” before perspiring sadness from her eyes, casting out; in one tear, an eternity of yearning that she would never feel once the transformation was made.
The single tear ran from the bridge between her eyes, down the length of her nose and coursed along the thick line of her cheek before finally pooling at the point of her jaw before dropping into the breath of air and carrying to a tiny vial that lay permanent around the still lady’s neck.
Marcos had a look of panic on his face. Mother lay by his feet and her body was starting to harden and crack as if her skin were turning from skin to leather to brick and then to sand and within every instance of a second, he could feel billions of particles of her brush past his skin as the wind swept up within the camp, lifting the corners of the tent form its metal pegs and threatening to carry the whole tent off into the night.
“We must make haste. Mother’s vessel is decaying. If it turns to sand, nature will lie along with her and we will be left here, untempered” said The Pudgy Old lady.
“What do I do?”
“You will place Mother’s dress upon her face and apply the hooks. Stand back as you finish. Her vessel will absorb the night, setting us at danger. As soon as her dress is worn, the bridge is opened for the night to return which means the other elements will be returning to their vessels quickly and believe me; they will stop us if they get the chance. We have to be quick. I need to you steal the sun” she said.
“How? From where?”
“From her womb. Here use this” she said, handing him a long silver blade.
“Cut deep, but do not cut the sun. The child of existence must not be hurt” she said.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“You have to. We have no choice. We’ve come too far by necessity alone. We have to do what is right” she said.
“What is right about stealing from another’s womb?”
“You’re defect is the effect of the love for her child. Mother doesn’t care anymore. Her womb is infected with humanity and the industry you created. As long as her child is born in her womb, god will no longer mourn of her absence and without his love, the well of empathy will continue to run dry. We must save the sun” she said.
The air about them swirled with dust as Marcos squeezed his eyes shut and fought to keep the dying lady’s legs and body in position inside of the circle.
The Pudgy Old Lady was chanting now and dancing around the circle with her arms waving back and forth. Marcos couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was just sounds of which to her obviously had some emotional and memorial connection but to him, just sounded like the broken speech of an infant bargaining for its mother’s breast.
The Pudgy Old Lady then canted in word as the sky abounding shook violently and patches of air rushed upwards like the static of a broken television.
La-ia
La-e-a-ia
E-ia-e-ia-e-a
A-ia-la-ia-a-li-ia
La-ia-e-ala-lia-li-a-e-lia
La-la-lia-ia-lia-ia-e-a-lia
La-a-aia-ia-la-aia-a-ia-la
La-lia-ia-la-lia-a-ia-e-lia-a
A-lia-ia-ia
“Now is the time, we must be quick or all will be lost” she said, screaming over the sound of howling winds and the rapping of loose canopy slapping against the sides of the tent, buckling the bamboo frame that kept the swarm outside from picking them up and carrying them off, somewhere over a rainbow.
The Pudgy Old Lady lowered herself through a violent swirl of dust and dirt and lay on the cold earth, resting her body like her Mother with her legs and arms meeting at five points along a circle, etched in the sand.
Marcos took the white chalk and scratched symbols into the spaces between her limbs, marking out the names of the elemental sisters; the children of nature.
He took from a hesham bag that The Pudgy Old Lady had been keeping close to her heart, a slimy and horrible looking clump of
flesh tied together with leather strapping and crude hooks. He held the skin dress up to his face and was aghast at what he saw. It was like the old lady had said. It was a girl’s face and the skin was so warm. Were it not a clump of flesh held together by leather strapping and crude hooks, he could swear that the young woman was standing before him; at his height. And he laid then, his hands upon her soft delicate skin, feeling the tremors of exhilaration ripple through the subtle hairs that touched against his own skin. He waited for her to say her name and as the dust swarmed around his eyes; closing his sight, he remembered.
“Sofia,” he said out loud, remembering maybe a part of another dream or maybe someone he had come across in The City, someone whom until now he had not held in remembrance.
“They steal faces, they live forever,” said the young woman’s voice in his mind as he stared at the skin dress.
It was her. He remembered now. He had met a girl in a cage and she had been taken prisoner like he and her friends too had been absolved of their liberty. They had had their faces removed. She watched them leave and then return on the faces of the twisted old ladies who danced mischievously and manically under the summer sun, singing to her and eyeing her own unblemished youthful glow.
Marcos lowered the face of the girl and eyed the two figures lying in five points on the floor. She was his captor, not his saviour.
How long had this nightmare gone on?
The capture?
The torture?
The mutilation of young women?
And for how long would it continue if he were to bring about this change and conserve nature?
“Now, the first act” she screamed.