The Infinity Sign That Takes Longer to Draw 1 Read online

  Dedicated to all those who I asked weirdly specific questions while writing this book.

  Copyright © 2020 Zohar Neiger

  THE INFINITY SIGN THAT TAKES LONGER TO DRAW Zohar Neiger

  First printed 2020

  © All Rights Reserved, Zohar Neiger 2020

  © Cover Art: Zohar Neiger

  All rights reserved.

  All content and images herein are subject to copyright. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without written prior permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  First printing: March 2020

  Part I

  Chapter List

  1. Cherub's Spirit Arrow

  2. Neuron Scars

  3. Sol

  4. Si

  5. Houyi Feng (I and II)

  6. Madame White Snake

  7. Golden Angels

  8. When Flutes Fly

  9. Third Heaven

  10. Third Circle of Hell

  11. The Goat Crusade

  12. Black and Blue

  13. Salvador

  14. The Whirlwind Curse (Part I)

  15. Artemisia Tea / Diana

  16. Have a Date, Feng (I and II)

  17. Who is Alioth?

  18. Four Leaf Clove

  19. The Empty Chair

  20. The Whirlwind Curse (Part II)

  Extra Content:

  1. Character Name Index

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter List

  1 一

  2 二

  3 三

  4 四

  5 ٥

  6 ٦

  7 ٧

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Character Name Information Index

  It's a cold night of the third month of autumn,

  Tranquil is a lone old man.

  He lies until it is late, the lamp already extinguished,

  And daintily sleeps alongside the sound of rain.

  The ash in the heater yet warm from the fire,

  Its aroma further warms the blanket and covers.

  At dawn, it is cloudless and cold, but he will not rise,

  The frosted leaves red, they hide the steps.

  - Bai Juyi, Sleeping on a Night with Autumn Rain

  1 一

  Cherub's Spirit Arrow

  I may have spent a year to get here, and my sister may die back home, but I do have one thing going for me: I'm burning my Chinese passport.

  The thrumming orange flame latched on its corner. The crinkled document softly sizzled, leaving a black, shriveled trail as it slipped faster, sauntering slowly closer to my finger.

  Dry burning danced on my cheeks and the back of my eyes. I leaned in further to read the homeland words on the page one last time before they were munched away for good – or, actually, before my teacher, singing low and sitting across from me, ordered me to whorl it straight into demise.

  The words read:

  Family Name: Feng.

  First Name: Houyi.

  Sex: Male.

  Appearance: Bags under eyes, one eye contains a white circle cataract, hair that reaches the shoulders with white streaks, scars on—

  The rest, including my birthdate and other ritualistic legal jargon, was now completely ash.

  The bumble of my teacher's skin drum that bumped my eardrums subtly accompanied his repeating, droning, shamanic, song.

  "Nichi tai tai,

  En-yu-ai,

  Oro nika, oro nika,

  Hey hey hey hey,

  Oh, ooh, ai."

  I turned my eyes, itching and burning from the smoke and the craving for sleep, to the warm and lulling orange glow the fire cast on the monastery roof. Below the Abbey was a grand mountain cloaked in snow, that was drenched in nighttime. We were surrounded by the Iraqi desert.

  I felt on top of the universe, yet deep inside the nooks of my mind.

  I closed my eyes.

  Then I sucked air in pain.

  "Oh, ow!-" I held my finger, blowing on it before the numbness of the burn set in.

  I heard the clacks of my teacher's drum as he put it aside and his song went silent.

  "Are you hurt, Putaca?" he addressed me by my fake name – my fake identity, as his fake nephew.

  "It jumped me, more than it hurt," I chuckled it off, mouth drying with every inhale of smoke.

  "Good." His webbed eyes – within them the line between white and brown dulled from years of doing fire rituals like this – they smiled at me.

  We sat in silence.

  I took the opportunity to yawn wide, wobbling on the wooden stool we dragged up here, which was frankly a fire hazard.

  My eyes watered so I wiped them.

  I yawned again, hawing and widening my mouth. I made him yawn.

  The orange glow was now a yellow halo on the stones below our feet. We had to wait patiently until the fire grew shorter and shorter, burning out slowly enough for my straight soldier posture to fail and I craned my back.

  After the light dulled, the stars came into view. Above my teacher, Salvador Huapaya, was the constellation Aries, scraping the sky like a scythe or like a spoon scooping up starry cereal.

  …I must be getting hungry.

  I knew his kind as shamans – but he hated the term when I used it. He's a paqo, not a shaman, he said. However, to me, all otherworldly spirituality is the same. Praying never seemed to help me.

  "I'm proud of you, Putaca," said Huapaya.

  "I miss her," I said at the same time.

  A moment of confusion at who replies first.

  "The passport?" Huapaya laughed devilishly, as if nudging me with his toothy smile.

  I smiled as much as I could manage to please the man who's proud of me.

  "The passport? It isn't a 'she'," I responded, "uh, it's not 'her'."

  "I was joking, but good to see your Arabic is improving enough to tell between masculine and feminine nouns. I have taught you well." Paternal lines were drawn on his many wrinkles.

  "So, which 'her' do you miss?" he asked, his elbows on his knees. He had a single, gleaming golden ring.

  I sniffed. "The princess," he opened his mouth to respond, "this time I miss the princess."

  I shut him up.

  He clicked his tongue now, shaking his head. "I take it the ritual last month didn't work, ey? Did you channel your longing for her into the spirit arrow?"

  The "spirit arrow"—the rather unsightly name for the thing you burn in the fire ritual, the one which we are doing right now, made to help your negative feeling get mulched into the earth.

  It's usually just a stick, which Huapaya had a pile of on the bench next to him. Still, he wanted me to use something that's more obviously related to my past. To ease me into the idea of the spiritual tie of things to the soul, he said.

  So I burned my passport.

  I felt stupid enough doing it that I want to be mulched into the earth myself. But, what else could I do? Huapaya teaching me shamanism was the only way I could stay undercover in the monastery without becoming a monk.

  And I have to stay here.

  And I can't become a monk. I
must marry my princess.

  "Yes, yes, I channeled the feeling and all that. It's not better."

  "Patience, Putaca."

  My heart swelled with anger. My body burned and dried before the fire, which was only embers and soft little flickers of fire now.

  Great. Now he reminded me of the other person I constantly miss. Some spiritual healer he is.

  "You know," I muttered to the ground, "Posuo means 'to jump'… in Chinese. This fire Posuo."

  I could only imagine his face.

  "Still craving to speak Chinese? How will you learn Arabic?" he laughed.

  "I want to remember my sister's name," I shrugged.

  "Putaca," his tone was curt, but then softened: "Of course. I'm sorry. You're not in the mood to joke, I know. I just want your sorrow gone."

  I puckered the edges of my eyes in a lazy smile.

  "Very well. Let's remember your sister. Why was she called Posuo?"

  "It was her name when we were at the military training camp. When she trained, she looked like she was dancing."

  "Like a flame?"

  "Not even I know her first name, we came to the camp as small children."

  "Ah, so 'Posuo' is – what's it called – what do you Chinese call them, the name you give yourself in adulthood."

  "Zi names, and no, women don't have zi names before marriage."

  I didn't care to explain everything behind courtesy names, nor translate it all to Arabic. Huapaya knows nothing of Chinese culture anyway, though he did work for the Chinese empire.

  "Does the princess have such a name?" he winked eerily, spherical eyelid coating his iris.

  I breathed too deeply, causing a coughing fit. "Woah, easy, nephew." – even alone, he was acting my uncle.

  I aggressively cleared my throat, hurting it more.

  "Heh," I heaved, "one of our nights she said I'd give her one someday."

  "How romantic. Such young love birds."

  I chuckled.

  "What a shame you left her," he said.

  "She!—"

  I balled up my fists, losing the strength to talk back. My nails imprinted themselves into my palm. If Huapaya knew why I left, he wouldn't speak that way. He thinks I had a choice.

  When I first came here 3 months ago, I only told him I am General Feng Houyi, and since I could not speak of the potion, I instead lied that I was seeking spiritual cleansing after many years of military hardship. I also asked to remain anonymous among the monks.

  "Since you're not Christian, I won't force you to become a monk. I may be an Abbot now, but originally, I came here after studying mysticism in my birth country of Peru. I will give you an ethnic Peruvian Quechua name. Say… Putaca. You are now Putaca Huapaya, my brother's son, coming to learn mysticism with me. Yes, I'll teach you. It'll be your cover.

  No one will ask you to speak Peruvian Spanish or Quechua, just stay in character. You'll have to tan a bit more to pass as Latino, though," he said with a signature laugh – something between a chortle and a wheezing cough.

  One laugh which I heard again when he made fun of the monks struggling to pronounce the anti-Arabic 'P' in my new name, instead mostly calling me 'Butaca', like 'armchair', in Spanish. I was simply grateful the joke wasn't of a far more obvious wordplay in the name Putaca.

  One laugh, which I heard again now, as he laughed at my anger.

  "Look, nephew," he opened as he does every inspirational speech, "if you don't learn to let things go, how will you cope with your existence?"

  I averted my eyes.

  "Hm? You need your heart for a lifetime, wearing it out when you're, what, 30? It won't do you any favors."

  How did he guess my age perfectly?

  "I need my heart for a lifetime, do I?" I laughed.

  "Wow, didn’t expect that to be what you crack at. But, I suppose it is pretty funny. Your heart is stronger than the average person's, so, it's even more true in your case, I should add."

  I kept snorting to myself, half from throat ache.

  "But, again, Putaca, letting go of things of the past that ache you is crucial—" I laughed again.

  "My passport?" My laughter was a foreign sound, like chewing gum sticking to the sides of my ear from the inside.

  "I left home. So, that passport was a useful bookmark, nothing more."

  He looked down at what little sparks of the fire remained. All around, still thick, the air was plagued with the stink of chunky smoke.

  Only when he lifted a paper bag by his feet did I notice it was there. It crinkled.

  "Pink or white, Putaca?"

  He tilted the bag to me so I could see it was full of fluffy marshmallows.

  My eyes widened.

  "Before the fire burns out, I thought, it might be nice."

  I smiled. "White is a sad color," – the color of mourning, back at home in China – "anyway, pink is less bright."

  Huapaya grinned, "can't have sadness here, can we?" His eyes lit up, and he shook the package after shoveling a white one in his mouth. He was chewing it politely when he offered me the bag.

  I took it, and caught the stick he tossed me in midair.

  I smooshed a pink marshmallow on the edge of the stick and brought it over the tiny flame, waiting for it to blacken.

  "You're completely burning it, Putaca!" Huapaya humph-ed as he fished his stick out of the fire and blew on it.

  "It's the best that way!"

  He laughed at my pout and tucked in to his medium-rare marshmallow.

  We must have finished the bag, and I felt a stomachache coming, when the kindling of the fire finally all burned out and nothing was left. The fire survived a little longer before going into dimness, after having its share of life.

  I could feel my heart happy again, for the first time in months.

  "My teacher, thank—"

  When I turned to look at him again, my amused expression wiped off my face. I furrowed my brow. "What? What is it?" I asked.

  Huapaya's eyes held a startled spark as his face darted upward to be washed clean by the shadow of the moon.

  I turned my torso to look at what he was gaping at, but my cataract was blinded terribly by the starlight. Even though it was a new moon, I was still overly sensitive to all light, and especially the stars', since I was injured.

  I blinked away the pain as a black burnt-in blotch swept across my vision and disappeared as soon as it came.

  "Well, looks like the fire's all burnt out," said Huapaya, always humming low even when speaking, "I'm going to my room. We can leave. Oh, stay to close the ritual – remember how to close the directions? Go ahead, won't you, Putaca?"

  He tossed me a bottle of alcohol which sat by the drum, the liquid within threatening to topple over the edge.

  By the time it steadied he was already hot on his heels racing down the stairs back into the building, sandals plucking the stone.

  I studied the moon again and still saw nothing. My eyes were still soaked in pain. I'm not staying here alone, is he crazy?

  Out of the pocket of my robe came my silver pocket watch. It was for documenting my age, with several other uses.

  The large hand, which moved once a year, pointed to the number 30. 30 years old. The thin hand that moved every hour pointed near 20. This meant it was 2 a.m.

  If he's headed to his room, and not the 2 a.m. prayer with the monks like every night, I am finally left unsupervised.

  To do what I truly came here for.

  2 二

  Neuron Scars

  That small shelf closet in the Chinese emperor's palace could barely hold those hundreds of vials filled with exactly 520 ml Kaguya's Potion, let alone two trained military officers locked in – yet, in her stubbornness, she managed to squeeze in with me anyway.

  That was a year before I sat with Huapaya to do the fire ritual, when the hand of the watch pointed to 29. But it wasn't my watch yet, and I was in a much more claustrophobic situation.

  She wrapped her dark fingers around my wrist
s, her battle-coarse skin feeling like Ironbark wood closing on a man in the stocks. I flinched, pulling my hand to my side only to have her body follow, still firmly glued to my racing veins, standing closer.

  The shrieks of the vibrating jars on the shelves added a second ringing to the one already in my ears.

  Her cheeks smelled like ash when my nose scraped her face in an attempt to push her away from me with my head. "Houyi, don't."