The Infinity Sign That Takes Longer to Draw 2 Page 8

  Their storytelling tone returned. Alioth was somehow disheartened by this description, letting a squeaky ‘oh’ flee her lips before she shut up.

  33

  Akhet Lele

  It was about time to find an inn or hotel so we could shower and sleep in a warm place.

  "Akhet, I worry someone might see you and get scared," I said.

  Akhet laughed, her typical laughter, like a wheezing cough, paired with shaking shoulders. "Yeah, you're right, humans see an angel and suddenly think they're 'special' and 'worthy of an angelic revelation' – all that junk. But no worries, I have a human disguise, a way to hide my wings even from the most mystical of creatures, of course. Watch.”

  Akhet backed off from us, spreading her arms and legs like a starfish. First, she wrapped her neck wings around her neck, and they melted into a scarlet feather boa scarf with yellow tips.

  Then she hugged her body with her back wings, and they engulfed her as they faded into the illusion of a puffy, translucent red nightgown over her usual dress. Her green scales, too, disappeared, and turned the sleeves of the dress viridian.

  Then, she covered her feet with her ankle wings, and they bound around her toes until they became a pair of (frankly, hideous) robin red feathery boots.

  “Will you be able to stay in this form for a night or two?” I asked.

  Akhet swished her golden hair, and her unblinking eyes transformed into a much more humane shape, finally having white edges to the iris and taking a darker amber shade - so one could be fooled to believe they are brown. There was still something eerie to them, but that couldn't be helped. “Might be a little exhausting. I’ll deal. I’ll deal.”

  We were yet in Iran, in some small town with views to hills with blankets of colorful tulips. We didn't exactly feel welcome – but having Akhet with us gave me confidence.

  Though I was unsure where we were map-wise, Akhet assured us they knew where they were leading us, saying that after we cross Iran, we can get to the Pakistan-China border.

  When asked how Akhet knew the way, they responded in an offended tone, as if it was common knowledge that the second highest mountain in the world was on the Pakistan-China border. "I visit there every year, remember?"

  The houses were made of a dark orange-brown material, roofs made of tin, and the streets were almost too narrow for Janet to fit. Quiet wrapped the air.

  On the way to Huapaya's monastery I crossed Iran through the former Silk Road. Along the path were large buildings known as 'Caravansaries', which housed the travelers along their way, among them myself.

  These were usually built outside of cities and towns, but I came to learn that small Caravansaries were built inside of cities, and were more like inns, named khans. All we had to do was search for a "khan", and we would have shelter for the night.

  "Shaman Fang, do you know where you're going?"

  "I'm looking for a place called a 'Khan'. Help me look."

  One street went up a hill and was paved with stairs. My blurry vision couldn't make out what the sign on the building at the top of the stairs read, but Alioth started walking up the stairs, waving the rest of us up. Her pockets were lined with yellow tulips she picked.

  We came to a big, square-shaped building, an open courtyard in its middle and an entrance large enough for Janet to pass through.

  A middle-aged woman, wearing long black clothes and a headcover, smiled in greeting us. "Good morning," she said in Farsi.

  "Good morning," I said in Arabic.

  A look of understanding dawned on her face, and she went silent. I didn't know many words that were similar in Farsi and Arabic, but just enough to get our point across.

  "Hello. My name is Houyi Feng, she is Alioth Al-Nuri, she is Akhet…"

  I looked at Akhet for a moment, whose eyes were wide.

  "Akhet Lele. We travel."

  The woman's eyes took an amused glint, and she nodded, a friendly smile on her lips.

  Without further conversation, she led Janet to the courtyard where there was a stall filled with saltbush in a barrel, which Janet leaned down to munch on. We removed our bags from Janet and walked with the innkeeper to a tall tent with thick cloth-bolt walls and a wooden ceiling. The floor was carpeted with straw-weaved, patterned rugs, a few thick mattresses on top of them.

  The money I had was Iraqi, but she accepted it anyway, saying something I didn't understand. Once she left, a boulder of anxiety rolled off my chest.

  "Wow, you killed it there, Houyi, I had no idea what she was saying," Akhet sighed, crashing down on the mattress and stretching out their arms over their head.

  "The important thing is we have shelter. I need a nap," I said.

  "Me too," Akhet grumbled.

  Alioth settled Sahar under a blanket and was fiddling with the bag, taking out the tin can she filled with rainwater. She assured me that when Sahar is wrapped tight in a blanket, she can't move. "I'll be soaking the yellow tulip petals in the water to make pigment. Have a good rest, you guys."

  34

  Nothing

  Akhet curled into the fetal position on the stairs outside the inn, where the innkeeper set up sheets of waterproof blankets above the roofs of the buildings. She was watching the sky as if she didn’t care countless drumming raindrops crashed to the ground below her. Ah, and she was holding her pipe to her mouth, but nothing was in it.

  It must have been midnight.

  I saw the skin on her bare back develop bumps, so I shrugged off my coat and gingerly leaned down to rub her skin with the fur for a second before tucking the collar around her neck.

  She wordlessly looked at me before taking it off and curling her wrist to offer it to me.

  My sleeves were baggy around my arms, the cold slithering in and causing the hairs on my arm to stand and touch the fabric inside, like wings reaching for the sky. I took the coat back.

  “I don’t feel cold like humans do,” she said to explain.

  I didn’t want to step out into the rain, so stayed hovering behind her.

  Oh. “Wh… how would you know what it feels like for a human, to say that?"

  She chuckled. “You took the coat back so eagerly, even after you tried to be kind. I’m out here bare chested. I think that’s proof enough."

  She turned her profile to me now, and I saw her reptilian eye’s pupil widen. It looked a bit like a playful kitten’s, one happily staring down a toy from afar.

  “Over the years, after reading so many books, I managed to learn enough about human sensations to understand them. You know, happiness, sadness, anger. Even God feels them, but angels don’t. The only creatures to be denied of this! For good reason, too: Where, exactly, do feelings belong in serving the Lord, ah? The only feeling that matters in that eternal servitude is utter devotion.” She paused for a moment, pondering. “And longing. Devotion and longing. Denging, if you will."

  After I smiled, she turned away with a triumphant smirk, then sighed sleepily.

  I could think of another way to merge ‘devotion’ and ‘longing’.

  "But you feel emotions," I said. "I saw you cry once, and you laugh."

  She shrugged, "what I am made of, and what I am capable of, are different things, methinks. Who knows what I am made of… now? I don't think I want to know. Either way, did you know the sun's core contains Heaven's secret weapon?"

  She unlocked her childish position, stretching out her legs like a pawing cat.

  "I… didn't know that," I confessed, huffing in confusion.

  “Well, anyway, the only human thing I never managed to figure out is rain sadness. Why be sad when the liquid of life… our liquid of life, is spewing bountifully upon you?"

  I tried to maintain my serious face after hearing her say such large words casually.

  I suddenly noticed she was eyeing me down, a hungry flame licking at her irises.

  “Oh, you want an answer,” I responded.

  “Sure,” she replied.

  “I never, uh...” I trail
ed off, snuggling tight my own arms. “I never thought about it."

  I exhaled through my teeth, puffing out a shiver. Akhet’s eyebrows upturned, as did her shoulders. “Shame. Can’t ask Alioth, either, can I? Should have asked Sal."

  Obviously, I hate rain, but my reason is unlike other people’s.

  “I guess, for kids, it means they can’t go out to play,” I voiced my train of thought. “For teenagers, when the sun is gone, their already unhappy feelings are amplified." For adults?

  Akhet started humming a little tune, a random squeaky melody. She reached out to gather some raindrops on her palm.

  “For adults, largely, it means there’s going to be traffic jams."

  Akhet laughed a little, smoothing her hair back with the wet hand, flattening it. “Right, because they cannot fly, so they use cars."

  “Before that they used carriages and sedans."

  “And be—"

  She cut herself off, and I could see from the side view of her face that the skin around her eyes expanded. She unpaused her humming. The confusing melody only ended when she spoke again.

  “I thought it strange that some humans would dislike rain, not just because it’s a gift from God, I know they can be ungrateful, but because if they’re crying, what better way to mask the tears?"

  “Than to stand in a place where the teardrops will disappear without having to stop crying?” I continued her.

  “Yeah,” she whispered barely above the rain.

  I let my sight avert from her now, peering at the pouring downfall above, trying to follow the flow with swiftly vibrating eyes.

  “Some people don’t really cry anymore,” I said.

  “Really people,” she echoed.

  I breathed in the air.

  "Houyi," Akhet said, "before you head back, I've… been wondering."

  She rose from the steps, facing me. "Salvador told me a lot about who you are and your talents, and you told me about your injury vaguely, but never told me about your past or why you wanted refuge in the monastery."

  My head slipped to look at the floor. "It's a long story. I don't want to think about it."

  "But you must."

  My eyebrows furrowed as I looked up again.

  "I mean, you must – probably – think about it, from time to time."

  "Ah."

  Unwillingly, of course I do.

  "One year, Houyi, when I came to the monastery, Salvador wasn't there. He left me a note that he was off in the Three-Pronged Empire, to meet with a group of people who were summoned by the emperor, among them himself."

  I watched the twinkle in her eyes dance when she spoke of Huapaya. Their fiery shine was like a paper lantern in thick fog. I tried not to think of anything else.

  "We always exchanged stories, but it was usually me telling of my adventures, he never left the monastery much. So, I tempted him to tell me of his journey to China. I remember especially that he told me about their special watches."

  I tried not to think of anything else.

  "Yours, has a thermometer, and a compass, and it doesn't seem to move according to hours, but only minutes and seconds, with another mystery hand. It seems it documents years, considering the extra 0 added to each number on the clock, 10, 20, 30. Am I wrong?"

  "When did you…?" I struggled not to think of anything else.

  "It has a mechanism to reset itself, but why would a watch that documents 120 years, a human lifetime, need to reset automatically?"

  Stop.

  "Why did you look through it?!"

  "I got curious. Sorry."

  I thought of everything else. Akhet deduced everything. She surely knew now what happened to me, and my family, and the princess – oh, my poor family. She dug into my things while I wasn't there and rushed to conclusions I never wished to tell. I felt the brief simmer of anger boil at my feet like a thin veil of water in a kettle.

  "Akhet, don't make me talk about that."

  "You are from the empire, Houyi, you served in their army," Akhet's blissful softness triggered my rage even more. How dare she be gentle to me at a time like this?

  "What of it!?" I grinded.

  "You're… you were a general, you drank Kaguya's Potion, you—"

  Akhet placed her hands on my shoulders. "You're immortal."

  I smacked off her hands and breathed, trying to calm the waters already rising above my Adam's apple. Akhet moved her face as if I slapped her.

  Kaguya's Potion – the immortality potion.

  It gave my sister an immortal life alright.

  When she moved her head back to me. A silent amusement lounged on her lips. In a second she shed off her human illusion, and I was slammed against the wall of the adjacent house. Akhet's curtains of wings shielded us both from prying eyes.

  "Why won't you admit it?" she whispered. The whisper removed all honey from her voice, leaving only a rasp.

  She stood too close, the cloth of her garb itching at my clothes which clung to me like handcuffs. She held my wrists on the wall. Fear surged through my bones, and I couldn't speak.

  "If being immortal has some kind of shame behind it, I'd love to know. Speak, and know you'll be insulting me as well," she said.

  The calmness of her tone eased somewhat the fact that I was being chained to the wall. I took a breath.

  "Let me go, Akhet."

  She smiled, her fangs looking much more threatening up close. Then, she let go.

  I massaged my wrists, wincing in the pain that laced them before realizing she hasn't backed away from me.

  Her hands shot to my chest, and she ripped my shirt open, three buttons flying and clattering to the floor. "The infinity sign!" she screeched, pointing at it and her eyes widened. "You were an honorary—"

  Out of my belt came my knife. It was drenched in the dew of the moon.

  Akhet's expression instantly wiped off. She watched the tip of my blade intently, then licked her lips, walking backward until I could see her whole body from the feet to her neck wings, still stretched before she flapped them gently and folded them.

  "Are you standing in wait for the messiah to come, Houyi? Have at you."

  Her muscular arms made a gesture between a shrug and a beckon. I felt my own arms shiver, lungs filling to their full capacity.

  My eyes were fixated, seeing a halo of white lines direct me forward in delicious concentration.

  I twirled the knife in my hand and lunged forward. Akhet slipped aside, doing nothing in retaliation.

  I glared at her figure standing at the side of my vision, pouncing with the knife aimed at something, anything. She escaped again, this time her arm wrapping up my neck and holding me inert.

  I felt her tightened muscles on my windpipe.

  I slammed my foot into her bare toes. She barely flinched, but her hold untightened, so I managed to twirl around and scrape her nose with the tip of the knife, ducking to escape. I was at a safe distance.

  By the light of the moon I saw her grip the once smooth part of her nose, and when she let go of it, nothing oozed out. It was a flesh colored cut in her skin, but it was deep. Her eyes crossed to her hand.

  Nothing was on her fingers.

  "Nothing," she stammered, wings slowly drooping in her shock. "I'm made of nothing. Not even… not smokeless—… I'm made of nothing."

  I felt the anger disappear all at once. I tried to approach her.

  A terrible, muffled scream injected the air with shrill sound; I clutched my ears, looking its way.

  The innkeeper was standing at the window of the front room, clutching a towel to her heart and having an expression on her face not unlike a dead body.

  Likewise, Alioth stood outside front gate, puffing out her chest, eyes glistening.

  I tried to say something. "Alioth, it's not—"

  Akhet heaved and I reeled my head to them. "I…"

  They moved around their lips as if mimicking human speech, but with no sound made.

  "I… I'm going to look for
shooting stars. I think… I think I saw one, before, if it wasn't… a raindrop."