India and the Conundrum

“Maybe if I kill you, this time you’ll stay dead.”

Put that way, what he was doing was pointless. And he knew it. But people think strange things when they‘re handling a gun. I had to wonder what was going through his mind as he stood there, so confidently: his shoulders back, his eyes clear, his hand steady. How many years had it taken for him to learn to stand that way? I wondered if his father had taught him.

“You know it doesn’t work like that. Why do you bother?”

I guess this is the part of the story where I introduce myself. There are many things I am not. I am not a killer. I refuse to handle any weapon, or even to imagine any person dying maliciously. I know it happens, I have seen it happen. But I will not be responsible for it.

So why was I being held at gunpoint?

He leaned forward a little, like a familiar person would. If I were anyone else, this would be an intimate moment: two people standing apart, yet drawn to each other. Bound together by the weight of a shared past. “Because I will hunt you until the end. It has to end, you see. We should not have to make up for your mistake anymore.”

Because of me, evil was in the world.

—
Take me back.

My friend, with whom I have shared secrets and dreams alike.

Take me back.

Did it all start with a whisper? Or was it a scream?

—

I was in my late twenties when I discovered that I had always been a sorceress. The word is really meaningless without context, and at the time, I found it meaningless as well. I had been studying folklore, drifting away from my previous historical project, which had been a comparative analysis of a turn-of-the-century radical and an ancient general. The word “sorceress” appears in some of the old stories. But it wasn’t until I met Gregor, the university’s resident crazy man in the basement, that I discovered the Dark Lord in earnest.

I know I sound crazy. And the whole “Dark Lord” title is cheesy-sounding. But centuries of human storytelling have given us that name, and it also has an unreal sort of gravity to it. At least I think so.

I guess you could say I became obsessed. It was like a sociological codec buried under funny names and outlandish stories. In even the most mundane domestic tales, the presence of a Dark Lord hovered. I became not only interested, but an expert on the archetype.

No, archetype is a bad word. It is much more than that.

It was not a dark and stormy night, when I met Felix Vito. I was not impressed by him, but he was a man and most men did not impress me. Then again, most women were the same.

I always was a little on the elitist side.

Felix is a painfully attractive and playful man on the outside. Like a coy sort of playboy. He has money, resources, and contacts. He has more than the world on a string: he keeps it in his pocket. And he offered to fund my marginal folklore research. Pay me for my obsession, which had grown to the point where it was keeping me up at night. He showed me pictures and mythologies I hadn’t considered. Innocent, in a way. But people are not always as they appear.

And one day, he revealed himself to me.

—

We in the shadow of these past transgressions.

We in the shadow.

Tremble in the sight of sun.

Tremble in the cycle.

—

“Do you know who you are?” I had not expected my benefactor to be in the library again, so late. Only the most dedicated — or obsessive — students stayed in this section of the massive underground so late into the night. And we all had a code not to disturb each other.

“Audrey Laczynski. I could ramble off my blood type and social security number if you would like.”

He grinned the grin that set my roommate off into girlish rambles. And my roommate was a brilliant particle physicist. I guess that said something about my demeanor.

“Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any.” He sat down and revealed a small leather bound book. It did not appear old, more like something that had been bound in the old style out of some passing fancy. It did not surprise me, for Felix seemed more fancy than anything else.

The text was Latin, or something like it, though.

“Have you ever wondered… have you ever thought about why nearly every culture has a vision of a Dark Lord, of Knights and Seers, all of them?”

“It is memetic. People cannot help it.”

He shook his head. “What if I told you that it is not simply a repeating type, but instead the same person each time?”

“Excuse me?”

He flipped through a few pages and pointed to an illustration. It was a copy of something from a comic book, it looked like. The wicked villain, complete with cloak and poorly chosen tights.

“I do not have time for this.”

“Look at it. I happen to like comics, so I find them a good illustrating tool. Haven’t you ever wondered why the villain always acts the same way, barring slight cultural differences? Like why does he always monologue? Why is he bent on world domination?”

This was a discussion more meant for Catty, my roommate, and her son. They both had an appreciation of the idiotic video game and comic culture. I didn’t.

“That is a caricature, Felix. Not a definition.”

“But caricatures are based on something real. But this is just the introduction.” He flipped through some more pages and pointed to a new illustration. This time it was an extremely scantily clad woman with a dark bearing to her. A villainess, perhaps? Maybe some kind of magic wielder, judging from the wand in her hand.

“Those cannot be real.”

“Would you stop being cynical. This is you.”

I blinked.

“If this is some way to get me to wear some skimpy–”

“This is a sorceress.”

And he touched my shoulder.

—

I forget who I am in the mist.

Guide me.

—

There are times when even the most skeptical person has an experience that is so strange that they cannot deny it. When Felix touched my shoulder, something started inside me. Something that I had always known was there, but never really acknowledged until that moment. It was painful and wonderful and I closed my eyes tightly as if to invite it and block it out at the same time.

When I opened my eyes, I saw.

People are always looking for themselves in the things they see. Sometimes they find what they’re looking for, sometimes they do not. And sometimes the things they see cannot be anything other than themselves. I was standing outside myself and looking in.

Yes, the woman standing before me in this heady perfume dream world was me. Ophea.

The name rolled off my tongue before I even registered it. Ophea. That was what they used to call me. My dark hair was very long and held up by those pins wealthy women used to wear. I was rich because my husband was rich. But I did not sit idly and work on my cross-stitch. There was… a flying machine and… and…

I opened my eyes.

“What sort of trick was that?” I demanded. I demanded. If Felix had known who I was all this time, if what I had just seen was a memory, then why had I spent the last few years reading about it? What had all of those hours spent studying from musty old books been for anyway?

He flipped some pages to a man wearing some weird kind of visor over his eyes. “I’m a seer. I see things.”

Very descriptive.

“Yes, but how did I see your hallucinations?”

“Your memories are your own. You’d wake up fully if you weren’t so darn stubborn. I only view things. You have the power to shape them. Let go.”

“Let go.”

“Precisely.”

“All right. Let me get this straight. I am some kind of reincarnating sorceress, you are some kind of annoying psychic, and comic books are caricatures of historical fact?”

“All true.”

“Then there are others, by your theory.”

He flipped to the back of the book.

“Already found them.”

—

You my legion, forever steadfast.

Betray me not in this most perilous hour.

I will right all that I have done.

For you my faithful legion.

—

I could not go through a day after that without wondering. Without trying to see past the mundane veils everyone wore. Could the baker have once been magician? Or maybe the bus driver had been a hunter? Were we all fallen and corrupted from what we were at first, what we were meant to be?

Even more perplexing was the question of the Dark Lord. Who and what was he now? Why was I inexplicably drawn to him?

A part of my brain refused to believe these claims. Sorceress, indeed. I had been raised as a good Methodist and thus never dabbled in the occult and such things. People did not hold sway over nature, God did. No person could unmake matter. That was science and I had stayed up many nights talking with Catty about the laws of thermodynamics.

And yet.

I could not deny the tingle in my fingertips when I picked up a random rock on the side of the road. Nor the feeling that as long as I kept my feet on the ground I was safe from any harm. That I was vulnerable and invincible all at once. Felix did not bother to explain anything to me for weeks. He was biding his time while I made up my mind.

I had names and addresses. I had a legion that had once sworn themselves to my cause. Two had been right under my nose the whole time. Just a couple of cops in the area that had humored Catty’s son one time. I did not remember their names but somehow their faces had stuck in my mind. Something off about one, I distinctly remembered him being a woman, and the other was younger than he should have been.

It was too much for my mind. So I retreated to the basement with Gregor and watched them from a distance; in their folklores and histories. My soldiers and mages would be fine without me.

That was when I discovered the evil I had wrought.

—

Fear not.

I am here to enlighten that which you deny.

—

In the present I am staring down the barrel of a gun. And at a man daring himself to pull the trigger.

“I will end it. Killing me will only delay it, make this all spin around for another cycle.”

I remember his name now. Valdis. A very old style name, Icelandic. He does not look Icelandic, but that is beside the point. The point is, this cop was once one of my legion. A soldier, a knight. One of my two most trusted lieutenants. The other is not with her–no, with him, he is male now–and I know that is likely the cause for his current rash actions.

“I’m tired of your rhetoric! You swore that you would find a way to end it. Vern’s dead because of you! I have to live out this life and hope to God that in the next one I won’t have to wait as long.”

I pity him. I pity the her I used to know. I pity that the two of them would be reborn and she would have to wait. Yes, I would settle on she. She had been born a man this time, and carried herself well as one, but I could see the confused woman with the cold eyes underneath.

My mistake had yet again killed the only thing she held dear in the world. For this, I pitied her and was helpless.

“Etana.”

His hand trembled.

“Etana, I am sorry. I was foolish. I am sorry.”

Invoking her first and most true name is a little low. But I have learned that it can help things, sometimes put things in my favor. At least that’s what Gregor always rambled about. I can worry about how dirty I feel doing it later. Right now I am alive, and if I died I would only do this again. The same pathetic tragedy would play out again and again.

She puts on that old man’s face and I can no longer see the woman she used to be. “Then you have my sword, Lady.”

There has to be a catch, because people are never that easy to convince.

To be continued