Dark Child

He was quite confident with the decision he made on the cabin. It was small, settled into the densest nook of the woods, had running water, electricity (most of the time), and a village near enough to sell his catch of the day when he needed cash. The brick was overrun with moss, and yes most of the doors and windows were falling apart, but he needed something to fill his days anyways. He could easily see himself spending his time by the brook for hours on end, reeling in the bountiful trout and the sounds of hammering and brush strokes narrating his days. Hm. Spending time. It is certainly a currency, and it's one he has gambled and found himself in debt with. This was a way to burn through even more of it, but at least this time he was in nature and pandering around with his own mind and earth’s fruits.

He found the place on a whim. It was the kind that floats through your ears and into your brain like a wispy wind. Visions of endless greenery grew in his head, and he couldn't shake it. He had always been an outdoorsman and worked with his hands, evident by his calluses and roughness, but when it started entering his dreams he thought it was getting ridiculous.

On a walk to clear his whimsy head, he saw one of those newspaper vending machines, and this one was a truly ancient relic. Dust coated and sealed it like cancerous rust that was somehow now a congealed substance at least an inch thick. Something about the once mint color and stupid medieval Fool graffitied on the side caught his eye and then so did the realty listings within. He lifted the disgusting lid, needing to put in a few good jerks, and looked at the filmy practically disintegrating paper pamphlet in his hand. From there he put it under his arm, wrote it off as indulging his newfound fantasticalness, marched home shaking it off, and subsequently called the listed number.

There was no greeting when the call clicked in connection, just silence until his bonfire voice crackled a “...Hello?”. The voice on the other end was quiet. It was not as if they were afraid of being heard, but like they were constantly dancing on the verge of some crooning dirge. They avoided most questions and spoke in short vexing sentences. A few minutes later, and there he was closing on the mysterious cabin with its vast amount of land. The air around him buzzed and reeled with the suddenness.

The owner wouldn’t even answer how much land there was, only “more than enough” and “as far as your eyes can see land, it's there boy”. His hand ran through his long salt and peppered hair at that; he couldn't remember the last time he was called “boy” and it added to the mystifying nature of his newfound situation. As he was shaking it off, and before he could even say so much as a thank you, the receiver clicked and it was over. It was so fast he stood there for a moment scratching the silvery scruff on his sharp jaw, and he played the event over and over again in his mind to assure that it indeed happened. He bought a cabin, he was finally leaving his stagnancy, and his isolation would now have a more refreshing backdrop.

So, there he was repairing loose and crooked screened doors and ripping up floorboards. Bent over and sweating, his mind was completely blank and on autopilot to hone in on his task. This was his refined method of staving off any biting nipping loneliness trying to curl up and make a home. He was a king of the sharp knives of focus, never wavering once a project was set. The endless labors ahead of him were what made this cabin so perfect. They served his constant battle against the creatures’ wings that wafted despondency like smoke into the sulci and gyri of his brain.

In fact, he was so consumed with his tediousness he almost missed the glare off something black under the floorboards he was repairing. There was a double take and then he froze. The goose bumps under his t-shirt were abrasive. Being a man such as himself, he ignored the sensations but could not ignore the small book.

Once in his hands, he stroked the butteriness that can only come from the weathers of time and a faithful owner. Then, he saw the glimmering coins slinking in the shadows. The amount was vast, and the foreign symbols mocked him. He stared for a moment before having to turn to the journal. Its siren song was too strong.

He flipped open the pages revealing a series of lines and rushed slashes incomprehensible to him. Creased eyes ran across dots and holes made by a harsh hand. He was unable to consume them fast enough despite his inability to understand in the slightest. While his brain could never read such markings, something else inside of him was fed by the pages and couldn't stop.

Before he knew it, outside there was dusky red bleeding onto the green hills of his rolling land. He finally finished his not-reading and looked up to an aggravated sunset. In a zombie-ish stupor like from one of the old horror movies he watched at night (always to a bland fish and beer), he rose to put away what he needed and left what his subconscious intended to resume the next day.

His trance led him to the bedroom where he kicked off his work boots, which he really only wore to protect his feet out of habit and not any true regard. For him, a quick piss and disrobing was enough of a nightly routine and then he was falling into bed. Tonight there was something in the air that made him curl up and hold his sheets close as he rolled over to face the window. The red of the sun hit his eyes without a flinch or a blink; he was frozen as she sank below the earth and the moon bloomed. The coins chimed under his floorboards like a tell-tale heart. He felt dirty. All the while, he watched the mill that provided him power slosh through the water, turning and turning and turning. His lids dropped. Fortune and coins weaved themselves into his dreams, every night the wheel turning and spinning and turning and spinning.

The next morning was uneventful aside from waking up with the discovered journal. He honestly remembered resting it on the kitchen counter, but it wasn’t really a concern for him. Breakfast was some plain toast and a black coffee (truly he could never be bothered), and he resolved to go on a walk before getting to a project. Maybe it would ease his head. He got as far as the screened door slamming on his ass before he had to stop in his tracks.

There on his doorstep was an assortment of trinkets, garbage, and litter. Shiny can tabs, colorful fishing lures, mica sparkling rocks, and spools of wire were all laid out in patterns like very precious gems before him. A stark contrast to the small fortune he left to rest under the floorboards. He couldn’t even muster any thoughts. He just blankly stood there, still positioned to take a step, and stared. Once he regained a small level of brain function, he went to more closely examine.

It was definitely in some kind of swirling pattern but not any he recognized. Perhaps a maze of some kind? His instinct was to reconsult his little yesterday finding, but he was a weathered husk of a man. A phoenix could piece its molecules together speck by speck right in front of him and he would dully walk away. It was really quite easy for him to write it off as some nearby murder of crows he accidentally befriended. Even so, he quietly brought them inside and placed them gingerly by his fishing equipment.

For days he received these little gifts. Sometimes it was pieces of muddy quartz and old forgotten pennies, others it was thimbles and beer cans. Regardless of the offering type, he became used to the daily surprises and a part of him he wouldn’t admit to (as he thought it had died) started to even look forward to them. Until there was a dead robin by his door. This one made him visibly upset and perturbed. He never received one like that again.

He was feeling fondly towards crows and still able to easily see them as his visitors, even telling himself the money was just forgotten by the mysterious owner (how would that ever happen?) Then one afternoon he opened his cabinet and jumped back. There in his cup was a living gasping fish. He ran in a panic to fill the cup with water and transfer the fish to a bowl. A new friend, he guessed.

That night he sat in his recliner staring at the small thing squirming in his soup bowl. He was lost in thought and completely stumped at his newfound existence. The pages of the journal were flipped open in question, and the coins still haunted him. Before he could induce a migraine, the subtle blue rainfall of the day dropped open into full sobbing. He’d already patched the cabin’s leaky spots, but he had a shack of firewood that needed locking up and the rain brewed into a storm.

Sighing from the inevitability of getting drenched, he marched on outside. The winds were whipping and threw the rain horizontally like punches to the face. The rain fell in curtains in the twilight, and it was difficult to see two feet in front of him. He was at last nearing the shack when he almost tripped. It was only one of the seven large branches that he thought were the gifts for the day (before the fish), and then his vision focused.

In the circle of branches there was a small body the size of a middle schooler folded in on itself. Rain poured in rivers over the silvery skin that iridescently threw pale shades of purple, green, and white back at the moon. The glitter of the complexion was impossible, and yet there it was. He was now close enough to see It was feminine, and her white starry blonde hair stuck to her skin all the way past her behind. He couldn’t help but brush away the strands from her back in a need to feel the stone and silk, revealing even more ethereal color. The essence of gemstones pieced the shape of wings flat to her skin, similar in a gem’s hardness yet also fluttery as gossamer. They were outlined with stunning trails of silver and reflected like stained glass windows down her back.

He thought for a devastating moment the creature might be dead, and he moved to gently lift her head and turn her face (the touch burned, and somewhere in the back of his mind he felt the wetness on his face warmer than the rain). White eyelashes cast shadows down sharp cheeks and revealed a dainty pointed chin. Her freckles were glittering diamonds painted across a long aquiline nose, framing what he could only think of as a pixie face. He thought his heart stopped, and he began to mourn something so achingly beautiful when those white lids flashed open. And then his heart really stopped.

Kaleidoscope, lunar moth green eyes with no pupils. They swirled and twisted psychedelically, holding him completely in place. In that moment it all came together. She was the Queen of Wands, the Empress. A birthing from the universe. Ancient and thousands of years old. Those huge, bottomless, cat-like eyes saw into him.

Then she smiled, her sharp needle point teeth shining in the rain.