Thirty four

"If you don't listen to good things you will listen to bad things because you're a masochist; but I'm going to get straight to the point so that you don't suffer more than you should:

That castle used to be, to call it something, a repository of magic; but man, wanting to have all he could, one day managed to desecrate the great sanctuary and made magic for the rest of the world what they now call imagination.

Now, for magic to be free, it is necessary for someone to dance on the dance floor of the castle's great ballroom. Of course, only with the proper high heeled slippers, (Emphasis on the last 5 words) plus the applicants must meet certain requirements; but this is a game and I must give you the minimum conditions for you to be an active agent within the game..."

Luz has the pretense of wanting to throw herself into the void, even if she had not known that all this is a game designed to torture the entire student body of the school; she has the feeling that something would happen if she were to contact in an extreme way with the air or, better yet, with all of nature.

She observes that the genie makes one of those birds made of leaves appear and its rider a red worm that looks like a cut-up rose... and that's it.

The rider launches itself from the dove's back, spinning on its own axis, to leave (for each 360-degree turn) a petal of red skin. All the petals create a trail of vermilion or a red so intense that there are no words to describe.... or maybe that red color hides something else.

When the trail of petals is completed with the appearance of the last of them, the rider disappears or; I mean, it has another form of life: The trail of vermilion petals, worth the redundancy.

The central nerve of the leaf that makes up the skin of the dove comes to life and moves in a zigzagging manner; as if the shadow of a snake were the backbone of the bird.

This zigzagging shadow vibrates and the pigeon shakes its head as if it is going crazy. Then, it opens its mouth and a pair of brown seeds fall out. Both fall onto Luz's abdomen, which appears to be composed of two cream-colored mountains. One seed lies on top of each mountain and they spread out sideways, until together they form a single line.

The genie observes the brown line on Luz's belly and says:

"Like the first line of a book, the beginning of the adventure is often the most complicated thing to decide, it must catch the viewer and for you the viewer is going to be me, just for the moment. What's more, the audience reads to be caught and enjoy to the fullest when you release it, precisely, your main mission, for now, is to free me from the bondage of being a genius.

You will like it for sure, I know you are too curious: have you ever wondered where geniuses come from?

I'll give you a hint: The toe of the heel hides more things that could help you with your stomach infection.... happy championship day!"

Luz sees the genie get sucked into the sky and disappear as if she never existed while she continues to fly with two mondongos of wings. Of course she only vanishes for three minutes, the genie reappears as yarn and lodges herself right inside her navel.

The "wings" on Luz's belly lead her to a cliff made of frozen water, or so it seems.

It is not ice because it had already melted or was frozen. On the contrary, Luz feels a cozy warmth under her back; as she watches the two mountains return to their place.

She notices that her navel is tinged with a blue that cannot be unpainted.

She is surrounded by trees whose branches and leaves are ounces and blades of silver. This is the same color of the moon that enraptures the celestial sky, which looks as if it were daytime.

Suddenly, the blades of the nearest tree begin to work on the wood of its trunk and write on it:

"The wind you breathed, will breathe you".

Instantly, from this same trunk, one of the ounces of the branches is detached. Then Luz feels something sticking to her hair. She touches her hair and one of her curls draws blood... it is the cheetah.

She stands transfixed watching the drop of blood on her finger. Fear rushes through her more fiercely as the wind lifts all of her hair and blows it over her face. Her own hair squeezes her face but without hurting her. Implausible as it may seem, she does not feel suffocated but with an excess of air.

However, the benevolence of the wind doesn't last long because from one moment to the next her own hair wants to tear her head off.

The wind makes the hair pull her head forcefully upwards. She tries to pull the hair away from her face; but the sharp curl always seeks to come into contact with her fingers.

All Luz gets are drops of blood on each of her fingertips. Of course, we could say that as a consolation prize, she does manage to separate her hair a little to be able to see even a fly pass by... no, it is not a fly.

The leaf dove flies with the trail of rose petals clutched in its beak. It flaps its wings vigorously and Luz has no doubt that it is the bird that causes the wind that tortures her.

"Why don't you talk to me straight and fight like a mortal just like me?

It's not fair: I'm a human with no powers and you're a bird with powers..."

Then she remembers that in real life humans hunt animals. There the human being is the one who tortures the animals.

"I wish Margot were here, she sure knows how to treat unfriendly animals."

Luz looks around to try to find something plausible in this game. But she only finds another threat written on the bark of "a metallic tree", to call it somehow:

"What you see will see you."

Luz looks at the transparent earth because from there comes the voice of Flavia's friend who is now half wolf. She has just read the warning written on the tree.

"It is introducing you to the different phases of the game and I am your guide, I can help you in some things".

It starts to rain and Luz watches as her hair returns to normal. She even tests to see if the ounce has stopped taking hold of her curl.

"Thank you."

"Don't get attached to me."

"You're the little voice aren't you, how do you have an image now, why not before?"

"Too many questions for such a tiny little mouth.....

"And so rude for lips shaped like a little heart."

Luz wishes she could hug her friend; especially since the rain is really cold and Luz hates the cold.

"Think about the clues Patrick gave you, they will serve you well in the new reality."

"New reality?"

"Don't scream or you're really going to suck."

"What?"

"The earth you touch will touch you."

Luz shakes her head and the transparent earth under her feet begins to crack.

She runs but the pain in her stomach just came with a vengeance. She bites her lip as she runs to vent her pain.

However, the transparent earth suddenly tilts and Luz slips down the slope... she finds it impossible not to scream.

As she descends the slope, Luz observes her head with her hair-covered face hanging from one of the ounces attached to one of the branches of one of the "metal trees".

She finds it impossible not to scream at the sight of her head hanging from a tree. Luz's heart beats dizzily and, for a moment, she thinks she feels as if it were disappearing from her chest.

Who taught the girl how to feel her heart disappear?

She was taught by a woman her mother used to leave her with when she was a child. Her father paid that woman to take care of her while her mother was in the hospital to give birth and also during the postpartum recovery time from her other two pregnancies.

Luz's parents always warned her about her heart deficiency or rather, her excessive heartbeat because she suffered from tachycardia.

This woman's face reflected the glimpses of the physical beauty she had in her youth. It comes to Luz through flashbacks because; although now she is scared and many years have passed since the last time she saw her, every time her heart races because of something more than just fear, maybe because of the curiosity that always puts her in the shot of grace; but at the same time it is the only thing that gives her the illusion that someday she will live as she wants... the face of that woman was the beauty of freedom.

Luz remembers that this woman stimulated her curiosity with stories that explained the reason why her heart was racing: It was not her heart, it was actually her chest when she realized the absence of her own heart.

Curiosity and fear drive her down the slope but she no longer wants to be aware of it. In moments of high tension like this, if she doesn't have time to think, she can't imagine; so she can only remember to forget the fear and go on as we all do here.

Of course, I don't have a father to correct me but a Lucifer and a demon in love... we must go on:

As she descends the slope, every drop of rain that falls on Luz's skin runs down her like the fingers of a dead man on her living body. The icy intensity with which these drops cling to the pores of her skin is unnatural.

The worst thing is that her skin seems to like it because the sweet memories with the woman I told you about a little while ago have been summed up, so to speak, in a tattoo that has just appeared on her chest.

Luz doesn't need to see the tattoo; even if she closes her eyes to avoid being horrified and screaming, she doesn't manage to daydream or become unconscious.

Her sense of touch fails to evade the new reality. In fact, all her senses are detecting a different characteristic of the new reality.

Her skin with the rain, her nose smells something stinky, her ears hear the high-pitched growl of the skunk she thought she had hallucinated, her tongue tastes like rotten eggs because of her stomach infection, and her eyesight; even with her eyes tightly closed, she can make out a little blue dot in the middle of the darkness that little by little grows.

At the moment when the transparent earth breaks and Luz sinks, all the darkness turns blue and she finds herself underwater. She opens her eyes and screams when she sees the floating corpse of a skunk. Her scream emits no sound but the sound of bubbles coming out of her mouth. She swims upwards in desperation because her life is almost in the afterlife.

"Trying to talk underwater and not being able to... the little voice."

This last thought gave him impetus not to faint in the middle of the water. The fear of losing consciousness and waking up being the embodiment of the little voice inside her head. That presentiment of panic made her swim as she would never have done if she hadn't had a compelling reason.

Only one summer Luz's father paid for swimming lessons for her; but, more than for the lessons, she learned to swim thanks to the fact that she always watched her parents; especially her father, because she hardly ever saw him at home. On the occasions when some good flea bit her and decided to take the whole family to the beach, Luz took the opportunity to record family photos in her head, because dad would never pay any of the photographers who were on the beach.

Her favorite mental picture was the one showing her father swimming further than any of the three of them could at the time. She admired her father so much because he was always in the dangerous world outside the house.

Luz feels the wind caressing the skin of her hand, which is already touching the sand that is undoubtedly from the beach... or is it?

WELCOME TO THE NEW REALITY