Chimere-Chapter5

Chapter 5

Grandfather Pio.

 

“Ohhhhhhhhohohohohohoho… Welcome back, my boy!”

 

“Grandfather Pio! As healthy as always!” Grandfather Pio was a rather small sized man with thin limbs and liver spotted skin wrinkled and stretched over hard worn bones. He walked with a twisted wooden cane and had a back bent forward dramatically, but his hand gestures were lively when he talked, as if he was a 20-year-old Italian man. But what he lacked in size, he made up for with the sheer length of facial hair. His eyebrows, moustache and beard were pearly white and flowed to the ground, dragging behind him as he walked. From a distance, he would have looked like an extremely old pygmy elephant munching on cotton candy.

 

“Oooooo…you flatter me, dear boy”, Grandfather Pio patted the hatted man on one shoulder, or as high up on his arm as he could reach. “It was getting quiet here without you, all the youngsters nowadays only want to go to the music hall, music hall, music hall.”

 

‘I noticed you made some clockwork birds to put in the labyrinth of mirrors. Very nice effort, I must say.”

 

“Aaaa… cute little things aren’t they? Ohohohohohohohohack!! Hack!! Uhumk…” Grandfather Pio coughed and the hatted man thumped him on the back. “Uhum. Yes, I made them last Christmas. I’m quite proud of them, makes the place more cheerful, don’t you think?” He did not have many teeth and spoke slowly but spiritedly.

 

“Indeed. But it’s about time you had that bridge renovated.”

 

“Ooooo…this old man is sentimental of that bridge. It has served me well for the past 1034 years. I don’t think I will feel the same if I do not walk across that bridge every morning to get to this room.”

 

Looking around, I noticed that the room was a modest sized kitchen and matched the living room that we had been in when we first entered this so-called cottage. I wondered if we couldn’t have just exited the cottage and gone round to the back to reach this room.

 

“Oooo…but who is this excellent gentleman that you have brought with you?”

 

“Well, now that you ask, I’m not too sure myself. I just met him at the bazaar fountain and thought that he could use your help.”

 

There was an awkward silence and I felt both their gazes on me.

 

“Hmmmmm…well, he does look a bit pale.”

 

All of a sudden, the old man pulled me with great gusto to a kitchen stool and sat me down on it. He was much stronger than he looked. Grabbing a bowl from the kitchen counter, he stirred a ladle that was in it, rapidly, and shouted,” Open up, boy, this will help!” And with that, he quickly rammed the entire ladle into my mouth. “How’s that?” He leaned forwards, still carrying the bowl, and stared intently into my eyes. The ladle, as it turned out, was full of some green substance of uneven texture, which tasted bitter and raw and stale, and I fancied that there was something still very much alive and swimming in it. Hurriedly, I jumped back off the stool and ran to the sink to vomit everything out again. The substance hit the sink noisily as I belched. Indeed, I could see some small, unidentified creature with tiny claws and far too many legs wriggling about in the mess. I rinsed my mouth from the tap repeatedly and washed everything down the sink.

 

“Oh… that didn’t quite work did it?... Hold on, boy, I know just the thing!” Grandfather Pio was again rapidly opening and closing cupboard doors, taking out ingredients, shaking a bit of it into the bowl, pouring out a bit, chopping and throwing in a bit, sloshing in a bit. The mixture was changing from mossy green to murky brown, to vivid purple and fluorescent orange. He pulled the ladle out of my hand, and without bothering to wash it, began stirring the mixture rapidly. “Powdered bat’s wings and bulls’ intestines worked for poor John of Greenfield the last time. Although he did have an allergic reaction to the wings almost immediately. I have not been able to wash off all of his phlegm from this ladle ever since.”

 

“Why don’t you try a mixture of lemon juice and baking soda? The missus swears by it. Says it’s better than Chemicorp’s new omni detergent.”

 

“Aaah…I could give it a try.” Grandfather Pio tapped the ladle thoughtfully against his temple.

 

“Please! I’m ok! I’m fine! All alright!” I stood up straight and gave a brave smile. Grandfather Pio and the hatted man stared at me wordlessly, shocked by my sudden cheerfulness.

 

“MnM’s?  Grandfather Pio held out a packet of chocolate.

 

Cautiously, I chose a yellow MnM and popped it into my mouth. It tasted normal. The hatted man politely waited for all of us to be settled from our less than ordinary encounter. Then, he said, “As for the point I stated earlier, you, young man, looked to me as if you could use some help from Grandfather Pio, as do I. So now I will show you how it is done.” As if on cue, Grandfather Pio hobbled over to an overhead kitchen cabinet to his left. With much difficulty, he stretched his arms as far as they would go, and flicked the cabinet door open. Within, there were 3 levels of shelves, each of them labeled with alphabets; ‘A-H’, ‘I-R’ and ‘S-Z’, looking like a strange filing system for clinic patients. But instead of cards, there were many bottles of various sizes, shapes and materials. Some were as large as elephant heads, made of green and red glass décor, and seemed to be filled ¾ full of acorns, feathers and sequins. Others were as small as perfume bottles, and indeed, they did have little spray nozzles attached to the top of them. Yet others were the size of jam jars, made of wood that made them look like miniature wine barrels, or made of many faceted glass, full of swirling purple mist and what seemed like flying moths from a distance.

 

Finally admitting to his inadequate stature, Grandfather Pio dragged a small metal rimmed wooden basin beneath the cabinet and reached out towards the middle shelf. Then, he withdrew an orange flask. He swatted the cabinet close again and hobbled up to the hatted man.

 

“Are you ready, child?”

 

“Ready as ever.” Grandfather Pio pulled open the flask and threw out a handful of multicoloured tendrils with the tip of his fingers. They seemed to be made of ribbons, but yet they were less substantial, like a thick, curling fog, and nevertheless countless times more potent.

 

“See you then”, the hatted man said to me, twiddling his fingers. Before his last word was finished, his whole body had faded from view, enveloped by the ribbons of smog. As the fumes cleared away, he was nowhere to be found.

 

I was momentarily shocked. This did not look to me to be any sort of remedy, or at least not one I was familiar to in my own world. For this world, I decided, was not the same one as the one where I had come from. For a few seconds I wondered if a mistake had happened and something nasty had befallen the hatted man. I had only known him for a short time but he seemed like a pleasant guy.

 

“Aww…don’t be so surprised, young one.”

 

“What happened to him?”

 

“He has gone someplace else.”

 

“What?!!...”

 

“Don’t worry, he will return when he feels like it.” Grandfather Pio had a hearty laugh at my worried expression. He must have known that the words ‘gone someplace else’ had triggered unpleasant images in my mind associated with genteelly communicating about mortal harm.

 

“Now it is your turn. So where is it that you would most want to go?”

 

“Home.” The word spilled out of my mouth automatically. Precisely the subject that I was thinking about all this while.

 

‘Ah…but what a boring choice.”

 

“It’s my choice.”

 

“Well, if you insist”. Grandfather Pio now had a huge round basin in front of him that I could have swore was not there a moment ago. “Why is it that you want to go home so badly, son?”

 

“I have a job to hold, I have responsibilities to my editor and clients. How can I just disappear suddenly? Life must go on. And this place is so strange. It scares me.” At my words, little squares of white paper flew out of Grandfather Pio’s fingertips and into the basin. As soon as the fluttering subsided, he gentle touched the top of the paper mound, and a puddle of black liquid rose in the basin. Grandfather Pio’s face had become overcast, his expression difficult to determine.

 

“And here we have it.” The basin transformed into a steel tumbler.

 

Chimere-Chapter4

Chapter 4

The house of magic.

 

All the way to this place that he had mentioned, the hatted man had his hands nonchalantly in his pockets, humming a tune. He gave me an impression of an old uncle sauntering about on a Sunday afternoon.

 

“So, where is this place we are going?”

 

“Oh, it’s a wonderful place, just you wait and see.”

 

“You’re not taking me to a brothel are you?”

 

“Hahah…no, no, no. I’m not that kind of person. To me, pleasure is in the mind, not body.” Here, he tapped the side of his hat with one finger and nodded to me. The rest of the journey, we walked in silence, punctuated by the hatted man’s humming. I did not recognize the tune, but it sounded like it would be right at home in a circus. This silence was not uncomfortable to me.

 

Up ahead on the dirt road was a single wooden cottage. It was not surrounded by a wooden fence to keep intruders out, but by flowering shrubs and bird feeders intended to invite people in. Middle eastern glass lamps hung in abundance from the porch ceiling and the glass windows were coloured cheerfully. A white rabbit and its babies lollopped about on the porch, their pink noses wiggling. The cottage seemed to belong to either a friendly witch or an eccentric old lady.

 

Without bothering to knock on the door, the hatted man entered the cottage, careful not to step on the rabbits which seemed quite curious at our arrival. However, he took off his shoes and left them outside the door. I did the same. Once inside the shady cottage, he took off his hat as if in a sign of respect, maybe to the cottage itself, and not to it’s occupant. His footsteps were clearly audible upon the old wooden floorboards. He walked towards the middle of what I presumed to be the living room. There, he stood still and hollered, ‘Grandfather Pio! Are you here?”, to which a voice of an old man called back, sounding distant, “Oh, it’s you, my boy. I’m up here.”

 

“Alright, follow me then”, the hatted man told me, “I’m going to introduce you to Grandfather Pio, who can perhaps help you.”

 

The hatted man then walked back out of the living room and turned left. There was a rickety staircase painted white, although the paint was now crackled. Up the stairs went. On the landing, we turned right and went down a long corridor, light spilling in from various windows and open doors. A wide variety of pictures hung on the walls or sat in gilded frames atop tables. Watercolours of colourful countrysides, old family photographs, native African artwork, modern art in relief. At the end of the corridor, we took another right turn and walked a short distance before descending a little staircase, barely half a floor downwards. Here was yet another corridor, even longer than the one before.

 

“How can all this fit into a small cottage? It looked much more modest in size from the outside”, I said to the hatted man.

 

“Well, I do not know for sure, but it is after all a magic place”, he shrugged.

 

The corridor that we now walked down was a cavernously high one, with an ornate white plaster ceiling, corniced at the sides and intricately flowered n the centres. If I had known less, I would have thought myself to be in an Admiral’s mansion. Statues of glass and stone, wood and metal, lined both sides of this corridor. Some were full sized human figures, some busts of noble looking men and women, yet others were majestic and ferocious replicas of beasts, so lifelike that they seemed to charge down the hallway. Grand looking mahogany doors with brass handles opened into unknown rooms on the left and right at regular intervals. As I walked pass them, sweet music streamed out of each one, all of different periods, but each as beautiful as the next.

 

Just then, light footsteps echoed down the hallway, and I turned to see a young boy running, barely 10 years of age, holding onto a satchel with one hand and a piccolo in the other. He slid to a stop in front of one of those doors, it’s size looking ridiculous compared to his. With an anxious expression, he opened the door with much effort, and slid in. Through the crack in the door, I heard a snippet of orchestral music, which withered to a stop, apparently upon the young boy’s sudden appearance. Before the door closed again, I heard what I supposed would be the music master’s voice, giving the young boy a sound lecture about the importance of punctuality. In contrast, at the door on the opposite side, another orchestra could be heard playing, this one full of grace and hard earned knowledge. The thought of this made me smile to myself, the young musicians had a long way to go, but they were on their way.

 

Along the corridor, other musicians played, behind glass windows or within closed doors, calming and melancholy jazz, powerful and youthful rock, deep and resonant vocals. Yet, there was no audience lingering about the place, the music was for the musicians’ own fancy. As we came to the end of the corridor, there was a towering structure, covered in cloth. It’s shape was uncertain, yet I could see a gargantuan marble foot protruding from a gap in the cloth. My eyes lingered wonderingly at it as we turned yet another corner.

 

When at last I turned my head back to the path that we were walking, I almost fell for surprise at what I saw. Not a single corridor, but 10? 20? An infinite number of identical corridors, stretching into the distance. The staggering of my feet sounded sharp and crystalline and I looked down. There, I saw my own reflection staring back at me and I understood where we were. We were in a hall of mirrors. Clear mirrors and glass framed in ornate gold vines covered every surface of the hall. Sparkling chandeliers hung from the ceiling in abundance, all of different sizes, all of them complimentary and beautiful. There were no windows in this hall, yet it was as bright as daylight, there was bound to be a light source somewhere here, distributed and magnified by the mirrors. A gust of wind blew down the corridor, and a flock of white doves fluttered down upon the mirrored floor, like so many snowflakes.

 

Feeling on the verge of dizziness, I kept close to the hatted man, only daring to let my eyes wander around the hall every so often. Still, my eyes caught a glimpse of a group of ballerinas, how many exactly, I would not know. They danced gracefully around in their studio, but once I felt that they were encircling me. It could have been a trick of the mirrors, but they seemed to be casting an enchantment on me, as they danced to crystalline music that leaked from the hall of music. Indeed, I was getting mesmerised by their lilting movements, and, as engaging as I found this to be, I still felt some uneasiness for this place. It was so strange and other-worldly that by instinct I thought it to be dangerous, a deceiving spider baiting its prey into its lair.

 

And dangerous it soon proved itself to be, albeit not exactly in a way that I would have expected.

 

“Step.”

 

Hearing the hatted man’s word too late, I crashed to the ground painfully.

 

“Oh my, do be careful. The journey from here is going to be a bit rough.” The hatted man offered me a hand and I pulled myself off the ground, brushing myself off. However, when I looked up again, I wished I was back sitting on the nice, firm, solid ground.

 

“Oh…my…”

 

“Grandfather Pio, where are you?”

 

“Over here.”

 

“OK, let’s go. Stay close by me please.”

 

And thus, we proceeded forward, into a massive labyrinth of mirrored stairs. My knees shook as we proceeded. Forward, left, right, up, down, backwards and throught the left turning, upside down, sideways, diagonally…

 

“Say this is not true”, I gulped,” Are we not upside down?”

 

“Ohoho… this is indeed a magical house.” The hatted man sauntered onwards, leaving me no choice but to follow him less I be left alone in this nightmare maze, left to die of hunger or insanity, or both. My face, which was reflected a million times around me, all looked whitish green.

            We walked up; or down, I do not know, a horizontal spiral staircase and turned to the right upwards. Walking across a rickety glass hanging bridge, a few clockwork birds twittered round and round my head, mocking me. I tried to swat them away, but almost vomited into the mirrored abyss as the bridge swung at the energy of my flapping hands.

 

“My dear man, please try to be a bit more gentle. This bridge is not as sturdy as it looks.” The bridge looked anything but sturdy to me. “Oh, and mind that missing pane.” I quickly avoided the gap in the bridge.

 

Reaching the end of the bridge, I deliberately planted both palms on the nearest mirrored wall and slid myself slowly and carefully to the blessed mirrored ground. If I was lucky, the hall would stop spinning about in a few minutes’ time.

 

“Ah, we’re nearly there, young man! Brighten up!” The hatted man threw his hands up in genuine gladness and did a sort of jiggling walk towards a door at the end of the hall. Grudgingly, I pulled myself off the ground and slowly followed him out of the damned mirrored labyrinth.