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.