The evening scenery was impressive and exciting when Jesse was first making his practice treks with Yusef, but that got really old, really quick. The first ley line they traveled on sent them east over the modest San Vallejo Mountains, and then up and through the San Jacinto Mountains to a vortex on the ridgeline not too far off San Jacinto Peak, almost eight thousand feet in elevation. Here, above the sprawling signs of civilization below, was an ancient sacred site that the medicine-men of the Cahuilla tribe used for secretive rituals and accessing the Plane themselves. Only a dilapidated putrisomn foundation of a ring-like structure remained near the vortex, the remnants of what was probably a tower at some point.
The area crackled with a subtle buzzing sound and there were phantom rumblings like thunder in the distance. From here the wispy, flowing leyline splintered: one leyline went north along the ridgeline and eventually fell off the mountain into Morongo, while a thicker leyline continued eastward over the ridge and down the mountain. It continued to drop in elevation and made its way across the Coachella Valley, skirting the Little San Bernardino Mountains, and went further eastward.
In this small clearing on the ridge Jesse scooped up as much dirt as he could and sandwiched it in his hands. He began the ritual incantation by singing and moving his body, waving the dirt sandwich in the air as he focused on breaking down the putrisomn dirt in his hands into a pure form of putrisomn. His hands glowed purple and he began pouring the putrisomn out in a line on the ground, continuing his incantation. He continued this process until the line completely surrounded their boat.
When this ritual “circle” -- which was actually more oval to surround the boat -- was connected Jesse climbed back into the boat, where Yusef waited. With eyes shut, Jesse focused as he started the last part of his incantation. There was a pull to the eastern ley line like a magnet he felt tugging at a center inside a body within his body, or perhaps behind it. He held his body, Yusef, and the boat in place within the ritual circle until the pull was strong enough to take them all. When he released, the glowing purple putrisomn that surrounded them blew apart in a flash, almost like flame being thrown by the wind. It dissipated back to normal dusty dirt as it settled back to the ground.
Craggy rocks that jutted out of the earth in odd, crashed shapes suddenly surrounded Jesse and Yusef. They were now at a major vortex inside Joshua Tree National Park. The horizon was a mixed silhouette of bumpy mountain tops and spiky groves of trees. Dust flew about and swirled around the boat as Jesse clumsily buried his face in his hoodie, and Yusef already had his cloak over his eyes. The buzzing was here, too, and even though he couldn’t identify it or explain it, the static sounded different here. Yusef cleared his throat while Jesse jumped out of the boat and started the teleportation ritual all over again. He began to shiver as he worked.
Yusef crafted a dark gray and forest green poncho with white blotches on it for Jesse since this night was unusually cold and it became too unbearable for Jesse’s pride to hide. By now, Jesse was able to weave less complicated objects with a moderate hardness. But fine materials like cloth were well beyond his skill. Jesse was wearing what he had envisioned for himself in his subconscious when he entered his pylon: loose, dark jeans, a large black t-shirt under a black hoodie, a thin gold necklace, and white sneakers, which were all becoming dusty at this point. He thought ahead about keeping a low profile, but failed to anticipate just how cold it was going to get.
From this major vortex, Jesse could pull enough energy to take them to Phoenix. Weeks ago, Jesse had begun sailing on a network of ley lines across the Sonoran Desert, stopping at each vortex to practice his incantations. Doing so strengthened his sense of direction, or bond, to those vortices. This not only made teleportation possible, but as he connected more together he was able to teleport at further lengths, skipping through vortices where he had practiced his incantations and had grown familiar with their magnetic-like pull.
The doodles that Jesse had been mindlessly leaving on his notes, desks, and anywhere else he could let his mind wander, were practice for personalized sigils. Conjurers of the Plane used these personalized signatures, enchanted by putrisomn, to leave markings on the Plane for teleporting from a vortex or even for teleporting another Reader to their own location at a vortex. Another Reader with the same exact sigil marked on their body while on the Plane could be summoned by a conjurer, or teleported elsewhere. A sigil needed to be unique and the design interlinked in one contiguous pattern. Some Readers had sigils tattooed on their bodies to make the tracing of it while on the Plane that much easier and quicker to do, particularly for more complex sigil designs where accuracy was important. Other ancient tricks of the trade had Readers etch their sigils into stones or trees while in the waking world so that their marks were permanently available on the Plane.
Temporary sigils, or markers, could be left on the Plane. But they eroded after their first use or after three days, whichever came first. The marker was also useless if the sigil was disturbed in any way or if the conjurer changed the location of their den in that time.
Dust flew all around again in a purple-white flash, but it seemed to blow right back into the boat. Unable to avoid it this time despite covering his face with the loose sleeve of his white jubbah robe, Yusef sputtered out, “I guess-- qaf -- you made it inside the cavern -- qaf -- this time.”
Hunched over and nearly gagging, Jesse took a few moments to reply as he blindly waved dust away from his face and eyes. “God -- kaagh -- damnit! Kaagh! You were right. Cave wasn’t -- kagh -- worth it. Should have stuck to the mountaintop clearing. Kagh!”
“Still, your accuracy is getting precise, Mubtadi. I am impressed.” Yusef stood up in the darkness to lean over the edge of the boat and tapped the tip of his staff on the cave wall. When he found the wall he pressed his staff against it and hummed or mumbled a tune. The tip of his staff lit up a soft, yellowed white. “There is more about you than meets the eye, Mubtadi,” he added as he turned back to the bow of the boat, the light of his staff casting stretching shadows across the small cavern walls, floor, and ceiling. Ancient petroglyphs of animals, people, and other symbols lined the cavern walls. “This, I always knew. When I first set eyes upon you.”
Jesse took the seat at the stern of the boat. “On the street corner. By my place.”
A moment passed as Yusef’s back was to Jesse before he turned around. “Yes. On the street corner. That seems like such a long time ago now, does it not?”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
Yusef grinned and turned forward again. “You rest now, Mubtadi. I will manage us northward as much as I can. You may have to navigate again at some point. It has been a long time since I last traversed these old canyons and plateaus.”
As Yusef prepared for the next teleport, Jesse ignored the crackling and subtle rumbling of the vortex and stared out the cavern entrance, down the mountain and into the Valley of the Sun. It was littered with the artificial lights of metropolitan Phoenix. Jesse thought about what it looked like a few thousand years ago, when it was just the Salt River Valley and its only inhabitants were the Hohokam nation. On the top of the mountain they were inside of, there was a rectangular clearing with subtle ruins: traces of crumbled rock walls, mortars and cisterns carved into the mountaintop, and indistinct stone carvings of oversized heads and crude faces. Jesse had tried to teleport into this cavern because those face carvings creeped him out. The way their eyes were sunken, and deep. They stared back at him, and into him. It was as if they could see everything about him, and everything in his past that made him who he was -- it made him feel naked.
From Phoenix, Yusef teleported them north to a vortex in Sedona. After an incantation there amongst the dark rocks, they landed on one of the cliffs overseeing the Grand Canyon. Amidst its dark depths, the river’s waters on the cnayon floors subtly sparkled with the Plane’s myriad reflections and rarely bright moonlight. Jesse nearly threw up, then nearly passed out after Yusef completed the next incantation, which took them to the mesmerizing layers of Vermillion Cliffs in Marble Canyon. “One more teleport and then you will have to navigate a leyline to the next stop,” Yusef informed over his shoulder.
“You got it, ‘Sef. No more caves or cliff edges, please.”
“No problem.”
When the dust cleared, Jesse felt like an ant. He was surrounded by a wide, empty vastness, save for a few dark stone towers and spires that jutted straight out of the flat desert. A few purple leylines snaked their way through the buttes, stretching out in various directions and disappearing in the distance. The weight of how small he felt in comparison to the emptiness and the giant monoliths pressed down on him.
“Monument Valley, Mubtadi. When I first arrived in this country, this was one of the first places I traveled to, both in the waking world and on the Plane. Breath-taking, is it not?”
Jesse now noticed a nearby rock with petroglyphs similar to the ones drawn by the Hohokam on the cave walls in Phoenix. “Damn. These are everywhere, huh?”
Yusef chuckled. “Yes, Mubtadi. In many ways, even aside from drawings on stones. Since before we have recorded history humans made their marks and told their stories everywhere. In a way, these are the first recordings of our history, as a people. As humans.” He stood up from the bow and offered the seat with his arm stretched out. “When you are done with your incantation, we must go East.”
Jesse nodded and jumped out of the boat onto the dusty, graveled ground which was littered with sage, rabbitbrush, and brittlebush. He completed his incantation and returned to the boat, taking one last long look at the mesmerizing space around him, illuminated by the purple dim light of the Plane’s night sky.
With an arm extended out, he steered the boat on a ley line eastward. The ley line eventually took a northeast route as they passed by a few towns and gained elevation into foothills and then mountains, some of them snow-capped. There were more putrisomn ruins here, many of them towers, still partially or fully intact. They sprouted from ridgetops and some statues jutted out from cliff faces. Jesse finally looked back at Yusef with a shocked face.
“We have reached the Canyons of the Ancients, Mubtadi. Wondrous.” There were more petroglyphs etched into the putrisomn towers and statues. As they moved through the canyons, they saw the putrisomn on the rock faces reflect images of hikers and beasts, and even the occasional native in a hunting stance or in mid-dance. The Plane’s buzzing was loud here, and Jesse thought he could hear thunder in the distance. He was hesitant to get out this time.
“Are those… Indians, are they ghosts?” Jesse asked uneasily.
“These? No. Just reflections of the past. These are not lost spirits. I do not know of any here. This vortex is too strong and sacred.”
“Wait. Hold up. I was kind of kidding. Whadda ya mean?”
“There are vortices that are… disturbed… by immured wraiths, some of them ancient. The terrified and haunted subconscious of a very unfortunate soul sometimes may get captured or caught here on the Plane. Unlike normal wraiths who manifest when a pleb is asleep in the waking world, an immured wraith is stuck here indefinitely after the death of their host.”
Jesse’s jaw dropped. He was frozen trying to process this new information. Finally he made a realization. “That weird building. In LA. The one you told me to escape from. That shit was weird. Was that place… haunted?”
Nodding slowly, Yusef confirmed. “Some people would call it that, yes.”
“What the fuck would you call it?”
Yusef stared back at Jesse with wide eyes. “Interdimensionally occupied.”
Jesse shook his head. “¡Ay, dios mio! You’re gonna kill me one of these days, ‘Sef.”
“Come along,” Yusef redirected. “Time is of the essence.”
When Jesse was done with his ritual, Yusef took the bow again. “This should be our last stop: Wilson Peak.” They continued northeastward into more snowy mountains and valleys, now capped with dense pines and Douglas firs, and eventually aspens.
“When we arrive you will not need an incantation there. Aside from attracting attention to ourselves, I do not think you will need to return here anytime soon.”
Jesse nodded.
“When I have completed my extraction from Tilson, I will cast a brightened chunk of putrisomn into the sky as a signal. From the point of leaving this vortex, just up this last ridge, it should take me twenty minutes to locate his den, infiltrate him, and return to the Plane. At that point, begin your incantation and be ready to teleport me back here.” Yusef pulled his sleeve back and revealed a few sigils on his forearm. He pointed at one that Jesse had been practicing doodling for months.
They cleared the snowy ridge and arrived at the vortex atop Wilson’s Peak. They were surrounded by valleys and other mountaintops in the distance. A freezing wind howled from the east, rustling his poncho. Jesse shivered and looked at his watch, which was not ticking. “How am I going to know when it’s twenty minutes?”
Yusef gently landed on the ridge and walked to a rock that poked out from the snow. The moonlight cast a shadow of it against the snow. With his staff, he carefully drew a line. “When this rock’s shadow reaches this line, it should be about twenty minutes.” Jesse climbed out of the boat to get a look. Yusef drew a second line close to the first one. “This should be about thirty minutes. If there is no signal, extract me. And hope that I am still here. If I am not, then you must make your way back home alone, as quickly as possible. You must not leave any trace of yourself!”
Flipping his hoodie on and tightening it around his face, Jesse squinted, sunk into his shoulders, and nodded. “Got it. We got this, ‘Sef.” Jesse reached his knuckles out for a bump, but his hand was inside his sleeve.
“Yes, we do,” Yusef agreed as he reached out and pressed his knuckles against Jesse’s and left them there. “Let us hope that this night leads us to the everlasting change we have desired and worked so hard for; that our sacrifices would be worth it all. Bil-tawfeeq.”
Nodding, Jesse returned the expression. “Bill-towfeek.” He finally dropped his arm and hugged himself in the cold.
“And no fires, Mubtadi,” Yusef warned as he turned away and made his way down the ridge, collecting putrisomn with him as he went and eventually making a platform that he glided on the rest of the way down, and out of sight.
“I don’t even know how to make a fucking fire,” Jesse grumbled. He climbed back into the boat and huddled inside, trying to hide from the wind. He stared up at the sky and saw the stars through thin clouds and the purple fog in the sky. They were exceptionally bright. His mind wandered as he thought about how the stars were still there back home, even though he never saw them. He thought about a poem he could write about it, for Maria. And the big gift he needed to get her! Would it be an epic poem? He could write about this night -- as a metaphor, of course -- and how great his struggle and will is to get back home to her by following the stars through obvious dangers and terrifying mysteries. In his head he started listing a lot of the things he had seen and trying to form lines and rhymes. The buzzing and odd rumblings that were always in the background of the Plane became soothing. His eyes got heavy and his mind went to his warm bed. He felt weighed down, or weightless in a current that ebbed and flowed like a tide, tugging him about. Was it time for school already? What day was it? There’s a test tomorrow. Every day. Every day is a test.
A presence, like someone watching him. Flinching heavily and opening his eyes wide, Jesse jarred himself to attention. “Fuck!” He scrambled out of the boat’s bottom to look at the marks left next to the stone in the snow. Immediately his eyes caught something darkly cast against the snow to the side of the ridge and he ducked back down into the boat, holding his breath. Then he realized he was inside a putrisomn boat at a vortex on the Plane, and hiding inside the boat at this point was useless. He shot himself up, ready to spring into action. It was the living shadow of a wolf, wandering the ridge in the waking world. “Fuuuck,” Jesse sighed out with terrified relief. Another wolf’s shadow tramped through the snow, catching up to the first one. Their paws left tracks in the snow as they edged along a nearby thick patch of trees. They kept moving down the ridge, completely unaware of Jesse’s presence there on the Plane.
Jesse rubbed his eyes and saw the stone’s shadow was just barely about to reach the first mark. He set himself up in front of the boat and gathered some rocks, trying his best to avoid the snow, and prepared his materials for the summoning incantation. After breaking them down into glowing purple and green putrisomn, Jesse was set up and ready. “Alright, ‘Sef. Let’s go.” He waited, facing the north and keeping his eyes above the distant ridgeline for Yusef’s signal. Then he waited some more.
The stone’s shadow was well past the first mark and was almost touching the second mark. “Come on, ‘Sef!” He waited to see the signal soar through the air, to hear a distant pop or explosion like a firework. He just heard the howling of the wind in his ears, and the constant buzz of the Plane. Rumbling like distant thunder. Again, louder than usual. He looked at the mark, which was now touching the shadow. Jesse shook his head. “Damn it, ‘Sef.”
Another rumble, but it sounded close. An earthquake? He looked at the shadow to see if it shook. Instead another shadow shot from across the snow, a large spot. It was large against the moonlight but shrank, as if flying down from the sky. He recognized its shape in the split seconds as it zeroed in on the vortex and its big shadow took over the stone. He turned around as it landed on the boat and crushed it into splinters, a rounded blue light shining amidst the wreckage. Jesse dove for cover. Shards of the boat flew everywhere like daggers.
He scrambled up and seeing the destruction of the boat and what stood in front of him, he also acknowledged the destruction of his mission. His eyes carefully scanned the slats in Lazavik’s armor and confirmed Baronova was inside. She used the mecha to unravel her whip with one giant arm and reached over Lazavik’s shoulder with the other, pulling out her shield. “There are no wraiths here to save you this time, hooy morzhovyy!” Anna Baronova bellowed from inside Lazavik.
Jesse reached for the purified putrisomn he had been waiting to use for the incantation. He would have no safety in performing a teleportation ritual while Baronova was here, and even with the boat, he stood little chance of outrunning her on a leyline. He was sure she used her mecha for traversing leylines as well. And at this point, Yusef had probably been made or bailed out. Jesse was on his own, with nowhere else to go.
He moved his hands quickly and angrily. The putrisomn separated in front of him. One chunk flattened out and formed into a crude shield as the wind whistled through its arm fittings. The other chunk stretched out, becoming pointed and thin with a gripped hand guard at the opposite end. He put his left arm through the floating shield and grabbed the shortsword with his right. With his shielded left arm he pulled his hoodie back, then he twirled his sword and settled into a guard stance. “Let’s do this, puta.”
His dark poncho whipped in the wind as he kept his eyes on Lazavik’s feet. Its blue eye flashed bright and Jesse brought his shield up to cover his vision while peaking out from under it to look at Lazavik’s feet. They remained in place but he saw Lazavik’s left shin and knee straighten up and then bend again. He lunged forward and to the right, keeping his shield up while he shoulder-rolled into the snow and closed the distance.
A deafening whip-snap from behind clapped at his ears and he felt the shockwave reverberate in his shield. The blinding light stayed on him. Under the shield he spied Lazavik’s feet pivoting. Then its rear foot backed up a little bit and he saw its weight go on it. He kept taking steps to the left flank of Lazavik and prepared to jump up as high as he could. As if clearing a high jump hurdle, Jesse threw his weight up and flattened out. He heard the violently fast whoosh of the whip just underneath him. Kicking his feet up and over his head while in midair, Jesse flipped backward and landed crouched in the snow. He instantly somersaulted to the side, again closing the distance as another whip strike landed next to him and splashed snow and dirt everywhere.
Yelling angrily, he pushed off the ground and shield-bashed against Lazavik’s shield, immediately pivoting and striking at Lazavik’s left arm with his sword. Lazavik countered and adjusted its balance, barely blocking his strike with the edge of its shield.
Baronova grunted from inside the mecha and while still gripping her whip, punched at Jesse. He dodged it and sidestepped to her right, striking at her exposed right leg. It connected and a coin-sized chunk of armor chipped off. She laughed. Then she swung her shield across at Jesse and he jumped back to clear its giant swing.
Now Jesse was back at square one. Lazavik twirled the whip in the air, and Jesse panted. “Pinche puta.”
I’m outmatched. What the fuck do I do now? Another whip strike came in and Jesse dodged it, but the following thunderclap left a ringing in his head. Fuck! I can’t get through this armor. I have to get this sword in between that grating and stab the bitch.
The whip snapped again above Jesse, and it jarred him. Lazavik quickly followed with a low, side-swiping whip toss. Jesse stepped forward and lifted his feet high under his body like he was playing jump rope, barely clearing it. Lazavik immediately came back around again a little bit higher and Jesse ducked down and charged forward. His shield dropped for a second and Lazavik’s eye blinded him.
He heard the mecha shift in the snow to the side. There was a split second of silence and Jesse braced his shield. The whip snapped and crashed against his shield, popping his left eardrum and numbing his left arm. He felt ice on the side of his face and remembered he was still holding a sword, but he couldn’t lift it.
There was cackling laughter. “Ahahaha! That was cute. Not as exciting as last night, but still pleasuring.” Lazavik walked to Jesse where he lay. “Any time I can crush a pathetic American dog is pleasuring. I really like it when they are dirty dogs, like you. The ones that think they are Americans, ahahaha!”
Jesse started moving and realized he was lying on his sword underneath him. He began to scramble. Jesse had a split second’s flash in his mind of sitting in his old living room in his underwear on a hot summer day. Papá sat behind him on the coach, a beer dangled from his hand as he watched in silence. Little Jesse was planted in front of the television and his eyes were glued to the roadrunner eating seeds in the middle of a road. A dot of a shadow appeared next to it and grew in size. High above him the coyote looked down from a cliff and was watching a giant grand piano, tied to a giant anvil, tied to a giant boulder plummeting down toward the roadrunner.
The pain was sudden and then numbed out into heavy throbs. He heard multiple snaps and cracks and yelled out. He looked down at his legs and saw Lazavik’s shield, bordered in blue and fluorescent pink, had buried them in the snow. His head swiveled and he felt like he was being tossed and pulled down a drain.
“No you don’t!” Baronova griped as Lazavik threw the shield aside. It reached down to flick snow onto Jesse’s face. “You’re not going anywhere. I need to see inside that disgusting little head of yours.”
Jesse’s eyes fluttered. More snow got tossed on him and he felt it on his neck and slipping down his back, riling him. Lazavik holstered its whip and scooped Jesse’s body up and held him with both of its hands. His mangled legs dangled and grazed the snow as droplets of blood began to paint it red. Blood also streamed from his left ear, and only one arm band remained on his lifeless, left forearm with only a small chunk of the splintered shield remaining on it. His right hand was caught in his sword’s handguard. Even if he had the will to lift his sword, Lazavik’s grip was tight around his upper arms.
Lazavik’s chest opened down and Anna Baronova stepped out. She inspected Jesse and spat on his face. “Now I have to come up with name for you, my new pet.” She ripped the velcro off her white driver’s gloves. Jesse took this moment’s distraction and lifted his sword with his wrist and drove it toward Baronova’s body. She had nowhere to go. Swaying her hips, she dodged the desperate strike and then snapped a quick jab at Jesse’s nose, whipping his head backward. The sword fell from his hand and landed flat in the snow. More blood flowed from Jesse, now from his nose. Baronova reached out her hands to grip his head on both sides. Her right hand became bloodied. “Ugh. Disgusting.” She brought her face in close to his. “You disgust me!”
Jesse tried to move beyond the pain and think. He couldn’t give up and leave the Plane; that would expose a trail back to his den. His mind and willpower was already critically weak, but that was the only place left he had to fight. Before he could brace himself, he already felt her penetrating his psyche and swimming in his mind.
He knew what she was looking for. Why he was there. Who he was with. He had to protect-- no, he had to change his thinking. She was there, in his thoughts. I have to protect my secret. She can’t get to it. He tried splitting his thinking somehow, putting an inner voice at his forefront and thinking ahead somewhere in the back of his mind, without words. Protect my secret. Guard it. He thought of something that would catch her attention, something he legitimately wanted to keep secret. Anything to keep her away from the information she was really after. He dug it deep, encasing it and dropping it into an ocean of his subconscious.
Everything turned upside down. Water fell into the sky. Baronova’s colossal hands appeared from the abyss of his mind like a leviathan. She cupped the water as Jesse’s secret plopped into her grasp. She smashed its encasing with a slap from her other hand. Jesse’s voice screamed from the sky below, “Noooo!”
The clank of empty glass bottles echoed, and angry yelling followed it. A younger Jesse searched, but he was surrounded by darkness and strange voices. A giant concrete building loomed behind him and he turned to face it. His lungs felt solid and his chest felt like exploding. He needed to get away from the gray and windowless edifice. Other familiar voices called out to him.
“You can’t run.”
“You need to be the man now, Jesse.”
“You’re fucked.”
“Mamá!”
“... day. And a new future!”
He stumbled into the garage, kicking over a box of empty beer bottles. The clanking on the cement floor was dulled in his ears and he didn't realize he had knocked them over until he was already past them, still stumbling along to Papá’s Impala. Middle school-Jesse took another hit from his pen before trading it in his pocket with the keys. His phone chirped. Unlocking the car and climbing inside, he took out his phone and tapped. “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming to get you, heina. Fuck.” He carefully closed the car door and tapped the garage door remote attached to the visor. An old photo of his mother was clipped next to it, forever youthful and beautiful in his mind.
Tapping the breaks and adjusting his seat as the car crept in reverse out of the garage, Jesse struggled to get to a comfortable height. He had only done this once before, also when Papá was drunk and his older brothers weren’t home. He was in the driveway and squinted to find the remote again above his head. After groping for a bit the garage door closed. Jesse made his way down to the dark street and successfully backed out. Groping for the shift to first gear, Jesse pressed the gas but the car didn’t move. It rolled backward, toward the cars parked on the side of the street. “Shiiiiiiit,” he slowly mumbled and covered his eyes from blinding headlights down the street. The gear shift fumbled while the car revved loudly. Jesse never lifted his foot off the petal.
He blinked. The yelling was annoying and he just wanted it to stop. And the asphalt hurt. His pants were torn at the knee and there was blood. Papá was drunk and arguing with the neighbors. A police car arrived. He heard the officer call for backup as he stood from his opened door, surveying the scene. The silhouette of the officer was set against his blue and red lights. Jesse blinked and Papá was telling the officer that he was taking full responsibility. The officer said something about a DUI and wanted to see papers. The neighbors yelled and pointed at Jesse. Papá barked back at them angrily and slurred his words. “... No witnesses!”
A car pulled up and stopped in the street behind the Impala. Junior and Erik ran to Jesse and leaned down to ask if he was okay. They didn’t bother asking what had happened. They looked at each other and already knew. More blue and red lights arrived. They looked over and saw Papá getting cuffed. Junior looked at Erik. “Got my back, Hermano?” Erik gave a confident nod.
The two brothers started yelling aggressively as they approached the arresting officer. The cop was asking about Papá’s citizenship status and papers. Erik yelled at Papá trying to talk sense into him, he was being an idiot. Junior yelled at the policeman to stop, he was being an idiot. Junior was almost in the officer’s face, as the cop used his hands to apprehend a handcuffed Papá.
More yelling behind the new blue and red lights. Junior screamed as he was tased and hit the floor. Bystanders booed. Erik let out a roar and charged at the second officer. The tasing stopped and there was a struggle between Erik and the officer, silhouetted by blue and red. Bystanders screamed.
A gunshot rang out, echoing off into time. More screaming and people ran. “Nooooo!” Junior bellowed. He tried getting up, but the first officer was tackling him back down. Papá had collapsed on the street, sitting upright as he stared at Erik’s body slumped face down on the street, a pool of blood surrounding him.
Enraged, Junior punched the officer’s face, screaming the entire time. Papá whimpered, “Nooo.” The red and blue lights reflected off his glossy eyes and tears streamed down his face.
Jesse blinked and he was beside the cracked open rear window of a squad car. Papá stared out somewhere past Jesse. “You need to be the man now, Jesse.”
Another blink and Jesse stood outside a Mexican prison, next to Lita and beside her little Alfredo and Marcy holding each other’s hands in the hot sun. He was frozen in place, staring at the gray, windowless building. Deported, a stranger in his birth country, and convicted, Jesse knew how likely it was that he would never see Papá again alive or as a free man.
He wasn’t able to bring himself to see Junior back home, either, who was locked up with maximum sentences for multiple misdemeanors and felonies from that night, ranging from interfering with a police investigation to assaulting a police officer. He was just about to turn eighteen during the month of the incident, so he was tried as an adult. Jesse didn’t want to acknowledge that Junior probably didn’t want to see him, either.
“Ah-Hahahaha!” Baronova’s cackle echoed inside Jesse’s mind. “The real men in your family protected you and looked out for each other, to their own doom. And you, you disgusting dog, just sat there and caused it all. Ah-hahahah! So pathetic.”
The limpness and throbbing pain returned to the forefront of Jesse’s mind, along with the biting wind. He heard a mechanical trill from the side of the ridge. Baronova’s hands were off Jesse’s head and she was looking off to the side with a look of surprise.
Next to the treeline, a bronze golem had trekked up the ridge. It was almost like an insect, with six barbed limbs and a head that had two pairs of red eyes in a V-shape. It produced a trill again, flashing its red eyes in an upward pattern. It reminded Jesse of emergency exit lights.
“Chto?” Baronova blurted out, her brow furrowed. “Seychas?”
The golem made another trill and continued to flash its lights in a hurried pattern, and waited.
“No time to waste, dog,” Baronova muttered to Jesse.
“Fuuhhh…” Jesse forced out painfully. “You.”
She reached out her hands again to Jesse’s head with an annoyed but determined look.
A green and blue flash erupted from the trees behind the golem. Jesse turned to see along with Baronova. The golem’s eyes all turned red and wide then it turned around to the dense treeline right behind it. Earth groaned and churned as if something were being rejected by its bowels. Trees splintered in an explosion and pine needles flew everywhere, like an enormous dandelion puff being blown. Two giant, slimy tentacles shot out and grabbed the golem, lifting it off the ground. It used its sharpened limbs to cut and slice at the tentacles. A deep, cavernous howl erupted and trees shifted. An enormous amber and brown eye set in tree bark, half covered in drooping vine and surrounded with blotches of moss, emerged amidst the trees. The warm scent of decayed fish and manure invaded Jesse’s nostrils and throat. He tried not to throw up or pass out.
A tree trunk stepped out of the tree line. A massive, heavy arm bent and shaped like wood with patches of wet scales swung at the golem, still held aloft by one tentacle. Uselessly, it tried to block the blow. The arm smashed it again and again. The golem’s red eyes eventually shattered or popped out of its head. The tentacle then flung it against the other trees repeatedly and a few of the barbed limbs snapped off. Finally, it slammed the golem into the snow and then the beast lifted its tree trunk of a leg and crushed the golem, a chunk of its body flying off and down the ridge. Its dented and smashed head popped off and skipped across the snow in the other direction, clinking against the foot of Lazavik.
Baronova’s eyes were wide. She stepped backward without taking her eyes off the beast and sat back into Lazavik, closing its chest. Jesse fell into the snow as Lazavik picked up its shield and whip.
The beast let out a terrifying bellow, rooted from rage and somewhere deep and ancient. It trudged forward through the snow, fully emerging from the treeline. It was a hulky mass of barked wood and stray branches, intermixed with slimy and fleshy scaled hunks of body parts. One limb looked like it couldn’t decide whether to be a leg or a massive, fish-like tail. Slimy, dark vines or tentacles protruded from under and behind it.
Returning the battle cry, Baronova yelled and charged Lazavik forward. Jesse couldn’t see from where he lay, but out of his good ear he heard roars, the thunderclaps of Lazavik’s whip, the slaps of the beast’s tentacles, the stomping of its trunks. Then something caught his eye. Pieces of the smashed boat moved. They began to come back together and mend. “The fuck?” Jesse whispered.
His sword floated up and drifted away, opposite the battle. Jesse watched as a young-looking black man, somewhere in his late twenties or so, snuck up the ridge and willed the sword toward him. He reached out and weaved it, extending the sword out into a fine, flat tip: a spear. The man grabbed the spear from the air and hustled over to Jesse, placing his index finger over his own lips with his eyebrows stretched up high. Whispering through the wind and over the hellish sounds of the fight, he asked Jesse, “If I can push you toward Canyons of the Ancients, can you make it the rest of the way?”
Jesse nodded. The man willed a last large chunk of broken boat over to them and laid it next to Jesse. Then he pushed Jesse onto it, using the wreckage as a stretcher. The man guided the stretcher over to the half-destroyed boat and held Jesse on it. Jesse grunted and moaned. He was rolled into the boat as the man mended this last piece of wreckage into place.
Behind them, the beast gave a deafening shriek. The man looked back with concern. He was about to turn and leave when Jesse grabbed his arm. “Who are you?”
“My name is Aron.” He looked back behind him to check on the battle as another thunderclap echoed and a shriek followed. “Ebisu! Shit, I gotta take this bitch out. Good luck.” Aron shoved the boat into the leyline and extended his arm out to send it on its voyage. His eyes grew big as he remembered something. “And don’t tr--”
Baronova’s barbed whip snapped around Aron and yanked him back. His spear in one hand, he still extended his free hand at the boat and forced it forward with his willpower, even as Baronova pulled him away. The dilapidated boat shot in the opposite direction along the leyline and down the backside of the ridge, back to Canyons of the Ancients. Jesse caught a glimpse of a bloodied and uniform-torn Baronova next to her crumpled and broken mecha reeling Aron into her as he sailed quickly off the ridge and out of view.