tattoo, inattentive to all else till Leonid lassoes back my center of attention by snapping his fingers.
“Hate to athk again, but are you awright there, mate?” Leonid questions delicately. My eyes aimlessly drop from the tattoo onto the ground. I’m embarrassed when I get caught off guard, staring off into space.
“Yea. That’s a sick panther tattoo. That’s all,” I say dispassionately with my head lowered, staring at the gray lime–ash floor.
“Oh this? It’s a jaguar. Common to get those two mammals mistaken for one another. Especially when this tat is missing the distinctive rosette spotted coat most jaguars have. Every man here is identified as a brother of this fraternity by this exact black jaguar on their right shoulder.”
The mark is too thorough to oversight it as another feline tattoo. This is in fact Abeni’s tribe symbol needled on her before adoption. She was nine years old when she got it. On the right shoulder too. “You good there, buddy?” I ask, keeping my head down, fidgeting with my hands and wringing them nervously. “Your speech impediment just left the chat.”
“Ah, yes. Was hard to talk with this mouth guard in. Have a habit of grinding my teeth when I’m patrolling the grounds.”
“So, is there a pool behind this wall?” I ask listening in on the splashing as I raise my head. Keeping my sight close to the floor as I pick my head up, I see that the white towel wrapped around his waist has a logo on a bottom corner. The logo stitched into the spa towel is the golden outline of a top hat within a circle.
“There’re several. Come and see.” He waves me over to follow in his steps. He leads me to the back of the frosted glass wall where a retreat is available for numerous men who’re resting in Olympic–sized swimming pools. Two of which have steam rising out of them. Keeping close to the backside of the frosted glass wall, he stops at a white line. I stand with him over the line that splits this building in half.
“There’re five pools in total. This room is a health farm for the Immortal Jaguars to delight in as they take a break from their arduous work schedules. Neptune currently houses over eight hundred men. A quarter of them being new recruits. About seventy men from Mercury—a sect of this fraternity—are always out on business trips. At any one time, seven hundred men shall be roaming the grounds. Any less would be bad luck. You’ll probably never see more than a hundred brothers in the same place outside the health farm, besides at the theater or dining hall.”
Nearly a hundred men are spread out, walking by and swimming inside the pools. Considering the size of this place, the number of men leave a glum emptiness to endure, like a bankrupt amusement park in talks to be closed. On the left–hand side of this building there’re two pools. On the right–hand side there’re three. Every pool has a distinct shape.
In between the two groups of pools, this white line we stand over continues forward and separates them. The white line comes to my attention. It’s bright. The white radiates from underneath with the line acting as some sort of heavy glass structure, not more than a foot in width, able to hold our weight.
Brilliant translucent openings within oily black stone walls surround the pools and allocate a kaleidoscope of light from the sun to their pellucid waters. The colored glass on the windows measuredly plays with whatever sunlight it’s given with an affinity to origami, folding light into decorative polyhedron and pentagonal shapes. Projected off glossy floors of ocean green, these colorful shapes embody a feeling of euphoria.
The polished marble mosaic tiles about the room, untouched by sacred geometry, are a frozen lake with an abundance of algae. The cracked teal shells from a slew of robin eggs sunken below it cry songs of subtle tranquility. Spellbound, I stare past the floors, through the steam, into the water. At last, the blocky shapes wiggling in the water come together in my head. I lift my head up from their reflections. Thousands of religious and historical symbols occupy the stained–glass windows throughout this enclosure with a peculiar stand–in for legs. Each character depicted here possesses a salmon’s tail below the waist.
A particular window that stands out is magnificent in size and to my right. I only partly twist my waist to it, keeping my feet glued to the ground. On this right–hand wall, a window boasts the shape of the capital letter H—a balbis. On the left stem of the stately–sized balbis window is Napoleon Bonaparte in his imperial throne with a rose pink salmon tail. The bar of the balbis connects the Napoleon I icon to another icon. But not only is it there to serve as a bridge between icons. The bar displays the words ‘Per vitem fragum sursum,’ elegantly spelled out with hundreds of sapphire and baby blue glass shards in each letter. The right stem, congruent to the left, concludes the shape of the balbis and presents…
“Is that the prophet Muhammad on the right line of the H?” I ask lamely, pointing to it.
Leonid fails to hide his contempt in my foolish assumption. “It’s actually Jesus K. Unlike most interpretations of Jesus, that one there portrays him not as an altered European version with blond hair and blue eyes to resemble perfection in the eyes of the westerners who worship him but as a historical depiction of a dark–skinned Middle Eastern man. What Jesus would’ve looked like in the past according to what most scholars believe to be his origin. I’d say he looks much like the Middle Easterners of today; minus the bright orange fishtail of course.”
I turn my body to Leonid from behind. “For me I can appreciate a genuine art form. Seeing this icon on stained glass. The craft. The great artistic skill it must’ve taken to conceive all of this. Well, it’s just mind–boggling.” Raising the muscles under my brows I exaggerate my blink as if I’m dreaming.
“I personally find truth to be more beautiful than lies. Don’t you think so too?” Leonid asks, content on the information he’s provided me with.
Rapid grating honks ring me in at an end of the health farm. Below the large lancet, cathedral, and rose windowpanes of tinted glass at my front are big fat geese running around chasing one another. Around forty frolic with their white feathered bodies not minding the heat from the steam that rolls past them.
I notice they’re actually chasing a man in green and white swim trunks. He has a fairly young face, short shaggy red hair, and is of tall but chubby build. A black smile fills his whole face. One that’d run up the dental bills fixing to put his house in foreclosure. Charred breadcrumbs leap from his palm with a flick of the wrist behind his back. To my surprise, the few skinny geese are the ones being left behind. The fat ones interlock their long necks in a scrimmage their own. Those lucky to get in front first bearishly peck at the breadcrumbs using their orange beaks as weapons and guards.
The red head misses a step in running and begins to stumble on the wet floor. He saves himself from a fall by staggering to the edge of a pool and confidently flipping into it, causing a rowdy splash. His eyes steadily peep out from the surface as though conducting reconnaissance for a profile about geese. His disembodied arm shoots next to it and he throws the blackened loaf of bread he had in his pocket, now soaked, at the skinny geese while the fat geese peck away at the breadcrumbs he’d left behind. Good arm he has, having thrown that loaf of bread like a football all the way to the slow geese, still far from catching up to him.
“Who’s that?”
“That’s David. New member. He turned eighteen just a few weeks ago.” Leonid gives me an engrossed look when he says this. He wants a response out of me, letting him know when I’ll be eighteen. I wonder how far off his guess on my age is, solely based off my appearance.
David too possesses the mark of a black jaguar on his right shoulder. As Leonid said before, that mark identifies a person as a part of their club. Everyone here has the label that comes with a sense of belonging.
“Now I’m no philistine but isn’t this a little too much? The graphics of it all, in this tinted window swamped health farm are breathtaking but I can’t keep focus on any one visual. What’s the point?” I ask, still astonished I’m here having been in the wild just moments ago.
“Art’s functional and beautiful to all men. Rooted in man is a deep symbolic pine for art to unveil meaning in otherwise meaningless signs. The soul can derive inspiration from nothing if that nothing’s name’s Art.” Leonid sighs, staring approvingly at the many still icons flattened and reimagined through colored glass as if it were his life’s work.
“The pleasures of Neptune soon cloy all men’s senses. So, I suggest you observe your surroundings. For when your time here goes sour, you may find that the need to get some creativity put back inside you, is right in front of you. You’ll have more than plenty of time here to focus on these icons. And you might even begin to remedy boredom by shifting your focus toward some of the more flavorful, active features Neptune has to offer. Try looking up for example. It’s almost seven,” he signals with his index finger pointed up to the ceiling. I trace the gray powder from his shotgun’s residue sprinkled on his pale finger, discernible despite the mud I transferred to him, raising my head tall to the ceiling architecture.
At the center of the health farm’s ceiling, a large circular gap leads way to an even higher end. Inside the gap, a cylindrical stone wall extends several yards above the average height of this area, beyond the four stories already housing this acre and a quarter sized health farm. The upper limit of the cylindrical wall is a bowl–shaped ceiling. Below the bowl–shaped ceiling, the lowest part of the cylindrical wall is bedecked with a clerestory. High windows above eye level so clean that they look to have no glass inside their stone frames.
The clerestory’s infested with intertwining thick reddish–brown branches outlining their lower borders. Along the thick branches, full–sized jaguar sculptures constructed of smooth black metal lie leisurely with their heads bowed. They’re a conversation starter for sure. Why, what masterpiece wouldn’t sulk that their beauty be imperceptible at night? And in the day, as they perpetually peer down at those soaking below, what if none look up? Sad. I would’ve missed them had Leonid not spoken.
Above the clerestory, the oily black stone wall continues up for some yards and then ends with a divide. It’s a hollow in between the wall and the bowl ceiling. An empty space that cunningly convinces anyone looking up that the bowl ceiling is separate from the rest of the tubular structure; thereby it’s perceived to be floating.
Not only is it a ceiling though. It’s an enormous annular clock, separated from the cylindrical wall by one ongoing circular windowpane. This is the perceived invisible divide. From outside the castle, this clock would look like half a sphere and its base—a tower. It’s as a monolithic dome church that has its roof form a convex surface.
The clock is awry in comparison to flat clocks. Not uncommon to Gulixua watches alike the one I’m modeling. It’s distorted in shape as though I’m looking up into a legit cereal bowl awaiting milk. Mighty in comparison to what I’d use for breakfast. I’m no giant but if I were, I’d flip this place upside down and fill the dome with Zombie Surfer Crunch.
With wandering eyes, I glance at the watch on my left wrist. It’s just grown a spec of green on its yellow rubber strap. This caved into the ceiling clock is made of iron wood and holds a high gloss shine among its exterior. I know the same wood to be the material for what Erik’s yacht is made out of; firm and shining.
Around the inside edges of the bowl clock there’re openings. Twelve roman numerals to signify the hours of the day. But there’re no other graduations on the clock nor hands on the clock denoting minutes for an exact time. The Roman numeral seven is instantaneously lit up in strawberry tangerine flames.
A line of fire shoots out to the center point of the clock where a minor square aperture slurps up the flames. The source of fire comes from inside the holes that shape the digit VII. The square hole at the center of the clock must be a vacuum because the fire changes direction once it reaches the center and shoots up, vertically into the hole. It’d seem the fire is shipped by the vacuum out into the open. Depending on how often the fire is blasted I would’ve seen it. If frequent, I’d seen it when we were still walking amongst peacocks and scarlet macaws towards the castle.
“How?” I speak, turning my head immediately to Leonid with the wide eyes of a child having just experienced their first magic trick. I’m simply stunned as to where this fire goes and how exactly it’s being produced.
“There’s another floor above us that shields the tower and clock. From outside Neptune, one cannot see the outer clock or tower because it’s housed in the above layer.” He looks up and asks me if I hear footsteps on the second floor.
“I do.”
“A monster lives on the level above us, roaming that floor and crawling around the tower, climbing to the top of the dome. The twelve roman numerals are openings. It burns fire through the openings with each hour of the day to let us know time.” He smiles and squints his eyes, letting out a short laugh from behind his shut teeth.
“Um…ok?” I take a step back muddled. Could it be he’s referencing a mythical dragon? I reckon that’s the only monster that can conjure a fire.
Bet my reaction was expected. How am I to believe this? The clerestory on the base of the tower shows white daylight and so does the 360–windowpane separating the tower and bowl clock. I know the difference between artificial light and broad daylight. There’s certainly no other floor above us covering that clock tower. Not to mention that all wood burns and not a single streak of ash is on that iron wood clock. Those aren’t real flames. Can’t be.
I glimpse at my yellow wristwatch with a green spec. Its time doesn’t double the time on the wooden clock above everyone’s head, currently spitting out flames from the Roman numeral seven. It’s not even seven P.M. and it’s definitely not seven A.M. My clock…I’d forgotten it’s broken.
When I checked the time back in the waking heat of the sun from a small island it read 9:34 A.M. It remains stuck on that time. My watch has been fixed at 9:34 A.M. ever since I saw that mysterious boy from the cliff come out of the bushes, when I couldn’t hear it ticking anymore. It’s been hours since Lucas, Ramze, and I drove into the solid mist.
The fire above us clears on the minute.
I wonder if the drug has anything to do with how much time’s passed. The drug that has ‘jaguar’ in its name. Just like the people in this castle have ‘jaguar’ in their club name. Jaguar’s spit and the Immortal Jaguars could be correlated. The jaguar’s spit might’ve somehow led me right to them, but correlation doesn’t equal causation. Correlation doesn’t model cause. It models relationships. I’ll test that statement.
“You know that drug I said I was struck with?” I ask looking away, pursing my lips, praying he doesn’t respond.
“Yes. Jaguar’s spit, right?” he says in uncertainty as I look to him arching my brows.
“Strange. I don’t remember ever stating the name of the drug.”
“And I don’t remember you ever thanking me for saving your life,” he quickly counterblasts raising his chin up at me, rolling his eyes along with his head as if he just saw a fly pass by.
“Touché. But to be fair, it’s because you had on that gas mask in your left hand. Sketchy behavior won’t get you no thanks from me.”
He shifts the gas mask behind his back.
“We’ll continue this conversation later.” He lays his chin on his violet bowtie. “I’ll send him your way.”
The violet bowtie has a small portable black mic on it. A stainless–steel button protrudes six centimeters from the core of his violet bowtie. In his left ear is a tiny crescent–shaped listening device. It’s the pale pigment of his skin.
“But—” I mutter.
“No buts. We’ll talk more after you change your shorts. I don’t want you dragging any Komodo bacteria further in here.”
“Bacteria’s everywhere. You can’t stop it,” I murmur, slouched over, releasing an exasperated sigh. I must change my shorts when they don’t even convey dirty. Is this all a joke? Is the person on the other side of that listening device telling him to make a mockery of me?
I’m too tired to do anything about it except think of how long I’m going to be here. This place is a fanciful surprise but I’ve no business here. There’re other matters to attend to. Number one is saving Ramze. At the same time, I don’t want to get arrested for veering off the road and almost killing my friends.
I’ll eventually have to come clean, tell the person I get help from how it came about that Ramze and I became stranded, and why he couldn’t tag along with me looking for assistance. Ramze is in trouble and my mission after a good talk with Leonid will be to get his support in a rescue. In order to get my friends back I’ll need him. I can’t do it alone. Not like this.
“Better safe than sorry when it comes to lethal germs. Go to David over there. The second row of pools right at your front. The row with only three pools. All the way at the end.”
“I’m sorry. Which?” I ask, attempting to relocate David.
“The one shaped like a blotch of splattered paint. Ask David to take you to the locker room where you can change. He’ll let you borrow one of his many lively swim trunks.”
We part ways. Leonid walks off with his clear mouth guard in one hand and his snow camo gas mask in the other toward a far–off exit at the end of the health farm. The exit leads to the outside from what I can tell. The arched passageway has geese wobbling through it to get outside. They’re clearly seen to be following the natural light from a mid–morning sun.
I walk past the first pool in the second row of pools. A Venetian–style pool. The diamonds suit in playing cards is its shape—a rhombus. The pool decking is flamed Italian granite. Four steps lead into it on its side. There’s a grotto across from me at an end of the pool. A waterfall gracefully falls over the opening of the grotto, distorting the figures inside.
The men in this pool are racing slowly through the water. The color shifting fuchsia to powder blue metal bands linked to their limbs I assume are the cause for their downtempo swim. The spirited bands must be wrist and ankle weights. No swimmer takes notice of me. They mustn’t care much for who visits this castle.
Some of the guys are hanging out on top of a long, wide Venetian bridge. It’s curved six feet over the water, going across the middle of the pool and serves no purpose in my eyes but to jump off it or swim under it. It only gets someone dry across the first pool before they get to the second pool so that they don’t have to walk all the way around it.
The next one over is a rectangular pool. It’s understandable no one here takes notice of me. They’re playing an athletic game of unofficial water polo without any caps or a referee. A yellow ball is in play with men in speedos bashing each other across the head to get to the ball. In front of this row are the first two pools which Leonid walked past to get to the exit. Those are truly the only ones releasing steam. Some of the steam overflows onto the back ends of the second row of pools. The pools are so large that for this sport active pool only a portion is used for the game, closer to the back end by the steam.
Then there was one. The paint blotch. More of a leisure pool with David being the only one who’s making a fuss, doing continuous backflips into the pool. The surrounding men deviate from him and corner themselves at an edge of the pool. All the geese had followed Leonid outside with no more bread available to them.
As he’s about to do another backflip, I interrupt him, and mention Leonid sent me followed by an introduction. “My name’s Koata.”
He does a quick jerk of the head to face me with gritted teeth in what could only be called a smile if I was dangling on a tree limb upside down. His plump body’s dripping wet and his red shaggy hair’s drenched but fried in some parts, like there’d been a plugged–in toaster swimming too. “Pleasure.” He reverts to doing a backflip, ending it by compressing his body, pressing his arms and legs inward into his chest.
Cannon ball.
Now for my first encounter with this guy I already have a bad feeling about him. His teeth are disgusting, and he pays them no mind. He swims underwater to the edge of the pool and rises from it. Once out of the pool, he shakes his head like a wet dog. Water droplets go flying from all sides of his head, out of his inextinguishable hair.
He takes four steps to me and places his right hand on my left shoulder. He then pats the side of my shoulder, telling me to lighten up. That I look stiff. “So, you’re the guy everyone’s been talking about. I’m David Collins. Your chosen herald. I’m here to give you some good news but my message to you won’t come easy. Not quite yet. So, you’ve met our groundskeeper, Leonid Vandever.” He spoke a mile a minute.
“Come again. Did you say you’re my herald?” I turn my cheek to him with my left index finger on my left earlobe.
“Yes. You don’t suspect you stumbled upon Neptune by chance. Do you?”
“Would it be crazy if I said yes? How was I made known to you? Everyone you say has been talking of me, how’re you going to start off a conversation like that when I only just got here?” I try to regress to my previous line of inquiry as I notice David’s different colored eyes. His left eye’s a deep blue and his right eye’s a light green.
The people in the sport active pool clamor for attention. One team in the middle rectangular pool scored against the other team by getting the yellow ball into the floating hockey–type goal net. The shouting men must mean its game over and the losing team isn’t happy with the results. On the other hand, it could be a celebratory rumpus from the winning team. I go back to David and I’s conversation. “A herald? As in you’re my messenger. How does that work?”
“Slow down there kid. You’re about to crash. I’ve already said too much. Don’t grass on me or I’ll kick your ass. I’ll have plenty more to explain and talk to you about once you emerge anew from round one. Kapish.”
“Capisce?”
“No not Capisce, Kapish,” he says, the two words synonymous in their phonetics.
A rugby fit, hairy–chested man with a pecan brown man bun and a Spartan beard, in what must be a red speedo stuffed with a sock, comes up in between the two of us with his right brow bleeding and a white towel hung over his right shoulder. His merry and child–like cocoa brown eyes hopscotch past me to greet David. “Some game huh? You see me score the winning shot?” he asks David with a swell of joy.
“No. I was busy talking to Koa over here or do you prefer Koata as you said your name was?”
“Koa is fine. That’s what my friends call me.”
“Perfect. We’re all friends here. Isn’t that right Kapish.” He looks affably to him as Kapish awkwardly stands there glaring at me. David throws a soft punch to Kapish’s left shoulder and Kapish responds nonplussed, rubbing his shoulder with his right hand.
“Sure. You play any sports kid?”
His voice has a slight rhythm to it with the stressed vocalization of his vowels. David and Leonid are both British. Leonid with his English accent intact and David’s an obvious Welsh. The Tudor colors of green and white separated by a horizontal line on his swim trunks gave it away. It’s the Welsh flag and on his butt stands the flag’s red dragon incorporated into its design. Strictly going off his appearance, I’d say Kapish must be Greek because he looks like the descendant of a Greek god.
“I surf.”
“That’s not a real sport,” Kapish contends with arrogance projected on his face.
I clench my fists but rather than instigate a debate, I smirk. My odd, fake, closed–lip smile fades as I ask for his nationality.
“I’m Swedish.”
“Ever been to Varberg? Doubt it. You wouldn’t get past the cold surfing in Sweden. When you decide not to be such a bloke in defining a sport, I can introduce you to some of the hot, fit, friendly Swedish girls only we surfers get. Something this place is in dire need of.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need to get any girl. I prefer women who aren’t into snuskhummers.” Kapish grits his teeth thinking I only objectify women.
“So, this is probably a dumb question but if everyone here isn’t British, why’s there a variant flag of Great Britain hanging from that panel of frosted glass as soon as one walks in through the gate?”
“We expect it to be the first thing people see,” David responds.
“Our founders are British,” Kapish adds.
“If from that region, why settle here, away from all towns?” I ask, looking up again to the sound of monster footsteps coming from the supposed second floor.
“Costa Rica’s cloud forest provides a beautiful hideaway, and we don’t like being bothered,” Kapish says realizing I’m looking to the ceiling as he’s talking. He roughly punches me in the chest forcing me to take a step back. “Pay attention when I’m giving a response to your vapid questions.”
David tries clearing the ferocity in the air by offering up a tour of the premises. I politely decline and suggest stalling the tour till he shows me the locker room where I can change my board shorts before Leonid gets back and has a fit. He concurs that’s the better plan. We turn from Kapish and walk to a corner of the health farm parallel to the archway Leonid went through. I can’t help but look back and see Kapish cynically watching us.
What did I ever do to him?
An equilateral triangle with stairs running down one side of it is what we arrive at in this corner of the health farm. The path downstairs immerses us in an underground manmade cave. There’s a mixture of black shale and light–blue slate rock formations that’re the makeup of the ceiling and walls. Midway into the cave there’s the bending of glass that becomes the wall to our left.
David notices my interest in it. There’re legs at the height of the glass wall kicking their way through the water. One man dives deep to retrieve his gold aviator sunglasses.
“It’s a look inside the White Oak Leaf.”
“The splattered paint blotch pool?”
David glances at me. His eyebrows shot up in judgement.
“That’s what Leonid called it anyway.” I felt the need to state.
“The White Oak Leaf is that pool’s official name.”
“So, what’s up with the gas mask Leonid had?”
“The gas masks are an item exclusive to the Aedile and the Praefectus because they’re the only classes that spend time outside. I’ll explain more on why gas masks are needed later but I’m sure you got a hint from the smell walking outside.”
“Boy did I.” I nod my head with a look of repugnance.
“As for the strange labels I just told you about, this fraternity is divided into classes. Those are just two out of the fourteen we have here. The Aedile, which Leonid is a member of is the groundskeeper class. We only have three brothers in that class, but more can be added as time goes on if an appropriate candidate is found.”
We turn into another hall.
“Our brothers in the Praefectus, there’s a set number of eleven members allowed in that class. There’ll always be but eleven Prefects. They control the prison system composed of two buildings which just so happen to be connected through an outside path. The Praefectus class and the Caesar class, composed of one individual, are the only classes with a set number on members that can join them.”
“What’s the Caesar?” I try and keep up with the information overload.
“Why that’s God of course,” David says with ease.