The Book of The Stones. Mario By Mario Book 3

Mario By Mario

Book 3 ‘The Stones’

1 The Revelation

1^st January

Kiss and back. The laid back wave hustling to the sandy edge and back infinitely, like a lover hugging the beach as the shore kisses it back. It defies any man held definition of time. It is a timeless kissing as if time had not only stood still but it had actually never existed. The only humna on this beach was myself. The sun caked my skin and made me as golden as the landscape. The glittering crystals in the music of the waves was white and pure. I stood motionless lying on a mat on the grains of the softest sand burning with the summer it collected day by day.

 2^nd January

 This is not a sequel, nor is it intended to be. I know not how I got there, nor how long I have been here for. But for all this time the problem of the human race did not bother me. It was all washed away. You know that things seem so large when they are up and close and so insignificant when they are far away. No one troubled me, nor took the trouble to call. I felt sad that I had lost, but it had only been a game. A serious game at that. My first feelings had been that I had let them down and with them my whole race. But the water had a healing potion that eased my parched spirit. And probably it is only a question of telling yourself that everything is okay and then all you have to do is to wait for yourself to be convinced. There are many voices inside oneself. The ego, the conscience, the fear and the desire to overcome, present and future hopes……. It is so hard to talk of yourself as one being.

3^rd January

One day I had a vision and the beach suddenly changed to one full of beach combers, sunbeds, umbrellas, yachts, water bikes, surfers, parachutes, gliders, children with an endless assortment of toys in every colour under the sun. Girls with bikinis or without and fet bellied men with beer cans and eyes lingering over the younger members of the opposite sex, beach boys and people frolicking around in the sea or sleeping in the sun. (Well that is the picture that I would paint today, but that vision, that day was full of people enjoying the beach). When the vision disappeared I was all alone again. I knew that I had seen the future.

One must understand that I, even at this day and age cannot reveal all the secrets of the spirits for many reasons. A secret is a secret after all. Most things people would not believe anyway. The truth is sometimes so incredulous and fantastic that people in their right minds, will refuse to believe it. So there are many things that I cannot explain, but I will let you know as much as I think I can be allowed to say.

Becoming a spirit is a process, a process of experience and education, of tests of character and intelligence. Spirits are allowed to disappear from their daily routine to return when they feel refreshed and renewed. Let us call it a spirit vacation. With the vision of the people of the beach, the picture of a possible future, my holiday ended. So I set off to Byblos carrying the caskets in the sack that I had taken from the Mountain of the Spirits.

The Revelation

The Death of Merhurt

4^th January

Merhurt greeted me alone, without pomp. “Be proud of what you have become. Victory majes great men, defeat teaches them how to be greater.” Merhurt seemed to know everything. But I was asking no questions.

“I saw your son. He is well and alive.” Merhurt was quiet for a long time. He walked me out of the city of Byblos up towards the low mountains to  the east. We walked and walked, but my news seemed to have silenced his heart. As for myself, I had lain on a sandy beach for so long, alone and quiet that I did not seem to have many words inside of me. The night fell down on us and we still walked. When the sun rose we were at the foot of the mountains. We clambered up the moutain ridge in the heat of the sun, till we came to the peak. The mountains were not very high and not very difficult to climb. There was a trickling stream, a rare occurrence in such a desolate place. Merhurt stopped to lap up what water he could. I had to cup my hands and wait for my hands to fill, for there was very little water to talk about. That night we slept by this water vent on a ridge high above the forsaken desolate plain. When the sun rose, it looked even more forbidding than ever. Even at that very early hour the heat was already becoming unbearable.

“I have come here to die,” Merhurt suddenly announced. “I have lived long enough.” I was asking no questions, but I was still a human and a lump came up in my throat. “See this land. There is a city underneath, nay a kingdom, a man made kingdom. One day the spirit Ursus flooded it and then sank what remained under the sand, together with a great river that made the land rich and fertile. You have lost the land that was Ala. I know that Enlil would like you to take over this land instead.” I looked at the treacherous emptiness in disbelief. “I was once told by my father, that the day I would return to take over my seat at Ylos[1] , would be his last. Indeed he passed away just as news of my return reached him. I found him dead. My son will take over in Byblos, for if he told you that to greet me, it means that he is about to return. Now it is time for me to go.” Merhurt did not look at me but kept staring at the landscape below. “Do you have any final wish?” Merhurt however remained silent. The sun was burning my back as if the Red Demon was touching me, but I would not move. “I know that you will take care of the bulls and I know that you will act like me and give up everything, even your familt and race in the face of duty. The bulls will be driven out of Byblos by the human race, I know and I will bow to the fate written by the spirits for us. I asked not to witness it and therefore I die. Yet I die happy in the knowledge that you will oversee this land that once was mine. A barren land, but it was home.”

 

5^th January

 “What do you know about rivers? Do you know that rivers twist and turn?” I was startled by this change of conversation. “Rivers are of many kinds like human beings. They may be said to have stories. They are born, they go through their childhood days and their youth. They pass through the stages of adolescence, maturity and many of them reach old age. As with human beings again their appearance is very different at different ages. A river is born, perhaps as a spring from a hillside. At first it runs straight cutting out a channel for itself leaving steep banks on each side. The power of a fresh newly born river creates even steeper banks forcing a valley with high land on both sides of it. With the rain, comes even more water and the river has grown so large that it starts to flood, but there is no place it can go but straight with such force that it will now even cut into rock and not only soft earth. The rocks it pulls down sink to the bottom, the crashing current swings to the other side with even greater force and digs a bend into the rock and this river now turns into a snake, where it finds weaker banks, the banks break and form tributaries and again once the water finds vents to spread, it relaxes. Now the ground is not so steep and the current not so strong. The river has grown old and will eventually mingle with the sea. Farewell, Mario of Huta.” With this he sprang into the gorge beneath. I had no time, no warning and probably no power to stop him. Merhurt was gone.

6^th January

I looked down into the abyss and made out his dead body, but a speck below. I kicked at the rock face in anger, right there where the water had trickled and the ground gave way beneath my feet. Water gushed out with so much energy that it nearly threw me off the ridge were it not for Wiza’s claws that kept me clinging on as the water washed all over me with great intent. Slowly I pulled myself out of harm’s way. More and more water was falling into the abyss where Merhurt’s body was already floating. It took me a couple of days to get down where he lay. I dragged him out with much effort. The water had already formed a little stream which disappeared over the horizon and it was showing no signs of stopping. Merhurt was a big, heavy animal and it took all my strength and enterprise to slug him up to a place which I thought would remain dry and buried him. I took the medal which hung round a chain on his neck and made my way back to Byblos. I entered at night and asked the guards to keep my entry a secret till the dawn and made my way to the foot of Mount Enlil using a secret was shown to me by the bulls. There I found Merhurt’s son and laid down the medal without saying a word.        

“Enlil told me to ask you about my father and you bring me sad news. I understand that it is time for me to return to Byblos.” I picked up the medal and wrapped it round his heart broken neck. He would become known as the One who Stepped Forth from the temple or as the Bull who came down from heaven, in the tongue of the bulls Gu (one) Ga (from) Lana[2] (Nirvana) Gi (come). So together with Gu Ga Lana Gi and with other envoys from the Ensa of Byblos, I traced my way back to the place where I had buried Merhurt and they led his remains back to the city where he was given a state funeral. In the shadows I made out the shapes of various other spirits, but none approached me. When Merhurt was lain to rest, the sky blackened and a huge sandstorm could be seen rising in the desert. The bulls closed the gates of the city and ran for shelter.

The sandstorm lasted for days. Few dared leave their homes and none dared leave the city. So died Merhurt and with him age old secrets. He was one of the eldest spirits but had renounced his powers and his throne to the bulls. Now he had even renounced his life.

End of The Death of Merhurt.

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[1] Ylos was the land of the bulls by Byblos, before Byblos was given to the bulls.

[2] The Sumerian Tale of Gilgamesh depicts the slaying of the Bull Of Heaven Gugalana as an act of defiance against the gods. From the earliest times the bull was a lunar creature, its horns symbolising the cresent moon.

The Book of The Spirits. Mario By Mario Book 2

Mario By Mario

Book 2 ‘The Spirits’

Kane

1^st January

Writing as the cool crisp wind of an early autumn wraps the town, I find myself trying to remember how many seasons have passed since my first calling. The problem, one must remember is that in those bygone days time was not measured by digital watches and I have no idea how much time had passed. I do remember myself deep in the river, quietly and quickly rising and risking a breather. Soon, I grew more confident that there was no sign of my pursuers, but one could never be too sure and I dared not leave the water. The river seemed to widen and there were signs of human settlement on the banks. One must remember that I had come from the island of Huta and had never seen any sort of human activity which had produced anything larger than the citadel back at home. I had been to Santorini, but there had only be ruined gates, walls and rubble. I had been to Morc but I had only seen the palace. Here was acollection of huts that seemed to stretch for miles. The eeriest feeling was one of silence. The place seemed to be deserted.

  

2^nd January

As the river flowed through my fingers I heard screams and a whole population fleeing away as the rain pelted down, as a cloud I well knew choked the sun. But there was more, the earth shuddered, hot lava seeped through the region. Poor people, with no idea where they were going, nor what they were running from. The water gushing through my palms as I waded in the shallow edges of the river had more stories to tell. Individuals who leapt into the river not knowing how to swim, of mothers and children in panic, leaving their homes and all they knew behind, heading for the mountains or for the sea. Either way they perished. There was little suffering, or most of it was brief. Yet the river acknowledged that some had managed to escape and survive, the cloud’s darkness, it’s famine and drought, it’s earthquakes, it’s lava. But it was the presence of another force that struck terror into man’s hearts. Faceless ghosts that could not be hit, wounded and yet they could pin you down at will.

A Digression

3^rd January

It is not the practical way to start a story and then write its historical background at the end. However it is time that a little explanation of the way things had come to this end is needed here. If you find historical facts boring, please skip this.

4^th January

In those early days, people’s notion of geography was vague. The Centre Sea was the focal point for most of the gentry of the day. There was no America, we definitely knew nothing of it. Africa was one looming mystery behind the Sahara and the Land of The Pyramids. Some had travelled beyond, fewer returned with strange tales of weird powers and fantastic creatures. These were taken as facts and probably these ‘facts,’ were not far from the truth. Fact is an oxymoron. Jesus curbed Thomas for doubting unless he saw or touched. Did the Holocaust really exist? Some believe that it never did, although I would advise such doubters to visit Aushwitz. Did we come from the apes? Was our earth the result of a big bang? These are today’s frenzied facts. So I believe that the people of those days were justified in believing what they were told.

5^th January

This is the knowledge that I learnt at the time, a little from Nena’s books, from Othello’s library and others. Ala was so called because many claimed that it was shaped in the form of a wing. The so-called 7 Wings of Ala were actually 7 peninsulas or as called by the people of Ala, the Feathers of Ala, in Alain the Rix of Ala. The shape of the Centre Sea has changed considerably since then. It covered what is now known as Syria, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Albania and what used to be Yugoslavia. They regarded themselves as the first people to come to the Centre Sea. Each Rixa was an autonomous state under the patronage of one sage king. The King of Ala. The feathers eventually broke and formed most of the islands that dot the Ionian Sea. Humans however shared the Centre Sea with other creatures. Fish and animals had larger brains and wisdom than the ones we know today. Some of the wisest living creatures were not from the human race. A race of Giant Bulls roamed for example on the fertile plains of Toro, which was both the name of their land and the shape of their country.

6^th January

They were however a warrior race and did not tolerate human activity in their country.They set their eyes on the fair crescent of Morc, the Land of the Crescent Moon which was also the name and the shape of the country. They bore red flags with a gold cresent and thrived as Ala’s western Allies from time immemorial.

The family of De Costa, were so-called because they hailed from the coast of the 3^rd Rixa of Ala. They actually left to explore what was beyond the Centre Sea, but joined forces with the people of Morc. The Bulls perhaps rightly reiterated that Morc was actually the second horn which had seperated itself fom their land in times gone by when their legendary King Torrero, (the huge bull of terror which is the root of the word terror,) punished the bulls for not keeping his day sacred. It was a day of much feasting when the bulls romp or stampede across the country from dawn till dusk and beware of getting in their stride. 

 7^th January

The Costa’s however decided to try and solve the dispute by going over to Toro and settling the affair peacefully. The De Costas thus gained the title Matador, which ran through the family and was my uncle’s title. The de Costas showed the bulls ways of irrigating their land and farming which made Toro prosperous. This meant that they could trade with the humans they had previously wanted to fight. Some humans were even encouraged to come to Toro and till their land. The bulls of Toro were so appreciative that they asked the De Costas to settle on part of their land, the right horn of the Land of Toro. The De Costas called it l’Onda, the wave, for it broke the sea beyond the Center Sea and suffered terrible storms. The bulls of Toro did not know what to do with this land that was constantly being flooded by the sea and was considered unsafe and useless. Onda or Anda as it soon became known soon became the third largest power in the west after Toro and Morc. De Costa and their people were reknowned for their wisdom and it was said that they could grow tomatoes out of rock, grapes out of salt and their orange trees were taunted to feed on the sand. Soon the crop produced from the barren slopes of Toro and Onda found envious buyers all over the Centre Sea. The city of Anda itself, in the center of the right horn was a rocky and a mountaious nightmare, but just as the Andean had tamed the bulls, they tamed the mountains. They found precious stones, made steel out of the rock ore and had a maze within the mountains that allowed creatures with the right sense of direction get all over the land in record time. This the De Costas had learnt from the ancient scrolls of the Bulls of Toro, once one of the ruling creatures around the Centre Sea, till they infuriated the spirits and shamed their leader Torrero.

8^th January

Dalma himself, had lived for some time in Anda and was well versed with the bulls’ way of life and transport systems, information which his armies later used to fill the mazes with some evil liquid cutting off all communication lines. Dalma chose to strike when Don Jacques and his mother were in Toro on a state visit. King Pedro De Costa was in Ala and Pitru was on one of his travels. This is where my story took off.

9^th January

Now I will get back to the country that interests us most. Ala as I have said before was divided into 7 states called Rix ruled by his excellency The King of Ala. The 1^st Rixa[1] was the Land of White Cotton, the 2^nd Rixa was the Land of Blue Fish, The 3^rd was the Land of  the Green Flower, The 4^th was the Land of The Golden Flower, the 5^th was the Land of Water, the 6^th was the Land of the Red Rose and the 7^th Rixa was The Land of The Unspeakable, The Land of No Return and was all dry and covered in desert sands.

The 1^st Rixa was known as the White Rixa, the Land of Cotton. It was the last feather to establish itself as a kingdom and was probably a result of emigration from the other Rix seeking new lands west. It had long been known as The Land of The White Carpet due to the cotton fields which were always plentiful in the region. It was probably this factor that attracted the first settlers. It was in fact a restless kingdom bent on travelling and seeking new lands. Piede, the large stretch of land was just a few days away over an oily calm sea. However when the White Rixa became a kingdom allied to the other feathers of Ala, the people of Piede broke away and refused to pay any taxes to their leaders, and cut all ties with the king. But the Kingdom of The White Rix sent its messangers to Piede with the king’s decree. “The newly formed kingdom of The White Rixa will not persecute, nor impose any sanctions on the people of Piede who have been our brothers, most of whom are our distant cousins. We will not force you to pay for the produce you have gained from the Land of The White Feather. Let it be a gift. Those of you who want to continue our friendship feel welcome. Those of you who think can get by without our help, we wish you the best of luck.”

However the people of Piede were obstinate and all ties with the Land of the White Rixa were cut apart from some coastal settlements. The people of the White Rixa thrived whilst Piede fell into poverty. Indeed the name of the country Piede and the term ‘barefoot people,’ became synonymous. 

10^th January

The 2^nd Rixa was the one of the Blue Fish. It was the mecca of the philosophers, artists and scientists of the time. It did not produce much by the way of commerce but it did produce good wine and olive oil. It entertained Alains with its theatres, books and proposals of political fresh reforms. They introduced sport events and competitions. They embraced any new invention and cared not whether it was of any use or not. It was often the case that inventions were enthusiatically reproduced and sold on such a grand scale that every house was soon full of gadgets no one knew how to use and even less remembered what they were meant to do. Two villages prospered into cities Corinda and Ath. They were ruled by powerful rulers and great stories of their achievements which later formed part of what is now known as mythology. When the fetahers of Ala scattered at a later point in time these feathers formed much of what became of Greece and the foundations of Corinda and Ath grew into Corinth and Athens.

11^th January

The 3^rd Rixa was known as the Green Flower. Luscious forests and the most beautiful women thrived there. Animal sages also built their own kingdoms there and lived harmoniously with humans. The people here banned hunting and when they wanted new farming land, their animal allies were consulted and an agreement reached. The rulers of the Green Rixa built a wonderful palace in the middle of an extensive forest and only a few ever made it to the palace without a guide. There were times of the year especially in the height of summer when the thorns and the blossoming branches blocked the way in or out. The palace was divided into numerous chambers to hold the Bison King and his entourage, Pegasus and his winged horses, his cousins the Unicorns, The Stag and his uncountable deer subjects, Castor the Queen of the beavers reknowned for their medicinal knowledge, Brokko the Emissary of the badgers, Ezo king of the Eastern wolves, HuHu Prince of the hyenas, Ursa Queen of the northern bears, and Spelaeus king of the cave bears and their cousins the brown bears, a court of felines loyal to the Cave Lion who’s territory lay to the North East, Sylvan King of the Baboons, and other apes,  Qaws and his birds, the list is endless.

12^th January

However it was this harmony that caused disharmony at Ala. As the kings of the 3^rd Rixa tended to retire into their palace in the forest and hold council with their animal allies in the forest, they started to lose touch with the world around them. When the animals complained that in the other Rix humans still hunted their brethren the kings of the Green Rixa protested and tried to make Ala impose a ban on hunting. Unfortunately only the Rix of Gold and Blue agreed and this is how Ala developed into an Eastern and Western divide with one ruler representing the Rix of the west and another representing the Rix of Water and the Red Rose to the East. The Rixa of the White Cotton remained neutral. The 7^th Rixa was by this time a dark horse no one spoke about. No one dared go beyond the mountains that lay between the Rixa of the Red Rose and the Land of the Unspeakable. Many believed the Spirit’s wrath to have wiped out any human in that forsaken land. The Western three wings were soon overpopulated with animals seeking a safe haven. There were even animals who broke the pact. Attacks on humans were not unknown. The citizens of the Rix of Green, Gold and Blue were not so happy about this as one might imagine. However after long talks with their animal allies a balance was found.

13^th January

The people of the 4^th Rixa, known as the Land of the Gold, obviously were so called because they had mastered and crafted gold. It was not sold, nor used as currency but was put to practical use as the most long lasting uncorruptible thing that man could smelt out of the earth. Gold is as pure as a pure heart, once the heart goes sour, the gold turns black and needs to be cleaned again. Such a philosophy these people lived by. It was also rumoured that whilst digging so deep into the ground they had come across the great huge golden wheel that turns the Centre Sea around and had met the strangest creatures who had once roamed the earth and had now decided to live beneath it, in darkness for some reason which only the Alains who met them knew.  

They had no need for growing crop or hunting animals. Their natural resource was the very fulcrum of this Rixa and they only focused on how to mould it, into what, how to improve it and how to find its hidden inner power. For gold as an element has strength. If you look at it for too long it will captivate your brain. It could also turn you into a lifeless statue of gold. So it was covered until it was necessary to look and hastily covered again. Gold rings and bracelets wrought by special smiths however could be worn for they strengthened its beholder. The king had a spearhead made of gold and this was the most powerful weapon in Ala. It could penetrate everything if the man who launched it had a pure heart. Again if the man threw it against an enemy out of spite or out of an injust cause the spear would turn black and crumple harmlessly on impact

14^th January

The 5^th Rixa, the Land of Water was populated by people who hugged to the water’s edge, whether sea or river or lake. Many built thier homes on stilts embedded in the seabed or around their lakes. Some of the people still had fish tails instead of legs and could stay under water for long periods. In the northern regions village folk were known to disappear under water when it got too cold and the water froze on the surface. Their main diet was plankton, seaweed and other vegetation. Yet their palace on land boasted coral, shells and other ornaments from the deep. They battled water dragons together with the fish. If a water dragon took over a lake, the people fled for the dragons were big and strong. If the dragon chose to pick up a lake where a village had been established then the king sent his generals to help. These generals grew in stature, in power and in wisdom and their popularity amongst the fish kingdoms opened up new friendships which led to King Pilip’s father setting up a dolphin colony at Delfa and De Costa’s close relations with other sea creatures. These were humans who felt just as home on land as they did under the sea and did so in harmony with all the creatures they encountered. In time a peace treaty was arranged with the water dragons, just as the De Costas managed to do later at Toro.

15^th January

The 6^th Rixa was the one of the Rose. Roses and all types of flowers grew in abundance. The people that lived there did so in the harshest conditions, in rugged mountains, treacherous swamps and cragged deserts. Yet they knew how to make their way in a sandstorm or a blizzard and found underground water streams in the most parched areas. They were a tall strong race, their skin as brown as the soil and their hair any colour of the rainbow, naturally red or purple, though the men were known to dye their hair blue or yellow according to their standing in society. The people of the other feathers feared them for they were a warrior race, a practical race and were wonderful in architecture and geometry. They built bridges to cross unsurpassable rivers and dykes to hold back the water and directed rivers wherever they willed.

16^th January

Their main diet was meat however and they had littles respect for the animals which they hunted or reared to kill. This was a sore point between the Rix of Ala and the Rix of Gold, Green and Blue in particular. The Rixa of Water remained neutral, although they disliked the idea of men eating fish, their fellow sea comrades. It was this neutrality that kept the people of the water comparatively safe, for they too believed in strength and often had to battle agains the water dragons or other ferocious beasts along the rivers like crocodiles, water pythons in the lakes, and sharks or dogfish in the sea. It was also a fact that the Rixa of the Rose and that of Water were the parts of Ala who supplied the kingdom with a trained army, experienced generals, therefore with security. These two Rix were the muscle and backbone on everything that had been achieved and passed on their building skills, expertise and man power to the other Rixa. The Rixa of Gold provided Ala with golden artifacts and other craft, the Rixa of Green understood the forces of nature, while that of the Blue theorised and philosophised, offering wise leaders and entertainment. The Rixa of White Cotton supplied the land with cotton and other agricultural products and food. They too realised that neutrality kept them in business for they got their security from the Land of the Rose and the Land of the Water and their main clients were in the other 3 Rix.

17^th January

The wise men of Ala realised that such a nation could not hold out much longer so a king was appointed over all the other 6 rulers, one that would rule Ala. The king would be chosen by all the rulers of the Rix after noble and accepted candidates from each state vied for the post. Each candidate had to spend a lunar year in each Rix, learning the local people’s ways and thus gaining their respect and knowledge. After 6 lunar years these nobles would come to the throne and one would be King of Ala.     

Under the King of Ala, the first king being Zeus from Corinda, a strong man who impressed the elders of the Rixa of the Rose by single handedly killing a bear twice his size and then crying at the act. Indeed later as King, Zeus enacted that animal hunting would continue to be practiced in the Rixa of the Rose and that of Water, whilst domesticated animals could be slaughtered, eaten or used as beasts of burden in the Rixa of White Cotton, but that it was disallowed in the other Rix of Gold, Green and Blue. Zeus impressed the nobles of the Green Rixa by demonstrating his knowledge and mastery over the weather and how the force of lightening could be used for man’s needs. The Feather of White Cotton he charmed by wearing garments made out of their cotton and linen and only Zeus passed the test of the Gold Spear in the Rixa of Gold, as he was pure of heart as pure as gold. The people of the Land of Water did not dare oppose what seemed to be a unanimous decision.

Yet King Zeus was a good, sensible king and married a woman from the Rixa of Water and the empire of Ala became strong and united once more. Many other kings followed supported by a court of advisors never bettered by time.

18^th January  

One might think that I forgot all about the 7^th Rixa. Unfortunately there is not much to say. No one in Ala dared speak about it. It was the Land of the Unspeakable. It was the land where all Alains had originated from and yet something had happened to scare all the men who survived away and none dared retrace their steps. It was the source of an evil, an evil that not even Dalma dared kindle.

It was however at this point that I came to my wits. The river passed through my fingers with no more stories to tell. The number of huts pettered out into one huge stone wall that seemed to be the remains of some gigantic palisade. I found a little hole in the wall and dried myself to sleep.

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[1] Rixa is spelt Ri-sha as in shut. The plural form is Rix pronounced Ri and sh as in leash. 

The Calling Mario By Mario Book 1

Preface

There have been a lot of things said about me, some untrue, some very close to the truth, but none actually hit the mark. The reason is that the truth is elusive and facts change with different perspectives. Fact is stranger than fiction, for fiction is a made up story, whereas fact is a question mark. I will give you my vision of the facts.

Many people will believe in magic, just as others will not believe in UFOs. Probably to the disbelief and disappointment of my followers, I must say that I am neither a magician nor an alien. I am a human being, just like all humans, same body, same organs, same brain.

Many people do not believe in the power of the brain. On the Planet of The Apes, monkeys and apes managed to develop their brain faster than humans and most aliens, ( at least the ones I could examine,) seem to have smaller brains than ours. Mankind has the possibility to dominate the universe, but probably luckily for the universe, we do not trust ourselves enough to make the grade.

This mistrust left people grasping for a reason why there have been humans with super abilities like Jesus or Nostradamus or Merlin, or Hobbits and turn them into gods or prophets or wizards or elves. People will never believe Harry Potter if he tells them that his magic is but pure brainpower and mental exercise. I have said this many times but no one ever believes me. Most people will not believe that this world is a cycle of life. Things grow and die, back to the earth and grow again and die again. Some of us want to die and when the cycle turns they ebb with the tide. Others are determined to live on. The brain is so powerful that it allows them to overcome death. Some return as other humans, or as other beings within the earth. This depends on how developed the brain is. Most people refer to this as reincarnation. Unfortunately some of the people who want to return, (and this possibility is only confined to well trained and really developed brains,) fail to do so completely and roam the world as ghosts or spirits. Sometimes a ghost, can be described like a brain, which is a hidden file on the monitor of the world,( as on a computer,) trying to find ways to return, sometimes by contacting humans. These spirits have different motives, sometimes to help, sometimes to hinder the living.

This knowledge I learnt as my life unfolded, and  a life is not an easy thing to put in words. Memory too has clouded particular instances and so has my pride or my wish to portray the people I cherish in a good light. I wrote this first part as I was travelling through a Europe, which is roping itself in to unite.

The story was written on a diary. It does not mean that each part of the story was written on that particular day that appears at the top of each part. There were days when I wrote 4 pages and days when I wrote none. 

Book 1

The Calling

The Initiation

31^st December

The stone was fascinating. It was big, nearly round and it was peaceful. My 9^th birthday. Gianni went away for a walk. “Hello,” I shouted. The stone shouted back to my surprise. “My name is Mario.”

“Mario, Mario,” the stone replied and then it turned into “Echo, Echo.”

“Your name is Echo?” I asked and it replied, ”Name is echo, name is Echo” I never knew that stones could speak. “Stones don’t speak,” I said.

“Stones don’t speak ,” it answered.

“Then what are you ?” The stone repeated the question. “I am Mario, it is my 9^th birthday and Gianni brought me here.”

“Me Hera,” the stone replied.

“Echo or Hera ?” I demanded getting a little impatient, but the stone merely repeated “Echo or Hera,’ and left me unanswered.

“Echo or Hera are you a stone ?” The stone retorted with, “Are you a stone?”

“No I’m not.” I sniggered, and for the first time the stone changed her voice, for all the time it had been repeating everything I said back to me with what looked like a copy of my own voice. “Neither am I”

I was a little startled at this change of voice, but being a very inquisitive child I could not help asking, “Then what are you?” Again the stone repeated in my own voice this time. “What are you ?” It might seem stupid but even today that question still troubles me.

“Things are not what they seem,” Gianni who had come back said. The stone repeated using Gianni’s voice this time. “The stone doesn’t talk, it’s what is called an echo that you hear. The stone again repeated this using Gianni’s voice. I could not actually understand what was going on, “How did you do that ?” I asked Gianni.

“It’s easy, you just ask Echo questions and it answers back. Hera lives on the stone, you cannot see her, but you can hear her. She is a very wise spirit. She who is not seen but heard.” The sea was rough and came into the bay like an army of men waving their clubs as women screamed in terror. The water vanished and only a mass of dead bodies lay. “Your ancestors,” Hera whispered, “Massacred by the legions of Dalma.”

“Who is Dalma ?” Hera was silent, the waves crashed again, as swords clashed and horses kicked their way to death. “Gianni did you see that ? What does this mean ? Who were my ancestors ? Who is Dalma ?” I turned around and saw that Gianni had tears in his eyes. He suddenly kneeled before me and kissed my feet. I was stunned. Gianni was like a father to me. He was big and strong with black hair and brown eyes. “Why do you kneel ?” Gianni looked up at me, “Mario  you are designed for great things.”

He kept on looking at me as if in some sort of trance. “Why do you say that ?” Gianni slowly rose and taking hold of my hand led me closer to the water’s edge where the waves had regained their calmer self.

1^st January

“You have just seen a vision, which the spirit Hera only reserves for the chosen one. Many parents bring their children here, for Hera chooses only the pure of heart and free of mind. Hera chooses but once in a thousand moons.” I was looking at the sea where the battle scene had been so vivid but a few moments ago. “Do you mean that what I saw was a vision ? I saw armies and dying people. Who were they Gianni ?”

“I don’t know, my chosen one, I didn’t see them.”

Now I became sort of desperate and alarmed, “But the horses and the mothers grabbing their children and asking for mercy even as the blood dribbled from their bodies ?” My voice echoed all around, but I was not interested in the echo anymore. “I didn’t see anything, I was not chosen to see the vision.” I held Gianni by the wrists and I shook him like any child would, “But surely you heard Hera tell me about Dalma ?” Again Gianni shook his head.

I looked at the sea again. It looked as it always did, blue and serene. It was hard to believe that I had seen the sand and strange buildings going up in flames and mothers and children and horses as men dragged the women away or murdered them before the very eyes of their own children. I had never heard nor seen such violence before. I had seen how the fishermen cut the heads off fish and how the house wives chopped off rabbit heads and plucked chickens, but I had never seen humans do it to other humans. I had never seen such a thing at Huta, my island home.

“My chosen one, let’s go home now,” Gianni announced. From then on, Gianni called me, ‘The Chosen One,’ and treated me like some idol. It was quite a funny feeling at first. I had been just a normal village boy and now I was not allowed to carry anything, or do any rough work, the sort of errands that village children do. The children often helped to carry water from the spring and take it home to their families or various elder people in the village. It was also normal to help with ploughing the little patches of fertile land scattered around the rocky barren cliff face of the village, or to pick capers, olives, oranges, apples, prickly pears, and other fruit which grew wild a little way off from the sea side village. The village lived on these products. They grew potatoes, wheat, turnips, pumpkins, tomatoes and so on. Meat was scarce. Goats, rabbits and chicken, normally bought for a high price from other villages. Fish was plentiful.

However soon all the village was calling me “The Chosen one,” and I was excluded from any work whatsoever.

2^nd January

Ix-Xih, (meaning ‘Old Man,’ which however at the time carried great respect as Ix-Xih was the wisest man in the village, ) with a doubled up back, long white hair and a beard came up to Gianni’s hut. The neighbours had come to us to give us warning prior to his arrival. Gianni scrubbed my face and made sure I looked as smart as possible. “My Chosen One, Ix-Xih wants to talk to you. This is a great honour. He is one of the wisest men in Huta.” I do not remember what impression Gianni’s words made on me, I was but a child and knew nothing of man’s ways and the older I grow, I find out how little I still know, for man is unpredictable.

Ix-Xih took my hands. “My dear Chosen One, you came to our village as an infant. The woman who brought you to me told me that your parents were both dead and that they wished you to be called Mario, which means “The Light,” in some foreign country’s language. It means that you come from some other country and that you are bound to answer some sort of calling that is reserved only for a chosen few. We entrusted you to Gianni here and he has done us proud. We are honoured to have ‘The Chosen One,” here in our midst. One day you will leave our tiny village and the shores of this island. Your eyes will see what none here will ever see, what none here will ever hear, you will touch what our hands cannot touch and you will feel what our hearts cannot feel. You will then start to understand what we never will. This is your destiny. You will carry the torch of reason, the torch of wisdom. In you lies the leader of our race and you will jump into the skies and show us what lies there, then you will guide the ones that will follow and they will tread into your footsteps which will serve them as a fountain of wisdom.”

3^rd January

“I don’t know when the spirits will come to pick their ‘Chosen One,’ but you have been given a sign. You must open your eyes and your heart, use your ears, your senses and you must look for the signs that will lead you to the world of ‘The All-Knowing,’ which is where all chosen ones go.”

“You will also have to learn many things. You are but a child. One thing you must always remember, that wisdom is a great thing, but it must be used well. There have been chosen ones who decided to use their wisdom in evil ways or for their own egoistic profit. Then the earth fell into a deep, sickly night where thousands died and others suffered, till the evil one’s wisdom drained, for evil is stronger than wisdom unless your wisdom is healthy and pure. Then flowers blossom and the sun shines, and then ‘The Chosen One,’ can roam the earth telling stories and feeding his wisdom to the common people for wisdom must be shared. As ‘The Chosen One ,’ you must always remember your duty to your people. You have been chosen a pure child. Wisdom lies only in keeping yourself pure. Evil things are always a temptation. If you are wise you will opt for peace.”

Imnajdra & The 50 Questions

Imnajdra & The 50 Questions
by Mario Cordina

1

She led me through a gate, to various terraced fields with rubble walls that had belonged to her family for centuries, fields that her family had tried to tame for centuries. “Here is a lucky charm, which we always carry when we go down .” It was a soiled bag with something inside, but I was not to open it. It took me some time clambering down to the sea’s edge, and the ball of the sun was already rolling on the water. I had come to watch a spectacle, the sunset dipping beyond the horizon of the bluest Mediterranean sea. Surprisingly I glimpsed a little girl wading by the rocks. She was fair, still unshaped, unclothed.

“Hey, it will get dark soon, you should be going home, mama is probably wondering where you are .” She came closer. “Where is your mother ?”

"There," she said pointing to the cliff from which I had just come.
“Good, I’ll take you home .” She smiled.
“I would love to, but you see I cannot . I came to see her but .....” She was sobbing. I put my arms around her in sympathy. Suddenly she dug her nails into my skin and the blood seeped out, but I felt no pain. My blood was all over her. She stood bathed in blood and water . She bent down and from a point in the centre drew a spiral in the earth, as the water and blood mingled, colouring the earth .

Meanwhile the sun was sinking fast . She looked up at me, but her face had changed from that of an adolescent girl to a beautiful woman, her body too had changed. “There is a womb, the child cuts itself free from the womb to create new life. You dip one hand into the water, one hand into the blood and eat the flesh of the land, meat and crop. You live till one day you return to the womb, to be one with the mother that gave you birth. This is the circle of life. But the circle has been broken.” The sun fell at that instant and she was gone.

2

There is another side to the story of the wading girl that I met close to the sea . She left me in pitch darkness, for the sun had fallen . I noticed that the bag which I had held in my hand had dropped to the ground beneath my feet. The bag had opened and I discovered that a stone had rolled out of it. I shook the bag but there was nothing else inside. The stone was a normal half spherical piece of limestone, not unlike the ones you find all over the island. However, in the moonlight it started to glow, and traced on it was what looked like the half spiral which the girl had drawn in the soil with water and blood and on closer inspection it seemed as if this was only half of the original stone.

All the time I was stumbling up the fields to the tip of the cliff, the stone serving as some kind of light . I stopped at a clearing for no real reason, and at that moment the moon shone on the grass . The stones underneath the weeds did not look like the rubble walls that surrounded the fields. I traced this collection of stones for such they now seemed to be. They went round in a circle.

I was now standing in the centre, and there, now would you believe it, I found another glowing stone, I thought that it would fit the one that I already held in my hand. It did. I put them together and shouted like mad. “ The circle is not broken, I have put the circle together.” Then I waited, and waited. She did not come back, nothing happened. I was angry and threw the stones away.

3

At the gate my worried host waited for me. She saw the nail marks in my skin . She did not ask for the bag. She would not touch me. She closed the gate, and not even waiting for my unvoiced thanks sped homeward. I was left alone with my car in the distance. I looked at the moon’s lonely trail on the ripples of the sea below. It was time to go home. I looked at the spot where the ring of stones had stood. It was not visible from the top. I looked at the watch, I had a plane in three hours and had no idea how to kill the time. I was born here, I had lived here, I had left here. I had come back home, but home was not the same place anymore. A plane in three hours.

I wanted to know more about the ring of stones below, about the broken circle, but I had to go. What a fool I had been to think that I could put two stones together and start a circle that had been torn beyond repair by the centuries that stood between me and the wading girl. There is no return home. The womb waits empty, covered by weeds and ruined, like the octopus that sees no reason to live after giving birth.

Grandma's Bed

[SynApsis]

Open with a punchline. This is about the film that nearly got made and a life that passed away in the process.

It is about one striving for knowledge to be crushed to death by a bookcase.

And yet I was still but a child, still oblivious to all this drama and could not understand how my wrinkled, old smiling grandma could have produced 11 children and never thought much of grandpa, a 95% bald silver quiet man, who fell down the stairs after a stroke and became a cripple till he gathered all the family with their children and their children’s children, bred like rabbits, countless and unknown to me at his funeral grave. Grandma survived him for a full 5 years. Yet this story is about her bed, which in Maltese is called “Sodda,” and grandma being “nanna,” ergus “Is-Sodda Tan-Nanna.”

The bed had been her grandma’s, had survived 3 generations and 2 world wars, unlike its owner and found its place in the New Village which by the time I was born was around twenty years old and stretched to the local prison and the dockyard where poor old grandpa used to work during and after the war. It was iron cast with spirals and curls and twists along the rails and legs. It was as inconspicious as the house in a line of similar post war, tasteless but practical architectureless buildings hastily mounted to house the baby boomers of the time. It was a time when one did not pay per metre purchased, so the cheapest marble slabs, two rooms on the groundfloor with a kitchen and a mandatory yard, two rooms upstairs and yet another one leading to the roof. One might be acquainted with Maltese homes to get the whole limestone drab picture, which is now highly prized and sought after by rustic romantics.

Basically, the story hinges on grandma’s bed with grandma’s funeral leading to a tragic end.

The characters include the children of grandma’s oldest daughter Agatha, who like the saint she had been named after slaved her life for an alcoholic husband and her traumatised children, losing her very own self as a result. There was the sexy, cute, black-haired Soraya, short but very pretty and petite. She had a soft spot for red, whether they were ribbons or beads in her hair or lipstick as bright as a pomenagrate down to the nails on her fingers and toes. These were usually complimented with black flashy bangles on her right wrist and ankle. A lizard tatoo scrambled over her left shoulder blade, black with a reddish outline and crimson toes.

David the eldest brother was a wee bit taller but was unfortunate with the genes he had inherited and grew bald, very early on in his life, had a stammer, was not very attractive, had no girlfriend to speak of and sold watches after he returned home from his full time job which was at the local post office and only went out when his sister needed a chaperon or wanted to nurse her brother’s heart, or just had pity on him. David’s latest decoration was a black eye patch which made him look like a harmless black pirate, obtained from a wind lashed day’s sailing accident.

The youngest, well he suffered most, probably or at least that was the neighbours’ version for her turned gay and later decided to have a sex change and he became Mabel to me.

I came as a very late addition to the family and by the time I could comprehend that there was a world beyond my play pen and my mother’s arms, dad was vegitating in bed, smoking the odd cigarrette or two when mum wasn’t looking and when he found the strength to stumble to the drawer where they were hidden. By the time that this story comes to life, Mabel was Mabel, Soraya was working as a waitress on some cruise liner and David had nearly gone blind.

Scene 1: Take 1

Camera = My Eyes

Put a camera on top of a child’s head. Adults turn into faceless giants from below. View the world through his eyes. The words that come through his mouth are uncensored for a child has not yet learnt the art.

Everything is so mysterious to this curiously driven camera. Unstable and causes nausea and yet this makes for a great film. You see, a film that explains everything is disappointing because it excludes us from the process of watching.

Cut, Cut !!!!!!

Pretend to be the actor who just got these lines and see whether they make sense as a story outside the concept of the film.

The Children of The Pod

Synapsis: This is the story of the Children of the Pod, born as seeds out of the earth as they try to understand and mingle with the human race.

Wladende

First Meeting

Wladende was once a great town, founded by a man called Wlado. A giant of a man in search of a home. He came from far away, from across the Gobi desert through Asia to the west. His heart he held in his hand and whenever he stopped it beat harder than ever, restless and unsatisfied. So he moved on, the lone wanderer searching for a place to call his own. Basically the only ware he had to sell was a pinch of cocoa powder which he could have traded if he wanted to but its use was then unknown to men. They did not know it could nor how it was to be turned into something edible. He carried the cocoa in his heart, but when he showed his organ to the few locals that he ever came across, they scattered and fled in fear and disgust. Probably he did not look very attractive in his unshaved beard that almost came down to his feet and hair that trailed behind like a bride’s veil, catching up the twigs, stone, grass and dirt as it brushed along the ground. Thus he fertilsed the soil and sowed the seeds that his living mantle dropped. One can still trace the route he took by the straggling line of foreign vegitation which sprouted in his wake.

One day however he tripped over a stone and his heart rolled away and he could not find it. Alas he had suddenly gone blind and went around in desperate circles on all fours fumbling in the earth and grass for his heart. He heard some voices giggling and gibbering in the distance, but he could not see anything. Then she touched him. It was the first and only touch he had ever known, for he had been born under the roots of a large tree. When the men chopped it down, they found him inside thriving on earth worms and other delicacies in the soil. Her voice came out in uncouth jumbled jargon. A language he could not understand, nor any language whatsoever. The art of human speech was a magical weird discord that he had never deciphered. But he stopped rambling like a beast and stood up. A tree of a man. She tugged at his hands and he fell down to his knees and then she pushed his hair away from his face and he could see again. For the first time he could see her clearly and she was so………

So………

FAT!

But in the middle of all this disappointment he glimpsed his heart and jumped for joy. It had stopped beating, probably because it had not been pumped with blood for some time. He simply put it back in and let out a hollow stumpy bellow in mirth, sounds that his mother tree had taught him. The fat girl and her friends thought that it was in grief and they felt pity for him. They were also expecting him to die any moment, for who can live with a heart that has stopped beating. But he only caroused louder and louder, fell to his knees once again and kissed his saviour’s feet. As fat as she was, she did however have a pretty smile and a rotund bosom. It was then that she smelt the cocoa in his heart.

It was impossible for her to tear away from that smell, so when she saw that he was still alive and that there was no sign of his passing away, she took him to her little hut, where she lived, bathed him, cut his hair and trimmed his beard. When he emerged from the bath, he was the most attractive being that she had ever met and his perfume seemed to have cast a spell as did the size of his genitals. No clothes she had from her late father’s wardrobe would fit him, so she just gave him a night gown which just about covered his private parts and which her father had used to carry around him like a blanket with the ends trailing on the ground. The man born of a tree, then collected his beard and his hair snips from the floor and let the wind carry them outside, covering a little patch outside her hut and beyond into the barren meadows that no one had ever tilled. She was his saviour, the saviour of the life giving son of a tree, for in the months that followed rose bushes, tulips, carnations flowered, apple, pear, almond and citrus trees sprouted, a vine commenced its creepy crawl around the house, capers in their foilage burst forth wild and many other plants that were not known in that corner of the world together with a plant that carried his perfume, the cocoa plant.

The first word that Wlado ever uttered was Kinga which he discovered was her name. Wlado was the name she gave him for some reason known only to herself. The two claimed the fields beyond the hut and the couple prospered on its exotic yield. Soon they needed the help of other farmers for the harvests were plentiful. They traded fruit, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, beetroot, turnips, carrots, cabbage, cauliflour for their basic needs. Both were vegeterian and fed on what the earth produced. When other farmers found that their crop was barren, they would seek Wlado and he would come, cut a lock of hair, which he still kept long, although not as long as it had once been and sow it into the poor soil. The following season there would be a great harvest and his name and skill became a household name. Wlado thus gained the simple folks’ respect, just as his smell had conquered Kinga’s heart.

The Anthole

Prologue

Bethlehem 2000, a child was born. A child’s world is a small world, as small as its mother’s womb. The child knows only this, there is no other world for it. It holds onto the umbilical cord, oblivious of the world mother walks through. It does not see what it is that feeds the cord that brings it life. The essence of life is but a little cord inside the womb not the mother. Instinct however pushes the child out of this world into a new one, with waterless, cold and alien hands circling round its head, and a painful scissors cutting the cord free. The child screams in terror. This must be a great step for any child. Its world is inverted, what was outside is now inside, and what was hidden is now visible. The child clings to its mother. It takes nine months to leave the womb, but it takes many years to leave mother.

A child’s instinct however is to seek a new world, thus all children leave their parents, the hand that feeds them, in order to create new families. This is fundamental to survival. Man is an explorer.

This is easy to say, but it does hold frightful implications for mankind. The child seeks new pastures, like eating one cake and looking for another. Man is but an intelligent form of parasite.

Having said this, I will now go on to my story. It is based on a country divided into two people, a sort of Gaza strip, but not Gaza. There is a lot of political turmoil and tension between the two, like in many parts of the world today, but there is no reference to any specific country, nor any specific man. What follows is fiction.

Part 1

My Private Logbook

My name is Omar.

My interest in ants was a highly spontaneous affair. Having graduated, and not wishing to be caught up in a year of military service, I entered university. The local one did not offer many options. There was a Law affiliate, a diploma in Economics, and the University was known for its Masters Degree in Geography, Anthropology and Natural Biology. It seemed that Anthropology would do for me. It was close to where I lived and I did not have to travel to study as many unlucky students had to. My position was not really different when I finished the course. Military service again loomed largely in my life. I got to know that voluntary civil service would further postpone the militia nightmare, but what would the state do with an anthropologist. Luckily, thanks to a slight ‘mistake’ from the mayor’s side, and a bottle of Brandy, it was believed that having graduated from the local university, which had a natural biology course, I must naturally have some knowledge of the nature of ants. So I got the job. I told myself that the study of human behaviour might be better understood through a study of ant behaviour.

So I found myself working at the ant lab, next to the old drunken ex-general with an amputated leg, who was supposed to be studying scorpions, which were kept in a big dirty tank. No one knows when the last scorpion had been seen, but there were rumours that in a drunken frenzy, the general had opened the lid and put in his leg for the scorpions to feed on. They did. Rumours play a vital role in human life and run like wild fire. I locked the door every morning and conversed with the ants.

My predecessor in the lab had found a way of pigmenting ants yellow and putting them in a glass aquarium to study the building of ant hole architecture. He died after eating mashed potato. He was a little blind, you see and never saw that the ants had built a skyscraper in the mash and somehow it disagreed with him and he died not out of food poisoning but out of a heart attack. I was given a clean aquarium, which had been used for examining deformed octopuses, filled it with pristine soil, purified by explosion, a method known to snipers and guerrillas supported by the state. I went down to the canteen, caught an ant in a crack as it tried to get at a little drop of coffee, and Adam, as I called it, was coloured yellow. In the garden, I found some twenty ants, coloured them yellow, placed them with Adam, threw in what was left of my eaten apple, half my sandwich, sealed the lid and left Adam alone with his Eves. That was the nature of my job. To report at 8:00 am, collect the keys to the ant lab, lock myself in, scribble and scrawl down notes.

My interest was solely to track the ants’ progress. It became extremely difficult to trace Adam. Eves and Adams had multiplied possibly daily. The soil in the aquarium, which had been flat and brown, started changing shape. A hole appeared somewhere in the middle and a little molehill came out of the flattened soil. The ants could easily be taunted out by the smell of food, if ants could smell. I feed them anything, fruit remains, sour potatoes, stale bread, old chocolate...........

In other words I got into the habit of carrying a little plastic box with me and it worked like a little waste bin. The expense of running the ant lab was therefore only in obtaining recycled food. It was like love, me and my ants. They would carry off anything into their hole. Big or small. They could scramble over the flesh of an eaten apple. A hundred squirming spots of life on rotting fruit. They would break small pieces away and a whole trail, a caravan of ants would proceed home, in a very orderly manner, in a way that humans never would. When a fruit was unbreakable, then the whole team of ants would surround the prize, and try to push it gradually day by day. An ant or two was lost in the process. For them, it looked like a gigantic rock, as essential to their life as it was heavy and dangerous to transport. After a whole 48 hours the apple was swallowed up by the hole. I imagined that inside it would be set up like a pedestal. A Stonehenge.

I lived alone, in a little studio flat. I did not have much. No T.V., no stereo, just the basics and my dreams. Every morning I woke up at 7:00 am, it was still dark and sometimes very cold. I was at the tram stop by 7:45. There was a little quiosque which sold everything from tissues to bubble gum, magazines, toys, photo albums, cigarettes, (I didn’t smoke,) and tram tickets, (which I bought everyday as I didn’t have a pass, as all those who hadn’t done military service.) There were also several food items, (for emergencies, like an empty waste food box,) and clothes and odds and ends. Basically anything which had sold once and might sell again. I bought tram tickets, a couple everyday, one to take me to the ant lab and one to get me back. The quiosque was a kaleidoscope of wares for sale, a glass cage. Someone sat inside. I never saw her face, but her voice was sweet. It said, “Good morning,” to me and I said “Good morning,” to it, and she would slide two tickets on a plate specially for such business. I placed the money and I would watch her nail bitten hand retrieve it.