The Sultan and the Secret

The year is 1456 and the streets of Istabul's Fatih are a buzz with a strange tale. This day last week (the day being Friday) a nine year-old gypsy boy followed five, suspicious looking foreign travellers down into the basilica cistern in the hopes that he might earn a kuruş or two. Once underground though, he first lost his would-be patrons who were oblivious to the fact that they were being tailed, and then lost himself.

That night, the gypsies of Edirnekapı took to the streets in search of the boy who didn't return home. They made quite a disturbance. There was wailing and crying, there was a fight that broke out and eventually the authorities showed up. They made five arrests and dispersed the unruly crowd which resentfully returned to its ghetto.

The next morning, the gypsy boy showed up, pale and with crazy eyes like a ghost from the dead. After having spent the night in the subterranean network of catacombs beneath the city, and eventually finding his way back out, he was raving madly that he'd seen Şahmeran -the snake queen of Persian and Anatolian legend. The story spreads like wildfire over the course of the week, and though it has not reached the ear of the Sultan yet, he is about to hear of it from an entirely different source.

Sultan Mehmet the conqueror's grand vizier, Mahmud Paşa, enters the smaller reception hall of the saray to find five men huddling around the grill in the centre of the room. It is mid-spring, but still the mornings are cold. The men are a delegation of Italians from Venice, who have introduced themselves as members of a society with no connection to the government of their country. They have come (with valuable gifts) to seek audience with the Sultan over a matter which is in no way political. Apparently.

Their request in the first instance was denied, right out. But these were persistent gits. They returned with support from various intermediaries at high offices until eventually the sultan ordered his vizier to deal with the matter.

Now, Mahmud Paşa is a man of sharp intellect and a keen sense. He is also originally a Serbian Greek turned Turk. He discerns instantly by their manner, their speech and by their understated though evidently expensive attire, that they are a shifty bunch. What's more, one of them has atop his head the most ridiculous hat the Grand Vizier has ever seen. And that is saying something. He also observes that they each have an identical signet ring on the middle finger of their left hand.

"State your business," Mahmud Paşa says curtly after the greetings have been dispensed.

"Noble Paşa," ridiculous hat steps forward to speak. "We've come bearing gifts and a humble request."

"For?"

"There is buried in the basilica cistern, a treasure we seek to retrieve."

"Retrieve?" the vizier's right eyebrow rises quizzically.

"Aye, retrieve. It belongs to us."

"The last time I checked, Constantinople was under Ottoman rule. Everything in this realm, above and below ground, belongs to the Sultan and his people."

"Forgive my insolence."

"I take it this is Bayzantian treasure."

"Not Byzantian. It is of time immemorial, but it was interred in its final resting place by the Great Justinian. During the fourth crusade it was revealed to us.”

“Ah yes, the fourth crusade. When your Christian armies spilt Christian blood on their way to conquer Muslim lands. Such senseless barbarity.”

“We are not Christian,” another member of the group speaks up this time. He is younger than the others and appears ill tempered.

“Aren’t you?” Mahmud Paşa had already gathered as much, but is still unsure about what they are exactly. Hence his attempt to provoke a reaction. But it is in vain. The ill-tempered man does not elaborate and the Vizier can see that he has no intention to. “So why come for it now?” he asks ridiculous hat.

“We come now because our traditions are under threat. Our treasure is no longer safe where it is.”   

"And where exactly is it?"

“Noble Paşa, we will only disclose this secret to the Sultan himself, and none other," says ridiculous hat with a finality that leaves no room for persuasion. Intrigued and at a loss for anything else to do, the Vizier goes to the Sultan and relays the particulars of the meeting. Sultan Mehmet is equally intrigued. He decides to hear them out but will receive only one of member of the delegation. On the appointed day, the Italian with the ridiculous hat shows up all by his lonesome and  is admitted into the presence of Sultan Mehmet.

"What is this treasure you seek?" the Sultan asks, firmly but politely.

"The treasure, great Sultan, is not one of riches or valuable metals. It has no monetary worth and would hold no significance for yourself or your subjects."

"I will be the judge of that. Tell me what it is, not what it isn't."

"Our treasure," the man throws a nervous gaze about him before continuing, "it is a Sarcophagus. And the corpse within."

"Corpse?" Sultan Mehmet considers the man's words. "Whose corpse?"

Half an hour later, the Italian exits the Sultan's court looking pale, flustered and with ridiculous hat askew. On his way out, he doesn't acknowledge Mahmud Paşa, who is posted by the door, and who watches him teeter down the corridor accompanied by the guard. The Grand Vizier then enters the Sultan's presence without being summoned or admitted. This is one if those times neither of them are concerned about ceremony.

" Sultanım?" he says, approaching the royal seat. Sultan Mehmet looks at him for a moment, lost in thoughts which have darkened his brow. And then he says;

"Ridiculous hat, whot?"

Mahmud Paşa smiles, “Allah's my witness I've never seen anything quite like it. But did you permit them to take what they came here for?"

"I could not," the Sultan says. "What they came here for must never see the light of day."

"Sultanım," the vizier nods deeply in acknowledgement of this command.

"What's more the Basilica Cistern must be made inaccessible to suspicious characters... nay, anyone without authority."

"Sultanım," the vizier nods again.

"And..." Sultan Mehmet has a short list of commands to make but he pauses. Instead he asks his Vizier a question, "What do you know about the Medusa, Mahmud Paşa?"

Mahmud Paşa’s mind makes an instant connection between the Medusa and the Basilica Cistern to surmise that the Sultan is not asking about his classical knowledge of Greek mythology. He knows about the curious column bases in the northwest corner of the cistern, which are re-used blocks carved with the face of Medusa.

“Is it the column bases they are after?”

“No, it is the Gorgon beast herself that they want. You did not answer my question.”

“The Gorgon?” Mahmud Paşa pauses, unable to understand. This is one of those rare moments where he feels he is not on the same page as his Sultan.

“Yes. I wish to hear of myth, Mahmud Paşa.”

“Myth has it that the Gorgon is a beast,” Mahmud Paşa begins a little tentatively. “That the Gorgon is a woman turned monster. That she is damned but all powerful. That she had snakes for hair and her gaze could turn men to stone. They are stories.”

“But stories are invented to conceal truths, or to better retain them. You know this.”

Pixi and the Prostitutes

Crammed into the little part-enclosed space that constitutes the women's waiting area at the police station, two Nepalese prostitutes sit hugging their knees on filthy chairs with worn, navy upholstery. Handcuffed to the arm-rests, they have their faces buried in their arms. At first sight, you could be forgiven for thinking they were European or Russian –what with the badly bleached blond look. But the older of the two has a phone that keeps going off with some native love-song for a ringtone. She breaks from her stance every so often to answer it, and it's her features and talking that betrays her nationality to Pixi.

Four hours ago Pixi was walking to the villa which housed her studio in the quiet, residential backstreets of Muroor. The sun was setting, and the neighbourhood Indian kids were playing cricket in front of the mosque, their bats clacking woodily, their voices full of enthusiasm. It was a pleasant sound. Pixi stopped to light a cigarette and observed the white orb on the horizon as it descended. It reminded her of the binary sunset scene in Star Wars Episode IV. And she’d decided then that she was tired.

Now, Pixi is sharing the police station women’s waiting area with the Nepalese prostitutes because she took a utility blade to her arm later that evening. If you try to kill yourself in the UAE, they put you in jail. This law owes its origin to the kind of logic that is responsible for building ski-slopes in the desert apparently. Go figure.

Every time Pixi phases back in from oblivion, she remembers where she is, and takes the opportunity to glance sideways over at the prostitutes. She feels sadder, if that were possible, and hopes they'll be ok. And then she thinks profanities at authority, beginning with the doctor who stitched her up and reported her to the police. 'Dick-head,' is the recurring thought. 'That self-important, clueless dick-head with his god-complex.' After an hour of waiting, she rummages in Big-sis's bag for some gum she might be able to offer her neighbours. The bag yields no gum. Pixi puts her hands back in her lap and flinches at the pain from the wound she spent 2 hours making. Suicide, it seems, isn't as easy as it appears in the movies. Either that, or them people have sharper appliances which save them having to cut repeatedly into a gash, in the hopes of getting to the vein.

'How embarrassing,' Pixi thinks, and wishes she'd taken an overdose instead. She also wishes there was something funny about this situation, because she's desperate for a long and hearty guffaw. 'I guess it's pretty ridiculous that people should want to put you in jail because you tried to kill yourself,' she thinks. 'That might be funny in years to come.' But years to come is not much help now. A window of Wes Anderson vision is necessary:

Pix steps out of herself, walks into the centre of the crowded and ugly waiting room and makes a square with her hands to put her view into a rectangular frame. In the frame, Pixi is sat perfectly still with her gaze lost in mid-space; hands in her lap; bandaged wrist; and very bad posture. In the left corner of her background the prostitutes disturb the image as they pick scrutinizingly with barely suppressed appetites at the trays of food they've just been brought. They are talking to each other and if we could understand them, we’d find that what they say is comically irrelevant. In the very forefront is an Indian man who is pacing the length of the room with an I-own-this-shiKt attitude. He has a paunch and a very thick, very black moustache, slick as his hair combed to one side. But when he walks into the frame, his neck upwards is lost. There is only the paunch and the I-own-this-shiKt attitude in his stance, interrupting the melancholia of Pixi's stillness, and even blocking the view every so often.

Pixi takes a good long look into her frame again and finds it to be good and comical. 'This is life,' she thinks 'which goes on in spite of the small Armageddons that rage in our souls. This is the disharmony of existence, always flowing with its players out of synch. And what it all means is that nothing really matters...'

'You can afford to lose everything,' a Sri-Lankan lady once told Pixi, four years ago. This was a woman who had very nearly. 'You can afford to lose everything but your faith. Don't forget that.' It doesn’t help her case when Pixi goes and loses it in the interrogation room though, when she’s finally called up. 

In the narrow, closet of a space with air-con on full blast the self-important police officer stands over her with his hands at his waist and repeats the same question for the fifth time, “Why did you do it?” The way he’s asking, one would think she’d tried to kill someone else. Pixi ignores him and shivers. Whether it’s her nerves that’s doing it or the air-con, is unclear. Big-sis, who is on the verge of getting frost-bite suspects it’s both. With her hand gently resting on Pixi’s shaking shoulder She tries to shield her sister from the air that’s blowing directly at them. 

Big-sis is torn between being very afraid of crossing the police officer, because it could end Pixi up in a cell, and pushing her damaged sister over the edge. In Turkish, she softly encourages Pixi to tell the guy something, anything, just so they can get the hell out of there. But Pixi’s mind isn’t working that way. Someone who just tried to open her veins doesn’t give a shiKt about prison and she certainly doesn’t like this police officer. She ignores him. And the man repeats his question again. This time, Kalahili urges her to say something. He’s more scared than Big-sis about how things will turn out, because he knows all too well how fLucked up the law is in this country, and how stupid police officers are.

“Tell me, why? Ha?” the officer raises his voice this time, his patience wearing thin and his pride suffering from Pixi’s insolence. He isn’t used to people not being intimidated by him. “Do you want to go to jail? Ha?” the ugliness in his tone finally tips Pixi’s dominoes. She raises her face like the girl in the Exorcist and gives him a glare that very nearly makes him piss himself. It scares the shiKt out of Big-Sis and Kalahili too.

“FLUCK OFF!” she yells with gusto. “LEAVE ME ALOOOONE!”

An hour later, Pixi is sharing a cell with the same prostitutes she was previously sharing the waiting room with. But she’s less concerned about this turn of events than she is about Big-Sis who was led away crying by Kalahili, over her wretched little sister’s plight. “We’ll be back first thing in the morning,” she’d wept, holding Pixi to her breast. “I promise it’s going to be ok!” Pixi knew it was, and she knows it now with some disappointment. Curled up in a corner of her bunk by the window, she endures the throbbing pain in her wrist with her vacant gaze lost in the darkness of the room.

The prostitutes, having chattered between themselves for a while and then squeaked this way and that on their cheap mattresses have finally fallen asleep. At the foot of the bed is a tray of food for Pixi, which stank up the place with a curry smell before turning cold. Pixi doesn't touch it. Doesn't even register it. Her only recurring thought, when she has one, is regretful. She wishes to God she hadn't emailed her family that stupid goodbye message. Eventually her mind grows tired and shuts down. Her eyes close and her head hangs forward on her weary neck. But the sleep is short lived. Pixi wakes a little while later to the sensation of someone sitting on the side of her bed. Her head jolts up and she finds the familiar glow of two eyes holding her in their gaze.

The first thing the boy notices about Pixi is her pixie. Later he'll tell her she looks like himself now, with her hair like Peter-pan. But he doesn't say anything then. The second thing the boy notices about Pixi, are the deep dark circles under her big eyes.

"You're back," Pixi croaks. Her voice is hoarse from the crying and the tiredness and those profanities she yelled to the police officer. "Why are you back?" she asks then, a tad accusingly.

"Because a great disaster is coming."

"Hardly news to me. And hardly warrants a visit... What are you after?"

"After?" the boy glares at her, anger taking the place of the worry that had him sick to his stomach when he first got here. "I'm away for a year and you end yourself up in prison. What am I after?"

"'twas a minor hiccup in the grander scheme of things."

"Hiccup?!" he exclaims, but then slap a hand over his mouth for fear that he's woken up the prostitutes. When he gets up and tiptoes over to their bunks to check on them, Pixi remembers with a flinch how夢幻used to say 'Hitchcock' instead of hiccup.

"What did you do?" the Boy comes back and sits on the side if her bunk again with a squeak. The last time Pixi saw him, the boy had manifested the beginnings of a growth spurt. Now, he'd become well and truly tall.

"Nothing." Pixi guiltily draws her arm into herself and hugs it a bit. The reflex doesn't escape the boy's notice. Without warning, he pounces on the limb in question before she has time to defend herself. Observing that it’s bandaged, he let's go of it sadly and looks away with a tightened jaw.

"You've used and abused your body like it's utterly dispensable," he says, with bridled anger.

"Isn't it?" is Pixi’s response, and when she says this the boy wants to take off his shoe and deal her a sense-restoring one. He doesn't. Because he knows that someone who's been treated as such couldn't know better.

"Where the hell is夢幻?" the boy asks. Only weeks ago Pixi's response to that would have been 'freezing his ass off on some doomed fishing vessel in Hokkaido.' But he isn't. That had been his plan when he'd left Pixi. In reality, he wasn't cut out for such bravery. He was instead back in the UK, probably Cornwall, working at a cafe and already seeing someone else.

Knowing this was the best thing that had happened to Pixi since she got her heart broken. Because losing respect for a man that did not deserve it any way, was better than living out her life imagining him to be the man he wasn’t. In the brief space of 4 months, living alone in the strange land she’d escaped to, she had learnt a great deal about herself and the man she’d loved. 'Ganbare!' Pixi thinks to him in her mind. And to the Boy she says, “So you know about夢幻?” 

“I know everything. Where is he?”

“Apparently you don’t know where he is.”

“Where is he?!” the boy nearly loses patience.

"I don't know," is her response, and he knows she is lying.

"What happened to you being the Oryo to his Ryoma sakamoto?" he presses. That stings. The last thing Pixi wants now is to be reminded of those foolish days when she and 夢幻 told each other heroic tales and dreamt of such things.

"If anyone was Ryoma Sakmoto in our relationship, it was me. He on the other hand was a spineless chicken-shiKt, who sought recourse in trying to chop off his pinkie to make amends for it."

"Eh?! He chopped off his pinkie?"

"No, he couldn't even get that right. His friends took him to the hospital when things started getting bloody."

"What the fLuck man?!"

"Right? What the fLuck would I want with his stupid pinkie after he broke my heart and defecated on its pieces?"

"No I mean how the hell do you find these types?"

"They find me!"

"I aint surprised if you're so ready to off yourself over heart break."

"I wasn't offing myself over heartbreak!"

"What were you doing then, airing your veins?"

"I was offing myself in the face of humanity’s collective despair."

"BullshiKt."

"Point being?"

"What's wrong with you?!”

"I'm mad.” Pixi erupts. Her voice has risen to levels which can not only wake the prostitutes but alert the guards too. “Don't you see? And you can't save me.” Luckily the prostitutes sleep on and the guards are chewing qhat. “The last one that attempted it very nearly pushed us both over the edge and barely got away with his own life. But I didn't. I'm mad!"

"Pixi, stop," the boy reaches out to put his hands on her shoulders but she pushes him away.

"No! Go back to where you came from."

In Which Pixi and 夢幻 Save Star Fish and We are Such Things as are Made to Be Broken

夢幻 says, “Aishitoude.” And then they watch the giant seagulls pick about Brighton beach, with feathers meticulous like they'd been moulded out of rubber. As big as Sufi-cat, possibly taller and twice as angry looking, they squawk about like they’re looking to pick a fight or bully someone. They squabble with each other over the deposits of last night's high-tide.

"What are they eating?" Pixi asks after having watched them for long enough. 夢幻 stops chucking the random stone at nothing in particular after having near buried his last target; a sprite can. He lends his attention to the seagulls.

"Star fish?" he wonders aloud and with a little disbelief. "No, can't be. They wouldn’t come so far in." he stands up and dashes to the nearest flock. The gulls scatter angrily. Pixi gets to her feet and follows him only to dash back for her camera and then dash to his side again, a little out of breath. Sure enough, at their feet is a half masticated starfish, as large as Pixi's hand.

"Oh my God," Pixi is a bit shaken. She's never seen one alive before, and never imagined they'd be kind of grotesque.

"Yuck," 夢幻 makes like he's gonna kick it but she grabs his arm.

"Please don't. Poor thing." Halting in mid-kick, 夢幻 catches sight of that look in her eyes which he always feels powerless against. Like the gaze of a buddah: sensuous, sad and sacred all at once. "Can we save it?"

"Haaaiiiii," he bends down, grabs one of the creature’s arms without hesitation, and then chucks it like he would a Frisbee, back into the sea. Watching it airborne for a few seconds, Pixi is filled with a stillness that completes her. She dashes across the beach with 夢幻 following behind. The two racing to find more starfish and rescue them from the Seaguls and certain death on dry land.

‘Aishitoude,’ he’d said like it was an indisputable fact of life. Fire burns. Gravity pulls. And I too will break your heart one day. But right now, I mean it with every fiber every fragment of my being. Aishitoude. And when he said it, the world, for all its inescapable realities which deem us so regrettably fragile, was beautiful. And so was our fragility. And so were we.

“Aishitouyo”, Pixi responds eventually, yelling to have her voice heard above the roar of the surf and the wind and the crying guls. 夢幻 smiles a chuffed smile and shakes his head because she never fails to surprise him.

“You’re eyes are broken,” he teases to imply she’s made the worst choice in the world in choosing him, but it’s too late now. He tells her this often as well, ‘It’s too late! Haha!’

“You’re broken!” she sticks out her tongue.

“You’re broken!” he says back childishly, and then wrapping his arm around her, nuzzles his nose against her ear as he adds, “Perfectly broken.” Pixi gets shy and pushes him away, and夢幻 sprints across the beach again at another gathering flock which disperses immediately.

‘Perfectly broken’ Pixi thinks, as she watches him pick up the beached starfish and hurl it flying through the air and back into the sea.

***

On the other side of the line they cross in Pixi’s dingy hotel room, the sky is so full with stars. Overwhelmed by the sight, Pixi feels frightened. It is as though tiny-she were exposed futilely in the centre of outer-space where the universe transpires upon some rythmic and ancient course to emulate eternity. Some stars appear so close that one can almost pluck them from mid-air. Pixi attempts this, and to her surprise the spark before her darts away from her reach, betraying its nature.

"A fire-fly!" Pixi exclaims. "there was one right in front of my nose!" she pauses in her tracks when she notices more and more if them floating past her. "oh my God, they're everywhere!"

"Of course they are, we're following them," the Boy chuckles, leading the way. "and there's more where we're going."

Pixi breaks out into an abrupt skip to catch back up with him. When she does she resumes her old pace to match his, and takes in her surroundings as they walk. Sure enough, the fire-flies increase, and when the Boy and Pixi's path leads them through a thicket of trees that roof over to block out the night-sky, their glow is the only light. It leads them through the pitch darkness in which Pixi cannot make out a tree-trunk nor a low hanging branch from the dense, forest shadow.

Eventually, a clearing appears, and in it is a spring that catches the heavens on its surface. In fact the first thing which greets them is the reflection of moonlight on the waters. As beautiful an attempt as it is, it merely compliments the light that stains the Easter horizon. The moon itself is nowhere in sight, but the clouds which hide her, glow as though a White fire burned in their breast. Pixi pauses again and gapes about at the dance of the fireflies which hover around the spring like pilgrims that have reached their destination. She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. When she opens them again it is because the Boy's hand has slipped into hers.

"We don't stop yet," he says and guides her until they reach some mossy crags. Here he let's her hand go and leads the way upwards. It's an easy and quick climb. But they don't stop at the top. They go right over and climb halfway down the other side until they reach a very specific bolder. the two sit on this, facing the moonlight and the surrounding hills yonder.

"Now what?" Pixi asks, because she'd rather go back to the clearing with it's spring and fireflies.

"Now we wait and watch," the Boy pulls one leg up and dangles the other off the bolder. "You wanted to see the wolves, no?"

"Eh?!" Pixi 'eh's excitedly.

"They're mostly unreliable, and it’s tough to trace their haunts. But ever since I was little I'd steak out the trails they followed to patrol their terrain. Eventually a pattern emerged: on the 14th of every Lunar month they'll make a passage here."

"Why?"

"Beats me," the Boy shrugs and turns his gaze to the stars. Pixi watches him for a moment before reaching out to hold his hand. This distracts him, "you ok?" he asks. Pixi nods but then pauses in mid-nod to shake her head instead. "What's wrong?"

"This really is a dream right?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"It was... The only way I knew how-"

"Don't." Pixi squeezes his hand to make him stop and then pulls hers away. She holds herself sadly. "This isn’t it. Don’t say anything at all if that’s what you’re going to say. "

"Pixi there's...ok. I won't." he smiles a bit bitterly.

“Say something else,” she elbows him teasingly, to lighten the mood. When he turns to look at her though, there is nothing light about the way he does it.

“I made a deal, Pixi. And I made a promise.” Pixi understands his meaning without need for further explanation. Not again, she’s thinking all the while. Not you. Not this time. Not again.

“Promise me you will go back and get the hell on with it,” his eyes are piercing and demanding, and every time his face is cast in shadow, they glow in that distracting way.

“You’re so damn sensitive,” Pixi quips sarcastically.

“Well I don’t want to make a huge boohoo out of it, that’s all.”

“Eh?” she looks hurt. “Why bloody not?!”

“Coz it’s easier this way. That’s why bloody not.”

“Denial is a dangerous thing,” she mutters half under her breath, and refuses to look at him.

She doesn’t see what his face is like when he says what he says next. She doesn’t know that he’s not only giving her up but trying to save the rest of her life.

“When heartbreak comes, bow your head to it,” he whispers. “Then Harden to stave off madness. But when hardness is home, run away.” Home and run away. The combination brings to her mind Stand by Me, and Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, and everything else about coming of age nostalgia. It also reminds her of him. A lean boy with an angry scowl and golden tan and brilliant teeth and...probably nothing that remarkable about him at all. Except that he took Pixi’s first love to the grave, and somewhere of little interest to anyone, that made all the difference in the world.

Correction: An earthquake took it. Why the hell did everything about her have to be so damn dramatic?

“Pixi,” the Boy distracts her from her thoughts. She looks at him and realises for the first time that it is all ok now. It doesn’t matter. “Now is the time to bear your wounded breast again,” he says. “We are such things as are made to be broken.”

“Pish,” she feigns irreverence to hide the effect his words have had on her. “What is that, the inspired insights of a comatose?”

“Something like it,” he grins. Pixi becomes serious again.

"Are you going to be alright?" she asks.

"I'm always alright."

"I mean will you be better? Will you wake...from this?"

"I deserve never to wake, if I'm not man enough to ask if I can kiss you tonight," the Boy smiles half-shy half daring the way a boy is when he's banking his man-card on an act which can break or make him.

"Only if you tell me your name," is Pixi's response.

His smile broadens into something heartbreakingly beautiful, "which do you want? The one they all know me by, or the one even I don't know."

"Surprise me," Pixi teases, and just then they both catch sight of some movement from the corner of their eyes.

"They're here," the Boy stands up and lends Pixi a hand to steady herself as she does too. There is a single one at first, and then the whole pack emerges. They're giants. Nearly 8 feet in height. And they move with a grace, with a sublime humanity, that a noble man could not emulate on two legs. Their movement is slow, purposeful. Their eyes and ears keen, as they take in their surroundings. Life slows in their presence. Time stops. And in that timelessness, one giant wolf turns its gaze in Pixi's direction and pierces right through her.

A breath catches in her throat, but the breath has a mind of its own and the throat feels like it belongs to another. The wolf sniffs the air, trying to read her from her smell which must be carried on the wind to him. And then as if with some obscure recognition, it squints and makes a low, howling-yelping kind of sound. Pixi's eyes are rimmed by tears when the wolf turns its attention back to its pack and then skips on gracefully to catch up with them.

This world is full of wonder, Pixi thinks. Every moment, every instant is holding its breath in anticipation of something, some great end. How meaningless and inappropriate we are in comparison.

The blurry vision in Pixi's right eye clears as a micro-ocean swells over its rim and makes a deliberate descent down her cheek. The Boy leans in close, and in her ear, whispers his name.