Arko Cade & The Magic Hunter

Mind Maze

    *Cover photo by Rebekah LeBlanc, "Wizard's Astro Study."

    The first thing any Creedean learns is how to tell time.

    Approaches vary geographically. Creede might be just about as small as the mainland's Greater Manila area, but it's also twice as dense, and far more diverse. There are cultural differences between barangays and districts that can range from slight to drastic within half an hour of driving in any direction.

City kids are taught to read the Clocktower first. Its twitching hands guide office hours and public transportation from moment to moment, and are therefore relied upon to maintain urban efficiency. Children growing up by the river might learn lubi-lubi before anything — the months of the year in melodic folk song. Creede is a tropical island. We have no seasons apart from dry and wet, drought and storm. And when the waters of Ilog Anino carve out new shores and deepen the bank with each day, when they overflow in the wet months, riverside families must take extra care. They know very little constancy, especially from Hunyo to Oktubre.

    I was raised further up north, where the light pollution is scarce, and the city buzz is drowned out by limitless breezes, whistling birds, and the steady hum of crickets when night falls. Manong Pablo, Nana Marj's father, retired from the head-of-house role sometime in the late nineties to teach kids how to farm. He's been there ever since. I spent most days with him and a handful of other probinsyanos under the sun, tilling soil, prepping saplings. Eventually, if the weather was particularly kind (which it usually was), we harvested and cooked all sorts of fruit and vegetables. Most of my classmates stayed for no more than a summer. But while I came to split the time with regular school, I'd always go back to the farm. I guess it makes sense, now — it's where mama thought I'd be safest. Hidden in plain sight, surrounded by the thickness of magic trees, which created an Auric field so potent it was impossible to discern just how much magic there was anywhere.

Out in open fields like that, left to no devices but our own, we were taught to tell time by glancing at the heavens. We covered the sun with mud-stained thumbs and counted hours by the shadowed spaces between our fingers. Minutes by every round of Bahay Kubo we sang. Seconds by the passing of clouds. We woke at dawn and slept with the stars, but the sky was clear and vast enough overhead for the moon to watch over us, always. We counted weeks with her phases. And though I'd naturally come to prefer clocks, a part of me was still hardwired to look at the sky when one wasn't in sight.

That's where I looked, when the Queen loomed over me — out the window, with its breeze-blown drapes, finding nothing more than Nowhere's empty, lifeless sky staring back at me. It could've been seconds, but was more likely minutes of cold, crisp silence.

Were you being protected from the world, or was this world being protected from you?

My jaw fell loose against my collarbone. There was a mind-throbbing urge to say anything at all, but no words came.

    She loomed over me, and I was overcome by shadow. She said it with such wonder — "You're not like your tio, not like your mother. You are not pretty. Pretty things are soft and delicate. They do not reek of Death."

    I flinched back when she dared to graze her knuckles against my cheek. The Queen watched as I did this and hesitated, leaving my skin untouched.

"I'm tempted to dispose of you here and now, boy," She said, teeth gritted, "But I will admit you've piqued my interest enough, if only for a night." Then she tugged her skirt behind her as she approached the door. "You will sit by me. Keep me entertained throughout the feast... Or else," And she tilted her face my way, just enough for me to see her Aura-filled eyes—a clear threat in the smothering darkness before she disappeared, out the door. My muscles tensed, still wary of her talent though she made her leave. I'd expected a torturous reprimand. But I now believe she could tell I had just as many questions as she.