A Trick of Light: Short Story

Decades later, I remember that day and wonder how well my memory serves me. If it were not for my aged, leather notebook featuring the detailed account I rushed to pen while the experience was fresh in my mind, logic would have wiped the details from memory long ago. It happened on my walk from the university at the start of the academic year, in the most curious way.

I had moved to Desiderium in late summer of that year, this golden city known most for the gothic campus on its northside, a forty-minute walk from my uncle’s southern cottage. It was a practical decision, coming to live with him, despite my never having met him before. A little but fierce country man, he prepared homemade flapjacks with raspberry jam for tea each morning during our first days together, which I would eat in hurried silence to avoid his talk of country folklore.

He was all I had left in the world, and while living with this strange man was an adjustment, my move to Desiderium was a grand opportunity. The southern part of the city was less civilized than I had imagined, but magical, with its old and quaint cottages. Everything flowered there, unlike the dark and hopeless region I had traveled from, and the meadows were within reasonable distance of the metropolis.

The day after I arrived, my uncle had taken me on a tour of the city and its country roads. He was less severe with the superstitions than father, but still he chided me on the importance of memorizing the path to the university and taking no detours.

“Much of this land is uninhabited and wild,” he admonished as we made our way to the university to tour the grounds where I would study. “As long as you make your way before dark and do not veer off the pebbled path, you will be alright. The townsmen cleared it for a reason, you know, and you must not tarry. Nor wander into the wood — it’s prone to catching fire in this late August drought.”

Uncle was an honorable man, as neighborly praise of his character revealed, but he, like the rest of the rural folk, dreaded the impending modernity just on the outskirts of their countryside. While uncle and father had not spoken since I was born, both held fast to the archaic beliefs that defined this wild region, though the root of their estrangement stemmed from uncle’s improved rationality as the younger brother.

He did, after all, welcome me into his home and while he did not celebrate my choosing to attend university, he respected the newness of our relationship enough to restrain from saying so, unlike my deceased father who was so archaic as to believe that women should not be taught, nor should they speak at all, really, as mother had well demonstrated. I wondered with a savage bitterness at what they might say if they knew the trifling inheritance they left behind was being squandered on their daughter’s becoming a free woman in this world.

As we entered university gates, a looming building of medieval spirals and crests descended upon us. Gargoyles from the Middle Ages hovered atop the church, sending a shiver of existential dread down my spine. Still, it was a marvelous university, regarded as a summit of scientific enlightenment, prestige, and secret society, an enclosed campus of luscious grass. The region’s most accomplished scholars darted about, mingling and exchanging details about the next social event before the start of classes.

I noticed a group of four figures by the campus tower, attracting the attention of passersby in their brilliance. One gentleman leaned against the stone with his hands in a wool coat. His gray vest dangled a pocket watch while dark eyes took in the sky with a mysterious intensity. Even from a distance, it was clear he possessed the sort of beauty immortalized in oil paintings, with a face of such formal symmetry it seemed almost inhuman. To my satisfaction, he appeared disinterested in the lovely woman at his right, who chuckled at whatever a blonde gentleman in a fashionable tailcoat animatedly spoke of, while she ran her fingers over a silk scarf tied intricately at her throat. The fourth of their party was slumped against the stone on the ground, a cap slunk over his eyes. The dark-eyed gentleman met my gaze and my heart suddenly pulsed with a tremendous throbbing.

Uncle gripped my arm, then, and guided me onward while I felt my blood rush at the shame of my company.

“It was a simpler time then and trust me when I tell you they knew better. Their instructions work well still, if people would just believe it,” uncle said, pointing to images of saints and Latin scrawled atop the entrance to the main hall in Gothic script: “Noli vinci a malo, sed vince in bono malum.” “And who knows what they advocate for in this university. All the country folk know that the spread of this ‘learning’ will be the downfall of us all.”

I paid little mind to uncle’s ranting about children disappearing in the city, of youth found eaten alive by worms from the inside out in the country, their leftover guts splayed out by the pebbled path and rotting in the heat until some passerby came upon them, or of young, faceless bodies discarded in the woods, piling at the outskirts of the city. I absorbed the grandness of the university instead, where I would complete my learning, though I had yet to settle on whether I would be a most distinguished barrister or celebrated artist.

It was not that I did not believe in darkness or in magic – I knew much of darkness already and magic I yearned to know. But uncle was narrow minded in the vastness of this world, and he, like all the others of the country, would never cease to keep me from it while my wonder was only ever increasing.

The fateful day began like all the others that week – I brushed my long, golden curls and tied them with a bow. I eagerly donned tights and a houndstooth ensemble that, though drab, complimented my philosophical volumes wondrously and set off for university.

“You are stuck in a dream, child. Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever wake up,” my father’s mocking voice echoed in my mind.

I arrived early that day with time to spare before class, so I read on a bench by a mural of the university grounds. The following lectures were boring in their introductory material and my professors stuffy and uninteresting; there was hardly one handsome enough to daydream about, though perhaps if the literature professor shaved his medieval beard he might suffice, and the student social events had yet to commence (not that uncle would approve of my going, but I would find my way there somehow, as I had in primary school when living with my parents).

The walks home were quickly becoming my favorite part of Desiderium. Vast skies and stalks of grass to run my fingers through as I strolled by the open field helped satiate some of that longing which always pulsed – a bit too intensely – within me, oftentimes enough to ache, grasping for something outside of myself.

That afternoon was bright and warm, the sun beating against my back as I walked home and wondered at the weaving hills and the day’s events – which were quite ordinary – and the vastness of my future at the university. I knew the path well enough already – the way it curved up on a slope, past a decaying barn, over a hilltop and a withering oak tree.

When I was halfway through my walk, I stoutly collapsed by the pebbled path and chose to splay myself out upon the grass in defiance, hands crossed behind my head to watch the sun beat down into my eyes until they burned like the stench of those putrid cigars, that day father fell asleep and burnt the house, himself, and mother down, and I was forced to turn my head and look away.

That is when the bridge appeared suddenly in the most ordinary way. It was a wide and quaint stone bridge I had not noticed earlier, veering just off uncle’s path and hidden by a brush of wild shrubbery. I was already late, and I could almost taste the rich flapjacks, steaming off the griddle, that uncle would offer for evening tea and the awkward silence that would follow. I felt queasy at the notion of returning to him. 

Yes, his tales reverberated in my mind, but my father, too, had tried to frighten me into submission. He often utilized stories of punished women, endeavoring to tame the yearning black sheep of his family into submitting to his authority. I refused to allow uncle’s temptation of flapjacks or superstitions to do the same – my credulity had ended with my childhood. Now, my mind was my sole capital in this world, as my teaching mentor in primary school had reminded and encouraged me in secret. Here, in Desiderium, I would make it my first investment. And what, I wondered, might be the nature of this place’s ‘evil’ anyhow?

I abandoned my books and empty lunch bag by the path, considering the possible excuses I might fashion for my uncle to explicate my tardiness – a meeting with a professor after class, a session in the library, a new volume I had accidently lost myself in – and so I crept onto exposed stones of bridge and pulled apart branches for my passage.

I found myself in a secret clearing dotted by trees so tall the sky was hardly visible. It was an oddly bright place; for a moment, everything became muddled and there seemed a soft muttering in my ears, a distant humming ringing like honeybees through the breeze.

The strangest thing was that, almost before I had looked around me, I had already half forgotten how I came to be there. When I tried to piece it together afterwards, I could think of nothing to describe my first encounter with the clearing but that it was as thick as uncle’s raspberry jam. Soft green light fell on me from above the trees, and dark pools of yellow water of various sizes formed a multi-tiered waterfall below the bridge, moving as slowly as the sands of an hourglass. I made my way across the bridge’s stones, and they came looser beneath my feet the further I walked. It was the strangest and most satisfying place and I could not imagine why my uncle had never mentioned it, and I was only more enticed by its potentially forbidden quality. 

The trees were the greenest green I had ever seen, greener than my mother’s eyes when she had held me as a child and read me tales of magic by the hearth. The flowers were more like a painting or a metaphor than real – sapphire greens and ruby roses, so garish they were almost sickening in their unnaturalness, like those girls in the advertisements with too much facial power that I stored secretly beneath my floorboards.

I had thought to myself they must be loved, these bright young ladies, while I chased a boy in primary school, and he chased the class beauty. I imagined her dying of jealousy at our wedding and for once feeling what it was to be second-best. The night he spurned me, I stole a cigar from father, for cigars are what my father turned to for comfort when the loan officer came to our cottage, while mother cheerfully dismissed his habits, running off to prepare his lamb chops. I could hardly light it, and when I did, the stale odor was so offensive it caused my eyes to water awfully and my mind was hardly numbed down enough to make the acrid fumes worth it. But I smoked it to a stub while I wept, and tears coagulated with ash that streaked my chubby, trembling face.

I peered into one of the pools below me and examined my reflection, which was brighter in that place, too – my eyes a deeper blue, my skin a milky white, something more like a beauty’s when I gasped. My hair whipped across reddening cheeks as I turned to face the man behind me.

“I’ve seen you at the university.” He was all sharp angles and dark hair, with eyes so brown they were almost black. This frightened me for a moment, but it was a delighted terror. I could not help but notice that his severe features were altogether so handsome as to be unsettling, and therefore more fascinating than anything I had yet to come across in my life. I recognized him as the gentleman I saw that day on the university grounds with my uncle.  

“I’ve given you a fright. Forgive me.” He stretched out his hand to introduce himself. I met it hesitantly with my own and took in his black waistcoat and tailored trousers – he was dressed too formally for daytime, just as he had been earlier that week, surely on his way for an evening affair.

“I’m alright, I just didn’t see you! It’s a pleasure to meet you. I haven’t had an opportunity to make acquaintances yet.”

“Well, welcome to Desiderium! I’m glad to be your first. I see you’ve found my favorite clandestine clearing. Might I give you a tour?” He beckoned at me with a grin far more alluring than that of my primary school infatuation.

He was notably polished – a wool tie peeked out of his white collared shirt, clipped together by a golden pin with a symbol I could not make out behind the lapel of his blazer coat. Something within me – perhaps father’s disapproval of the ostentatious – caused my stomach to churn. But I was tired of all the babbling and the repressed emotion, and here was the sort of adventure I deserved, and I could finally take ownership of the small and precious life that I might call my own. Almost at once, I was in love, for this man was the closest thing to an angel I had ever seen, and so I yielded my arm to his and he pulled me closer to him.

“I can’t be long. I am expected at home, and it is terrible enough I veered off the path without my being tardy to top it off.”

He laughed with a throw of his head and a chuckle that caused my cheeks to redden to what was surely a frightening crimson in that saturated place.

“Who told you not to veer off the path? Is that what the rural folks still say?”

“Yes, my uncle among them. It’s odd, and they are all odd here, but he and the others are firm about it, and I would hate to disappoint him. We are only recently getting to know one another.”

“Silly indeed, the practices of the country folk. It saddens me that they keep this city from greatness. They are the ones who hinder its development, you know. I hate to speak ill of your uncle, but I wonder what this world might look like if we did veer off the path occasionally,” he noted with a wink. “This might sound odd, but do you know much about the science of the natural world? Scientific phenomenon and that sort?” 

I had no idea what he meant but I hated to appear foolish – the depth of his eyes revealed he was likely an older pupil, perhaps old enough to be one of the teaching scholars.

“Philosophy is more my niche than physics, but some, I suppose, though I want to learn more. Why do you ask?”

“Don’t be frightened. Not that you seem the sort. But the wonder of this place lies in its pools. It’s a hidden secret of the university – an initiation for some scholars. Would you indulge me in demonstrating it to you?”

I turned to look up at him then. I had always dreamed of a learned man, and here one had fallen upon me. Uncle’s reprimanding voice and flapjacks and the path were slowly fading behind the incessant buzzing of that vivid place.

“I suppose I have little choice, no?” I tried to bat my eyes flirtatiously, though I had never been good at that sort of thing.

“You always have a choice. Just hold your breath then.” He chuckled and dug his fingers deeper into the crook of my arm. I hardly had a chance to close my eyes before we dove off the bridge and into the water of the nearest pool, the yellow of that glowing place cascading around us in fragments.

I expected to be wet, but as I felt around myself and waved my arms, I found no water, only air. I opened my eyes to find myself lying softly on green grass on what appeared to be the university estate, though I had not been here before. The stone tower loomed in the distance while clouds spread over late-afternoon sun like a stain.

Glancing around, I realized why it looked familiar – I had seen this place in the painting of the university grounds. The “fourth-year courtyards” they called them – a row of quaint living quarters shaped like stone houses. They were dreadfully expensive, and I had wondered if I might experience them for myself at some point, but they were difficult to find one’s way into, even for sightseeing. All the university scholars were the cream of the crop, but the fourth-years somehow more so in their learnedness. I could only dream of making friends with such an individual and garnering an invitation. I felt my acquaintance on my arm then.

“Well, here it is. You’ll love this place,” he proclaimed with an exaggerated bow and a wave of his hands – everything about him felt stimulating.

“How did we get here? We were just in the clearing, and I thought we had jumped in the water, and I’m not soaked –”

“Try not to think too much, though I gather that’s difficult for you,” he interrupted. “I know it all seems highly improbable, and it is. It’s the beauty of that clearing – a phenomenon a small group of us have kept secret in the university. It’s a secret passed on for centuries, really; the scientific logic has to do with quantum physics and relativity and that sort of thing, but it’s not worth boring you with the details. The pools are the principal scholars’ means of transportation around here. And we haven’t got much time before you must head back.”

My head pulsed from so much information, but all the same, this was a better outcome than what I could have imagined here in Desiderium, and a delicious opportunity – the closest I might come to the expeditions of my books. I tugged at my curls and leaned in closer to my companion.

“So, what is it you have to show me here, then?” I quipped with a nudge of an elbow. As my fingers lurched to brush against his, I was struck by the fresh rawness of his skin, cold like milk and wild honey.

“I have some friends who I feel would be eager to meet you – this curious young woman who somehow found her way into the secret clearing. No one ever does, you know, not without being initiated as a principal scholar. Now, they’re a rowdy group, but I’m sure you’d like them and be glad to have some new friends. You look like a girl who deserves happiness.” With this he pulled my hand away from my ringlets and into his own, and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks again.

I’d always wondered what it might be like – to feel the stirrings of true, reciprocated love. I was pretty enough, as I tried very, very hard at it. It had been a tedious journey of hiding magazines and newspaper clippings from my parents, lest they pick up on my “vanity.”

But something about me turned others off no matter how I tried, putting myself together in the school lavatories before classes began. The primary school infatuation had been the start, and then there had been the neighbor, who I would often eat lunch with by the yard, and whom I thought would surely call me lovely until he caught me outside my house one day and, leaning in so close I could smell his fuddling cologne, asked if my cousin might be interested in him. My new acquaintance was neither of these boys, and no stuffy professor. He was unlike any man I had ever met, I observed as he pulled me off my feet and led me through the courtyard to seek out his colleagues.

Surely, I wondered at his realness. Perhaps he, like the bridge and like the pools, was nothing but a trick of light, some dream I had fallen into by the path. But, in truth, all my life before his strong hand had felt like a dream, and his earthy scent dug at some internal, primal instinct within me, like an awakening to reality. Me, a cup that could never be filled, felt my contents rising to the brim with his breath upon my neck and the curves of his fingers fitting in my own. He was slender and tall, with a confident gait that favored his left side and added to his character. His hair fell in waves atop his head, the sides shaved elegantly near his sharp cheekbones.  I wondered whether he could ever find me so enchanting. The darkness about his eyes made him appear tired, or maybe that was the whiteness of his skin, but either way it stirred in me an insatiable desire to run my fingers over the hollows that extended almost into his cheekbones. Before I could pull him to a stop, he jolted me towards the door of the farthest stone house and hurried me into a room.

My eyes adjusting to the light, I took in a stunning foyer, painted navy with tall wooden beamed ceilings. The room was dimly lit by a dangling, metallic chandelier that cast shadows over landscape portraits hanging in intricate golden frames and darted rays across a slick, marbled floor, an old Persian carpet overlaid atop it.

“This place is marvelous,” I exclaimed under my breath, and gripped my companion’s hand tighter, thinking how I had only imagined such rooms through the description of my romance novels as he led me into an adjoined room, decorated in a crimson wallpaper and faintly playing Vivaldi.

“There you all are. I would like to introduce you to my most recent acquaintance, a fellow university pupil and my newest friend,” he pronounced as he separated from me and made his way towards a bar cart stocked with liquor and packs of cigarettes in the corner of the room. I wondered whether the word “friend” was endearing or terribly disappointing as I took in three figures spread out over a luxurious sectional. The one closest to me was an amber-haired young woman reading a journal, who lazily slipped off the couch and slinked towards me to introduce herself.

“You hardly look old enough to be here,” she noted as she stretched out her hand with a tilt of her head. Now she was lovely. She looked like those girls I had cut out of newspapers to replicate intricate hairdos or wardrobes for some occasion that would never arise – so much so that I wondered if she was, in fact, one, so familiar were the curvatures of her face. Her thick hair fell in a sharp cut at her chin, and she was adorned in a satin set that hugged her curves.

“Is she a first year? Don’t you think that’s a little young?” She turned to my companion and collapsed back onto the sectional before beckoning me to join her.

“Do not be cruel now,” he chuckled as he clicked his cigarette lighter. “She found the clearing, you know.”

The three figures turned their heads briskly towards me with sudden interest. 

A young man to the right of the amber-haired woman sauntered over and introduced himself. He was smartly dressed in a printed paisley suit and a velvet top hat that highlighted the brightness of his blond waves and I recognized him as the eccentric young man in the company from my outing the other day. Grinning, he beckoned towards the remaining figure beside him.

“I apologize for our third counterpart, he’s a little out of sorts at the moment – at most moments, really.” The young man he pointed to was flailed over the sectional, one long limb dangling a decanter, his white blouse crinkled and partially unbuttoned, and his cap covering his face again. 

“Nonsense, I am well enough to be the only one to employ proper manners around here and offer our visitor a drink.” The capped fellow staggered as he stood and whisked a limp tie over his shoulder with a flourish. “Would the lady like some whiskey?”

I felt the eyes of my companions upon me. Uncle had made a point to note that he was avidly against drinking or ingesting any other such mind-altering substances as had led my father to his condition. I had never been tempted myself, but the burning gaze of my new friends fell hungrily upon me, and I nodded at his invitation.

“You know, you have darling curls, but you would look so much chicer with a blunt cut. And maybe in something a bit more flattering; don’t you think she needs a tighter dress?” The amber-haired woman pulled at my locks and eyed my houndstooth ensemble, which was admittedly dowdy besides her own. My companion barely glanced in our direction at the question as he smoked, and I wondered if he and this young woman might be involved. Had I imagined any interest towards me on his part? He certainly gave no airs of interest now.

The capped man pushed a crystal glass into my hand with a grin and collapsed on the sectional beside me.

“It’s a special edition, this one. Give it a try.” I gulped the liquid with a grimace and muttered my gratitude as it rushed hotly inside my chest. It burned, but it was a pleasant sort of suffering, this self-instigated rush of blood within my veins and a drowning of the anxieties of being in the center of a room of people I had never met before, of a sort I never would have imagined being of interest to. The fermented whiskey smelled of my father. Surely my cheeks now flushed like his that day he gripped my arm and spit curses and seared cigar butts upon the skin of his only child, upon discovering me decorating my hair in pins. Surely, he would have said I was giving in to the world’s temptations and letting dark powers consume my mind. My father took part in a daily drowning of delight and vanities, letting bitter poison calm the tempest of his veins, and I, too, disappeared into it then, until I felt the pull of a hand against my arm.

“I can show you around the university. Introduce you to some fellow pupils and faculty and whatnot. I know all the ins and outs about here, I have been the student body president and one of the secret society members for quite a while now. A legend of some sort, if I may say so myself,” said the suited gentleman while the young woman rolled her eyes in his direction.

“She really ought to change first, if she indeed is secret society material, whether she found the clearing or not. Follow me.”

She ushered me out of the room while the young men chatted, and I could not help but sneak a look over her shoulder to see if my companion’s eyes were upon me. They were not.

We walked through the hall and into a room surely too massive to belong to a student and filled to the brim with accessories and vials of various powders and creams – enough to supply many lifetimes. The amber-haired woman rifled through dressers and hangers and shifted through flimsy materials until she finally came across a tan fabric that she tossed in my direction.

I marveled at the richness of the velvet – it was more extravagant than anything I had ever come across and I could not hold back a hoarse guffaw as she pointed to a dressing screen.

“You want me to change? I’m not here for long. I should be heading back soon, and I shouldn’t come home wearing something else,” I stuttered.

“Just try it. For our amusement. I think your new friend will like it, and you can always take your clothes with you and change before anyone sees you,” she turned to reapply a red lip stain while I hesitantly made my way behind the screen and stripped to don the luxuriously soft fabric. I peered outside to ensure she could not see me and noticed her tightening the silken scarf at her neck by the dressing table.

“That’s a splendid scarf. You often wear it, I see?” I asked her.

“My hair is short, so the silk covers the garish scar on my neck nicely. Are you about done?” I could not imagine any part of her faultless skin marred. I had donned her gown and it hugged tightly at my waist, with delicate buttons that pressed against my stomach all in a row. She had no slippers to fit my feet, so I kept my own. I was grateful for the length of the dress, covering most of my legs and the shoes that clearly did not match the ensemble, but I pulled at the flowing fabric, desperate to somehow separate it from its clinging at my skin before I presented myself. It felt heavy. Despite my visible embarrassment, she beamed in approval and clasped her hands together, powdering my nose like a doll before dragging me back to the main room with such enthusiasm that we both forgot to take my old clothes with us.

“There they are. I was about to come looking for you – I think it is about time we get going.” My companion glanced up as he placed a white, bony cigarette between his lips with a swift movement, leaning against a wallpapered wall with his right hand in his pocket. He grinned after inhaling the cigarette, soaking me in from the tips of my toes to the tops of my hair. There seemed to be a glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes, and it sent a thrill through my body. I felt older, then. He looked at me as though he was consuming every single part of me, from the carefully crafted exterior to my deepest interior of longing.

He took hold of my hand again and I settled in its growing familiarity as he pulled me into him. He waved a swift acknowledgement to his glassy-eyed colleagues who watched us all the way until he led me out the door and to the trees by the courtyard, stopping at the edge of the pool we had arrived through.

“Would you mind staying out with me a while longer?” He held my hands by the edge of the water. “There is something about you I cannot quite put my finger on – a quality that makes me feel as though I have known you for eons. There is a greatness about you, even, I can see it.” He ran his pale fingers over my own. “You should find your place in the university, not dangle on the precipice between a world of progress and the spiritual superstitions of your uncle.” I stared into his dark eyes. In this brief moment he had seen in me what no one else had.

“If you are welcoming me into the grandness of your world, I don’t think I need convincing.” I looked down quickly at the grass beneath my worn shoes and huddled closer to the pulse of his body.

“Even so, the society I belong to requires a kind of oath of secrecy and dedication before we move much further. The country folk persecute us, so the university – they force our hand with these precautionary measures.” He studied our hands in disappointment. “I would never imagine you would be a risk to us, but the group would never forgive me if I compromised their work.”

It was outlandish, perhaps, becoming so undone so quickly in the presence of someone I had only just met, and yet the entirety of the experience was outlandish, so why should my emotions not be?

“Alright. Initiate me then.” I giggled and made a clumsy spin in the new dress. My inhibitions fell away like the curls from my bow and warmth crept up the whole of my body, whether from the whiskey or exhilaration, I did not know. “Besides, I might come home to my uncle as a whole new person and perhaps inspire a bit of change in all of them.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” he ran his fingers through his hair in a swift motion as he stared into the water. “It is all or nothing around here. Neither side will ever let you belong to both. You’ll just belong to – nothing.” He bent to pick a white flower by the water, a small bell drooping from its green stem. “It’s a sacrifice, I know. But I would be honored to show you what this new life could do for you before you head back. Of course, it’s entirely up to you.” He tucked the green vine behind my ear.

“Lead the way, then. I feel like I have been waiting for this moment all my life,” I declared, taken aback by my newfound boldness. The corner of his mouth pulled in a wicked grin, and we leapt back into the pool.

I was sure I would never tire of this sensation, and when I rose, expecting to find myself back in the clearing, I was surprised to see a room instead, its walls wrapped in ivy and twisted branches. The pool we had just exited was there, enclosed in this room of soft earth and makeshift walls that made it difficult to distinguish the wild of the outdoors from the signs of human habitation – a rug in the corner, a door frame to another room, lit candles and shelves containing various volumes and jars. It was as if he had built this home upon and around the forest, letting the wild slither in.

“This is where I prefer to spend my time.” He brushed dust off his coat and headed for the second room of the small enclosure, one I could see, even from a distance, was lined with vials and elements like a sort of makeshift kitchen. “I’ll teach you to master the pools so you can travel to whichever one you want to – you will have access to them all if you study them. Anyway, I’ll feed you first, since you must be famished,” he said as he wandered about, clanging pots and glasses.

My stomach growled and I became suddenly aware of not having eaten since lunch time, uncle’s hot flapjacks creeping back into my mind. He would likely be pacing by the hearth now, perhaps inquiring of the neighbor what time the university library closes or pickling cabbage and peering at the blackening sky outside the shabby cottage window. I pushed the thought away and made myself comfortable on the flat earth instead, tracing circles in the earth while I waited. Before long, my companion had returned with a platter of exotic looking meats, jellies, and colorful fruits I had never seen before, which he lay atop a tablecloth he spread out on the dirt.

He darted me a reassuring glance and I realized he expected me to eat. For fear of appearing unlearned in cuisine, I reached out to place a fleshy rind inside my mouth. I leaned back on my shoulders and stretched my legs before me, chewing bitter meat as he lay down comfortably beside me. The tie fell out of his vest, and he traced his pocket watch with one hand, his veined throat swallowing.

“Do you know that what you are learning today is just the beginning of the vast world we live in? It’s been here all along – the visible realm and the secondary realm, your physical eyes have just not opened to its fullness yet.” He watched intently as I ate my fill, though the novel taste was nauseating. “You, my dear, have been stuck in the mire of superstition and the old ages. It’s so thick, you might even need an extra dosage.” He waved his hands about as he spoke, wide eyes boring into my own.

“A dosage?” I chewed the thickness of my meat and gawked at him in silent wonder. My fingers were smeared with the blood of undercooked meat, but I had become unapologetically ravenous and the more I consumed, the more I began to relish in the taste.

“There’s a property, concocted centuries ago by the most intelligent scholar ever to attend this university, its founder in more ways than one, and those who drink it can see more of this world. They access the fullness of the mind’s spiritual IQ, can you imagine? The very fact that you found the clearing on your own already speaks to the natural ability and inclinations towards the second realm in you. It shocked me, really, which is why I pursued you with such shameless intensity.” He grazed the velvet fabric on my arm. “I have never encountered anyone in the clearing before they have taken the elixir. Even my colleagues – you cannot imagine what they had to give to make it into the clearing, and to get everything they have now.” He had a curious, far-off expression then, a sort of satisfaction spreading over his countenance as he stood to pace the edges of this pool. “I led them to their greater purpose. And I can do the same for you.”

I harkened back to the luxury of the society, the elegance of his company and their living quarters, the courtyard, the young woman’s elegance, the gentlemens’ charisma and notoriety, the intoxicating breadth of their experience.

“How would it work?”

“Well, much of your mind is currently inaccessible. It is limited by societal conventions and constructs. Now, imagine what would happen if you stepped into your brain’s fullest, most unhindered potential. That is what the property is for. That and to remove the perpetuated consciousness that the country folk force upon this city.”

“I’ll forget what is good and what is evil – is that what you mean?”

He scoffed in response to my question.  “It removes the barriers of conceived societal standards of ‘right and wrong.’ Who is to say which is which? The ‘spiritual’ masses? You think they know better than generations of scholars?” He darted towards me then. “Aren’t you tired of being in the camp of fools? Of listening to what they tell you? You belong with me, I am sure of it. Join the learned dear, and welcome to the new age!”

My companion was possessed with excitement as he pulled me off my feet to join him and spun me around the enclosure.  Having eaten, I was satiated. Having changed, I looked the closest I ever had to “beautiful.” The draughts of air coming in through thin walls bit with a greater coldness than the outdoors, yet it was a coldness that invigorated all my body. He pulled me into himself as we spun, and I collapsed into the thickness of his breast as he sunk his fingers deeper into my waist, reaching lower and leading me across the floor.

I had never been light of foot, but in this moment, as I discarded my old slippers, I danced better and stronger than I ever had. He whirled me in circles around him upon the earth, passing by an arabesque of cobwebs on dirt walls, him watching as the skirt of my dress billowed with an insatiable satisfaction, eyes unmoving, thin lips curled, and I laughed. My heart pounded like the beat of some drum and the worries of uncle, the cruelty of father, the uselessness of mother, the foolish grief of their loss, and every good intention evaporated into the movement. I watched my companion’s hair fall around him and his skin burned hot as the ceiling disappeared above us.

“Slow down. I’m getting dizzy.”

But he didn’t slow. He only began to spin me, faster and faster.

“I am sorry but I’m feeling unwell,” I gasped.

“You’re not unwell, just acclimating.”

“Acclimating to what?” I struggled to focus on the words that poured slowly from his mouth like wine.

“Your body will strengthen in time. It is the flesh; you are unused to it.”

“Flesh?” My vision blurred in black splotches.

“The human flesh,” he whispered with a study of my expression. I could only stare back, frozen, while my companion pulled at my limp body.  “Do not look that way. You cannot imagine the capacities of human flesh or blood that binds the elixir. It elevates our own. There’s a reason it is taboo, as many scientific wonders often are at the start. The country folk and spiritual sects will do anything to stifle progress and control the people.”

“The disappeared?” My mouth could produce no more than a soft and still mutter as I recalled uncle’s tales of the lost, the discarded bodies and faceless youths scattered about the city’s limits and piling on with each year.

“Not all are for consumption, some for experimentation. Other more attractive youths may be useful in their faces for the beauty of the older scholars. In their own way, they contribute to the success of the whole of the university. The greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Did you not say you were learned in philosophy?”

“I want it to stop,” I suddenly screamed, pushing uselessly against my companion as I thought of the meat and of the auburn-haired woman and her scar and her scarf. I thought of uncle at home pacing in the dark. I gasped for breath as the fingers at my waist pierced my flesh like talons, running over my figure and settling at my arms where they burned through the fabric of the velvet until his fingerprint coils were ingrained upon my skin. They released a smell of burning flesh and smoke that spread against the whole of the enclosure and the wood. If anyone were to catch the sight from a distance, they might wonder if the wood had caught fire again in the drought.

His eyes were no longer dark pupils but a complete blackness, like the soot of father’s ashtray, his teeth no longer human but bestial. In that instant, I saw him as he was.

“No hard feelings then? It is the survival of the fittest in this world, love.”

Mustering all my strength, I pulled my arms free in a final push of his body towards the edge of the pool, startled by my newfound power. He was right – the meat had amplified my natural abilities. 

My companion peered up at me with beady eyes, twisted mouth gaping in disgust and I stepped with one small foot atop his head, stomping it beneath the water until the figure ceased its convulsing and the form vanished, leaving behind a mist of dust and sulfur.

I tore the remnants of my bloodied dress and bathed myself in the pool, allowing the icy water to wash the sulfur off, its coolness alleviating the burning and actuating my mind. I starkly found my way out of the earthen house, the wood and the clearing, the path, and into the town and the cottage in my raw and naked skin. The moonlight revealed the marks of all my branding, scattered like muted constellations upon my boy, ensuring they would remain, like the taste of sulfur upon my lips, a reminder as I ventured back into the smallness of the world. 

I told everyone then – uncle, neighbors, peers, fellows at the university. Uncle alone sat solemnly and heeded my account. His fellow countryfolk did not know where my tale fit in the structure of their belief system and attributed my ramblings to the mental collapse of a grief-stricken young woman lost in a burning wood. 

After a time, I quit trying.

Each year, logic seeks to dispel my memory. Yet, whenever doubts plague me in the night, I hold fast to my uncle, my notebook, and the scars upon my flesh that no quantity of powder can mask, and that speak to the shame of all I have done. I have become no barrister nor artist, but a professor of philosophy, my marks reminding me that all that is left is the teaching of values to keep man from becoming a more clever devil while the wood smokes in Desiderium.