Iliona and the resumption of ties Read online

  Ed interrupted them when backing from the kitchen with a handful of dead purple moths and giving a bite in one of them, with the purple juice of its inside rolling down his chin.

  “What? It’s not like you ate human food either.” He said toward Winda’s disapproving eyes while licking the tip of his fingers.

  “It’s not that. It’s just how can you eat when we’re in the middle of something important?” She said.

  “But this is being such an unproductive reunion. What about our plan? I honestly expected more from you.” Ed said, sitting in his place again. “So I eat to deal with my disappointment.” He added.

  “Well, that’s it then. I just can’t take your words anymore, at least not for now, it’s too much cynicism for one night. I’m leaving.” She said standing up.

  She opened the door and screamed after a few steps.

  Zian and Muriel hurried to outside through the yet open door, knocking the lamp floor in their way, which fell and broke, letting the room in the dark. Ed followed, slower, behind them chewing his last moth. But Winda was nowhere to be seen. The first two stepped further from the door threshold, and Ed could see them disappear with a scream similar to the one Winda had just shouted.

  He stopped by the door:

  “Amateurs.” He said, after analyzing the nil on the floor, in front of his house entry. Then he jumped into it like someone who jumps into a swimming pool during a hot summer night.

  11

  Complements

  “Hmm, so that’s how they arrived in here,” Timothy said to himself after Bob told him the nil that engulfed Muriel, Zian, Winda and Ed had led them to the woods.

  “Ed went behind them just in case they didn’t have how to go back since nils are being opened and closed very fast nowadays. However, when he saw they were somewhere they knew, he said it was better to check the surroundings, in the case of whom opened the nil was still around. He waited by the side of it for some hours, while the others walked up here, ‘till it closed by itself. Then he opened another one and returned to his house, expecting he could find someone or something suspicious in there. It was when he found you.”

  Timothy had slept the rest of the day, waking up in the sunset time, when everybody was gone but for Bob and him. His uncle was sitting on the bed next to him.

  “So, ilions can open and close nils to anywhere they want?”

  “No, it’s not like that. Ed is what we call a timer. Timers are ilions who received training to learn how to manipulate nils, so they know how to open and close them.”

  “That’s why his eye seem different?”

  Bob took a deep breath while wondering if he really should tell Timothy about those things and drag him into it.

  “Listen Mothy, I’ll tell you everything I know about them, but it’s important for you to keep in mind that what’s happening is not some entertaining adventure. You’ll understand many things better with time. However, you must remember this is serious and even dangerous. And that you shouldn’t completely believe in them, because they will try to protect their home, after all.”

  “But you’re friends with them.” He retorted.

  “Yes, but it took some time for us to be that close. And ‘till today there are some of them, like Ed, that I don’t trust at all.” He looked thoughtfully at his nephew, who was with a healthier feature than the one he had when they were sitting at the kitchen table. “It seems the matmit gas effect has finally passed’’. He commented.

  “It’s true, I feel normal again,” Timothy said trying to sound cheerful to deceive the worry that had appeared between his uncle’s eyebrows. Even by the cozy amber lights from Bob’s lamps, he could notice the black rings around his uncle’s brown eyes. Along with some white hair strands that stood out among the blackness of his short hair.

  “Will you remember this?” Bob asked.

  “Serious and even dangerous. Copied.” He repeated it in a way that made Bob smile.

  “Fine then,” Bob took another deep breath as to begin a long story:

  “Yes, that’s why Ed’s eyes are different. The training timers receive changes their pupils into a shape similar to a clock gear. But he uses contact lenses to hide them. And no, not all timers can open nils to anywhere they want, this takes a lot of practice. Just skillful ones can do it easily.

  It's very hard to control where the nil is going to open. The more trained a timer is, the greater the range of his or her abilities. Therefore, some timers can open nils to other worlds, while others, can open them just to near distances. Those with an intermediate level get to focus on where they want to go and make a nil appear in the surroundings of it. As those who are beginning on this, just open nils. With none or very few clues about where it’s going to appear.”

  “So Ed is a powerful one,” Timothy said more to himself than to his uncle.

  “Yes, he dedicated himself too much to this. And he still in training.”

  “That’s why his hair is that pale too?”

  “No. This is an ilion thing, the majority of them don’t have colors in their hairs. Except when they get very old, because in their world, contrary to ours, as you get older you hair gets darker. In a way, those aged ilions have almost black hair.”

  “Then, if you’re an ilion the younger you are, the paler your hair is? So Muriel… but she doesn’t look old.” Timothy thought aloud, remembering of Muriel’s black hair.

  “She’s just five years older than you, as Winda and Zian as well. Ed and Tevis are three years older than they are. You haven’t met Tevis yet, but I guess you’ll have the chance to. Anyway, dyeing the hair is very usual in Iliona. It’s a way to stand out among the grayness of the crowd.”

  “And how do you know about all this? I mean, why were they all here? How did you meet them in the first place?”

  “Well, the first ilion I saw was about ten years ago. She was always on her bike, and she liked to observe the lake near my house. I remember her long gray hair had called my attention very much.

  Usually, by the end of the day when I got off the house there she was, sat by the lake with her flashy green bike lying by her side. However, I couldn’t observe her for too long, or she would notice it. Sometimes, depending on the hour I would think, “She must be on the lake by now,” and when I peered through my window there she was. People don’t come to the woods often, you know. And I don’t have neighbors, so I was starting to be curious why she was coming here every day.

  One day, though, she did not stop by the lake. She came bike riding, passed straight by it, and disappeared. She had gone into a nil, but at that time, I did not know that. Then I kept thinking I must have seen it wrong.

  The day next, I waited for her, peering through my window glass. She came bike riding again, and again she just passed by the lake and disappeared into nothingness.

  The same thing occurred the next day and on the following one. Then, after one week watching her fade away, I decided to intervene. I waited for her by the lake, in the same spot she used to seat.

  When she saw me, she stopped the bike and came to sit next to me. But she did not look at me, she kept her eyes on the lake and said:

  ‘So you are the eyes that have been watching me?’

  I felt embarrassed because I had always thought she hadn’t noticed me.

  ‘Yes. Since the day you started observing this lake ‘till the days you chose not to and began to disappear instead.' I said feeling a little awkward to put the words like that since it was the first time I was meeting with her.

  She remained in silence, though. Then, as to make conversation, I asked indicating the lake:

  ‘What did you watch so much in here, by the way?’

  ‘The red fishes. I’ve seen fishes before, but not that red.’ Then she turned her eyes to me, and everything about her grew. We talked for a few hours, and her mind along with her shining gray eyes made everything about her seem so real, so present and vast. Then, backing to the fishes, she said: ‘We don
’t have these where I come from.'

  ‘Red fishes?’

  ‘Hmm,’ she shook her head, ‘fishes in general. We don’t have them in my city’.

  ‘Your city… that’s where you go when you disappear?’ I remarked the disappearing part.

  She smiled and saying she didn’t mind telling me about her city, despite many she knew would not approve it, she began to speak. Then she talked about Iliona and Iliona City, and why she had to come to Nagranto every day and what a nil was. She worked here in Nagranto as a teacher, and she told me she enjoyed this process of coming and going.

  “A teacher? I mean how would she teach in here if she’s from Iliona?” Timothy interrupted.

  “She was a pianist, and she taught her skills in a music school in Nagranto’s downtown. Some languages are unlimited, no matter where you come from. Such as with music.”

  “A pianist….just like….” Timothy was linking the dots.

  “Exactly, just like Joanna. Because she was Joanna.” Bob said, taking the portrait on his nightstand and handing it over to Timothy.

  He knew Bob liked Joanna, he had seen her a couple of times in his house, but her hair wasn’t pale at all. Joanna was nice and enjoyed talking, but he never noticed anything on her that would denounce her as from another world. She also never mentioned anything about it with him.

  In the picture Bob handed to him, Joanna’s short hair was dyed in black, and there was a yellow ribbon on it that stood out. She wore round sunglasses, just like Bob, along with a white dress with red stripes. Bob wore something like a dress too but a light green one. They were standing side by side, and there was a beach full of people scenario in the background, which Timothy thought to be one of Nagranto’s shores. It was a recent picture, maybe from just two years ago.

  Looking more attentively at Joanna, though, he also noticed she was wearing a necklace whose pendant was a glass triangle he already knew now. Then he remembered where the sensation of familiarity had come from when he first had it in his hands in his house. He saw Joanna using it when he met her in his uncle’s.

  “This pendant…” He murmured.

  “Yes, it’s equal to the one you gave back to Muriel earlier. This is a twond. It’s used to locate nils. Some timers with advanced training don’t need it because they can feel if there’s a portal around. But this pendant can be very useful if you don’t have this ability. Many ilions use it, so it’s common to see it as pendants, or rings, or watches, or attached to anything easy to carry. It’s a triangle made of Iliona’s glass with fragments of nil within. They leave the triangle corners toward its center when a nil is close, but Muriel already told you that.”

  “Is Joanna a timer too?”

  “No, she’s not. That’s why she uses the twond. These pendants are manual twonds, but there are electronic ones as well like the one Winda has. It’s a round device the size of an eye, it’s a digital twond.”

  “Cool,” Timothy whispered, amazed.

  “I know, right. I also have one Joanna gave me.” He said opening a drawer from his nightstand and showing his nephew the triangular twond, he took out of there. “There are many fascinating things about the ilions’ world.”

  “And why Joanna would come to work in here? Doesn’t she like Iliona City?”

  “Nowadays, she works in there, but she visits me often. Non-timers are forbidden to leave the city like that, but she never minded. Some other ilions that couldn’t care less as well come to work in here too. Although this is not a regular thing. The money they get in here is not valid in Iliona, but they can use it in here, to travel or to other stuffs they want. Except for food. Human food doesn’t nourish their bodies, even if they eat them, only the fake stars do.”

  “And how the ilions who live in here do to get fake stars from there?”

  “Just like we have food delivery. There’s a delivery service for fake stars to the ilions living outside Iliona City as well. But living outside Iliona City is not well seen, so they have to do it sneakily. It’s said purple moths can nourish them for some time too, and thus some of them also give it a try while they’re in here.”

  “Then, that’s why Muriel and Ed are raising moths in their ceiling,” Timothy said.

  “Yes. The purple moths’ cocoons mature faster in the dark, so there was the inconvenient of blocking the light in the living room, but still it was the most practical way they found. Since, it's harder to get out Iliona City in these days, even for food delivery.” Bob added. Then he continued:

  “But you also asked me how I met them. I met them through Joanna. Zian and Tevis are cousins, and their work is to check nils, they are nil keepers. They check open nils, the amount of them, the frequency with which they’re open, things like that. Therefore, they have to spend some time watching nils to take notes of what happens with them, and they often meet with the ilions who are using them. Therefore, they already knew Joanna, when she introduced me to them. By that time, Winda worked with them too, before she came to live in Nagranto and open her store, that’s how I met her too. After we had met each other, I passed to invite them to stop by, and Joanna and I used to have long conversations with them. She never minded making contact with humans. She thought the acquaintanceship between us could be very enriching for both sides. And her naturalness about it helped me not to fear them and to be more open to what they used to tell me about their world.

  The three of them were already friends with Muriel. One day then, they brought her along and introduced her to Joanna and me. And a couple of months ago when Ed became her work partner, Muriel brought him along, that’s how I met him.”

  “So you met Ed for last. Winda warned me about him; she said to me he was trouble.”

  “I know him a little over a year, it’s a short time, but I trust her words. Ed is a hard person to read; he’s always hiding behind his sarcasm or cynicism, it’s tiring.” Bob said looking at the willow leaves the wind blew to inside his window. The forest outside was already in the darkness.

  “Nagranto’s summer, full of moisture.” He said to himself.

  “Bob, do you think they will get to stop it? I mean not letting more people know about them? What Ed said about memory changing… are we going to need to run?” Timothy asked with some tone of concern in his voice.

  “These are hard questions.” Bob scratched his head and continued: “The connections between humans and ilions happen more often than we can imagine. It has been happening for many years, but not on large scale. The difference now is that there are groups decided to tell us about them, teams that are making an alliance with bigger groups of our world, like Nagranto’s enterprises, which increases their reach and makes harder to control it or to stop it.

  I don’t think the alliance between the two worlds can be as harmful as Zian puts it. And about this memory changing…well, we might have to leave the town temporarily, if things come to it.” He turned to Timothy while saying that, and the black rings around his eyes seemed even deeper.

  “That’s what’s been bothering your sleep?”

  Bob smiled softly:

  “You’re quite an observer. It’s just more often than we would like Iliona’s City Administration gives orders to make what they call deletion, to change someone’s memory. And the technique timers found to do it was through music. So, each timer chooses his or her musical method, some just sing; others play instruments, others yet just whistle. But when it comes to larger deletions, like…” he hesitated for a moment, “like deleting a whole town, they give the order to a group of timers, so the reach of the singing is increased. Zian said he doesn’t believe the situation in Nagranto will come to this point, although Ed said it already did, and they are just waiting for a confirmation to start the singing. If what Ed said happens, then we’re going to have to run, if we want to preserve our memories.” He gulped, and Timothy's eyes widened.

  “Do you know which Ed’s musical technique is?”

  “He plays the violin. Twice he broug
ht his instrument when he came here, and I heard him play. Not his oblivion song, of course, a regular music. And it was beautiful; he plays it very well. But this does not change what he can do with it, right?”

  “Have you ever been there, in Iliona City?” Timothy changed the subject a bit as noticing his uncle was lost in his own thoughts for a while.

  “Sure I did. Joanna took me there many times. Now I go on my own to visit her too. But before I start a long description about what I’ve seen in there, what about head to the kitchen and do this while eating? I’m starving, and I bet you are too since you slept the whole day.” Bob suggested, stretching while standing up.

  “Hm. Ok.” Timothy agreed also standing up.

  They talked while they prepared and ate their dinner, and Timothy grew amazed and curious about the impressions his uncle told him over Iliona City.

  12

  Rounds

  Round one

  After leaving Bob’s, Muriel and Ed returned to their home while Zian went to meet with Tevis at the rented house they were staying. It was sunset time when they arrived at their temporary homes.

  “There was an absurd number of nils being opened during the night. I could feel their presence while I was keeping guard in the woods, but I didn’t see who was opening them,” Ed commented toward Muriel, sitting on one of the the living room stools and massaging his temples. Since the lamp floor was broken and there was no light in the ceiling, they opened the windows to let in the streetlights.

  “Something changed then. We must be called back at any minute.” Muriel said sitting on a stool next to him and resting her head on the wall behind her, with eyes closed, feeling the breeze that was coming from the windows.

  She loosened her hair bun, and after sighing, she opened her eyes. And staring at their ceiling, she said:

  “We need to free them. Since we’re leaving any time now, we won’t be able to eat them all.”