tiny woman made of folded yellow paper. He holds it where he can see it. âCall her, â says Letti, who then goes back to bed. A half hour later, after sheâs returned to her dream of a city with circular walls, he finally expires.
Back in the grotto there is an enormous white mushroom, perfectly formed, that serves as a pedestal for a rose-colored glass bubble, and Emily and Vincent approach it cautiously. This is something I hadnât been aware of before, because I was seeing the scene under the bottom of the lake from a distance, but the white mushroom gives off a kind of perfumeâa sweet, tantalizing scent, like the aroma of orchids, but more substantial, more delicious, so to speak. That fungal reek, Iâm just realizing, not smelling it but âunderstandingâ the aroma they are smelling, also carries a soporific effect and Emilyâs long eyelashes are fluttering. Vincentyawns and forgets all about his anxiety due to being underground and in a mysterious grotto. Instead, heâs hungry and finds himself wanting to take a bite out of that big luscious white mushroom cap thatâs grown as high as his chest. Emilyâs more interested in the rose-colored bubble, and as she reaches for it, Vincent spits out his licorice gum, leans over, and sinks his teeth into the marshmallow meringue of the fungus.
âWhat are you doing?â says Emily and, even though she knows what heâs up to is dangerous, she finds it funny. Vincent reels backward, disoriented from the explosion of sweetness in his mouth.
âItâs awesome,â he says in between chewing. She doesnât notice that heâs now been brought to his knees by the overwhelming delight of the white morsel, because sheâs got the rose-colored bubble up to her eye and is staring inside, where she sees something swirling.
What moves like a miniature twister within the see-through boundary is the tale once told but never heard. She puts the bubble to her ear but can hear nothing. She shakes it, taps it, and rolls it from palm to palm. Then she simply drops it, and I watch as it falls, slowly spinning in its descent. After an eternity, it explodes against the rock floor and scatters a fiery revelation, like a bird of flame careening off the walls within the grotto of my skull.
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Once there was a yin/yang wizard who could perform great feats of magic that drew power from the balanced forces of the universe. Sometimes he worked for the sake of good, and when that enjoyed too great an abundance he worked for the sake of evil. Swinging like a pendulum between the two extreme states of human nature, he spent his years conjuring and casting spells. His methods were always the same. A pilgrim would travel into the desert and visit his cave. That individual would ask him for assistance with somelife problem. If the wizard decided to help, he would turn to a great fire that roared at the back of his cave and call for his ghostly assistants to bring him his blowpipe. Turning whatever spell he was performing into a story, heâd speak it, so that none could hear it, into the glass blowing tube. In this way, when he was finished, the tale of his magic would be trapped within a rose-colored bubble. He didnât use ordinary glass, but instead his raw material was enchanted ice, crystal tears, and diamonds fallen from the moon. The pilgrim requesting the service would then have a spell cast in his or her behalf, which would invariably work, and would then be given the glass bubble containing the story of their spell, which they were expected to hide in a safe place. If anything happened to that globe, the spell would be broken. One thing remained: the pilgrim never knew if the spell cast by the wizard was one of a positive or a negative nature.
It was to this very wizard that Cassius Cake came in the twenty-third year of his life. He had traveled the world, searching for release from the pain of an unrequited love.
Back in the grotto there is an enormous white mushroom, perfectly formed, that serves as a pedestal for a rose-colored glass bubble, and Emily and Vincent approach it cautiously. This is something I hadnât been aware of before, because I was seeing the scene under the bottom of the lake from a distance, but the white mushroom gives off a kind of perfumeâa sweet, tantalizing scent, like the aroma of orchids, but more substantial, more delicious, so to speak. That fungal reek, Iâm just realizing, not smelling it but âunderstandingâ the aroma they are smelling, also carries a soporific effect and Emilyâs long eyelashes are fluttering. Vincentyawns and forgets all about his anxiety due to being underground and in a mysterious grotto. Instead, heâs hungry and finds himself wanting to take a bite out of that big luscious white mushroom cap thatâs grown as high as his chest. Emilyâs more interested in the rose-colored bubble, and as she reaches for it, Vincent spits out his licorice gum, leans over, and sinks his teeth into the marshmallow meringue of the fungus.
âWhat are you doing?â says Emily and, even though she knows what heâs up to is dangerous, she finds it funny. Vincent reels backward, disoriented from the explosion of sweetness in his mouth.
âItâs awesome,â he says in between chewing. She doesnât notice that heâs now been brought to his knees by the overwhelming delight of the white morsel, because sheâs got the rose-colored bubble up to her eye and is staring inside, where she sees something swirling.
What moves like a miniature twister within the see-through boundary is the tale once told but never heard. She puts the bubble to her ear but can hear nothing. She shakes it, taps it, and rolls it from palm to palm. Then she simply drops it, and I watch as it falls, slowly spinning in its descent. After an eternity, it explodes against the rock floor and scatters a fiery revelation, like a bird of flame careening off the walls within the grotto of my skull.
Â
Once there was a yin/yang wizard who could perform great feats of magic that drew power from the balanced forces of the universe. Sometimes he worked for the sake of good, and when that enjoyed too great an abundance he worked for the sake of evil. Swinging like a pendulum between the two extreme states of human nature, he spent his years conjuring and casting spells. His methods were always the same. A pilgrim would travel into the desert and visit his cave. That individual would ask him for assistance with somelife problem. If the wizard decided to help, he would turn to a great fire that roared at the back of his cave and call for his ghostly assistants to bring him his blowpipe. Turning whatever spell he was performing into a story, heâd speak it, so that none could hear it, into the glass blowing tube. In this way, when he was finished, the tale of his magic would be trapped within a rose-colored bubble. He didnât use ordinary glass, but instead his raw material was enchanted ice, crystal tears, and diamonds fallen from the moon. The pilgrim requesting the service would then have a spell cast in his or her behalf, which would invariably work, and would then be given the glass bubble containing the story of their spell, which they were expected to hide in a safe place. If anything happened to that globe, the spell would be broken. One thing remained: the pilgrim never knew if the spell cast by the wizard was one of a positive or a negative nature.
It was to this very wizard that Cassius Cake came in the twenty-third year of his life. He had traveled the world, searching for release from the pain of an unrequited love.
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