‘Because they only seem to a bodily part of you to be dreams; but your soul is now tied to you, remember? It doesn’t want to let you go!’
Sh*t!
If my eyes hadn’t already been bulging, they would be now.
What’s she saying?
That my soul’s taking me with it when it goes off into its own little world?
*
Wouldn’t you know?
That’s exactly what she’s saying!
That my soul’s got its own level of life to access, its own plane it really belongs on, where it normally drifts off to whenever I’m asleep so as not to upset me; because if it did it while I was awake, see, I’d probably get all uptight because I’d be worried it might abandon me.
Which under normal circumstances, it just might, it turns out, because it always enjoys itself so much when its freed of my ugly, restraining body.
But now I’m ‘tied in’ with it, it’s taking me along; like I’m some long lost bosom buddy she wants to get to know all over again!
Hey; we’re the very best of friends now, aren’t we, me and my soul!
So naturally, it wants me to go along just for the ride.
Oh sh*t, sh*t and more sh*t!
*
Chapter 10
‘How do I stop this?’ I wail.
‘You want to stop it?’ she says, like I’m turning down a lifetime’s supply of free chocolates.
‘Of course I want to stop it! God only knows what else is out there in this spirit world!’
She nods, pouts seriously, like I’ve got a point.
Cr*p!
I mean, I was sort of hoping she’d say something more reassuring; like I was just imagining things, the spirit world can’t harm you, or the spirits are every bit as friendly and harmless as little kittens.
‘Yes,’ she says, adopting the tone of voice a doctor uses when she’s advising you to cut down on cream cakes, or else, ‘there are some very, very, very nasty spirits out there!’
Oh greeeaaat!
Just great!
All this is getting better by the minute, isn’t it?
‘Why’s this happening to me?’ I snap. ‘Why not Lisa? She’s not having any dreams!’
‘Hah!’ Her already bulbous eyes light up. ‘The girl with the hare and moon!’
‘Yes, like me: but she hasn’t got bulbo – I mean, she’s not going through what I’m going through!’
‘But her hare and moon were on her right shoulder!’ she says, her elatedly widening eyes plainly indicating that she thinks that explains it all.
‘Well so’s mi–’
Ah, but it isn’t is it?
It’s on my left shoulder.
‘That makes it work differently?’ I gasp. ‘One on the right, one on the left?’
‘All the difference in the world!’ she says cheerfully.
‘Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you warn me?’
‘You didn’t ask,’ she coolly points out.
‘This…is…unbelievable!’
‘Another tattoo?’ she asks with what passes for an inviting grin on her face.
‘Another tattoo! They’re what caused all this!’
She airily waves a hand in the air, dismissing my accusations and my concerns with equal measure.
‘Not this one! This one saves you from evil sprits!’
She turns, starts to walk into the back of the shop.
‘Er, where are you going?’ I ask, feeling sure she can’t really be expecting me to once again so foolishly follow her into her medieval idea of a surgery.
‘I need to pee,’ she says unashamedly, glancing over her shoulder to add with yet another grin, ‘To mix into the ink!’
*
She tells me no one else has turned up to complain about the dreams.
I tell her they might not have been able to turn up.
Once again, she unfortunately nods sagely rather than dismissing my comment as nonsense.
She tells me shamans use these tattoo-induced dreams to deliberately access the spirit world.
I tell her I’d prefer it if the spirit world wasn’t accessing my bedroom.
‘Isn’t there some other way of stopping it, other than having yet another tattoo?’ I plead.
‘Some shamans have the joints of their hands and toes severed!’ she says helpfully
Suddenly, a new tattoo seems wholly preferable to any other alternative.
‘Why would they have their hands and feet cut off?’ I say, unable to hide that I’m a little startled by this means of preventing annoying dreams.
‘Well, to be honest,’ she adds, smiling like it’s only a minor point (which, in her world, it may well be!) ‘I do mean when they’re dead: otherwise, their magic won’t leave their body and, entering the uma, will cause sickness. Besides, as the shaman keeps the souls of her people in her possession, she might take them with her into her grave!’
She’s mixing the ink as we talk: ‘Tagneghli,’ she explains as I watch, ‘a magical substance of finest, darkest graphite from Siberia; the stone spirit that guards us from evil spirits and the sicknesses they bring.’
‘And that’s not really your…er, urine, you’re mixing in with it, is it?’ I ask nervously.
I tell myself there must be other liquids with a similar weak yellow tint, an equivalent sour stench.
‘Tequq,’ she says jovially, briefly reassuring me that it might after all be yet another fine ingredient purchased at great expense from far off Mongolia, ‘which comes from one of the primary seats of the life-giving force of the soul; the bladder!’
‘How does that severing of the hands work again?’
*
‘First, to harness ancestral powers, you need “guardian” markings on your forehead where–’
‘My forehead?’
She’s managed to persuade me that the urine-mixed ink is a necessity: it’s used to protect children from the possessive spirits awakened whenever someone close by dies.
Why am I suddenly accepting all this nonsense as if it all makes perfect sense?
Oh yeah; I remember – because now I’m beautiful, whereas a few days ago I wasn’t even close to being pretty.
Still; the forehead?
That’s hardly going to keep me up amongst the A listers, is it? A brow filled with ‘guardian’ markings, whatever they are.
Turns out they’re the sort of things bored cavemen used to paint on their walls; stickmen hunting stick buffalo, throwing stick spears.
She’s showing me a picture of these stickmen hunts like its bound to allay my fears about having them tattooed on my forehead.
She also gets out pictures of flowers, of starbursts, of peacocks, with tails like hundreds of eyes. Not for my forehead, thankfully, but across my waist, my back, my shoulders; ‘then evil will bounce off your body like raindrops from a flower, while your ancestral spirits will communicate their magical and curative powers through you.’
Sh*t.
I’m going to come out of here looking like a bloody carpet, aren’t I?
*
Fortunately, the results aren’t anywhere near as bad as I’d feared.
Rather than using my forehead for her hunting scenes, Yatpan – that’s the tattooist’s name, I’ve finally got around to finding out – has hidden them all amongst my hair. So as long as I don’t go bald, no one should notice that it looks like my six-year-old niece has gone to work up there with a whole set of coloured biros while I’ve been asleep.
All the other tattoos, thankfully, are hidden beneath my clothing. Although some of them, I’ve got to admit, are quite beautiful in their delicate rendering, their bursts of colour.
As for the bulging eyes, the cause of the need for all this excessive decoration, they’ve gone.
Apparently, although I didn’t realise it, my sub-conscious had enough wit about it to recognise that my dreams weren’t anywhere near as innocent as I’d supposed. There was a reality to this world that
it normally wouldn’t have access to, even while I slept.
Hence the bulbous, fear-filled eyes.
There’s hardly any point in making my way into school now, however; besides, although Yatpan assured me that I had a remarkably resilient body as far as adapting to new tattoos was concerned, she warned me that my flesh might remain a trifle sensitive over the next few days.
I’m not quite sure if it’s some sort of psychosomatic effect or not, but everything about me seems oddly unreal, just a little flat, like I’m looking at it all through some old stereoscope; you know, one of those ancient gizmos, allowing you to look at two almost similar photographs at once, giving it all an odd three dimensional appearance.
The only thing that appears reasonably real is a hovering hawk, one preparing to dive on some unfortunate prey it’s locked its penetrating gaze onto.
Yet it doesn’t dive; it just continues to hover there.
Or rather, despite the way it appears to be more or less motionless in the sky, it’s always close by me no matter where I go.
Surely there can only be one explanation for that: it’s me it’s watching.
*
Chapter 11
Unlike me, Lisa’s suffering no detrimental effects from her new tattoo.
Just the opposite; it’s all completely positive.
She’s hugely popular with everyone. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t wish to be her friend.
Whatever magic this hare and moon have wrought on Lisa, it’s brought out the very best of her.
Me, I just seem to be getting stroppier with each passing day, rapidly alienating all the A lister kids at school who had previously all been falling over themselves to get to know me, to ask my advice on clothes, makeup, boys.
Rapidly alienating, too, the few friends I’d had before I’d started treating my body like I was my own voodoo doll.
Cr*p!
I’m mean-spirited. Rude. Insulting. Arrogant. Mocking.
I just can’t help it; it really is like the hare and moon have begun to bring to the fore all my worst characteristics, not my best ones.
Or maybe, if I’m being honest, I just never had many good qualities in the first place.
*
Let me guess; there are things about yourself even you don’t like.
Things about your character you’ve hidden away; things you don’t like to admit are you.
Things that, if they were revealed to other people, would cause them to instantly dislike you.
That’s not you?
Hmmn, okay – I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.
I mean, it’s not like you’re capable of lying, is it?
But truth be told, if you were telling the truth about this, it would make you a rather odd person.
An unusual person.
Because everybody’s got something to hide.
The way I see it, it’s the only way to survive these days; to hide things about you that other people might not like.
To have a nasty side to you, that’s prepared to say ‘no’, to put yourself rather then others first.
Can you honestly say that isn’t you?
Or, if you do suffer these selfish thoughts every now and again, do you, maybe, manage to kid yourself they’ve somehow just been magically wafted into you otherwise perfectly innocent mind?
Or maybe, instead, you persuade yourself that you’ve been put in an unfair situation, giving you no choice but to think, to act, this way?
Yeah, we’ve all been there; all done that.
Because we’re nice people, aren’t we?
Not nasty people, like everyone else?
Now me, I was always of the opinion that, if you didn’t admit to having a nastier side, it would just fester away, becoming increasingly furious that it was being ignored.
But now I’ve got to admit that maybe I was wrong. Because I increasingly feel that I’m in need of a weapon, a serious weapon: one that could help me kill a whole multitude of– and here, thankfully, I’m not too sure what comes next.
It would be bad enough to admit it’s animals: even worse, of course, to realise it’s people.
*
It’s not something you can just go along to the doctors and admit to, is it?
That if I were, say, given a double-handed sword, or a bow and arrow, somehow I’d feel that my bloodlust would be assuaged.
The only options opened up to me would be the doors to rooms in either an asylum or a prison.
So I have to confess that I really don’t see that I have any choice but to visit the person who’s recently become my own personal amateur psychiatrist; Yatpan.
This time though, I tell her upfront: no more tattoos!
Just advice please!
‘It’s the way of the hunter, that’s all!’ she declares cheerfully.
‘But I don’t hunt: fact is, I was seriously considering becoming vegetarian at one point! It’s just not me at all! I just don’t know who I am anymore!’
‘Well, did you ever really know who you were?’ she asks with a knowing smile.
‘Ah, well, of course, then…well, I was at least me! Someone I could sort of recognise as being me.’
She pulls a face that says she doesn’t believe me.
I don’t believe me.
How low can I get? Lying to myself.
And I’ve always flattered myself that I'm honest when it comes to admitting I’ve been putting on a whole host of false identities, such that I no longer know where to find the real me; if, indeed, there ever was a real me.
‘If I could give you this me back,’ she asks, ‘what would she look like, what would she think?’
‘Well…er…it’s not easy to describe yourself, is it?’ I answer lamely.
‘The real you, if it ever existed – you’re intelligent enough to know she’s gone. You thought you were the one in control, back when you were hiding those qualities that don't fit into the way we’re supposed to behave, supposed to look. Even if we’re putting on an identity for positive reasons, promoting those bits about ourselves we know will make us more attractive, we’re still submerging the real us beneath it all. Then one day, we realise we’re no longer sure which of those layers are the false ones, the characters that are just a part of an act; and which were part of the original us.’
Ooopps!
She’s right, isn’t she?
The real me – well, I reckon she vanished a few years back at least now.
Being relentlessly pushed to the back of the line as I acted out entirely new characters, ones whom I believed would make me popular, or at least interesting; you know, giving me a unique identity the real me seemed to sadly lack
‘And you?’ I ask. ‘Do you know the real you?’
‘Of course!’ she says assuredly.
She begins to unbutton the front of her blouse.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. I’m embarrassed.
She turns around, lets the back of her blouse slip down, revealing a large tattoo of what seems at first to be beautifully rendered wings.
Not angel wings, however, as you might expect.
No, these are the wings of a bird.
A hawk, with its back to us, which is why I originally thought it was an illustration of just the bird’s wings.
It’s so accurately drawn it could be real, if it weren’t for its enlarged size.
The wings could almost be fluttering, in readiness to start beating vigorously at the air; and then, wonderfully, they are extending, flapping as if to help take Yatpan into the air.
But then she completely changes, transforming in an instant.
She’s no longer Yatpan – she’s a hawk.
*
Chapter 12
Thankfully, Yatpan has transformed into a normal sized hawk rather than the more enlarged version she has tattooed on her back.
I say thankfully because as soon as she’s transformed into this bird, she starts flying around the shop; and if
she were any larger, it’s so crowded in here with examples of work displayed everywhere that I feel sure something would be knocked over, despite Yatpan’s obvious skills and remarkable manoeuvrability.
I’m taking all this morphing into a hawk a whole lot more calmly than I suppose I should.
There’s a part of me, I realise, that is surprised by everything that’s happened, yet surprised only because I wasn’t expecting it.
Crazy, huh?
What makes it worse, making it all even scarier than seeing Yatpan transform into a hawk, is that it’s a part of me that I’m not really sure is a part of me.
Crazier still, right?
Yet this part of me accepts all of this like it’s all perfectly normal.
Truth is, Yatpan looks a whole lot more beautiful as a hawk than she did as a person; a whole lot less scary too.
Eventually, Yatpan settles on the very top of an old wooden cabinet, one exhibiting innumerable signed photographs of ecstatically worshipping customers.
Obviously, he isn’t amongst them.
Yatpan glares down at me challengingly from the top of the cabinet.
‘You’ve been following me!’ I say determinedly.
That is, unless there just happens to be another hawk who’s developed an unnatural interest in me.
‘Watching me!’ I add sternly, accusingly.
‘Watching over you,’ she corrects me, her metamorphosis into a hawk obviously having no detrimental effect on her ability to speak.
With another abrupt flap of her wings, she takes to the air again, this time swooping towards me so fast that it makes me instinctively duck – but before she strikes me, she transforms once more, this time back into herself; if, indeed, this is Yatpan’s real form.
‘That was amazing!’ I admit elatedly. ‘Can I have one of those tattoos? A hawk tattoo?’
She wags an admonishing finger.
‘Ah ah: no more tattoos, you said – remember?’
‘Yes…’ I admit hesitantly, ‘but this is different! This is unbelievable! I wouldn’t have thought it possible!’
She smiles benignly if a little condescendingly.
‘You have your own abilities; you just haven’t recognised them yet!’