The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) (5 page)

"Timing is not on our side," my father said, "The painkillers they are giving you interfere with your lucidity. Normally, we would explain all this history to you without the intrusion of a single foreign chemical in your body. But your mother and I don't have a lot of time."

"Your father and I--" my mother added.

"We're worried you're headed in a very wrong direction," my father interrupted. "Joining the OLF and going to the protest was only a first step. I'm worried that you carry not just my stubbornness, but also my temper, and maybe even my bad luck. I have to ask you to stop your involvement with the OLF."

"What do you know about OLF?" I said. "You'd rather have me stay complacent and superficial."

"These are the same people that hacked the 911 phone system when the Millennium riot started. That disruption kept ambulances from arriving on time. People died as result. Clara, before you fight me on this, you need to get the whole story--"

"I don't need anything."

"They say that the OLF has put a contract out on the city politicians. This information's coming directly from OLF. Do you think you’re not going to be bring more violence and anarchy about?"

"What does this have to do with the tonal, anyway, Dad? Get to the point."

My father took a seat on the bed. My mother pulled her chair closer to where I lay, her chin almost touching the rail.

"That night," my mother said, "we saw you go into deep sleep to find your tonal, but when you returned, something was different. You looked afraid, stunned. You did not look happy. That’s how we knew you didn’t find it. If you had been successful, you would have told us about your animal over the next day, as all children do during the rite.
 

“Instead, you brought something else back. As far as your father and I know, no one has ever brought anyone, or anything, back during the journey. It’s unheard of. Finding the tonal happens in the dream, and the rite ends in a child understanding the knowledge of her tonal. While we waited in your room, we saw this
other thing
that came through. It stared at us through windows. We couldn't make out its size or its shape, except for two eyes that shone like headlights on the highway. The eyes--Clara--they were the size of dinner plates, lit from within. Whatever owned those eyes did not like us, and it fixated on you."

"I don't believe any of this," I said.

"You don't have to," my mother said. "You get to make up your own mind. All you have to do is hear us out."

It had always been this way in our family. Our parents just gave us what they knew and what they believed. But it was up to me and José María to make up our minds. This was the very reason why I still didn't believe in half the tales from the Bible, while they did.

My father dragged out a green disc from his leather bag. It was nothing but a tangle of weeds, coiled like a snail's shell.

"Another fungus?" I said.

"Better," he said.

He drew his finger along its surface.

"We all take the trip to find the tonal," he said. "We take the trip the day we're born, when we are thirteen and when we are twenty-six. On the 26
^th
year we see the tonal and embrace it, whether it’s a rabbit, a crocodile or a jaguar. This is how we become full adults. That’s three trips from birth.

“Your first trip would be akin to this origin point on this piece of lichen. It's where things begin. They say that lichen like this one have access to the mysteries of the universe--sort of like a key--but it's never worked for me. What's important is the shape that you see here. The second trip is further along the edges here, where the texture is still smooth. When you brought back that creature at the age of thirteen, we didn't know what it meant. But I am afraid I have learned it. You are living close, very close, to death and violence, Clara, and I am worried that you are actually enjoying the chaos. I am worried that the lines that you are creating are closely intertwined with something with terrible and cruel intentions. You like blood."

Get off my case.
 

I'm so offended.

"You're saying I got...contaminated?" I said.

My father shrugged, shook his head.

"Something has to change in order to cleanse you,” he said.

"Your father's proposing that you take drastic measures, Clara," my mother said. Sadness tinted her voice. "He and I both think you need to take your third trip early. Seven years early."

No one spoke for a few moments. The machines at my bedside punctuated time with their chirps.

"Because the thing you brought with you on your thirteenth year--" my mother said, "It was from Mictlán."

Mictlán
. That was another word I hadn’t heard in years.

A day of found objects. Will the fun ever stop?

I sighed.

"But I thought it was just an old fairy tale,” I said.

"Old…but a story with legs," my father said. "What we know about Mictlán we know from what my grandparents taught me, and what they learned from their grandparents, and on and on."

"And I only learned it from your father when I married him," my mother said.

"Direct knowledge of Mictlán is forbidden," he said. "And yet, something drew itself to you when you sought your tonal. I suspect you might have visited Mictlán in your thirteenth-year dreams. It’s unusual, but possible. I have lived in anxiety for the past six years, wondering why this happened and where your mother and I went wrong."

Suddenly, I wanted some more hardcore drugs so I could just tune all of this out.

Give me all the drugs, somebody.

But my mom and dad were relentless.

"Cleansing is possible,” my mother said. “Handling this type of creature—taming
 
this kind of creature--can only be done by an adult," my mother said. "And you are not an adult yet."

“Far from it,” my father spat. “Immature and obstinate.”

Heat rose in my face, and I clutched the bedsheets with rage. All the years in school, the work I did for social justice, the volunteering, these meant nothing to these people I called my parents. Perfect grades and part-time jobs--they were nothing, nothing, nothing.

But I am adult. So much more adult than you, with your old ideas and creepy ways.

"I don't want to be here anymore," I said. I was not used to talking to my parents in such a terse manner, but my tongue moved faster than my heart. "Get out of the room. And take your new age superstitions with you."

"See, Juliana?" my father said, his voice gathering steam. My mother started gathering her things as he hovered over her. "I told you this was going to happen. Everything we do for these two, they just toss it aside."

My mother had placed my cell phone next to the bed, and I picked it up, oblivious to my parents' departure, texting José María as fast as I could.

"They've gone completely batshit," I texted him.

My mother and father reached the door.

"Clara, we'll be gone for a couple of hours, but we'll be back with the rest of the family. We’ll have more time to talk in the next week or so. Just be ready for the journey. Won’t be easy."

Get the fuck out already.

The door shut, and I let out a huge sigh of relief.

That was perhaps the most awkward moment I had ever lived through.

None of this was fair. My body was broken, and my face hurt even through the veil of painkillers. In all this time, it hadn't occurred to me to look at myself. There, along the bottom row of icons, was the camera app on my phone. If I pointed it at myself, I'd get a glimpse of my bandaged face.
 

I brought the phone up into the air, and I held it there, my hand shaking. In the end, I didn't have the heart to tap the icon.

I set the phone down on the blanket and resented the lack of clarity in my head. Painkillers and fairy tales--these two things made a deadly combination. Why mess with my head? Why? And my father--shouldn't he have thought better of what he said to me about my thirteenth birthday? Why have me recall a memory that felt so hazy, so fragile? It was just a dream, anyway. Just a dream of my parents with a candle in the room on the day of my birthday.

They couldn't just let it rest. What was their urgency? They couldn't wait till I got out of the hospital.

I wanted to get back up from this bed, to heal, so I could get back to the real world. To learn what exactly took place in Millennium Park and, more importantly, what was next.

No response yet from my brother on my phone, but as I flipped toward the bottom of the inbox, I found dozens and dozens of unread messages.

Messages from members of our chapter of the OLF. Dozens of messages from strangers that knew I had been hospitalized, wishing me well. These people identified me by my screen name, "She-Ra" on the Internet forums and Twitter. I didn't so feel alone. I had a lot to catch up on and lots to plan. For the next few hours, I could forget about my parents and come back to reality, where I could touch solid matter, where action was still needed.

I pieced a few things together. The five thousand protesters at Millennium had pushed the lawn's capacity to the brim, and the use of SWAT and military forces had actually been quite routine. In fact, the deployment had looked very similar to that of the May 2012 NATO protests, also in Chicago. According to reports about the Millennium Riot, gunshots had been fired at 4:54 p.m. The media reports said the first shots came from armed protesters in the center of the pavilion, while Twitter reports and bloggers pointed to the sound in the video clips to put blame on the troops situated on the north side of the park, behind the stage of the pavilion. The rest of it--the thousands of bodies trapped and trampled, the use of force from the SWAT teams and the police--was more or less as I remembered.
 

The mayor's "sit down and shut up" ordinance from 2012 was already kicking into place. Those who could be identified in the video footage were already seeking damages against any organizations that took part in the protest, while the investigations continued. I forgot to ask my parents if the investigators were trying to reach me, but I figured if that was the case, I would know soon.

I saved several images into my camera roll so I could take a better look. An aerial view of the park: It was a high-resolution image that I could pinch and zoom as I needed. Here I could see the places where the aftermath took place. There, along the southern edge of the Pritzker Pavilion, the first ambulances began to treat the chemical burns form the tear gas, and to provide aid to those who had been shot and injured. There, in the middle, was the worst chaos. And then up on the northern shoulder of the pavilion, a span of grass where the armed troops laid out the bodies of the dead.

I stared at this diagram for some time, and I scrolled back, going back to look at the photos of these piles of the dead. The twisted feet, the broken fingers and the bloody heads were so familiar to me now.

That flat patch of grass was the place where I had been dragged.

This was a path carved out in dead bodies, laid out by troops and armed cops. They had placed me in the same zone as the dead.

When you step inside the Palace of the Skulls.

When you step inside the Palace of the Skulls.

When you step inside the Palace of the Skulls.

I let go of my phone and it hit the floor with a dull crack. I was breathing fast, and sweating under the hospital gown. I fought back the urge to vomit.

When you step inside the Palace of the Skulls,
my mother had said.

When you step inside the Palace of the Skulls,
my mother had warned me.

I considered calling my parents now, to tell them to come back. I would eat my words, but seeing them might calm me down. I was scared. My finger lay on the “call” button, but I never tapped it.

There, on the blanket, lay the coiled lichen my father brought with him. I ran my fingers over it, grasping it with both hands like a tiny steering wheel. Its edges were pebbled, like lizard skin. I turned and turned it in my hand, knowing that the repetitive motion might help me bring my breathing back to normal.

As I spun the lichen, a damp taste filled my mouth. It arrived from the front of my tongue, filling my tongue ad my palate with its oily scent. It was a smell unlike any I had known before, though some of its notes were easy to identify. I tasted copper and sulfur, and a sick sweetness like fruit gone bad. It was a taste that reminded me of shit, but perhaps worse. This was the taste of graves and swamps, and the taste of burning human hair. The tighter I gripped the coil, the more intense the smell became.

I retched, and pain exploded in my back and in my head. I tossed the coil of lichen at the hospital curtains. As soon as it was out of contact with my hands, the taste of rotted meat vanished from my mouth.

I was panting again, while my heart sought to explode from my chest.

A nurse showed up at the door.

"Everything all right?" she said. " I thought I heard something."

"You did," I said. "I dropped my phone. Can you get it for me?"

"Thank you," I said as she slid it onto my palm.

Before she could make it out of the room, I was already typing with fury into the phone, scouring through search engines for the word "Mictlán."

RHINOCEROS

"About the stele that stands at the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Mexico City: It exists squeezed between the church of Santiago de Tlatelolco, rows of mid-rise apartment buildings, and the ruins of the Aztec empire. The stele pushes itself up from the ground like a magical object, filled with men's words and runes that are readable to those of us who speak Spanish. In this stele, we recognize that this plaza was a place of life, and much death. Mexico's ancient marketplace was once converted into a place of violence during the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968. Today it flourishes as the home of the twenty-first-century Mexico. It is in this very spot that the masked identity of the Mexican people lies hidden, yet also exposed through the power of language." –Architect Carlo Fuente,
Journal of Architecture and Design
,
Vol. 56, May, 2012. p.89.