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Organised by
RogerDodger
Word limit
2000–8000
The Burning of the Hanged Man
Mai Yamada stuffed her deck of tarot cards back into her bag. They’d shown her the same cards. The same cards as every day. She wondered whether she ought to just take these three cards with her; at least it would make her bag a little lighter. The corners of her mouth made an unfamiliar twitch upward before reality reasserted itself. There were about ten minutes left until homeroom started, and she’d rather spend them someplace else.
She picked up her book from her desk, and in a few seconds the world around her changed: The unheated classroom that smelled of chalk and citrus cleaning agent, along with the incessant jabbering of her classmates, gave way to a wooden hall that was heated by a large, crackling fire. Men had assembled that would ride out into battle, defending the lands of mankind against the forces of evil.
“Ferthu Théoden hál! Receive now this cup and drink in happy hour.” She passed a cup to her king, then to his guests in turn. When she stood before the mightiest of them, awe and excitement made her tremble. As she looked up into his eyes, he said—
“Attention, class!” The shift from Edoras back to Tokyo was abrupt and painful. The general murmur had settled down, and the teacher was standing in front of the class. He wasn’t alone, however…
“Welcome back to school. I hope you all have had a pleasant summer vacations. Before we continue though, let me introduce Kevin Duran here.” The teacher indicated to his left where a boy was standing. “He’s a foreign exchange student who’ll be joining us for the next six months.” the teacher said.
The exchange student, a brown-haired westerner, waved. “Hello everyone, I’m Kevin.” Then, he seemed to remember where he was: “Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!” He bowed. “That’s what you say, right?” He grinned defensively.
The teacher nodded to him with a kind smile, then turned to the class again. “He speaks some basic Japanese, but it would be best if a pupil with good English took care of him.”
A few heads turned to Mai, who in turn tried to slip down her chair without obviously looking as though she was trying to hide. Suzume Hashimoto, one of the popular girls at the other end of the class room, raised her hand, and Mai let out a silent sigh of relief. “Yamada-san has top grades in English. She reads all sorts of foreign books, too.”
Mai’s heart skipped a beat, and she shot a glance of pure horror at Suzume, who was smiling at her with a smile that did not extend to her eyes.
“Well then,” the teacher said. “I’ll be entrusting him to you, Yamada-san.”
Mai opened her mouth, but did not find the heart to protest. Kevin slumped down in the seat next to her and stretched out a hand: “Kevin. Pleased to meet you.” Even over the murmur that had started while Kevin walked to his seat, Mai could hear Suzume giggling. Mai thought of an idiom she once read, and thought Kevin should’ve read it, too. Then, she rearranged it in her head, and for the second time this day, the corners of her mouth twitched upward: When faced with Romans, do as the Romans do. She reached for Kevin’s hand and shook it, her own trembling ever so slightly.
Kevin didn’t need any help during the lessons, which surprised Mai. After his short introduction, he hadn’t seemed that fluent in Japanese at all; she had misjudged him.
When the bell sounded for lunch break, Mai lifted up her book, ready to disappear to Middle-earth again, but Kevin stopped her: “So reading Lord of the Rings, huh?”
Mai nodded, lowering her book again and looking at him.
“So, uhm… do you like other books, too?”
“Only fantasy,” Mai said.
“Oh, why?”
Mai hesitated for a moment, looking at the ceiling to think. “Because the hero always conquers fate, I guess.”
“Hah, that’s interesting.” He smiled. “Thinking about it, I guess you’re right. It’s the complete opposite of the classical plays with tragic heroes. You know, Hamlet, etc.”
“I’ve never seen one of those.” Mai said.
“What? Isn’t there a theatre club at this school?”
“Yes, there is, but —”
“That’s the one we’ll join, then,” Kevin said, a big smile spreading across his face.
“Wha… we?”
“Why, of course we. I was gonna ask you for that club anyway. Always did theatre back in the US. Now it’s settled though.”
“But why me, too?”
“I need you. I didn’t get a word that guy said. What was the subject, anyway?”
Mai’s jaw dropped. “Why didn’t you ask?”
“Hardly could’ve asked you to just translate the whole lecture, could I.”
“But… how are you gonna learn?” Mai asked.
He grinned. “Ah, I’ll study up, don’t worry. Theatre I take seriously, though. You’ll help me, right?”
“Uh…”
“Pretty please?”
Mai could tell that the face Kevin made was probably his interpretation of puppy eyes, but he failed so miserably that she couldn’t help but grin. “Alright.”
Mai hadn’t been involved in club activities last year. She’d been to the literature club once, but they were different: they read books for new ideas, and to discuss them. All she wanted to do was read. There was no club compatible with her.
Yet now, she was heading to the theatre club. A club about expressing oneself, of grand gestures. Things felt a bit surreal as she walked down the corridors, but Kevin had basically ambushed her when school had finished. Had he known where it was, she was sure he would’ve grabbed her hand and dragged her there.
Mai had braced for a large group of people, probably in the middle of a recital, but when they got to the club room, the door was wide open. She knocked anyway. “Excuse the disruption…” she said and looked inside. The room was smaller than she’d thought, but on second glance, that was only because all the walls were lined with props and other stuff: fake stones, trees, and buildings, all painted on wood or cardboard. A large wardrobe with an assortment of costumes had an entire wall for itself, along with a shelf featuring hats, helmets, swords, and shields. In the back of the room was a raised platform that was momentarily closed off by a large, red curtain: the stage.
Mai looked around for what was probably an impolite amount of time before she acknowledged the two senior students, a boy and a girl, sitting at a desk in the middle of the room. The boy had raised his head, smiling at her. When their eyes met, he said: “Come on in, we’re just doing registration today.”
Kevin and Mai went up to the desk.
“I’m Harada, the president of this club, and this is Iori, our secretary.” He indicated the girl sitting at the desk next to him, but she didn’t look up from her paperwork. “And you are…?”
“Yamada, Mai and Duran, Kevin,” Mai said. “Duran-kun is—”
“Call me Kevin,” Kevin interjected and took a step forward.
“Oh, American, huh?” the president asked, switching to English in an instant.
“Yep.”
“That’s interesting!” The president got up from his seat and went around the desk towards Kevin. “ I’ve always wanted to do a show in Engl—”
The secretary cut in: “the majority of members would object, Harada-san.”
“Ah,” the president waved a hand at her. “Don’t be a killjoy. I’m sure we can convince them, can’t we? What do you say, Duran-kun?”
Kevin gave him the thumbs up. “Sure we can.” He stretched out a hand toward the president.
The president took it. “Opposed to a classic? Let’s say, Shakespeare?”
Kevin shook his head. “No objections.”
“Alright!” The president said. “Yamada-san?” he looked towards Mai, who’d been trying to sneak out the club doing one silent back step at a time.
“Uh… I don’t really know,” she said, “I’m not really a theatre person.“
“But you do want to join our club, right?”
“I’m more of a book person, so…”
“Oh, but don’t tell me,” the president said as he approached her, “that you haven’t read a story yet that felt real to you. A story that transported you to another place, putting you into the shoes of one of its characters.” He was standing right in front of Mai now.
Mai just stood there, dumbstruck.
“That is what theatre is all about.” He turned to point towards the stage behind him. “On this stage, the story comes alive, and you become one of its characters. The only difference is that you don’t have to only convince yourself, but others, too. Do you think you can do that, Yamada-san?”
“I don’t know…”
“Then, we’ll see. Please come back after school tomorrow.” The president looked at Mai and Kevin in turn. “We’ll announce the play and start with assigning roles right away.”
With that, Mai and Kevin went to leave, but before they could, someone else blocked the doorway: tall, good-looking and a look of mixed surprise and scorn on her face. “Oh, Yamada-san. What brings you and our new exchange student here of all places?” Suzume asked.
“Hello Hashimoto-san. Duran-kun wanted to join the theatre club, so…”
“So he dragged you here, huh? Don’t tell me you’re going to join, too,” she said, smiling coldly.
Mai folded her arms in front of her chest. “I am. So?”
Suzume laughed. “Oh, nothing. Go ahead and make a fool out of yourself for all I care. Well then, see ya.” With that, she pushed past Mai and Kevin.
“I didn’t get that all,” Kevin said as they went out of the room and set out on their way home, “but that girl doesn’t really like you, does she?”
“No.” Mai said.
Mai’s ride home didn’t take more than half an hour, but it was still too long. She and Kevin had parted at the train station, and the railway car was too crowded to read, which meant she was alone with her thoughts. Her mind wandered between her tarot cards, the awkward situation at school, and what was yet to come.
The way from the train station home was short, and she went almost on autopilot. Mai told herself this was due to having walked that way so many times before, but in truth, she felt as though the house was a void, or a vortex, sucking her in. As she stood before it, the apparent wealth and good spirits its facade portrayed were in stark contrast to the emptiness she felt.
“I’m home,” Mai said as she opened the door and took off her shoes in the hallway. On socks, she slid over the cold floor tiles into the kitchen where her mother stood, already working on today’s dinner.
“Welcome home,” Mai’s mother said without turning to face her, stirring something in a pot on the stove. “You’re late today. Did something interesting happen at school?”
Mai hesitated for a moment, then said: “Nothing.”
Mai’s mother stopped her stirring for a second, her shoulders slumping. Then, she continued. “You’d better go to your room and do your homework. I’ll call you for dinner. Your father will be late again.”
This time, Mai did not answer but simple turned and went for her room. When she'd already left the kitchen, her mother added: “Your father is under a lot of stress recently, you know?”
Mai stopped in her tracks. “I know.” Then, she went up to her room and got started on her homework.
The mouse had dug its hole deep, deep beneath the soil where the young plants tried to grow. The mouse didn’t like the hole, but it was safe there. It cowered, surrounded by darkness and the sound from the surface muffled by layers and layers of dirt. Still, it heard the approaching Minotaur, and closed its eyes for one additional layer of protection.
The mouse waited and shivered, and tried to make no sound. It wanted to scream to not hear the Minotaur’s pounding. It wanted to struggle and run to not feel the shock waves as the young plants were stomped, one by one. But what use would it be. All the mouse could do was go and tend to the broken ones once it was over. Each time, there was one that never grew back, and the mouse feared that one day, it would be faced with a barren wasteland that would give no nourishment, and it would have to perish, too.
Mai sat in her chair, oblivious to the increasing noise around her as the number of students waiting for class to begin increased. She laid out three tarot cards for her usual question: The Moon, Eight of Swords, The Hanged Man. Usual question, usual answer. She was about the put them away when a hand on her shoulder made her freeze.
“Morning. Whatcha doing there?” Kevin let go of her shoulder, moved his own chair right next to her and dropped into it, looking at the deck of cards in her hand.
“Just… laying cards,” Mai said, staring at her desk.
“Man,” Kevin said, “You look as though you’d seen a ghost.”
Mai looked up, seeing Kevin’s face up close and worried.
“Bad cards?”
Mai hesitated, then nodded.
“You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”
Mai looked at him. “You don’t believe in fate?”
Kevin shook his head. “Didn’t you say just yesterday you liked your books because the heroes conquered fate?”
“Yes, but that’s why it’s fantasy, isn’t it?”
Kevin laughed. “No, silly. The fate thing is the fantasy part. C’mon, lay my cards, I’ll prove them wrong.”
Mai blinked a few times, then said: “I need a question for that.”
“Uhm… alright. What will this afternoon’s try-out in the theatre club bring me?”
Mai took her deck of cards and laid three of them in a row: The Sun, Fortitude, Page of Cups.
“So what do they mean?” Kevin asked.
Mai had to think hard to answer that; it had been some time since she’d seen any of these cards. “The Sun means success or fame, Fortitude means good health, and Page of Cups a new friend. You were born under a good star, huh?”
Kevin laughed again. “Well, I just try to make the best of situations, but stars? C’mon.” He shrugged. “We’ll see what happens.” He moved his chair back to his own desk.
“So, what are you going to do during class today? Pretend you understand everything again?” Mai asked, putting her deck of cards away, wishing they’d ever shown her a good fortune such as this.
“I told you I’d be studying up, didn’t I?” He looked at her in mock outrage, then grinned. “Yeah, probably. What’s the subject, anyway?”
“Math,” she said, grinning back and shaking her head.
“Hey, I might actually get some of it, then,” Kevin said and gave her the thumbs up.
After school had finished, Kevin waited for Mai in the corridor, and they both went to the theatre club room together. The room, stuffed with props but mostly empty of people last time, was packed to the brim today.
The room when silent when the large curtain shutting off the stage opened, revealing the club president. “Dear fellow students and theatre enthusiasts,” he addressed the crowd. “Let me welcome you to another semester at the theatre club. This time, I’ve given long and careful thought to the nature of the play we should perform, and I’ve decided that we will leave the realm of modern arts and chose a classical piece you should all be familiar with: Romeo and Juliet.”
A low murmur went through the crowd, and Mai saw some students look at each other, rolling their eyes or making grimaces.
“However,” the president continued, obviously amused by mumbling of his club members, “to spice it up and not bore our fellow students, I’ve decided that we should add another educational layer to our performance and also deepen our understanding of the original work. The play will be performed in its original language: English!”
The murmuring intensified. Some students raised their voice in protest. Some already went for the door again.
“To help us with this monstrous task, we’ll be joined by Kevin Duran, a foreign exchange student. He’ll help us in diction and translation. Duran-kun, would you come up here and introduce yourself?”
Kevin left Mai’s side and went for the stage. The crowd had gone silent again, and the people who’d been trying to leave were rooted to the floor. Mai made a mental note. The Sun: check.
Kevin didn’t bother going for the small stairs that led up the stage, but pushed himself up from the front. He looked extremely cool. Then, he stood next to the president, bowed deeply, and said in flawless Japanese: “I’m looking forward to working together with you. Let’s do our best!” Someone started clapping. Others joined in, and in the end, Mai only noticed a few boys who didn’t applaud but looked rather grumpy. None of them left, however.
“Now that’s settled,” the president continued as Kevin waved and made his way to the stairs to get off the stage, “I’ve prepared a sheet with a few lines of dialogue for each character, they can be found—”
A sharp, drawn in breath from the front of the crowd cut the president short, followed by a loud crash. A girl screamed. Mai shouldered her way through the crowd and found Kevin on the floor. With some effort, he stood up. “I’m good. Nothing’s broken,” he said and tried to take a step forward, but nearly fell. Mai took his arm to support him.
“Stop.” The secretary had moved from the crowd and seemed to be assessing Kevin. “Your trousers are ripped and your knee is bleeding. You should go to the infirmary and take care of that.” She looked at Mai. “I presume you’ll take him?”
Mai nodded. The secretary nodded in turn and moved aside, and, Mai supporting a limping Kevin, they made their way through the crowd, out of the club room and towards the infirmary.
“Man, that really hurt,” Kevin said once they were out of earshot from the club room.
“It’s not far, hang in there.”
“I think I can walk on my own,” Kevin said and tried to free his arm from around Mai’s shoulders, but she didn’t let go.
The door to the infirmary was open, but at this time of day, there was no staff around. Mai sat Kevin down on one of the stretchers and went looking for a disinfectant to clean up the gash in his knee.
“You know, I’m feeling kinda good about this, though.”
“What exactly?” Mai asked, searching through a shelf with an assortment of bottles.
“This whole hurting myself thing,” Kevin said.
Mai, who’d found the right bottle and had turned back to face him stopped in her tracks. “What?!”
“Yeah, cause I proved you wrong, didn’t I?” He said, grinning triumphantly.
Mai shook her head at this silliness, then shook the bottle and uncapped it, kneeling down to face Kevin’s knee.
“What were the cards? Success, good health—Ouch!” He yelped as she sprayed the disinfectant on his wound. “And a new friend, right?”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s what they said.”
“Two out of three, then.” Kevin said. “Cause success and a new friend I got; thank you for your help.”
Mai wanted to say ‘you’re welcome’, or ‘it was nothing’, but she did not trust her tongue, and thus remained silent.
“Well then,” he said and got up. “Back to the club room. I have an audition to win as the first limping Romeo in the history of theatre.”
Mai could not help but grin, and did not object.
The mouse was covering its ears as the pounding went on and on, destroying the little nourishment the soil could provide. It wanted to cry out: ‘Stop!’ It wanted to plead: ‘Why?’
A vision crept up in the mouse’s mind, of days when the churned up earth outside had been a garden of peace and plenty. A vision of days when both mouse and Minotaur had nursed the trees and crops, and what little harm would be done by carelessness and neglect would be negligible in comparison to the growth and support. The mouse remembered, and again the question crept up: ‘why?’
It wouldn’t go away this time, and in rhythm with the shock waves that shook the mouse’s world, it repeated it its head. ‘why?’, ‘why?’, ‘why?’, ‘Why?’, ‘WHY?’
At last, the mouse cried out loud, up towards the surface, through layers and layers of dirt, where wrath reigned. The earth went still for a second before the pounding resumed, lost to pleading, set on wilful destruction alone. The mouse clenched its eyes shut, covered its ears again, and waited for it to stop.
At breakfast the next day, Mai was reading through the copy of Romeo and Juliet she’d borrowed from the library after auditions had been over. It had not surprised her that Kevin had landed the role as Romeo, but she wasn’t as happy with all of the other nominations.
“Reading Romeo and Juliet, are you?” her mother, sitting on the other side of the large dining room table, asked softly.
Mai nodded.
“How come? Don’t tell me you decided to join a club after all?”
Mai hesitated, then nodded again.
“That’s wonderful, dear,” Mai’s mother said. She reached out and put a hand on Mai’s forearm. Mai knew it was meant as an affectionate gesture, but the warmth she felt under her mother’s touch burned and disgusted her.
She pulled her arm away. “Don’t touch me, please.”
Her mother’s arm remained outstretched for a short moment, then was pulled back. “I’m sorry.”
Mai looked up from her book and at her mother. The sad face with its deep worry lines… she wanted to hit it, and her pulse shot up until the pounding in her ears threatened to consume her. She tightened her grip on the book in her hands, the sharp edges of the hard cover biting into her palm, until the pain made the numbness in her head go away.
Then, she asked her mother the all-consuming question. She’d asked time and again, but never had she gotten an answer: “Why?”
Her mother looked up at her, shock and grief mingled as one in the familiar face. She looked away again, her lower lip trembling. Mai got up from the table, grabbed her school bag and went into the hallway. She tied her shoes to the sound of her mother’s sobs, and welcomed the thud of the door that closed off the air of helplessness that filled her home.
It was another twenty minutes until class started, and Kevin wasn’t here yet. Otherwise, he would’ve talked to her, distracted her. Mai hesitated for a moment, then grabbed for her deck of tarot cards. The usual question, the usual answer: The Moon, Eight of Swords, The Hanged Man.
Yet, Kevin had proven them wrong… at least partially, hadn’t he? She wondered…
How will this afternoon’s theatre club rehearsal go? She laid out the cards. Five of Coins, Ten of Swords, Queen of Coins: Loss of self-esteem, failure, dark haired woman with dark eyes. It seemed as though the stars did not like her, but that was alright; she didn’t like them either. If they could be proven wrong, she’d do it herself this time.
Mai rose from a deep slumber, and found herself lying on an altar. All her hope for a future with her true beloved vanished from her as she found him dead by her side, the cup of hemlock drained. Desperate to not have to live without him, she dove for his lips, hoping a drop of poison would still cling to them. A last kiss—
“Yamada-san, quit dreaming!”
“Duck!” Kevin’s warning came too late, and a piece of chalk hit Mai squarely on the forehead.
“I know school’s nearly over, but this goes too far.” A collective snicker went through the class as the teacher resumed his lecture. At the other end of the room, Suzume was grinning at her, then made a kissing motion. Mai turned red as a lobster.
The history lecture went on for another ten minutes, in which Mai frantically tried to get a her face to take on a normal colour. After class had finished, Kevin waited for Mai in the corridor again, as he had for the last two days, too. The way to the club room felt excruciatingly long this time, as Mai couldn’t stop thinking about what the cards had shown her this morning, and how she had resolved to challenge them.
In the club room were fewer people today, as the president wanted to get the crucial scenes from the main characters done first, and worry about the fluff later. That left a few onlookers for feedback, Mai, Kevin, the president, and Suzume, who had been chosen to play Juliet.
“Watch and learn,” Suzume commented as she passed Mai, who had taken seat among the onlookers, on her way to the stage.
“Alright, Ladies and Gentlemen. First up: Act 2, Scene 2, or also known as the balcony scene. Action!” The president announced, and the stage curtain opened to reveal Kevin, standing beneath the window of a fake house that, Mai knew, was just a cardboard wall with a ladder behind it. Suzume appeared in the window.
Throughout Kevin’s monologue, everything went well, but trouble started as soon Suzume’s was up.
“Ayu me!”
“Stop, stop,” the president cut her off. “It’s ‘Aye’, with the ‘e’ silent. If you turn it into a ‘u’, people will not understand you. Please continue.”
Kevin aced his role, but Suzume’s trouble continued. At times, Mai was hard put not to laugh out loud, and instead giggled as silently as she could at Mrs Popular's pronunciation. Suzume still noticed, and looked daggers at her whenever Kevin was talking.
“... Henceforth, I will never be Romeo,” Kevin recited.
“Wat man arut sou sat suss… besukureen’du?” Suzume stammered, raising an eyebrow at the sheet on which her text was written. Mai, keeping it in for longer than she’d even thought possible, burst out laughing. Some of the others joined in, but the damage was done.
“I want to see you do better!” Suzume shot at her in Japanese. She jumped from the small ladder behind the fake building, stomped down the stage’s staircase and tossed the script at Mai. Then, she folded her arms. “Go on, let me have a laugh, too.”
Mai’s heart sank. Loss of self-esteem, failure, dark haired woman with dark eyes. Well, at least she knew who that was. She decided against losing her self-esteem, though, and stood up.
With script in hand, she climbed onto the stage, got up the small ladder and looked out the window of the fake house. Then, it was a fake house no longer as the sweet scent of flowers and the distant lake were carried to her by a gentle breeze that wafted through night-time Verona in midsummer.
From below her window, a voice was raised: “I take thee at thy word; Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptised; Henceforth I never will be Romeo.”
Too readily the voice had followed her previous wishes, so she chose to mock its owner slightly: “What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night so stumblest on my counsel?”
The voice answered again: “By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy of thee; Had I it written, I would tear the word.”
Strong affection overwhelmed her as she'd heard that voice only once before, yet it felt so familiar: “My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue’s utterance, yet—”
“I get it, okay? We all get it. You’re good at English. That was your plan all along, wasn’t it? How did you convince them, huh?” Suzume practically foamed at the mouth.
The president raised his hand. “Actually, it was my idea.”
“Argh!” Suzume let out a cry of frustration, turned on her heels and stomped out the room.
As the door slammed shut, the president looked up at Mai who was only slowly finding her way back into reality again. “That was good,” he said. “I think we’ve found ourselves a new Juliet. Congratulations.”
Mai’s jaw dropped. She looked down the window at Kevin who was grinning at her and giving her the thumbs up. She jumped down the ladder, went around the fake building and lunged herself at him. “I did it!”
“Y-yes, you did it…?”
“I conquered my cards. I conquered fate,” she added, releasing him, but not letting go off his hands.
As new comprehension dawned on his face, his smile grew wider and he drew her back into a hug again. Some of the onlookers began to applaud at this exhibit of passion. Seconds turned to moments as Mai lost track of time, yet neither of them seemed to want to let go.
“Ehm,” the president cleared his throat, breaking Kevin and Mai apart in an instant. “Shall we continue with practice, then?”
The mouse didn’t wait in hiding today. No, the mouse waited out in the open, guarding the fruits of its labour and conquests. It was afraid, but not petrified. A gentle breeze rustled through the leaves of the newly grown plants, but it bore the stench of the Minotaur. The mouse knew it was probably hopeless, but it had to try.
“Minotaur!” the mouse addressed the approaching giant. It halted, and two red eyes fixed the mouse in their gaze. “You will ravage these lands no more. You are not welcome here,” the mouse said, its voice shaking slightly.
The Minotaur laughed, like a beast gone insane. “I BROUGHT FORTH THESE LANDS AND SHALL DO WITH THEM AS I PLEASE!”
“I said NO!”
“THEN TRY TO STOP ME!” the Minotaur answered and raised one of its huge hands, bringing it down towards the ground. In a split second, the mouse dodged the blow, and the hand came down on one of the newly grown crops.
The giant howled in pain as red fluid sprayed from a gash in its palm. Moving quick, the mouse pulled one of the other crops from the ground, for this time, it had planted steel. Bright lights engulfed it and brought forth a shield maiden. She raised her sword and faced the Minotaur with fierce eyes.
“Time and again I’ve asked you, but I realize now there was no answer,” the shield maiden grinned at the wounded Minotaur. “Hopes and dreams you have trampled. Now, the time of action is upon you.”
The maiden charged at the minotaur. It swung its good left hand at her, but she dodged beneath it, ramming her shoulder into the beast’s belly, toppling it. When it fell, she lunged forward once more, stepped onto its left arm and used all her weight as she drove her sword through its chest and into the ground beneath.
The beast screamed, spewing blood. “But… but I am…” the beast stammered, a pleading tone in its voice as its frantic eyes sought her’s.
“I care not for what you are, only for what you are becoming: a corpse,” she said and leaned on her sword again. The beast gave another yell, then went still as their eyes met. Time seemed to stand still as red and suffering stared into blue and hateful. Slowly, the light began to fade from the Minotaur’s eyes, and the maiden stared into the abyss they left behind.
Mai sat on the dining table, cross legged. She’d lit no lights but the one right in front of her, which cast shadows encircled by orange auras at the white walls of the pristine and wealthy home. The fire, which she had built from a few chopsticks, paper waste, and one of the chairs, was burning high, charring the ceiling, but she did not care.
One after the other, she tossed her tarot cards into the flames and watched them be consumed. When only one was left, she paused. The card depicted gallows, and a man dangling from a rope. She’d seen this card countless times and savoured the moment she’d be seeing it for the last time. When she finally tossed it into the fire, too, her thumb had left a red fingerprint on the hanged man’s face. Mai smiled.
She picked up her book from her desk, and in a few seconds the world around her changed: The unheated classroom that smelled of chalk and citrus cleaning agent, along with the incessant jabbering of her classmates, gave way to a wooden hall that was heated by a large, crackling fire. Men had assembled that would ride out into battle, defending the lands of mankind against the forces of evil.
“Ferthu Théoden hál! Receive now this cup and drink in happy hour.” She passed a cup to her king, then to his guests in turn. When she stood before the mightiest of them, awe and excitement made her tremble. As she looked up into his eyes, he said—
“Attention, class!” The shift from Edoras back to Tokyo was abrupt and painful. The general murmur had settled down, and the teacher was standing in front of the class. He wasn’t alone, however…
“Welcome back to school. I hope you all have had a pleasant summer vacations. Before we continue though, let me introduce Kevin Duran here.” The teacher indicated to his left where a boy was standing. “He’s a foreign exchange student who’ll be joining us for the next six months.” the teacher said.
The exchange student, a brown-haired westerner, waved. “Hello everyone, I’m Kevin.” Then, he seemed to remember where he was: “Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!” He bowed. “That’s what you say, right?” He grinned defensively.
The teacher nodded to him with a kind smile, then turned to the class again. “He speaks some basic Japanese, but it would be best if a pupil with good English took care of him.”
A few heads turned to Mai, who in turn tried to slip down her chair without obviously looking as though she was trying to hide. Suzume Hashimoto, one of the popular girls at the other end of the class room, raised her hand, and Mai let out a silent sigh of relief. “Yamada-san has top grades in English. She reads all sorts of foreign books, too.”
Mai’s heart skipped a beat, and she shot a glance of pure horror at Suzume, who was smiling at her with a smile that did not extend to her eyes.
“Well then,” the teacher said. “I’ll be entrusting him to you, Yamada-san.”
Mai opened her mouth, but did not find the heart to protest. Kevin slumped down in the seat next to her and stretched out a hand: “Kevin. Pleased to meet you.” Even over the murmur that had started while Kevin walked to his seat, Mai could hear Suzume giggling. Mai thought of an idiom she once read, and thought Kevin should’ve read it, too. Then, she rearranged it in her head, and for the second time this day, the corners of her mouth twitched upward: When faced with Romans, do as the Romans do. She reached for Kevin’s hand and shook it, her own trembling ever so slightly.
Kevin didn’t need any help during the lessons, which surprised Mai. After his short introduction, he hadn’t seemed that fluent in Japanese at all; she had misjudged him.
When the bell sounded for lunch break, Mai lifted up her book, ready to disappear to Middle-earth again, but Kevin stopped her: “So reading Lord of the Rings, huh?”
Mai nodded, lowering her book again and looking at him.
“So, uhm… do you like other books, too?”
“Only fantasy,” Mai said.
“Oh, why?”
Mai hesitated for a moment, looking at the ceiling to think. “Because the hero always conquers fate, I guess.”
“Hah, that’s interesting.” He smiled. “Thinking about it, I guess you’re right. It’s the complete opposite of the classical plays with tragic heroes. You know, Hamlet, etc.”
“I’ve never seen one of those.” Mai said.
“What? Isn’t there a theatre club at this school?”
“Yes, there is, but —”
“That’s the one we’ll join, then,” Kevin said, a big smile spreading across his face.
“Wha… we?”
“Why, of course we. I was gonna ask you for that club anyway. Always did theatre back in the US. Now it’s settled though.”
“But why me, too?”
“I need you. I didn’t get a word that guy said. What was the subject, anyway?”
Mai’s jaw dropped. “Why didn’t you ask?”
“Hardly could’ve asked you to just translate the whole lecture, could I.”
“But… how are you gonna learn?” Mai asked.
He grinned. “Ah, I’ll study up, don’t worry. Theatre I take seriously, though. You’ll help me, right?”
“Uh…”
“Pretty please?”
Mai could tell that the face Kevin made was probably his interpretation of puppy eyes, but he failed so miserably that she couldn’t help but grin. “Alright.”
Mai hadn’t been involved in club activities last year. She’d been to the literature club once, but they were different: they read books for new ideas, and to discuss them. All she wanted to do was read. There was no club compatible with her.
Yet now, she was heading to the theatre club. A club about expressing oneself, of grand gestures. Things felt a bit surreal as she walked down the corridors, but Kevin had basically ambushed her when school had finished. Had he known where it was, she was sure he would’ve grabbed her hand and dragged her there.
Mai had braced for a large group of people, probably in the middle of a recital, but when they got to the club room, the door was wide open. She knocked anyway. “Excuse the disruption…” she said and looked inside. The room was smaller than she’d thought, but on second glance, that was only because all the walls were lined with props and other stuff: fake stones, trees, and buildings, all painted on wood or cardboard. A large wardrobe with an assortment of costumes had an entire wall for itself, along with a shelf featuring hats, helmets, swords, and shields. In the back of the room was a raised platform that was momentarily closed off by a large, red curtain: the stage.
Mai looked around for what was probably an impolite amount of time before she acknowledged the two senior students, a boy and a girl, sitting at a desk in the middle of the room. The boy had raised his head, smiling at her. When their eyes met, he said: “Come on in, we’re just doing registration today.”
Kevin and Mai went up to the desk.
“I’m Harada, the president of this club, and this is Iori, our secretary.” He indicated the girl sitting at the desk next to him, but she didn’t look up from her paperwork. “And you are…?”
“Yamada, Mai and Duran, Kevin,” Mai said. “Duran-kun is—”
“Call me Kevin,” Kevin interjected and took a step forward.
“Oh, American, huh?” the president asked, switching to English in an instant.
“Yep.”
“That’s interesting!” The president got up from his seat and went around the desk towards Kevin. “ I’ve always wanted to do a show in Engl—”
The secretary cut in: “the majority of members would object, Harada-san.”
“Ah,” the president waved a hand at her. “Don’t be a killjoy. I’m sure we can convince them, can’t we? What do you say, Duran-kun?”
Kevin gave him the thumbs up. “Sure we can.” He stretched out a hand toward the president.
The president took it. “Opposed to a classic? Let’s say, Shakespeare?”
Kevin shook his head. “No objections.”
“Alright!” The president said. “Yamada-san?” he looked towards Mai, who’d been trying to sneak out the club doing one silent back step at a time.
“Uh… I don’t really know,” she said, “I’m not really a theatre person.“
“But you do want to join our club, right?”
“I’m more of a book person, so…”
“Oh, but don’t tell me,” the president said as he approached her, “that you haven’t read a story yet that felt real to you. A story that transported you to another place, putting you into the shoes of one of its characters.” He was standing right in front of Mai now.
Mai just stood there, dumbstruck.
“That is what theatre is all about.” He turned to point towards the stage behind him. “On this stage, the story comes alive, and you become one of its characters. The only difference is that you don’t have to only convince yourself, but others, too. Do you think you can do that, Yamada-san?”
“I don’t know…”
“Then, we’ll see. Please come back after school tomorrow.” The president looked at Mai and Kevin in turn. “We’ll announce the play and start with assigning roles right away.”
With that, Mai and Kevin went to leave, but before they could, someone else blocked the doorway: tall, good-looking and a look of mixed surprise and scorn on her face. “Oh, Yamada-san. What brings you and our new exchange student here of all places?” Suzume asked.
“Hello Hashimoto-san. Duran-kun wanted to join the theatre club, so…”
“So he dragged you here, huh? Don’t tell me you’re going to join, too,” she said, smiling coldly.
Mai folded her arms in front of her chest. “I am. So?”
Suzume laughed. “Oh, nothing. Go ahead and make a fool out of yourself for all I care. Well then, see ya.” With that, she pushed past Mai and Kevin.
“I didn’t get that all,” Kevin said as they went out of the room and set out on their way home, “but that girl doesn’t really like you, does she?”
“No.” Mai said.
Mai’s ride home didn’t take more than half an hour, but it was still too long. She and Kevin had parted at the train station, and the railway car was too crowded to read, which meant she was alone with her thoughts. Her mind wandered between her tarot cards, the awkward situation at school, and what was yet to come.
The way from the train station home was short, and she went almost on autopilot. Mai told herself this was due to having walked that way so many times before, but in truth, she felt as though the house was a void, or a vortex, sucking her in. As she stood before it, the apparent wealth and good spirits its facade portrayed were in stark contrast to the emptiness she felt.
“I’m home,” Mai said as she opened the door and took off her shoes in the hallway. On socks, she slid over the cold floor tiles into the kitchen where her mother stood, already working on today’s dinner.
“Welcome home,” Mai’s mother said without turning to face her, stirring something in a pot on the stove. “You’re late today. Did something interesting happen at school?”
Mai hesitated for a moment, then said: “Nothing.”
Mai’s mother stopped her stirring for a second, her shoulders slumping. Then, she continued. “You’d better go to your room and do your homework. I’ll call you for dinner. Your father will be late again.”
This time, Mai did not answer but simple turned and went for her room. When she'd already left the kitchen, her mother added: “Your father is under a lot of stress recently, you know?”
Mai stopped in her tracks. “I know.” Then, she went up to her room and got started on her homework.
The mouse had dug its hole deep, deep beneath the soil where the young plants tried to grow. The mouse didn’t like the hole, but it was safe there. It cowered, surrounded by darkness and the sound from the surface muffled by layers and layers of dirt. Still, it heard the approaching Minotaur, and closed its eyes for one additional layer of protection.
The mouse waited and shivered, and tried to make no sound. It wanted to scream to not hear the Minotaur’s pounding. It wanted to struggle and run to not feel the shock waves as the young plants were stomped, one by one. But what use would it be. All the mouse could do was go and tend to the broken ones once it was over. Each time, there was one that never grew back, and the mouse feared that one day, it would be faced with a barren wasteland that would give no nourishment, and it would have to perish, too.
Mai sat in her chair, oblivious to the increasing noise around her as the number of students waiting for class to begin increased. She laid out three tarot cards for her usual question: The Moon, Eight of Swords, The Hanged Man. Usual question, usual answer. She was about the put them away when a hand on her shoulder made her freeze.
“Morning. Whatcha doing there?” Kevin let go of her shoulder, moved his own chair right next to her and dropped into it, looking at the deck of cards in her hand.
“Just… laying cards,” Mai said, staring at her desk.
“Man,” Kevin said, “You look as though you’d seen a ghost.”
Mai looked up, seeing Kevin’s face up close and worried.
“Bad cards?”
Mai hesitated, then nodded.
“You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”
Mai looked at him. “You don’t believe in fate?”
Kevin shook his head. “Didn’t you say just yesterday you liked your books because the heroes conquered fate?”
“Yes, but that’s why it’s fantasy, isn’t it?”
Kevin laughed. “No, silly. The fate thing is the fantasy part. C’mon, lay my cards, I’ll prove them wrong.”
Mai blinked a few times, then said: “I need a question for that.”
“Uhm… alright. What will this afternoon’s try-out in the theatre club bring me?”
Mai took her deck of cards and laid three of them in a row: The Sun, Fortitude, Page of Cups.
“So what do they mean?” Kevin asked.
Mai had to think hard to answer that; it had been some time since she’d seen any of these cards. “The Sun means success or fame, Fortitude means good health, and Page of Cups a new friend. You were born under a good star, huh?”
Kevin laughed again. “Well, I just try to make the best of situations, but stars? C’mon.” He shrugged. “We’ll see what happens.” He moved his chair back to his own desk.
“So, what are you going to do during class today? Pretend you understand everything again?” Mai asked, putting her deck of cards away, wishing they’d ever shown her a good fortune such as this.
“I told you I’d be studying up, didn’t I?” He looked at her in mock outrage, then grinned. “Yeah, probably. What’s the subject, anyway?”
“Math,” she said, grinning back and shaking her head.
“Hey, I might actually get some of it, then,” Kevin said and gave her the thumbs up.
After school had finished, Kevin waited for Mai in the corridor, and they both went to the theatre club room together. The room, stuffed with props but mostly empty of people last time, was packed to the brim today.
The room when silent when the large curtain shutting off the stage opened, revealing the club president. “Dear fellow students and theatre enthusiasts,” he addressed the crowd. “Let me welcome you to another semester at the theatre club. This time, I’ve given long and careful thought to the nature of the play we should perform, and I’ve decided that we will leave the realm of modern arts and chose a classical piece you should all be familiar with: Romeo and Juliet.”
A low murmur went through the crowd, and Mai saw some students look at each other, rolling their eyes or making grimaces.
“However,” the president continued, obviously amused by mumbling of his club members, “to spice it up and not bore our fellow students, I’ve decided that we should add another educational layer to our performance and also deepen our understanding of the original work. The play will be performed in its original language: English!”
The murmuring intensified. Some students raised their voice in protest. Some already went for the door again.
“To help us with this monstrous task, we’ll be joined by Kevin Duran, a foreign exchange student. He’ll help us in diction and translation. Duran-kun, would you come up here and introduce yourself?”
Kevin left Mai’s side and went for the stage. The crowd had gone silent again, and the people who’d been trying to leave were rooted to the floor. Mai made a mental note. The Sun: check.
Kevin didn’t bother going for the small stairs that led up the stage, but pushed himself up from the front. He looked extremely cool. Then, he stood next to the president, bowed deeply, and said in flawless Japanese: “I’m looking forward to working together with you. Let’s do our best!” Someone started clapping. Others joined in, and in the end, Mai only noticed a few boys who didn’t applaud but looked rather grumpy. None of them left, however.
“Now that’s settled,” the president continued as Kevin waved and made his way to the stairs to get off the stage, “I’ve prepared a sheet with a few lines of dialogue for each character, they can be found—”
A sharp, drawn in breath from the front of the crowd cut the president short, followed by a loud crash. A girl screamed. Mai shouldered her way through the crowd and found Kevin on the floor. With some effort, he stood up. “I’m good. Nothing’s broken,” he said and tried to take a step forward, but nearly fell. Mai took his arm to support him.
“Stop.” The secretary had moved from the crowd and seemed to be assessing Kevin. “Your trousers are ripped and your knee is bleeding. You should go to the infirmary and take care of that.” She looked at Mai. “I presume you’ll take him?”
Mai nodded. The secretary nodded in turn and moved aside, and, Mai supporting a limping Kevin, they made their way through the crowd, out of the club room and towards the infirmary.
“Man, that really hurt,” Kevin said once they were out of earshot from the club room.
“It’s not far, hang in there.”
“I think I can walk on my own,” Kevin said and tried to free his arm from around Mai’s shoulders, but she didn’t let go.
The door to the infirmary was open, but at this time of day, there was no staff around. Mai sat Kevin down on one of the stretchers and went looking for a disinfectant to clean up the gash in his knee.
“You know, I’m feeling kinda good about this, though.”
“What exactly?” Mai asked, searching through a shelf with an assortment of bottles.
“This whole hurting myself thing,” Kevin said.
Mai, who’d found the right bottle and had turned back to face him stopped in her tracks. “What?!”
“Yeah, cause I proved you wrong, didn’t I?” He said, grinning triumphantly.
Mai shook her head at this silliness, then shook the bottle and uncapped it, kneeling down to face Kevin’s knee.
“What were the cards? Success, good health—Ouch!” He yelped as she sprayed the disinfectant on his wound. “And a new friend, right?”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s what they said.”
“Two out of three, then.” Kevin said. “Cause success and a new friend I got; thank you for your help.”
Mai wanted to say ‘you’re welcome’, or ‘it was nothing’, but she did not trust her tongue, and thus remained silent.
“Well then,” he said and got up. “Back to the club room. I have an audition to win as the first limping Romeo in the history of theatre.”
Mai could not help but grin, and did not object.
The mouse was covering its ears as the pounding went on and on, destroying the little nourishment the soil could provide. It wanted to cry out: ‘Stop!’ It wanted to plead: ‘Why?’
A vision crept up in the mouse’s mind, of days when the churned up earth outside had been a garden of peace and plenty. A vision of days when both mouse and Minotaur had nursed the trees and crops, and what little harm would be done by carelessness and neglect would be negligible in comparison to the growth and support. The mouse remembered, and again the question crept up: ‘why?’
It wouldn’t go away this time, and in rhythm with the shock waves that shook the mouse’s world, it repeated it its head. ‘why?’, ‘why?’, ‘why?’, ‘Why?’, ‘WHY?’
At last, the mouse cried out loud, up towards the surface, through layers and layers of dirt, where wrath reigned. The earth went still for a second before the pounding resumed, lost to pleading, set on wilful destruction alone. The mouse clenched its eyes shut, covered its ears again, and waited for it to stop.
At breakfast the next day, Mai was reading through the copy of Romeo and Juliet she’d borrowed from the library after auditions had been over. It had not surprised her that Kevin had landed the role as Romeo, but she wasn’t as happy with all of the other nominations.
“Reading Romeo and Juliet, are you?” her mother, sitting on the other side of the large dining room table, asked softly.
Mai nodded.
“How come? Don’t tell me you decided to join a club after all?”
Mai hesitated, then nodded again.
“That’s wonderful, dear,” Mai’s mother said. She reached out and put a hand on Mai’s forearm. Mai knew it was meant as an affectionate gesture, but the warmth she felt under her mother’s touch burned and disgusted her.
She pulled her arm away. “Don’t touch me, please.”
Her mother’s arm remained outstretched for a short moment, then was pulled back. “I’m sorry.”
Mai looked up from her book and at her mother. The sad face with its deep worry lines… she wanted to hit it, and her pulse shot up until the pounding in her ears threatened to consume her. She tightened her grip on the book in her hands, the sharp edges of the hard cover biting into her palm, until the pain made the numbness in her head go away.
Then, she asked her mother the all-consuming question. She’d asked time and again, but never had she gotten an answer: “Why?”
Her mother looked up at her, shock and grief mingled as one in the familiar face. She looked away again, her lower lip trembling. Mai got up from the table, grabbed her school bag and went into the hallway. She tied her shoes to the sound of her mother’s sobs, and welcomed the thud of the door that closed off the air of helplessness that filled her home.
It was another twenty minutes until class started, and Kevin wasn’t here yet. Otherwise, he would’ve talked to her, distracted her. Mai hesitated for a moment, then grabbed for her deck of tarot cards. The usual question, the usual answer: The Moon, Eight of Swords, The Hanged Man.
Yet, Kevin had proven them wrong… at least partially, hadn’t he? She wondered…
How will this afternoon’s theatre club rehearsal go? She laid out the cards. Five of Coins, Ten of Swords, Queen of Coins: Loss of self-esteem, failure, dark haired woman with dark eyes. It seemed as though the stars did not like her, but that was alright; she didn’t like them either. If they could be proven wrong, she’d do it herself this time.
Mai rose from a deep slumber, and found herself lying on an altar. All her hope for a future with her true beloved vanished from her as she found him dead by her side, the cup of hemlock drained. Desperate to not have to live without him, she dove for his lips, hoping a drop of poison would still cling to them. A last kiss—
“Yamada-san, quit dreaming!”
“Duck!” Kevin’s warning came too late, and a piece of chalk hit Mai squarely on the forehead.
“I know school’s nearly over, but this goes too far.” A collective snicker went through the class as the teacher resumed his lecture. At the other end of the room, Suzume was grinning at her, then made a kissing motion. Mai turned red as a lobster.
The history lecture went on for another ten minutes, in which Mai frantically tried to get a her face to take on a normal colour. After class had finished, Kevin waited for Mai in the corridor again, as he had for the last two days, too. The way to the club room felt excruciatingly long this time, as Mai couldn’t stop thinking about what the cards had shown her this morning, and how she had resolved to challenge them.
In the club room were fewer people today, as the president wanted to get the crucial scenes from the main characters done first, and worry about the fluff later. That left a few onlookers for feedback, Mai, Kevin, the president, and Suzume, who had been chosen to play Juliet.
“Watch and learn,” Suzume commented as she passed Mai, who had taken seat among the onlookers, on her way to the stage.
“Alright, Ladies and Gentlemen. First up: Act 2, Scene 2, or also known as the balcony scene. Action!” The president announced, and the stage curtain opened to reveal Kevin, standing beneath the window of a fake house that, Mai knew, was just a cardboard wall with a ladder behind it. Suzume appeared in the window.
Throughout Kevin’s monologue, everything went well, but trouble started as soon Suzume’s was up.
“Ayu me!”
“Stop, stop,” the president cut her off. “It’s ‘Aye’, with the ‘e’ silent. If you turn it into a ‘u’, people will not understand you. Please continue.”
Kevin aced his role, but Suzume’s trouble continued. At times, Mai was hard put not to laugh out loud, and instead giggled as silently as she could at Mrs Popular's pronunciation. Suzume still noticed, and looked daggers at her whenever Kevin was talking.
“... Henceforth, I will never be Romeo,” Kevin recited.
“Wat man arut sou sat suss… besukureen’du?” Suzume stammered, raising an eyebrow at the sheet on which her text was written. Mai, keeping it in for longer than she’d even thought possible, burst out laughing. Some of the others joined in, but the damage was done.
“I want to see you do better!” Suzume shot at her in Japanese. She jumped from the small ladder behind the fake building, stomped down the stage’s staircase and tossed the script at Mai. Then, she folded her arms. “Go on, let me have a laugh, too.”
Mai’s heart sank. Loss of self-esteem, failure, dark haired woman with dark eyes. Well, at least she knew who that was. She decided against losing her self-esteem, though, and stood up.
With script in hand, she climbed onto the stage, got up the small ladder and looked out the window of the fake house. Then, it was a fake house no longer as the sweet scent of flowers and the distant lake were carried to her by a gentle breeze that wafted through night-time Verona in midsummer.
From below her window, a voice was raised: “I take thee at thy word; Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptised; Henceforth I never will be Romeo.”
Too readily the voice had followed her previous wishes, so she chose to mock its owner slightly: “What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night so stumblest on my counsel?”
The voice answered again: “By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy of thee; Had I it written, I would tear the word.”
Strong affection overwhelmed her as she'd heard that voice only once before, yet it felt so familiar: “My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue’s utterance, yet—”
“I get it, okay? We all get it. You’re good at English. That was your plan all along, wasn’t it? How did you convince them, huh?” Suzume practically foamed at the mouth.
The president raised his hand. “Actually, it was my idea.”
“Argh!” Suzume let out a cry of frustration, turned on her heels and stomped out the room.
As the door slammed shut, the president looked up at Mai who was only slowly finding her way back into reality again. “That was good,” he said. “I think we’ve found ourselves a new Juliet. Congratulations.”
Mai’s jaw dropped. She looked down the window at Kevin who was grinning at her and giving her the thumbs up. She jumped down the ladder, went around the fake building and lunged herself at him. “I did it!”
“Y-yes, you did it…?”
“I conquered my cards. I conquered fate,” she added, releasing him, but not letting go off his hands.
As new comprehension dawned on his face, his smile grew wider and he drew her back into a hug again. Some of the onlookers began to applaud at this exhibit of passion. Seconds turned to moments as Mai lost track of time, yet neither of them seemed to want to let go.
“Ehm,” the president cleared his throat, breaking Kevin and Mai apart in an instant. “Shall we continue with practice, then?”
The mouse didn’t wait in hiding today. No, the mouse waited out in the open, guarding the fruits of its labour and conquests. It was afraid, but not petrified. A gentle breeze rustled through the leaves of the newly grown plants, but it bore the stench of the Minotaur. The mouse knew it was probably hopeless, but it had to try.
“Minotaur!” the mouse addressed the approaching giant. It halted, and two red eyes fixed the mouse in their gaze. “You will ravage these lands no more. You are not welcome here,” the mouse said, its voice shaking slightly.
The Minotaur laughed, like a beast gone insane. “I BROUGHT FORTH THESE LANDS AND SHALL DO WITH THEM AS I PLEASE!”
“I said NO!”
“THEN TRY TO STOP ME!” the Minotaur answered and raised one of its huge hands, bringing it down towards the ground. In a split second, the mouse dodged the blow, and the hand came down on one of the newly grown crops.
The giant howled in pain as red fluid sprayed from a gash in its palm. Moving quick, the mouse pulled one of the other crops from the ground, for this time, it had planted steel. Bright lights engulfed it and brought forth a shield maiden. She raised her sword and faced the Minotaur with fierce eyes.
“Time and again I’ve asked you, but I realize now there was no answer,” the shield maiden grinned at the wounded Minotaur. “Hopes and dreams you have trampled. Now, the time of action is upon you.”
The maiden charged at the minotaur. It swung its good left hand at her, but she dodged beneath it, ramming her shoulder into the beast’s belly, toppling it. When it fell, she lunged forward once more, stepped onto its left arm and used all her weight as she drove her sword through its chest and into the ground beneath.
The beast screamed, spewing blood. “But… but I am…” the beast stammered, a pleading tone in its voice as its frantic eyes sought her’s.
“I care not for what you are, only for what you are becoming: a corpse,” she said and leaned on her sword again. The beast gave another yell, then went still as their eyes met. Time seemed to stand still as red and suffering stared into blue and hateful. Slowly, the light began to fade from the Minotaur’s eyes, and the maiden stared into the abyss they left behind.
Mai sat on the dining table, cross legged. She’d lit no lights but the one right in front of her, which cast shadows encircled by orange auras at the white walls of the pristine and wealthy home. The fire, which she had built from a few chopsticks, paper waste, and one of the chairs, was burning high, charring the ceiling, but she did not care.
One after the other, she tossed her tarot cards into the flames and watched them be consumed. When only one was left, she paused. The card depicted gallows, and a man dangling from a rope. She’d seen this card countless times and savoured the moment she’d be seeing it for the last time. When she finally tossed it into the fire, too, her thumb had left a red fingerprint on the hanged man’s face. Mai smiled.