Chapter 25. (The Beginning)
Dawn light greeted green jungles along Heart of Darkness. A Banlung mother sawed ice into manageable chunks as glistening elements dripped moisture into dust.
Women swept red dust in front of wooden doors up and down a red road.
Four-foot long blocks of ice were loaded on antique battered black and red motorcycles driven by delivery boys wearing baseball caps with glittering golden stars.
Ice lives and dies every morning. Sun makes ice cry.
After school the mother’s daughter saws ice using a rusty serrated blade rescued from a genocide ordeal.
What are you doing? Leo asked.
Rita smiled. I am a seller pronounced with confidence.
She opened an orange box. She picked up a chunk of white ice in her left hand, cradling it inside a blue cloth. She slammed a hammer on ice. It cracked.
Fissures of released refracted pressure, jagged lines, imperfect beautiful white lightning spread deep inside ice. She held global warming in her left hand. She smashed it with all her power and strength fragmenting ice, floe chips and elemental particles.
A piece of cold sharp ice pierced Leo’s left eye. The sensation of pain was minimal, immediate and cushioned by the delicious cold feeling of ice melting through a retina, cones, rods, a pupil, nerve endings, frontal lobe, cerebral tissue, and layers of tissue, altering his visual organic sense as ice light transmitted new electric signals from rerouted optic nerves to the cerebral cortex following a path of synapses.
Leo’s enhanced visual acuity reflected everything. The stimulant was all. The world is made of ice, he reflected, seeing crystals shimmering in ice mirror kaleidoscopes.
Illusions of truth, suffering and drama danced. Long jagged beautiful sparkling universes emitted glowing crystal rivers. The world is ice. Everything he saw, heard, touched, tasted and felt was ice.
A sibylline language of clarity.
She dropped the small block of ice back in the box. Collecting chips in a glass, she added fresh thick brown coffee, sweet condensed milk extract, a straw and a spoon. She handed it to Leo.
Here, you look tired and thirsty.
I am. Thanks. I’ve been walking all day. It’s delicious.
She bagged a block of ice and handed it to a cycle man. He handed her crumbled Real notes.
She sawed in oppressive heat.
You are a good seller, said Leo.
Yes, I am, she said. I greet the buyer and sell. I cut. I bag. I talk. I sell. Ice is moving. What’s your name? Where are you going?
My name is Leo. I am walking down this red dusty road. See where it takes me. One life, no plan, many adventures. What’s your name?
Chimaera, she said, handing him diamonds.
The road is a river, she said. Like a human’s life it doesn’t know why it is born until it reaches the end.
This is the day of my dreams.
Ice Girl in Banlung
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