main | table of contents The Reflecting Eye Copyright © 2003, S. Y. Affolee 20 Cards The recreation room, during the evening, was lit with floor lamps creating an odd contrast of a lit ceiling and a dim floor. Someone, possibly a nurse or orderly, had drawn the drapes on the windows so that the entire room was enclosed, cozy, as if the outside snowy world didn’t exist at all. A feeble old man sat in a corner with a tray of food in his lap. He was slowly eating as if his arms an extension of an unoiled hydraulics system. A woman with steel-colored hair piled on top of her head and a garish red shawl on her shoulders sat in an armchair knitting something that looked like a blob of yellow yarn. Verity found Aeneus crouched at the coffee table attempting to lean two playing cards together to form a teepee. “I thought you would be in your room,” she said. Slowly Aeneus pulled his hands away from the cards. They stood. He let out a noisy, relieved breath and the two cards immediately collapsed. “Drat.” “That’s very tricky. A lot of things can disturb them, including breathing.” “I know that.” Aeneus slowly stood up and then sat down on a nearby chair. He winced. “My bones aren’t as they used to be. Sit down, I hate craning my neck. But after staying in my room for a couple of hours, I realized how much I like coming out to the recreation room.” Verity sat across from him and looked at the cards on the table. She was supposed to be on her way home that day instead of meeting with Gammell for her side job as assistant since he said he needed the day off to run some errands himself, but instead, she was here talking with an old man. She wanted to delay as much as possible going home to an empty, dark home. She didn’t want to be alone. “I hate those things,” he said. “I’ve always seen these people, these experts who have practiced all their life, working with the cards and building structures several levels high. And I can’t even get two cards to stand up.” “Maybe you should start using glue,” said Verity. “That’s not the same thing. And where’s the challenge in using glue?” “Sometimes you have to use any help you can get.” “I don’t need any help. I’m fine enough on my own. So what are you doing here making conversation with me? I thought you were with him, Nathaniel Gammell.” “I got the night off.” “Figuring out the guardian stuff, eh?” “He said he was going to do some errands. You know what guardians do, right?” “He didn’t tell you?” Verity didn’t want to say that she knew that Gammell knew nothing about being a guardian. Instead she said, “He didn’t tell me much about anything.” “Well, that’s guardians for you. Secretive and all that.” Aeneus leaned back and briefly closed his eyes. “So do you know what guardians do?” “Why are you asking me? Do I look like I know?” “I don’t know. You seem to know a lot about those other things, if you know what I mean.” “I’m sure I don’t look like the kind of person a guardian would confide things in.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I only know of their existence, just as I know about the existence of other things. That doesn’t mean, however, that I know how they work. If I did, I’d be a genius. Or the knowledge might make me completely insane. So have you used the foil I gave you?” “No.” He shook his head. “You’re being risky and dangerous. When you find out how useful the foil would be, it might be too late.” “I’ll keep that in mind.” Verity crouched down at the table and picked up two of the cards. “So what does the institute have planned for you and the other patients for Feasting Day?” “Every year, the cafeteria staff cooks up a special menu.” He frowned as she put up the two cards and quickly put up another two cards. She finished it off by placing a card flat on top of the four cards to make a table like structure. “Or rather they call it the special menu. It’s the same every year.” “What do they serve?” She found herself quickly establishing a solid lower level of cards. Soon she would start on the second level. “They always have pork roast and stuffed lamb. There are berry pies and fish appetizers in the shapes of small rolls. Of course, if you’re on a special diet, you’ll have to forget about all of that, but, well, I’ll have to say one thing, it’s literally a feast.” Verity placed the first two cards on the second level. They held. “When I lived back south, the big thing for Feasting Day was actually the stew. The contents of the stew itself varied from household to household, of course, but the must have ingredients were lentils and beets. I hated it.” “They serve that here too although it’s not as important. Now that I think of it, the cafeteria staff changes the type of soups they serve every year. Last year it had been some sort of chowder with chicken and a plain vegetable soup. The year before that, they had that lentil stew you talked about. There’s not one course that’s particularly important in Monteport, but the institute staff also serves, as a delicacy they say, of roasted crows.” “Crows?” “They have to import it from out of town. Mainly, it’s the staff and the doctors who are still around who eat the stuff. I think it’s bad luck partaking of Aunat’s chosen form. It’s blasphemous.” “Perhaps they’re not religious.” “Not religious? Not religious?!” Aeneus’s face became red. For a moment, he sat in his chair, rigid with anger. She merely waited, not wanting to say anything to set him off further. After a moment, his shoulders slumped. “Of course they’re not religious. They don’t believe in anything that can’t be proved in tangible form.” “That’s sort of my philosophy for my own non-religiousness.” “Yes, but at least you don’t eat crow. There are just some traditions you have to follow, religious or not. People don’t eat crow. They’re not supposed to eat crow. It’s just wrong. They don’t realize that Feasting Day is a religious day.” “It may have begun as a religious day, but now it’s just a holiday, like everything else.” “Nothing is everything else.” The old man folded his arms and watched Verity complete the second level. “You’re good at that. Have you built a house of cards before?” “I’ve seen it done before.” “You’re a natural at it.” “I don’t think it’s natural. Building a house out of cards is not your run of the mill kind of hobby.” Verity finished off the third level and stood up. “For the first time since, well, since when I was first on my own, I’m going to a Feasting Day party. Two of them in fact.” “That’s nice.” Aeneus got up too. He looked down at the house of cards and a wrinkle crossed his forehead as he thought of something. “Once, when I was younger, I went to one of those invitation only affairs at the Old Quarter. Old prominent families in the Old Quarter like to show off their influence during Feasting Day by making everything exclusive and expensive.” “Oh? How was it like?” “Predictable and maybe a little snobbish. But,” the old man raised his head to look at Verity with a lucid gaze, “they like doing strange things. Maybe in the beginning it all started as an innocent ritual to Aunat, but well, I don’t know.” “What was the ritual?” “It doesn’t matter what the ritual was. What it turned into is the problem. Of course, it may just be me and my lack of ability to change with the times.” “What did it turn into?” “Something more corpulent than the feast that the institute throws, I can tell you that. But you don’t have to worry about it if you’re not going to the Old Quarter.” Silent, Verity stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. “So you are going to the Old Quarter.” Aeneus frowned and then said, “Well, if you can’t avoid it, just be careful of yourself. People may still celebrate Aunat in their own new ways, but that doesn’t mean that the change just happened by itself. The Old Quarter is notorious for its strange influences.”