No one knows how our family got the Eye. Perhaps we’ve always had it. Grandfather, when he was still here, once told me that it was part of us—that it was our duty to carry on this legacy. But I don’t want to carry on this legacy. I want to be as normal as everyone else.

Father solved the problem by denying everything. He has his own life, which on all appearances appears as usual as anyone else. He doesn’t want to know what sort of things our family has always done. He doesn’t want to know how responsible this family is for what hangs precariously in the balance. I once asked him for advice on the Eye, but instead of even telling me to not dabble in things I am too young to think about or to ignore things that were in my Grandfather’s domain, he told me he didn’t know anything about it at all. He told me to finally face reality and to take my heads out of the clouds. Concentrate on life, not the ravings of an old man.

But as the time nears, I feel a great uneasiness. Perhaps this was what Grandfather meant by a peculiar sensitivity in the soul—that I am more aware of things unseen and of things that might happen. Most people may ascribe events to coincidences and bad luck, but I see everything as deliberate and with purpose. When crows fly off to warmer lands, it is not simply migration. It is Aunat leaving. Or even if there was no such thing as religion and the nameless one, perhaps these birds have observed something that makes them uneasy. That makes them leave.

And then there are the disappearances. People have pretty much accepted that it has always happened and will always happen—but I don’t think it is due to any unscrupulous person dealing in some underground slave trade or a murderer. There’s something systematic about all of this—especially how it always happens about the same time every year. I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to figure out what the pattern is, but my gut tells me that there is.

Grandfather passed on some peculiar traits to me. He once remarked that it had been useless with my father. He simply didn’t have the temperament. He would never understand. His sensitivity for some reason had been dulled to a point that he was like everyone else. He would never hear. He would never sense. At first, I didn’t believe him. I only learned those particular tricks with the Eye that Grandfather taught me to humor him. But then I’ve begun hearing and I’m beginning to believe that he was right.

This acute sensitivity, however, is not endemic to our family. It can also occur sporadically and randomly within the population. These are the mad and melancholy. They feel too much and do not understand why they do so. They inherited something that puts them in close contact with the other but they have no one to guide them. One of my great-grandmothers from some family stories was like that. She was of a different family altogether and she felt things, other unnamable things, and at times, she was stronger in this sensitivity than anyone in our family.

Grandfather once mentioned that the Eye itself did not require sensitivity. His father before him had used it successfully without being able to hear anything at all. But at least he had an open mind when he was taught—and more importantly, that he realized why he had to use it at all. My father, on the other hand, has completely closed himself off from the rest of the family. He doesn’t understand it at all. He doesn’t understand me—and normally, that would throw me into a protracted fit like the ones I had in my childhood when I heard things from the birds and he told me to stop making things up.

At least Grandfather believed me. But now he is gone and I am not sure what to do. The time is coming closer, and in the dark, I think I hear it whispering to me. Without Grandfather, I have to face it alone.

I don’t want to look at the Eye. It prophesizes and distorts. It reflects what shouldn’t be. That is the burden that one faces in possession of something that belongs elsewhere. It’s required as long as it exists in that unnamable place. In my recent dreams, I see the shadows of this place that can only exist trapped in a reflection within a reflection.