The Scholar, the Sphinx, and the Threads of Fate

Chapter 1-2

The professor tucked the tongue-filled jar under his arm. He rubbed his chin, his performance-ready smile melting into a calculating grin. “Tongues, boldness…such commodities are valuable only to gossips and braggarts, no? But when confronted with an intellectual mind, ah, there is the true power. I can bottle brains, but the mind would be a terrible thing to lose, wouldn’t it?” He leaned forwards on his cane towards Degare. “But then, you would already know that.”

Degare snapped his gaze straight up at the professor.

With a flick of the hand, the showman produced a strip of green paper from the air and held it out towards Degare. “Perhaps I can shed a little ‘light’ on what ails you. A free pass to my light show this evening. I promise that you will find it enlightening. It might even guide you on your way, eh, lost one?”

Degare tightened his lips. There was no way this professor would know his name, let alone that he was memory deprived. Unless…was this medicine man responsible for Degare having lost his memories in the first place? What was a light show supposed to “enlighten” him about?

Lyssa went over to the stage, taking the ticket from Professor Shakpana and delivering it to Degare with an ivory-shine smile. “Do come to the show,” she cooed. “We love having a captive audience.”

With a beat of hesitation, Degare grasped the ticket with his index finger and thumb, as if he was touching a snot-soaked handkerchief, and slid it out of Lyssa’s hand. The crowd pressed in closer to the stage, eager to inspect the curious jars and request tickets for the light show, but Degare was oblivious to it as he turned and walked away, stuffing the ticket into his pocket. For the next few hours until sunset, the penetrating eyes of Lyssa lingered in his thoughts, and yet he was acutely aware it was not because he found her pleasing or beautiful. It was because she had rooted herself in his conscious and refused to release him until he returned to the Eccentricities Emporium.

More bizarre than that was how this notion of someone invading his thoughts seemed as familiar to Degare as the skin on his bones.

He should not go back. Whether those two were just clever frauds, or truly did know something about him, Degare knew there was something unnerving about that medicine wagon. But this was the first time in two weeks that he had found something that could help him discover who he was and what had happened to him. He could either keep living as a food-pilfering phantom, or possibly unlock the crypt of his mind.

The wagon looked different in the fading light of dusk, its bright red color decayed into the bruised maroon of a rotting passion fruit. The stage had somehow grown larger and was now cloaked by a gauzy tent with a small flap that allowed anxious show attendees to slip inside. Degare spotted a group of somewhat intoxicated boys coming to see the show, so he slipped in among them as they entered the tent. Rows of stools were set up in two sections, with a large black box-contraption in the middle aisle. A drapery of white linen stretched across the full length at the front of the tent. Degare picked a stool in the back row to sit on, figuring he’d go unnoticed among the full audience.

“I’m so happy you decided to join us,” came the saccharine voice of Lyssa, who had appeared on the seat next to Degare without his notice. Her hair was done up in a loose bun, accentuating her long, slender neck. “Do you like magic lanterns?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Degare replied. “If I have seen one before, I don’t recall.”

“It’s quite a fascinating device. Do you see those three brass cylinders sticking out in the front? Those are lenses, and each one has a door behind it to place a candle. There are slots behind each lens for circles of glass, which have painted pictures on them. When the light of the candles passes through those painted glass circles, the pictures will—”

“Project onto that screen in front of the box. It is designed to tell stories with a series of images, like a picture book,” Degare finished for her. Wait, how did he know that?

Lyssa gazed into his eyes. “You’re smarter than you look. Well, I can promise that you won’t forget this show. They say Professor Shakpana’s light shows are life-changing.”

“Shakpana…where does he hail from? From across the sea to the south?”

“Oh, much farther away than that, but also as close as the hairs on your head.” She combed his bangs with her fingernails, but he jerked away from her. She giggled. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, David. I’m really quite nice, if you are nice to me.”

Degare’s jaw went limp for a moment. “What did you call me?”

“The show is starting soon. I must take my place.” Lyssa stood and glided away to stand beside the white drapery at the front of the tent.

Degare was prepared to get up and follow her, demanding for her to tell him what she knew, when the boisterous voice of Professor Shakpana boomed in the tent.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and curiosity-seekers of all kinds!” the charismatic voice reverberated, as Shakpana entered the tent with a dramatic glide. He wore the same blue-and-gray suit, although the colors seemed brighter now, and his necklace of seashells and teeth had been replaced by a collar of vulture feathers that gave the impression of a tufted mane. The same kind of ivory skull that was on his cane was now attached to the front of his feathered trim, but this one had red rubies in the eye sockets that glistened like moonlight on fresh blood. “Welcome to the Eccentricities Emporium’s Illuminating Light Show. I warn you, this is not the same fair you may have seen from your traveling lantern men, or some crude shadow puppetry as children play on the walls. They say that light can play tricks on the eyes, so what you may believe are mere illusions could become far more real to you than you think. People have been known to contact the spirits of the dead with magic lanterns, and while I make no promises of conjuring ghosts, you may see more tonight than your brain is willing to handle. So those who are faint of heart, and sleight of mind, you have been warned.”

Degare could not help but snicker. All that over a simple light show? This professor was certainly charging up the audience’s anticipation; hopefully he could deliver what he promised, or otherwise face an onslaught of disappointed customers demanding their money back.

Lyssa brought forth—from where, Degare was not sure, as it seemed to magically appear in her hands—a beautifully carved lyre, shaped like a horseshoe with two horse heads on each side. The strings shimmered bronze, and as Lyssa began to caress them, they sung with gentle, calming notes—a mother’s lullaby. Professor Shakpana stood beside the magic lantern, producing three painted glass disks from his coat pocket and sliding one into the slot for the topmost lens. A pastel picture of a man and a woman, both in classic Grecian togas, dancing in a lush forest while the man played a lyre much like Lyssa’s, flashed onto the screen.

“Orpheus and Euridice, lovers so true,” Shakpana spoke in a lyrical, half-singing voice. “She a nymph of the trees, he the son of a muse. His music was so sweet, it could tame the wildest heart. So deep was their love, they could never be apart. But on the morn of their wedding day, a bite from a snake took Euridice away.”

Another slide rolled into place, this one of the woman from the first slide being bitten by a winding, black-scaled snake…

Degare blinked, feeling a slight wooziness. Why was that snake two-headed? He could’ve sworn it was a regular snake when the image first appeared on the screen. Not only that, but whoever painted this slide had gotten the story wrong. It was clearly Orpheus, the man, being bitten by the snake, not Euridice—although why hadn’t that been apparent to Degare right away? And why did Orpheus look so different in this image compared to the first? He looked…sort of like…

Degare looked down at his weather-beaten clothes, then back up at the slide. Orpheus was wearing the exact same clothes as he was, but in their best state, clean and pressed. Degare shrunk down on his stool. Was the rest of the audience noticing these things? No one said anything about the strange errors in the picture—in fact, they seemed oddly, immersively captivated.

“To regain the precious prize he had lost, down to Hades Orpehus went, no matter what cost,” Shakpana continued—somehow, as he was no longer visible in the tent.

Another image flashed on the screen. This one was of Orpheus—now a withered, old man still wearing Degare’s clothes—speaking to Hades, who for some bizarre reason had been depicted as a massive, brown lobster.

Not Hades. Geras. Old age personified.

This was not the story of Orpheus and Euridice.

Degare looked across the tent to Lyssa, who began to play her lyre faster, more urgently, and the music had taken on a more chaotic, sour voice. It sent a prickling sensation up the back of Degare’s neck, but his eyes returned to the screen—not because he was trying to make sense of the strange imagery he was seeing, but because he couldn’t resist.

“To bring his love back from death, he must prove his worth and pass a test.”

The screen flashed the image of now young Orpheus—Degare—holding a glowing, turquoise stone in his hands, while he kneeled next to the body of a—lion?—lying on the floor, dying. No, not a lion. A lion’s body, yes, but the head, the face, was human female, gorgeous but feral, with flowing dark hair and eyes of gold. Two rumpled wings were folded against her shoulder blades, feathers of violet-black.

This story was out of order. But this had happened. Degare could feel, in his gut, that all of this was true. This was his story. Or maybe this was all some dream, the first he had had in two weeks. But it had to mean something. Who was he kneeling next to in the image?

“With his music, his God-given gift, the veil of death from his love, he did lift.”

An image of Degare playing—a violin? It was larger than a violin; a viola?—surrounded by an atmosphere of spiraling mists of rose, gold, and blue, while the lion-woman had regained her health and luster, although she was wearing a grand peach dress in this image, and her shape was more human than lion.

That moment had been a dream. When he had saved her, with the song he had composed—

This was crazy. Degare needed answers, right now. But he couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen.

“But just as he believed he had saved the girl, she was stolen away, back to the dark world.”

The story was not on the screen anymore. It poured through the room, as the visage of the lion-woman, animal-bodies and winged again, howled while being confined in a large cage, reaching her paws out to Degare. Not Degare in the image, but the real Degare, sitting in the audience. But the cage was stolen away as a giant shadow, a monster with the moonlight pale face of a man shrouded by long midnight-black hair and raven wings that encompassed the room, stared down at him, burning loathing and revulsion into Degare with his solid obsidian eyes.

Degare wanted to run. He wanted to scream and tear his way out of this tent. But he was pinned, while fear consumed him with a sinister glee, while the visage of this giant death-like creature hung over him.

“Having lost his love, his music was tainted by sadness. And the song of Orpheus’ lyre filled everyone who heard with madness.”

Orpheus’ lyre…Degare forced his head to look back at Lyssa. Her music had become manic, the notes whirling out of control as her fingers plucked so furiously, she threatened to snap the strings.

The music was making Degare feel sick again. But now he could see he was not the only one. The people in the audience started to squirm, some moaned pitifully, others began to clutch at their hair and growl. One woman fell out of her seat and withed on the floor, mumbling something incomprehensible.

Degare felt the urge to go help the woman, but as he leaned forwards to stand up, he saw them. He saw all of them.

Hovering above the heads of every single person in the audience were ethereal shapes, translucent but indigo in color. They seemed human in form one second, then more like vultures, then more like dogs, and they continued to shift except for their eyes. Red, shining, ruby eyes.

And every one had a smiling mouth of jagged, pink-stained teeth.

Degare craned his neck back to look straight up. A pair of ruby eyes was looking down at him, but the smiling mouth immediately shut into an uncertain frown. The phantom c****d its head at him, and then brought a wavering hand around towards him.

“STAY AWAY!” Degare screamed with such force, his lungs nearly exploded.

The music ceased into dead silence. Every pair of ruby-red eyes turned to Degare, staring.

Degare’s breath caught in his throat, and tears of terror stung in the corners of his eyes. I guess this is the end of the story…

I guess this is the end of the story…