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The Wheel and the Serpent

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'Do not multiply the mysteries,' he told him. 'These must be simple. Remember Poe's stolen letter, remember Zangwill's locked room.'

'Or complex, ' Dunraven replied. 'Remember the Universe.'

- Abenjacán el Bojarí, Muerto en su Laberinto

She still sees eye to eye with dogs when it starts. At first, it only attacks at night when she closes her eyes and sleep. She starts sleeping in the bathtub to keep it at bay, but then it doesn't work anymore. She opens the shower and the water is a relief; its sound muting down the screams and the crawling, the incessant crawling.

Mother doesn't know it, Mother can't know it because if she knew she wouldn't stop it, it would eat her alive. Nobody can help her, not even the Sun, not even the rain - it doesn't rain often enough, it doesn't rain strong enough.

The maze is taking over her games, it's taking over her mind. Inside the maze, nobody has faces. She murmurs a poem she once heard from her mother -

Faceless lay the sultry and overpowering lion,
Faceless the stricken slave, faceless the king

She wonders who was the king and who was the slave. Maybe they were all one and the same. Lions are, after all, kings of the jungle - but they are slaves of their own desires, slaves of their own destinies.

Zimmy sits on the dirt and starts drawing squiggly lines with her tiny, bony fingers. The lines don't cross at first, but then they start to meet in perfect angles. The maze gets wider and wider and the lines grow messier, the lines grow deeper.

She closes her eyes and the lines continue, deeper deeper inside.

***

A lucid, fundamental night awaited, a secret in the future - the night when he finally saw his own face, the night when he finally heard his name.

- Biografía de Tadeo Isidoro Cruz

Time erases everything and memory is no exception. The maze slowly eroded the warm banks of her childhood and she got lost at sea, away from everybody's reach. No hand was long enough and no arms were strong enough to help her from sinking. So she let her weight bring her down, so that someday she'll reach the bottom and she'll reach the numbing calm of death, the cold sleep that signals the end.

She wanders the world alone, because her mirror is cracked and there's no reflection. One of a kind, a kind that should not exist, an abomination of nature, a ripple in reality. She knows it and she smiles and her teeth are fangs.

Fate shall not be kind to her, she reasons, because she shall not be kind to anybody. Fate plays not with dice but with darts directed to its toys.

Zimmy hugs her knees and the tears won't come out, only the anger.

And then it happens. A flash of light, a light summer rain in her mind. She glances up and there she is. One of a kind, a kind that almost doesn't exist, an angel out of a dream, almost fictional in her kindness.

Zimmy grabs her hand and and they run. Towards the end of the world, towards the end of their rope.

***

That magical project had exhausted the whole space of his soul; if anybody had asked his name or any trait of his past life he wouldn't be able to reply.

- Las ruinas circulares

When they set foot in the Court for the first time, it's like Zimmy's mind, wide and vast and full of corners and corridors that bend once and twice and forever. But it's sterile and there no spiders, no things that crawl through the walls.

Then she feels the eyes, intently watching her and she growls, she hides and then they're gone.

She takes Gamma's hand and Gamma smiles.

But she's not smiling at Zimmy, she's smiling at everybody, her smile shines on all these new people, all these new people that have no right to enjoy that shine. All these new people who have not seen what she's seen. She scowls and she snorts. She wanders through the maze in her mind and then she's out, in the great maze outside it.

***

This has happened and it will happen again,' Euforbo said. 'You are not lighting up a pyre, you are lighting a maze of fire. If all the bonfires I have been would unite here, they would not fit in the Earth and angels would go blind. This I have said many times.

- Los teólogos

It's the fire, the never ending fire. It spreads across Zimmy's mind whenever she's near. The maze endures the fire, even when the flames engulf it, but it retreats a little every time.

Annie shines, but doesn't know it. Zimmy pities her sometimes, pities her innocence, pities and envies how little Annie knows.
Does Annie understand? Maybe sometimes Annie's mind loses all track of reality too, maybe her past hunts her like Zimmy's does, maybe she wakes at night grasping for air and running away from her nightmares.

But for Zimmy there's no night and no day, just an endless nightmare and one beacon of hope.

Annie has one too, a partner, a companion. More than a friend, more than a sister, more than a lover - her other half, her better half. What they would have been if they weren't broken.

***

I thought of a labyrinth made of labyrinth, of a winding, growing labyrinth that encompassed the past and the future and that implied somehow the stars. Absorbed in those illusory images, I forgot my destiny of being chased. I felt, for an undetermined time, abstract perceiver of the world. The vague and vivid country, the moon, the remains of the afternoon, worked on me; and so did the slope that eliminated any chance of tiredness. The afternoon was intimate, infinite. The road went down and forked, amidst the already indistinct prairies.
- El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan

Zimmy lets her hand slide on the tree and the bark itches. It's a cherry tree and it's in full bloom. She's never seen it before, even if she crawls through the Court like it was her home - maybe it is, now. The sun hides behind puffy clouds and the sky is the colour of lead.

She wonders why is it there. Who brought it? What for? She wonders why she even cares. Just a pretty tree and soft grass and the wind softly blows.

A thousand possible reasons, a thousand possible outcomes. For the tree, for her, for the Court and the world.

A thousand roads to take or to ignore. Maybe there's a Zimmy that never saw that tree, maybe there's a Zimmy that never saw the maze.

Gamma lies against the tree and sleeps. It's a quiet sleep. Zimmy sits besides her and leans her head on her shoulder. She takes Gamma's hand and she knows that maybe there are not cherry trees shading the other Zimmys, but there's a Gamma sleeping right next to each one of them.