SKETCHPAGES; Installment #2!

Jay cried out in anger. Then she said something that I still do not know the meaning of. It sounded like

‘Akla! Hastlaw e joka bok al a pastru akan ceka mana kal kal i oon! Ama la es Tweet, e coom rom paraplan. Es englon.’

A voice both low and high sounded in my ear with breath smelling of pine. 

‘Kanshal ital otad funoc?

‘Don. Don, Akla. Don.’

‘How do you know she is not a traitorrrr?’

The mysterious person had a smooth voice with rough edges, purred out her r’s. Jay answered 

‘She has the Mark. You did not see it? You are losing your edge, my sister.’

‘If I am losing my edge, then at least I keep my knife honed sharrrrp.’

She (for it was a she) took the knife off my throat and twisted me and around so she was now facing me. As she examined my face for ‘The Mark’ I got a look at someone who looked even stranger than Jay.

Dressed in a t-shirt and skirt with ragged edges, being in the forest for so long must have rid the clothes of their original color and replaced it with an almost un-noticable brown-gray. Just about every inch of her skin was tattooed. From her ankles, shins, arms, and face, it seemed she almost had no natural skin color. She also wore a dagger, like her sister, in a sheath slung around her waist. Her hair may have been her most impressive feature, if you dismiss her tattoos as being not natural. Shaggy and thick, her orange with black-striped hair touched the ground. It gave her a kind of blanket and a soft landing pad, judging from what I had heard when she dropped from the treetops. She examined me carefully, even a bit warily, At one point she held my chin in her hand and forced me to look at her eyes, at which point I got an excellent view of her irises. The second I looked in her eyes, I wished I could look away. But she was challenging me, waiting to see whether I would look away, kind of like wolves do when they’re challenging each other. Her gaze was intense. Her eyes.... Her left iris was a dark, mysterious purple, with strange patterns and shapes drifting within view. Her right iris... It was a piercing, shining, silvery white. Not like a pearl, but like a sparkly bone. Lightning flashed through her iris, brightening it. Between the two, right-INTENSITY, left-SPOOKY, I didn’t know where to look. So I looked into her right pupil.

Pupils weren’t much better. Though her gaze was somehow steady, her pupils were wild and untamed, like there was an animal inside, fighting to get out. It reminded me of the time I was trying to write an intense scene in this story and my pet bird was saying 'happy bird, happy bird, happy bird,' over and over and over again. I got really frustrated, and it was hard not to freak out at him and cover his cage. But with her, it was so much more wild and crazy, She was insane. Mad. Cuckoo. Off her rocket. She didn’t have one screw loose, she had almost all them. Just a few left, enough to keep her from falling apart. But the scariest part about this madness was how precise, how controlled it was. It made me feel paranoid. This girl could kill me if she wanted, but to her it wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t bat an eye. Then and there, I resolved to never make an enemy out of her. If I did, and if I lived, I would regret it. After a long time that seemed like hours, she let go of me and announced, (as if anyone had been waiting) 

‘The girrrrl has prrroven herrrself worrrthy of ourrr prrrescence and, as of now, I have decided to give her an Aura.’

I had no idea of what an ‘Aura’ was, but whatever it was, Jay was looking impressed, and Jay’s sister looked very satisfied and more than a little bit smug. She then leaped up the trunk and disappeared into the leafy branches.

‘Come along! The time is not ours to be wasted!’

Jay looked at me, unsure, and shouted up, 

‘Tweet can’t climb your tree.’

‘Nonsense! I can climb any tree-’

Jay silenced me with a look.

‘Not this tree, you can’t.’ She murmured.

A voice came bouncing down from above

‘Use the haura! Twenty-three, forty-two.’

Jay moved closer to the trunk, muttering to herself 

‘Twenty-three, forty-two. Twenty-three, forty-two.’

At last she made an exclamation of pleasure. She pressed one of the glyphs, and a ladder appeared out of nowhere. She placed her bow and quiver on the ground near the roots of the tree, and jumped on the ladder. She tested it, then scrambled up. Before she vanished from sight, she motioned for me to climb as well. Uneasily I stepped forward, and carefully tested the ladder as she had done. It felt like a normal ladder, but when I stepped on it, it felt steadier than any other ladder I had been on. I eagerly started upward. In a remarkably short time, I was in the leaves. The leaves did not grow along the branch like they usually did at home, but instead grew only at the tips of the branches, giving the impression of a full leafy tree. Somehow an illusion had been placed on the tree so that when you were below the branches and looked up, it appeared to have widespread boughs. But now that I was above, the tree was totally different. The branches and boughs were as thick around as my head, and they pressed together, growing to make a floor. The opening I had come through was one of the three openings for entrance and exit. The tree had also somehow made its branches grow in such a way that chairs and couches and tables grew out of the floor. Huge, soft petals, leaves, cattail fuzz, and a few animal pelts gave the furniture and the floor some soft quality, though the rest of the floor was hard and bare. Higher up, I could see that the taller branches made other floors, though they were considerably smaller that this one. It was in one of those higher rooms that the girl danced around singing in a strange language, mixing things in small pots, sprinkling things, and touching the tree in some particular order. When she had stopped her work, I yelled up,

‘I never got your name, did you get mine?’

She whistled back cheerily with something that sounded like a bird call. 

‘I got yourrrr Jay name, Tweet. But what may yourrr trrrue name be?’

‘My real name is Emiline.’

‘Emiline, Emiline, Emiline,’

She sang, and then called down,

‘I have many names, but you may call me Cat, since my trrrrue name be Tigrrress.’

She then went back to her feverish dance and mix routine, humming and singing to herself. Occasionally she would shout my  name down, but I soon realized she didn’t need me or anything, she was just shouting.

Finally she slithered down the main trunk with a box in her hand. She placed it on a small table, and instructed me to walk towards it, bowing at every step.

I felt pretty stupid, but I did it. When I reached the box she told me that whatever she said to me, I must answer truthfully. Jay jumped in then, claiming that she would translate. I wanted to know whether this box was an Aura, what an Aura was, and whether they had any spy cameras in the tree, but then Tigress started to speak.

‘Ala shon de la fon hok oo la play?’