Wisdom’s Child Jadeite’s Return
ACT 4
Visions of clashing steel, the exertions of battle-hardened warriors, the cries of the wounded, victory and the triumph of death, the taste of iron tainting my pallet as I gulped in the brisk morning air had ripped me forcefully back to the present moment.
You’ve got to be joking! I am but a denim-clad soldier…a master of the sword, valor and hardened warrior… who me? Yeah right! I growled inwardly.
My head felt as if it were being turned inside-out, the chill upon my skin, the hissing currents of air disorientated me as if ropes were forcefully pulled from my ears at great speed. I was feeling sick, almost wanted to dry wretch.
I steadied myself, and breathed deeply again. Dizzy from my exertions, I angrily banished the thoughts and images in my head as I impatiently pushed my sandy bangs from my eyes and continued on my way.
I stomped upon the dew-drenched grass determinedly, as if by doing so, I could get a stay of execution and ward off the day’s intrusion into my befuddled state of mind as the sun extracted the carpet of green’s longevity as if it were responsible for my sudden wave of melancholy.
I was striding across a vast sports arena on campus. Tokyo University, success after years of striving and scrimping, putting together every Yen I could manage, and after winning a scholarship provided by the Japanese government for disadvantaged students, I did it! I had made it. I was so glad to have gotten this far. I had been a loner all my life, written off by most, but I hadn’t let that deter me. My preoccupation with becoming a self-made individual I had developed from a very early age. Seems my destiny up until recently had been running on the theme of overcoming obstacles, be these human in the forms of bullies -- and this included my stepfather -- or my adversaries were financial or of the female persuasion as time and again, I would fall into a sweet pit of rose and thorn . I wanted to find out who my real parents were, my new stepmother I had called ‘mother’ as she was more of a mother than any of the older women I clung to while growing up in that lonely orphanage. Mother, so much more loving than any of those inadequate surrogates I sought out elsewhere was. My sister, was my biological sister, we were inseparable and she was two years older than I was.
So, as I was saying, I wanted to find out the identities of our biological parents, but it was hopeless. They had not a clue, refusing point blank to look into it. I challenged their logic and though I could beat them down with words, they wouldn’t respond to my requests. Telling me, ‘Oh, we’re only looking out for your well-being… Yeah right. I would say often in a sarcastic tone, ‘Oh, am I some sort of cabbage patch kid, or did a pelican drop me into the bosom of the prefecture’s Kami-forsaken pit of the unwanted and accursed?
ACT 5
Family life for me was a new and unfamiliar enigma, I soon discovered I could burn him. Yes, placid, little Jad, I have a penchant for lighting fires with my mind and casting fiery orbs and strange spheres of indigo energy at anything I so desired.
Oh, allow me to tell this most liberating tale. I guess you’d say, if you didn’t believe me -- and I wouldn’t blame you -- that I was a victim of the inevitable Oedipus complex. Yes, Freud fascinated me, but not as much as had Jung and Klein. Yes, Lacan was a misfit, and a steely hard-hearted man like my stepfather and I hated him and his ideas.
But I digress. One night, after witnessing another elaborate example of my stepfather’s cruelty, My sister and I looked on in horror as he had torn off our sweet mother’s kimono , her favorite she’d worn that very same day to the Cherry Blossom festival. Her red hair, unusual for a Japanese woman -- a story for another day – fell in a cascade over her bruised exposed flesh. She cried out in a vein attempt at mercy and her boundless shame were lost on the man standing over her – strap in hand. This the result of a fight they’d had after she’d caught him with a girl in the guestroom.
She had screamed at the girl to gather her belongings and the giggling university student -- drunk on Sake -- stumbled out of the house, mother helping her into a taxi after assisting her to dress and gather her belongings.
Mother asked the driver to charge it to her credit card as the girl apologized profusely, hanging her head as she saw the tears pouring down mother’s face. I saw this as my sister and I were standing at the gate in case that drunken fool of a stepfather left the house. But he remained indoors, continuing to drink and muttering under his breath until she returned to the guestroom to confront him, admonishing him for his womanizing ways.
Of course, the result being, he dragged her out into the garden, stripped her and inflicted the ultimate humiliation as ‘dear father’ sort to tie her hands behind her back and parade her naked in front of my older sister and I.
Well, I wouldn’t have it. After I had discovered at an early age my unusual powers pertaining to the element of fire, my experiments of the incendiary kind made me master of the flame. I focused while holding Akashi’s hand, her tears soaking my shirt as I stroked her long black tresses, and this seemed to calm her. I whispered for her not to cry. Staring at the drunk and vicious man, another more formidable opponent for my monster of a stepfather appeared. It was hideous, its green reptilian skin, bulbous head and gleaming white fangs coated in what I imagined to be venom, turned and faced my stepfather.
He couldn’t se it. Ha! I was laughing now, my sister’s wet cheeks and wide-eyes met mine. She saw something she said she never wanted to see again -- a killer instinct, primordial and rapacious, dark and malevolent in my eyes. And for that single moment in time, my gaze answered her deepest fears and she buried her face in my shirt once more.
I wished for the creature to spit fire at my stepfather as he pushed our mother to the ground. In an instant, he was engulfed in a corona of violet flame.
Then, a disembodied voice began to speak in a deathly timbre and mother looked up at me – her face ghostly white with fright.
“Jadeite, you are mine, Shitennou, I have trained you well,” the face a dark swirl of black smoke. The woman’s voice, distorted, half-human half-nightmare hovered over the burning remains of my cruel overlord. She laughed before speaking again, “You are mine, Shitennou. I am sister to your fallen mistress….”
I shook my head, sneered at the visage, raised my hand – now aglow with purple light -- and said in a voice not my own, “No, witch…you serve me!” the Medusa-like image then winked out and was gone. I never saw it again and hope I never do.
After the events of that night, the visit by the police, ambulance and a long protracted series of supine relatives of the dead tyrant paying what passed for their respects at the funeral, I was glad to have it over. I almost gagged. The cruel man would not be missed. I was his adopted son, a wayward strong-headed kid they couldn’t wait to get rid of at the orphanage, and my ‘father,’ yes, he was supposedly struck by lightning. Nobody told the authorities what really happened, my sister has never spoken of it since, as if she’d selectively isolated the incident and obliterated it from her memory altogether .
I felt ill as I sat there to -- pay my respects -- to a man I hated -- my only respite, the beautiful temple and its peaceful grounds where I, my stepmother, sister and I spent that afternoon in comfortable silence.
Finally, we were free. My stepmother would sometimes watch me when she thought I wasn’t looking, her expression a mixture of gratitude and fear. She saw the thing, she saw the power of what she called, a Youma, and knew somehow that I had summoned it. She was afraid for me. Hell, I was afraid for myself.
I allowed my eyes to sweep over the only two people I cared about in this wretched world, and vowed to care for them. I kept my word.
ACT 7
Looking up, I became immediately aware of the smoldering banks of thunderheads that were creeping up on the horizon. I felt my anxiety rise suddenly, drew air in a large gulp into my lungs as if the Earth’s atmosphere was about to be sucked away in an instant if I so much as hesitated for a single second. Sighing, I continued on my way. I came to the end of the grassy clearing, the weather was going to be tempestuous, yet that was exactly how I felt, it suited my mood. It was then I was assaulted by another series of visions. As if it weren’t enough that I moved across the lawn in a staccato motion, experiencing psychotic visions of things of which I had no memory as a miasma of altered images and sounds bombarded my senses. Coupled with these, a rush of silks and finery, a regal silver-haired woman and a dark burgundy queen with an obsidian sphere sending rivulets of fear through me and I had to stop myself collapsing under the insistent urges of those weakening knees supporting my teetering form.
The familiar sense of foreboding threatening to make me yield and give ground to the wash of mixed emotion and terror that took me as would a rip in the ocean stalking the coastline, wishing to feed, looking for unsuspecting fishermen, divers, and carefree beach-bunnies to sate its never-ending appetite.
That face. I knew her, the shimmering locks of ruby-red -- the lips that claimed my own. The rushed passions as sumptuous royal attire gave way to licentious desire, and the dark eyed monarch claimed me, not only in her service to her darker purposes, but as her lover.
I shuddered. A blood red rose exploding before my eyes. I shook off the feeling and leaned over, trying to catch my breath, once again, a comical refrain, boy what a fool I must look. These visions were growing ever more insistent with every passing day.
ACT 8
Then I looked up and saw her, it was she, the new girl, Tsukino Usagi. I suddenly felt afraid, as if I had somehow slighted her. I felt this way every time our eyes met, at the library, class or anywhere our paths happened to cross. There it was, that same inexplicable feeling. The innocent eyes, the knowing smile and the beneficent expression on her face that crowned her persona as much as it had the visions of the Moon Princess.
I knew her, but from where? I mused and thought on the woman with the silken voluminous black gown and those sumptuous vermillion locks as she fought hand to hand with a girl, Usagi, in an outfit that looked so like a cheerleader’s kawaii outfit you’d see during the Cherry Blossom festival.
Oh, my head, the stars, they revolved around her, all twelve signs of the zodiac. Usagi was she, some sort of princess. I coughed and laughed. I must be reading too much Homer or Grimm, princesses and wicked queens. Oh man, I needed a Manga Café and a good stiff drink.
Recovering myself, I smiled absently at the girl that continued to bring these strange visions and noticed a hint of a frown upon her brow as well, could it be that she too was recognizing me? The irony of a shared vision would at the very least mean I wasn’t going mad. I slept well enough, didn’t I? It was a warm night, Like any other of those atmospheric nights on campus and I gave Usagi Tsukino and her friend with the emerald hair a cursory glance, bowed my head briefly, and smiled before the two women smiled nervously back and kept their eyes fixed on me, even after I continued on my way. I knew it, I felt it, they knew me from somewhere before.
I continued walking across the exquisitely paved octagonal stone tiled concourse, from the central rotunda, I observed a series of pathways running off in all directions. The marvelous architecture of the faculty buildings, surrounded by attractive gardens, picture perfect were giving off an almost surreal glow under the haunted moonlight – that moon always ever watchful.
I remembered Paris, and Vienna, oh, Vienna, city of enchantment I could see its classic cottages, these beautifully adorned by intricate stone carvings, statuary and manicured gardens. I remembered stopping to film the assortment of artistic wonders of that promenade. It seemed the gargoyles and nymphs on display were mocking me, as if under starlight they were silent witnesses to crimes I had no memory of ever committing.
Who am I?
