Red Remains of your Words

Sam Carreon

Sometimes, Alma would touch something before she would remember her physical body is absent. Her own Nu only stirred the essence in the stones. She passed through, an invisible cloud of Nu hovering over the place. 

For years, Alma watched the May festival even as the festivities remind her of what has been. When she could still hold someone, the sensation of reading the threads of Nu intertwining in the person’s body overwhelms her. It was beyond seeing with your eyes. Alma’s parents took pride in her, a promising Sanador. At eight, Alma thought she’d inherit their Sanitoria and heal more sick people.

When the parade started, Alma zeroed in on the float at the road’s end, the Agustins are there. A pit stirred in her core and heated the air around her. When sadness leaves her, something much more potent takes its place, potent enough to give this cloud the ability to touch her surroundings. Malice.

Alma swooped down and thrashed the floats. She was a nuisance, reveling in it as she did each time.

When she scanned all the faces aboard the Agustin’s float, she froze. Familiar sensation of fog clawed at her chest and the cacophony of screams and whispers assaulted her. That Agustin woman’s face haunted her as she remembered how her body was flayed with unimaginable force in mere words of a Malpalabras. 

Alma collapsed and fell onto the ground. Her ability to touch her surroundings lost, she was left to the mercies of the mancaceriadors apt to disperse her like they do to clouds of remnant Nus from abandoned war fields.

Another sentient Nu cloud darted in to save her and took her to an abandoned workhouse. Esang reproached Alma as often as she saved her. They talked with the only voices they knew now, curses and anger. 

Esang slapped her face raw. “Speak when you have the tool to break your curse. Meet me at the Sanitoria in the Poblacion tonight at the hour of the rooster and I’ll show you how revenge is done.”

 Alma kept her composure yet as soon as she left, she caved into herself in another of those bouts of numbness that visits her from time to time in this form. Esang’s offer was the most enticing if not for the conditions that it entailed. 

Rage fueled them both, Esang from being left bodiless by her Malpalabras husband after she tried to leave the Familia with their child. When Alma imagines the Agustin woman’s face contorted with the same pain she has inflicted on her, it gives her life, fuel. 

Alma dragged herself to the Sanitaria and passed through its doors. It has been years since she last stepped into one. Nothing has changed. Only, the air felt draftier and the enclosed space seemed bigger. She scanned the rooms for Esang when a scratchy, unintelligible voice rang through.

“Esang?” She called. 

A lamp flickered in the distance. Green fog crawled across the hallways and floors. In an instant, lines of gleaming text darted across the walls as the voice screamed with voices of a hundred people speaking in cacophony. A Malpalabras.

Alma called for Esang in a trembling voice. The disembodied voice in the hallway echoed back her call, yet fainter than the others. Tearing herself away from where she stayed, Alma swooped through the walls until she came into a familiar presence.

Alma walked into a small room used for complex procedures. Esang hovered over a table with a pair of evenly-shaped circular stones with glints of blue, green and red. These stones were rarely-used in Sanitorias and for good reason. These pair of stones induce sleep for they paralyze the threads of Nu within the body. Anything longer than half a minute the stones touch the areas nearest to the core, the threads within the body break. Esang was not playing when she offered revenge. 

Before Alma could utter a word, Esang shook. She let out a labored malicious laugh as her cloud flickered like a flame being blown off. There was a deafening shriek. Then, Esang popped out into smoke. 

The smoke left of her was muddy green. It hung viscously in the air before it was sucked out in the distance.

Green fog slinked into the room and Alma was paralyzed. ‘Esang’ she muttered. Only the wind stared back at her and the fog mocked her in echo.

Suddenly, the door slammed open and the fog disappeared back into the walls. 

“Mother?”

It was a boy not beyond eleven years old. For some reason, he fixed his big eyes on where Alma floated. The boy muttered, “Who’s this ugly shit?”

Alma snapped to attention. A certain surge of energy colored her upon looking at the boy. The boy wore a face Alma wanted to scratch out. He was donned in silken long-sleeved camisa and a glove on the left hand. But it was his face Alma focused on. The boy can’t not acknowledge her presence and Alma relished it.

“You kid stupid enough to stay the night here?”

The boy whipped his head to face her, “I’m not stupid. You are! My mother will send me to the Academia Nacional because she thinks I’m smart.”

Alma’s lips curled into a grin. “Oh? Why is she not here then?”

“She’s in our house!” Then, his brows furrowed and he stared at his side. His voice continued on just above a whisper, “they said she is in our Villa by the mountains. I went to visit her.”

“Alone? There’s no other way at this hour except through the flood settlement. People there will eat you alive. Wow, I feel for them.”

The boy shot up on his feet. “Fuck you! Get out. I’m old now. I can handle myself.”

Alma obliged. She could not wait to see his arrogance knocked out of him. 

The boy was left in complete darkness and the sounds of silence filled the air. At the count of three, the boy bust the door open. His eyes grew with fear glowered at the sight of Alma. Then came the voice Alma swore was nails on steel, “You’re an adult. You help me.”

“You’ll trust me? I’m not even of your Familia?” It might not be trust driving this boy but fear and desperation. His wings poorly concealed in his back tells everyone that he is of those Familias who have barely touched the earth and are cooped up in their mansions in the sky. He was a shiny target for the remnant Nus and the thugs wandering the Poblacion at night.

“Very well,” She positioned herself above him. “Just bring these stones for me and we’re good to go.”

“Fine.” The boy packed the stones in a box then came to Alma for a handshake. Alma extended a cloudy tip for this ‘handshake’. The boy’s grin tells her she should be insulted.

Seeing his features even closer, Alma squeezed the hand even as the boy suppressed a yelp. Anger, malice, pain, it flowed onto her in that silence. The boy was every inch the spitting image of that Agustin woman’s face. Oh, how she’ll take this boy to his home alright. This Agustin boy. That woman’s child.

***

AS per the deal, Alma escorted the boy through the Poblacion. Years of wandering as a cloud showed Alma that the safest way around is the flood settlement for the guardias nary touch its gates. She led the boy in front of an old door nestled against a low wall holding the flood waters. Roofs peeked over the water’s surface. The door opened down a steep flight of stairs leading to the flood settlement. 

The boy whined like the little shit he was. “Anywhere but there! It’s dark and full of dirty people.”

At that, Alma kicked the boy down the stairs. He stumbled in but had no choice but to walk forward. He flashed a dirty finger and protested, still trembling. Alma only scoffed at the gesture. She dragged the boy by the collar down to the settlement’s entrance and prepared to swim.

Alma floated in the floodwaters while the boy swam. His eyes and cheeks almost bulged out as he struggled to breath. Of course, Agustins are a Familia long respected for their ability to manipulate their Nu to grow wings. This boy was a lark swimming in mudfish waters. Errant groups of flood settlers will surely jump at the chance to get their hands on a boy from the Familias with money.

Surely, a group of flood settlers with scales on their necks and fins on their hands surrounded the Agustin boy. Alma sat back even as the child called for him just to watch him scared shitless. One flood settler pressed on the boy’s head, another hand on the boy’s useless wings. Shit! They were not out for coin but for this boy’s Nu.

Alma dived to rescue the boy and drag him onto the edge of the waters and to its far-off banks.

When they rose from the surface, the boy punched Alma with his puny hands. “You almost killed me!” He was shaking. “Mother will know of this. You bitch!”

Something in this innocent gesture raised her hackles. “She raised someone like you? Your mother is a bigger bitch.”

As expected, the child sobbed like the little coward he is. He bit back tears and snot from his nose in a futile effort. But it seems the sliver of arrogance was not gone from him. He cursed hard at her. He fished the stones from his pocket then threw them at Alma.

The stones hit Alma and the impact caused her to freeze at her spot. Her body felt yanked at all sides. It was only for a second, but the sensation brought her back to that day, the memory clearer despite the years.

Upon recovery, she exerted malice into her hands to be able to pick up the stones and drive them back to the box. As so, pain shot in her wispy core.

Just over the horizon is a small isolated villa in the edge of the Mountains. Green fog emanated from its edges. The boy has led her to that Agustin woman as she planned. He’s useless now. She had enough anger to keep the box in her person so she darted towards the Villa.

Suddenly, something grabbed at Alma. It was the boy grasping Alma’s cloud with his hand.

The boy kept crying like an insect being squashed. “No! No! Stay with me.” 

But the boy, his left hand holding her was not made of flesh, but a wispy tangle of Nu, much like what was left of Alma. His cries became even more desperate. For a second, Alma remembered, this is a child looking for his mother.

Alma mustered steel in her voice and refused to let her look at him. “You idiot. The world is a dangerous place. You see, there’s these people who use Nu in ways people barely know about. They don’t manipulate the energy in the body or manipulate the Nu in objects like other Familias. They use words.”

Alma looked at the child with the anger she could muster in her face, yet this act of explaining to a child seemed to drain her even of these feelings for a moment. “They use words and they are dangerous. This person, she did not kill me but she destroyed me. She destroyed my life, my dreams, any good thing on this earth for me and every day, I wander in this existence, only waking because I haven’t yet died. “Alma rocked the box in her hand. “These stones, they can be strong enough to kill. I have to. I need to remove that monster’s ability and only then can I go back to my life.”

The boy only stared at her with red-rimmed eyes. “You’re off to kill Mother.”

Those words spoken so bluntly and innocently from a child hit Alma. She felt surreal, like she was hearing those words spoken to someone else. The boy hid his disintegrating hand on his back. Living near the Malpalabras like his mother must have slowly melted that part of him away like how she did to her. There was something else in the eyes of the child, not yet a word of protest, but a silent acknowledgment that of course, someone would want to destroy his mother.

“You will stop me?”

“I should. She is my Familia. What else can I do?”

Hopelessness echoed in those words and she hates that it mirrored her own. “Then, you stupid shit should just go die with her.” Alma waited for the boy to hit her back. He did not, but only muttered something before leaving.

“You speak like her.”

Alma sat back speechless. Where was the sweet child who would not leave without saying a nice word to every patient at her parents’ Sanitoria?

Alma shuddered to see the end of her cloud muddy green. As the green fog around her emanated, it hit Alma. Maybe, Esang did not die. The disembodied voices Alma heard from the spell of a Malpalabras, they were the voices of once living people. Esang lived but all that remained of her was malice and anger strong enough to fuel another Malpalabaras. It was not her anymore.

A pit in her core caused Alma to burn red. She scrambled into the villa lit in orange from the dinner party. Inside, the Agustin woman stood in front of her guests and addressed them. Everyone in the hall listened to her. Everyone looked at her. Alma burned a deep hole in the wall where she hovered. 

Come dead of the night, when the Agustin woman was alone in her ballroom, Alma trashed her chandeliers and lamps. The woman shrieked. She pleaded for help.

 Her voice sent Alma freezing. Pain shot through her head as she kept herself from falling apart. “Victoria Agustin, do you remember me? Alma?”

She shook her head. A desire to escape or genuine ignorance? It was hard to see that this person’s name haunted the rest of your life while they remain unwilling to remember the person whose life they wrecked. Alma would scatter Victoria’s limbs and burn her. Only fantasies. 

“Ah, yes. Alma Macabuhay. I thought I killed you.”

There was a small chuckle of amusement in her voice and the panic gone from her eyes. Back on it was the look she gave her every time she’d glance at her and chuckle as she relished in taunting and isolating her and eventually killing her.

Alma has thought of what she’ll say back to Victoria when they meet, but in front of this Malpalabras, all the cursing and all the harsh words she learned left her. She simmered in anger.

Before Alma could falter, she plunged the pair of stones right into Victoria’s ears. 

She was paralyzed. Fear finally colored the woman’s eyes. Her green fog flickered in and out. She pleaded. A miserable existence as an Agustin? Rejected by all the men in her life? Excuses!

“Mother!” It was the boy. 

Victoria pleaded, “Niňo, my child. Save your Mama, please. I don’t hate you. Mama loves you now. “  

Her green fog circled the boy. Gleaming text ran across his body and his eyes lit up in a soulless trance. Her green fog led the boy to walk towards Victoria and embrace her but his eyes remained soulless.

 “You fucking shit!” Alma screamed. She cursed and growled and screamed as anguish clawed its way out of her mouth. The stones started to unravel the threads of her Nu too. 

Victoria contorted and shrieked. To finally see her body break apart in its seams until the mind was filled with nothing but thoughts of the pain. Desperation. Hopelessness.

“Mother?”

The cacophony’s voices, then Victoria and Alma’s own, it all melded in the air as a thick, ugly streak. In their midst, the boy’s voice demanded Alma’s attention. She bit back her fury, as she removed the stones off Victoria before it could truly kill her.

Victoria was left seizing on the ground like an ugly worm. Her skin and hair turned pale and withered and her eyes bulged. The green fog disintegrated from her body and she vomited text. Alma relished the sight. 

The boy knelt by his mother’s side and seemed to take it all in.

Alma spoke, “I’m sorry that you are bound to love this woman as your family.”

The boy replied but the first tremors had set in Alma. As her consciousness blinked in and out, she darted out of the villa. She’d hate to be near a body when she becomes like Esang. Green engulfed her cloud while she ran into the war fields with the other remnant Nu’s. Perhaps, she’d remain caged here. If not, she’d be dispersed if she ever crosses the border and causes harm to others in the town. As her consciousness failed, she pieced together the words she last heard out of Niňo. ‘I don’t hate you anymore’. She smiled to herself before she blacked out.

***

SHE woke up. Her mind was bleary and the sunny sky and wide-open fields looked surreal as if she had just come from a long dream. She stretched out the tips of her cloud yet felt an unreal lightness within herself. Then, she tasted the air as it brushed past her. She shivered from the long familiar sensation. When she hovered over the river, a plain, clueless face looked back. It was a stranger’s face yet she knew in her heart it was hers. It disappeared yet she knew it would come back to her after a while. She stretched out her tips and a homely calmness settled in her again after a long time.