Kingdom of the Remembered

"Where are you leading us, My Lady?" Cynthia's asked, her strong voice sabotaging the silence and clearing the thick fog. October's fog was much heavier than November. Ghosts rapturously danced in the dewy fog during these weather conditions. Hide-n-go-seek, they'd call it as they painted a phenomenal mirage combining their roaming souls with the atmosphere. Cynthia instinctively investigated through the mist for any perilous threats, knuckles strained and pale as white, indigo veins cut her flexed forearms. Her husband's former skull still incarcerates her round head, lustrous strands of her sienna hair disorderly sprung from underneath, like spiraling brown tornados. Now I think about it, she has not removed it since her husband's death.. Did she believe  if she removed his bones, she'd be free from a curse her soul desires? I replied with a soft smile and hidden secrets shadowing my sepia irises. 

A twelve legged spider vomits silk from her rear, stitching syrupy threads into intricate patterns. Jewelers have tried vigorously to imitate these glittering designs. Attempt after attempt, prodigal failure would shatter any hope to ever accomplish such beauty. Some have volunteered their brains to insanity, praying for no more than a reflection of this spider's uniqueness. Others have committed their last breath to kill this insect. "Penelope," I whispered, leveling my soft eyes with her thousand effervescent ones�" gleaming like  unparalleled diamonds on a palatial chandelior. "I've come early. Open the gates." Her dozens of eyes narrow at me, squinting as if to verify I am her queen and not an imposter with a lurid purpose.  

Cynthia's gasp breathes along my ear's rosy shell. The temperature drops dramatically but we can barely feel the crisp blows of wind pinching our cheeks. There is a much more astonishing sight before us and if we  blinked, we'd miss the extraordinary illusion. Penelope's limbs aren't scruffy with narrow hairs anymore and her twinkling eyes aren't obsidian, like the dark stone. Her hues gravelled into a much more valuable rock; glimmering gems and precious jewels replace those past eyes and her black skin chips off to a golden coat. If she bled, her blood would be as silver as the gates. 

Cynthia had a weary expression channeling, suspicious suddenly of the stranger who had saved her. I have not yet introduced myself. How rude of me, you may think. But some people do not have a closet full of secrets. They have crypt homes and forgotten castles composed of secrets. I happen to own a few dark palaces. She took a few steps back, tightening her hold on her spear. Her mouth twitched into a growl. I fought the urge to to roll my eyes. Werewolves. 

"Welcome to the Kingdom of the Remembered, Cynthia. I owe you an explanation. Of who I am. Where I come from. My gift to you." I say, my words laced in a mexican accent. "Do not fear me. If I wanted you dead, you would have fallen over long ago. I would have left your body rotting in the trees and left you as dinner for the birds and insects. Now, come." I enter the gates and an explosion of light blindes my vision for a few moments but I heard Cynthia's steps close behind, shielding her face from the omnious light. 

The eruption of light dimmed, like a volcano's lava cooling down, and the gate shut abruptly behind us. Fear vanished from all hearts who entered into this utopia and light entered all those who stepped forward. Except the supernatural. Cynthia's expression did not alter, for the exclusion of amazement flickering in her eyes. Aztec designs embellished all the tightly-knit homes and the neon rays only made eternal shades �"magenta, vermillion, yellow, cyan, jade�"more vivid, as if the colours themselves were parading around town. There weren't leaves on these trees. Candles lit up trees like fireworks and instead of falling the way leaves did, wax dripped from their metallic branches. A garden of decorated skulls rip their jaws apart, filling their empty mouths with joyous laughter. And best of all, the carnivalesque feista is imperishable. 

Skeletons juggled plump pumpkins between their palms, splitting their metacarpals in half. Flower crowns plucked from marigolds ornament the wavy hair of death's youth. The youngest are the miracously beautiful, still possessing their beauty from life. These young ladies are the queens of this land and all skeletons adore their nobility. It is said their laughter if captured in an instrument, will play tunes so divine, heaven will weep storms onto earth. 

Children, younger than ten, sit around lanterns as the elders recite legends from the Mayan era. My favourite begins from the mouth of an old woman. "Once upon a time, there were two women. The kind and gentle woman versus the woman who was devoured with pride. All the townspeople adored Xkeban, and she loved her people. Quite the contrary, Utz-Colel loathed the poor and found herself often disgusted by them. Xkeban was sick with lust, and vomitted her virtue for the favours of men yet Utz-Colel remained virtuous but her aura had a different twist.  Her soul wore proudly trickster medals; jiving all the townspeople to believe she is a woman of status and honesty." Giggles quietly seeped out of the children's lips. To my surprise, even Cynthia craned her hearing towards her moving lips. "One day, Xkeban vanished and not an eye saw her ever since. A fragrance of sweetness filled the air on the fifth day of her disappearance, like an inevitable trance the townspeople followed the scent to Xkeban's home. Oh, how they swooned. 'Impossible!' Utz-Colel proclaimed flabbergasted. 'If that is the odor of a dead prostitute, mine shall be much more fragrant when I die!' She swore under her breath but virginity doesn't make anyone a saint. When death ripped Utz-Colel's soul from her body, a stench of a million rotten eggs devoured her body." It's a lesson many humans do not recognize. There are wolves hiding in sheeps clothing. We are almost trampled by the children leaping out of their seats, scrunching their nose at an odor that did not even exist. 

"You're very pretty!" One of the young boys beam at Cynthia, offering a marigold. She's taken aback, stuttering which has to be a first. Has anyone not noticed her beauty? It was as if a paint brush dipped in a pastel bronze and smeared its' colour on her skin, and those moss coloured eyes that could have anyone swear there is a forest living within her. There is a unique beauty found in her savage appearance. She takes the marigold hesitantly, a smile threatening to expose a kindness hidden deep within her frozen heart. 

"Emmanuel Carlos de Luciano! Mijo, si tengo que lo vuelva a llamar...!" His grandmother threatened. He groaned, recognising her croaky voice. "Abuela! I didn't hear you!" He kicked his foot against the gravel and slumped back to his grandmother, muttering how much he disliked it when she addressed him by his full name. He was lucky she didn't throw her chancleta at him.  

When I return my attention back to Cynthia, she's lose in thought as she gazes deeply into the marigold. Marigolds don't obtain any power but the way Cynthia looked at it, was a way a bewitched man would look at a sinful woman. "He's a sweetheart, isn't he?" I break her concentration, brows quirked. 

"Indeed, he is. H.. How'd he..?" She didn't need to fulfill the ending for the question to be evident.

"His mother drowned him. And when his grandmother prayed to the gods to revive him in all her attempts, his mother shot his grandmother in the head. No witnesses, no story. Especially in Mexico. Everything can be hidden in the dust storms." Furrowing my brows, she nods solemnly. I must credit her ability to veil her emotions. Most would have drowned their eyesockets with tears from his story. "Follow me." I lead my werewolf companion down the city halls, a few men drunkenly throwing their arms on each other's shoulders and singing inaudible melodies, their sombreros tipping off their heads. The fiesta's music and jubiliant chatter became a drone on the other side of a palace's doors. Just a hum of a pleasant song, stuck in the back of my mind. 

Moonlight washed peculiar shadows from the open windows. Our feet prance down a spiral of stairs, through a hallway embellished in old photographs and paintings dating back to art's origin, into an ancient dining room though there wasn't any point in having a dining hall since I never eat. At last, we arrive at my throne. Golden bones compose my royal throne, engraving decorations and marking the beginning of time. These rubies aren't red from earth's lava but from the blood of the rich and spoiled. In literal terms, I sit on the fear of the rich. And so I did, demonstrating my power above all.

"My name is Catrina. Calavera Catrina." My fingers snapped, and a loud thump drummed in the sky. A flash of lightning exposed my true form, a dapper skeleton with pearls hanging loosely around my neck and beautiful flowers picked from funerals flourishing across my hat. "I am the living symbol of death. Death's sweetheart, if you will. I am freed on the first of November every year to instill fear into the hearts of the greedy and remind them, their money will not grant them eternal life. It is my duty to the natural balance of the universe to fulfill this requirement. It isn't a terrible one either. I have the opportunity to dance and drink, laughing and kissing as mundanes do. Then it is all over at the end of November and I return to darkness by an unknown force. This land, the one I brought you to today, is my home and my kingdom. I am their goddess here." I left out enduring torture for a few moments of pleasure. "This year, I was released early by a man who is not a man. A god, another being. I have never had the pleasure of meeting him and he fled before I could question him. It is impossible for me to be freed by a mundane, not even a witch." I answer the question on her lips next. "I saved you because I need your help. You are connected to me and him somehow. I do not know how but all three of us were on different points in the forest, forming a triangle." My fingers rubbed my chin, my curious eyes wide in thought. Suddenly, I was not speaking to her but to my inner demons. Spirits possessed my lips, rambling various whispering rumours. 

I noticed Cynthia's strained jaw. Slowly, I turned my head to her. "What do you know?"