Basilisk Island

The Sun rose lazily over the mountains of Taurinos, maybe a bit too lazily. The silence in the car was only broken by my mp3 player connected to the sound system in Duílio's car that Anderson drove:

"From a bed in a frontier hotel, eyes made of water, sky and mass, to the heat of the day or to the certainty of it. The Sun had hardly yellowed in the sky. The Sun had hardly yellowed with hope, all my good will. Eyes made of water, sky and mass to the heat of the day or to the certainty of it. The Sun had hardly yellowed in the sky. The Sun had hardly yellowed…"

The Sun Had Hardly, written by Moto Perpétuo

The words to the song written by Guilherme Arantes so many years ago echoed in my mind. I mean they echoed in my mind until Anderson asked me to change the song. I thought to myself: "that's a new fad now with the lads of the Obscure Police asking me to change songs." When Renan was friendly with the song, it was Anderson's turn to be picky. Andrés surprised me taking my side.

"I'm listening to the song too. Don't you change it, Miss Grisam."

"It is disturbing me as I drive", his voice sounded slightly growled.

"I can drive if you want me to", rebuked Andrés; master Danilo glanced at me with the eyes of one foreseeing trouble ahead, "were it that hellish noisy heavy metal you listen to or Catholic songs with that boring acoustic guitar it wouldn't disturb you in any way", he added.

Anderson braked the car brusquely, "want to drive, you'll do it right now", what followed was Anderson dragging Andrés out of the car with violence. Andrés wasn't very happy with his move and punched Anderson real hard on his chest as he got out of the car, sending him reeling back. He didn't take long to recover and the two were fighting like dogs in no time. Trouble foreseen, trouble seen. Renan, master Danilo and I ran to the outside to pull the two fighters apart. Master Danilo and I really need to pacify those lads all of the time.

"Come on, drive it, you fucking piece of shit", it was hard to hold Anderson back. Renan didn't know who to hold back as he knew the two saw him as a foe, but his issue with Andrés was smaller this time and he chose to hold the Conselheiro. Even this situation was complicated. Andrés didn't like to be held and punched Renan too what caused even more trouble, a general conflict still out of the car, with Anderson springing on the two others, red with rage. We two intervened to avoid bigger disgraces. Don't ever ask me how we could pull the trio apart. Those are secrets for the ones within Taurinos' Ancient Society's Inner Chamber.

"Sorry, I just can't understand you. Is there really a problem with that bell or what?"

Andrés was the one driving now. We weren't far from the lake. No music, no sounds in the car besides its engine running. I had never seen him driving and thought he did it well. Renan stared at me from the back seat through the top rear-view mirror. Master Danilo traveled worried, looking through the window. At the end of a curve, we passed by the plain where Anderson was initiated in the Obscure Police. The strangest chills ran through my body up and down, making me sensitive to the area maybe even a bit too much. Almost everyone in the car advised the others to avoid looking outside. The exception had to be Andrés because he was driving. Well, something got hold of him. He stopped the car, got out of it and ran straight to the spot where Anderson was initiated.

"Hmmm, now there's no holding 'im", said Renan, "now he'll have to watch all the ritual he didn't see on that day", he added, drawing a shout from Anderson. Renan beamed at him and laughed too, but the laughter vanished when the two had hardly caught themselves laughing together. Renan tried to keep on laughing but his attempt only fell through. This transition was plain for me and master Danilo to see.

Well, I shouldn't feel sorry for Andrés after what he did on the Initiation rite. But I did, while we all wondered how long we'd stay in that goddamned place. All he had to see there was what made us late right now. The most incredible thing was to see him coming back with his clothes as clean as they were on that day. He drank water as a camel to rid his teeth from the stomach acid, under a shower of acid jokes by the two young officers. He threatened to resume the conflict with the two officers and I said we had been there for too long already. Master Danilo looked disturbed and did encourage the lads to stop the stupidity so we could get out of the place as soon as possible.

The island where Tinnitus was built was in the center of a lake of limpid fresh waters that the morning light made blue. The vision of the bell we had from here was amazing. It was larger, much larger seen here from the bank than Andrés dared to mention: it was as large as a cathedral.

Amid the purest crystal blue, strange shapes in darker shades of blue, as beings moving inside the liquid mass. Andrés stopped the car in front of the lake, beside a small wooden pier. A small ferry boat moved by ropes was seen there: it was bound to a rope that extended from the bank to the shores of the island. To move the boat on the water, one just had to pull the rope that was much like a handrail from one bank to the other. Andrés got out of the car and went to a spot where he could collect the water of the lake; he filled a demijohn with his eyes shut. I glanced at master Danilo and my expression should have looked interrogative, because he went on to tell me why the Conselheiro had collected the water like that.

"In the lake there are some things called basilisks, that look like geckos, but are ugly as the lads here on duty. And their look draws yours and does you a helluva harm. They come to town and the bell draws them here and binds them under water; you only cannot stare into the water for long or they'll pull you under water to drown. This is called Basilisk Island on account of them goddamned things."

He made reference to the basilisks present in bestiaries since the Middle Age, heinous little monsters born from a rooster's egg (!) hatched by a frog (!!!). I wondered why the Conselheiro had collected the water.

"So is Andrés going to drink that water???"

Master Danilo giggled, followed by the young Mineiro kids all around us, "there's no trouble drinking the water, "sá" Stella."

I laughed and the boys didn't appreciate it much. Taurinians usually see me as a stubborn disbeliever. But I eventually said I had seen strange dark-blue shapes in the water in the lake's blue water "well, that's them, "sá" Stella", Andrés and master Danilo drank the water and passed it on to the others. I drank it too and it seemed to me I had never experienced such pure and refreshing water in all of my life (or death).

"You needn't drink it with your eyes shut, Miss Grisam" asserted Andrés smiling slightly.

We took the supplies to the pier and were there for some time analyzing the situation. Having forgotten about the water and basilisk episode the three lads were already back on the warpath. I glanced at master Danilo and he said only two could go on the boat at a time. That the supplies counted as one of us.

"It's a thirty-minute crossing to the other side. I can't return because it's going to take an eternity taking one by one. If I go with "sêo" Renan and you stay with "sêo" Anderson and "sêo" Andrés, they are going to fight and you won't be able to pull them apart. If I go with "sêo" Anderson and you stay with "sêo" Renan and "sêo" Andrés, they are going to fight too and again you won't be able to pull them apart. If I go with "sêo" Andrés and you stay with "sêo" Renan and "sêo" Anderson, they are going to fight too and once again you won't be able to pull them apart either. Same if you go on the boat with any of them. If you leave any of them with the supplies he is going to play havoc with the supplies in the backpack", added the countryman in dismay.

The three young plump boys looked like three small werewolves staring at us as if they were homemakers examining food at a supermarket while master Danilo proposed that enigma to me.

"I'll go first with Andrés. You come next with Anderson. Let them kill themselves if they want to", I suggested, eliminating thus the need for the enigma. We were not in a damn Simpsons' episodes, after all. We had an issue as big as a cathedral to solve instead.

Well, the kids killed themselves at will, smashing each other as they decreased in size when we started moving on from the pier we left behind. I felt sorry for master Danilo wanting to intervene and not being able to.

When we finished the crossing, the two police officers were in tatters and the supplies seemed to have been attacked by a rat whose name had the same initial as the word "rat". Fucking shit, I figured Renan would be the safest one with the supplies on account of the lack of appetite he had been showing these days, but I was all wrong. The little lad was back in his voracious primitiveness.

Tinnitus was really a colossus. I was amazed and intimidated by the absurd size of the object. A true juggernaut on that island's beautiful landscape, but something that seemed to add a eerie, frightening and symmetric beauty to the place. From here on the shore (that was made of ground quartz to my greater astonishment as some shores by rivulets in Ibitipoca, in the region of Juiz de Fora), it was plain to feel that the place was really very windy as master Danilo had warned us. From here we could see the details of the bell, an absurdly sophisticated and refined tapestry within the blinding sharpness that took control of my sight after my death. I stared at the bell and at its creator, in disbelief. How could I be such a disbeliever after all I had seen and been through in this town?

"What are you looking at?", he asked rudely.

"Respect with your elders is always important, "sêo" Anderson", asserted master Danilo with a steady voice, making the blacksmith cringe a bit, "there are thousands of other ways to ask things."

The structure around the bell was plain and objective: a gigantic arch from where Tinnitus was hanging. A spiral staircase around one of the columns of this arch and something up there that set the tolling speed of the bell. After some five minutes of walk through a small grove into the island and we got to the bell's base site.

The astonishment of the astonishments. The mastodontic size of the object, intimidating to the extreme. The infinite details engraved on its resonating surface. Town's landscapes, its rows of houses, the season of the year. Anderson brightened up a bit and said the details of the bell changed. That sometimes there were even texts to be read on the bell that engraved itself continually according to the circumstances in town. I thought that the bell was still. Anderson explained that its movement ws far too slow for the eyes to follow and it was slower still because the bell was coming to a stop.

He warned us that we shouldn't stay directly under the bell. I looked down there and saw a deep well under it. The blacksmith explained that the basilisk and other kinds of creatures were drawn there and thrown into the well. I thought it worked like a gigantic dream catcher for Taurinos.

"What the hell is a dream catcher?", inquired Renan.

I explained what it was and as I did it, Anderson was already climbing the spiral staircase to the top of the arch, "Renan!", Anderson shouted from up there with an annoyed voice, "cut the crap and come help up here!"

A bit upset, Renan started climbing. Up there the two started trying to move something like a lever, but we couldn't see it on account of the extreme height and distance. Wind blew whistling around us, strong and threatening even under the sunny sky above us, taking away our words to infinity. We three watched as they worked up there without understanding the blacksmith's engineering.

I started going around the bell. Admired its details and wondered how long it would take for Andrés or master Danilo to tell I shouldn't be doing this. Much to my surprise they came along me around the object. On its other side, fabulous details engraved too and a phrase written in the lower part of the bell:

"The letter A has got hold of your name. You know metals like no one else. You like music but don't understand it. The letter R has got hold of your name. You have no way of helping alone."

"Why would Anderson have engraved that on the bell?", I inquired. The two accompanying me had the opinion it was not Anderson who did it.

"Tinnitus is like the Book of Origins", said Andrés, "it is like it talked to us, Miss Grisam."

He shouted to the other two, asking them to come down. We couldn't see it from here but we could guess their interrogative expression. The came down and joined us. I pointed at the phrase and asked whether Anderson had left it there. By the expression of the two police officers, I saw it was novelty to them as well.

"Hell, I hadn't seen that shit before…", the blacksmith whispered, confused.

"But what in the world is that supposed to mean???", inquired the other police officer, as baffled as the former.

"That means that none of you will be able to solve the issue, at least not alone", explained master Danilo.