Saint Christopher's night

Guilherme directed the works in the Mithraeum. He was the Officiant of the day, under the auspices of the Celestial Gardener. First meeting ever without Renan and Andrés. They'd stay in the Sanctuary until they found whatever I left there. However, it was not the first meeting without a member of the Society: the famous meeting about the Obscure Police, a true arm wrestling match between the two city vigilantes, without Adriano attending, he himself a victim of the tenebrous Police found in town.

Master Danilo had already warned me there was enough lead in reserve for me, especially from Arthur. I was staring at Bruno, sitting at a distance, trying to read through his silence, as the countryman spoke.

"He is going to complain about the treatment you're giving him. Maybe he keeps it to himself, maybe I'm just too wrong, but I think he is going to complain about it."

But he didn't. He brought me in the eye for the whole of the meeting, but said nothing about it. The Officiant asked me if at any moment any of the two tried to warn me I was entering a forbidden place for outsiders.

"No. They took me to visit the place."

The Officiant asked me why I took so long to open a gift having been warned it was a plant.

"Arthur was not that persuasive in the beginning", I answered carelessly and sustained my stare at the Officiant even with the fulminating beams that were fired by his angry eyes. Arthur showed some teeth too. Only Bruno, as enigmatic sphinx, remained in silence. Nonchalant.

""Sá" Stella, for the King Star's sake, please do be more respectful", whispered in my ear an alarmed master Danilo. The Officiant warned him against talks in parallel. He threatened to swap our places far from each other.

The afternoon was lazily coming to an end and I was still very far from home. I just got out, went to wander aimlessly by the country dirt roads after the Mithraeum meeting. I walked so much I didn't even recognize the vicinities any longer. Light was still alright but I intended to get home before it got dark. I didn't know much of Taurinos, had even been to places here I should never have set foot in.

The silence of that afternoon was magnificent. It involved all the splendor of the setting Sun as the perfect soundtrack. I didn't even miss my mp3 player, the sound of one more night beginning absorbed and fascinated me.

Suddenly the sound of something falling and a horse running away after the curve right ahead of me. I stopped on the road without knowing what to expect, then started walking slowly. As I went past the curve, I couldn't be more astonished: no one but my new gardener was fallen on the road. Judging by the sound I heard he must have fallen from his horse that just ran away without a master. Something that could have scared it?

I had to reanimate the kid that had fainted. He clutched to me and complained that his right leg was aching too much. I thought: here we have it. He's broken his leg in the middle of nowhere.

"It hurts like hell", he had tears of pain in his eyes, "please help me, Miss Grisam, please do…"

If that was another test and he intended to move me, he was doing a brilliant job here. I remembered my mobile phone. All I had to do was to call his parents, find out if he was at home and direct them to this spot in case he wasn't. But just where did I leave my phone when I most needed it?

Shit. I had left it home in my purse. "I won't leave it home anymore", I thought, frustrated and not knowing what to do any longer. I got off his clutch and was looking at that little fluffy thing on the ground. He didn't wear the blue dungarees, it was more like something casual. He shut his eyes and cried in agony. That could never be a test.

"You aren't leaving me here, are you?", his voice was a kind of lament.

The last lights of the afternoon were going out, draining to the bleeding horizon like water going down a drain. I thought that my intention to go home before darkness had been frustrated. Without the phone, there was no way of letting anyone know where we were. Without a car, and with the boy unable to walk, I imagined that a penitent sunset was on its way.

I decided to waste no more time. I helped Arthur stand up with a hell of an effort and put him on my back. I set off walking with him on my back on the road. Light was scarce now. Soon it would be hard to see even the sides of the road. I walked in the hope of getting a ride from someone coming back to town.

"What were you doing here, Arthur, so far away from home?", I inquired him as I followed the road.

"I was just riding around… When I was coming back an animal got out of the bush, maybe a lizard… The horse shied away from it and knocked me off as I was not expecting…"

All the narration was delivered between hiccups. He asked me by his turn what I was doing there. I replied I was doing the same as him, only without a horse.

"Don't you get tired of walking?", he wanted to know, with his voice right by my ear while he clutched to my back.

"If I can carry you right now it is because I like to walk."

He said nothing else. We were in silence for a long while, no talk at all. Darkness dominated everything. I staggered with all that weight, was already losing the reference from the sides of the road and for twice almost fell on the brachiaria beside the walking path. It was at this time that I saw one of the most beautiful views this city's night has to offer.

Myriads of fireflies started following me, blinking their little lights and landing on the sides, as if to mark exactly the limits of the road I couldn't distinguish in the dark any more, as lights beside a runway. As I was passing, the fireflies I left behind took off from the places they were and landed again ahead of me, in a continuous loop of vital luminescence that helped me walk more safely with the young gardener on my back.

I noticed that with every step I took the young lad got heavier and heavier. As in Saint Christopher's story, patron saint of drivers, then called Reprobus that aimed to serve the most powerful man on Earth. After serving a king and the Devil he forsook them, because there were things they feared: one feared the Devil himself and the latter feared the presence of the Cross. Reprobus agreed to serve Christ taking people on his back to the other side of a river that was very dangerous to cross. One day, he was taking a boy on his back and felt that the boy was getting heavier and heavier with each and every step he took. It was the One and Only that even the Devil feared.

"Arthur! You're sleeping! Wake up, it gets heavier to carry you sleeping. Arthur! Wake up!"

Well he did not. When I got to the gate of my house at last I could hardly stand on my feet. I had a fucking hard time opening the gate, trying to get away from the spikes that didn't even seem to have been sheared and when I walked in my house and set the young gardener on the sofa, he finally woke up. He still had his face streaked with tears. He thanked me and asked for water.

"Sorry, I forgot you don't want to give me water", and he was silent, looking at the ceiling. I gave him water and his eyes glinted with satisfaction. I brought the pitcher as he seemed to have spent forty days in the desert. He thanked me again and we were in silence for some time. I asked him about his father's phone number and he gave me the number of his father's mobile. I called him and told him to come pick up his son. He was on the roads looking for Arthur. Said his horse was found wandering without a master and they were all in despair, searching for him. They had gone to the farm Taurinos, had been here, no sign of him at all. I was thinking of what could have become of him in case I thought it was a test and left him there on the road. I shook and trembled at the very thought of leaving the child helpless there. I asked him some questions while we waited for his parents to come.

"What were you doing the day before yesterday at your house and at mine at once?"

"I have a clown side that is good to talk people into doing things. The kids of the Obscure Police call it an aspect. We call it a side. But a side doesn't mean it is not me. Don't you have a writer side? The difference is that you cannot be in a place while you writer side is in another. Look, I am fine at doing this clown thing. Only when I start to get impatient the clown's attitudes get rougher and rougher in time, you know. You did what you had to do: you opened the plant's package."

"What are the other presents, Arthur?"

He beamed maliciously naive as the country brat he was, "want to know? Open them gifts!", I smiled and said he was such an amateur. He smiled back at me and this was our last exchange of communication for the day. A car engine was heard outside. It was his parents. I felt they were really in a hurry to take the kid away from here, as though the news on the curb on coffee and water in my house had already reached the farm Feletti long ago.