Obsidian Ring

Chapter 8

You are not entitled to your opinion; you are entitled to your informed opinion.

Never had she seen anything so bright.

All around her was boundless radiance. The sky was white, the ground under her feet green with fresh grass; it was so blinding, in fact, that Aislinn had to squint. Her eyes, she realized, were not made to look into the light. Yet, at the same time, the air around her was refreshing. There was no smell of blood, ash, or even incense. The breeze all but blew it away, leaving nothing but the faint scent of grass.

Aislinn closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened her eyes again, reluctantly but slowly letting that breath out.

"Do you like it here?" came a voice. It traveled as an echo to her ears, carried, seemingly, by the wind.

"Yes," she answered quietly.

"Welcome to paradise."

Hearing that word, she perked up, turning her head to see more clearly where she was. What? There was no one within her field of vision; she seemed alone. If that was paradise, it was bound to be more inhabited than this.

"Surely you jest," Aislinn replied in an even tone.

"I do not jest," came the response, as calm as ever. The voice belonged to a probably powerful patriarch, vaguely familiar, yet one she could not quite name. "'Tis a vision of paradise—your physical soul is still in the abyss."

"Oh..."

Paradise. It must be nice; if only there was a way to visit there.

"Do you want to leave the abyss, and live in the real paradise instead?" the voice asked.

"But..."

"It could be. Make your informed decision."

Her father was a doctor from the West, her mother a local. How they became a couple was a question they never answered, and one Aislinn herself never asked more than once. They lived in a comfortable home in a semi-rural village, where her father owned a clinic. The couple's daughter took a Western name, after her father, but they lived in a traditional local house, wore traditional clothing, and spoke the local tongue.

It was odd, very odd; and this was a truth the little girl learned very early on.

Each morning, Aislinn clothed herself and took her pink wagasa before running out to the yard. Breakfast would be served soon, but not yet. She opened her wagasa and stood under the cherry blossom tree, whether or not there were cherry blossoms, and imagined the pink petals falling over her head, the type of romantic imagination only little girls could afford.

Then, within a few minutes, reality would check in, in the form of her mother's voice, and she would reluctantly close her wagasa—and the curtain of her one-woman play—before joining her family at the dining table.

Aislinn had a small circle of friends from the village, but she did not attend schooling the way they did. Instead, her parents took turns teaching her, having figured that she might encounter immense trouble entering school with a name like hers.

Sometimes, she wondered. She wondered why they hadn't just given her a normal name. Her parents did not explain.

A shrine had been situated in the village where she lived. Aside from annual visits with her mother, Aislinn occasionally went there on her own, lingering nearby, intrigued by the workings of the religious site.

"Sara!" Aislinn called out one day, into the woods behind the shrine. Secluded as the shrine already was, whoever built it had the thought in mind that even in the village, a site of ritual should be further isolated from the world of mortals.

Aislinn peeked into the woods, looking for her friend. "Sara!" she called again.

"Here, Ash! Over here!" the singsong voice of a girl came from—as Aislinn suspected—far beyond the shrine.

"Why are you all the way back there?" Aislinn sighed, jogging towards her.

Sara, with her curled ponytail, was kneeling on an opening on the soil. When Aislinn arrived, Sara pointed at the area just in front of herself. She seemed to have brushed aside the fallen leaves that had previously covered the area. To see better, Aislinn bent down. There on the ground was a symbol—one Aislinn did not understand. It was comprised of many cryptic markings, altogether forming an indecipherable shape.

"What is this?" Aislinn asked, turning from the symbol to Sara.

"It's used for summoning the devil, my father told me."

"Your father?"

Mr. Tanaka, Sara's father, was responsible for the shrine. Why he would tell his daughter anything of the sort was beyond Aislinn.

"Yes! Well, he didn't say it's for summoning the devil, exactly. He said it's the 'mark of the devil', and 'bad things will happen if you try to do anything with it'."

The more zealous Sara appeared to be about it, the more discouraged Aislinn became.

"Why did he tell you that? Maybe he was just messing around..."

"Tell you what, Ash!" At that question, Sara became even more aroused. "He told me only because I was looking at his scrolls in our library. I asked, so he told me—of course he didn't want to, but that's why I think it's real."

"...I'm not taking part in this," Aislinn decided, "Why don't we go somewhere else?"

"Wait a bit longer, Ash. Kazue hasn't even arrived yet. Once we tell him too, we can decide, okay?"

They waited.

Sara and Aislinn were childhood friends, but they had grown up in very different ways. While Aislinn holed up in her complex, reading books her parents assigned to her, Sara was attending school, making friends. Aislinn rarely smiled—not because she was depressed, but merely because she didn't have any particular reason to. Whenever Aislinn and Sara were seen together, as children and as teenagers, passersby would greet Sara, and leave Aislinn well enough alone.

It was probably because of how different she was.

They waited only a few minutes before a set of merry footsteps came treading down the seldom-used path. Aislinn had joined Sara on the ground, sitting beside her.

"What's this?" Kazue's first reaction was much like Aislinn's; he stood next to Aislinn, bending slightly to see the ground better.

Sara repeated her story, with undying enthusiasm.

"Hey, I'm in!" Kazue decided, as soon as Sara finished her tale.

"What?" Aislinn exclaimed. "What if you actually summon the devil? What do we do then?"

"Don't be so stuck up, Ash," Kazue said, "I thought your dad was a Westerner? He's not into superstition, is he? Why would you be worried?"

"...I have a mother too, Mr. Chinen."

Aislinn did not normally refer to Kazue by his last name. She, like everyone else, called him Kazue. Nonetheless, this subtle change of addressing him had shoved enough distance between them that Kazue froze for a moment.

"Oh?" Kazue's tone dropped. Not yet a full grown man, his voice could not lower to the level of a patriarch, but it was still significantly lower, and fuller, than the young women he was in company of. "Two can play that game, Ms. Casey," he said, taking a step back to visualize the distance that Aislinn had initiated.

He took her hand in his.

"Um, what are you doing?" Sara asked, stepping up beside Aislinn.

Kazue ignored the question. Instead, he bowed, planting a peck on the back of Aislinn's hand, before standing back up again—without releasing her hand.

"How about you think about it for a few more days? I will see you again soon."

With that said, he dropped her hand, gave Sara a quick wave, and exited the scene.

"What was that?" Sara voiced, one eyebrow arched.

Aislinn shrugged. "I think he's trying to grow up."