"Did she just eat my car?"
Chale Xaxalpa Sr. dropped his arms and stared. The little Yaban monkey ripped chunks of metal from a junker hood and stuffed them into her mouth. These chunks were among the last remnants of what was now a vinyl-dazzled skeleton. The sad thing seemed alive and begging for a mercy kill in the speckled-overcast of the afternoon.
"She actually ate dog food and metal chains at the Fleurville Zoo earlier.” That was Vicente’s response until he saw her bend the frame with the barest touch. "This is outrageous!" Vicente dug through his hair and gestured towards the sight. "Look! Look!"
Yulaan snapped a solid metal tendril as if a flaky pretzel.
"Wonderful job helping your old man," Senior added with a gasped laugh. He pat his grandson's back and added, "Oh, I thought my son had a goddamned appetite. Boy would only eat HALF the car." He set his hand over his forehead. "She! Ay-yay-yay, she only left the seats."
"I was going to panfry those hocks, you freaking monkey! You didn’t have to—" He rubbed his nose and said, "You know, I don't think we're reacting to this like we should.”
"Well, let me tell you what my mother used to say to me: El diablo necesita tres días."
Vicente furrowed his brow and said, "The Devil needs three days?"
“Three days is all it takes for anything to become normal.”
Yulaan stood and sighed, turning herself and aiming her head towards the trees, roads, fields, and Senior's home. One thick lichen-dressed magnolia arrested her attention, and she stomped forward, throwing her momentum into an explosive right hook that shattered the tree.
[https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/358adaa8-4b0b-48dd-894e-f19e4aa9655d/deqh7lq-e51a719d-ff80-45e3-b97b-3df6d093110a.jpg/v1/fill/w_1111,h_719,q_70,strp/punching_down_trees_by_yuli_ban_deqh7lq-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODI5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzU4YWRhYTgtNGIwYi00OGRkLTg5NGUtZjE5ZTRhYTk2NTVkXC9kZXFoN2xxLWU1MWE3MTlkLWZmODAtNDVlMy1iOTdiLTNkZjZkMDkzMTEwYS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.oEg7ONEuzeg8rX7npQTfP7zkTsrgO8MIc2VS8V7ZWjg]
"Jesus!!"
"Qué chingados!"
Both men staggered back.
Yulaan turned and punched down another tree, this one a great green oak. And then another. And then another. The effortless destruction brought to mind tales of ancient demigods showing off to mortals.
And then she stopped. Something possessed her to realize that Senior's shock and awe wore out at the same rate of his front yard. The man clenched his fists and stepped forward several times, and only through great restraint did he keep his anger hidden. He had to. A quick glance to the four snapped trunks were why he had no authority.
"Incredible. Incredible. Are you going to pay for this?"
Yulaan hobbled towards the two, who both backed away towards the house.
"It still doesn't look right, sometimes... That limp she has. It makes her look—"
Yulaan lifted her hand and a rustic stick taller than herself flew into her palm, and from then on she used it to drag herself forward.
This brought laughs to Senior's lips. "She's like a little old witch. El bruja. Hey, el bruja!" He waved, laughed, and turned himself to his boy.
Vicente tipped his hat to hide Yulaan and turned to his grandfather to goad him back indoors where tea and soda beckoned from red plastic cups. "I told you. Very Herculean."
"Hercules! I read of Hercules in my free time. Never did Hercules eat people's cars."
Vicente smirked. "I wonder why." With a look over his shoulder at the girl whose chaotic motions brought her closer to the house, he added, "I wonder why a demigod from ancient Greece, three thousand years ago, didn't eat people's automobiles. Perhaps we should get to the bottom of this."
"A smartass!"
"At least she got rid of that old junker rusting up your yard," Vicente said. "I honestly didn't think she'd do it. I don't know how it's possible, but, eh, I stopped asking questions."
Senior found his seat in a rocking corduroy chair and flicked away a dust mite from the curved wooden armrest. Repeatedly he looked out the back door, still able to see the spiky hair and upturned and swirled tail. "Does she swing like a monkey?"
"Hmm?"
Senior licked his lips and said, "That tail. It's thinner than I would expect. But is it strong enough to keep her in the air?" He motioned with his hands a little pantomime, that of a monkey swinging through branches.
Though Senior had a full pitcher of tea, both cups were close to empty.
"I'd like to know myself. Probably. Probably."
"What was—" Senior caught himself. "De acuerdo, escucha," he said to his dog, curled on the floor beneath an overhanging frilly white sofa cover. "Don't go near that girl. I've seen videos of monkeys. They do weird things to dogs."
Vicente laughed, though his tophand had colored itself red from his constant rubbing. "Oh, you've seen that video? I don't think she's like that. She's just been violent more than anything."
"I don't know, if a monkey stuck its hand up far enough up to touch my lung, I'd be pressing charges. And I don't care where it's from." He swung his hands opposite of each other. "Oh no. I already get enough of that from the doctor."
Vicente looked out the back door again. No further damage. No more trees down. And there she came, that same shambly witch hobble.
"Seriously, she's literally el brujita. It's like she's 12 and 82 at the same time."
"El brujita?"
The clap was louder than a lightning bolt, Senior holding his hands in a prayer. "Look at her! Look at what she's done.”
"El brujita?"
Vicente reclined and looked at the ceiling as Yulaan threw down her cane, the motion exposing more of her rugged scar-infested bicep from her pelt. ‘What are they called? Yabans? I don't think they're any better.’ He pulled his cup towards his mouth but felt nothing. Rather, he stood and poured himself more tea.
And then she spoke, "Vicente."
The sound startled both men.
"I keep forgetting she can speak," Senior said with a hand on his chest. "I don't know why I think she can't. She just looks so feral."
She lifted her arm and her tail wrapped around the cane to keep it from hitting the ground.
"What is that?"
Once the Man in the Zoot Suit recognized she was pointing at his cup, he lifted it with such haste that a tongue of tea spilled over the brim. "This, fellow, is tea. Cheap, dollar store iced tea because my-my papa is cheap fuck."
Senior snorted and said, "Can you do some of those, what is it— Kamehameha? Blast the little booger."
The cup of tea splashed and clattered on the floor. Vicente gasped and laughed as he threw himself out of his chair and waved his hands about. "No! Nonononononono. Not literally. It's— it's a joke. A joke is all." The hocks returned to his mind, so he added, "You were—" before pausing and catching the deepest breath he could take. "I'll make the ham hocks. Alright? Okay? Okay? Okay?" And he backed away, facing Yulaan as he did.
Yulaan stood in the middle of the room. Neither man could tell her intentions without seeing her eyes.
"What, they don't understand jokes?" Senior sat back, blew out his cheeks, and tilted his head to hide the heart palpitations and pulsating vision.
And yet he took action. "Yulaan, I'll give you something too." She turned her head. What was an insignificant action for every creature he'd ever met now ignited a blank and frizzy brain shock. Its attention was on him. He was its focus.
He fiddled a cigar. "Uhhm. I have a stack of old language books. From when I first came to the United States of America. They range from basic elementary to higher level...linguistics. Might help you speak better."
It was the bangs that made this old man want to cry. How goofy. How absurd. How did she even see? Why was he feeling so terrified of someone who looked like a stone-age emo?
She nodded.
He shot up and rushed upstairs. When he came back down struggling under the weight of his books, a pacifying aroma filled the air. Yulaan stood next to Vicente, watching and listening to the pig ankles sizzle and bubble in grease. When one was crispy and browned, he stabbed it with prongs and tossed it across the room.
Yulaan dropped her cane and jumped, mouth agape so she could snatch the hock in midair. When she landed, she tore viciously at the meat, shaking her head and then grabbing the bone ends to pull off all the meat and fat with one savage motion.
"She loves these. She loves gnawing on the bones."
"Well come here, el brujita. Let me teach you inglés y español."
Yulaan wrapped her tail around the topmost book and pulled the tome to her hands. Then she flipped through the book, its pages fluttering by in a flurry. Finally she tossed the book back at Senior and took the second one, this time without ever touching it physically. Again the pages flew and the back cover slapped the mass of aged pages. She tore one loose page free and ate it to complement the salty smoked hock.
"You're supposed to read them, you chimp."
Vicente kept his eyes on both of them, letting the hock currently smoking burn its flesh. "I don't think you're...." He rolled the meat with his prongs. "You're not going to comment on that?"
Senior half-caught a third book the Yaban flipped through, its pages crumpling in his quick catching grip. "Tú bruja, don't bother! If you won't read." He snatched the fourth book from her as she finished.
Yulaan caught another hock with her teeth and ripped at it whilst hiding in a corner.
"How did her sword not stab you when you carried that bag?" Senior took his seat and peered into the duffle bag. "What even is this?"
"I think when she reduces her weight, she also reduces the cutting power of that sword."
"Wait a second. It's a scimitar made of bone!"
"Yeah." Vicente tossed two more sizzling and steaming hocks to Yulaan, who caught them with her hands and plopped herself onto the ground. Once she finished the one she had, she ate the next two as if eating grapes.
[https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/358adaa8-4b0b-48dd-894e-f19e4aa9655d/deu49lv-8c1709b6-f55f-47f3-a9a8-44d1ebaf7bce.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzM1OGFkYWE4LTRiMGItNDhkZC04OTRlLWYxOWU0YWE5NjU1ZFwvZGV1NDlsdi04YzE3MDliNi1mNTVmLTQ3ZjMtYTlhOC00NGQxZWJhZjdiY2UucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.d1BJyFK2ywYqD4LnwTQFbjBv0o8zexe0znYco-TtuWg]
Vicente went on: "From what I could ascertain, it's from a femur. But the material isn't the same sort of collagen-based matrix as any known Earthling bone. Undoubtedly it's some elaborate war prize."
"Really..."
"Scariest thing is that I ran some blood from her pelt the day after I got her on that genetic scanner Mr. K gave me. Apparently..." The smile was soft and awkward on his face as he let his grandfather have a moment to take in, "She's wearing the skin of the same person whose bones made that sword."
Senior's eyes boggled. He clutched the books and shifted them to obscure his face.
Yulaan turned her head at him, curled the end of her tail in front of her face, and said, "One more tree."
She turned to the open backdoor and pointed at a pine tree that stood alone in a small field. Electricity broke and cracked around her arm as she lifted it to eye level, and her still-extended finger became the center of dancing strings of ethereal plasmic light. She exhaled and closed her hand.
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The convulsing energy swirled. She pulled her hand down and said, "Hai!"
And with a grunt, she thrust her arm forward again, all fingers extended— the motion was so quick that neither man saw just what she shot, only the result.
The 25-meter pine tree shattered as if struck by lightning, spraying wood and pine needles all about the yard, the rooftop, and even the highway road that lay opposite the yard on the other side of the house.
Bits of the tree kept raining for a minute afterwards. Senior's yards soon fell dirty of pinecones, nests, and giblets of small critters who once considered the home.
"Papa, you see what I have to deal with now, right?" Desperation saturated the man's voice. "I didn't mean for all this."
"How did you do that?" Senior ignored his instincts and hesitation. Indeed he felt nothing of his earlier terror as he approached the Yaban. "What magic was that?"
Yulaan opened her hand and her cane flew into her palm. "We of the Yeren khanate know it as vril. A form of spiritual energy that flows through our universe and all life. You humans have different names for it."
The next hock hit the blackened oil and a splash of grease made Vicente recoil. He ran an ice cube over the burned spot of skin on his wrist and took the time to marvel at how talkative his monkey demon had just become. "You've said more in the past twenty seconds than you did in the past two days!"
Yulaan yawned. "Where's the shitter? Upstairs?" She hobbled over to the stairs. "I'll don't care to speak if I have nothing to say."
"Then why'd you say that?" Vicente could scarcely maintain himself as he considered her question after the havoc she had only just caused. However, the Yaban had left, her tail also out of view.
Senior threw himself back into his chair and rocked himself. "Ay-yay-yay..."
Vicente took off his hat and tossed it behind him onto an oilwood table and said, “I left my cousins back at the zoo for this.”
“And thank the Lord! I wouldn’t want them to see this. As long as they can get home!” Senior rested his hand on his face, the sighs coming often and louder than the last. He tried to sip some tea from an empty cup, and instead of fetching himself more, he instead set the cup down with enough heaviness to knock it over. “And now she talks about qi! Lawdy lawd.”
“Yeah…” Vicente took the meat off the heat and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Count Sakiné mentioned something like that too. And I’ve been meaning to ask if it’s the same thing as that electricity power she has.” He took one last look at the hock, and then at the bones scattered on the floor, and then at the skeleton of the junker outside, and then at the splintered boulevard of broken trees. “El bruja, indeed…”
----------------------------------------
Old Hearst Highway took its name from Alan Hearst, a slaveowner who used the last days of his ill-gotten money to have an ever-muddy path paved so God didn't judge him to have done nothing worthy before the man was found hanging on horse wire in a neighbor's field. Local legend claimed a note written by the Devil had been left in his bloody nose and on that note was a curse scrawled in arcane letters unknown to any reader. Ever since, the road has evolved into different states of disrepair before finally being christened a highway during Ford presidency. This singular vein stretches eleven miles and connects the bustling town of Cypress Hill to the interstate towards New Orleans, running through Falstead, Dalecott, Covington, and Gulf Breeze. Most traffic casualties are possums and deer— the few remaining are birds swooping down in fatal daredevil attempts to snatch free food as if the explosive momentum of multi-ton monsters of steel was a neverending display of dominance these birds were too Alpha to avoid. There is no New Hearst Highway.
Chale Manuel Xaxalpa Suárez lived in the least boggy quarter of this boggy boondock. A man with crags for a face and a mind born of early 1970s machismo, he folded into the tired and weedy boonies as well as any other ethnic face. One day months ago, he caught grainy photographic evidence of mysterious figures and an unknown structure beyond the distant treeline which seemed to support the outrageous possibility that neighbors existed. He remains a skeptic.
Yet he has lived on this postage stamp of land for long enough to see that the sins of Alan Hearst left behind a shadow culture beyond the veil of normalcy. The car-eating monkey-tailed monster that just laid waste to his yard and toilet alike was only the most tangible of a hundred fifty years of incursions by the paranormal bizarre.
And that paranormal bizarre never let themselves fall so conspicuously into the light. What Yulaan did was illegal for the haunts.
Senior had never seen with his eyes anything so beyond the mundane, rather retelling others the ambiance that thickened the air like the meat around the vein. Spectres photographed in old homes, unknown faces in the distant bushes, triangular formations in the sky, premonitions from behind the milky walls of sleep, all things claimed and yet nothing he himself was allowed to enjoy. And for years, he and his wife watched an eccentric grandson split from his siblings and seek kinship in the fleeting bizarre, wishing that he might one day experience some undeniable proof of the residue of Hearst's evil.
The scar-crossed, electrical-haired girl exploding a tree and eating pan-fried ham hocks was the exclamation mark ending those years.
Vicente pulled his hat back over his head and asked, "I saw Gideon at the zoo. He's one of the younger followers."
This pressed heavily on Senior's face, erasing his tense grin. "If Totta's brats were there, then why not bring the girls? And Freyja."
The exclusion of Freyja cut off Vicente's reply, replacing it with a lipsmack. "Respect her decision! Look, I didn't want to do it. But I couldn't risk letting Yulaan grow bored. I promised her this food. Twice, actually— I told her twice I'd give her meat. I was warned not to disregard her."
The splintered trees tickled his peripheral vision.
"I understand. I understand."
And the young man couldn't find the reason for understanding until he asked, "Should I get them?"
"No, I said it's better they not see this. Not yet. And you made the right choice coming straight here."
The cup spilled its tea in his trembling hand. The corner of his eyes itched, and the broken trees scratched them. "What should I do?"
"I'll tell you what you can't. Absolutely do not ship her to any government or large organization that expresses interest in her. I can assure you that certain people already know about her."
Vicente sipped. "They might come for her then."
"No, boy, I mean they just know she exists. They don't know what you know. For all they know, you've kidnapped someone and are trying to throw off their trail."
Each breath came deliberately as if waiting for a cancer diagnosis. "Really."
"They don't know everything. They want you to think they do because that illusion of absolute power is necessary—" Senior pinched his fingers and gestured massively, "absolutely necessary to keep the rich and powerful where they are."
A red robin fluttered unto a patch of scattered twigs and broken eggs. It packed about the still body of a tiny robin, twisted its head about, hopped away, and flew off. Vicente followed its path until it left his life forever, a dot of red faded into the background.
"Should I get my cousins? Bring them home?"
The suggestion brought the possibility of being left alone with Yulaan to Senior's lips with a resounding, "No!"
It filled his stomach like swallowing a grenade: his cousins could be in danger. Gideon had contacted Valentina once before. The Man in White had slipped out of sight at the last second. If only he could've known who left first.
Thump, thud, thump, thud— Yulaan came downstairs. Both men hurried back inside.
She yawned. "I spoke of vril."
Vicente rushed back to the stove, only to stop by a force snagging him in place. His muscles felt stiff, as if they had all been turned off.
"No need for further treats, Vicente." The cane stood upright when Yulaan let go. She crossed her legs and floated into the air, holding her hands in a lotus pattern.
Senior watched as if he had seen the Lord. "So that's it."
Yulaan hovered in the living room, her hair lifted even further to the point her bangs uncovered her closed eyes. Her tail curled around her body like a ring.
The dog lay beneath her, licking its lips and resting its head on its paws.
Vicente felt awake.
Senior felt renewed.
The terror and fears that had gripped them fell away.
All things felt right and harmonious. What had they been so scared of? It was all silly.
Then it faded. What filled them in its place was the tepidity of mundanity. They felt as if Yulaan wasn’t there at all, or perhaps if she was an old familiar face.
Vicente sat down on a couch while Senior took his rocking chair, his dog jumping into his lap.
Yulaan let one foot touch the floor before the second several seconds later. "I understand you human lot, you would rather a less explosive demonstration."
She opened her eyes right as she let her bangs fall over them. The bangs and a few shocks of hair barely obeyed gravity— most of the rest remained skyward, and the plume caught by the vertebra looked like a blooming black flower on her head.
"Yeah, that's better than blowing up my trees. I don't need blood pressure that high at my age."
Vicente sniggered.
Yulaan cracked her back and stretched. Some fatigue weighed her down enough for her to find comfort. A touch of relief flowed through Vicente, enough to nod. The ground upon which she walked did not crack and shatter.
Her tail coiled around her midsection and legs until she threw herself onto the corduroy loveseat.
Senior said, "You said something earlier. You mentioned that thing about energy and the Force. With your hair and sitting and— what was it, brillo?"
Yulaan curled herself up and wrapped her tail around her body, the length enough to do so one full time and a half. "Vril." Then she lifted a finger and let fairylike orbs twirl and whirl. To suggest the ethereal texture should be roughened by a wicked spasm of static now came as ludicrous. If light could have form, she created it.
Vicente's tea was so cold it stung going down.
With a quick lick of the lips, Senior asked, "Many many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and made rock and roll music, I knew a good man. He ran a school over in Gulf Breeze, on Uri Lane, and he would teach people— do you understand what I'm saying? Do I need to explain anything? Shake your head if—"
Yulaan raised her head off her knees. Her tail's end fluttered on the seat. Senior stopped.
Then he went on. "When I first come into America, came to America," and then he stopped and laughed at something known only to him. "Bleh! Both might work. When I first came to America, I knew a man who would teach the, uh, the Asian martial arts. Kung fu mostly. A white man with a beautiful lady. He would tell us all the time about her homeland."
Yulaan dropped her head onto her knees, smooshing her cheeks. "Was this human male bestowed the name Raymond Wright?"
Senior's lower lip drooped.
"And the female: Lau Yanling. Good finks, Chale. You knew humans who were aware of vril."
Senior dropped his head and said, "Uh— YES. You are a mindreading monkey. Yes. Raymond talked about his lady and her great-grandfather. I don't remember the name no more; oh it was too long ago." He raised an eyebrow.
Yulaan finished a yawn. "If you don't know, I don't know."
"Aha. Boy, you lied to me. You sold me a defective goddess."
Vicente quietly sipped the last of his tea, keeping his eyes and nose turned to the fired oil and the remaining ham hocks atop the table. Yulaan scoffed and looked elsewhere at nothing in particular.
"I hoped she could unclog my brain."
She turned her head and said, "He taught you about vril under a different name. That name is qi." She then focused on Vicente. "And you noticed the similarity to ki."
Both men staggered in their own way. Vicente set his cup aside and focused on anything his eyes fell upon, swiping through his phone and reading halves of sentences before moving on. Senior did Mary's cross and said:
"Well, yes. That's it. I don't need to say anything, do I?"
Yulaan uncurled herself and sat with her elbows on her thighs. "Then you're aware of the twelve meridians humans possess." She pat her chest. “A number
Vicente considered this and asked, “Is it anything to do with the lightning powers you have?”
“Hrrrk?” The way Yulaan looked at him, one of her fangs stuck out of her mouth.
“Remember, back at the zoo hospital. You shocked Dr. Golitsyn’s hand. Do you have electricity superpowers as well as the vril powers?”
For a moment, Yulaan’s face scrunched as she remembered what had transpired earlier in the day. She had found snuggling in a bag to be fun, but the human she scared at the slave-beast enclosure came as a fuzzy stream of action till she remembered with a grin that he made the mistake of touching her charged hair.
“Tell me the question again.”
“The shock powers.” Vicente rolled his hand. “The electrokinesis. Is that vril?”
Her tail’s end wagged. “Hmm. I know the answer is no, but I could not tell you why. Piggy would know.”
He blinked. “Piggy?”
“The Count told me humans excel at friendship. You would understand her to be a friend of mine.”
“You have pigs on your world?”
She set her chin within her knees again. “ Kevelnege is her name.”
“Oh, so it’s more of a pet name.”
She scowled. “Pet name,” she echoed. She looked at the stack of books set on a coffee table and then back at the floor.
“I’m asking, they are different then?”
Yulaan lifted her hand and let the lights flutter around her fingers again. Yet this time electric starters zapped off the tips of her fingers, cracking into the air by a second-finger’s length on each. The five tendrils of electricity wiggled and broke without disturbing the physicalized spirit energy orbiting her hand.
Even dreams did not make so much mockery of common sense. It was all too much to see: this wild-haired monkey girl whose arm exuded such raw power. But in watching the display, Vicente could not help but feel that whatever force sparked such electricity through the girl’s fingers was not the same as that which alit her arm with the freaky anime aura. The electricity seemed much too physical, much too mundane. The word ‘bioelectricity’ ran through his mind.
Senior’s phone rang and he calmed himself to say, "Bueno! Bueno!"
Vicente disengaged his ears.
"¿Qué es eso? Oh... Ah, no. ¡No! La vi en algún lugar de Briarville. ¿Porqué?" His face contorted. "Totta? Both men exchanged nervous glances.
Vicente folded his arms and twisted his body several times to keep moving. Hearing that name concerned him, and once Chale said, "Uhhh, cierto. Voy a comprobar. Te amo, adiós," he raised an eyebrow.
"Well!" Senior tensed his face, sucking in air through his teeth. "Luis just told me that Valentina might be fooling with one of Totta's boys."
It took Vicente a few seconds to process this and respond. "Why?"
Senior blew out his cheeks and said, "Maybe she was wooed? He said they’re on their way home now; she’s fine and didn’t get roped in. But it looks you were right to be worried, boy." He got to his feet and ran his hands through his hair, using his other to dial. This, Vicente knew, was for his cousin Julio. He walked to the back door to survey the damage Yulaan had wrought to ease his mind. The last thing he needed to worry about was Ezekiel Totta wrapping up a cousin into his esoteric ramblings.
Vicente took off his hand and scraggled his hair. “I had a feeling. I had— hmmghh! I knew I should’ve left with them all.”
Over his phone, Senior said, “No, you were still right to be cautious with Yulaan.” No answer on the other end, so he tried again.
Vicente turned to Yulaan and said, “Tell me, what else can you do with vril?”
“What do you call vril?” With another glance at the books, she said, "Tell me again."
Vicente paused and looked to his abuelo, who now turned to texting. "Didn't you already know it?"
She looked at the books and said to herself under her breath, "Pet name..."
“Ah… Actually, you know, I swear I’ve heard that term before somewhere. Vril. But what you describe, we call it qi.”
She threw her head back and said, “Qi. It’s the same here as there…”
“I really would like to know. Because depending on the circumstances, I may need your help with something.”
He looked again to Senior, who silently shook his head. Both men knew what he meant. Senior’s earlier caution rang in his ears. Bringing that caution to a sense of danger was the sight of a vein dancing on Yulaan's forehead, as if she struggled with a heavy weight not on her back.
“And that’s why you’re asking about qi.”
Beat. “Yes.” He looked back to the chaotic yard and to the rustic greenery beyond, that land of Alan Hearst long since cursed.
Senior stepped up. "Yulaan, disregard him. It's a matter he has to resolve himself."
Vicente looked to him. He looked back, to the yard, and then back to him.