Neither Be Seen Nor Heard

Crashing through the glass panel of a greenhouse, I land onto a bed of velvety moss and roll forward into some large ceramic pots containing large trees with waxy green leaves and the most fragrant yellow flowers. While I am not entirely sure the location of this place, I know for a fact I am in a greenhouse of spectacular size. Checking myself for injury, I notice my clothes are in tatters, and I have a few bleeding cuts. Nothing is broken, no holes sliced into the depths of my abdomen, and my head is still attached to and directly above my neck. That last one is very important, don’t want to lose your head, they are really hard to find. 

Suddenly realizing the fact I had very ungracefully crashed into this greenhouse from the outside, I checked the space that once contained glass to see if anything was crawling in after me. I cannot recall why I am here, but nothing can be seen nor heard from where I am standing. I see a large door across the luscious, lime green moss and take steps to exit through it.

I pass through the opaque glass french doors and I am in a corridor with a few people sitting in chairs. There is a woman and man in scrubs at a cart counting out small little tablets, and an elderly gentleman with an adorable sweater vest and white cane. A few people are sitting in chairs with giant wheels on the sides, I watch as they stare off towards the ceiling and walls at nothing in particular. Tiptoeing towards the closest wheeled chair-riding female cozied up underneath a brightly coloured crochet blanket, I wave my hand in front of her wrinkled, drooping face, but she does not respond. 

The woman speaks with a slight yell towards the woman by the cart, “Is someone there? I felt a breeze, Miss!” 

The younger woman at the cart, looks towards the woman, then at me and says, “She doesn’t have the best vision, but it appears that you can neither be seen nor heard by her” and promptly continues on with her work at the cart. The elderly woman says nothing more, just whimpers slightly while sitting in her chair. To myself, I’m thinking that what the young woman said was quite strange. 

The young woman hands the small paper cup she just counted tablets into to the elderly gentleman leaning against her cart, his white cane held in his left hand. He puts the contents of the paper cup into his mouth and washes it down with a thick, orange liquid. He nods towards her, throws the liquid cup and the paper cup away, picks his cane off the floor and begins to walk into a room behind the young woman. Stopping, he gives me a long look from top to bottom. 

“Haven’t I seen you here before?” He inquires. 

“No sir, this is my first time to this place”, I reply while still scanning the surroundings.

“I have met you,” he states firmly, “You may think you have not been here, but actually you have. Follow me, you gotta meet the Master of this place”, He walks on, muttering to himself. 

He leads me past a large room with many tables with doilies and cutlery laid on them then down a corridor with many doors varying in color and shape. We stop at a maroon painted, heavy wooden door and he gives a melodic knock with his cane. 

“You may enter”, a deep, rumbling voice says somewhat impatiently in return to the jubilantly, annoying knock the man gave. 

Turning the knob he grunts as he pushes this thick, wooden door open with a shoulder. 

“Don’t worry your majesty, I don’t need help”, he said to me with a tone that I could not understand but it did not sound sincere.

I follow him into a large office with books stretched up three floors high, multiple circular globes of different topography, and a large cage towards a window that held brightly coloured birds. Opposite of the window, the man the voice belonged to is sitting behind a minimal, well-polished wooden desk about two meters long and a meter wide. There is but a single book laid out in front of him, one pen, vase with exotic flowers, and a pair of glasses. He looks towards us and a welcoming smile breaks into his face when his eyes see me. 

“Welcome, you have been expected. You have neither been seen nor heard of in the past few decades, we have missed you greatly Ria” he says with a slight bit of an accent that was different from the other people I have encountered so far, “Nice of you to finally grace us with your presence again.”

“Who are you? I don’t know of this place”, I flatly say as my eyes float around the room. The more I look around this room my brain is invaded with memories. Each of the large oil paintings of people and scenes of wars and family picnics comes to life inside me. I feel emotions towards the studies of these paintings. I recall the tones of their voices and the events of the afternoons. 

Impatiently the older gentleman huffs, crosses his arms with the cane in hand, and then blurts out, “I wish you’d just keep them memories between your travels”.

Confused, I spin around the room, looking at each photo, memories rebirth behind my eyes. The memory that is most profound is of the man behind the desk. It is distant, the man much younger than he is now, his face containing far less wrinkles and his hair more color and thickness. The memory is him yelling at me, for what I do not know but he was upset, tears in his eyes. I was not a child at this time, but the memories are still fuzzy.

I fall to the chair behind me, my memory of him was from centuries ago. 

“Sir, why can’t you just force her to keep them memories? You be the Master of this house after all! Now we are gonna waste precious time gettin’ her all caught up on the happenings or watch her figure it out on her own.” the elderly man whines to the master. 

“You will be quiet Troy. She has chosen this fate and we also have to suffer the consequences with her” he admonishes the man gently but yet impatiently, not taking his eyes off me. 

He stands and makes his way towards my chair. He stops before me, kneeling down onto one knee, and takes my hands up into his delicately. I stare at these hands over mine and raise my head up to look into his eyes which are thick, brown color, kind, and wise. Not fully sure I should trust him, but right now there is no memory to disprove trust. 

“My dear, I will call Patricia to bring you some rejuvenating waters from the kitchen’s greenhouse spring, as well as a bit to eat. Then we can talk and catch you up on why you might be here.” turning towards the older man he continues, “Also, Troy, we need to alert Greg to fix that hole in the greenhouse before the beetles find the more potent of flowers.” 

Before making that hole, I slightly recall running, glancing behind me to see something purple and mucous like, two heads higher than a grown man, with a grin full of sharp teeth. When I attempt to think further back beyond crashing into the greenhouse, my brain aches. Piercing pain causes my head to fall into my hands. My ears ring so loudly I can not hear the commotion and bustle around me. The man is holding his hands over mine on the side of my head and is speaking something to me but I can not understand what. Voices are distant and the screams in my head distracting. For the first time I notice that my clothing is covered in some black goo and blood. I stare at these stains attempting to recall what they are from but the harder I focus on them the tighter the vice around my head gets. 

There is a knock at the door, a woman opens it carrying a tray with a cup of orange liquid, small cucumber (“Fresh from the garden” she says proudly to the Master) sandwiches, and a few colorful gelatinous treats covered in a sweet powder. She walks over to set the tray on the desk, but the man snaps his fingers to indicate for her to come where we are.

“The food is not for me, set it on this table here for the girl”, he commands the woman while pointing at the small, ornate golden table next to the chair. 

“What girl, Sir?” she meekly questions.

Troy and the man quickly look at each other, look back towards me, and back to the woman with the treats. I am even more confused. Why can’t this woman see me? Is she blind like the woman out in the hall? Surely not, she was walking around the room with the tray and looked directly at the Master. Before I could ponder any longer on this my head started to ache slightly again and then the men starts to answer my unspoken questions. Ones I didn’t know I had.

“She didn’t shift correctly Troy”, the Master states, showing more emotion in his eyes then he had previously unveiled. 

“No sir, she didn’t. I suspected ‘cause the Seer in that hall didn’t even see her. Until she can get up the strength to be back to her full self only a few of us folk will actually know she is around” Troy replied annoyingly, “This isn’t going to go well with the Overseer”. 

The Master then stood up, motioned his hands towards the tray and encouraged me to consume the contents. 

“Patricia” he says to the woman who brought the tray, “Please bring two more trays in for Troy and I, this is going to be a long evening.” 

She nods and turns to make her way towards the doors to leave, “Yessir”. 

“On second thought, bring a third tray as well with double portions and a pitcher full of the strongest of the waters”, he directed as he made his way to his desk. 

Troy sits down on the couch with a humph, I eat my sandwiches and finish off my orange liquid, and the Master reads the pages of his book. As I drain the last little bit of orangey deliciousness down, I feel my skull receding from around my softener brain bits and the pain lessens. I can recall more memories of this place. As I swiftly tumble into a hole of locked up memories, Patricia comes back into the room with a cart full of delightful looking treats. 

The Master places the book under his arm, steps from around the desk towards the tray. He grabs a plate and piles it high with cakes and sandwiches, some meats and cheeses, and a slice of pie. He then takes a large glass and fills it to the brim with the orange liquid. Walking over to me, he replaces my empty plate and glass with the ones he just filled up. 

“Eat this. You must leave this place so you can gather your full existence back” he says to me but what he says still sounds foreign.

I watch as Patricia looks just above my head, “She did it again Sir?” she says as she looks back towards the man. 

He nods in return. 

“Oh the poor Dear. You eat up and get back to us safely in one piece!” she yells in the general direction of the chair. 

“She ain’t deaf you daft old woman! She just irresponsible!” Troy yells at them both. 

Patricia makes her way out of the room and the three of us sit in silence for the next few hours, other than the sounds of cutlery on our plates and glasses being set down on coasters. Once I have finished two more glasses of the thick, sweet liquid, the Master stands up and sullenly says, “It is time to go, Ria. You must try again.” 

I blink. There are no words. I barely have memories of where I was prior to this place. How am I going to do this all again? Preferably I would like to take a nap for a while and try whatever this is again tomorrow. 

“Sir, I have no idea what I am doing” I tell him plainly.

He comes up to me slowly, picking one of the flowers out of a vase. Again kneeling in front of me but this time not making eye contact. I see Troy shift uncomfortably on the couch then he stands up and walks to the cart to fill his plate up with more food. The Master just watches me closely. 

“You must have died where you were Ria, which is why you were sent back suddenly, incompletely. You must go back to that time and defeat whatever bested you. There are ways to do so, but you must discover them”, he said. 

“I don’t recall anything from that moment. Some purple blobs is all”, I tell him frankly, “And I don’t know what to do when I go back to this unknown place”. 

As if he suddenly was filled up with more emotion in that instant than he could bear, the man stands up and shouts at the top of his lungs. He stomps towards the desk and slams his fist into it with a thud, smash, grunt and the table falls. 

“RIA! Do you not understand! If you don’t do this within this moon cycle, you will neither be seen nor heard by anyone in this realm ever again . Troy is right, you should keep your memories, but after 630 years of traveling you can only keep so many before you break. This is a problem that the gardens are going to fix”. 

He quickly walks over towards me and I stand to meet him. He stops just a foot away from me. 

“My Love, I am sorry, but you have to make this quick”, with this cryptic message he holds up the feathery, cottony flower towards my face. He sucks air into his cheeks and blows the light, bouncing material over my eyes. My vision blurs, my body feels as if it is evaporating into the air space around me, and he whispers gently, “Til our next meeting my love”.