Illustrations by Alison Berry
Guest art by Soraya Aulia (Soe)
Episode 4: In the Arms of Vindaloo
Hana and James were not the types to casually find themselves on the roof of a building. The only reason they were on one was because James wanted to meet the alleyway king that Hana had met the previous day, when she had to save Henri from fanatical lobsters.
The building was a short, nondescript one they had climbed onto from a hill of artificial turf, and Hana was so certain she had found the right building that, when it became obvious she had not, she began racing along all the edges, willing the alley to magically appear. She did not think it would be too much to ask for after all the other strange things that had been happening lately.
‘It’s okay, Hana,’ James allayed, watching her with his hands in his pockets. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
James’ cat had run away a year ago, and what Hana had told him about the king of the alleyway had given him some small hope that this seemingly omniscient king would know of its whereabouts: after all, if the king had known about Hana’s dandruff problem and the plans of a pair of stray lobsters, then surely the king would know what had happened to his cat.
It was as a sympathetic gesture that Hana offered to attempt retracing her steps from the previous day’s journey, when the king’s servant had led her to the rectangular kingdom; otherwise she would have wanted to stay as far away as possible from that realm of absurdities, if only to take a break from the mental exhaustion that dealing with a talking cat can bring.
‘But I really want to help you find your cat,’ Hana told him, disappointed. ‘I know how much it meant to you.’
James shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s best if we don’t know what happened to it,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the idea of knowing it’s under the wheel of a truck or anything. Poor guy. You know, it was always a wild cat – I like to think it’s off scavenging for mice and birds and all that good stuff. Getting milk straight from the cow.’ Then he grabbed his bat lying on the roof beside him, strolled up to Hana and prodded her lightly in the stomach. ‘I hear you stayed the night at Henri’s grandparents’,’ he said, always the expert at changing subjects.
‘Yeah, you heard that from me,’ Hana said.
‘Was Henri a perfect gentleman?’
Hana looked at him in surprised disgust. ‘Gah, I can’t believe you said that!’ she said, pushing the bat away. ‘You have a sick mind. As far as I know, Henri thinks I’m a boy.’
‘You sure act like one,’ James said, and Hana stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Don’t worry; I know Henri is an upstanding citizen.’
‘And you? What would you do if I was forced to stay over at your grandparents’ place?’
James raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I’d probably go somewhere that doesn’t have a snoring girl in it. So, who’s the sick one now?’ he asked as he took wide swings at the open air beyond the roof.
‘C’mon, let’s keep looking for the alley.’
James stopped swinging and rested the top of his bat against the roof; he looked like he was posing with a cane for an old photograph. ‘No, I already said not to worry about it. Sometimes bad things happen, and all we can really do is learn to live with them.’
‘Since when did you get so mature?’ Hana asked, raising her own eyebrow and smiling wryly. ‘Don’t tell me you read a book or something.’
James tapped the side of his head lightly with the bat. ‘Delinquents have feelings too,’ he said, and then started back towards the hill of artificial turf, leaving Hana to wonder what he meant by that. ‘I’ll buy you lunch,’ he called after her when she made no motion to move. ‘I could go for some Indian food and I can never finish it alone.’
She walked up to the edge of the roof and took the hand of James, who was standing on the hill; he helped her down, and together they went off in search of an Indian restaurant.
They went into the first one they came across, and it was so cramped that it could only contain two small tables. Together they shared a bowl of lamb vindaloo that had four flames next to it on the menu but tasted more like it should only have three.
‘I’m not about to argue with a free meal,’ Hana said.
‘Does that mean I have to argue with it, since I paid for it?’ James asked, and then he looked at the bowl as though he were about to argue with it.
‘It still tastes good.’
James stabbed at an orange piece of lamb with his plastic fork and popped it into his mouth in agreement.
‘So, how about that talking cat?’ James asked as the lamb tumbled around in his mouth; Hana winced and held up her hand to hide the view.
‘Actually, I started thinking about something this morning,’ she said.
‘It’s always the next morning that people start thinking,’ James observed.
‘Yeah? Maybe that’s true, because I think I may have figured something out. It’s really far-fetched, though.’
‘Spill it.’
‘Okay, so remember how I told you that the cat talked about a guy named Daniel Druff who had the same power as me?’
James nodded absently as he dabbed vindaloo from his lips with a paper napkin.
‘Well, remember how the river monster kept saying the same thing over and over again?’
‘“Dandruff”. What about it?’
‘I guess I didn’t notice it at the time, or pay much attention to it, but there was always a pause in the middle of the word. So it was like it was saying ‘Dan Druff’; or, and here’s where it gets far-fetched, Daniel Druff!’ She rapped the table excitedly in anticipation of James’ response.
‘So, what you’re saying is, is that all of Daniel Druff’s ancient enemies, if he had any, are coming after you?’ James offered.
‘What!? I was just thinking it was an interesting coincidence. I don’t wanna have to deal with any more monsters,’ she said sulkily. James dipped his finger into the bowl and then pressed her nose, leaving a dab of sauce on it. ‘Other than you,’ she said. Then she wiped her nose and tossed her plastic fork into the bowl. ‘I’m done eating. I can’t eat on a frightened stomach.’
James shrugged and used both forks to shovel the last of the vindaloo into his mouth. ‘You know,’ he started, and Hana gagged at the sight of all the food still having a party in his mouth, ‘you shouldn’t take what I said so seriously; I was just trying to repeat what I thought you were going to say. It was time-travelling conjecture and nothing more.’
‘Maybe I’m just upset you said something I was secretly thinking,’ she said.
James pushed the empty bowl to the side of the table and got out his wallet to pay for their meal. Hana made a lopsided bird out of a dirty napkin and floated it towards him, watching as it dived towards the wrinkled bills and loose change that James had set down on the table. They left the bird to guard the money and exited the restaurant, out onto the busy street where they wondered what they were going to do next.
They decided that, now that they were well fed, they were ready for something physical, albeit not something so physical that their digesting Indian swished angrily around in their stomachs. The answer, of course, was to play catch. They had not done so since the incident in which James was struck by a dandruff ball in more than one sense, and straying from the routine for so long had begun to diminish their hand-eye coordination. So, once they figured out where they were, they headed for James’ place to pick up a ball.
James lived alone with his mother in a compact bungalow where nearly every room was roughly the same small size. When James was a little boy his father had died in a work-related accident at a factory due to malfunctioning machinery, and soon afterwards that factory closed down; before he died, however, James’ father had managed to save up just enough for James’ education, which was why he and his mother lived in such a modest abode. The house was cosy in the sincerest sense of the word, and Hana felt as comfortable there as she did in her own home.
When they arrived at the bungalow they found James’ mother cutting up carrots and celery for a stew, and she greeted them jovially, a rotund woman whose heart was as big as her body. Hana offered to help cut vegetables for the stew she would not be having while James knocked around in his room for the ball. Each chop seemed to correspond to a unique sound from James’ room, with one chop leading to the sound of books falling from a shelf while another chop led to the accidental twang of an acoustic guitar.
‘It must be hard knowing there’s such a messy room in this house,’ Hana said jokingly and hypocritically to James’ mother.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll yell at him when he gets back,’ James’ mother said, winking.
‘Or refuse to let him have any of this awesome stew,’ Hana suggested. ‘But I guess that’d be bordering on cruelty.’
‘Right you are, Hana. And you know what they say: “Don’t be cruel to the animals”.’
Hana laughed at her motherly humour. ‘I think this is one animal who could use a little cruelty every once in a while,’ she said, grinning, and James’ mother grinned as well.
When James came out of his room with the ball in his hands he wondered what they were smiling so widely about. Looking at them through slitted, suspicious eyes, he spun the ball on his fingers and tilted his head in the direction of the front door.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, ‘before my mother turns you into a real lady.’
‘Goodness!’ his mother exclaimed good-naturedly, and Hana threw the stem of a carrot at him.
They left as James’ mother thanked Hana for her help, offering that she come back later to help eat the stew as well. Hana politely declined the offer, however, knowing that her mother would have something equally wonderful waiting for her.
Outside the house was a low-flying blimp advertising something in print too difficult to read, and after each took their guesses as to what the blimp was trying to sell – Hana’s squinting suggestion that it was advertising advertising space was what won out – they headed to the school’s baseball diamond.
They arrived to find it populated by the school baseball team practicing for a game. After the initial disappointment faded away they circled the diamond like vultures, making the players feel uneasy as they looked to see if Henri was playing, but they could not find his number among the uniforms; after this second disappointment they supposed he was either still with his grandparents or had otherwise been kicked off the team. Despite Henri’s dismissal being nothing more than an obvious joke, there was still some bitterness lingering in James’ words: whenever he looked at the team he saw himself playing with them in Henri’s stead, but he knew that, until his grades got better, he would be unable join them. Hana pulled the dreaming James away from the vicinity of the diamond and together they found a spot in the neighbouring field to play in, every so often glancing back at the diamond with resentment.
‘That’s really what it’s there for, after all,’ Hana said after they had thrown and caught several balls in silence.
James shrugged, then nodded, and then finally smiled at Hana.
‘What are you so happy about?’ she asked.
James went back to shrugging. ‘Just how easy it is for you to not only accept things but also rationalise them,’ he said.
Hana did not know how to respond. ‘Are you saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing?’
‘It’s a thing,’ James said. ‘And it’s your thing. Nothing more and nothing less.’
Hana stopped herself mid-throw and let her arm hang limply at her side. ‘So are you gonna tell me why you’ve been so serious lately?’ she asked.
James sighed. ‘Why you gotta go and ask such a serious question like that?’ he asked back.
Again Hana did not know how to respond, and that was why she was exceedingly grateful when something completely out of the ordinary happened: in the space between Hana and James there manifested a floating bowl as translucent as the steam it was letting off, and this bowl gave out a strong smell that was strangely familiar to them.
‘Er, is that what I think it is?’ James asked.
‘So you can see it, too?’
‘I can certainly smell it.’
Hana took a few steps closer to the bowl for a better look, and that was when she noticed the ends of two translucent forks sticking out of it. ‘It’s a bowl of vindaloo! And not just any bowl, but the one we had for lunch! But what’s it doing here?’
She took another step closer, this time with her hands reaching out to grab it, but as soon as she advanced, the bowl disappeared. The smell, however, remained.
‘What was that all about?’ she asked the spot where it had appeared. ‘Was it trying to warn us about something?’ She scratched her head, sending out a few dry flakes of dandruff.
James gave the empty space a thoughtful look. ‘I think it was just our Indian food coming back to haunt us,’ he said.
When nothing else happened, Hana was forced to agree. They ended up cancelling the rest of their game of catch and went off to their respective homes in a daze, both of them thinking over the day’s events in their own unique ways.
To Be Continued In Episode Five: Pitaya
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Episode 12
Episode 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
Volume 2
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