The Temple in the Sky, Fernando Herrera Jr [the rosie project .txt] 📗

search for it. One minute later, he came back with it. She took it and began to dab on the bricks, checking the sounds they emitted. She dabbed them consecutively as they were juxtaposed, one by one: “knock, knock, knock, and thump!” they sounded.
“Just as I expected,” said Daisy with her cocksure attitude.
“Huh?”
“Listen, stupid.” She batted it once more, “thump!,” it sounded again. “This one is hollow,” she said.
“Oh.”
“Now, go get me a screwdriver. Fast boy!”
So he started once more, sprinting with excitement to his father’s study to get the toolbox.
“Not a Phillips, get a flat tip!” she yelled.
He halted and slipped on the shiny floor as he fell on his bottom. “Ouch!” He rubbed his bottom to palliate it. It was one of those falls where one bumps the coccyx and the pain oscillates through the spine with a flagitious tickle that sends the soul on a temporary jaunt to respite. That type exactly is what he felt. He was excruciated by the coccyx but was too embarrassed to cry (though tears did brim). So he disguised his anguish with an insouciant posture. What’s a Phillips?” he asked.
“The one with the cross—don’t get that! Get the flat one!”
“Oh, ok!” So he started again—came back a minute later in gasps. He crouched in pants and handed over the tool.
“Thank you, boy.”
Kneeling, she took it with her right hand, took her left hand to her mouth, breathed onto her pricked at nails (she was a nail biter) emitting moisture on them, polished them swiftly by her chest with the cloth of her dress, gave Jasper a sleek glare, and rolled up her sleeves mid-way in preparation.
Jasper was too giddy to even think straight and couldn’t concentrate on assisting her. He wasn’t sure what he wanted the most: to find the key, to ease that pain by his buttocks, or to play that game with Daisy. He presumed that the finding of the key was inevitable with such brains for an accomplice but the game was not so sure to go that well; though he knew he was bound to do it eventually. His campaign options: 1. right then and there; 2. tomorrow; 3. months after; 4. maybe years after; 5. never—No! Veto the fifth! But whatever option he did choose, he understood that by his naughtiness, it was inevitable, eventually and indubitably. He had done more hazardous things before; this was to be a cinch, theoretically of course. However, he wasn’t so sure whether she would like it—or if she even wanted it in the first place. And as he knelt contemplating about the “ifs” and “whats” of his risky campaign, he happened to glance at her, which triggered his apprehension of the reality that he was incredibly, curiously naughty. So the limits of curiosity were right there and then breached. He would go for it right then and there. Option “1” would be the one. As he knelt beside her, she agitated her arm with a type of flinch that brushed his shoulder. It gave him chills of screaming meemies. He was as close as he could ever be without invading her “private aura.” That sweet scent from that perfume and her sweat he could smell. It was especially strong that day. Maybe she did wear it for him. The thoughts that ran through his head: “Will she be mad? Will she hit me? Will mom spank me? Will Daisy tell on me? What will dad say? He’ll be proud. Will she kiss me back? Why am I doing this? I’m only ten. My friend kissed a girl, but he’s eleven and a half, and she kissed him first. Maybe I will wait till next year. What if she slaps me on the face? That’s what girls do in the films. But she’s not like those grown ups. She’s nice... sometimes. I will wait. But she’s so pretty. I want to now. I can’t wait. I want to know what it feels like right here and now. Yes, I will then, right here and now.”
So he scooted towards her and leaned in while she kept busy with the hammer. Taking the deepest breath he ever had, he gulped, whilst she turned to him and smiled with glee. Their glares locked. The boy’s absorption was so intense, he even noticed her pupils dilate by the dim brilliance. He looked at her lips: chapped as usual. Roughness and cracks never looked so appealing. She said something. He felt her halitus collide upon his face. Her breath smelled of grape lollipops. He tried to assemble the words she had just uttered and tacked together this: “Boy, you’re handsome. Sweetie, I wanna kiss.” But his mind was too perturbed to comprehend her actual words, for what she had really uttered was: “Boy, you’re so dumb. Good thing I’ma real whiz.”
The boy convulsed in nerdy giggles and murmured this in wavy pitches: “If you say so,” then closed his eyes and puckered his lips for a grape kiss.
“Why does your breath smell like cheese?” she asked.
He opened his eyes to find her profile. She was concentrated on the brick.
“I had an omelet,”he responded. “Is that bad?” he asked.
“No, omelets are good. Your breath is bad.”
“I’m sorry,” he said while taking his scooped hand to his mouth and breathing onto it, for obvious reasons. He rucked up his face in disagreement with the cheesy aroma.
“It’s fine, boy, just don’t talk at my face that close. Now, go get me a pop,” she ordered.
“What? Why?!”
“Because I’m parched. Hurry, boy! I haven’t got all day!”
“What kind?”
“Cream!”
He was a bit daunted by her rudeness but he started to his feet once more, anyway, and sprinted to the kitchen. He always wanted to please her, so he obeyed her like a slave. While he was gone, Daisy got on with the business. She took the driver with her right hand, the hammer with the left, set the tip upon the brick’s ridge (the cement part), and began to chip away. By the time Jasper came back running with the soda in hand (like a chipper puppy with a stick), Daisy had already ejected the brick from the chimney. Still kneeling, she was holding it in her arms—as if holding a baby—and studying it like she had done with the chest. Commoved, she turned to him and said: “Oh, give it here!”
Jasper handed her the bottle of cream soda. She took it and downed it with gusto, completely tilting her neck and bottle upright—bottle base vertical to the ceiling. However, just before she consumed the soda in its entirety, in a boisterous manner, she flung the glass bottle to the floor and spit out the fluid in bursts into the air. With a look of concern, Jasper stood in perplexity. She wiped the bubbly fluid off her face with her sleeve, looked at him with a sort of dread, and asked with anxiety, “Why was it popped?”
The bottle spun behind her, flowing foam out of its mouth.
“Huh?” he asked, perplexed.
“You popped it! Why was it popped?”
“Uh-uh-I-I-I did it f-f-f-for you.”
She began to wheeze as if ill with asthma and asked: “You tasted it, didn’t you?” She spoke with furor. The chartreuse of her eyes seemed to radiate fury—if looks could kill.
“I-I-I.”
“Eeeeewwwww!” She squalled loudly (as little girls know very well how to do), then wiped her mouth with her sleeve, and puckered up in disgust. Then, in an alarmed manner, she took to her feet in a sprint towards the bathroom. Jasper gulped and scratched his curls, then inflated his cheeks to the max with chagrined air and eventually proceeded to get some fabrics to clean the mess for his lovely. She came back some minutes later marching to him with an angry glare. Daisy then got all up on his face (like the bullies at school knew very well how to do) and stated with deterrence and grape aroma: “Don’t you ever drink from my pop again without telling me.” She gnarled the phrase with anger and lisp, sprinkling saliva onto his face. He noticed her teeth grind with anger.
Afterwards, she knelt back down by the chimney, heaved in a sigh of complain, and took the brick once again to get on with the business. Shaking it by her ear, it rattled with dampened, tiny thumps.
“Oooh, hear that? It’s in here,” she said.
So much for that game he wanted to play…

3
The Beggar

Back in Nazca, Apaec sat at the dinner table with his mother, feasting on a red, hot, roasted, pig leg. The room was dark. The dawning sunlight barely let in enough light through the small windows, enough for them to be aware of the food on the table, without the need of torches. He indulged in what he knew would be the last hearty meal before his departure to search for the old beggar. His mother admired him affectionately from the other side of the table. She had two, long braided pig-tails hanging down her back, and wore a tunic made of finely patched alpaca wool. It tucked into a colorful skirt that stretched down to her ankles. Wrapped around her head were many colorful cords and two long feathers of red and blue (that might have belonged to a parrot) stuck out on her forehead from between the cords. Needless to describe furthermore, she was young and beautiful. How young? Well, it is irrelevant to the story but if you must know, she was twenty-seven--which was quite normal in those times--to have a son of fourteen at such young age. Patiently, she sat watching him eat, and was surprised at the amounts of food he stuffed himself with, but still complied in giving him as much as he wanted. Food was not a scarcity in the royal-household, and she spoiled him happily.
“Hey there little warrior, are you planning on giving yourself nightmares?” she asked calmly.
Apaec looked at her while nibbling on the roasted leg and replied with a mouthful, “I am a growing boy mother.”
She smiled at him and responded, “Yes, of course you are dear.”
He swallowed a big gulp of water from an old wooden cup, took a deep breath, and asked, “Hey mama, you know that old man? I don’t remember his name but he was a beggar, and you always helped him. You told me he did not deserve—”
“Kusco?” She interjected.
“What?”
“Kusco—his name is Kusco.”
“Yes of course, now I remember.”
Confused, she paused for a moment and asked, “What do you wish to know about him?”
“I just always wondered why you were so nice to him. You seemed to be very fond of him. I always assumed you were very compassionate to the poor, but then, why didn’t you? --See, what I mean to say is that I don’t understand why you never helped all the other beggars. Take the crazy blind man for example. I don’t recall you lending him a helping hand. What made the old Kusco so special? And why do you know his name?” He mumbled with a mouthful.
She had become skeptical. She looked at him as she took a drink of water from her rustic, wooden cup, and sighed. “I know his name because I knew him when I was a child. He was a very dear friend of my father… He was also a very important member of the council. I simply feel sympathy for him, and try to help whenever I can.”
“What? He knew my grandpa? And you say he was in the council? That’s crazy! What happened to him? And, Where’s