Chapter 6: The Powers Beyond

Arjun stood, frozen, with his eyes wide open and glazed over. They didn’t appear to have any emotion, or light of any kind, in them. His body stood like a statue. The space around him appeared to be a black void. There was no colour, other than the colours on Arjun’s skin, hair, and clothes. There didn’t appear to be any light source either, yet somehow, Arjun looked just like he would have in broad daylight.

Suddenly, a figure appeared in front of him.

“Hey, buddy, can you hear me?” The feminine voice from earlier returned. In another moment, the figure gained detail, becoming distinctly female. Like him, it was clearly defined against the black void. The woman waved her hand in front of Arjun.

“Hello?” another voice said, this one deep and masculine. Once again, a body appeared in the void that seemed to match it. When the masculine voice spoke again, however, the new masculine form’s mouth did not move.

“You there?” it asked. “Is he brain dead? OH MY GOD! NO!”

“We just got someone like us and he’s already brain dead!” the feminine voice cried out. The feminine body’s mouth did not move. “Por que, Dios?” In her panic and anguish, a different language and accent slipped out.

“Maybe you did it wrong?” the masculine voice suggested, appearing in front of Arjun’s still body.

“How would using my powers wrong make him brain dead?!”

“Who’s brain dead?”

“AHH!” The woman screamed, surprised to suddenly hear Arjun’s voice. ”¡Chingada madre!”

“Wait a minute, aren’t you–”

“TALK IN YOUR HEAD!” both voices yelled.

“Why?” Arjun asked, eyeing both figures in front of him. He slowly noticed where he was, and wasn’t even sure it counted as a “there.” He was a bit too out of sorts to think about the implausible details. The black void itself was troubling enough. Even though the two bodies in front of him were strangers, he felt better that he wasn’t alone.

“You’re unconscious,” the woman explained, “or would be, if you didn’t have powers. You’re basically inside your own head right now, and we’re visiting. If you ‘talk out loud’ here, you’ll be babbling out in the real world. Best not to risk it.”

“Ahh! Am I dreaming?”

“No,” the woman said flatly. She’d regained enough control to drop her accent and return completely to English. “This isn’t a dream about you being unconscious, or dead. You’re actually mostly-unconscious. As far as everyone out there in the real world is concerned, you’re knocked out.”

“You sure?” Arjun asked, with his eyes narrowed, unconvinced. “Because I have the hots for Cisco’s mom, and from time to time she comes to me in my dreams ... and you look exactly like her.”

“Well, I’m flattered that you have the hots for me, Arju,” the woman said, smiling widely.

Arjun’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened again.

“MISSUS García?!” Arjun screamed, realising the woman standing in front of him is his friend’s mother, Marianna García. There was no questioning it; it was her: the same busty, black-haired Latina mother he’d seen countless times, and who he’d fantasised about ever since he’d hit puberty.

“Si, baby. ¿Cómo estás tú? Bien?”

“Bien,” Arjun said, slowly nodding. “Muy bien.” He wasn’t, but didn’t know what else to say.

“You remember me, right?” the man asked, floating in front of Arjun. He looked to see the man’s face clearly, and saw that it was Cisco’s father, Francisco Senior, whom he usually called Paco.

“Yes, Mr. García!” Arjun nodded aggressively.

“Wait, what are you guys doing here?” Arjun asked. “And why is the inside of my head a black void? That seems bad. Is it bad? Am I dying?”

“You’re probably not dying,” Mr. Garcia said. “I doubt you’d have ‘woken up’ inside your own head like this if you were. The black void, well, yes ... it’s not ideal. You got knocked unconscious, and that will disrupt most people’s inner mindscape. Yours got disrupted a lot. Once you consciously construct your own — which you’ll be able to do thanks to your powers — it might withstand a few blows to the head better than the usual chaotic mess of dreams and emotions.”

“Sorry,” he said, finally noticing Arjun’s discomfort. “That’s a lot. You’re not dying. You just got knocked out. You’re probably going to be just fine. That’s the most important part. Are you with me so far? Not dying.”

Arjun slowly nodded. He didn’t want to admit it, but he appreciated the repetition. It felt good to know that somebody else thought he wasn’t dying.

With that, Paco turned to his wife. “Do you want to continue, or should I?” he asked her.

“You start.”

Paco turned back to Arjun. He gave a sheepish smile. “History lesson incoming, Arjun,” he said. “But hey, you’re in school, right?”

Arjun nodded again. The fact that all of this was about his new powers was starting to sink in. He was even feeling eager to hear what Mr. and Mrs. Garcia had to say.

“We — me, you, and Marianna — are gifted with amazing powers,” Paco began, “powers which are older than most ancient civilizations — well, the ones they teach you about in schools around here, anyway. As far as we know, they originated in ancient India, and have been passed down through the bloodlines for thousands of years.

“As you might imagine,” he continued, “people did what people do. They made up fancy names and tried to figure out all the rules and relationships. For my part, I’m not entirely convinced they got it all right.”

“He needs to know it anyway,” Marianna chimed in. “Common vocabulary.”

The masculine figure nodded. “You’re right, of course,” Paco said. “The Path of Blood and the Path of Maya; that’s the fundamental division. All three of us are on the Path of Blood. You and I have the power of sight-swapping; Marianna possesses telepathy. The name of ours is very convenient for beginners, but there is a bit more to it. With enough practice, for example, it can be used to take over the bodies of animals.”

“Wait, my powers can allow me to take over people’s bodies?” Arjun asked. He couldn’t hide the excited glee from his voice.

“No,” Paco answered. “Only animals. Humans ... are too complex.”

“Oh...”

“Yes,” Paco said, nodding. “It’s a little hard to understand just how difficult the road ahead will be, at first. And since I’m pretty sure you’re going to attempt to try and control an animal on your own, I’ll offer you a warning instead of just telling you not to do it: the bigger the animal, the bigger the consequence — at least the first few times you do it. Start with ants if you can, and make sure you have some pain relievers handy.”

“Wait, seriously?!”

Paco nodded his head. “It gets easier, but it’s never completely painless. Your own body doesn’t want so much of your consciousness leaving it, and the animal’s body certainly isn’t meant to house such a complex will.”

Arjun nodded, thinking to himself in his head. “I guess I’ll have to make do with sight swapping for a while.” He didn’t realise that Paco and Marianna could hear that thought just as clearly as all of his others.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Paco said, “I couldn’t even manage it until years and years after my powers first awakened. When I did it, I couldn’t move my body for weeks. My cousin, on the other hand, was able to do it from a very young age, and the pain didn’t seem to be so bad for him. So, who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“Or maybe I’ll die.” Arjun said to himself — or, again, so he thought.

“Don’t worry,” Marianna replied. Her avatar smiled. “You won’t die.”

“Wait, how did you hear—oh...” Arjun said. “I guess all thoughts are the same.”

“For you, for now,” Marianna said. “Sight-swappers have to struggle to learn how to erect new mental walls. Telepaths have it easier.”

Arjun nodded slowly. “And what about the Path of Maya? What does that do?”

“Well, the Path of Maya doesn’t really involve us, right now,” Marianna said, pausing for a moment. “But since you’re interested, the Path of Maya is said to have come from the same source as the Path of Blood, although its powers are more, how shall we say, fanciful than ours.”

Arjun stared dumbly.

“She means they’re much more what people think of when they think of ‘magic,’” Paco explained.

“Oh!” Arjun exclaimed. “Does that mean I also have magic powers?”

“No,” Marianna said flatly. “We don’t even know how you have powers from the Path of Blood, but we can be sure that you don’t have any from the Path of Maya. It’s one or the other — in most cases at least. Moreover, we haven’t found any ancestral link from your family back to Maya Lokam.”

“Damn, that sucks,” Arjun said with a heavy sigh, before perking up. “Wait, does Maya Lokam mean ‘World of Magic?’”

Paco nodded his head, asking, “How’d you know?”

“I still remember a little bit of Malayalam, and in Malayalam that’s what it means.”

“Ohh, that’s right,” Paco said, remembering Arjun’s ethnic background.

“So, is Maya Lokam a real world or is it just a name of a place?”

“It’s a real world,” Marianna said. “It was created about four hundred years ago by a powerful magic user from the Path of Maya.”

“Wait, so there’s another planet, out in space, right now, that people can go visit?”

“Not out in space,” Paco corrected. “Maya Lokam was created as a parallel world. No rocketship will get you there. You have to use magic to ... step to the side.”

“How?”

“To be honest, I have been asking that question since I was a child,” Paco replied.

“Ahh,” Arjun said. “Then, does anyone know how that power came to be?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t know where or how any of these powers came to be. The elders have theorised that they might have naturally evolved during the time of hunters and gatherers. But that seems too far-fetched to be true. That’s one of the reasons Marianna and I don’t really believe in it.” Paco sighed. “The last elder who might have known for sure died three hundred years ago, during the early European rule of India.”

“Wait,” Arjun said, stopping Paco’s story. “How would we be hunters? That doesn’t make any sense. Also, what elders?”

Marianna eyed the boy. “That’s why we said we didn’t really subscribe to it, and that it was just a theory.”

Arjun’s head was still swimming — as was the black void — taking in all the information given to him. He gave a quick nod, but then pressed forward.

“Okay, but what’s this about elders?” Arjun asked again. “Is there a hierarchy in Maya Lokam or something?”