Turn by David Podlipny Read Free Book Online Page B

shamans around here?”
    Omitting his teeth, Edgar nonetheless made room for an impressively broad smile on his worn face.
    “You’re joking too…”
    “No I’m not.”
    Edgar’s eyes seemed to reflect something much more colorful than the monochrome surroundings.
    “The tree is life. So is Turn.”
    “ Wow , what an insight…”
    Edgar remained quiet.
    “No response? Did I just break your sarcasm gauge? I’ll give you some time to sweep up the pieces. Don’t cut yourself.”
    “Life flows through the tree in the same way it flows through you and me; it just looks different to us. We have roots just like the tree, and the tree has veins just like us. They have feelings just like us too, and they can even speak to each other, through fungal networks or by releasing chemicals to the wind. Some of them even reproduce with the help of the wind. There is literally life in every breath Sono.”
    “You mean there was life in every breath? Burrr…I have a weird feeling about all of this…you going over the top to suck up to the tree. Yeah. You do know that bestiality is still frowned on? Because I’m pretty sure it would fall under that. Poor tree...”
    “Sexual union is the one thing you took from that?”
    “If you call fucking a tree sexual union, then yes. It’s one of the drawbacks of youth; overpowering virility. Don’t blame me.”
    “I agree with you that there’s an unfathomable taboo surrounding lovemaking, menstruation, and childbirth—how else would we be here?”
    Sono frowned in bewilderment. “Hah?”
    “But don’t dress your romantic side up merely to put people off. Don’t be so cruel to it. Nurture it.”
    “I’m not…I’m not being cruel; it likes it rough.”
    The disappointment that veiled Edgar’s face ever so slightly had an even more delicate strain of compassion in its gauzy midst.
    “What if you’d seen something entirely different? What if you’d seen yourself?”
    “Well…seeing myself would’ve been disturbing. As a girl?”
    “Why are you so stuck on girl boy?”
    “I didn’t know I was stuck…”
    “Why does it matter?”
    “Why it matters? You wouldn’t ask that if you were a woman. Ask Aunt Yanda. You’d know …”
    “Perhaps. Because you see me as a man.”
    Sono squinted slightly, and then rolled his eyes around frivolously before freezing them abruptly. “Yeah. I do.” He nodded emphatically with the beginnings of a smile rousing his mouth. “What else?”
    “Where do one end and another begin? And I don’t mean simply boy girl. Those two are only the extremes of a grand expanse, arbitrary extremes…myopic extremes.”
    With a slight tilt of his head, Sono scrutinized his grandpa.
    “Is this some half-assed ploy to try and dazzle me by throwing around as many extremes as possible? Preventing any progress by helicoptering your own piss around…”
    “No. No, quite the opposite.”
    “Well, you’re not doing too well…”
    Edgar smiled benevolently. Sono swallowed firmly and averted his eyes.
    “If I decide what I see, what if I didn’t see anything?” Sono asked.
    “You didn’t?”
    “You said I was god, so then I can make away with things…”
    “That’s just ignorant.”
    “Why? You said I decide.”
    “Yes, you decide what you see. But that doesn’t mean all things cease to be if you desire so. Nothing ceases to be, because it can’t step out of the circle. There is nothing to step out of the circle. You can only change the way you see things. Your response. At least to some extent…”
    Sono stared blankly at his grandpa. “I’m confused…I think I need an emergency lobotomy. Nothing else will help. Get your plastic spoon shaman!”
    Edgar patted the top of Sono’s head which he had lowered for him to operate on.
    “Objects become fixed when you look at them. Before that, they’re everywhere, and nowhere. They’re everything, and nothing. You create the objects you focus on. Isn’t that amazing?”
    Sono flicked