Still wobbly, my insides buzzing and fizzling from the time jump, I drag myself up the stairs of the tower. In front, Jacqueline ascends with graceful steps, propelled by her designed muscles. Her raven-black hair cascades to the middle of her back in a curtain of silky locks. Even Nairu, her chestnut hair bobbing with each bounce, is bounding ahead of me.
Whatever entity charges to access the tower also turned its insides into a heritage museum. We pass by a fireplace poker, a cooking pot, an old-fashioned lantern. Nestled in a recess of the stone wall stands a contraption crafted from metal and wood. A sturdy base flares out into an ergonomic seat worn smooth. The chair is attached to a mechanism involving a wheel, a crank handle, and unidentifiable fittings, tailored for some task that became obsolete a century ago. The grain of the wood, rich and dark, speaks of decades of service, and the luster of the metal components suggests the touch of many workers’ hands, or the same one, repeated over time.
Hung on the rough walls of the stairwell, black-and-white pictures show street scenes, along with architecture from the late 19th or early 20th century. One photo captured a group of people seated in an open-top vintage automobile. I’m about to glance away from the pictures when I spot the word “Irún” in a caption. My hometown, before it degenerated into a post-apocalyptic Babel.
I stop in front of the photograph even though Jacqueline and Nairu continue ahead. A gash of sunlight, streaming in through an opposite window, is shining on the framed picture, so I shift my head around to study the details. It depicts in monochrome a streetscape featuring benches, a tree that provides shade, and tramlines laid on the road. The building façades, unfamiliar and distant, stand behind the frozen silhouettes of strangers from an unreachable past. How many ancestors of Irún’s modern inhabitants walked these streets before the buildings were demolished and replaced?
My breath hitches in my throat. What’s this upsurge of feeling? Do I miss the city of my childhood, although I yearned to flee from it and from everyone I knew? It shouldn’t matter any longer; living with Jacqueline, I can almost believe that my past belongs to someone else.
While I force myself to stagger up the staircase, I pass by more pictures that pull my attention as if imbued with their own gravity. In a sepia-toned photograph, women with woolen bathing costumes stand in beach waters as they smile at the camera. One woman’s face, beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, is swallowed by shadow. Another photo has gathered about twenty working-class people around a kid on a bicycle. In the next shot, the members of a motorcycle club pose in caps and duster coats, their vehicles polished and gleaming. In yet another frame, a row of men are standing on Ondarreta beach, wearing tank tops and shorts, maybe after a track-and-field competition.
Those people, their lives and stories, have slipped away. As if they had kept observing the world that moved on to decay and ruin, I feel them accusing me: “Why did you allow this to happen?”
What could I have done to stop it? I was surrounded by humans whose motivations and intentions seemed incomprehensible. Each time I thought others shared my perspective, their words reminded me that I was alone, a mass of flesh and bone that couldn’t budge this planet one centimeter.
I clutch the iron handrail. My eyes have moistened, my throat clenched, my facial muscles twisted into a grimace.
“Oh, the photos caught your attention, did they?” Jacqueline says, her voice echoing in the stairwell.
Instinctively, I turn toward the pictures beside me to hide the onset of tears.
“It’s just that… the further I climb, the more my thighs burn. But I’d catch up eventually.”
“Seems like these stairs are telling us to spice up our days with a bit more physical fervor.”
A heavy sigh escapes me.
“The moment I uttered those words, I feared I’d hear such a thing. You, with your chameleon body, can become as athletic as needed, and our Paleolithic daughter remains mostly unpoisoned by the additives and toxins of modern civilization, but me? I’m an arthritic, hunchbacked relic weighed down by a lifetime of regret.”
Jacqueline giggles.
“Fresh air awaits you a couple of landings away, my dear. And I promise that the view is worth every step. You can see all the way to France.”
Once we reach the final landing and climb a confined, spiral staircase, an archaic doorway transitions us onto the tower’s crenellated battlements. Sunlight splashes across me, bathing my skin with its warmth. I close my eyes, tilt my face skyward, and inhale a lungful of the fresh, crisp air. I expected it to carry a hint of brine, but it smells clean; I guess we’re too high up.
When I open my eyes, my vision is filled from end to end by a watercolor of pale blue brushed with wisps of cirrus clouds. Somewhere out there beyond the blue, across light-years of cosmic space, a conquering alien species must be planting eggs in the carcasses of their mutilated enemies. Here on Mount Igueldo, though, the autumnal breeze has revived me, clearing the fuzz from my brain.
Foosteps tap-tap-tap in a hurried rhythm; Nairu scampers up to the robust parapet punctuated with sandstone teeth. As she grips the stone for balance, she cranes her neck to peer through an embrasure. She emits a sound that starts as an “oooh” infused with the wonder of a child, but when she contemplates the steep drop that leads to a splattering death far below, the tail end of her vocalization quivers. Once Jacqueline and I join her at the parapet, Nairu reaches for my hand to clutch it tight.
The Cantabrian Sea, rippled in a sluggish motion by the winds, resembles a slab of turquoise marred by dense, underwater patches of green like submerged clouds. A yacht stands still amid the rolling swells, anchored deep below. Near the whale-shaped island at the bay’s mouth, garlands of foam stretch into the sea. The distance reduces a flock of seagulls to a swarm of white flies. To the east, beyond the verdant hump of Mount Urgull, a hilly landmass shrouded in haze melds with the horizon.
The cool breeze licks at my face, lifting strands of my hair. High-pitched squeals of joy rise from the amusement park, accompanied by the mechanical noise of the rollercoaster.
Jacqueline proffers the remaining three churros. After time-traveling to the dawn of civilization and back, I deserve a sugar hit. I pull one of the churros out of the paper cone and slide its lukewarm length into my mouth, coating my lips and tongue with a dusting of cinnamon sugar.
Yapping in a North American accent announces the arrival of a family of tourists, that whoa their way to our side. They seem the kind who would ask a stranger to take photos of them. The three of us shift away to a corner turret that overlooks the crescent-shaped bay, an amphitheater of water. Where the sun hits the foaming breakers, white sparkles ride the crests of the waves, coalescing into a silver shimmer. For a moment I wish to do nothing but munch on my churro and stare at those flashing lights.
Past the lace edge of waves against golden sand, the beachfront promenade teems with people milling about like mobile sundials: solid upper halves, angled shadows as lower halves. From the beachfront, the sprawl of Donostia, a clustering of buildings, spreads in a gridlike pattern, nestled within the green backdrop of hills.
Beside me, Nairu’s chestnut hair glimmers in the morning sun like a halo. She’s gazing upon the city with the silent, contemplative demeanor of an artist, or of a Paleolithic child who can hardly believe that any of it exists.
A cold, hissing gust buffets my face, flaps my corduroy jacket, whips the tail of my scarf about my shoulder. Nairu, her hair fluttering wildly, clutches the sketchbook to her chest as if guarding a precious heirloom. I huddle in my jacket and tuck my chin under the scarf. Its warm fleece tickles my nose.
Jacqueline wraps an arm around my waist, drawing me closer to her statuesque form.
“I brought you to a reasonably magical place, didn’t I?”
As the wind whistles around us, her tresses undulate like the waves of a glossy, black sea, exposing her earlobe and ivory-white neck. I could sink into the crystalline blue of those irises. Her full lips, always tempting, curve upward as if my mere presence pleases her.
“We should buy a castle,” I say.
“We should, though that quiet apartment of ours was quite the investment.”
“If you ever buy a castle, I’ll lounge on a throne atop the tower, too high up for any trouble to reach me.”
“I know what you mean, my darling. From such a lofty vantage, overseeing everything, it’s like we’re protecting the city, right?”
“We’d need a moat to keep away intruders, and a portcullis. Maybe a few portcullises. Oh, and don’t forget the drawbridge. Wouldn’t want to be unprepared in case of a siege.”
Jacqueline gazes at the mountainous horizon. When she speaks again, her voice has softened.
“I don’t want to give any of this up.”
My stomach knots with a sudden surge of fear.
“Wh-why would you need to?”
“Because the world expects me to resume my role as a secretary. But I refuse.”
“Oh?”
“I stayed put at the office, despite better options, out of a sense of obligation to our boss. After this break to nurture our home and Nairu, I’ve realized that my heart never lingered on the hours I spent working, and if I returned to my desk, I would wish to be elsewhere. So that’s it: I quit. I’ll ring him up when I muster the patience for that conversation.”
“Bold move, one I suspect you’ve been considering for a while. I always thought that working as a secretary was beneath you, even back when I was sure you wouldn’t… want me. From now on we’ll have to manage without your income, but I’ll do my best to provide for us three with the meager wages of a website programmer.”
Jacqueline laughs as if my statement tickled her. I feel like a child hearing the ringing of an ice-cream truck on a summer day. When the outburst dies down, her grin lingers warmly, showing off her pearly teeth and making the corners of her cobalt-blues crease.
“Ah, you’re sweet, but I didn’t expect you to shoulder the responsibilities alone. I’m returning to camming, where I truly shine. Now you understand what it means, right? As many sources of revenue as gorgeous ladies I can transform into, thanks to horny internet people.”
“That’s… an overwhelming number of sources, then.”
“Indeed, mon petit oiseau. That will more than cover the bills while still spoiling our little one with churros and amusement park trips. And don’t you worry, I gave the goverment my pound of flesh, not that I appreciate how they spend it. We won’t get in trouble.”
Jacqueline’s fingers press into my side through the corduroy jacket. With her eyelids drooping halfway, her gaze fixed on mine, she breaks into a smirk that sends my blood rushing downward.
“You know,” she continues, dropping her voice to a lower, huskier tone, “a partner could spice up my repertoire. Such a woman might prefer to preserve her anonymity, but a masquerade mask would do the job, wouldn’t it?”
Although her suggestion caresses my spine with electric fingers, I’m already flashing a dismissive wave.
“Oh, there’s no way that anybody wants to see my pussy.”
Jacqueline leans in close, her warm breath teasing the shell of my ear as her moist lips brush against it.
“They would kill for a taste, they just don’t know it yet. Besides, camming would be my side gig after the most important role of all: raising our child, as well as whoever follows. What a lucky woman I am to care for a girl who loves to create, who recognizes the beauty of the world. She won’t endure the fate of children whose curiosity and wonder are crushed in their youth, leaving them broken, forever distrustful of human beings. We’ll make sure that as Nairu ages, her childhood memories will become a beloved song, one she’ll long to return to and sing again.”
Author’s note: today’s songs are “The Last Living Rose” by PJ Harvey, “Ask Me No Questions” by Bridget St. John, and “Such Great Heights” by Iron & Wine.
I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout the novel so far. A total of a hundred and ninety-six videos. Check them out.
Do you want to listen to this chapter instead of spending your eyesight? Check out the audiochapter.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 
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