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<a class="link link--external" data-proxy-href="/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-tKo4vvIlW8&amp;hash=2f1f4f86292d4f7d21528e1400d6d517" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tKo4vvIlW8" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">Asturias</a><br/>
<br/>
<i>Ki shan i Romani—<br/>
Adoi san' i chov'hani.<br/>
<br/>
Wherever gypsies go,</i><br/>
<i>There the witches are, we know</i>.<br/>
<br/>
_______________________________________<br/>
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<br/>
<div style="text-align: left">"Did you bring me what I asked of you?" asked the<i> Rogulja</i>, the old witch's skin appearing as gnarled as the bark on the woodland trees surrounding her ramshackled wagon.<br/>
<br/>
Tamas had heard that she dabbled in the dark arts and was there to consult her about his son, Amadan. Her lips were large and leathery, her nose a bumpy collection of warts and her eyes narrowed to a squint so close that it was impossible to tell their color. When he spoke to her about his gay son cavorting with a <i>Gadjo</i> man, and his leaving the group of Roma for this outsider while breaking their codes, sealing Amadan's fate was as simple as gathering personal items of his. A few strands of hair, some fingernails and his baby amulet that was worn as protection from the dark spirits that existed in their world. And his mother, Livia.<br/>
<br/>
At birth, she named her son a secret name not even her husband knew, a fake name meant to protect him from evil spirits. <br/>
<br/>
Now she spoke the name aloud to harm him.<br/>
<br/>
"Patrin. His name is Patrin, <i>Roguljia</i>. We have brought the money, and his things."<br/>
<br/>
On a black shrouded altar, with even darker candles there was a ritual athame and a chalice. The spell was word of mouth and memory, there were none so vile as the one about to be cast.<br/>
<br/>
"Place the items here," came the wavering voice of a woman 82 seasons old, one bony digit pointing to the space within the circle with the upside down star in its center.<br/>
<br/>
Tamas and Livia Vélas'did this horrible thing to protect their culture and to rid themselves of the son they had given birth to that was an abomination to them. The money was exchanged with the witch and libations offered to her dark god. Tamas' blood was spilled first then Livia's, just a cut on the wrist with the athame, the blood combined in the ritual chalice. Earlier in the day, a large spider was caught and placed into a jar. It too, was placed on the altar. It would be sacrifice enough.<br/>
<br/>
"Go now, I will conduct the ceremony," the Roguljia said, her cowled visage dark and foreboding.<br/>
<br/>
After the Vélas' departed the witches wagon, the black candles were lit, and the ceremony begun.<br/>
<br/>
The Romani witch stood in the center of the pentagram with her arms raised, crying out to the horned god.<br/>​</div><i><div style="text-align: left"><i>Dáv rátá me káthe!"<br/>
Miseç ándre tut,<br/>
Ačel ándre tut!"<br/>
Ač tu káthe<br/>
Čin mánush táv păianjen<br/>
Čin păianjen yek mánush<br/>
Ko mudarel mánush yon káthe mudáren.</i><br/>
<br/>
<i>O evil one come forth!<br/>
What is evil within<br/>
May it always remain<br/>
You shall remain here<br/>
Until the man becomes a spider<br/>
Until the spider becomes a man<br/>
Devouring man until he perishes!</i>​</div></i><div style="text-align: left"><br/>
A cold draft of air issued from a corner of the wagon, rippling the flames in the candles, as the witch took Amadan's hair, fingernails, his parent's blood, and a large walnut. The meat of the nut inside was long gone, and the shell was all she needed. The spider in the glass jar stirred, its front legs rearing back defensively as the witch reached for it. It bit her as all eight of its legs contorted violently when she picked it up and held it aloft. Ignoring the instant flame of pain traveling up her arm, she repeated the incantation, stunning the spider by placing it over the flame of a candle. <br/>
<br/>
She placed the still living spider inside the walnut shell, and sealed it closed by tying the red ribbon representing Tamas' fatherhood around it securely. The incantation was repeated a third time. While the spider's venom traveled through her body, she carried the shell from the wagon and into the woods. Under a full moon, the witch dug a hole in the ground and buried the spider alive inside the walnut shell. To the rest of the Romani, she was a crazed old woman who believed in superstition and the old ways.<br/>
<br/>
That was what they thought when they found her dead in the woods near the camp the following day. <br/>
<br/>
Unaware that she hadn't died of a heart attack but from a spider bite, the Romani knew nothing of what she had unleashed with her maleficence. The secret of the magical incantation also died with her, but Amadan was forever transformed by the gypsy's curse. The spell was double-edged, culminating with Tobias' mysterious suicide soon after arriving in the United States, and Amadan's unexpected and unpredictable shifting back and forth from his human form, to a spider the size of a large dog. For those unfortunate souls that discovered his spider form lurking in the shadows, it meant a sure death.<br/>
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______________________________________________<br/>
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If there was a quote that describedAmadan Vélas' chaotic evening that he could screen prined on a T-shirt, it probably would have read:<a class="link link--external" data-proxy-href="/proxy.php?link=http%3A%2F%2Fskreened.com%2Frender-product%2Fk%2Fi%2Fy%2Fkiyfxpcpgkmubwgcqksw%2Fimage.skreened-t-shirt.black.w460h520b3z1.jpg&amp;hash=3d4d00b3fe8fb3bce4b2928cdef2602a" href="http://skreened.com/render-product/k/i/y/kiyfxpcpgkmubwgcqksw/image.skreened-t-shirt.black.w460h520b3z1.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">Cancel my subscription, I'm tired of your issues.</a><br/>
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Amadan had walked this world all of twenty-five years, and from growing up on the fringes of normal society he knew the kind of people that looked down on him now. Texas cops were just the same as if they were etched in his head with a sharp knife, scored in his neurons deeply like some strange work of art. The Austin streets were foreign to him, because Amadan was born and raised in the Romani slums of Seville, Spain. His reasons for moving to Austin, Texas were his own, and then again, they weren't.<br/>
<br/>
Amadan made a terrible error of judgement, letting his heart rule over his common sense, and it had little to do with what the cops arrested him for, or were grilling him about in the interrogation room down at police headquarters. He believed everything his <i>Gadjo</i>boyfriend, <i>Tobias Jarquin</i>, told him about the United States and how their dreams to be together for eternity could be realized if they left their old lives behind in Spain and moved to America, land of opportunity. He bought into his boyfriend's lie, hook, line and sinker.<br/>
<br/>
He knew full well he had forsaken his cultural ties by becoming involved in a relationship with Tobias. He broke the rules completely by being gay, and by consorting with a Gadjo he robbed his father of a heir to carry on the family name. To restore his honor, dark deeds were done. Less than six months later, the Gadjo man was dead, having jumped to his death from the sixteenth floor of a building in downtown Miami, Florida. Amadan was going to marry him, and fulfill their dreams together. It was a dream that would never come to pass.<br/>
<br/>
He collected the fragmented pieces of his life and packed them all into a tiny home he shared with his lover, towing it behind the Chevy Tahoe out to Austin, Texas to start a new life. The world was in crisis, going to hell in a hand basket almost daily. He made due with shopping for clothes at consignment shops, growing a garden for whatever bounty it could provide, and playing the violin for money at weddings and other celebratory events. Amadan kept to himself, he didn't make friends but the neighbors said he was quite friendly, even talkative.<br/>
<br/>
Almost as if he were desperate for company.<br/>
<br/>
If Amadan's neighbors were asked, they would say this. No one knew much about the enigmatic man, except he came from somewhere in Spain, he was learning to speak English, wasn't married and he played the fiddle better than Charlie Daniels dancing on flames.<i> In hell.</i>They knew this because he'd serenade them every single night at sunset with a song. No sheet music or conductor's cues, the kid knew how to charm snakes with the goddamn violin. When Amadan played, the music soared through the air like an eagle on an up-draft, taking with it the very souls of his listening neighbors.<br/>
<br/>
The notes ascended together in a magical flight to the heavens, a breathtaking melody of orchestral exuberance. Then after the crescendo they dived back down, giddy, their breath stolen from their bodies, until all that was left was the silence like there was at the beginning. It was a shared journey that held them spellbound in rapt silence. Then like a tsunami a ripple of noisy clapping followed, until Amadan took a bow and vanished into the darkness of his little home on wheels. None of them knew that Amadan was a <i>pasche-paskero</i>, a Romani musician.<br/>
<br/>
Amadan always carried with him a rare old violin in a wonderfully carved wooden case that was at least two centuries old. Booked into jail on the false charges of terrorism and capital murder, the authorities had taken everything Amadan had on him, including his violin and its protective case. The officers and the jail staff examined and inventoried all of his personal property in the event they happened to find evidence in the process. It would probably be given to the investigators or stored in an evidence room, once the barrage of ridiculous questions finally ceased.<br/>
<br/>
If these detectives thought that he was easily broken, they were sadly mistaken. He was accused of a crime he didn't commit, and of that Amadan was certain.<br/>
<br/>
"I tell you already, I KNOW nothing of what you say! Please. No more." he pleaded with his interrogators.<br/>
<br/>
After a few hours had passed, Amadan asked for something to drink --and the detective's strategy was to deny his request. Instead, more questions came, the pair of detectives growing more insistent that if he confessed to the crime the questioning would be over, and he could rest easy.<br/>
<br/>
"¡Déjame en paz!" he yelled, at the edge of his sanity.<br/>
<br/>
"I only just play violin, I always play for the neighbors, they come for listening. I play, I go inside my home, to sleep. That is all I do!" Amadan's events of the evening never deviated or took a guilty tangent during the multiple, repetitive questions fired at him to twist the events up in his mind. <br/>
<br/>
Amadan's hands pressed to his ears, as if a sudden headache threatened to blow his head off. Amadan was also trying to block out the droning sound that the pair of detective's voices were making while accusing him of doing the unspeakable. He wanted to leave, to escape, but Amadan felt so trapped in the room that he could hardly breathe anymore. On the surface, Amadan looked the epitome of relative calm. Even though he was trying to stay on an even keel, his patience was wearing thin. His heart wanted out of his chest, wanting to beat free of its soul cage. It pounded like it was going to break his ribs. With senses on high alert, every color became brighter, every noise louder. Amadan was surrounded by very strange, judgmental expressions on the faces that surrounded him. <br/>
<br/>
He wanted to shift so badly, to bring about their quick demise. There was a fine line between avoiding eye contact and conveying his deference to the detectives investigating the crime he was suspecting of committing. Amadan was disinterested in their closed minded world of violence and hatred. Nothing turned his mood faster than their dimwit, Podunk attitude and ignorant fears. Amadan pushed his chair away from the table with his feet to as a sign he had mentally disconnected from the conversation. Amadan's facial features were impassive, his head downcast. <br/>
<br/>
Surprisingly, the pair of detectives didn't pursue further questioning. Called out of the room for a break, the door opened to the interrogation room. Amadan expected they would just leave him there alone to stew, but another man came into the room and took a seat across from him. Amadan's vermilion hued eyes lifted to meet his for just a moment, trying to read what was there before his eyes broke their connection. When the new detective addressed him, Amadan's hand lifted to brush the dark fringe of hair that shielded his green eyes from view.<br/>
<br/>
The accent seemed different from the two idiots that were grilling him earlier, and that made Amadan curious. "Don't apologize, just fix. I hear enough of apology." Amadan uttered, bitterly, his English broken.<br/>
<br/>
"Discussion?" he released a rather disturbing, sarcastic-sounding laugh that ended rather abruptly. <br/>
<br/>
"You mean inquisition,<i> correcto?" </i>Amadan asked with an audible trilling of r's in his strangely exotic accent.<br/>
<br/>
All the while, his mind mentally turned the melodic sounding name he'd been given over in his head.<br/>
<br/>
"If going to sleep is crime,<i> To-nee Dee-chanay, </i>then I am guilty." Amadan admitted, which would be the only confession he was giving today.<br/>
<br/>
"No, I not know why I come here, except for questions. I thirsty, hungry. I want lawyer, and I not get anytthing from<i> esos policías estúpidos."</i>Amadan was angry now, and a bit hungry too.<br/>
<br/>
Of course, the spider lurking beneath the surface of his human shell was hungrier, its ravenous appetite ever present.<br/>
<br/>
Perhaps after his temper tantrum, Amadan would be able to get a goddamned can of Coke from the soda machine outside in the hallway.<br/>
<br/>
__________________________________________<br/>​</div><b><div style="text-align: left"><b>Translations -</b><i> Déjame en paz:</i> leave me alone;<i> correcto: </i>right;<i> esos policías estúpidos:</i> those stupid cops​</div></b><div style="text-align: left">​</div></div>