In This Economy I Have To Fight Wizards To Become A Homeowner? | Part 5

[sunlit_skycat]

Title: In This Economy I Have To Fight Wizards To Become A Homeowner?!
Rating: Teen
Major Warnings: Religious violence, colonialism
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Genre: satire, dark comedy

Summary: The cost of housing in San Francisco is too damn high. That's why Ethan Kemmotsu, long-time commuter, first time resident, is taking his condo as his demesne.

Still, keeping hold of a place to live isn't easy. Ethan will have to face San Francisco's politics and history in order to claim a position in it as a Practitioner. Despite the city's reputation as a site of modern technological advancement, a deep divide runs between the haves and the have-nots. Who gets to control what land has always been deeply contested within California. Ethan's demesne won't come without a fight.

 

 

5. No one expects the Franciscan Order

I stood outside in a garden of flowers. Bees buzzed between colorful flower petals, while tall trees added contrast and shade. In the distance, cows and sheep grazed on grassy hills. A path ran through the dirt, leading to a building partway up the hill.

Something about the area felt familiar, but I couldn’t place my finger on what. Had I been here before?

I followed the path in, rounding a curve to see the building from the front. It was made of red tiled roof and whitewashed adobe in a Spanish architecture style. Two rows of decorational columns ran down the front, framing the building’s entryway and windows. A wooden cross rose from the roof at the front. In the back, there was a raised circular dome. This had to be a church of some sort.

A tanned white man stood in the center of the stairs leading up to the entrance. Brown robes covered him from neck to feet, cinched around the waist with a rope belt. He had graying hair and slight wrinkles around his eyes, making him look around his fifties or sixties.

As I opened my Sight, dark clouds spilled out around him, like ink in the air. Clearly this was some type of Other. Was he tied to death? War? Disease? My guard immediately went up.

“Welcome, my child. I have much to discuss with you. Please, come inside so that we may talk,” he said.

I stayed where I was. “Who are you?”

“I am Padre Boscana,” he said. “Won’t you come inside, where it is more comfortable? There are chairs for us to sit.”

Padre. Right. This had to be one of the missionaries sent over to colonize California, or some lingering remnant that had left its mark and turned Other.

How had I gotten here? I remembered cleaning up the floor as best as I could after the last challenger, rigging up an alarm to alert me if anyone came, going to bed for the day, and then…

I took a deep breath. “This isn’t real, is it? I’m in the middle of a demesne claim. I have a right to see it through for the full three days without being interrupted by any other events. That includes disruptive visions, kidnapping off premises, and transportation to other realms by anyone not participating in my claim.”

“You need not worry that this is some unrelated diversion, child. I speak to you from the heart of Mission San Francisco de Asís, the origins of the city you seek to make a home in,” Boscana said in a soothing tone.

He stepped forwards, gesturing, and the church building doubled, growing a second structure with an ornately detailed gothic tower much larger than the first. This had to be the modern day Mission Dolores, a tourist attraction and active church that I’d seen listed as a highlight in so many real estate listings for the Mission District, the other location that I had considered buying a house. It had a vibrant nightlife, full of restaurants, galleries, and clubs. In the end, I’d decided against Mission as a neighborhood because it was twice as far a walk from the Caltrain station as Soma. I could almost see the crowded sidewalks and cars whizzing by as I thought about it.

Then in the blink of an eye, it all collapsed back to hilly scrubland and newly-converted pasture. The church in front of me was a single humble structure, nothing more. A small creek tumbled through the area behind us. Details were especially sharp around Boscana, as if his presence turned the landscape higher resolution wherever he stepped.

“What we discuss here is pertinent to your demesne claim and the fate of your everlasting soul. Your dreaming mind is one of the few parts of your world that I can access, but that does not make what happens here any less real,” Boscana stated, advancing forward.

As he got closer, my clothing changed around me. Instead of the pajama set I had gone to sleep in, or any other normal type of clothes, I was wearing a homespun lacey white dress of some sort that covered my arms and legs. On my feet were brown sandals. What? I didn’t know much about dream magic, but this was not what any symbolic projection of myself should display as, dream or no. Had Boscana chosen to put me in this? Some Others warped the environment around them automatically as part of their nature, but the changes Boscana was making felt more controlled than that. Whatever he was doing, I needed to stop letting him set the terms of engagement.

“Don’t call me child. I’m a 32 year old man, we’re not related, and you don’t know me well enough to claim that sort of relationship,” I said.

“We are all children of God, Sealer, even if some are reluctant to enter His church,” Boscana chided. His voice shifted into a more authoritative tone. “By concordat with the Holy See, all land within 125 miles of this point belongs to Mission San Francisco de Asís as part of the Kingdom of New Spain. All pagans present are to be converted and made into productive Catholic men and women. Allow me to baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ to be reborn as a new creature, and you shall receive the church’s blessing to move forward with your demesne claim.”

Out of habit, I reached down for my toolkit, but it wasn’t there. My stomach dropped.

Baptism involved a lot of oaths, didn’t it? Officially speaking, my family was Buddhist, but my brother Andrew went to church events for his wife and I’d long stopped believing there could be truth in any Innocent-led religion. At the same time, I didn’t want to get forsworn if my dad asked me to make offerings to the family butsudan that we used to remember my late grandmother and grandfather. Who knew what might make those baptismal oaths trigger? I might be a bad Buddhist, but I refused to become a good Christian.

At the same time, an outright no might not be safe either. Boscana had some wraith-like qualities, but there were hints of something else — maybe he had subsumed an agent of Incarnate Dream? Unknown Others were tricky, because sometimes there was a single set of actions that allowed their victims to survive, loosely hinted at in the narrative that drove them, and other times the only way to survive was to avoid playing into their narrative at all. The missionaries had been allowed to kill anyone who didn’t agree to convert inside the areas they held, right? Or maybe they had soldiers for that back then. I wasn’t sure.

I’d start by challenging Boscana’s narrative framing. “I know about the genocide the missions did of the Native Americans in California. The Bay Area had, uh, the Ohlone and Coast Miwok? The missions didn’t save them, they killed them.”

“All men die. We brought the Indians God’s truth, so that their souls would live forever in the kingdom of Christ the redeemer. What do a few mishaps along the way matter in the face of eternal Paradise? There is no greater service we could have done for them,” he asserted, advancing on my position.

I moved away from him. “You say that like the deaths of all these Native Americans were some kind of accident. More than half of the population died in the missions!”

Boscana flicked his hand in a dismissive motion. “First cast the beam out of your own eye, and then you shall see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Do you think your own nation has done much better?”

The ground rolled under my feet, and I nearly lost my balance. The sandals didn’t have much purchase on the uneven ground.

“Don’t pull a whataboutism on me. My ancestors were on the wrong side of the Pacific to be involved in that. You were directly part of the missions conquering this land.”

“Most of the Indians in my mission died of disease, not the execution you accuse me of. It was a tragedy, but better more souls in Heaven than to allow them to turn from the way of righteousness and face the fires of Hell,” Boscana said.

Narrow gray stones split the earth, rising out of the rumbling dirt. One appeared by my feet, close enough that I could make out chiseled letters on them with a name and two sets of dates. It was a headstone. I was standing in a graveyard. I recoiled, trying to lift the edges of my feet in the open-toed sandals away from the exposed soil.

Headstones stretched over the hills as far as I could see.

I scrambled away from Boscana and his cemetery, my legs feeling impossibly slow. My toes brushed against clods of grave dirt, and it was hard not to think of how much kegare this would generate. Did it count if it was all imaginary? Did touching symbolic death- and bloodshed-filled dirt wear on my symbolic Self? The waking version — I didn’t even want to think about how many mass graves like this there might be across California, unknown and unacknowledged, lacing the land with spiritual taint.

The creek was now wide enough that I’d have to swim to the other side. I retreated into a stand of trees instead. One of the branches hung low, leaves catching the back of my head, and I snapped it off the tree a few feet in. This would serve as my brush here. I dragged the broken point of the branch through the dirt to create a circle around myself, embellishing it with a crenellation-shaped embattled border on the outside to reinforce it as a barrier. I might not be an expert on dream magic, but some things were consistent across the different disciplines of Practice. Keeping the Other out was the most basic thing I knew.

When I turned around, Boscana was hovering just outside of the barrier, cocking his head at the lines I had drawn between us. I tightened my grip on the branch as he circled around the outside menacingly. For good measure, I added some notation to tune it against wraiths and other fragments of memory.

“You need not worry that a baptism from me will be invalid, Sealer,” he said. “Though my soul is trapped in wretched purgatory now, I have kept my vows and still am a man of God. The baptisms I perform are licit and valid. There is water behind you to cleanse you with, and you already wear the proper raiment, so all that is left is the candle and the holy oils. Those I can provide just as well.”

Boscana reached behind himself to pull out a small side table with glasses of yellow oil. They had an unnatural glow to them, though it was hard to tell if it was real or just a trick of the light. Was this how he had put me in the white dress, using his control to manipulate the environment around us? There should be some way to contest what he had done, especially in a space walled off from him.

I pulled at the lace frill around my shoulders. “This isn’t me. This isn’t the type of thing I wear. When I go out for Sealing work, I put on something practical, like a breathable sun hoodie and hiking pants tucked into boots to avoid the ticks. That’s what I should be wearing in this type of environment, not some dress.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, visualizing what I had just said. When I opened my eyes again, the dress had been replaced with a shirt and pants like I’d described, and my feet had practical hiking boots. The color was no longer snowy white, but teal and gray. I smoothed down my new pants in relief.

Boscana slammed his fist down on the table. “Do not ignore me, Sealer! I was willing to humor your childish rebellion, but my patience wears thin. It was the will of God that the missions were established to civilize the peoples here. To turn away now from me and God’s grace is intolerable.”

I steeled myself against flinching from his raised voice. “Fuck off! It’s 2023. The missions stopped having power more than 150 years ago. New Spain no longer exists. You have no authority to tell me what to do as a modern Californian.”

“On the contrary, Sealer. You live in the lands of Alta California, and you think to call the missions powerless? Your people worship us, godless pagans and Lutherans though you might be. Your cities and streets bear the names we gave them; you teach your children our history and call us your forebearers. Do you know how many statues your people have dedicated to our honor in this city alone? You cannot use our land, our symbols, our settlements and deny our influence,” Boscana sneered.

A wind blew, muddying the shallow lines in the dirt that I’d drawn between him and I. I dropped to the ground, trying to repair the damage before Boscana could get in.

I seized on the first thing that came to mind. “They’re getting rid of the statues, actually. In the 2020 BLM protests, a bunch of people tore down statues in San Francisco, including the one of Junípero Sera. It was pretty big news when it happened. Your legacy isn’t fully wanted or accepted.”

“Were you among those malcontents, Sealer? Did you bring the statue down? Do not claim the actions of others as your own.” Boscana gestured dismissively. “As a child, you yourself built a little idol of Mission San Diego to celebrate Spanish influence in this region. In every way that matters, we have built the foundation of civilization within these lands, and your nation has gladly partaken of our fruit. Do you presume on the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”

I winced at the memory of the little model mission I’d made back in fourth grade, along with all the other kids in my class. I had been so proud of it back then. My parents let me use an xacto knife to cut cardboard at an age when most children were barely allowed to handle scissors, and I’d used real acrylic paint to color in the plastic figurines sold in stores as an educational tie-in. It might still be kept a box in my parents’ garage today, like my other childhood art projects.

I wanted to say that I was just following the assignment. It wasn’t my fault that the school system abstained from teaching about mass death and enslavement to nine year olds. How was I supposed to know?

“The mission project is getting phased out of schools. None of my nieces and nephews have done it,” I protested.

“Whatever you say now, you and your people have long embraced the results the missions have had in these lands. Our influence carries on, from the Californios of my time to the Californians of yours,” Boscana said. He shook his head. “If you will not come to the Lord, the Lord in his mercy shall come to you.”

At Boscana’s raised hand, the water in the creek parted, half of it rushing towards me in a large wave to crash against my barrier. For a split second, the circle held firm. Then water sloshed through, erasing the furrows on the ground and sweeping me off my feet. I was carried away in the deluge. Some of the water went down my throat as I flailed. It sent me straight into a cluster of headstones, stone knocking hard against my side. The rest of the wave washed away downhill.

I pulled myself up against a headstone in a sitting position, coughing out water. I wanted to speak, but it was too hard to breathe. My clothes were soaked all the way through. The stick that I was using was gone.

Boscana intoned, “I declare this a situation of emergency where I may dispense with the usual formalities. I hear no objections to my course of action. The immersion with water has been performed, and that is enough. I baptize you in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the —” he stopped.

I’d used river mud to draw a symbol on myself, a circle held together by eight lines of spokes. This was the wheel of dharma, a major Buddhist symbol. It was the fastest way I could think of to show that whatever Boscana was doing, I still didn’t agree to it.

After a moment of consideration, I started adding a field of dots next to it. One, two, three, four…

I spat out the last of the water that I’d swallowed, clearing my throat. “You — hrrk — you want to make an appeal to precedent by saying we reference New Spain so much we need to do as you did? Here’s your precedent: you came in and killed the Native Americans originally living here. You used force and coercion to get your way. Then Mexico gained its independence and took over this section of territory. They used force to get their way too. That’s why the missions had to sell off their land. Mission Dolores might have owned land in a 125 mile radius at some point, but it got reduced down to half a block by the time Mexico was done with it.”

I completed the 50 dot-stars to add 13 stripes to the side and underneath. It was the American flag. My country, for better or worse.

“After that, the United States rolled in and conquered this land from Mexico. You’ve handily established a precedent of ignoring the religion and sacred sites of the previous people living here. I can call on that too. Reused names and symbols isn’t a substitute for real control. Winner takes all, and as part of the winning country I don’t have to give a damn about respecting your religion,” I concluded.

It was an ugly argument, but I was tired, and I wanted out of this nightmare yesterday.

Around me, buildings burst out of the ground, crushing the scattered headstones under their foundations. Cows and sheep disappeared, replaced by asphalt-lined roads that cut across the hills in ever-expanding networks. Bright murals of street art popped up on the walls. The mission expanded again into two buildings, one much more ornate than the other, but both were dwarfed by the silhouettes of skyscrapers from the Financial District. The Oracle Park baseball stadium stood to the side, where Soma was. In the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge stretched over the bay, a beacon of red-painted steel cables and flat deck that connected to Oakland on the other side.

In the glare of city lights, Boscana looked diminished, clearly out of place. He said something, but it was covered up by the roar of a fighter jet passing overhead.

“This is my dream, and you’re not welcome in here. I’m ending this farce of a challenge,” I declared. “Get out of my head.”

Then I slapped myself in my face, hard.

Moments later, I jolted awake in my bed, staring at the ceiling and covered in sweat.

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Anyone interested in learning more about current Native American tribes in the Bay Area can go to Native Land Digital and type the query San Francisco into the search box to be taken to the right area.

Both the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe have claimed the site of San Francisco as their traditional territory, but as of May 24, 2024 this is under active controversy.