Ruined Cities

by James Tallett (ed)

  The pink waves splashed into the crowd, weakening their knees, making their skin tingle. They fell together, skin sliding against skin and lips sliding against lips.

  It went on until the sun rose.

  Mamte stood above Mudworm, waiting for him to wake up. He was smiling for the first time. She felt a sudden connection to him, but couldn’t define its meaning, or its boundaries.

  Mudworm let out a deep, calming breath.

  “How do you feel?” Mamte whispered. She didn’t want to rouse the people around them. They lay in a tangled mess of hair and limbs around the dais.

  “Both empty and full.”

  “Good, that is the perfect state. We can now make you clean on the inside.”

  She reached down to pick him up.

  “Wait,” Mudworm said.

  “Yes, I almost forgot. We should get dressed before we go.”

  “I agree, but that’s not what I wanted to say.”

  “Go on then,” Mamte said, setting him back on the pillow and slipping the shirt over his head. She reached down to get her sari.

  “This was all just a distraction. Your lesson is a false one. You’re using me so that you don’t have to go below. I touched the magic within you last night. I know you’re ready to join the Stone Pantheon. Why don’t you?”

  Mamte was suddenly embarrassed to be naked. She turned away and got dressed.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “How do you know I’m ready?” Mamte asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “Last night, as we lay together, I felt a force drawing me inward.”

  “Such feelings are natural. I am a goddess and you are just a man. I am the succulent flower and you are the simple bee.”

  “I know, and I’m grateful for what you’ve done.”

  “As you should be.”

  “But I saw something within you. Beyond the layers of light and beauty, buried beneath everything.”

  Mamte held her hand up. “That’s enough.” She looked at the people sprawled on the floor, hoping none of them were awake.

  “I saw your fear of the flames.”

  “How can you be so insolent? Remember that you’re speaking to a goddess.”

  “You purged me of my negativity, my fears. I thought I’d do you the same favor.”

  “You’re wrong. I gave you a vision of your own fears, but you were so overwhelmed by my power, you saw yourself as me.” She adjusted her veil so it was perfectly centered on her head. “Don’t worry. Some lessons are harder than others. Take some time to reflect on it, and in time you’ll understand.”

  He frowned. “I’m sorry, Goddess. I’ll do better next time.”

  She leaned down and picked Mudworm up. He stared into her eyes. She looked away, knowing the lie she’d just told had made the world heavier.

  Mamte tiptoed over the slumbering people and headed out into the street. A crowd waited for her and Mudworm there.

  A man pointed. “See. I told you. She carries him like a babe.”

  Two lines of women wove their way to the front, and sidestepped, making way for a man clad in bright white silks, trimmed in gold. A thick garland of flowers hung around his neck and he’d slicked his black hair back over his head. He pressed his palms together and bowed. “Greetings, Goddess. I am Gohabhrata. Would you do me the honor of blessing me next?”

  Mamte lowered her eyebrows. It hadn’t been about sex, but instead about the serenity she’d given to Mudworm.

  “No,” shouted another man. A contingent of soldiers elbowed their way to the front and then split to reveal a man in red and blue striped ropes, with a golden headdress wound in heavy red silk cord, and a mustache that’d been oiled into curls on his cheeks. He bowed low to Mamte. “I am Bihir Jhat, the richest merchant in all of Vishkapur. Surely, I should have the honor of being next.”

  “Don’t be silly, Bihir,” Gohabhrata said. “Ask any of my many wives.” He waved his hand at the women who’d accompanied him. “Only I can give her the pleasure that she deserves.”

  “No, Goddess,” Bihir said. “Don’t let it be him. His manhood is worn down and chafed from too much lovemaking. Don’t let him sully your sacred crevice.” He took a spear from one of his soldiers and shoved it into the rocky soil. “He’d stick it into this hole in the ground if we’d all just turn our backs.”

  The crowd laughed.

  Gohabhrata thrust his pelvis out a few times. “And the city of Vishkapur would remember well my skilled thrusts and thus I’d have another wife.”

  The crowd laughed again, this time louder.

  “Goddess,” Mudworm whispered. “Please set me down. I can’t stand their staring.”

  Mamte whispered back, “I’d rather you stayed with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Look at these men. Neither of them is worth more than you, but both assume they are. They think their money, fine clothing and influence make them important.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “We’ll show them that they are not.”

  “Please, Goddess,” Gohabhrata said. “Come and whisper in my ear. I promise to whisper something back that’ll make you choose me.”

  “Stop this at once!” Mamte shouted, using her power to project her voice. “I have chosen my lover and offered him my gifts. See the lesson in it.”

  “This lesson is too cruel,” Bihir said. “Mudworm is not worthy of you. I have earned the right to be your lover, not he.”

  An old beggar man, who’d been carried by one of Mamte’s pilgrims all the way from the Funma district, let out a loud laugh. “What makes you so much more important than the rest of us?”

  Bihir examined the beggar and then shook his head. “Look at yourself and then look at me. The answer is obvious.”

  An angry tide of words swept through the crowd. Bihir’s soldiers gripped their spears tighter and Gohabhrata’s wives looked nervous.

  “If beauty is to be the deciding factor,” Gohabhrata said. “Then I win.”

  A woman near Gohabhrata scooped up a handful of dirt and shoved it in his face. “Not so pretty now, are you?”

  Gohabhrata closed his eyes and sputtered. Three of his wives flocked to him, wiping at his face with the hems of their saris, while the others attacked the woman.

  Bihir’s soldiers rushed in to break up the fight, but trampled a few bystanders in the process and soon the entire crowd was lost in the excitement of the moment.

  The fight spread outward from its center to the street nearby.

  Mamte screamed, “Stop!”

  But no one listened. The seductive rush of violence thrilled them, provided a counterpoint to the serenity of life in Vishkapur. Mamte knew that Paha Byrat would’ve calmed them with a word, or that his presence would’ve been enough to stop the riot from starting at all.

  Mamte closed her eyes and drew upon the magic within her. She needed to stop the fight before the sudden surge in sin overwhelmed the Stone Pantheon.

  “Get me out of here,” Mudworm said. “I’m afraid.”

  “Wait,” Mamte said. Power rose within her. Her hands pulsed with a golden light.

  Before she could send the light radiating into the crowd the ground began to shake. People staggered and some were knocked from their feet. A crack in the shape of a lightning bolt formed in the wall of The House of the Crimson Orchid.

  As they’d been trained to do since childhood, everyone fell to their knees, palms pressed together, and meditated. They released their hate and anger, they sought serenity and balance.

  But it was too late. The world didn’t stop shaking. Buildings shifted and the dusty streets quivered, kicking up clouds of dust.

  Mamte ran toward the nearest edge of the world, using her power as the Goddess of the Graceful Step to find the perfect route and to run at a godly speed.

  She clutched Mudworm to her chest.

  “You’d go faster if you’d put me down,” Mudworm said.

  “No. What kind of goddess would I be if I left you
to die in all this chaos?”

  Mamte rounded a corner and found her way blocked by a stampeding herd of cows. They lowed and blundered into each other, seeking escape. She vaulted to the back of the nearest cow and leapt from one to the other across the herd, calming each one with a brush of her perfect toes.

  Once outside the city, she passed through the rice paddies. Farmers clutched each other and cried. She wished she could stop and comfort them, soak up their adoration one more time before going below to stand in the fires of hell for all of eternity. Why couldn’t there have been another god or goddess born at the same time as Mamte? She wasn’t ready to join the Stone Pantheon. She needed more time.

  Mamte’s steps grew longer as she grew taller. The final change was coming. She could feel the stiffening in her limbs as they slowly turned to stone. A rush of sudden energy, like a deep breath filling her with divine power, drove her onward.

  A line of pilgrims knelt in the red mud near at the edge of Vishkapur. The mud shook and swirled around them in fat crimson waves. Raja, the sculptor, was among them.

  Mamte leapt over them, slid to a stop, and set Mudworm down.

  Her power faded and she began exhaling the breath of divine power. She flexed her arm. The stiffness was gone and stone flakes fell from her skin to the ground.

  “I don’t understand,” Mamte said. “What’s happening?”

  “You’re shrinking,” Mudworm said.

  “My power is fading.”

  The city tilted and the line of pilgrims screamed, pleading with Mamte to save them. Another tremor shook the city and Mudworm slid toward the edge. Mamte reached out to grab him, and when her fingers closed around his collar the power rose up inside her. As she grew, she pulled him to her chest.

  Mudworm screamed as stone arms sprouted from his stubs. Drops of his blood fell, and turned to pebbles before they sank into the quivering mud. He wrapped his arms around Mamte’s neck. “I’m glad that both the first and last thing that I do with my arms is to take hold of you.”

  He smiled and Mamte noticed that his lips had pulled back to reveal teeth of stone.

  “Why do I need you to transform?” Mamte asked.

  “Maybe it’s my humility? Maybe you needed an aspect of suffering? Maybe I have so much hate in me that I’m too heavy for this world? I don’t know.”

  “I’m afraid of standing in the fire. How can I be the Goddess of the Graceful Step with charred feet?”

  Mudworm laughed. “Yes. You needed my humility.”

  “But the pain.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll share it with you.”

  Mamte had grown so big that the pilgrims had to move back. They cheered for her. “Mahaja!”

  She turned, put her arms around Mudworm, and placed her stony hands together. “Mahajaloon!”

  She looked over the pilgrims, basking in their praise for the last time. She caught Raja’s eye and, patted Mudworm on the back and nodded. When Raja nodded back she knew he’d include Mudworm in her statue. She stepped up to the edge and dropped over the side, catching the cliff with her giant hands.

  Mamte dug her fingers into the underside of Vishkapur and swung, like an ape grabbing at branches, toward the gap in the Stone Pantheon that she’d been destined to fill since the day she was born. As she moved, her feet grew ever nearer to the hellfire below, so she held them up.

  When she finally found her place, near Paha Byrat, Mamte let her feet drop. The searing pain ran all the way from her heels to the top of her head. She screamed and tried to pull her feet up, but her legs had turned to stone. She’d never move them again.

  Mudworm shook and grimaced. Mamte could felt the pain flowing from her into him.

  “The pain is too much,” Mudworm said. “I shouldn’t have done this for them. They all hated me.”

  “You didn’t do it for them. You did it for me. It was my final lesson. And I gave it to you. I gave you so much of myself that you were overcome with power. You sacrificed yourself for a people that hated you. Your transformation is just as meaningful as mine.”

  Mamte braced herself. “Give the pain back to me. I can take it.”

  “No. I promised to share the burden. I…”

  Mudworm’s words faded as his lips turned to stone.

  Mamte looked up, spread her hands across the stone and earth above, and flexed her shoulders, willing the world to stop shaking. The tremors ceased and her consciousness started to fade, leaving her to focus on the burning pain of the fire. The pain reminded her of her purpose. She owed it to the people above. It was her duty to bear it.

  As the last of her body turned to stone she felt another sensation. A more powerful adoration than she’d ever felt, coming from the prayers of the people above. It flowed around them, the essence of pure bliss, multiplying and growing ever stronger.

  Before her eyesight faded, Mamte saw Mudworm’s head tip back — the stone of his neck cracking as it flexed, his mouth opening and letting out an exhalation of joy. Through their bond, she felt his hate fade as he took his share of the adoration of the people.

  Mamte and Mudworm felt the collective wisdom of the Stone Pantheon wash over them. And she saw for the first time that Mudworm had a shard of the godsoul within him. It must have grown so big inside Paha Byrat that one god couldn’t contain it. And so it’d split. That’s why she’d needed Mudworm to join the Stone Pantheon.

  A tremor ran through Vishkapur, and then the city began to sink. The hellfire crept up Mamte’s ankles.

  No. This wasn’t right. She was strong enough to hold up the city. She’d prepared for this her whole life. Had their sin’s grown to numerous, too heavy? Or was it that time of doubt near the end that’d sapped her strength? It couldn’t be. She had Mudworm now, to make her whole, the fill in the gaps of her character, and to complete the godsoul.

  The godsoul. Yes. That was it. She could still save the city.

  Mamte felt the godsoul inside her, ready to rise up and form a new god. She concentrated, held the godsoul still, and then split it in two. The two soon became four. The four soon became eight.

  The hellfire was around her waist now. Surely the people above could feel the heat. Their prayers turned to screams of terror, begging for salvation.

  Mamte spilt the godsoul until she had thirty pieces. It was all she had time for. The hellfire was up to her chin.

  She called to the sliver of the godsoul within Mudworm and it crept out of his open mouth. She birthed the pieces of the godsoul from the perfect curl of her bellybutton and they joined with Mudworm’s sliver.

  “Go my little Children of Light,” she said. “Rise up over the city. Protect the people.

  The Children of Light scattered, a storm of blue sparks cascading through the Stone Pantheon, and rose up over Vishkapur, pulling an azure barrier over the city from end to end, sealing it against the hellfire.

  Vishkapur sank into the inferno, rushing downward through the world, and soon the hellfire turned to burning lava.

  Mamte felt the peoples’ fear. Heard their screams. She understood it well. She’d feared the hellfire her whole life. But the barrier held all through the depths and into the core.

  Vishkapur burst forth from the inferno on the other side of the world, trailing massive streams of lava that soon cooled into stone.

  The city fell for seventy days.

  During the journey, the Children of Light capered about on the barrier like a storm of suns. And once they grew tired they cooled to a faded blue and slept in the configuration of a new constellation each night.

  The city crashed into a passing world, driving the Stone Pantheon deep into the earth. The Children of Light drifted down from the barrier, filling the bellies of thirty-one women. They weren’t born gods, for that time had passed, but they were still revered.

  Below, in the darkness, the Stone Pantheon stood in a vast, cooling underground river.

  Mamte loved their new home most of all. Her time in the hellfire was short. She preferred the
cool water of the river, and felt she’d earned its serenity.

  Far above Vishkapur burned their old world, like a second sun, to remind them of their past.

  Dedicated to the memory of Rita Lindberg.

  JUAREZ SQUARE

  by

  D.L. YOUNG

  “Why does he want to see me?” Diego asked.

  “I don’t know, guey,” Pedro replied. “But he asked to see you in person. And he never meets anyone in person. I couldn’t believe such an important man really wanted to meet you.” Pedro laughed. “Little Diego from my old neighborhood has a meeting with El Carnicero. Who would have ever guessed that?” Pedro looked the younger boy over and smiled. “You scared?”

  “No,” Diego shot back. He knew Pedro expected him to be afraid. But a man doesn’t show his fear. A man stays cool, even when his insides are jumping around like crazy. “I just want to know what’s up, that’s all.”

  Diego was fifteen, Pedro a year older. Before the surprise knock on his apartment door this morning Diego hadn’t seen Pedro in weeks; the street said Pedro had landed a messenger job with the local narco boss.

  “Listen,” Pedro said. “You don’t need to be scared. If he wanted you dead he wouldn’t invite you for a chat, right? He’d have someone throw a grenade through your window. Come on, we can’t keep him waiting.”

  Diego tried to ignore his turning stomach. “I told you I’m not scared. Vamos.” He exited the apartment and closed the door behind him. Only a scared kid would stay at home, he thought. And besides, Pedro had always been a joker. He probably just needed another player for street soccer.

  Pedro led Diego through the narrow back streets of the boys’ home turf, El Cuatro. “I’m glad your brother wasn’t home, guey,” Pedro said. “Lorenzo never would have let you come with me.”

  “He thinks he’s my dad. I can take care of myself.”