by Jadie Jang
Then it seemed to go still, with its entire bulk looking at me, and I knew, with my entire self, that it was preparing to eat me.
Monkey had never been anyone’s prey, and wasn’t about to start now. I screeched like the death of a banshee, turned into water, and flowed out from under the shadow. I streamed across the few feet of sidewalk between my position and Tez’s, and then under the crevices of Tez’s body. He was gasping for breath, but the sensation of water seemed to wake him, and he started sitting up, still gasping.
I came up on the other side of him, deliberately using him as a shield, (What? I was really freaked out) and reconstituted as a minotaur, my favorite muscle-form. The shadow seemed to ignore Tez, flowing over him without stopping, to get to me.
I took several rapid steps back, wound up, and roundhoused the center of the shadow’s mass as it got close enough. It was a serious wallop. Almost as serious as I got. And it only stopped the shadow’s forward momentum for a second. It didn’t move it back an inch.
Monkey was screaming bloody murder in my head. I came at it with the two, pretty much all my punching power there. It stopped again, more completely this time. But no movement back. What the hell? My all-out roundhouse had never failed to knock an opponent out; in fact, I rarely went all out for fear of killing someone.
Starting to panic, I unleashed a rapid succession of punches and kicks at the mass of shadow, Monkey calculating angle, trajectory, and power in my head while screeching in harmony with my totally freaked out human brain. Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck. The shadow didn’t move forward, but I seemed to have no other impact on it.
When I stopped for a moment, utterly frustrated, it walloped me again with its shock wave, but I was ready this time. I let it spin me around 360 degrees backward, landing on my feet … mostly … well, there was one knee on the— it was awkward, but I wasn’t laid out, okay?
“All right, Slim Shady,” I muttered, retreating again. “I see you. How do you feel about THIS?”
I turned into a freestanding jet engine, already running at top speed, and blasted him.
Slim Shady did not react much, but I had stopped him again.
I was tempted to be frustrated and switch tactics again, but had already learned my lesson. If Ol’ Shady was gonna act like solid smoke, he’d better damn well act like solid smoke. Maybe it would take time to blow him all away. Well, I had nothin’ but time.
I blasted and blasted, imagining myself as a sand blaster, as a desert storm, as a pounding ocean. I eked every bit of power I could out of my … whatever it was that power came from. And finally, after what seemed like hours, but was probably only a fraction of a minute, I started to see the edges of his shadow … move? A little? Backwards? Yay?
If I was seeing right, I was finally having an impact. But. I was also starting to get a little—just a little—tired, and I didn’t know how long I could keep this up at full blast. And the main part of him hadn’t moved yet at all.
“Maya?”
I didn’t let up, but I could see Tez vaguely through the shadow. He was standing, but not looking very stable. Maybe that was my fault. Shady didn’t seem to be blocking all the jet stream. He needed to get out of my blasting path. I couldn’t call to him—jet engines have no mouths—and I was starting to regret not having telepathy. (Can you imagine? Ugh!)
Instead of using his common sense, though, Tez just attacked. He performed what I was starting to recognize as his signature move, a high-jump-with-overhead-punch, and I could somehow see … or feel … Shady’s attention reverse around his smoky form, to focus on Tez.
Perfect.
I reached deep and found a little extra sumpin’ sumpin’ and blasted Shady into Tez’s distinctly hairier-looking fist. The dark cloud bowed around Tez’s arm. Shady turned to look at me—auuurrggghh—and then broke off from both of us and flew away at a speed I hadn’t ever seen from him.
I did not try to follow. Let it never be said that I don’t learn my lessons.
As soon as Shady was out of sight, Tez collapsed almost to the ground, and I had to help him into the car. I got in the drivers seat.
He was panting like a dog in labor and holding himself around the middle.
“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
He didn’t respond.
“Did he hurt you?” Jeebus Iced. He’d had part of his essence sucked out. What even was I supposed to do?!
“Who?”
“The shadow guy!”
“Oh, did you decide it was a guy? I decided it was a girl.” He sounded weak, but not out of it. Maybe he was just tired. I started calming down.
“I’m calling him Slim Shady, or Shady for short.”
“Shady the smoky lady.”
Okay, he was still panting, still holding himself. But he was also joking. Which he didn’t do much of. So that was good, right?
“Are you hurt?”
“No … yes … kind of. In a weird way.” He panted a little more. “I feel … just … weak. Not sick or injured. Just weak. Like … diminished … like, a phone with a drained battery.” Oh shit.
“Does your stomach hurt?” I asked, anxious again.
“No. It feels … empty. Not like hungry empty. Like … plastic bag empty.”
“How can I … help?”
“There’s nothing you can do. Just get me the Huexotl.”
“I’m not sure you should be touching it.”
“No, I need it. It knows I’m diminished, and it’s calling to me. It’ll revive me.”
My confused brain cast about for a moment, but then I remembered seeing the bag with the stick lying a few yards away from where Tez had been downed. I lurched back out of the driver’s seat and a few yards back down the sidewalk to where the stick and bag were. I hefted the walking stick, with its bag bunched around it. I could almost feel its power buzzing through the cloth of the bag. Was it getting … stronger? Good thing this stretch of Telegraph was mostly empty after midnight, even on a Saturday, because I’d completely forgotten about our things. I looked around and saw that I’d left my own purse and jacket in a heap near the cafe door.
Still entirely unsure I should be giving the damned thing to Tez, I went for my own things and walked bang into the man himself. He’d somehow dragged his own ass out of the car and down the sidewalk to me—or rather, to the stick—although he’d barely been able to move without assistance a moment ago.
He grabbed the stick, with the bag bunched around it, from me. As I watched, Tez held the still-bagged stick, and strength flowed almost visibly into him. He stood up straighter, the exhausted look left his face, his body began glowing with vitality again. I could almost have sworn that the color came back into his face as well, but it was impossible to tell in the orange street light.
Using the stick, he swept an elaborate bow. “My chariot awaits, milady.” Oh god, he was all goofy and high again. I was so relieved that he had recovered that I almost didn’t mind. Almost.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sunday, October 23, 2011
San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco
Tez insisted he didn’t need me to come talk to Amoxtli the next morning and I didn’t argue. I was sure he’d prefer keeping the whole thing a secret, but that was just a bummer for him. Tez had been in Ayo’s—my—inner sanctum, and had used its resources. This was no longer just about him. Let’s be honest: it hadn’t been for a while now.
So I was waiting for Tez by the elevator when he stepped off. He was startled, but not surprised. And he didn’t try to argue with me, either. I guess we’d both learned a little about each other.
Amoxtli was very pale and looked like he’d lost about twenty pounds in a day and a half —an impossibility for a human, barring liposuction. But he was alert and sitting up when we came in.
“See?” he said to us both, as if continuing a conversation. “I’m fine. I’m in a normal room. They say I’ll be outta here in two or three days.”
“Yea
h,” Tez muttered, “I’m gonna wait to talk to your doctor.” He said to me: “He’s always a bit overoptimistic about his own health.”
Amoxtli didn’t, I noticed, object to the idea of Tez—not even a blood relative, and much younger—insisting on talking to his doctor. Was this a nagual thing? A “family” thing? Or were they really … “partners” already, like in Ayo’s story?
“How are the boy— Manny and Pronk? How’d they get through yesterday?”
Tez just nodded, then tilted his head. This seemed to be enough answer for Amoxtli.
“Pronk’s coming this evening after ze gets off work. Manny will swing by with your clothes and stuff this afternoon.”
“You okay?” Amo asked softly.
Tez nodded, more firmly, at the ground. Amoxtli nodded at his own feet.
“So,” Tez said. “I have a shit-ton of questions for you.”
Amoxtli looked wary. “About what?”
“Well,” Tez said, opening his backpack and pulling the stick out, “about this, for one thing.”
I had thought Amoxtli was pale before, but all the color drained from his face until he was positively grey. His face became drawn and furrowed, and he looked old, old, old for a moment. I had a horrible feeling that I’d been right about the stick, and I shouldn’t have let it get its hooks into Tez.
But then, in the next instant, Amoxtli’s face flushed again, and filled with wonder. He sat up straighter and reached out a hand to touch it.
“My God, mijo. My God. Cómo …Where did you find It?” And his eyes filled with tears.
He touched the stick gently for a moment, but didn’t try to take it from Tez. Tez, for his part, didn’t seem at all discomfited by Amoxtli touching it.
“You know. You know,” Tez murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
They were almost talking over each other, as if each knew what the other was going to say. “I couldn’t have helped you. It was lost. It was gone. And then your father … I didn’t want you to feel as if you had lost so much. I didn’t want you to know … It was gone …”
“You should have told me. You could’ve helped me. I could’ve gone looking …”
“I didn’t think you’d ever find It. I didn’t think you’d ever become complete. I didn’t want you to know …”
“I could’ve found it. Wherever It was, if you had just told me …”
They went on in this vein for a while, not really arguing, just communing over the stick and mooning over each other—until I got tired of it.
“Okay!” I cried, interrupting their flow. “What the hell?”
They both looked at me, and Amoxtli dropped his hand, smiling wryly a little.
“Sorry, Maya, I guess this all seems very weird to you.”
“What is that … thing? Is it evil or good? ‘Cause I was coming down on the side of evil.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s not evil or good, It’s just …” He sighed. “You’d better sit down.”
Tez and I exchanged glances, and both pulled up chairs.
I expected him to wind up into storytelling mode, but he went on in the same, very practical-information vein. “The Huexotl goes back to the time when the Spaniards came, Tenochtitlan fell, and our people scattered. There’s a whole story I won’t go into detail about right now … but anyway, our clan’s nagual encountered a Spanish sorcerer traveling with the missionaries as a servant, and secretly studying the magic of the Nahua in the hope of increasing his own power. The nagual made a deal to exchange knowledge of magic with the sorcerer: European for Mexican magic. But the nagual made sure he got the better of the deal, and that the Spanish wouldn’t walk away with any more treasures that didn’t belong to them.
“The sorcerer taught the nagual how to capture power and contain it in an object. And the nagual chose the most simple object: his walking stick, carved from a branch of a tree in his old compound, before the world changed. His new, mixed magic was successful beyond his wildest dreams: the stick tied the clan to that piece of earth, where they were living, made them belong. Their clan became prestigious in that village, and their nagual, with his walking stick drawing power from the very earth beneath their feet, became the guardian of and speaker for their land.”
He began to fall into the cadence of a story.
“The nagual had two sons: one from his own loins, an ocelotl, and one he adopted, with the gift of memory and flowers. So he transferred the power of his walking stick to his nagual son, and made his gifted son the living amoxtli of the clan’s story and the ritual of the walking stick. The two brothers were very close, and did everything together. And when they had sons of their own, they each taught one of their sons about the walking stick: one a nagual, and one a storyteller, and those two moved forward together in life, and brought the clan with them.
“After many generations, the clan was driven from their home by a famine, and they wandered again. And they found a home, again, through the magic of the walking stick. And so it went. Whenever the clan was endangered, they moved, and took the power of the earth and stars with them. Until the time of your grandparents, when the danger wasn’t war or disease or famine, but poverty.”
His voice became conversational again.
“And it was the same in our time. None of our clan would go north without their nagual, so your grandparents went with a small group, including my parents. My father was the storyteller, so he had to go, too. And they went to, you know, case the joint. If they decided to settle here, the rest of the clan would follow. Your grandparents met with terrible luck, and my father thought it was an omen that they should all go home. But by that time, he and my mom were making good enough money that no one wanted them to come home.”
“So, what happened with the walking stick?” I asked. “Did Ome have it with him, or did his father take it?”
“Tez’s grandfather Luis left It with Ome. Luis wasn’t sure he was going to move the clan, and the Huexotl was better left on its home turf. If disconnected, It will yearn for a new home and push Its holder to put down roots wherever he spends a lot of time. Luis wanted a clear head, although apparently it was very hard for him to leave the Huexotl—and the village—behind. He had to disconnect from them magically, and that leaves a big, psychological hole.”
“So Ome brought it up here with him?”
“It had become very clear that the village was dying—economically speaking—and they’d have to move. And since my folks and I were well established in the Bay Area, the decision was made to move the clan up here in stages. Ome and Pilar came up, bringing the Huexotl with them, and he didn’t perform the ritual for many years; partly because they were migrating back and forth all up and down the coast, seasonally, and he wasn’t sure where they would land; and partly because the clan was still moving up here, and he wanted to wait until everyone was established.”
Amoxtli looked down.
“I’m not being completely honest, though. My Papa wanted Ome to do the ritual as soon as he could. But Ome was tasting freedom for the first time in his life, and he couldn’t bring himself to tie himself down just then. And I was selfish; I was young too, and wanted Ome and Pilar to be free to wander with me. We were the three musketeers in those years. And … I think, as reasonable as it was for him to wait when he first arrived, being here for so long without bonding with the Huexotl made him unstable and his decisions became rather irrational.”
“What do you mean, ‘freedom’?” Tez asked, looking spooked. “Why wouldn’t he have been able to wander with you?”
Amoxtli looked at him, and his face was sad, and compassionate.
“There’s no power without a price,” he said. “The price of nagualism is a responsibility for your people. You know that already. But the Huexotl is … so much more. The power It gives you is incredible. So the responsibility is also … so much more. You become responsible for the land you draw power from. And … and you can’t leave it.”
“What … ne
ver?” I asked.
“No, not ever. You physically cannot leave. Not for a single moment.”
“But Abuelo was able to leave!” Tez cried.
“Only by breaking his bond with the Huexotl and the land. That comes at a terrible, psychological cost. I believe that’s why Luis died. He was lost without the connection, and everyone said he was clumsy and absent-minded, and his power was severely diminished. If he’d reconnected immediately, he would have bonded with the land here, the way the Huexotl was meant to be used, and his presence would have led his clan to follow him. But he was trying to be rational about it, trying to find the right place. It was a mistake.”
“But Ome had the stick!” I cried, hating the sick look on Tez’s face. “He had access to the power of it. I’ve seen it! I’ve seen how strong it makes Tez! Why couldn’t he have used it without bonding with it?”
Amoxtli shook his head in disgust at himself. “I should’ve seen it. I should’ve known it wasn’t drugs. Drugs probably don’t work well on you, hijo. Maya, you saw how It affected him. How was it? Did he seem stable to you?”
“Well … no. But his sister just died!” I said, then regretted it immediately when both of them winced.
“You thought the Huexotl was evil because of the effect It had on him. Access to that much power, without the connection to the land, the guardianship of the land, to balance it out, leads to severe instability—psychological instability, extremes of emotion, bouts of giddiness and paranoia, irrationality, and ultimately, violence. You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “You mean he’d be like that even if … nothing bad had happened?”
