by Lani Forbes
“That’s still pretty impressive for someone who’s only seen eighteen cycles of the calendar.”
“I guess.” But the corner of his mouth ticked up. He suddenly walked a little taller too.
“I don’t think I could ever kill someone. I mean, you saw me with the animal sacrifices. I think I’d die before I took a blade to another person.”
Ahkin swung the shield on his arm back and forth absently. “I didn’t think I could either. My mentor, Yaotl, is the leader of the Jaguar warriors, so I had the best training available. But something changes the moment you step onto the battlefield. It’s almost like your heart stops beating, and you cease to be a person outside of what you’ve trained for. Your survival instincts kick in and you realize you don’t have a choice unless you want to be killed or captured.”
Mayana shook her head slowly. “I don’t think I could ever block out my heart like that.”
“That’s why you would be a horrible warrior.”
Mayana stuck out her tongue at him. “I’d probably be better than you think. Having a sensitive heart doesn’t mean you’re weak. It takes more strength to care than it does to not care.”
Ahkin considered her. “Perhaps. Weak is definitely not a characteristic I would use to describe you.”
Mayana tilted her chin up. “Thank you. After all, if it weren’t for me you’d probably be devoured by Cipactli in the Sea of the Dead right now.”
Ahkin gave her an amused look. “Definitely not weak, though stubborn might be more accurate.”
Mayana fished a maize kernel out of the bag the Mother goddess had given her and flung it at his head.
Ahkin batted it away with his impressive battle reflexes. One of his eyebrows arched playfully. Mayana took a step back. He lunged forward and rubbed some of the gritty, bloody mess coating his arms on Mayana’s shoulder.
“Yuck! Ahkin! You’re a beast!” she shrieked and shoved him away.
Ona barked a warning, but she shushed him while she tried to wipe the muck off her skin. Ahkin grinned at her like her younger brother, Tenoch, always did after playing some sort of mischievous trick. She wished she could wash the grime off, but the thought of water reminded her of how dry her tongue felt.
“Is there a sign of water anywhere?” She looked around the billowing grasses hopelessly. The tall reeds reached only to her chest, so she could still see the hills that continued to roll and ripple out from their current path in every direction. But there was no sign of a river anywhere in the sloping fields. There was one way for her to find water, but she was sure Ahkin would disapprove of her using any more of her blood.
“Maybe there will be some kind of stream or river at the base of the mountains?” Ahkin narrowed his eyes in the direction of the dark peaks.
“If you’d let me—”
“No.” Ahkin cut across her. “No more blood. You’ve lost enough.”
Mayana frowned. His tone was laced with a panic she didn’t understand. It wasn’t as if he needed to protect her from bleeding to death. And if they didn’t find any water soon, she’d pretend to accidentally cut herself and use her divine senses to find some anyway.
Several more hours passed, and finally the mountains appeared to be getting closer. They reached another fork. As they approached, two spirits materialized out of the grasses. Just as they had at every fork in the paths.
“Come this way, for that way leads to certain death!” wailed the spirit of a woman wrapped in a shawl.
“No! This is the only way to find your destination. If you go that way, you will wander for all eternity!” cried the spirit of a young man dressed in a servant’s cloak.
The first time this had happened, Mayana had nearly leapt into Ahkin’s arms. Spirits materialized every time they reached another fork in the paths, determined to keep them lost for all eternity. She tried to judge which of the two spirits seemed the most trustworthy. But Ahkin decided that the path to the left seemed the most appropriate. The spirit of the woman wailed warnings after them, leaving Mayana with a sick feeling of unease.
At least until the next fork, when two more spirits appeared with similar warnings.
“They are trying to misdirect and confuse us. I think it’s part of the challenge,” Ahkin said, scratching at his chin.
“How do you know which way to go then?”
“We don’t listen to them.” Ahkin directed them to the right.
“Why not the left path?” Mayana asked, only now realizing that Ahkin had been making every decision so far.
“Simple strategy. I’m marking an x on the ground with every turn we take so that if we run into a mark, I’ll know we’ve already been that way. If any path is marked twice, I know it leads to a dead end. We don’t have to pay attention to the spirits at all.”
Mayana blinked at him. “I—I guess I was going whichever way felt right.”
Ahkin shook his head. “No, having a strategy is always best. You can’t follow your heart with a maze or trust these spirits to direct us.”
“You certainly like planning things out, don’t you?”
A shadow darkened his eyes. “I like things to be predictable, that’s all.” The spirit of an old man wailed after their latest choice of path. Mayana struggled to drown out his warning cries.
“Like with the rituals,” she whispered.
A muscle in his jaw tensed. “I used to think so. Now, I’m not so sure. I thought if we followed the rituals, it would make everything as it should be. So, for the Mother goddess to tell me that they are only our way of trying to gain control . . .” He didn’t finish.
Mayana shrugged a shoulder. “I never liked the rituals.”
Ahkin snorted. “I’ve noticed. Though I never really got a chance to ask why.”
She’d had a thousand conversations with her parents, her siblings, Yemania. Every time she was accused of disrespecting the gods, being ignorant or selfish, or worse—putting their entire world in danger. No one had given her the freedom or space to just be herself. The rituals outlined in their holy codex texts governed everything from religious ceremonies to the proper way to prepare a meal. The instructions were supposedly passed down from the gods themselves, a way to honor and remember the sacrifices that were made each time another god had to sacrifice him- or herself to save their world from destruction. Blood had been paid and so blood was owed, regularly returned by the descendants of those gods and the creation that benefited from their gifts.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard to explain. Something about the blood sacrifices never felt right. Not when I think about the love required for self-sacrifice—the kind of love my mother always showed to everyone around her. That kind of love is selfless, undemanding, freely given. It doesn’t require repayment.”
Her belly began to squirm. Perhaps he wouldn’t understand her either. She let her gaze wander far in the distance, the mountains looming like the dark clouds of a coming storm.
She sighed. “I could never reconcile gods that supposedly loved us enough to die for us with the beings depicted in the codex sheets, the ones ordering such strict and brutal obedience. Love and power don’t mix well together.”
But no one ever believed her. Not when fear dominated their minds and hearts. The codex stipulated that if the rituals were not followed, the same disasters that destroyed their world six times before would repeat, dooming the Chicome to floods, or plague, or beasts, or fire. Fear is a powerful and controlling thing, but her mother taught her that true love casts out fear. That’s where she chose to focus her energy—on her love of the gods, not her fear of them.
Ahkin didn’t answer her at first, just stared at his feet as his sandals stirred little bursts of dust with each step. She tried not to let his silence proclaim judgments over her. She could practically hear the hum of his brain working through everything.
“What
was your mother like when she was alive?” he finally asked.
His thoughts must have drifted to his own mother—the mother the rituals took away from him after the early death of his father.
Mayana shifted the bag on her shoulder, warmth spreading from her chest out to her fingertips at the thought of her mother. It filled the cold space her fear of his rejection had left behind. “The thing I remember most about her is her smile. She could brighten any day by smiling at me. I have five brothers—three older, two younger—and being the only girl wasn’t easy. Rivers are everywhere in Atl, and we spent so much of our time fishing and swimming. My brothers always teased me or left me out of games, and I would cry because I couldn’t keep up with them. My mother never let me quit or give up, though. She’d throw me right back in the water and tell me to keep swimming, that I could be as strong as they were if I was willing to practice. I eventually learned to swim and climb as well as any of them. She believed in me when no one else did. That’s why I loved her smile so much. It was a smile that whispered encouragement, that told me she knew I could do whatever I set my heart to.
“But my father . . . I don’t think he knew what to do with a girl. He could teach my brothers to fight or discuss religion and politics, but he’d leave me out of everything. I never understood why. I still don’t. Look at the women of Ocelotl, they learn to fight as well as any of the men. It used to make me so angry, but my mother would discuss those things with me. She tutored me in the codex sheets, even if she wasn’t allowed to teach me to fight. We’d talk about politics and the rituals while we weaved or made flatbreads. We raised litters of puppies together, training them and finding homes for them in the city. She loved animals as much as I do, and she never saw the point of the sacrifices either. She didn’t have to lead rituals because her blood was common, but she knew that I would have to. I was twelve when I—I wouldn’t perform my first animal sacrifice. It was the month of the lizard and I had the blade in my hand but I . . . couldn’t. My father slapped me in front of the entire city-state. I fell to the ground and he lifted his hand again, but—” Mayana stopped at the sudden tightening in her chest. The memory washed over her and burned at her eyes, as though she were peeling an onion root.
She could still see it all in her mind’s eye. The hundreds of faces, blurred and blank, watching her from around the stone banquet hall in Atl. Her father standing over her, the fear and anger in his eyes burning as hot as the fire in the brazier beside them. The throbbing ache in her cheek where he had struck her, the smooth wood of the handle clutched tight in her sweaty grip. He had hissed something as he gestured to the lizard wriggling in her brother’s hands. The burning defiance, the rebellious stubbornness that lived deep inside her soul and refused to bend to his will. She shook her head, positioning her hands onto the stone floor to push herself back up. But then, icy fear gripped at her heart as she saw his fist rise again, pleading in his eyes . . .
“But my mother ran in between us and took the blow for me,” she finished quietly. “That’s when I knew that real, sacrificial love looks nothing like what the codex demands.”
Ahkin winced. “What did your father do after he struck her?”
“He was horrified. The room was deadly quiet. He carried my mom out of the banquet hall. I don’t know where they went. My brother ended up doing the sacrifice for me, and I ran to my usual hiding place.”
Ona pressed his head against her thigh and Mayana stopped walking to bend down and pet him. “Ona always knew where to find me.”
Ahkin stopped walking too, though his eyes darted to the horizon before he asked, “Where did you like to hide?”
“Always the same place. In Atl, our temple is stone, but my family’s blood keeps the rivers and canals flowing from the underground well that flows through the temple and out into the city. If you climb the temple’s steps, you can slide behind the main waterfall and find a little nook between the water and the stone. I would sit there and listen to the waterfall and watch the rainbows dance on the rock walls.” She rose to her feet and rubbed her arms.
“Rainbows.” His mouth curved into a smile. Mayana wondered if he, too, was remembering the rainbow they had made together when she was first introduced in the capital. Water and light can come together to make something beautiful, she’d said.
Ahkin’s eyes met hers, and the squirming feeling in her stomach intensified. She’d laid herself bare, exposed such deep parts of herself she always tried to keep hidden. But instead of disapproval, his eyes held something softer. As if he was seeing the real her and he actually liked what he saw . . .
She wanted to linger there, in that tender moment of allowing him to truly see her. But it made her so vulnerable. And vulnerable was the last thing she wanted to feel in a place filled with such danger. It was hard to imagine the beauty of light and color when you were trapped in a world of darkness and shadow.
As if to make her point, the dark clouds rumbled threateningly. A dry wind rustled across the dead grasses with a soft hiss, like unseen spirits whispering warnings in her ear. The back of Mayana’s neck tingled. The constant wailing spirits already had her nerves teetering on a precipice.
The moment between them dissipated like fading smoke. “But then she died last year. Fell down those horribly steep stairs of the temple and no one found her until it was too late. I still have trouble going up and down those same steps for the sacrifices. I miss her so much sometimes. Even now. I can’t imagine such a loving soul trapped in a place like this.” She waved a hand skyward.
“I know what you mean,” Ahkin said quietly. He blinked his eyes several times in quick succession.
Before she could ask if he was okay, thunder rumbled again, and a fork of eerily green lightning arched across the sky.
She blinked up at the angry clouds. “Does it rain in the underworld?”
“No idea. I wouldn’t mind washing some of this off though.” Ahkin gestured to his filthy arms.
Another gust of wind swept across the dead plains, stronger this time. It pulled at Mayana’s sand-encrusted hair, whipping it into her face. Ona whined and stepped closer. Several wayward spirits took flight out of the grasses and flitted from view.
“I’m sorry about your mother, Mayana. I miss mine too. I can’t imagine her spirit making this journey, and to think that the ritual that demanded she take her own life—to think that she didn’t need to—” He stopped and looked away.
Mayana reached out and grabbed his hand, her heart twisting at the pain she could see lurking beneath the surface. He squeezed back, but then pulled his hand away just as quickly, as though he didn’t want to admit how much he appreciated it.
Thunder tumbled overhead. An icy drop smacked into Mayana’s forehead, then her nose, her shoulder. The drops increased in intensity, and soon the skies unleashed themselves. Mayana was familiar with the torrential humid rains of the jungles, the summer storms that could blink into existence and swell the rivers to overflowing. That was her family’s main responsibility in the empire, to assist the other city-states in avoiding disasters of drought or flooding, to make the regular sacrifices that would appease otherwise angry gods that would punish with water.
But she had never experienced a rain like this before. It was chilling, unforgiving. Icy rivers ran down her back in torrents, plastering her hair to her head and rinsing it clean of caked sand. They both opened their mouths to try and catch some of the freezing drops on their parched tongues. It would have been refreshing, if it weren’t for the frigid cold. The blood and grime flowed off Ahkin’s arms and chest, pooling into brownish-red puddles at his feet.
Ahkin shook the water from his hair. Ona mimicked him to the point that Mayana bit her lip to keep from laughing. At least, until her teeth started chattering so hard, she feared she would bite right through.
“We need to find some kind of sh-sh-shelter,” she said, looking around and seeing nothing
but the sea of grass, now thrashing in the wind like a turbulent tide.
Ahkin pulled her close, his bare chest slick and cold beneath her hands. She snuggled into him, seeking what little body heat he had left. With one arm tight around her shoulders, he lifted the other with the round shield above their heads, holding off some of the downpour. Ona whined and fidgeted between their feet.
“This isn’t going to be enough,” Ahkin shouted, his voice hard to make out over the sound of the storm. Mayana’s ears began to throb from the roaring of the wind, so she covered them with her hands. Perhaps the wind wouldn’t be so brutal if they could find a way to keep themselves dry, but Ahkin couldn’t hold up his shield for long. Already she could see his arm shaking with the effort.
Mayana slipped her hand down to where the obsidian shard was wedged in the waistband of her skirt. She didn’t even bother asking his opinion, knowing what his answer would be.
Her finger ran briefly across the sharp edge, exposing barely enough blood for what she planned to do.
“Ahkin, you can drop the shield,” she said, looking up to where his jaw was clenched tight with the effort of keeping his arm up.
“No, we have to stay dry or else . . .” but he slowly lowered the shield. His eyes went wide with wonderment and then flat with suppressed annoyance.
Mayana beamed an innocent smile as Ahkin’s head swiveled, taking in how the sheets of rain now parted around them, as though a dome of air was protecting them.
He sighed and pulled her closer. “I’d be angry, but I’m too exhausted and freezing to argue.”
“Good, because I’m insanely thirsty, and there’s another little trick I’ve picked up.”
Mayana pricked another finger and pointed it toward the rain outside of their bubble. Some of the rain condensed into a perfect sphere and she summoned it toward her. It hovered over her hand like a butterfly waiting to land.
“Open your hands,” she instructed him. He did, and she let the orb splash into his cupped palms. He brought his hands to his lips and promptly sighed in relief.
