The Jade Bones

by Lani Forbes

  “Ahkin, let go,” she called to him, but she didn’t give him a choice as she willed the waters to sweep him up with her. His body pressed against hers, arms wrapping around her shoulders as he held on. Ona barked in excitement as he bounced along the rock face, following after them like he might have chased a cart back in the marketplace of Atl.

  Her focus remained on that dark crevice, the hollow she prayed would offer them some sort of steady ground where they could recuperate. It wasn’t terribly wide, but as they neared she could see that it led into some kind of internal cave, winding away deep into the mountain.

  Ona barked in warning and darted inside. Mayana turned her head to see another massive boulder careening through the air toward them. But this time she saw where it had come from.

  A creature unlike any she had ever seen or imagined materialized out of the far wall across the ravine. It let out an almighty roar that shook her eardrums as effectively as it did the walls of the canyon. It reminded her of the camouflaged moths that hide against the bark of a tree, completely blended into their surroundings and impossible to distinguish until they moved. This creature was roughly humanoid in shape, though it was gigantic, taller than the temple back in Atl. It was made entirely out of stone, as though a part of the mountain itself had broken free and come alive. The name “mountains that crash” suddenly made perfect sense. These mountain giants were as large as mountains themselves, and they did not seem to enjoy trespassers in their realm. It reached a rocky hand to break off another boulder to continue its attack.

  On their own side of the ravine, another creature made itself known to their right. Its rough-hewn face roared in anger, a sound like thunder, and it lifted a rocky arm longer than the tallest trees of the jungle canopy back home. It swung toward them, intent on crushing them against the side of the mountain.

  She threw every ounce of her strength and concentration into making it into the crevice. As they swept into its opening with a large splash, the thrown boulder and the other stone giant’s arm smashed into their side of the ravine. With a boom that made her ears throb, solid rock covered the crevice opening. Remnants of the mountain showered over them. Mayana curled into a ball on the stone floor of the small cave, arms over her head to shield herself. Dust burned inside her lungs. She curled in tighter, sure she was being buried alive as the cave opening collapsed.

  A faint ringing in her ears grew louder as the clatter of the last few rocks settling into place faded. Tendrils of light slipped in through cracks, barely illuminating the wreckage. She shifted her body to sit up, kicking off the debris that covered her legs. Ona whimpered somewhere. She turned, but the words to ask Ahkin if he was all right froze on her tongue.

  Terror overwhelmed her senses as she beheld Ahkin’s steadily paling face. Shock had kept him from crying out, but now that the shock was wearing off, the scream ripped out of him. It tore Mayana’s heart in half. She slipped over the rocks as she stumbled toward him, all thoughts of her own safety diminished to nothing.

  Ahkin’s right hand, his sword hand, was trapped beneath a large chunk of the shattered boulder. The shield still strapped to his left arm appeared to be the only reason the rest of him had not been crushed. He pulled and pushed at the stone, which was about the size of Ona when he curled into a ball. But it would not budge.

  Another scream escaped him, raking along Mayana’s nerves and sending her heart rate even higher. He beat the shield uselessly against the rock. She fell to her knees beside him. Tears poured down her cheeks and a sob escaped her, despite her efforts to keep her fear in check. She worked furiously to help clear away the debris around the boulder trapping him, shoving and kicking to push away the smaller stones. Ona whimpered again, his ears flat against his head as he watched them work.

  Ahkin panted, growing paler with each passing minute, a sickly greenish hue replacing the blood in his face. He vomited once, twice. Mayana worried that he would lose consciousness from the pain.

  Finally, she cleared enough to wedge her feet underneath the bottom edge of the boulder. She used all the force her exhausted body could muster to try and lift—but it wasn’t enough. It settled back down with a crunching sound. Ahkin screamed again.

  “I’m trying! I’m trying!” she sobbed.

  She grabbed the amulet around her neck and summoned more water, willing it beneath the rock to help her lift as she wedged her feet back beneath it. She focused the magic of her blood and the strain of the muscles in her legs. His whimper of pain shot through her tender heart and gave her another burst of strength. The boulder inched upward, so slowly it felt like an eternity, but finally, finally, Ahkin pulled his hand back from beneath it.

  She released her strength and the boulder collapsed back down. Ahkin fell onto his back, cradling his wounded hand against his chest. She whistled for Ona, whose ears perked up at once. The dog lightly leapt toward them and began licking at the split skin and bloody mess that was once Ahkin’s hand. The blood began to fade, and the skin began to close. But the misshapen wrongness of his hand did not change. His fingers bent at strange angles, and parts of the bone looked crushed entirely.

  “Why isn’t Ona healing it?” she whispered frantically.

  Ahkin continued to pant, as though he had just climbed to the top of the Temple of the Sun. A sheen of sweat glistened on his bloodless face. “He’s . . . he’s stopping the bleeding, but it seems he can’t heal the bone.”

  “W-what? What does that mean?” Fear kept its cold claws wrapped around her heart, so she knew she wasn’t thinking clearly, was having trouble understanding.

  “It means my hand is crushed, Mayana!” he yelled suddenly.

  Mayana arched back as though he had slapped her, tears burning in her eyes. “Ahkin, I—”

  “What were you thinking?” His voice filled with a rage that didn’t feel fair. “You basically screamed our location by summoning the water like that! You made us shining targets for whatever those . . . those . . . stone things were! You should have waited for me to get there and help you!”

  Shame burned through her chest, sending her cheeks flaming. “If I hadn’t, I would have fallen into the ravine! Besides, they already knew where we were. It didn’t change anything.”

  “You never think, never plan anything out. You just act. And now this!” He waved his mutilated hand in her face. “This is what happens when you act rashly, Mayana. People get hurt.”

  Mayana bit at her lip to keep it from trembling. “I saved us,” she said quietly. Where was this hostility coming from? He wasn’t seeing her heart anymore. Not at all.

  “Well, now I’ll be lucky to ever hold a sword again. Some emperor—unable to even defend myself, let alone anyone else. That’s what I get for trying to follow my heart. For choosing the lying heretic. None of this ever would have happened if I had done what Toani wanted and picked Teniza as my bride from the start.”

  Something sharp lanced through Mayana’s chest. She’d opened herself to him, exposed deep, painful parts of herself, and he . . . he called her a heretic. He should have chosen Teniza, the princess of plants from Millacatl. The throbbing pain in her chest transitioned into something hard and cold. She immediately shoved it away, shoved it deep into some dark place inside of her where no one would ever touch it again. She rose to her feet, the coldness now spreading out and slowly creeping into her limbs. She imagined when she finally met his eyes, the ice in her gaze would be enough to freeze him to his core.

  Mayana didn’t even bother to respond. Without another word, she turned and marched straight into the dark interior of the mountain without him.

  Chapter

  10

  Ochix might be injured, but that didn’t mean Yemania had to be nice to him. No, the sooner he was strong enough to be on his way back into those cursed mountains, the better. Foraging for food to help bolster his energy seemed to be the best way to avoid the dark, intense gaze
that seemed to follow her as she moved around their makeshift little camp.

  What had she been thinking in healing him? She hadn’t thought what would happen after she saved his life. Would soldiers from Millacatl be looking for her? Surely. She imagined Coatl would be terrified to realize that she hadn’t come back to the city. Being so close to the Miquitz Mountains, the logical conclusion would be that she had been abducted. If the soldiers found her with Ochix . . . well, she doubted he would live much longer after that. Captured enemy soldiers were always sacrificed. And to lose his life so quickly after she saved it . . . her spirit recoiled at the very thought.

  Yemania told herself it was purely her healing instinct that made her so concerned for his well-being.

  Plump yellow fruits spilled onto the ground by Ochix’s feet as she emptied her arms. She didn’t meet his eyes, quickly turning to start a small fire. Now that the darkness of night had lifted, the fire wouldn’t attract as much attention. It would warm him as effectively as her body could.

  “I wish I could get you some meat to help rebuild some of the damaged muscle, but trapping is not a gift I possess. I could try fishing, but . . .” She let her gaze wander to the rushing river. She’d never been gifted at fishing. He’d just have to do without it.

  Ochix gingerly lowered himself to the ground beside her, wincing. He wrapped an arm around one knee and extended the other leg with a groan. The bones of his necklace rattled slightly as he settled. Yemania’s heart lurched in response.

  “I’m sorry. You’ll be sore for a while still, until your body recovers. Those were some major wounds.”

  “How bad were they?” he asked her. “I remember—” but he stopped himself.

  Yemania narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. “Remember what? Being stabbed?”

  His square jaw tightened, but he remained silent.

  Yemania rolled her eyes. “Fine, don’t tell me how you got stabbed, but you are a fool if you think I can’t recognize a knife wound when I see one. My life has not been as pampered as you might imagine.” She arranged the kindling she had shaved off a white cedar tree in a small dirt pit.

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Fine. I was stabbed.”

  “By who?” She piled the kindling higher.

  He smirked, but again remained silent.

  Yemania threw her hands up in frustration. “You don’t make for very pleasant conversation.”

  “Well, ask easier questions.”

  “Fine, what’s your favorite food?” Yemania said, exasperated.

  “That’s a boring topic of conversation. Surely you can come up with a better question than that.”

  Yemania groaned and reached for his knife. She struck it repeatedly against a flat stone she had found, praying a spark would catch. “Nothing says we have to talk,” she grumbled. Sweat started to bead along her hairline, but she continued to try.

  “Why don’t you let me—?” but he stopped with a small chuckle at the seething glare Yemania gave him. He lifted his hands in surrender. “Fine, healer, do as you must to take care of your patient.”

  The blade of the obsidian knife continued to scratch at the stone with no success. Irritation flared and got the better of her. “I’m fairly certain that using your voice is taking up energy that you could be conserving.”

  Ochix boomed a laugh that sent several birds into flight from the surrounding trees. “You are not what I expected from a healer.”

  Yemania shrugged a shoulder. “You certainly aren’t what I expected from a death demon.”

  Ochix’s face fell slightly and he cocked his head to the side. “Death demon? Is that what you call us down here in the valley?”

  Yemania wiped a hand across her sweaty forehead and leaned back. Maybe she should let him start the fire after all. “That’s what you all are. You worship Cizin, god of death and decay.” She gestured to the necklace of human finger bones around his neck.

  “How does that make us demons?”

  “Aren’t Cizin’s minions called demons? How are you any different? You sacrifice our people to him, innocent farmers, not only captured soldiers like the gods decree. You kill your own citizens if they get too old. You glorify death and destruction.”

  Ochix frowned deeply at her. “There is a difference between glorifying something and respecting it, sun worshipper.”

  “Sun worshipper?”

  “Your people are entitled to use nicknames and we are not?” Ochix arched a brow at her.

  “I never said that. What do you mean by respecting death instead of glorifying it? How is there honor in killing your sick and elderly, or innocent farmers?”

  Ochix leaned back against the thick trunk of the kapok tree, its expansive canopy casting them in dappled shadows. Behind them, the dark outline of the Miquitz Mountains loomed as a deadly reminder of how close they resided to his home. The darkness fell across his face in a way that made Yemania shiver with foreboding. “You Chicome believe that how you live affects what happens to you in the afterlife—where you are able to start your journey through the underworld or whether you get to enter straight into one of the paradises. In Miquitz, we believe it is based on how you die. Anyone who falls in battle or acts as a sacrifice joins the paradise in the east with the rising sun. Women who die in childbirth are considered warriors fallen in battle. If you die from water or lightning or certain diseases, you go to Tlalocan, the paradise with the god of rain. We believe only those who die of old age or most illnesses go to Xibalba, where they must be tested to earn their right to rest in a paradise. We believe in helping them avoid the excruciating journey, ensuring they find their place in a paradise with a death that brings honor.”

  Yemania threw the dagger down in the dirt and balanced her elbows on her knees as she studied him. The Miquitz believed they were helping their sick and elderly escape Xibalba? That the farmers they sacrificed made it to the highest levels of Paradise? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but it definitely made her question what she knew about the enemy empire. This was not the first time she had had her core beliefs about her world challenged. Mayana had succeeded in making her question the very nature of her reality, the way in which her people worshipped the gods. Was it possible they were mistaken in other ways as well? That maybe like with Ehecatl, always at odds with the rest of the empire because of their different beliefs, Tollan and Miquitz faced tensions because of their religious differences?

  “I don’t know,” she said after a few minutes of thoughtful silence. “What is the point of life, then, if how we die is all that matters? To me, that cheapens life more than it respects death. And wouldn’t you be trying to control your own fate by controlling how you die, the way we control how we live with the rituals?”

  Maybe it was a trick of the shadows, but Ochix’s face seemed to darken further. He studied her with a gaze as black as onyx, made even more intense by the white stripe of paint smeared across his eyes. He certainly looked like a demon to her, a smoldering fire of deadly embers that longed to devour her if she wasn’t careful.

  “You fascinate me, Yemania of Pahtia. You may be a sun worshipper, but you seem to think for yourself instead of merely believing everything you are taught to be true.”

  “Is that what you think of us as in Miquitz? Mindless sheep that do as we are told?”

  Ochix gave her a wicked smile. “It is an effective way to maintain power, you must admit. Frighten your subjects into submission, convince them that if they do not obey, they will all perish. But you, at least, don’t seem to be mindless.”

  “How kind of you,” she spat, her tone dripping with venom.

  Ochix threw back his head in laughter again.

  Yemania guessed she had Mayana to thank for that, to opening her eyes to the possibility of things being different. Had she been a mindless follower before that? Accepting everything the way it was as truth? How
was she supposed to ask questions when they were taught that the rituals themselves saved them from the end of the world?

  She crossed her arms across her chest. “You never answered my question, death demon. How does your focus on death not cheapen the value of life?”

  He considered her for a long moment with that intense gaze of his. The way he devoured her with his eyes sent a thrill up her spine. When he finally did speak, it was not at all what she expected from his answer. He began to recite a poem,

  “Oh, only for so short a while you have loaned us to each other,

  because we take form in your act of drawing us,

  and we take life in your painting us, and we breathe in your singing us.

  But only for so short a while have you loaned us to each other.

  Because even a drawing cut in obsidian fades,

  and the green feathers, the crown feathers, of the quetzal bird lose their color—”

  Yemania took a deep breath and finished the final two verses,

  “—and even the sounds of the waterfall die out in the dry season.

  So, we too, because only for a short while have you loaned us to each other.”

  Tears stung the corners of her eyes. Ochix’s gaze seemed to burn a little hotter as he smiled at her.

  She recognized that ancient poem from another age: the time of the fifth sun, perhaps? She couldn’t remember exactly when it had been written, but she recognized it because it had always been her favorite. It was a love poem, talking about the fleeting fragility of life. How when we love, we are only together for a little while, that nothing lasts forever, so savor it while you can. Before it’s gone forever.

  He tilted his head. “To answer your question, life is not meaningless, daughter of healing. Because the gods designed us for love. To love them and worship them, and also to love each other. We respect death and honor it, yes, but that does not mean we do not also value life.”