by Paul Kane
“You know, Justin, I realize you’ve never really understood why I used your stories and our fights for my work. I have to create from what I know of my life, and you’re part of that. An important part. I’ve always loved you, you must know that.”
“How, Father? How am I supposed to know? You’ve never encouraged me, never praised me.”
“That was your mother’s way. I want you to be strong enough to take the pleasures life has to offer. To experience all its wonders and those beyond this world.”
I’ve long believed that human communication is mostly based on fear and misunderstanding. They lapsed into silence.
“Time to play, I think,” said Caruthian. He looked up and signaled to someone in a gantry at the top of the hall. A walkway was lowered, allowing him to cross from the bridge to the center of the installation, where there was a large blank disk of the bronze panels.
Before stepping onto the walkway, he kicked off his shoes and loosened his tie. Crossing the walkway, he removed his clothes, so he was naked when his feet touched the installation. The walkway returned to the gantry.
Caruthian walked around the perimeter of the disk. As he did so, sparks of light snapped at his feet and for a moment he paused. It had obviously hurt and briefly I thought he would stop, but he walked on.
The installation juddered. Inside it, the groans, sighs, and screams of pleasure ceased. There was a sense of expectation like you get in the queue for a roller coaster. Now sections of the box began to shift and rise. I wondered how Caruthian was meeting health and safety rules here. I didn’t remember seeing seat belts inside.
As one section rose, we heard screaming; screaming and calls for help, mercy and of despair. One of the men in overalls ran to the entrance door to open it, but that section was suddenly traveling toward the ceiling.
Hidden smoke machines came into action and Caruthian had obviously arranged for lights to be buried in the wall, as shafts of blue fell from them and became the only illumination in the hall.
A section rose and swung past us. Through the tang of the smoke, I smelled excrement and blood and saw a young woman, standing at the entrance to a room, which now moved over a fifty-foot drop. She looked at me and then stretched out an arm. She was yards away from us, ridiculously out of reach, but I raised my arms to her. The next moment, the floor beneath her swung down and she dropped. I closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears. Even then I could hear a church bell tolling.
I started to act sensibly. I ran.
No, no. I mean I ran for help, reaching into my pocket for my mobile phone to call . . . but my phone was out of power and . . . and I just ran. I left Justin throwing up on the bridge and I ran from the things coming through the walls.
I was scared and I don’t like being scared.
The newspapers were bewildered. Justin’s talk of The Alignment of Regrets and the work of an obscure French toymaker didn’t add up. They concentrated more on the insane artist and his son, and speculated on an unnatural physical relationship between them. They crushed Justin, blaming him for not alerting the world earlier to his father’s plans. After all, he’d been living with him for months; surely he’d known.
Ah, well, Justin’s subsequent suicide couldn’t be helped. The police denied all connection with Lemarchand, and rightly so. They hadn’t found any plans or diagrams by Lemarchand in Caruthian’s studio or flat.
I’d made sure I kept the paper Justin gave me on the bridge. While he was calling me that final evening, I was removing the evidence of my dealings with Caruthian.
Part of my price for the plans had been his silence about my enjoyment of his son—a dalliance necessary to ensure Justin knew nothing of his father’s wanton desires for that night.
I still have Lemarchand’s designs. One day, I may show them to you.
If you have the desire.
Only the Blind Survive
Yvonne Navarro
Wikvaya found the sand painting a morning’s walk from the wash.
The sun hung high in the sky, strong and hot, and the Almighty had made it a good growing season so far. The villagers’ prayers and offerings had not gone unheard by Rain Cloud, and the seasonal rains had been regular and steady, occasionally overly generous and swelling the wash so that the water rose and the wind sang through the entrance and across its liquid surface. Because of this, the People had named this place Aponovi, the wind that blows across the gap. But all of that could change so quickly. And it would, if Wikvaya did not get back in time to warn the other spirit warriors.
He stared at the sand painting, unable to resist watching it shimmy and shift. The unseen hand wielding the colors was expert, the lines precise and myriad. Never in his twenty-two summers had he seen such complexity and beauty. The combination of textures and the odd, dark hues were mesmerizing, pulling him closer because he couldn’t wait to see where the lines would go next. Was there a sound? Was it whispering to him, enticing him to reach down and try adding a line or two of his own to the pattern, something to bring it closer to completion? Another step—
Something screeched over his head and Wikvaya jerked, looking up. The wind had risen and an eagle, perhaps the largest one he’d ever seen, perched on the swaying branch of the old and battered acacia tree that overhung the ground where the sand painting was taking shape. The eagle’s golden eyes seared into his and Wikvaya realized he was shivering, so cold that he felt like he’d been standing for hours in the snow. He was supposed to be running back to Oraibi, his village, to warn them of the sand painting. What had he been doing? How long had he been standing here? With horror Wikvaya realized the sun had sunk halfway to the horizon. It was the painting on the ground, of course; it had robbed him of precious time as surely as if it had formed hands and held him in place. Even now its surface squirmed and re-formed, beckoning, but Wikvaya forced himself to turn away. He would not let himself be bewitched again.
“Thank you, Kwahu,” he murmured to the eagle. It merely watched him with unblinking eyes. Its silent disapproval weighed on his shoulders like boulders, but Wikvaya did not know how to make amends for his foolishness. All he could do was turn his back on the sand painting and begin the long run back to Oraibi.
His strength and youth carried him well, and even though he’d run the entire way, fear made Wikvaya arrive at the village with energy to spare. His brothers were waiting in the family pueblo, and Wikvaya could see the irritation in their expressions. He was supposed to have been here hours ago to help weave his future bride’s wedding clothes.
“Where have you been?” Cheveyo, his eldest brother, was sitting next to their father and the youngest boy, Hania. It was clear that they’d been working on Cha’kwaina’s wedding clothes for quite some time. He and Cha’kwaina were to be married in five days, and tradition dictated that the males of his family would all help weave her attire. Wikvaya should have been here earlier in the day to do his part, but things would be altered a great deal from the plans that had already been set. A lot of people would be unhappy, most of all his bride-to-be, but that could not be helped. “Cha’kwaina will be here at sunrise to grind corn,” her father told him. “Your mother is looking forward to her help and to making sure she will be a good wife for you.”
His thoughts spun and for a moment Wikvaya said nothing. Was he absolutely sure about what he had seen? It all seemed so far away now, and there was a part of his mind, a small, insidious voice, that insisted the sand painting had been nothing but his imagination, the result of too much time spent beneath the high desert sun and too little water. There was so much to do in the coming days—
No . . . it had been true. Nothing else could explain the hours he had lost or the painful redness on his shoulders where the sun’s rays had scorched his unmoving skin. “I bring news,” Wikvaya said hoarsely. “I have seen the gate of evil.”
The other men stopped their weaving and looked at him, their eyes wide. Honaw, his father, set aside his work, then stood. His movements were sl
ow and ponderous, much like those of his aged namesake, the bear. “Tell us.”
“It is as the stories have always foretold.” Wikvaya chose his words carefully. “An image in the sand that forms by itself, created by something unseen.”
“Perhaps it was the wind,” Cheveyo said. “You were gone for most of the day. The sun can play tricks on a man.”
“It can,” Wikvaya agreed. “But it was the image—a sand painting—that spirited away the hours. It . . . called to me, and I wanted to help complete it.” At his father’s look of alarm, Wikvaya added hastily, “But I did not touch it.”
“Are you certain?”
Wikvaya turned to stare at Hania. “What do you mean?”
“You admit that the sand painting stole many hours from you. What did you do during that time? Do you recall?”
“I . . .” Wikvaya could not finish. Instead, he looked at his hands, but the flesh seemed unchanged and told him nothing.
“As I thought.” Hania settled back, Cha’kwaina’s wedding clothes forgotten. “We must ready ourselves for battle. According to the dark prophecy, we must be strong and stop the gate to the Underworld before it can open.”
“In case we are too late, the village must be rendered sightless,” Wikvaya added. “Legend says that any beast that comes through cannot harm those who cannot see it. Those who see it, fear it, and the creature’s power comes from fear. So—”
“—only the spirit warriors may have vision,” Cheveyo completed.
“Yes,” Honaw said. “Only the four of us.”
Cha’kwaina had just finished gathering her things for her three-day stay at the home of Wikvaya’s family when she heard shouting outside. Grandmother Chochmingwu, ancient and becoming hard of hearing at fifty-seven summers, was bent over her grindstone, and the old woman looked up only when Cha’kwaina touched her on the shoulder. “Something is happening outside,” she said in a near shout. “Everyone’s running around.” Reluctantly the elderly matriarch pushed herself to her feet and followed Cha’kwaina to the doorway, leaning heavily on a twisted mesquite cane. Not for the first time, Cha’kwaina was silently amazed that one so old and frail could be so revered in the village, so powerful. Chochmingwu’s daughter—Cha’kwaina’s mother—had died birthing her second child, a son, so someday Grandmother Chochmingwu’s position as village matriarch would pass to her granddaughter. As it always did, the prospect brought a roll of anxiety deep into Cha’kwaina’s belly. How would she deal with such huge responsibility? How would she lead?
Their adobe was a full level up from the common area, and while Cha’kwaina scurried easily down the ladder, her grandmother waited by the doorway, watching the activity; while her hearing was slipping away, there was little wrong with her eyesight and nothing at all amiss with her perception. Even though she went down to find out what the excitement was all about, Cha’kwaina found herself glancing upward to check her grandmother’s reactions.
“What’s going on?” Cha’kwaina called out as girls she knew ran past. Everyone seemed to be abandoning their chores and heading back to their adobes. “What’s happening?”
But no one took the time to stop and answer. Finally, Cha’kwaina spotted Wikvaya and his brothers at the far end of the plaza. They were huddled together with their father like a bunch of old men trading stories about a bygone hunt. Shouldn’t they be working on her wedding attire? In five days she and Wikvaya would be married and he would join her grandmother’s household, turning his attention and energy during the day to supporting her family’s cornfields. If the great spirits looked on them with favor, the nights would work to ensure that they had babies of their own in the coming years.
Tired of trying to figure it out, Cha’kwaina strode to the men and touched her groom on the shoulder. He spun in surprise, his eyes unaccountably wild, and she almost back-stepped. “Wikvaya,” she said. “What is all the excitement about? No one will say.”
Instead of answering, he took her by the elbow and started guiding her back the way she’d come. “You must go home,” he said urgently. “You and your family must stay inside, and you must cover your eyes with fabric or skins—”
“What!”
“The whole village must do this,” Wikvaya continued. “Haven’t you noticed? People have already started, and there’s no time to waste. No one can remove the eye bindings until the spirit warriors tell the elders that it’s safe.”
Cha’kwaina pulled against Wikvaya’s hand, slowing him. “Spirit warriors? What has happened that we need those?”
“The warnings that my grandfather’s grandfather gave us have come true,” Wikvaya told her. His solemn face was covered in fine desert dust, there were worry bags beneath his eyes, and his mouth was drawn into a hard grimace. He looked as though ten summers had passed since she’d seen him just yesterday. “I have found one of the gateways of which he spoke. The town must be rendered sightless until the opening is destroyed.”
“What?” Cha’kwaina repeated in confusion. “That makes no sense, not in real life. Those are just big stories told by old men breathing smoke fire down in the kivas. If there really is a gateway, and if something comes through, blinding ourselves is the worst thing to do—we won’t be able to see it, to run or fight.”
Wikvaya shook his head. “No, the tales are true. The ancestors testify that this has happened before, many times since the First People. If the gateway is not closed, a terrible creature will come through and destroy the world with fire just as Sóyuknang destroyed Tokpela, the First World. But this time, there will be no place for the People to hide, and we will all perish.”
Cha’kwaina stared at him. “But who among us can defeat a creature with that kind of power?”
“As has been written, the four spirit warriors,” Wikvaya told her. “The legends command that if a person cannot see it, the creature cannot see the person. It cannot harm what it can’t see. Only the spirit warriors may remain sighted in order to battle and kill it.”
Cha’kwaina took a step back. “The spirit warriors—you mean you? Your brothers and father? You can’t be serious.”
He scowled at her. “What makes you so doubtful? These are the ways of the People. We have always known this.”
“The ways of the Old People,” she said firmly. “I am nineteen summers and have never seen any gateway. It is a story invented by the elders to frighten children into behaving, just like the kachinas, when they come in costume, dance, and then hit the boys with sticks. The People have always been safe in the past, and they always will be.”
“Safety is not something to be taken for granted,” Wikvaya argued. “It is something to be watched over, and sometimes you must fight to keep it.”
“Times have changed, and it is silly to let ourselves be frightened by ancient, irrational myths. There is nothing here that threatens us,” Cha’kwaina snapped. Her face darkened as a thought slipped into her mind. “Perhaps you have reconsidered our marriage and this is nothing but a means by which to ensure that the wedding does not take place.”
Wikvaya’s mouth fell open. “I have done no such thing. No one would be so reckless as to do something so involved just for that. Our wedding will take place after the gateway is closed.”
“But—”
“And so it shall be,” a gravelly voice interrupted her. Cha’kwaina spun and saw her grandmother standing behind her. She had no idea how the old woman had climbed down the ladder. “Come. We return to our home now. We darken our eyes as instructed, and we do not come out until the spirit warriors say it is safe.”
Cha’kwaina started to say something but Grandmother Chochmingwu held up a weathered hand. “This is not a request,” she said. “You will do as you are told.”
And because she could do nothing else, Cha’kwaina bowed her head and sullenly followed her grandmother back to their adobe.
“We are too late.”
Wikvaya stared at the ground while the others crowded around, their expressions as horrified as
his own. The sand painting was still there, but it had divided in and upon itself into dozens of pieces, all different shapes and sizes; the result was something huge, a visual cacophony shot through with streaks the color of dead deer’s blood. Wikvaya realized that it hurt to look at it—it felt as though his eyes were being pierced by the spray from a hundred boiling pots. When they slapped at their eyes, he knew that his father and brothers felt the same. Hot tears streamed down his cheeks, but Wikvaya would not look away, would not allow himself the comfort of diversion. When the torment quickly passed, he couldn’t help but wonder if what they’d felt had been real or ancient memory, an instinctive response built upon the experience of those who had come before. For, as the legend decreed, if they could see, so could whatever beast had passed through the gateway from the dark world beyond it.
“There.” Honaw pointed. “Just beneath the edge of the rock. The beast leaves us a trail.”
“Or bait,” Cheveyo said. “Knowing that we will follow—”
“—because we must,” Wikvaya finished. To his father, he asked, “What do you see?”
“The shadow of rotting blood,” his father said in a low voice. “Of death and evil, and the agony that will come if this creature is not driven back to its origins or killed.”
Something snapped in the dry summer grasses behind him and Wikvaya whirled, his spear ready. But there was nothing . . . he thought. No, he hadn’t imagined it. His brothers were standing in a crouch to either side of their father, bows drawn, their faces ashen with tension.
“We must hurry,” Hania said. “If the beast should reach Oraibi . . .”
“They will be safe,” Cheveyo said. “They have been blinded. They have been warned.”
Wikvaya nodded and fell in step behind his father as the old hunter followed the traces left by the unspeakable creature, thin trails of sand that carried traces of black and red. Everything it had touched was desiccated, all moisture and life sucked away until nothing remained but twigs and powdery dust that might have once been leaves or small desert creatures. The generous rain this season had spotted the earth with bushes and tufts of bright green grasses, creosote and weeds; the acacia and mesquite trees were thick with leaves, while the cacti were plump with moisture and fragrant blooms over which bees and other insects challenged one another for the best position. But cutting through it all was the path that he and the others followed, a trail that reeked of decay and seemed to widen as it went along.
