by Pete Kahle
More days passed.
The green corn grew in abundance. The hunters had good luck, killing wild pigs and deer. The guava bushes fruited. A boy, searching the storerooms, found a jar of old cacao beans that had been overlooked when Great Ixlat and his household left the village.
It soon became the custom to, following the morning chant, take small gifts and offerings to Soft-Walker. The best cuts of pig-meat, the sweetest and ripest guava, garlands of jungle-flowers, strings of beads, other trinkets.
Then, though, came a day when the sky was thick and yellow-tinged. The air hung heavy, hot and oppressive, not damp but dry and somehow brittle. Everyone woke thirsty, lips chapped, skin cracked, throats rasping, tongues parched in their mouths. They could not void their bladders. The nursing mothers found their milk would not pull. The crying babies shed no tears. The women who went to the cenote found that the constant water level was constant no more, but had sunk low until their buckets had to scrape the limestone bottom to come away even half full.
The People gathered worriedly in the shadow of the Great House. Their anxious gazes turned to Tuapecmal for answers. When he went out to the place where the jaguar-likeness stood, amid the rows of sprouting corn, the People followed.
A shrill caw fractured the heavy air. A shape flew from the jungle, a bird-shape, thin and ungainly, a vulture-turkey long of neck and scraggly of feathers. Where the shadow of its ragged wings passed over dense growth, the leaves and foliage withered and turned brown.
Its face, they saw as it flapped closer, was that of a hideous old woman, pinched and sneering, a hooked beak where a nose might have been. Shriveled teats dangled against her scraggle-feathered breast.
Drought had come.
Drought, one of the three eldest and strongest of Black Macaw’s thieving brood.
“Do not let her get near the corn!” cried Tuapecmal.
The villagers rushed to comply, the men with bows and arrows, the boys with sticks and stones, even the girls and women seizing whatever was at hand. Shouting, they hurled their weapons at the ugly, flapping creature.
She cawed again. Several corn-stalks dried up, husks curling and flaking, the tender young and budding ears seeming to sizzle. A dog jumped at Drought, biting off a mouthful of tail-feathers, and dropped instantly dead with its hide shrunken to its bones as if it had been buried in hot sand for many years.
Tuapecmal ran into the field. “Soft-Walker, help us!” Remembering what had happened before, he pushed his hand into the tooth-studded muzzle, slicing his flesh and letting fall some grains of corn.
A sudden force drove him flat into the earth. The jaguar-likeness vaulted over him. Its stick and corn-stalk body, wrapped in the spotted hide, sprang up out of the growing corn, and brought down the vulture-turkey in a frenzy of jaws and claws.
The hideous bird-woman shrieked. Soft-Walker snarled. Blood, dust, shredded corn-husks, tattered feathers and stringy meat flew.
In moments, it was over.
The jaguar-likeness once again stood motionless. Drought was a bony, shrunken carcass at its feet. By the time the People composed themselves, by the time Tuapecmal had their best hunters pick up the scrawny body to burn it to ashes, a thick cool band of clouds had formed.
An unseasonable, gentle rain fell all the rest of that day, and for many days thereafter. The corn grew higher and healthier than any in the village had ever seen. The cenote filled to brimming. Creeks ran swift in creekbeds, leaping with silvery fish.
Then the sky one morning dawned an infectious greenish-grey. The People were stricken miserable with running sores and wet, itching blisters. Blotches speckled the jungle leaves. The guava fruits sagged, soft and rotten. The creeks turned a sickly color skimmed with foam, and in them the fish floated with their dead eyes bulging.
Blight came.
Blight, another of Black Macaw’s three fearsome eldest children, shed filth from beneath his tail and his moist corpse-grey wings. He was as fat and bloated as Drought had been thin. He stank of rancidness. His cries gurgled with phlegm. Pus oozed, dribbling, from the nostril-slits in his scabrous beak. Instead of birdlike talons, he had pale fingers with peeling nails and more pus oozing from beneath them.
On the corn, which had been nearing ripeness, dank spots began to flower. The corn-flax went dark and slimy. The husks sloughed off like boiled skin.
Again, as the People rushed out with their weapons, Tuapecmal went straight to the jaguar-likeness. He cut his palm on a sharp tooth and made another offering of corn and blood, asking for Soft-Walker’s help.
And, again, Soft-Walker gave it.
With a powerful bound, the likeness launched itself from the field. A swipe of its obsidian-bladed paw gashed open Blight’s drooping underbelly. Guts dumped out in a putrid pile. The sound as Blight struck the ground and burst was something that threatened to haunt Tuapecmal’s dreams for the rest of his life.
Once Blight was dead, the People stopped itching. Their sores and blisters healed. The green jungle leaves lost their blotchy speckles. The rotting guavas dissolved to foamy mush and firm, new ones fruited. The creeks ran clear again. The fish no longer floated dead against their banks.
As for the corn … the dark, dank spots upon the corn … these did not vanish but blossomed into the rich and pungent huitlacoche, a savory delicacy richer than any mushroom.
But, their troubles, the People realized, were not yet over. Some days after Soft-Walker killed Blight – that body, also, was burned – they woke to a sky tinged the murky orange-brown of smoke from a thousand fires.
At first, they noticed nothing else out of the ordinary. Then they became aware of a low, pervasive, constant hum. It swelled into a buzzing drone. The sky dimmed further as an immense mass roiled into a whirring, advancing cloud.
Swarm, the last and angriest of Black Macaw’s eldest children, led the way with wings spread wide. His torso was that of a warrior, painted with battle-stripes in yellow and black. Atop his head streamed a crested headdress redder than fresh blood. Instead of a feathered tail, he had a venomous stinger like a spear, and where a bird’s beak would have been, serrated pincers glistened.
This time, the People did not attempt to make a stand. They fled and hid in terror from the teeming cloud of insects – biting flies, wasps, mosquito, ravenous far-leapers. They fled also from the tide that seethed along the ground – fire-ants, scorpions, worms of a hundred legs, shiny-shelled chinche-beetles.
Fleeing and hiding did little good. Through the tiniest of cracks, the insects streamed in determined lines. They bit and stung. They descended on the milpas, settling onto the corn-stalks, nibbling and gnawing and devouring.
Tuapecmal ran through them, half-blinded, swiping insects from his face and eyes, spitting them from his mouth, choking. They crept up his nose and into his ears. They crunched beneath his sandals. They burrowed in his hair. When he stumbled, his knees came down hard upon them. He crawled past rows of corn. A legged worm longer than his forearm scuttled over the back of his hand.
His head collided with something wooden and hard. Not able by then to see at all, he groped for it. His fingers found the familiar carved contours, the rounded ears, the smooth disks of polished jade set for eyes.
Sucking what thin breaths he could through gritted, insect-filled teeth, he thrust a fistful of corn-grains into the jaguar’s mouth. Sharp points raked his knuckles, drawing blood, cutting him to the bone.
He gagged and spat. His words emerged in a garbled croak.
Yet, it was enough.
Soft-Walker heard, and answered.
Tuapecmal felt the jaguar-likeness shoulder past, knocking him off-balance. He threw himself flat, pressing his face into the soil, everything inside of him an endless silent scream as the horde engulfed his body.
His last thought, as his senses left him, was one of relief.
His next thought, an untold time later, was one of confusion. He had not expected to ever wake again.
Yet, wake he
did, and soon saw that Soft-Walker once again had saved them. The seething insects were gone, having barely had a chance to more than begin their crop-rending feast. Of Swarm himself, the only signs remaining were the red feathers of his war-crest, and the spear-length of his disembodied stinger.
The jaguar-likeness stood motionless, in the same place, though the spotted skin wrapped around its body of sticks and corn-stalks was partially torn. Many of the People had been stung and bitten, but the welts and bumps were already melting away.
In the days that followed, the corn flourished like never before. It promised a harvest of untold wealth and prosperity. So much early-ripened that they almost could not pick it fast enough. The baskets in the storerooms overflowed with grain. The stone metates were busy grinding from dawn until dusk. The women made thick cakes of corn-dough filled with pork and guava. They baked in a corn-meal coating fish stuffed with the savory huitlacoche. The atole-drink was sweeter than they had ever tasted.
Tuapecmal saw to it with diligence that the best portions were saved aside and offered to Soft-Walker. The likeness went on being regularly cleaned, adorned in flower garlands, beads, and ornaments.
Men skilled with chisels carved scenes of Soft-Walker’s victories upon limestone stelae, setting these up one to either side. Cloths decorated with intricate embroidery and featherwork hung between the stelae to serve as shades.
All was well, until the morning that the sun did not appear. It rose, but could not be seen through turbulent dark clouds. From every direction rolled the ominous rumble of thunder-without-rain, and high behind those same dark clouds flashed flat sheets of deadly light.
“Black Macaw is coming,” Tuapecmal said.
They had little time to prepare. The women and the children, the aged and the infirm, and all the more vulnerable among the People, took shelter within the Great House. The remaining men – hunters and warriors – gathered by the milpas, near the jaguar-likeness.
Tuapecmal poured a pouch of the best new corn into his palm. It heaped there, ripe, full, smooth and golden. As the storm closed in, thunder growling with rage and intensity, he slashed his other palm against a pointed jaguar’s tooth. He hissed at the pain, the red blood welling, then cupped his hands together.
“We are the Corn-People,” he said to the staring disks of polished jade as he dropped the red-soaked grains into the wooden mouth. “We are the Blood-People. We are the God-People, made from Blood and Corn.”
Above them, a darker shape unfurled from the clouds. Vast black wings spread across the sky. Terrible thunderous winds whipped from them, lashing at the jungle treetops. Where talons might have been, clawed yellow forks of lightning sparked and crackled. More lightning made up the beak, which clacked a shattering thunderclap, and outlined the white-yellow blazing eyes.
The corn-stalks bent like rippling reeds, bowing away as Black Macaw swooped down. The lightning-talons clutched the tops of the carved limestone stelae to either side of Soft-Walker. The decorated cloths that had been hung as shades ignited into flaring smolders. The stone stelae themselves split with jagged lines.
Men cried out in fear, averting their faces. Tuapecmal alone met the thunderbird’s deadly, baleful gaze.
Then, with a sharp, snapping pop and flash, Black Macaw transformed, diminishing in size but not in presence, standing with one foot braced atop each of the stelae. Only the blazing eyes remained the same, white-yellow and almost too bright to look upon.
Black Macaw’s shape now was that of a goddess-queen, robed in blackest feathers, adorned in gold, with a high feathered headdress and living lightning-bolts gripped in either hand.
“You dare,” she said, and her voice was thunder. “Wretched clumsy dolls of dough, you dare?! You dare to call yourself the People, the God-People, the chosen? All the seeds and grains and fruits of growing things upon the world should belong to my children! Sky-Heart and Green-Maize-Woman had no right to --”
Soft-Walker moved with sleek and silent speed. In that moment, the likeness was no humble, crude construction wrapped in a tattered skin, but flowed into a huge shadow-jaguar with shimmering jade-green eyes and teeth like daggers.
The suddenness of its pounce caught Black Macaw by surprise. She made a wild and ungainly leap, screeching in fright. Her black feather-cloak billowed. She stabbed with her lightning-bolts and only struck scorched craters in the ground. Attempting to land again upon the stelae, she lost her footing and tumbled into the corn.
The jaguar hunkered, fangs gleaming, long tail swishing with anticipation. As Black Macaw lurched awkwardly upright, indignant and outraged, Soft-Walker swung a paw in a playful, batting gesture. A playful, batting gesture filled with obsidian-sharp claws.
She screeched again and turned to run. The jaguar gave chase. It sprang and swatted, sending Black Macaw spinning in a storm of shed feathers. Soft-Walker stalked and chased her all the way to the edge of the village.
Seizing at the flapping edges of her torn cloak, Black Macaw flung wide her arms. They blurred into long wings, beating madly at the air. Sputtering tendrils of lightning snaked out, crackling around her fleeing, changing shape.
“Go, and do not come back!” roared the jaguar… or Ixatalan through the jaguar’s throat. “You and your greedy children will leave these People in peace!”
As the bird flew frantically skyward, the dark storm clouds swirled in a spiraling maw like a gaping mouth. Black Macaw vanished into it. The clouds were sucked in after her. With a final earth-shaking blast of thunder, the day was abruptly calm and clear.
The jaguar-likeness had returned to its normal state, between the cracked stone stelae. The scraps of burnt cloth, the scorched craters, and the shredded feathers strewn throughout the corn-field told the men they had not imagined what they’d seen.
From then on, the village was untroubled by Black Macaw or her hungry brood. The only birds that came near were of the ordinary sort.
The corn grew better than ever, healthy and lush. The harvest was more prosperous than any in living memory or legend. The People had more fruit and fish and meat than they knew what to do with. No sicknesses or injuries befell them. They discovered a new grove of cacao trees. A woman gave birth to twins.
Word of their wealth traveled. They made the Great House into a temple, and brought the ragged and weather-beaten likeness of Soft-Walker there. They asked Tuapecmal to rule over them, but Tuapecmal refused.
Then, their former leader-king, Great Ixlat, returned to the village. News of their prosperity had reached him; he was eager to be home again among them, his People, so favored by the gods. He returned with his wife-queen and high priest, and household, and the many treasures and valuables that had so mysteriously vanished with them.
“Show me this jaguar I’ve heard tell of,” Great Ixlat commanded. “This protector, this guardian of yours.”
Tuapecmal obliged. But Great Ixlat was not pleased to see that the likeness had an honored place in what had been his Great House, was not pleased with the humbleness of it, and was very much not pleased with the way the People looked now to Tuapecmal.
“I will not have this here,” Ixlat said. “It has served its purpose. Take it away.”
In an eyeblink, Soft-Walker leaped upon Great Ixlat. It knocked him to the floor and pinned him there as everyone, stunned, looked on.
“Murderer,” it said, in Ixatalan’s voice. “Son-killer.”
“Ixatalan?” cried Great Ixlat, sweat beading on his brow. “Ixatalan, my beloved son? Is it your spirit that speaks to me?”
“My spirit, from the underworld, where I was shown the truth. You made no sacrifice, but rid yourself of what you thought was a rival. Beloved son? You hated me. You’d gone old and fat and weak, Father, and you hated me.”
A swift paw swiped, obsidian claws splitting the skin of Ixlat’s chest from collarbone to quivering belly. The leader-king screamed as flesh parted to expose the pale cage of bone. Blood ran like flooding water.
“You feared th
e People would come to love me better,” said the jaguar. “So, you killed me, and called it sacrifice, and abandoned them to their fate.”
With that, as Ixlat continued to scream and plead and gibber, Soft-Walker’s carved wooden jaws bit into his ribs. Bone cracked and gristle crackled. The jaguar’s muzzle burrowed deeper. Its teeth closed around the frantic pulsing knot of meat that was Great Ixlat’s heart, then tore it free in a single triumphant motion.
The heart twitched for a moment like a landed fish, then shuddered and went still. The blood that had been spurting from its trailing severed veins slowed to a dribble. Ixlat lay dead, eyes wide and blank with horror.
The likeness of the jaguar took a single step and fell in upon itself, nothing but a bundle of sticks and corn-stalks draped in a shabby spotted hide. It trembled. It stirred. Stirred, then moved and heaved.
From beneath the jaguar-skin, emerged a hand … an arm … a body, young and strong and handsome … whole and alive.
Tuapecmal, sobbing with joy, stepped forward to help Ixatalan to rise. They regarded one another for a moment, Great Ixlat’s body at their feet. Then, as the People began to cheer, they laughed together and embraced.
Christine Morgan works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility, which plays havoc with her sleep schedule but allows her a lot of writing time. A lifelong reader, she also reviews, beta-reads, occasionally edits and dabbles in self-publishing. Her other interests include gaming, history, superheroes, crafts, cheesy disaster movies and training to be a crazy cat lady.
She can be found online at https://www.facebook.com/christinemorganauthor and https://christinemariemorgan.wordpress.com/
CEMETERY
OF THE SKY
By D. Morgan Ballmer
