by Joshua Ingle
“And I am Thilial, an Angel of Truth. Tell me, from where did this expedition come?”
“We set sail from Havana just over one year ago. We’ve tried to keep these men peaceful, but they are brutes by nature, and there are too many demons whispering too many lies. You could do no better with them than we have.”
“Have you asked the Lord for reinforcements?”
“Yes, but His ears are deaf to us.”
“Surely not. He must have some greater purpose for these men and this expedition. Be patient and you will see.”
Gleannor frowned, and glanced past Thilial to the walled town. “How long have you been here?”
Thilial balked. For nineteen days, since God created me, was too pathetic of a response. Instead she said: “We angels have been here since humans first entered these lands. This ‘New World’ is not so new to us.”
“Hmph,” Gleannor said, with just a hint of smugness in her voice. “It will be soon.”
•
“We should never have let these men into a refuge town,” Tree Frog said as he paced beneath the thatch roof of his mother’s house. Thilial whispered to calm him, but he kept sharpening his knife with a small stone as he continued his rant. “I ran for two days straight so I could warn the priests that the Spaniards were coming, and they mocked me by welcoming the beasts into our town, and with such heinous ‘gifts.’ A refuge town like Tugaloo is supposed to be sacred. No Real Person can be killed in a refuge town without upsetting the balance—you have said this yourself many times.”
Grasshopper, Tree Frog’s mother, nodded solemnly as she ground agrimony and woodmint together with a mortar and pestle.
Two squirrels foraging in the remnants of last night’s meal found themselves in the way of Tree Frog’s heavy footfalls, and scampered away. “The Spaniards have not spilled our blood as they spilled the Mvskokes’ blood, but the plague they carry with them is killing us all the same. Even the priests cannot fight it. Two of them have been stricken down, and three others are ill. We should war with the white men and rid Tugaloo of this pestilence.”
He stopped by his father, Leaps Through The Wind, who lay on a bear rug on the floor. The man’s soft, painful moaning filled Thilial with sorrow. She’d known him her whole life—now forty-three days—and he was dying, his skin hot and riddled with tiny bumps, his mind lost to delirium.
Grasshopper ground her mixture just a little faster. “You have not given my medicine time to work. Be patient.”
“But you do not know if the medicine will work.”
“I know that animals, who had been hunted by man, created disease as vengeance, but plants were sympathetic toward man, so they created medicine to cure all diseases.”
“But you do not know if you are using the right medicine.”
“The spirits of the plants tell me which medicine is right,” Grasshopper said.
Tree Frog huffed. “Then why have the spirits not saved all the others who have died since the Spaniards arrived?”
Why indeed? Thilial thought. In just two dozen days, she’d seen enough human suffering for one lifetime. And as if the disease sweeping through Tugaloo’s populace wasn’t enough, the priests had become even more willing to abuse their power, using their Spanish guests as a convenient excuse. The food storehouse was nearly empty. Young women had disappeared in the dead of night. Obsessed with finding gold, the Spaniards had beaten several prominent tribe members in search of it.
Why has God not intervened? Soon, Thilial would need to return to Heaven and petition the Lord in person. This destruction of the tribe, of the people she’d come to know and love, was growing unbearable.
As Grasshopper knelt next to her husband to feed him his medicine, she admonished her son. “Do not test the spirits. They have their own matters to attend to. The spirits from the world above are in constant battle with the spirits from the world below. We are caught in between the two, so the most crucial thing for us is to preserve balance between the two spirit worlds. If some of us perish during the spirits’ battle, it is a small price to pay.”
Thilial laughed in spite of herself. Grasshopper’s low regard for human life was unfortunate, but her assessment of the spirit realms was more correct than she knew. Still, Thilial loved Tree Frog too much to let him believe such superstition. She whispered into his ear. “Tree Frog, think. How could Grasshopper know this? Does she really know what she claims to know, or is she just pretending to know because it makes her feel safe?” The journey of this people from superstition into sensibleness would be long, full of pitfalls and conflicts, but worthwhile in the end, both for the tribespeople and for the angels who’d been sent to supervise their journey. Given another century or two, maybe this tribe of “Real People” would catch up with Europe technologically, and maybe even surpass them philosophically. Tree Frog had voiced doubts about his people’s myths to some of his friends, and this gave Thilial hope.
“What if it had been Weaver that the priests had given to the Spaniards?” Tree Frog asked his mother. “Would you believe me that they are a serious problem if they had taken my future wife to their filthy beds?”
“The Spaniards are a burden that we must bear,” Grasshopper said. “Pay mind to the ceremonies. The ceremonies are what is truly important, for if we do not perform them, the spirit worlds will become unbalanced and the world will end, sinking into the sea. The Spring Moon Ceremony is approaching. Prepare for the ceremony rather than for war.”
Tree Frog abruptly hurled his knife at a squirrel that had wandered back inside looking for scraps. His aim was true, and the squirrel was cleaved in half. Grasshopper gasped and spilled some of her husband’s medicine. The animal’s blood soaked into the dried grass and dirt on the floor.
“The world will end, the world will end,” Tree Frog said. “All I ever hear from you is that the world will end if we do not complete the ceremonies on schedule. I am different from you, Mother. I want to defend our world against the threats we know rather than the threats we imagine.”
Grasshopper wailed an exaggerated cry of sorrow. “My son is so disrespectful. Why must he question me? Why can’t he be like the other good young men of the Real People?”
“I do not mean to disrespect you. I mean only to take action where action is needed.”
Grasshopper buried her head in her hands and began to weep. “The squirrel once defended man against the other animals, angering them so that they slashed at him with their claws. That is why he has white stripes on his back.” She stood to face her son, tears on her red cheeks. “You have killed a squirrel in my home. I will cook it for our supper, but first you must apologize to its spirit.”
Tree Frog held her gaze for a few breaths. Then he turned toward the dead squirrel. His face fell, perhaps realizing he had acted brashly. “Squirrel, forgive me for taking your body from you. Wado for your sacrifice. You and your brothers are beloved among the Real People.”
•
The Europeans left the next day, fording the river and trekking away from Tugaloo, toward Iswa territory. Thilial was thankful that they had not openly harmed the Real People, yet still, the diseases they carried had laid waste to a third of Tugaloo’s population, with many more still sick.
A demon was heckling the Spanish clergyman as the poor fellow trod between the walls to exit the town. “Go beat some of the older Indians again before you leave. It will make you feel powerful.” The clergyman seemed to ignore him, and scratched at his skin, still pockmarked from illness. “Better yet, convince de Soto to leave you and twenty men here to convert the savages. With your weaponry, you could rule over them as kings.
“Don’t actually convert them, though,” the demon was quick to add. “Brutalize them, but let them keep their feral religion.”
“Think,” Thilial whispered to the man in Spanish, countering the demon. “If your own religion has not kept you from your own savage deeds, is your religion indeed less feral than the myths of the natives? Leave now foreve
r, and take this question with you.”
Thilial drifted near Tree Frog and Weaver as they watched the white men depart from just outside the town’s wall. She noticed the young couple watching the last of the black slaves finish loading a packhorse. As the slave led the beast away, he cast a sorrowful glance back toward Tree Frog, as if to impress on him the infinite value of freedom. And then he, too, departed toward the river.
Strong Deer came up behind them, smoking tobacco from his pipe. “Osiyo,” he said.
Tree Frog and Weaver both greeted the elderly man. “We are glad to be rid of them,” Weaver said.
“I am glad, too,” Strong Deer said. “And I thank you, Tree Frog, for your service to our town during this ordeal. You warned us of the Spaniards’ coming, and you have hunted with the prowess of the owl to bring food for our sick and dying. You will be welcome in Tugaloo for all time.”
“Wado,” said Tree Frog in gratitude.
“You have even avoided the Spaniards’ plague,” Strong Deer continued. “The spirits favor you, Tree Frog. And your actions have proven that you are truly a man. It is time that you had a man’s name.”
What a refreshing surprise in the midst of all this darkness. Thilial had wondered when this day would come from the moment she’d taken Tree Frog as her charge. And the news had come from Strong Deer, no less! The old man hailed from the Long Hair Clan. Though he was the wisest of the lot, and had even inherited a position as a priest, he had abandoned the corrupt priesthood as a young man. Thilial—and many of the Real People—greatly admired him for that.
But… what was this now? The European demon who’d been harassing the clergyman had overheard the conversation, and was drawing nearer. No, don’t pester us now. Not at this important moment. Thilial wished she could drop down into the demon realm and shove this boor away.
“The priests have approved, and will announce your name to the town later today,” Strong Deer said, then drew another puff of tobacco smoke. “From now on, you are no longer Tree Frog. You are Flying Owl. Your family and friends will now call you by your man’s name. And now Weaver can marry a true man as well.”
Tree Frog—now Flying Owl—was beaming. But a second demon approached Flying Owl to whisper some vulgarity, apparently ignorant of the first one’s interest. The first demon leaped forward and swatted the second aside, then took a defensive position above Flying Owl.
“This one is mine,” the first demon said to the second. “For I am Thorn, the right hand of Xeres, and I will have what I want.”
•
The flames of the small campfire licked at three realms. In the physical realm, the fire’s glow warmed the humans sitting about it—Flying Owl, Weaver, and a few of their friends—and cast long shadows into the dark woods around them. In the demonic realm, Xeres and Thorn had asked their followers to leave them for the night, and the two hovered near the fire, close enough to burn them had they been humans. In the angelic realm, Thilial sat across from the two demons, eavesdropping.
“I tell you once at each Indian town, and I will tell you a thousand times more,” Thorn griped to his hunched leader. “No matter how curious we were, we should not have left civilization for these untamed lands. Europe holds more prestige to be earned.”
“Does it?” Xeres asked, and the fire seemed to flicker at the simmering power in his voice. “Untamed lands are more ripe for conquering.”
“But the demons here are dullards, with no ambitions of their own. They respect you out of fear, not out of reverence. They’ve not even heard of the Second Rule! Would you rather spend the next hundred years educating these cretins, or planning the downfall of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church? Please. At least let us catch up with de Soto and continue to oversee his pillaging.”
Xeres rubbed his chin and stared into the fire. The reflections of drifting embers danced in his eyes, lending him the countenance of the hellish beast he truly was. Thilial focused her attention on Thorn so she would not have to look at him.
“The demons here may be doltish cravens,” Xeres said, “but look at the natives. Their tribal society resembles the Europe of millennia ago. Unstructured, unlearned, naïve. Humans are much easier to control when they have no knowledge. Reason is the most ruinous virtue.”
“Indeed. Which is why we should have contented ourselves with the Inquisition. This venture into the New World will be fruitless. Am I to waste my days away with this young fool, his wench, and their progeny?” He gestured to Flying Owl, and Weaver leaning on his shoulder, blind and deaf to the demons in their midst. “Am I to grow so accustomed to this drudgery that I see other demons’ tunics and surcoats replaced by breechcloths and nakedness? I tell you, Xeres, this is madness.”
Xeres rose above the fire, stretching out to his full height, nearly twice as tall as Thorn. “And what of the inevitable clash between these two civilizations: West and Far West? The demon lords of Europe are too prideful to ally with each other, so if I become sole lord over the Far West, I will be able to steer the human conflict toward maximum loss of life. I will be able to bend the course of human history to my will.”
Thorn slowly sank down until his feet lay beneath the ground. He bent over into a subservient posture.
“You hadn’t thought of that, had you?” Xeres said to him.
“I had not.”
“This is why I am the leader and you the follower. Do not question me, Thorn. I am beyond reproach. I value your advice, but you are not my equal. The day you forget that is the day you again become a Rat.”
Thorn stiffened at that. Thilial sensed his anger, but the thin, bald demon retained his composure, nodded to Xeres, and floated off into the woods.
Xeres seemed even more menacing alone, towering over Flying Owl and Weaver like some monster straight from the Real People’s myths. Thilial mulled over the conversation she’d overheard. This demon lord’s conquest could enslave this land’s demons and slaughter its humans, and sabotage God’s plan for His planet, perhaps irreparably.
She flew to the other angels and told them of Xeres’s plan. But Gleannor, who had stayed behind, dismayed by her time with the Spaniards and eager for a new life, dismissed Thilial, claiming nothing should be done to stop it. “We may yet save Xeres, and furthermore, it is not our place to intervene,” she said.
Enraged that the other angels were so passive as to accept the possibility of Xeres’s envisioned future, Thilial stormed off into the solitude of the rock layers underground. I’m more loyal to God than the lot of them, Thilial decided. I’ll stop Xeres alone if I have to. If I have to, I’ll drop down into the demon realm and kill him myself.
•
Thilial spent the next several days following Thorn around. She had little choice: the moping demon had chosen Flying Owl as his sole charge among the Real People, so Thilial had to counter each of his whispers with one of her own. And often, these whispers were rather strange. Thilial had expected subtle evils, such as, “Weaver annoys you, so you should treat her poorly,” or, “Fight with your parents and distance yourself from them.” But instead Thorn whispered biddings such as, “Drop in the dirt, roll around, and yell like a maniac.”
Thorn was clearly quite bored.
Fortunately, this meant that his half-hearted temptations were easy to fend off, and Flying Owl’s life continued on a productive path. But months passed, and even as Xeres journeyed to surrounding territories to assert his power, Thorn stayed in Tugaloo, spending nearly all of his time with Flying Owl.
“Bother someone else,” Thilial tried whispering to Thorn. “Look at all these humans you could torment! Where is your ambition?” She disliked having to appeal to his demonic nature, but for the moment, she just wanted him away from her own charge. She even enlisted other angels to help her pry Thorn away from Flying Owl, but Thorn was as stubborn as any demon. Flying Owl had become his favorite plaything to pass the time while Xeres was away.
The Ripe Corn Festival was approaching, and the young me
n of Tugaloo readied themselves for hunting time. Flying Owl was one of the men chosen to be sent into the forests. The priests tasked each of the men with finding a specific type of game for the ceremony feast, and Flying Owl’s responsibility was rabbit meat. The meat would have to be prepared in a specific way, and would become part of the ceremony involving specific types of dance in specific types of clothing with very specific songs meant to keep the spirit worlds in balance. Thilial had never seen a Ripe Corn Ceremony before, but she guessed it would also involve the whole town ritually bathing in the river, as so many of their ceremonies did.
“Why do we do these things?” Flying Owl asked Feasting Wolf in passing, as the priests saw the hunters off on their assignment. “There must be other ways to appease the spirits. Why must our ceremonies be so particular?”
Feasting Wolf looked around, possibly searching for Grasshopper, who would chide her son for his rude question. Unable to find her, the priest addressed Flying Owl himself. “We do these things because this is the way they have always been done. To change would be to deny not only the nature of the world, but our own nature as well.”
Troublingly, this answer seemed to satisfy Flying Owl, so Thilial whispered to him, “To not change is to deny our own natures. Changing our ideas is something we all must do if we want to grow.”
Thorn perked up when she said this. He’d been idling near the town wall, waiting to leave, but now he glanced directly at Thilial, like he’d heard her speak. When she flew sideways, though, Thorn’s eyes did not follow her, so she dismissed the happening as coincidence.
And soon the hunt was on. By foot, Flying Owl traveled far to the south, through deep woods and deeper rivers, occasionally chanting a song meant to lure rabbits to him. He walked alone, except for the invisible angel and demon trailing him. Every now and then Thorn would whisper some vulgarity, but he kept quiet for the most part. In fact, he spent much of the journey gazing off into the forest, though Thilial could not read his mental state.
