by T. Wyse
“I believe you. I believe you.” She waved her hands to shoo the letter away as he shoved it towards her again. She grinned, another tired laugh following.
“This was new though.” He grasped the CD from between the shirts, emblazoned with the logo that repeated on the CD slip.
“Wow, 23-Fly Rhythm. That’s not very creative of them.” She gave a trembling snort. “But it’s the real thing this time, isn’t it?”
“Real as it gets. Maybe next year, they’ll be able to stay in a place more than four months.” He sighed.
“Now if only you owned a CD player!” Her voice broke into an energetic chortle.
“Then you could actually listen to it!”
He winced, letting the CD fall back into the box. “To Kechua, our inspiration and love,” the CD declared in sharpie ink, at least until he smothered it with another of their shirts.
Without a giggle, her hands led him to his feet. He tried to face her, only to be pivoted onto his side. Her feet began a purposed placement and rhythm.
“What’s this one?” he asked, following her movements, and slipping into his place in her dance. The footfalls were strangers, but the engine driving the pattern rumbled in its predictable limitations.
“Freeform. Nameless.” She stifled a giggle, spinning him around. “No more following! Time to create.” She grinned and he caught her in a backwards dip.
“He’s taken care of?” She took a pause in the dance to glance out the window, her heart spelling the rhythm.
“Of course.”
“I hear . . . ” She spun back to her feet and doubled their pace. “You’re going away to be a ‘man’ soon,” she said somewhere between breathlessness and exaggerated pout. “We’ll have to use what time we have before your dangerous journey of trials.” She snickered.
“You did it. It wasn’t dangerous or strange, was it?”
“I became a man and then I became a woman.” She grinned, repeating her feinted swoon and froze in place another moment. “Should be much easier for you.” She leaned in for an embrace. “You’ll be fine, I’m sure.” Her little laugh rumbled in his chest, pressed hard against his, and she brought his head down for a lengthened kiss.
He followed into that rhythm too, and the night faded in a sweeter tone.
***
The allotted time came and went, the monotone tick of three days passed under the sun, and the low afternoon heat stumbled the walker.
His feet trembled with each rising step, his shoes having torn and cracked from stamping and being gnawed by the baking desert sands. Yet still they rose and fell without being engulfed in red; still they followed an unmistakable pulse.
Mana watched his approach, catching his figure as she let loose a young mother and her sobbing needled child. The woman leaned in the door and let him end his tired path on his own terms.
His feet stumbled in front of her door his sweat long having run dry.
“Well, come inside. I expected he would run you ragged. Let me get the honored guest a drink.” She ushered him inside, freezing in a half turn and bisected by the door as he croaked.
“No.” He stared at his feet; blistered, scarred, burned, and judged. All that would wash away with the night’s passing, and yet the clinging cramp in his stomach only rose as he saw the confusion on her face. Where was that irritating omniscience now? Why were they suddenly so stupid at the worst times?
He sputtered and his feet stumbled in disharmonious clatter. She caught him with her deceptive sinewy might, but she steadied him on his feet rather than bringing him to rest.
She made a sharp shooing gesture at an unseen figure and looked at him, guiding his stiff neck down. “What is it? You saw the hands. Is that it? Do you hate me? You must hold out hope, there’s—”
“I’m not a man today.” His voice trembled in disharmony, his throat clenched and bit against his beating and stumbling heart.
She stood silent, looking into his eyes, merely listening.
“I went to the hands, each of them, and then I came to the head. I saw it. I saw the mines and smelled the poison leeching from the soil, but he was right, their bite didn’t fester on me. I came to the head, stupid and proud and I danced—oh I danced.” A fleck of pride crossed his lips but he turned the smile into a raged sneer at his own stupidity.
“I fell into sleep, into the dreaming world.”
“Good, good.” She grinned at him. “Describe it to me. I think you just aren’t seeing it properly. I know it can seem odd at first.”
“It was like the forest; like the clearing of stones in the Forest of the Heart.” Here, he had to choose his words carefully, to not betray the secret kept. He had seen this place before, knew it all too well, but only when Talah had been vicious enough to bring him to the brink of his mortality. He let the silence fall to read her eyes and found no suspicion; only the glimmer of hope. “The trees all around were dark, like darkest midnight, and there were two lights. One in the distance, down at the end of the clearing, and one close by.”
“Two lights,” she muttered. Breaking the gaze, her hands lowered. “Is that it?”
“No shaman, no.” He closed his eyes from the sight of her doubt. “There were shapes in the clearing beyond, felt but not seen. The light from the orb blinded me. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel the movement; feel the rhythm of their feet on the ground. There were so many of them. I couldn’t move from the circle. I tried to reach out and speak to them, but my voice fell to the earth in a puddle that rippled and disappeared.” He had never moved in the forest; never thought to speak, only to be still and feel the burn of the light. Perhaps this was the difference in coming to it as a living creature, but he didn’t dare ask her.
Her eyes found footing into his. “You felt them. It may be part of your gifts that you see this orb.” She nodded. “Did they speak to you?”
“Yes, but . . . ” he trailed off. “It didn’t make any sense. They didn’t speak to me; didn’t give me some grand announcement.
“What was said?” Her eyes opened wide, her eyebrows furious with concentration, that the words might fall on her and crush her into dust.
“It doesn’t make sense. I think it was just delirium.”
“What did it say?” She gripped the sides of his head and locked her eyes onto his. “Tell me, exactly.”
“It was a chorus, not a single voice. Not quite talking as one, and the words flowed through the earth from all around, pulsing along the ground and flowing up, over me.
He paused, closing his eyes to feel the overwhelming sentiment again.
“They said . . . ‘it is time to burn the rocks.’ It doesn’t make sense, like I said.” He followed it with a chuckle that made him crave Anah’s face.
Yet instead of the expected expression of disappointment, or even confusion, something else gripped her. Mana’s hands fell to her sides and trembled.
“Did I say it wrong? I think it was right. Is it code?”
“No, you said it right. I have to go. Stay here, please,” she said as though she had aged a century, and all the blood and air had been sucked out of her. She walked up the steps with a stumbling shuffle, kicking every step with her unsure gait before disappearing into her house with a slam of the door.
The sound of her jingling keys and the screech of the opening vault preluded an event beyond the rhythm. Her chimney trickled white smoke, and the smell of exotic earthen spice wafted out the door. The smoke flickered to the familiar black and grew thicker, but not alarmingly so.
Kechua stood, feeling the minutes pass as his stumbling heart came to a resting rhythm once again.
When she re-emerged, she did so with a slow and careful trance. Her lab coat lay upon her shoulders, but her shirt’s buttons spilled out; her collars folded down and crinkled. She came barefoot into the sands. Kechua watched her pass beside and by him without a word, leaning upon a staff that towered over her. In her free hand, she held his hideous ceremonial garb folded and bund
led, with something sloshing inside.
He followed her stumbling pace, yet sensed a rhythm within it, driven by a new and reluctant purpose.
“What did it mean?” he dared to ask, fully expecting the staff to strike him for the first time. “This means you want me to dance?” he muttered, hoarse.
“No.” Her voice sounded hoarser than his, weak and faraway. They reached the waiting wood of the central bonfire, and she paused a few moments. “Hold this.” The garment slid into his hands to reveal a bundle of woven red.
With the staff resting against her shoulder, she unwrapped a clay egg from its blanket of musty red cloth, draping the cloth carefully over the tip of her staff. She turned the egg in her hands, tracing the rough but featureless surface with her fingernail in an almost nostalgic embrace. Her stare locked into it and looked beyond, into the waiting pile of sticks in the bonfire, and she tossed it into the base.
The egg shattered, and a deep red ball of fire erupted forth, sending Kechua slamming onto the ground but leaving Mana a stoic statue. She didn’t reach down, or even acknowledge him as the first of the doors opened in the circle. Their faces poked out as the fireball rose slowly to the sky, the woodpile unlit but painted red by its touch.
Figures poured in, their words lost upon Kechua’s ringing ears. None of the elders spared him more than a passing glance, and he lay there stunned.
He could make the basic shapes of the words out as she met each of them as they came. “Burn the stones,” she repeated, sending them shuffling back to their houses.
The ringing passed his ears, and he shuffled to his feet alone. White smoke rose from the twenty-one chimneys, each blackening in turn.
“So, is this part of the ceremony then?”
A wailing began, moving into a chorus from all around, abruptly chilling into a resigned groan.
“No.” She didn’t snort; didn’t spare any annoyance. She stared into the fire, leaning into her staff. “No, this isn’t for you.” She snatched the garment out of his hands, the beads jingling merrily as ever. “This day has become something different.” She produced a small bottle of rubbing alcohol from her pocket, seasoning the ceremonial dress. She struggled with a tiny lighter a moment, and the red thing trickled with flame, changing it into a bomb she tossed into the bonfire.
“No more dancing. All shows cancelled, today, tomorrow, and forever.” She sighed, hugging her staff and watching the flames climb upwards with the sparking enthusiasm of fireworks.
“Glalih is a gem, one that has grown lonely over the years. I’m told there used to be a wealth of sacred places like this; places where the spirit world was so close you could just reach out to it. I tried, we tried, to honor it; to make it a safe place to welcome any who sought it. Yet such is the sweet poison of the Merciful Ones. We could not continue without them.”
Kechua fidgeted, watching the blaze grow, lapping at the heart of the flames; the stink of burning plastic and dye ripping at his nose.
“You are of this place, but you are not this place,” she muttered with the softest tone of scolding. “We have been fighting with bent nails for far more than eighteen pithy years.” She sighed.
She lowered her head, the flame crinkling at her face as it did Xatl’s. “Have you seen a man die of rabies, boy?” Her voice crackled with the same constant disdain the old man ever spoke with. “A baby die from smallpox?”
“I have. That and more. The black spots, the green bruising, they are a mercy compared to the horrors we used to know.”
The others all stood at their doorsteps, either sitting or leaning against their walls, each with a staff in hand.
“They came to tell us we had souls, and then they demanded them so we could live.” She leaned hard against the staff, the flames wriggling at her face. “They came wanting to mine and offered us modernity in exchange—medicine and food; housing and knowledge. We thought to fight and sought the spirits’ council, but they gave only silence. We thought to refuse, but they came with force instead and took what they wanted, giving us less in punishment. I shouldered the blame then, became the one they negotiated with, so it was me who crushed Glalih’s spine, me who tore holes into Glalih’s hands, and me who sold the very hair from our heads so we could continue. Me.”
“They wanted the heart too, without understanding what they asked, but I stopped there. Our gods still gave no council then, and I relied on myself; on what I’ve learned of this world to continue.” She shook her head. “That’s the first sad truth about what you’ve craved so much: Even with their attention, they will not offer guidance when you need it most.”
She swayed pensively, her head locked in place against the bobbing. “I don’t know why they do it, maybe anger? Maybe they’re rotting inside or growing old, hiding powerlessness behind silence. We watched our children wither in poisoned earth while they spoke of things that seemed more and more trivial.”
Mana’s sealed lips swiveled around as if struggling to unlock. “I have had a dream, coming every so often, whenever I feel the most helpless; whenever I feel like . . . ” She glanced at the sky. “Whenever I feel like leaving this place behind.
“I see a stranger; a man but not a man, standing in a circle of sodden earth, surrounded on all sides by a great waste, but a waste of potential. The stretch beyond the circle grows fuzzy so quickly, but that hollow feeling leeches in. He is alone, completely alone in some way that brings me to wake in tears each time I am granted this vision. I see him, I see you, meet a guide slithering out of trees that do not jut above the soil. You step from the circle and then I see nothing more.”
“What does it mean, then?” he muttered.
“Our grand experiment, A-lah-nah-o-glalih, has come to an end,” Anah spoke, her words only half intended as an answer. “Was it worth it, you think? Were we just? Were we worthy?”
The other elders came in a somber march, towards the bonfire, each holding a bundle in one arm and leaning on their staffs with every step.
“Coming to an end? What does that mean?” He leaned in and made her stumble a little with his closeness.
“The rocks are a gift from those who came before; long, long ago. They speak of the renewal of all things; of washing the old world away and bringing in the new.” She smiled at him.
“Your parents are proud of you . . . we are proud of you.” She sniffed. “The moment you stood before Talah, you were a man on that day. No ceremony or dance could be more true than that single moment.”
The others shambled around the fire, each with their backs to their houses, every face locked onto Mana.
“If only we could have bestowed our history into that granite head of yours, but that is our failure as teachers. I suppose if anything, that makes you more of all of us, strong in the heart, but our memories lost to you. Good or ill, you are all of us here, a memory distilled into twenty-three, and then poured into you.”
There was a shifting of nods, though not a single misplaced breath or grunt. All gazes stayed locked upon her.
“The spirits do not need to show me more of the vision, because I know you will walk with bravery, truth; nobility in your heart. Whatever choices you make will be of the best of us. Whatever you strike will fall to dust, and whomever you find worthy, we will have found worthy.”
She grasped her staff lower, and the others followed suit. “Glalih is no more. We are no more.” She tipped her staff into the blaze. The clattering of the others, and the sizzling and crackling of the fire accepting the sacrifice, echoed in his head with a disharmonious weight.
The assembly gazed into the fire in a moment of silence as the flame painted their faces red and black in turn. In a near unison they turned to face him, shifting from the fire around him in a crescent.
“This is not unexpected, though we thought there would be more time. I guess you always think there will be more time.” Mana shrugged. “We have prepared a few things to burden you, from each of us.”
“I think this goes first.�
� A man approached with a pair in tow, carrying the largest of the bundles. He gently lay the thing to rest on the ground before Kechua and slipped the cloth away, revealing a backpack. “I’m told it’s about right. It should feel the same as the pack you’ve been using with the rocks, but stronger and lighter. Instead of metal for the bones and bracing, we’ve used wood brought to us from the forest.”
The pack gleamed a dull red, with deep blue diamond patterning across its sides. A large flap clamped shut with a wooden tie at the top, and a pair of smaller such mouths ran down its face. Six large pouches ran over its sides, and the thing looked as if it would peek just above his shoulders when worn, dangling below his waist but allowing for his legs to move freely.
“No, leave it.” Mana held back his kneeling grip. “Wait until it’s all out.”
Another of the three stepped forward and revealed a gleaming metal knife within a hard leather holster, an empty extra sheath stacked underneath it. “Not quite traditional, but tempered and strong. I was told to include an extra sheath, but the first shouldn’t break. There’s a sharpening stone in each as well.” The man laid them on the pack and withdrew.
“Just some rope.” The third came from behind. “Thin and strong.” She placed them down. “It’s a bit much, but always useful to have. It’s synthetic weave, but you can hold much more of it because of that. I had to argue for weeks, since I was told to do it ‘traditionally.’” The woman rolled her eyes. “I tried telling him that the synthetic stuff is much better; tried showing him.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to argue with a coyote. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
The three withdrew, replaced by another set.
“Three belts, a bundle of leather straps, and a jacket from us,” the muscled old man announced, the two behind him remaining silent. “Straps should be good for whatever, but don’t cut them unless you have to. Jacket should be good and waterproof, though they said you probably wouldn’t see much rain.”
They withdrew and another trio came forward. “Been working on a new weave. Wanted to get you some pants that fit proper this time,” the woman began, her voice trembling slightly. “No time, but made these of the new weave.” She set down a bundle of light red pants into the pile. “You’ll have to strap the legs down like always, but the cloth should avoid wear better; let you move a bit freer.” She glanced to the sour younger woman beside her.
