Spirits of the Wildflowers

by Parris Match

  On Coiedeh’ah and his warriors drawing near to the Golden City, they came to a temporary halt in a restricted steep-sided gully. Small earthenware vessels, containing thick red berry juice, were distributed amongst the purposely agitated brothers, and they were instructed to smear a red-stain mark upon each exposed cheek, both on the front and on the back. A painted crimson thumb’s slash with a cross, conferring a personal sanction of the fraternal brother-hood, to clearly identify themselves to one another; also to presume the personification of a masked advocate of the all-consuming, spiteful, dark and ravenous, Spirits of Chaos.

  Coiedeh’ah dispatched a little messenger to Iicoo’ah, informing him of his early arrival, and requesting that Iicooah make ready twenty strong brothers, to go together with him on the prearranged campaign to eliminate Bahcoo’ah and his fanatics. Coiedeh’ah took thirty of the most physically handsome brothers, stain-marked to a lesser degree, and advanced ahead of the others towards the Golden City, while ordering the remainder of the frenzied warriors, to lag back out of sight and not to come forward until they were signaled to do so.

  The main principal passageway which approached from the south into the Golden City followed within a sand-packed strict-sided deep ravine. The bulk of Coiedeh’ah’s warriors could sneak closest to the eastern side of this exceptional turbulent floods depression and not be detected. Not in the least to visually inform the blinded weak-eyed adversary. Coiedeh’ah and a feigning troupe of thirty, consisting of his most physically powerful brothers, strutted openly down the center of the engulfing channel. The trail abruptly climbed out of the concealing ravine and entered into an inclined open field; Iicoo’ah, ceremoniously waiting on the other side, at the elevated entrance to the grand stately capital.

  It imparts its golden luminescence, the illustrious shining Golden City; spread out, ensconced, and framed within the charcoaled mauve concave cliff, to stand behind Iicoo’ah and his superior club borne imperial retinue. Coiedeh’ah and the visiting brothers started to cross the funnel netted trammeling field, and Iicoo’ah assuredly feeling his own bravado, moved slowly towards them; to graciously greet his outmatched humbled guests. Iicoo’ah was next attended by ten of his most powerfully built brothers, with the formidable remaining handsome and eagle-feathered guard, observably standing in his close background.

  Even at a limited distance, Coiedeh’ah took cautious notice of Iicoo’ah’s available forces, but he also knew he had completely out-maneuvered this tiny blood-sucking nit. When Coiedeh’ah reached the center of the field he stopped; Iicoo’ah, enjoying his upmanship, continued to close the gap. Coiedeh’ah raised his arms high in the air, and Coiedeh’ah’s prompted brothers mimicked his gesture; and they all hailed loudly in a deferential salute; “AIE…, AIE…, IiCOO-AH”. Iicoo’ah was convincingly gratified by the honor he was receiving, and continued to pompously draw nearer, ever nearer, to Coiedeh’ah; vanity deceives vanity.

  The closest he got to Coiedeh’ah and his brothers, Iicoo’ah began to perceive the curious decorative markings on their cheeks. Then is when he saw them; looking past Coiedeh’ah and his stained brothers, the massive blustering horde of warriors spilling from the edge of the ravine onto this decisive field. Those wild and savage foreboding coldest winds of the Spirits of utter destruction had been made manifest. He glanced at Coiedeh’ah’s open smiling face and furrowed brow in total disbelief; then to closure, Coiedeh’ah revealed a veiled satisfied smirk on his pursed lips.

  Iicoo’ah’s, thin regal pretender’s mask of arrogance, turned ashen, his blue-to-grey eyes held the benumbed gaze of impotent terror: in a single blink of a moment he realized his inevitable fate. Coiedeh’ah rushed the few steps forward, ungirding his suitable hate-club, and brutally split Iicoo’ah’s accepting head wide-open. The great Iicoo’ah’s flaccid puny body crumpled to the ground, and the ready painted warriors quickly overcame, hammered and hacked-down, the ten handsome guards; who had escorted the mounted and buggered prig, Iicooah, to his final defining role.

  The swarming horde of incited warriors behind, caught up with Coiedeh’ah and his brutal vicious pack of cruel blooded butchers, and they quickly charged savagely forward; gutturally screaming their indoctrinated hate, to enter the dusty rose cast of the failing light, of the false tarnished Golden City. The city’s people and their subordinate guards, stood motionless in shock, and then the residents bolted and ran frantically into the Golden City; while the responsible guards remained steadfast, to do battle and protect their fleeing families.

  Coiedeh’ah and his warriors in their sheer numbers, and recently deep-seeded blood thirst, quickly over-ran and ferociously slaughtered the remaining clumsy inept untested stately guards. The lustful warriors, under Coiedeh’ah’s commands, spread throughout the Golden City and mercilessly massacred anyone they soon encountered in flight, all men, all women, and all children. The confused few and scrambling people, crazed by terror, grabbed their remaining children and disgorged from the Golden City; running and hiding in the thick thorny brushwood, and profusion of waterless ravines, outside of the stunted cornfields, surrounding the shrieking and spewing Golden City.

  Those who crouched and hid within their compartments, were easily exposed by the wanton blind warriors, in their search for bloods’ savage appetite, to taste and to smear, or for the bounty-coup of trivial spoils. The cowering craven common people were brutishly butchered and crushed on the spot, then scalped of only their bushy tail; a cut and ripped tally, for men’s brag account.

  Coiedeh’ah ordered his lieutenants to collect an adequate stock of provisions to accomplish the final invasion of Bahcoo’ah’s territory; also their warriors could take anything they could additionally carry, but to destroy the withered/shriveled remnants of the people of the domed Golden City. The coveted carved-animal ceremonial clubs, were hand delivered to Coiedeh’ah and he distributed them among his intimate subordinate braves, choosing one large wooden wolf-head for himself; twelve mighty convincible, artfully whittled, inflexible mallets of the law, soon followed by total chaos and wrathful misconceived vengeance.

  The warriors piled everything that was flammable and set it afire; they torched the beamed roofs of the adobe buildings and the multi-storied apartments, leaving a smoking and char-scored, inverted, corpse occupied sandstone honeycomb in place. They busted every serving pot and all granary containers into innumerable shards; scattering, rubbing their ensilaged contents into the powdery dirt, to stamp out with their frenzied dancing feet. They burned every protective blanket, every woven mat, every testimonial framework of the storied weaver, every sign and the Idols of their culture and habitation were thrown upon the flame, and then the horde went to the newly planted, emaciated and shrinking, fields of the corn, and lay them to utter ruin.

  Conspirators with Coiedeh’ah gathered the gelded bodies of the Iicoo’ah and his fallen handsome guard and dragged them to the vile pit, disposing of their desecrated remains to the hidden depths.

  Coiedeh’ah directed four warriors to go out and search, and bring to him, the most unblemished beautiful budding flower; they soon returned with a quivering naked, terrified pubescent young maiden, arm in tow. Lacking the slightest hesitation, with his finely carved new ceremonial wolf-club; Coiedeh’ah, with two marked signature sweeps of his hands, quickly broke both of her legs. A piercing shriek, followed with curdling screams, pleaded innocence to the deaf echoing cliffs. As she laid writhing and whimpering on the ground, Coiedeh’ah sadistically screwed and jammed the handle of his trusty club, within her squirming fine-downy crotch, to stake out and mentally arrest her full attention. Coiedeh’ah sneeringly said to her dispassionately; “Tell your vile, arrogant and assuming, bloodsucking, worthless stiff-necked people; of this doomed silver-dust shrouded, now ablaze and vacant, devious Golden City”, “We Will; return again”.

  Coiedeh’ah, by the signaled recall of his obedient lieutenants, assembled the blood bespattered wolverines. Ruthless, glazy-eyed warriors, laughing and high-counti
ng at their many kills, on the red digits of their hands, heavily loaded down with all the petty plunder that they could carry away; left the still burning and smoldering, insignificant corpse strewn, ravaged, Golden City behind them. Coiedeh’ah and the laden warriors marched towards the alluvial plain to seek-out the hidden scheming opposition, Bahcoo’ah; and to exterminate Bahcoo’ah, and his entire same family, and all the remaining heretical traitors to The Great Nation of the Sun.

  The hundreds of ravaged and wretched people, who had quickly escaped the carnage in the Golden City, gradually crept back into the hollow charred remains of their demolished main homestead. On receiving the deadliest message as of Coiedeh’ah, from the childlike, defiled and executed maiden, that was waiting for them, they devastatingly dropped to their knees. Raging tears and gripping anguish, and agonized howling into the impassive void; the bitter burnt skin stench; into and through the apathetic moonlit night; could not lessen their excruciating emptiness and despair. Then from amongst the scattered broken shards, meticulously gathered remnant-bits, they pinched and collected the last few seeds, spilled upon the ground; and fleetingly dissolved into the dark hazy land of the last shroud of lowest smoke, disappearing into their wide-ranging reclusive wilderness, in each and all direction.

  Constant crushing fear, overwhelming distrust, drought caused famine, and continual civil war; betrayal of common trust being the ultimate failure; fractured, then collapsed inward, The People of the Sun. Intolerance of choice and hatred rained upon their polluted, then made conclusively barren infertile earth. Soon the united Nation of the Sun would disintegrate and sink into the nothingness, desolate sand dunes of time, or simply fade-away under the changing cloudy shadows of the light; The Golden City and the beautiful quilted fields of the most colorful assortment of flowers, never to be seen or known again.

  Untutored adoptive uncles and their quickly gathered factions, would withdraw into willing solitary confinement, in private secreted places; limited box canyons and large sunken holes in the ground, where no path entered and no path left; insanely forgetting or confusing the history of their people; and akin to a silent rattlesnake, would strike and kill and swallow-up, any and all accidental trespassers. Every curious wandering outsider was their mortal enemy, and after a fed fireside welcome by pretense, narrative to the summation, the naive guest was quietly strangled.

  The numbers of the impoverished people lay in a stagnant pool, mother’s spurned milk came to be shrunken and dry; they did not want their families to grow beyond their clan Spirits’ influence; submission to the uncertain little straw idols’ embrace. Hidden isolation meant survival, simple given trust was a sure pestilence; small clumps of withered sallow straw flowers in a close shaded nook. Hereditary essence became deranged; death by extinction was a slow silent event. The Nation of the Sun would be no more.

  The Golden City remained only a crazed occasional memory, the exaggerated ramblings of long-in-the-tooth old men, and an empty tragic golden flaw in the universe. To the ahyes of the rising Great Spirit, or the presence or to the parting flash of that setting Sun, its lone eternal temporary guest; scorched earth with a gauzy shroud of grey dust, a constant stench of the dead, never night occupied by humans again. The wandering people who passed near-distant may not venture closer; for the growling; and the gnashing; yellow-eyes in the dark; evil Spirits lurked in the shadows, waiting to baffle, then utterly consume, any curious intruder of the immutable mystery. The lofty mescaline entranced Story Tellers, calling out to the blurry Spirits through the night wind, stood beside the evenings flickering firelight; would wistfully speak of the gleaming City of Gold, as an exalted dream, a pure truthful golden city of missed expectations, a lost vision of what could have been. And then one far-off day collectively forgotten; who lived there? Who were they…? Where did they… go…?

  As for Coiedeh’ah, the overly brutal warrior and egotistical tyrant; he casually sacrificed his spoiled selfish sons to violence, grew older and fearful and weaker, come to pass, was found hiding and cowering in another hole and exterminated.

  Bahcoo’ah and his larger family huddled closely together in the bitter void of destitution; very little snow fell on the upper plateau, but the steady northern wind, chilled the people and confined them within and neath a scarce pine grove in silent despair. The withered and faded people had meandered aimlessly, back and forth, crisscross; now and then again, to settle within crude makeshift brush scrub shelters in the sparse spiritless unreliable tableland, for many years, looking for a permanent home.

  To the south of the narrowly limited plateau, after a full day’s hard travel, over rough laminated and waterless sandstone tablelands; disorderly settled with ruptured jagged-edged plates of vermilion stone, and moderately covered with small slated platforms, with wind-bent stunted evergreen pine among dark-jade accents of misshapen juniper. Beyond this solid-rock plain existed, an enormous awesome gapping grand canyon, so massive you could hardly determine its magnificent imposing broad width, or its overwhelming frightful depth? Positioned alone on a projected slate-layered outstanding promontory, looking down into this breathtaking almost fathomless lifeless chasm, Bahcoo’ah easily conceded that his people could not seek comfort in this direction.

  Far towards the northern outline of this dull bleak plateau, lay the boundary of a low pinkish-beige and rust-streaked continuous mesa, interspersed with a twisted labyrinth of dry restricted desolate canyons, surrounded within by towering bright crimson layered cliffs. The theatrical passageways of shape shifting hoodoo-spires, of brilliant reddish-hued and golden multi-colored rock, teasingly shimmer-dancing, in the passing clouds deflected change of Sun light. An awe-inspiring place to witness, a reverential earthly cathedral; where the roving uncommitted Spirits, whispered into your ear, seemingly chanted the songs remembered, whose shadow images frolicked in the twilight’s wayward cooling winds; but no common people could live there.

  Bahcoo’ah and his transient people, temporarily squatted and bent beside still water, next to shallow ephemeral vanishing basins; or where the water seeped from the scarce tiny springs, located in the hollows of small rocky swells, discovered sporadically across the meager plateau. A flat deficient marginal in-between, lacking the least comfort of shade or cover; coppery reddish-brown powdery earth, stunts the quick green grass of the meadows. But for the slated thin forest of blustery-weather-inclined cone-bearing pine, hard and enduring abundant source of the flickering fires of faith and hope, to deliver warmth and temporary sustenance on the coldest of dark wintry nights.

  The people planted a reserved variety of their original seed, that ideal they had conveyed from the prolific verdant river plain; sowed in close proximity to the spring fed shallow basins, where the water collected in the resilient season of the year. Not far into the languid summer’s heat, the low scant basins would begin to dry…, whence the lesser amount of spring-water would become barely a trickle; the resulting consequence was severe disappointment, the longed for crops were stunted if not thoroughly unproductive, with those few implanted exceptional spirits of talent.

  The inadequate harvests were a recurrent and disheartening setback for the already bent and withered fading descendants. Snaring dumb rabbits, and occasionally bringing down the swift side-stepping antelope, stayed the people from their hunger. If not for the inexhaustible collection of the boundless supply of longer lasting pinion nuts in the gradual fall, the people would never have made it through the severe winter storms. The able people were practiced cultivators of the land with nowhere to bring this inborn gift to fruition; another superficial deceiving source or basin of enough water, followed by another underdeveloped crippling yield. The weary people under Bahcoo’ah’s guidance, over and over again, prior to the early newer spring, would tend to move slowly, further and further, to the westerly pink and gray closing horizon. Bahcoo’ah’s people were sad unwilling nomads, wandering aimless vagrants, just existing in thinnest brush shelters; in the emptiness, in the loneliness, in
the dreary bleakness, of the almost silent guardian Spirits’ forgotten wilderness.

  Bahcoo’ah; devoted Story Teller; would minister to his people, reminding them of their stalwart but gentle nature; he would chant the minutely detailed recount of their timely escape from the beautiful verdant plain; from the tight clutches of the evil, selfish and despicable, presumptuous twofaced Iicoo’ah. Bahcoo’ah knew the people had witnessed the very thing he was describing; but he wanted them to never forget the cause of their suffering tribulation, and the reason for their firm determination; and to pass this result on to their children, and from their children’s children, into perpetuity. Bahcoo’ah reaffirmed, “Life is precious”, “Honor your ancestors”, “Care for your brothers and sisters”, “Praise The Earth, The Sun, and also The changing Sky”. He wistfully reassured his people, as time passed into the diminished haze; The Possessed People of the Sun would seldom mention, and soon forget, that they, Bahcoo’ah’s colorful alien family, even existed. That they would be saved from annihilation, but could never return to that beautiful and pleasing, fertile open plain; and from this time forward, that they would be known by way of the shifting winds, and changing light, or whispers from the darkness, offhandedly, as The Forgotten Ones.

  Bahcoo’ah died; and Oceh, a favored son of the wise Bahcoo’ah, became Oceh-ah, chosen and merited Story Teller of The Forgotten Ones.

  Relentlessly, Oceh’ah and The Forgotten Ones, year after year after year, were blown scarcely across the immense plateau, carried by the many seasons ever variable winds; planted tufts of scattered flora and fodder, to harvest and glean with little result, never finding a place to permanently settle and to call their home.

  A selected team of brothers would infrequently venture into that afore seen likely wasteland, to make certain again, the outermost southern boundary of their world; the impassable fathomless wide grand abyss, abruptly descending from their way. The northern borderland of the flat crimson plateau, and the barren, however occupied, distorted crooked canyons and mesa landscapes were always clearly visible; near-distant red-barred stone barricades, tentatively containing The Forgotten Ones in their meager faded existence.