by Vic Connor
As the countdown clock ticked the remaining minutes away, we engaged in some small talk. About me, mostly, which was odd. Typically, I’m the quiet one who sits back and lets others do the chatting, but it soon became clear that Sveta wouldn’t reveal much about herself. I already knew she could run circles around me, both in reality and metaphorically, so I didn’t even try to corner her into sharing personal details. She only mentioned that she was from Novosibirsk—which I had never heard of but was apparently the largest city in Eastern Russia—and that she had spent several years in Edinburgh, but didn’t elaborate on why. After being trapped for eight hours straight in the same room with a girl that most guys I knew would kill to spend five minutes with, that was all I knew about her: the names of two cities she had lived in.
The countdown clock chimed softly when it reached three minutes, and the lights throbbed slightly.
To my left, the blue portal glowed brighter. Blood rushed to my face. It was starting.
“That’s your cue, boss,” Sveta said. It may have been my imagination, but did she sound just a little worried?
“I guess it’s time to see what this over-hyped Istoria is all about, then.”
“Right as always, boss. But before you go, there’s something you need to look at.” With that mischievous smirk of hers, she watched me as she undid the top button of her blouse. “I’m told it’s the only one of its kind you’ll ever see.” She unbuttoned the second button and I gulped, mesmerized. “And you’ll need it in the game.” Using two fingers, she drew a large, round yellow disc from inside her bra, placed it on the table with a metallic thud, and slid it over to me.
Shaking myself from my stupor, I reached out and caught the disc. Like my Gadium, the thing was heavy. And still warm to the touch.
A coin.
Big as half my palm and thick as a pencil. I’ve never owned expensive jewelry, but I could swear it was gold.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said, buttoning up her blouse and somehow reading my mind, “other than it’s something you’ll need in the game. But yes, I’d say it’s a massive gold coin.”
I lifted it with both hands and inspected it closely. On one face, it was adorned with something like a sun, with dots around the edge. The flip side had a glyph I was already familiar with.
“I don’t recognize the sun,” I confessed. “But the glyph is Aztec.”
Sveta seemed surprised.
I paused, savoring the suspense. “Tenochtitlán,” I said. “This is the Aztec glyph for their capital city.” I glanced outside the windows at the Zócalo, where the dark cathedral loomed, framed by two towers on the square’s left side. “The main pyramid used to stand right there, but the Spaniards tore it down and built their cathedral on top.”
“Are you sure?”
Well, that was new—at long last, we’d found a topic where she wasn’t several steps ahead of me. “Not 100%,” I admitted. “I’m no expert in Aztec history, just an amateur historian. But I’m fairly certain that this glyph,” I raised the gold coin, “shows the rock and prickly-pear cactus used to identify Tenochtitlán.” I secured the coin in my breast pocket. It fit perfectly, as if they were made for each other.
The clock chimed again, and the room’s light throbbed with increasing urgency.
“Time to go,” I said, and my voice trembled a little.
I directed my rocket chair toward the blue portal. Sveta walked over to me; she was indeed wearing high heel shoes.
“Good luck, boss,” she said as the blue hue surrounded me. “And thanks for the kind words.”
“Don’t even mention it,” I replied. “I’ll talk to you later, Svetty dear.”
She winked at me.
Things went blue.
Then black.
9
Mist of Memories
Sunset orange hues and yellowish reds.
The acrid, pungent scent of smoke and burning herbs clings to my throat.
Everything is blurry.
I’m lying on my back. Dull pain throbs throughout my shoulders, my arms, my back and belly, as though I’ve been through an excruciating, brutally exhausting physical training session.
I notice that I feel no pain from my waist down. In fact, I feel nothing there, no sensation.
I blink once, twice. My dry eyes sting. All around me, the yellowish blur persists.
“Help,” I croak. The word slashes at my parched vocal cords.
Through the blurry mist, a shadow creeps closer until it looms over me.
I raise weak arms to defend myself. A powerful hand, all strength and no kindness, clutches my right wrist like an iron manacle. I yank back, trying to break free.
“Belay that, lad,” a deep, jagged voice rumbles. It sounds familiar, as if I’ve heard it before…
Memory Unlocked…
Failed!
…but as hard as I try to rifle through my memories, I fail to recognize it.
I pull again, struggling to escape the heavy grip. My wrist may as well be encased in hard concrete.
“Be right welcome, lad. But be done with yarr wrigglin’!” the voice thunders. The grip tightens. My body complains by shooting a jolt of pain up my arm. “Don’t make me hafta go rough on yarr thin fishbones!”
I stop pulling and jerking, and blink furiously again. My parched eyelids feel like sandpaper. The blurry fog persists, revealing only the looming shadow against the yellowish mist.
“Ya be needin’ time for yarr eyes t’ see,” says the voice. “Not that thems barnacle’s eyes of yourn be any good anyways.”
Is there a trace of rough mirth in his tone?
“Now quit flailin’, ya beanrake, or ya’ll be spillin’ the brew.” The manacle on my right wrist softens its grip a little. “Ya hears me, lad?”
“Yes,” I croak. Speaking feels like regurgitating a knot of sharp razors. I nod weakly; the movement doesn’t hurt as much.
The shadow lets go of my wrist and draws nearer.
I flinch as the huge, rough hand pushes against my nape and helps me lift my head. With some effort, I can focus enough to make out a mud-brown bowl being brought close to my lips. Whatever liquid the bowl holds has a faint scent of rotting fruit, reminding me of sour kefir.
“It be tastin’ better than it be smellin’,” roars the voice. “That’s what the bloody witch be sayin’. I mean our witch, not t’ other one. That one be sayin’ nothin’ since she brought ya back. Now ya drinks, me lad, if ya enjoys livin’.”
The brew fulfills the thunderous voice’s promise: tasting of herbs and sour lemonade, its fresh coolness is a soft caress soaking its way down my desert-dry throat.
I gulp it down until the bowl is empty.
“Atta-boy,” the shadow says, his huge hand letting my head rest. “Ya’ll be good in no time, ya’ll see. Not that t’ times be any good, me reckons, but we’ll see when ya be done returnin’ t’ the Land o’ the Livin’.”
Returning to…?
Memory Unlocked…
Failed!
I have this ominous feeling that I should remember it, remember something important…
…nothing makes sense.
My eyelids feel heavy with sleep.
I close them, and I feel my body sinking, sinking…
I hear a low, slow chant in a language I don’t understand, even if it does sound somewhat familiar.
I open my eyes and blink; blurry shapes coalesce into focus.
A head and shoulders.
A creased face, brown skin worn out by time, carved by wind and sun. An old woman stares at me, an aura of kind firmness radiating from her expression and her posture. It’s hard to tell exactly how old she is, though—judging by the many wrinkles fanning out from her gentle eyes and stern mouth, I would say she is past her sixties, but her lush, straight hair, which is long and mostly black and contains only traces of white and silver, puts her closer to her fifties or even her late forties.
And I know this old woman.
&n
bsp; I don’t know how, but I’m sure I know who she is…
Memory Unlocked:
We’ve Known Each Other
For a Long, Long Time.
Her name is Juanita. I don’t know how, but I know: she’s Juanita, and we have known each other since…
…I can’t remember since when, exactly, but we have known each other for a long, long time.
I feel I can trust her. Completely.
“Hello, Juanita,” I say.
The hut brightens as she smiles. “You make this old woman’s heart weep with joy, young Jake,” she says. Accents I don’t recognize wrap around her words, revealing that the English she speaks perfectly well is far removed from her mother tongue. “Once more, Lord of Here and Now has been kind to us, my child. You are alive, and you remember my name.”
Her calloused hands grab mine. They are warm—pleasantly so.
Soothingly warm, like a mother’s touch…
Memory Unlocked:
She’s Taken Care of Me
She took care of me when I was ill. Many years ago. I was very ill; Death hung in my room, sharpening Her scythe, wearing Her skeleton grin, with Her eyeless sight fixed on the grains falling in the sand clock at my bedside,
falling,
falling, as my time elapsed.
Yet Juanita stood at my bedside, too, chanting, with her warm hands on my feverish forehead—chanting and praying until Death grew bored of waiting and left to reap other lives elsewhere.
I realize the blurry, yellowish mist has lifted: I can see.
I’m not in my bed, or anybody’s bed. Instead, I’m lying on layers of roughly hewn blankets spread across the dirt floor of a small hut. Drying leaves and herbs hang from a sturdy post that appears to hold the roof in place and supports two wooden beams. The walls are made of stone, I think. A few embers remain lit in a small firepit, where traces of acrid smoke from burned weeds still swirl upward.
Juanita wears a poncho with zig-zag patterns in red, black, and blue, with traces of white woven in here and there. Along her naked arms runs a stream of tattoos that the hut’s poor light obscures.
“This isn’t the first time,” I tell her. “This is not the first time you sit by my side while I’m sick.”
She seems surprised; pleasantly so. “You remember that, too, young Jake?”
“I do,” I reply. “I think so, at least.”
“Do you know who I am?”
I do…
…I almost do…
Memory Unlocked…
Failed!
…but the memories elude me.
“I know your name,” I say. “I know you have taken care of me before. And I know that I can trust you.”
She presses her right hand to her heart, closes her eyes, and whispers words in a language I don’t understand. But the words ring a bell.
I make a guess: “Nahuatl?”
She whispers a few more words, then opens her eyes. “Yes. The tongue my mother spoke and taught me. You never learned it yourself, young Jake, so do not trouble yourself by trying to remember it.” Her English is still perfect, even if laden with strange accents.
I gawk at her. “¿Hablas Español?” I ask.
“I do,” she says. “Although in time, and if the Possessor of the Sky and Earth keeps being kind to us, you may remember I loathe speaking it. Why do you ask?”
“Your name cannot possibly be Juanita, then. It’s a Spanish name.” I raise myself on my elbows. “You don’t look Spanish, you hate talking in Spanish…”
“Do you not remember how I got my name?”
I…
Memory Unlocked…
Failed!
…shake my head. “I don’t. It feels like I should remember lots of things, like words held at the tip of my tongue, but I don’t.”
She places a tender hand on my forehead. “They may come back to you later today, my child. Your memories. Or they may come back tomorrow; or never. The will of the Smoking Mirror is not for us to know, let alone twist.” She withdraws her hand, looking down at me.
I continue staring at her.
“Do not rush yourself, young Jake. You have returned to us. Only this matters. Whichever of your memories the Smoking Mirror wishes to withhold for himself are a small price to pay.”
“I don’t remember,” I concede, “but I’d still like to know why you have a Spanish name, if your mother tongue is not Spanish.”
“Let us say I had a name given by my mother at birth, then I lost it, then I received this name I now have: Juanita.”
Doubt creeps into my mind. All this talk about mother tongues; is she…?
She doesn’t look at all like me, but the way she is taking care of me now, and has taken care of me before…
“Are you … are you my…?”
Her smile is sad now, as she shakes her head. “I was already too old to have a child when we met, and you already knew how to read and write in a tongue that I did not yet speak, save for the three words that were the mark of my trade back then.”
“What trade? What words?”
“The trade for which ‘Yes, my Master’ are the only words you really need to know,” she confesses.
For God’s sake…
Memory Unlocked:
Juanita’s Trade
About a dozen men and women stand on a crude wooden stage. Dirty, badly fed, half naked. Some are black-skinned, brown-skinned the rest.
One of them—a tall, muscular black man with his chest covered in battle-earned scars—keeps his head up, hurling a fierce look of defiance. The others cast their eyes and heads down; a few of the women weep.
A long chain links them all by their necks, and more chains hang from their wrists and ankles.
“For God’s sake,” I whisper. “We bought you. We bought you as a slave.”
“For a day, yes. Then, I was your slave no more. The name my mother had given me was what they called me when they enslaved and sold me. Juanita was the name your family gave me when they bought and then freed me, and the name I’ve kept for myself since then.”
“Oh, God, Juanita, I’m sorry…”
She points her index finger upward. “Gods—yours and mine, and those from other lands, too, as I’ve come to learn—aren’t kind or merciful to people who do not count themselves among their followers. And, sometimes, not even to their own followers.” She squeezes my shoulder. “But Lord of Here and Now willing, you will soon remember you have nothing to be sorry for, my child. Quite the contrary. At least not when it comes to that particular gold-for-flesh transaction when we first met each other. It is oaths made willingly that bind us now, not shackles and chains.”
“But—”
“Our lad be alive?” rumbles a voice from outside the hut. I startle; it’s the voice from the shadow that fed me the potion.
Juanita turns to face the hut’s entrance. “He is, thanks to Lord of Here and Now.”
I recognize the rasping sound of someone spitting out a sizeable gob of snot. “Yarr Lord be not mine, witch,” the voice growls. “An’ yarr fellow witch out here be damn certain our lad be alive thanks to her doin’, not yarr Lord’s. An’ she be expectin’ t’ payment we promised ‘er, sure as there’s hell below our feet she is.”
New Quest (Tutorial):
Pay for your Resurrection
I open my mouth, but Juanita raises her hand to stop me from speaking. “There’s more to this tale that may come back to you later, young Jake, if Lord of the Smoking Mirror so wishes.” She stands up, using a long stave to keep her balance. The zig-zag patterns on her poncho wriggle like snakes. “And, in time, I will tell you what I can about what you do not remember. But there are other matters we need to attend to, now.”
“Aye!” roars the voice outside. “Matters like draggin’ yarr butt outta this here hut, ya fishbait. We be sailin’ far away from this pagan town. An’ the sooner we be sailin’ the better, Ol’ Abe thinks!”
“The pirate is right,” Juanita agree
s. “We’d be wise to put some distance between Tepetlacotli and us, in case Barboza’s men look for us here.”
10
Tutorial: Pay the Priestess
“Come in here, Abe,” Juanita says, speaking toward the hut’s entrance. “Keep your big mouth shut and make yourself useful for a change.”
He spits again. “Ol’ Abe be takin’ no orders from no witch,” replies the voice. A giant shadow blocks the entrance, casting even larger shadows inside. “But bear ya one another’s burdens, we’ve been told, so Ol’ Abe shall bears what burdens he can.”
He’s as large as his voice has foretold: just under seven feet tall, and broad-shouldered and thick-necked as a heavyweight MMA champion. A thick, scruffy, grayish-white beard covers a face well used to confronting the wrath of violent storms and angry seas. A dirty yellow bandana is wrapped around his head, holding back his hair and pushing down a pair of bushy eyebrows the same shade of grayish-white as his beard and giving him a perpetual frown. Three parallel scars mark his left cheek, as though perhaps some monster has clawed him.
I also take in his steel-gray eyes and large gold earring.
He should look intimidating, and something in me knows he’s not to be trifled with, but the situation is so bizarre I cannot help chuckling. The only thing he lacks is a parrot over his left shoulder, and he’d be the archetype of a Caribbean pirate.
He wears the dirty, old shirt and trousers you would expect for such character, and a huge cutlass hangs from his left hip, so long that normal-sized humans would need both hands to wield it.
He glowers at me, cold eyes framed in scars and sea-salted skin.