Bolan was actually one of three or four things people had here that you could call souls. It was the one youd see in shadows and reflections, and the one that might have to make its way through Xibalba and serve the landlords there, before someday being allowed to dissolve into nothing. The other souls were the uay, that is, your animal counterpart, and the pal, like the name, which stayed with the remains of your body. There was also the chal, breath, although it might be a stretch to call that a soul.
And after that, my souls will help you, over me, they will, after …
I trailed off. My bullshit muscles were locking up. And it wasnt just because I could feel in Chacals body how much he revered 2 Jeweled Skull, how much Chacal thought he was semi-supernaturalalthough, strictly speaking, in this mindset nothing was really supernatural, it was just thatsome beings were more natural than othersanyway, it was mainly just that he absolutely radiated authority and would have even if you had no idea who he was. Behind him the walls seemed to be flowing, like we were in a crystal box sinking into lava.
This is while I above you wait for you to come back? he asked. And hope for you below me to come and call your twin?
You over me would not have to wait at all, I lied. We can time it to the exact moment.
And what will you send to take away your uay?
Its like a javelin of sunlight, I said, a sort of lightning.
No answer. Maybe hes just not answering what he doesnt understand, I thought. I switched to Ixian:
In my own katun I will send the right, the right message, through the passage I came through, and it will reach you here and erase me, pull me out of you.
Pause.
Maybe hes buying this, I thought. Wait, dont even think that way. Thats not how to lie. Believe what youre saying. Dont change your story again. Be cool.
2JS looked at the nondescript new guy. I was getting the sense that I hadnt passed.
Suddenly I had an inspiration.
Or we can go together, I said. We can entomb the two of us, and then, and then your souls can get sent back.
He looked at me. My eyes scurried away and focused on the shrunken head on his belt. It was glowing with golden fuzz. All faces, even Native American ones, have this fine down all over them that you can barely see, but when a face gets concentrated to the size of a peach it gets that cute fluffy-stuffy toddlery flocking
You underneath me, you would like to trick me, he almost whispered.
No, I said, I wouldnt. Fear, like a self-cooling soda can, popped open in my small intestine. Oh, chíngalo. Chacals nervous system might keep me from flinching, but my mind was Jeds, and Jed was a wimp, and I was afraid.
PULL OUT YOUR PARASITE NOW OR LIVE IN PAIN!
I started to say something and couldnt.
Oh, spooge and corruption. Im going to die today. Id never been much of an actor, and now what with the dope and the new bod and the tough audience
The Bush-looking character, who Id realized was a bet-yaj, a teaserthat is, a torturersat on my left side and walked his fingers up my cheek. They were in sort of finger-cots made, I guessed, from intestines. When he came to my left eye he held the lids apart, rather gently, and, with his other hand, lifted the lid off a miniature incensario.
Hun tzunumtub tz-ik-een yaj, the teaser chanted. He spoke in the womens language and had a womanly voice. He held the censer underneath my eye. I got a glimpse of pink embers and a curl of tan smoke.
Now, I generally like chilies. Poblano, serrano, rocoto, habańero, you pick em, peel em, cook em, serve em, and pay for em, Ill put em away. And at first it didnt even seem so bad. Maybe they were using some special species, or the reaction was delayed by the bufotenine or whatever it was that was spreading through my bloodstream. But there was just a faint tingling at the beginning, like someone across the room was peeling a single onion. The teaser set down and covered the incensario. There was something in the way he did it that triggered a flash of my real father putting down a Squirt bottle with the same species of motion, and I bit my lip to stifle the nostalgia rush. The teaser took a tobacco leaf and fanned away the smoke. I felt one of the guards holding me stifle a cough, as though if he let it out hed be demoted to the ranks, which was probably close to the case. Dryness spread out from the rims of my eyelids and around the balls, back toward what felt like the base of my optic nerve, but I, or rather Chacals warriors body, didnt want to give these guys the satisfaction of trying to wink.
Take back your twin, 2 Jeweled Skull said.
Im going to, I said lockjawedly. You have to let me start. Fluid swelled in my nose and little dust devils whirled up under my lids. Probably everyone whos not from a chili culture has had the experience of innocently munching a slice of spic-flavor pizza and biting into a wayward level-ten green habańero. So this kind of pain ought to be easy to identify with. Except thats confined to your mouth, and somehow this spread to my whole body. Now, as I said, Chacals body had this disconnect, this precious ability to distance itself from major pain. But I could almost see the gap narrowing, closing like slow, slow elevator doors. My orbital muscles contracted. I managed to keep my other eye open and not twist my head, but then before I knew it Id tried to wink, and as his fingers pushed the lids wider the teaser turned to 2JS and grinned, and 2JS looked back and it was like I could hear him chuckling even though his face didnt move and he didnt make a sound. Now my eyeball was rolling in onion zest and the tighter I squeezed my lids the more it swelled up like a red sun, and the more tears streamed around it the more desiccated it felt, and then everything crashed in as the capsaicin penetrated the liner cells around my eyeball and blasted the overload into my spinal cord. The priceless disconnect closed and evaporated. I screamed, almost but not quite silently, more like a sort of endless sputtering hiss like rain falling on a hot griddle, and even though I was more or less insane at that moment I felt that automatic shame rising out of Chacals brain, that brown, crushing shame that the Oprah Syndrome had nearly wiped out of twenty-first-century emotional life. It was like his body knew that my weakness had disgraced it.
How will you take it out?
I have to show you, I said.
Take out your twin worm now.
Okay, I thought, or rationalized. Fine. Lets say we cant bullshit this guy. Come clean. Be a mensch. I cant do that, I gasped out. Look through Jeds memories, look for Taro Mora. Youll see I just dont have the ability to do that, I dont, I dont
Take it out, 2 Jeweled Skull said again.
I beneath you dont have the ability to do that, I said, trying not to scream. I cant get me out of your head, because, for the same reason I cant get me out of my head.
Pause.
But you above me and I can operate together, I said, the Jeds in you and me could take care of the Ocelots in almost no time, and I think we will win, beat em, beat em …
Youre babbling, I realized. Shut up. But I couldnt. I heard myself trying to talk about fireworks and crop rotation, but it came out as near gibberish. Well, this is great, isnt it? I thought. Mickey Mouse is gonna come get you for this, my voice was saying somewhere. Hes a very powerful demigod and hes a pal of mine besides, eeeeyyh, hes a friend whos made for you and meeeyeeeehYYYAAAHHH …
He must have signaled again, because the teaser chanted, Hun tzunumtub tz-ik-een yaj again and my orbital muscles automatically squeezed so tight I thought my eyeball would pop and I realized it was a Pavlovian thing, a little formula they say before each stroke of the lash, as it were. He gave me another shot of smoke. My eyeball sizzled like a frying egg. This is your eye on toast. Dont ask them to stop, I thought, then youre really in for it. Itll just make it worse. How could it be worse? Hmm, fair question. Still, theyre pretty professional with this stu
ff. Lets figure they actually could make it worse. They could put on an Alicia Keys album, for instance
Then tell me how to force your twin to leave.
I forced Chacal to leave me, I managed to say. You can force Jed to leave you. I cant tell you how to do it. Just do it.
I almost added the word Nike, but we were speaking in Ixian so it didnt follow. There was a long pause. I guess you could say it was an uncomfortable pause, only at this point that probably sounds a little weak. Suddenly the teaser took his fingers away. My eye clamped shut. Tears actually squirted out of the lachrymal glands and I could hear them hitting the teaser on the chest. Something soft settled into my eye and the burning descended on a long arc, until it was almost just a pleasurable buzzing, like someone had stuffed a magic finger in the empty socket. Although of course it wasnt empty, it was still filled with an eyeball the size of a croquet ball. The teaser was still chanting to One Harpy in that soft maternal voice. A finger was buttering my eye, coating it with some kind of salve that smelled like oil of cloves, although there werent any cloves in the New World. Were there? I guess you dont want the eye to burn out permanently, you want it to be all right in a while so you can do it again, and again, and again. Saltwater sprayed into my eye out of someones mouth. The hands let go of my head and let me dog-shake it automatically, and then wiped it down with wet cloth mittens. It felt so great I got that stupid rush of pathetic gratitude.
So you have killed me, 2 Jeweled Skull said.
I started to explain that hed have gotten a lower dosage of luons.
Baax ka? he asked. How long?
More than two and fewer than seven rounds of the tzolkin.
How long exactly? he asked.
Thats as close as I know, I said. Look in my head, its not
Hun tzunumtub tz-ik-een yaj, the teaser said. It felt like a timpani roll that you know is building up to a crash of cyclopean cymbals, like in The Crusaders in Pskov, and youll do anything to stop it. My body strained against the ropes, struggling to get a hand or a toe or something up to my eye, but everything was held down, and I passed into that absolutely insupportable pain of the frustrated imperative, the itching that demands to be scratched more than your body demands even, say, air. Id thought Id felt big pain before, as Jed, getting skewered by ten-thumbed nurses for arterial blood tests, for instance. And Id always felt Id still prefer it to, say, eternal nothingness. But that was just ignorance. Death is a million times preferable to real pain. After an indeterminate while my eyeor rather the liner cells in the fatty tissue surrounding my eyewas feeling fine again, feeling kind of great, in fact, and there was my hand, there were the cool red petals on the flooryeah, I was even seeing out of it. I looked up.
2JS crouched in front of me. Beads of sweat covered his face like the scales of a Gila monster. His hands were in big long sharkskin mittens that looked absurdly like something that Williams Sonoma would sell to suburban barbecue chefs. The thumbs were covered with chili paste. He took me by the head and shook me, like a dog killing a squirrel.
TAKE OUT YOUR PARASITE ! ! ! he said. FINISHED !
I didnt even have a chance to answer before his thumbs dug into my eyes. This time I really screamed. I screamed for a long time, and then, as I gulped in air, I found I was breathing in chili fumes, that they were holding the censer under my mouth, I felt likeor in fact I somehow believed thatmy body had been turned inside out and dipped in sulfuric acid.
At some point I realized, again, that I wasnt in pain anymore. A happy nectared breeze caressed my face. I noticed I was prone on the floor, and my head was on its side. I opened my good eye and saw something odd: a long, snouty, spiky-haired giant rat things blank black bead-eye staring into mine. It was one of the armadillos, and it was licking my eye. I recoiled with that absolute prehuman revulsion, but my body was still being held down, and all I really managed was to quiver.
Hun tzunumtub tz-ik-een yaj, the teaser said.
Big pain stretches time, so I dont know how many times 2 Jeweled Skull said, Take back your uay. Maybe ten, or a hundred. Finally his voice tapered off, and the teasers voice took over, yelling things into my ear, using casting-out language, and I realized they werent simply torturing me out of anger but trying to exorcise Jed from Chacal, I guess on the theory that if I left I might take my twin, the one in 2 Jeweled Skull, along with me. Once in a while the teaser would start the Salve Chant, Ukumil can … , and Id get this cooling blast of hope and longing, as though the waiter at the restaurant where youd eaten the habańero was coming toward you with a big old mango milkshake, waving it under your nose … and then the teaser would stop without giving me anything, and it became not even so much about the pain, but about wanting the salve, and then theyd bring the chili out again. Three billion years later there was barely any me left, just a big ball of reptile panic, but at some point I had an unlocated feeling that they were giving up, and a little later I heard 2JSs voice say, Chan, Enough.
Xa nänbäl-een ek chäkan, 3 Blue Snails voice said. Well see him to the course. Maybe it was just my messed-up perceptions, but I thought their voices had even more of a vibe of urgency than theyd had before, a looking-over-the-shoulder tension. Hmm.
The guards gathered me up and marched me outside, into vegetal humidity. I didnt need a blindfold this time, of course, but I could tell that night had fallen while I was away. They took me down a flight of forty rough stairs into a big wooden roundhouse and tied me down on a wood pallet in a pool of heat from two sputtering torches. I tried to relax my muscles to accept whatever pain they were going to dish out. A cold, purposeful tickling came up over my legs and arms and onto my chest.
What the shits going on now? I wondered, not for the first time. They were tying thin-soled running sandals onto my feet, and a tight sash around my waist, and now there was a tightening around my head. It was some kind of leather cap with wooden inserts that they were fixing onto my skull with gum and wound gut cords, like they were hafting a spearhead. For a while I guess I kind of pretended to myself that it was still just Dr. Lisuarte gluing the trodes onto my head and that none of this had happened, but then one of the cold tickling things worked its way up to my neck, and as I involuntarily giggled and squirmed and got my good eye open I saw for a half-second that it was a long-bristled paintbrush, like a Chinese calligraphy brush. They were painting white glyphic dots on the tan field of my skin. I found myself looking at the pattern of tattooed zigzag stripes on the arm that was holding the paintbrush and instantly knowing from it, the way youd know that a person in a black-and-white-striped shirt was a football referee, that its owner was an ajjoomsaj. That is, he was a getting-readyer, or a dresser or valet, or maybe the best word would be preparator. And then the fact that the zigzags were brown and not blue meant he was an emsaajjoomsa, a lower preparator, a kind of untouchable who could handle dangerously unclean things. I tried to roll my head to either side to see what the others were doing but I couldnt turn it, there was some kind of big thing on it stopping its movement, a wide headdress with two pairs of branching stalks … maybe they were horns, I thought … no, not horns, I realized, they were antlers. They were dressing me up as a deer.
[32]
There was a sense of jostling motion and the air was hot and stale. I strained to get a hand to my face, but my arms were tight to my sides. I was rolled up in a grass blanket. Two people were carrying me, I thought. And it seemed like we were going uphill. I listened.
The motion stopped. They laid me down on turfy ground. I picked up a few words; it was 2JS saying something about how hed invited all these people here as part of his penance and that he was offering a deer to the fastest among them, with more profuse apologies and plans for a more elaborate festival in the near future. Stupidly, I felt embarrassed for 2JS and the whole Harpy House, even though they were g
oing to kill me. I flipped over four times as the blankets unrolled. Air. It was like diving into cool alcohol. I was on my back, on a canvas ground-cloth under bright torchlight. A wave of jeer/cheers rose up on all sides and cut off as though someone had given a sign. There were four beats of silence and then a chorus of We far below you thank you over us, in the high aristocratic voices of thirty or forty young kiikobliterally, bloods. A blood was any male who had been initiated into one of the warrior societies. So in practice the term had connotations of both high-born and able-bodied, someone born or adopted into one of the greathouses, and usually under eighteen years old. Someone else held my mouth open and spat in a hot thick syrupy mixture of balche, honey, some kind of blood, and something elseone of their superduper secret ingredients, I guessedthat gave the stuff an epoxy undertaste. But my throat was so withered that I was like, yum, a delicious beverage, and I gurgled it down. A third pair of handsalso wearing those damn mittenshelped me get my eyes open. The left one was still too swollen to see much, but the right one was almost fine. Huh.
Brian D'Amato Page 40