by Jeff Posey
Far ahead in contrast against the white walls of the town center, Tuwa noticed movement. Men approaching. Strong, confident men, the way they moved. Unhurried. Wearing dark body coverings, their long, white loincloth tales swinging back and forth, and large black hats on their heads. A group of some kind of warriors. Tuwa’s stomach roiled and he fingered a good flake knife.
“See?” said The Pochtéca, turning to Tuwa. “There’s our greeting party coming to welcome and escort us to the High Priest.” He picked up his pace and titled his head back. “I hope a feast is prepared. It’s a long time since we’ve had town food.”
Tuwa looked at Choovio and Sowi and made a sign that meant weapons ready. They both nodded and repeated the message back to the orphans, who were already on high alert. They’d never walked into a town like this before, with no welcoming men, curious women, mobs of children.
Choovio stepped ahead of The Pochtéca as point guard. With his buffalo-shaped shoulders and narrow hips, he made a powerful first impression. Tall and lanky Sowi, his short bow acquired from the jungle people in one hand, a fistful of arrows in the other, stationed himself to The Pochtéca’s left. Tuwa, no good with a bow but a marksman with throwing stones and proficient with a knife, walked to his right, his left hand balancing the meat jar on his shoulder, a freshly flaked knife in his free hand.
Tuwa’s legs weakened when he saw the approaching men more clearly. Their long black hair, sculpted with grease or pitch, sat like shells on their heads. They wore sleeveless dark leather vests with small bones and skulls dangling from them, some with fur still attached. Painted prominently on the front was a black circle, two short straight lines for eyes, and another for the mouth. No nose. Tuwa had seen that sign before, far to the south, deep in the dark jungle, to signify Másaw, god of the underworld and dead and rotting things. A god who demanded unspeakable acts of violence and sacrifice. Men like these murdered Grandfather. It made Tuwa’s blood run cold and he shivered in anticipation. The men’s faces were painted black and white, but smeared as if the paint were days old. Several carried standard bows, longer than Sowi’s, and arrows. All had wooden clubs weighted with stones tied to their waists. Tuwa knew they would have no shortage of knives, sharp enough to cut open a man’s stomach in a single swipe if they kept the edges flaked sharp.
Then Tuwa noticed their teeth. The lead man smiled, and the ones on either side sneered. Each had front teeth that had been filed to points, like wolf or bear canines. Tuwa fought his own panic and felt The Pochtéca slow beside him. They’d seen men before with teeth like these far to the south where the once-mighty Másaw People were splintering into fanatical groups that fought each other ruthlessly. The Pochtéca avoided them. They had rituals so obscene people refused to speak of them. They involved, Tuwa knew, blood and dismemberment and body parts. Animal and human.
The men who murdered Grandfather did not have teeth like these men. This place had changed. Tuwa wished his rebel group had split away from The Pochtéca and sneaked in away from the main road.
The Pochtéca stopped. The warriors stopped. No one spoke for a few long moments. The warriors looked from The Pochtéca to his three young bodyguards to the heavily laden children. They grinned and cut their eyes at each other.
Tuwa sat his meat jar on the ground and made a sign for the orphans to put down their burdens. The warriors stiffened.
“Don’t do that!” shouted the lead warrior. “We want everything.” He bulled forward, but Choovio didn’t give ground. They bumped, and the warrior, shorter by half a hand, glared wildly into Choovio’s eyes. Choovio didn’t flinch. Tuwa pulled a throwing stone from his pouch and moved his stone flake-knife to his left hand. He knew a third of the orphans carried small bows and arrows like Sowi. Some were quick and accurate, but the youngest were slow and clumsy. The eldest girl, Kopavi, was their best archer. She stood as if exhausted, but she could be armed and deadly in the blink of an eye. Tuwa noticed that Choovio’s hands hung empty and loose at his sides, his war club still tied to his waist string. The warrior inflated his chest, arms back, and looked up into Choovio’s face.
The Pochtéca stepped forward. “Of course your High Priest will have everything we carry. If you will lead us to him.”
The lead warrior turned away from Choovio and sneered at The Pochtéca. “I have my orders,” he said. “Ihu will deliver your goodies himself, not you and your babies.” With a screeching laugh he pulled his war club and started to swing it at The Pochtéca’s head. Choovio lunged at the warrior’s arm and deflected his swing, but The Pochtéca took a hard glancing blow across his forehead as he flinched away. His hat flew off and he stumbled backward. Choovio twisted the warrior’s arm behind him and went down with his knee in the middle of the man’s back, making it crack into an unnatural angle. A scream escaped through his pointed teeth. The other warriors rushed forward. Tuwa threw a stone into the eye of one, who turned aside but did not go down. He saw Choovio rush an archer and stop him from shooting. Sowi sent a short arrow into the chest of another archer just as he fired at Choovio. The archer’s arrow missed Choovio and disappeared into the stomach of a child orphan. Dust rose from the scuffling of feet and Tuwa could no longer clearly see the full battle. He turned to find a target, someone to help, a warrior to attack, and heard hard blows and shouts and finally a few screams. Then sobs and the crying of children. The dust wafted away in a burst of breeze. Tuwa had thrown only one stone.
He realized that all but one of the warriors were down, along with a few orphans. They had won the skirmish. He glanced at The Pochtéca, who sat holding his head, his eyes wild, blood flowing as red as his hat through his fingers.
With fury at the unprovoked attack, Tuwa looked into the face of the lone remaining warrior, who stared in disbelief at what had happened, then turned and ran. Sowi, their fastest sprinter, went after him. Tuwa started to join him, and then turned to Choovio. “There may be more in town. Bring help.” Then he dashed after Sowi, who ran with his bow fitted with an arrow. Tuwa could see he considered taking a running shot at the man ahead. When they entered the town, Sowi close upon the warrior’s heels, Tuwa not far behind, the warrior shouted, “Ihu! That crazy trader’s children killed everyone!” That’s when Sowi launched his arrow. It entered the base of the man’s skull and he collapsed into a heap.
Tuwa saw a man standing on an elevated platform in the central plaza with long, straight legs and a shiny, hairless head. Ihu. Two warriors at his side rushed forward. Sowi tried to string another arrow, but a warrior head-crashed into his chest with a chilling cry. Tuwa threw a stone as hard as he could at the other warrior. The rock struck the man full in the forehead but seemed to infuriate him more than daze him. Tuwa charged, his anger rising like a hot spirit from the depths of the Earth, and swiped at the man’s throat with his flake-knife. He missed. They collided. Tuwa spun and slashed again with his knife. He felt warm liquid on his fingers and saw half the man’s face flap like the limp ear of a dog. The warrior fell and moaned. Tuwa stomped the man’s forearm until it snapped and ripped the club from his hand, then brought it down hard on the warrior’s forehead. The crunch satisfied him so much he pounded his face twice more until it no longer looked like a man.
He turned to help Sowi, who lay on his back, frantically trying to string an arrow to his small bow, the warrior standing over him with a raised club. Somehow, Sowi managed to fire. The arrow disappeared below the man’s vest into his stomach, angled up behind his breastbone. The warrior’s eyes went wide, and then he fell. His club bounced off Sowi’s head.
Choovio arrived with a few older boys and from the corner of his eye Tuwa saw Ihu dash to the north road. He said to Choovio, “I’ll catch him,” and he ran.
Tuwa dropped his water bladder and his blanket. Only one throwing stone remained in his pouch, and he held it tight in his fist to keep it from flapping against his side. He tucked his flake-knife into its pocket in his vest and relaxed into running, the power of his anger draining from him.
Ihu ran hard. It would be a long run.
Tuwa loved running, the quiet rhythm of it, the way he felt like a spirit gliding through the world. In running games The Pochtéca arranged and enjoyed with passion, Sowi would always win the short sprints, but no one could run fast as long as Tuwa. He knew he would catch Ihu. When he did, he would pick up rocks from the ground and pound him until he gave up. And if Ihu came close, he would cut him. He would aim for his face as he had the last man. He had learned that a man with half his face cut away would not fight.
But Tuwa didn’t gain on Ihu. This could be a very long run, he thought. The running cleared his mind from the fog of the fight, and he began wondering why the warriors had attacked. How badly injured was The Pochtéca? Which of the orphans had died and been injured? And what are these pointy-toothed warriors doing here? Who controlled them? Tuwa remembered The Pochtéca say the true Másaw People rarely came this far north, but these had. Their violence and demeanor reminded him of the man who had killed Grandfather. That inspired him to run harder.
Did the people of Center Place Canyon tolerate these Másaw Warriors, or were they renegades acting without orders? How many more were there? The way Ihu ran, there must be an army of them somewhere, and he ran for their protection. If Ihu escaped and he brought a great many more back, the orphans wouldn’t stand a chance.
Ihu began to run up a rise. Tuwa saw the sun glinting off his bare head, the inverse of how other warriors wore their hair. Did all the captains of these warrior groups pluck out their hair? The slight hill gave Tuwa an advantage. This is where I will catch him, he thought. He liked running uphill. He increased his speed and concentrated on his breathing. Tuwa thought he gained on Ihu. His heart raced and his lungs heaved. The back of his throat tasted of bloody froth. At the crest, he slowed and saw Ihu crashing at top speed down the hillside, running wildly, arms flailing, out of control. Gasping for breath, Tuwa gathered a few stones from the ground and prepared to throw a volley should Ihu face-plant within range. But Ihu stayed on his feet and began to climb the next hill, still running at a furious pace.
Tuwa dropped the stones and put his hands on his thighs. He couldn’t catch him. He couldn’t catch him.
Someone Comes
When Tuwa and Choovio carried The Pochtéca into the town center, an old woman, blinded by blue clouds in her eyes, called for them to bring him into her room. She began feeling his face and head and cleansing his wound, a helper girl watching with big eyes.
The Pochtéca’s eyes shot open, his lids wide, and he stared at the old woman. “Haki?” he asked.
“Yes, it is me, you foolish red-hat man. It was a mistake to return to this place. I don’t know what you were thinking. But I’ll scold you for that later. Now we make you sleep.” The helper girl, thin as a twig, handed the old woman a bowl of steaming tea that filled the room with a pungent odor. She soaked a wad of brown cloth in it and then put it to The Pochtéca’s lips. “Suck this.” He sucked and smacked. “Now drink,” she said, and he drank. He blinked his eyes a few times, his lids growing heavy, until they stayed closed.
As if she could see, the old woman turned to Tuwa and Choovio standing in the doorway. “Leave us. He will be fine. His spirit is as stubborn as he is.”
“We have more who are hurt,” said Tuwa.
“Bring them.”
Sowi refused to go at first. He insisted the falling war club had missed him, but a trickle of blood flowed down his face, and they finally convinced him to let the blind woman clean it.
Sowi winced as she swabbed his wound, but it didn’t stop his mouth. “I don’t know why I chased that guy anyway. I should’ve just run the opposite direction. All of us should. Staying here is crazy and it’s only going to get worse. You think they’re going to let a bunch of kids kill their warriors and get away with it? They’ll hunt us down. Our only chance is to start running and never stop.”
“Leave the injured ones?” asked Choovio.
Sowi swung his eyes to The Pochtéca, who slept with a shallow breath. “Well, I don’t know.” He looked back at Choovio and Tuwa. “It’s not going to be easy.”
“We don’t expect easy,” said Tuwa. “These warriors are the kind of people who killed my Grandfather. And his parents,” Tuwa pointed his chin at Choovio. “Somebody has to stop them.”
“It’s crazy, is all,” said Sowi. He screwed his face into a pained expression and didn’t utter another word.
After the woman finished cleaning his wound, Sowi helped Tuwa and Choovio carry in two young orphans, one with a broken bone, protruding from his arm and a wound in his chest, the other with the fletched end of a black arrow protruding from his stomach. Their wounds looked bad to Tuwa, but he couldn’t read the blind woman’s impassive face.
They went outside and dragged the dead warriors to a place below the lowest fields and left them lying face down, their eyes closed. Tuwa hoped they would wander forever without sight in the evil, dark places they worshipped. Then they tended to the three young orphans who had died that day. They laid them out on a hillside above town, their eyes open skyward with their favorite belongings at hand. Tuwa rubbed a smear of cedar ash on their foreheads so that their spirits would rise like aromatic smoke, and tossed a pinch of cornmeal offering in the six directions. Some of the younger children cried hysterically. Kopavi tried to comfort them but they wouldn’t have it. Choovio began a slow dance. Tuwa joined and sang a chant about a falcon that flew to the stars and spoke to the sun and moon, then returned to Earth to tell the people what to do. It wasn’t a proper death chant, but he remembered it best because it was Grandfather’s favorite. Kopavi coaxed the grieving children to join the dance, and the remaining Pochtécans went round and round the dead ones until they stopped in a stupor halfway to middle night.
Tuwa looked into the dust of starlight that stretched from horizon to horizon, seeing what the dead ones’ eyes could no longer see and thinking about Ihu, still running to his masters in Center Place Canyon. He hated that name. It was the center of nothing that was good.
Tuwa had exposed the orphans to further attack by failing to catch Ihu. More warriors could arrive at any moment. Tuwa noticed Choovio had already posted sentries, as he did every night. Choovio was their backbone, the quiet one who did the right things without question or discussion, as if an elder guiding spirit resided in his large young chest. Before the coming of the awful Day Star, he and Choovio had often opposed one another as rivals. But with The Pochtéca, they had become closer than brothers. Tuwa thanked the sky spirits that Choovio survived this horrible day. He couldn’t imagine continuing without him.
Back in town, a fire burned in the courtyard. A handful of women and children huddled near it, quiet and thin as skeletons. No men or boys were about. Tuwa saw both Choovio and Sowi jump when an orphan girl clattered two empty water jugs together outside the circle of firelight.
Kopavi led the older orphan girls in preparing a meal from the stores they had carried in, and soon began passing out bowls of corn and dried squash stew with bits of meat from Tuwa’s jar.
Tuwa wanted advice and went to find the old woman with cloudy eyes.
“Greetings, Eldest Woman,” he whispered.
He saw the dim shape of her sit up with more energy than he expected. “Who speaks?” she rasped.
“Tuwa, grandson of the Tokpelamongwi, Village of the Twins,” he said, using formal language as if he addressed a high chief.
“Help me to the courtyard,” she said. Tuwa pulled her up and almost carried her to the raised platform where he first saw Ihu. Kopavi helped get her settled and handed her a bowl of warm food.
“This is wonderful,” the woman said after eating all of it. “I have not eaten so well in months, even though the spices aren’t right.” She asked for water, and her stick-thin helper girl brought her a drinking bowl. After she drank, she looked sightlessly around the fire and asked, “Who is here?”
Tuwa asked everyone to say their names, going in order around
the fire, all of the Pochtécans except for the youngest, who slept together like a pile of puppies. The town women and girls said their names as well. The thin girl who helped the old woman sat at her feet.
“This one,” Eldest Woman said, smoothing the hair of the girl, “does not speak and has no name. She came here from nowhere and tells us nothing. She is like the long-hair stars that come and go without warning. She is a good girl. She is my helper. This is her place. Someday she will find a name. And I am Hakidonmuya, which means ‘the time of waiting for the full moon,’ as we are now, for the growing half-moon is in the sky now and will set after midnight. Even a blind woman can see these things.” She tapped the side of her head. “You may call me Haki or Eldest Woman or Grandmother, as you wish.”
She hesitated and turned her head from side to side. “Where is the one called Tuwa?”
Tuwa, standing behind her, leaned down and touched her shoulder.
“Sit here,” she said, patting the place beside her. “We will talk. But only if you speak as if I’m your grandmother, not some murderous priest who demands formal talk.”
Tuwa sat beside her and looked at the faces around the fire. It had been an awful day. Even Choovio and Sowi were dazed and exhausted.
“May I call you Grandmother?” asked Tuwa.
“Please, Grandson.” She smiled and reached out her hand. Finding his forearm, she squeezed, and then released him. Her hand, though small and bony, had a strong grip. “Now. You tell me everything, and then I will tell you everything.”
Tuwa told, as quickly as he could and using informal language, the story of The Pochtéca and the orphans and their plans to trade for bluestone, and even his desire for revenge because of what had happened to Grandfather after the appearance of the Day Star.
“I remember your grandfather,” said the old woman when Tuwa finished speaking.
“You knew Grandfather!”