by Jeff Posey
At first, he didn’t intend to trade his shiny cubes in the sacred canyon. His long experience there made him want to avoid the place. He walked out of the mountains to the east until grasslands flat as water stretched to the horizon. Using small cubes as trade, he bought food and new inferior sandals along the way. He saw many things he could trade for much larger sums in the canyon, but nothing more valuable or easier to carry than the cubes on his back. His options grew increasingly limited. He could travel far to the northeast and trade with the earth-mound builders, rumored to be as rich but less violent than the people in the South, but the dark canyon of rock-stacking Sun worshippers was much closer if more dangerous. Nowhere else could he get enough value for his load to set him up for the rest of his life.
To get that much, he would have to entice the fickle wives of the canyon’s High Priest and his bloated court of advisors and warriors. If they started a bidding war against each other, the women of the various palaces and temples, he could get rich indeed. As long as no one recognized and remembered him. It was a risk, but it was a risk he knew from his years of having served there, which is why he chose to approach at night.
He paused and admired the rising moon, imagining the coming ceremony at the Twins, said to be the twin war gods themselves frozen in stone. The master skywatcher there had proclaimed the full moon would rise on the evening of the longest day (and shortest night) of the year. Vingta had attended a ceremony at the Twins when the full moon rose between the Twins on what was said to be the skywatcher’s birthday. He had been the official emissary from the High Priest in the canyon, two summers after he became an official messenger. He ran, as he had countless times, without rest from the temple in the canyon all the way to the Twins wearing a plume of feathers that made him stagger in the wind. It was more than a full day’s strenuous effort along the arrow-straight road that ran through rolling desert grasslands from the canyon to North Town, and then east up the big river and northeast up the last big tributary into the foothills where the Twins rose like two giant fingers pointing to the sky. That was his life before his unexpected retirement to the easy life of long-distance trader.
He chuckled. Easy life, indeed. Running messages from village leaders to the High Priest and back had been an easy life, by comparison, for twelve summers, four longer than the eldest storytellers remembered any runner before. Most boys who became runners quit during their first year because of the long distances with little rest and no home to speak of. The best usually lasted three or four years at most. An elder told Vingta he remembered one who lasted eight. Vingta wanted to double that. Not for any good reason, but because nothing else particularly interested him. He liked being on his own, jogging long distances, and being pampered and respected everywhere he went. But a new warlord rose through the ranks who insisted all runners report to him rather than the High Priest. Vingta refused a little too vehemently. He had always had the direct ear of the High Priest, and it was unimaginable that he would whisper into the ear of the new chief warrior, a runt of a man with an arrogance that grated on Vingta. He would not tolerate being demoted to serve a man like that.
The warlord, wanting to make an example of Vingta to secure his own new position, sent only two men to kill him, large and unkempt Southerners who knew nothing of Vingta’s training and had no finesse of their own. He didn’t just run errands. He was trusted with protecting deep secrets, which meant he trained at hand-to-hand fighting harder and longer than any warrior. An overbearing lizard-faced captain in the canyon picked him out for special instruction, and Vingta relentlessly sought and practiced with the best warriors in every village, every clan, every garrison he visited. He mastered the best knife-and-club-fighting techniques from the entire region north of the canyon, yet used his weapons rarely. He studiously avoided creating a reputation that would make reckless young warriors want to challenge him. He found that restraining himself from using his abilities proved more difficult than actually fighting.
But the two giant Southerners were easy. Vingta knew their intent immediately and wasted no time. He drew their last blood before they even raised their clumsy weapons. The memory made him shake his head in disgust. He considered all Southern warriors inferior in skill and intelligence, but nevertheless dangerous because of their great numbers, their proclivity for ultra-violence and torture, and their taste for human flesh, cooked or raw. He detested them as rattling snakes in human form. Deadly if you step on them or back them into a corner. Best to kill them quickly without thought, though the High Priest decreed it an offense against the gods of shadow and light to resist them. He couldn’t stay in the canyon after he dispatched the two assassin goons, so he had taken what he could carry and ran north into the mountains.
For two years he worked as a stonemason’s helper at the Twins where a building boom kept everyone busy and well-fed preparing for the next moonrise between the Twins a year from the coming fall. And then he noticed the tiny, heavy cubes that shine like a smoke-darkened sun, sacred and valuable to all who possess them. They called to him as if they had their own separate spirit, and he laboriously traced the mineral to their source in perpetually snow-covered mountains far to the north. Now he returned with his small but heavy treasure, and he would find a way to make the High Priest pay dearly. Or maybe even Póktu, the arrogant warrior chief who ordered Vingta’s execution four summers ago. That would be justice, and Vingta grinned thinking about getting rich off the very man who tried to end his life. But his plans would work only if their wives wanted them, bickered over them, and drove up the price. If not, there were always rich pilgrims, or fat men who ran the hidden markets, though their value would go down if the canyon women didn’t want them.
Vingta looked nothing like he used to, and he displayed not a shred of his former runners’ uniform. No one would recognize him. At least so he hoped as he came into the place called High Town, the last stop for visitors before they climbed down a long staircase cut into a sheer cliff to get to the canyon floor and its grandiose temples.
An abandoned pottery stand a stone’s throw from the central big house caught his eye. It hadn’t been there the last time he came through. In the bright moonlight, he saw shards of newly broken pots mounded around the area, as if everyone who traded for the potter’s wares smashed them on the spot. He looked for other signs that things were not as they should be, but all else seemed normal. He slowed and studied the three old women selling common cooking pots along the south wall of the big stone building. They stood stiff, eyes fixed on something ahead of him, which meant they acknowledged him without being intrusive. He returned the gesture and passed them without open acknowledgment. Around a bonfire, people chanted and danced. A small crowd, a couple dozen at most. Next month’s big moon would be different, falling on the night after the longest day of the year, a rare event that stirred deep passions among people under the influence of the High Priest and his warriors. Pilgrims from all corners would trail into the canyon, and High Town would be crushed with humanity coming and going, and the bonfire would be ten times the size it was now, a steady stream of brush and stick cutters feeding it. This and the canyon floor would be a place to avoid then, and he hoped to be long gone after a short rest in some obscure side canyon.
With a deep sigh of relief, Vingta lowered his pack against a west-facing wall in moon shadow until middle night, when he would be bathed in white light. He could sleep now, then awaken and watch the day arrive when he would begin to live like a rich man. For a little while. Not too long. Before the half-moon, he would go north again, back to the Twins, or to his childhood home on the edges of the mother hot spring a day’s walk east of the Twins. He would get rich off the crazed bureaucrats of the canyon, but he wouldn’t live among them. If he could pull off this one major trade, he would be content to be a simple man in an out-of-the-way village.
He drank all his water and chewed the end of his last big piece of dried moose, then crunched parched corn until he felt full and drowsy, and
he leaned against his pack of riches and relaxed.
Before he drifted into sleep, he saw eyes. For a few moments, he didn’t know if he dreamed or if the eyes were real, but he roused and realized faces watched him. Small faces. He grinned and sighed and made a gesture for them to approach, but only one did, a boy who crouched and crept forward like a wary animal. As if he had been kicked and slapped and run off so many times he expected it now from this stranger. The boy’s hunger and abuse showed in his eyes even in the shadow of moonlight, and Vingta flashed with anger. If he saw anyone mistreat this boy or his orphan friends, he would make them cower like a beaten dog.
Vingta held out the last of his meat and the boy studied him before snatching it and turning to run.
“Wait,” said Vingta.
The boy paused and turned.
“How many are there of you?”
The boy whispered in a hoarse voice. “Seven.”
“Including you?”
“Eight,” the boy croaked.
Vingta fished in his pack and pulled out two fat pouches of parched corn, leaving him with only one. But he could hunt and trade. The starving orphans needed it more than he did. Everywhere he went where people gathered, there were always starving orphans, always people who ran them off and abused them, and always a scant few who helped them and kept them fed.
He also grabbed a handful of his precious shiny heavy cubes and counted out eight.
“You share,” he said.
The boy nodded and blinked. “Thank you, sir,” and scurried away, clutching the sacks of corn to his chest, one hand tight around the cubes and the chunk of meat.
Vingta hoped they didn’t eat too fast and make themselves ill. He knew that feeling too well. When he was sent away from the hot springs village to the canyon as a young boy, he nearly starved until a toothless old man with one eye made a sign for him to approach. Vingta did, as warily as the boy he just met, expecting the old man to cuff him or demand help. But instead, the one-eyed man spread his meager food on a flat rock and offered half to Vingta. Careful not to take more than his share, he ate fast, and then, moments later, it all came up again. The old man laughed at him, and then made Vingta take half of what remained.
He remembered where that happened. All those years ago. In this same town, against this same wall. He never saw that old man again. But as he’d done a thousand times, he thanked the man’s spirit and praised his memory. He drifted to sleep with the feeling that the one-eyed man smiled back at him.
Something made him wake but not jerk to his feet. A mere scrape. A drag of rawhide over stone. Barely a sound at all. But he heard it. He had the gift of light sleeping, which often meant he slept very little and became ragged as a result. But it also kept him alive on more than one occasion. There were always unscrupulous men willing to kill even an official runner for the High Priest and take whatever goods he carried, and long-distance traders were even more of a mark.
With his eyes still closed, he heard breathing, fast and shallow. A girl or a boy. The orphans were hungry again? He parted his lids and rolled his eyes, resisting the urge to blink from the bright moonlight. He saw nothing the direction he faced. But the sound had come from along the wall behind him, so he sat up suddenly, turned, and stared.
A girl, a young woman by the shape of her hips, with hair cut short on one side and long on the other shrank from him, frozen in his gaze, eyes wide in surprise. She turned and scampered away. Vingta chuckled and stretched. Made his way into the bushes to relieve himself, and then strolled a wide arc around his pack, keeping a careful eye on it and fingering his knives in their quick-draw pouch. He glimpsed the girl lower her head behind an unfinished wall. She must have seen what the orphans got from him, and she wanted her share. For what seemed an eternity, he waited, and finally she raised her head for a peek. He didn’t move, but in a few moments she snapped her head back down as if realizing he watched her.
He grinned. That should scare her away enough. She was too old to beg. She should belong to some man already, someone who would take care of her. His kindness to orphans rarely extended to those past puberty. By that age, they should know how to make a place for themselves, or they were apt to become lifelong beggars, a burden too heavy except down in the canyon, where some rich people chose to support a population of never-do-wells for their own amusement.
He went back to his pack and sat with his legs outstretched, back against the stone wall of the big house. The light took the edge off the landscape, but he knew better. The softest thing about the desert was sand, and its grit ground constantly into everything and everyone, from eyes to armpits to crotches. Chafing was a part of life. To itch, but not to scratch, constituted a daily challenge for everyone but the pathetically soft inhabitants of the palaces.
Inside his bag, he found a sack with his fingers. He dug out the last sweet corncake and popped it into his mouth. He loved sweet corncakes. They were rare because they were always in high demand. He planned to acquire a nice supply when he could afford them. Soon. Down on the canyon floor. They had stores galore in the palace halls. He knew. As a runner, he had access to nearly anything he wanted, and he always took as many sweet corncakes as the head cook would allow. If he traded well in the canyon, he would bring a bulging sack of sweetcakes to the orphans. He loved watching the eyes of children when they tasted them for the first time. The image made him smile.
He heard the same scuffing sound as before and turned to see the girl cowering against the wall, looking at him. But this time, she crept closer even as he watched. He didn’t know what to make of that. A wretched thief wouldn’t return and approach like this.
“What is your name?” the girl asked in a whisper so soft Vingta barely made it out.
He decided to teach the girl not to sneak up on strangers, and jumped to his feet, arms reaching high as he growled, “I am Másaw.” He held a long low note at the end like the beginning of a chant, and he laughed when again, the girl scampered away, her feet and hands slip-sliding over graveled ground.
Three or four people turned to him, adult faces shining pale in the light. He’d disturbed their peace. He considered speaking an apology when he heard footsteps behind him. Strong, determined steps. He spun as his hands instinctively went to his favorite flake knives and the handle of his club. It was an older man, judging from the stoop of his posture, shorter than Vingta, but broader of shoulders, more bowed of legs. His hair scattered wild and unkempt, his nose and mouth vaguely familiar.
The man stopped and began to laugh, as he turned his face into the moonlight to reveal himself. Vingta recognized him and joined his laughter.
“Tut,” Vingta said, nodding his head in the way of a close friend.
Tut returned the gesture. “I hoped it might be you when my girl told me she saw you. Said a man carrying a pack that looked heavy but not full.” He laughed. “That girl has a funny way of noticing things. And I thought, ‘I bet that’s Vingta back from his mountain quest for heavy shiny cubes,’ and here you are.” He laughed again.
“I thought she was just a young thief out to steal something,” said Vingta. “You coming in or heading out?” Tut was the oldest, most experienced trader who plied the north side of the canyon. He’d been south a few times, too, where Vingta had never gone.
“Out. Well, to here. Short one, supposed to be, but something’s wrong, and the timing is all bad.”
Vingta kept silent to allow him to finish in his own way. Tut could be counted on to fill the silence. The man liked to talk.
“You ever seen one of these?” Tut held out a triangular shard of pottery.
Vingta took it and examined it in the moonlight. Thinner and smoother than most pots, but nothing else seemed peculiar or particular about it. Until he noticed a faint design. He held it close to his eyes and ran a finger over a marking that looked made by a tiny fingernail dragged through the soft clay, swirled, and pulled away. The tight spiral had been mashed, which softened the edges of the impressio
n, and then widened and feathered out in a spray pattern.
The power of the symbol swelled over him. His knees felt weak as he continued to study it, feeling it grow heavier and warmer as if it contained its own spirit. At first glance the symbol looked like a long-haired star that shot across the sky from time to time, but the head of the star was a small, impossibly tight spiral, the classic symbol of finding one’s way (or, in reverse, losing it). Yet the wandering star meant one had no path that returned home and would soon disappear never to be seen again in this lifetime. Vingta had been born under the passing of such a long-haired star. The combined symbol implied a lost way could be found again. Or that, even with a clear path, one could shoot out of control into oblivion. He’d never seen nor heard of a mark like this.
“Where did you get this?” Vingta asked, continuing to run his fingers over it.
Tut lifted his arm and pointed to the pile of pottery shards Vingta noticed on his way in. Crouched against the wall, Tut’s girl sat watching.