“Charlie!”
She swatted at the whispers of the conspiring leaves. Her hand connected with a dangling snake. It left a sticky fluid on her hand. A vine. They were in some kind of greenhouse. Hadn’t Jim Finch mentioned jungles up here? Maybe the Grupo kept satellite locations for, well, who the hell knew?
“Charlie, where’d you go? I can’t see a damn thing in here. Is this where you keep your potted petunias?”
The jungle smothered her breaking voice. More vines hit her in the face. She used her forearms as shields but sap and water ran down the sleeves into her armpits, down her stomach, and into her boots. The rotting perfume grew into an overpowering stench. How were her feet tracking the trail? It must be a trail. This wasn’t a random jungle on top of an empty mountain. It was a greenhouse. That meant there were walls, running water, electricity. Why did she think he hadn’t taken her into the mountains to eat her? These plants couldn’t grow way up here without serious artificial support.
“Listen, dude. I know you have your whole thing and that you’re a big scary monster man and the world doesn’t freak you out but this is… this is…”
JustSayItSayItSayIt
“This is starting to freak me the hell out! Enough!”
She stopped walking.
“Enough! Dammit, enough.”
A crown of light and fire butted through the vines. Charlie’s head was at its base. She slapped at him.
“Holy shit, is that a torch? That’s an honest to god torch. With tar and some cloth and… ”
“We are here. Quiet. See.”
He and his thunderous growl retreated into the vines. She pushed through after him. Distant flickers of indeterminate light bloomed to life. Her night-adjusted eyes drank it all. More torches. A thousand thousand torches littered the sprawling valley that she could now see. The torches formed into villages carved from a rainforest. Huts filled patches of clear space separated by miles of trees and vines and life. This wasn’t a greenhouse. Who lived up here? The villages and the canopies flowed like a river back to its source, a towering white mountain that reflected scant starlight over the entire world. What made it so white? She squinted.
“Is that… that’s a glacier. Charlie, where are we?”
He had started down a trail but paused to take in her view. His somber face cracked into a child’s sublime grin as if he was seeing this familiar place for the first time.
“That is the apu. The god mountain watches Ilhuicac. Come. There is someone for you to meet.”
Charlie moved down the path and Eliza ran to follow. Her thighs screamed for rest but there was no stopping. Curiosity was a more potent stimulant than pain. The first terrace slipped past, unnoticed. She noticed the second. It added much needed width to their goat’s trail. More terraces appeared along the cliff as they descended.
The trail turned inward and Eliza could look back at where they had started. Hundreds of earthen terraces dotted the valley’s edge. Clusters, stalks, and vines grew around the tree at the center of each terrace. All exuded fruity perfumes that contributed to this new world’s oxygen-rich air. She could breathe again.
“These are being farmed, aren’t they? Who lives up here?”
Charlie ignored her. He wasn’t exactly hurrying but neither was he waiting for her. She watched him stumble from the valley wall on their left to the trail’s edge on their right.
“Hey man, are you okay? Charlie?”
He crouched at the edge so that he looked like a gargoyle perched on top of a cathedral of Gaia. Strands of spit glistened on his jaw. His eyes shuddered as he drew in long breaths and forced them through pursed lips. Eliza crouched beside him. The first hints of hideous purple throbbed in his neck. She traced his treacherous veins as they pumped the serum through him. How far gone was he?
StuckUpHereWithHimStuckUpHereWithHimWhereIsHeTakingUsComeOnProfessor
“Listen, man. I’m not… I’m not sure why we’re here. You’re taking me somewhere, right? Or you’re heading somewhere and I’m along for the ride? Can you get us there? Where are we headed?”
Silence. Eliza started to ask again as Charlie’s arm rose and pointed to a nearby hut at the valley’s floor. Eliza traced the trail back to them. It was the first clearing at the bottom, probably.
“Who are we meeting there? Can you tell me?”
She started to pat him on the back but stopped. Wasn’t that how people made other people feel better? She wasn’t a touching kind of person though and he, well, wild animals didn’t like to be touched.
“I, uh, I bet whoever is down there is eager to see you, right?. Who is it?”
He began to rock. Eliza tried to reach around him and slow him down. They were too close to the edge. His body heat stung her hands. She whimpered but held on. It was like trying to stop a rolling, burning log. Her effort was pointless.
She scrambled backward as he tumbled forward and fell down the mountain. She raced to the edge in time to see him curl again into a ball and plunge through the terraces, skipping off one and vanishing into the jungle.
OhDammitOhShitOhDammitOhShitTraceTheTrailTraceTheTrailComeOnNowMove
His trajectory aimed him at the hut. At least he was thinking, even if the serum overwhelmed him. How long had he been tripping? She realized she didn’t know if he was sober when he first appeared outside the compound. This entire experience might be another hallucination for him.
No. He was going somewhere even if he wasn’t sure of reality right now. She ran down the trail.
It ended in a clearing with a single squat hut in the center. Electric lights ringed a large oval of deforested space. The little building was half-buried in the surrounding earth. Subterranean stairs led several feet down to a short door. She would have to duck to enter it but it didn’t matter because the steel door was sealed and had no handle. It looked just like the doors in the compound, a world away. This whole world was doors and locks and things she didn’t understand. She knocked anyway.
“Hello! Anyone here?”
Something grunted behind her. Eliza spun and brought her hands up to fight… a pig. She looked again. It was more of a piglet, or maybe a particularly large guinea pig, covered in short brindled bristles with the beginnings of yellow tusks. It stared at her. She took a step up. The pig squealed and vanished.
More grunts and squeals rose from the forest. Several piglets darted across the clearing. A larger pig with ragged tusks as long as her hand rocketed past. Another slowed down to consider her. She stared at its filthy tusks, hopped back to ground level, and then leapt onto the building’s roof. Could pigs jump? Or worse, climb? The extra space made her feel a little safer.
The building rumbled. A herd of hogs invaded the clearing. They were all snorting and squealing, tripping over each other in their panicked dash to the relative safety of the forest’s far edge. A pygmy emerged behind them. The miniature woman planted her feet and flung a spear. Eliza heard its wet thud, a squeal that ascended beyond human hearing, and rapid chatter in a familiar language as the hunter raced to the slain piglet.
The hunter twisted the spear deeper into her kill. Something inside the poor creature crunched. The hunter levered the spear and pig over her shoulder in gruesome mimicry of a hobo’s knapsack. She glanced at Eliza as she descended the stairs, activated a recessed control panel, and entered the building. The door stayed open. Eliza hurried down and inside. The door sealed behind them.
They were together in a single room. The hunter dropped her kill on a long wooden table, slipped a knife from her waistband, and began butchering the creature. Eliza took a moment to consider her.
She had looked like Tarzan when she appeared from the jungle but now just looked like a tiny person. Her skin was the color of milk and cocoa, her features fully human at a child’s scale, and she was old. She might have been the oldest person Eliza had even seen if not for Hyun Minseok. Weren’t there pygmies like this at Behema’s party? She, like them, showed no signs of dwarfism. She was simp
ly a tiny person.
Unlike Hyun Minseok, she was alert and terribly quick with a knife. She pushed a pile of guts into a waiting pot before sectioning long slices of meat from bone. When had she skinned it? The piglet’s dripping skin hung from a hook over the same pot.
Eliza eased forward, keeping both hands clasped behind her back. The woman shouldn’t feel attacked. That knife looked sharp.
“Hey there. So sorry to intrude, I just… I lost my friend and, and he said, well, pointed, kind of indicated, that he was headed here and… oh god, that smells good.”
The woman sliced two lumpy sweet potatoes directly into the broth. Steam rose from the frothing surface as the aromas of oregano and minerals filled the room.
“Sorry, I just. Have you seen my friend? Have you seen Charlie?”
The knife and Eliza stopped moving. How quickly could the woman move? Again, Eliza realized she had walked into a situation she knew nothing about. This was not smart. It would catch up to her, soon. Maybe tonight was the night.
The woman pointed a bloody hand to the wall on their right. A long, deep shelf was carved into it where an unwrapped mummy lay in repose.
“Charlie! Holy shit. Are you okay?”
She ran to him. He didn’t move. She poked his arm. He still didn’t move. She took his heavy head in her hands and tilted it so she could see his neck. A galactic mass of serum bruised the entire side of his neck, jaw, and head. He was frigid.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“You talk much. Quiet.”
Her voice was dry and slow but firm. Eliza waited. The woman didn’t speak again.
“What happened to him? We were doing fine and then he fell off the mountain. He said he was headed here. Who are you? Do you know him?”
More silence. The woman rubbed long cuts of meat with what looked like a salt and spice mixture and hung them from a rack. She wiped the table’s fluids into the pot, flicked bloody droplets from her tiny hands, and dried those hands on a tunic stained by many crimson handprints.
“Sit. We talk. You hear. You leave.”
“But what about…”
The pygmy held up a wrinkled hand. She dipped a wooden bowl into the boiling pot and sat it in front of Eliza along with a slab of coarse bread the color of tree bark. Eliza tried to tear a chunk of bread from the slab, hurt her thumb, and decided to soak the bread in her soup. She watched the woman fill her own bowl and drain the scalding liquid in three long gulps. When did she chew the meat?
“Who the hell are you?”
“Pachamama. You are witch woman Eliza.”
She ignored the insult. Time would tell the woman’s perspective. Thick saliva filled her mouth. The soup smelled like life itself. Eliza poked at the bread.
“What does your name mean?”
“Earth mother. I am youngest of seven Quechua sisters.”
Pachamama stood beside the pot. She stirred it occasionally, showing no sign of sitting down. Eliza was to hear her story and leave.
“Quechua. That’s the native Peruvian language, right? So you’re Incan. You’re a native.”
“Yes. Quechua before Spanish. Spanish before witch woman.”
Eliza waited. The woman would not offer any help. Charlie’s deep chest rose and fell in gentle rhythm. At least he rested, though she guessed the purple demon rampaged through his dreams.
Pachamama’s face was somehow older than her body. Deep devices ran through the crow’s feet around her colorless eyes. Her skin showed every vein and tendon beneath it. Had she not been so apparently full of life, Eliza would have thought her a corpse.
“You’re more alive than Minseok was. He’s crippled. You’re so active. Probably stronger than me. How old are you?”
“Old.”
“What’s wrong with Charlie?”
“No thing wrong.”
“But he’s unconscious. Is he just sleeping?”
Eliza started to rise and check on him again. The placid woman’s voice seated her.
“He dreams.”
“Will he be okay?”
“He will die.”
“Yeah, I’m tired of being told that by you people. We have to help him.”
“Pachamama helps. He wants to die.”
“No one wants to die. That’s ridiculous.”
Her voice faltered. Of course people want to die. Her sister had wanted to, hadn’t she? Apparently Charlie did, now four times and counting.
“Why do you help Charlie?”
“Eat. I talk. You listen. You leave.”
Eliza’s hands found the bowl. The bread has eroded into the broth. She nibbled the edges, letting succulent fat and intoxicating protein scaled her throat. It was the best soup she had eaten in her entire life. Who would’ve thought a mountain piglet, some sweet potatoes, and a handful of spices could taste this good?
She drained the bowl, sopped it with the remnants of her bread, and then ate that. She placed the bowl near the pot and waited. When Pachamama didn’t move, Eliza dipped her bowl back into the scalding fluid and sat it on the table.
YouJustHaveToAskSheWantsYouToAskTheRightQuestionsPullTheRightThreadForTheStory
“Okay, I’m being quiet and listening. I’ll just throw some questions out, and then be quiet. How old are you? Why do you help Charlie? What can you tell me about him? Why was he coming here? Uh… and what are those delicious pigs called?”
The woman’s dour face split into a toothy grin. Eliza guessed she had asked the right questions. She bit her lip and waited.
“Pig is wankana. Peccary.”
Pachamama blinked slowly, twice. Eliza bit her lip harder. It was a damn test.
“He coming because he remember from his dream. He come long time ago when he remember from dream.”
She blinked twice again.
“He come to my grandmother’s grandmother when she little girl. Spanish not come yet. Tawantinsuyu was whole world. He was empty thing.” She rapped a knuckle against her temple and clucked. “Grandmother grandmother pour life into him. He is Quechua now.”
Pachamama became animated as she spoke, miming a vase in her hands that her grandmother’s grandmother apparently used to pour life itself into the sleeping man. How many times had she told this story?
“Before the Spanish? But that’s like 1520 or 1530…. Oh, sorry.”
Two more slow blinks. Was the old woman slowing down as punishment for the interruptions?
The youngest daughter of seven Quechua sisters considered the American professor for almost a minute. She blinked just three times during the wait.
“I tell you. You be quiet. You look. You hear. World is big and tall. Many levels. You not know wankana. Do you know puma? Not know we are here. Not know when Spanish come and kill. Not know most things. Be quiet and hear. Think. What is right question?”
Eliza stared at her hands. A scarlet blaze covered her downturned face. She refused to look at the woman’s milky eyes until she knew the right question. It would give her the right answer. Then she could help Charlie not do this unforgiveable thing he wanted, maybe needed, to do. She jabbed around her mind but heard no argument. So at least that voice was quiet.
“What is… no, why is… what did Charlie remember in his dream?”
She looked up. The woman was smiling again. Her eyes flared unnaturally wide to reveal two blank white full moons. She started speaking. Eliza knew she could focus, had to focus, while her faded host dreamt nightmares about lives he only thought he’d lived.
CHAPTER 17 - TENOCHTITLAN
It had been a successful Flower War. The eagle warrior called Blue Moon Dancer enjoyed it more than he thought he would. The other cities understood their place in the intricate calculations of life. How many lives were saved by avoiding true war? How many people would eat fresh maize this season when the rains came?
The Triple Alliance reigned over the known world. His home city, Tenochtitlan, was first among equals. Their neighbors had arrived at the arena with their warri
or slaves. They had even died, as scheduled, at the hands of the eagle warrior’s captain. Smiling Fire Hawk was a good name for him. The man soared from combatant to combatant, his obsidian-toothed macuahuitl first smashing and then tearing the shields and flesh of whoever opposed him until all parties kneeled.
Carved from a single piece of heartwood into a paddle as long as the warrior’s arm, polished until it shined, engraved with the faces of the gods and the names of the warrior’s family, and studded with knapped obsidian teeth sharper than any knife, the macuahuitl was a beautiful tool of war.
Smiling Fire Hawk polished his each day. How many times had the eagle warrior watched his captain test the cutting edge on his own thigh? He wielded the weapon like a dancer wielded their body, flinging it and himself around in violent arcs in abandon of his own safety. Proud scars shined on his muscular frame.
The captain loved the Flower War. Blue Moon Dancer wondered if the man would enjoy it as much if he had been underfed, shackled, and harassed for an entire month before the ceremony, as had obviously happened to these slaves.
That was a blasphemy. Blue Moon Dancer cast it from him mind. The Triple Alliance ruled by natural force gifted from the gods. If the gods did not love them then why were the lake cities so strong? Why did the rain continue to fall? The gods enjoyed the bloody sacrifices offered at the temples. This was simply how the world worked. Blue Moon Dancer would grow into this world. Smiling Fire Hawk would continue to train him.
The ocean crashed against the scorching beach. He looked up. How long had he been daydreaming? But the prisoners were still trailing him in awkward caravan and his captain was a hundred strides farther behind. The prisoners had nowhere to go but Tenochtitlan. Some among the garrison mused that you didn’t even need to shackle the prisoners. They would march themselves right up to the altar, even check the blade’s sharpness and make the first incision, because to dishonor the results of the Flower War meant open war.
The sibling cities of Tenochtitlan, Tlacopan, and Texcoco might quarrel about fishing rights but they were fully aligned about their supremacy over the rest of the world. Open war meant thousands dead and cities razed instead of these fifteen slaves.
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