It didn’t.
Two revolutions of Ina the timekeeper went by.
Something rustled and clunked over to his right. Tliichpil lifted his head and looked over. Behind the strap of Lotlixya’s hammock he caught a flash of movement; as his eyes adjusted it resolved itself into a human figure, crouched near the floor.
“Comalpo?” he whispered. He got up, slipped under her and padded over.
“I thought -“
“You didn’t think.” He took the spindle and roving from his brother’s hands, tucking them back into the basket and the basket back into its niche.
Seated on the warm hearth, Tliichpil squeezed his hands between his knees, guilt and shame curling like pitch in his stomach - it seemed so terribly cruel, to be separate from the pain, to not be able to offer anything to help but useless words and clumsy embraces.
Unclear words from outside. Their shadows, thrown away by the lamps on the windowsill, flickered across the open doorway. In the dark, Comalpo and Lotlixya seemed like nobody he knew. For a moment, they all did, even the little ones in their hammocks, like there was a deep fracture separating him apart and it was only growing, heartbeat by heartbeat.
Even in more things than age, he and Comalpo had always been similar. They laughed at most of the same jokes, liked most of the same foods, had gone and still did go most nearly everywhere together. One unit in two parts, matching halves like on the moons-tapestry.
He curled his lips in a silent snarl. It wasn’t as though it was surprising that that symmetry was starting to fall apart, though - it had to. They were twins, and in every set one twin was good and one twin was evil. The opening of that great a gulf would undoubtedly be preceded by some foreshocks. To attempt to wish them away might be understandable but it was also incredibly foolish - there was no defying doom.
So did this have meaning, good or evil? Did this mean that Comalpo was going to be the evil one, that he was going to go mad entirely? Or did it mean that he was himself the evil one, selfishly sitting here in persistent not-suffering no matter how hurt Comalpo was?
A sudden urge to go find them washed over them, to go kneel before Comalpo and say forgive me, forgive me, I should be able to save you, how can I say I love you and yet fail to save you -
Something black and rotten swelled up in his chest, and Comalpo knew.
“Stop,” he said, stepping forwards.
“What?” Lica only half-turned around.
“Stop,” Comalpo repeated. “It’s not safe. It’s rotten. It’ll fall, you’ll be hurt -“
“Don’t be stupid.” This time Lica did turn around fully, fixed him with a derisive look. He pulled out his knife and banged the hilt on the bark without looking. A dull, solid thunk thunk thunk rang out.
“No! No, I swear, you’ll be hurt -“
Lica just shook his head patronizingly and turned away. He put one foot on the lowest rung, reached up, and hauled himself up fluidly.
Comalpo ran. He seized Lica’s lower arm and dragged, heedless of care, just knowing that he needed to get him off that thing before it collapsed. They overbalanced and toppled into the grass. He jumped up, beginning to whirl around back to face the cache and see -
Lica struggled to his feet and slapped him across the face. “You -“
He was cut off by the sound of rending wood, followed by crashing branches. Everyone flinched, flinging their arms up and cringing away. A branch lashed across Comalpo’s calves, and he stumbled and fell back to all fours.
Everyone was staring at him with something uncomfortably akin to awe. “How did you know?” breathed Yaix, after several long heartbeats.
“Congratulations,” said Tliichpil bleakly. Then he turned and walked away.
Comalpo stared after his retreating back.
He ought to have been able to brush it off. Lotlixya had cried with joy and kissed his cheeks and embraced him, and his little siblings had all crowded around to offer their admiration, and the news had travelled unbearably fast and he had had near-strangers, people whom he had only shared one or two words with before in his entire life, clapping him on the shoulders and offering their congratulations in the street. Amidst all of that, why was he focussing only on Tliichpil, who had… just not said it in the right tone of voice?
He had never been jealous before, though. And even now - it was Tliichpil’s arms he had sobbed into for wanting something like reality, back when he still had not understood what was happening to him, so he more than anyone else would be less likely to find this something to envy.
Talk to me, Pila, he wanted to say. I do not think I am a different person now than yesterday. So what have I done, that you avoid me?
Maybe he just felt like it would be an imposition to butt in too closely to his brother’s accomplishments, like if he stayed he might be suspected of trying to vicariously steal some of the warmth and pride and regard for his own - to Comalpo, it didn’t feel like an accomplishment, though. He hadn’t really had to put in any effort. It had just sort of… happened. And anyway, that wasn’t true - they can commend me all they like, but that is not fungible with your company, Pila. I still love you.
He was reaching the edge of the farmed plots; the forest draped like a standing wave across the pathway, and already a few fig seedlings fallen from the overhanging branches were starting to press out pairs of glossy leaves in the edges of the turned earth, mingling with the last few straggling stalks of oilseed. Comalpo slowed, trailing a finger over the sawn edge of a marker-pole.
I don’t want anything to change between us - it doesn’t have to, we’re not doomed -
And suddenly, he was cold with understanding. The commendation, the pride was not sourceless - could not so much ill-fortune be warded off if only somebody knew of it beforehand? Had he not kept Lica from a crushing death beneath the trunk of that rotted cache-tree? It may have been an added complication in Comalpo’s life, but having one foresighted among them was a great boon to a village as a whole - the ones so blessed were always better-able to buffer themselves from droughts, floods, and storms using the knowledge that these things were coming. In their eyes, he was a not newfound but new-recognized blessing - the blessing, probably, because as twins he and Tliichpil were fated to be equally both, blessing and curse.
If anyone had predicted that he was going to end up as the good one - this would be a definite, substantial point to favour that.
Which left Tliichpil with only one option.
Tliichpil was doing his very best not to think about it. The basket of blanks shifted against his hip, and he hoisted it up one-handedly. Today would be a good day to make more knives - he still owed Inttlicato a blade for the multiple quails they had taken of him these past months, and more for future trading. Also, if he stubbed his foot on these stones where he’d shoved them in the corner one more time he was going to scream, despite only having himself to blame for that.
So it was time to act like a responsible person and make knives.
He went out past the fields and onto a small use-trail that led to a clearing with a nurse-log fallen to one side of it. He would be roundly and justifiably criticized if he knapped in the village proper, leaving spalls to cut people’s feet upon. Whereas here, he had only to worry about his own.
He plunked himself down upon the nurse log and set the basket at his knee. The bracket fungus was still there on the other side - it had been there since he had been using this log, ringed terraces of brown-orange-white, and was grown almost a span across at the widest. He was rather fond of it.
Its glossy top also made a very useful shelf, as Tliichpil placed billet and flaker atop it and set to work abrading the first blank. This one was the largest, and would be nearly as long as his hand if he didn’t take too much off. Once its edges were rough and biteable, he swapped the abrader for the flaker and pressed the first flake off.
Hueapal had demanded Comalpo come to his house as early as he possibly could, and so he had not been there when Tliichpil had woken this morning. He and Lotlixya had had to make the morning meal and wake the little ones only the two of them.
He hoped whatever his brother was learning over there was good. Would be good enough to make up for these last few months.
Flakes snapped off, one after another after another. He flipped the blank and set to work on the other side. Probably three more rounds would shape the profile well enough…
He tilted his head to line up the flaker on a tiny platform, and pressed.
The core snapped across its width. He flung it and the pressure flaker across the clearing with a yell of frustration. Of course he couldn’t do this right. Of course he wasted stone, caught that flaw buried in its heart just like the one in his. The other cores followed the first, crashing into brush, thudding into ridged bark in a shower of splinters. Tliichpil stood, panting - it didn’t feel like enough, yet. Why was he like this, why couldn’t he just be happy for Comalpo and his new station? Why was he so broken?
(Why was it looking more and more like he had to be the evil one?)
Something else. He had to destroy something else. The basket tumbled and bounced unsatisfyingly across the leafmould, and he turned and stomped on the bracket fungus with all his strength. The wood supporting it gave, and it collapsed in a pile of ochre disks. He kept stamping until mud was ground into the white pores, until it was half slime and broken chunks.
“Can I see what you made?”
“Fine.” He flung it at her feet with a rattle.
She jumped. “Hey! What’s up with you!”
“Nothing,” he snarled, and turned to go in.
She reached up and caught his wrist, wrenched him down to squat next to her. “Obviously not. Come on, brother. And whatever it is, you have no excuse to be cruel.”
He huffed. “Why not? You already hate me, you know I’m worthless, look, I broke everything -“
“Well - then use these as arrowheads or drill tips, they’re still big enough for that. And you can go get more stone, it’s not like you’re going to run out of mountain -“
“Not. The point.”
They glared at each other. Tliichpil’s heart counted eight beats within his chest before Lotlixya spoke again.
“Are you angry with Comalpo?” she asked. “Are you jealous that he had been taken into Hueapal’s service and you have not?”
“No.” At least he could be truthful about that.
“Brother,” she said, and took his face between both her hands, forcing him to look at her. “I know of no-one who makes better knives than you. No-one as strong, no-one as helpful and uncomplaining. You bring joy to our family that could never be replaced. Comalpo has received a special blessing, but do not for one instant think that you are any lesser than he, or than anyone else.”
That is not what I fear, he wanted to say. I do not fear being less - I fear being great, and in that greatness terrible.
But how could such a thing be voiced? If he feared it, it was founded. He swallowed and said nothing.
“Do you hear me?” asked Lotlixya.
He nodded. She released his face.
Lotlixya stood up and immediately winced, pressing a hand to her lower back. His nephew-or-niece was starting to grow large enough to swell her belly, and heavier too.
He had had a cloud-stone, mottled black and milky blue, sitting around for - well, it must be a year and a half ago now, since the last time he had gone out with the traders to the meet in the south. It was beginning to take shape into a frog, one limb bent to form a loop to attach the cord to. He would have to cut the pattern into the back soon so that it would be ready by the time her child came. Tliichpil turned the amulet over in his hand. But certainly not today. He should wait. See whether the skill she praised deigned to return into his hands or if he would just shatter this like everything else.
(Hand it off to Comalpo and his purity to finish, if that was the case.)
Tliichpil put it back into its pouch and bowed his forehead down onto his hands. Oh, Hualma, he thought. If I have ever begged of anything from you, listen to me now. Save me. Show me what I have to do, to redeem myself - it is so hard, and I do not know the way. Don’t let me become what everyone says I am going to become, because I love them. I do not want to hurt them.
Or else kill me before I get there. For I know I am all Olin’s, and have been so since my conception. I know if I am correct, and I am the evil one, I shall never see your realm, am doomed to Tlazocpalli - I’ll go, if it will stop me from hurting them.
Tliichpil settled the last saddlebag onto the ass’s back and reached up to stretch out his shoulders. Finally, they were ready to go. Comalpo supposed he should have expected it - was he always prepared for journeys at least one palmsbreadth of the sun before any of his companions? Yes. Did it irritate him to be consistently the one waiting? Yes. Had he yet figured out a way to convince other people to arrive when he requested and not lean on his forgiveness? Absolutely not.
Comalpo pulled the scarf up from around his neck and over the top of his head, adjusting the ends about his jaw. Riding beside him, Tliichpil shrugged his over his shoulder and adjusted the pin under his other arm. This was habit by now, whenever they went to other villages: concealing his and Tliichpil’s similarity. In other places, they would have killed you both just to be sure. So they had to lie - say they were of different ages, bore just a very strong family resemblance. He was usually the elder one, and Tliichpil the younger, and that did not feel fully like a lie, for he had been born first - merely by one fingersbreadth of the sun rather than one year, as they would claim.
It had taken exactly one trip to confirm the necessity of that. Their first trading trip, Comalpo and his siblings had obviously been too young to help out their parents with anything, so they had been given reign
“You stay away from my daughter,” she had spat in his face.
“They ought to have drowned you,” she had muttered, snatching up her daughter and turning to go. “Why, if I was your mother -“
He had run crying back to said mother, wailing that he had done a bad thing, he was sorry,
“You have not done anything bad,” she had reassured him. “You have not hurt her, not with what you did. But you must remember not to do so again, Mala,
And that was how Comalpo had received a provisional promotion of one year in age.
The different hair helped. The scarves helped, to conceal the similarity in their bone structures. The achiote paint he wore, marking him as a shaman’s apprentice, would probably help this time as well - make people look at that, and not at his face under it.
[THE STORY OF THE GREEN EYES AND THE CONQUERESS]
Finally, Tliichpil gave in and sat up. Yeri had climbed to the zenith, a pale light behind the thin clouds, and yet he had not slept, his thoughts tramping the same field of blades over and over again. The other sleeping faces around the fire, thankfully, dd not stir: Lica with one arm flung up out of the blanket over his head, and his brother curled up beside him, breathing slow and deep and steady.
Tliichpil watched it for several long rounds. It was true: Comalpo was the elder, if only by a fingersbreadth. That was how, up until now, they had always gone, with him leading and Tliichpil following. Which meant - well, they both knew their linked fates, just like in the tale: one good, one evil, one heroic and one villainous. But that meant that there had been a brief period of time where, for Comalpo and their family and their village, that threat had not yet been in effect. Where he could have grown up and had a normal life, with a normal doom, and everybody could have been safe, if only -
And then Tliichpil had come.
Even if by some incredible fluke and despite all mounting evidence to the contrary they were wrong and it was Comalpo who grew monstrous, it was still him that had brought that threat into the world. And despite all that his family had fed him and clothed him, shielded him from suffering.
How could such a thing be paid for? What would be justice? What would be appropriate punishment, for his selfishness?
Tliichpil gently drew his knife from his sheath, grateful that he had never beaded it or bound it in copper that could have rung against the stone. No movement from Comalpo and Lica. He looked at his exposed thighs where his aprons had slid down - but revealed now they could be so again, so better to choose another place. He lifted the edge of his tunic instead, and dragged the knife across the soft triangle of flesh, feeling the catch of every flake-scar.
For a moment there was nothing but the sharp line of pain, and Tliichpil readied the blade for another blow - you coward, this was the very least you could do, if you can’t keep yourself from evil you must at least punish yourself for it but apparently aren’t even strong enough for that, worthless, selfish - and then he saw the tiny specks of blood appear along it, gradually swelling and blebbing together.
The knot in his chest loosened a little. He exhaled, shifted the edge, and continued.
After five lines the pain was well-suffused and he felt like he could breathe again, so he wiped off the knife with a plantain leaf and resheathed it, then plucked out another to press against the cuts.
It was a terrible shame for a man to supplicate himself to anyone. It made him look weak, would turn all his friends, family, wife against him, if he admitted so blatantly to having no way to get what he desired but to beg for it.
But neither was it acceptable to deny a ritual plea, either. Comalpo lowered himself to one knee, and then the other, setting the backs of his hands to the ground before them. I don’t care. If you have ever had to listen to me before, listen to me now.
She gasped, recoiling. “Comalpo -“
“Lotli.” he said. “Do not go. You will die.”
“I - okay,” she said shakily. Her hand came to rest on the crown of his head. “I won’t. It’s okay. Brother -“
[[The part where it’s okay if Tliichpil just has brain damage]]
“You aren’t broken. You’re not evil -“
“Then what?” he snapped. “What is wrong with me, if you won’t let me believe that?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Pila, just -“
He snorted cruelly. “Yes, of course, because I’ve always been moody and mean and just never noticed before.”
“And, and -“ He sought wildly for the right words to explain what he knew, with absolute certainty: his brother was not a monster, he couldn’t be. They were matching halves, and so he knew Tliichpil’s heart better than any other. it wasn’t broken; he loved it too much.
Tliichpil’s answering look was uncomforted, and he understood: that didn’t really make anything better, did it? That wasn’t going to make him stop worrying that he was burdening their family and their village, if he was not evil, just insane. “I - please, Pila, you have to trust me. You’re not going to destroy us. We’re stronger than that, I promise.” He reached out and tried to pull him into a hug, but Tliichpil stiffened, and it turned awkward.
The decorations sparkled in the sunlight where they had been hung from the eaves - carven pieces of horn, fat gypsum crystals, and strands of fresh berries and yellow-and-purple flowers. Windchimes, too, cast their hollow sounds across the village. Everyone enjoyed decorating their houses for Mactliloq - a prequel of sorts, to the party that followed.
Nonetheless, Comalpo’s head remained back at their house. But he wouldn’t be allowed in even if he ran back there - birthing was kept sacred for women and women alone, and if the midwives didn’t Lotlixya would undoubtedly have no qualms about kicking him out a second time, and even less politely than the first. His niece-or-nephew had begun pressing last night, so he had been the one to make the night meal and get the little ones into their hammocks - Lotlixya had paced feverishly until Tliichpil had finally managed to talk her into lying down and had sat beside her and rubbed her back until she dropped into fitful sleep.
Comalpo had asked him to wake him up after three palmsbreadths of Yeri (for Ina was in her dark) so that he at least could get some sleep too, and had found himself being shaken awake in the paling of dawn instead. “Whuh - I told you to wake me up!” he had hissed, noticing the light.
“Yeah, I know, I didn’t have the heart,” Tliichpil had whispered loudly. “But I need you to go get Zolpilquina now, Lotlixya says it’s worse -“ He had darted a look over his shoulder to where she had been curled on her pallets, arms wrapped around her abdomen. Comalpo had wrenched on his clothes and dashed panicked out through the rear door to her house, banging on the jamb and babbling he didn’t remember what -
Zolpilquina had just chuckled at him. “Catch your breath, love,” she had said, turning to get her basket of supplies. “Babies do not come all at once. And you will be of no help to anyone working yourself all up into a lather.”
“Now get out,” she had snapped at them, miserably finger-combing the last few kinks out of her long black hair. It looked very strange on her, hanging loosely like a waterfall below her hips rather than in its usual tight braided coil. “I love you both, but I’m not going to if you hang around.” Then Zolpilquina had laid a hand on her shoulder, and she had softened. “Don’t look so worried, you two. Go out. It’s Mactliloq-day. They will take care of me, they promise.”
It was still difficult to enjoy, thinking of her, labouring in the dark of the house without any of their family with her, and only listening to the celebration going on outside. But at least his nephew-or-niece would be born to those sounds as well; how auspicious a birthing-day was he or she going to have! Lotli, please comfort yourself with that at least for me: your child is born on the day of bounty, the day of gratitude. Surely he or she will be blessed lifelong, for that.
And there was another good part about all the festivities - everyone was half-inebriated already, so nobody could spare the mental energy to hold him and Tliichpil at arms’ length anymore. They had already been pushed, prodded, embraced, and back-slapped more times today than in the entirety of the last month, he thought. Fed, too - everyone’s secret motherly urge to make food and drink and force it upon people came out on Mactliloq, apparently, and his hand was starting to ache from the awkward position of holding three nutflour cakes tightly enough not to drop them but not so tightly they crumbled to dust.
Tliichpil was clutching his half-filled cup of mead to his chest like it was going to scrabble out of his hand and run away. To mitigate the dilemma, he offered him the handful.
Tliichpil eased one cake out from between its brethren and his fingers. “Thank you.” Now left with no free hands himself, he shoved the thing into his mouth. “Mrrmf’grmph -“ He attempted to swallow, realized he could not do this, and fixed Comalpo with a look that elegantly expressed embarrassment, exasperation, and threat should he make a single comment. “Mmfph -“
“What?!” Tliichpil yelled in his ear as they passed a mob of flutes, harps, and drums being played with the wild confidence that came from being either very very good or very very drunk. Given the distinct lack of a tune, Comalpo had to assume it was the latter. He hauled on Tliichpil’s wrist: I’ll explain once it gets quieter.
On the mud-brick wall surrounding the sapote tree, on which milky fruits were swelling, a cluster of children had gathered. All were gazing with vague awe as Yaix stood, silhouetted against the trunk, looking almost delirious with the attention. He had his arms flung out wide, and as they passed Comalpo heard him begin: “Listen, and you shall hear a story. Once there -“
“Wonder what mischief Yaix has got for them today,” Tliichpil mused.
Comalpo grinned at him. “Awww,” he teased, “did you want to listen?”
“How many years do I look like I have, ten?”
“Well you are the littler one -“ He danced out of the way as Tliichpil swatted at him. He grinned and made another lunge, and they were running, around the tree and down past the water-beds, leaping from side to side of the path to avoid stones, weeds lashing against his shins. He seized a stoop-pole and swung around to look back as Tliichpil stumbled to a halt, clutching at a stitch in his chest. “All right, all right, you win,” he laughed breathlessly.
Comalpo was glad at least to see him happy, even if that happiness was slightly sleep-deprived. See him not beating up on himself for fear of going evil, fear of harming all of them - they would have to return to normal life soon enough. Would have to keep on facing themselves every day of every month of their lives. They deserved this: one day of joy, one day of food and drink and music and dancing and wonderful anticipation of the miracle that their new niece or nephew would be by tomorrow. One day to rejoice in all the blessings Hualma had already bestowed upon the village, and in their lives too. One day to hope everything was going to turn out all right, despite everything they knew to the contrary.
“Come, come!” they cried, seizing around their shoulders, their wrists. Their eyes were huge, pupils black - already most of the way gone, definitely. But this was a ritual of Mactliloq too, so Comalpo let himself be led under the awning and guided to sit down.
Someone ladled out a slop of octemictl into a wooden cup and shoved it into his hands. He grimaced as the sticky drips spread out against his palms - the milky liquid had very little to attract it by way of texture, smell, or taste, the latter two of which were generally closest to burnt mushroom and sodden, mouldy punkwood. It had only this: the ability to thin the boundaries between the realm of sight and sense and the realms of spiritual things, to reveal unto one glimpses, as it were of light sparkling off water, of the shape of soul.
Let him see, then, what lay hidden within him today. Comalpo raised the cup, drained it, and spat. The cup was immediately taken away again, and he did his best to wipe his hands inoffensively on the hem of his tunic.
“Ah! Don’t trip me!” he squawked, which got a burst of riotous laughter. Another cup, shoved at him, and he took one large swallow, spilling a trickle down his chin.
The octemictl was already pulling in his guts. He released his breath and let himself be drawn with it.
[COMALPO’S TRIP]
Comalpo is in the heart of the jungle - where the lianas weigh down the branches until they creak from the strain, and ferns grow taller than a man’s head. As he walks through them they cast out clouds of spores.
Above, the canopy blots out the sky, all the light coming down a deep serpentine green. It comes into his mind that he stands on the bed of a massive lake, a lake stretching out to the horizon, whose surface is waving branches and whose waters the heavy misty between the mighty trunks. The path he follows is unfamiliar, but he is not afraid; his stride is leisurely, simply gazing at the green, the calm.
Eventually, the pool of ferns begins to thin, and the vegetation switches to bushes and bramble-vines. Hush, these whisper as they brush against his calves. From the disturbed vegetation rise gem-like dragonflies, beetles, and butterflies, their flights gentle and languid. Behind each their path is traced in carnelian, amethyst, pale aventurine, wafting on the air.
A white flash on the ground catches his eye; he kneels and brushes aside a branch to see a cluster of cloudflowers, just barely budding. They bend their heads towards his fingertips when he reaches out to touch them, as an ass leans in to be scratched. For a moment he simply does, lavishes affection on this one plant, so small and yet so finely-wrought.
He emerges into a clearing walled in thick-furrowed figs, their bark mottled with lichens and epiphytes. Bindweed tumbles over the mould, hangs like sacred garlands from every branch, every liana and knot of trunk. Its leaves are new and fresh, and the succulent spears of torch-lilies nestle within the buttresses of the roots.
The vines bend themselves towards him, teardrop-shaped buds swelling as he watches. Comalpo reaches out and touches the closest, which ruptures and unfurls into a trumpet of brilliant scarlet. He taps the next and the next as more vines sprout and wend their way between the trees, dancing from plant to plant in a kind of duet, laughing as the glade blossoms into coloured flame. The smell is like nothing he has ever experienced before; intoxicating as mead and yet he knows he is sober and that all he sees is the truth.
If one knows the weave, dye, and fabric, one can replicate the pattern of a tapestry perfectly over. If one has but the shape of the hole to which it must be fitted, one can carve a perfect tenon to replace one that has split. And this is what Comalpo sees, in the blossoming of the woods and the stirring of the insects: that the world is but a knotted string, a perfectly mortised joint, each part entangled with each other part. The leaves feed the insects feed the birds feed the serpents
What has been is fixed. And what has been feeds what is and that what will be. That is why you can see the weft of the future, when you look. That is why fate always fruits.
[TLIICHPIL’S TRIP]
Tliichpil feels empty. Not the empty of a sinkhole, nor of a ribcage dressed and gutted and scraped clean, for there was life and fullness in those once and may be so again. It is greater than that, deeper than that, perfectly sterile and sere. A void, delineated only by the agony of its sucking center.
Several years ago, the dry season was more intense than normal - the sun hotter, the skies emptier, the stream shriveled down to only mud, and he went out nonetheless to pluck the weeds and till the stones out of the fields once the oilseed had rooted, because it still had to be done. He remembers of that day only the yearning for water, the feeling that his whole self was steaming away like cooking bread, and then nothing: Lotlixya found him passed out among the sprouts palmsbreadths later, and he was ill three days after that.
This is worse. This is far worse, dehydration not only in his body but piercing down to his soul. Not only water lost - everything. All light, all love, all hope and empathy. Nothing, nothing, and nothing.
It must be filled. Anything - he imagines the lake, its surface cloudy and dotted with jade weeds, gulps it in handfuls and armfuls until there is nothing left but the bed and fish flop on its surface, but that is barely a flash in comparison, so he sucks out the mud until it cracks, reaches up and draws moisture out of the overhanging leaves until they curl and brown. He claws their hearts open to gulp the sap, peels insects from their burrowing and ants from their holes, taking and taking - birds’ eggs crush cool and sticky in his palms, blood of coati and deer and mouse and peccary hot and savoury, but it all spirals down to the hole that is in him and is lost.
There are glittering lines of power running across the land, eddying and knotting where spells are cast, where shamans have established themselves and where sites have been sanctified; he tears them up like dodder, wrenching away blessings and curses and spirits and dreams, sinkholes collapsing with no pressure remaining to support them, hills sliding and reeling - unthinking, uncaring of anything but just making the pain stop but there wasn’t enough, there wasn’t enough in the whole world to fill him he could devour all existence and never be satisfied I don’t care I don’t care make it stop please just make it stop -
Tliichpil’s eyes snapped open. It was dark; the sun had already set and left only a faint smudge of purple over the treetops. He sat up suddenly, gasping.
This was himself true: selfish, empty, hopeless, fit only to steal and twist and destroy everything he loved.
He jerked to his feet. “Hey,” someone shouted, “are you -?” but he was already bolting, stumbling between the mess of hands and legs that made up the throng and off the edge of the stoop. His limbs shuddered like a twig in a mountain storm; barely, he made it into the shadows at the edge of the house before crumpling.
See? See what lies for you beyond the realm of sight and sense?
There were rocks digging into his hip and shoulder; weeds prickled the back of his neck. Tliichpil curled up in the gutter and wept.
It felt like someone had gummed his eyelids together; he squeezed them tight and rubbed away the loosened caud, then opened them again. His lashes pulled on each other, strangely and very unpleasantly.
“Here.” Somebody elbowed him, handed him a cloth dripping with water.
“Thanks.” He scrubbed down his face, pressed it to the back of his neck. Octemictl always left a weird crawling feeling, like his skin was the middle of an ant trail. He pushed his flyaway hair back and retied it. It had already grown dusk; the lamps were lit, sending jumping shadows over the stoop. No-one was laughing anymore, and the music had decrescendoed to someone playing a solitary flute a few paths over; the celebration was beginning to peter out, as people would return at nightfall to rest so that they would still be functional for the next day.
Maybe that was a good idea for them to do too. He levered himself to his feet. “Pila, where are -?”
“Here.” He whirled around, and Tliichpil raised a hand vaguely. His hair was mussed and he looked faintly drained, but that was in no way unexpected, and his eyes were brown enough.
“C’mon, let’s go home.” Tliichpil made a noncommittal noise and followed him. The bright sun-yellow that the day had been had changed to orange now that all the lamps had been lit in windows and alcoves. They went through the street in a disjoined bunch, a pair or trio occasionally splitting off to duck into their own homes. No-one seemed inclined to speak much, suffused with the warm calm that comes of justifiably-earned exhaustion, the slow ending of a day spent well.
They turned the corner onto the path where their house stood and saw that its lamp was already lit. Comalpo appreciated that; Zolpilquina or one of her assistants having lit it to help them find their way back in the dark. He went up onto the stoop and reached for the edge of the door-screen, looking absently down beside the threshold.
A wide, baked-clay basin sat there, piled with sodden, worn rags that may once have been yellow or ecru - a very fine line of that colour was still visible along the edge of the scraps. But no longer, and likely never again, for the rest of the mass was deep, vivid red. Like bindweed and torch-lily flowers opening out.
It is astonishing how utterly the world can change, between one heartbeat and the next. He wrenched the screen aside, dove across the threshold, and choked on the smell of blood. The scene pieced itself together in the dim light - the birthing-rope hanging limp from its anchor, the figure of one midwife bent over something near the hearth and the other on her knees scrubbing at their burned-clay floor, and Zolpilquina, hurrying up and taking his shoulders.
“Where’s Lotli?” he gasped at her. “What happened? Please tell me - why didn’t anybody come and find me -“
“Love,” she said, holding him tighter. “I was just about to send one of the girls now.”
“Where’s Lotli?” And to think he had gone out and celebrated while - no, no, she was still alive, she had to be, the alternative was unthinkable -
Zolpilquina led him past her kneeling assistant to the back corner of the room. The hearth-glow resolved itself into a curled human, and he dropped to his knees. No, no, please - then she took a taper and lit the lamp in the alcove above, and he saw the blankets shift with a breath - too-shallow, too-fast, but there.
Lotlixya had been lain on her side on the pallets - two of them, to keep her off the cold floor, and yet it didn’t make her hand any warmer when he took it. One of the midwives must have braided her hair back earlier, but it was still mainly a tangle, wisps sticking damp over her forehead and cheek. And her skin - Comalpo remembered, back when his mother had still been alive, her weaving as a betrothal gift for a distant cousin two rugs. An identical pattern, but where the first had used all colours of pink and orange and red and brown she had swapped in varying shades of grey for the second, so that side by side they appeared the same rug but with the colour all drained out of the motifs of leaves and moons and small human figures. Lotlixya looked like that: all the brightness drawn out of her, leaving her translucent like the finest hide-membrane.
There wasn’t even any colour in her lips.
“Oh, Lotli -“ Speckles of blood were drying in the hollow of her jaw; he raised his other hand and rubbed them off.
“There must be something I can do -“
Zolpilquina shook her head. “Pray, love, if you will, stars know we all have, for her, but - nothing more within the realm of sight and sense.”
“If I had been -“
“Love,” Zolpilquina said again, more earnestly. “You could not have helped. You do not rule her body, and even more, you did not know. Not all birth comes easy, or fortunate.”
But that was worse, though, at least if he could blame himself he would have some target to fling all his vengeance upon, whereas helplessness - who was he supposed to scream at, fate itself? Olin, afar off in Tlazocpalli outside the dome of the sky? His new ne -
Everything that was not already crushed in his chest crunched. Please, he wanted to beg, do not make me have to face this, I can bear nothing else today. But he was closest kin, and so he had the obligation, like or no. He bent down and kissed Lotlixya’s still cheek, and then her hands, and then reluctantly let go, tucking the blanket back around them. “Lotli, please. Come back to me, and soon.” Stiff and sore as though he had just run a long journey, he sat back on his heels. “And, the child -“ he forced out.
Zolpilquina led him to the cradle by the now low-burning hearth. There was a bundle in it, wrapped in the blanket he knew it would be, infant-sized. Hands that felt like somebody else’s reached in, lifted it from the lining, cradled it to his chest.
He unwrapped the twist of blanket, revealing a perfect hand with its little mica-fine fingernails and a small, perfectly-formed skull covered in spiderweb-thin skin. “Her name is Atlcalcoē,” Zolpilquina whispered over his shoulder. A niece, then. And if she was named then Lotlixya must at least have been able to hold her before -
Her tiny blue lips were pursed up like a barely-opening flower bud. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and his insides were being torn out with a dull blade, chest cavity already emptying as handfuls of his mangled guts fell free - his breath hitched, and her beautiful face blurred, and he realized he had begun to weep. “Atlcalcoë,” he repeated. A tear fell onto the green blanket. Then another, and another, and he shifted her to his right arm and tucked the corner around her chin, so that they would not land on her.
He knew Zolpilquina was still looking at him expectantly, and her assistants in the corner of the room as they cleaned and repacked their baskets, and all the cousins who had not fled or been shepherded away at the door. “Atlcalcoë,” he began, clutching her closer, knowing that this should have been Lotlixya’s privilege but it could not wait for when (if) she woke. “Daughter of Lotlixya and of Mizapinna, my blood and my beloved. I give you this name for your own, and for all your years -“ He choked on the word, swallowed hard, continued. “- and I am sorry that they could not be longer.”
There was a muffled sob from the doorway, and then someone scrabbling their way out of the crush of cousins, the thud of fleeing footsteps.
Comalpo went on: “But nonetheless, I bless you, niece, under the sun and the moons and the stars of heaven. May your path be easy, and may you find joy in Hualma’s realm.” And when our fates wear out, may we meet you there. Oh, my niece.
He raised his head. “Someone should speak,” he said thickly, “to Mizapinna.”
Zolpilquina met the eyes of one of her assistants, who nodded, scooping up her basket, and made her way to the door. The group of cousins parted to allow her through, and Zolpilquina followed her. “Go home,” she told them, waving her hands as though to shoo them like flies. “It is already twilighting. We cannot bed you all here.” They trailed away slowly, led by parents or siblings or leading or carrying children, glancing back over shoulders, until eventually just [little siblings] remained waiting there wide- and shining-eyed. Them she ushered in quietly, making little shushing noises, and Comalpo was faintly proud that all seemed to obey, although he could not be confident of that - the world outside him and Atlcalcoë and her blanket had retreated like the surface retreats when diving.
He could not look away from her small dusky face.
It was Zolpilquina’s hand on his shoulder, eventually, that roused him. He looked up blearily - the other assistant was hanging the hammocks, shepherding the younger ones into them. Vaguely he thought he ought to go to them, ought to offer comfort as an elder brother should, but his arms were still full with Atlcalcoë and Zolpilquina was guiding him towards the hearth instead.
Somewhat unwillingly, he laid his niece back down into her cradle, on the soft deer pelt, and tucked her blanket neatly around her. The cradle swayed as he removed his hands, to rock her to sleep.
“You ought to eat something too, love.” A piece of bread was placed in his hands. He stared at its pale face stupidly.
“Oh, Lotli. Oh, Lotli, sister mine.” He smoothed away a tendril of her hair. “Please, you have to be okay. The little ones need you. I need you. You have to be strong, Lotli, you have to fight. Please.”
“Did you sleep out here?”
Tliichpil hid his eyes beneath one hand as a slit appeared in the stable door. He was already - well, nursing wasn’t the right word, stars knew he deserved no relief from it, but he did have a headache and selfishly had no desire to make it worse trying to answer stupid questions.
Which this one was. That ought to have been abundantly clear not only from the depression remaining in the straw but from what would have been his utterly untouched hammock inside. “Go away.”
Comalpo didn’t. “Why?” And then, like he was actually concerned, “Weren’t you cold?”
Yes, that was rather the point, now please go away. He clenched his teeth so as not to encourage him.
There was a long silence.
It did not look like Comalpo had slept much either, truthfully - bruise-like shadows ringed both his eyes, and half his hair had not made its way into the tie. Maybe he had been weeping again. Fluidly, he folded himself down into the straw one arm’s-length away - Tliichpil’s lips tightened with the closeness, and he sat up, the fresh cuts across his stomach pulling, but Comalpo only set his hands in his lap. Both gratitude and resentment caught in his chest - that he would not make him have to snarl, fling him off with don’t touch me - although maybe it would be better if he had. They wanted proof? He could have furnished that, with that excuse: see, see, I am broken, just kill me or exile me or something already, because it was agony to have to watch this, to see himself fall. The agony of a true tragedy: all the storyteller had to do was say that one word, tragedy, and any listener knew what would befall its heroes even as he hoped against hope that they could evade the fate the teller had fixed for them.
But with stories, one could leave the circle and return to one’s ordinary life. Not so if the black hyphae were infiltrating one’s life itself - there was no hope of that relief ever.
“Lotli lives still,” Comalpo said, in answer to the unasked question. A stab of guilt drove through his gut.
“It’s my fault.”
“Pila -“
“Stop calling me that!” he snarled. The sound sent another burst of pain through his temples, and he winced. See, if I can’t even keep from accidentally hurting myself - “Just stop it. Stop acting like I’m a child and you don’t hate me, you still somehow love me, like you can’t see how I’m just going to ruin everything for you.
“You have to hate me. It’s my fault.”
“How?”
“It just is!” The cry startled a finch out of the roof-cleft in a whirr of wings and dust. “I was so thirsty, you don’t - I would have devoured everything, the whole world, and not cared, it hurt so much - and I just, I didn’t know but -“ His ribs were all tied together with drying rawhide and he couldn’t breathe, it was making terrible wounded-animal sounds every attempt and he couldn’t stop it - “I wasn’t thinking about being careful, I didn’t care, and everything, everything - it all went, once I’d stolen all the water, when the ground couldn’t hold it and it just - and she was being born right then, she must have been, but because I’d - I didn’t h-have a soul, I didn’t even, I just -
“She needed her protection. But - but I’d stolen it all away, and I just -“ The words shattered sharp as glass, and he dropped his face down upon his knees and moaned. Atlcalcoē was dead, she was dead before she had ever had a chance to live and Lotlixya like to follow her, and it was all his fault.
Apparently lost for words, Comalpo didn’t respond.
“I came to ask if - we need to inter Atlcalcoē. Will you come and attend the rituals? You are as much her uncle as I.”
“No.”
“Really, do not think -“
“No.”
Comalpo drew in a breath, like he was going to tell him not to be rude, but released it again. Ah, so he did see after all. “Okay,” he said carefully.
He carried her in his arms to the cave. It was south of the village, the path there faint and ill-used.
Tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over. Comalpo fought to keep his voice steady.
A muffled howl - his eyes darted to the side to see Mizapinna fallen on his knees, covering his face with his hands, his father stooping down to pet his shoulders, try and soothe him. The barbs dug further into Comalpo’s heart.
The branch split with an angry shlink, revealing clean pale interior. Tliichpil’s arms had started burning quite a while ago. Good. Let them, let his muscles tear themselves entirely apart until he was nothing, was a pile of meat for the scavengers to drag away into their dens and devour.
He had fled to the edge of the fields, after Comalpo had left and he had heard him rouse the neighbours for Atlcalcoē’s interment. He had not been able to endure remaining still; all his bones were energy, something sick and blue-black prowling through the caverns of his arteries - it felt horrible, appeasing it even this much, giving in to that feeling of having-to-do.
Yet of course, everything he could do would be suspect, would be searched through and through with his evil. So it may as well be the wood, already destined for breaking, for agonizing consumption and re-purification on the scarlet hearth-fires.
Instinctively, his legs readjusted for the next blow - knees bent, so the force would be absorbed easily down into the earth, and shoulder-width apart, so that if the head missed it would only fly out harmlessly into space rather than into his calf. Just like his father had taught him years ago -
No. No - he narrowed his stance again - let it. Who cared if he was harmed?
The sun climbed above the rims of the trees, burning on his ears and shoulders. The pile of rough-hewn log sections dwindled; those of quarters, kindling-sticks, and useless curls grew. The burn in his arms shifted, moved, and curled itself up again in the cavities of his marrow.
And there was suddenly someone on the path. Her hair was long and loose, and her arms were slung about her as though she was cold even in this weather. He lowered the axe and watched her approach, slowly growing to recognizability. Zolpilquina’s assistant.
And he saw her face - lips tight, eyes downcast - and he knew.
The axe fell from his hand with a thud, and he ran. Blindly, desperately, off the path into the jungle, crashing through shrub and fern and vine, beating footsteps and panting breaths drowning out any call she might have made after him. Like maybe if she didn’t say it it would not be true, like maybe if he could flee far enough, fast enough he would find a world where things had gone differently, where he hadn’t killed his beloved sister as well. Punked logs crumbled as he scrambled over them; vines tangled around his ankles and tore.
He stumbled and fell into a bare rock outcropping, tearing brown gouges into its moss covering and red lines along his forearm, and threw himself away again, sobbing. He fled past nurse logs he did not recognize, across game trails and dry creek-beds. Branches whipped across his face, and debris tangled in his hair. He came upon a mother ground-deer and three fawns in a hollow - she looked up, alarmed, and he snarled at her stupid innocent face until they all bolted in terror.
This was what he was. This was what he would always be, death hanging a flint cape from his shoulderblades. Wherever he turned, it seemed, its edges swung and slashed. He was cruel and evil, down to the marrow. There was nothing he could touch that was not poisoned. There was nothing he could touch that was not hurt. Finally, pierced with stitches, he collapsed against the roots of a fig, wrenched his knife from its sheath and brought it down on his arm, heedless that the marks would be conspicuous, that they would all know. Monstrous, worthless, deserving of every ounce of pain the world could furnish and more beyond that, how dare he, how dare he still be here. How dare his
Eventually, his instincts took over and pried open his fingers, let the blade drop into the mould. A raspy sound of hatred tore from his mouth - no, no, he couldn’t stop now, it wasn’t enough, it would never be enough -
Never. Tliichpil buried his face in his arms and wished desperately - to Hualma and Olin both, to his father and mother’s spirits, to every other spirit that might be within earshot, with the entirety of his heart and the entirety of his mind - that he had never been born.
No one answered. Stubbornly, awfully, he continued to exist. His body continued to bleed hot tears, suck in gasping breaths.
The sky was clouded the colour of marble, in the patches that showed through the canopy.
A carpet of glossy leaves spread out around him. Tliichpil looked up. Ah, yes. Some of the trees in the jungle were best suited for use as wood, some harvested for bark, and some as food by their fruits and nuts and roots. But some were like the manchannell, the poisonwood, and useful for one thing only. Every bit of it was deadly - the leaves and the bark burned on the skin, and so did the sap. The fruit did the same to one’s insides. No birds nested in it, no animals made homes among its branches. Not even any other plants grew around it, for it dropped its leaves in such a thick carpet that they poisoned the land in a great circle around it, and only other manchannell saplings, sprouting from the dropped fruits, could withstand it.
They tasted sweet, apparently, although he had no idea who had found that out or how. He noticed many, small pale-green lumps poking out of the leaf-carpet, and more hanging heavy from the branches - no maggot would burrow through them, nor would the frugivorous mountain-dog and coati drag them off to eat themselves, so they remained on the ground a long time before rotting.
A strange calm settled over him, looking at that field of green against the shimmering water. Another of Olin’s works, just as he was, and the manchannell knew its place in the world. It didn’t scream or cry or beg to be redeemed, just gave poison, knowing it never would be.
Evil tree, evil him. It was all very appropriate. Fit for the poem that nobody was ever going to sing.
Plop.
He looked up. And a second noise followed the first, and another, and another - growing to a gentle pattering upon the leaves and on the surface of the water. Finally, the first rain of the season. Finally, Hualma had sent his water to renew the earth. To make it pure, and make it clean. Tliichpil smiled, and then laughed. What good was fear now? All would be well, before the end of the day. Lotlixya would be avenged. The village would be left with Comalpo to serve them righteously.
The rain was warm. It slicked down his hair and washed the blood from his arms, drawing it in soft fat drops into the water to swirl away and be lost.
Tradition held that when Hualma first created mankind, they were like all other animals, and voiceless. But Hualma had given to them the sapote tree, and the first father of men had eaten of its fruit and gained the ability to speak; this had been his first and greatest mercy to them.
He could not choose his doom. He could not choose his soul. He could not choose the harm he would bring down upon the village. For fate was fate, and always fruited. But he too had this sliver of mercy; this one single choice left to him.
He reached up a hand.
Whoever they were, they had been right: it was sweet.
Lotlixya they bore to the cave upon a litter, for her he could not carry by himself. Comalpo said again the things he had to say, watched her body - washed and dressed, her hair neatly braided again - be cast down.
People kept putting their hands on his shoulders, trying to offer comfort. He wasn’t even sad, anymore. Just tired. He wanted to curl up in his hammock and sleep for a year.
Mizapinna didn’t appear. Not that he had really expected it - cruel to demand a man attend his daughter’s and his wife’s funerals both within two days.
Tliichpil didn’t either.
After what felt like an eternity, the sympathy began to dry up, people going back to their own homes and their own work. He followed at the end of the straggling procession, not really remembering how he got back to the village, to their house, inside it.
Lotlixya’s pallets still lay beside the hearth. As did the cradle. He stared at them dumbly. So normal. Like she was just going to come back in from the garden and begin to work on the night meal.
He made himself turn away and went over to the entryway. And already dreaming, Comalpo re-hung his hammock, got in, and shut his eyes.
He was ultimately woken by the rain. It slammed hollowly onto the roof, hissed onto the streets. The leaves of the okoi bowed under the battering, making dancing shadows along the window’s edge.
“Where’s your stupid brother?” she asked. “He should be helping you too.”
Huh. She was right. He tried to think back to when he last had seen Tliichpil - not all last night, not at Lotlixya’s interment, nor at Atlcalcoë’s - no, no, right, he had asked for his presence and not received it. And after that - “I don’t know.”
Comalpo cursed and clutched at his surcingle as his ass stumbled for the third time. Probably this climb was to be useless anyway, and he was to have wasted a day with nothing at all to show for it. And nobody would thank him either, if his gamble came true. For as things were, they could say they had known it all along, that Comalpo was the one destined to remain to serve the clan and Tliichpil be lost. As things were, they would no longer be a game of chance unto everyone they loved - the rods had been thrown, and rolled, and settled.
It was inappropriate, unconscionably selfish to snatch up a roll and toss it again if one was displeased with the outcome. If Tliichpil still lived, could, and wished to reappear, he would. His feelings did not justify leaving behind his duties. Not worth showing all his weaknesses, crumbling apart like gypsum before the face of the whole village.
A branch whipped across his face, and he swatted it away with a snarl.
With one last heave of shoulders, they came up over the edge. He slipped off
The forest stretched out as a green knot-rug below the plateau, ruched up against its foot. The mist was still burning away looking like so many columns of smoke. A trogon called, the noise thin from this height, but thin like a blade-edge - it slashed open the grief that had been growing cystic in his throat. Suddenly, breathlessly, he was certain it was all worthless, that he would never find him. He was gone utterly; the jungle had devoured him just like behind their backs everyone whispered would be good.
The halter-rope slid out of his hand, and Comalpo dropped to his knees and wept. Hot tears slid between his fingers, plopped off his elbows onto his apron.
Most of the top of the plateau was covered in scrub-brushes growing so thickly that they could not be navigated mounted. Where the path widened out into a clearing paved with grass and rock-lichens there grew a bent tree, its branches rubbed smooth by years of ropes placed around them; Comalpo hitched his ass to one of the lower, firmer branches. Placidly, it lowered its head and began to graze.
He straightened his knife on his belt and looked up. Beyond this point all the paths were - well, they weren’t, were game trails at most and gaps between trees at least, and there were myriad places in which someone could hide and hunker down among the scrub and humus and fractured rocks. Nobody knew them all, and Tliichpil would know better than he anyway.
But he may as well start with the simplest.
It felt far more effort this time to ascend up the rock-face. The rocks were dewy-wet as he clambered up them, not dry the way they had been when they had made camp before. Chunks of moss and lichen, half-rotted dirt crumbled away under his palms and feet, fell into his eyes - had there always been this much stuff growing over the surface? There must have been. But before he had had a reason to look up, not to notice. Alone, nothing was there to distract him.
He climbed from the last cleft over onto the mounded ledge on his knees, crystals digging painfully into flesh, and knelt there trying to pant away the pain in his chest, compulsively brushing shreds of bark and stone grains out of his palms. When it didn’t ease, he rose anyway, and faced the starving mouth of the cave. Against the brightness of the pale-grey morning-illuminated dolostone, it might as well have been a hole into the void. A few of the stones from their so-many-months-ago firepit were still there, still stained black with char, but filled in with tumbled leaves and blown dust.
“Tliichpil?” he called hesitantly, leaning into the opening. “Are you in here?”
No answer. He hadn’t been expecting one anyway - why run away just to answer to the first person who calls you back? Comalpo ducked inside cautiously and waited until his eyes adjusted. The smell was different than it had been before, much more rank, although everything smelled different at the end of the dry season when there hadn’t been all that moisture to sop up and wash away scents. Like maybe some animal had dragged a kill in here, left the bones to rot and seep marrow out to curdle and turn. He swallowed hard, then inched forwards, praying nothing would suddenly crunch underfoot. “Hello?”
The back walls slowly began to come into relief as his eyes adjusted, the algae-slashes differentiating themselves, the mudstone sill again. No figures, no markings carved into the soft rock. Not a flicker of movement, save for a fly that buzzed past his face and out into the open air. The floor was bare and sere and empty, back to the furthest crevice.
He sighed. It had been foolish anyway.
The ass looked at him plaintively as he unhitched it and remounted, evidently hoping it had had more time to graze. I’m sorry, he thought. Sorry for dragging it all the way up there for naught.
“Comalpo?”
He looked up from the quern. He had put the ass back in its enclosure and realized that he ought to do something to make up for the unauthorized excursion - grief permitted some allowances but only so much, when there were still living siblings and cousins to care for.
But it was so hard to think. The spaces where Lotlixya and Atlcalcoë should have been were like a fog filling out his head. He kept on catching himself, thinking that she was still there, thinking of things he ought to do for her, say to her,
At least he didn’t have to think much while grinding. “What?”
Yaix was standing there, looking… vaguely uncertain? As though he feared anything he said would rub against Comalpo’s raw grief. “I -“ he began. “Um, we - well, come with me. You should see.” He beckoned.
Comalpo closed the lid of the grain-basket against dust and stood up. Yaix led him along between the houses and up to where the village-path led away. There was already a small group standing there - he spotted Lica and Chiinpe, along with Eztlicencuil, who he faintly recalled had departed days earlier for a period of distant snaring and furring.
He had one hand on the bridle of his ass, which Chiinpe was absently finger-nibbling. Its heavy surcingle stuck up behind her shoulder, and as Yaix and he approached both of them moved aside, revealing a travois unhitched and set down. His lips involuntarily parted as he caught a wave of the heavy, noxious scent of death. Surely Eztlicencuil would not have brought back carrion -
But the thing on the travois was a human body.
The face and lips had swollen to near-unrecognizability, and the clothes were grimed and speckled with debris. But he still knew that sloppy close-cut hair, the turquoise catfish slipping out of the neckline; knew it as closely as he knew his own self.
No.
This was not happening. It couldn’t be.
No.
None of them said anything to him. Everything was still, pinned through by that bolt of horror.
No, no, no. The universe had already taken away his sister and his niece - it couldn’t take his brother away too. It couldn’t. It - but the plea dissolved like salt under the unyielding report of his senses, burning bitter as it slipped away.
And Comalpo understood why they had brought him here. There was no mourning on any of their faces, because Tliichpil was well-nigh certainly the evil one and so who should grieve him? But Comalpo was still head of their family, and so still had authority over what should be done with Tliichpil’s body. And he knew he ought to say it be abandoned, rather than properly interred; he knew he ought not to break down in weeping, for to weep over evil would make him a pariah for his sympathy, worse than before when his and Tliichpil’s fates had still been in flux.
He knew he ought not to collapse keening into the dirt in front of their faces, clutching at his brother’s cold hands and face. It did not matter. The sorrow sleeted through him like the worst of the rainstorms, overruling all. It felt like someone had reached into his chest and wrenched his lungs out, in one stroke - and perhaps they had, one lung at least, one kidney, one arm, half of everything of himself gone in an instant and still motionless, still dead, no matter how he called his name, how he held him and begged and screamed.
I would have traded with you, brother. All of it. I would have taken up all your pain, all your hatred - I would have been the evil one, and gone down to Tlazocpalli singing, for nothing within it could be a worse agony than this - had fate not decreed otherwise. Had not decreed him the good one, the one that had a heart.
If only that were not so. For then he would not have to feel it breaking.