The Crocodile God

Part 16.

For a little while, the crowd's nervous shuffling settles into quiet resignation. In the dim light, the whale-goddess seems like any other young woman: Her bright blue sundress and soft leather sandals are not unusual among everyone else's school-clothes, and work aprons, and suits.

Amidst the chaos of the new arrival, Haik brushes past her shoulder and startles Mirasol--he's so big and yet so quiet when he wants to be.

Hadassah's hand tightens on Mirasol's in disapproval. "She's not walking right," she whispers. "Did the officers beat her up?"

"She's been like this for a while," Itak tells them, hunting for a patch of wall they can lean against. "She and Mom got mugged when we were little."

"Mama got shot by the Spaniard when she was carrying me, because he was afraid that I was a god," the whale-goddess says, to her siblings' frantic looks. "Then Papa turned into a crocodile and ate him--"

"No, Ate, that wasn't real," Banog tells her. "Remember? The doctor said it was just some weird dreams from the anesthetic."

"Oh." But she's only disappointed, as if she was playing in a sandbox and ran into some finicky adult rule that she didn't realize was there. "Well, I guess it was. But I'm okay now!"

"No, wait--"

AY, the Turtle laughs. YOU CAN'T REWIND THINGS, CAN YOU, MIJO?

No, Banog responds. They didn't see her too well the first time, but they're still on edge.

The world does not freeze this time; but a bleary mist softens all the edges, like Mirasol's just woken up.

"Ay, now they think she's crazy." Lola laughs in sympathy. Her scales scrape along as she shuffles around people, like an arthritic human grandmother. "Maybe you should have let her stay a goddess, Totoy."

"But Papa doesn't have a last name, Ina," Banog retorts. "We're lucky as hell that Hadassah thinks he's depressed as fuck, because he is. All we had to do was nudge her along. But people can't get nudged to accept a goddess showing up in their jail cell--not anymore. They won't fucking listen to it. It's too much for their heads now."

"It's not too much for me," Mirasol offers.

BUT YOU ARE VERY OPEN, SIRENITA, the Turtle's voice comes in. HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOUR HUSBAND CAME BACK? YOU'VE TRAVELED SO FAR IN THE SPIRIT WORLD; EVEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE BY NOW. ALL THAT LAND AND FIRE--ONE ALWAYS GIVES THE OTHER MORE FUEL, AY?

What a strange way of saying it, Mirasol thinks. "How do fire and land give each other fuel? Fire eats things and it only leaves little bits of them."

Lola's laugh rattles in her chest. "Ay, Neneng. That's just when it gets out of control. You like to think modern society controls everything, that you have tamed the world with technology and medicine and science. But nature is quite stubborn. You learned how to work with fire--but you can't control it, not completely. You can't stop the big fires eating. Not where lightning hits, or where sparks land, or when volcanoes erupt. You can't even control when a pot cools down, or when the lye's turned to soap. Perhaps you'll learn in the next thousand or so years, but until then? You will remember that you are creatures with soft skin, and only in the middle. Not big enough to dominate, but not small enough to be content. Haik loves you, he protects you from the water-demons, but he was born a man and he's used to that shape, as tree-gods are used to being trees. So even Haik will die if something else is more determined than him--he just knows the way back to life now."

Lola laughs, and the demigods' eyes flicker to her.

Itak--however she tries to hide it--shifts closer to Mirasol. "Ina, don't scare her."