I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Nine

The cave walls lit up in sheets of breathtaking golden flame that made a Grillo Negro bonfire look like candles. Threads of light crawled inwards through the disk beneath our feet. When they reached me, my vision transformed.

Suddenly, the flames were close, but there was no heat. Just a great, all-encompassing warmth, that wrapped me up and made me feel more at home than my parents' own tent did. Around me, images formed. I was in a city that I somehow knew was a city, in a market square bustling with hundreds upon hundreds of people. They brushed past me like I didn't exist. Each was tall and terra-cotta-skinned, with straight, black hair. Their clothes gleamed white in the sun, or drew my gaze with all the colours of a flock of bright tropical birds. I looked down to find my jacket and snowpants replaced by the same. I was one of them. I belonged.

I lifted my gaze to the pyramids that dominated the skyline. The largest, Huēyi Teōcalli, had two shrines on top: one red, one blue. They trailed faint plumes of smoke from sacred fires. Tenochtitlan, whispered a voice in my head. You're in the city of the Mexica. And I somehow knew what those words meant.

A pair of sweeping stone staircases commanded the big temple's front. Carved snakes' heads at the lower ends of their balustrades snarled at another monument. This one was a low spire over a layered base. A massive, round stone was mounted on it, facing the temple. It was carved with a dismembered woman. I saw the story the moment I laid eyes on it. An eldest daughter grew suspicious of her mother's new pregnancy and conspired to kill her. She rallied an army of her four hundred older brothers for the attack. Her mother fled. She could not flee fast enough, though, and her children caught up and beheaded her. The baby she was carrying leaped from her and became a grown man in an instant. A warrior.

The man faced his oldest sister and did to her what she had done to their mother. He cut apart her body and threw it down the mountain, then chased the four hundred brothers as they scattered, leaderless. As they ran, they glowed. The man was the sun; the sister, the moon. Her brothers were the stars. Each day they battled back and forth, one side gaining ground in the nighttime, only to be beaten back at dawn.

The scene swirled, and I found myself among houses with thatched roofs and white walls, backed by trees so lush they looked painted. Canals crisscrossed the land ahead, where square-ended canoes glided between gardens that seemed to float. There was water everywhere. Women in the village wove baskets and worked on looms, and a man walked by with a bundle of firewood. I flinched as a turkey gobbled. There were two in a pen behind a house.

Another swirl. This time I recognized the scene, the Spanish and the Mexica standing face to face, negotiating, then fighting. Then I was back in the village, and something was wrong. Wailing drifted down the empty streets. I started to run. The man staggered towards me, his skin riddled with red dots. The women were gone. The turkeys wouldn't stop. A house, its whole family wreathed in sickness. A house with a body. An empty house. The turkeys grew louder and louder, and I could see flames again. The sound blurred back into the deep rush of the fire-cave. 

I came out of the vision with a stagger, everything I had just seen scrambling my mind in an explosion of light and colour and emotion and meaning. I felt wrung in a thousand different directions. Jem stood beside me with a look of wonder on his face. Grifo barked and barked at the flames, his tail flailing. Was he seeing things, too? Did he have Mexica dogs in his ancestry? Still missing one friend, I turned to look for Emma.

She stood at the center of the room with her arms out to the sides, her head up and her eyes nearly closed. The wind that churned the cavern centered on her, but her curls barely swayed. A shimmering robe had materialized over her clothing. It was not a physical thing, but it was somehow still present, like the waterfall of jewelry that had mantled her turquoise pendant. Everything about her glowed.