I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Fourteen

The last thing I saw was a snap of fingers from all five gods.

I found myself in a house like the ones from my visions in the fire-cave. White walls boxed me in beneath a tightly thatched roof. The space was barren: a bench beneath a solitary window was the extent of its furnishing. I looked around again and was startled to find two children in the room. Had I missed them before? Or had the vision changed?

One child was undoubtedly the dark god, sitting cross-legged in a corner, playing with a clay doll. Tezcat? Tezcat. He looked scarcely older than Miguel. The other child was a girl, maybe ten or eleven, kneeling on the bench with her elbows on the windowsill. It took me a long, shocked look to identify the family features that dotted her face. Those aside, she looked nothing like her siblings. Where their skin was terra-cotta, hers was honey-pale, and her hair was a silken white that flowed over her shoulders like water. Only her eyes were the same: black and long-lashed. They were fixed longingly on whoever was laughing outside.

Why was I here, being shown this? It felt like an intrusion: a peek at a past I had no right to see. An invasion of privacy. I sensed somehow that leaving was an option: I could wrest myself out of this vision if I wanted to. But foreboding hung thick in the air and I couldn't just leave the children to whatever was coming. The least I could do for them was be present for whatever I was about to be shown. Even if I was helpless to stop it.

Neither child so much as glanced at me as I joined the girl at the window. Three young boys rolled and tumbled in the grass outside. Quet, the smallest of the three, was an adorable child. His hair was shoulder-length and untied, and the feathers in it had the flyaway look of a nestling bird's down. The other two boys had their heads shaved. One was the now-giant man, Tlaloc, stocky and somber even at the age of maybe eight. A year or so older was one I struggled to identify until the sunlight caught the golden splash in the bracelet he was wearing. Nine-year-old Xipe had normal skin. I wondered where the gold had come from.

Quet was directing what looked like a war effort with the charisma and winning grin of a natural-born leader. It wasn't bad for a six-year-old. Xipe followed orders dutifully. Tlaloc was clearly humouring his little brother. If Quet was here, though, Xolotl should be, too. I scanned the scene and eventually found him, another small thing sitting almost invisible against the trunk of a shade tree. He was making friends with a Xolo puppy.

A butterfly danced past. The girl in the house perked up and reached out. Something flashed in the window: a wall of golden threads, sinister and electric. The girl yanked her hand back and clutched it to her chest. The butterfly fell dead.

"Coyolxāuhqui," rumbled a voice behind us. My body froze, and young Tezcat sank into the corner and held still like a mouse in a hawk's gaze. A presence entered the room.

I fumbled back against the wall. The woman was gargantuan. Like grown-up Tlaloc in female form, she had thick, strong arms, a full chest, and legs that looked like tree trunks next to her children. The front part of her hair was braided and looped into hornlike twists on either side of her forehead. Mother earth, my mind told me. She was the earth goddess. The first deity ever made by the original being, Ōmeteōtl.

And her skirt. The only article of clothing she wore, it was made of living, slowly twisting snakes.

There was something very, very off about her. I tried to pin it down, in her eyes, in her face, but I could find nothing else to back up the feeling.

Her voice was thunder, soft but menacing. "Step away from the window."

The girl quailed. Something gave her courage, though, and she straightened her back. A potent mix of terror and deep, gut-wrenching longing dampened her eyes. "Mama, please. Just once? I want to go outside."