I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Sixteen

The vision broke.

"So that was how we got our world and a sibling who wanted us dead," said Chal, her head resting on the back of the couch. I risked a glance at Tezcat. He had procured a half-bound knife handle and taken on the task of finishing it. He wasn't looking at anyone.

Emma's limbs maintained their knotted arrangement. "You said she's alive. You said she knows we're here, and they said she found a village today." She tipped her chin at the gods on the opposite couch.

"I do wish it ended there. All that plus a few thousand years of Huitz chasing the Centzon Huītznāuhtin across the sky brings us to a hundred and three years ago."

I sat up straighter. "That was right before Fuego."

"Three years before. We didn't know it, but Coyol wasn't dead."

"That was one hell of a spell," muttered Tezcat. He threw the knife handle on a side table and leaned back.

"Kept alive by a spell, even with her body cut to pieces." Chal pulled her head off the couch and drew her hair over her shoulder. "We didn't know it, but she was alive and gaining strength—and that, not stubbornness, was why the Centzon Huītznāuhtin kept fighting. Every time they injured Huitz, they collected his blood, and any life essence spilled by a god or a human is power. It's why sacrifices made us so powerful."

"People made sacrifices to you?" said Emma, aghast. "Like, human ones?"

Chal gave a tired smile. "We can't control what humans do. The deaths gave us power, and we had to use that before it burned us. They liked the rivers and rain that resulted, so they kept on sacrificing."

"Until they were decimated," growled Tlaloc. "By the visitors."

"Quet's still ripped up about that," said Tezcat. He tried to smirk, but something hurting showed up instead. He let both fade. "Especially now that it's happened again. He still protected their descendents."

"Anyway," said Chal. "The Centzon Huītznāuhtin gave everything they gathered to Coyol. She regained strength, then a hundred and three years ago, a consciousness. That was both luck and timing: we have two calendars that intersect once every fifty-two years, and that intersection is a moment of immense power for all of us. On top of the gathered strength, that gave Coyol a moment in her own mind. She didn't have much time, and she didn't have a working body, so she sent her spellcaster to find a god named Chalchiuhtotolin. The god of disease. Also... of turkeys."

I set down my mug as my stomach turned over.

"She gave him a task," said Chal. "To make something that would let her harvest enough life force to get her body back, while cutting off that same source for us. Because it's not just blood or life returning to the earth that gives us strength. It's also belief. And there's no belief or death if there are no people. So the world burned. The Tlachinolli is a magic that acts like a disease. It destroys its victims and draws on their power to propagate itself. It was Coyol's idea, and Toto made it happen. The spellcaster then tapped into the excess life force from the deaths and channelled it all back to Coyol, and she got her body and full consciousness back."

I didn't know who to hate most now: Coyol, the spellcaster, or Chalchiuhtotolin—Toto—the turkey and disease god. Coyol was clearly the driving force behind all this, but I had a bone to pick with the turkey.

"Why fire?" said Jem.

"Because fire wipes out the sun." Chal gestured to the windows behind Tlaloc. "Tlalocan is a garden, so it's dying like the rest of the world. She is, literally and figuratively, trying to smoke us out."