I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Seventeen

This all made too much sense for me to even want to believe it. Emma, found alone in the desert at two years old, playing with a coywolf pup. Wearing nothing but a diaper-cloth and a gold pendant around her neck. Without a human track for miles around. How could the gods have known all that, or made it all up? And then there was her weird familiarity with them, and the incident in the fire-cave...

A memory spell would explain my visions in that cave, and why Jem and I had started speaking Nahuatl without a second thought after it. The gods' definition of "memory" must be generational. Ancestral, even. A memory spell would not explain why Emma had exited that cave as amnesic about the gods as she'd been when she entered it. It had only given her back her magic, and now I doubted even that. Emma had shown behaviours only explicable by magic since she was a tiny child.

Emma was a goddess. Gods help me. A goddess.

But ice? But her talent had always been with plants and animals. Even wood and stone. Never ice.

Emma was too stunned to reply, so I reached out and gave her my other hand to grip. She availed herself. Jem had somehow maintained his composure, and he wasn't satisfied with the bigger picture yet. I was deeply, truly glad one of us could be rational right now.

"So how do things stand now?" he said.

"We've been picking off her army and looking for Itztia and new villages," said Chal. "And Coyol has been looking for us. We suspect she will want to try a big attack before the next calendar intersection, rather than risk taking us on when the scales are not tipped so heavily in her favour. But that is only if she can find us."

"So you're hiding."

Nobody flinched.

"Yes," said Chal. I had to admire her for how calmly she was taking this interrogation. "Coyol wants us dead, and we cannot currently face her and her whole army. She is the kind of leader who will sacrifice every ally she has before letting the enemy touch her, so our best shot at victory is to exhaust that buffer first."

"And then have a village to back you when the big attack comes?"

"Yes."

"Will that village be safe?"

"Safer than it would be without us." One of Chal's eyebrows lifted ever so slightly.

I scraped back through my memory, past the painful slog of the gods' childhood, to whatever we'd been talking about before they snapped their fingers. Ah. I could see the exact moment Jem too remembered the three gods trudging back in here, telling us they had warded Grillo Negro, but that Coyol had found another village. How many villages had they protected like ours? How many of those had Coyol found? Xochi had said they were down to one again.

How safe was Grillo Negro, really? Even with the gods' help?

"And how do we play into that?" said Jem, gesturing to himself, Emma and I.

Before Chal could answer, the front door clicked. Golden-god jumped up and returned with Xolotl and another god I knew must be Huitz. He was short, barely up to Xolotl's shoulder, and very muscular. He made up for the height difference with a headdress of green feathers on a helmet shaped like a hummingbird's head. He pulled this off and dropped it on Tezcat, who magicked it to a free seat. Huitz grinned. He had a contagious grin. Beneath the helmet, his hair was shoulder-length, with the front half tied up in a topknot like someone had stuck a little column to his head.

"How bad were they today?" said Chal.

"About usual." Huitz had far too much energy for someone who'd just spent the day chasing stars. He plopped down on a couch with a bounce that nearly spilled Chal's tea.

She set her mug aside. "Xol, you got the matzin?"

Xolotl was still in the doorway, fiddling with something tied to his belt. He came up with a large, peanut-shaped gourd, tossed it to Tlaloc, and took the spot Chal scooched over to make for him. The other gods eyed the gourd hungrily. Tlaloc flicked a finger, and a table, six mugs and a jar appeared in front of him. What he poured into each looked like water to me, but he handled it like every drop was precious.

The mugs were distributed, and the jar capped and marked with a Q and a dire "Do not touch or—" label followed by several glyphs I didn't understand. Tezcat downed his drink, but most of his siblings cradled theirs like hot tea on a cold day. Emma sniffed hers suspiciously. Tlaloc capped the gourd and tossed it to Huitz. What was left, it seemed, went to the sun god who spent his days fighting Centzon Huītznāuhtin. But what was it?

Does this work? said a voice in my head. I nearly dropped my tea mug. Don't make it obvious, said the voice. It was Tezcat. In the physical world, he was petting Tochtli, but his voice in my head continued, This one's telling me Xol didn't let you see what he does for a living.

I recalled my encounter with Tochtli, cut short by Xolotl calling the dog. I tentatively tried a reply. He didn't.

Figures. The humans thought he was a monster for it. Pissed Quet off to no end.

Tezcat took the dog's ears in his hands, and images flicked to life in my head. He was transmitting what Tochtli showed him. It was the long cave and golden torchlight again. The tunnel went on and on, then finally opened into a broad, grey beach. Ahead was the river. A line of battered wooden canoes with chiseled ends lined its near shore, a single paddle resting in each of them.

The dog's head turned. On the bank behind her was a flock of confused, frightened people. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the one moving among them with a golden torch held aloft was Xolotl. His Xolo cap had spread to form an entire dog head, replacing his own. He moved with a hunch and a limping shuffle far removed from his light gait in human form.

Xolotl comforted some people, talked quietly to others, and guided them all to the boats. Each person got a canoe. Some pushed off immediately and were lost from sight on the water. Others fretted before rallying the courage to begin paddling. At the shore, still others froze in their boats, their hands pale. Xolotl went to each of these, talking to them until they calmed and followed the rest across the water.

I caught the flicker of movement on the last one. Just before the person's canoe left the sand, Xolotl plucked something from them: a shimmer of silver essence that he slipped into the gourd at his hip. When the canoe was out of sight, the torch went out, replaced by a small flame in Xolotl's cupped hand. He tapped his leg for his dogs, and they set out together back up the tunnel.

He guides the dead to Mictlan. It was Tezcat again.

The faces of the people remained in my memory, etched and ghostly. Were they from the village that burned today?

Yes.

What was the silver stuff?

Tezcat picked up his mug and extracted a last drop from it. The dead lose most of their life essence when they die, but a bit clings to them until Mictlan wears it off. Xol collects that. Coyol doesn't know.

Yet.

We try not to think about that.

Um...

Tezcat.

Thanks. Tezcat? When's the next calendar cycle? The fifty-two years?

He gave me a tight smile. Why do you think we needed to find people? It's been a hundred and three years. And eight of your months if you want to be specific. Do the math.