“You know very well we have not, old — ” But Songbird found herself pinned by Yiska’s gaze, and amended whatever she might’ve been about to call the older hex. “Spinner.”
“Be quiet, then, little ghost. Attend, for once. There is virtue in the past’s lesson, always, for — since all gods repeat themselves, and most Hataalii likewise — it may give us some idea what he plans to do next.”
The words of the story wove themselves out, echoing hexation-aided through bone and blood, in three languages at once. Exhausted, Yancey let her cold-burnt lids drift shut and saw vague shapes unspool behind them — squarish symbols wrought from contorted bodies, all fangs and feathers, tongues and bulging eyes. Ink-black, macaw-red writing scribed on whitewashed walls, so fresh it almost ran, while a steaming green jungle rose behind, and the unfamiliar din of insects.
Her place, she thought. Lady Ixchel’s dead world, the one she wants to swap ours for.
“Tollan was chief city of the Tolteca,” Grandma said, somehow not stumbling over the names, though they couldn’t’ve come any more easy to whatever she used for a tongue than to Yancey’s own. “A great nation which existed before the Mexica built their Empire, down where the sun meets the swamp. But their last king, Huemac, fell into evil ways, and was punished. It began when a Hataalii who called himself Toveyo appeared in front of the city, a beautiful man painted all over in green, and was invited inside.
“With sweet music and spells, Toveyo tempted Tollan’s people to dance in their marketplace, making the song he played swirl faster and faster until it finally drove them into such a madness they rushed out through the city’s gates, throwing themselves headlong into a canyon in the earth. As they fell, they bounced off the walls, breaking all their bones, and when they finally reached the bottom, their bodies turned to stone.
“Moments later, the mountains overlooking Tollan began to growl and belch flames, in which the city’s priests saw figures making terrible gestures. Surely, they thought, the gods must be angry — and when Huemac ordered an offering to appease them, Toveyo was the first one seized. But when the priests bent his body over the altar stone and opened up his chest, they found he had no heart at all. His veins were also dry and empty, sending no precious blood spilling onto the temple’s stones. Then a stench rose from the body, and though the priests and onlookers fled, an epidemic of foul wasting diseases followed.
“For choosing a man with neither the heart nor the blood that creatures such as She of the Ropes and Snares require as a sacrifice, Tollan was punished with crop-killing frosts and summer droughts, wild storms, floods. Huemac fled, leaving his illegitimate son in charge. Two armies of invaders were bought off with the last of the city’s riches before the northern nomads known as the Sons of the Dog finally descended, at which point the first two armies turned back, and joined forces with them. For three years, the people of Tollan held them off with only a company of old men, boys and women, but eventually, the walls were breached. Tollan fell.”
“So Toveyo got his will,” Songbird said, examining her sheathless fingernails, while Yancey levered herself into a sitting position, each bout of shivering slightly less frantic. “He tricked Tollan into insulting their own gods, and those gods destroyed them. A victory for our kind.”
Grandma shook her head. “No. For according to the Mexica, Toveyo was simply a face worn by the Smoking Mirror, Rainbow Lady’s Ixchel’s ‘brother’ — Night Wind Tezcatlipoca, Enemy of all, who loves to stir up chaos for its own sake: god of all Hataalii, all hexes. Who some say stands for nothing less than conflict as a means to change itself.”
Songbird bristled. “He is not my god.”
“Mine either,” Yancey chimed in, surprised to find herself agreeing. And might be Grandma would’ve struck them both down in her rebuttal, had they not been interrupted.
“I should . . . hope not, Missus Kloves,” said a new voice, hoarse and desert-dry. “For little as we see eye to eye in other ways — murderous revenge as . . . justice, for example — I’d never’ve took you for a . . . heathen idolater.”
There, by the butte’s foot, right where its shadow would’ve fallen in the day: that was where Sheriff Love’s widow stood barefoot, her weeds ripped, long yellow hair unbound and heavy with dirt. Hoisted in her arms, she carried a good-sized baby boy who looked as though he’d been through similar straits, but was managing to sleep it off. Yancey felt her heart go foolishly soft at the very sight of his lumpy, boneless weight, mouth slack around one pudgy thumb.
“It is you, isn’t it?” she asked, looking straight at Yancey, freckle-set brow furrowed. “I mean . . . haven’t seen you since that . . . awful day. At Bewelcome.”
When I blew your man’s brains out, right in front of you? Yes ma’am, I recall it well. That was me, and so’s this.
“How’d you get here, though, Missus Love, exactly?” she made herself say instead; polite, like they were taking tea. “Was it Reverend Rook sent you?”
Sophy Love shook her stately head, clutching her baby all the tighter. “No, one of that New York hex’s three — women; the Irish one, I believe. Tell the truth, I could barely understand her! But I knew she wished harm on Gabe and me, so I called on the Lord to aid us. And then . . .”
She narrowed her eyes, as though she couldn’t quite recall the specifics. But as she did, her son shifted in his slumber, gurgling — and beside her, Yancey felt Songbird suddenly stiffen and hiss, like a spooked cat. Felt something spike from her, and Grandma too: a pulling at the air, a pressure drop, as though before a storm. A hungry cry pitched almost too high to hear, so sharp it plucked even at her, and she wasn’t a hex at all; Yiska, too, hand falling automatically to her tomahawk’s grip.
They feel somebody, all of ’em, someone like them. Someone who could eat everything they have or be eaten, in turn. But . . . who?
That was when the baby — young Gabriel Love — jerked awake for good, seeking with barely focused gaze for a brace of rivals he couldn’t possibly spot, even at this distance, and sent up what seemed like the ghost of the same squalling, thin as fine-chopped bones. All of an instant, then, Yancey could almost see what they saw, plain as Songbird’s skin or Yiska’s nose. Plain as the flare ’round Grandma’s helmet-skull, lighting up her upturned bucket of a no-face, revealing her true nature to anyone.
“So sad,” Sophy Love said to herself, completely unaware; she looked almost drunk, to Yancey’s bar-bred eye — drunk on loss, on fatigue, on sorrow too long deferred, in favour of cold responsibility. “How I’ve hated you and prayed not to, for so long; foolish, really, for all the good it did me, either way. But now I see you again, you have my pity — to see any white woman so abandoned, fallen amongst savage witches.”
“Wouldn’t be so quick to insult them if I was you, ma’am,” Yancey replied. “These ladies are powerful. They might yet be the ones to save your son’s life.”
“Is that a threat?”
Yancey almost laughed, hearing Songbird’s mental speech yammering at her inner ear, at the same time — an endless reel of: Kill him, while we can, before he strikes at us! Kill her!
No, she thought. But that is.
&n
bsp; Yiska tsked, out loud. “You disappoint me,” she said — to Songbird, though Sophy Love no doubt heard it directed at her. “This is a chance we have, here . . . to do right even when doubted, to teach this bilagaana Book-babbler by example. Do not let your fear control you.”
Songbird hissed again. And Grandma, stirring in her seat with the groan of a mountain settling, told her: “She is right, little ghost. The salt-man’s wife knows no better.”
Sophy’s eyes went wide, for all the world as if she hadn’t really noticed Grandma sitting there, ’til part of the butte itself took on life; her whole body recoiled a step, grip tightening on poor Gabe ’til her knuckles whitened. “My good Jesus,” she said, with admirable calm. “You’re . . . that other demon.”