Chapter 3

  Buenos dias, mi hijo.

  Rays of light split darkness through slits along the windows in the wall. The pillow nestled Arturo’s head comfortably, and the blanket covering him was soft and well-stuffed with cotton. …a blanket and pillow? This wasn’t Arturo’s tent, where was he?

  The greeting from the Mother seemed to hang in his mind like she was waiting for a response. That was ridiculous, she never reacted to any responses. People talked about their daily greetings, some with annoyance and others with a religious fervor. No one ever talked about having a conversation with the woman. Woman? Was the god a woman? No… No, his thoughts were drifting. He was in a daze. His head was a cloud, and his concentration a wisp whisked in the wind.

  A clean shirt draped across his chest, and loose linens clung to his legs where they had made him sweat in his sleep. Familiar walls and decor comforted his gaze and pacified his worries. It all graced his body with comfort, and the home’s stucco and mud insulated a cool stillness from the angry heat of the summer sun. He was in his home. Alone, again. Arturo flexed his hands. They weren’t that painful, how odd. He typically tried to have a relaxed and carefree attitude, but he was far beyond that. Right now, he wouldn’t react if the Father himself strode through the door. He seemed to remember painting his tent, but that couldn’t be right.

  A hammer struck his chest, and his breathing seized and constricted his throat. Realization. Remembrance. The day before he punched a puma and it exploded.

  Memories rampaged in his mind. The injured sheep, the run through the grass, the standoff in the campsite… and the mauling. Arturo flung his blankets off him and clutched at his chest, phantom claws raking gaping canyons in his flesh. His chest heaved with panic and a whining echo deafened him. And his chest was hardly scratched at all. It was not the day after. Never mind it taking three days to reach the pueblo from the campsite, Arturo must have been asleep for weeks for those injuries to heal if he could have healed at all.

  He shouldn't have healed at all. He should be dead.

  The ache began in his hands then. Not the splitting and bursting wrench he’d felt at the end of his fight with the puma, nor some other haunting wound opened by tooth or claw. It was the familiar ache. A soft frustration cradled his heart along with it, a tightness he would not accept to be anger. Arturo could count on his quivering, useless fingers the times he’d woken without his first thought on the pain. It always popped up a few minutes into the day, resilient as he wished he could be. Yet, he was alive. To be resilient. How was he alive?

  Where was Barto?

  Arturo’s breath flowed free as he sat up in his bed and shambled over to the covered windows, tired limbs protesting, throbbing feet scolding. Thin, wooden bars stretched across small openings in the packed mud walls to block some of the sun and retain moisture in the room. It was possible to see through at the right angle, and Arturo crouched into a comfortable stance, as comfortable as he could be standing, to view the people mulling about outside. He brought his eyes up to the slits and pressed his chin forward to the wood to rest it there. Aromas of baking air and mud and pan dulce greeted his nose, a smell of home. By the Father’s good graces, Barto was walking right up to his door at that very moment looking very much the same grumpy fart as he always did. Arturo felt a fool at his worry over Barto, the man had to be immortal, or the tequila would have taken him long, long ago.

  Gnarled hands rocked against the door, and it swung in on worn wooden hinges, dust swept into the air. Arturo might be a good shepherd and a well-liked friend, but he could probably do better with cleaning his home. His parents’ home. Barto swung the door shut behind him and threw down a heavy, leather satchel on the table across the room. Head kept low, the grump grumbled to himself, unintelligible and low, the rasp of his voice an echo of the door sweeping the dust. Barto turned and met Arturo’s eyes then turned to open the satchel. The man froze. Like a child fearing the scolding of a fuming abuela, Barto turned with a slow horror.

  “Buenos di?as, Barto,” Arturo greeted him.

  “Chingada madre?!” The curse was muted by the thick walls, and the old man stumbled over his feet and fell to the ground, cursing further as he rubbed his back and stood again.

  “WHAT? What? What did I do?”

  “How in all of the Parents’ good green land and by every shameful whore in the Capital are you awake? I didn’t think you were hardly alive, puto!”

  Arturo glanced around and touched over his body and chest. “Barto, my chest is practically healed. It must have been at least a few weeks, right? No soy medico, pero… I didn’t see how bad it was, but it couldn’t…” Arturo studied Barto’s awestruck face. He prodded forward, “I thought Valeria or Olina were feeding me, or something.”

  “Three days, amigo.”

  A dog barked outside.

  “Que?”

  “Three. Days. Arturo,” the man strained out his words. The dog, scrappy and of medium build, barked again, and Barto cursed out at the mutt.

  Heart dropping into his stomach like a stone in a landslide, Arturo looked back down at his chest. Light, red scratches scabbed over a crisscrossed pattern all over his torso. “But, my chest, sen?or.” He lowered the blanket. Barto’s eyes swelled even further, and he swayed as if he might faint. Sweat dripped down peaks and spotted valleys in the old man’s forehead, but he held himself together.

  “I dragged you into town in the height of the night. Couldn’t have been earlier than the Parents’ hour,” Barto breathed out the words. Shaking arms and unsteady feet, he pointed at Arturo’s chest, outstretched finger shaking even more. “I couldn’t bring myself to look under the bandages. The blood. Where are the cuts, nin?o? Where’s the blood?”

  “I- I- I just woke-” Disbelief stole Arturo’s words, air stuck in his throat. “I just woke up, amigo. I haven’t seen anyone,” he pleaded. Eyes wide like staring down a monster, Barto was tense, face distrusting. Arturo pushed on, “I woke up. I got out of bed,” he took a deep breath to sink the panic shifting just beneath the surface, “And, I walked over to the window and saw you coming.” Arturo found some feigned confidence. “That is it.”

  “You killed that cat, too.”

  Events of his last waking moments, realizations of his miraculous healing, his unknown helper, hooked into his shoulders and drug them inward like a scorned child. “My hand did something. I didn’t mean to do it.”

  “You've been lying about having no brother? No sister? Would’ve been hard to miss another towering pendejo lumbering about this pueblo.”

  “A sibling?!” Rage took him. Barto knew not to speak of family. He knew and he did it and he did it when Arturo was already so vulnerable. Not even Valeria spoke of it. “My parents had me then died in a year. You people would’ve remembered another one of us crying in this home.” Flame and heat and screaming and pain, searing pain, inundated Arturo’s skin and muscle. Another of those phantom wounds. It passed. “I don’t have a sibling. And the only father I’ve known is a sour viejo,” he spat the last words.

  Barto’s eyes shrank in his skull, fearing then to disheartened. “This sour viejo drug you back to your home while you died. And he could do nothing.” Barto sighed. “Lo siento, Arturo. I’ve just never seen something like that, except…” Except from a Storm. The blessed twins of La Terra. The old man, back bent more than normal, turned to leave, and he waved an absent hand at the satchel on the table. “Some fruit and cafe?. There’s water in the cistern on the roof. Ministry’s been in the pueblo, distributing again.” He pulled open the door and stopped before he was in the full summer sun again. “I don’t know how you did it. But thank you for killing that beast. You saved our lives.”

  Arturo jerked his head, “Por su puesto.” He didn’t feel happy for killing that beast.

  Barto pursed his lips and nodded back, “I’ll find Valeria for you.”

  “Graci?as.”

  “Que? paso?? Arturo, you have to be more careful out there!” Valeria fretted over his every scratch and blemish, most he took with him before the confrontation with the puma, but his novi?a looked past those things. Love blinds, a curse and blessing.

  “I only fell through some brambles and old grass. The really tall stuff is sharp. The actual hurt was my ankle. That’s why Barto got me back here. Can’t walk, can’t shepherd.” Arturo brushed another of her prying hands away and looked her in her eyes with a flat stare. “Are you done? I’m ok, I promise. I carry worse pains with me than these anyway.” In truth, her touches were less than delicate and were hurting more than helping.

  “Fine, fine. I’m sorry I love you and care for you.” She spun and brushed his hands away now. “No, you don’t need my help. Big shepherd man can take care of himself.”

  “I can take care of myself, mi? amor, but I really appreciate it when you do it too,” he pleaded. Not a real plea, he knew how to get her back to her previous mood. The anger of this woman was fleeting most times, and the other times Arturo just closed himself off and withered the storm.

  Valeria twisted back around quickly and flung herself onto him. Dark hair, thick and so slightly frayed from the heat, and honey brown eyes washed over his pains, foreign and familiar. Knowledge of the true events of his injuries would only hurt her. So, his ankle was sprained. With his stumbling, stubborn, and strained legs, Arturo had to avoid a limp when he walked all the time. For now, he could embrace it.

  Valeria turned her nose up at the satchel. “Do you feel up to getting some food from Olina’s? The Ministry’s food isn’t the most appetizing.” Preserved chiles, fruits, and vegetables in jars packed with vinegar and dried spices clanked on the counter as Valeria shifted through the supplies the Ministry brought the pueblo. The government’s outreach was well-received out in the grasslands with food not always abundant, and water even less so. She uncovered dried beef caked with drier spices and a liberal layer of salt. There were a few fresh limes. She grabbed those. “Not a total disgrace.”

  The dried beef dusted the tabletop with its seasonings as Arturo lifted it and took a bite. He’d realized how hungry he’d been once Barto left, but he was trying to be polite and wait until his novi?a indicated she was ready to eat. “You know, when we’re married, with our own house, we’ll have to keep some preserved stuff.”

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  “We will eat fresh food.”

  “And in the winters? Or if there is drought?”

  “The Ministry will provide. The Parents will provide.”

  Arturo snorted and passed his hand over the jars of pickles with grandiosity, “They have provided, amo?r.”

  Valeria rolled her eyes at him, “They’ll have better stuff next time. Stop eating that and let Olina feed you.”

  Arturo shook his head, chewing the tough meat. No use in arguing this with her. He wrapped the beef back in its cloth and returned it to the satchel. He would eat it later. Salt was just such a tantalizing flavor with the metallic meat. Chapulines might be a better savory snack, but that was up for a debate with Miguel. He was rather portly, in mind and body, and he knew how to eat. Arturo loved him for it. They would eat their fill and more when they traveled to the Capital. A desire to bring that up with Valeria rose and died. She was not going to be attending this year and had made her disappointment in his travel plans known.

  Raucous laughter, goats and sheep bleating, the clopping and creaking of horse-drawn wagons, the hawks of vendedores, and the general bustle of his little, busy pueblo met Arturo’s senses as he stepped into the street. The locals knew each other here, but in this season, no one did. Most of this mass of sweating bodies were from out-of-town, from the neighboring pueblos with similar economies trading in wool and dye and pottery, or fishermen with their carts of dried and pickled wares. Hard to get fresh things out to the middle of the grasslands. Only the Capital got fresh saltwater fish from the port towns with their Storm-powered rails.

  Valeria dragged him through the crowd, head only coming to his lower chest, arm extended out behind her like a swordsman fighting those they passed for her position next to him. They had gotten used to the height difference, and the truth was no woman in the pueblo compared to Arturo’s height in any greater capacity. Hardly any man did either.

  A leather sombrero, his father’s, blocked his eyes from the sun. Arturo kept it tucked away most of the time. Best not to remind himself of his loss, but Barto brought it up today, so Arturo couldn’t find a reason not to wear it. His feet were bound with extra wool making steps only kiss him with agony. Valeria looked back at him and smiled. They rounded a corner and came to the pueblo center.

  People of all varieties populated this space. Their clothes didn’t speak of any great affluence, but their smiles and friends spoke of riches all the greater. Many women wore rough skirts and blouses of tan, woven wool, and the men wore rough shirts and pants. Arturo supposed the true variety was in the headwear. Bandanas soaked up sweat and wide hats blocked the sun. Their different colors and materials caught the light in dazzling ways. Whites and bright reds and vivid blues and greens. Select women wore stark white dresses with red frill and geometric designs of black and blue on the bottom of the skirt. They grabbed the large, open skirts and twisted their hips and shook the fabric in arcs like a bird’s wings flapping, then back and forth, and men and women cheered and danced with them to the guitar and trumpet blaring from the viejos seated on barrels behind the fun. From his height over most of them, these people seemed to make up a grassland of their own. Swaying one way, then the other. He was happy to notice these little things of so much life.

  Shouting overtook the buzz of the crowd, an awfully familiar voice. Barto was arguing with one of the visiting merchants. At least the day was gaining some normality back from the morning. Arturo leaned on Valeria, feigning his injured ankle like a true thespian, and they chuckled together at the exchange. The merchant’s nose was turned up at the angry old man. Argument dwindling, Barto’s rage building, the merchant spat at the ground and drove his mule on, bisecting the crowd. “Culo,” Barto called after the hifalutin merchant.

  Without turning, the man called back, “My, you are an observant one!” Barto, aghast, turned and limped with angry determination at the merchant, shaking his fist and screaming obscenities. The mule driver did not turn around.

  Sighing and shaking their heads, Arturo and Valeria turned their attention to the tavern on the north side of the center. The sun was over their heads now, the beating heat making it through even the thick leather of the sombrero. “Let’s get inside,” Arturo suggested. Valeria nodded.

  “Puta, you couldn’t hit the wall with the dice if you tried, ha!”

  “Olina! Frijoles y tortillas, por favor!”

  “Can we get some more beer?”

  “What are you even aiming at?”

  Men and women laughed and ate. Two men drunkenly shoved at each other over a game of throwing dice. People shouted their orders and cried out their joys. Arturo smiled and walked to the main bar.

  “Hola Arturo! Que? quieres toma?r?!” Olina asked him over her shoulder as she appeared to pour more drinks at once than Arturo had drank in his entire life. The tavern owner, and its barkeep, was a woman of large, rotund proportions. Fat and happy in her own way and louder than any man in the pueblo, Olina was the life of her bar and the people in it, and her food was second to none. “Ay, keep your cerveza on the coasters, pendejo!” She flung a sandal at a drunken man in the corner making himself a bit too comfortable for her taste. Her hospitality, however, was third in the pueblo… out of three. “Perdon, Arturo! Tell me what you want to drink now, or you get nothing!”

  “Just some cafe? and whatever is freshest to eat, por favor. Before you threaten to starve me too,” he smirked at the barkeep. Valeria said she wanted the same. The crowd shouted and blustered and drank much to the annoyance of passersby on the street outside. An old man howled an older hymn, more of a dying sheep than a professional singer, but his pickings with the guitar were passable. Empty glasses of mezcal and spent limes paid for by the serenaded crowd littered the unoccupied stool beside him all the same. Quite early in the day to be drinking such spirits. As Olina moved to the kitchen, Arturo hailed her with another order, “Some mezcal, too! Reposado!” Olina flicked her hand in the air in acknowledgement. Quite early wasn’t too early.

  “You really shouldn’t after getting hurt like that,” Valeria hissed. She had no idea. She continued, “Better be good stuff, at least.” Venom could have dripped from her lips with that tone and look she gave him.

  “It will heal any weakness left in me.” That’s what Barto always said. “Olina only serves the very best.” Not quite true, but she never served the very worst. Clanging and steam burst through the kitchen door, and Olina followed, a bull bucking and surging in a fury, to throw plates in front of Valeria and Arturo. A carafe of cafe? followed with a clink of a short glass and the splash of the strong spirit to cure Arturo. He took a deep breath of the food. “Que? rico, Olina.”

  “Muchas graci?as,” Valeria added, sweet as sugar cane now.

  Enfrijoladas graced Arturo’s eyes, mouth, and stomach; a plate piled with tortillas softened in beef tallow with garlic and dipped and drowned in a thick sauce of frijoles. Olina liked to add eggs dropped into the tallow and fried until the whites were crisp along with a hot salsa roja, hellish in its hate of whoever deigned to eat such an unassuming creation. Arturo skipped breaths to fit more food in his mouth. He washed each bite down with the sweetened cafe?, and strength flowed back into him. When he was done, he sucked a lime and knocked down the mezcal.

  Cured.

  Coins clinked onto worn wood, wet with the splash and stains of drunk men and women and adolescents too stubborn or impatient to wait for a riper age to drink these drinks. Arturo took a deep breath of the stuffy tavern. Tobacco smoke had begun to fill the air with its dankness and musk, but he never fell into that vice. He was more for strong drinks and good food. Smoke was a nostalgic scent, regardless of the horrors that plagued him when it clawed its way down his throat. Arturo’s father was a smoker. So, he liked it. They moved out of the tavern and back into the street, stomachs full of Olina’s cooking.

  The crowd stilled outside.

  Valeria froze midstep.

  Arturo gasped.

  “Mis hijos.”

  The Father spoke to the crowd. Likely to the whole of La Terra. Every man, woman, and child in the world froze and listened to his words. Only the men of the Ministry in hardened leather armor and its women in their white linen continued to move. They passed along bread and pickles and cheeses to people who took these things absently. The merchants were silent by their carts with all their bounty. The voice continued, not of the heart like the Mother, but of the mind.

  “A Greatstorm is born.”

  The voice was a thousand boulders cast down a mountain, it was a creek meandering through the chill peaks of La Valle de Las Tormentas.

  “Will you stay my hand?”

  The people of the world murmured, “...no.”

  “After we built the pyramids, Demons rose to take this world and its people. Brothers of the same faces, sisters of the same bodies.”

  It was a cool breeze on a moonlit night, and it was the strike of lightning burning flesh and killing men.

  “Your Mother and Father gave you Storms. The twins. The bonds. And we cast away the abominations of our blessing.”

  An image formed in Arturo’s mind. He closed his eyes, but it remained there in the dark behind his eyelids.

  “We rid you of these demons, these destroyers. In our name.”

  Two babes cried in unison, arms stretched at the same angles, feet kicking in identical motion. Twins were a blessing, two children born so close, yet so distinct. The Storms, lightning and then thunder. A Bolt and their Thunderhead. But not a Greatstorm. Every year, one was born. Babies with the same face, the same body, identical in every way. Arturo’s skin crawled. And yet… This image was haunting him. Not the Greatstorm itself, but its fate. He closed his eyes harder, rubbed at them, shook his head. The vision remained unmoving. The crowd was unseeing for they saw this. The execution.

  “I ask again. Shall any of my children stay my hand?”

  How could they? A living god speaks into their minds and eyes.

  “Then, by our guidance, may La Terra del Sol and her people find peace another year.”

  The babes lifted into the air off a pedestal of rock, no swaddle to warm them. Black walls, smooth and glossy and reflecting, showed warping lights and the babies’ backs as they wriggled at an invisible force. Arturo didn’t want to see this. Someone in the crowd cheered. He felt a stab at his heart for the loss of innocence, for a hatred of the cheers, for the… awareness… that seemed to notice him.

  A force wrenched the babies back to the pedestal and dashed their heads upon the rock. Red and black walls, smooth and glossy and dripping. Arturo could see nothing else.

  “Les amamos, mis hijos. May the Mother’s farewell warm you tonight.”

  The voice faded, but the awareness stuck with Arturo a moment longer. He glanced around to not draw attention to himself, heart beating a wild rhythm in harmony with his fear, then it faded too. The people in the crowd erupted in cheers. They laughed and blew hard into their trumpets and went on about their business, as quick as the babes had died, smiling at the Ministry officials here to supply the pueblo. Arturo was nauseous. Insects buzzed about the swarming people, and the Ministry waved and passed their food. They told passersby of new accommodations in the Capital, of the news of La Terra, of fresh tariffs on certain luxury items. Purple dye was receiving an increased tax this year. Most of the people sighed and moved on, content with the supplies and news. People here lived content lives. Those babes had no lives to live. Valeria huffed at the news of the tariff. Her family’s business was in dyeing wool, and it seemed their most valuable product wasn’t going to sell too well this year.

  Trying to ignore his disgust, Arturo brushed Valeria’s hair and tried to console her. “Esta bien, mi amor. I can try to find some extra work in the Capital this time. Get some extra money,” he cooed at her as she turned from the helping hand of the government in their pueblo. The Ministry was well liked, to be sure, but everyone had some problems now and then. Valeria should recognize that.

  She looked up at him, a fresh tear in her eye, “Si?.” Her family needed the medicine for her sick abuela this year. Maybe they wouldn’t get it.

  Arturo said goodbye to his novia, clutching her close and telling her it would be ok. His wages could be stretched further, he could spend less in the Capital. Her mood was not improved by that suggestion, like she was souring on the idea of him leaving her for weeks. Pain relief and comfort were worth far more than anything he’d buy at the Capital; a fact Valeria should understand very well by now. She would have to be ok with it.

  Grunts and low curses held a call and answer sing along with creaking wood during Arturo’s attempt to get undressed and into bed. It hurt no more than normal. Pink scars stood where the puma savaged him three days prior. Just this morning they were still scratched and scabbed, but he hadn’t noticed the new change until now, hadn’t wanted to.

  An explosion of wind and sound tore the roof off his home, a rain of blood falling through the opening now. Teeth fell in with the warm splatter. Eyes. They tapped on the wood, thumped, and squelched on the hard-packed mud floor of his home. This was easier to watch than the execution. What had done this?

  He blinked his eyes, and his room was dry, roof intact. Arturo’s hand throbbed. It was covered in blood, painted red, screaming at him. “Que? pasa,” he asked himself. He wiped his hand on the sheets, but the blood grew thicker on his skin, wanted to stay with him, cling to him; and the sheets came away dry. That awareness caught him again. Strong. Solid. Steel. A sword pushed through his throat. Ears popping, sound rushing back into his own consciousness, Arturo jolted in his bed. The phantom eyes fled. Everything returned to normal, and his eyes drifted close. He hoped that ghost would not find him in his dreams.

  Buenas noches, mi hijo.