Chapter 10

  Aquiles gasped for air and shot out of bed with a depraved and cruel pounding in his ears and behind his eyes, tearing him apart from each joint, each breath a monument to his body's will to live for he did not wish to take another. It was pain. Like he’d never felt before. Unintelligible whispers filled his ears, and a screaming rush of wind battered the inside of his skull, pulling the moisture from his eyes and strangling a scream in his throat. He stood next to his bed, bent over at the hip, with his hands clutching at his chest and face and eyes. Vomit forced its way out of his constricted throat and through his nose, bile burning and boiling in his chest. His body revolted against his world, and he whimpered. The assault drove the air from his lungs, and he whimpered.

  Then, it just stopped.

  No pain or left-over feelings or anything was left. It was an instant relief. The taste of his stomach’s contents still soured in his mouth, but the agony pulling them there was gone. He wasn’t even out of breath. Aquiles had never felt anything like whatever had just happened. Slowly, he checked his ears and around his scalp, worried his hands would come away sticky with blood from some unseen attack. The last remnant of the onslaught was some sweat on his brow and vomit on his floor. Acrid, acid air. Aquiles had to stop himself from throwing up at the smell.

  “Que paso?…” he muttered to himself, voice hoarse. The candle burned on the night table as always. Boots and robes were placed carefully for the morning, again, as always. Except… No feeling was left over from when he woke. No pain racked his bones and strangled him. But, most unsettlingly, no words echoed in his skull. Not mindless screaming nor wordless pleading.

  Nor the engrained chime of the Mother greeting one of her children.

  Aquiles’ breath caught in his throat, a wordless scream twisting his face, horrified and confused. His heart pounded in his chest, every beat resonated in his body, the toll of a bell like a warning. Aquiles flung about himself, hands slicing in the air, an attempt to show her he was awake. Where was she? He collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the vomit on the floor, and he reached out to the Ministry across the city. He gasped and pounded the dirt beneath him.

  This wasn’t possible. Never in Guidance nor myth nor legend was this a remote possibility. The Mother always greeted her children in the morning and dismissed them to sleep at night. Most took it for granted, even Aquiles, the literal voice of a god in his head each morning, and he took it for granted, not knowing or caring what the world might be without it. Silent sobs shook his body, and he slapped the palms of his hands into his temples.

  “Please, please, please, please, please!” Beating his hands to his head in that rhythm.

  Not even those identical twins, abominations of nature and heretics in nurture, damned by the Parents to spend their lives living with a doppelganger however short those lives may be, never receiving the unconditional love the Parents have for each of their unique children, could deserve a horror such as silence in their first waking moments. Aquiles would rather his own brains dashed on a rock like those babes.

  Was it possible this curse was a symptom of speaking with the Father in his new duties? A secret kept by that old puta Socorra to mess with him? Protect him? Aquiles wiped his eyes and roused himself.

  He hoped with everything in him the Mother would be there in the morning. He hoped the Father’s apparent anger with him had not seeped into the Mother’s mind. Aquiles assumed the two spoke often, but was one god speaking to another? Surely, they didn’t chit chat like he and Emilia transcribing their Guidance for a mass.

  “Que mierda. The mass,” he hissed to himself. Pilgrims came to the Capital to praise the Parents and follow in their guidance. And the monk leading them wasn’t even receiving the basest of love all the people of La Terra experience in their spiritual connection with the Parents. How could he be expected to address that roomful as damned heretic mongrel unworthy of the Mother’s greetings? Aquiles would have to tell Socorra. Could he?

  The arcs were becoming easier to manifest. What if this was some rare and cruel punishment enacted on those using the blessings not offered them? Aquiles checked and, indeed, felt the pop of an arc between his fingers. He hadn’t done anything like that first day sparring with Emiliano. He wasn’t sure if he was even entirely responsible for that. Aquiles grabbed at the warring parts of his mind and submitted them. Pulled them together. He looked at those parts of himself. He had a duty to the pilgrims and a reputation to uphold. He was better than this.

  And so, Aquiles cleaned and dressed himself, eyes swollen red with the morning’s tears, and pulled open his door to Young Ones lowering their heads in deference, as always.

  ***

  Arturo’s eyes creaked open, his head pounding, arms and legs stiff and stubborn and pained. It was no pain of hangover or of sickness contracted from the Capital. Nothing of his travels or irregular amounts of walking. It was familiar. By the Father himself, it was so familiar.

  He groaned and held back from screaming in frustration. He came to the Capital to escape this feeling. Skin and bone threatened to yank themselves from his very soul, and he knew that feeling; couldn’t forget it. Years upon years upon his entire waking life versus a measly two weeks of travel, so he could not forget it. This pain was part of him. So, why in the Mother’s good green land and all her children did he waste all this time getting to the Capital, waste the good grace he and Valeria had, waste his life running just to fail in getting away from it? The pain followed Arturo to the Capital, the one place he knew in his bones with a desire at that very moment to snap in his fingers and toes, that it could never follow.

  Arturo sat on the edge of his cot, right leg bobbing quickly, and that hurt. He pushed himself to his feet without his normal ginger care and winced and shook at the lances shooting up his arms. He took steps to put on his clothes and walk out to start a miserable day, feet pounding… then it stopped. And it was like he was holding his breath. A gasp escaped his mouth, ecstatic, involuntary, at the flood of relief, a wave of coolness, soothing his muscles and mind. He laughed to himself.

  Then, he froze.

  Nothing from the Mother this morning. Heart pounding, he shot through the door of their room into the back alley. He stood in misty mountain air in nothing but his under clothes and spun looking for a sign of the Mother’s greeting. Frantic eyes and scrambling feet covered in mud and fear, and he searched for her.

  “Mother? MOTHER?” He cried into the air.

  Arturo finally laid eyes on the Ministry. She was silent. Was he being punished for killing that cat? All of the visions about the death and accusations of lies, then the Mother stays silent one morning? Arturo wished he paid more attention during mass in the past. Maybe there were some old stories of bad men doing bad things. Maybe demons never heard from the Mother. Maybe that’s what made them demons.

  Arturo lowered his head and pressed his eyes closed. He winced against the pressure of his circumstances, against not knowing what to do about them. He took a deep breath. Same as the fire. As his parents… No. He took deep breaths and thought of other things. Acted happy until he felt it. That had worked before.

  And yet, the Mother hadn’t greeted him.

  “Que pasa, guey?” A borracho slurred from the street, looking at Arturo as if he was out of place. Well, perhaps he was.

  “Nada. Good luck finding a bar serving tequila this early.”

  The drunk flung a hand in his direction and shambled on.

  Arturo burst back through the door into his room with his friends from home. He looked to a rumbling mound of flesh and blankets. Miguel had slept well into the morning, his body working off the buckets of booze from the night before. Barto sat half-awake, leaning on his fist, slack jawed. Could Arturo tell them? Of course not. Anyways, it would all be fine. The pain when he awoke was the same as what he always felt during life in the countryside, so he could handle it. And the Mother would say something eventually, right?

  There were no nice old ladies to serve café and food by the fire while they were in the city, but the same bars that enabled pilgrims and locals alike the night before now served café and pan amarillo. They understood their customers. Arturo dressed quickly and threw his socks over his dirty feet. Barto didn’t acknowledge him, Miguel never awoke, and Antonio was nowhere to be found. That spook would be fine.

  “Esta bien, muy bien. It’s all good. It’s great,” he whispered to himself.

  “Wha- what are you goin’ on about?” Barto grunted then burped.

  “Nothing!” Arturo’s voice cracked, and he slammed the door behind him.

  The city awoke with the laborious breath of so many lives starting a new day and the stretching muscles of commerce. Arturo’s heartbeat outpaced it all, tripping over his feet to get to some food. That would help.

  He threw a few coins down at the first counter with a steaming pot and blurted, “Cafe!” The vendedor grunted in response and poured a cup. Arturo sipped at it, and a familiar warming sensation spread through his chest and into his stomach like a hug from a loved one. It nearly washed away all his worries, then the first bite of the pan finished the job. Hard to worry about things with a good breakfast. He sighed, mouth full of sopping bread and sugars and goodness.

  “Gracias,” Arturo sighed to the vendedor. The man was shriveled and bent over at the waist, and he couldn’t seem to hear much less than a shout. “Ah,” he grunted, “si?, si?.” The word got caught up in his gums and spit out. Barto wasn’t ten years from this man’s condition, and he would be right bastard when he got there. That thought brought a better feeling to Arturo than the café ever could.

  Arturo still couldn’t shake the pulling feeling. The whole breakfast the skin on his back stretched towards the Monastery, and now as he walked towards the monolith, his cheeks felt like they bulged towards it. Was it getting stronger the closer he got? Arturo imagined stepping into the great hall and shooting across the room to smack into the statue of the Parents. He breathed out in amusement. Any odd thought to distract himself.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  ***

  Aquiles went over Emilia’s transcription of the Parents’ guidance, and it certainly made no mention of the circumstances of his morning. No greeting from the Mother. Que horror. He bit his nails and at the skin under his nails. His pinky welled up with blood. “Damned Greatstorms and demons and every curse of the Father,” he spat at the pinprick of pain and his day and anyone that would listen.

  Stuffy air in the cleaning closet Aquiles was hiding in clawed its way into his lungs, dust and an unsettled detritus drying his lips. He didn’t want to chance someone seeing the Arm have to practice reciting the Guidance. “By the Parents, their love, and their guidance, we Children hold ourselves and each other to the highest of orders to love and nurture one another.” He breathed out wetly, and with it, “Do no harm to one another, but love one another. Speak no hate to one another, but love one another.” Exasperation and frustration, he breathed in and droned, “And, the Parents said, ‘Our Children are sacred with divine pieces of our Love. Let none of you bring down another by body or by mind.’” He breathed out and sarcastically raised a hand to the imaginary crowd behind the brooms, “By the Parents’ guidance… yaaayyyy…”

  And now, the section on being productive. What a great time he was having.

  ***

  Arturo walked laps around El Mercado Rojo. His skin pulled on his face then slowly rotated around to his ear and onto the back of his head. He stopped and, glancing around for watching eyes, turned in place to see if the feeling would move around his body that way. From face to ear to neck and back to face, the pull was like many strings attached to a point far away. He continued his laps.

  The newest vendedor to drown Arturo’s mind raised an eyebrow as he visited the stand for a third order of elote. The man entombed, “Extra mayonnaise, right?”

  Aturo’s stomach twisted. “Actually, can you do normal this time? Stomach is getting a little rumbly.” He laughed nervously, then answering with the obvious to an unasked question, “Couldn’t tell you why.” He tried too hard not to sound anxious.

  The vendedor stared him down, then sighed and grabbed a piece of corn from the steaming water in his cart. “Here, this one is on me. Don’t have many repeat customers in a day,” the man said through heavy breaths, “and certainly not within an hour.”

  “Oh, gracias sen?or!” Arturo slipped a coin into the pay box when the man turned around anyway.

  Mayonnaise dripped from the piping hot corn. Arturo’s lips were pulled towards the corn as he stared at the Monastery. He turned and his scalp yanked on him towards the pyramid. It didn’t hurt, but it was rather annoying. He looked down the main road past wooden signs hung onto brick walls, dogs playing with laughing toddlers and their parents shooing the animals away to the children’s dismay. Arturo tossed his mostly eaten cob to a particularly patient pup watching him eat. His lips tingled with the lick of chili.

  The pyramid of the Ministry did not pull at him.

  ***

  “Si?, si?, si?, lo sé.” Aquiles rolled his eyes as he walked away from Child Emilia. She had come to see if he had memorized the passages correctly. She was quite particular about getting the words exactly right. All these pestering annoyances, and Aquiles had –

  Buenos días, mi hijo.

  Aquiles squealed and tripped over his feet, the transcribed papers flung in a lilting dance in the air before him. Emilia turned and cried out, altogether more concerned than she should be, but not a fraction of the terror Aquiles felt. It seemed the Mother hadn’t completely neglected Aquiles this day. His heart raced, and he waited for that fiery pain to envelop his fingers and head again, though he wasn’t sure why he expected it.

  “Que paso?, Arm of Us,” Emilia’s whining voice scratched in his ears.

  “Nothing, nothing. I was just reviewing the passages and missed a step.” Thankfully, she made no mention of his little outburst.

  Aquiles’ mind outpaced his thumping chest. What could this mean? The Father had acted strangely when they spoke. Or had he? The man, or thing, or god, well, he was a damned god after all. Bit of an oxymoron, but still, he was. Couldn’t he just get five seconds of normalcy and ten of some damned peace this day? The sundial had cast it to be only the fourteenth hour - as he was leaving after only half an hour of obsessive scribbling - and he’d already gone through more stress than Young Ones during one of Horacio’s punishments.

  Scraping feet sounded further down the pyramid’s stairs. “Arm of Us, it does not befit your station to play in the dirt, pendejo!” Aquiles almost cackled out loud at the timing.

  ***

  “Barto, you can’t whore and drink all night then skip out on mass. You won’t cancel any of the-” Miguel stopped talking as Arturo creaked open the door to their room at the inn. He discovered the establishment was named Los Juevos del Perro by the light of day.

  “Are you all ready for mass, viejo?” Arturo looked expectantly at Barto, who sat in the exact position Arturo had left him in.

  “Too hungover. The monk’s messaging would make me hurl.”

  Arturo didn’t blame him for that. “Well, what about you then? Let’s go, vamos,” he chided Miguel.

  “Can’t,” the chubby man leaned back and put his foot up to the light, “broke my foot.” And indeed, it was swollen and black and blue.

  “You broke your- how did you break your foot?”

  “No lo se?, must’ve broken it last night.”

  “And you didn’t feel it?”

  Miguel slid his foot back down to the ground and leaned forward like an old man ready to dispense wisdom, “Mira, I drank an entire bottle of tequila. We don’t get that good stuff out in the country.”

  Arturo stood there with his mouth hung open. “Y Antonio? He wasn’t even here when I left earlier.”

  Miguel gestured, “Stumbled back in an hour ago. Won’t wake up now.” Barto grunted in affirmation. Indignation? And again indeed, the twig of a man lay sprawled against the opposite wall under the many clothes and fabrics packed for their pilgrimage. And Arturo’s hat. He snatched it from his snoring friend’s head.

  Arturo stepped back towards the door, hat firmly on his own head, and flung his arms in the air. The skin on them was pulled back towards the Monastery. “Thanks guys, guess I’ll be the only good child of the Parents in here.” Barto grunted again. Indeed, indignation.

  He plopped onto the sofa to put on less sweaty and stinking clothes for the mass. It wouldn’t befit the Monastery to walk in covered in grime. Arturo was quite fond of dressing nicely; it was just that he never comforta-

  Buenos días, mi hijo.

  Arturo’s breath seized in his chest, and he jerked his head around at the others in the room. “Hey amigo, you sure you don’t want to stay back too?” Miguel watched him with slight concern furrowing his brow.

  “What?!” Arturo replied entirely too loudly. Antonio stirred in his cot, and Arturo began to breathe again. “Perdon, I’m fine.” He looked down at his hands, clenched them, wrung them in his calluses. They had felt that too familiar ache this morning when the Mother had forgotten to greet him, nothing when she remembered. He was thankful for that, yet terrified at what could be happening to him. The pulling on his face looking through the curtain towards the Monastery was a little stronger now. A ray of light breached the room and illuminated dancing dust disturbed by Arturo’s panting.

  ***

  Aquiles listened to the ebb and flow of the crowd, whispers and murmurs and lives from across La Terra. He surprised himself with that pinch of appreciation for the diversity. But never mind that; mass had to begin on time. Hourglasses sat in a row, three tipped and still with the last nearly spent. The sand piled lightly onto a mound below it, a still candle reflected off the tiny grains. Four hours starting the first hour of the afternoon. Five hours from the Mother’s late wake up call.

  Sweat wet his brow after running back to his rooms to scour his literature on the Mother’s record of greetings and goodbyes. What he found put a vile taste in his mouth.

  Perfect consistency.

  The Mother never failed to greet her children as they woke and always tucked them and lulled them to sleep at night. Aquiles’ experience was the only one of its kind in the whole of his readings, and he refused to let Socorra in on his problem. She would dismiss it, or worse, himself, in his entire. Maybe the whole thing was a prank, and she somehow convinced the Father to persuade the Mother. Did they have that kind of relationship? He hoped not. The idea didn’t seem as crazy as it should. Socorra’s petulant cackle rang in his skull.

  Aquiles did, however, nail down the last details of his sermon for today’s mass. The pilgrims had almost certainly heard it before, and they almost certainly didn’t care. Everyone knew these trips were excuses for expensive nights on the town. Aquiles had better things to be doing with his time, better ways to serve the Monastery and La Terra. He was the new Arm of the Monastery, relegated to a task for the scholars. To put it nicely. He snorted to himself.

  “Did you say something?” Emilia smiled at him.

  “No, sorry.” Very needy.

  They waited in a room half a man lower than the altar in the great hall and hidden from the view of the mass. It was one of the few rooms fully built of wood in the entire pyramid, the monks of many years enjoying plentiful completed construction and storage space. Emilia had gone on about that fact and the rest of the great halls lofted structure in a nervous tirade for the past thirty minutes. What a perfect way to spend his time.

  Footsteps thumped above him. Emiliano and Jorge were chosen for the ceremony. It was supposed to be an honor for a Monastery-trained Storm, but with Socorra, it was more of a joke making them all take the stage together after their sparring session. She hadn’t spoken of the ending, just looked at him with a knowing smirk at their meetings.

  A clap of thunder hushed the crowd. Aquiles heard a zip and a pop as Jorge lit the torches of the room with an outstretched hand, lightning catching kindling on fire. Some stragglers were sure to come in late, but the Parents’ guidance hadn’t offered any specific offense to tardiness. The fourth hourglass ran out. Nerves sparked by the Mother’s change in schedule outweighed nerves of public speaking. It was time to get it over with.

  ***

  Arturo watched the spectacle, formally dressed Storms with white wool tied around their waist and white cloaks over their bare chest and shoulders walked out onto the altar. The Thunderhead clapped and the crowd stilled. Arturo stood with his practiced patience and politeness waiting for more people to sit, so he could find his own seat. Two statues with hands locked together faced away from the crowd. Even far from the seating, and at the back of the altar, the Parents’ stood larger than life, carved from the stone of the very mountains that made up the gargantuan structures dominating their city. The Bolt of the Storm swept his hand across the crowd. Arcs of lightning jumped to metal torches, lighting straw, and setting them ablaze.

  ***

  Aquiles nodded at Emilia. She responded with an exaggerated smile and two thumbs up. He smiled back painfully and turned towards the stairs. The light coming down into the darker room reminded him of the ramp up to the training grounds. He took deliberate steps up foreign and unsteady wood.

  ***

  Arturo watched as the Storm returned to their place on either side of the statue. Each of the Parents’ stone hands hung by their side, as if to touch the heads of their Blessed children, their blessing lending their children the power of a Storm.

  The pull on his skin shifted in slight increments across his face. Cheek, across his brow, and to the other cheek. It became stronger with each heartbeat.

  ***

  Aquiles’ eyes broke the lip of the stairs and into the great hall, and he turned his head out to the crowd. Some were coming in late after all, typical country folk. But who could blame them. This was going to be a long hour. He noticed Jorge missed a torch in the back. Aquiles made a note to make sure the Bolt was disciplined for that.

  ***

  A monk’s short, cropped hair peaked above the stage. It was as black a head of hair as Arturo had ever seen. It reminded him of his father’s. The monk’s shoulders were next. Adorned with a rough spun wool robe, it looked like something Valeria might make for winter. The monk continued up his hidden stairs.

  ***

  Aquiles winced as the stairs squeaked under his slow climb. No wonder this was the only construction of wood in the whole of the Monastery. It was not sturdy stuff.

  ***

  Arturo’s heart raced. His hands felt lighter than the air around him. The pull on his skin, it followed the monk’s movements. Tall and lean and corded with the muscle of a fighter, not quite gangly like Arturo himself. But for the monk’s face. The face he saw as the monk turned towards the crowd and opened his mouth to speak. A face Arturo didn’t see often, but a face he had seen enough in reflections of water and polished metal. A wide nose and square jaw. Round eyes with pronounced cheeks. His face. Arturo’s face.

  ***

  Aquiles made it up the stairs to see the crowd finished seating themselves. He opened his mouth to speak and noticed a tall country boy standing stiffer than the statues at the altar. On his head, a ratty sombrero cast a shadow down the aisle between the benches. The man slipped off his hat, and Aquiles took in his features. His features. Aquiles’ own. The man was his own mirror image. Identical.

  ***

  “What the fuck?”

  ***

  “What the fuck?”