Chapter 15

  Josefa sat in the windowsill looking out over the Capital. The moon hung just overhead and cast a gloom across the streets, shadowless figures haunting the alleys and swooping in and out between buildings like bats diving in for the crunch of insects. She had sharpened her knife during her shift to avoid falling asleep. Her leg hung out the window, and her boot scraped the leaning stones of the Monastery exterior, little touched in these days by men and women. Half a lifetime of discomfort taught her to sleep in just about any situation; a useful trait, unless she wanted to stay awake. Josefa had to make sure the new Arm of the Monastery remained alive to see another day. She snarled in disgust.

  The Ministry was not the benevolent force for the people’s well-being and good fortune that those very people believed it to be. Her fingers ached against the hilt of the knife. She should be dead. And her sister, she should be alive. The Ministry made a choice, those many years ago, to rid Josefa of any predilection it cared about its people, her sister's smile dashed scarlet red and shouting soldiers dragging at her hair, and she still did not know why. And Socorra, that lying snake, had always promised to help her get back at the tyrants, to discover their hidden abuses. The Child believed them to be heretics of the highest order, acting against the Parents’ guidance, hurting the Father and the Mother. What could Socorra say about heretics now? Harboring identical twins, a Greatstorm, an abomination. Those two would raze this pyramid, the Ministry, the entire city and its people to the ground then salt the earth on which they used to stand. La Terra would burn.

  If the legends about Greatstorms were to be believed, that is.

  Yet, Aquiles did not seem to be such a threat. A hot-headed idiot, yes, but a demon with the power to shake the very earth, no. Socorra would have so much explaining to do.

  “We need a weapon to use against them. They have an army of Storms. We have artfully trained monks. This land cannot face battle. These people do not know violence. We have a decisive advantage now,” Socorra’s words echoed in her mind, the fire of her sin still hot in her knuckle, and an unconscious man laying in a cot beyond the grated door.

  “Advantage? Convincing the people the Ministry was not what they thought it to be was already an impossible task. And now, you make it worse with this? How, Socorra? How did you create a Greatstorm?” Josefa had pleaded with her.

  “I didn’t, nin?a. I just found the people who could.”

  “You said you failed in your plans, so many years ago, when you saved me.”

  “But look at them. Now that they know about each other, there is no stopping what’s to come. We must use them if we are to survive the coming days. The Father has shown me, and he has told me the truth,” Socorra had turned away from her and refused to meet Josefa’s eyes, “When I told you I failed, I lied.” So, here Josefa waited for a man that wanted to kill himself to take the bait.

  And a scream broke the night.

  The net erected outside of the room directly below Aquiles’ own snapped taut with tonight’s catch. “Pinche, pinche, mierda!” He looked over at Josefa. She hadn’t flinched a muscle and continued testing the edge of her blade on arm hair.

  “Hola, Arm of Us”, she said his honorary title in a mocking tone. He scrambled to the edge to continue on his fall. “Nope,” she slashed the catch knots nearest to her and the net tangled close. Aquiles was left to hang, tangled like the rope in the net, bumping against the pyramid’s slant.

  “Pinche, pinche, mierda!” He bellowed, and Josefa raised her eyebrow at him. He spat at her, “Cut me loose!”

  “No.” Straightforward, calm, decisive.

  “Let me die!”

  “You must not.” Reluctant, unsure, anxious. He screamed and strained against his strong restraints. “Callete?. You’re going to wake the Young Ones.”

  “Good! Maybe the bastarditos can stir up a mob and trample me!”

  Maybe this man could be a demon after all. “Juan!” Bolt Juan came lumbering into her room.

  ***

  Bristled rope bit into Aquiles’ flesh and shocked him back into reality. He had stopped falling, almost in an instant, his attempt on his life arrested before he even felt his stomach begin to float in his abdomen. And he didn’t comprehend it. His chest heaved, but he didn’t really feel it, his eyes and ears just barely able to focus on Josefa, his mind able to force him to yell at her and the night. He had given up control in those final moments, content to have done good works for the Parents, to end a disaster before it could occur, and here he was tangled in his failure. He felt ashamed, it rotted in his chest, but he felt relieved to have that shame. He’d jumped, and he couldn’t believe it.

  Other Juan shuffled his oafish feet across the room and wrapped his bearpaw of a hand around several cords of the net. With a one-armed heave, he dragged Aquiles over the windowsill and into the room and thundered like a stern boy chiding a dog, “No rayo.”

  “If only I could make enough to do anything with,” Aquiles threw back at the giant.

  “Si. Puede?s. Lo vi?.”

  “That was different.”

  Aquiles was able to think when he lit up the astronomy hall, a star come to its disciples, when he could dive into his anger. Right now, his mouth and movements worked on their own like he was viewing the world in a suit made of himself, not calibrated to his intentions but rather its own necessities, however unknowable they might be. Never mind feeling his emotions.

  “Socorra said, if you promise to relax, she’d talk to you about what’s going on and try to ease your mind,” Josefa seemed to strain against an internal conflict. She hated this as much as he did.

  He heard his voice, “She’s Socorra to you?” Other Juan scooped Aquiles into his arms and carried him out of the room, a newborn being cared for by its mother. He wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to sit silent in his room for a century, wanted to plead the sleeping Children about him to save him from this torment, wanted to sail through the open air, but he wanted to know what Socorra knew. He was carried across the hall, and Juan was there waiting. He opened the door to the bleary-eyed Arm.

  She shifted, sank into her persona, “Pendejo. Why’re you up in the middle of the night?”

  “I assure you I could not begin to describe my intentions at the moment. Why not just tie me up here and wait for me to wake?”

  “You might have woken in a fury. Hurt someone.” She paused, “And I wandered at the extent of your convictions.”

  Other Juan undid the net and plopped Aquiles in a chair across the Child and looked down at him with a concerned expression, “Esta?s bien?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” He wasn’t.

  Other Juan’s massive head bobbed down and up in a nod, “Bien.” He smiled.

  Exhaustion itself inhabited the sagging skin that called itself Socorra. “I thought I might have an easier time with you. I guess we really have taught all of you well… to have such a visceral reaction.”

  “Socorra, not two weeks ago the very threat I’ve been shown to be was dashed against a rock before they had time to even comprehend what their existence could mean.”

  She sighed, “Yes, the executions.”

  “YES! Yes, Socorra! The executions. The Parents’ guidance. The stories of the abominations the Parents exterminate to protect all of us. But somehow, they missed one. And you… you seem happy about it.”

  “I am. The Father told me about you. More than twenty years ago. Told me how to get you here. And he’s been telling me how you and your brother can help us all.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t expect you to believe me. Believe him.” A metallic brace on her wrist flashed as she lurched forward and planted an iron clench on his head. Aquiles screamed.

  “Hijo.”

  His scream went mute, not for lack of air passing over vocal cords, but for the lack of a medium in which to experience them. There wasn’t blackness, there was nothing. Nothing but a voice.

  “Hijo.”

  Something in him spoke back.

  “Father?”

  Not a laugh, but the briefest of sense of amusement.

  “Si. I know about you. But… you lied- no you didn’t lie. You couldn’t have known, but YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD- no, no that can’t be right.”

  “Father, I didn’t know what I was. Please, strike me down. End this. Protect the people like you and the Mother said you would.”

  A pining screech, it was laughter.

  “No, no, no, hijo. You are exactly what I want. Those two, they want to use us, our power. Build something more- take it back. It? They want this. They-”

  “Father, please.” Aquiles wanted desperately to whimper into this abyss, but there was nothing for it.

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  “NO! They know about you. Know because I know. But I can hide much. I fake it, hijo. Make them think you’re stronger, yes, yes. They think you’re strong, and they’re afraid. And I am still strong. I sacrifice this bit of myself to stop them from taking more. I have more power than they know, yes.”

  “How,” he wanted to heave for air, just for the act of falling into his distress rather than a need for breath in this nothing, “how can I possibly be what you want? I’m a Greatstorm, a demon.”

  The green mask filled all of Aquiles’ awareness, his soul not his eyes, and peered down at him, into him.

  “Demons do not exist, hijo.”

  And, sight returned, and flashes of horrors. Babies in tall, cylindrical jars, red like blood flowing in water, vats stretching along a polished black wall, mailed hands reaching for them, tears falling down a green mask and voices like the clang of swords and the whisper of a blade on a whetstone. “Show them, Father. Show them their fears.” And he understood.

  Aquiles felt his presence stretch towards those babies, felt his mind open, and he watched the world through so many eyes neither knowable nor countable, and he spoke, “Mis hijos. A Greatstorm is born.” And the words drowned out with a wind in his ears, and he smashed those innocent babes' skulls to pieces.

  Screaming filled the air again.

  The room came back, and the aged wood of his chair creaked as Aquiles shifted. Vocal fry cracked in his throat and his chest pumped up and out, over and over, “The executions, the Greatstorms, they’re fake?”

  Socorra’s grip on his head shifted into a caress of his face. “Oh no, they’re killing those babies. They’re just… grown for the purpose. The Father does not know how.”

  That was a terrifying prospect, and she continued, “But Greatstorms are real. Very real. The Father knows this, and he says the Mother does too. They want you, the pinnacle of their blessings. But the Ministry is controlling them, has been for much longer than we could know.”

  Aquiles watched and listened, his breath a frozen spike in his heart.

  “The Ministry is using the Parents for something, Aquiles,” she said, “and when the Father revealed the truth of the Greatstorms to me, we couldn’t stand by and wait to find out.”

  He caught the distinction there, “We?”

  She glanced at Josefa, but the fiery woman just stared down Aquiles, her knives clasped in white knuckled fists, red in her eyes from the tears on her cheeks, and the Arm spoke over the rattle in Josefa’s straps and gear, “I made sacrifices in the past to prepare for this future.”

  Josefa flew from the room in a silent fury, and there wasn’t sadness on Socorra’s face at the guard’s departure, it was a resignation to a truth she’d held too long.

  “Pues… if the Parents are being controlled, then we need to help them. We are the Monastery. The people’s spiritual guide. Why have you waited so long to do something.?”

  Socorra sat back, relief evident in the relaxing of her brow, in the slump of her shoulders. “The Ministry conditioned an entire population into believing you were the single greatest threat to them.” She leaned back in and wrapped her hand around the back of his head, eyes of steel bearing into his brain and flooding his skull. “And they were right to be scared. Not for the people, but for themselves. You, Aquiles, you have the power to restore the Parents, to challenge the lies of the ones that claim to govern us and provide. You and your brother. We were waiting for you.”

  Bile soured in his throat. His brother. A thought so foreign.

  “You said you and the Father planned this,” he paused and tried to stop himself, he already knew the answer, “you told me my parents dropped me at the great hall as a newborn.” his need to hear what she would say next stabbed into his throat and ripped out those words.

  Socorra’s arm slackened, but her eyes were just as hard.

  Then, they flashed with her typical malicious cheer, “I lied.”

  ***

  Blood rushed through Arturo’s veins, and his bones thundered with familiar memory, exalted in the shattering sensation of his old pain for the briefest moment. The pain passed, and his heart dropped to his feet. The Mother hadn’t kept to her tradition again, but she had given him a new one. A memory of home and Valeria now embraced the marrow in his bones each morning. He’d been gone for less than a week, a lifetime. He wished he could get out of this room he’d been trapped in, interrogated by voices in his head and bombarded by visions of horrible things. Arturo remembered how he used to feel waking up each morning. Tired and retired. He’d get back home, and in days, he would be longing to leave again, to leave his hurt. He knew that about himself. He hated that about himself.

  What gave these people the right to keep him here, locked away like some animal in a cage? His face stared back at him through remembrance of the monk on the stage. It looked puzzled, surprised, and scared. He knew. He knew his face looked the same. It had to. They hadn’t locked an animal in a cage, they had imprisoned a demon.

  Over the years, he’d grown disgusted by the treatment of the Greatstorms, broadcasting an execution for all to watch, to become desensitized to. He didn’t know much about the nightmares and the legends of the demons roaming the early land and destroying all before them, forsaking the blessing of the Parents. His own parents hadn’t tried to scare him into behaving. He just did. Laughed with them, learned to nurse himself and how not to hurt. His mother was always so sweet, and he always behaved. Not for fear of getting smacked, he just wanted to. Arturo never wanted to be a burden on anyone. He looked down at his hands. They didn’t tremble like they did at home. Whatever happened now, he was scared to be the burden of an entire people. If the legends were to be believed.

  His face had stared back at him, and he knew. He accepted what he’d done to the wildcat and the odd bursts from his body. The ringing in his ears like a loud blast had rushed over him. Because a loud blast had rushed over him. But Arturo didn’t feel like a demon, like a powerful Greatstorm. He felt like a little boy, and he was scared of the dark.

  The blanket was becoming too warm. He flung it off himself, and tears splashed onto the sheets as fabric brushed his face. Arturo was far from powerful, he was weak. He’d always been weak. Valeria made him stronger, and he’d thrown her aside to run for the city. He ached for his pain to return, to be careful dressing, to have his arm wrapped around the girl he loved, a girl that knew how to touch him slowly and lightly.

  “I have been told your name is Arturo.”

  Arturo jerked his head up from his hands and his rumpled sheets. A head was silhouetted in the barred opening on the door. Torches backlit the figure and cast human shadows into the room. A stretched, black head shape was interrupted by the cast of the bars, long and imposing on the ground. He nodded and whispered, “Asi? es.”

  “I have learned you are my brother.”

  He managed a shaky reply, “I think that must be true.”

  Arturo crossed the room to stand at the door. The man backed away, and lights from the hallway lit his face. They both had to duck to see through the opening. Arturo didn’t grow up with polished metals to see his reflection, but he’d seen it plenty watching himself in the river to know it well. That face stared back at him now, a reflection of himself walking free in the world.

  “My name is Aquiles. I’m a Child of the Monastery, and I will be the Arm to the Ministry.”

  “…hola,” Arturo tried to swallow the sand forming in his dry throat. What else could he say? His opposite’s face remained neutral. Arturo pressed forward, “You seem tired today, Aquiles.”

  “I tried to kill myself this morning.”

  “I might have if I were you too. Kinda hard for a monk to be an evil demon from bedtime stories,” Arturo said, breaking a palpable knot of hysteria tying itself between them with just the right kind of inappropriate humor. The man’s lip almost curled in a snarl. Probably not enthused with his situation. Recovering, Arturo added, “So, if you’re a monk, does that mean I’m in the Monastery now?”

  “Si?.”

  Then, with exaggerated incredulity, “You guys have dungeons in the Monastery?” He was trying too hard.

  “The prison and guard here are news to me as well.” Flat. Indifferent. “I’m here speaking with you because I have seen some information recently that this might not be as bad as I thought,” he gestured between his dark figure and Arturo, “but believe anyway, this is very bad.”

  “Are you blaming me? I got knocked out, kidnapped, and dropped here with no say in any of it.” Who did this guy think he was coming in and telling Arturo what he was?

  “I’m not blaming you, exactly… but I don’t, or didn’t, think we should exist. I’m not sure what to think now.”

  Something clicked in Arturo’s head, “Wait, Storms are bonded, right? If you had killed yourself…” His brother looked down with an embarrassed look on his face. “You tried to kill me off as well!”

  “It’s what was best, I-”

  “You weren’t going to get my say in it?”

  “What would it matter? You don’t understand the gravity of the situation. You wouldn’t have agreed.”

  Arturo punched the door, and it resounded with a satisfying thud and metal ring. “You gonna start telling me other things I don’t understand? I understand you people locked me in a cage, and now I understand you tried to kill me too.”

  Aquiles scrunched his face and let his head fall to the side, “Kill us, technically.”

  “First family I’ve had in years.”

  “Ay, padres mio.” His murderous brother looked like he was shoved out of the way, then Socorra’s voice returned, requiring Arturo to crane his neck down to see her. “Getting two men to have a heart-to-heart conversation is like trying to teach a dog to talk.” She handed Arturo another vial and bag of seasonings, “Mira, I’m going to let you out, but you’re not going to try to run off.” She looked up to either side of her, “Not that you’d get anywhere.” An enormous dark hand reached over and waved at him through the door.

  He promised to remain calm, and the-future-Arm-of-the-Monastery was escorted, to put it nicely, by a pair of gargantuan twins that would fit the tales of Greatstorms better than Arturo and his twin ever could. They carried themselves with an assurance Arturo didn’t think he’d ever possess. He tried being happy for them knowing their places in this life. Socorra had opened the door and threw a brown woolen robe over his road clothes. She pulled a hood over his head. “Keep that up and cover your face. The twins up there spook people enough as is.”

  “You don’t say.”

  They walked through hallways made of the same dusty packed earth in his room. Several tucks and turns later, they emerged into a large open square bustling with people where old monks talked in hushed voices, and groups of children ran around, some ordered by a man in a robe, some herded by women with calm faces. This place wasn’t so bad. What had turned Aquiles so sour?

  He looked up to the peak of the pyramid and traced the impossible, wrapping stairs with his eyes, waiting for the stones to come undone and drop among the crowd and the whole thing to collapse. Olina’s tavern and the whole block back home could fit in here. He stared with his mouth open at the surroundings. A hand smacked the back of his head, and Socorra hissed in his ear, “Do please keep your head down, Arturo. Would you like to see a hundred angry monks trained with every weapon imaginable coming for your blood?” He lowered his eyes to his feet and kept them there.

  “You listen well,” a stocky woman with a tight bun said. She pulled up beside their group. No one else seemed to pay attention to their passing but her. “Better than the other one.”

  “That’s Josefa. She’s aware of the situation, and you can trust her,” Socorra huffed. His eyes met Josefa’s, and a shiver ran down his spine. Arturo didn’t quite believe he could. He smiled at her, coping with his anxiety. She did not return the expression, instead shifting that wide-eyed gaze to Socorra. The vieja shrugged it off.

  “This way.” Socorra guided him with a tiny hand on his back. They turned into another hallway off the large room. It ended with wooden stairs leading up to a dark room.

  “Are we leaving the Monastery?” Aquiles questioned Socorra from ahead. Fear drenched his voice.

  “No.”

  They climbed the stairs, and Arturo realized they now stood on the stage he first saw Aquiles, the statue of the Parents on their right, gods’ hands interlocked over the heads of their greatest heretics. The bent, old woman guided them behind the statue and stopped there.

  “Aquiles, you wanted to know how I spoke with the Father from the Monastery. Here you go.” She smiles, an expression that looked much more like a grimace on her.

  “What about that bracelet on your-”

  “That too. Don’t worry about that one. Neither of you may come here without me. Neither of you may speak about this place with anyone. Is that clear?” An annoyed Aquiles nodded his head. Arturo was too struck with awe and confusion at his predicament; he just squeaked a vague agreement. “Josefa, Juan, Juan. It’s best if you don’t come in at all today.”

  They were both named Juan?

  “Juan,” Socorra gestured at the one on the left, possibly the rougher looking of the two, “stand guard out of sight in case jumpy here tries to run.” he jabbed a thumb at Aquiles, and he scowled back.

  “Si?,” Juan replied.

  “You other two, go about your business. You haven’t seen Aquiles today.” They nodded their heads and left. These people worked well together. “Arturo, brace yourself. The Father isn’t what you’ll expect.” She threw open a hidden door in the wood behind the statue and climbed down a ladder. From below the floorboards, Socorra continued faint and distracted, “Not anymore.”