Coffins Have No Place in Paradise
To every tribe from Arapaho to Xhosa, worldwide, much love to every one of you.
Hopefully I do you justice here in borrowed words, imagination and adventure.
Peace and love.
-W.J. Jackson
I.
The Tale...
Achgeket, the Mother we all walk upon, cycles life and death. We live, breathing in her breast milk air, gratefully eating the blessings of game and crops. But we must all die. Every one of the People is pulled out of the womb by her right hand and rocked into the final sleep by her left. Each of the Tribes in Rokoana, the Land, handles their dead in their own way. The Heneyanesh along the coast bury them, only to pull them out within two summers to scrape the bones clean and preserve them in the mounds of those who came before. This is the same with the Abiak to the north, who fight the Heneyanesh, but they first raise the body on a platform for up to two seasons. The Barikka on the isles of the Rokoana Sea carry the dead into the jungles, and lower them into bright blue lagoons, where the bottoms are filled with the bones of elders.
There are many ways the dead are cared for in Rokoana. I have wandered the world and witnessed them all, for I, waabijiiyaa kiááyo, the Gray Bear, had eyes set to see all and to know how things in the world were. I saw the Tribes, Great Grandfather Sun and Grandmother Pearl Sun who holds his hand across the sky, the hundred galleons on fire plummet into the sea with their many strange peoples and talking beasts who ruled over them. I saw these and many treacherous things.
But I had never seen a coffin, until that one day.
"A warrior of your caliber has never seen a coffin, Grey Bear?" my old friend in black asked me. He said he now had another title to go with the others, 'undertaker'. I believed him, for there was no reason not to.
"No, Cloudfire, I have not," I told him, one of my rugged hands, thick fingers ran down his five-sided box of death. "Why the trouble?"
He stood up from a polished desk, for the Favored loved their polish and shine and people working always for the little coins they threw at them in purses or from banks. Chomlis the Fire Eared, undertaker, rose to a head above me, not as tall as Mehunwey, the giants who molded the first of us from Mother's hide. He belonged to the Favored, overlords who fell from the sky. They told me after the Fall that they lost a war while searching for the Last Gift. I know of no such thing, but Chomlis called me that day for he thought I could help him to find it.
"Trouble? Well, we can't just shove bodies in pits or burn them. We need them preserved for the day when we find the Gift, my old associate. I cannot endure this ragamuffin world of yours much longer, I do declare! The density of the forests, their pollen, plays havoc on my sinuses! Havoc!" Chomlis spoke through his small mouth and thin nostrils, so it sounded like a man when he speaks into a conch shell, real but hollow at the same time. This said much of Chomlis. So real with his fire amber skin and two pairs of curved horns around a mane of white hair. Words often spoken, eloquent, and most of them for display or cunning falsehoods.
"The world has been travelled, Cloudfire, by me. Some of it by you. But I have seen all, except the isle farthest to the south. Barikka lands. I have never seen such a place."
Chomlis moved towards me. He wriggled long fingers, making the ugly rings of gold click and chirp like birds in the nest. The floor of aged wooden beams creaked, and I could watch the dirt from them fall into the calm sea below."The isle of Barikken, yes. I have collected stories of the place. Untarnished beauty. Almost spotless, and the Barikka fled there after, well..."
"You and your tentacled soldiers killed them. Forced them onto your endless farms to die." I spoke this with the sand grit of irritation between my teeth and eyes cut. We must always bring to the Favored, the Cloudfires, attention to their wrongs. We must do this whenever they speak from under their tongues, evading the truth, letting their words drift off as a sleeping old man. Even if a thousand of their incomprehensible years should pass by, may my descendants speak truth to their lies.
If Mehunwey does not rise up and devour us first. And this will occur. For they told us, just as they warned the tall ones would fall from the sky and make us tremble.
Mehunwey knew things and held incredible power once, but this was before they ate flesh and bled their spirit out, became small heads on bloated bodies and ran away, monsters. The Favored and their Fallen too, know things, like metalworking, stitching, how to polish their pottery, make large buildings from stone as the long gone Rappashanno once did. But as Mehunwey, the Cloufires and their servants eat themselves up over moneys and time expenditures, whatever that may be. The humans, Fallen, who look like us but are not are wageslaves to the Favored, except the ones who escaped. I like them. But they do not like me. They hate their masters, but love their gold and fine items. To these things, I shrug.
"Ah...yes, Grey Bear. But, I have asked you to come to my new office, for the first time, might I add, to discuss our final peradventure. I am convinced that the Last Gift is on Barikken, and I intend to find it, and live forever."
I hurt my gut trying to hold in the laugh. I have great strength, and have spent much of my life in skirmishes to the death as well as wandering. Achgeket loved my stonework so much she made me as durable as the ancient hills, and I am old but potent. But that day, not laughing had to be the hardest fight in my life.
"Who will carry all the coffins to this place, and what is the Gift, Chomlis? The Cloudfires have not enough galleons yet to take them all, these coffins." I hefted hatchets of obsidian, my handiwork, for none were better at knapping than me. I liked them large, bigger than the slender ones favored by other Tribes, and flicking their edges brought me comfort. Stonework I knew more than a woman's touch.
Chomlis gave me his airy words, but they made me ponder. The hunger to wander came from deep down as wolves howling in the valley. But the Barikka...
"We shall cart off no coffin, only a coffer, to pay the struggling natives there. I intend to buy my way in. There is a waterfall there, its purity is unique. My privateers went near there, at great cost, you must understand. Pallista Nightfear lost her leg. My best woman! But they returned, and the tale was worth its weight in gold. They saw from the cliffs men enter into the waterfall as it parted! Parted open, at their insistence! Behind, Pallista viewed through her lens a gilded realm, full of immaculate beings in resplendence! The Barikka said to her the beings offered entrance to those who were worthy." He stomped a leg, and the office shook. The grandfather clock his people built missed a tick of its black hands.
I hated the clock and all clocks. Time can not be trapped inside a box of gears.
I hefted my shoulders up. "What of it?"
"So, who is more worthy than I? Have I not dredged up the sea floor to recover what was sunken in the Fall? Did I not talk the Trauwanee out of killing us, going back to the bottom of the sea where they creep and trading with us? I am the most successful profiteer in Rokoana Fortress. Surely this is what they mean. Will you accompany me? I cannot fathom a holiday without my most ardent companion."
Bragging and a seed of truth. The Chomlis I knew. Why did I go back to him over and over? He lied, cheated, and had more enemies than the Sisters Who Eat Sick Hearts. But on all of my travels, no one was there for me more than this horned Cloudfire. I never understood his ways, but I loved his curved horn friendship.Even when I spent fifty nine of the Cloudfires' 'years' with the Nunnehi, never aging while there, it was Chomlis the Fire Eared who greeted me first and hugged me upon my return.
"Because you ask, I say yes. Also, this is the one place I have never seen, so I cannot die without going there first."
"So says the Mother, eh?" Chomlis had worms in his speech. They called it sarcasm.
"She said nothing. She gives it in signs, and you read them, or you do not. I read my lifespan with the Nunnehi. Every dream I had in their village was my death, on a land I know not."
"Please do not share your negativity with my crew, Bear. It will make them anxious, and superstition is their middle name." Chomlis opened a closet door. In this closet were carpetbags, many of them in different colors. He claimed once each had a certain trick to them, so in a way, Chomlis had the influence of Coyote on him. Or he was heyoka, contrary. But by this time I assumed all of the Favored were heyoka.
"Red will do for this venture, I believe! Shall we?"
"Now?"
"Yes, now. My galleon, A Most Pleasant Pasturage, is docked at the end of the pier. We should depart before the winds die down, and you change your mind."
"I do not change my mind, Chomlis."
"Oh? The winter of our ninth year, when you said you would bring us turkeys to eat, but brought fish. I hate fish."
"The turkey were lean that season."
"And when we faced the wandering giant--"
"Mehunwey. Which one? We fought many."
"Let me think, Bear! Ah, the flaming one with the coal for eyes. Yes. I distinctly remember you saying, 'go left, Cloudfire,' when we were set to defend the encampment against it. But you went left, so we were both left, it was summarily not outflanked and..."
"Once. I changed my mind once." I huffed.
"There are other times, my dearest assocaite. But on to the quest!"
"Yes. I look forward to the Barikka vomiting on us like last time, and you getting out of your mind."
"I sense negativity!"
Snarl. I clapped my hatchets together. "Let us go."
II.
A Most Pleasant Pasturage is an odd name for a galleon. In truth, galleons were the best thing about the Favored. Large ships with a crew who relied on each other proved the Favored and Fallen were not without good hearts, only that those hearts were hidden. But for all the ones I sailed in, this one ship held the dumbest crew. It made sense. Chomlis kept more of his moneys using dumb wageslaves than he did with the smart ones.
"Are you fiddlin' with us?" a boy with blonde hair and freckles asked me. "You're over a hundred years old? You've but a single lock of gray hair, man! And you killed an alligator with hatchets? They're big enough to swallow a man whole an' shot from a blunderbuss barely tickles their hides, but you killed one by hand!"
"Yes," said I, irritated.
"Yes, he did," Chomlis said, bursting from the circular door that led down below deck. He changed into even more frivolous clothing than the somber undertaker's garb. This was a long frock coat of crimson, ruffled shirt, tight pants and black boots. He wore five swords across seven belts and a tricorner hat with three feathers. Ugly. "He did so and I was there to witness it. A spectacular feat of fortitude, if I do say so myself. And, swamp climate is not conducive to Ilumiculto cleanliness. My horns shed there, constantly."
He used the word the Cloudfires call themselves from before they fell out of the sky because whoever is up there hated them so much they burned them out. I suppose this was the Creator, but he never told me it was so in my many meditations. Maybe they tried to steal the money the Creator never had.
"Aye, me lord," the boy mumbled, and he scurried away.
Chomlis had a crew of thirty, men and women, differing in clothing and skin tones, aggressive, fearful, but all wageslaves. Those on ships had more of the thing than others in Rokoana Fortress, but they used it to act foolish for the most part, drinking to stupidity and cursing. I think the thing they had more of was called 'freedom', but how can one give out what is in the air?
Chomlis gave a golden coin to his captain, a woman of blonde hair, scarred face and daring named Rasha RedTempest. She killed many a man in her day. It showed in her blue eyes, the ferocity, the certainty. I liked her from the moment I boarded. Rasha took the coin, eyed Chomlis with hatred, me with suspicion.
"Much obliged, laird." Her accent sounded Feynish, for the Fallen once had distinct cultures, a dozen until the Favored captured them. I know little of them or the others, for they are all bonded by the Fall. But Rasha had the spirit of battle, if not one of wisdom, and this I admired in anyone.
"The sea is calm and the wind is with us, Bear. We can make Barriken in twelve days." Chomlis snorted the sea air, sighed, and then sneezed. Allergies, he called them. The Cloudfire body did not agree with our wonderful, clean air.
I wondered what the air must have been like where Chomlis came from.
"Yes, time to sleep," said I. "Captain Rasha, it is good to have a warrior onboard."
She gave me a volcanic stare. "I'm nae a captain, Tribesman." Then Rasha eyed my circles, tattoos across my bare chest. In each circle of charcoal dye were images of my wanderings. A Thunderbird. A great spider of the Heneyanesh. Skull with wings. A woman, my dead wife. Tattoos for commemoration. The Araposha are known for this as well.
"Not captain?" I glared at Chomlis. "Still stingy?"
"What? How could one ever accuse me of..." the usual Cloudfire speak, until Chomlis saw my cut eyes. "Oh, very well." he reached into his fuzzy purse and plucked out another gold coin. "Captain's wages from now on, RedTempest."
She smiled. I liked the smile very much.
"Thank ye, laird!"
"As you must know, this will demand more responsibility from you." And my old friend walked away.
Rasha gave me a nod of respect. Good. People must be treated well. Hearts should be satisfied, not broken. And, I like to keep Chomlis honest. No. I like to keep Chomlis as close to honest as I can make him be when he is within arm's reach.
I nodded back in kind.
Rasha studied me. I liked it. I had not exchanged glances witha woman since my wife who long ago died, and I found it pleasing.
"You're diferent, Tribesman. Lots of scars. Bare chest." She looked over the horizon, of teal seas, the white teeth that show for seconds on the wavetops, the sky a verdant orange. "Are ye Abiak? They're men are strapping like ye."
"Araposha. Stone and ink. From the Fifteen Arrows, where all the rivers join. I am different, yes, even from them. I like to see new things. I like to fight."
She blushed, then gripped the wheel of the ship. "So do I."
I walked up to her as the wind shifted and gulls hovereed over the aft deck. "Then one day, we should fight."
"Sooner rather than later, ye?"
III.
Twelve Days Past...
Stone is my life, as is struggle. I was born in a longhouse on an island in the midst of the Seventh Arrow River, surrounded by a loving family, four generations, with great stone cliffs all around us. When I was a boy of thirteen, I walked with my father to the land of the Shovonaxl, who wear masks and move like serpents. They dance with snakes, and sleep in cliff houses with the giant vipers and constrictors. Every night we were in their lands, in the desert with three-headed cacti and the unseen stalkers, I had vicious nightmares. A Shovonaxl shaman, head covered in a buffalo skull would fall from the moon. His toes would grow into the beige sands, scattering the scorpions, the dung beetles and trapdoor spiders. As he did this mysterious thing, he sang to me:
"I am like a tree
My leaves might change color,
But my roots are the same."
Then, his roots reached me, and devoured my body, and I wandered as a skeleton.
I woke up in a cold sweat on those hot evenings, my father telling me, "Little One, do not disturb the night. Screams will make the stars fall."
I never understood in those days.
But as we laid our eyes on the umbral undergrowth of Barikken, with the moon high, the sky black and stars few, I began to understand the nightmare. I began to comprehend my father's warning.
Bad things will break out into the night if you do not move with care.
We did not. Or rather, our youngest mates, Ishmael and Aqib, who rowed ashore earlier to spot trails in the Wild did not. Anywhere one goes in the Wild, there are trails left by the People. But they are narrow footpaths, barely discernible in the thick forests of vines and trees who speak. We do not disturb the Wild, for it feeds us. It feeds the animals, who also feed us. You cannot cut into Achgeket too much before she bleeds. Her blood, once spilled, cannot be washed off.
But these trails are narrow, so hard to find. Ishamel and Aqib were eager to find it, being stowed in the bottom of the galleon for a long time scrubbing floors, killing rats. They were so eager they forgot to take weapons. They were so excited, they forgot the Night listens, especially to loud voices.
"We didn't know, lord!" Ishmael, rowing the boat frantic, eyes wide, screeched. "We made the trail, to the southwest by the red cliff! But, they heard us! The shadows have white eyes!" The crew got frantic over the report and a commotion arose.
I groaned as Chomlis slammed the deck door open, a brass lantern in one hand, cutlass in the other. He wore a red silk robe and a pointed nightcap. His eyes were two beryl firepits.
"What is all of this ruckus, Captain RedTempest?"
No hardened warrior of the sea should have to see their master in a nightcap.
"Land ho, laird! Young lads found the trail but woke the jungle janglers," captain yelled back, for her eyes were alert for canoes, a war party.
"Barikka," I corrected her, but no one listened. "We must go to them now. If we wait, they will turn hostile."
"Are ye mad, Grey Bear?" Rasha fumed. "Walk to them in the pitch of night? Let them skewer us with those wee poisoned needles or drop into their pitfalls! Not me! Too smart for me own good and yours as well, thank ye very much!"
"Bear is aggressive," said Chomlis, "but right on in matters of the People. The Barikka hate our galleons and see them as an act of war. Past encounters have not made them, er, accessible, to our preferred methods of negotiation. It is much more civil, from their stanpoint, to caress their acrimony on their home ground."
"But, laird--"
"In order to give them a feeling of ownership. Over the island. No doubt they believe we have come to claim it," Chomlis responded. "Like the others." The final part he whispered next to me.
I groaned.
"We go. Right now. Torches. Lanterns. Weapons. We show them we are warriors but keep everything in a holster, bag or sheath. We meet them at the trailhead, quiet. The night must be kept quiet." groaning only helped so much. I needed action to stave off doubt.
"Superstition," one of the mates mumbled.
I gave him my killing eyes. "Truth."
Two boats went out onto the sharp waves. In one, Chomlis, Rasha and terrified Ishmael.
In the other, myself, Aqib and the Nubashta blunderbuss woman, Syqerra. I remember a campaign we went on, Chomlis and I, when Syqerra was but sixteen. Even then, she had a mind like steel, unfathomable patience and skill. She I was glad to be with. Aqib? A boy. Boys on campaigns, certainly in the dark, made me nervous.
Cold beach sand got into the stitching of my high moccasins as we landed. Salty banana air filled our lungs along with moisture. We sweated entering the trail, a dusty mote track reaching into the impenetrable night of the jungle as a skeletal finger into a cave. The birds above were excited. I kept one hatchet in hand, but walked ahead, first in line. Chomlis took the rear. This was not due to cowardice. If anything, Chomlis the Fire Eared would have a man or woman's back in an ambush. This I know very well. We owed each other our lives many times over..
"Dreadfully putrid air in this region of Rokoana," Chomlis spat. In words did he betray, offend...and annoy. "Impossible for me to resist sneezing much longer."
"Why are we here then?" I asked. I think the word the Favored use for that tone is rhetorical.
"To get our laird into the Last Gift," Rasha said, using anger in her voice well. "Madness, ye. But the goal."
"Yes, Cloudfire, we are here in this dread to help you perspire perfectly forever."
Laughter came out of the group in hushed tones, stopping at the instant when the branches quivered and leaves, rubbed together made a sound as cicadas in the summer season.
A man screeched in the distance.
The Barikka, almost naked save for a loincloth and necklaces filled with shark teeth, appeared out of the foliage, pointing spears, yelling, their eyes white flame.
None of the Barikka I or Chomlis encountered ever had such eyes. Perhaps these were gifted by Achgeket in a different manner, for their brethren are known to swim with sharks as if they are one and the same. I did not know, but their fire eyes made me see double. Only later did I realize one man stood before me, and not two. The effect was like a dream. The Takuskan have one foot here, the other in the Place of Slumber. They say dreams can come into this world by the hands of ones skilled in doing so. The Fallen have this belief too, but they call it mysteries and sometimes cantrips. I call such things 'avoid at all cost'.
My People call it biito'hohu, 'land of the star men'. Some want to go there, but I do not. This world, Rokoana, though beautiful, is difficult enough to traverse, takes a lifetime to navigate, but then you perish.
I spoke to them in their tongue, as wandering has given me the tongues of every People in Rokoana. At first, one rested the spear tip on my abdomen. I smiled. The Mother made me as stone for my hard work. I am very hard to kill. By myself I could put all these men with their ancestors and not breathe heavy after.
But we wanted peace. I did not want Rasha, Syqerra and the others to be harmed and Ishmael quivered as a babe and it filled me with anger. Chomlis spoke with authority, words , terms, he wanted translated. Offers of gold coins stashed on the galleon. I spoke the words and tried not to laugh. What would People this far from Fallen lands want with fancy coins?
No answer came from them. Their leader, whose eyes burned brightest, walked into the jungle, not along the trail, and by spear points we were nudged into the darkness.
Out of our line, struggling to move forward, I found Chomlis suddenly at my ear. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Are they taking us to the waterfall? Their eyes, lit as embers! Do you see? My men spoke of this. They believed it came from being near the Gift. Holiness. We are so close, my associate! I can feel my spirit ascending!"
"To where? The clouds you crashed from?"
"Do not be a cynic, Bear. Support is a valued commodity amongst friends."
"So is truth, Cloudfire."
IV.
In the Barikka village, we found the answer to Chomlis' question. A line of dome bark houses made a semicircle around an imposing waterfall, fresh, beautiful. A healthy fire illuminated the village, and an old shaman in the distance placed a ritual stick into his mouth in order to initiate vomiting, one step these People take to reach a land of spirits and gain wisdom. On one of the homes, four branches held simple cloth effigies of men, wards to keep away the soul stealers who wander these islands.
From the largest home, a man with two rows of teeth, six fingers and sickly ribs visible while his gut was bloated exited to stare us down. He stood a head and a half above Chomlis. This was not Mehunwey, but close. The giants cannot breed. All of them are men. They have children by forcing themselves on our women. The women die in the attack, or giving birth to a large baby their body cannot sustain.
For those who do no grow large enough to be Mehunwey, too much of human in their blood, those are exiled back onto the surface, where they join a Tribe as a warrior. With their strength, many soon become cacique, a chief of some kind. War, raiding, tribal meetings, whichever. To fight one is to die. I have fought nine. I killed nine. None were easy.
"Araposha," he said, in a voice as if it came from a sea cave smashed by strong waves.
"Yes. I am Grey Bear. Warrior of the Stones. Achgeket's stronghold. You have been to the center of the Land?"
"Once. I met a chief about a skirmish. I left with his head."
A cheap set of words, meant to rile me. Rasha put her hand on her blade. Chomlis laughed. Syqerra loaded her blunderbuss with cautious ease. More of the Barikka came out to look us up and down, comment on our peculiar dress and weapons. In the back, the waterfall roared as flying fish with pink scales swam upstream.
"My friend here, Cloudfire, is in need of your waterfall. Or, what is behind it."
The six-fingered chief moved close to my Favored friend, glared down at his double horns and ruffled shirt.
"Piss from the stars, you are. When you came, my People suffered. Women tossed themselves off cliffs from grief. The land is gouged. Our waterfall is not for..." He took time to recall the right Favored word, "...sale."
"My good man, I am Chomlis the Fire Eared, Lord of the Southern Bridge of Rokoana Fortress, Heir of Thumbercladda and Premiere Undertaker for the Favored."
"Premiere?" I whispered.
"Shush! As I was elucidating, your pure waters harbor an entry into what my People term the Last Gift, Paradise. There, no one dies, gets sick or injured, all speak the common language which legend states is most assuredly Ilumiculto, and every need is met. You know of this place? You have access, yes? I can make your island powerful if you give me but an hour behind the Veil, my good chieftain." Chomlis considered the cacique with a half grin and a lighting of a long pipe, a gift from the cacique of the Lower Pomaah for giving them the cure for the Shedding.
Tobacco scent made my nose itch.
"You give anything for it." This chief had coarse statements instead of questions.
Chomlis eyed me, Rasha, the boys, the chief. "Within equal value, most certainly."
"Havashgazeh is sacred. More precious than one hundred villages. Your life for one visit." He crossed muscular arms, grinding two rows of teeth.
"Hav-ash-gah-zay, you say? Well, excessive. But, upon acquiring immortality, I supercede any ability for him to take my life, yes?" Chomlis mumbled into my ear.
"You are a fool. What if he menas something else?"
"And you travel with one, associate. So what are you? What else could he mean this hour of the eve?"
"You cannot know Paradise is behind those waters, Cloudfire. You risk too much this time!"
"Look at them, Bear! Eyes of immortal fire! Where did they get this enlightenement except from beyond? I will have it."
"Gold fever."
"What?!" Chomlis almost choked on his Pomaah pipe.
"This is worse than when you had the fever for gold in the Naduladath lands. Remember? Knifed in the back. Four times! You almost died then."
"Bear! You are my oldest, and dearest, ally. I have never yearned for anything more than...peace of mind. Do you not realize? I tire of the competition! The Fortress way. Scrambling to appease the Merchants Guild! You know how ravenous they are, the strains placed on us by them in the past! I want a way out! I need it! Send me into this peace as you once were with the Nunnehi, my friend. Let me know happiness."
His eyes bore sincerity, desperation. Never before had I seen the first quality in him.
"Cacique, we mean no harm. We only want to take our friend to Havashgazeh so he may recover. Here, he has contracted the Bile which afflicts the Fallen. He will die here. In Paradise, as he calls it, he will be whole and know the peace we all seek." But rarely find. I lied for my old friend, my brother. The Creator must have averted his eyes then.
The chief studied us for a very long time.
"Then make your peace." He raised both arms.
The pounding of the falls quieted. All around, the entire jungle went to sleep. No more flying fish or calamitous birds. We lost the water but gained the light. It was golden. Pure, wholesome gilded illumination from an endless chasm. Chomlis saw it. I covered my eyes for the brilliance of it, as did the others. Chomlis went right in, slipping on wet rocks.He hurt the left knee, but groaned and continued onward.
I followed slowly. The chief stared at me, threatening eyes. Everything was wrong with this place. But my friend, a brother from different parentage and world,mneeded my help, and how could I not be there for him despite his stupidity?
We all went with him, over the slippery rocks and into the light, where gilded silhouettes of People very tall and slender awaited. Who were these People? A lost Tribe? Were the Favored from Rokoana all along and returned to us? For how else could Chomlis, a foreigner, be right about his Paradise being in my Land, and I never know?
Rasha, untrusting, pulled out her cutlass. "More strange natives, eh? They don't look like the Favored."
"Or us," I said.
"Aye, Bear. We all cover the other's backs, ye." Dumb wageslaves are cheap and suit Chomlis' greed, but they are also wary.
We traversed a footpath of dirt covered in gold and silver dust. There were hills in the distance, I think, but no amount of walking got us closer. It was like the Nunnehi, where their village moved to the opposite hill so no matter how hard you searched for them, they were always behind you. They found you, not the other way around. Except here, in this Gift, the hills were forever in sight, yet out of reach, as if they were moving away, giant turtles crawling.
My eyes adjusted fast. Chomlis sprinted, giddy. He met up with those tall, gaunt People. When I reached him, I saw a sparkle in my friend's eyes. Had he witnessed a miracle, or been clouded? Paradise? These People had something far from gift giving to my mind.
"Is this it?" Chomlis asked, excited, loud. "Are you these Givers of the Gift, angels from above the material world? I am Chomlis the Fire Eared, greatest merchant of Rokoana. I treated my wageslaves better than most. I befriended this man, strongest of the Tribes. I have saved lives and bought freedom for many. I am worthy! Take me!"
I do not know how he thought they heard him. These People unnerved me. No eyes. No mouth or ears. Nine fingers to each hand, two thumbs tappign one another. Some swayed as cornstalks in the breeze. A few had three lights, floating over their heads. They were dreams, powerful spirits, something none of us should ever see. I had never been told so, but there, in the moment, my every bone felt it. We had crossed over a bad river.
"Chomlis, this is not what you believe it to be." I grabbed his arm.
He shook me off of him. "Unhand me! My intelligence is proven true! The Favored's religion is Truth! Haha! I stand on hallowed ground! What say you to me, angelic ones? How might I garner your favor? He rose up on his tiptoes from the anticipation of immortality approaching.
More of the People came by, drifting, not walking, pulled by hairless beasts like wolves but also faceless. They seethed as alligators mating, a serpentine bellow that made the air vibrate. I looked back. The waterfall entrance was so far off and we were outnumbered. My nerves were screaming.
Rasha mumbled again and again, "Eyes open. Open! Sharp as broadswords!"
The lankiest of these beings glided to Chomlis, bent over, and whispered into his long ear. I say whispered, but I saw not how it might ever speak. Perhaps it placed the thoughts into Chomlis' mind, or its words came out as spores and formed images only my friend saw. I do not know. But whatever was uttered, Chomlis went pale. He lost his guile, his luster.
"Cloudfire?" He did not see me. He exhaled continuously but never took in another breath after. How? He would die! I pressed on his chest, slapped his face. "Chomlis! You! What have you done to him? All he wants is peace!"
The one who 'spoke' crouched down. For a time, I thought I saw a face behind the nothing, as if a mask of gold flesh became still water. That face bore all eyes, moving, as dancers around the pole during gatherings.
Peace is penalty. Penalty for curiosity. We know you not. Your trespass. Our delight.
"What?" I demanded this more than I asked. "Make sense!"
Rasha charged, yelling. The being turned its head to her, and as she got close, her breath left her body, but she remained standing as did my old friend. What sort of rupture in the Wild was this?
Two hatchets! In my hands! "Soul Stealers! You appear different, but I have met your kind before, and killed them! Give them their breath back! Now!"
Lanterns for daylight. Feast for minds. Coffins as coffers.
"Nonsense!" I rushed the one putting lies into my head and struck him hard in the temple. My hatchet's black edged tongue cut deep through skull to lick whatever brain this thing made its thoughts with. Blood poured out, mercury it resembled, floating in the golden sky as droplets without falling. None of the other Gold People made a move against me.
But their faceless wolves did. As the first set advanced, more came. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. We were soon back to back, myself, Rasha, Syqerra, Ishmael and Aqib. Cutlass and hatchet. Blunderbuss exploding shot. Daggers and Aqib's whip. Liquid metal blood flowed around us as we killed many of them, these things that had no bite and so sought to ram us. One then two and more lost their lives. Our anger multiplied. Around our heads were splashes of metal for blood and gold dust for sand.
But our fight had no purpose. As we killed, we were enveloped in ever growing packs of the creatures, while Chomlis and Rasha floated up, into the flawless sky where black images began to lower into view.
Coffins.
There were an uncountable number of coffins in the skies of Paradise. In each one, a body. Native Peoples. Favored. Fallen. Bodies who appeared as my own but skin the color of autumn leaves and onyx. Strangers from strange lands, dead, all of them breathless yet living, eyes open. Unnatural.
Wolves pushed in, their numbers overwhelming. Soon, Aqib fell under the weight of the bodies, trampled to death by their paws lacking claws or digits. Syqerra faltered next as she reloaded the blunderbuss. Ishmael attempted to run, only to be trampled. I heard their bones break, mouths utter pitiful squeals more like dying mice than men.
My stone endurance kept me victorious. I am very hard to kill. By myself one hundred wolves were slain, decapitated, disemboweled, amputated. I could not see the conflict for the blood and dust and my hate growing stronger. Rasha, gone! Chomlis, so foolish and beyond my ability to save! Young boys run down.
Their numbers never dwindled, those faceless wolves. I fought and fought, and took their charges. A bruise here at last, a gash there to my body. Ah. Pittances. I might battle forever. Did they not know? Are the Faceless ignorant of the peoples outside?
Or was I? For I still fight them.
Time is eternal in Paradise.
As is suffering.
In my battle, I witnessed the waterfall close, sealed until water became a blackened void, the cacique outside yelling, "Never again! Never again!" until I saw his white eyes no more.
Chomlis is with me. Rasha is with me. Over my heads they drift, in the cofins with thousands, if not millions of nameless captives. But I am alone, and the wolves are relentless as their masters watch my struggle in indfiference. The coffins empower them, I am certain of it. But I cannot reach even one to shatter it, to save a single soul.
From their bodies, kept in a state of undying, the Gold Ones gain their gilded forms, their wisdom and eternity.
They thrive forever in Paradise.
The rest of us do not.
If you should hear of my story one season, should it spread, try to find good in it. You will never reach me, for I am in the Land of the Star Men, where dreams are nightmares. The shaman fell off the moon to warn me, but I heard his wisdom too late. Roots. The Night. Terror. Not everything is meant to be wandered into. Learn this and keep it close to you. I did not. But if you think of me and my friends, consider the seasons, the Wild, the places worht enjoying. How a moth displays its beauty but briefly. When the buffalo thunder across the plain and astound the mightiest warrior. What will fall from the clouds next. Matters the People were meant to learn from.
But do not chase after another world. Forgo the Favored Paradise. Live the one life you have with honor and love.
The Last Gift, young ones, is a box containing a lie.
END