An Excerpt: Apistli
Near Ixaya
For nine days, Apistli sat still outside the doors of the temple, eating and drinking nothing, carrying his grief from a place of chaos to one of learning. Grief is like fire in this way, he knew; powerful for those who can harness it, and all-consuming to those who can’t.
He knew which one of these he’d been. He closed his eyes and allowed the grief to wash over him, warming his blood and lingering in every memory of his son, sharpening the colors and singeing the edges.
It wasn’t the monks who kept Apistli out in the sun for nine days. They had welcomed him into the temple, offered him salted meat. This was the nature of the Way of Endless Water. The Deathless, as they were called by the fearful. They would have done the same for any living creature, their “siblings.” One of the Way had lain corn and water a short distance from where Apistli sat, far enough away as to not insult his fast, but close enough to signal that he was welcome in their company whenever the time was right. They refreshed the corn and water after the fourth day. No one ever spoke to Apistli during those nine days.
They were unfailingly generous. To him, of all people. Apistli wondered whether they knew who he was. They must. No one was untouched by the ongoing war. Not even the Deathless.
Again he thought of his son. Másatl had been born in wartime, had led his own men in raids, and had been assassinated. His entire life and his death had been shaped by the same conflict. Másatl had deserved peace. And he’d never seen it. Not a day of it. The body that he returned to the Basin of Spirits would be elaborately adorned with his many acts of heroism in battle. Too many for such a young body.
The silver wars kept the body artisans busy, thought Apistli grimly. The tattoos were many. Ink was low in the city of Ixaya.
Apistli greeted the grief like an old friend, welcoming it into every corner of his body. He let his mind linger on Tonalixko, emissary of the gods, whose likeness in ink graced the back of the hand, in a perfect circle. He moved his grief up his arm and through his heart and lungs and into his shoulder, where Metstli's silver vastness had been rendered in white ink. There, on his shoulder, Metstli bore the brunt of his rifle.
It was Tonalixko and Metstli -- together, the sun and the moon -- who worked through him to fire his weapon in defense of their people. Apistli's body, like everyone's, was only borrowed.
Once he was ready, Apistli pulled his legs out from underneath him and stretched, gently waking each muscle before standing. He walked to the doors of the temple, which were simple unadorned wood. It was nothing like the houses of worship of the Order of the Divine Mandate, which were enormous and elaborately decorated in silver. This temple was not much bigger than a house. All temples of the Way of Endless Water were unassuming, especially since their banishment. By law there could be only one true faith in Temictlan. And the Order of the Divine Mandate held a firm grip on Temictlan, like a weed with long roots.
He broke his fast with the corn they'd left for him and buried the cob in gratitude to the gods. He drank the cool water and gently set the clay cup on a nearby stone before opening the wooden doors and walking in.
The monks seemed to be expecting him. Nine of them sat in a straight line, facing him, their hands lightly clasped in their laps. They wore simple garments, all in undyed rough-hewn linen. Threadbare bandanas, unadorned and nearly worn through, covered the top halves of the monks' faces, concealing their eyes and their noses, so that no guest of theirs would be able to identify them later. Those bandanas, Apistli knew, helped keep them alive.
Behind them was a platform on which stood an immense wooden door. There was only a door, no room or enclosure behind it. No adjacent walls, or even a frame against which the door was set. The door was highly elaborated with carved and polished glyphs that Apistli did not recognize, arranged in five neat columns. Whatever this language was, it was beautiful. He'd never seen anything like it. This was not the lexicon of the People of Sun and Moon that Apistli would have recognized. Nor was it the strange line-writing of the People of Paper, nor the boxy runes of the People of the Red Mountains. This was entirely foreign.
The monk at the center of the line spoke. “Who is Apistli?” she asked.
Apistli sat once again, as he'd been sitting for nine days. He replied in The Way of the Order of Endless Water. “Apistli is no one and everyone who is, who has ever been, and who ever will be.”
She nodded slightly. Apistli breathed a sigh of relief and lifted a prayer of gratitude to Felipe Ordoñez, who’d taught him the script. The Words, as the Deathless called it.
“Then whose body is this before me?”
“My body is borrowed. My skin, my heart, my thoughts, and my memories are all made of earth, which neither enters this world nor leaves it. Each one is borrowed from the collective, and will soon be returned.”
“And who is Másatl?”
Apistli looked up at her, unconsciously searching for the eyes behind the undyed bandana. He hadn't expected to hear that name. That wasn’t in the script. “Másatl is no one and everyone who is, who has ever been, and who ever will be.”
“And whose body does he wear?”
“No one's body, my...?” Apistli didn't know what titles the Deathless used, and so the sentence trailed off, unresolved.
“Sibling,” she offered, and smiled. “The Way of Endless Water has no use for titles. Not even yours, I hope you understand.”
“I do,” he said. And it was true, he did understand. The Resistance technically did make use of titles, but the army was too small now for those titles to have much meaning. And his own tribal legacy didn't matter in the silver wars. No one cared if you were First Among Warriors of the People of Sun and Moon if there were more of those People in the enemy's uniform than there were in your own ranks. “Másatl has already returned his body to the Basin of Spirits.”
A knowing nod from the monk. Stillness from the rest.
“What do I call you, my sibling?” asked Apistli. “Forgive an old man. You know my name and I don't know yours.”
“Huin,” she said. “You're here for Másatl then? You've heard rumors that we can bring the dead back to us, I'm sure. As you know, as a member of the Faithful, The Order of the Divine Mandate teaches that only the Keeper of the Living and the Dead can do that. And she hasn't done so in a thousand years.”
“From what I hear,” Apistli paused to reflect on his choice of words, “I hear you all are not followers of the four gods. That you’re out there saying they ain’t even real.”
“You are half right,” said Huin. “We are not followers. But we also don't necessarily deny the existence of the four gods. We simply do not care whether or not they exist. We've shed our need for them.” She allowed this statement — this unfathomable heresy for which others had been hanged — its due space before continuing. “You look surprised, Apistli. And yet, you've just said yourself that we're all made of earth. Didn't you? There is no difference in the basic essential material between organisms. Bird, beetle, god, and man are all made of earth and water. Even our memories, our thoughts, our feelings. All made of material borrowed from the collective.”
“We call that fish talk, out in the wilds.” He narrowed his eyes, careful to make his point without causing offense. “Slippery. Like you don’t want me to really grasp it. Just want me to see the shimmering light real quick. But you and I, we both know it ain’t all the same. Bird, beetle, god, and man. Beetle can't kill me. Man can. A bird can't bring back my son. You can.” Apistli knew they weren't rumors.
“Fish talk,” repeated Huin like she’d never before heard the term. And maybe she hadn’t. She didn’t sound like she’d crawled out of the thicket.
Huin turned to her right and nodded to the monk at the end of the far end of the line. He stood, bowed to her, and left through a side door.
A moment later he had returned, with a straw pack strapped to his back, and a pot between his hands. He set this all down exactly halfway between Apistli and Huin. The pot made a sound when it touched the earth that suggested it was filled with water.
From the straw pack, he drew a small brush, a firedisk, a bundle of dried corn husks, a buckskin pack, and a folded titanium device. With the brush, the monk cleared dust from the floor in a wide circle. When this task was finished, he returned the brush to the straw pack. The titanium device was unfolded and configured, forming a small stand on which the monk placed the pot of water. Under the pot, he arranged the dried corn husks. The firedisk was switched on, and once the small blue flame appeared over it, it was tucked under the dried husks. They caught fire almost immediately.
The hemp tied around the buckskin package was released. Inside were five stout sticks, each about the length and girth of his arm. Each exquisitely carved in glyphs like those on the door. Each must have taken its artisan hundreds of hours to create. And to Apistli's horror, all five sticks were arranged in the fire, between the husks and the pot. Such beautiful work, serving as firewood.
“Why?” asked Apistli, watching the fire curl around the sticks. “Why burn your sigils? These gifts that you toss on the fire... Why burn them now, for me? Must have taken hundreds of hours to carve.”
“More,” said Huin, “if you add the time it took to grow the pochote tree for this purpose.”
Finally, Apistli understood. It was then that Apistli realized that they had been expecting him. It must have been years ago, maybe decades, that Huin or her predecessor had foreseen that Apistli would appear at their temple, on this day, asking to retrieve Másatl from the Basin of Spirits. So they had seeded the pochote from which they would eventually cut five sticks, which would then be carved into sigils, and thrown into a fire to boil the water that would be drunk by Apistli.
All of this, they had known before Másatl had even been born.
Apistli, who had been sitting, tucked his legs beneath him to kneel. He placed his forehead on the earth. “My siblings,” he stammered. “Huin.” He didn't know how to continue. He couldn't tell them he was manifestly unworthy of such an honor. Nor could he suggest that he was worthy. He found there was nothing at all that he could say to meet the moment, and so Apistli kept his silence.
“Tell me,” said Huin, “of the strength.”
Apistli pushed himself back up onto his knees. “Yes,” he said, collecting himself. Again he blessed Felipe Ordoñez. “Yes, of course.”
The monk who'd built the fire, whose name he didn't know, had spread before him on the buckskin a variety of roots, dried leaves, and succulents. Each of these he unbundled, one at a time, brought to his lips, thanked, and added to the pot of boiling water.
“I draw strength, and I return strength,” began Apistli, closing his eyes. “A stone in a river is immersed in, and changed by, the water rushing past it. And in its own small way, the stone redirects the course of the water immediately surrounding it. If the stones are many, this small, almost imperceptible act of resistance gives the river its depth, shape, and direction. The stone defines the contours of the river, and the river defines the contours of the stone. The stone, like all of us, is the dust of stars. The water has no beginning or end. I am the stone, drawing strength from the endless river and returning strength to the river.”
“May we draw strength from each other, and return strength to each other.”
Apistli smiled. “Didn’t think I’d hear ancient Kuautlali wisdom spoken here today.”
“Yes,” said Huin. “But, actually, before it was Kuautlali, it was the greeting of the Way of Endless Water. Long ago, before it was made illegal and we were driven underground, the Way of Endless Water was practiced throughout all of Temictlan. But especially here in Kuautlali, where there were many devotees. And so, although most Kuautlali don't know it, much of their culture comes from the Way. Like this greeting.”
The monk who'd set the fire had completed his work. He knelt before the pot with his head bowed. His prayers completed, he refolded the buckskin, now empty, and returned it to the straw pack. From the straw pack, he drew a small cup, and a ladle. Gingerly, he ladled some of the tea into the cup, and set the cup before Apistli. His work completed, he returned to his place at the flank of the line, bringing with him the straw pack.
“Why?” asked Apistli again. “Why me? Why this request?”
“Why are you surprised?” asked Huin. “You've made the request. You came to our temple. You prepared yourself for this.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know why I've come.” He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “Guess I've let myself hope that you had your reasons. Maybe I've let myself believe that the monks of the Way of Endless Water would be our brothers and sisters in this fight. Find common cause in the Resistance.” Apistli removed the knife from its sheath at his side and placed it before him, parallel to his crossed legs. “Whether we’re brothers and sisters, or enemies, or strangers, I’ve come prepared to die. And maybe, in preparing to die, I've learned to let go of everything else.
“But still,” he continued, “this is new. The fact that you'd already known that I’d show up here, begging for Másatl's life. You've been waiting for me. For at least as long as it takes to raise a tree.”
Huin raised her head slightly as she replied. “It sounds to me, Apistli, as though the question ‘Why me’ might not be the right one.”
Apistli considered this for a moment. “Alright,” he conceded. “Guess what I mean is this: What called you to do this work? You planted the pochote tree, you cut a branch from it, you carved the sigils, you made the tea. What called you to do it? Or who called you to do it?”
It was a long time before Huin responded. “I don't know,” she said. “Some things are not meant to be understood.”
Apistli shook his head slightly and lowered his gaze. “No, that knife don’t cut. Not with me. I need to know what you’re hiding before I lay down my life.”
But Huin didn’t respond. She didn’t even react.
“You're for the Resistance, then,” offered Apistli. “It’s the only way this makes any sense. And it explains why you can’t tell me, I figure. Whatever cosmic force it was, or spirit, or being, that compelled you or your predecessors to plant the pochote tree -- that force is on the side of the Resistance. Maybe there's a prophecy that Másatl returns from the dead to lead our warriors to victory over the United Silver Company. You must have known it since before Másatl was even born. Since before the silver wars even began, you knew. Or your predecessor did, before you.”
“None of us have any predecessors,” said Huin. “Nor do we have successors. I am no one and everyone who is, who has ever been, and who ever will be. My body is borrowed. My skin, my heart, my thoughts, and my memories are all made of earth, which neither enters this world nor leaves it. Each one is borrowed from the collective, and will soon be returned.”
“But the Resistance—"
“The Resistance,” interrupted Huin, “is small. Too small to have any place in your mouth or mine. The Resistance is a leaf in the breeze, holding your attention as the earth breaks under our feet.”
He looked down at the cup. The more he learned, the less he understood. “So this tea, then. Is this meant to help me see?”
“Maybe. It is teotilistli. It will nourish you and prepare you for your journey. It's not for me to know what your journey is, nor where it will take you.”
“Teotlistli,” he repeated, incredulous. “But that's a myth.”
“Myth is truth.”
“Sure,” he said. “But I mean it ain’t real. Teotilistli is not real.”
“Of course not,” said Huin. “Neither are you, nor am I, nor is this room, nor is anything in it or outside of it.”
“If this really is teotilistli,” Apistli raised the cup before him, as if in offering, “and myth is truth, then won’t I just die? The way Tonalixko just died, when he drank it?” He turned the hand that held the cup such that Huin could see his tattoo of Tonalixko, chosen by the gods to die. “If you even believe in Tonalixko, I guess,” he added.
“You and Tonalixko are two different people, with different destinies ahead of you,” said Huin. She leaned forward, as if sharing a secret. “But you don't need me to tell you this. Or anything else that I've said so far. You already know it. You know it all. I can't know why it is that I must speak these words, or why it is that you must hear them, any more than I could possibly know why the wind must blow and the rain must fall. All any of us can ever know, at our most enlightened, is what is. And even that is tenuous. So now, Apistli, you must do what you've come here to do.”
Apistli looked down into the cup.
“Wait,” said another one of the monks, this one at the end of the line. “There is one more thing we need of you. Forgive me, Huin.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” said Huin. “Please. Proceed.”
“Apistli,” continued the ninth monk. “Before you die, I need to understand how it all began.”
“What do you mean?” Apistli turned back to Huin. “I don't understand. You know how it all began. You knew I was coming. The Way of Endless Water--” Apistli lowered his eyes, willing himself to control his confusion and his frustration, both of which were mounting. “My sibling, forgive me. I just--”
“I am not your sibling,” interrupted the ninth.
Apistli looked up at the monks seated before him, his eyes wide. He turned to Huin, expecting to see or hear some sort of reaction; a reprimand of the monk at the end, who'd spoken out of turn, perhaps. Or some sort of clarification of what she'd meant. Or, in the worst of cases, the revelation of an elaborate trap. Revolvers, drawn from behind the linen garments. Apistli steeled himself.
Huin remained perfectly still.
The ninth monk spoke again. “The eight monks beside me are members of the Way of Endless Water. I am not. I am here for myself. My mission is an altogether different one.”
“I see,” said Apistli. Slowly, his hand moved closer to the knife before him.
“But I am not here to hurt you,” she said. “I'm here to learn from you how it was that the First Uprising began. I need to hear it from you. I need your perspective.”
“First Uprising?” He furrowed his brow. “Will there be a second?”
“There is too much that I've missed,” she continued, ignoring his question. “Everything that happened while I was still alive, I missed. I did not yet have the sight of the dead.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You're dead,” he whispered. “You've come back from the Basin of Spirits.”
“I have. I am a chronicler.”
“I see,” he said again. “Who are you, exactly?”
The chronicler leaned forward, and turned to her right, looking down the line of monks at the one who sat at the center. Huin nodded back at the chronicler. With Huin's permission granted, the chronicler squared her shoulders. She untied the bandana and pulled it away, revealing her face.
Apistli sat up, his eyes wide. “It's you,” he said, breathless. “Impossible.”
“Impossible, why? Because I'm dead?” She said it gently. “Are you not here to ask the Way of Endless Water to return Másatl from the Basin of Spirits?” This last she said reverently. Maybe even lovingly.
She was strangely ageless. Her face was steadfast in its presentation of all of the ages that she'd ever been, all at once. She was both a child and an elder. The wrinkles beside her lips and eyes deepened as she smiled; and also her skin was entirely without wrinkles.
“So tell me everything,” she said. “Even the things you think I know.”
Apistli glanced at the cup of tea at his feet.
“The teotilistli?” she asked, almost laughing. “It will still be warm when it's time for you to drink it.”
“Alright,” he said. He breathed in deeply, as he'd been trained to do when he was a young ranger. “Guess it started with the merchants. The People of Paper. They came back to Temictlan in their tall ships, having already been to Thyr, Eleanos, and Ximohe. They wanted our stone of gods, refined and smelted. ‘Silver,’ as your people call it. Kings, queens, and emperors around the world, they all needed to have it. Our stone of gods. Our birthright. And they needed it for nothing, really. Vanity. They had to wear it in their ears. On their heads. Around their necks. The merchants and the nobles, they grabbed it up from under our feet. Silver foundries cropped up overseas, making things out of our stone. Silver revolvers and silver daggers to decorate the walls of rich folks’ homes. Not to use, just to look at. Silver plates, silver forks, silver knives, and silver spoons all had to be made, with delicate engravings. Silver was rare everywhere else in the world, which made it precious. In our brand new Republic out here in Temictlan, the earth was rich with it, right where the four gods left it. The merchants, all People of Paper, you all became wealthy, selling to foreigners what our gods had left in the earth for us. So did the artisans. They are engravers, as you know. I remember that you’re one of them. Don’t think I forgot.”
She waved it off. “I understand. But you should know, almost none of us became wealthy. The artisans, I mean.”
“But some of you did. People of Paper, I mean. Everyone else was robbed. Impoverished. Stripped of our stone of gods.”
“They're our gods too, Apistli. And the silver -- it’s our gift too. People of Paper all pray to the four gods at night, just like you do. And like the People of the Red Mountains, for that matter. All of us, together, have been dispossessed by the few who became wealthy.”
Apistli nodded. “I supposed it’s true for you nomads.”
“Nomads like José Rogelio Izote?”
Apistli smiled warmly, thinking of the boy. “I expect we’ll see big things from that kid someday.” Then he narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to the side. “How do you know about José Rogelio?”
“We're digressing from your story.”
He nodded dubiously. “Sure. Well, you know how it goes with a new industry. The first miners were all a bunch of locals. Prospectors. They’d set up their camps, few days’ ride from their own homes, and would dig with pickaxes and spades. Then folks needed transport, so that popped up as an industry. And distribution. All just guys on horseback, at first. Or on donkeys. But then the vehicles started coming in from Eleanos, and those vehicles had no need for horses. The hauls got bigger. Companies wanted insurance, so that grew too.
“Didn’t stop with the vehicles either. Rich men from Puerto de los Espíritus showed up, soaking in foreign money, stumbling over each other to build the biggest, fastest extractors. And drills. Ernesto Zavala was one, of course. Easy to forget that he was a nobody back then. Just one of many. Zavala had been a naval captain during the war of unification, though of course you know that. We all do. But you might not know he was in charge of keeping the supply routes safe. He knew that whoever could move supplies across the continent would win the war. He was right. Same thing in the new silver industry. Whoever it could pull it out of the earth the fastest and send it to the coasts would dominate the industry. And so it was. Not too long after that, Zavala Silver gobbled up all the competition, and they called themselves the United Silver Company. Inside of five years, the Company had a monopoly on all stone extraction and distribution in Temictlan. But you must know all of this.” Apistli shook his head wearily. “This can't be what you're hoping to hear. I'm starting too early.”
“It is exactly what I want to hear,” she said. “This was all before I was born. So yes, I know what happened. But everything I know is what I've heard from my parents, and from the other merchant families in our caravan. They talk. And we're silver merchants, you remember. Most silver merchants were on Zavala's side. And all we know about the Resistance is what they print in The Voice of El Llano. And 'Resistance' is not what they call it.”
“The Voice of El Llano,” he sneered. “It's a tidy business, selling lies. It's like pulque. Once you get people addicted, they'll be banging down your door for more. Giving you whatever you want. More money in lies than there is in silver, gods damn.”
“Lies are addictive?” she asked, smiling conspiratorially.
“No. Fear and outrage are addictive. Make us feel awful, but we can't get enough of it, stupid creatures that we are. Like sipping poison and then paying for more. The Voice is in the business of manufacturing fear and outrage for the simple reason that fear and outrage sell.”
“Let's move on. So, he's bought out the press. I assume you think he's bought out the whole Assembly too.”
“Think?” Apistli glanced at Huin. She remained still. He started to wonder whether something had happened to her. The rest of the monks were similarly still. Transfixed.
“Enlighten me,” said the chronicler.
“You don't need me to enlighten you. Just think it through. Business was good. Foreigners wanted lots of silver, and there’s lots of silver underfoot. Money was pouring in, and the only thing slowing it down were the people working at people speed. The faster the workers, the greater the margins. So what you might guess would happen, happened: Working conditions, which were already bad, got worse.
“Zavala’s a lot of things, but a fool ain’t one. Wasn’t too long before a bribe here and a bribe there at the House of Assembly turned into a full payroll. Bigger payroll than the Republic itself was paying. The only check on Zavala’s power -- and on the abuse of his own miners -- was the Assembly. So he just went and bought it. Bought the whole damn thing like tomatoes at Sunday market. Most of those Senators are eating out of his hand.”
“And the people. They too were a check on his power, no?”
“The miners. Yes, they were. They rose up. And so did their kin. So the Company adapted. The United Silver Company became nomadic. Every day, their drills and extractors big enough to blot out the sun would be moved to new land. That location would be kept secret right up until drilling began at dawn. The miners -- my own kin -- would step out of the sleeping car. The “ambulatory,” they call it. And they’d be lowered into the mines to pull the stone of gods out of the earth. They'd feed it to the extractor, giving away their birthright for a few coins to buy the same damn food they used to grow.”
That seemed to evoke difficult memories in the ninth. Her eyes left him, settling on some distant place over his shoulder. “That's right,” she said. “About the food. They told us they had to centralize food production so that no one would ever go hungry again. Food would be grown by ‘the efficient few,’ I remember.”
“Yes. ‘The efficient few.’ I'd forgotten what they'd called it when the Assembly stole our land and sold it to those rich folks. Made it illegal for the rest of us to grow our own food. Well, I suppose it worked. They were right, in a way. After that, there was more food in Kuautlali than ever before. Even past Kuautlali. North, into El Llano, and Mitlahuic. Piles and piles of food, just sitting there, in stacks, in warehouses, to be sold to the few who could pay for it.”
“Most couldn't,” she added.
“Right. We could pay, but we were regular folks, paying regular prices. Not what the foreigners were paying. So our crops, which we were no longer allowed to gather and grow ourselves, were shipped out to Eleanos, Thyr, and Ximohe. They'd become a big deal abroad.” Apistli lowered his gaze and nodded, remembering the Great Hunger.
“War was inevitable,” she said.
“It was,” he said. “Fact is, I've often wondered whether the Great Hunger had been done on purpose. To lure us into a fight that would give them an opportunity to wipe us out.”
“If so, it hasn't worked, has it? It's been nearly twenty years.”
She smiled at him, and it occurred to Apistli that she'd meant to be congratulatory; celebrating his long, protracted rebellion. But Apistli understood the price of war. A single year of combat was a year too long. Twenty was unspeakable. “I've just tried to do what they've asked of me,” he allowed. “Fulfill my duty as best I can.”
She looked askance at Apistli. “What who asked of you? You've lost me.”
Apistli smiled tragically. “There's been so much war that people don't remember the Miners’ Union of Ixaya -- the strikers who started this whole war. The whole thing began with peaceful protest. When the Company retaliated with violence, the miners came to me.”
“That’s right.” She nodded slowly, remembering. “The raids. The attacks on the armory, and on the Company mining encampment. That was a huge coup, I remember. You brought Zavala down to his knees. On a single morning. With something like forty men, right?”
“And women. People of Sun and Moon... our sisters fight too. Ain’t like the People of Paper, keeping them locked up in cotton and lace. Present company excepted, of course. You fight like you got the demons in you, I remember.” He smiled faintly, recalling the confrontation at that gritty old tavern in Ixaya, all those years ago. The Ayotl, it was called. They both almost lost their lives.
If the chronicler was also remembering the Ayotl, she didn’t show it. She pressed on with her interview. “And then you issued the Law of Apistli.” Her face darkened. “Wrote it in blood. Real blood. Sent it to Zavala’s house from the Company's encampment. On a sheet of paper from his own desk. Sealed the envelope with his Company’s emblem.”
Apistli’s eyes wandered back to Huin. She wasn’t moving. Not at all. None of them were. They sat like statues, so still that even the folds of their garments made no movement at all. The monks, it seemed, weren’t even breathing.
“The Law of Apistli,” repeated the chronicler, drawing Apistli’s attention back to herself.
“There is no Law of Apistli,” he said. “Never was. I didn’t write it. The miners did. It was actually called the Declaration of the Miners’ Union of Ixaya. My name ain’t even on it. Anywhere. I didn't come up with the terms of the offer, nor did I draft it. I just sent it. It was the Voice of El Llano who first called it the Law of Apistli, to make me look like some kind of unhinged radical out in the sun too long.”
“Well, it was pretty radical. It turned out to be a historic document, didn't it?”
Apistli shrugged. “Shouldn’t be ‘historic’ to demand better working conditions and reasonable pay.”
“But you're glossing over the most important thing: the statement that the silver found in Kuautlali soil belonged to the Kuautlali people. It’s the idea that you own it, and that you need to be paid for it by the United Silver Company. That was revolutionary.”
“Zavala called it extortion.”
“He did more than that, didn't he?”
Again, Apistli remembered. He thought of the carts and carriages that had been overturned, dead horses and riders strewn about the roads. He remembered trying to avoid the rivulets of blood streaming downhill between the cobblestones. There had been an oppressive heat that day, emanating from the fields and houses that had been set ablaze. He remembered the acrid smell of burning hair wafting from a window as he ran past. “He did,” he said solemnly. “The Slaughter of Ixaya.”
She honored his grief by remembering it aloud, speaking the name of the atrocity in a sacred space. “The Slaughter of Ixaya. May those who lost their lives walk in the blessed company of the gods.”
Apistli nodded wordlessly. “May the gods bear witness,” he said. He pointed to his eye and then upward at the heavens. “Sorry, Huin,” he said to the monk. “Don’t feel right to pray to our gods in your temple.”
There was no response from Huin. He’d already known there wouldn’t be. The Turning had begun, and his own time among the living was approaching its end.
Apistli turned his weary eyes back on the chroniclier. “Before I go, I want to make something right. I didn’t ever thank you for what you did, and I’m sorry for that. Thank you, Remedios. Thank you. With my whole soul, thank you.”
Remedios’s face softened. It had been an impossible face, both old and young at once. But it seemed to make sense when she smiled. For that moment, the girl she’d been once, years ago, when they’d met at the Ayotl, and the woman she’d been when she’d died, looked the same.
Apistli touched his own face, wondering whether she was also seeing him as an old man and a young man at once.
“You have nothing to thank me for,” she said. “She was like a sister to me.”
“You saved her life,” said Apistli. “All those years we had together, she and I. They’re all I have, and I have them because you saved her life. Hers and Másatl’s.”
Remedios smiled in remembrance of her old friend, seeming to linger on a sweet memory, basking in its warmth. “Did she ever sing you the agonía I taught her?”
Apistli calmed his heart, as he'd been taught to do as a young ranger. “Yes,” he said. And then he sang the first two lines of the melancholy song he'd only ever heard from the lips of Másatl's mother:
We won't die tonight if we sleep with legs entangled.
Because that way, Death would have to break us both.
“That's all I remember,” said Apistli when he'd finished. “I remember her singing it, but in terms of the words, I can only recall those two lines.”
“That's alright,” she said. “That's perfectly alright.”
The room was silent. The eight monks before him remained perfectly still. They suddenly reminded him of the stone godforms that one could find in the houses of worship in the jungle, with their legs crossed, indifferent to the moss amassing on their heads, backs, and shoulders. Remedios had also stopped speaking. She offered him no more questions.
“Is there anything else you'd like to know from me?”
But she didn't answer. She didn't even seem to hear him, she was so engrossed in her reverie. All nine were so still he wondered for one ridiculous moment whether time had actually stopped.
“Nothing else?” he asked again.
But no one spoke. No one even moved.
So Apistli raised the cup to his lips and drank. Setting aside the empty cup, he stood and faced the door behind Huin. “I draw strength,” he said, “and I return strength.” He walked around Huin, who remained still as he passed, and approached the door. He opened it, though there were no hinges or frame, and he saw that behind it there was nothingness. He did not see any sort of room, nor did he see the back of the temple, as he would if the door were false. There was neither light nor dark, nor image, color, or texture. There was a void; an absence of seeing, as if Apistli had acquired a curious blindness exactly the size of the door.
There was no sound either, nor scent. The bitter taste of the teotilistli had dissipated, as had nine days' worth of hunger.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that all the monks of the Way of Endless Water were gone. So too was Remedios. Or perhaps they had never been there. Nothing remained but the empty cup.
Apistli stepped through the threshold and ceased to exist. Or rather, he finally understood that he did not exist, nor had he ever existed. Nothing had. The temple did not exist. And in that temple that did not exist, there had been no Way of Endless Water, which also had never existed.
He wept for himself and for Másatl, who had never been real. But the tears rolling down his cheeks weren't real, and neither were his cheeks. There he was, at last, in a place of knowing. And yet, there he wasn't.
All was earth and water.