kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"UnicornHunt.5"

words

Four Monkey followed his parents and siblings through the city to the temple. They had slept little on their many days of travel on the white road to answer Summons. He saw the temple rise on the far side of the city, notched into the hills as if it was a natural outgrowth shaped by the gods. As they neared, four fours of guards became visible, arrayed on both sides of the wide stairs that ascended through a jaguar's open mouth.

His father hailed the guards from a respectful distance. "I am Shield Kan. I answer Summons."

A priest stepped out of the mouth and, catching the attention of the guards, beckoned Four Monkey and his family in. Light fell through large slats in the stone roof, pooled into large cisterns, and flowed over in scattered rays amidst the smoke. The room was easily five houses wide and deep, and tall enough to let in some small part of the sky. Incense burners stood in the four corners of the room, each tended by a priestess unwavering in her attention. The two priestesses closer to the door held jugs while the two at the far end held wide bowls of what appeared to be rough sand. Copal permeated the air.

Four Monkey was overwhelmed.

The priest motioned for he and his family to go no further than the entrance. "Name your life." he called in ritual.

"Shield Kan," replied Four Monkey's father.

"Name she who is your fount."

"Laughing Monkey."

"Name your sons."

"Shield Paw, Six Kan, Four Monkey."

"Name your daughter."

"HoYak."

"Feathered Serpent," intoned the priest as he stepped aside and another entered. Feathered Serpent was dressed as befit his name, brilliant plumes shimmering like scales about him. Four Monkey's breath caught--here was the high priest of all the land.

Laughing Monkey's eyes widened as she turned to her husband and hissed, "What have we done?" He placed a warning hand on her shoulder, silencing her.

Feathered Serpent continued the ritual. "Shield Paw." Each priestess placed an offering of Copal in the braziers; the smoke swirled lazily towards the center of the room.

"Yes," coughed Shield Paw. His eldest brother had full years and was brave in the hunt, but he seemed now as nervous as Four Monkey felt.

"Step forward."

Shield Paw stepped forward and was enveloped by the growing cloud of Copal. Through the smoke, Four Monkey saw him responding to the deep rhythms of Copal and voice.

"Have you hunted Jaguar?" Rhythm blended with the words and compelled truth.

"Yes." He was proud.

"Have you caught Jaguar?" With truth spoken once, more truth was pulled.

"Yes." He was proud.

"Have you hunted Woman?" No judgment could be found in the tonelessness.

"Yes." He was proud.

"Have you caught Woman?" No judgment.

"Yes." He was proud.

"Step back." No judgment.

Shield Paw emerged from the Copal and Four Monkey saw that his eyes had glazed and dilated. Shield Paw walked back slowly; his breathing quickened and slowed as if trying to remember proper function.

"Six Kan." The priestesses each placed a new offering of Copal in their braziers; the smoke swirled lazily towards the center of the room, thickening with the last.

Six Kan stepped forward and was enveloped in the cloud of Copal.

"Have you hunted Jaguar?" Feathered Serpent's voice slithered around like the tendrils of the smoke, demanding truth.

"No." His was to farm the corn, not hunt.

"Step back."

He did so, gladly, and the smoke let him be.

"Four Monkey." The priestesses each placed yet another offering of Copal in their braziers; the smoke swirled densely through the room, pooling towards the center.

Four Monkey stepped forward, afraid of the smoke. He did not breathe.

"Have you hunted Jaguar?"

The voice pounded at his head. His father had refused him the hunt for he did not have his HoTun twice. He was two from that accomplishment; he was too young. And so he made to answer as his father bade him. As he started the syllabic word, he could feel something ripping at his mind compelling him to answer truly. His head swam from fear and lack of breath. Still he forced himself to be true to his father.

"No." Feathered Serpent fixed him with a sharp look for a moment, making Four Monkey feel transparent, the lie visible inside him like a burning accusation. But it passed.

"Step back."

Four Monkey obeyed hurriedly, trying to hide his lack of breath and the dots spinning in his eyes. His heart continued to pound and he hoped he had done right; he was thankful that Feathered Serpent stood too far in the other world to see how he moved in this one.

"HoYak." The priestesses each placed a fourth offering of Copal in their braziers; light bent through the billowing trails, making Four Monkey light headed even where he stood.

HoYak stepped forward, looking especially uncertain and afraid.

"Have you been hunted?" HoYak swayed in the smoke, and twitched as if some warmth were suffusing her body.

"Yes," she replied, sounding surprised by herself. Four Monkey knew it was her Spirit that answered; Spirits often hoarded knowledge

"Have you been caught?"

"No." Her voice was pure and certain with this answer.

The smoke sunk more quickly towards the center where HoYak stood, and Four Monkey saw her gently place herself on the stone floor, almost as if she floated down. Her eyes closed peacefully.

"Shield Kan, your sons are not worthy. HoYak will be sacrificed to help find another to hunt the Unicorn."

Shield Kan gasped for air and composure, Laughing Monkey clenched into a pale knot, and Four Monkey stepped compulsively forward--he knew that he shouldn't have lied.

"I _have_ hunted Jaguar!" cried Four Monkey, and he hovered over his sister protectively, fists clenched, taking in deep breaths of the Copal. His parents were silent , and Four Monkey knew that the prospect of losing both only daughter and youngest son was too much for them to bear.

Feathered Serpent moved forward and sniffed at Four Monkey's neck, searching the lie. He pulled the sweat out with his nose and, like a serpent, read the fumes with his darting tongue. "It is so. You have hunted Jaguar."

Four Monkey felt his father's anger tinged with hope falling on his back. He felt his brothers' surprise, his mother's shock.

"Have you caught Him?"

The answer came easy when he rode the smoke. "Yes." His father's hope burned brighter and his brothers' surprise turned to respect. The high priest searched the lie, and found none.

"Have you hunted Woman?"

"No." The high priest again searched the lie, and found none.

Feathered Serpent knelt down and sniffed at Four Monkey's groin. "It is truth. The boy is worthy. HoYak will live." He motioned to the first priest.

The first priest brought two small bowls forward and handed them to Laughing Monkey and Shield Kan. "These are for your tears. Your love will help protect and your fear will help keep wary."

With that, emotion finally overran their banks and Four Monkey watched his parents begin to softly cry, drops falling into their respective bowls. Once a palmful had been collected in each bowl, they were asked to leave. "Your son will feed the continuity of this land in his hunt of the Unicorn. But he must go to Xibalba to do it; he is gone from our world. Take your daughter and other sons." And then they were gone, and the enormity of it began to beat at his chest.

The first priest then moved to Four Monkey and stripped him and helped him atop a simple stone slab just behind Feathered Serpent . Four Monkey shivered from the contact, or perhaps a bit from fear. This was not a journey many were honored to make, only one being in a KaTun. He hoped the honor was not too great for him.

The two priestesses from the far end brought their bowls of sand and began to bathe him in it. They scrubbed vigorously and left no flesh unscathed; his skin glowed red through his brown as if a fire were being fanned within him. "Here your body is scrubbed free from your soul," Feathered Serpent explained.

The first priest placed at each corner of the stone slab a lit candle so that the wax dripped onto Four Monkey's hands and feet. The hot wax fed his inner fire.

As the first drop of wax fell from each candle Feathered Serpent called out to the four Bacabs, praising them and asking them to hold the sky still so that no thing would disturb the proceedings.

With the fourth call an old man, naked but for a golden circlet adorned with jade and standing tall and proud, emerged from a side room. The old man paid no attention to the world beyond the ritual at hand. He raised his arms and all saw the results of the sauna he had just left.

Feathered Serpent took four strips of white cloth and soaked them in the old man's sweat, his brow and body. These were then tied around Four Monkey's wrists and ankles.

"The elements," noted Feathered Serpent. "Five must be bound to you for your journey to be successful. Sweat is the first." He slid a ring about his finger and there was a jaguar's claw embedded in the gold. "Blood is the second." Four Monkey flinched, but the high priest turned to the old man and quickly ripped holes over the old man's nipples and through his foreskin. The old man received the wounds stoically and with much practice; the blood that dripped from those holes was caught on another strip of white cloth, which was then compressed against Four Monkey's forehead.

"Third are the tears that connect you to this world," Feathered Serpent stated, and the bowls of Four Monkey's parents' tears were brought over. Laughing Monkey's tears were poured onto his left eye even as Shield Kan's tears were poured into his right.

"Fourth is the honey that first succors." The two priestesses from the corners of the front of the room came forward with their jugs and washed his hair with sweet milk. Four Monkey was then wrapped in a full sheet of white cloth and stood up from off the slab.

Now Four Monkey could see the old man whose blood and sweat had anointed him, and he stammered, "Smoking Jaguar, Ahau!" Four Monkey tried to prostrate himself before the lord-in-man's-body, but he was well and bound in the sheet and barely kept from simply falling over. The old man smiled patiently.

Feathered Serpent brought a stick of Copal, lit it, and set it under Four Monkey's sheets so that the sheets billowed with the aromatic smoke. "The fifth element of Ixt," Feathered Serpent murmured to himself.

Smoking Jaguar spoke. "This Short Count brings us near an end of the blessing of the Unicorn. Will you hunt him for us?"

"Yes, Ahau." Four Monkey's voice wavered with awe that the Ahau spoke to him--the Ahau had bled for him!

Smoking Jaguar smiled. "You must gather an element for each Pahuatun. Do you know them?" Four Monkey's heart was pounding but the smoke helped calm his mind, and the knowledge came as if from nowhere: horn, claws, eyes, heart.

"Yes, Ahau."

"Then go and place them upon choc mool, there are four there linked to here," and he gestured about the room, "and doing so the Long Count will remember you." A chained dagger was placed about Four Monkey's neck and a spear tucked into his sheet.

The slab he had lain on was moved aside and beneath it was a yellow green hole that went further than light carried. He was lifted up above it and dropped to his death.

Four Monkey entered Xibalba slowly--he could still feel the splintering of his bones, the agony of impact. His eyes at first would not open but then he remembered the blood anointing his forehead and his third eye opened with higher clarity than anything before. Below him lay his body still contained within the sheet, blood only beginning to ooze through it. The spear was in his hand and the dagger about his neck. He would hunt the Unicorn.

Four Monkey looked around. There was a dim light as if from the air itself, lighting caverns of liquid stone. He heard echoes of water in the distance. Closer still he could hear a breathing and he knew it was not his own. He moved quickly but quietly, hiding behind an upright formation of the yellow-green rock. Jaguars attacked from trees but he saw nothing of the sort here. How would a Unicorn fight? He could hear its breathing but the breathing resounded through the cavern and echoed. He heard movement.

A great purplish-black beast dropped from what must have been a hidden ledge above him and made to devour his not-long-departed body. Four Monkey nearly gave himself away, the movement so startled him, and the sight was frightening in itself. The Unicorn's movement was liquid smoke shimmering effortlessly from one spot to another; only solid were its gleaming white teeth and horn and claws, which for the moment were struggling with the folds of cloth that wrapped his mangled body. It _was_ a jaguar, but twice as tall and wide, with a spiraled horn jutting from its forehead as a third eye.

His fear propelled him forwards and he speared the Unicorn through its left shoulder, missing the soft spot in the back of its neck. It thrashed about but he held on to the spear as it ripped out of the Unicorn's shoulder. The Unicorn looked about, left and right and above, but did not see him. It backed away from the direction of his attack, slowly. Four Monkey was afraid to move, afraid that perhaps with any movement it would see him and rend his spirit to shreds. Then he understood that it was the magic of Smoking Jaguar and Feathered Serpent that protected him, and he leapt at the Unicorn. He ducked between the flashing claws and this time his aim was true. With a shudder the Unicorn lay limp and dead.

Four Monkey trembled with adrenalin. He took the knife from about his neck and cut loose the Unicorn's horn and claws, gouged out its eyes and carved forth its heart. The claws he took and placed in the south of the room in a stone statue of a man with an open belly. The claws faded into smoke that wafted upwards through the statue's nose. The heart he placed in the west of the room in a stone statue of a pregnant woman with an open womb. The heart dissolved to blood which soaked into the statue and disappeared. The eyes he placed in the east of the room in a stone statue of a cat, its own eyes shut and mouth open. The mouth descended on the eyes and held shut for a moment. When the mouth opened, the eyes were gone.

Four Monkey felt a tingling in his skin as he placed the horn in a simple hole in the north of the room.

His third eye closed.

Four Monkey could see nothing.

He felt himself being wrenched back into his body. With broken limbs he flailed about until the sheet was off him and he lay sobbing in the greatest pain he'd ever felt. He could feel broken limbs reforming, separated bones moving about through his flesh and finding each other, and he hoped consciousness would depart him for the process to finish--but the pain continued. His blind body was the battleground of creation and destruction.

An eternity passed and Four Monkey wondered if it had truly been but an instant.

His eyes opened of their own accord. The cavern was grey instead of green; it had a strange look to it. Instinct led him up to a ledge high in the cavern wall. He was hungry but there was no flesh to be had. The cavern was empty.

Four Monkey licked his sleek black paw and waited. Someone would come.