Brujas TOC
Read Brujas pt. 7
Previously: Jenna gives new meaning to “and the horse you rode in on", Elvis battles some crows, and our three heroines join their powers to stop Jenna.
"You have taken something which is not yours. Now, you use it, you exploit it, and you're surprised that it is polluting your soul, ripping you apart.
It was never meant to be used. It was meant to be harmonized with. It flowed like a river and we respected it. Great, rushing waters contain beauty and peace and terrific power all at once. We knew that.
We let it take us where it wanted, when it was willing to. You seek to control it, cut it off, reroute it for your benefit. It is a relationship — not between machines and humans — but between íỹ'we and pa'íỹ'we. It is sacred, divine, total."
- waka'tum to Valerie Farina, 56 AKD
Where volatile inferno met charged flash, there existed two opposing energies that recognized each other and longed to meld together. However, the corruption of one force was too great for the other to tolerate, and a truce was not met.
Time slowed as they collided, igniting a blinding flare at their center. As one sought to destroy the other, it did so with regret, mourning what could have been.
Jenna held on, unable to admit defeat — even as she watched the twisting arms of electricity crawl up her beam of fire, even as the lightning swallowed the last of her stolen ammunition, even as her fingertips began to blacken.
"No!" she seethed.
Catriz poured everything she had into her strike against Jenna, as she balanced on the edge of the precipice between this world and the next. Her opal eyes glittered and rolled in their sockets, but still she held on to the Earth. She resisted the urge to glide upward and away on the tail of the hawk. She channeled the mesquite tree, pulled from its core, danced the dance, but refused to burn. This power was hers to wield, and she planned on using every last bit to save them all.
Íỹ'we flowed through her and she became the mortar and pestle that ground the mesquite into a fine sand that cascaded downward grain by grain, creating the beginning and the end of time — until Jenna suddenly let go.
Without a target, all of the overflowing power shot back into Catriz with the force of a wall of water rising up to meet a rapidly descending human form. Her mind went blank and she fell, and then she flew, as she had done many times, with kwa'el, to a place where past, present, and future exist at once.
***
Before the valley was dry and desolate, it was home to a lake and a group of people who called themselves sú'wepuchill'tem. Though some lived next to the lake, others lived in the surrounding mountains, near the mesa, in the valleys beyond, and in the hills. Despite the distance between them, they were one with each other and the land.
Waka'tum met Catriz as she woke by the lake. Catriz rolled over onto her stomach and sat up on her knees. Waka'tum sat down next her and both women looked out at the water. Catriz felt at peace as she took in a view that she had enjoyed countless times in her life. She turned to her ancestor and smiled. Waka'tum reflected back her smile and her eyes.
When the dark-haired woman with sharp, narrow features and an oval face spoke, the sound was a great comfort to Catriz — gentle and rhythmic, musical like a bird's song.
"Your dress," she said tenderly, "You hoped to meet him today?"
Catriz shook her head and returned her gaze to the lake. "Hm. We swam here many nights together. He always believed it was nothing more than a beautiful dream," she sighed, "How could I tell him? No, I wear this to remember him. That is all."
Waka'tum studied the face of her descendent in silence. She decided not to remind Catriz that her love had been a choice.
"It is done then?" Catriz asked, lost in the ripples on the surface of the water. "I saved them?"
The ancestor's face softened with sympathy. "You found her."
"She found me."
"You'll be together again, soon. She will wait for you here."
Catriz whipped her head around in shock. "What?" She stood. "No! She cannot come here. Not yet!"
Waka'tum got to her feet and placed her hands on Catriz's shoulders. "Your guardian fought fiercely, but ultimately we did not prevail. We have lost the last link. The time we gifted you has come to an end."
"What?" Catriz stumbled backward and blinked in confusion.
"It has broken at last. A cause for great sorrow, but also a chance for regeneration — a chance to reclaim what was taken from us." — a single tear rolled down waka'tum's cheek — "A great awakening has begun. We have Loré to thank."
Questions and demands bombarded Catriz then, rendering her speechless. She spun about and searched the valley for any sign of her house and the women. She knew this was pointless, but she couldn't stop herself.
Her ancestor continued, "You have one last task, and then you may return. You three will be the last to dance the dance, but the song of creation will be sung again. Long from now, perhaps not on this land, perhaps not on this planet." She kissed Catriz's forehead. "Go."
With that, Catriz left the land where the stars whisper many truths, and those truths are planted as opal seeds and grown as verdant visions.
***
Without their master at the helm, the festering reanimated crows ceased their attack, plummeting to the ground below.
As Catriz's body hit the ground, Elvis released an earsplitting cry that bent the air into rolling waves.
The jolt of losing Catriz's power in the stream sent Kim flying through the air. She landed on her back and slid past the mesquite tree. She lifted her head from the dirt to see Jenna pinning Loré against the tree. Kim yelled and reached out her hand, but all was drowned out by a deafening hawk's screech and the thunderous beating of Elvis's wings as the awesome beast flew toward them.
Kim saw Jenna raise her hand, fingers blackened with the death that continued to leach power from her. She saw her lips moving. She could not see Loré's face, but she saw her hands beating against her attacker's body.
Before Kim could act, a swirling, hazy film descended over her as the vial at her neck began to pulse and glow. She grit her teeth and fought the calm that seeped into her mind. She had to help. She had to get up.
Just as Jenna's hand moved toward Loré's face, Kim gave in and lost consciousness, her head laid softly on the ground, her body cradled by a loving warmth.
***
Loré's head slammed into the tree trunk. She felt the bark scraping her back as Jenna pushed her harder and harder into the tree. Jenna's face loomed in a field of stars, doubled in Loré's stunned vision. The daze did nothing to lessen the venom in Jenna's eyes as she raised one decaying hand and leaned in closer.
Despite the valley rattling with Elvis's shrill calls, Loré could hear every movement of lips, scraping of teeth, and flicking of tongue as Jenna intoned with great loathing, "I want what you have." Tears formed at the corners of the malicious woman's eyes and her face displayed a rapidly morphing kaleidoscope of emotions.
Jenna pierced Loré's shoulder with her other hand, which had become hard and sharp obsidian. Loré opened her mouth to scream, and Jenna plunged her raised hand straight down her throat. The two women locked eyes and a sadness passed between them, as Loré's body fought a losing battle against the poison that spread throughout her the only way it knew how — by destroying everything.
All of her energy — both newly discovered and buried deep — ignited within her and bled into the mesquite tree holding her up. Sap flowed freely from the tree then, as the internal structures of both organic beings began to collapse.
Rays of white light poured from Loré's mouth and from the tips of every branch of the tree. A discordant wail sounded as the light grew and punctured holes in both the human and the tree. The air around the three of them quivered as a bubble of radiation threatened to pop and engulf the entire valley in fire.
Just as the core of woman and tree reached a breaking point, sharp talons grasped the enemy and pried her away from what was left of Loré. The great hawk tossed Jenna far from the center of impending combustion, then drew close and enfolded Loré and the tree in her massive dark wings.
Loré looked into Elvis's eyes. Spiderwebs of black poison spread from her lips to her cheeks and down her neck, where it met the rest of her body as it melted into the tree. She tried to speak, but Elvis nuzzled her face with a feathered forehead to quiet her. Tears streamed down the woman's face as she considered her certain end and the irony of finally finding acceptance as her whole self only days earlier.
A soothing red glow filled the close cave of feathers and a voice swam in her mind, "Sleep, little one. I've got you."
Loré nodded, relieved that her mess of a life was, at last, not her burden to bear any longer. She closed her eyes and Elvis embraced her tighter. Familiar hands of her new companions — the weird old woman she wished she knew better and the stranger she looked up to — slipped into hers. The leaves of the plants in the courtyard brushed her face, sweet pan dulce sat on her tongue, and a joy rose in her chest as Elvis stifled the explosion that ate through flesh, bark, and feather of three long-lost relatives of those who can see with more than their eyes, love beyond time, and commune with the essense of the universe.
***
Life, as it is known on Earth, rushed into Catriz. Her eyes, which had returned to their normal rich brown color, sprang open and she gasped. Sitting upright, she scanned the scene in front of her, working to make sense of what she saw.
Jenna's nude body lay on the ground, far from where she sat. Catriz turned and looked over her left shoulder to see Kim a short distance away, encased in a semi-transparent dome that pulsed with undulating bands of pink, green, and gold light. Kim's chest rose and fell with the breaths of a peaceful sleep.
Catriz then turned to look over her right shoulder and felt her soul ripped from her with a thousand hands made of glass. She scrambled to her feet only to fall to her knees again a few strides later, at the edge of the scorched hole in the ground. Nothing at all remained of the ancient mesquite tree — no branch, no stump, no root.
She opened her mouth and raised her face to the sky as she mourned her loss with awful, despondent howls. She convulsed with open-throated, full-body sobs while her fingers scratched and dug at the dirt until they became bloody. Unbearable pain took huge, greedy bites out of her heart as grief worked its way through every atom she was made of.
Amid the despair, a small, high-pitched mewling came from the hole in the ground. Catriz's eyes widened in disbelief and hope. She leaned over the edge to look in. One tiny red jewel winked in the ash and a pink tongue darted out as the newborn goat bleated again.
With a series of unintelligible shouts, Catriz reached into the blackened impression in the earth and pulled out a tender and fragile Elvis. Underneath the goat, there was a single, bright white papelillo bract, untouched by flame or ash. A fresh wave of torment shook the woman as her fears were confirmed.
When she looked down at Elvis, the goat tilted its head upward and fixed her with sorrowful red eyes. Elvis keened sadly and tucked herself closer into Catriz's arms. She cradled the goat to her chest and wept.
Eventually, Catriz let herself go numb. She tried not to think of everything she'd lost in this life and focused instead on how soon it would all be over. The midday sun warmed her skin as she laid down in the dirt, her body curled around the baby goat, and hummed a lullaby she hadn't thought of in twenty years. They both drifted off to sleep.
***
Kim awoke from her slumber at the sound of Catriz's grieving. In a trance, she got to her feet, glanced at Jenna, then shuffled off to the house to lay in a cot and return to sleep.
***
Pitiful weeping sounds near where she lay woke Catriz in the twilight hours of the next morning. When she opened her eyes, she found herself face-to-face with the muzzle of a much larger goat than she'd fallen asleep holding. The events of the previous day came back to her and she choked on a painful sob as she wrapped her arm around the neck of an already-graying Elvis.
"I lost her."
Soft hiccups and sniffles rose again from the shadows. Catriz sat up in alarm and strained to see in the half light.
Seated almost next to her, at the edge of the burnt scar of the mesquite tree, Jenna had her knees drawn up and her arms encircling them. She sobbed, auburn hair swaying with each movement. Catriz hissed and got to her feet without thinking of what she planned to do.
Jenna looked up, fright swimming behind the tears in her eyes, and attempted to scoot backward on her bare bottom. She held up one hand and pleaded, "Please! Don't hurt me!"
Catriz stepped closer and stood towering over the naked, trembling woman.
"Please," Jenna bawled, "I didn't mean for this to happen! Loré was my only friend — the only person who ever cared about me." Panicked breaths made her chest heave. "I killed her. Oh, God! I killed her!" Her last words broke off into devastated weeping that overpowered her fear.
Catriz knelt before Jenna, who flinched and covered her face with her hands but did not stop crying. Dawn's gloom lifted slightly, which illuminated the return of Jenna's natural, warm skin color. Gone was the infestation of evil and the pallor it had cloaked her in.
The older woman spoke calmly, in a detached voice. "You've stolen so much from me. From us" — she paused to take a deep breath — "Somewhere, someone went wrong with you. I see that."
"Catriz," the younger woman begged, "I only wanted to feel again. I wanted to feel everything. I wanted you all to love me again. Why have I never been good enough? Why?" Jenna shrieked and frantically beat the sides of her head with her fists.
Catriz leaned forward and grabbed her wrists. The two of them wrestled briefly before Jenna gave in and pressed her face to the other woman's chest and wept. Catriz stroked her hair and whispered in her ear.
"Calmate," she purred. "It's going to be okay."
"I love Kim. I love Loré. I just wanted to be normal. The pills keep me from the magic. I just wanted the magic," Jenna whimpered into the lace of her dress.
"Aye, mija." Catriz moved her hand to her pocket and grabbed her knife.
"I'm so sorry," Jenna sobbed.
Catriz grabbed a handful of reddish hair and pulled Jenna's head back to look her in the eyes. "Nothing excuses what you've done," she whispered.
Jenna's face contorted in shame and she nodded.
"But the ancestors will still have you," Catriz said softly as she pressed the knife into Jenna's neck and slashed from one ear to the other. She laid the woman down onto the ground. Jenna's wide, golden eyes stared into hers. Her fingers went to her throat, but she could not stop the blood pooling underneath her.
A startled scream came from the house. Kim ran down the porch steps, freshly clothed, bag packed. She stopped at the gate, fumbling with the latch, calling out Jenna's name.
Catriz dropped the knife and walked toward Kim. Elvis stood and trotted behind.
At last the gate came free and Kim barged through. She made her way toward Jenna. Catriz blocked her path and grabbed her shoulders.
"No, mujer. It's done."
"Why? Why did you do that? She was family!" Kim struggled against Catriz, but the older woman held her in place.
"She had to be delivered to the ancestors," Catriz grunted.
"Bullshit!" was Kim's shrill reply.
Catriz lost her patience. She held Kim at arm's length and shook her roughly. "What bullshit? Huh? You see what she did? How many lives she took? You think I could let her go on like this? You didn't mind her dying when she had demons aimed at you!"
Jenna's blood soaked the clay beneath her, mingling with the vestiges of the spirit of the mesquite tree. Somewhere, both deep in the planet's core and far off, past the stars, a door unlocked, a dam burst, and a sleeping entity woke. The Earth shuddered.
Kim searched Catriz's eyes for mercy and found none. Still, she agonized to the unyielding woman, "She was sick. We could have helped."
"No," was all that Catriz could manage.
The two women swayed as the ground quaked. Kim's eyes flared with an astonishing rage and she slammed her fists into Catriz's chest with all her might.
"Witch!" she spat, before she turned away and ran to her car. She jumped in and started the engine. She caressed the vial at her throat before she shifted into gear and sped away from the adobe house in a flurry of gravel.
Out of her windshield, she saw countless meteors streak across the sky in the growing daylight. The car swerved with each rumble of the Earth's crust under the tires, but stayed its course.
She looked into her rearview mirror to see Catriz slump over, then collapse in a heap at the gate. Worry for the babysitter she used to wish was her big sister, when they were both just girls, pricked her as she watched the elderly goat trot over, lay down in the dirt, and rest her chin on the dying woman's back.
She wiped away the tears on her cheeks and kept driving.
***
Dirt spewed from under the wheels of the truck as it traveled along the only road into and out of the valley. The adobe ranch house grew larger as he neared, bringing back memories from his childhood. He noted the absence of the old mesquite tree and became concerned.
The metal driver's side door of the truck slammed shut and Erasmo walked on the clay soil of his ancestral lands for the first time since he was a kid, when his sister got married there. He shielded his eyes against the harsh desert sun.
Walking up to the front of the house, he inspected the thorny papelillo vines with vibrant magenta bracts intertwined with the gate and chain link fence. A single, pitch-black feather fluttered in the slight breeze from its place, tucked into the branches of the plant. Erasmo tried to pull it out, but the plant would not release it.
He wiped the sweat from his brow. "Aye, Catriz..." he lamented.
With a quick hop over the fence, he continued toward the porch steps. He looked about nervously when he saw the remnants of the front door. Erasmo shot a hesitant glance at the charred spot where the tree used to be before he stepped into the cool house.
The folded sheet of paper with his name on it was waiting for him right where she said it would be in the letter he'd received a week ago. He sat down in one of the chairs, an unpleasant creak resounding against the kitchen walls, and plucked the paper from the table. He unfolded it and read.
"Hermano, if you're reading this, I'm gone." He stopped to pinch the bridge of his nose and growl a curse at his sister. He cleared his throat and read on.
"I only want to say one thing. Everything we heard was true. I found her. She's real. Our bastard father and our evil mother kept her a secret. We have a little sister. Her name is Loré Ortiz. If she's not here when you get here, you must find her. Do this, for her, and you. Promise me. Signed, Catriz."
Cover art comprised of original images by K. Mitch Hodge and Mulyadi, edited under the Unsplash license.
I’m entranced. This can’t be the end?? What a beautiful and brutal story.
Read it twice and enjoyed it more &more. You weave a magical tale. Hope this isn't the last appearance of Elvis