Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (31 page)

“But you’re coming back,” she said simply.

“Yes. But if I don’t, you must promise.”

“If you insist,” said Hwara, crossing her arms. “I promise.”

“Thank you.” I took my sister’s hand in mine, squeezed it, and walked out into the night.

My eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, and I was thankful to be blessed with a cool breeze. Most of the paths in the Lowlands had been erased years ago, but the faint few that remained were enough to guide my way. I encountered little in the way of wildlife, which was to be expected. It was hard enough to find game even when looking. At one point, I heard a rustling in the grass. Afraid that the Lowlanders had spotted me, I stuck my back to one of the large, wilted spruce trees and peered from over my shoulder. After a few terse minutes, I spotted the culprit: a famished weasel, no doubt hunting for his dinner. I tried to offer him a few of my nuts, but he dashed off as soon as he saw me. Poor creature. The gods had been as cruel to the animals as they had to us.

I continued on, treading for hours through the water-starved grasslands until I reached the village of our ancestors. My grandfather’s generation had left it behind when the Lowlanders began their war, and worn bricks that had once been buildings were all the remained. The Lowlanders hadn’t taken it for their own, or if they did, it had been a brief occupation, as there was no reason to stay after the creeks dried up and the herds moved on.

The village itself sat in the shadow of a large hill. This, I knew, was my destination. I had only been here a few times, as a girl. My father brought me and my sisters here to show us the place where our ancestors worshipped. It was my father who told me never to forget the old gods.

The entrance to the Low Temple, a cave in the side of the hill, had been sealed with several large boulders to stop the Lowlanders from getting inside the sanctified chamber. As my father told it, the plan didn’t work; the Lowlanders simply moved the boulders to their current resting place beside the entrance and looted the few offerings my people left behind.

As I stepped over one of the large rocks, I again heard movement among the nearby grass. At first, I assumed it was the weasel, back to take me up on my offer, but then I heard the voices barking into the wind.

Lowlanders.

As quickly and silently as possible, I ducked into the Temple. I held my breath but kept my eyes open. The voices grew louder, and soon I saw a faint light creep into the cave. A moment longer and I saw them—five Lowlanders with torches and spears, a hunting party by the look of it. I could not say why they would be out at this time, other than to guess that they were as starved as we were. They didn’t notice me, and they didn’t pay any attention to the Temple. They passed by and soon the light of their torches faded into the distance. I exhaled and rolled onto my back, letting my nerves calm before progressing any further.

The Temple, if it could still be called that, was dusty and overgrown. Near the back, I could make out the faint outline of a small, cylindrical stone pedestal. I put my hands to its surface and found several large cracks running throughout. Any more force and I would have broken it entirely. From one of the pouches on my dress, I took a handful of seeds and placed them on the top of the altar. Then, using the tip of my finger to sort them, I picked the largest of them and placed it between my teeth. I sat, closed my eyes, and waited.

I focused on the image of Honovi. I focused on the message in his arm. I focused on the memory of my father, which had grown fainter and fainter as the years went by. My body tensed and my muscles relaxed as the breath of the gods filled my veins.

I saw Honovi. He sat, legs crossed, in front of me, a serene smile on his face. I reached out to touch his arm. The message was gone, and his skin was as smooth as mine.

“Why?” I asked. “What did you see that frightened you?”

Honovi’s smiled widened, but he did not answer me.

“Show me,” I said, to the spirits as much as to Honovi. “Help me see the way.”

And suddenly, the wind left my lungs. I coughed, grasped my throat, and fell to my knees. My vision blurred. I reached out toward Honovi, but he made no movement to help me. My eyelids fell, and the world went black.

In the darkness, I felt a powerful hatred fill me. I heard otherworldly voices in my head, though I could not make out their words. These were not the kachina spirits that visited us in the High Palace. These were the old gods: frightful, commanding.

“Show me the way,” I repeated, gasping to try to regain my breath. “Help us.”

There is no path.

I panted and flailed in the darkness.

There is no way.

I held my arms against myself and shivered. A chilled despair overwhelmed me.

You are not our favored children.

My blood ran cold. This is what Honovi had seen. The old gods had visited the High Palace, but they had not brought a message of peace. I was filled with such devastating anguish at that moment that I wanted nothing more than to lay on my back and die. It felt as though all that was good had left the world.

The voice only laughed at me. It taunted me with images of the High Palace in ruins. I saw bodies, hundreds of them, and many more sick and dying. I saw our lands, dried out and desolate.

You are not our favored children.

I cried out for the voice to stop. As my screams grew louder, the visions faded. The voice dissipated, repeating its warning again and again. The old gods had abandoned us, just as we had abandoned them.

When I opened my eyes, the Low Temple had returned just as I had left it. I found myself on the ground, shivering like a frightened animal. I lay there for a long while, reflecting on the message the old gods had sent me. I understood now why Honovi acted as he did. There was no right path for me to take. Nothing I could do to help my people.

As I rolled onto my side, I felt Cha’kwaina, my niece’s kachina, roll with me. It landed on the ground next to me, still attached to my dress. I picked it up and stared into the slits that acted as eyes.

“And what about you?” I asked the doll. “What do you have to offer? Do you hate us as well?”

The kachina didn’t answer. He simply continued to smile, taking pleasure in my pain. I gripped him hard, tore him from my dress, and tossed him against the rock wall. He hit less forcefully than I’d imagined, landing on the ground with nothing more than a faint stirring of dust.

I turned my head from it and began to hear a strange laughter. I felt my pulse quicken, afraid that the gods had returned to torture me. But this wasn’t the same vile laughter from before. Instead, it was the high-pitched, mischievous laughter of a child.

Behind me, I saw Cha’kwaina float up from where I’d discarded him. A peculiar jade glow surrounded the doll, illuminating the cave and forcing me to shield my eyes. I had seen the kachina spirits appear before, in the kiva of the High Palace. But not like this. Never like this.

With his stubby, fingerless arms, Cha’kwaina raised his bow. At once, a green arrow of light appeared against the string. The doll pulled it back and fired it into the wall behind him. The light from the arrow splattered against the rock like spilled dye and began to spread out to all corners of the cave. The light enveloped me, and when my eyes adjusted, I was no longer in the temple. This vision did not fill me with dread, but with confusion. I saw layers of grey bricks piled up to create massive structures that stretched into the sky. I saw the ground layered with black rock. I saw great beasts of shining colored stone moving past me with daunting speed. I saw many people, but they were not like me. They had pale skin and wore strange clothes. Above me, I saw Tawa rising into a shimmering blue sky.

“What is this?” I asked Cha’kwaina.

He only tittered in response. This vision seemed no more useful than the one the old gods had sent me.

I pointed to the pale people walking beside us. “Are these your chosen people? Are these the ones you discarded us for?”

Cha’kwaina raised a single stubbed arm and pointed behind me. I turned, following the doll’s gesture, and saw a pair of figures behind me.

My heart pounded. Though they were dressed in the same strange clothes as the pale men, I would have recognized them anywhere: Hwara and Ankti.

No, not quite. The faces were different—a lowered eyebrow, a wider lip—but I still knew them. They were family. They were my people. My legacy.

“Is this real?” I asked the kachina. “The old gods showed me a different path. Which is true?”

And the answer came to me.
Both
. My blood flowed in my sisters. They would survive, even without the favor of the old gods. If they no longer needed us, then we no longer needed them.

“Thank you,” I said, tears falling from my eyes. “Thank you for showing me.”

Somewhere behind me, I heard more voices crying out. I did not let them distract me. I kept my eyes on the child, watching as she stepped past me and walked, hand-in-hand with her mother, into one of the large buildings. I wanted to follow her, but I found that my feet would not move me forward. The voices grew louder. One last laugh from the kachina, and it fell to the ground, extinguishing the vision around us.

I was back in the Temple now. The Lowlander hunters stood in the mouth of the cave, balancing their spears deftly in their hands. The front one shouted a curse at me. I had nothing to say in reply.

In my head, I saw the spear flying through the air even before it left his hand. I slithered backward and the spearhead missed my thigh by only a hair. I pulled an arrow from the quiver on my back, nocked it into my bow, and fired. I was not the best archer, especially at night, but from this distance I did not need to be. The arrow pierced his neck and he fell to the ground.

I did not have time to savor the kill. Before I could reach for another arrow, two of the other hunters flung their weapons toward me. One missed, clanging uselessly against the wall. The other sailed into my shoulder.

I screamed. A haze fell over my vision, and the pain in my arm prevented it from reaching for my quiver. With my other hand, I retrieved an arrow and fired it. This one entered the leg of one of the hunters, but it seemed like a shallow wound. One of the remaining men stepped forward, appraised me for a moment, and threw his spear. To my surprise, I hardly felt it impale my chest.

As I slumped against the Temple’s altar, I felt a jostling on my legs. Cha’kwaina had appeared in my lap. I picked him up and squeezed his soft wool skin against my face. The warmth left my body, and I took comfort in his.

=[]=

Matt Borgard
is a software engineer living in Austin with one cat and one wife. He’s been writing his whole life, and is still not entirely convinced that the writers of
The Nightmare Before Christmas
didn’t steal the film’s plot from his elementary school notebooks. He enjoys reading, writing, and partaking in video games, and does not enjoy that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do all three simultaneously. He has been published in the worlds of academia and journalism, but is a newcomer to fiction.

A.J. French

=[]=

An accomplished editor in his own right, A.J. French adds a distinctive contribution to this anthology: Dreams, astral projections, and drugs—a perfect recipe for any mysterious fiction concoction. In fact, when I read this, I thought if Hunter S. Thompson had collaborated with H.P. Lovecraft, this would be their brainchild. The selection,
Rebirth in Dreams
, is a journey in which the destination is quite unknown. It is a path of self-exploration, one of transcendental knowledge, and of discovering ancient secrets. And mezcal . . . lots and lots of it.

=[]=

Dreams have much to tell us about the existential condition of
being
. The native peoples, which some foolishly refer to as savages, know this well. The Aborigines of Australia, the indigenous tribes of the Americas, the shamanistic wizards of the Caribbean Islands—these cultures ascribe transcendental knowledge to their dreams, and rightly so. They even built this knowledge into their grand ancient cities, whose crumbling ruins now remain like esoteric signposts, pointing us toward the origins of the universe.

I became obsessed with the subject during my teenage years. My fascination drew me into the realm of rare books and bizarre records. Away from my fellow human beings, I retreated into a world of symbols, pagan rites, and paths better left untrod. Even after I graduated from college, my appetite remained unsated. This lingering interest in dreams affected my work life, ensuring that I remain a bachelor indefinitely.

Each night was an opportunity for me to conduct some new experiment, which I meticulously recorded in my dream journal, not knowing what to make of the strange visions. Through study I learned of certain individuals who had found a doorway in their dreams, an escape from endless suffering, a portal to their higher selves.