Escaping Fate (21 page)

Even after hearing my grandpa recount
his great uncle’s story, I was astounded. Everything didn’t just
look real, it was real, the heat, the smells, the stones under my
feet. The only hitch in this timeless reality was the absence of
any surroundings. The hills of South America were green and
rolling, the rivers swift and long. But here, there was only the
temple. No crowd of onlookers cheered. No birds flew overhead.
There was only the mist, as if it had covered the whole
earth.

Silently the high priest nodded his
head, the wooden mask bobbing with his movement. The silent guards
seized my arms, tearing me from my grandpa’s grip.

“No!”

The scream was torn from grandfather
and granddaughter alike.

Reaching for my hand, my grandpa
stepped forward in a rush. The loud crack barely registered to my
ears, but the pain quickly swept through him. Lying on the hard
stone of the temple mesa, my grandpa moaned, clutching his head. A
thin stream of blood ran through his fingers. His eyes rolled in
pain as he heaved in breath after breath. “Arra,” he
croaked.

“Stop,” the priest shouted. The man
trembled visibly. “Just hold him.” He turned his back, a hand going
under his mask to his eyes.

The two remaining guards resumed their
work. “No,” I screamed, struggling against their stone-like grips.
“You can’t do this to me.” My eyes caught the priest’s. Desperation
poured down my face with every tear. “Please, please don’t do
this.”

“I have no choice!” The strain in his
eyes overwhelmed me. He had gloried in offering sacrifices to his
god in my dreams. That joy was gone now. He looked at the blade in
his hand with disgust. Looking like he wanted to throw it from the
top of the temple, he clutched it more tightly instead. His
weakness pushed me forward.

“You do. Please, don’t do this. You
don’t have to kill me.”

The priest’s whole body sagged, worn
from centuries of fulfilling his duty. “I’m sorry Arrabella. I have
no choice but to see you die by my own wretched hand. The gods
demand it, and they cannot be denied.”

“No, you can stop this. You must stop
this from happening. Please,” I asked. I could see it in his eyes.
He didn’t want to watch another girl die. He wanted to stop the
gruesome murders, but I did not believe him when he said he could
do nothing to stop it. He was the one who had made the deal in the
first place. Surely he could undo it if he really wanted
to.

“You can’t do this, you evil beast.”
Fury dripped from my words.

The movement started slowly, just his
hand moving from his side. Suddenly the hand whipped to his
forehead and ripped the wooden mask from his face. My struggling
stopped, and my gaze fell upon the man’s face. The difference in
his features shocked me. He looked to be the same age as he had
been in my dreams, but he was barely recognizable as the same
man.

His skin was pulled too tightly against
his skull, yet in some places seemed to sag much more than it
should. Red veins meandered through the whites of his eye. His
pupils, too large for the brightness of the day, seemed to soak in
every horrible detail of the mesa. His teeth were yellowed and
weathered with cracks. Misery and hopelessness radiated from
him.

“Evil beast,” he repeated, sighing
deeply. Withering even further as he spoke the words, the priest
looked ready to collapse. Suddenly, the weariness in his face
disappeared in a flash, replace by a furious rage. “How dare you
name me an evil beast. You call me evil, when I only thought to
save a life, Kivera’s life. Do you think I was pleased when she was
brought forward as a sacrifice? I was horrified, but it was too
late.”

My guards, who seemed to be confused by
the change in procedure, had lessened their grip on my body.
Seizing the opportunity, I wrenched out of their grasp. Fear
slapped their faces and they lunged for me again. The high priest
waved them away. Reluctantly, they eased their stance. The priest’s
strange young, but old, hands covered his face, squeezing his
flesh.

“What are you talking about? You killed
thousands in the name of your gods. What made you give in to
Kivera’s pleas, of all people? Why make an exception for that
selfish little twit? Why was she so different?” I asked, my anger
not abated by his obvious grief. “Why won’t you save
me?”

“Would you willingly do what Kivera
did?” he asked.

“Never,” I spat.

“Then I wouldn’t have been able to save
you then, either, just as I can’t save you now.”

“But why Kivera? Why offer her such a
vile deal, dooming her children to death, just to save her? How
could either of you do that?” I stared, accusing him, forcing him
to face his treachery.

“Kivera was the most beautiful woman I
had ever seen.” He paused as my scowl deepened, my hand raised as
if to attack him. I wanted to wring his neck. A pretty face? Are
you kidding me? Katie and Maera had died because of man’s
uncontrolled hormones. I eyed the knife in his hand and wondered if
I could get it away from him.

Sensing my anger the priest drew the
knife behind his body and spoke. “It’s not what you think,
Arrabella. I grew up with her. We were children together. I was
sent to train in the city, but I went back to see her every chance
I got. That summer she was turning sixteen, old enough for me to
ask her father’s permission to marry her.

“When I arrived in her village to speak
with her father, he was dead and she was already gone. I asked
those who weren’t too afraid to speak to me, but all I learned was
that she had been taken to the city as a sacrifice to Tlaloc. I
raced back to the city, hoping to stop her, but by the time I
arrived the priests had already pronounced her the chosen sacrifice
for the ceremony. It was binding. Nothing could be done to have the
order rescinded.”

The man, if he could be called that,
crouched on the ground, his hands squeezing his temples. “I had
wanted her for my bride.

My jaw had dropped at the beginning of
the man’s confession, now I simply struggled to keep up with his
story. Glancing at my grandpa, I saw that he had recovered from the
blow to his head and was drinking in every detail. His face was
stone, but still strangely reassuring to me.

“I did not know,” the priest continued,
“that when she was presented before the priests that she hadn’t
gone willingly. I didn’t know why she was there, stolen from her
murdered father in an effort for her village leaders to gain favor
in the eyes of Tlaloc. Only when she begged for mercy on this
temple mesa did I realize what had happened, but then it was too
late. Once a sacrifice is declared, it is unlawful to retract the
person.

“Tlaloc is not a god of mercy, not in
any way. Her pleading, her promise of giving anything to save her
own life inspired the mischievous god. He wanted to know how far
she would go, how far we both would go, to save her life. She and I
both accepted his offer. In exchange for Kivera's life, our
daughters became forfeit.”

I swung my fist at him, not caring
whether I could actually hurt a being that didn’t really exist.
Landing with a sharp snap, the blow barely even fazed the priest.
He seemed beyond feeling any more pain than he already bore. The
guards stepped forward again, holding my arms tight enough to leave
instant bruises.

“We had no idea it would continue like
this. You must believe us. Both of us thought he meant her
daughters, the ones she actually bore, not every female in her
line. We had no idea,” he cried pitifully.

“It doesn’t matter what you thought he
meant! Even one life was too many.”

The guards, seemingly no longer content
with drawing out what had to be done, lifted me and slammed me onto
the altar. The air in my lungs blasted out of my body and sent me
into a fit of chocking gasps. The hard pitted surface rubbed
against the bare parts of my skin as I squirmed, trying to catch my
breath. Pinpoints of pain radiated all over my body from the rough
treatment. Every limb was tied securely before I was able to clear
my head.

Growling in anger, my grandpa tensed.
No longer able to contain his rage, he reared against the ancient
warrior holding him. Swinging elbows and fists at his captor, my
grandpa tried to free himself. The burly man behind him did not
even seem to notice the flailing and screaming. Tears slid down his
face, matching my own expression.

“I’m sorry, Arrabella, but I can’t stop
it now. The gods cannot be stopped by mortal man,” the priest
whined.

“You’re sorry? Is that all you have to
say to me?” I met the priest’s eyes again, and held his gaze. “What
about your precious Kivera? Is she sorry too? Is she even capable
of feeling anything for anyone but herself? Is there any sorrow in
her for the hundreds of girls she has murdered?” Unable to continue
my angry tirade, I looked away.

“Ask her yourself,” the priest
whispered.

I snapped my head back towards the
priest. The air wavered next to him, folding and rippling until a
slender body materialized. A small woman stood gazing at her feet,
motionless. A visible shudder ran through her body. Raising her
head timidly, her eyes locked onto the priest’s. A glimmer of joy
flashed briefly in her eyes before the realization hit and she
collapsed to the ground sobbing.

“No, not again. Skaline, I can’t watch
this again, I can’t. Make it stop, please,” she begged him. “I
cannot watch another innocent child die. Please don’t let it be
time again.”

“Shut up!” I hissed. The realization
that Kivera did regret her decision, that she was even capable of
emotion, had not lessened my anger in the slightest. I was still
being made to pay for Kivera’s selfish choice. The woman snapped
her attention to me, stunned by my outburst. “You shut your mouth,
Kivera,” I said through gritted teeth. “You have no right to cry.
You did this. This is your fault. You deserve every scrap of pain
you feel. I hate you, Kivera. I hate you for what you’ve done to me
and everyone before me.”

I glared at the woman who had cast my
death sentence. Once she had been a beauty, most likely turning
every head around her. Now, her body, pocked by misery, hung like a
rag doll with little strength left. Kivera approached my bound
form, drying her tears furiously.

“I don’t blame you for hating me. I
hate myself for what I’ve done. It hasn’t been easy for me either,”
she said, as if that excused her. “Six of my children died as
sacrifices to Tlaloc, a god I despise with everything I am. Out of
sheer mockery we were finally blessed with a son. We were so
pleased, pleased to have at least one child that would live past
their sixteenth birthday. We thought we had been redeemed, that we
could now have some semblance of happiness. We thought it was
finally over. We aged, watching our son marry and have his own
children.

“The horror of what we had done never
faded, but we found small joy in what we had left, until our son’s
eldest daughter reached her sixteenth birthday. We had always
counted our son as such a blessing, now we knew he was only a
device to keep our bloodline alive. Once again we were swept here,
I to watch, Skaline to perform the ceremony. It is our eternal
punishment for our selfish actions. We can never escape
it.

“I wish that I could change things. I
can’t bear to watch anyone else die. I was wrong to do what I did,
but what can I do now? I cannot command the gods. I am at their
mercy, here for their pleasure, nothing more. I wish with all my
heart that I could untie you and send you back to your family, but
I can’t. I am sorry, truly sorry, Arrabella.”

I turned my head away. What else could
I say? Sorry didn’t mean very much to me now. Sorry would not bring
anyone back. Not my Aunt Katie, not Maera, there was no saving
them. Kivera was desperately seeking to ease her own conscience,
nothing more, and I did not want to give her that satisfaction. I
glanced at my grandpa, expecting to see my own feelings mirrored in
his eyes, but they were not. He watched Kivera, a strange pity
flowing from him.

“You can’t just say you’re sorry
Kivera, it doesn’t mean anything now,” my grandpa said, his voice
calm. “You have to do something. Don’t let Arra die while you stand
by and watch.”

“Do something? Do what, old one? What
can I do?” she asked, her haggard face heaving with every
sob.

“Die,” Alden said quietly. I heard his
words, but did not understand at first. Suddenly hope sprung in my
heart.

“What?” Kivera asked, chocking back
more wracking sobs. “What did you say?”

High Priest Skaline was looking at my
grandpa now. Hope tinged his dark eyes as well. Moving closer to
Kivera, he pulled her up to a standing position. as

“That’s the only way you can end this,”
my grandpa stated. He looked at Kivera and Skaline. It would take
them both to make it work. How much shame did they really feel? Was
it enough? I hoped that it was. “You have to die Kivera, and you
have to be the one to kill her Skaline. You have to be willing to
give up now what you couldn’t give up the first time you stood
here.”

Still bound to the altar, I struggled
to face them directly. I watched as recognition flashed through
their minds. It seemed such a simple answer now that my grandpa had
presented it. Had they really never considered the idea, I
wondered. Or had there just not been enough deaths yet to convince
them of the need to repent of their evil choices? Tears fell from
their eyes. Skaline embraced his love. Kivera dug her head into his
shoulder.