The Devil's Secret (18 page)

“The world will end, the world will end,” Tree Frog said. “All I ever hear from you is that the world will end if we do not complete the ceremonies on schedule. I am different from you, Mother. I want to defend our world against the threats we know rather than the threats we imagine.”

Grasshopper wailed an exaggerated cry of sorrow. “My son is so disrespectful. Why must he question me? Why can’t he be like the other good young men of the Real People?”

“I do not mean to disrespect you. I mean only to take action where action is needed.”

Grasshopper buried her head in her hands and began to weep. “The squirrel once defended man against the other animals, angering them so that they slashed at him with their claws. That is why he has white stripes on his back.” She stood to face her son, tears on her red cheeks. “You have killed a squirrel in my home. I will cook it for our supper, but first you must apologize to its spirit.”

Tree Frog held her gaze for a few breaths. Then he turned toward the dead squirrel. His face fell, perhaps realizing he had acted brashly. “Squirrel, forgive me for taking your body from you.
Wado
for your sacrifice. You and your brothers are beloved among the Real People.”

The Europeans left the next day, fording the river and trekking away from Tugaloo, toward Iswa territory. Thilial was thankful that they had not openly harmed the Real People, yet still, the diseases they carried had laid waste to a third of Tugaloo’s population, with many more still sick.

A demon was heckling the Spanish clergyman as the poor fellow trod between the walls to exit the town. “Go beat some of the older Indians again before you leave. It will make you feel powerful.” The clergyman seemed to ignore him, and scratched at his skin, still pockmarked from illness. “Better yet, convince de Soto to leave you and twenty men here to convert the savages. With your weaponry, you could rule over them as kings.

“Don’t actually convert them, though,” the demon was quick to add. “Brutalize them, but let them keep their feral religion.”

“Think,” Thilial whispered to the man in Spanish, countering the demon. “If your own religion has not kept you from your own savage deeds, is your religion indeed less feral than the myths of the natives? Leave now forever, and take this question with you.”

Thilial drifted near Tree Frog and Weaver as they watched the white men depart from just outside the town’s wall. She noticed the young couple watching the last of the black slaves finish loading a packhorse. As the slave led the beast away, he cast a sorrowful glance back toward Tree Frog, as if to impress on him the infinite value of freedom. And then he, too, departed toward the river.

Strong Deer came up behind them, smoking tobacco from his pipe. “
Osiyo
,” he said.

Tree Frog and Weaver both greeted the elderly man. “We are glad to be rid of them,” Weaver said.

“I am glad, too,” Strong Deer said. “And I thank you, Tree Frog, for your service to our town during this ordeal. You warned us of the Spaniards’ coming, and you have hunted with the prowess of the owl to bring food for our sick and dying. You will be welcome in Tugaloo for all time.”

“
Wado
,” said Tree Frog in gratitude.

“You have even avoided the Spaniards’ plague,” Strong Deer continued. “The spirits favor you, Tree Frog. And your actions have proven that you are truly a man. It is time that you had a man’s name.”

What a refreshing surprise in the midst of all this darkness.
Thilial had wondered when this day would come from the moment she’d taken Tree Frog as her charge. And the news had come from Strong Deer, no less! The old man hailed from the Long Hair Clan. Though he was the wisest of the lot, and had even inherited a position as a priest, he had abandoned the corrupt priesthood as a young man. Thilial—and many of the Real People—greatly admired him for that.

But… what was this now? The European demon who’d been harassing the clergyman had overheard the conversation, and was drawing nearer.
No, don’t pester us now. Not at this important moment.
Thilial wished she could drop down into the demon realm and shove this boor away.

“The priests have approved, and will announce your name to the town later today,” Strong Deer said, then drew another puff of tobacco smoke. “From now on, you are no longer Tree Frog. You are Flying Owl. Your family and friends will now call you by your man’s name. And now Weaver can marry a true man as well.”

Tree Frog—now Flying Owl—was beaming. But a second demon approached Flying Owl to whisper some vulgarity, apparently ignorant of the first one’s interest. The first demon leaped forward and swatted the second aside, then took a defensive position above Flying Owl.

“This one is mine,” the first demon said to the second. “For I am Thorn, the right hand of Xeres, and I will have what I want.”

The flames of the small campfire licked at three realms. In the physical realm, the fire’s glow warmed the humans sitting about it—Flying Owl, Weaver, and a few of their friends—and cast long shadows into the dark woods around them. In the demonic realm, Xeres and Thorn had asked their followers to leave them for the night, and the two hovered near the fire, close enough to burn them had they been humans. In the angelic realm, Thilial sat across from the two demons, eavesdropping.

“I tell you once at each Indian town, and I will tell you a thousand times more,” Thorn griped to his hunched leader. “No matter how curious we were, we should not have left civilization for these untamed lands. Europe holds more prestige to be earned.”

“Does it?” Xeres asked, and the fire seemed to flicker at the simmering power in his voice. “Untamed lands are more ripe for conquering.”

“But the demons here are dullards, with no ambitions of their own. They respect you out of fear, not out of reverence. They’ve not even heard of the Second Rule! Would you rather spend the next hundred years educating these cretins, or planning the downfall of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church? Please. At least let us catch up with de Soto and continue to oversee his pillaging.”

Xeres rubbed his chin and stared into the fire. The reflections of drifting embers danced in his eyes, lending him the countenance of the hellish beast he truly was. Thilial focused her attention on Thorn so she would not have to look at him.

“The demons here may be doltish cravens,” Xeres said, “but look at the natives. Their tribal society resembles the Europe of millennia ago. Unstructured, unlearned, naïve. Humans are much easier to control when they have no knowledge. Reason is the most ruinous virtue.”

“Indeed. Which is why we should have contented ourselves with the Inquisition. This venture into the New World will be fruitless. Am I to waste my days away with this young fool, his wench, and their progeny?” He gestured to Flying Owl, and Weaver leaning on his shoulder, blind and deaf to the demons in their midst. “Am I to grow so accustomed to this drudgery that I see other demons’ tunics and surcoats replaced by breechcloths and nakedness? I tell you, Xeres, this is madness.”

Xeres rose above the fire, stretching out to his full height, nearly twice as tall as Thorn. “And what of the inevitable clash between these two civilizations: West and Far West? The demon lords of Europe are too prideful to ally with each other, so if I become sole lord over the Far West, I will be able to steer the human conflict toward maximum loss of life. I will be able to bend the course of human history to my will.”

Thorn slowly sank down until his feet lay beneath the ground. He bent over into a subservient posture.

“You hadn’t thought of that, had you?” Xeres said to him.

“I had not.”

“This is why I am the leader and you the follower. Do not question me, Thorn. I am beyond reproach. I value your advice, but you are not my equal. The day you forget that is the day you again become a Rat.”

Thorn stiffened at that. Thilial sensed his anger, but the thin, bald demon retained his composure, nodded to Xeres, and floated off into the woods.

Xeres seemed even more menacing alone, towering over Flying Owl and Weaver like some monster straight from the Real People’s myths. Thilial mulled over the conversation she’d overheard. This demon lord’s conquest could enslave this land’s demons and slaughter its humans, and sabotage God’s plan for His planet, perhaps irreparably.

She flew to the other angels and told them of Xeres’s plan. But Gleannor, who had stayed behind, dismayed by her time with the Spaniards and eager for a new life, dismissed Thilial, claiming nothing should be done to stop it. “We may yet save Xeres, and furthermore, it is not our place to intervene,” she said.

Enraged that the other angels were so passive as to accept the possibility of Xeres’s envisioned future, Thilial stormed off into the solitude of the rock layers underground.
I’m more loyal to God than the lot of them
, Thilial decided.
I’ll stop Xeres alone if I have to. If I have to, I’ll drop down into the demon realm and kill him myself.

Thilial spent the next several days following Thorn around. She had little choice: the moping demon had chosen Flying Owl as his sole charge among the Real People, so Thilial had to counter each of his whispers with one of her own. And often, these whispers were rather strange. Thilial had expected subtle evils, such as, “Weaver annoys you, so you should treat her poorly,” or, “Fight with your parents and distance yourself from them.” But instead Thorn whispered biddings such as, “Drop in the dirt, roll around, and yell like a maniac.”

Thorn was clearly quite bored.

Fortunately, this meant that his half-hearted temptations were easy to fend off, and Flying Owl’s life continued on a productive path. But months passed, and even as Xeres journeyed to surrounding territories to assert his power, Thorn stayed in Tugaloo, spending nearly all of his time with Flying Owl.

“Bother someone else,” Thilial tried whispering to Thorn. “Look at all these humans you could torment! Where is your ambition?” She disliked having to appeal to his demonic nature, but for the moment, she just wanted him away from her own charge. She even enlisted other angels to help her pry Thorn away from Flying Owl, but Thorn was as stubborn as any demon. Flying Owl had become his favorite plaything to pass the time while Xeres was away.

The Ripe Corn Festival was approaching, and the young men of Tugaloo readied themselves for hunting time. Flying Owl was one of the men chosen to be sent into the forests. The priests tasked each of the men with finding a specific type of game for the ceremony feast, and Flying Owl’s responsibility was rabbit meat. The meat would have to be prepared in a specific way, and would become part of the ceremony involving specific types of dance in specific types of clothing with very specific songs meant to keep the spirit worlds in balance. Thilial had never seen a Ripe Corn Ceremony before, but she guessed it would also involve the whole town ritually bathing in the river, as so many of their ceremonies did.

“Why do we do these things?” Flying Owl asked Feasting Wolf in passing, as the priests saw the hunters off on their assignment. “There must be other ways to appease the spirits. Why must our ceremonies be so particular?”

Feasting Wolf looked around, possibly searching for Grasshopper, who would chide her son for his rude question. Unable to find her, the priest addressed Flying Owl himself. “We do these things because this is the way they have always been done. To change would be to deny not only the nature of the world, but our own nature as well.”

Troublingly, this answer seemed to satisfy Flying Owl, so Thilial whispered to him, “To
not
change is to deny our own natures. Changing our ideas is something we all must do if we want to grow.”

Thorn perked up when she said this. He’d been idling near the town wall, waiting to leave, but now he glanced directly at Thilial, like he’d heard her speak. When she flew sideways, though, Thorn’s eyes did not follow her, so she dismissed the happening as coincidence.

And soon the hunt was on. By foot, Flying Owl traveled far to the south, through deep woods and deeper rivers, occasionally chanting a song meant to lure rabbits to him. He walked alone, except for the invisible angel and demon trailing him. Every now and then Thorn would whisper some vulgarity, but he kept quiet for the most part. In fact, he spent much of the journey gazing off into the forest, though Thilial could not read his mental state.

After five days, Flying Owl had caught no rabbits—the Spaniards had eradicated most of the game in this part of the forest. Thilial whispered for him to stop chanting, and to her delight, he did. Without the chanting, Flying Owl would not be able to attribute any hunting success to the spirits. He was learning. Thorn didn’t seem to notice.

By night, Flying Owl sharpened his arrows, ate, and slept; by day, he walked ever farther south. He drank much and often due to the heat, for the season was currently gogi, the female months, the warm part of the year.

And then, on the eighth day of the hunt, something bizarre occurred. Flying Owl pushed through a dense copse of trees and found a breathtaking clearing in the valley below. Red and blue flowers dotted a field next to a river where a waterfall caught the sunlight and fractured it into colorful fragments on the ground beneath. The cliff face behind the waterfall jutted upward to an immense height. An eagle circled above it.

Flying Owl smiled at the sight. Even Thorn seemed impressed by the scenery. He kept pace with the boy as he dashed down and across the field, dropped his bow and arrows, then splashed about in the river by the waterfall, laughing to himself. He swam toward the cliff face, and schools of fish darted out of his way. He tried to grasp at one, but it slipped through his hand, so he made a whooping noise and splashed at it, chuckling all the while. Thilial enjoyed Flying Owl’s celebration from above.

After the initial burst of excitement, Flying Owl settled onto his back and let himself drift downriver a ways. Thorn hovered above him, and when Thilial drew closer, she saw curiosity on the demon’s face. His eyes examined the warm sunlight on Flying Owl’s skin, the crisp water lapping at his side, the contented grin on his face. Several moments of calm passed. The shallow river gently flowed, the eagle screeched its majestic call, and wispy clouds swept up off the tops of the mountains. And then Thorn spoke four words that changed everything.