Chapter 8
The mushrooms were picked by specialists who had trained their eyes and nurtured their senses which was necessary since the mushrooms were scattered and disparate, not growing in clusters around each other and hidden in undergrowths, nettles, bushes in a small forest not far from Heaven's Bridge. The mushrooms grew wild.
Two women were groping all around the natural disguises and shields; bypassing defences to collect what they were looking for, with their forearms so muscular and defined, giving woman's answer for the attempts to obstruct their desires.
Huayta looked around her just as her companion did, scouring for the mushrooms that would bless their community, and the priest more directly, kneeling as their eyes trained the forest floor.
'Are these mushrooms getting smaller?' asked Cui, the woman with Huayta. 'Or maybe it's me…I had only a few hours of sleep.'
They had been searching for mushrooms for some time and only had found five. Usually it would have been double the amount. Huayta frowned.
'I had less but I don't think it's that…this is strange. Maybe it's something in the soil.' She tapped the earth a couple times.
'It still feels the same.'
'I think we've been picking too many and not giving them time to grow. But what can we do when the priest has been running through them lately?'
She took a deep breath through her nose.
'It even smells different. It was more fragrant here before. You know how them mushrooms stank…I guess the new one will slow it down as his tolerance is still low.'
'Yea. We will need less when the new one comes in.' After a momentary pause Huayta added, while moving vines and fallen leaves, avoiding eye contact:
'The priest has been doing well. Good things have been happening for us, especially for some of our families. Have you seen Amoxtli's child? How extraordinary she is! Just like Eztli's. Goodness those two…they're the best of us.'
Cui stopped and looked back at Huayta, frowning with new information.
'Really? They didn't look all that special when I saw them last week.'
'Look again. Everyone is raving about them. They're the best of us, I said to myself and the best of us should not rest with us - I said that aloud. Everyone heard me and said the same thing - and called for sacrifice. Both of them said they would be happy and even deserve to make a sacrifice. We all agreed.'
Cui looked at her bemused by her energy, unusual to Huayta. She replied in echo:
'The best of us should not rest with us - but I'm sure your sister's child beats them. There's something about her children that - and even the midwife came around and said once again -'
'Not at all. Not this one. Everyone says so. They said this kid was too good for us not to be sacrificed.'
'So the midwife -'
'Old and out of her senses. It's high time we need a new one.'
'Oh that's too bad. I thought your sister would be on a winning streak. Every single one before -'
'Me too. But,' she sighed rather thespian like, 'not this time. It's time for someone else to have that glory.'
After a minute of silence, Cui asked:
'Why don't you become a midwife? If we need a new one.'
'Me? What's a woman doing helping giving birth when she can't give birth to a live one herself. My breasts are of milk but with no children of my own to feed.'
'Hmm. I guess you're right,' Cui said in agreement.
The two harvesters started to focus more on the mushrooms which increasingly were now buried around nettles. But these women with thick forearms felt nothing as they brushed aside nature's repellents, feeling not even the fine hairs on the silver mushrooms as they tore them off the ground. The only thing they experienced was the pleasure of finding what they were looking for. In the end they came away with a good number of psychedelics.
Chapter 9
Maita returned home to find his wife alone with their newborn asleep in her arms. Despite the pretty picture, its beauty only served to irritate him, aggravating his growing headache. With pain, fury and the tired disjointed tremble of sleep deprivation in his voice he addressed his wife.
'I want to know…why; why do you keep doing this to me?'
'What did I do?' asked Amaru, staring evenly at her husband. One could tell she was holding back tears, her face unnaturally still.
'Why can't you give me a normal child!' Maita hissed. 'Why must they always be beautiful?'
'How did I do that? Is my family attractive in any way? You see for yourself! It's not me. WE did that! It's something about us that creates beauty…or maybe it's the midwife.'
'Spare me your sister's ramblings. A woman like you means nothing but sacrifice...I don't know what's the cause but I know that if it's not you it's no one.' He let out a noise of disgust and defeat, becoming more maudlin. 'In all, what does it matter? It doesn't matter anymore since this is my last child, losing this one too. No man can take such a decree. One maybe, gladly even, but three? I haven't seen any of them grow to adulthood only because…'
A moan stopped him from completing his thought and then a groan got in his way. He sat down on the floor with his back against the wall, staring into prospective loss with vacant, empty eyes. A more disconsolate man would be difficult to imagine and his wife's heart broke to look at him.
'But it might not be that we lost this one. Not yet.'
The baby stirred from their voices.
'Even if this is our last child it doesn't mean we will have lost this one too. It's not determined that she will be chosen. It's only because they're chosen that this happens. We have to do something to make it so this one is not chosen.'
Maita remained silent, still staring into the prospective loss, a darkness that shimmered, and its lights were farewell. 'Why, when they've only just…'
Huayta's concentrated determination had infected her little sister but its manifestation in Amaru was more desperate. She was speaking in bursts.
'There - so many children - more beautiful -'
Maita turned his eyes on her and his tongue likewise, baleful, at the woman who had birthed his children, to his mind, only to take them away from him; while Amaru accepted the dark look of menace as her due, and even if he attacked her now she would consider it justice for she considered herself guilty too for their family's fortune.
'You know that's a lie. No one would agree.'
'Says who? We have to make them believe it! Who is to say that they ever believed our ones were the best of us? I feel that this has been a conspiracy all along. That others are targeting us so that their own children come out second best.'
With unconcealed contempt Maita said:
'A conspiracy to deprive themselves of pride, honour, things every man and woman want? Some conspiracy…'
'What if they don't see any honour in it? What if you're the only one?'
She could not have said a more shocking thing to Maita. People not interested in pride or honour?
'Can that be? Are you saying that the children were not truly preferred in beauty?'
'Yes!' she shouted triumphantly. The baby started to wake and whimper. 'Who says they're more beautiful or even beautiful at all?'
'You can see it for yourself.'
'Can I?'
Maita frowned with the new idea and perspective, helping to clear up his headache a little.
'Can I ?' he asked again looking at the crying baby which started to appear uglier with each tear. 'Oh! This is impossible!' he cried out. 'We would lose much more than children if that were true. Don't mention anything to me, least of all a conspiracy! All I want to do is sleep and drown this day from my memory.'
But he couldn't sleep and neither could his wife nor any of the other inhabitants of Heaven's Bridge. Lana too was tossing and turning in his bed angry that he could never find the sleep he was so desperate for when the face of the priest's always well rested, his constantly fresh face came before him…
