The Sound of Many Waters (23 page)

Chapter Twenty Three

Vast plumes of smoke impeded the morning sunlight and cast undulating shadows across the charred and smoldering blight. More than half the huts in Many Waters had burnt to the ground. Others were only partially scorched, while, somehow, a few looked untouched by flame.

Dominic, catatonic, sat on the ground with an arrow sticking out of his arm and a severed head on his lap. Dozens of bodies lay around him. Some of them had succumbed to the smoke and flames, but most of the victims were bludgeoned, speared or hit with arrows when the Ais warriors overran the village walls and went to work slaughtering every person they found. In their cruelty, they had targeted the women and children first.

…………………………

“Give me my sword!” Dominic had yelled as soon as he realized they were under attack.

Francisco and Mela emerged from the chapel, the deluge of flaming arrows reflected in their eyes.

“God be with us,” whispered Francisco.

Mela gasped. “The Ais—they must have followed my father.”

Francisco backed into the chapel doorway. “We know what they have really come for, and we cannot let them have it.”

Dominic marched toward Francisco and screamed in his face. “My sword!”

Francisco looked again at the fires erupting in the village, drew a pensive breath, and hurried into the chapel. Dominic followed and watched him remove a carved wooden crucifix from the wall. Behind it, hanging over a cross-shaped patch where the wall was unstained by candle smoke, was his sword. Francisco reached for it but Dominic pushed him aside and ripped it off the wall. When he wrapped his fingers around the grip, his body shuddered. He lifted the sword over Francisco.

“If you ever touch it again,” he said, “I will butcher you.”

Dominic heard a cough and spun around, ready to swing the blade. His face, however, contorted in shock and he lowered his arm. There, sitting on the pew in a stupor, was Ona.

“How?” said Dominic.

“God’s grace,” said Francisco.

Dominic shook his head. “Impossible.”

Ona rubbed his eyes, stood shakily, and stumbled to the doorway. His wounds no longer looked infected.  His face burst into concern when he saw the flames. He turned to Francisco and uttered a flurry of brusque words, and then he hurried out of the chapel.

“What did he say?” asked Dominic.

Francisco looked stunned. “He asked why I brought him back…from all the beauty.”

Dominic rushed out of the chapel and into the burning village. A shout caught his attention—his eyes darted toward the village entrance where Ais warriors were spilling in over the bodies of slain Timucuan guards. A chill of terror washed over him. Where was Mela? He scanned the village. Terrified women and children stood huddled against the opposite wall. Ona ran to them, scooping up crying toddlers with his one arm and rolling them through a narrow passageway in the wall.

“Angry Squirrel!” Dominic spun toward Itori’s familiar voice and saw him huddled with a group of Timucuan warriors in the center of the village, near the meeting circle, hol
d
ing their weapons high. The Ais, having stopped to assess the Timucuan warriors, paced back and forth just inside the vi
l
lage entrance, their dark faces dripping with vitriol. Dominic ran up and took a stand beside Itori.

“Brother,” said Itori.

Dominic did not respond. He lifted his sword but its rustiness troubled him—the metal gave off no sheen whatsoever. How could he go into battle with something so unsightly? He bent down and grabbed a handful of ashes from the edge of the central fire and rubbed them over the blade, and then he spit on his hand and wiped the blade again. The metal spa
r
kled, and everything felt right.

A savage yell rang out from the Ais. They broke into a charge. Dominic turned to face them. There looked to be about twenty attackers compared to the ten Timucuans beside him. The three Timucuan archers drew their bowstrings; the others reared back with their spears and clubs.

“Wait,” said Dominic, and Itori repeated it in Timucuan.

The approaching Ais, lit by the hellish glow of the burning village, resembled demons pouring out of the netherworld in some apocalyptic church painting. Dominic caught a whiff of their sweat and knew it was time. “Now!” he said, and Itori translated it with equal ferocity.

The Timucuan archers released their arrows, hitting two Ais and hurling them onto their backs. “Again!” yelled Dominic, but at that moment, a voice rang out and the oncoming attackers split into three groups. One cluster of Ais warriors maintained their course toward Dominic, while two groups on each side broke away and took an outside track.

Dominic saw that the source of the order was a little native strutting in the distance. It was Urribia, warrior chief of the Ais.

When the middle group of warriors was nearly upon them, Dominic reared back. “Send them to hell!” he screamed.

He swung his sword and cut a long gash across the chest of the closest Ais. The warrior collapsed to the ground. Blood bubbled out of his wound and quickly formed a puddle around him. Itori swung a club against the face of another warrior and pieces of the man’s head splattered out. To Dominic’s side, an Ais drove a spear into a Timucuan; Dominic swung his sword across the Ais warrior’s calves, severing bones and tendons, and the man collapsed to the ground and writhed. Dominic stood over him and drove the sword into his chest. He turned to look for Urribia, but the wicked little man was gone.

A woman screamed behind them. Dominic and the Timucuans spun around. The other two groups of Ais had surrounded the remaining villagers. Itori gasped—an Ais warrior held his wife by the hair. Urribia, standing in front of her, plucked the little girl from her arms and held her up by her legs and pressed a conch shell knife to her neck.

“No!” screamed Itori. He bolted toward them. Dominic followed.

The little girl screamed and Urribia smiled sickly as he pressed the knife into her neck but his eyes suddenly widened and blood gushed out of his mouth. He looked down at the spearhead protruding from the middle of his chest. The spear retracted back into his body and he tumbled to the ground. The girl fell with him, her landing cushioned by his torso. Mela dropped the spear and embraced the girl, who was now slick and shimmering with Urribia’s fluids, and carried her past several stunned Ais warriors before disappearing through the passageway in the wall.

Blind chaos ensued when Itori, Dominic and the other Timucuan warriors reached the remaining Ais. An arrow hit Dominic’s arm but in his fury it felt like nothing worse than a wasp sting. Amid the fray, Itori clubbed the warrior who held his wife and continued clubbing the man until his head was like a trodden gourd.

Two Ais warriors approached Dominic. He wielded his sword. Reflecting the surrounding fires, the blade was like a shaft of flame.

“You like to kill women and children?” said Dominic, but the Ais did not respond and continued approaching with their spears held high. The native on the left lunged forward and in one motion Dominic swung and sliced off the spearhead and whirled around and cut a deep gash across the native’s thighs. The native collapsed, screaming. The other warrior looked at his fallen friend and then dropped his spear and retreated toward the village entrance.

“To…hell,” said Itori, and he sent an arrow into the fleeing native’s back. The man folded to the ground and a cloud of ash rose up like his spirit leaving.

Dominic looked around. All the Ais lay in the dirt, scattered among the bodies of Timucuan children, women, and warriors. A voice caught his attention and his eyes found Ona cradling his primary wife. Someone had clubbed the back of her neck and her head dangled to one side. She breathed lab
o
riously. Ona stroked her hair and spoke into her ear.

“She…go…beauty,” translated Itori. “She…no…afraid.”

Ona suddenly looked up at something behind Dominic. Dominic heard the sound of an impact and Itori crumpled to the ground beside him. He started to spin around but something struck the back of his head and he glimpsed blood-soaked dirt rushing toward him and then his world went dark. In that darkness he heard hushed voices, and then silence.

“Dominic! What have you done!?”

Dominic’s mind clawed out of the gloom. The first thing he saw was Francisco screaming in his face. Dominic’s head pounded and he struggled to think. Why was Francisco so frantic?

“You killed him!” bellowed Francisco, sobbing.

Dominic felt something heavy and spherical in his hands. He rolled it around and felt hair and teeth and a fleshy nub with a sharp bone sticking out of it. He looked down. His eyes saw the disconnected head in his lap but his foggy mind strained to identify it.

“He loved you, Dominic,” cried Francisco. “Ona loved you and you…you....”

Dominic’s brain snapped into coherence. He threw Ona’s head off his lap and jumped to his feet. “It was not my doing!” he screamed.

Francisco bent down and held the head by both cheeks. The rest of Ona’s body lay on the ground nearby, his wife’s limp body beside it. Dominic’s sword lay between them. “Then who?” pleaded Francisco.

Dominic put his hands over his face. “I do not know,” he muttered. “I do not know.” His murmurs became sobs and he leaned forward until his forehead touched dirt.

By the time the fires had consumed the afflicted huts to ash, the sun sagged low on the horizon. Thick, acrid smoke sullied the air and mingled with the mounting smell of decay. Francisco darted from body to body like a bee among wildflowers, giving Last Rites and anointing the cold foreheads of the dead with oil in the shape of crosses. Yaba sat in front of the central fire, chanting. Somewhere off in the distance, mourning women yowled like coyotes. There was a dreadful peace about the whole scene. Watching from the bench in front of the chapel, Dominic was trying to replay the events in his mind when Mela slumped down beside him.

“I know you did not kill him,” she said, her face raw from a day of crying.

“How can you be sure?” said Dominic. “I am not. You cannot trust me. I am a wicked man.”

“Urribia was the wicked one. Do you know why he attacked at night?”

“Surprise, I presume.”

“He attacked at night so that God would not see his evil.” She pointed at the sun.

“I would have done the same.”

Mela moved closer to Dominic and placed a bundle of moist herbs and bark against his arrow wound. It felt cool on his skin. His pain morphed into numbness.

“I must ask something of you,” Mela said.

Dominic looked at her. “Anything.”

“Marry me.”

Chapter Twenty Four

“Did you know,” said Destiny as she drove her car down a dusty road, “that all the matter making up the human race could fit in one little sugar cube?”

Zane smiled. “Sorry?”

“Make a fist.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Zane did.

“Now,” said Destiny, “imagine that your fist is the nucleus of an atom, enlarged of course. Get this. The nearest electron would be miles away.
Miles
. Everything between is just empty space—a void.”

“That’s crazy.”

“With all that space, it seems like my hand should just slide right through anything, right?” She karate-chopped her steering wheel. “I mean, come on, everything we touch is almost a hundred percent empty space. But it doesn’t go through, because of all the energy. In my body alone there’s enough energy to keep the whole country going for fifteen years!”

Zane laughed. “I think your customers would agree.”

“Oh, shut up!” She laughed. “And listen to this. There are more atoms in one glass of water, than there are glasses of water in all the oceans! Seriously, doesn’t that freak you out a li
t
tle?”

Zane nodded. “A lot, actually.”

“If people only knew how crazy it is to even be…”

“Be what?”

“Just
be
.”

They were taking a wooded back road in Destiny’s clunky old
Buick
to avoid the highway. Doing so would add an extra hour to reach Gainesville, she had informed him, but they both knew that cops would be swarming the main roads. The plume of dust trailing them shone orange in the waning light. The car’s interior smelled of hot leather and gasoline. Soda cans, fast food wrappers, quantum physics books and dirty clothes littered the floorboards. He wondered if she lived in it.