First 5 Pages March Workshop - Mayorska

Name: Lyudmyla Mayorska
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Title: TEMPLES of TETLAN

The beheadings took place, as usual, at full moon. The doomed souls rattled on the floor of the cage cart in accord with the heavy rain past the main arch of the Justice Temple in the direction of the execution field. I sure was glad I wasn’t a boy, as I watched them from the basement window disappear behind the street corner. I kissed the fingertips of my right hand, wishing the two men quick death, then tiptoed across the stone floor back to my bed.

Naked, I slipped under the straw blanket and blew out a candle half melted inside the old skull. I decorated it almost ten years ago. It was the first human skull I painted for our shop. I brushed it with gold and dragged a single black stripe across the forehead. I loved it so much, I asked for my Father’s help to scribe my name on the back with a stylus, like the great artists of the temples did marking their artwork.

“I don’t think we should sell it, Palenke. Keep the skull for your own candles,” he said when were done.

I closed my eyes and dug myself deeper under the blanket, allowing sweet smelling Vi curl up on my neck one last time. The monkey’s tail tickled my cheek, while my mind wondered. I knew the criminals deserved their fate, or they wouldn’t be on their way to meet the executioner’s axe - my mother’s axe – still, I couldn’t help but to feel pity for their misery. There would be no Priestess there, no prayers. Their feet would be buried outside the city under the statue of the wicked Nott, forever barring their entrance into the Black. Their ribs would end up on the shelves of our shop next to the jars stuffed with finger-bone necklaces, parrots’ skulls, and teeth garlands ever so popular during the harvest holidays.

Our Bone Shop, filled with decorations and trinkets, was supplied mostly through my mother’s gruesome job. I knew I would miss these walls. The pet sleeping under my chin and the smell of the crushed paint powder would soon become my past; the walls of the Temples of Tetlan – my very near future.

I whispered my prayers, ending the requests with, “This I deserve,” kissed my fingertips, careful not to disturb Vi, and fell asleep, but only until the door slammed and my mother returned. All the familiar sounds of her shuffling through our shop into the kitchen, and setting a pot to boil, a chair shifting across the floor, the water pouring into the cup - put a rock in my throat and kept me awake. And even after the bed creaked under the weight of her body, and our home returned to silence, I spent the night nibbling on dried plums and listening to the rain.

At the first sign of morning, I was up with my most plain tunic on and the black heavy heap of the floor-length hair loose and unbraided. Wiping a stubborn tear, I pressed my lips between Vi’s ears, taking in her scent one last time and setting her back down onto my pillow. Fifteen years I spent sleeping in this house, smelling corn breads and green snake soup, setting tiles into the bone masks and painting ribs. Even if I trusted my reasons for leaving, I still kneaded my knuckles and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from bursting into sobs when I snuck downstairs to bid my respects and say goodbyes to my father.

He was the only inhabitant of the ancestry room built under the kitchen floor of our house.  His body, wrapped in blue cloth and layered with salt and spices, was there for me to talk to, when my mother’s silence and harshness drove me to madness. I imagined his voice telling me stories of Tai-Tai, “people made of clay”, and I straightened out the dried bouquets of herbs and garlands of clay beads hanging on the walls above him. I was sure he’d watch my upcoming trials form the Black.

He was the second son. Naturally, he was never offered to the temples, but his life wasn’t long either way. I cherished the handful of memories the old bearded man with pale eyes and freckle spots left me.  A stomach infection did him in, and not even Kalarai, the most respected shaman in Bilda City, could save him. She shook her bony finger in his face, frowning, and promising him nothing but death, so when he grew cold, it didn’t come as a surprise.  “She-Demons do not favor men,” she reminded me as she rubbed the spot between my shoulder blades. After the prayers were sung, but before the tears have dried, Kalarai returned to the temple steps, to continue collecting She-Demon’s grace and passing it along to the young girls as blessings.

When I finished the prayer in my dead father’s honor, I climbed the stairs back up and walked into my mother’s bedroom. I wasn’t worried about waking her up. She slept like stone – still and somber. She wore the white-leather mask even in her sleep. They called her Faceless. Even I called her Faceless on occasion. Only once did I see her without her mask. She was sick and took it off to rub a pale pink ointment on the bridge of her nose. I remember gasping at the sight of the ripped scars that tore through each of her cheeks and pulled at the corners of her eyes - part of the commitment ceremony when she received her assignment from the temple. She described to me the entire ordeal in great detail - the blade, the stinging, the smell of the burnt flesh. I was about to wretch my meal on her feet, when she made me swear I would never enter the temples. Ever.

At five years old I promised, gladly.

Turned out - I lied.

I couldn’t help it. I wiped the water from my eyes with the heel of my palm and left her room, forcing a deep breath and a smile, resolved not to think of my mother, at the very least not for the following three days. She and Vi would have to manage without me from now on. I crossed the dusty floor of our shop in four paces, and the door slammed behind me, leaving the slanted shelves of our shop to be tended by someone other than myself, for a change. Someone else would carve the shoulder bones into whistles, someone else would string the ribs into ornate belts, someone else would tile the sternums into amulets. I would never attend the Scribe Academy to become a record keeper, as my parents wished on me for as long as I could remember myself. I had more important things to attend to. I

Barefoot, I leaped over the puddles, passed the perfectly shaped round chasm in the center of the square, approaching my near destination and reminding myself that my offering was worth the risk. Abandoning my mother, never feeding Vi slices of papaya, risking my throat sliced over the Well of Gii, or my heart ripped out to the sound of four-barrel clay flutes - was worth it.

The first row of skulls at the base of the She-Demon Arch lit up with the morning gold just as I approached. A line of about twenty girls already stood at the start of the sacred path.