First 5 Pages March Workshop - Mayorska Revision 1

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 on the their way to meet the executioner’s axe – my mother’s axe. I watched them from the basement window disappear behind the street corner. The heavy rain accompanied them past the main arch of the Justice Temple in the direction of the execution field.

I knew the criminals deserved their fate, 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. Their ribs would end up on the shelves of our Bone Shop next to the jars stuffed with finger-bone necklaces, parrots’ skulls, and teeth garlands ever so popular during the harvest holidays.

I sure was glad I wasn’t a boy. Even if my venture were to end in death, at least I could be certain of a proper, honorable burial for myself.

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 into an old tunic, wrapped the straw blanket around my shoulders, and lit the half melted candle inside the old skull. I decorated it almost ten years ago - the very first human skull I painted for our shop, supplied mostly through my mother’s gruesome job. I brushed the jaws 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.

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. Now three years dead, 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 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.

I spent the rest of the night awake in my bed with Vi curled up on my neck. The monkey’s tail tickled my cheek, while my mind wondered.

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,” and kissed my fingertips, careful not to disturb Vi, when 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 wiped a stubborn tear and pressed my lips between Vi’s ears, taking in her scent one last time. Carefully, I set her back down on my pillow. The black heavy heap of my floor-length hair remained loose and unbraided. Fifteen years I spent in this house, smelling corn breads and green snake soup, setting tiles into the bone masks and painting ribs. I was leaving everything behind, against my mother’s wishes, and despite the low chance of success for my self-imposed quest.

But that was the very difference between my mother and I: she didn’t believe risking the life of her second child for a slim chance of saving the life of her first one. I couldn’t help myself. I was born in the year of the Jaguar, after all. She was a Carp. If nothing else could explain our constant bickering and clashing characters, the stars did.

I snuck past her bedroom. I shouldn’t have worried about waking her up. She slept like stone – still and somber with the white-leather mask on 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 wiped more water from my eyes with the heel of my palm, 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’s keeper, as my parents wished on me for as long as I could remember myself. I had more important things to attend to – promises to break, blood to shed, and a brother to unchain.

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.