Creatures of Shadow

“Miyela, are you ready?” Kartoeb called through the parting in the woven curtains. I pushed back my hair, inspecting it in the chip of mica all of my tribe used for mirrors.

“Sei. (yes)” I took a deep breath, and cringed slightly. I didn’t relish the thought of pain. But nothing beautiful was without it, as the elders said. My golden bracelets jangled brightly on my wrists as I shook in nervousness. I was among the twenty women to be sacrificed to Ze, the mountain god. He had been displeased in the last year for my people’s actions. In order to satiate him, someone had to die. Blood was the only way to wash the dark stains from the soil where the innocent lay slain. Just as sweet as the thought of virtue was the scent of the mountain violets I wore in my hair. The purple and magenta flowers were blurs of color on the mica chip that I peered into. I was ready. A lot in the afterlife was worth a thousand years’ torture. But my death in the lava pool would be instantaneous, the priest had assured me. Ze would bless us, and that was what mattered. No more of my people would die of starvation, cursed by hunger, for Ze had drained all nutrients drained from the soil. No maize, nor any bitter roots would grow. The bean seeds wilted as soon as they touched the parched earth. Ze would bless the land in return for my life.

And I would get to live forever.

“Miyela, you know this is not the end,” Kartoeb had entered the tent, and now he was brushing my shoulder with his hand, his deep brown eyes staring into mine. He was as handsome as the cacao seed is bitter.

“I know. I have faith that Ze shall preserve us both. We shall meet again in the afterlife,” I said, hot tears of passion flooding my eyes and streaking down my cheeks, smearing the white clay that I’d carefully lined along my cheekbones and eyelids.

“Fear not, for we shall meet again,” he murmured to me, and I embraced him, feeling the power of his arms as they encircled my narrow shoulders.

In that instant, all fear vanished, and a sense of righteousness fell upon me. I would not fail. There was none more honorable or noble than the sacrificed. I was to be one of them.

With no more words to say, Kartoeb took me by the wrist and pulled me outside, the blanket flap snapping in the wind behind us. I stood on the ridge and held out my hands for him to bind, watching the sun glint off of the bone studs in his lama wool and wicker armor. He tied the hemp cord tightly about my wrists. I inhaled sharply as the fibers cut into my flesh. Pain is love, I told myself, for love is not but pain.

Then the drums began to sound, and the priest came forwards, leading nineteen other women and girls, all of us dressed in the crimson and indigo blankets of the sacrifice. Beneath my sacrificial garbs, I wore the fine white woolen skirt that my mother had given me, along with the boots I’d crafted myself, weaving strips of leather and skeins of wool .

The cool fall winds sang around us as we ventured up the slopes of the mountain towards the caves of ceremony, the low tones of honor chants all the while droning in an ageless rhythm. Around rocks we swung, wailing and keening as those who had gone before us.

Into the caverns anterior chamber we walked, the orange flames of torches glimmering on the shiny wet stalagmites that hung from the ceiling like the many fangs of Ze’s mouth. Farther we paced, still chanting in beat to the drums. I felt the cold air of the cave clamp over me like a wet cloak, a hand blotting out the light from my eyes. Finally, we had reached the lava pool, where molten rock glowed amber in the earth’s mouth, red with Ze’s zealous fury.

“The time is now that we show our thanks to you, o mighty Ze,” the priest chimed, and he struck his staff upon the cavern floor three times. Then he pushed in the first woman.

“That the power of her soul might feed your kindness and show our gratitude,” intoned a hundred people who had followed the procession of sacrificial subjects. The lava enveloped the woman’s body, and she vanished beneath the scalding surface without a trace.

Four more women followed, and then it was my turn. My heart pounded like drum, vibrating in my chest as if it should burst. I heard the priest say the rites, and a hard blow to my shoulder sent me sprawling headlong over the pool. I felt the icy sting of molten rock close around my body, the strange sensation of being liquefied and solidified at once wracking my senses. Then I saw the shreds of clothing, the bones dissolving instantly from my being. Yet I didn’t feel dead. My body had sung with the horrible agony of pain, searing my consciousness for a millisecond, but now I felt a deep sense of gravity, even comfort, as I sunk to the bottom of the volcanic pool.

A gentle hand-not a hand, nor fingers-not a body, but a presence descended upon my spirit, and I heard a choir of voices.

“Welcome, Miyela, welcome, sister,” they said.

“Where am I? Is this Ze’s home?” I asked.

“No, little sister,” came the many voices from the darkness. “This is the place between this life and the next, the place between Earth and Heaven or Hell.”

“Heaven? What is Heaven,” I called, a strange confusion causing me to shy away from the alien beings whose voices echoed in the empty void.

“Heaven is God’s home,” they replied. “God is the Father, the Creator, the Everlasting Light. Ze is but a shadow of what He is.”

“God? What do you mean?”

“The Creator. What Ze is to you, God truly is.”

“God…the Father…” I murmured.

“Yes. Come into the light,” they sang. A slight flash of somewhere far in the distance caused me to squint.

So I obeyed, drawing nearer and nearer to the brightness until I was inside a pool of spectral white, glowing with silver and blue. There were figures that danced like smoke, the faces of many shimmering, transparent upon the insides of the giant orb.

“We are Creatures of Shadow,” they said. “This is what some call Purgatory, the place between life and Heaven. Yet we are not ready to venture beyond. So He sent us here, until we are. Then we are called upon for Judgment. You had not the chance to hear of His Word, so that is why you are here. Some of us were of ill mind in life, but here, we can perhaps make better of ourselves. He gave us this chance, thus we gratefully accept it. We hope you will too, little sister.”

“I-where do I go? What shall I do now?” I asked.

“Soon you will leave this place, this place of Purgatory, and venture back to Earth. There you will be a phantom, not truly alive, nor dead. “

“What will I do there?”

“Make better of yourself. This is a second life, a half-life, for we live longer than any flesh should exist, but we live not in the flesh. We are of spirit, simply beings.”

“I-will I...be able to feel things?”

“Yes. You shall feel all that a human feels; heat and cold; pain and comfort. In mind, you can feel love and passion, hate and sadness. Yet you cannot be physically harmed, for you are no longer flesh.”

……………………

That was how I became a Creature of Shadow.