Chapter 4 Xolotl
Xolotl
Nope, bonding her was definitely a mistake.
So far, the general I chose has tried to shove me over a cliff, bashed me on the head with a big rock, tripped me, and tried to strangle me—twice—and for fun, she’s pelted me with rocks half a dozen times. Each time, she watches me carefully, like she’s cataloguing the damage it does.
Which is none.
I can’t be harmed by her or any other human.
This human’s a lunatic, and even worse? Now that she’s concluded that she can’t kill me, she’s begun arguing with me about my very purpose in life.
“I’m heading into the town.” I turn again to head south, and she blocks me, as if she could stop me with her teensy, tiny, frail mortal body. “Get out of the way, or I’ll run you over.”
“You didn’t do it as a horse.” She crosses her arms.
“Do what?”
“Run me over.” She tosses her head. “You won’t do it now, either.”
I feint left and then duck right and jog around her. “I’m about to shift back into my horse form and fix my mistake.”
“You’re talking better than you were, more comfortably.” She jogs alongside me, and I realize she’s still doing it, trying to herd me back north. “You sound less like a badly written historical cartoon.”
I don’t explain that I’ve been able to model my language after her own speech patterns.
I have to do this every time I awaken. Although I understand every human language, it takes a bit of time to sink into the proper dialects and usages.
“What exactly is a historical cartoon?” Cartoons are drawings, but a historical one?
I frown as I try to make sense of her, but I should really just ignore her instead.
I do plow ahead, shoving her small body with my own much larger one when she physically tries to nudge me north again.
This time, I’ll stay on track even if it kills her.
I sense the location of the large mass of humans, and it’s time for the balance to be restored.
“You don’t know anything about the world, you’ve been asleep so long. Do you even know what year it is?”
“Do you know who I am?”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course. You’re the death god, Xolotl. Right?”
I can’t help my pleasure that humans still remember me, even after a long interval. “I don’t care how you count your years. Your time means nothing to me.” But I do actually want to know how long it has been. I just can’t give her the satisfaction of knowing I care.
“Well, time means something to us,” she says. “In fact, all that we poor little humans really have here on earth is time.”
“Yes, but you don’t appreciate any of it.” I shake my head. “That’s the point of my existence, you know.”
“Huh?” She darts around and blocks me again, and I slam into her, nearly knocking her flat. She presses her tiny hands against my chest, and I feel something very strange.
I like it. “Do not do that.” I bat her hands away.
“You need to explain that thing you just said,” she says. “And after that, you can explain why I feel some kind of tether connecting me to you. What did you do to me?” She’s glaring at me pointedly.
“I could fry you and be done with all this,” I say. “And I might do it any moment.” I glare right back.
“But you haven’t yet,” she says. “I saw you setting people on fire and blackening them back there. So why not me?”
I square my shoulders, my eyes flashing. “You’re correct that the Aztecs called me Xolotl, the lightning God, the Lord of Mictlan, or sometimes they called me Mictlantecuhtli when I slept. I bring the souls of humans to their final rest.” I lift my chin.
“So, you really are death.”
I can’t help my frown. “I’m not just death. I’ve been called Cizin, Ta’xet, or Vichama, and any number of other names, but my real purpose is to restore balance when the world has become overgrown and sickly.” I clear my throat. “As it is now.”
“What name do you like?” She lifts her eyebrows.
“I prefer Ta’xet.” I nod. “The Haida people were fine and strong.”
“Xolotl it is.” She purses her lips.
I can’t show her that I find her entertaining.
It would encourage her to misbehave more.
She’s lucky that I sense humans not far ahead, so I push past her, eager to fulfill my purpose and willing to let her small rebellion go.
All around me, I feel the festering overgrowth of humanity, some old, frail, and sickly.
Some of them are unwell in their brains.
All of them are focused far too much on things that don’t matter, lacking in purpose or direction. I’ve been asleep far, far too long.
“But you didn’t answer me before about why I’m stuck to you.
” She circles around in front of me, blocking my path yet again.
“Because this is annoying.” She leans closer, glaring.
“I’m annoying you, too. Why don’t you just kill me, or better yet, let me go?
” She bites her lip. “If you’re on the fence, I strongly vote for ‘let me go.’” She frowns. “Do I get a vote?”
“No.” I shove her out of the way. “You don’t.”
As I close the gap between us and the small dwellings, I reach outward, snuffing the life immediately from all of those humans close enough. I sense some of them falling. I hear others cry out, before they too collapse, and then I breathe easier.
“What are you doing?” She wails, circling to block me again. “Balance is when things are even, when they offset each other. You’re just killing people. Some of those were kids!” She’s gesturing wildly. “It’s—it makes no sense. You have to stop.”
“Do your children understand complex science?” I lift my eyebrows.
“Do your idiots comprehend the work of the true artist?” I shake my head.
“I don’t have to explain myself.” I start moving again, this time stretching my powers.
Fire. Electric pulses. Dehydration. Sickness.
All of them send little shivers through my new body, reminding me of how exhilarating it is to fulfill the purpose for which I was created.
I prune from the earth that which has overgrown.
I can’t help my smile as we move farther south, removing the unnecessary, and eliminating the tired and unwieldy.
I shiver a bit as I expand my powers, enjoying the feeling of a job well done.
But when I turn to head more sharply toward the large settlement I feel ahead yet again, the idiotic woman I chose as my general leaps in front of me, throwing her hands toward my chest and planting her feet.
“Stop, please, stop!” She’s crying, tears rolling down her face, and she blazes brightly. Her aura, her soul, is blazing.
How on earth did I make this mistake? Where’s the darkness I saw at first? “What now? We’ve established that you’re tied to me. I bonded you in error, but it’s difficult to undo, so you’ll just have to come along.”
“Undo?” Her eyebrows fly up. “Yes, do that, even if it’s hard. Even if it’s painful. I’ll help in any way I can.”
I don’t explain that the only way to end the bond is to kill her. The last thing she needs is more bad ideas. “I can’t do it simply. I can’t do it right now.” I can’t do it at all, at least, not without going back to sleep. So I’m stuck with her.
It’s all very annoying, the sleeping phase of our powers.
From what I understand, only the four death-bringers are forced into slumber. The stupid life-shepherds stay awake all the time. Perhaps that’s part of the balancing, since our powers work faster, but it still irritates me.
Until I’m ready to sleep.
Then I welcome the break. It’s all part of the cycle of what I am.
But I won’t be ready to sleep again for a while, not with the state of the world now. As I close my eyes and reach out, I feel it everywhere. The vibrant shaking of life, the teeming, feverish hum of the world all around me, growing, thriving, striving and expanding. It’s too much.
“Can’t we head back up into the mountains to talk about this more?” She points behind me. “You can explain the tether and we can talk about how to break it, since you seem bothered by it, too.” The smile she’s forcing looks more like a rictus of pain than anything else.
“Just trail along behind me,” I say, “and shut up.” I start walking again.
She ignores me, trotting along right beside me. “Assuming I can’t do that?”
I shift into a horse.
“Hey.” She slaps my rump, which I barely feel. “No fair.”
I turn my head slowly, my anger manifesting as steam rising from my nostrils.
“Right, I mean none of this is fair. I get that.” She glares. “But surely the tether exists for a reason. You could at least tell me why.”
I don’t want to confess that for the first time in millennia, I chose my champion badly.
I don’t want to tell her that she’s now a vulnerability.
She seems like exactly the kind of idiot who might try to kill herself at an inconvenient time.
She already did that without knowing when she practically plunged off a cliff.
“Okay, so it’s clear you don’t want to talk, and you do want to kill people.
” She nods. “But if you want to do that better, Utah’s so not the place.
” She tosses her head. “I sort of shoved you west, away from Salt Lake City, which you seem to have noticed, but now that we’re circling Farnsworth Peak, I say we should keep heading west to bigger cities and more people. ”
I tire of hearing what she wants to do. She’s not in charge.
I am.
I toss my head and start jogging at a quick clip, sick of her slowing me down and eager to stretch my powers.
I burn, I level, and I destroy as we move, and it’s glorious.
If I’m going a little fast, well, maybe I want to punish the stupid human for being such a huge disappointment.
Maybe I’m mad at myself for choosing so poorly.
Either way, she keeps falling farther and farther behind me, even running at full tilt, because she cannot keep up in her current form, not with me in my horse shape.
I finally slow, expecting her to close the gap, but she doesn’t.
Because she’s collapsed.