Revenant's Storm (The Wicked West series)

"Luksa, when faced with the choice between betrayal and self-preservation, chose to protect the prosperity of the commune over her own life. She was found beside the writhing bundle of her infant daughter days after gifting the last of her food to her. The daughter, Fiera, would later lead the commune through its debatably most prosperous era. Luksa's sacrifice during times of strife ensured the survival of future generations and ultimately elevated her to sainthood." Scriptorium of Mojave Saints, 39:27

When Maritza timidly approached the crowd of neighborhood kids in the fading embers of sundown, they did not notice her at first. It was often like this. Every evening the children would flock together as the blistering heat of the day scattered into the cooling darkness.

Maritza was a soft-spoken and well-behaved child, skittish and gullible, with mouselike footfalls. She had a habit of slipping by unnoticed. She was accustomed to observing from the sidelines, secretly fantasizing scenarios in which her peers would give her attention or praise, too shy to ever intentionally request it herself.

They were chasing shadows cast by the firelight, the type of game concocted by children in which, by some convoluted plot twist, the shadows were actually demon monsters all along. The beauty of youthful creativity is that it is propelled by a sort of manic, careening logic of which children can find no quarrel with.

She recognized the familiar voices of her friends as she hedged closer: Pipra's singsong un-compliments, Rozabela's boisterous laughter, and Nikolao's errant mocking were the most prevalent. The other kids hovered around the trio, satellites gravitating into the orbit of their fascinating personalities. Supper would be ready soon; its immanence was made tangible through the heavy aroma of seasoned meats warmed slow over the crackle and spit of flame. When they spotted her from periphery, the entire group unexpectedly quieted, like the hiss of a water bucket smothering a campfire.

Maritza faltered and stopped walking. She squeezed little Mothball in her small hands. Her heart kicked up dust as it jogged in her chest. She was hyper-aware of the curious eyes boring holes into the raw glyph on her forehead.

For some reason, deep in her heart, she had absurdly hoped that no one would notice it. Her mouth pressed together in a thin line and she willed herself not to cry at the overwhelming flood of attention.

It was Nikolao broke the silence. "Why's it been crossed out?"

Maritza, despite her horror and shame, was curious. She, in fact, had no idea what the tattoo looked like. Her small tent did not have a looking glass, and Madame Zhalinka certainly never introduced one to her during the ritual. She longed to know what the new drawing on her looked like.

Pipra squinted one eye, tilting her head to the left and the right. Her ribbon-spangled braids moved with her, defying gravity. She announced matter-of-factly, "It's an upside-down crown, cut in half."

Nikolao crossed his arms, nodded as if satisfied, and then doggedly persisted. "What's it mean?"

"I don't know," Maritza said, but her voice did not leave her throat the first time, and she had to repeat it once more, louder this time.

While it was true that she fantasized about her peers' acknowledgement, she did not like when Nikolao in particular paid this much attention to her. He had been the loudest voice that had pressed her to climb into the well, with its slimy cold and wet darkness, and she had never truly forgiven him for that. She refused to look at him now.

Nikolao noticed, and was agitated. He kept trying to discreetly move into her line of sight, but Maritza kept shifting her gaze stubbornly.

Rozabela, tossing the long waves of her hair over her shoulder, loudly interjected, "My mother told me that she's being sent away. Banished, she said. And we're all supposed to be grateful about it."

Maritza did not know how to respond to that. She didn't get the chance to respond with what she did not know. Nikolao's face was suddenly very close to hers as he tried to spy her reaction, craning to see as she squirmed away from him. "Are you really going away, Ritza?" Then, in an exasperated voice, "Why won't she look at me?"

Pipra skipped around them in a circle, twisting and turning like a snake coiling in on itself. She hummed an off-tune hymnal of the saints and confided, "I wish the witch would have taken me. I bet my mark would have been the prettiest. Wait! Do you know where she lives, witchling?"

"I'm not-," Maritza started, but Rozabela was behind her, suddenly, yanking up her long skirts. Maritza, who had no idea what to do with the exposure of her knees, yelped in alarm.

"Her legs are all scraped up! Maybe the witch will she use her blood in one of her spells or curses, and that's all her destiny ever really was, and the saints didn't even talk to her, the witch just needed another victim."

It was awful because it was true and it was what Maritza had feared most of all, shaking so uncontrollably that she and Jasper had to keep stopping during her blindfolded walk home.

Maritza felt a single, traitorous tear fall. It's my last day here, she remembered, miserably.

Rozabela touched the tip of her finger to the drop on her cheek, and playfully flicked it away. Maritza's cheeks burned. Pipra still twirled around them. The other kids gathered around were either enjoying by the drama in their otherwise boring lives, or too cowed by the thought of Rozabela turning her ire on them to defend poor, tiny Maritza. The neighbors, who had been eavesdropping through tent flaps while tending supper, stirring spoon forgotten in their idle hands, strained to hear.

"That's stupid," Nikolao interjected hotly. For a brief moment, he looked unlike himself, almost like he wanted to say more. He anxiously glanced at Maritza, and then at Pipra and Rozabela, and then the moment was over and he was suddenly arrogant again. "This is boring. We shouldn't waste our time on crybabies."

Her eyes flashed to his, angry tears fumbling from her eyelashes. Nikolao startled, alarmed by the hurt on her face, and she ducked through the crowd and darted back into her tent before anyone else could say something mean and cruel and hurtful.

Her sudden tumble through the tent flaps brought a sweep of wind with her. The papers in the tent rustled, some scattering to the dusty floor. Her mother flinched in surprise, hands jerking the tin molds and splashing some hot tallow onto the table. The brass wick-cutting scissors had been knocked askew by her elbow.

"Ritzy," her mother chastised, not meeting her eyes. "Do not run. You might fall or break something."
Her hands delicately resumed pouring the hot wax for the prayer candles. Maritza had always liked to watch the creamy fluid swirl and cool into its molds. When her mother pulled them out after the wax had tempered, Maritza thought they looked like little candies one might find in a fairytale.

The thick scent of it was a comfort to her, like the smell of parchment and the clack of prayer beads as her mother absently rubbed her fingers together in deep contemplation. They were things that she associated with the concepts of safety and safety, and it was how she envisioned her mother in her mind's eye, although she knew now that it was not the truth of her.

Beside her mother was a box tied neatly with twine, wrapped in a dyed gauze. It was very pretty, like something a princess might receive on her plush bed before a ball. It had been there all along, but Maritza thought it might have popped into existence itself with her very noticing.

Even though she was upset with her mother for allowing the witch and her phantom to steal her away, and she was unsure if such a thing could ever be forgiven, Maritza could not resist inquiring about the bright, pretty intruder. "Why is there a box?"

Her mother stopped moving, and stood very still. She pressed her fist to her mouth, and then covered her eyes, blinking hard against the tears. Her shoulders began to shake from the effort of keeping calm in front of her daughter, so young and so precious and so very near to death.

Maritza knew in an instant that it had come from the witch. Her fate waited for her in the pink glow of sunrise, just a few hours away. She felt the press of time sharper than ever.

Then Maritza, with her six years of life, came to the realization that she was going to die. It was neither gut-wrenching, nor cathartic, but instead a somber resolution. She thought that something miraculous, which had just taken root, was going to be yanked out and severed prematurely. The lure of saints and prophecy and divinity mean little when mortality is standing so very close, on the very threshold of your doorstep.

The realization was like the splash of icy water when you are fully submerged and it closes up with a thwup! over your head. She was too surprised to cry or feel the sadness of it.

And then Maritza, abruptly and all at once, stopped believing in every charade. She looked at her home with the sudden perspective of someone who will go away for a very long time and never return. Like a man drafted to be one of Colonel's Bootcamp Boys, as Nikolao aspired to be, or a prisoner looking at their cage one final time before their execution.

There was only an uneven table and two bed rolls, a crate used to store her mother's candle-making tools, and their meager rations from Councilman Lewis, organized in neat stacks. There were papers strewn about, normally neatly fastened together, which had been disrupted by Maritza's blustery entrance. They were every scrap of paper they could collect about the saints, and her mother could nearly read through all of them now.

Reviewing her tent, she felt the serrated cut of poverty and strife. It felt suddenly like the fabric of the tent was pressing down on them, a claustrophobic sensation, where one is choked off from the freedom of the night sky.

It was her last night, and her forehead ached, and her chest hurt, and her friends had mocked her, and her mother would not look at her, but Maritza felt at least a little glad that, maybe, she could help make this hard life a little easier for them. She wished that she could see the rain that would come: gargantuan purple thunderclouds and fat raindrops and the wet, lush, earthy musk of the sage and creosole bushes perfumed in petrichor.

Maritza went to bed with these thoughts to comfort her, curled away from her mother, with her stained Mothball curled against her chest. In her dreams, she could feel the cold droplets of rain on her skin, and she pretended away that it was only the wetness on her cheeks.

* * * * *

Maritza held Mothball in front of her face, her absolute favorite and most dependable friend (certainly much better than both Nikolao and mother) until their noses almost touched. She loved to stare at the squiggles of wool, amplified through the magical scope of close proximity.

It was an alpaca. Her mother had told her as much, once, in her unpolished, childlike grasp of time. It was from a time before her mother had so catastrophically disappointed her. Before she had forsaken Maritza for her wretched saints.

Her focus intensified the detail of the eyes: two knots that had been fashioned with a needle and a wiry black thread. It was a strange animal, with a long neck, and not one that she had ever seen in the desert, but she liked to imagine that if she were to meet such a creature, she would allow herself to fall face-first into the cloud of puffy wool and lay there forever. Or at least until suppertime.

While she fiddled with her cherished toy, her mother's face and voice blurred into abstraction. She had not looked at her mother the entire morning. She was upset, yes, but mostly, she was afraid of what would discover in her expression. Indifference, or relief, or even the sadness she secretly hoped her mother felt about the circumstances would be too much for Maritza to bear.

"Maritza," her mother chided softly, crouching until she was squatting at Maritza's height. Mother's grip was gentle but firm when she took hold of her arms, pinning Maritza in place until she reluctantly returned her focus to her mother's words. Her voice was incredibly gentle, as Jasper's had been, just yesterday. "You have a very, very important task. You understand, why you have to...?" She could not finish the sentence.

Maritza squinted at the ground. The ornamental clothes were stiff and rough against her skin. It had been embroidered, meticulously, miraculously, by hundreds of small, colorful beads. The long, fluted sleeves had been crafted with the same dyed gauze which had wrapped the box it came in. Her heavy headdress was secured to her by a thick ribbon; the strings adorned with beads of smoothed glass tinkled in her ear when she tilted her head.

"I am an offering. I have to go to the saints and beg for water."

Mother pursed her lips and tucked a stray curl behind Marita's ear. "We need rain, my sweet girl. You will save us from this thirst. Madame Zhalinka witnessed it in a dream, and we must heed the dreams of the saints, always."

Maritza did not like this conversation. She wanted to go home, to their little canvas tent. She had left her other toys there, and wouldn't Mothball get lonely on her trip if he was just by himself?

But her mother had refused to take her back when she had asked before. Mother had firmly insisted that there was no going back. Now they were standing at the edge of their town, and Maritza would not look at her, still, because she could not tear her terrified gaze away from the gaping maw of the desert.

It was bigger than anything she could have fathomed. As big as the sky. The heat rolled off of the sand in waves that blurred the horizon in its twinkling mirage shimmer. Cacti and scraggly plants reached upwards, blearily, towards the swollen sun.

Maritza thought, very suddenly, that the ocean must be very, very far from this place.

She did not want to go into the desert alone. But her Mother and village would thirst until she did. And Madame Zhalinka herself had pulled Maritza aside and told her to never come back; she prophesied destruction and misery upon Maritza's return.

Her mother tried again, but it was clear at this point that she was coming undone. Her voice cracked on the last word. "Do you understand, my girl? What you must do?"

Maritza lifted her small arm and admired the twinkling glass beads dangling from her sleeve. She was wearing the prettiest clothes she had ever worn, and it was only to please the saints when she died at their feet. She focused on the fabric instead of responding.

She did not like ignoring Mother, but Mother was saying unpleasant things. She wanted Maritza to leave and never come back, all because the witch had told her to. Even though Maritza was her own daughter.

Maritza puffed out her cheeks and waited for the anger to pass. She did not want to be angry at the person she loved most, not when it would be the last time she ever saw her. She did not understand the feelings welling up inside her. She hated Madame Zhalinka for making her so confused. It was all the witch's fault that she had to leave, anyway. Rozabela's jeers, and Pipra's nettling, and Nikolao... What had even happened with Nikolao?

Why couldn't the Madame just keep her silly dreams to herself?

"Maritza," Mother's grip tightened and her voice struck a strange chord, sharp and despondent. It frightened Maritza into paying attention again. She had never heard that tone from her mother, not ever before. Her fingertips pressed hard into the soft flesh of Maritza's upper arm. "Please."

Maritza searched her mother's eyes one last time. She saw travesty there; tears welling up but not spilling over. But Maritza did not see leniency, and she did not see forgiveness. This was it. It would be the last time she would ever see her mother. The finality of it struck her with a clarity like fork tines against glass.

In a small voice, she whispered, "I understand." And then, because it would be the last time she ever saw her, and it was more important that her mother know than for Maritza to be angry, she said, "I love you, Mumsy."

Her mother gave her a wobbly smile, trying to inspire confidence, but the motion made her watery eyes overflow and flood down her ashen cheeks. It looked both joyful and utterly desperate, all at the same time.

Her mother nodded once, curtly, and abruptly stood up. She would not look at Maritza. The tears fell freely now.

She turned her back and said, "I love you, Ritzy. Go, now, and find the saints, and save our village." A heaving sob wracked her chest. "I love you, my sweet, sweet girl."

The heat swirled around her, boiling in invisible fumes up, up into the sky. The people of Salvation watched her leave, the disjointed harmony of their voices swooning through the melancholy tunes of the hymnals, from the perimeter of the encampment.

Foremost and looking forlorn stood young Nikolao. His hands were curled to fists at his sides, and he looked as if he might sprint after her like a jackrabbit at any moment.

Unseen in the shade behind the crowd, with pale hands clasped politely in from of him, Jasper Pentaghast mournfully observed the departure. He pulled his silver timepiece from his waistcoat pocket and opened its curved surface to regard the photograph tucked inside, as he often did during sorrowful instances.

Her mother had not stayed to watch.

Further in the basin, the vultures circled overhead.