12.21 by Dustin Thomason

Author:Dustin Thomason [Thomason, Dustin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Action & Adventure, Medical
ISBN: 9780679644286
Publisher: Dial Press
Published: 2012-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

I, Paktul, royal scribe of Kanuataba, am buoyed by the presence of a scarlet macaw, who has flown into my cave. My spirit form given to me at birth was a macaw, and the bird has always been a great omen when I have chanced upon one. The night of Auxila’s murder, it arrived wounded. I gave it worms because there are no fruit seeds to offer, then let drops of blood out of my tongue to welcome it. Through this, we became one. I embody the spirit of the bird in my dreams. Now I am as grateful for his presence as he is for mine. It is not often a spirit animal finds his man in the flesh, and it is the only happiness I know now.

For there has been no rain but in our dreams, and the people of Kanuataba grow hungrier by the day. Maize and beans and peppers are almost as rare as meat, and the people have taken to feeding on shrubs. I have given my rations to the children of my friends, for I am used to subsistence eating in my communes with the gods, and my appetite has grown small.

The death of Auxila, just twelve suns ago, still haunts me. Auxila was a good man, a holy man, whose father took me in when I was a boy and without parents. I knew only my father, my mother having died when she pushed me from the womb. My father could not handle a boy on his own, but he was not allowed by the king, Jaguar Imix’s father, to take another wife from Kanuataba. So he fled alone to the great lake beside the ocean, the land of our ancestors, to rejoin them, as soon the bird will rejoin its flock. He never returned, and Auxila’s father took me in as an orphan and made Auxila my brother. Now my brother has been killed by the king I serve.

I headed to the palace with my macaw, on a day when the moon was halved, and the evening star would pass directly through Xibalba. I swallowed my sadness at Auxila’s death, for to express discontent at a royal decree is unwise. I had been summoned to the king for reasons I did not know.

The macaw and I passed other nobles standing in the central patio on our way to the palace. Maruva, a member of the council who has never had an idea of his own, leaned against one of the great pillars encircling the patio, dwarfed by the stone that reached seven men high. He spoke to a king’s ambassador well known for supplying the black market in the Outskirts with hallucinogens. They both looked at me suspiciously and whispered as I passed.

I reached the palace and was led by one of the guards into the king’s quarters. The king and his minions had just finished eating, another secret ritual in which only he and his sycophants are allowed. These men were finishing a royal feast.

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