Moon Blood and Salt Flowers

Until a night without moonlight.

Under the jiwa sky, salt flowers sprouted above ground freely, drawn by misery and tears. Even now flowers lined the canal, so many she could see their faint luminescence. For all she could tell they sprouted throughout the city, too. How many poor souls had they taken already?

And now the mitayos were fleeing the mountain, headed toward the city.

* * * *

The Spanish heeded her warning. It would have been hard not to, with her holding the corregidor's crying son and describing what had moved her to run headlong into a gathering of Spanish grandees and their wives. Though she tried to tell them about the salt flowers, they seized upon word of mitayos descending from the mountain.

Throwing off their masks and shouting for the servants to fetch their horses, the men ran to get their weapons while scores of masked women in silken plumage fled across the stone garden into the palace. Fernando, in the one look he exchanged with Amaya as he mounted his brown horse, appeared grim and brave. She screamed to him about the salt flowers, but he gave no sign that he heard. As she clutched the wailing child to her body to still its crying, Fernando rode out with the corregidor toward the bridge.

A woman's voice jolted her. Amaya turned to see Beatriz shaking like a possessed thing, thanking God and the Holy Innocents that her baby was safe.

"Stop crying!" Amaya handed the boy to its mother, who kissed his tears. "Beatriz, you must keep the others calm—don't let the children or the women cry. Remember what old women say: salt flowers are drawn to tears. Keep everyone walking, running, dancing. Until the sun rises, do not stay in one place. If someone screams, get to them quickly and pull them away. If you have gold, carry it with you."

"Amaya—"

"I cannot stay with you. I cannot protect him here!"

Amaya left the white palace, running into the darkness. As she raced downhill after the corregidor's men, the people of the city surged to block her path. Alerted to the approaching mitayos, the town people fled toward the palace where they knew soldiers were barracked and might protect them. She passed one or two incorporeal souls, flimsy beings that paid her no mind. They were looking for their families.

Bumped from every side and crushed against house walls in the narrow streets, Amaya pushed her way past well-fed men in woolen capes and nightshirts, stinking prospectors, and perfumed prostitutes. The press of people only diminished when she reached the high walls of the convent of San Francisco, beside which wandered three pale, visiting souls.

The souls moved gracefully through the night, sometimes more visible, sometimes not.

To either side of the convent gate salt flowers already sprouted, tendrils drifting from nodding pods. A tendril hooked one of the souls when it wandered too near and pulled the screaming thing swiftly into its bloated maw as the other souls wailed and fled.

Run faster, she told herself, abandoning all hope of saving any but herself and the one soul she could not bear to see lost.

She knew she was near the canal when she caught wind of sewage mingled with the stink of sulfur from the mills upstream. A minute later she came to the bridge of stone arches. On the other side of the canal, a mob of miners bearing torches blocked the road and wanted to cross the bridge. The fitful light illuminated the figures of the corregidor and the men who had ridden with him, barring the mitayos from entering the wealthy quarters of the city.

Sharp reports from harquebus fire split the night, followed by the screams of the dying. Moments later the mitayos rushed the soldiers, overwhelming those in the front with their numbers. Amaya staggered to a halt, staring in horror, as the mitayos broke through the first rank and advanced onto the bridge with the soldiers.

Salt flowers surrounded them.

Ghostly stems curved like hooks bloomed upon the banks of the canal and snaked between the buildings on either side. The leaden water reflected their shapes several fold. Some salt flowers, rooted in the stones of the bridge itself, rose higher than the mounted men's heads.

"Stop!" she called, but of course no one did. The mitayos did not even see her, and the soldiers did not care.

More shots rang out and she could not see how many fell. With a roar of voices, the miners laid hold of men and horses. Swords flashed, faintly traced with starlight. She saw Fernando dragged from his horse, the corregidor vanish beneath a sea of heads and hands.

With a cry of dismay, Amaya waded into the mob of mitayos. The man nearest her, with swollen eyes and skin blackened by mine dust, carried a torch. Wresting it from his hands, she plunged on. Near the center of the bridge she found Fernando, fallen but still fighting, being kicked and stomped by angry men. Waving her blazing brand, she drove them back until she stood astride the young Spaniard. One cheek badly bloodied, he stared up at her, eyes wide with surprise.

"Why are you here?" she shrieked at the mitayos.

Hearing a woman's voice and words in their own tongue, many turned and ceased fighting. They had heard about the soulless girl, the one who had seen demons in the mine. The few Spaniards still on their feet ceased fighting also.

"The evil is here!" Amaya cried, waving the brand to every side. "Here is where the salt flowers grow! This water comes from the mines! Death sprouts in the stones to every side! Look at the men who are fallen—"

A dozen men, miners and Spaniards alike, lay on the bridge. Their screams strangled with blood, their bodies jerked and fought against assailants no other among them could see. Bulging eyes leaked blood and blood poured from their nostrils as they choked into silence, their struggles ceasing. The corregidor, resplendent in a doublet of silver and pearls, twitched spasmodically on the bridge, open-mouthed, blood trickling into his beard. Only she saw a flower head's long tendrils snagging and pulling the soul from his staring eyes and gaping mouth in long, spangled tatters.

"I see them," she told the mitayos. She swung her torch, forcing the men nearest her to jump back, out of the path of ethereal death. Salt flowers crowded near. The yellow dress twisted about her body and the shawl of red and gold flared about her arms like flame itself. "Run from this place! Run far! Run to your homes, your villages. Anywhere but here."

Believing her, knowing the lore of the high lakes and having seen such deaths in the mine, they turned and fled into the night.

But the leaderless soldiers stared in confusion.

"Bruja!" One Spaniard shouted, his voice followed by another.

She knew the word. They thought her a witch. Spaniards, like their priests, knew nothing of salt flowers or spirit children, but much of witches and devils.

Amaya grabbed Fernando's arm and pulled him to his feet, away from the mottled pod bending toward him.

"Get away from the witch, Don Fernando," an old soldier wearing full breastplate and helmet ordered. He swung his harquebus at her and she ducked, but the heavy butt struck glanced the side of her head.

Pain cracked through her skull, delivering blackness. She knew she fell by the way her body hit the stones of the bridge. Her eyes opened again to see the sky, so bright with stars, and the somnolent glow of a salt flower pod bending near. Somewhere, the bells of the convent of San Francisco began to toll.

Though Fernando was shouting, she could not look for him. The salt flower's pod was too beautiful, too luminous, with violet lacing its surfaces and feathering the edges of its moonbeam petals. Those petals opened as the pod dipped toward her face, showing her a throat that was deep, bottomless, blotting out the stars. The blackness, so perfect, exuded a sweetness that entered her nostrils and prompted her lips to part.

She invited it in, tasted coldness on her lips.

"Amaya!"

Her name exploded in her ears and a blaze of light separated the blackness. The flower vanished.

Hands grappled under her shoulder blades and knees, lifted her up. The stars came back into view. So did Fernando's face, his eyes silvered by starlight. Her shawl fell away from one shoulder and she realized it was unpinned.

"My tupus!" she cried, twisting to look back. The pain in her head made her feel ill.

"I have them. I used them. I think. I could not see anything, but I used them." He carried her from the bridge, its stonework now occupied only by fallen men and the silent garden of silvery flowers that tugged at their souls. The soldier who had struck her flopped upon the stones like a fish.

Across the city, more churches joined in ringing their bells, doleful knells calling the people to prayers and arms. Loud cracks of cannon fire punctuated the night, telling them more mitayos were trying to enter the city, using another road, another bridge. Carrying Amaya in his arms, Fernando ran the other way.

* * * *

Fernando found a horse belonging to one of the corregidor's men, and quickly proclaimed it as being God's salvation. He mounted, then helped Amaya swing up behind the heavy leather saddle. She wrapped her arms around him, clutching handfuls of velvet.

They thought at first to re-enter the city but madness had seized the streets and every road was clogged with refugees fleeing calamity. Some pronounced the city infested with invisible demons, while others screamed of pickaxe wielding mitayos running in the streets, murdering priests at church doors, raping virgins, and robbing the treasure houses. When a gang of desperate men tried to seize the horse, Fernando spurred it to a gallop and burst through the crowd the way his predecessors had ridden through Inca armies.

They stopped on a crest of the road outside the city and looked back.

Potosi looked diseased. All along the canal fires burned, glowing red above warehouses filled with grains, ivory, rich clothes from Cuzco and silks from Cathay. Lights flickered in and around the haciendas of the wealthy. Fernando uttered a soft prayer to his God. He might have prayed harder, and to other gods, had he seen what Amaya saw: canals that flowed from the black mountain's mirror lakes like pale rivers to fill the city's aqueducts with unnatural light, feeding ghostly whorls of inflorescence that sprouted from tile rooftops and waited in the belfries of churches.

Translucent death encircled the corregidor's palace like a pale sea.

* * * *

The road followed the river and deadly flowers spawned along its banks in incandescent strands, though only a few appeared on the road. Night was still thick when Amaya begged Fernando to rein in the horse so she could dismount and approach a lone soul sitting beside the road. Squatting before it, she warned about a salt flower they had seen, and that the river too was dangerous, so the soul thanked her by telling her of an old Inca road that would be safer to use. There would be a dwelling, it said, and good water.

When she relayed to Fernando what the soul had said, he weighed the advice. Although he bore a sword, she was armed only with tupus and two travelers stood little chance against thieves or desperate men. They were also in need of water and food. "Can we trust what it says?"

"It has no reason to mislead us."

Souls visiting the lower world during jiwa seldom bore grudges against strangers. They were looking for their families. Unfortunately, entire kin groups had perished either through war or disease and many souls found little to engage them.

The sun rose and they soon found the road, hidden as the soul had said it would be behind the taller of two nearby hills. Only after they saw the tumble of stone buildings ahead did they realize the soul had sent them to a ruined estate. Inca nobility had founded many fine estates throughout their empire but had surrendered most of these to the Spanish. To judge by the broken door and shards of bone or pottery in the overgrown courtyard, this one's stone house had been plundered years before.

Fernando helped Amaya down from the horse before dismounting himself. He scanned the deep slopes of the surrounding hills with a practiced eye.

"Good land," he said. Most of the terrain of the high plane was arid and harsh; this sheltered fold between hills already showed scatters of green rare for early spring.

"The Incas worked it. See?" she said, pointing to remnants of quinoa stalks among the previous summer's dead puna grass. She would gather what grains remained.

A pool carved out of the rocky hillside collected water, more than enough. They found unbroken clay pots for what they needed for themselves, then let the horse drink its fill. Minutes later, Fernando tied the beast to an old llama post and joined her in the house, where she had spread a few blankets upon a clay floor.

She thought it best not to tell him they shared the house with three visiting souls. Barely visible in the shadows at the rear of a storeroom, the souls had spoken little other than to tell her where the blankets could be found.

Pale sunlight filtered across the entrance, softly illuminating the interior. Upon entering the house, Fernando looked around before sighing and lowering his body stiffly to the blankets. She sank down beside him. The mitayos had landed many hard blows and his injuries now caused him pain.

Fernando caught her completely by surprise when he grabbed her face in both hands and his mouth sealed hers, his tongue pushing insistently until she opened for him. All the terror of having escaped death, of fleeing the city and the river, collided with relief that they had made this far, that it was daylight and they were safe. His need for her felt raw, serrated like a knife. Amaya yielded until his kisses softened, then rubbed her face against his, kissing his swollen cheek, welcoming the prickle of his beard.

My Spaniard, she thought as he pushed her down. She had anticipated they would have need of the blankets. His body moved over hers, crushing her beneath him, his mouth traveling down her neck as his fingers pulled the tupus from her shawl so he could lay it open to spread bright as sunlight beneath her. Her breasts strained against the stiff bodice of the Spanish dress. Encouraging him, Amaya placed her hands on his arms, enjoying the corded tension of thick muscles beneath his paned silk sleeves and the doublet stitched with pearls.

"Fernando," she breathed, savoring the sound of his name.

He groaned and sucked at the pulse in her throat, tasting her voice. Hook by hook, he undid her dress until the bodice fell open. Her breasts, no longer shy, rose to his hand and begged to be touched. With an eagerness that made her blush, her nipples grew hard, brazen, and Fernando pulled away from her to watch as they tightened and lengthened beneath his stroking fingers.

"Dios," he entreated, "You are beautiful, soft—"

Also begging. Yielding. She wanted him too, had wanted him from the second day she had known him. She had announced her choice when she kissed him on the convent doorstep.

With only a little encouragement, he became all hands and hunger. Her garments parted like grass, flimsy obstacles to his assault. It was in his blood to take any treasure in his path and she offered her body to his plunder. With a thoroughness that left her gasping, he exposed her secrets, glutted his mouth on the gold of her skin and teased love words from her kissed, swollen lips. Feeling Fernando's tongue slip one of her nipples into the hot recess of his mouth, Amaya arched her back to give him more. Having lifted her skirt, he moved one knee between her legs, his erection hard and wet against her thigh as she hooked her leg around his hips, pulling him to her.

When had he loosened his garments?

With a moan, Amaya clutched at his head, amazed at the thick wonder of his hair while holding his mouth to her breast. His suckling awakened the music of her blood. She had always thought she might enjoy a man, could she ever find one brave enough.

His eager hand beneath her skirt drifted up to her waist, found her hip and moved with languorous possession again to her thigh. When he found the folds of her sex, she gasped. Then she moaned as he rubbed the moisture there, his fingers parting her silky flesh and delivering slippery strokes over the throbbing center of her pleasure.

Impatient but practiced, clearly a man who knew his way with a woman, he pleasured her until her juices flowed freely. Positioning himself between her spread knees, he grasped the shaft of his manhood and rubbed its tip over and into the well of her excitement until he too was slick. He entered her without warning, a brusque thrust and sharp pain that made her bite back a yelp.

He took her greedily. Amaya clasped him, arms about his neck and legs gripping his hips, holding him to her while his head bowed over her breasts and his muscular buttocks pounded into her with raw need. She wanted the life she felt within him the way the salt flowers wanted souls: hungry, urgent, desperate to pull him into her and consume him utterly. The force of her craving frightened her. The village men had feared her. What if her darkness proved too great?

Fill me! her seeking kisses begged of his salty skin, though filling her was what he was doing already. His shaft felt strong, so hard within her she marveled that it belonged to a man of flesh and blood. It felt rather like iron or steel, that shining Spanish metal. That he was using it to plow her deeply felt right in a way she only now understood. The pain was less now, but she understood it was her sacrifice, her gift of blood.

She was the fertile earth, the virgin violated so she could give conceive new life. Mother Earth, more powerful even than the life-giving Sun.

Despite the cold high air, sweat blossomed on his forehead and throat and dripped onto her face. When his body shuddered and jerked and she felt him softening within her after having delivered his seed, she kissed his damp brow, then his cheek and lips, pulling him into a kiss he ardently returned.

"Forgive me," he gasped, struggling to find words for what he wanted to say. "A demon possessed me. I should not have—"

"I wanted you."

"You are so small, so tight . . . I know I hurt you." He looked more in pain than she was.

She kissed him softly. "I'm happy."

"You were virgin—"

"Not because I wanted to be one!"

"I was so afraid," he whispered then, planting new kisses along her nose and in the soft hair near her ear. "I was so afraid when I thought I would lose you. I hit the soldier who struck you, and then I left him to die."

"And I left the corregidor's house to find you. No one else mattered."

"I have changed you. The priest warned me, said if I ruined your innocence, God would cease to protect us, protect you, and you might cease to see the demon flowers."

"I can still see them," she vowed. Three visiting souls, flickering like pale candles, hovered near, observing them. If she could still see souls . . . She kissed Fernando's dark hair and pulled his face to her breasts, happy to feel his body relax atop hers. "We're safe now. We're safe here with kind souls to help us."

"My spirit girl," he murmured.

The gentle movement of his muscles against the soft skin of her breasts told her the smile she so loved had returned to his face. She sighed happily. The light outside the door grew stronger and the thin air carried the honking calls of flamingoes flying overhead on their spring migration.

Their nesting grounds encircled a lake with water as green as her lover's eyes.