

God of the 4th Sun

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams

Coming Soon

A Guide for Young Wytches

Text copyright© 2015 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

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Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

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'Although mute throughout its life, the song of a swan about to die is the most beautiful of all calls amongst the birds. The serpent is also mute yet, shedding its skin to create life anew, lives eternally: and so the Snake Song heralds the end of all life.'

Annals of the Jaguar, Text.III

# Chapter 1

The Iron Men were laying their long swords of iron across the plains, drawing nearer every day towards Tesetra's city.

Not that it should bother her anymore, she thought.

She had been finally exiled.

While she had been sent out into the wilderness to die, her sisters had been accorded the honour of taking part in the procession to placate the Jaguar god.

'Tears of the Moon'; that's what her new name meant. Even worse than her old name, Setrast: 'Snake Song.'

The changes to the tattoos running down her arm still stung from the recent changes. She ignored the pain however, concentrating instead on keeping low amongst the rocks, hoping to avoid the gaze of the Iron Men populating the plain far below her.

She had heard they had magical instruments, including the Long Eyes which allowed them to see clearly over great distances. They also had strange bows that, although never tightly strung, fired invisible arrows.

On the river, docked to unload ever more supplies, was an Iron Pyramid. Despite its great size, it was smaller by far, and appeared only partially built, compared to her city's own great, stone pyramid. But the pyramids of the Iron Men could move on the water, carrying men and the strange beasts called horses. She had heard from their own defeated warriors that these Iron Pyramids also emitted balls of the Sun.

Had the Sun and the Moon deserted her people, as more and more people were saying?

The metal these new men called Iron seemed to be a gift from the Moon herself, shining as if with her own silver sheen. It remained impregnable to their own golden metals. The Iron Men, coated completely in the armour of this wondrous metal, were unbeatable.

Many of her city's best warriors already lay dead.

Only the Jaguar god could save them now.

Perhaps, at last, he would be placated by the blood of her sisters.

*

As Tesetra watched the industrious work of the Iron Men far below her, she heard a scuffling of rocks off to her side.

She ducked, fearing that she was about to be discovered by one of the Iron Men's scouts, men who rode upon the iron horses.

But it was instead an old man who ran past her, his hair white, his skin almost like leather. Taking up a hiding position behind a boulder on the edge of the mountainside, he began to observe the toiling Iron Men below, studying them every bit as intently as Tesetra had observed them.

Tesetra didn't recognise the man. He wasn't from her own city.

Could there be another people who also felt threatened by the steady yet relentless encroachment of the Iron Men?

She wondered if she should approach him, thought better of it: just because these people feared the Iron Men didn't mean they weren't also a threat to her own people.

The old man watched the Iron Men for the rest of the day, seemingly impervious to the blasting rays of the sun. Fortunately, Tesetra had chosen her own position more wisely: she had the shade of a withered shrub to keep her relatively cool.

Even so, she felt parched, in need of at least water if not also something to eat. In the same way that he seemed to shrug off the effects of the sun, however, the old man seemed to either fail to notice or didn't require anything to assuage his hunger.

The Iron Pyramid was creating more of the thick, black clouds the Iron Men always surrounded themselves with. The plumes rose like writhing black serpents from the rigidly straight trees surmounting its top.

On the long swords being laid out across the ground, an Iron Serpent wound its way, creating its own dark storm clouds. Reaching the end of the swords, it hissed impatiently, waiting for the Iron Men to lay down more of their iron, adding daily to the swords' ever growing length.

Were there real men inside all that armour of iron? According to the warriors who had survived the ferocious battles, the men themselves were of iron. The iron was their skin, not a battle costume.

As the sun at last began to set, the glow of the fires that blazed everywhere amongst the encampment of the Iron Men, fires fed by their black rocks, glowed themselves like hot, miniature suns. The harsh clangs of iron against iron continued too, the Iron Men continuing to work by the light of their fires, their boxes of solidified water containing flames.

The old man at last appeared to be tiring from his long watch.

Placing in his satchel the tablets of clay he'd been using to make notes, he turned and slinked quietly away from the cover of the boulder. As he loped past Tesetra, she could see his face, see him closer up, and she realised he looked exhausted. In fact, he suddenly seemed much older than she had first taken him to be.

Once again, Tesetra was tempted to approach him, or at least follow him. But only a few steps back from the edge of the mountain, he stopped once more.

Placing his satchel by his side, he lay down alongside it, as if preparing for sleep. He placed his hands across his chest; then closed his eyes.

Tesetra wondered if this gave her an opportunity to slip away. Or if the man – who could hardly really be asleep after such a brief span of time – would hear and catch her.

She stayed where she was, waiting until she could be sure he was asleep.

But as she watched him, looking for signs that he was falling asleep, his already heavily leathered skin began to rapidly dry, as if his time in the unforgiving sun, his lack of water, was beginning to reap its unfortunate rewards. As it dried, it buckled, lifting clear on ever larger parts of his body.

And yet, now, there was a strange shuffling movement within that dried skin, like a man wearily moving beneath sheets.

Towards the head, the skin broke, tore. The tear became larger as the movement within became more frenetic.

What had been the white hair began to peel back, as if it were the skin of a piece of fruit.

A new head appeared through the hole, the glistening head of a young boy. A boy of about six, with hair shinning like sun-reflecting corn.

Tesetra had to forcibly hold herself back from gasping in a mix of horror and awe.

The Snake People really existed.

They weren't just a ridiculous, ancient myth after all.

*

# Chapter 2

Wriggling now like a snake sheds its own skin, more and more of the boy appeared.

The skin of the old man's head and face grotesquely stretched as the boy's wider body wormed its way through.

Where the feet had been, however, the skin was now as wrinkled and flattened as a long-fallen leaf.

The boy's skin shone, like a newborn babe's.

The old man's skin was dried and useless. An unwanted husk.

As the boy finally slipped out of the last remnants of his older self, he kicked the old skin clear of his feet.

He briefly looked about him, puzzlement on his face.

He glanced down at the dried husk of the old man as if unaware what it could possibly be. The satchel similarly appeared to mean nothing to him.

He was completely naked, yet this didn't seem to bother him. Even so, he grasped – if unhurriedly – the loincloth the older man had been wearing only moments before. Then, holding tightly onto his cloth, he set off at a brisk and easy run towards and down the far side of the mountain.

Tesetra waited only a moment before she scrambled excitedly towards the husk of the old man the Snake boy had left behind. She didn't want to touch it: it looked disgusting, a white sheen of diagonally-adjoined sections of skin. She could still make out the old man's face, a hand, a foot.

When she eventually plucked up the courage to touch it, she was surprised by how cold and dry it felt.

It was like a dried leaf, nothing more: brittle, fragile.

Carefully, Tesetra began to quickly fold the crumpled, flat skin into a small, tighter package. This she even more carefully placed into the satchel the boy had left behind, realising she would need all this as proof of the existence of the Snake People.

She set off, eager to return to the city she had been exiled from only weeks before on her sixteenth birthday.

Although any one spotting her tattoo would undoubtedly stone her to drive her away, she had to tell _someone_ there that the Snake People really existed – and they and her own people seemed to have a common enemy in the Iron Men.

*

Tesetra could hear the wailing trumpets and beating drums of the ceremony long before she at last sighted the top of the pyramid rising up from out of the jungle.

Painted with every colour imaginable, today it was brighter and more splendid that ever. Large, colourful banners and flowery vines had been draped everywhere along the processional concourse that wound its way up to the very peak.

The long procession was already winding its languid, serpentine way around the pyramid's sides. Those heading the procession had just turned around the corner, coming out of the dark, shadowed side of the pyramid that backed onto the jungle. They were emerging into the light flooding both the pyramid's front and the side Tesetra was rapidly approaching.

Somewhere amongst that procession were her two sisters, chosen to appease the Jaguar god and request his help in ridding their land of the Iron Men. It was an honour that had also been bequeathed on their parents only months earlier.

An honour denied Tesetra, for she was deemed unworthy.

And yet – if the Snake People really existed, did that mean that the Serpent god also existed?

If the Jaguar god continued to refuse to help them, if he had abandoned her people, then shouldn't they instead be seeking the aid of his legendary enemy, the Serpent god?

Reaching the base of the pyramid, Tesetra began to climb up its steep sides, using the carvings of the gods and her people's history as foot- and handholds.

If anyone saw her, this alone would be another reason to stone her. Yet this was the quickest, if perhaps more tiring, way of catching up with the procession before it reached the pyramid's plateaued peak.

Every now and again, she crossed over sections of the wide and corkscrewing causeway that had already been passed over by the procession, a thick layer of strewn, brightly coloured petals signifying their passing, their weeping, their tears of joy. At last, she arrived on the level where the procession had only recently passed, those at the rear in sight and now just a short run ahead.

Tesetra ran, even though she was exhausted, her feet feeling as heavy as lead, her heart beating wildly.

She didn't want her sisters' deaths to be in vain – just two more sacrifices to a god who hadn't benevolently looked down on them in years.

*

# Chapter 3

Tesetra's father had insisted that his sacrifice to the Jaguar god would ensure he would be invited into the Thirteenth Heaven.

Tesetra's mother, however, had expressed her private doubts to her.

There had already been so many sacrifices, she had whispered fearfully to Tesetra when they had gone to the river together to complete some washing. And yet the Jaguar god still refused to help them.

They had sacrificed to a number of gods, and none of them had responded to their pleas for a means to remove the Iron Men from their lands. The Jaguar god was just one more god in a list of superior beings who had seemed to have abandoned them to their fate.

Tesetra had been surprised to hear her mother talking like this.

She had always believed that her parents accepted the rule and rulings of the gods; no matter how confusing or unfair the gods' decisions seemed to the people, there was always a reason behind them.

Her mother had seen the shock – yes, even the horror – in Tesetra's face when she had admitted her doubts. It was dangerous to refute the right of the gods to impose their rule upon us.

'The gods can be as foolish and misguided as anyone,' he mother had explained. 'So why must we assume that our priests know what they desire? Aren't they even more imperfect than the gods? Aren't they simply placing their own words in the mouths of the gods to impose their own rule upon us?'

'You mustn't think this way, mother!'

It would be dangerous for both of them if they were overheard talking in this way. Worse, however, was the fact that her mother and father's deaths were inevitable; how much worse it would be to think that their deaths would be for no reason other than to placate the foolish wishes of a hierarchy of arrogant priests!

Her mother had taken Tesetra's hands in hers, holding them tightly.

'Do not trust authority!' she had said. 'The fact that they all agree with each other shows not that they must be right, but only how misguided, blinkered and corrupt they are! That they will never be open to other viewpoints that might threaten their authority!'

Then, after carefully checking that they were still on their own, Tesetra's mother told her the story of The All-Knowing King.

*

# Chapter 4

The All-Knowing King

There was once a king so wise that his admiring courtiers had granted him the title of the All-Knowing King.

This king was far from being perfect, of course. Physically, he was not what many people would expect of their king.

Far from being strong, he was weak.

Far from being skilled at warfare, he was a little clumsy.

Far from possessing a towering, commanding presence that awed a room into silence, he was small in stature, and just a touch too thin to be in any way impressive.

Nevertheless, it was said, the king was extremely sharp of mind.

He could best any man when it came to coming up with solutions to a problem. No matter how long it took him to resolve it, he would continue to ponder the matter in hand, arriving at the answer before anyone else could speak.

He had the wit that made those around him laugh uproarishly. While no one was capable of catching him out, or making fun of him.

He could make a decision within an important meeting that, despite being apparently unusual, would undoubtedly prove to be right. It was always universally agreed that any situation would have ended up far worse if any direction but the king's had been taken.

The All-Knowing King was highly regarded and respected throughout the vast lands he had inherited from his father. Indeed, when some of the outlying lands of his kingdom were unfortunately taken over by other rulers, the people there sought to overcome their dismay by pretending to be relieved that they would no longer benefit from his wise rule.

So all-persuasive was the king's persona on his court that the women there soon began to realise that their idea of the ideal man had been wholly and foolishly wrong: how could they be seen to be fawning over the strong men they used to adore when, quite clearly, such men were foolish rather than wise?

But how would they spot the wise men of court? Why, they would have a nature similar to the king's, of course!

The man who tripped over a small step, over some minor obstacle, wasn't the fool they would once have taken him to be. He was quite obviously a wise man who was otherwise distracted by his thoughts on matters of great importance!

The man who failed to show any degree of prowess in the tournaments wasn't weak, as they would once have assumed; he was actually strong of mind. He saw, as we should all see, that making such ridiculous endeavours to win should be frowned upon!

With their eyes at last opened to the realities of life, the courtiers now shunned and even made fun of the crassness of the men and women who at one time would have been the most celebrated amongst them. Unless, of course, those very same men and women at last felt free to also demonstrate their own high levels of intelligence; they could trip-up now and again without feeling in any way embarrassed by it, or gracefully lose at those silly games they had once granted such undue importance.

Naturally, any visiting dignitaries were surprised by what they saw as the incredible ineptness of the king's court. But that, of course, was purely because they themselves still held to outmoded ideas of what passed for wise kingship.

The court of the All-Knowing King was so far ahead of all other contemporary thinking that it was bound to appear odd to anyone who hadn't understood and embraced its high ideals.

So as the courtiers lost at their games, tripped their way clumsily around court, and boasted of their weakness and physical ineptness, the servants too found themselves drawn into this new utopia of correct behaviour. For how could a servant be seen to be more capable than his or her master or mistress?

Of course, if a servant tripped with a plate that smashed, then woe to him!

But if he were so unwise as to put physical prowess above intelligent behaviour, then woe to him all the more!

The more the king stumbled, the more his courtiers and servants stumbled.

The more he wheezed and gasped for air, the more his courtiers wheezed and gasped too.

When the king began to excuse himself because he felt exhausted, then they said not to worry, for they were exhausted too.

When the king took to his bed, then they also took to their beds.

'But I'm _ill_!' the All-Knowing King wailed.

'But I'm _ill_!' his courtiers and servants all wailed.

'Can't someone please _help_ me?' the All-Knowing King pleaded weakly.

'Can't someone please _help_ me?' his courtiers and servants all pleaded weakly.

'Water, I need _water_!' the All-Knowing King whispered desperately.

'Water, I need _water_!' his courtiers and servants all whispered desperately

And in this way, just like the All-Knowing King, his whole court happily passed away while confined to their beds.

*

# Chapter 5

Amongst so similarly dressed people – with flowing, bloom-decked cloaks, and looming feathered headdresses – Tesetra couldn't immediately make out where her sisters where in the procession.

She ran through the well-ordered lines, raising calls of indignation and curses from whomever she passed.

It was sacrilege to disturb such an important ceremony. It might even result in the Jaguar god refusing to accept the sacrifices.

The anger around her increased when they saw her heavily tattooed arm, the emblem of the Tearful Moon: she was an untouchable, and she was bespoiling a sacred rite.

They would have pushed and shoved her, held her forcibly; yet each and everyone there feared that their own actions would thereby taint the ceremony as it descended into a chaos of angry recriminations and violence.

They didn't wish to break off from the calming, reassuring chant the procession had all taken up. They let her be. They let her run amongst them, each hoping that it would be someone else who stopped her outrageous behaviour.

It was an extremely long procession. Tesetra had almost run along most of its length when it turned once more into the dark, shadowed side of the pyramid. Here it would be even harder to make out her sisters amongst so many ceremonially-dressed people.

To her side now there was the equally darkly shadowed jungle. No one saw this side of the pyramid this close up, accept those chosen to take part in the processions. No one was allowed, even, to enter this area of the jungle. It was dangerous to do so anyway, especially when the jaguars were prowling around after a ceremony.

Here the stone concourse necessarily transformed into one of the wooden bridges that spanned the deep, black valley cut into this side of the pyramid. The drop from here was precipitous, frightening, and yet there were no walls or fence to prevent anyone from falling off the bridge.

'Tesetra! What are you doing here?' someone angrily hissed as she charged past yet another line of almost uniformly garbed people.

Tesetra recognised the voice; one of her elder sisters, Pilodea.

She whirled around, glad that her searching was over. She smiled in relief when she saw that her eldest sister, Fretra, was thankfully walking alongside Pilodea.

'Pilodea! Fretra! The Serpent god can help us–'

'The Serpent god?' Fretra hissed furiously. 'A _children's_ story? You insult our sacrifice to–'

'But that's just it, Fretra! You don't need to–'

'Tesetra! Go away! You're not allowed here!'

'You're spoiling it for us!' Fretra wailed.

'The Jaguar god will refuse–'

'He didn't respond to the sacrifice of our paren–'

Suddenly, Fretra was frantically pushing Tesetra aside.

'You're jealous that you weren't chosen!'

'No, no, Fretra! Please you've got it all wron–'

She was closer to the edge of the causeway than she had thought. Her feet scrambled for purchase – but one foot was already stepping out onto nothing but empty air.

She couldn't keep her balance any longer.

She toppled backwards, now falling uncontrollably.

*

For a brief moment, Tesetra feared she would plummet to her death, landing in the dark valley carved deep into the side of the pyramid.

The jaguars from the jungle were already gathering here, attracted by the familiar sound of the trumpets and beating drums announcing yet another feast for them.

The satchel she had been carrying across her shoulder was already falling down into the valley, towards the waiting, hungry jaguars.

Fortunately, they had already crossed the bridge when her sister had pushed her away. Unfortunately, this still meant there was a steep, punishing fall from one level of the concourse to a lower section far below.

To slow her fall, Tesetra urgently reached out for the protruding elements of the many sculptures she was falling past. She never got a true, tight grasp, yet her wildly flailing hands and feet managed to briefly grip enough arms, noses, and rasping tongues to slow her fall.

Even so, she landed on the lower part of the causeway with a bone jarring impact that both severely winded her and left her momentarily dazed. By the time she'd recovered enough to stand once more, the procession had moved much farther on, its head already nearing the pyramid's flattened top.

There was nothing Tesetra could do anymore.

As the head of the procession reached the lip of the plateau opening up onto the valley's cliff-like drop, they kept on walking.

They were all still singing joyfully as they fell into the darkness leading down to the valley floor.

*

# Chapter 6

Tesetra only lingered long enough to see the most forward part of the procession – where she believed she had found her sisters earlier – casually walk towards and topple over the pyramid's edge.

She had hoped that what she had told them might persuade them to back away from willingly going to their deaths.

But as with every ceremonial procession Tesetra had ever watched, there were no last minute squabbles indicating that someone was refusing to plummet over the peak's lip.

Like everyone else in the procession, like every man woman and child there, her sisters subserviently, perhaps even happily, unhurriedly walked over the edge and fell down towards the waiting jaguars.

The procession, being so long, was still toppling over the edge and into the valley's waiting darkness even as Tesetra finally clambered down the last few statues leading to the paved floor.

At last, she heard the clarion call of trumpets that announced the Jaguar god was sated; although she could no longer be bothered to look back and see it, Tesetra knew that what remained of the procession would have come to a halt, the survivors turning and heading back down the ramp.

Tesetra was crying, her tears like the Tears of the Moon; silvery, cool, and the very purest of waters.

As she stumbled away, she failed to notice that a small plant spouted, burgeoned, then bloomed where every teardrop fell.

*

# Chapter 7

By the time she was deep within the jungle once more, Tesetra was no longer crying.

Her sisters had chosen to walk to their deaths, after all.

They had been chosen for this role long ago, as far back as their first birthday. A choice that had been reaffirmed once more on their sixteenth birthday.

Pilodea – 'Jaguar Bride'.

Fretra – 'Flower of the Earth'.

Their lives had been set out for them, just as her own fate had been determined: first by the date of her birth, it's inauspicious positioning on the great stone-cogged calendar gracing the centre of the pyramid's forecourt; secondly, by the priest's dangerous journey into the Ninth Underworld – his tongue lacerated and layered with a mix of plant and animal venoms – when she had at last been deemed a woman.

Her first tattoo, naturally, had been that of the Snake Song. Although Tesetra had been little more than a newborn baby, her mother had been commanded to take her out into the jungle, to leave her there for at least a week.

The gods would decide if she would live and be allowed back into the city.

A week later, even though devoid of any hope of finding the young Setrast alive, her mother had made her way back through the jungle. She had carefully remembered and marked the course she had taken that dreadful day when she had been ordered to abandon her child.

When she first arrived at the spot where she had left Setrast, however, she wailed in anguish, thinking she must have made a mistake, that she must have got lost somewhere along the way: for although it was well known how quickly the jungle could grow, everywhere around her appeared to be totally unfamiliar.

The small hollow where she remembered leaving her baby was no longer there. Instead, a fearsomely barbed wild rose grew everywhere about this area, having already grown into and conquered the surrounding vegetation.

Then – she heard an echo of her wailing.

It was her child, her darling Setrast; hidden somewhere deep within the protective embrace of the interwoven stems.

Without even pausing to consider the damage it might cause her, Setrast's mother began to force her way through the tangled wickerwork, forcing her way past the thorns, ignoring the huge gashes they made to her skin, her own tattoo of a Flowered Vine.

She gasped with joy. Setrast was not only unharmed, kept safe from any wandering beasts by the thorns, but was also well fed. A number of berry-bearing plants had strangely sprouted around her. There were also small pools of the purest, most silvery water, which Setrast had obviously been able to drink from.

Yet when Setrast's overjoyed mother returned to the city carrying a live child – rather than the bloodied sheets every other mother had found after being ordered to abandon their child – few other people thought this was a wonderful event to be celebrated.

'She must have gone out every day to feed and protect the child,' people whispered behind her back.

'She must have placed the chid in a safe cave, with food to sustain her,' others voiced more forthrightly.

Yet neither of these things could possibly be true, the authorities assured them.

Naturally, the parents of a child destined to be abandoned to the jungle were carefully watched and regularly searched throughout the whole week. When abandoning the child, they were similarly allowed to take nothing but a sheet to wrap their child in. They were even followed to ensure the baby was left behind in a small clearing or hollow, as instructed.

Although it was painful for Setrast to have her tattoo altered while her first was still fresh, the singing serpent was slightly changed so that its tail coiled back on its mouth, a sign of the serpent devouring itself, of eternal life; a sign, also, of suspiciously dark attributes, or someone favoured by the demons.

As the young Setrast grew, the arm naturally widened, the skin expanding, stretching the tattoo, fading the colours. New patterns, like the shapes that can be read into the formations of the stars, began to naturally form.

On her sixteenth birthday, these patterns were once again interpreted by a priest.

The priest voyaged into the Third Jaguar Heaven, searching for new symbols and pointers to Setrast's fate and purpose.

The meshing cogs of the great calendar, the smaller 260-day cycle of rituals turning within the year's 365 days, the synchronicity of their brightly painted symbols, were checked once more.

The Tears of the Moon.

This was her new tattoo.

Her new name.

Tesetra.

Her fate had been decided. She was exiled once more, this time with instructions never to return, even if she survived.

Now that her sisters had followed her parents into the underworld, there was no need, no wish, for her to return anyway.

*

# Chapter 8

As Tesetra ran through the jungle, she heard the sounds of iron on stone, a sound that anywhere else would be a warning to beware.

But she knew her friend Degrat often worked here in the stone quarry, knew too that he had been gifted a precious tool taken by a fierce warrior from the Iron Men.

Degrat had been distraught on the day Tesetra's name and therefore fate had been announced. They had been friends from the time when they had been children, one of the very few boys willing to associate with the inauspiciously named Setrast. The son of a mason, and now a young mason in his own right, Degrat had always seen himself as having a little more control over his life than the other boys.

Besides, despite her unfortunate naming, her cautionary, ill-omened tattoos, Setrast had always been an exciting, vibrant person to be with. Her pretty, delicate face had also gradually blossomed into an angular beauty, her hair like a dark, glistening river.

Tesetra headed towards the quarry, seeing this as an opportunity to say goodbye to Degrat. She hadn't been allowed to talk to anyone on the day of her naming, of her exile.

She had simply been ordered to leave the city. And no one had been allowed to either follow or talk to her.

The quarry was full not only of raw boulders and the cut stone blocks readied for transportation to the city, but also of half completed, unpainted sculptures. It was amongst these that Degrat painstakingly worked.

He was so intent on his work, he didn't hear Tesetra's approach. Covered in dust from the stone he was working on, he could have been mistaken for one his sculptures come to life. It completely hid his own tattoo – 'Most Favoured of the Jaguar' – one that in his case covered his whole body with the darkly exploding stars of a jaguar's skin.

He started in shock when he suddenly realised Tesetra was close by, his strained, dust-filled eyes widening in what seemed to her to be both delight yet also embarrassment.

She glanced at the statue he was working on. It was completely unlike his normal sculptures, the graphically symbolic renderings of gods, historical tales and the animals of the surrounding jungle.

This one was far more lifelike than his normal work.

And that's why Tesetra recognised that it was a statue of her.

*

# Chapter 9

Her hair flowed like a river. It extended well beneath her skirt, flowing off in two directions.

In one hand, as if irrigated by the waters of her hair, she was holding the stem of a prickly pear tree, burgeoning with fruit that Degrat had rendered to look almost like hearts.

In her other hand, she held a cross, symbol of fertility, of the four winds that brought the rain to irrigate the crops.

As if all his wasn't strange enough, Degrat had added two smaller bars to the cross, transforming it into the ancient Chakana; the Tree of Life, with its Three Levels of Rain, Jaguar and Serpent.

Of course, Tesetra was surprised that Degrat had decided to make a carving of her; yet she also felt strangely elated that, in line with her discovery that the Snake People really existed, here was another reference to the possible existence of the Serpent god.

'Degrat,' she exclaimed excitedly, 'why have you included the Chakana? Do you believe the Serpent god is more than just a ridiculous legend?'

Although still a little embarrassed, Degrat almost sighed with relief that Tesetra hadn't challenged him on why he'd made this elaborate carving of her.

He shook his head.

'No, of course not!' he insisted.

He appeared annoyed, as if asking him if he believed in such a thing implied that he still adhered to childishly primitive beliefs.

'It's just that...just that I was worried for you, when you were exiled. I hoped that...well, that I could ask the Jaguar god to favour you. That even...that even if you died, you would be allowed to ascend through the Thirteen Heavens.'

He looked more ashamed than ever. Unusually, too, for such an accomplished carver of deities, he didn't look as if he knew what he should be doing with his hands.

He was nervous; he was blushing ferociously.

Obviously, Tesetra wasn't aware that Degrat possessed a magical Smoking Mirror. It was a mirror that allowed him to see inside the hearts of other people: and so he had now known for a long time that Tesetra didn't love him in the way he so dearly loved her.

Yes, she desired what some would foolishly claim was the need for a husband; yet Tesetra desired no husband (nor wife either), no marriage. It was a deep desire, too – for she felt strangely, inexplicably incomplete. It was an _animalistic_ desire: there was no other word for it. It was an all-consuming need, a want – but one she had unfortunately decided wasn't attainable from Degrat.

The Smoking Mirror, of course, was a wonderful gift to process. Sometimes, however, like this one, it could cause you more anguish and agonies that you believed you could continue to handle.

'Are you staying?' Degrat asked hopefully. 'Have the priests relented?'

He stared in a mix of awe and fear at Tesetra's tattoo of the weeping moon. Before Tesetra could answer his question, however, his eyes flickered away from observing the tattoo. He glanced over her shoulder, both curious and irately suspicious.

She turned to see what it was that could have drawn his attention.

It was a boy, standing on the very edge of the quarry. A boy who looked around the same age as them. He had the golden hair of the Snake boy, yet he was far too old to be that same boy.

Could he be a brother of that boy? Could he be one of the Snake People?

Before she could think any more about what this strange boy's presence might mean, a strangely eerie whistling completely surrounded her. It drowned out her call to the boy. She looked about herself in alarm.

Degrat appeared to be even more alarmed than she was. He had heard it too. She wasn't imagining it, no matter how otherwordly it seemed to her.

He grabbed her hand.

'Run!' he commanded, trying to drag her off farther into the jungle.

'Run? Why? What is it, Degrat?'

He glanced back at her with a look of complete disbelief on his face.

'Don't you know?' he asked in surprise. 'It's the Snake Song, Tesetra! It's the end of the world!'

*

# Chapter 10

'Shouldn't we be running towards the city?' Tesetra protested. 'Wouldn't it be safer? Don't we need to warn everyone?'

'They'll know!' Degrat announced emphatically, grabbing her hand all the tighter and trying to pull her along with him. 'They'll hear it too! And the buildings will soon be collapsing; no one there will be safe!'

As if the Earth herself wanted to back up his outlandish claims, the rock beneath them began to tremble, as if her anger was growing.

Did she demand even more blood, even more of their dead to be buried within her hungry flesh? Tesetra wondered fearfully.

'The stone's coming back to life!' Degrat yelled, pointing out the statues around them.

The gods and animals of stone were beginning to move, to open their jaws wider. They were also beginning to lean a little, to topple when they realised they couldn't move too easily without legs.

The cliff-like walls of the quarry began to crumble, great boulders plummeting and striking the ground, exploding like huge seed pods.

The ground now rumbled, shook violently, as if the Earth was at last trying to shrug herself free of this unwanted invasion of these bothersome, ant-like creatures who had populated her surface.

The earth rose and sprouted around them as if, just like Degrat had bizarrely claimed, the stone was now alive, growing and moving.

If the city were suffering anything like this, then as Degrat had also claimed, it would now be an amazingly dangerous place to be. Its high buildings would be shattering, falling, burying its own people under the very stones that had previously given them shelter and secure.

No longer resisting Degrat's insistence that they run, she broke into a sprint. Yet she felt as if she were trying to run on water rather than land, for it moved beneath her feet as if fluid, not firm and solid.

Around them, cracks were appearing in the rock, the nearest sculptures briefly leaning then toppling down into the increasingly widening crevasses.

Far ahead of them, the looming trees of the jungle shook and bowed as if caught in an unforgiving storm. Birds screeched in fear as they rose up from the dark green foliage, like flashes of a shattered rainbow. Animals everywhere could be heard wailing in terror.

And still the Snake Song continued, its eerie calling like the pained mourning of a thousand mothers.

The jungle hardly looked safer than the quarry. Some of the great trees could already be heard wrenching their roots free of the earth, crashing against each other like battling giants.

Yet these toppling trees weren't falling completely to the ground, for they were too tightly packed to have the space to tumble to the earth. The maze-like strands of vines running between them were holding them all reasonably securely in place.

The beasts of the jungle, failing to realise this, seeing only that the world they knew was collapsing about them, were everywhere rushing out of the trembling undergrowth, running past Tesetra and Degrat. Creatures who would have at one time attacked them, seeing them as an opportune feast, ignored them and rushed by, their fear far greater than their hunger.

Directly ahead, in the dark shadows of the jungle, there were flashes of silver, moving unhurriedly. It moved smoothly, as if unaffected by the chaos and trembling around it, as if the Moon herself had descended to briefly grace the Earth with her presence.

It wasn't until Tesetra and Degrat had drawn a little closer to the jungle, until the flashes of silver had drawn closer towards them, that they at last began to realise who was heading towards them.

It was a mounted Iron Man.

*

Tesetra and Degrat stopped running, glanced anxiously about themselves, wondering which way they should now run.

Tesetra had seen how remarkably fast the Iron Men's horses could run. Degrat hadn't seen this, of course, yet he'd heard from the few warriors who had survived their disastrous battles that these wondrous beasts possessed amazing levels of power.

The Iron Man was in no rush whatsoever as he unhurriedly rode out of the jungle, quietly heading towards them with little more than the echoing clip-clop of the horse's hooves.

He was completely armoured, such that he seemed to be made entirely of iron. Even his face was covered with a grilled visor, effectively veiling from view the man inside. His mount, too, was clad in thick armour.

He seemed in to hurry to chase them. No hurry to raise and point his magical bow at them.

Degrat made as if to run off – but Tesetra, still holding his hand, held him back.

'If we run, he'll catch us anyway!' she hissed, remembering how she had seen the magical bows kill people from a great distance.

Then she noticed that the Iron Man didn't seem to be holding a magical bow. His hands were simply grasping instead the reins that controlled his remarkable beast.

The strange beast languidly drew up in front of them: then stopped with a quiet snort.

Now neither the horse nor the Iron Man moved, apart from the trembling imposed on them by the quaking ground. The Iron Man remained perfectly silent.

Panicking, Degrat used the only weapon he had to hand: the iron chisel he'd been using to carve his stone.

Before Tesetra could stop him, Degrat threw the chisel as hard as he could at the looming knight, hoping its remarkable properties would cause more damage than anything made of their own softer metals.

The chisel struck the Iron Man with the clang of a booming bell. It rebounded, having caused no damage to the man's armour that either he or Tesetra could see.

The Iron Man moved ever so slightly in his saddle. His clasping hands came free of the reins.

He toppled back out of his saddle, slowly slipping from his mount. He crashed noisily to the still violently quivering earth.

Tesetra and Degrat exchanged puzzled yet relieved glances.

They rushed to the side of the fallen Iron Man, cautiously bending down by him. He lay on the ground, perfectly motionless and silent bar the rattling caused by the rumbling earth.

He had fallen partially on his side, his body unable to lie flat on its back due to the thick shaft of the spear deeply embedded in his spine.

Tesetra looked back towards the patiently waiting horse.

'He – or she – must be well trained: she just kept on walking until she came across someone else.'

As she spoke, she rose to her feet once more, approaching the horse as quietly as she was able, to avoid startling it.

She had watched how the Iron Men mounted these wonderful beasts. They bent a leg, slipped a foot into a hanging strap, hoisted themselves up into the seat on the creature's back.

'Let's go!' Degrat demanded nervously, reaching out with a hand to take Tesetra's once more.

Tesetra shrugged him off, ignored him, her eyes only on the waiting horse.

She slipped a foot into the metallic semi-circular ring. Grasping the saddle with a hand, she pulled herself up, swinging a leg over the creature's back.

She edgily eased into the seat, expecting the horse to protest at any moment.

The horse, however, remained perfectly calm.

She reached out, offering a hand to the awed Degrat.

'I think this will be quicker, don't you?' she said with an exuberant grin.

*

# Chapter 11

The horse moved even faster than Tesetra had expected. Even with the two of them on its back.

Then again, the two of them probably weighed far less than the heavily armoured Iron Man.

They had to duck every now and again to avoid low hanging branches, the looping vines. The horse crashed through the undergrowth as if impervious to its barbs, its entangling stems.

Tesetra couldn't understand how this was possible until she noticed the red glow of the horse's iron legs and front. They were incredibly hot, instantly incinerating anything they touched without, thankfully, setting it aflame.

'Where do we need to head?' she yelled back to Degrat over her shoulder.

'The hills,' he also cried out, the only way to be overheard over the cacophony of quivering trees, rumbling earth, wailing snakes. 'We need to get as high as we can.'

'Why? Won't the mountains be affected by the Snake Song?'

'Of course, yes: but the Snake Song doesn't just mean the earth's going to shake – it means that everything has to _destroyed_. Just so everything can be reborn and start again!'

*

Even at the remarkable speed they were travelling, it still took them a while to clear the jungle and find themselves on the lower slopes of the mountains.

Here the trembling of the ground wasn't as pronounced. They slowed down, allowing the horse to carefully pick its way up the rocky incline, avoiding any dangerously loose stones.

Now that they had slowed, now that they also seemed at last to have escaped the worst of the quaking earth, they could talk more easily.

'Why is everything being destroyed?' Tesetra asked.

As a mason, Degrat would have to be more fully aware than possibly anyone else of their people's many religious beliefs and ancient legends. His carvings had to reflect these beliefs, their symbolism being pointers to how the people should regard these gods, how also they should behave and approach life.

'You were right,' Degrat admitted, with an edge of perhaps sullenness or fear. 'The Serpent god _is_ real: _he's_ causing all this!'

Tesetra was amazed by this claim.

'But I thought the legends told us the Serpent god was a more generous god than the Jaguar god? That he was involved in creation?'

'And before you can create anew?' Degrat said wryly. 'You have to destroy what's already there, of course! The time of our people is over, Tesetra! Just as the people of the earlier suns were destroyed, now it's our turn too!'

'There were people _before_ us?'

'There have been many different types of people the gods have created. Many, too, that they have destroyed when they have become angry or dissatisfied with them! Our time – if the ancient legends are correct, as I now believe they might be! – is that of the _Fourth_ Sun!'

'There have been three suns before this one? Each destroyed?'

Out of the corner of her eye, Tesetra saw Degrat nod in agreement.

'Then if the Serpent god is trying to destroy us all once more, why isn't our Jaguar god trying to stop him?' she asked.

'Because, Tesetra, our Jaguar god is also taking part in this destruction: because he, too, was _originally_ a serpent!'

*

# Chapter 12

The Quartering of The Earth.

There was a time when there was an endless sea, a sea that had always been, that no one, not even the gods, knew how or when it had been created.

Above this sea, a goddess moved back and forth, a goddess of the Earth, even though no such place yet existed. But two other gods decided amongst themselves that such a place, this Earth, should indeed exist.

Transforming themselves into great serpents, they took hold of the goddess. One grasped her by her right hand and right foot, the other by her left hand and left foot.

Dragging her down from on high, they tightened their grip as she protested, pulling on her all the harder, all the more forcibly.

She was torn asunder, wrenched painfully into another shape; quartered into the shape of a cross.

Her hair became the trees, flowers and grasses.

Her skin became the tiny flowers, the very fine grasses.

Her eyes were the wells, fountains, small caves.

Her mouth the rivers and large caves.

Her nose valleys, hills.

Her shoulders mountains.

The two gods left their serpent forms supporting her from below. And so, when these two are tired or angry, they cause the Earth to quake.

The first god ruled this new earth, this time of the First Sun.

But when the second god struck him down, he became a jaguar, the people fleeing into the jungle. Fighting amongst themselves, these first people also turned into ferocious animals like the jaguar.

The second serpent now ruled as the Wind, in the time of the Second Sun.

Yet the untameable winds of the hurricane of the Rain god carried him away in his turn, the people once more having to flee into the jungle. This time, the people became creatures like monkeys, or the herding animals.

The time of the Third Sun was overseen by the Rain god.

He ruled the Earth until uncontrollably heavier rains were unleashed on him by the Water goddess. The people transformed into birds, so they could flee.

And so the Fourth Sun is the time of the Water goddess.

Yet this Fourth Sun, too, will reach the end of its time; heralding in the time of the Fifth Sun.

*

# Chapter 13

'So the Serpent god was more powerful than the Jaguar god? So why do we sacrifice to the Jaguar god rather than the Serpent god?'

'It's just a _legend_ , that's all; a legend which says they were _both_ serpents – and the Serpent god himself was also disposed. I never really believed it until – and even _now_ , I'm not sure it's _entirely_ accurate – until the Earth started quaking like this.'

'But what of the Water goddess? The Rain god? Why are we sacrificing to this Jaguar god who, according to this legend, is no longer all-powerful?'

'That's _all_ it is probably – a _legend_!' Degrat vehemently insisted once again. 'All the gods, and the goddesses, seems to have abandoned us! Think about it: the Water goddess has allowed her waters to bring the Iron Men here from the east. And if the Serpent god exists, if he's still our friend, why did he allow them to come into being, to come here?'

'What do you mean, why did he allow this to happen? They've _all_ allowed it to happen, haven't they?'

'When the Earth was quartered, the Serpent god was said to be given control of the east: and that, of course, is where the Iron Men arrived from!'

'He lives in the east? Then that's where we should head; that's where the Snake People must live!'

'Then if they do, perhaps the Iron Men have already overrun their lands!

'There's only one way to find out!' Tesetra said, bringing the horse to a halt, turning it around. 'We have to head back down into the valley; to head east rather than west!'

*

'Tesetra! Are you crazy! We've just _come_ from there, remember?' Degrat protested as Tesetra urged their horse down the slope, heading back into the still violently shaking jungle.

As if to back up the wisdom of his protests, the jungle abruptly began to thrash more wildly than ever. A hurricane-like squall descended across it, darkening the whole world in what seemed to be the blink of an eye.

And, like a blazing eye, a full moon shone through it all, casting its eerie, silvery light over everything, transforming it all into a ghostly semblance of what had originally existed there.

'The Moon!' Degrat wailed in terror. 'Where did she come from? She wasn't there just a moment ago! She should still be asleep! Where's the Sun?'

The wind blowing across the jungle was now so strong even their remarkable Iron Horse was struggling to make headway against it.

'Turn back, Tesetra! Turn back!' Degrat yelled out above the increasingly ear-splitting cracking of the wildly cavorting bushes, the shrieking wind.

The sky was now so dark, the moon glistened like a silvery mirror amid the almost solid blackness. The light quivered, apparently dissolved, became as watery, as fluid, as the moon's reflection in a lake.

The silvery water began to fall to Earth.

The Tears of the Moon.

*

# Chapter 14

When the rain struck them, each heavy, silvery drop stung.

It was icy cold, almost as hard as hailstones. And the drops came in ever greater numbers, ever faster.

When the lightning came, the silver drops sparkled as if aflame, as if it were a rain of fire.

The leaves of the jungle rattled under the onslaught.

Realising she would have to turn around, Tesetra spun their mount once more, urging him into a fresh burst of speed up the mountainside.

Behind them now, there were the loud cracks of splitting rock, the thunder of massive pieces of tumbling stone. Glancing back over their shoulders, they both gasped in fear as whole parts of the jungle now dropped away, vanishing in an instant into the huge crevasses snaking at incredible speed across the Earth's surface.

With the shattering of the rock, there came the release of waters, of rivers, of lakes.

The water poured into the valley, carrying before it even the gigantic trees of the jungle, a dark green landscape transforming into the white of an angry spume, the blue-grey of the relatively calmer waters following on behind.

It engulfed the works of the Iron Men, dousing their roaring fires, bringing their creation of the black clouds to a sudden halt. It rushed across the quarry of mainly half completed statues, throwing aside gods, toppling ancient kings.

It swept, unstoppable, towards the city.

*

Alerted to the oncoming wall of water, the citizens were already fleeing their soaring structures of stone, their wide boulevards of carefully cultivated trees and flowers.

They themselves were like a sea, but a lesser sea, the waves of terrified people surging and faltering, the weaker ones falling, trampled under the stronger.

Tesetra halted their mount. Degrat leapt down, looking down on the city, their home, with an anguished expression of helplessness.

Before him, he conjured up his Smoking Mirror.

It rose up from the earth being pounded by the rain, the hot muddy floor steaming, the hazy air swirling such that it took on a glistening sheen.

Normally Degrat would hide his marvellous mirror, from everyone, even Tesetra; but today he was uncaring about such things.

He wanted to see what was happening to the people he loved, despite their foolishness, their selfishness.

The mirror looked into the troubled hearts of the people. Their fears appeared in close-up in his mirror, the terror that would be etched into their faces plain to see.

Mothers carried babes, fathers carried older children. They glanced back fearfully, knowing that they could never outrun the towering waters hurtling towards them.

The waters smashed into them as if the waves were as solid as stone.

Indeed, the pummelling waves brought with them great chunks of the buildings they had already effortlessly destroyed. These alone wracked havoc amongst the poor, fleeing people – shattering bones, skulls, wrenching families apart.

The children were swept from their parent's arms.

And even as they drowned, the men and women lamented the deaths of their children far more than they lamented their own.

*

# Chapter 15

Strangely, the children swept away in the flood weren't drowning.

When Degrat's mirror looked into their hearts, he and Tesetra saw that the children had no fear, no cares.

They were swimming. Swimming as if they had been born to live in the water.

Their skin shook, rippled, became like tiny scales.

Their eyes expanded, becoming bulbous, enabling them to see in the darkest, deepest waters.

Limbs became fins, feet tails.

They became creatures of the sea. Creatures who saw the waters as their home, their sustenance.

They dived deeper into the waters; and, like their parents, were suddenly gone.

Weeping, Degrat dissolved his mirror.

The vast sea spread out across the valley. It seemed, at first, to be entirely devoid of all forms of surface life.

Then, in the distance, over to the east, heading back to the east, they saw the pitch black plumes rising from black trees.

The Iron Pyramid of the Iron Men.

Some of them had survived. They were floating on the waters.

Returning, at last, to where they had come from.

*

Tesetra didn't think this was the best time to ask Degrat how he had produced his remarkable mirror.

She would ask him later.

'We can't go east anymore,' she said, if a little unnecessarily. 'Or north, or south,' she added looking about herself, seeing the incredible extent of the spreading waters.

Was only this mountain left? Was there no west to head to either?

'The land of the Rain god,' Degrat said, gathering himself together, realising tears would be of no use to either himself, Tesetra, or the people who were now lost to them.

He looked over towards the west.

As the rain eased, and the darkness waned, the Sun thankfully replacing the Moon once more, a rainbow arched across the sky, its many, gorgeous colours like so many brightly plumed birds taking to the sky all at once.

'How do you know all this?' Tesetra asked Degrat. 'Where the gods live, I mean?'

'It's the way the Earth was quartered; a realm for each god, for when they're not the overall ruler.'

It wasn't Degrat who had replied. In fact, Degrat was staring past her, glowering at whoever had spoken as he came up behind her.

Tesetra turned around on her horse. An incredibly handsome boy, with hair the colour of sun-washed corn, was heading towards them.

'Who are you?' Degrat demanded aggressively. 'How long have you been watching us?'

He was worried that the approaching boy had seen his mirror. Worried, too, that Tesetra might find this boy more attractive than she found him.

Because Degrat had seen the interest in Tesetra's eyes.

This time, Tesetra instinctively knew who the boy was. Even though he was now much older than when she had first seen him.

It was the Snake boy.

*

# Chapter 16

Moving around to the other side of the mounted Tesetra, Degrat positioned himself as if he were protecting her from the steadily oncoming boy.

'Long enough to see your mirror, if that's what worries you,' the boy answered calmly to Degrat's aggressive query. 'To see you weeping, too. But don't worry; the children live again as fish, adapted to living in the sea.'

'Fish?'

Tesetra had never heard such a word before, or of such a creature.

She did notice, however, that the boy's own skin had the slight hint of being scaled, but like a serpent's rather than one of these 'fish'.

The pattern, too, was serpent-like, a mainly red hue graced with crazily meandering lines of pure black and white. It was impossible to tell if it was merely an elaborate tattoo or the actual texture of his skin.

Maybe, she told herself, she should find herself appalled by such an odd look. Yet she wasn't; she found it strangely attractive, somehow entrancing and seductive.

There was something _animalistic_ about it.

'Creatures of the sea,' the boy said in answer to Tesetra's query, 'I know this because I have my _own_ magical mirror.'

He added this last part a little more urgently, noticing that Degrat still remained belligerent.

'How? How can you also have such a mirror?' Degrat asked uncertainly, disbelievingly.

He wasn't sure how he had come by his own mirror. He couldn't possibly believe that this boy had another one just like it.

'No doubt like yours, I just discovered I had it one day,' the boy admitted, now drawing close to both Degrat and the mounted Tesetra. 'Though mine is slightly different. It allows me an uncontrollable glimpse of the future, and even then a future of tales that will be told, rather than the reality.'

'Then how do you know what's true, and what isn't?' Tesetra asked curiously.

'I don't; I didn't believe that there would really be such remarkable things as fish until I just saw them being created just now. And that's despite the tales of fishermen appearing in many tales I see in my mirror.'

With a wave of his hands, he created a swirl of air, a light gust of wind; and brought a mirror into existence before them.

*

# Chapter 17

The Wish Fish

A long time ago, there was a poor fisherman; poor because he was lazy, hardly even bothering to wash. He spent most of what little money his far wiser wife earned on drink.

One day, to his immense surprise, he actually caught a fish. One of tremendous size too, almost as big as a child.

'The gods be thanked!' he exclaimed excitedly. 'This should please even that miserable, ungrateful wife of mine!'

'I'm sure she won't be pleased by my awful taste,' the fish insisted miserably.

The fisherman jumped back in surprise.

Had he heard correctly? Had the fish _spoken_?

Had he been drinking too much again?

He took out his knife, ready to slit the fish open.

'Please, please!' the fish begged. 'If you throw me back into the waters, I can make it worth your while!'

The fish _had_ spoken!

The fisherman was aghast!

Was this fish actually some poor (or rather, incredibly _rich_ ) prince who had been transformed into a fish by a wicked witch, as he had heard tell in some odd tales?

'How?' the fisherman asked unsurely. 'How can you make it worth my while?'

Without bothering to answer, the fish strangely began to cough

Was he fighting for air? the fisherman worried, anxious that his chance of riches might be fast disappearing.

The fish coughed up a sparkling gold ring.

'That _is_ remarkable!' the fisherman cried out gleefully, snatching up the glistening ring and admiring it greedily. 'I'll take you home so you can cough up more gold rings for me!'

'No, no; I'll die once I'm out of the sea, and there'll be _no_ more rings!' the fish declared fearfully. 'You won't need any more rings! Read its inscription!'

The fisherman looked closely at the letters that had been beautifully engraved onto the ring. He frowned, his expression one of doubt.

'Well?' the fish asked.

'I...er, can't read,' the fisherman admittedly ashamedly.

The fish sighed; he was worried how much longer he could continue to live while remaining out of the water.

'It says,' the fish explained tiredly, '"Wish Me Luck!"'

'It's a lucky ring?' the fisherman asked excitedly.

'It's a _lucky_ ring,' the fish agreed, more tiredly than ever. 'So, please, would you put me back now?'

The fisherman eagerly gripped the ring tightly in his hand.

'Ah, but I have the ring now anyway; and so I can have you for lunch anyway!'

'No, you can't!' the fish snapped irritably, 'If _I_ die, so does the luck of the _ring_!'

*

The fisherman was whistling so joyfully at the change in his fortune that, when he returned home, his wife stormed at him for being so happy when he was returning empty handed once more.

'Not _empty_ handed,' the fisherman said cheerily, proudly showing her the glistening ring on his finger.

'A _brass_ ring?' she snapped, astounded by his stupidity.

'A lucky ring!' he insisted, taking off the ring and showing her the inscription.

He told her the amazing tale of how he had come by such a remarkable gift. Of course, he had enough sense to realise his wife wouldn't believe his tale – so he added a few more details he thought would make it more of a story his wife would accept as the truth.

His wife didn't believe him, of course.

*

Once again, the fisherman's wife found herself down the market, buying food it was really her husband's job to provide.

The market traders were used to her appearance every weekend, familiar with her particular humiliation at having to buy fish.

'Ben returned empty handed again, did he?' the traders chuckled.

The wife was more distraught at her humiliation today than she had ever been.

She knew her foolish husband would go around proudly displaying his brass ring as if it were the most precious object in the world.

'Actually, he caught the _most_ remarkable fish it's possible for _anyone_ to catch...' she began, as she fell into the tale of how he had come by a magical ring.

*

The fishmonger was amazed by the tale he had heard from the fisherman's wife.

A ring bearing the legend 'Wish for Luck!'

If he had heard such a tale from her fool of a husband, he had to admit, he would have dismissed it as nonsense.

Yet his wife was a sensible, respected person: and she had seen the ring conjure up a plate of cooked venison so delicious, she had declared, that she didn't need to buy any fish _or_ meat this week!

At the guild meeting held in the town's hall, he related the tale he had heard to the mayor.

Naturally, he was sensible enough to realise that the mayor wouldn't believe any references to an enchanted _fish_ ; but, of course, the part about the magical _ring_ was perfectly believable.

It could be that it was made of a remarkable metal, gathered from a comet that had fallen from the heavens down to Earth. Perhaps it was even forged by a wizard, he explained, as he told the mayor of the ring bearing the promise, 'Rub me and wish for luck!'

The mayor, being a far more learned man than the fishmonger, doubted some aspects of the tale.

So when he in turn told of the ring's discovery to a visiting dignitary from the state's capital city, he judicially removed the more unlikely sections, replacing them with far more likely scenarios.

The ring had obviously belonged at some point to an ancient, now long forgotten wizard, for it proudly proclaimed that its bearer simply had to 'Rub for a wish!'

It was a remarkable tale, the court dignitary had to admit, keeping his own doubts about the tale to himself.

He kept these doubts to himself, too, when he retold the tale to one of the king's aids.

In fact, he simply removed the more doubtful facets of the story, filling in the gaps with far more plausible explanations of the ring's provenance.

The ring's incredible powers were all down to a sparking jewel renowned for consolidating magical energies. This was the infamous Ruby of Wishes, which a great many now unattainable esoteric books referred to.

When the king heard of this fabulous ring, he decided he must have it, no matter the cost.

Heralds were sent out to every town, even every village, either announcing or posting a proclamation that the king desired to purchase a famous magical ring known to be within the ownership of a person living within the kingdom's borders.

Anyone possessing this fabulous Wish-Ruby Ring could name their price.

Reading this proclamation one day, the fisherman irately glared at the now filthy and dull ring gracing his own hand.

'Why couldn't _I_ have been lucky enough to find such a magical ring?' he grumbled, irritably slipping the useless ring off his finger.

And so he threw it away, casting it into the river for some other incredibly lucky fish to swallow.

*

# Chapter 18

'So our children will be _eaten_?'

Degrat was appalled.

'Not these children, no. But the children of children of children? Well, one day there will be so many of them, they will become like so many of the other animals that the creations of gods see it as their right to eat. At least, this is how it will be for a long time; some tales hint, however, that it might not remain so for ever.'

'I thought you said you couldn't control which tales you were shown in your mirror?' Tesetra pointed out as the boy let his mirror dissolve. 'Yet you just showed us a particular tale.'

'Hah, not a _particular_ tale,' the boy replied honestly. 'It was a tale about a fisherman and a fish, yes; but not one I was expecting, or think particularly apt for what I wished to prove. I'm lucky, though, that at least it was _about_ a fisherman – sometimes, fortunately, my mirror seems to allow me to choose a _subject_.'

'Where do these mirrors come from?' Tesetra asked next, this time looking more towards Degrat for an answer rather than the new boy.

Degrat shrugged; he didn't know.

'The dust just formed about me one day as I worked in the quarry; it revealed to me what was in my father's heart that day.'

He hung his head.

Was that the day, Tesetra wondered, when his father had volunteered to take part in the sacrificial procession? It had been a surprise to everyone as, being a mason, his role was already an important one as far as worship of and subjection to the gods was concerned.

'I kept it a secret, of course,' Degrat added. 'I didn't, like you Tesetra, want to be accused of having powers that might bring bad luck down on our people.'

The Snake boy glanced at Tesetra's tattoo; he didn't ask for an explanation of Degrat's comment.

*

Despite its amazing power, the horse wasn't capable of carrying the three of them comfortably on its back. Even so, the Snake boy had clambered up behind Degrat, as this was easily the swiftest way to travel

Despite Degrat's doubts, Tesetra had insisted that the boy – who had at last introduced himself as Fandran, a name he had given himself (for he couldn't remember anything of his past life) – should accompany them in their search for the Rain god. Even so, Degrat still continued to show his displeasure at Tesetra's decision.

'It's too late for even a god to help our people now, Tesetra,' Degrat morosely complained as they ascended the rest of the mountain. 'Most are dead; the children are these fish, destined to be eaten sometime in the future by the new men who will populate the earth.'

'Surely we might as well try.'

This wasn't Tesetra who had retorted to Degrat's mumbling complaints, but Fandran.

Degrat glared back at him, finding another reason to hate him; Fandran agreed with Tesetra, adding to Degrat's sense of alienation, of humiliation.

'There doesn't seem to be much else we can do,' Fandran continued, either unaware or uncaring of Degrat's anger.

'Shouldn't we search for survivors?' Degrat persisted. 'We can't be sure that _everyone_ died in the flood.'

'If they're safe, they're safe,' Tesetra stated flatly, perhaps even a little unconcernedly. 'There's nothing we can do to make their situation any better.'

Their irate conversation seemed to ring out around them, for now the angry cracking of the Earth had come to an end, along with the pounding of the rain and even the Snake Song. The only other sound now was the steady clop of the hooves on the hard ground, the rattle of disturbed stones.

It was a rattling, however, that sounded as if it were growing in intensity. They noticed, too, that the disturbed stones rolling around them also seemed to be increasing once more.

'Surely it's not happening again!' Degrat wailed worriedly.

*

# Chapter 19

The ground was moving.

Solid stone, no longer so solid.

It was rising up in mounds everywhere around them. It was this movement that was disturbing the smaller stones, sending them cascading down the incline.

The moving sections of stone continued to rise, what had been mounds shaking off their covering of dust and powdered stone. Each mound didn't rise uniformly but, rather, bent in half, one side originally rising more rapidly than the other, until that also bent halfway down to rise up like a small hill.

They rose like rapidly growing plants, shooting up from the ground as if they were huge trees.

But they weren't trees; as more and more of the powdered stone and earth fell away from them in great cascades, they were revealed to be shaped like men, giants made of rock.

If the iron horse had been made of flesh and blood rather than iron, it might have reared in fright, thrown off his heavy, cumbersome load. But it continued on its path through the rising giants of rock unconcernedly.

Tesetra briefly considered whirling the horse around; she decided instead that it was best to continue on their way, hoping they would clear this birthing ground of stone giants before they were spotted. The giants, after all, were still covered in dust, dust that must be clouding their vision. Moreover, the already disturbed dust had created a swirling cloud, which should veil their passing from clear view.

Within the dust, Degrat formed his Smoking Mirror.

He looked into their hearts, the hearts of the stone giants.

He was surprised, naturally, that they had hearts; that he could read hearts of stone.

And he was more surprised than ever to see kindness within those hearts.

'They don't mean us any harm,' he cried out. 'We don't have to run from them!'

*

The stone giants were indeed kind.

They fed on berries, on vegetable roots, all of which were in short supply this high in the mountains, of course. It was a relief, however, to find that such otherwise fearsome giants didn't feed on flesh, as could be expected of their gruesome nature.

The giants were as much surprised by the way Tesetra, Degrat and Fandran looked as the three of them were shocked by these men of living stone. When they had gone to sleep it was when the world was being destroyed, their closest friends either crumbling, turning into a dark earth, or transforming into strange beasts the like they had never seen before – 'Many taking on a skin,' one added, indicating Degrat's jaguar tattoo, 'like yours.'

'The first people!' Degrat breathed excitedly. 'The ones who were turned into the first jaguars, the other fearsome creatures of the jungle; when their world was destroyed!'

'We lived long ago, it seems,' another one of the giants murmured sagely after Degrat had explained the legends of the Four Suns as quickly as he could.

'Then what has awoken us?' One of the giants looked about himself, seeking clues that might lead to an answer to his question.

'The world has been destroyed again,' Tesetra explained. 'The serpents sang; and the Earth moved!'

'Hah, I see,' a giant nodded as he munched on one of the few pieces of root the stone men's scrummaging had managed to turn up. 'This, too, happened in our time. One of the Serpent gods; he appeared, and transformed the Serpent who had become the Sun into one of these patterned beasts.'

'Ah, so the Jaguar god didn't become a jaguar through choice, it seems,' Degrat said with a rare smile. 'This was the way the Serpent god overthrew him!'

'Serpent _gods_?'

Of course, Tesetra reasoned, the giant might have spoken of _gods_ simply because he meant the two Serpent gods. Yet the way he'd said it seemed to imply to her that he was referring to even more than two.

'All the gods were serpents. They could just take on other forms, of course, when they so chose.'

As he said this, the giant who had replied eyed Fandran's skin curiously, even a little nervously.

Tesetra couldn't miss the giant's anxious stare. It was strange, she thought, that something so large and powerful would find anything to worry about, let alone a boy simply because his skin had an odd pattern.

Did Fandran differ in other ways to her? she found herself wondering. Was his blood also red like a serpent's? Surely it far more likely to be silver, like that of her own people?

His eyes weren't serpent-like, after all. They were similar to hers, if with a slightly amber or yellow tint to them. They went well with his brightly glowing hair, both complementing each other.

In fact, apart from the slight sheen to his skin, the only thing serpent-like about him was the powerfully undulating muscles that moved so smoothly, so seductively, beneath that skin. She felt herself wanting to reach out, to feel that movement beneath her hands.

To kiss that glorious skin.

Those delicately curling lips.

Either out of the corner of her eyes, or simply because she had originally sensed it – Tesetra couldn't be sure which it was – she noticed that Degrat was angrily glaring at her, his eyes seemingly greener than ever.

The ground tremored slightly, such that Tesetra briefly worried that the chaos was about to begin all over again. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that some of the giants were approaching, depositing the food they had gathered far down by what was now the seashore.

They had waded into the water, they reported, harvesting trees and bushes from the jungle, finding more than enough food to keep them all alive. Around the shores, many of the jungle's animals had survived, though the more ferocious amongst them were taking advantage of the situation to hunt down and kill the weaker ones.

The vanishing of the jungle, the giants told them, was something that they actually appreciated.

When they had ruled the earth, they had believed there was nothing for them to fear in the jungle, their size being that of all but the very tallest trees. Yet they had succumbed to something so small it had been all but invisible to them: the tiny spores of moss and fungus that would settle within the smallest crack and, being a harbour for the water that would freeze in colder times, gradually split them asunder.

Tesetra shuddered at the thought of these massive creatures suffering the attack of parasites. It made her wonder why the first god had chosen stone for the creation of his people: it was such an odd substance after all, being lifeless until receiving the god's own breath of life.

And yet the Serpent god had in his turn created the living, breathing jaguars and the ferocious beasts from these creatures of rock.

Had he been a far more accomplished god that the Jaguar god?

*

# Chapter 20

Just how powerful was the Serpent god?

It was a question that Fandran might know the answer to, Tesetra reasoned, if he could be somehow persuaded to remember more of his own past life.

The Stone People had persuaded the three of them to stay the night. There was no point them travelling on in the darkness; in fact, so high up in the mountains, it was undoubtedly foolhardy and dangerous.

They had been given an area for them to settle down in, beneath a crude structure of large branches and leaves that the giants had quickly put together. Large ferns similarly rescued from the new sea served as bed and coverings, more than enough to make sure they were comfortable and warm.

Their horse seemed to require no shelter. Since they had dismounted it, it had remained placidly still, requiring no attention whatsoever. Tesetra wondered if they were supposed to feed it, yet she had no idea what food it would require. Berries, roots and grasses had been placed before it, yet all these remained untouched by the horse.

Perhaps it didn't require feeding. It wasn't a real creature, one of flesh and blood.

Tesetra had studied the animal for a while, wondering if the iron plates were elaborate sheets of armour cloaking a living beast beneath. Yet the plates were securely fitted together; nothing came loose.

It was indeed an Iron Horse.

As the three of them settled down in the shelter provided for them by the Stone People, Tesetra asked Fandran if he had been able to remember anything more about the Snake People. Could he at least, she asked, recalling the way she had seen him shrug off the guise of the old man, remember how he himself had come into being?

Fandran shook his head.

'Is it possible,' he himself asked, 'for anyone to remember how they came to be?'

'Of _course_ we can remember how we came into existence!' Degrat snapped aggressively. Once again, he was angered by the closeness he detected growing between Tesetra and Fandran. 'We're a reflection of the Water Goddess herself! She formed us from the quicksilver produced by the Moon, shining across her own Waters!'

Tesetra was impressed that Fandran, despite Degrat's rudeness, was calm in his reply.

'I meant the way an individual comes to life, not a people. Besides, it seems your goddess was obviously dissatisfied with her own creation.'

'Weren't your own Snake People wiped out?' Degrat retorted furiously. 'Do you hold your own Serpent god responsible for that?'

Fandran shrugged.

'I can't remember anything about my own people, as I've already explained.'

'Then it's a pity your mirror can't show you our own legends, rather than those of a people of a future age! If you did, you'd know the people of the Serpent god – patron of the Winds! – were punished with a hurricane!'

Fandran shrugged nonchalantly once again.

'Then obviously we angered our own god–'

'Don't you see what I'm getting at, you fool? The Serpent god _himself_ was brought down by this untameable hurricane. A hurricane containing the rain of the _Rain_ god! Then he himself was usurped by the _uncontrollable_ rain of the Water goddess.'

'Then again, everything you've described could simply be that particular god's punishment–'

'Didn't we just hear how the Jaguar god was beaten by being _unwillingly_ transformed into a jaguar? Each rival god usurped his – or her – predecessor by throwing something of their own nature back at them; yet in a form beyond their own control!'

'So, you're saying the Water goddess isn't responsible for the flood?' Tesetra ask, intrigued by Degrat's reasoning. 'Yet we saw ourselves that the waters came from the Tears of the Moon.'

'But if you're right, if all this destruction is down to some other god,' Fandran said thoughtfully, 'then who could this other god be?'

Now it was Degrat's turn to shrug, but this time because he had no idea what the answer to the question could be.

'The Rain god?' he said eventually, if unsurely. 'Enacting his revenge, perhaps?'

'The Rain god we're trying to find?' Tesetra said, adding an ironic hint to her tone.

'Whoever it was,' Degrat pointed out, 'it's obvious that the god was angry with the _Water_ _goddess_ : not _us_!'

'Whoever he was angry with, it's still resulted in the wiping out of your people,' Fandran pointed out in his turn.

'There are _two_ of us left!' Degrat said assuredly, reaching out for Tesetra's hand, grabbing it tightly. ' _We_ can create our people _anew_!'

*

Tesetra liked Degrat – as a friend.

He was a talented sculptor, respected throughout the city for his skills and his knowledge. Despite this, he hadn't looked down on Tesetra, as so many other people – including her own sisters – had.

He had been a close friend to her, when most other people avoided her. They had feared that simply being in her presence might taint them in some way.

He deserved better from her.

He deserved her love.

And yet...she didn't quite know why, but she couldn't think in that way about him.

Not _love_.

It wasn't that he wasn't attractive; indeed, he was handsome, in a sharply featured way. Physically, his body was also muscular, his constant heavy work on the stone having granted him a strong if wiry appearance.

But...it wasn't there, that final piece of attraction that would make her want to lie with him.

Even so, wasn't he right?

Didn't the survival of their people depend upon them lying together?

*

# Chapter 21

That night, she tensed as she felt the warmth of the body drawing closer towards her in the darkness.

Then she relaxed, realising this was inevitable, necessary.

It _had_ to be!

Their coming together was essential.

His body was warm, comforting.

The pressure of his body against hers seemed right, meant to be; his curves somehow ideally slotting into hers, his rises flowing into her hollows, her rises into his.

They were formed to be together in this way (as many a woman and man are pleasantly surprised to discover).

His skin was as the softest rose petals to her touch. It tasted like the sweetest fruit.

In parts he was soft. In parts hard.

In parts she was soft. In parts hard.

Other parts hardened to the touch.

Parts that were sensitive.

Tingling.

Each touch sent a rippling of unbelievable pleasure throughout her body.

She gasped. She moaned, groaned.

Closed her eyes.

In delight.

In ecstasy.

Her mouth was hot. Wet.

It wrapped around him wherever it could.

She wanted to devour him.

He was devouring her.

Her lips opened, warm, embracing.

This is what they were meant to do. Meant for.

Arms curled around backs.

Legs curled around waists.

Their sweat – at any other time so obnoxious, so unwanted – oiled the free movement of their bodies against each other.

It was a sheen of their love, their need, their want, for each other.

She sighed.

She bit hard into his shoulder, to hold back all other cries.

She was no longer confined within her skin.

She was as one with him.

As one with the universe.

*

The body that had held Tesetra so tightly afterwards had had powerfully undulating muscles.

The body that slipped away from her in the morning had hair of gold.

She was worried.

If she had a child...? What would such a child be like?

Was such a union permissible?

Would it be fruitful?

And, if it were, what type of fruit would result from it?

As they ate the breakfast prepared for them by the Stone people, these questions flowed endlessly, uncontrollably, through Tesetra.

'Do the legends tell us,' she asked Degrat, trying to appear nonchalant, uncaring, 'how the Snake People came about.'

Degrat eyed her a touch suspiciously. Even so, he answered.

'No one can be sure, it was so long ago. If the legends are correct, then they came into existence through the snaking winds, solidifying, taking form.'

'And I might be the last of my people,' Fandran said, crunching into a roasted root. 'Perhaps I've simply woken up, the same way these Stone People have been woken by the Earth's movement.'

And perhaps he has ensured he won't be the last of his people, Tesetra thought. Was that the only reason why we lay together last night?

She went off to prepare the Iron Horse for the next day's travel. Yet there was no movement whatsoever within the poor beast.

It remained perfectly still, as if simply waiting to be mounted.

'If only we'd known what to feed him!' Tesetra sighed bitterly, angry with herself for letting such a faithful creature die.

Fortunately, one of the stone giants offered to carry them a little farther, if not the whole way towards the realm of the Rain god.

'The dampness creates the perfect environment for the mosses that taint our lives,' he explained apologetically.

*

# Chapter 22

The giant moved swiftly.

He effortlessly carried the three of them, strapped to his back in a construct of branches and shredded leaves wound into rope.

All around them, the creatures who had fled the now sunken jungle were spreading over what remained of the Earth.

Tesetra and Degrat's people, who had of course become fish, where naturally nowhere to be seen. They now lived in the great sea, their skins as silvery as the Moon's sheen had been upon the Waters.

'Why do the gods seek to destroy whatever they have created?' Degrat wondered aloud as he looked around at this sad remainder of what had existed only the previous day.

'Perhaps they feel they need to remind us how much we owe them for our own life,' the Stone man replied sadly, perhaps believing the question had been directed at him.

'How could taking away our lives be a reminder of how much we owe them?' Tesetra asked.

They felt the great stone giant shrug beneath them.

'You are thinking of life only from the point of you own people,' he said morosely. 'To a god, your people are just part of a fragment of time; not an entity within themselves.'

'That's a pessimistic view of life, surely?' Fandran chuckled.

'If they only wanted to punish us for a misdemeanour, they would let us survive wouldn't they?' the giant pointed out. 'And this, indeed, is how it used to be, when the Wind would give us warning of the gods' intentions.'

'The Wind would warn of the coming destruction?'

Tesetra was suddenly very interested in this conversation.

Wasn't the Serpent god patron of the Wind?

'Long, long ago,' the Stone man replied. 'When the Wind had many faces.'

*

# Chapter 23

The Many Faces of the Wind

Long, long ago, the role of the Wind was to carry out all the orders issued by the gods.

It would bring fortune to the people of the gods by bringing with it the rain that would irrigate their crops. Or it would bring the cool air to lessen the impact of an overly fierce sun.

When the gods were angry, it would bring misfortune. These were the stronger winds, that would flatten of even uproot the crops.

It could help the heavier rains pound the ground until it became useless mud, transforming the earth into a fruitless clay that would crumble when the sun dried it out.

Unlike the gods, however, the Wind possessed a kindly nature that saw no reason to punish these poor, vulnerable creatures so harshly.

It had often gently caressed the skins, tousled the hair, of these people. It had developed an affection for them, much as a parent develops an affection for a child.

The Wind thought it unfair not to at least give them some warning of whatever was about to befall them. Otherwise, how could they be expected to repent for their misbehaviour?

Of course, the Wind could not simply talk to these people. The Wind's own language was untranslatable, as far as any of these people were concerned.

Yet within his many powers the Wind found it easy to whip up fallen leaves into a face, with eyes, nose – and mouth.

And through this mouth, the Wind could talk.

Could tell these people to beware the oncoming storm.

The powerful gales.

The pummelling rains.

To prepare for the worst excesses of these calamities that were soon about to fall upon them.

It wasn't just leaves that the Wind could use to create a face through which he could converse with these people, however.

He could whisk up small stems discarded by the bushes.

He could utilise dust, powdered stone, the dropped petals of many flowers. (A particular favourite amongst the people he talked to, because it looked so delightful, so colourful.)

He could even whisk up the waters of a stream or sea, if necessary.

The people began to appreciate the many faces of the Wind. For every face was a kindly face.

Every face heralded a potential disaster. Yet every face also gave them enough warning to lessen the impact of those disasters.

Of course, the Wind soon came to be regarded by the people as a powerful god. And, moreover, a benevolent god who regretted and tried to mitigate the worst effects of any punishments inflicted on them.

The gods were appalled.

They were angry that the Wind had come to be regarded by the people as more worthy of worship than they themselves were.

They were angry that the impact of their retribution on the people was being considerably lessened by his intrusion into their affairs.

The Wind it seemed, they said, also required an intervention of the gods'; one to ensure he was fully aware of his true, more lowly place within the hierarchy of being.

They conspired to lessen the Wind's power: to place objects such as leaves, dust, water, beyond the Wind's direct control.

They would no longer obey his instructions, behaving only chaotically and unpredictably whenever the Wind blew across them.

No longer would the Wind be allowed to use his powers to form faces that could talk to the people.

Of course, not even the gods could prevent the Wind from talking. Neither could they prevent him from trying to warn the people of any forthcoming event.

Yet without his face – how could he talk in a language the people would understand?

And without the regular appearance of the faces of the Wind, the people soon began to think that, like the other gods, the Wind had deserted them.

He sought only to punish them, like any other god.

It wasn't long before the people had forgotten that the Wind had ever attempted to warn them.

Even sooner than that, they had forgotten that he had been able to do so by forming faces of leaves, dust, water.

So now when they think they hear a voice warning them to take care, they just say:

'Pah, it's just the wind!'

*

# Chapter 24

The wind was whistling through loosely scattered stones as they passed over the bleak area encompassing the highest peak of the mountain.

It seemed, particularly after they had listened to the stone giant's story, that some of that whistling could be mistaken for excited voices, for laughter.

The way the stones around them were laid, the symmetrical patterns they formed, implied that they had once been walls, quite possibly of buildings.

If so, it was an odd place to build a town or city.

The wind blew excessively strongly here, to the extent that no soil for crops lay upon the ground, the wind having long ago whipped it up into the air and swept it down into the more sheltered valleys.

Water too, of course, was in short supply. It would also have been hard to keep herding-animals here, with not the slightest signs of the scrub even the hardiest goats needed to live on.

The voices of the wind gradually became louder, more distinguishable as individual cries, as the giant quickly traversed the mountain top. The wind itself whipped at his eyes.

The giant almost fell into the deep, sharp depression cut deeply into the ground, so cleanly and abruptly was it cut into the stone.

Glancing down, he and his passengers found themselves looking down onto a large, rectangular opening. Here a handful of people were playing a furiously fast game, a large ball of hard rubber hurtling between them.

Striking the ball with elbows, knees, hips, the players constantly knocked the ball back towards the four surrounding walls. The floor plan being in the shape of an I, the longer walls were a mix of sloping and horizontal planes extending far into the court.

The players appeared to be attempting to aim the heavy ball through the mouths of huge painted faces at each end of the court, the holes shaped like four interlocking circles.

The ball at last dropped to the ground as a player, looking up in awe at the looming giant of stone, faulted his play. Following his shocked gaze, the other players also looked up, their mouths dropping open in surprise.

Tesetra wondered if they would flee in fear. The giant must look even more terrifying than usual, she realised, as he was standing so much higher up on the ground compared to the players.

Although both surprised and awestruck, however, none of the players displayed any fear. Far from running away, they raised their hands in greeting, calling on the Stone man and his three riders to come down and join them.

The giant didn't need to search for any steps that would take them down into the deep cutting: he simply clambered down, as any normal person would climb down into a small hole.

As the giant carefully lowered his three passengers to the ground, Tesetra was once again surprised to see that the players had no fear of the Stone man. Yes, they seemed amazed by his presence, continuing to stare at him in wonder as they gathered around him; but it seemed that his existence wasn't entirely unexpected.

'We'd heard that stone could come to life; but I never thought I would _see_ such a man!' one of the players, a woman, exclaimed excitedly as she stroked the hard leg of the giant.

If the woman was surprised by the giant's rock-like composition, Tesetra was no less surprised by the woman's own nature. What passed for her flesh seemed to have been made in some spectacularly elaborate way from plants, a tight mesh of stems, leaves, flowers that showed faintly in the texture and patterns on her skin.

In every other way, however, she and her friends appeared to be hardly dissimilar from themselves.

If either the woman or the other of the game's competitors noticed any difference in their own composition to that of the three newcomers, they failed to show it. All their attention remained on the stone giant, who appeared a little disconcerted and embarrassed by their continued interest.

'I must return to my own people,' he stated flatly to Tesetra. 'We're not yet ready to involve ourselves completely in the lives of the other peoples of the Earth.'

Then, without bothering to make any further explanation or apology, the shy giant turned and clambered out of the huge court cut into the stone of the mountain peak. The ground shook a little as he quickly strode away.

At last, the people who seemed to have originally been made of plants turned to observe Tesetra and the two boys more closely.

'You must be hungry?' one of the men said.

'You've travelled far, yes?' the woman added, smiling benignly.

Tesetra glanced about herself apprehensively, plainly remembering the barren land they had just passed through, even if she could no longer see it beyond the high-rising walls of the court.

Surely these poor people wouldn't have much food to spare?

'We have plenty of food,' another man said, as if recognising Tesetra's reasons for her anxiety.

'Our god provided us with all the corn we need,' another answered.

'Your god?' Degrat frowned as if deeply puzzled.

'The Serpent god of course!'

'But...but _you're_ not the Snake People!'

*

# Chapter 25

'Degrat: didn't we worship the Jaguar god, even though we're not the Jaguar People?'

Tesetra couldn't understand why Degrat still appeared confused that the Plant People could worship the Serpent god. Couldn't understand why he continued to insist that that must mean the Snake People _didn't_ exist.

Was it, she wondered a little bitterly, that he secretly hoped the Snake People didn't really exist? If only to punish Fandran in some way?

'The Jaguar people?' one of the men asked curiously, picking up on Tesetra's admonishment of Degrat's intransigence. 'So the legends are true? Like the men of stone, the Jaguar People also really existed?'

Tesetra nodded.

'The Stone People _are_ the Jaguar people: or at least, the people as they originally were.'

The men and women swapped perplexed looks.

'This isn't what our legends tell us,' the woman said to Tesetra. 'They say the Jaguar People came before us–'

'How _far_ before you?' Degrat interrupted rudely. 'If they were the first people, then where do your legends place you?'

The woman didn't appear to be upset by Degrat's rudeness.

'We came directly after the Jaguar people–'

'You see, Tesetra?' Degrat exclaimed with a strange mix of both triumph and nervousness. 'They _are_ the people of the Second Sun!'

'Yes, I suppose you _could_ call it that; the _Second_ Sun,' one of the men said graciously.

'At least, in the sense that it followed the _First_ ,' another added.

'But we're not these _Snake_ People, whom you seemed to be expecting us to be!' yet another chuckled richly. 'We're the People of the Corn: Corn People, if you will.'

With a polite bow and an elegant wave of a hand, he invited them all to walk towards one of the large facemasks decorating one end of the court. It seemed to have no exit, causing Tesetra to wonder why they should be directed this way.

'Of the Wind?' Fandran asked, as if still requiring further confirmation. 'You're the People of the Wind?'

The man and woman who had been doing most of the talking both smiled and nodded in agreement.

As they drew closer towards the end of the yard, Tesetra noticed a line of red ants climbing up the wall towards the face's gaping mouth. Here they vanished through the hole.

The circular hole on the right began to widen, like the dark pupil of an eye expands, the surrounding stone made up of curving shards that slipped easily alongside each other.

At last, there was room for a person to pass through it.

'Yet why here?' Degrat persisted. 'Shouldn't you be out to the east?'

'And the Jaguar people?' the woman replied. 'Shouldn't they, by rights, be living in the south? Yet in fact many people have been displaced by the catastrophes that have punished our Earth.'

'Though we ourselves,' the man added, 'moved here before the hurricane that took all our people bar us away.'

'How did you survive?' Fandran asked.

'We were tending the corn.'

As they entered through the hole that had now become a door, they were confronted by a whole field of corn growing beneath a vast coned ceiling.

*

The sun shone surprising brightly into the cylindrical room.

It streamed in through an opening high up in the roof. It was a remarkable, almost unbelievable sight.

'One of our kings originally insisted we move to the mountain tops; to avoid the ferocious beasts who controlled the jungle,' the woman explained brightly.

'There were few other animals for them to feast on at that time, of course!' the man explained further.

'We were safe from attack here,' one of the others added. 'But only because the soil was so barren, so unsupportive of life, that no one would wish to come here anyway!'

'We thought we had fled one danger to fall into the trap of another: we were sure we would die!'

'But then we recalled how the Serpent god had provided us with corn when we had lived in the lower areas.'

'Seeing a red ant scurrying by with a kernel of corn, he followed him through the narrow cracks of the mountain. In this way, he discovered the very first, secret hoard of corn.'

'So we did the same; and we found the corn that became our sustenance!'

'It was a relief to find that our legend of the discovery of corn had a basis of truth.'

'And so we shouldn't really have been surprised by the sight of your friend, the giant of stone.'

'We'd thought of the existence of such men as being nothing more than a childish story. Even though we had been assured that it was in fact a _legend_.'

*

# Chapter 26

The Man of Rock

Once there was a Man of Rock who, being an extremely powerful man, married every beautiful girl he could.

And yet he abused these wives, leaving them crippled, with missing limbs, or at the very least very severely bruised.

When he heard, however, of seven young men who had a fabulously beautiful daughter – a girl who had miraculously sprung into life from the blood of a wound caused by a thorny plant – he insisted that she should become one of his many wives.

He charged the magpie with informing these people that he desired her as his wife. But the magpie had seen what had happened to all the other wives; he warned the people to refuse the rock's demands, no matter how threatening he became.

When the magpie told the rock that his offer of marriage had been refused, the rock ordered him to return and inform these men that the girl must nevertheless marry him.

Now the magpie did not wish to refuse the commands of the rock, for he knew what the rock was capable of. So he suggested that the rock should use a far swifter messenger than himself: the hummingbird could carry the rock's demands far more swiftly than he himself could ever hope to achieve.

Of course, the magpie was also fully aware that the hummingbird's swiftness would enable him to save himself when the thwarted rock set out to pursue him.

Just like the magpie, the hummingbird warned the men that their daughter would be sorely injured if she married the rock. He advised them to leave where they were living as soon as possible.

When the humming bird returned, he told the rock he had been unable to find the men and the girl the rock desired to marry.

Yet the rock somehow knew the hummingbird was lying: and so he told the hummingbird to fly back to the men immediately and tell them that if they continued to refuse his demands, he would seek them out.

Recognising the rock's power, this time the hummingbird told the men that they had no choice but to acquiesce to the rock's demands; but, he added, he knew of two animals who could help her.

So the girl went with the hummingbird back to the rock and his tent full of crippled wives. The rock was pleased that at last he had this beautiful girl as one of his many wives.

The next morning, as he did every morning, the rock rose up through the top of the tent. He left his wife there until he would return in the evening, entering the tent in the same way he had left.

While he was out, a badger and a mole dug a hole into the tent. Even so, they told the girl she must stay where she was until the rock returned.

They lightly covered the hole; and so when the rock returned, he fell into it. Then as the girl rushed from the tent, they cried out, 'Let the Earth be covered again.'

The rock tossed and turned angrily inside the Earth as the girl returned to her fathers and they fled the area. The men and the girl travelled all night; yet by the morning, the rock had overtaken them.

The fleeing men wished for a steep-sided canyon to open up behind them, and the rock fell down its precipitous sides. While the rock attempted to climb out, the men and the girl ran on, once again running throughout the night.

Once again, however, the rock had caught up to them by morning.

Now the girl was tired of running.

She knew, she said, of a better place where they could go: a place where she could provide the means of living for all of them.

Along with the words, 'First for my father,' she kicked a silver ball she had been carrying high up into the sky.

Her father rose up with the ball.

And when she kicked the ball into the sky once more, another also rose up into the sky with it.

She did this for all of them, such that they all reached the sky in one place.

And when the rock was about to close in upon her, she kicked the ball a final time; and this time she rose up with it into the sky.

Then she said to the rock, 'You'll remain where you overtook us, troubling people no more, but found wherever there are hills.'

So now she and her seven fathers live in a tent covered with stars.

*

# Chapter 27

'Yet if this is a legend of the first Stone People,' Tesetra asked, as the woman finished her story, 'then how could there be other people there?'

'Perhaps it's not a legend of the time when they populated the Earth on their own,' the woman replied. 'Perhaps it's of a time when some of them had survived into another age, when people _were_ also around.'

'Yet it seemed to us that the trembling of the earth has only just brought the Stone People back to life once more.'

The woman paused while she considered Tesetra's point. She looked to her friends to see if they had an answer.

No one could offer a solution, apart from an unconvincingly uttered, 'Legends are always a _falsely_ remembered memory.'

'Then the legend that says the Rain god lives this way?' Tesetra asked uncertainly, even a little anxiously. 'Is _that_ only a falsely remembered memory?'

'Ohh no, of _course_ not!' the woman declared assuredly.

'The Rainbow People live not too far from here now,' one of the other women said.

'Though it would be quite easy to miss them, unless you knew how to get there.'

'Isn't it just straight on from here?' Degrat asked. 'Don't we just keep heading towards the west?'

'If you're seeking them, then it's lucky you arrived here!'

'For to just continue heading west, as you propose to do, will only lead you to the very edge of the Earth!'

'Then if you know where these Rainbow People live, could you please direct us there?' Fandran said.

'Ah, I'm afraid you can only direct yourselves there!'

'But we can show you where you must _start_ off from!'

*

The Evening Star hung like a glowing rock in the sky.

Its copper-like glimmer dimly shone across the far end of the games court, where the Corn People had provided both beds and small tents for the three of them to stay the night in.

The beds and tents had been placed beneath the glowering face that graced the court's wall. The face's gaping mouth was an obvious draw for a line of spiders that made its way up the wall towards it.

As Tesetra chewed on the corn seed that had also been provided for them, a rumbling of thunder gently shook the sides of her tent, making them tremble. Little light came in through the tent's sides, yet there was enough for her to recognise when the dark storm clouds settled around them, plunging them into an almost complete darkness.

It was as if they'd been completely cut off from the rest of the world.

Is this what it felt like to be immured in the ground? she wondered.

Where were her sisters now? Her parents?

Were, as her father had hoped, were they all now making their way up through the Thirteen Heavens?

Were they making their way down through all nine levels of the Underworld?

How did it all work?

Did it work at all that way?

Did it, in fact, even work in _any_ way?'

What exactly happened to us when we passed on?

Did we simply cease to be? As if we had never, ever been here on Earth at all?

To think that way...it all seemed so bleak, didn't it?

So pointless.

She rose from her crude bed.

Feeling her way carefully through the darkness, she made her way to Fandran's tent.

*

# Chapter 28

Throughout the entire day, she had relished the memory of their coming together the previous night.

Yet the memory, no matter how wonderful, no matter how careful drawn on, would always be an unsatisfactory substitute for the physical reality. In fact, the memory only made her desire the reality all the more.

Her skin, even her mind, had tingled at every recalling of what had passed between them. All day she had felt the urge to draw nearer to him, to sense the strange power of his close presence, to reach out and touch, to hold, to caress, kiss, taste...

How could it have such an effect on her?

This sensation that every part of her sprung into life when she was with him?

And until that moment, everything inside her was dead. Lifeless.

Or, at the very least, not expanding – not _exploding_ – to its true potential. Its true sense of ever-glowing life.

She slipped beside him, beneath the sheets of woven leaves. Bare skin against bare skin.

So soft. So warm.

So made for each other.

Her malleable curves against the relatively angular hardness of his.

She couldn't believe her eagerness to caress those curves, to feel him caressing hers.

She embraced him softly, gently, warmly, willingly, urgently – as if, as ridiculous as it seemed, her very life depended upon it.

How crazy was that? For her life couldn't surely depend upon it, could it?

Everything from both of them was now freely given.

Everything was freely taken.

For in such an act, it is only when all things are equal that it is truly beautiful.

Then there comes the dissolving of the individual. The merging of the two.

Our skins evaporating, our very souls apparently mingling.

We expand. We explode.

And we cry as we reach the Thirteenth Heaven.

*

The Morning Star was every bit as coppery as it had been the previous evening.

Its light rippled across Tesetra's skin.

Skin that had once been silvery, and of tightly-lipped, minute scales. Now it glowed red in that strange light.

Like the skin of a serpent.

And yet, even in this pink light, Degrat's skin retained the silvery sheen of the Water People.

He glowered in disgust at Tesetra.

'So this is why you're attracted to _him_ , not to _me_! The priests saw you for what you are! You're the serpent's egg: placed beneath a bird for her to hatch and provide the child's first breakfast!'

'That's impossible!' Tesetra snapped. 'It's just a redness to my skin–'

'I went to your tent last night!' Degrat glared at her. 'To save our people!'

Fandran had now also risen. He calmly observed Tesetra's changed skin, noting curiously the faint maze-like lines of black and white meandering crazily over the red.

'Perhaps it's my – _our_ – people who will be saved.' There was a snide tone to his voice as he talked to Degrat that not even Tesetra liked. 'There's just _one_ of _your_ people, it seems.'

Degrat launched himself at Fandran. They clinched with a punishing sound of hard flesh and muscle. Both unbalanced by this, they toppled together to the ground.

The ground rumbled aggressively, trembled worryingly as it had done only a few days previously.

'Stop this! Stop this now!' Tesetra raged at them both.

She was flattered by the attention she was receiving from both of them. She was tempted to make more of it, to use it so she had power over them both. Make them do anything she wanted.

Yet that would only make her as ridiculous as them.

'We might be the only three people left, and you two are arguing!'

'People?' Degrat sneered up at her from his awkwardly splayed position upon the ground. ' _You're_ not of the Water People! You're one of _his_ – a snake amongst us!'

He indicated Fandran with a sharp, disgruntled nod of his head.

Fandran ignored his anger, getting back to his feet, wiping the court's dust from his hands.

The rumbling of the ground had fortunately eased off. It had only been a thankfully brief quake after all.

Looking beyond Tesetra, he saw that the huge face portrayed on the wall was now gawping at them.

'The doorway,' Fandran declared calmly, indicating with a nod of his own head that Tesetra should turn around. 'It's opened up: just as the Corn People said it would.'

*

# Chapter 29

It was a path leading beneath the Earth.

They followed it, passing deeper into the darkness.

The Corn People had provided them with what they had called planting sticks, cornstalks that should be lit from the embers of the previous night's fire to light their way.

Along the way, they passed masked figures placed in either standing or seating positions to either side of the path. They were the mummified bodies of past kings and queens, there to greet them to the realm of the Rainbow People.

After only a short while, they came to a small, cubed room, with jars of water in each corner. Each represented a different kind of rainfall, the Corn People had warned them: one would bring a good harvest, another a dried-out one. A third would rot the harvest, the fourth would freeze and pound it flat.

Beyond the small room, there stretched a vast cave, one full of plants and trees, like a spring-time paradise. There was also a long lake, lit like the plants as if by an invisible sun.

The Corn People had also provided each of them with a small, empty pitcher. Holding these nervously, the three of them peered into the water-filled jars, seeing only their reflections, as if in a dark mirror.

'How do we choose which to fill our pitchers with?' Fandran asked.

'Degrat?'

Tesetra glanced his way hopefully, hoping he would recall something from his vast store of legends that might provide them with an answer.

Degrat shook his head morosely.

'Does it matter? Can't we just walk through?'

'The Corn People said we had to make a choice: they wouldn't say why.'

'There are three of us,' Fandran pointed out, moving from a jar he'd stared into with a disappointed expression to one that seemed to give him more to smile at. 'We could each make a different choice. The chances are, one of us would get it right.'

'And if those who get it wrong die and end up staying down here?' Degrat snorted irately.

'Still,' Fandran answered coolly, raising his pitcher in readiness to dip it into the jar he was staring into, 'we can't just stand here forever like these mummified bodies, can we?'

*

'Choose wrongly, and you might _well_ join those who are mummified here.'

Fandran's pitcher hovered unfilled over the top of the water.

A boy of about their age had entered the small room from the direction of the large cave.

At least, they all assumed it was a boy, as he appeared to be about their own height. It was hard to be entirely sure, however, as he wore a huge, resplendent mask of rainbow-coloured feathers. The beak, bizarrely, had fangs, while the eyes were overly large.

'You're one of the Rainbow People, yes?' Tesetra asked exuberantly.

The boy nodded, the feathers rippling and fluttering.

'How many more of you are there?' Degrat asked, trying to peer beyond the boy into the cavern stretching out behind him.

'You didn't see them?' the boy asked, staring to lift the mask clear of his head.

'We haven't entered yet...' Degrat began to impolitely point out, his voice fading out as the removal of the mask revealed that he was talking to a girl.

'I meant on your way down,' the girl said. 'Surely I heard you say you saw the Rain People on your way down here?'

'The mummified bodies?' Fandran asked edgily.

The girl nodded.

'They're all that's left of my people. The time of the Third Sun is long over.'

'Yet we've meet people from other ages on our way here.'

The girl nodded once more, this time as if she understood that this was highly likely.

'And yet we all know they were not supposed to survive.'

She looked towards each of them curiously, for they were still standing by the jars they had thought of withdrawing their water from.

She moved closer to Tesetra, peered into the jar.

'Ah, water in abundance!' she declared excitedly.

Tesetra smiled, both pleased and relieved that she had made the right choice after all.

'Far too much for crops, of course,' the girl continued calmly, moving away from Tesetra and more towards Fandran's jar. 'They would be dashed to the ground, and rot in the fields!'

She smiled as she looked into Fandran's jar.

'A rainfall that would be too light: the wind would carry it away, then dry out the soil.'

She moved towards Degrat next. He smiled, confident that he must have made the right choice. Hadn't he seen Fandran disappointedly peer into the only other remaining jar?

'And this would freeze, just as the jaguar freezes his prey in fear before devouring him!'

She stepped towards the remaining jar, the one Fandran knew contained hardly any water.

'Ah,' she sighed blissfully. 'This one, _this_ one is perfect!'

Fandran frowned in a pained mix of bewilderment and annoyance as he quickly strode over towards the girl. He gawped at the plentiful supply of water in the jar in surprise.

'But I just–'

He stopped trying to explain why he had doubted her when he saw that water was pouring from her hands into the jar.

She grinned happily at him.

As she turned away from the jar, looking back once more into the room, she let the water rain from her hands, let it splash upon the floor.

'Each jar is like a mirror, reflecting our personalities – and talking of mirrors, why hadn't you considered using yours to try and work out the solution to this problem?'

She fleetingly looked towards them all in turn as she said this.

How could she know of the magic mirrors? The three of them exchanged puzzled glances.

'Our mirrors wouldn't have helped us make the right choice,' Fandran said in answer to her question.

'Not yours, certainly,' the girl agreed, as she spoke lifting her arms so that the rain coming from her fingers now had farther to fall. 'Nor yours, either,' she added, glancing Degrat's way.

'Then the mirrors _wouldn't_ have helped us,' Degrat said sourly, wondering why she had raised the potential of the mirrors, only to say they would have been useless after all.

Before the girl, however, the rain was now being played upon by the sparkling rays of an otherwise invisible sun. It began to glisten, to shine, to display a gorgeous rainbow surrounding mirage-like images.

It was a mirror, a _third_ magical mirror.

'Ah, but what of the _Fourth_ Mirror?' the girl said, showing the image of a perfectly round mirror that had appeared within her own.

*

# Chapter 30

All four of them observed the circular mirror that hovered in the mirror of rain.

'What does it do, this Fourth Mirror?' Tesetra asked.

'You really don't know?' the girl asked.

She brought her hands down, bringing the rain to an end, snapping out of existence both the mirror and the mirror reflected within it.

'What of _your_ mirror?' Degrat asked. 'How did you come by it? Why did it show us this Fourth Mirror? What are its powers?'

'So many questions!' the girl chuckled richly. 'My mirror reflects that which is hidden from us.'

'But...isn't that the most fabulous mirror of all?' Tesetra gasped. 'If you know all the things that are hidden – then you know everything!'

The girl chuckled again.

'You might think so; and yet I have decided to only rarely use my mirror–'

'How can you _not_ take advantage of such an amazing gift?' Degrat snapped in irritation.

Perhaps he should tell her the tale, he wondered, of the foolish fisherman who threw away a most remarkable gift, simply because he didn't understand how it worked.

'It may show me that which is hidden; but not that which _isn't_ hidden,' the girl answered placidly, obviously hard to anger. 'And so that leaves me in the same frustrating position as the man with the Six Wise Heads.'

*

# Chapter 31

The Six Wise Heads

Men have always sought the solution to how the universe works.

They toil endlessly away at their tables, bringing together this fact with that fact, this solution with that solution; seeking that moment when everything will at last fall into place for them, and they will understand everything that man needs to know.

Yet, equally endlessly, the answer always eludes them.

Whenever they feel close to an answer to their questions, they find it slips away as if from their fingers, as if only just out of their reach, if only they could stretch out that little bit farther... The fingers of their minds can't close around that elusive thought, which slips away from them in the silky waters of the mind like the flash of a slinkering little fish that never wants to be caught.

Now one such man, hard at work one incredibly dark evening, his candles burning so ridiculously low, started in surprise when he realised a man was peering curiously over his shoulder.

'What? How did you get in here?' he furiously demanded of the stranger. 'Who are you?'

'Why, you asked me here, didn't you?'

'I most certainly did not! I don't even know who you are! So I could hardly have called you!'

'Oh, but indeed you did! Didn't I just hear you mumbling only a moment ago that you would sell your soul to attain all human knowledge?'

The man's eyes opened wide in understanding. Because, of course, he was far from being a foolish man. He was, he believed, the wisest man on earth!

He knew immediately that this man standing before him would indeed be capable of granting him all he wished for. Provided, of course, that he paid the required price; and that, naturally, would be his own soul.

Perhaps, on realising who he was dealing with, the man should have been scared. Perhaps he should have told this trader of souls to depart, that there had been some dreadful, horrible mistake.

And yet – wasn't he the wisest man ever to have been born?

If he wasn't capable of thwarting this man, this trader, then who on Earth was?

All he had to do was to beware the choice of words the man would use. To make sure it was a fair deal, not a trick.

And provided he did all this, he could probably turn this chance meeting completely to his advantage.

'All human knowledge?' the man said at last, dragging thoughtfully over each word.

He chuckled richly.

'Then you must think me a fool to promise me this!' he said triumphantly. 'For anyone who isn't a fool would be wise enough to know humans know so little!'

The trader of souls nodded sagely.

'I see I'm not dealing with just any old fool here!' he said with a smirk.

'Don't go playing your clever little word games with me!' the wise man snapped back. 'If you wish to make a bargain with me, then you can start by treating me with the respect I deserve!'

'I had no intention of treating you any other way,' the trader replied, a hint of shock in his voice implying he was affronted that the wise man believed he would resort to trickery.

With a wave of his hand, he brought into being seven heads that serenely hovered in the air in front of the wise man.

'As you have wisely ascertained,' he said, 'there is far too much knowledge to be known for it _all_ to be contained in just _one_ head.'

'Hah! Do you still take me for a fool?' the wise man growled. 'If you get me to cut off my head to replace it with one of these, then I am dead and yours to take immediately away!'

'But there is no need for you to cut off you head!' the trader pronounced assuredly. 'For it is already replaceable.'

With an elegant twirl of his fingers, he made the wise man's head rise up from his shoulders without even the slightest hint of pain. Within that same instant, one of the hovering heads had taken its position upon the man's shoulders.

They eyes of the head opened wide in awe.

Suddenly, the man knew everything there was to know about all of the planets seemingly endlessly circling throughout the universe!

Abruptly, the head rose up from his shoulders and swept back into the line-up of other heads. The wise man's head instantly slipped back into place; and the wise man groaned in agony.

Not because it had been a physically painful procedure. It had all, as before, being entirely painless.

The wise man groaned because he realised he wasn't a wise man at all!

His knowledge was only a fraction of that contained within the other head!

It was like being suddenly plunged into a complete, hopeless darkness.

He felt lost. Useless.

Dead.

He must keep his wits about him!

His soul was at stake here!

'Hah,' he said, trying to sound unimpressed. 'My soul isn't worth just _one_ of those heads!'

He was about to insist on taking all seven heads as his price for his soul.

But even though he wasn't anywhere near as wise as the head that had only briefly been his, he was _still_ the wisest man on Earth.

What if all the other heads weren't quite so wise?

'Tell me,' he enquired assuredly, casually waving a finger to indicate the line of hovering heads, 'what is the knowledge contained within _each_ of these heads?'

And so the trader told him.

Each head knew all there was to know within a particular field of knowledge.

One head knew everything anyone needed to know about animals. Another knew all of the history of the peoples of the Earth, another of its geography. And so on, down to the very last head.

And that head was the head of the complacently unknowing fool.

The wise man chortled gleefully.

So that had been the traders trick, had it?

Well, he had been found out, hadn't he?

His trick hadn't worked on _him_!

Remarkably, as if thwarted in his original intention, as if to demonstrate that now there would be absolutely no trickery, the trader offered to let the wise man choose another head to briefly wear upon his shoulders.

The wise man shook his head.

'That won't be necessary,' he declared loftily. 'For I will be taking all _six_ for the price of my soul!'

'But the bargain should be for _one_ head alone!' The trader insisted in obvious surprise. 'Why, one head alone–'

'One head alone will not be _enough_!' the wise man declared adamantly. 'It is all _six_ ; or _none_ at all!'

The trader grimaced in frustration. He eyed the wise man as if still contemplating a way that he could regain the advantage in this transaction.

He shook his head, as if realising he was beaten. As if he were now resigned to making the most of a bargain that had otherwise gone sour for him.

'Then,' he said at last, 'I must take your _original_ head; but as a _goodwill_ gesture, I will leave you the fool's head for free! No one will need it now!'

The wise man chuckled.

He would have no need for his original head when he had these six far wiser heads to choose from. As for the fool's head, that could be stored in a cupboard. He would have no need of such a foolish thing!

'Agreed,' he said.

And with that, the bargain was sealed.

*

As soon as the trader vanished, the wise man's head disappeared with him.

But one of the wise heads had instantly replaced his own.

He sighed with pleasure, his mind flooded with all knowledge of the seas!

Another head, he must try another head!

He sighed in ecstasy once more. He had never realised that there were so many animals! Never even considered that there would be so much to know about them – let alone that he would ever _know_ everything there was to know about them!

He relished the knowledge now flooding through him, amazed by every new fact, every fresh detail of life on Earth.

In fact, in fact...wasn't _that_ the most amazing fact!

Who would have thought it?

But no, no! What about _that_ fact?

_That_ was truly _incredible_!

Wait, wait, though! Wasn't that...?

Hadn't he discovered something remarkably _similar_ when he had tried on the head of cosmology?

What was it? What _had_ it been?

He couldn't remember!

But why should he worry? It was still there, that knowledge, waiting for him to access once more when he tried on that particular head!

Momentarily discarding the head that knew everything of zoology, he replaced it with the one that knew all there was to know about cosmology.

Yes, yes, it was in here _somewhere_! Now, _where_ was it?

What _was_ he looking for?

He couldn't _quite_ remember!

Wasn't it something about...something about _animals_?

Never mind; his mind was a whirl once more with every detail about the planets, all this new information revolving around inside his head as if it were a miniature universe in its own right!

And there... _there_ was a fact that had the most amazing similarities to what he had discovered when he had worn...

Now, _which_ head was it?

Quickly, he tried on the head giving him the most unbelievable insights into how the human mind worked.

Wasn't it in _this_ head that he'd seen...seen what, exactly?

What _was_ he trying to recall?

Something about... _animals_ was it?

No, no! _Geography_! The way the Earth had been formed...

No, no; _that_ wasn't it either!

This was all just so _painfully_ frustrating!

The way the _mind_ worked, though!

How truly remarkable _that_ was!

It reminded him of the way the universe...the way the universe _what_ , exactly?

There _was_ a link! They were linked by the way the mind and the...or was it the Earth's _timeline_?

This was all so _aggravating_!

He would go crazy thinking like this!

He needed a rest!

He just needed to give his whirling, overworked mind a short break!

Then he could get back to trying to work out what all these connections were that, for the moment, were only _just_ alluding him!

If only he had his _own_ head, he could put the separate parts together, he was sure!

But to have all these swirling yet ultimately un-connectable thoughts – it was so _maddening_!

He was fortunate indeed to be wearing this particular head. For it knew enough of how the mind worked to know this untreatable frustration was driving him to distraction – to _madness_ , even!

He needed a brief respite.

The _fool's_ head!

_That's_ what it was for!

He was right, of course. For when the fool's head slipped onto his shoulders, it worked perfectly.

Within a split second, he had completely forgotten what all the other heads were for.

In fact, they really were such horrific things to look at!

Hovering there, as if he'd stumbled into some devilish torture chamber!

He couldn't understand what they were doing here: why he had foolishly thought he would ever need such terrifying, disembodied heads!

And so, naturally, he threw them all away.

And with all those six hideous heads at last out of the way, he found he was perfectly happy just sitting there, his mind completely empty of worries.

And that, perhaps, is all most men truly need to know.

*

# Chapter 32

'I _still_ say it's a remarkable mirror!' Degrat said acidly.

'But if you can't _link_ one new discovery with another...' Fandran said in reply, hoping Degrat might begin to understand what the girl was trying to explain.

'The most important mirror,' the girl declared, ignoring them both, 'is the _Fourth_ Mirror!'

'The one we _don't_ have!'

Degrat's mood was still sour.

'But you must know _where_ it is hidden?'

Tesetra looked towards the girl hopefully.

The girl shook her head.

'Where something is _physically_ hidden? Well, it's not quite the same as hidden _knowledge_. Besides, I don't have such _fine_ control over my mirror to ask specific questions.'

At last, Degrat nodded in understanding.

The mirrors didn't always give you the answers to the questions you wished to ask.

'So,' Tesetra persisted, 'do you know what _powers_ this Fourth Mirror holds? And if it's something we should be _seeking_ to possess?'

'The mirror reveals the true nature of something, not what we _perceive_ it to be.'

'That's hardly a remarkable power!' Degrat's sourness had returned. 'Only magic would prevent us from seeing some object in its true form.'

'And yet you, Degrat, for all your intense observation of her, for all your abilities enabling you to see inside her heart; you never perceived Tesetra for who she really was?'

Degrat fleetingly glowered at Tesetra. Here was confirmation, obviously, that Tesetra was indeed one of the Snake People.

'When we see things in our minds only,' the girl continued, 'it's surprising how easily it fools us into accepting that which doesn't really exist.'

And with that, she revealed that they were all still standing on the mountain top.

*

High above them, a huge yet heavily mixed flock of birds was swirling around in a squawking panic.

Other birds, equally panicked, were swooping low, passing close by them.

The sky was crowded, a mass of rainbow brightness against the blue. And yet the birds appeared to be dropping lower, becoming increasingly more massed, as opposed to taking the natural route of escape and rising ever higher.

'What's wrong with the birds?' Fandran frowned in concern.

'My mirror revealed something else,' the girl said, this time raising her mirror up before them all to a great height.

Within the mirror, the Sun shone remarkably brightly.

Yet as the girl talked, it changed slightly, showing first the patterns of a jaguar, secondly of a serpent, thirdly of the plumage of a bird.

'Why is each age called the First, or the Second, or the Third Sun?' the girl asked. 'Because each god also briefly became the Sun while he wielded power over the Earth.'

The Moon appeared; and devoured the Sun.

Now the Sun still shone, yet with a silvery sheen.

'The Water goddess is now also the Sun!' Tesetra exclaimed.

'So that's where our Water goddess is!' Degrat cried out equally excitedly. 'The Moon is also the Sun!'

The mirror of sun-shot rain fell away. Behind it, the real Sun shone, shone through the frantically fluttering feathers of the highly panicked birds.

It shone a bright silver.

And then, as if the Moon had abruptly devoured it, the Sun was the Moon.

*

# Chapter 33

The Moon hung, massively, oppressively, in the sky.

The birds fled, flying even lower, swooping down past the mountain top. Swooping lower and lower, dropping into the valleys.

The four corners of the court began to steadily crumble, the rock tumbling, falling into the yard.

Where the birds had been, the blue of the sky began to fade, swiftly replaced instead by the darkness of the night.

The stars came out. The Milky Way spread her white cloak against the darkness.

The Moon appeared to grow larger, ever larger. As if she were weighing down heavily on everything beneath her.

As if she were attempting to draw closer towards the Earth. Towards Tesetra, Degrat, Fandran and the girl.

'What's she waiting for?' Tesetra asked. 'What's she trying to do?'

The court's walls continued to crumble, faster now than ever.

'It's my four corners that hold up the sky, that frame the passing of time,' the girl announced coolly, drawing their attention to the now rapidly disintegrating walls.

The darkness was now also dropping ever lower, the night invading day, eradicating it.

Everywhere, the sheer blackness was conquering the light. Devouring it.

The Moon was growing, drawing closer.

The darkness enveloped them all.

It was the darkness of space.

There was no air to breath.

*

# Chapter 34

Thinking this would be their last breath, they each – save only the girl – breathed in heavily,

They didn't have chance to run for the valleys where, strangely, the light remained. Where the birds still flew, if chaotically and with hardly any room to spare.

The animals survived there too.

And yet, despite the darkness, the complete lack of air, they each soon realised that they were also alive.

'We _can_ breathe,' Degrat sighed with relief.

'Of course.' The girl remained nonchalant. 'But _only_ us.'

'Only us?' Tesetra repeated fearfully. 'Then the Stone People? The Corn People?'

'The time is at last over for those who were spared the last time, when they retreated to the mountain tops.'

The girl was almost too cool, too unfeeling, Tesetra thought.

'But why?' Tesetra wailed. 'Why is the Water goddess doing this?'

The Moon hanging in the sky directly before her was now huge, a vast silvery, perfectly circular lake.

The Water goddess appeared within its glistening framing.

She was beautiful, of course.

Her skin was that of a red serpent.

The Moon was a perfect mirror.

The Fourth Mirror.

*

Now Tesetra could see all the others in the Fourth Mirror.

Like her, like Fandran, they all had the skin of serpents.

The Snake People.

The gods.

This is why they had survived.

Because they had caused it all, all this destruction.

To start things anew.

To create a new beginning.

To wipe out imperfections.

And to try again.

*

# Chapter 35

It dawned on Tesetra that they were the only ones who could raise the night sky, the only ones capable of setting it back in its proper place in the heavens.

'Degrat, Tlaloca,' Tesetra said commandingly, recognising the girl for who she really was at last, 'I need you both to raise the sky!'

Degrat and Tlaloca both shivered, trembled, writhed.

As huge serpents, they rose up and up, effortlessly taking the great weight of the night on their backs.

They pushed hard against the darkness, raising it higher and higher. Letting the light, the day, flood in beneath them.

The birds swooped around their soaring bodies, swirled happily in this new sky, sang out their joy for this renewed world.

The reborn world briefly quaked once more. For despite its newness, the Earth was still delicately suspended on the hooks of an anger that Degrat – and Fandran, too – were at last managing to control, to use to restore rather than destroy.

There was another song, too. One that rang out amongst the glorious trilling of the exuberant birds.

The Snake Song.

Yet this was in many ways a different song to that earlier one of jealousy, bitterness and fury that had wracked destruction upon the earth.

This was a far more joyous song. Degrat had at last recognised that Tlaloca was his chosen, not Tesetra, as he had erroneously presumed.

As their heads rose higher, merging into the streaming white waters of the Milky Way, they kissed, embraced.

Naturally, they couldn't stay here supporting the night sky forever.

And so they briefly became immense trees that, as they continued to grow, to sprout evermore branches, pushed up the heavens ever higher, restoring them to their rightful place.

Then Degrat and Tlaloca left the trees in place, left them supporting the heavens, while they swam off through the milky waters; merging, entwining, the flashes of what remained of Degrat's jaguar pattern adding to the cloak of stars as he rapidly shed them.

The Moon shone like the most beautiful mirror, like a huge silvery ball tossed into the sky. And Tesetra rose up with it, taking Fandran by the hand, taking him with her.

As they released their hold on each other, Fandran stayed with her, encircling her head as a crown of stars, as a sparkling feathered serpent.

'We need a people who are of us, who are of the gods themselves,' Tesetra declared. 'A people who have the potential within them to _be_ as the gods!'

And she cried once more.

The Tears of the Moon.

Yet these were in many ways different tears to the earlier ones of bitterness and fury that had wracked destruction upon the earth.

These were far more joyous tears, for Tesetra had at last recognised who she really was.

And she had the power to readdress all wrongs.

She had within her all that was needed to create a new people.

The Tears of the Moon fell like the silvery white spume of waves, snaking through the air, falling everywhere around the Earth. An Earth bathed entirely in Tesetra's silvery sheen, a covering of her mystical of waters.

And wherever her tears struck and touched these waters, the tears became children, boys and girls, the beginnings of a new people.

' _Our_ children,' Tesetra announced proudly.

And as the children swiftly grew, walking off hand in hand, Tlaloca arched across the sky, her colours those of the most beautiful rainbow.

End

If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams

Coming Soon

A Guide for Young Wytches

