BURN IN HADES (2 page)

“She’s one of the more beautiful ones.” Cross admired the bird’s smooth brown skin. Barbot’s were usually harder looking, but this one was a lot less wrinkly.

“Looks like a big ol’ saddle bag to me,” said Cottontail. “Like all the others.”

He’d seen uglier barbots and she would too if she survived long enough. There were plenty of them in the underworld. The scaly birds fit his mind’s image of dragons, only smaller, and lacking the scary horns and the useful ability to breathe fire. They were gentle creatures.

Cross crept up to the featherless bird whispering in his friendliest voice all kinds of pleasantries to make it feel comfortable. A bushel of fresh calabash lay next to the bird. Their smooth green skins were burst and split open, emptied of all their poisonous, green juices.

He’d been drawn to the garden intentionally, and he knew exactly the sneaky bastard who had led him there. But it was too late for him to do anything about it now.

He leapt on the barbot’s leathery back. It gave a great squawk and flailed around. If its wing hadn’t been broken the tight area of the dense garden would have prevented it from taking flight anyway, but that didn’t stop the bird from trying.

It gave Cross a rough ride; it thrashed around, trying to leap into the air only to bash Cross into the limbs of frail trees. He held on firmly, arms wrapped around its thick featherless neck.

“It’s alright,” Cross said to the barbot. “You’re safe. Best be glad I got to you before those ants. They ain’t got no respect.” He placed a comforting hand on its head and gave it a pat. The barbot calmed.

“Good. Thata girl,” he said. “Now, this is going to be scary at first. But when you start to feel tired, you just go on to sleep. Everything will be all right.” He reached down and clutched the underside of its beak, and pulled its head up. The bird resisted and struggled against him. He tightened his grip and held firmly onto the bird.

“I hate it when you do this part,” said Cottontail.

“I want you to look this time,” he said, pointing the tip of his obsidian blade at her. “Don’t you turn away. You hear me?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.” She stared down at her feet.

“If you’re going to make the journey to paradise you’re going to see a lot worse than this.”

Slowly, she lifted her head and squinted her eyes as Cross placed his blade at the bird’s neck.

“May the Great Goddess have mercy on your soul,” he said to the bird and sliced its jugular.

Cottontail winced, but she didn’t look away. He understood her reluctance to see such brutality. That was the only reason he didn’t force her to kill the bird herself this time, even though he should have.

The very first time he ever killed a chicken, he was a kid, and the sunny-side-up eggs he had eaten that morning for breakfast left his stomach and soiled his only shirt. He had raised that chick from the cutest little fur ball to full grown. It was his first friend. There weren’t any other Negroes his age to play with, and that chicken was his only companion on the entire plantation. When Mama made him kill it, he cried for a day and couldn’t bring himself to eat it. He had come a long way since then.

Life goes on. And so does death.

He propped the dead barbot against a tree upside down. “Always let the blood drain out completely,” he told Cottontail. “You can’t get too much of that stuff in your stomach. It’ll make you sick like you never thought possible.”

She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “This is why I need to be with you. You know everything.”

“Yeah, sometimes it’s not good to know things. Sometimes you can know too much.”

“But if you keep teaching me stuff like that, I won’t be so useless.” She kicked at a stem with no head.

“I wish I could be a dumb little kid again,” he said. “You ain’t gotta do nothing but eat and sleep while somebody else takes care of you. Why don’t you make yourself useful and you won’t be so useless.”

She never lifted her gaze from the ground and heard a little sniffle escape her. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so mean to her, but she needed to toughen up. Out in the underworld, she’d experience much worse things than his cold attitude. If she couldn’t handle him, she wouldn’t last a second with any other spirits.

“Useless souls don’t make it to paradise,” he said, gently. “And I’m gonna see to it that you make it.”

She lifted her head back up, and flung herself into him, wrapping her scrawny arms around his waist. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I promise I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll be quiet. I won’t ask a whole lot of questions.”

“You misunderstand me. I’m not bringing you with me.”

She released her grip on his torso and stared up at him. “What then?”

“We’re gonna meet in paradise. You’re going by yourself.”

Her eyes widened and glazed over. “I can’t go alone. I don’t even know the way.”

“Paradise is east. That way.” He pointed eastward, but the light of paradise couldn’t be seen from inside the shady garden. “Go east and you won’t miss it.”

“I’ll toughen up. I promise. You can call me whatever names you want. Just take me with you. I could even help you fight off those squal things. We’ll be a team.”

She would make a great companion in another life. She reminded him a little too much of his childhood friend, Kate. Knowing he had to part ways with the runt hurt him, but the spirits hunting his head would have no problem burning Cottontail to get to him.

He refused to allow that to happen to another soul, especially her. As happy it made him to have her around—or anyone around for that matter—she was safer staying as far away from him as possible. She was too pure to allow the underworld to taint her like it did every other soul. Her innocence was rare and precious. Her compassion was a gem worth coveting and keeping secret from the rest of the underworld. He wished he could hold on to her sincerity forever.

He’d rather she not make the journey to paradise at all, but she was as stubborn as he was; she’d follow him throughout the underworld no matter how much he protested. She already followed him around like a little lamb. Mapping out her quest to paradise was at least a way of giving her a better shot at survival.

He sat down on the cool dirt and patted his lap for her sit. She snuggled up with him like he used to do with his mother when he was little. Mama’s arms were the safest place in the whole wide world.

“Between here and paradise is hell,” he said to Cottontail. “Not
the
Hell. Well that’s somewhere along the way too. But I mean hell as in really bad stuff. What’s out there ain’t got nothing on the ants, or the bats, or the jaguars, or even the squals. That’s why I still think you should stay here where it’s safer.”

“You said there is no such thing as safe in the underworld.”

Her memory was nearly as good as his. She just didn’t remember anything about her life, unlike him. She didn’t know how she died, while he could never forget the perplexing events that surrounded his final moments. Of course, no other soul knew what he knew. None of them remembered like him. That’s why his headful of memories was so prized. But soon he would forget; once he made it to paradise.

“This is what you’re going to do,” he told her. “You’re going to call for Charon. It comes to spirits no matter where they are. It usually takes you where you’re supposed to be, but sometimes it takes you where you want to go. It already did that for me before. It’s not going to do it again. But you’re new. You have a clean slate. And you’re a kid. You’ll get slightly good treatment.”

Her frail spirit trembled in his arms. “I don’t know if I can,” she said.

He was hoping that he’d at least instill enough fear in her to make her want to stay in Xibalbá with the weepers, but his scare tactics only caused her to cling to him even more.

“A little bit of fear is good,” he said. “That means you’re paying attention. And when you’re paying attention, it’s difficult for something to surprise you.” He poked his finger in her stomach and tickled her. She giggled and squirmed.

“How long have you been in this place anyway?” asked Cottontail.

Cross caressed her bushy head and brought her close to his chest. “Long enough,” he said.

Sometime during his 300th year, he had given up on counting his sleep cycles—the only way souls could keep track of their personal time spent in the underworld. Since that year, it seemed as if he had languished through the underworld’s endless day for double that amount of time. Eternity was a restless bitch.

The blood had fully drawn from the barbot and now he could cook it for the both of them. Cross sat Cottontail aside gingerly, rose to his feet and chopped off the bird’s head.

“If I’m going to meet you there,” said Cottontail, “then I think I should tell you my true name so you can find me.”

“Tell it to me when we see each other again,” said Cross, confident that she would make it to paradise, but a lot less sure about himself. He had a long treacherous journey ahead of him and his bounty hunters always trailed closely behind.

The garden swished and the barbot’s head rolled away into the crumbling foliage.

“Ants!” Cottontail whispered as if trying to hold in a frightful scream.

He thought they would’ve been gone by the time the ants smelled the barbot blood.

“They don’t want us,” he said. “Just our food.” He snatched up the barbot’s tail and lugged with all his might. It was like hauling a dead horse.

A forager ant race out of the brush and latched onto the other side of the barbot. The ant was the size of a fat rat and easily lifted its half of the bird in its clamping jaws. In a tug of war Cross pulled his end while the forager ant towed in the opposite direction.

Cottontail picked up a statue head in both her hands and raised it above the ant.

Cross released the barbot’s tail and threw up his hands. “Don’t—”

Before he could finish warning her not to kill the ant, she splattered the overgrown insect with the stone head. The weeping in the shadows stopped in an instant, and the garden itself belted out an angry hiss. It was the sound of an army of ants swarming upon him and Cottontail.

His thick spirits blood ran cold. “
Now
they want us,” he said.

Her trembling fingers touched her bottom lip. “I’m sorry.”

“Get to the ball court as fast as you can,” he said, remaining calm for her sake. “The ants never go there. Take this.” He wrapped her jittering hands around the grip of the blade, making sure she was holding it firmly. “I’m right behind you.”

Without hesitation, she began hacking the brittle weeds, making a path for him to drag the barbot through.

He threw the barbot’s tail over his shoulder and trudged forward through the dead kudzu in a fury. The sweeping trickles of the ants grew louder, gaining on him. His calves bulged to the point of bursting, but he dragged the bird through Cottontail’s path, past the tiny temple and then tumbled down the stony slope into the ball court.

The ants halted at the edge of the garden. Cross, out of breath, gasped in laughter. He raised his fingers up to his head and mocked the ants’ wiggling antennae.

“Too slow,” he said, giggling like a little girl.

“Don’t tease them,” said Cottontail.

“They were gonna eat us.”

“Because of me. I smashed one of them. That was one of their sons or uncles or something. They’re just hungry like we are. I feel like we should share our food with them now.”

“They weren’t gonna share with us.”

“They wouldn’t have teased us though. And it’s not like we ever eat the entire bird in one sitting anyway. Even with your pet cornurus, there’s enough for all of us.”

Her compassion was one of the many things he liked about Cottontail, but that was also the exact attitude he had to break her out of if she was going to survive. He was just too reluctant to destroy something so uncommon.

He turned to the ants still standing at attention at the edge of the ball court. “You have her to thank for this, fellas. Remember that.”

The ants waited patiently as he chopped off pieces of raw meat for them. Yanking the giant bird through the garden had strained his lower back, making for a tougher job as he bent over, but the obsidian blade ate through the flesh like a flame to a love letter.

He thanked the Great Goddess for finally repelling the scorching blue sky that had tortured them all week. It would char the meat before he could even sauté it and it took several periods of sleep to rid his mouth of the sooty taste.

But even when the smoldering sky dimmed red as it did that day, souls still weren’t immune to its wrath. A river of perspiration rippled down his back and sizzled right on his skin. Even though clouds of smothering smoke swirled above, they offered no relief from the baking heat and only served to bathe the realm of Xibalbá in redundant gloom.

“I get the breast this time,” said Cottontail, rubbing her palms together and licking her cracked lips.

“The breast is for Gimlet.” Cross lopped off the wings.

“You said earlier that you were going to give me my favorite piece.”

“Lesson one. Everybody lies.” He had to be tough on her. The underworld wouldn’t go easy on her just because she was a little girl. Something as simple as a meal could be her end. “Gimlet always gets the biggest piece because she’s the biggest.”

“Well, I want the wings then.”

“No, I get the wings because I killed the damn thing. That’s lesson two. When you kill it, you can have whatever piece you want.” He chopped the raining pieces off the bird. “Legs, thighs or tail? Take your pick.”

Cottontail huffed. “Legs then,” she grumbled.

“And your ugly little friends can have the rest.”

Curiously, the ants had climbed on each other’s backs forming a totem. The tower of ants wobbled and leaned into the ball court, nearly toppling over. Cross scooped Cottontail off her feet and dashed her out of the way of danger before the ants could crush her. The ants dangled over the barbot breast and snatched it up in their jaws.

“That’s not for you,” said Cross, grabbing for the breast, but merely swiping the air.

The tower of ants sprang backward into the garden and collapsed like a waterfall. They scurried away, carrying the breast with them, leaving behind the legs, thighs, wings and tail.