Douglas Niles - Circle at center

“Good… snow boiling into steam. It is perfect.”

Sir Christopher smiled as he started down the mountain, certain that God would enjoy the irony.

N atac was aware only of a consuming laziness. Even though he knew vaguely that it was light outside, he slept for long hours, luxuriously buried in the plush furs, sated by lingering memories of a night of impossible passion. There were screens across several windows, muting the bright daylight, and he allowed himself to languish in comfort, drowsy enough to avoid the questions that otherwise would have gnawed him to agitation.

Eventually it was the need to empty his bladder that compelled him to move. When he sat up in the bed he also became aware of fierce thirst, and hunger growled insistently in his belly. He stood at the side of the sleeping pallet, for the first time wondering where the woman had gone. He remembered her beauty, wondered for a fearful moment if it had all been a dream. But he touched his chest, found no wound there. His flesh was healed. And the pallet was the same… he saw the lamps in the niches on the wall. All the details of this place were the same.

Except for his companion.

He noticed a circle of golden dust upon the floor and realized that he had first appeared in the center of that ring. The dust had been scuffed away in one place, where he had walked toward the pallet. Next he recognized the exit from the room, which was a panel of wood not unlike a door that might be found in a splendid house of Tlaxcala. The hinges and latch were of a hard, cold material that was not familiar to him. Still, he had no difficulty lifting the latch and pushing open the door.

He found a short corridor extending away from his room, with a sunlit courtyard visible through an open archway at the opposite end. The faint smell of sweet pollen tickled his nostrils and he advanced with a quick, anticipatory step. He passed open, airy rooms to either side, but his eyes were fixed on the bright outdoors. From somewhere a tantalizing waft of grilling meat reached him, and his stomach rumbled at the prospect of hearty food.

Only then did he remember his nakedness. Quickly he returned to the room, where he found a white robe with sleeves and hem of perfect length for his sturdy, powerful body. The cloth was smooth and supple, almost liquid in its shimmering texture, gentle as the softest fawn’s hide against his skin.

Returning to the hallway, he hastened to the courtyard beyond, and found himself standing before a wide, bowl-shaped pool of water. Plants, including familiar ferns, palms, and blossoms, as well as other, more exotic foliage, grew from numerous clay pots. The sky overhead was a rich blue, but as he walked through the garden and the view expanded his steps slowed. Finally he stopped, gawking at a vista that was like nothing in the world-at least, nothing in the world Natac had known all his life.

He stood on the paved veranda of a large, white-walled villa. The garden was forgotten as he looked across a sunlit expanse of blue water. Steep bluffs, such as the slope right before him, plunged to the shore of the lake, or perhaps it was a sea. From here the body of water looked fully as big as the entire valley of Mexico. In the center of the sparkling expanse was a large, hilly island, a place dotted with many tall buildings of white, gray, red, and black stone. From the center of that island a silver spire rose skyward, a structure as tall as a high mountain and, when viewed from here at least, as thin as a pole.

“The priests were wrong,” he said aloud, remembering the tales of black Mictlan, with its sunless skies and midnight horizons. “The land of death is a wondrous place!”

He was stunned, elated, and confused. By rights, he should already be embarked upon an arduous and challenging journey, with only the comfort of his loyal friends, those who had died with him. But instead, he had found this paradise, with a beautiful woman to meet him, a splendid view of a sunlit horizon, and-judging by the aroma that wafted outside to him-at least one meal that promised to be very tasty.

And it was a place where his body seemed to work much as it had during life. His broken hand was whole, and free of pain, healed as thoroughly as his chest. After he urinated off the edge of the veranda, he turned back to the house, determined to find the source of that wonderful aroma.

He was startled to see, amid the trees and flowering bushes in the garden, the figure of a youth or a small man-he couldn’t be certain which. The fellow was slender, and his head was surrounded by a veil of hair the color of ripe straw.

“Hello. I’m Fallon,” said the stranger, speaking in that same singsong language that Natac now comprehended so well.

“Hello, Fallon. I am called Natac.” The warrior wondered if this might be a son or a brother to the woman called Miradel, but he quickly decided there could be no blood relation between them. Fallon was so fair in hair and skin, where she was coppery dark, and there was a fullness to Miradel’s body that seemed utterly lacking in this young fellow-who was in fact so thin that he looked frail. He wore a green shirt with red leggings, and his ears were weirdly pointed and seemed too large for his narrow face. He carried a shiny pitcher in one hand.

“Is this your house?” Natac asked.

Fallon chuckled with easy humor. “It is Miradel’s house… I help here with some of her tasks. That’s all.” With that explanation, the blond man reached into his pitcher and cupped some water in his hand. While Natac watched, he raised his hand, then breathed a puff of air across the drops of liquid.

The warrior blinked in astonishment as a cloud of mist billowed out of Fallon’s hand. The fog swirled into the midst of the foliage, settling around the tops of the leaves and blossoms. And then it began to rain! For a minute or more the vaporous shape remained in place, and Natac heard the patter of drops, saw the moisture, as if a miniature rain cloud had been summoned upon Fallon’s command. Despite his surprise, the warrior suddenly realized that was exactly what had happened.

“Forgive me… I have to finish the watering… No doubt you will find something to eat inside.”

Since that suggestion was utterly in keeping with Natac’s desire, the warrior nodded, trying to conceal his astonishment as he went back into the large white house. He entered a room that was unmistakably a kitchen, and here he found a person. She was an elderly woman, her gray hair bound into a bun. She smiled shyly as he entered, and he saw that she wore a white robe similar to his own.

“Where is Miradel?” he asked, coming to look into the pot on the stove. That cooking vessel was of a hard black substance-similar to the hinges and latch on the door of his room. When he reached into the pot, he felt the heat radiating from the sizzling food, but snatched a piece of meat anyway. He was startled by the searing temperature, but too famished to stop himself from popping the tender morsel into his mouth.

“You’ll have to be careful,” chided the woman. “This is iron… it can be heated much hotter than the stone bowls of your own land.”

“A miracle of Mictlan?” Natac asked, amused, but willing to be patient.

The old woman shook her head. “This is not Mictlan. You are in a place called Nayve.”

That brought him up short. “Do not play me for a fool, Grandmother… I know all about the land of death.” He realized with a glimmer of unease that they were speaking that language he had come to know last night. That gave him another idea. “Or is Nayve simply your name for Mictlan?”

“Mictlan is a human fiction,” replied the woman, with a hint of sternness in her tone. “You have been brought to Nayve.”

“Where is Takanatl?” demanded Natac, unhappy with her answer. “He died moments before me… I would find him, share food and a story with him.”