Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

Urruah looked over at Rhiow. “The Lady in Black did mention ‘three times three times three’…”

She waved her tail at him in agreement. Arhu meanwhile sat there squinting at the characters for a few seconds more, while his off ear flicked again a couple of times as if someone was whispering in it. “Getting it now,” he said. “The years don’t just have numbers, but animal names. All of these are Years of the Black Jaguar.”

The fur stood up all over Rhiow.

“You don’t seem to get a whole lot of those,” Arhu said, laying a paw on one or another symbol to get a clearer reading. “But when you do get a Great Coincidence, it comes in a double pair with another one that’s fairly close: then they don’t repeat again for a good while. The places on the tablet where somebody came in and chipped out the characters – that’s the last time the cycles coincided.” His far ear flickered again as the Whisperer said something in it. “The way ehhif reckon time, the first coincidence started on June twelfth, nine thirty-one A.D. and ran through till that June fourteenth. Then there was another one that ran from April fifth, nine ninety-four A.D. until April seventh–“

“And the time after that?” Urruah said, his voice completely steady and unconcerned.

Arhu peered at it. “From July twenty-first to July twenty-third, nineteen forty-six…”

Rhiow gulped. From last night until tomorrow night…

“And the rest of that pair is June seventh and June ninth – “

“Of this year,” Urruah said almost inaudibly. “Our this year, uptime.”

“Yeah,” Arhu said… and only then realized what he’d said, and licked his nose several times in rapid succession.

The terror took Rhiow by the throat and squeezed. We’re too late, she thought. Whatever’s going to happen has already started happening! Yet she forced herself to calm down, for there was no proof that they were too late. In fact, the Powers prefer to intervene at the last minute. It gives the Lone One less warning of what They’re about to do, and less chance to find a defense…

“All right,” Rhiow said, working to keep her voice under control. “The question now becomes one of what exactly is supposed to happen.”

“These are ready for you,” Hwaith said from inside the next case.

Arhu paced past the tablets in the case where he’d been working and jumped across into the next one as Hwaith stepped back to make room for him. “Thanks,” he said, looking at the next tablet, which though square had a circular design in the middle and various other pictographs and signs in the corners. “Yeah, this is about the Coincidence too. ‘In this time and only this time may the Dark One become the Shadow of the great and deadly Silence that comes from outside all that is, the Devourer of Worlds: and the greater makes the lesser Its own for that time.” Arhu turned his head to follow the symbols around the curve of the circle. “Yet only by beings within the world may this identity come to be so forged, when they shed blood in rivers, denying their kinship with their own kind, willingly driving out life for death’s and power’s sake.” Now he was standing with his head practically upside down. “Then at such a time if such beings so seek their freedom as to bring about the fulfillment of their desires at the utmost price, they shall have their will, and pay that price; for even the God of gods, in wisdom or folly, has not denied them this freedom, either to preserve their worlds or destroy them…”

Arhu straightened up, and spent a moment wiggling his head around to try to get a kink out of it. “Anything more on that one?” Urruah said.

“No,” Arhu said, jumping down to the second tablet that Hwaith had reconstructed. “Those are just decorations.”

“Good,” Urruah said. He sounded terribly calm, but Rhiow could feel him managing himself as rigorously as she was doing. The last thing either of them dared to do right now was upset Arhu and possibly interfere with his ability to read clearly what he was seeing. “Got that copied too?”

“Did that first thing,” Arhu said. He now sat down in front of the third tablet, which was densely packed with the squarish pictographs, written very small.

“Wow,” he said after a moment.

Hwaith gave him a look. “Wow?”

Arhu’s tail twitched back and forth as he tried to work out what he was looking at. “Whoever wrote this didn’t believe in putting things in order,” he said. And his face wrinkled a little in distaste, like that of a Person smelling something bad. “It’s all scrambled up. The first part is something about ‘The Dark Rift’. And something comes out of it, and it’s really angry. ‘For long has it been confined in the dark, and kept from its home.’And then there’s stuff about blood, too much blood being shed…”

“I hear a theme starting to develop,” Rhiow said, not at all happy about it, and still working to keep her reaction from interfering with Arhu’s work.

Arhu was silent for a moment, his tail stil twitching. “After that it mentions the stars a few times,” he said, sounding confused. “The stars coming out. But ‘after the devouring, the stars are dark…’ Then there are some more date references: to our own time – that last set of dates. And something about the Jaguar again. ‘In the Black Jaguar’s mouth’ – that’s the dark rift again — ‘the Serpent shall be seen, and again they shall struggle. But the struggle shall not go again as it has.’”

The Serpent again, Urruah said privately to Rhiow. Are you starting to think that someone who’s not here really ought to be along on this party?

I was thinking that this morning, Rhiow said. Wait a little –

“Then,” Arhu said, “it says – “ And he stopped. “Rhi, I’ve been really good so far… but this thing’s resisting me. I have to use the Eye.”

“You’ve done brilliantly to get so much out of these as you have without it,” Rhiow said. “Go ahead.”

He leaned close to the tablet and held quite still for a few moments. Rhiow held her breath. Around them all the feel of the room altered subtly as Arhu’s vision of the tablet briefly superseded theirs. Everything else went shadowy compared to the ancient carved designs, which grew deep with uncomfortable meaning. “Now comes the Roar that bursts the earth and lets in the bitter seas, that breaks the dark and frees its dwellers to do battle with the light…”

They could see it as Arhu did – the vast shattering crash of inimical power that waited to wash across the planet, to set the crust cracking and the outraged oceans rushing into new beds as magma broke up through the old ones. The Earth tore itself apart in growing darkness, the sun vanishing in an atmosphere full of the dust and ash thrown up from the broken surface and the thousands of volcanic eruptions along the fragmenting continental plates. Soon there was no light anywhere but the smothering fire breaking up from the planet’s outraged mantle. Then even that faded.The reek of death filled heaven and earth as all life that had not already died in fire or water now began to do so in ice and darkness…

And it would not stop there, of course. The destruction would spread unimaginably far, the outflooding darkness killing every living world and smothering the stars. “Yet if the Roar is not heard,” Arhu said, as everything went dark, “then shall life be spared until the day, and the hour of the day, shall come again, and life shall again be offered the choice to live or to die forever…”

…and the Earth turned bright again under the sun, unharmed, placid.

The vision faded. Arhu took his paws away from the tablet, shaking his head, and paused to catch his breath. The others looked at each other, unnerved. “Boy,” Urruah said, “you’d really rather be somewhere else when Tepeyollotl lets out with that big meow.”