The Devil's Secret (17 page)

Before Thorn could censor himself, he said, “Then why don’t you want to help me become better?”

Thilial chuckled somberly, and shook her head. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

“From our encounters in Atlanta? Of course I remember you.”

“No, from before then. Long before then.”

“When?” Thorn asked.

Thilial drew nearer, her robes fluttering in the night air. She told him a story.

Thilial was nineteen days old when the first white men entered Tugaloo. They were Spaniards, bringing with them swords, metal armor, and a fearsome repute. In recent months, rumor had spread across the land of the Real People that a war party from a strange yet powerful new tribe was crossing through Mvskoke territory, into the Real People’s territory. Some even said this tribe of white men had come from the other side of the big water, though such a tall tale was only believed by children and mystics. These men had ridden to Tugaloo on dogs bigger than any dog the Real People had ever seen, and they carried with them fire sticks that could kill a man from a distance, like a bow with an invisible arrow.

Young though she was, Thilial had been created fully formed, with much knowledge of God’s world and its peoples. Naturally, she knew that these men were European conquerors, riding horses and carrying arquebuses, but seeing these foreigners for the first time filled her with fear as much as the Real People standing around her. These villagers made a show of staying calm, but she could see the terror in their eyes, each one of them hoping to survive this encounter with these brutal men who had slain so many in other tribes.

Thilial drifted down to Tree Frog and whispered in his ear. “Do not be afraid.” The tension in his muscles eased a bit, and Thilial smiled to herself. He’d run through the wilderness all day and all night to warn his town of the coming Spaniards. The impulsive boy would want to fight the white men, she knew. Tree Frog had the brashness of youth in him. He wanted to fight everything. She’d made it a point to teach him patience and calm during the nineteen days she’d been alive. He was a wild one, though. She would have to work much harder if Tree Frog was ever to become a sensible adult.

The Spaniards continued their walk through the town’s entrance: a narrow passageway of logs, four meters high on both sides, formed by the overlapping ends of the circular wall surrounding the town. The dismal sight felt like the end of Thilial’s world, but she was at least grateful that the pompous Feasting Wolf had allowed no more than ten of these Spaniards inside the refuge town of Tugaloo. She was surprised that the other priests had let him admit even that many. Most of them had wanted to wage war against the Spaniards. The argument had lasted all morning.

“The Wolf Clan has protected our borders for hundreds of years,” a priest from that clan had protested. “You cannot ask us to let an enemy pass into the heart of our territory. They will slaughter us.”

“They seek metals and trinkets, not bloodshed,” Feasting Wolf had argued. “We have pearls, and a bit of copper. I will offer it to them, treat them well, then point them toward our enemies’ territories. ‘The Iswa have gold,’ I will say. Let them deal with these white men.”

Feasting Wolf’s decision had caused substantial controversy among the common people, but in the end, the high priest had had his way. Except that…

Many more than ten Spaniards were coming through the entrance. Why had the guards not stopped them? Thilial unfurled her wings and flew up above the town. What she saw beyond the walls left her dumbfounded.

Hundreds of white men stood just outside the town. Dozens of horses carried armed soldiers, and hundreds more carried packs of food and supplies. A few men rested on travois, though Thilial couldn’t tell whether they were wounded or sick. A small army of pigs loitered in the distance behind the throng, escorted by several black-skinned slaves.

Worse, a vast multitude of demons traveled with the men.
European
demons. Thilial had heard tales of their kind: brutal, savage, and far more formidable than their local counterparts. Having parted from Eurasian demons long ago, the demons on this continent had developed their own culture: one just as vile and cruel as that of their foreign counterparts, yet more passive, less dogmatic, and easier to repress when necessary. Local demons preferred solitude, eschewing groups and hierarchy in favor of more personal, intimate destruction of human life. But Thilial’s peers had warned her that these European demons, much like their pet Spaniards, went on actual
conquests
, so she’d hoped to avoid dealing with them until she’d grown more seasoned.

Who was leading them? She looked around for the demon lord, and did not have to look long. His arms raised in a pose of ultimate authority, he drifted proudly above the men who were now entering Tugaloo.

“Demons of the New World!” he bellowed in a mellifluous bass that turned the head of every angel and demon in the town.

He speaks the trade language!
Thilial could see her own panic written on every angelic face in the town. If the foreign demons had already learned the local language, they could wrench control from the local demons in days, if not hours.

The leader continued: “I am Xeres, demon lord of Iberia. This land beneath us is now my territory. You shall submit to me, or you shall be exiled.”

Tugaloo’s demons fretted nervously and exchanged uneasy glances. The angels did the same—all but Thilial. It was not her place to take action, but since the higher-ranking angels were just drifting idly as the takeover commenced, she chose to fly down to Xeres herself. From centimeters away, she whispered to the imposing demon with as much compassion as she could muster: “It is not your place to control other beings. Think about your life and your future. Forget power and prestige. What is it that you really want?”

If Xeres heard her, his actions gave no indication of it. He continued his proclamation to the local demons. “You shall surrender all of your Indian charges to me and my followers, or you shall be exiled. In addition, you shall direct us to the nearest angel sequestration area, so that we may proclaim our triumph to the angels there.”

Thilial’s heart sank. The sequestration area ruse had worked in Europe and Asia, but had never before been needed in the New World. Now she and her compatriots would have to establish quarantine regions on this continent too. But of course, she would do whatever her Heavenly Father deemed necessary. He knew best, so if He wanted the demons to think they’d won the war against His angels, so be it.

Near the town’s entrance, Tugaloo’s priests stood in a long line to welcome the “guests.” Standing in the center of the line, Feasting Wolf gestured a greeting. “Travelers from far away,” he said in the trade language, “we receive you gladly. We bring you gifts.”

Two women from the Wild Potato Clan brought forward a small basket full of pearls and copper: both crude and formed varieties. They set it before the leading Spaniard, and Xeres above him. And then—what was this? Seven girls were coming out of the priest house, each escorted by two strong men and several invisible demons.

“Our girls are young and unspoiled,” Feasting Wolf said to the Spaniards. “You will enjoy them.”

The men and women in the crowd murmured their horror. Thilial was stunned as well. The priests were known for their tyrannical rule, but never before had they so thoughtlessly violated the sovereignty of their own people. Near the back of the crowd, Tree Frog spat on the ground, spun, and tramped off toward the river.

At the same time, one of the local demons, floating above the girls, made an offer to the demon lord: “We are but worms beneath your feet, O mighty Xeres. Accept this small vice as our offering to you. We will follow you for all time, if you allow it.”

Xeres seemed pleased by that. “The depravity of these Indian priests impresses me. And I see how you have used their authority to subjugate the others. You have done well, and you and your followers may join my own.”

This situation was becoming too atrocious. Thilial flew through the town’s wall and scoured the crowd outside for any sign of potential help. She descried a few European angels, but their faces seemed dejected, beleaguered, and devils far outnumbered them. “Angels from Spain, who is your leader?”

“I am,” said a large, stately angel who looked like she could have taken Xeres in direct combat. “I am Gleannor, an Angel of Peace.”

“And I am Thilial, an Angel of Truth. Tell me, from where did this expedition come?”

“We set sail from Havana just over one year ago. We’ve tried to keep these men peaceful, but they are brutes by nature, and there are too many demons whispering too many lies. You could do no better with them than we have.”

“Have you asked the Lord for reinforcements?”

“Yes, but His ears are deaf to us.”

“Surely not. He must have some greater purpose for these men and this expedition. Be patient and you will see.”

Gleannor frowned, and glanced past Thilial to the walled town. “How long have you been here?”

Thilial balked.
For nineteen days, since God created me
, was too pathetic of a response. Instead she said: “We angels have been here since humans first entered these lands. This ‘New World’ is not so new to us.”

“Hmph,” Gleannor said, with just a hint of smugness in her voice. “It will be soon.”

“We should never have let these men into a refuge town,” Tree Frog said as he paced beneath the thatch roof of his mother’s house. Thilial whispered to calm him, but he kept sharpening his knife with a small stone as he continued his rant. “I ran for two days straight so I could warn the priests that the Spaniards were coming, and they mocked me by welcoming the beasts into our town, and with such heinous ‘gifts.’ A refuge town like Tugaloo is supposed to be sacred. No Real Person can be killed in a refuge town without upsetting the balance—you have said this yourself many times.”

Grasshopper, Tree Frog’s mother, nodded solemnly as she ground agrimony and woodmint together with a mortar and pestle.

Two squirrels foraging in the remnants of last night’s meal found themselves in the way of Tree Frog’s heavy footfalls, and scampered away. “The Spaniards have not spilled our blood as they spilled the Mvskokes’ blood, but the plague they carry with them is killing us all the same. Even the priests cannot fight it. Two of them have been stricken down, and three others are ill. We should war with the white men and rid Tugaloo of this pestilence.”

He stopped by his father, Leaps Through The Wind, who lay on a bear rug on the floor. The man’s soft, painful moaning filled Thilial with sorrow. She’d known him her whole life—now forty-three days—and he was dying, his skin hot and riddled with tiny bumps, his mind lost to delirium.

Grasshopper ground her mixture just a little faster. “You have not given my medicine time to work. Be patient.”

“But you do not know if the medicine will work.”

“I know that animals, who had been hunted by man, created disease as vengeance, but plants were sympathetic toward man, so they created medicine to cure all diseases.”

“But you do not know if you are using the
right
medicine.”

“The spirits of the plants tell me which medicine is right,” Grasshopper said.

Tree Frog huffed. “Then why have the spirits not saved all the others who have died since the Spaniards arrived?”

Why indeed?
Thilial thought. In just two dozen days, she’d seen enough human suffering for one lifetime. And as if the disease sweeping through Tugaloo’s populace wasn’t enough, the priests had become even more willing to abuse their power, using their Spanish guests as a convenient excuse. The food storehouse was nearly empty. Young women had disappeared in the dead of night. Obsessed with finding gold, the Spaniards had beaten several prominent tribe members in search of it.

Why has God not intervened?
Soon, Thilial would need to return to Heaven and petition the Lord in person. This destruction of the tribe, of the people she’d come to know and love, was growing unbearable.

As Grasshopper knelt next to her husband to feed him his medicine, she admonished her son. “Do not test the spirits. They have their own matters to attend to. The spirits from the world above are in constant battle with the spirits from the world below. We are caught in between the two, so the most crucial thing for us is to preserve balance between the two spirit worlds. If some of us perish during the spirits’ battle, it is a small price to pay.”

Thilial laughed in spite of herself. Grasshopper’s low regard for human life was unfortunate, but her assessment of the spirit realms was more correct than she knew. Still, Thilial loved Tree Frog too much to let him believe such superstition. She whispered into his ear. “Tree Frog, think. How could Grasshopper know this? Does she really know what she claims to know, or is she just pretending to know because it makes her feel safe?” The journey of this people from superstition into sensibleness would be long, full of pitfalls and conflicts, but worthwhile in the end, both for the tribespeople and for the angels who’d been sent to supervise their journey. Given another century or two, maybe this tribe of “Real People” would catch up with Europe technologically, and maybe even surpass them philosophically. Tree Frog had voiced doubts about his people’s myths to some of his friends, and this gave Thilial hope.

“What if it had been Weaver that the priests had given to the Spaniards?” Tree Frog asked his mother. “Would you believe me that they are a serious problem if they had taken my future wife to their filthy beds?”

“The Spaniards are a burden that we must bear,” Grasshopper said. “Pay mind to the ceremonies. The ceremonies are what is truly important, for if we do not perform them, the spirit worlds will become unbalanced and the world will end, sinking into the sea. The Spring Moon Ceremony is approaching. Prepare for the ceremony rather than for war.”

Tree Frog abruptly hurled his knife at a squirrel that had wandered back inside looking for scraps. His aim was true, and the squirrel was cleaved in half. Grasshopper gasped and spilled some of her husband’s medicine. The animal’s blood soaked into the dried grass and dirt on the floor.