By E. A. Bourland

The People of the Fire Moss by the River were at war with the People of the Misty Forest, and the war was bloody and destructive, as war ever was. Both peoples were on the verge of famine because none of the fishers could fish the river, and none of the harvesters could harvest from the fruit trees. Finally the king of the People of the Misty Forest, desiring peace, sent his son to the Apotropaic Mountains in the east where, it was said, the Speaker for the Dead lived in a cave. The young man, whose name was Crocodile Tooth, was to learn from the Speaker for the Dead the means to make peace between the Fire Moss People and the People of the Misty Forest. So he traveled east, away from the Misty Forest that was his home, through the wide swamp that lay between the forest and the Apotropaic Mountains. Throughout his journey he was not able to sleep, for the swamp was haunted by voices which goaded him and permitted no rest. He struggled forward. He was chased by warlike people who tried to murder or enslave him. He was bitten by insects, menaced by beasts, and afflicted by fever, but he kept moving, always east, always hearing the voices which continually summoned horrible visions in his mind, as vivid as reality. Finally the land began to rise, the trees thinned, and he slogged out of the swamp and found himself in the foothills of the Apotropaic Mountains deep in a moonless night. Far away he saw a white fire and though it filled him with dread he began to climb toward it, knowing it was there he must go.

He climbed until he reached a bare ledge where he fell exhausted. From an opening in the wall of the mountain, framed by stones carved with strange devices, pale light spilled, and he knew he had come to the cave of the Speaker for the Dead. With a weariness that surpassed any he had ever known he closed his eyes and finally slept, and his dreams which had been held back over so many nights broke out in a calamitous flood, screaming and thundering in his head. Behind this uproar walked a woman whose face made him shudder and look away.

He awoke inside the cave. Its walls were of gold, its ceiling of lapis lazuli, its floor of white nephrite and black lignum vitae, but all this finery was covered in dust, and the floor was strewn with pillows that once had been rich but were now rotted with age. A firepit held dead ashes. The woman stood over him. The flesh of her jaw had been torn away. He could not speak, but she knew his mind, and in a voice like a wind she commanded him to go deeper into the mountains and live in exile, for he must never see his home again. Then she said that humankind would never do better than to wage endless war. She said magic was false; love was the enemy of sleep; and gold was poison. She said no map would help him and he must go. Then Crocodile Tooth left the cave of the Speaker for the Dead and went deeper into the mountains like she had told him.

In the mountains he regained his strength, and found followers, and assembled an army and began to conquer the people who lived in the mountains and the swamp, and he was cruel especially with the warlike people who had hounded him while he had sought the cave of the Speaker for the Dead. He haunted forest, road, and river, and became known as a warrior bandit, and he began to ready his bandit army to return to the land of the Misty Forest to fight against the People of the Fire Moss by the River.

But an emissary came to him from the People of the Seven Jaguar Hills, against whom Crocodile Tooth had fought with special bitterness, for he disliked their looks. This emissary was the wife of the king of the Seven Jaguar Hills, and Crocodile Tooth loved her with an intensity that was proportional with his hatred of her people. And her name was Thrice Woven Dagger. She brought a message of peace from the king of the Seven Jaguar Hills, and Crocodile Tooth agreed to the peace, adding a condition that she, Thrice Woven Dagger, must marry him and be his queen. To which condition she agreed, but first she must return to her husband to deliver the message that she must now divorce him to become the wife of the warrior bandit Crocodile Tooth. Even more she was to bear upon her own body a message writ in symbols inscribed by Crocodile Tooth himself in the ink of a species of octopus, which read in translation: This Peach Is Now the Captured Property of the Famous Warrior Bandit Crocodile Tooth.

The king of the Seven Jaguar Hills, when presented with terms of peace that included divorce and dishonor, and with a proprietorial notification imprinted directly on the person of his wife, stood up from his throne of skulls, roared in fury, and bade her flee instantly, before the rapidly expiring fondness with which he yet perceived her was devoured by the rage that inevitably was consuming him. In a mood the opposite of serene, he gathered an army and invaded the lands that Crocodile Tooth had recently conquered, and Crocodile Tooth was forced to commit his bandit army to his own defense, rather than return triumphantly to his former home of the Misty Forest. There followed months of war, and then during a fight in a rainstorm on the side of a valley, the king of the Seven Jaguar Hills was killed, and his principal town was overrun. Crocodile Tooth commanded a bandit feast amid the ruined town of the Seven Jaguar Hills people.

Yet the feast was cut short when it was discovered that the woman, Thrice Woven Dagger, had been killed too. So it was in those times. A life was and is no more. A life, nothing. Crocodile Tooth raged and wept clutching a knife. Then a young boy was brought before him and this boy by another man was the son of Thrice Woven Dagger, and Crocodile Tooth spared his life and sent him into the mountains. And Crocodile Tooth married Rose Fire, a Jaguar Hills woman, a river woman who knew a thousand-and-more stories. Crocodile Tooth and Rose Fire were gifted with a daughter whose grace was surpassing though she lived among bandits. Her name was Orchid Fire.

Crocodile Tooth did not love Rose Fire, but she satisfied him sensually, and told stories that entertained the rude, war-scarred officers who served as courtiers in that thieves’ den. One evening, standing before a roasting pig, Rose Fire finished telling one of her thousand-and-more stories. She concluded, “Pierced and slashed by the weapons of Crocodile Tooth’s army, the king of the Seven Jaguar Hills, still wrapped in his Jaguar robes, was washed down the river, perhaps to join the great river in the west, which long ago was called Miss-Iss-Ippi, when people talked from the side of their mouths. That is my story for you rascals tonight!” And she smiled her charming smile but looked weary.

The officers laughed and some repeated the word. “Miss-Iss-Ippi.”

She told them finally, “The old name of these Apotropaic Mountains, which proceed far north into the Poisoned Lands, was Apalatsi. And our land, famous then as now for its trees of peaches, was named Jor-Ja.” And the officers laughed, and drank into the night.

Crocodile Tooth ever grieved for Thrice Woven Dagger. He grew old and soft, and never slept well. Years later, Thrice Woven Dagger’s son, who had been brought before Crocodile Tooth as a captive and an orphan, raised an army and defeated the bandit army of Crocodile Tooth, and with a dagger sliced open the belly of Crocodile Tooth, who died with great ordeal. And the boy took the name Black Dagger, and married Orchid Fire who was the daughter of Crocodile Tooth and Rose Fire. And she loved him with great passion, and he loved her, though he was still a violent youth, and beat her. That was the way of the world then and the way of it now. And the People of the Misty Forest continued to war against the People of the Fire Moss by the River. Fear crept in most places, and depravities were done, in that land as it ever was, between the river in the west that went down to the sea, and the Apotropaic Mountains in the east that ranged all on one side of the world. But it was also true that Black Dagger loved Orchid Fire.

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