“Will you bring me your gold this morning?”
None of the villagers stepped forward. They instead kept their gazes upon their boots. None of them possessed any gold. They learned quickly that pleading with the bandit leader did them far more harm than good. They could not reason with the leader who was convinced that a dry village filled with so much blossoming color was no wealthier than the dust.
The bandit leader shook his head. “How can you claim to be so poor? Do you take us to be fools? The flowers grow too lovely in your valley for you all to just stare at your feet.”
The bandit leader nodded at his men before sipping from a glass of water. He would sip just long enough from that water to wash the dust from his lips, plenty of time for a villager to step forward and tell him the location of the wealth that provided means for so much color in such a dry land. Yet for one morning more, none of the villagers stepped forward. Still, they stared at their boots. The bandits chuckled, and their leader nodded once more before his men dragged a random villager from the crowd.
The bandit leader shook his head. “Will you all remain silent for another morning?”
The meek man dragged out of that crowd trembled as the bandit leader unholstered his gleaming gun, upon whose barrel no dust would settle. Without another word, the bandit leader claimed another villager with a bullet through the skull.
“Today’s cost for thinking me a fool.” In a flash of reflected sunlight, the bandit leader’s pistol returned to its holster. “Is it guile or ignorance that motivates all of you to sacrifice neighbors rather than show me to your gold? We saw your color so high up in the hills. How could we not resist its temptation after we’ve travelled so far in our saddles? Look at how thickly the green vines grow upon the walls of your homes. See how the roses blossom though they are planted in dust. Feel how the shade of your groves cools you. Count the flowers that adorn your mothers and daughters’ hair. And yet you attempt to tell me through your silence that you have no gold. Dust may cover your clothes, may cover your faces, but a poor people cannot cultivate such color. Yet still you remain silent as I kill another neighbor.”
None of the villagers answered. What good what it do them to explain that it had been Robert Lopez’s magic touch that had pulled so much color from the dust with so little water? What good would come to the villager who tried to explain that the bandits had already stolen their greatest treasure when they had shot, trampled and quartered Robert Lopez? How would a dusty villager convince a bandit leader that his bullet had destroyed such magic? The first man murdered by those riders descending from the hills had been the only man capable of handing the bandits anything that could be considered golden.
The bandit leader gulped the remainder of water before shattering the glass upon the ground. “Your wells turn shallow. My men and I cannot stay forever in this village of blossoms and dust. We should die of thirst if we wait too long. So to move you to reconsider your silence, we will again gather at dusk so that I can one more time ask one of you to bring me this village’s gold. I have many bullets more. My gun does not hunger.”
Feet shifted in the crowd. Villagers trembled. Children sobbed before their parents’ hands muffled their cries.
“Search every home, every adobe wall, every chicken coop, every inch of dust another time,” the bandit leader growled to his men. “We’ll leave no inch of this village untouched before we have to ride back into those hills. We’ll see flames eat all this color if we don’t see gold.”
The bandits shouted and snapped their whips to corral the villagers back into their homes, where those men and women could reconsider their silence while they waited for dusk.
The village possessed no gold. No one knew what kind of treasure might appease the appetites of such terrible bandits. No one knew where to search for anything that might glimmer in a bandit’s eye. Their only treasure were the blossoms that gave their village color, and the bandits had murdered the saint who gave those flowers such life.
But magic had not abandoned them. A power lingered in the shadows of the hills that was very capable of crushing black hearts.
* * * * *
“This is a terrible story.” Tears flowed down Sunflower’s eyes.
“I never promised you a happy story,” Henry answered.
“But you said our defenders would rise to protect the village.”
The grandfather nodded. “I didn’t say they would make us happy.”
“I don’t want to hear any more.”
Henry held his Sunflower more tightly than ever as she squirmed against him. “This is not a story that can be stopped after it has begun. You must hear it, and you must learn from it. You need to know what kind of creatures you are putting your faith into.”
Sunflower made no sound. She stopped squirming. The grandfather listened to the night, the hills again silent. He heard no creature stir, and he knew that such quiet promised that the armies were preparing to march. Those armies would waste no more shells and bullets from a distance. Those armies hoped to fight close, to see their enemy’s eyes as they wielded bayonet and sword.
The old man closed his eyes and prayed. The village was caught in the middle of so much hatred. The defenders would rise. He must tell his story for the sake of his granddaughter.
“Listen now, Sunflower, and hear of another who wielded a magic not so unlike the power which Robert Lopez’s touch once gifted to our village.”
* * * * *
Chapter 5 - Widows Dressed in Black...
The bandits’ bullets planted two more silent villagers into the dust before their leader suspended his interrogation and his murder for another day.
Shortly after a final shovels of dirt were tossed over fresh graves, a trio of the village’s matriarchs, women who had watched the bandits kill sons and husbands, shambled out of their homes dressed in the mourning black of widows. Each woman carried a large and empty bucket as they strode to their community’s outskirts.
“No one is allowed to leave the village,” a bandit grumbled as the women approached one of the gates leading into the hills.
Another bandit leveled his rifle at the oldest of the women. “You’ll find only graves beyond this gate.”
The women’s shoulders slumped as they dropped their empty baskets upon the ground. The women panted to catch a breath before one stepped forward to address the bandits.
“We only want to go into the hills to fetch fresh water.”
A second of the women in black nodded. “Did your leader not say that our wells turn dry?”
“We only want to bring you water so that you’re not so thirsty in the morning,” whispered the oldest matriarch.
The guards did not lower their guns while they considered the purpose claimed by that trio dressed in black. The dusty valley turned cold in the night. Though the sentries each possessed ample whiskey with which to combat that cold, such liquid warmth would only increase their thirst come the morning.
A silent judgement passed among the sentries before one of the bandits smiled so that his companion lowered his rifle.
“I recognize you,” and he pointed his pistol at the shortest woman. “I’ve noticed the granddaughters who tremble next to you each morning when you line up in the street. You may pass to collect your water, but I promise to punish those granddaughters if you’re not all back by morning to hear our leader ask you all again to bring us your gold.”
The women said nothing as they lifted their empty buckets off the dust and shambled as quickly as their trembling legs allowed beyond the gate. Their hearts raced as they heard the guards chuckling at their backs. They were women born and raised upon dust. They were terrified for their grand-daughters. They were terrified of the bandits.
And those fears made them forget the older terror those widows had felt towards the white witch who rumor spoke resided in the hills.
Robert Lopez’s uncanny touch that summoned color out of dust caught the eye of many a possible paramour. Fa
thers and mothers recognized in Robert Lopez a wealth in the young man’s fertile touch which none of the other young men of the village could match. Many a young woman desired to plant herself within Robert Lopez’s strong arms, wished to feel the magic surge through their skin, to feel the power that Robert Lopez so casually wielded in the growing of his dusty seeds.
Yet Robert Lopez never returned an affection towards the village’s young women. He paid no attention at all to the flirtations the village’s daughters tossed to him as they passed Robert in the dusty street. He never betrayed any want to plant a seed anywhere else but in the dry dust.
So seasons passed when Robert Lopez’s disinterest gave birth to rumor. Many a frustrated young woman sneered that Robert’s desire leaned unnaturally towards his own sex. Kinder whispers sighed that Robert’s strange touch with flowers exhausted any passion that may have otherwise been reserved for any maiden, that it was Robert’s very magic that left him unfeeling, or infertile, for love and for family.
But after a few seasons more, a darker rumor emerged to explain Robert’s disinterest. The village’s old dames claimed to see Robert Lopez walking into the hills in the middle of the dark night. Old shepherds recounted watching Robert take the roughest trails deeper into those hills. They told how Robert navigated twists and turns that superstition had for generations warned the rest of the village not to tread.
The old dames shook their heads as they listened to the shepherds affirm what they suspected. They had watched smoke rising from those hills, billowing into twisted omens old dames feared. They wondered if there might have been a link between Robert Lopez’s magical touch and that smoke that rose from the hills.
Eventually, the village’s young women no longer smiled when Robert Lopez passed them in the street. Eventually, it came to be rumored that Robert Lopez had made a deal with a devil cloaked in a woman’s figure in exchange for that power that gave the village such color, and none of the village daughters wished to attract the envy of such a dark lover.
Thus that trio of matriarchs dressed in black shuffled into the hills with the laughter of bandits mocking their backs. They bore the pain of their stiff knees and crooked backs to follow a foul rumor. Their village had nothing else.
Slowly, they climbed the most perilous paths until they looked upon the dark cave cut into the side of the hill. They gasped, and held their breath. For they were taken by surprise to find that Robert Lopez’s paramour waited outside of that cave for them.
* * * * *
“Old man! Have you lost your mind?”
Henry winced as his wife smacked his wrinkled forehead with their home’s dust broom. He grunted and bore the blunt of several strikes more while the woman took her frustration and her fear out upon him. A broom was not a great weapon, would not leave much any kind of a bruise. The dust of the striking broom merely teared his eyes.
“That’s enough,” and with a careful hand, Henry disarmed his wife.
The woman’s eyes smoldered. “You’ve no right to tell Sunflower such a terrible story. She’s already terrified enough! And you would tell her about that witch! You’ve lost your sense in your years!” The grandmother’s shoulders suddenly slumped, “but you’re going to tell her that story anyway.”
The grandfather nodded.
“Be brave, Sunflower,” and the grandmother retreated with her broom back into the home.
The grandfather continued his telling while his granddaughter clutched him. He feared it would not be long until he heard the cadence of boots marching down from the dusty hills.
* * * * *
Chapter 6 - The White Witch...
The three women dressed in black trembled before the sight of the witch who greeted them in the hills. None of those women had ever looked upon a thing so pale, a creature so white. Even the dust that covered everything else in that land balked at touching her skin. The witch was an albino nearly devoid of color, a thing the women dressed in black assumed would burn beneath the sun. The witch regarded the women with a pair of white eyes tinged with drops of pink, the only hint of color found anywhere on the witch’s flesh, color enough upon a body so white to glow in front of the cave’s shadow.
Tangles of white hair knotted beyond the witch’s narrow shoulders, drawing attention upon the bend in the spine that forced the witch into a low, forward stoop. Atrophy appeared to have claimed her arms and legs, and the strange movement of her limbs led the women in black to shudder for thoughts of spiders. The witch made a wet, coughing sound as she raised a swollen, white hand towards her visitors, extending a long, crooked finger to draw the village women closer.
“I know they have murdered my Robert,” the witch sighed. “I see from these hills that Robert plants no more flowers for me. I know the men who have stolen my color, and I will give the three of you the means to deliver my revenge.”
The village matrons stole furtive glances at one another. They were not in the habit of trusting a witch’s power. They worried about the stain assisting such an albino woman would leave upon their souls. The witch waited while the women dressed in black hesitated to even nod, her pink eyes glowing upon those villagers who had climbed the steep, narrow paths into the hills.
The white witch snorted. “Tell yourself that you must accept my help in order to protect your grandchildren. Use any excuse to convince your heart to bring my magic down from these hills. But don’t fool yourselves into thinking you’ll not be my tools of revenge.”
The witch pointed towards a large clay pot bubbling upon a fire. Dark plumes of smoke billowed from its contents, dark clouds the village women had witnessed rising in the hills many times at dawn. The witch didn’t need to tell those three women in black what they needed to do. The village women turned off their thoughts and let the instinct of their feet guide them to that bubbling pot. The village women did not question their hands as they filled their buckets with the pot’s contents. The village women had believed that morning that they had lifted those empty buckets from the dust to convince the bandits at the gate that they only wished to bring the village fresh water. But as their shoulders groaned to accept the weight of the cauldron’s contents, the women feared the witch had instructed them in their dreams to lift those buckets into the hills.
“It’s not what you think.” The white witch chuckled. “It’s not such a simple poison. I need to deliver a punishment beyond death for my revenge. They took more than flowers from me when they murdered my Robert. Be still and wait while I trace the language of my powers upon the dust.”
The white witch stooped and pulled a scorched branch from the fire’s embers. With that simple tool, the witch traced shapes and lines, symbols and runes upon the dust. The witch’s tracings grew more intricate with each movement of her wrist, with each twitch of a her fingers. Strange shapes writhed in the dust as the village women stared. The witch traced a final symbol, arced a last line before stepping away from the dust canvas of her work. The witch clapped her hands, and the vibrating lines puffed small clouds of dust into the air before burrowing, like snakes, into the ground.
“It’s written,” the witch snarled. “Return to your village with those buckets. Assemble again in the morning as the bandits demand. Look down upon the dirt, and when you see the dust shake, when you feel the vibration in your toes, then spill those foul waters at your feet. I will have revenge, and I promise those bandits will suffer for harming your families.”
The village women turned and took a breath as the faced the steep, narrow path down from the hills. The weight of those baskets already taxed their arms and shoulders.
The white witch whistled and stopped the village women from taking their first steps back towards their homes. “Mind you all one thing,” and the witch’s voice hissed on the wind. “Be sure that not one drop from those buckets fall onto the ground until you stand before the bandits and feel the ground shudder. Those buckets hold a potent brew, and we must be careful that only those bandits taste its consequence.” br />
The witch’s warning further terrified the village women, and their progress back down the hills was very slow. Dawn threatened to rise before they reached their village, and they feared what might befall their daughters should they fail to return before the bandit leader summoned the villagers into the street. Yet the women returned just as the first bandit stirred in his sleep, and the three women dressed in mourning black shuffled into that crowd waiting in the street.
* * * * *
“Are you still listening, Sunflower?”
The granddaughter sobbed. “I want to go inside. I want to hide beneath my bed.”
Henry smiled weakly, sadly, in the dark. “Do you forget who we need to fear? Do you so fear the white witch that you would think armies would save you? You will find no mercy from them. You must hear a little more to understand who will rise to protect us from those cannons and rifles.”
The grandfather pulled a rock from out of his pocket and placed it upon his tongue so that its irritation might fool his mouth into forgetting its thirst. It was better to be thirsty. It was no time to stroll into the street to draw water from a well. It was better to let his thirst taste whatever solace a rock offered. The old man took another breath, felt his dry lips crack, and continued as the beat of war stepped closer to his home.