My Dark Star
By Stacy Galore
Chapter One: The Winged Serpent
A village in the jungles of Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula, five generations ago.
Ixchel sat in a cave on the stony bank of an underground river. Her daughter was squatting in the crystal clear waters of the shallow cenote, illuminated by the full moon shining through a hole in the roof of the cave. The laboring woman held her breath and bore down with all her might, making low grunting noises punctuated with painful screams. Ixchel opened her cloak, ornately decorated with brightly colored feathers, revealing a matching pouch, strung around her neck. From inside the pouch she retrieved a dried, hollowed-out gourd. She poured the contents of the gourd into the water. The river began to smoke, emanating a sweet smell of flowers and honey. A smooth twig held Ixchel's long, silver hair in a mound atop her head. She removed the twig, letting her hair fall over her leathery, brown face. With long, slender fingers, she grasped the twig and waved it around her daughter, whispering incantations in an ancient tongue. The laboring woman screamed in a panic as the water around her turned blood red.
"Can you feel the baby's head coming, Xiomara?" Ixchel asked with a cold, anxious voice.
She reached down into the water, then shook her head. She spoke in broken sentences between the momentary lapses of pain. "Something's . . . not right . . . hurts . . . too much."
"I have tried every potion, and every spell. Still your baby refuses to come into this world," Ixchel said in a quiet voice with a hint of disappointment.
"I just . . . can't go on . . . call for help," Xiomara pleaded as the pain began to rise with another contraction.
Ixchel's eyes widened in anger as she stood up. "I am the most powerful healer and sorceress in all the villages of the Yucatan. If I can not deliver your child, no one can."
"I'm going to die! Your grandchild will die!" Xiomara screamed as the pain reached its peak.
Ixchel said coldly, "You and your brothers have bore me many grandchildren, who will continue the Quetzal family legacy. There is no need for any more."
At the end of the contraction, Xiomara said weakly, "I'm calling for help."
Xiomara pulled her own wand from her hair, and shouted an incantation. A silver mist emanated from the wand and formed a shimmering, winged serpent, which rose up and through the cenote cave opening. Within minutes, a loud crack echoed in the cave, and a hunched old woman appeared, holding a coiled wooden staff. Her eyes were cloudy with cataracts. She reached one hand out to feel around in the dimly lit cave as she spoke with a frail voice.
"Who summons me at such an hour?"
"Xiomara. I need your help. Please, Uxmal."
"I sense that you are in pain, and that you are very tired, but I am a seer, not a healer. I can not help you."
Ixchel bowed to her elder and apologized, "Sister, I beg you to forgive my youngest girl for disturbing you."
Xiomara reached out and grabbed Uxmal's wrinkled hand, almost pulling the old woman into the water. She steadied herself with the staff and squat down at the water's edge, still holding Xiomara's hand. Ixchel pointed her wand at her daughter offensively.
"Uxmal, what is our fate?" Xiomara asked.
The old woman tightened her grip around Xiomara's hand and peered into the large crystal atop her staff, which began to glow.
She spoke as if reading words in the crystal, "The seventh child of the seventh child of Quetzal will not live to see the birth of her last. This child will not posses any of the power of her ancestors. The line of great sorcerers born in the temple of the winged serpent will be broken. . . That is all." With that, she disapparated, and was gone.
Xiomara screamed in both pain and in anger. The seer had reiterated what she already felt in her heart – she wouldn't live to see this child. She did not fully understand Uxmal's vague prophecy, but it was apparent that Ixchel interpreted it easily.
"I will not let you taint the blood of our ancestors with that abomination you carry in your womb! A filthy squib! Get out of the sacred river!" Shouted Ixchel, indignantly.
With a flick of her wand, she levitated her daughter out of the river, through the cave roof opening and lay her on the forest floor above. Ixchel flew out of the hole to join Xiomara.
Xiomara's face was wet with tears and sweat. She was panting and clutching her ripe belly. "Mother, I don't want to die."
"As it has been foretold, so shall it be" Ixchel said, in a calm, distant voice. With little emotion, she waved her wand with a slashing motion.
A large gash appeared across Xiomara's belly and she began to bleed profusely. Her shrieks blasted through the night, silencing the jungle. All the insects, frogs, and birds stopped their evening songs.
With what little strength she had left, the pregnant woman lifted her wand and sent out her winged serpent patronus to summon her husband. Soon, Coatl appeared, dressed in a feathered loincloth and snake-like silver neckpiece. Coatl was shocked to find his wife unconscious on the ground, bleeding. He heaved her up with his muscular arms and carried her through the moonlit, eerily silent forest.
When Xiomara came to, she was home, lying on the floor. Her husband and five young sons encircled her, keeping vigil over the exhausted woman. She reached for Coatl with shaking arms. He knelt beside her and pressed his cheek to hers.
"I have tried all the spells I know, but this wound won't heal. I have summoned your mother, but she has not come," whispered Coatl.
Weakly, Xiomara whispered back, "It is because I bear these wounds by her hand. Coatl. You must save our child. Take it to the mission town by the coast. There is a Spanish convent there. Leave it with the nuns and never turn back. Never speak of this child. Tell the others that the baby is dead."
"Do you have strength left to push?" asked Coatl as he held his wife's limp hand.
"No. You know what you must do." Xiomara removed a silver bracelet from her wrist, handed it to her husband and said, "If the child is a girl, this is rightfully hers."
Coatl sent his weeping, frightened children out of the room. He closed his eyes, rubbed his hands together , and began to chant. He had performed this many times before to remove still-beating hearts from enemies and sacrificial slaves. Coatl knew that a cut this deep from Ixchel's wand would never heal, never stop bleeding, and surely be Xiomara's demise. There was no chance for his wife's survival. Still he was apprehensive about what he was about to do. He wanted this child alive. Coatl's hands were now emanating a red glow. He slipped them through the gash in Xiomara's belly as effortlessly as a sharp knife. His wife's screams of pain burned themselves upon his soul. From Xiomara's lifeless body, he pulled out his daughter, unscathed and gulping her first breath of air.
13 years later . . .
Xiomara Lorca sat under a shady palm tree on the beach, wearing her school jumper, reading a medical text that was far too advanced for her grade-school knowledge. She was totally engrossed in a chapter on the cardiovascular system. A strong gust of wind blew the pages of the book and she looked up indignantly, as if to reprimand the weather for making her lose her place. As she was about to bury her nose back into the text, a flash of shimmering green and silver caught her eye in the distance. Was it a bird? She squinted her eyes to focus on the strange thing moving towards her along the beach. Xiomara decided it was a fisherman and turned back to the book. She was marveling at a diagram of a cross sectioned cow's heart.
"You look just like your mother," said a deep voice with a thick accent she had never heard before.
Xiomara gasped and threw her book into the air. There stood a dark, grave, hulk of a man wearing a skirt made of bird feathers and what appeared to be a snake made of solid silver around his neck. He looked like one of the jungle people the nuns were trying to convert.
"Do not be afraid, Xiomara. I am your father," he said as if coaxing a frightened kitten out of its hiding spot.
But my parents are dead, she thought to herself. The girl fumbled for her book nervously, dropping it again in the process. The man darted forward to grasp the book. Xiomara stumbled backwards and fell in the sand. The stranger sat down at a safe distance in front of her and handed back the book. Xiomara cautiously extended her hand toward him to retrieve the book. Something shiny around her wrist caught the sun and the man's attention.
"That bracelet ," he pointed and seemed to crack a slight smile. Xiomara snapped her hand back without taking the book. "I gave you that bracelet after your mother died . . . when I left you with the nuns."
Romantic ideas began to flood her mind, suspending her disbelief. She wanted so much to believe she had parents – real parents – even if they were strange jungle heathens. My mother, she sighed to herself, wondering what she was like, and forming an image in her head to compliment the uniquely adorned man before her. Xiomara looked at the silver bangle as if seeing it for the first time. The pattern hewn on the metal looked like that of the man's necklace, like reptilian scales. She knew what the stranger was saying was true. For her whole life, she held on to this bracelet, the only connection with the family she never knew.
"My child, it is time to go home," he said with a gentle voice and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Your grandmother, at long last, has died," he declared with a sigh of relief.
"My grandmother?" she said with increasing curiosity. What was she like? Was she strict like sister Maria Antonia? Or was she gentle and nurturing like sister Maria Theresa?
He looked up at the sky, as if a huge burden had been lifted off his shoulders and smiled. "Yes, your evil grandmother is dead. It is now safe to take you home to your brothers."
Brothers! She thought. I have brothers! How many? Are they older than me? Younger than me? But the excitement was suddenly extinguished with a sobering thought.
"Why did you give me up?" she asked suspiciously, pulling away from him.
"Come." He reached out his hand for Xiomara to take. "I will tell you everything on the way home."