The Dragon Griaule

More women joined the group, swelling its ranks to four times its former size. Some carried garden implements, others pointed sticks and fist-sized rocks – a young girl in chartreuse satin pajamas brandished a pair of sewing shears. They seethed closer to Jefe, their voices a chorus of vituperation, yet did not attack, wary of their tormentor, though he looked to be done with flying. Positioned on all fours amidst a large puddle, his head hanging down, slathered all over in reddish muck, his hair caked with mud, blood oozing from splits and gashes, strings of ruby-colored drool depending from his lips – he might have been an animal of the village, a pariah dog gone rabid, exhausted by fever, his world narrowed to a hideous reflection in murky water. Snow had no pity for him, no disgust, no anger. If he felt anything it was the temper of a functionary compelled to discharge an unpleasant duty. He stepped forward and rested the edge of the blade on Jefe’s neck. The women fell silent and Jefe’s guttering breath could be heard. He sought to lift his head, perhaps to inquire of Snow, perhaps simply alerted by the blade, but either his head was too heavy or else he lacked the will to see, to know what this cold, sharp object was. Perhaps he knew and no longer cared. Summoning his strength, Snow swung the machete in a savage arc. The blade sliced deep, burying itself to the bone, yet Jefe’s reactions were minimal – he gave forth with a grunt and shuddered and listed a degree or two, but remained upright. Frustrated at his inability to finish the job, Snow yanked at the blade, but once again it was stuck. He planted a foot between Jefe’s shoulders, pushed down and wrenched the blade free, shoving him face-first into the puddle. A tide of blood sluiced from the wound.

As Snow prepared to strike again Jefe’s breath blew a bubble in the mud and, with a choking cough, he flipped onto his back, his entire frame coming off the ground and twisting in mid-air – it was such a physically adept movement that Snow feared Jefe’s strength had been miraculously restored, but then he understood that it had been a lizard-ly reflex, a final surge of vitality, for Jefe was clearly close to death. His limbs jerked and twitched, and a horrid slackness overlay his features and from his throat there issued a repetitive glutinous clicking, indicative of a disruption in some internal function and not an attempt at speech . . . though his eyes yet held a glint of the poisonous hatred that had infected the world for thousands of years.

The women descended upon him, first Itzel with a hoe, blood welling from the trench she dug in his chest, and then the rest, stabbing and cutting and pounding, exacting their vengeance for rape and murder and innumerable humiliations. They swarmed over the body, blocking it from view, and shoved one another aside in their eagerness to share in his destruction, announcing their fury and delight with orgasmic cries, until a puff of heat and rainbow-colored light (no more impressive to see than the flash powder of a second-rate magician) bloomed from the rags of meat and splintered bone, causing them to fall over backward, to scramble and crawl away yelping with fright, spattered by the same amalgam of mud and thick, dark blood as their ancient enemy, some bearing slashes and bruises received during the melee, inadvertently gotten at the hands of their sisters, and some nursing curious burns they seemed to obtain from some melting process, deriving from the paltry magic of Jefe’s death. Snow glanced up at the sky, fearful that rippling lights would manifest in the clouds like those seen above the village of Chajul thirteen years before, the beacon of the dragon’s rebirth – but none materialized. Jefe was dead. Utterly and irrevocably dead.