Thicket

Ixtic, floating in the water, looked at Etalcaxi not with the fear of the guilty or the rage of the accused, but with a weary annoyance. With a long, put-upon sigh—the sigh of a being dealing with a particularly hysterical and slow-witted child—she swam to the edge of the pool. She pulled herself out of the water in a single, fluid grace note, completely unconcerned with her nakedness or the sharp weapon pointed at her. The moonlight slicked her skin to silver as she stood before him, her hands on her hips, her expression one of exasperation.

"Honestly, the dramatics," she said, her voice dripping with a tone that was more insulting than any anger. "The noise. The shouting. One would think you had never seen a simple dispute settled before."

His mind, primed for a battle against a cannibal creature, struggled to process her mundane, almost domestic annoyance. "Dispute?" he growled, his voice still a low, shaking thing. "An entire caravan is gone, Ixtic! Vanished! If you did not eat them, then where are they? Where is Lord Cozoc and his men?"

She rolled her eyes. The gesture was so mundanely human that it was jarringly out of place. It was the gesture of a Itzotec market woman being told the price of chilies had gone up again. "Oh, for the love of pollen, you are obsessed with the eating," she huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Does everything in your noisy lands eventually end up in someone's stomach? It is so... unimaginative."

She was clearly irritated that she had to explain this simple, obvious matter. "Follow me," she commanded, turning her back on him and his spear. She walked up the passageway away from the cenote and into a clearing. She continued toward a solid, impenetrable wall of dense jungle that bordered the clearing.

She faced the wall of green, her back still to him. "Fine," she said, her voice sharp with impatience. "You are making a scene. You want to see your precious rivals? You can see them. They are not 'gone'. They are just... being improved."

She made a casual, dismissive wave of her hand toward the jungle wall.

With a deep, groaning sound of protesting wood and tearing earth, the jungle parted. Great, ancient trees bent aside as if bowing. Thick, thorny vines recoiled like startled serpents. Massive, gnarled roots pulled back into the soil with a low, grinding rumble. Where a solid wall of green had stood just moments before, a wide, dark archway now stood open, revealing a hidden clearing beyond.

The opening revealed a space bathed in the eerie, blue-green light of glowing fungi that grew in great, shelf-like clusters on the trees. And in the clearing were the missing Nictex warriors.

They were alive.

But they were planted in neat, orderly rows in the rich, dark soil, buried up to their waists as if they were grotesque, human saplings. Their arms, which should have been waving in panic or digging at the earth, were held outstretched, their fingers stiffening, contorting, and sprouting small, tender green leaves. More leaves sprouted from their hair, from their ears, from their nostrils. Their skin was taking on a pale, greenish, bark-like texture. Their mouths were open, locked in silent, unending screams of pure terror.

In the very center of this clearing, planted with a place of clear honor, was their leader, Lord Cozoc. He was buried up to his chest, his expensive jade ornaments looking absurd against his new, leafy skin. A particularly vigorous, vibrant green fern was sprouting from the very top of his very impressive feathered headdress, its fronds unfurling in a slow display.

Etalcaxi's spear lowered a few inches. His knuckles were still white, but the weapon now felt heavy, its purpose suddenly unclear. His brain, which had been fueling his righteous fury, now stuttered, faltered, and stalled. He was trying to process the sight before him, and his mind had no category for it. This was not the gruesome scene he had expected. This was not a cookpot full of human flesh. This was something else entirely. Something stranger, more methodical, and in a way, more terrifying.

Ixtic gestured to her handiwork with the exasperated air of somone explaining a necessary but unpleasant chore to a simple-minded visitor. "They were chopping," she said, her voice sharp with the memory of the offense. "With their noisy, ugly stone toys." She pointed a slender, accusing finger back in the general direction of the Nictex campsite. An image flashed in Etalcaxi's mind: a magnificent jacaranda tree, its beautiful, smooth bark marred by several fresh, ugly axe-marks.

"They tried to chop down my favorite jacaranda," she said, her voice filled with a genuine, heartfelt outrage. "For firewood. Can you believe the disrespect? The sheer wastefulness? It has been growing since before your city was a pile of rocks. It gives the best shade."

She crossed her arms and looked at the planted Nictexs with a critical, appraising eye, as if judging the quality of her work. "Eating them would have been a waste," she continued, her tone now one of pragmatic logic. "This way, they can be useful. They can grow, and be quiet, and have a peaceful life. They can give back to the soil that they so rudely disturbed." She tilted her head, a flicker of pride in her expression. "In a century or two, this will be a very nice, dense thicket. Good for nesting birds." She looked at the fern-headed Lord Cozoc. "He has surprisingly good foliage, I must admit."

Etalcaxi's mind, stretched thin by fear, confusion, and righteous, murderous fury, tried to hold all these new facts at once.

The axe-marked jacaranda tree.

The silently screaming, leafy face of Lord Cozoc.

Ixtic, talking about her future "thicket" with the pride of a maize grower.

The entire, elaborate construction of his cannibal theory, which had made such perfect, terrifying sense to him, now collapsed in a cloud of soul-shattering absurdity.

His mind, stretched beyond its limit, finally snapped.

A strange, choked sound escaped his lips. It was half a gasp of horror, half a cough of suppressed, hysterical laughter.