It was useless. The dry grass roof caught in an instant, and the old cypress log timbers and wickerwork walls were well seasoned. By the time the Sun Man could crawl more than a few paces, the entire structure was ablaze. Heat beat on the Sun Man’s face. It was so intense that he had to turn and crawl back the way he had come. The strings holding together his whelk-shell apron had broken, and he trailed carved shells behind him as he crawled.
Still the Earth shook, still her horrid roar rumbled in his ears and in the very marrow of his bones. It was beyond him. There was nothing he could do in this war of the Earth against the children of the Sun, nothing except finally to remember his chief role, that of intermediary between the people and the divine forces that controlled their world.
He crawled again to the edge of the mound, threw himself flat, and began to pray.
“Brother Sun, rescue us!” he cried. “Earth Woman, please do not punish your children! Cease the war between you!” And then he lost all sense and could only babble.
“My wife!” he said. “My children! Save them! Don’t let them die! Save my babies!” At his words, to his own great astonishment, the rumbling ceased. The Earth’s violence faded, but the Sun Man could still feel smaller tremors shivering through the ground beneath him. The Earth had ceased her attacks, and all at his divine command. He blinked in awe at his own power as he looked at the scene below. Thousands of buildings in his city had fallen, almost every one. Many, fallen onto breakfast fires, were now alight, columns of gray smoke rising in the still air. Most of the long wooden stockade that protected the central part of town had fallen. The fountains of water continued to gush from the ground, each now rising from a cone of white sand that had built up around its base. Some of the fountains were luckily placed so as to put out fires, but most just added to the confusion and terror of the people and animals below.
His poor people, he thought. Most that he could see were prone and helpless as himself. A few were on their feet, but they staggered helplessly, as if possessed by a fit. Howling dogs spun in circles or barked and snapped at everyone nearby. Hundreds of children were wailing. Many adults were screaming as well, injured or trapped in fallen houses.
The sky was very strange. A few minutes ago it had been blue and cloudless, but now low clouds were forming, black and threatening. He could see the clouds growing, expanding in the air like a black stain.
“Thank you, Earth Woman!” he said. “Thank you for sparing us!” He peered across the plaza—now torn in half by a rent twenty feet across—and tried to distinguish the few people he could see wandering around the Sun Mound. Had the Great Priestess survived? Eyes of Spring, his sister? His many children?
Willow Girl?
The Sun Man tried to stand, but a horrid vertigo seized him, and he fell again. Why was the world so dark? he wondered.
“Praise to the Earth!” he continued automatically. “Praise to Brother Sun!” He cast a look to the east, to where Brother Sun was rising above the riverbank, and he stared. Grandfather River, he realized dumbly, was gone. Gone. Gone completely. Between the fields on the west side of the river, and the great thicket of oak and cottonwood on the far side—now mostly fallen, he saw—there was nothing but the muddy brown bed of the river, and here and there a long silver pond, all that was left behind when the river left its bed.
Grandfather River fled, the Sun Man realized. Horrified by the war between Sun and Earth, the river had turned its face from the world.
A moving cloud crossed the empty riverbed and poured itself across the Sun Man’s vision, as if the river had inverted itself into the sky and was now in flood. Passenger pigeons, tens of thousands of them, risen in alarm from the wrecked forests on the far bank, headed west in search of a safe place to land.
“Praise to the Earth!” the Sun Man continued to chant, and turned again to the wrecked city below. He should try to stand again, he thought, and show himself to the people. Demonstrate to them that their divine ruler was unharmed, and ready to face the fearful emergency.
And then an actinic flash lit the dark sky, turning the world into light and shadow, and to the Sun Man’s utter horror he saw the lightning strike his ruined house on the Sun Mound. The grass roof exploded, flinging burning thatch in all directions. At once the entire structure was alight. “My children,” he moaned. He had only a few seconds to absorb this dreadful sight before another firebolt lanced down, striking the burning temple behind him. The Sun Man clapped hands to his ears at the shattering sound, and cowered as flaming debris fell around him.
The Divine Sun, his brother, was fighting back, flinging his lightning bolts at the Earth. But his own people were caught in the middle.
“Spare us!” the Sun Man whimpered. “Turn your dreadful lightning away!” His answer was another flash, another boom. He looked across the plaza to see people spilling down the slopes of the Sun Mound, fleeing from the dreadful thunder. “Don’t run!” the Sun Man commanded.
“Rescue my family!”
But they could not hear him. Another bolt smashed into a field not far away. The cloud of passenger pigeons overhead dispersed, each bird frantic to escape the blasts. Screams and wails were rising from the city.
“Save us,” the Sun Man moaned. “Spare us your anger. Save my family.” But the shattering bolts continued to fall, one after another. The Sun Man felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and tried to burrow into the turf of the Temple Mound, clutching the soil with his fingers. The lightning bolt crashed to earth mere yards away. The Sun Man’s head rang with the sound. The flash blazed through his closed eyelids. He could smell his own hair burning. Deafened, stunned by the blast and by the catastrophe that overwhelmed him, the Sun Man lay on the scorched grass, unable even to beg the gods for aid. He could hear the shiver and boom of lightning around him, but he kept his face pressed to the mound, cringing from the sound of each blast.
In time the blasts grew less. The Sun Man blinked, opened his eyes. The world was still dark, and low clouds still threatened overhead. Gray smoke rose into the heavens from dozens of fires. Tens of thousands of frantic birds circled madly in the air.
“My family,” the Sun Man whimpered. He propped himself up on an elbow and gazed across the wrecked plaza to the Sun Mound.
The long house was still in flames. Nothing living could be seen on the mound, though a few sprawled, motionless figures testified to the deadly nature of the lightning blasts that had rained on the high platform. The city below was half-concealed by smoke from burning lodges. Only a few stunned human forms moved in the murk. If they were wailing or calling for help, the Sun Man’s deafened ears could not hear them. The tall fountains of water had subsided, though their white sand cones still covered the drenched corn fields.
The war between Sun and Earth seemed to have reached a truce.
The Sun Man rose to his knees. “Praise to the Sun Brother,” he murmured, and held out his hands, palm upward, in a prayer position. “Save your people.” His head whirled. He looked around, and his mouth dropped open.
Grandfather River was coming back! But he was not returning to the old riverbed; he was pouring across the fields to the south, heading straight for the City of the Sun. He was running backward, south to north! And he was angry, foamy white teeth snarling as he rolled steadily toward the city, a wall of brown, churning water ten feet high.
Terror snatched the Sun Man and pulled him to his feet. His head spun. Madly he pointed and shouted at the stunned people below.