Gaia

Chapter One What Remains of Us

The next morning when the sun rises from the east, the village is quiet and the women who chanted the night before are waking up from sleeping on the ground. A beautiful young woman in her 20s named Shay is covered in filth, pieces of straw and dirt are throughout her long brown wavy hair, streaks of dirt and blood streak her beautiful pale skin. She looks down at her clothes and realizes she is covered in blood, but it's not hers. She screams and has forgotten that she had been hiding just beyond the tree line of the forest to watch the sacred ceremony that she was not allowed to be part of. Shay starts looking for the women of the village, running now as fast as she can down the narrow dirt path that leads into the village. As she nears the entrance to the village, she sees them removing their blindfolds and realizes they are covered in blood as well.

Shay glances over to the village and is horrified when she sees the heads of all the men of the village have been put on stakes, their mouths hang open with the last scream that escaped their lips before their horrible deaths. Their eyes have been burned completely out so that just the black hollow empty sockets remain. All the children of the village stand on the edge of the village's farthest corner, their dressing gowns that were once a beautiful white are now soaked with the blood of the men of the village. Shay notices that a tall lady dressed all in black, with long black hair and eyes that are filled with rage stands between her and the children of the village. Shay notices that the lady in black is looking right into Shays' golden brown eyes in a trance-like state. Shay feels a shiver go down her spine, but continues to look at the mysterious stranger directly, not breaking eye contact. Without warning, the mysterious lady claps her hands up above her head and a flash of chain lightning appears in the sky right above their heads, followed by a deafening clap of thunder. Shay places her hands over her ears and closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, she sees the mysterious lady disappear and all the children behind her collapse onto the ground. Shay and the rest of the women from the village rush over to the children, but it's too late, the children have all perished.

Shay notices one of the elders sitting in the dirt not far from where the mysterious lady was standing and hurries over to her to see if she needs help getting up. Shay extends her hand but the elder, known as Maya, waves her away. She drives her clenched fists into the earth and pushes herself up onto her feet and says “I have lived here all my life and everything is gone, I was born here and I will die here". Maya walks slowly, showing her age as she steps towards one of the homes; she pulls open the door and steps in, and lets the door slam closed behind her. Maya reappears from her home with a bottle filled with a dark purple liquid in her hands and says as she walks to a head of an elderly man and looks back at Shay and says “I have lived a full life, it is time for me to join my family on the other side”.

Maya turns back to the elderly man's head, caresses his cheek, and then sits down resting her back and head against the spike in the ground, opens the bottle, and drinks a swig of the purple swirling potion. Within minutes, her body begins to twitch and her eyes roll back in her head and she falls onto the ground, expelling the last breath of air from her lungs. Shay sadly walks over to Maya's body and picks up the bottle and walks over to a young male's head with short blonde hair and cries out, “I tried to protect you, but I failed, I promise I will spend the rest of eternity by your side”. She opens the bottle and drinks a swallow of the purple swirling potion and then passes it onto another woman next to her. The women of the village are cradling their children in their arms, screaming and crying in pain from the loss of their children and their husbands and sons, as they lean against the spikes in the ground, they each take a drink of the potion and die like Maya before them, each of their bodies falling to the ground in succession.

Shay awoke to complete silence surrounding her as her body lay lifeless on the ground; the light from above was blinding and seeped through her eyelids. The light was warming her skin and she felt different, she opened her eyes slowly to welcome Heaven and wasn’t prepared for the sight that fell upon her. Shay looked in horror at the bodies of all the women of the village lying dead all around her. The dried blood of their loved ones had stained their once beautiful white dresses a maroon red, their mouths were gaping open and their eyes were wide as they had struggled for their last breath. She knelt down on the ground and picked up the bottle of potion she had consumed along with the rest of the women of the village. Inspecting it closely and tipping it upside down, yes it was empty, she knew she had drunk it, she had felt the air leave her lungs as the others and then everything went black. Why was she still alive? she thought. Sorrow filled her heart and the reality that she was the only one left in the village alive hit her all at once. She stood there clutching the bottle in shock and panic quickly set in, she couldn’t stay here, she couldn’t bear the thought of living without them, she had to leave the village and never return. Tears streamed down her face. She walked to her house and started packing everything she would need for her journey, she picked up a jar filled with hemp oil, and fear struck her heart, she remembered preparing the jar of oil the night before for their ritual, with Maya. She thought to herself, this was her fault, she had introduced them to the idea of performing the ritual to conjure Gaia, Mother Earth, she didn’t know it would end in death. She tightened the lid and slid it into a basket of food and drink she had been packing and then reached up and grabbed the big heavy book her mother and father had kept all their rituals in. Her hand caressed the cover as she remembered how they used to read her this book every night before bed. She used to love the spells, rituals, enchantments, and folklore stories it carried, they always fascinated her, and she would lie there with her eyes closed hanging on every word. This was the only possession she had that meant anything to her; she wrapped it in a soft tan cloth and slid it into her bag on her bed.

She turned around to the window and as she gazed out into the village she was overcome with the image she saw after they had performed the ritual. Shaking, she backed into a chair and sat down. All of a sudden she was spinning, the room was gone and she was watching the men of the village talking about going out to stop the ritual. She tried to tell them to stay inside, that it wasn’t safe, but no one could hear her. They started going out the door and even though she stood in the doorway, she couldn’t stop them! Panic washed over her and she tried to scream but nothing came out. She watched as they approached the women dancing and pounding the earth with rage, calling Mother Earth, as soon as the first man’s foot stepped onto the soil where the women were, the ground shook, the sky turned black and the clouds parted. The men looked up at the sky and then at each other in dismay. Shay could see the women continuing their ritual, she was yelling for them to stop, but no one could hear or see her. A flash of blinding light lit up the ground and the men covered their eyes. No one but Shay could see the woman materializing out of nothing. The woman’s eyes were black and filled with rage; she raised her hands in the air and chanted something sounding ancient and foreign.

Shay’s hands were trembling as she was forced to watch the men in the village cower in fear in the presence of this woman. Green vines came to life and crawled through the earth like snakes; they wrapped around the feet of the village men and wound tighter and tighter. Shay’s brother, Cayden was the leader of the men, he was the bravest and strongest in the village and was not going down without a fight. He grabbed his hunting knife from his waist and started to cut the vines away, but as fast as he cut them, more appeared in their place. This entertained Gaia and she watched as Cayden struggled with the vines and commanded the men to cut the vines and free themselves. She smiled and reached out into thin air with both hands as though she was reaching for something and then, with a twist of her hands, she pulled them back into her torso. The vines jerked and twisted and then yanked the men to their knees. Gaia stepped forward to Cayden who had dropped his knife and was trying to reach it; she stepped on the knife and then picked it up and threw it into the ground behind her. When it struck the ground the wind picked up and Gaia raised her hands palm down and moved her fingers in and out. As she did this, the blade of the hunting knife arose out of the ground behind Cayden.

As Gaia looked at each man in the village, the blades multiplied in number, and soon the ground behind every man was covered with sharp steel hunting knives. Cayden’s blue eyes grew big with terror as he realized for the first time in his life, he wasn’t going to escape. Shay shook with terror, she cried and screamed and begged Gaia to stop, but it was useless, it was as though she was watching a movie playing. Gaia leaned forward and blew into her palm, the wind picked up and blew the men backwards into the knives, and their blood seeped out and covered the ground. Gaia stepped over the bodies and ripped the heads free from the knives. Gaia walked over to them and then pointed down to the ground and extended her palms up in the air, wooden poles rose from the ground and stopped as she closed her hands sharply like a conductor. To Shay’s horror, the woman then stood right next to Shay as she watched the women of the village pounding the ground singing the ritual for Gaia, Mother Earth to come. Gaia looked over at Shay for a moment with a malicious grin and then pointed to the heads of Cayden and the rest of the village's brave men and raised her hands up into the air, as if by magic, their heads were suspended in the air and they rose and settled down on the wooden spiked poles. She walked back to the spot where she had appeared, looked at Shay for a second, and snapped her fingers and disappeared along with all the bodies of the men she had just slaughtered.