From an Ixil, To a Gringo

Reading Time: 4 minutes

It begins. Edna, the forever child, rolls down the mountain. This year, like any other. Branches break. Dry leaves rustle. Loose rocks tumble. The mushrooming commotion hinges on the spectral dewdrops that have gathered over the valley of the living. A liquid sound, reminiscent of the humming of ancestral spirits, drizzles on the adobe houses at the foothill, drenches their roofs.

The village of Xexuxcap wakes, steps out of its homes, stares up diagonally, watches in awe. A cloud of dust zips downward along a nearby slope of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, backdropped in the brouhaha of monkeys and toucans, the hullabaloo of coyotes and raccoons, and the patient circling of squawking hawks. All of it growing louder by the minute as if rolling down alongside the mighty little girl named Edna.

“¿Qué diablos está pasando?” Theo asks.

Theo, the odd one out. And not just because he doesn’t speak the local tongue and uses a bridging language neither his own nor theirs, but for the confusion he expresses. This is his first time.

“Come,” the village elder tells him. “Let me lead you to answers.”

The village elder has a kind smile that fills his heart to the brim. That smile made Theo stay back in the village for the Hanal Pixán celebrations, even though his geology work was done about a week ago. It’s no small matter to be invited to partake in their Dia de los Muertos traditions. From an Ixil, to a gringo. Not easy at all. A bloodied past rears its ugly head, silently stands in between. Here, in the hinterlands of Guatemala, footprints of the civil war remain embedded. It’s hard to forgive, impossible to forget.

They turn away from the vociferous mountain. “That there is where we go.” The village elder points at a lone shack at the opposite end of the village. “But before that, we’ll stop at the temazcal. To ablute our souls is important. Let the steam lodge purify our inner hearts. Only then are we ready to unravel the past.”

Inside the temazcal, the hot steam whispers all around, as if the sweat of the living and the dead co-exist in its pregnant air, sharing incessant tales of hope and horror. Curiosity grows inside Theo’s heart.

“Juana has stopped ageing,” the village elder tells Theo as they step towards the distant shack—most probably about the woman who stays in there. “She ceased about five years ago. Said she couldn’t grow any older without dying. And if Juana dies, there’s no telling what Edna might do.”

“Edna?”

“Juana’s daughter.” The elder pivots and points at the mountain. “The forever child who rolls down the mountain every year at Hanal Pixán.”

Theo swallows. Shuffles through a bunch of questions. Prioritizes the ones he needs to ask first.

The village elder continues. “A fruit of love between an Ixil and a gringo in the times of war. Her father named her Edna. When the first whispers of killing our men and abducting our women and children arose in the towns, Edna’s father rushed in here from his barrack to take the two of them to the mountain—to hide them, keep them safe before the atrocities rained. Alas, Juana was too feverish at that time. She could not climb, kept slowing them down. So, she let go of the father and the child. Since then, ever after the dust settled, she’s waited for them to return. Waited in her scarred and broken body. Waited for over two decades. Until Edna began visiting her every year this day, her skin bathed in blood from rolling down the mountain.”

Theo’s head is heavy, but his feet are light. The rest of his body’s going numb.

The elder opens a door, ushers him in. Theo obeys.

Inside, there’s smoke and an eerie smell—almost too sweet. Theo crinkles his nose. The elder shakes his head in admonishment. “Don’t be disrespectful to the dead. It’s copal. The resin burns itself to form a bridge to the other world, so that we may meet and greet each other.”

An elderly woman looks at him. Stares. Then steps up, grabs his hand tightly between hers. “You’ve come. After all these years,” she says.

Juana’s dusky hands are cold. Theo pulls his away. Still, a chill shoots through his nerves.

“You resemble her man.” The village elder laughs, points at a hazy, monochromatic photo on the wall.

“Now, Edna will stay with us.” Juana smiles too. At Theo. “She’ll never let you go. You’ll see. It’s been a long wait. Happily ever after we live now.” She nods at the village elder who blinks back, softly.

This was preplanned!

Theo takes two steps back. Stumbles on something. Saves himself from the fall. Somehow. Saves himself?

Theo runs.

Outside, there’s silence. The demonic commotion along the slopes of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes is no more. Edna no longer rolls. Theo starts the car engine, presses the gas pedal. His car roars. More than it should. He releases the handbrake, and the tires roll down the mountain road. Deep through the forests of pine and oak.

Darkness descends. Pitch black.

Wasn’t it early morning only a few hours ago?

He turns on the headlights. Theo shuffles through his questions. Prioritizes the ones he needs to ask first. To himself? Or the girl in the passenger seat?

What girl?

The interior light turns on. He switched it on himself, right?

The little girl’s dress is mostly drenched in red. As is her fair skin, thanks to quite a few open gashes all over. Theo wants to look away from her, concentrate on the road, but she holds his attention with a frown. A little too sad. It melts his heart and grips his heart. All at once. “I stood at the very edge, Papa.” Edna’s voice wafts from afar, although she sits beside him, her lips unmoving, her eyes never letting him go. “I trusted you.”

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Abhishek Sengupta is imaginary. Mostly, people would want to believe he uses magical realism to write novels about world issues, even though he is stuck inside a window in Kolkata, India, but he knows none of it is true. He doesn’t exist. Only his imaginary writing does and has appeared in some periodicals and anthologies around the globe, won a few international prizes, including the Bristol Short Story Prize 2023, and been published alongside the likes of Neil Gaiman (who is a little less imaginary). If you’re gifted, however, you may imagine him on Twitter/X @AbhishekSWrites.