El Brujita (Superunknown)

Part One

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SATURDAY

March 6, 1999

Yulaan punched an oak tree until it snapped in half and crashed to the ground. Splinters flew and branches scattered all across the crusty yard.

"Thank you for that, el brujita!" shouted an older man from his front porch. He looked back to his roll of chewing tobacco and turned to Vicente. "You're paying me for that tree, right?"

Vicente gawked at the fallen thing, stretching from the border of the yard to nearly past the edge of the house.

"You told me been asking to have that tree cut down for decades."

"No, that tree. Your monkey girl punched down six of them!"

Vicente pulled at his beard, considering the several snapped oaks that lay in a procession upon his grandfather's front yard.

The polo-clad Chale Xaxalpa Sr. was a dark, wizened man hiding under a thick-rimmed hat, his face carrying a heavy white mustache. "What did you say she is?"

Running his hands over his face, Vicente said, "She calls herself a 'Saiyan.'"

Hearing this brought Senior to nod, spitting some tobacco to the ants. "Saiyan. I've heard that term recently. From when your cousin visited."

"She says she's from this other planet, 'collinder' or something like that."

"Kollidor!" shouted Yulaan, standing strong with balled fists.

"Yeah, that." He rubbed his nose and said, "You know, I don't think we're reacting to this like we should."

"Well, let me tell you what my mother used to say to me: El diablo necesita tres días."

Vicente furrowed his brow and said, "The Devil needs three days?"

"Three days is all it takes for anything to become normal."

Yulaan stood and sighed, turning herself and aiming her head towards the trees, roads, fields, and Senior's home. One thick lichen-dressed magnolia arrested her attention, and she stomped forward, throwing her momentum into an explosive right hook that shattered the tree.

[https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/358adaa8-4b0b-48dd-894e-f19e4aa9655d/deqh7lq-e51a719d-ff80-45e3-b97b-3df6d093110a.jpg/v1/fit/w_828,h_536,q_70,strp/punching_down_trees_by_yuli_ban_deqh7lq-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODI5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzU4YWRhYTgtNGIwYi00OGRkLTg5NGUtZjE5ZTRhYTk2NTVkXC9kZXFoN2xxLWU1MWE3MTlkLWZmODAtNDVlMy1iOTdiLTNkZjZkMDkzMTEwYS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.oEg7ONEuzeg8rX7npQTfP7zkTsrgO8MIc2VS8V7ZWjg]

"Jesus!"

"Qué chingados!"

Both men staggered back.

Yulaan turned and punched down another tree, this one a great green oak. And then another. And then another. The effortless destruction brought to mind tales of ancient demigods showing off to mortals.

She stopped. Her tail wrapped around her wooden cane, catching it before it could fall. What had caught her attention?

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"What is that?" She pointed her tail at Vicente's cup. "It smells like ginseng."

Once the Man in the Zoot Suit recognized she was pointing at his cup, he lifted it with such haste that a tongue of tea spilled over the brim. "This, fellow, is tea. Cheap, dollar store iced tea because my papa is a cheap fuck."

Senior snorted and said, "Can you do some of those, what is it— Kamehameha? Blast the little booger."

The cup of tea splashed and clattered on the floor. Vicente gasped and laughed as he threw himself out of his chair and waved his hands about. "No! Nonononononono. Not literally. It's— it's a joke. A joke is all." The hocks returned to his mind, so he added, "You were—" before pausing and catching the deepest breath he could take. "I'll make the ham hocks. Alright? Okay? Okay? Okay?" And he backed away, facing Yulaan as he did.

And Yulaan muttered, "Okay," as if a question mark floated above her head. She stood in the middle of the room, her tail lashing, her chubby arms folded. Neither man could tell her intentions without seeing her eyes.

"What, they don't understand jokes?" Senior sat back, blew out his cheeks, and tilted his head to hide the heart palpitations and pulsating vision.

And yet he took action. "Yulaan, I'll give you something too." She turned her head. What was an insignificant action for every creature he'd ever met now ignited a blank and frizzy brain shock. Its attention was on him. He was its focus.

He fiddled at a cigar in his pocket. "Uhhm. I have a stack of old language books. From when I first came to the United States of America. They range from basic elementary to higher level...linguistics. Might help you speak better."

It was the bangs that made this old man want to cry. How goofy. How absurd. How did she even see? Why was he feeling so terrified of someone who looked like a stone-age emo?

She nodded.

He shot up and rushed upstairs. When he came back down struggling under the weight of his books, a pacifyingly salty aroma filled the air. Yulaan stood next to Vicente, watching and listening to the pig ankles sizzle and bubble in grease. When one was crispy and browned, he stabbed it with prongs and tossed it across the room.

Yulaan dropped her cane and jumped, mouth agape so she could snatch the hock in midair. When she landed, she tore viciously at the meat, shaking her head and then grabbing the bone ends to pull off all the meat and fat with one savage motion.

"She loves these. She loves gnawing on the bones."

"Well come here, el brujita. Let me teach you inglés y español."

Yulaan wrapped her tail around the topmost book and pulled the tome to her hands. Then she flipped through the book, its pages fluttering by in a blurry flurry. Finally she tossed the book back at Senior and took the second one, this time without ever touching it physically. Again the pages flew and the back cover slapped the mass of aged pages. She tore one loose page free and ate it to complement the salty smoked hock.

"You're supposed to read them, you chimp."

Vicente kept his eyes on both of them, letting the hock currently smoking burn its flesh. "I don't think you're..." He rolled the meat with his prongs. "You're not going to comment on that?"

Senior half-caught a third book the Yaban flipped through, its pages crumpling in his quick catching grip. "Tú bruja, don't bother! If you won't read." He snatched the fourth book from her as she finished.

Yulaan caught another hock with her teeth and ripped at it whilst hiding in a corner.

"How did her sword not stab you when you carried that bag?" Senior took his seat and peered into the duffle bag. "What even is this?"

"I think when she reduces her weight, she also reduces the cutting power of that sword."

"Wait a second. It's a scimitar made of bone!"

"Yeah." Vicente tossed two more sizzling and steaming hocks to Yulaan, who caught them with her hands. Once she finished the one she had, she finished the next two off as if eating grapes. "From what I could ascertain, it's from a femur. But the material isn't the same sort of collagen-based matrix as any known Earthling bone. Undoubtedly it's some elaborate war prize."

"Really..."

"Scariest thing is that I ran some blood from her pelt the day after I got her on that genetic scanner Mr. K gave me. Apparently..." The smile was soft and awkward on his face as he let his grandfather have a moment to take in, "She's wearing the skin of the same person whose bones made that sword."

Senior's eyes boggled. He clutched the books and shifted them to obscure his face.

Yulaan turned her head at him, curled the end of her tail in front of her face, and said, "One more tree."

She turned to the open backdoor and pointed at a pine tree that stood alone in a small field. Electricity broke and cracked around her arm as she lifted it to eye level, and her still-extended finger became the center of dancing strings of ethereal plasmic light. She exhaled and closed her hand.

The convulsing energy swirled. She pulled her hand down and said, "Hai!"

And with a grunt, she thrust her arm forward again, all fingers extended— the motion was so quick that neither man saw just what she shot, only the result.

The 25-meter pine tree shattered as if struck by lightning, spraying wood and pine needles all about the yard, the rooftop, and even the highway road that lay opposite the yard on the other side of the house.

Bits of the tree kept raining for a minute afterwards. Senior's yards soon fell dirty of pinecones, nests, and giblets of small critters who once considered the thing home.