“If you want to start learning chayus, begin with the morning ritual,” Ichu told Silluka. She’d shown a new side of herself in the week since the turtleman ploughed through their home. The village elders were in the throes of planning, with Elders Papaki and Sinchi leading the others on how to organize the migration. They’d been alive for the last one, though they’d been children.

Ichu’s feet went to Basic stance by instinct, as wide as his hips, legs slightly bent, tension on the outside of his legs to form a circle of strength from the ground, to pelvis, and back to ground. His arms rested lightly in front of him, shoulders relaxed and hands open but ready to move.

They were in town, at one of the buildings used for storage near the center. Elder Quilqi had pulled strings with the others to find them a living space, now the farm had been destroyed. There was no point in going back. She hadn’t followed up on her talk of the mythical mental chayus, and Ichu was content to let it go, teaching his sister real, practical chayus instead.

Silluka copied him, her right arm placed correctly, had it been made with its full length. He could nearly see where her forearm should have been. Her legs were already in a better stance than the last time he’d made her try the morning ritual with him.

He nodded to her knees. “More tension on the outside of your legs, less on the inside. Create a circle connected to the ground. Let the energy from the gods come up into you, and release back down to the earth.”

Silluka frowned, but didn’t complain. She pushed her knees out to each side a little more. Ichu gave an accepting nod. It wasn’t quite right, but it was better than she had managed before. Chayus had to be nearly perfect in their precision to summon the ampuka. A practitioner could spend their whole life honing a favored chayu, and still have ways to improve. Most bodycasters had a few favorites and stuck to those on a daily basis. Most knew a handful of others, but only the elders had records of all the chayus. He had managed to learn and remember more than fifty, during his life. It was a feat no other bodycaster in the village had replicated.

“The Wing Grows is the first move. Can you show me?”

Silluka crossed her left arm to her right shoulder, and her right elbow came nearly to her center. A good try.

Ichu held a hand to stop her movement, and adjusted her arms, pulling in just a little more so her shoulders dropped forward.

“Feel your shoulder blades open? Now the energy comes all the way from the ground into your arms.”

“Arm,” Silluka corrected.

“Arm,” Ichu conceded, “but you feel how both are supposed to move, don’t you? Now, again.” He did the move himself, completing the motion with both arms crossing back to their side and stretching out, fingers opening like a bird’s wing, each finger precise. Even with that one move, he could feel the ampuka growing, his connections to the gods increasing.

“Yes, I feel it,” Silluka grumbled as she repeated the move. “I wish someone had told before how this worked. But I was never taught, as the girl with one arm.”

Ichu sighed. “The elders have failed you, and I have failed you as well. I should have taught you myself, but I was busy training and winning competitions in the village. It’s my fault.” He had tried to get her to train with him, but he’d never focused this much on her form. He’d assumed it wouldn’t matter. She’d never really be able to connect with the ampuka.

“No, I should have insisted,” Silluka said. This was new, from her. Before, she had always preferred to think, to watch others, even to read like the elders did. Elder Quilqi had instilled some drive in her to learn. “You wouldn’t have gotten so far without practicing like you did.”

“And where has that gotten me?” he asked. He hadn’t meant to make the remark. It had just popped out.

Silluka stared up at him, abandoning her stance and dropping her arms. “You’re the most powerful bodycaster in the Huaca! How can you say that?”

Ichu pursed his lips, debating whether to share his fears. He had kept them inside for so long, taking comfort in men and women awed by his prowess. A sham.

But Silluka was his sister, and the only family he had left, now their parents were gone.

“I’m losing my ability,” he forced out. Silluka frowned at him, but it was true. “I’m weaker than I was. My chayus are losing their effectiveness. I’m getting older, Silluka. I’m past my thirty-third year. How many bodycasters do you see my age?”

“I’m sure there are plenty…” Silluka looked upward, obviously counting. “Well, there’s…that is…”

“I’m the oldest bodycaster of my ability in the Huaca,” Ichu admitted. He kept expecting someone to call him out for this, tell him he had to become an elder, but no one had. It was why he’d pressed himself to win the bodycasting tournament last year. One last time, to prove his worth after their parents had died. There wouldn’t be another tournament this year, or likely for some time, until a new Huaca was settled.

“Anyone older is no match for me, or is an elder.” He put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. Both of them had dropped out of their stances. “So yes, I should have taken the time to teach you better. I’m going to correct that now. Let’s do the first move again, but this time feel the tension in your arms and legs. Create a circle with the earth and let the gods’ power into you.”

* * *

Silluka slept well that night, exhausted from Ichu’s gentle but persistent corrections to her feet, her arms, her hand, even her head. They hadn’t even finished the first five moves of the morning ritual. He said the ampuka wouldn’t come unless every muscle was in exactly the right position. Not that anyone completed the morning ritual. It was said to bring down the power of the gods, a violent, destructive force.

The next morning, she practiced with her brother again, but there was not nearly as much time for corrections. Finally, Elder Quilqi had summoned her to the elder’s hall. Silluka had been waiting all week to learn more of the mental chayus, but the elder had been caught up with the others in the fallout of the turtleman invader.

“The other elders are like quirras, perched on branches and chittering at the jakua chasing them,” Elder Quilqi complained as she strode along, slightly in front of Silluka. “They were planning for the Huaca to migrate later this year, but now they only see that invaders are coming, and they’re pushing up the timetable. We leave in a month. You must learn quickly.”

Quilqi gestured Silluka in front of her, into the back corridors of the elder’s hall. They passed other old members of the Huaca, and Silluka got both curious and pitying glances. She refused to hide her stump, letting it hang where all could see.

“In here is the chayu room. A bit sparse, if I’m honest, but it’s a good start.” The elder pulled Silluka into a chamber covered in cubbies, with charts rolled and stored from floor to ceiling. Now. Where is that one? Well hidden, I see. Dust and dirt! Doesn’t anyone clean in here?” She studied a column of scrolls, then pulled one out with a grunt of triumph and gave it to Silluka, who unrolled it.

It was a complex collection of lines, directions, circles, and illustrated body parts. She had only rarely seen a scroll like this. Most of the Huaca couldn’t read at all. She was lucky her parents had taught her when she was young, as an alternative to practicing bodycasting. But since they passed, she’d lost access to any scrolls. Ichu didn’t put much stock in them.

She didn’t recognize this depiction offhand, but she had guesses.

“What is it?” she asked.

Elder Quilqi frowned. “A chayu, girl. I hope you aren’t as thick as that, or I’ve been wasting my time.”

Stolen novel; please report.

The arrows and stops of the Huaca’s language did double duty in describing stances and movements. This was certainly a chayu, though a strange one.

“I don’t recognize many of the lines,” she said.

“That’s more like it,” the elder said. “If I were to guess, I’d think this chayu has seen little use since before this Huaca moved inland last time.” Elder Quilqi’s smile widened. “But it still exists, even if the elders no longer teach it. This village has forgotten what makes the chayus special.” She pointed to the scroll “Can you read what the chayu is?”

Silluka felt the weight of the test and concentrated on the scroll. It was an old dialect, not the one her parents had taught her, and she had to make guesses at some of the phonographs.

“With Tiyu Pacha? The air?” Silluka screwed up her nose. She felt the elder staring at her. “And the animal is a quirra, but there’s a modifier. Oh! Tiyu Pacha’s quirra? What is that?” She looked up to Elder Quilqi despite herself. The old woman had a slight smile, but said nothing. Then it clicked.

“Flying Quirra is the name of the chayu, isn’t it? But that can’t be what it does? Actually flying? Or does it simply make you lighter?”

“So you do have some reasoning ability.” The elder looked pleased, despite her words. You wouldn’t have seen what this does because it takes something this village has forgotten over the years.”

Silluka met the elder’s eyes, and almost took a step back. There was weight behind them, and power. “And what is that?”

“Intent. That’s why this doesn’t matter.” Quilqi motioned toward Silluka’s stump. “The connection to the ampuka is forged by the intent behind your moves. The moves merely help direct what you are trying to achieve.”

“That seems…too simple. It’s completely opposite to everything I’ve learned. What about body position? Muscle control? That’s how Ichu summons the ampuka. It’s why I can’t.”

Elder Quilqi tapped the scroll. “Yet it’s all here, written down decades before you were born, girl.”

“But if it was only a factor of meaning to do the chayu, wouldn’t I have connected with the ampuka before now? What aren’t you telling me?” There was more behind what the elder was saying, Silluka was certain of it.

“Driving rain, girl! If I was to list everything you don’t know about the chayus, we’d be here until the village packed up and moved. These are the very basic concepts.”

“Basic? That the Huaca doesn’t practice?” Silluka pressed. “While it does practice a perfection you put no stock in?” She couldn’t believe she was defending the very thing that had kept her from becoming a citizen.

The elder’s lips twisted in a frustrated grimace. “I believe there has been much lost as your Huaca was forced to move inland, escaping the new island approaching. Perhaps not all by accident. Now, look at these marks. What do they tell you?” It was clear she wouldn’t learn any more of the elder’s secrets today.

Silluka spent the next several hours decoding the chayu with Elder Quilqi. It was…strange. Many of the moves seemed to show more of how to think about the moves than how to perform them. Later, Silluka showed the scroll to Ichu.

“Elder Quilqi let you take this scroll out? Only the elders are supposed to see the chayu scrolls.”

“Then maybe that’s why our Huaca can’t even stand up to one turtleman,” Silluka said. “Can you tell me anything more about what this one says? Please? Elder Quilqi seems to think it’s hiding some secret I need to uncover.”

Ichu held his hands up. “You’re better at that than me. Our parents never trained me to read. That was something they only did for you.”

“You…can’t read this?” Silluka looked back down at the scroll. While there were unfamiliar elements, the basic pictograms were clear.

“Mother and Father put a lot into your education,” Ichu said.

Had she squandered that investment? Silluka resolved to study the chayu scroll until she understood it completely.

* * *

She spent the next week practicing the morning ritual with Ichu, and studying the scroll with Elder Quilqi. Lugopo was busy dissecting every part of the turtleman’s body, and she got an update every day or two about how it had blunted all their cutting tools, or how the bones were stronger than some types of metal. The little Allwiya had plans for every part of the turtleman’s body, in a gruesome, but efficient, series of steps.

The weather got steadily worse, even for their rainy, cloudy village. Every day brought another earthquake, or multiples, and the elders called upon Tiyu Tiksimuyu regularly until they subsided. Silluka was nearly crushed as the side of a home collapsed while she walked from the elder’s hall to the Allwiya side of the village. Only her quick feet got her out of the way in time. Thank the gods for her extra practice with Ichu.

The next day, the village had to shelter as a hurricane blew along the coast. The elders called upon Tiyu Pacha until the winds lifted from the village. Silluka watched the dome of yellow godly ampuka protecting them from the winds until the main mass of the hurricane passed them by. The Aunts, Uncles, and Entles must have their gaze firmly on the Huaca, as quickly as they were responding to the elders’ requests.

The calamities would only get more intense until the new island collided with the coast. It was very near now, and trackers who ran to the coast reported the waters between the islands boiling and sending off incredible gusts of wind. The storm warriors in the wall of storms looked like a cloud of gnats, protecting their charge. Silluka wondered if there were more turtlemen trying to get through.

“Come see! Yes! Cower before the technological prowess of the gods of the deep!” Lugopo pranced around their workshop as Silluka filed in with Ichu and Elder Quilqi. The Allwiya had sent a hasty note to the elder that morning, scrawled in Huaca pictograms as if they were writing with at least five of their tentacles.

“What is all this, Lugopo?” Elder Quilqi grumped. I have ten different elders bending my ear about what needs to be packed when for travel. The sleds are only half built and the damage from the hurricane put us even farther behind.”

“Crawling Dark of Squirming has blessed me with wild invocations! Come see the terror I have birthed!” They tapped their circlet. “Apologies. Translator is still not perfect. I have crafted a new item from the turtle-man.” They slung across the workshop on cleverly placed poles, reaching for a lever with three tentacles. The everlit candles flashed as an object dropped from a compartment in the ceiling. Silluka hastily stepped out of the way as it crashed to the ground.

“We are needing sleds to reach the desert, yes? What better conveyance than the bodies of our enemies!”

Elder Quilqi bent over the construct. “These are the plates that grew from the turtleman’s back?”

“Held together by sinews from the body. They are far tougher than what I can manufacture here. What incredible bindings and restraints they make!”

Silluka frowned at the little Allwiya, whose wide eyes stared back, then repositioned their circlet with four tentacles.

“Right here, see?” They pointed out straps across the insides of the plates. “Used to stay seated while the sled is moving. For safety.”

“You’ve used the turtleman’s body to create tools?” Ichu asked. “You haven’t used bodies of the Huaca, have you?”

Silluka just caught Elder Quilqi’s abortive gesture before Lugopo swung to the other side of the workshop.

“Naturally! Manylegs of Reaching provides many blessings.” They picked up a long drill which Silluka now saw was fashioned from a femur of one of the Huaca. “And such strong protections!” They placed a curious white dome over their bulbous head. Their eyes peeked out of two naturally formed holes.

“Is that a skull?” She thought Ichu’s eyes might pop out of his head.

“Well, the original owner isn’t using it,” Elder Quilqi snapped. “Focus, Lugopo. You’re telling us about this new sled.”

“I presume the Huaca plan to use the river system to travel when the time comes?” Lugopo swung back down, still wearing the skull, and pointed out the features. “Coarse skin becomes a waterproof barrier between moveable armor plates. Sinew and tendon restraints to keep occupants safe. Steering rig made from arm bones. Brakes from kneecaps and scapulas. And the turtle-man was so big, the sled holds at least ten!” They looked up at their visitors. “Allwiya, that is. Maybe two or three of the Huaca.”

Ichu looked sick. “You don’t waste anything, do you?”

“Not if possible,” Lugopo said. “Whirling Abyss sends so many delightful possibilities.”

Silluka peered at the little creature. Was Lugopo glowing? The Allwiya must have something similar to the ampuka.

“But that is not real trap! Bait is here.” Lugopo tapped the circlet. “That is, the real reason I called you.” They held up the vial Silluka had last seen Elder Quilqi take. She must have given it back later. “I believe this is also how the turtle-men get their power.” They shook the little vial. “Contains remnants of other turtle-men. Perhaps more body parts? A way to transfer power? Sacrifice the many to give power to the few?”

They swung across the workshop, above Silluka’s head, and picked a tool with a little open circle at one end from the opposite wall. They attached it to the vial and shook it vigorously with three tentacles. The vial glowed a rich, dark red.

“Shows blessing of the gods, yes? Which ones, hard to say.”

“Does that work elsewhere?” Ichu asked, suddenly interested.

“Certainly!” Lugopo placed the other end against the skull on their head. A white glow, tinged with sickly-looking dark patches, took form around the bones. “See the blessing of Manylegs of Reaching!”

“And on Huaca? It works on us too?” Ichu was far more insistent than normal. He’d been more quiet, more focused, since the farm had been destroyed.

Lugopo swung down to perch on Ichu’s shoulder, then placed the tool against his temple, waves of brown, blue, orange, purple, and yellow erupted in an aura around her brother, brilliant to look at.

“Such power to crush your enemies!” Lugopo crowed.

Yet Ichu frowned. “What about my sister?”

“Yes yes, everything can be measured!” Silluka felt the now-familiar brush of slightly malleable, but firm tentacles on her shoulder, and the coolness of the tool against her head. A faint light shone from her body, mainly yellow, brown, and purple—more than she would have expected.

“Maybe I do have some potential,” she said.

“And finally, here.” Lugopo swung away from her and to Elder Quilqi.

“No, you don’t need—” the elder protested, but Lugopo had already pressed the tool to the old woman’s temple.

A radiant blast of light shone forth, so much Silluka had to shade her eyes. How much power did the elder have?

“Ulp,” Lugopo squeaked as Elder Quilqi grasped them firmly in one hand and set them down on a table.

“That’s quite enough of that. Earthquakes and thunderstorms, doesn’t anyone have any privacy any longer?”