Teicuh kept her head down, pulling forward with the strap of the bundle pressing into her forehead as she climbed up the path through the jungle toward her village. Her ears monitored her surroundings, so she heard the buzz of insects before she saw them.
Stopping in the middle of the path, Teicuh lifted her head and looked around carefully, knowing the jungle housed many dangers for the unwary. Her ears told her the insect buzzing was coming from her right. At twenty one years old, Teicuh knew the insects of the jungle well, so knew she heard the rapid hum of flies, wasps, and the softer flap of feathery wings.
Slowly, she eased the pack strap from her head and set down her bundle of cloth that she had traded with their neighboring village for her decorated seashells and robust plant dyes, which the weavers loved for their cloth. As quietly as she could, she stepped to the right, continuing to scan the jungle underbrush carefully.
There, just beyond the long thin leaves of a growing copal tree, Teicuh spotted the swarm of life. What she saw stunned her.
Alighting upon a long thin mound were hundreds of butterflies; their iridescent blue wings identified them as cotytto. As the butterflies slowly moved their wings, the mound appeared to breathe.
Buzzing in and among the butterflies were flies and wasps, slipping in to suck up the juices of the thing hidden by the mound of butterflies.
Suddenly, a loud crash sounded behind her, followed by loud, muttered cursing. Xoco had finally caught up and must have stumbled straight into Teicuh’s pack in the middle of the path.
The sound, however, had startled the kaleidoscope of butterflies so that they rose together, swirling gently in a counter sun-wise spiral as they lifted themselves up and into the treetops.
Teicuh suppressed her instinct to react in revulsion by slowly breathing out for a count of six, then breathing in. The flutter of butterfly wings had pushed the scent of the rotting corpse in her direction. She blew the stink away, attempting to keep the remnants of the dead man’s soul from harming her or her family.
“Tei!” Xoco hollered. “Why did you leave your pack in the path? Did you have to go pee that badly?”
Teicuh ignored her younger sister and stepped gingerly through the undergrowth toward the corpse. How long the man had lain there was hard to tell, but she knew it was a man based on what was left of his clothing. His atlatl was still clutched in his right hand.
Teicuh blew a steady breath over the corpse to keep the man’s soul at bay, then covered her nose with her hand before she carefully stepped back out to the path. Xoco was standing with her hands on her hips the way their mother often did, her pack resting next to Teicuh’s in the dark dirt.
“I think I broke a toe when I walked into your pack,” Xoco whined.
“You should watch where you’re going,” Teicuh responded, chiding her younger, often oblivious sister.
“What were you doing?” asked Xoco petulantly.
“I was watching a man’s tonalli leave his body,” Teicuh stated, wrestling her pack’s headband back over her forehead.
Xoco’s eyes flew wide open as did her mouth. “Seriously?” Recovering enough to close her mouth, she grabbed her older sister’s arm just as Teicuh started to resume their journey.
“What did it look like?” Xoco whispered.
Teicuh looked at her younger, naïve sister, savoring her own superiority for just a bit. “It looked like a whole flutter of butterflies rising into the trees, like rain rising from the earth, instead of falling.”
Watching her astonished expression with satisfaction, Teicuh shrugged off her sister’s grasp and began walking up the path toward home.
Author’s note: Many people around the world have long associated butterflies and other bright flying insects with human souls escaping to the heavens. The Aztecs, in fact, believed this idea quite literally. The truth is that butterflies feed upon the juices of decaying carcasses when there are no flower blossoms to feed upon, so they often blanket the dead.
Ruth J. Heflin lives in the buckle of the Bible Belt with two cats and a husband. She works as an editor for Choeofpleirn Press, but also writes works like Bronze: A Postpatriarchal Examination of Prepatriarchal Cultures, the screenplay Mrs. Nash, and the short story collection, Time Coven.
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