Silence

The little Goddess of Sound skips along a jungle path that meanders beneath the trees, skirting the three main villages where dark-skinned Yombex worship her and a few even pray to her though they know she cannot hear their words.

She pauses in a shallow stream. The cool water washes over her thin, brown ankles, rippling as she drags her feet along the stony bottom. She closes her eyes and breaths in the smells of mud and fungus.

A frog bounds away from the water's edge as Chi draws near. She laughs like the tinkle of little splashes. The sound causes red, blue and yellow flowers to blossom all along the banks.

Chi smiles at the tiny flowers.

TUM!

Chi's smile fades.

TUM!

Her eyes — solid black pupils surrounded by brilliant white orbs — scan the thick jungle.

TUM!

The Yombex call to her. She feels the concussion of their bone and hide drums in her feet, shaking the very earth beneath them.

TUM!

She cannot ignore her people. This call is as ancient as she — as ancient as man's first communicative sound: the warning grunt, the beating of stick on stone, the first articulate word. Chi no more runs through the forest than sunlight falls from the heavens. She arrives at the tiny village of "Ch'uk Ya Byg Flop" before the drums' next strike.

TUM!

The drums cease. All is silent.

Arrayed before the little Goddess of Sound stands a gaggle of foreign men. These are strange men, like none Chi has ever seen. Their skins are pale as sand, their long hair is the color of goldenrod, and their bodies, almost to a man, are covered in a strange, silvery stone that looks hard as a beetle's carapace.

Behind these foreigners the assembled Yombex fall to their knees. The men drop their chest-high drums, the women press their babes to their breasts and each genuflects where he or she stands.

The pale men do not bow, though they look upon Chi with wonder. She forgives their ignorance. Surely they come from a land where the gods do not make them bow. Perhaps they were never taught.

One of the pale men holds up a sheaf of many bound pages. Upon one is a picture of Chi — a skinny, dark-skinned girl dressed in worn tribal sarong and pantacat top. He points at her and says something to one of the other pale men, but Chi cannot read the man's words.

The pale men spread out and only now does Chi notice the black-skinned man among them. He has not bowed his head, nor does he look surprised to see the little goddess. He is Yomti, tribal chief of the Bexyom — blood enemies to Chi's people.

Chi reads Yomti's lips as he says, "See, oh foreign king, she is but a child as I said. Take her and you shall conquer the Yombex."

Chi bares her little teeth, which are very white and very sharp. The pale men draw swords from their belts.

The men move to surround the little goddess, but she does not back away. They advance on her from the front and the rear and Chi crouches. Yomti is first to raise a blade — a gleaming foreign blade — against her.

Thunder like that of the most raucous storm issues from Chi's mouth. Although she cannot hear the sound, she savors its effect. The pale men nearest her drop their swords and fall to the ground writhing in pain. Yomti, who was closest, staggers back, blood running from his ears. As slow as leaves falling, he crumples to the ground and moves no more.

The thunder subsides, only to be replaced by a note of such clarity and such frequency, that nearby trees split at their trunks, birds fall dead from the sky, and the ten men closest to the little goddess are instantly struck deaf. It is the sound of cicadas — millions of cicadas.

The few pale men still standing scramble away in every direction, most running from one doom towards another as they rush blindly into the untamed jungle.

Chi strides silently to where her people kneel. They have not heard the sounds; she would never harm them. One young woman looks up and sees a smiling child — the little goddess — looking down upon her.

"They would have killed us," she mouths at the deaf Goddess of Sound.

Chi nods and caresses the woman's face.

A pale man, wide-eyed and clearly half mad, rises and staggers towards them. He wears a thin coronet of beaten brass and a brown cape. He must be the pale chief.

Chi presses a small hand against the man's chest and feels the beat of his heart.

The pale chief screams something at her. She can feel his rank breath on her cheek, but she cannot read his words. They are pale and foreign.

TUM!

The pale man's heart beats.

TUM!

Chi begins to sing. It is the song of the cockatoo, if a cockatoo weighed eighty tons and had a megaphone for a beak.

TUM!

The pale man is frightened. He wants to run away; he wants to cover his ears, but he can do neither. He stands, mesmerized by the little goddess's gaze, touch, and song.

Tum…

Blood runs from the man's ears.

Tum… tum

The man's heart skips and his eyes begin to blanch white.

Tum… tum… … tum

The man's shock of golden hair turns gray from roots to tips. He sags, but Chi forces him to stand with the last ounce of his strength.

… tum…

The Little Goddess of Sound stops singing just before the pale man's heart ceases its beat. She releases him and he falls to the ground deaf and blind and ruined.

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