brilliant red flash illuminated the interior of the squalid little hut, and for a moment, the man known to his tribe as Mixcoatl--the "Cloud Serpent"--believed he was back in that terrible fight with the Yaquis years ago, the time when they'd burned the town. Only half-awake, he hurled himself up off his sleeping mat and, still believing there were hundreds of enemies just outside, rolled over near the door and peeked out. Only then, as full consciousness began to return, did he realize that the Yaqui war had ended years ago. His leg, so badly wounded in that fight, had fully healed--although it had left him with a severe limp, unable to go to war for his people again.
From the floor, he couldn't tell what the light was. A fire, perhaps? It was possible that the little town he lived in had been attacked by some new enemy--the Apaches, perhaps--but no, the red glow streaming in the window was much too steady for that. Slowly he got to his feet, moved over to the doorway, and looked out. Just over the southern horizon, a bright red light--which Mixcoatl thought was shaped like an ear of corn--was beginning to slowly fade away, dripping flashes of fire as it did. He was not the only one to have seen it; he could hear shouts from elsewhere in the village.
But he paid no attention to these. As he stared at the light, all he could hear was his grandfather's voice, whispering in his ear as if he were speaking right now, as if he hadn't been dead for almost fifteen years.
"It will come, Little Snake, you must remember--and when you see it, when you see flaming maize in the sky, that's your day. You forget about everything else, Little Snake. Even your people. Your wife and children, if you have them. Because when that day comes, when you find that morning, you have to go, you have to go off to the southeast, and you cannot let anything stop you. On that morning, Little Snake, you can't care what anybody thinks about you. But don't you worry about it till then. Just remember. Get your brothers and your sister and get moving--southeast, southeast."
Mixcoatl stared at the fading light, disbelieving it. He'd almost forgotten about the old man's prophecy; he'd never believed that it might actually come true. But here it was, and it could not be denied. He toyed with the idea of ignoring it, pretending he'd not even seen it; but he knew he couldn't do that. He also knew that his three brothers and his sister would be coming up here soon, wanting to know what to do. They'd heard the prophecy too, but they'd been told only to follow him, to go with him. He struck the doorframe hard with his fist, hard enough to bring little bits of adobe falling down from around it. One more mess in an utter mess of a life. His wife and his children he didn't have to worry about; his wife had been killed in an Apache raid ten years ago, and his two daughters had been taken captive in the same raid. He'd never seen either of them again. Knowing the Apaches, they could either have been adopted into the tribe, sold as slaves to some other tribe, or killed--slowly and painfully. Any of these events was as likely as any other. Remembering, he sighed. He was, he told himself, in no condition to make a trip such as this. He was lame, he was old; he and his family would be easy pickings for any enemies who might come across them.
But he didn't feel he dared ignore the old man's words, not now, not now that he'd actually seen the flaming maize in the sky. With another deep sigh, he began packing a few things together for the trip--a trip to nowhere, a trip into the unknown. The three bows and the arrows his grandfather had given him, the arrows with the finely-crafted flint tips the old man had chipped himself; his knife, his hunting-net and game basket, his firedrill, his blanket. The quivers, stuffed full of arrows, caught his eye again. He pulled one out and examined the flint point lashed to it. He could remember his grandfather making these, meticulously trimming the shafts, feathering them, using an ancient technique to pressure-flake the flint arrowheads into the proper shape. He tested the point with his fingertip; it was still extremely sharp, surprisingly so considering its age; a flint or obsidian blade does not usually keep its edge well when exposed to the air.
But these had. Although Mixcoatl frequently hunted with his bow--in spite of his bad leg he was known as the best hunter in his tribe--he never used these arrows for the local rabbits and the occasional deer he managed to find in these arid mountains. These were special. They were for today, and they'd been waiting for a long time. Slinging the bows and arrows on his shoulder and carrying the rest of his gear, he went outside.
Ahead of him he could see his brothers, Apanecatl, Cuilton, and Huemac, and his sister Itzpapalotl on the road, walking slowly toward him. He didn't say a word to them, he just motioned toward the southeast and kept walking. They turned to follow him, silent, unquestioning.
As they left the town, as trail unrolled in front of them, Mixcoatl silently considered their situation. Crazy Indians. Following a twenty-year old prophecy, they were headed off to the southeast, abandoning whatever property they had, their families, their people, and the meager protection their tribe could provide for them. He looked up; by then the night sky began to turn violet. Staring at Venus as the morning star off to the east, he almost missed the two men who were standing alongside the road, watching them come. Immediately suspicious--even at this distance and even in the early-morning darkness, it was obvious they weren't from his tribe--Mixcoatl slowed his pace and held up a hand warningly to the others. He considered unslinging his bow, but, as the men's own weapons were sheathed, he decided against it.
"Greetings, strangers," one of the men said as they drew close. "Are you travelers?" Mixcoatl nodded. "Where are you going?"
"Southeast," Mixcoatl told him.
"Good, southeast... might we join you, strangers? As you know, their is greater safety in greater numbers when one is traveling..."
Mixcoatl considered this, but only briefly; then he nodded. Falling in beside them, the two men introduced themselves as Mimich and Xiuhnel, but they did not mention their tribe, their people. They were certainly not Apaches. They could have been Yaquis, Mixcoatl thought, or possibly they were from the almost-legendary Chichimec tribes further south. Mixcoatl did not bother to give his name or his tribe in return. With minor irritation, he heard Huemac telling the men who everyone was.
"Why'd you let them join us, Mixcoatl?" Itzpapalotl asked him in a low voice.
"I don't know. It seemed right."
"Strangers are always trouble," she said shortly.
He just grunted. Letting the men join them seemed just as ridiculous to him as he was sure it did to her, and yet, for some reason, he'd had to do it. He felt he had no free will at all now; he was rushing toward an unknown destination, puppet strings being pulled. Forcing one foot in front of the other, he stared ahead into the slowly brightening morning, hoping to discourage further questions.
Hours passed, morning turned into afternoon, then into evening; they continued to move toward the southeast. The days began to slip by, one after another. Whenever they were hungry, Mixcoatl or one of the others managed to bring down a rabbit or a ground squirrel; whenever they were thirsty they found a running creek or a waterhole. Only once did in rain, and when it did they were close to a cave which offered admirable shelter.
Although Mixcoatl had been concerned about running into wandering parties of enemies, they saw no other people at all. Passing into some mountains, they repeatedly crossed trails that showed every sign of being commonly used, but they encountered no one. Itzpapalotl began to wonder aloud if something magical had happened, if they were suddenly the only people left in the world. Mixcoatl assured her that this wasn't so, but the concept that they were among a select few people that really mattered in the world right now had stuck in his mind, it wouldn't let him go. He understood that it made no sense, but he still couldn't shake it.
And somehow, the two strangers were among those select few. One morning as they lingered around the campfire, he suddenly decided that it was time to find out about them. "Who are you?" he demanded suddenly, pointing at Mimich.
The man seemed somewhat taken aback. "Uh--you know who we are, we're, ah, travelers, we--became lost. Ended up in the middle of nowhere."
"Why do you want to go to the southeast?"
Mimich appeared increasingly uncomfortable. "Well, we thought maybe we'd go--down to where the cities are, we--I don't know why you're so curious, you haven't told us much of anything about yourselves, either--"
Mixcoatl fell silent, searching the man's face. There was something more there, but he couldn't see what. He tried to gauge the man, figure how hard to would be to take him if that were to become necessary. Mimich was a big man, at least two inches taller than Mixcoatl, and much heavier. He could see him as perhaps a dangerous and ruthless man, but that didn't worry him, he could be that way himself if circumstances called for it. He scanned Mimich's clothing, looking for the telltale bulges that might indicate concealed weapons, such as perhaps the darts and atlatls--spear-throwers--the city-dwellers to the south favored. He saw nothing. Confident of his abilities with bow and knife, Mixcoatl dismissed a possible threat from him. The other man was smaller and slimmer, and he didn't seem as threatening. He also seemed content to hang in the background a bit. This Mixcoatl didn't trust, and he resolved to keep a very close eye on Xiuhnel. "Let's get moving," he said at last.
On through the deserts they moved, headed south-by-southeast, Mixcoatl following instincts he hadn't known he had and the others following his lead without question. Days, weeks, passed; they still saw no one.
It was a surprise when they did.
It was late in the afternoon, and they were passing through an area where jagged red rocks bordered the trail they were following, a trail that in turn followed an arroyo, a dry riverbed. Rounding a bend as the road swerved to pass an outcropping of rock, they suddenly saw a man standing in the center of the path, a bow in his hands. Mixcoatl stopped the group short, holding up his hand as before.
"I greet you, stranger," Mixcoatl said loudly. "We are travelers, we--"
He stopped speaking. The man didn't answer; instead, he raised his bow, fitted an arrow to the string, drew it, and aimed it at them.
"Shit!" Mixcoatl cried. "Down!" He dove toward the cover of the arroyo, aware that Itzpapalotl was reacting with equal speed. But Apanecatl was standing as if frozen, staring at the man.
The whistle of the arrow split the early evening quiet. Mixcoatl glanced around in time to see he arrow strike his brother right under his chin. It bit in with sufficient force to pass all the way through his neck, emerging from the other side. Gurgling, Apanecatl started to fall; even before his knees had touched the ground Mixcoatl's hands had closed over his grandfather's bow and a quiver of arrows. With the speed born of long practice, he nocked an arrow and fired at the man, who was readying his own bow for another shot.
But, in the next instant, the man was staring at the feathered shaft protruding from his own chest. Mixcoatl watched his eyes roll back in his head as he slowly crumpled, blood soaking the arrow and dripping off the end of it, forming patterns on the dusty road.
"What the shit is going on!?" Mimich screamed. He was crouched behind the outcrop of rock, staring at Mixcoatl.
"Dunno," Mixcoatl snapped back.
"Apanecatl is dead," Itzpapalotl said flatly.
"I know." He gestured at the dead man. "Get his bow and whatever arrows he had."
Huemac jumped up and ran out into the road. As he approached the body, there was the sudden whistle of arrow fire from somewhere up in the rocks; arrows sprouted from Huemac's body and he began to fall, his momentum carrying him well beyond Apanecatl's corpse. He staggered momentarily, as if trying to get his balance, but there was another whistle and another arrow thudded into his side. He fell onto the trail, flailed about for a moment, then became still.
"Take cover!" Mixcoatl screamed. In seconds all of them were down in the relative safety of the arroyo. After catching his breath, Mixcoatl peeped up over the side; Cuilton, holding one of the bows, joined him. Itzpapalotl and the two strangers stayed down.
"Can you see anything?" Cuilton asked.
Straining his eyes, Mixcoatl scanned the low hills on the other side of the trail. He began picking out bows, faces, and eyes, peering back at them from around the rocks. Silently, he counted, and became somewhat depressed as he did so. He'd counted sixty that he could see, which meant their situation was logically hopeless--they were outnumbered by at least twenty to one. The omen, the old prophecy, had just brought them all out here to die? He couldn't believe that. Yet Apanecatl and Huemac were both stretched out on the road. The prophecy had certainly done that for them.
He studied their enemies further, a little surprised by how clearly he was able to see them. It was getting fairly dark, but Mixcoatl seemed to be having no problems picking out the watchers' faces. Suddenly, he realized why.
There was something not entirely normal about these people. In each face, the left eye seemed to glow with a light of its own, an effect probably not noticeable in the daylight, but certainly obvious enough now. If he just scanned over the hills, it looked like a collection of faint stars stuck to the tops of the ridges and boulders. One of the stars was moving, and Mixcoatl, holding his head down as much as possible, loosed an arrow at him. He could hear the satisfying "whunk!" as the shaft struck the man, who careened into a boulder, clutching at it before he fell. Mixcoatl was relieved, even as he ducked away from the answering volley of arrows. At least they died normally.
"What do you figure they want?" Cuilton asked after Mixcoatl told him how many he could see.
"There's no way of knowing," he said. "Just wait and see, all we can do."
One of the men in the hills stood up, shouted to them. "Come on out! You ain't got a chance!"
"What do you want with us?" Cuilton yelled back.
They waited for a moment, then received their answer--a volley of arrows. When it stopped, Mixcoatl quickly stood up and launched an arrow of his own at the standing figure. With satisfaction, he watched the man fall, clutching the arrow; but another barrage of shots drove him down again.
"Looks like they want to kill us," he said calmly.
"No, it's gotta be something else," Cuilton insisted. He'd been tying a piece of cloth to a stick, and now he stood up, waving it. "Let's talk, before anybody else gets killed!" he yelled. Mixcoatl watched him, half expecting him to be killed, but there were no shots. Slowly, still waving his flag, Cuilton walked back up on the road and crossed it. He disappeared from Mixcoatl's sight among the boulders.
Itzpapalotl came up beside Mixcoatl, peeped over. "Seems like it's okay," she said.
Almost as if in answer, a great cry went up from the men across the road. Mixcoatl and Itzpapalotl watched them push Cuilton out to the top of a little hill which was clearly in their sight, but out of range of Mixcoatl's deadly arrows. There was a tree stump there, a stark and jagged form standing about four feet high, and they were hauling the struggling man up to it. They had stripped him totally naked, and they'd tied his wrists behind his back.
When they reached the stump, four of them picked him up, held him upright, and sat him down on top of it. Mixcoatl saw the stump darken as Cuilton's screams echoed across the hills; slowly they forced his body down a short ways, taking a long time doing it. Then, when the tree stump was far enough up his anus for him to be balanced on it, they let him go, they let him sink on down on it at his own speed.
It didn't go quickly. It seemed like hours to Mixcoatl and Itzpapalotl, who had no choice but to sit and watch, listening to Cuilton's agonized screams cutting through the deepening night. The men in the hills built a fire near enough that they could still see him, a surreal figure in the flickering light, impaled on the stump. They tortured him as well; at intervals one of them came up to him and slashed his body with a flint knife, eventually covering his chest, abdomen, and back with shallow incisions. Using a wooden peg they nailed his scrotum to the stump; as he slid on down his testicles were pulled up into his anus and crushed against the wood. He remained conscious through that; he even retained his senses when they cut off his penis and, after mounting it on a long stick, danced around him waving it in the air.
"They all have to die," Itzpapalotl said suddenly. Mixcoatl looked at her. Her hair was hanging in her face, and her eyes were wild; he'd never seen her like this. But then, they'd never watched their brothers dying before, either. Her reaction seemed very odd to him, and the lack of emotion he himself felt over the deaths of his brothers was even more surprising. She stood up, her hands tense, her fingers forming claws like a vulture's. "They all will die," she said again. Her voice was peculiar in a way Mixcoatl couldn't define.
"Good idea. How're we gonna do that?" he asked sarcastically.
"I'll do it," she said. "I, myself, in person! It was not supposed to be this way; the Mimixcoa must have some kind of help!"
Mixcoatl reached out to stop her as she started to climb out of the ditch, but somehow he couldn't get a hand on her. She made a strange gesture, then began to walk across the road; soon she too disappeared among the rocks.
Only a few moments later, howls of pain and terror were reverberating through the hills. The two strangers came up and looked over the edge, but none of them could see anything. For a very long time, the screaming went on. But, at last, Itzpapalotl came walking back toward them. She was totally covered with blood, none of it her own.
"They are all dead. All four hundred," she said calmly. "We will now sleep."
Mixcoatl looked at her, wondered who she was. Something told him she wasn't his sister any more.
She glanced at him. "Itzpapalotl I am," she told him, as if he'd spoken aloud. "Obsidian Butterfly. And I am still your sister!"
He had no idea what she was talking about, but he was exhausted, and he slept. So did Mimich and Xiuhnel.
When Mixcoatl awoke the next morning, he was immediately aware of his hunger; none of them had eaten at all the previous day. He sat up and glanced around. The two strangers were still sleeping, but Itzpapalotl was nowhere to be seen. Shaking his head, he tried to remember the events of the previous night. Already they were hazy, made little sense to him. Had his unarmed sister actually gone up into the hills and killed at least sixty heavily armed men? How?
He turned and looked up toward those hills, and he stopped, staring. It was not yet full light; the sky was still dark gray. He stood up, and realized that the odd events of the previous day had indeed occurred; and apparently they weren't yet over. He was remarkably calm, considering what he was seeing. Over the dark hills, a pair of eyes watched him. Only parts of the face was visible, a horizontal yellow band over the eyes, another over the mouth. If there was a forehead and neck, he couldn't see it. He grabbed his bow, fitted an arrow to it as if to shoot at the face, but realized that that was nonsense. The face was suspended in mid-air over the hills, probably miles away. He watched the eyes crinkle and the mouth curve up in a smile, and it began to fade away, melting into the darkness. The night wind came up, stirring the dust around him, and the face was gone.
He glanced at Mimich and Xiuhnel, who were still sleeping, and began to move off toward the hills, where he was sure he would find Itzpapalotl. After a brief walk, he topped a little rise and stopped short. In spite of everything, he was astounded by the scene that lay before him. A sea of bodies, many of them literally ripped apart; Itzpapalotl's statement about "four hundred" seemed more accurate than his previous estimate of sixty. Down among the carnage, Itzpapalotl was busily sawing open the chest of one of the men with her knife. Mixcoatl watched as she ripped out the heart, cut pieces off it, and ate it.
"Mixcoatl!" she yelled. "Come on down here, I'm sure you're hungry! There's plenty!"
His stomach was twisting inside him like some huge worm as he walked toward her. He paused, retched once. "Itzpapalotl, what are you doing?" he asked.
She gave him an innocent look. "I'm eating. Why not? They have no more use for these parts, and it's really good! Try some!"
He turned his head from side to side, scanning the piles of bodies. Dozens of vultures were circling over their heads, and at that moment, it seemed to him that Itzpapalotl was one of them. "How did you do this?" he asked her, gesturing to the corpses.
She laughed. It was remarkable; she looked younger and prettier than she had in years. "It really wasn't hard, once I came to myself. The Mimixcoas were no problem. But man, I was so hungry! I haven't been fed in such a long time!" With this statement, she ripped out another heart and bit into it. Blood squirted out, adding to the dark red that already soaked her rawhide dress.
Vaguely, Mixcoatl was aware that Mimich and Xiuhnel had joined them, and that the strangers were carrying the other two bows and quivers. Their eyes were glazed. Mimich stared at Itzpapalotl for a moment, transfixed. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he shook himself like a dog. Xiuhnel came up very close to her, watching her closely. She smiled at him and offered him a piece of the meat on the end of her knife. He grinned back, bouncing on his knees as he crouched beside her, but he shook his head. Itzpapalotl shrugged and ate the piece herself. Mixcoatl realized he too was very hungry, but he wasn't ready for this. Our people, he kept telling himself, are not cannibals. We are not cannibals, we do not eat the flesh of men...
He wandered around the scene of carnage for a while, examining some of the bodies. Many of them had an arm or leg ripped off, and they had apparently bled to death from it. Not a few had left a long stream of blood, now only a dark brown stain on the sandy soil, as they had tried in vain to escape the death that was overtaking them. Others had no throats at all, having had them violently ripped out, and a few were missing their heads completely. Looking at the bodies, Mixcoatl might have sworn that these men had been set upon by a veritable hoard of giant eagles or vultures or something similar. The wounds looked like they'd been made with talons, like those on a rabbit killed by a hawk. He glanced back at his sister, remembering how he thought she seemed like one of the circling vultures. That too was peculiar. Usually the vultures would be very persistent about a meal this size, landing a short distance away from the moving people and taking to wing reluctantly. But now, they only circled patiently. Not a one had landed.
He rolled a man over with his foot and looked at his face. This man's right leg was torn away halfway up his thigh, but he didn't seem to have any other injuries. Mixcoatl did not recognize anything which might have given him a clue as to the man's tribe. He wished one of them had remained alive; he would really have liked to have known why they attacked him and killed his brothers. Last night, when the man in the road had fired at them, Mixcoatl hadn't thought it odd. They were strangers, therefore they were to be killed unless something strongly indicated otherwise. He also knew he didn't usually think like that, and wondered why he had then.
After a while, the two strangers seemed to tire of the grisly spectacle. But Itzpapalotl seemed to be insatiable. As she continued to eat parts of the dead men, Mimich drew Mixcoatl aside.
"How did she kill all these people?" he asked. "Who the hell are they, anyway?"
To both questions, Mixcoatl just shrugged. He would have liked to have known the answers to those riddles himself. Idly, he took an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow; Mimich watched him closely.
"You know, if she killed all those people, she'd have no trouble at all with the three of us," he said, an expectant look on his face.
Mixcoatl turned and looked at him. "No trouble with you," he said. "She's my sister; we're family."
"Are you sure? I mean, look at what she's doing down there! She's eating those guys, their hearts! You ever seen her do anything like that before?" Mimich's voice was silky smooth, almost oily.
"No," Mixcoatl said. Again he felt confused. Was the cannibal woman eating the bodies his sister, or was she not? She looked like Itzpapalotl, talked like her, but--but no, he corrected himself. She looked like Itzpapalotl had looked years before, before the strain of hard work in the village combined with the births of four children had changed her slim body into a shapeless sack, before her life had drawn permanent scowl lines on her once-pretty face. Mixcoatl realized, actually for the first time, that he had watched Itzpapalotl age thirty years in six since she'd married. But today, crouching over a ripped-up human body, she looked as she had the day before her wedding. He noticed that her short rawhide dress, the dress that had so scandalized the other women when she wore it in place of the traditional long skirt, was hanging loosely on her. When they'd started the trip, the seams were strained; naturally the rigors of their journey had caused her to lose some weight, but not much--they really hadn't lacked for food. Her breasts, also, were riding higher today, and her face was unmarked, innocent--that of a sixteen-year old. Mixcoatl's eyes were unfocused for a minute, and his head swam. He had already watched her consume an enormous amount of food, and she was still avidly eating; how could she be slimmer?
Thinking about this, he paused to glance down at himself. The limp was gone, it had vanished, and he didn't even know when. His own body had changed too; he felt hard, strong, able to do anything. What, he asked himself, is happening to us? He couldn't find an answer and he wasn't being allowed to think about it much, Mimich kept talking to him, incessantly.
"I tell you, it's going to be a problem," Mimich was telling him. "Look at how she's eating! What if we don't have any food out here for a few days? What do you think is going to happen then?" He sounded almost desperate, and he had his eyes fixed on the bow Mixcoatl was toying with. He put his face closer to Mixcoatl's left ear and continued talking, his voice a monotone, almost a chant. "You sure you can trust her? You sure you can trust her if she runs out of food? We can't stop her, we can't control her. You sure you can trust her? You sure you trust her if--?"
Finally Mixcoatl started nodding. He didn't really have a clear focus on what he was doing or why, he was moving like a robot; he put the arrow on his bowstring. He raised his bow slowly, drew the string, and took careful aim at her.
But, just before he released the arrow, she looked up. Seeing what he was doing, she grinned and put down the half-eaten heart in her hands.
"Are you going to kill me now, Mixcoatl, my brother?" she asked in an everyday, matter-of-fact tone. "Do you think it's time for me to die?"
"Yes," he answered. His voice was thick; he thought he was going to say something more, but no other words came out. He was swaying slightly, but he kept the bow drawn, kept the arrow trained on her.
She stood up. "There's a creek," she said, pointing off to her right. "Over there. It isn't far."
Mixcoatl nodded; she started walking off in the direction she'd indicated, picking her way through the corpses. Mixcoatl followed right behind her, and the two other men walked along behind him. She wasn't mistaken; just over the next rise was a rather steep slope downwards, and at the bottom was a small stream. Single file, they walked down the hill. When they reached the water, Itzpapalotl walked right out into it, and Mixcoatl followed her closely. The other men waited on the bank, just watching them.
As soon as Itzpapalotl was in the water, she started taking off her clothes, and she didn't stop until she was totally naked. Mixcoatl stared at her, unable to believe the change. Her body was slim and strong, amazingly beautiful, perfectly beautiful; she looked like she was about nineteen. Carelessly she dropped her clothes into the water, she let them float away in the stream. Mixcoatl looked back at the two strangers and motioned to them; they responded immediately, splashing into the water. When they got to them Itzpapalotl knelt down on one knee, and Mimich started shoveling handfuls of water on her. Xiuhnel joined in, and, after they'd gotten her completely wet, they started scrubbing her hair and body with their hands. They didn't miss any spots, none at all. Mixcoatl just stood and watched, and Itzpapalotl smiled at us once in a while and said nothing, even when Mimich rubbed the blood off her breasts and took great pains to rub every fleck off her nipples, even when Xiuhnel washed her thighs, then washed between her legs, and even pushed his fingers up inside her vagina briefly. .
Finally, when they had her spotlessly clean, Mixcoatl motioned for them to back off. They did, and he took a single handful of water and sprinkled it over her head, like he was baptizing her. She stood up then, and they all left the creek, again walking single file up the hill. Mixcoatl took the lead now, with his sister right behind him. In silence they walked all the way back up to the tree stump where they'd tortured Cuilton, where his body still hung.
Still naked, Itzpapalotl sat down on a rock and leaned back, letting the sun dry her off. Mixcoatl didn't do or say anything; he just stood by while the two strangers, grunting and struggling, took Cuilton's body off the stump. It wasn't easy; he'd sunk so far down on it that the wood was driven all the way up into his throat. It took quite a while, but finally they got the body off. They rolled it aside, then looked back to see what Mixcoatl and Itzpapalotl were doing.
Slowly, she stood up and walked over to the stump. Taking some pieces of thick hemp twine from his game basket, Mixcoatl tossed them to the strangers. Without any prompting, Itzpapalotl stood with her back against the tree, her hands crossed behind it. The strangers tied her to it thoroughly, tied rope around her waist, tied her wrists together, tied her ankles together and then tied them to the stump. She stood completely still and silent the whole time.
Once she was bound, Mixcoatl stood in front of her and slightly to her left, just looking at her face. Nothing was said, but it seemed to him they'd come to some kind of agreement, some sort of pact; they were both doing what they had to do, no more, no less. Still watching her eyes, he raised his bow, he drew it; she couldn't help but see what he was doing, and still she said nothing.
Then, after drawing the string just a little further, he released the arrow. It streaked forward, it struck Itzpapalotl in her right side at her waistline with a solid thunk, and it went in deep. Her eyes and mouth flew open and she rolled her head to the side, her body quivering as blood began flowing from around the arrow. Mixcoatl paused for a moment, then stepped up close to her and, while she groaned and ground her teeth, pulled the arrow out.
He then stepped back, replacing the arrow in his quiver while Mimich, taking his place, started using the blood flowing from her side to paint the right half of her body solid red. He then collected charred sticks from the campfire the men had built and used them to paint her left side black.
While he was doing that, Xiuhnel had been gathering kindling and dry wood and piling it around her feet. She looked down at him, she watched him. What he was doing was more than obvious, but even now she said nothing at all. Finally, when her body was completely painted and the pyre had been built, Mimich used his fire-drill to ignite it.
All three men stayed close, watching it closely. It smoldered for a few minutes, just a few little tongues of flame playing around in the wood, looking like it might go out any second. Kneeling down, Mimich blew on it and kept it going.
Then at last it established itself, and it began spreading out through the wood. Flames began flickering around Itzpapalotl's feet and she started to groan, started flexing her knees. The fire rose, it enveloped her lower legs, and she screamed. The men took a step back almost as one, as if her cries had taken them by surprise, as if they hadn't expected her to do that. They stared up at her; she was wriggling and thrashing violently, but the ropes hadn't burned, they still held her tight. Her eyes were really wide, and she was lashing her head back and forth.
"Mixcoatl!" she screamed as the flames licked up over her thighs. "Mixcoatl, my brother, help me, please, please!"
He wasn't even aware of having fired it, but another arrow whistled toward her, this one striking her breast, and it went in as deeply as the first. She made a choking sound; the flames were rising again, licking at her belly, sweeping up between her legs. She rolled her head back and forth, making agonized noises. Blood from the two wounds sizzled in the fire. The skin on her thighs turned bright red, then black, then began falling away. The flames rose on up around her chest, and more of her skin began sloughing off.
Watching, Mixcoatl narrowed his eyes; something was happening, something he'd not expected. He was looking at her legs; the skin had all burned off, and he'd assumed the muscles would just burn away too. They weren't; her legs looked like they were themselves on fire, like they were made of some flammable material. But they weren't losing any of their shape, and neither was the rest of her body.
The fire covered her face then, ignited her hair; he could still see her eyes, staring out at them wildly through the rising smoke and flame. It didn't look like she was dead. There were sparks flying from her body as the fire leaped and roared around her, forming four huge fans of flame that stood out around her body like butterfly wings. Her hands and feet seemed to changed shape too, they seemed to grow larger, they began to look like the talons of some giant bird of prey. The ropes had by then burned through but she remained, standing against the now-disappearing post, a fantastic flaming being with the body and face of a woman, flames for hair, huge butterfly wings, and eagle talons.
All three of them sat down in front of the fire and watched her burn. Mixcoatl had rather expected that her body would finally turn black and started to shrivel up, but it didn't really do that; instead, it seemed to become less and less solid, until at last it had faded into the smoke. There was a lot of smoke, heavy black smoke, and the fire popped and cracked like there were firecrackers in it.
For some time after the flames had died they just sat there, staring at it. Amid the cooling ashes, Mixcoatl could see four large objects; finally he got up and walked over to them. They were ovate pieces of flint, pointed at each end. Each was a different color, green, white, red, and black. Mixcoatl picked up the white flint; it seemed to him very important that he keep it. Mimich had retrieved a bag from one of the corpses, and he collected the other three, storing them in the bag. The three men glanced at each other, and simultaneously they dipped their hands into the ashes, then rubbed their faces with them. Not a word passed among them as they painted black rings around their eyes and mouths. When they had finished, they gathered up the bows and quivers, the pack, and three water-gourds taken from the dead men.
When they returned to the trail, Mixcoatl was somewhat surprised to see that Huemac's body was not in the road where he'd fallen. Quickly, he conducted a brief search of the nearby area, but turned up nothing. Perhaps the body had been dragged away by some large predator, he thought. Maybe a bear. Unless one of their assailants was still alive, there was really no other explanation for it. He was quite sure that Huemac hadn't gotten up and walked away. Apanecatl's body was still there, lying on the road, flies buzzing around it. He considered giving his brother some sort of funeral, but felt such an urgency to get moving again that he dismissed the idea, he left Apanecatl's body lying where it was.
Once again, they started off toward the southeast. Mixcoatl again wondered at his odd attitudes. Armed only with bows and arrows, the three men continued their trek toward an unknown destination.
Midday the next day found them crossing a range of low hills; once again, they had seen no one at all out on the roads. Considering what had happened, Mixcoatl thought it best to avoid any marked trails, so they had begun to travel cross-country. But the route southeast kept them near the same trail they'd been waylaid on, and they could frequently see it from the tops of the ridges they crossed. However, they saw no other people at all.
Finding a large, leafy tree atop a little hill, they rested for awhile under it. Mixcoatl considered the events of the past two days. His brothers were all dead, and he himself had, on a spur of the moment decision, killed his own sister. He remembered her as she had been when they were children; they'd been very close. He could not understand why he'd felt it so necessary to kill her, or why he felt absolutely no regrets about it, or why she'd not fought him or at least protested. But neither could he imagine how she had managed to slaughter the four hundred men - what had she called them? Mimixcoas? He'd never heard that word before.
He glanced over at Mimich, who seemed to be dozing, and wondered again what the story on the two strangers was. Clearly, whatever destiny was leading him on involved them; he'd been too certain that picking them up was the right thing to do, and they had fitted into the situation entirely too well for it to have been otherwise. What made Mixcoatl so uncomfortable was that he had no idea what that destiny was.
As he lay there thinking, a noise in the branches overhead attracted his attention. He looked up, trying to see what was up there, but all he could see was the movement among the leaves; nevertheless, it looked like something large. He jumped up, fitted another arrow to the bowstring, and backed off from the tree, his eyes searching through the tangle of leaves and branches.
Mimich and Xiuhnel came and stood alongside him. "What is it?" Xiuhnel asked.
"I dunno," Mixcoatl replied. "I still can't see it."
"There!" Xiuhnel cried. "I think it's a man!"
Mixcoatl glanced at them, noticed that each of them also had arrows nocked on their bows. Mixcoatl followed Xiuhnel's pointing finger into the tree. He could see a shape, green and brown; there was something coming down the tree. Finally it emerged from the leaf cover and sat on a low branch, gazing down at them.
It was a deer, Mixcoatl decided. But certainly a most peculiar one. Instead of fur, this deer was covered with green and brown feathers. Moreover, it had two heads, each of which moved independently of the other as it watched them.
Mimich suddenly loosed an arrow at it, and Xiuhnel followed suite. But it jumped gracefully to another branch, and the arrows thudded harmlessly into the wood. Mimich fired another, and the weird animal leaped to the ground and bounded away down the hillside. Instantly, Mimich and Xiuhnel were in hot pursuit. Mixcoatl ran a short ways behind them, then stopped and watched them go. As the deer ran, it fissured down the middle, following the line dividing its two heads; then there were two feathered deer, and they ran along side by side, easily outdistancing the two men. Mixcoatl remained on the hillside, watching the chase; then he started to follow them, at a slow walk. He could see one or the other periodically stop and launch another arrow at the fleeing animals, but neither had hit one yet.
For several hours, Mixcoatl trailed them. It was getting near sunset when he came across a small hut, sitting by itself in the middle of a rather barren area; there was nothing at all around except maguey plants and barrel cactus. Mixcoatl crept up close and looked in through one of the windows.
Inside, the two strangers were pointing arrows at two beautiful young women, who were both completely naked. One was very small, brown-eyed, with full, pouty lips; the other, somewhat taller but still not a large woman, had blue-gray eyes that Mixcoatl thought of as smoky. Both were dark-haired. Somehow, as absurd as it seemed, Mixcoatl felt certain that these two women were the deer that the men had been chasing. He could only stare at them; they were almost impossibly beautiful. He kept thinking they looked like moonlight, like flowers...
"So, my Chichimecs," the smaller woman was saying, "May we offer you food? Drink?"
"I see no food, no drink," Xiuhnel said curtly. "Nothing at all!"
The small woman gave him a rich smile. "You need only ask, my Chichimec," she told him.
"Okay," he said shortly. "I want something to drink, then! It's been a long, hot chase."
"So I thought," she said. "I offer you drink, then!" From somewhere beside her, she produced a long, thin spine, apparently a sliver of obsidian. She smiled at Xiuhnel again, held it up for him to see, then touched the tip of it to one of her nipples. As Mixcoatl watched, amazed, she slipped it into herself; it was obviously very sharp, it pierced her nipple very easily. Once it was deeply in, she twisted it a couple of times, then pulled it out. Blood welled out of her breast, dripping on the floor. She grabbed Xiuhnel's head and pulled his mouth to her breast as if he were an infant. "Drink, my Chichimec," she murmured, "Drink your fill!" As she stroked his hair, Xiuhnel's throat worked rapidly.
For a long while, Xiuhnel continued to suck blood from the woman's breast. He seemed to be oblivious of Mimich and the smoky-eyed woman, who just sat and watched. At last, though, he stopped and pulled away. The small woman, blood still dripping from her nipple, just smiled at him. She seemed to be unaware of the bleeding; her gaze was focused on the obvious bulge in Xiuhnel's pants. He glanced down, then back at her, and stood up. In an instant his clothes were off, and he almost hurled himself on her. She didn't fight him; she just spread her legs wide and allowed him to do what he wanted. He shoved his erection inside her like it was a weapon and her only response was to wrap her legs around his midsection. He was very rough with her, but she didn't seem to mind, even when he bit her lower lip hard enough to draw more blood. Neither of them even glanced toward their audience, who sat staring raptly.
After only a few minutes, Xiuhnel reached his orgasm; his body arched and he slammed his hips against hers. Collapsing across her, he lay as if dead for a moment. Then, shaking his head, he got up and pulled his penis out of her. She didn't move as he went to the pile of his clothes and rummaged around, she merely turned her head to watch him.
When he returned with his knife in his hand, she still didn't move. He straddled her thighs, leaning over her, and seemed to be waiting for something.
"I am your deer, my Chichimec," she said softly. "And it is time!"
Mimich broke his frozen posture as she said this. He moved to a corner of the room, picked up his fire-drill, and set about using it to build a fire in the small fireplace built into one wall.
As he was doing this, Xiuhnel pressed the point of his knife against the small woman's skin, just below her breastbone. Working it back and forth, taking his time and being very careful, he opened a small shallow slit in her perfect skin. He wiped away the droplets of blood and inspected it, then used the point of his knife to lengthen it a little. Then, just as carefully, he started cutting deeper.
The woman didn't fight him at all. She put her hands on his shoulders, and her teeth were clenched as she watched him cut into her belly. Mixcoatl watched intently as well, but he didn't really understand--most of the time, the skin Xiuhnel was cutting into looked human; but occasionally it seemed to transform into deerskin, it seemed to be covered with soft white fur. Mixcoatl shook his head, and the image stabilized as a woman.
Xiuhnel kept working at the incision, apparently trying to get the depth right. He kept wiping away the blood, and periodically he poked his finger into the little hole he'd made in her satiny skin. Finally, evidently satisfied with the depth of the initial incision, Xiuhnel began to pull the knife down in a straight line, down toward her groin. Her legs pushed out hard, her toes curled rigidly, and her head pushed back, but she still made no effort to interfere. Xiuhnel continued cutting, just deep enough to open her belly, all the way down to her pubic hair. Working his fingers into the long incision, he carefully pushed her body wall away from the glistening organs inside, cutting delicately with the knife where necessary. When her entrails were exposed and loose, he lifted them out in a mass, pulling them away as far as he could without breaking into them. Then he cut the bottom connection free down deep inside her and pulled the bloody mass off to the side.
"Take part of my liver," she said in a strained voice. "Hurry, my Chichimec!"
He responded immediately, reaching up under her ribs on the right and using his knife to cut a piece of her liver away, evidently taking pains not to sever the large arteries. She watched his face carefully as he hesitantly lifted the piece to his mouth, then popped it in. When he finished, he quickly sliced off the top connections of her viscera and removed them completely, tossing them carelessly to one side. Instantly, her empty abdomen began filling up with blood.
"My heart, now," she said, astounding Mixcoatl by speaking at all. "And quickly, quickly!"
Xiuhnel nodded, and he stabbed his knife hard and deep into her left breast. She made a little noise, which turned into muffled shrieks as he sawed vigorously down her side, staying between two of her ribs. Prying the wound open, he reached in, seized her heart, and tore it free. Immediately he started to eat it, and she watched him as her eyes glazed, her hand lying on his arm. Finally she went limp. Xiuhnel looked closely into her face as if he expected her to say something else. When she didn't, he used his knife to cut into her throat, and he continued cutting until her head came free.
Tossing the head aside, he turned his attention to the body. He cut away her arms and legs, divided them into pieces, and skinned them out. As he was doing this, the body started switching again, as Mixcoatl saw it; now a deer, now a woman. Xiuhnel didn't seem to notice. He put a thigh on a spit over the fire that Mimich had built and prepared the remainder of the meat for transport. Then he turned his gaze on the smoky-eyed woman.
Her reaction was nothing at all like the small woman's. She jumped up as if panicked, and ran to Mimich. Almost frantically, she tried to convince him that he was hungry, that he should eat something. Mixcoatl thought she meant part of the dead woman, but he wasn't sure. But Mimich didn't respond, and she backed off. Then, incredibly, she jumped directly into the fire.
But she didn't burn. Mixcoatl could see her in there, running across a flaming desert, seemingly uninjured. Mimich seized his bow, ran to the fire, and jumped in after her. With no more ill effects than she had suffered.
Looking into the flames, Mixcoatl could see them clearly, as if they were right in front of him. For what seemed like hours, the woman ran across the desert with Mimich in hot pursuit. Again, he sometimes stopped and fired arrows at her, but he wasn't even coming close. The woman appeared to be taking it almost as a game, turning her head and laughing at him. She probably thought that she could afford it; she was clearly the faster runner, and she had a good lead on him. But soon this got her into trouble. She kept running with her head turned, looking at her pursuer, and collided with a huge barrel cactus.
To Mixcoatl, her situation looked very painful. She struggled to get loose, her left shoulder and side impaled on dozens of thorns. After a few seconds, she ripped her body free, bringing a number of thorns with it. Several of them had passed completely through her left arm and breast. She didn't take time to pull them out. She ran on, as Mimich was now quite a bit closer. But obviously the accident had impaired her speed; she was running noticeably slower now.
For a few seconds, Mixcoatl lost sight of them; then he saw the woman sitting on a rock, brushing out her dark hair. She appeared to be quite at ease, as if certain that she had evaded Mimich completely. Her left side now showed no sign of the injuries she had previously received from the cactus spines. Obviously relaxed, she stretched her still-unclothed body and shook out her hair.
Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, an arrow thudded into the calf of her left leg. She jumped up as if to run, but she stopped, first staring at Mimich as he came toward her, then looking at the blood running down her leg. A long, sharp pike leaned against the rock she'd been sitting on. She picked it up.
"Do you know what to do?" she asked. Mixcoatl wondered if she intended to fight him with the pike.
Mimich grinned. "Yeah, I know what to do. But you'll run away, as soon as I put down the bow!"
She laughed at him. "No, I won't!" she said. "Not now! I think you know that!"
"I'm not gonna take a chance," Mimich said. With a smooth, quick movement he lifted the bow, drew the string, and loosed an arrow. As Mixcoatl watched, the arrow buried itself in the woman's stomach. She grabbed it with both hands, dropping the pike, and fell to her knees. But what struck Mixcoatl as really strange was the fact that even as she watched the blood drip from between her fingers, she began to smile again.
As Mimich lowered his bow and started to approach her, she suddenly jumped up and ran a few yards away. "You didn't trust me!" she cried. "So you'll have to work for it!" Snapping off the shaft of the arrow protruding from her stomach, she threw it at him, running backwards a few steps as she did.
"Shit, I knew it!" Mimich cried. He drew another arrow, fired it, and missed. She took another step backwards, and Mimich fired at her again, this arrow striking her in the upper thigh. It didn't seem to slow her down any; she jumped back several more yards, even though more blood was running down her leg.
Mimich took a few steps toward her, an arrow on his bowstring. She remained still, watching him, and amazingly, still smiling. Quickly he jerked the bow up and fired. She twisted her body to avoid it, but not quite fast enough. It struck her high in her side, just under her armpit, and it went in deep.
"That won't stop me!" she cried, breaking this arrow off as well. She coughed, spat blood, and again turned to run, but Mimich was ready this time. His next arrow struck her full in the back, just below her shoulder blade. She lost her balance, stumbled, and went down on one knee. Staring down at four inches of arrow protruding from her chest, she watched the steady pulse of blood coming out from around it. Mimich approached her slowly, another arrow on his bow. Still kneeling, she turned to face him, blood running from the corner of her mouth.
"I can't run anymore, my Chichimec," she said. "I'm yours, as you will."
He quickly reached out and grabbed her hair, dropping his bow and arrow to the ground as he did. She didn't struggle; she just kept looking up at him as he wound up her hair in one hand and jerked her head far back. With the other he drew out his knife, and he began cutting into her throat.
Her body jerked involuntarily as a spray of blood emerged from her neck, but Mimich continued cutting until he had decapitated her. He held up her head like a trophy, letting the still-twitching body fall. Then he picked up the pike and impaled her head on it.
Moments later, he emerged from the fire, still carrying the pike with the smoky-eyed woman's head on it and her body slung over his shoulder. Mixcoatl was surprised to find himself sitting alongside Xiuhnel in the little hut, gazing into the fire.
Mimich immediately started butchering the smoky-eyed woman's body. "I don't understand," he said slowly, addressing both the strangers. "Why did you kill them? There are other things we could've done with them--"
"Shit, man, they weren't women!" Mimich said, laughing. "They were deer, naguals! Dangerous. Had to kill them. You oughta understand about things like that!" He picked up the small woman's head and, pushing the other head down on the pike until the point broke through the top of her skull, impaled hers atop it.
Mixcoatl glanced back at the door; it was morning. He had no idea how long they'd been in the little hut. Xiuhnel touched his arm, and he turned his head.
"You want some?" he asked, offering a piece of the now-cooked thigh meat. "Best venison you ever had!"
As they continued their southeastward trek, Mixcoatl walked along chewing on the venison; as Xiuhnel had said, it was excellent. Mimich had refused to eat any of it; he trudged along in the rear, carrying the pike with the heads impaled on it. Every time Mixcoatl looked at them, they changed. First deer heads, then human, then deer again. Finally he started to make a conscious effort not to notice. The pieces of the carcasses that Xiuhnel and Mimich were carrying did the same thing, switching from human appearance to deer appearance, so Mixcoatl tried not to look at those either. He didn't feel very stable at the moment, and the changing deer-women didn't help any.
The association of deer and women caused a stray thought to wander into his mind, almost like a memory. Someone must have told him about it, he was sure. A ritual his people used to use, years ago, when the game--the deer in particular--became scarce. They would designate a woman from the tribe as a deer, refer to her as a deer; they would give her only a deerskin, complete with the head, to wear. Then she would run out into the desert, and the hunters, armed with their bows, would go after her, hunting her. She was supposed to do her damnedest to escape, to stay alive, and usually in her frantic running the deerskin would get lost or cast aside, and it would be as if the deer had changed into a nude woman.
But most of the time the hunters would catch up with her and bring her back, sometimes dead, sometimes only wounded. Either way, they would then gut her and skin her, all the while calling her a deer, and they'd cook the meat, referring to it as venison--exactly what Xiuhnel had done with the small woman. They didn't do this just to get meat for the pot, although that was in fact a side benefit; the main thing was to show the spirit protector of the deer that they were not afraid to put one of their own in the deer's place. Hopefully the deer would then return to the hunting grounds, and the people would have food. And, he reflected, his people had always survived, so--
He stopped the line of thought, momentarily thunderstruck. His people had never engaged in such a ceremony! Or if they had, it was in such deep antiquity that nobody remembered it. Where had he gotten that idea? As he'd told Itzpapalotl, their people did not eat human flesh! When thinking of "his people," he'd been thinking about some other tribe, a desert people, wearing skins...
Chichimecs. The legendary, storied Chichimecs, the "dog men," the desert men, the wild men--the wild men who were so feared and so respected all at the same time, those to whom, so all the wise men believed, the future belonged. Only now did it register that the deer-women had called Mimich and Xiuhnel Chichimecs. His head swimming, he looked at the two strangers and suddenly they didn't look like strangers at all, they looked like his brothers... He became very agitated and tried to push the thoughts back in his mind, tried to concentrate on the desert scenery.
From a ridge on one of the hills, Mimich pointed to something off in the distance. Shading his eyes, Mixcoatl looked. Yes, definitely; there was a break in the wilderness they were passing through. He could see a cornfield, tall plants in spite of the season. He wouldn't have believed that they had traveled so far south that the growing season was that much earlier, but apparently they had. Even at this range, there was no doubt in his mind about the maturity of those plants. Neither was there any doubt that there were people moving around the edges of the field.
"We need to get up close, see what's going on before they see us," he told his companions. "Keep low, use the rocks." Both of them nodded and followed his lead. Concealing their movements, they approached the cornfield.
A short while later, Mixcoatl peeped out from behind a rock and looked at the people they'd seen from a distance. One was a young girl. She wasn't aware of them, and she certainly wasn't doing anything threatening; she was gathering ears of ripe corn from the plants and loading them in a basket, softly singing a song as she did. The other person was a man, naked except for his loincloth, busily constructing something out of some large wooden beams. As Mixcoatl watched them, he became concerned about Mimich and Xiuhnel's reactions to them; based on recent history, they might well kill them on sight. Mixcoatl wasn't sure why, but he didn't feel he could allow that to happen.
The girl paused in her work and brushed back her long dark hair. Mixcoatl thought she couldn't have been more than nineteen at the outside, yet she had a set look of purpose about her, a maturity, that surprised him. He wondered what her purpose was, other than to gather the corn. Even as he was thinking this, she suddenly let out a gasp and dropped her basket, the ears spilling out onto the ground. Mixcoatl ducked back, thinking she might have spotted him somehow, even though she wasn't looking his way, and the wind was against her picking up any sounds. When he looked again, she was standing there staring at the cornfield, her hands over her mouth. He followed her gaze out over the ripe plants.
There was a blue-green mist of some sort hanging over the plants, and little tendrils of vapor were reaching down from it to touch the tassels in several places. Mixcoatl frowned; he'd never seen anything like it before. His companions were looking too, and he glanced at them, but they were just watching, not drawing arrows. Mixcoatl was relieved, but he kept glancing back at them to be sure. He was interested in what was going on, and he didn't want the others interrupting it.
"Ahuizotl," the girl said, not looking back at the working Indian. "It is time, he is here!"
Ahuizotl looked up. "Yes," he said. "I wonder where the others are. They should be here by now. The platform is nearly complete."
Mixcoatl had the oddest conviction that Ahuizotl was referring to himself and his companions. He felt like there was a tight string in the center of his body; a passionate urge to do something; but he had no real idea of what he wanted to do. His companions were looking at him expectantly; obviously they felt it too. But what? He took the white flint out of his pouch and rolled it around in his hand.
The man had apparently finished the structure he was working on. It was a scaffold of some sort, two uprights at the sides and a crossbar in the center, forming an H. He stepped away from it and stood beside the girl, both of them gazing at the hills as if looking for someone. As Mixcoatl watched him, the feeling that the man was waiting for him grew stronger, until finally it couldn't be denied any longer. He signaled to his companions and they all rushed out of hiding, yelling like madmen.
If the man was waiting for Mixcoatl, he didn't act like seeing him was exactly a pleasure. He picked up a long wooden staff from the ground, which had a carved handle like a sword, and waited for them to reach him, holding the staff on his shoulder like a baseball bat.
"Don't shoot, he's mine!" yelled Mixcoatl as he approached the man. He was a little startled to see that the other's staff was edged with balls of cotton. It seemed that pretty much negated its value as a weapon. But Mixcoatl was unwilling to take chances; when he was about twenty feet away, he dropped to one knee and loosed an arrow, putting it through the man's bicep. The wounded man grunted and dropped the staff, holding his arm. Mixcoatl rushed up to him and grabbed his hair, forcing him to his knees.
"You are as my own beloved father," the man said quietly.
"You are as my own beloved son," Mixcoatl responded. He'd never heard this before, but it was somehow very familiar to him, an age-old ritual exchange.
During the brief combat, if it could be called that, the girl had not moved. Now Mimich rushed up and seized her hair, dragging her roughly over to where Mixcoatl still held the man she'd called Ahuizotl. She looked up at him, but she didn't say a word.
"Tie her," he told Mimich. "But don't hurt her." He waited until this was done, then told the men to tie Ahuizotl to the scaffold he'd just built. They did, tying his feet at the crossbar and his hands extended up the side posts.
Mixcoatl stood in front of him and studied him. The man seemed utterly impassive, even though the arrow piercing his bicep must have been hurting like hell. "Why were you building this thing?" Mixcoatl asked after a moment.
"For this, of course," he answered. "As you know. Don't you know?"
"No, I don't."
"I believe you have a flint, a special one. It will tell you what you must do now."
Wondering how Ahuizotl knew about the flint, Mixcoatl took it out of his pouch again and stared at it. It seemed to vibrate, it seemed to be singing to him, a song he couldn't quite understand. Concentrating, he gripped the stone tighter. He felt a little dizzy.
"Don't you remember?" Mimich asked suddenly.
"Remember?" echoed Xiuhnel.
"When we shot an arrow to the south, and killed a blue jaguar?" Mimich asked in a singsong voice.
"When we shot an arrow to the north and killed a black jaguar?" Xiuhnel chimed in.
"When you shot an arrow to the west and killed a white jaguar?" sang the girl.
"When you shot an arrow to the east and killed a red jaguar?" came the voice of the man on the scaffold.
"Remember?" asked Mimich.
"Remember?" whispered Xiuhnel.
"Remember?" sang the flint, in Itzpapalotl's voice.
The four colorful jaguars were indeed very clear in Mixcoatl's mind. But they hadn't even seen a jaguar! This trip, he reminded himself. Remember last time. But even as he dialogued with himself, he couldn't quite grasp what was happening. Yet he could see the jaguar hides, after they'd been skinned. What had been done with those hides? Something very important, but he couldn't remember what. He struggled with himself, then something seemed to snap in his head. The flint felt ice-cold in his hand.
He took the bound girl from Mimich grasp and laid her on her back, under the scaffold. Putting down his bow, he took out his hunting knife and bent over her, briefly wondering if he intended to kill her; he didn't seem to be in control of what his hands were doing. But he merely cut away her clothing, leaving her naked on the ground. He then reached up and snatched the loincloth off the man on the scaffold. Backing away, he stared at the scene for a moment.
"A red jaguar?" he said thickly, not knowing exactly what he was asking.
"Yes," Ahuizotl whispered. "You shot a red jaguar in the east!"
"In the east," Mixcoatl said slowly. He drew his bow, aimed an arrow at the helpless man, and let it fly. It struck him exactly where his penis joined his body, exactly as Mixcoatl had intended. The man's breath rushed out, and he gave a wavering cry of anguish. Mimich and Xiuhnel went completely crazy, dancing around the man, fitting arrows to their bows.
"Not too hard, not too deeply!" Xiuhnel cried.
"Oh, no!" Mimich yelled. "He can't die too soon, no!" They fired at him repeatedly, softly at first, only pricking his skin. When he was bleeding in a dozen places, they picked up their arrows and fired again, harder this time, and the arrows began to go deeper. Still Ahuizotl lived; his eyes rolled up briefly, but he shook his head, stared out over the cornfield.
Mixcoatl was watching the girl, who had somehow gotten loose from her bonds and was writhing around on the ground as Ahuizotl's blood dripped on her body; he would have sworn she was having an orgasm. He glanced back up at Ahuizotl and followed the man's eyes back out over the cornfield.
To the strange mist he'd forgotten all about! It had changed color; now it was deep red. Moreover, it had moved, it was quite close to them. As he watched, a tendril drifted down from it and touched Ahuizotl's head. He groaned a little, and Mixcoatl knew it was time. Drawing his bow fully back, he fired an arrow into the helpless captive's heart. Ahuizotl stiffened, his eyes wide.
"So is the Night-Drinker honored," breathed Mimich.
"Our dread and awesome lord," added Xiuhnel.
"He who is without foreskin," said the girl.
"Which shall be restored to him!" sang Itzpapalotl, the flint buzzing in Mixcoatl's hands.
Ahuizotl's head slumped down on his chest, and his breathing stopped; as it did, the red mist Mixcoatl began to disappear. It was as if it was draining itself into the man's lifeless body. Mixcoatl the man noticed with a kind of an abstract curiosity that there was a sort of symmetry in the process, the man's blood dripping out as the mist entered, both of them very close to the same color. When the cloud had disappeared completely, the white men gently took the body down from the scaffold, treating it with a great deal of respect.
The blood-covered girl rose slowly from the ground, and knelt alongside the corpse; Mimich and Xiuhnel stepped away from them. Mixcoatl noticed then that the dead man's penis was, surprisingly, fully erect. He thought perhaps it had been so when he died, but couldn't be sure. Gently, the young woman manipulated it, pulling the foreskin back to reveal the shiny glans.
While she was doing this, a movement at the edge of the cornfield caught Mixcoatl's eye. He looked, as did the white men. A rattlesnake, fully seven feet long, had crawled out of the field and was rubbing its chin on a rock. Mixcoatl watched it; it was very dull-colored, a solid dark gray. But in a few seconds, it had loosened the skin around its lower jaw and upper lips; and slowly, with smooth undulating movements, it began to crawl out of its old skin, turning it inside-out as it went. The body that emerged was resplendently colored, almost golden, the dark diamonds sharply defined, the scales so highly ridged and velvety that they almost looked like feathers... With a harsh clicking sound, it disengaged its rattle and coiled near the edge of the corn. Mixcoatl turned his eyes back to the girl, who still knelt over Ahuizotl's body.
He felt a little dizzy as a bifurcate black tongue flicked out of the end of the man's phallus, and even more disoriented as the body of another rattlesnake began to emerge from it, rolling the foreskin back as it emerged. It too clicked its rattles as they came free. Lifting its head, it looked at them; for a moment, it seemed to Mixcoatl that its head was the glans of a human penis. But it looked quite normal as it too crawled away toward the cornfield and coiled itself. It seemed to be watching them.
As if this was a cue, Mimich and Xiuhnel pounced on Ahuizotl's body, literally tearing into it with their knives, cutting off the head and splitting the skin down the back. The girl helped them, and soon they had freed the skins of both the torso and the face. The hands had been cut off, and hung at the end of the sleevelike arm skins. They had made no attempt to skin the legs; instead they had just cut the skin free from around the man's crotch, from around the now- empty foreskin.
"Quickly," urged the girl, herself laboring to scrape clean the inside of the skin. "It will not remain Teotl for very long!" As soon as she had finished, she began tugging at Mimich' clothing.
"Why me?" he complained, resisting her.
"Why not?" she said breathlessly, continuing to pull at his shirt. Finally he was completely undressed, and Mixcoatl watched the girl and Xiuhnel help Mimich into the skin. They pulled it tight around him, tying together strips of skin they'd flayed out for this purpose. Then they put the facial skin on him like a mask. Mixcoatl could see Mimich' eyes and lips through the holes where Ahuizotl's eyes and mouth had been; and almost immediately his demeanor changed completely. Xiuhnel backed off, but the naked girl hurled herself on the ground in front of him.
"My Dread Lord!" she cried. "I am here, as you have commanded me in dreams! I am yours, as you will! Does my Lord thirst for my blood? It is here, for the asking! I offer it freely, of my own will!"
The costumed man put his hand on the kneeling girl's shoulder. "There is not enough blood in your body to sustain such as I for long," he told her in a gentle voice, a voice which was not at all the same as Mimich's. "But yes, I will take your life. Not as you think, but I will take it, nevertheless!" Kneeling in front of her, he pushed her back onto the ground. He was already erect, and he entered her almost immediately. She cried out, clutching at his shoulders, and kept her eyes tightly closed as they made love. Mixcoatl glanced at the rattlesnakes; they too were copulating. Finally Mimich had his orgasm and lifted himself off her.
"What shall I do now, my Lord?" she asked him.
"You came here from the north?" Mimich asked in turn.
"Yes," she said. "Far to the North. My people are known as the Cherokee, my Lord."
"You will now go back to the north," Mimich said. "To a land where there is a river that runs wide and shallow. As you travel, I shall show you the way, and there you will live with the people of the Wolf, who are known as the Pawnee. There, in one sacred year--two hundred and sixty days--you will meet a man. This man you will marry, and four years from now you will bear a son. Yet it shall not be his son, it shall be mine!"
"But, my Lord," she said, looking worried. "How shall I know this man?"
"There will be no problem," Mimich told her. "You shall know him. He is a grower of the maize, as is appropriate. You need not do anything more; his tonalli, his fate, will bring him to you."
"But my Lord--" she started to protest.
"It must be so, it will be so," said Mimich, his tone gentle but firm. "This is why you were called in your dreams, why you came here."
"What exactly are you talking about?" Mixcoatl finally asked, his curiosity overwhelming him.
Mimich smiled at him through the grotesque mask. "Ah, my old friend, I know that you do not remember me. You do not even remember this ceremony! Understand this: I am not the one called Mimich, I am merely using this body. This man is only a vehicle, he has allowed himself to be used. Don't you remember the jaguars?"
And it seemed that he did; he remembered they'd skinned the jaguars, and when the warriors had put on the skins, they had indeed become jaguars. Just as the woman in a deerskin had not been impersonating a deer, she had been a deer.
He felt confused; men did not turn into jaguars, women did not turn into deer, a penis did not turn into a rattlesnake. Yet he'd just seen some of these things happen. So what exactly was Mimich right now? It was more than clear than he was not the man Ahuizotl, for he too had been a vehicle; apparently the current occupant of Mimich' body could only enter Ahuizotl as he died, and had then been transferred to Mimich via the skin.
Mimich--or Ahuizotl, or whoever he was--turned away from them and walked over to the growing corn. At a distance, Mixcoatl and the girl followed him. When he got there, he knelt down and thrust his fingers into the soil. The plants in a fifty foot radius of him seemed to vibrate and shudder; it was a moment before Mixcoatl reaIized that it was because they were visibly growing taller before his eyes. Mimich stood up, looked at Mixcoatl, and smiled.
"The Snake Woman, She of the Jade Skirts, and the Old One of the Fire," he said cryptically, "are in the world. They have called us. As it was. And as it shall be again. And again, and again, and yet again. We have journeys to make, you and I, before we meet again. When we do, your dreams will have been done, yet I will have to dream on. But now, this woman's tonalli is as it should be, and I have only a little strength left. Be of strong heart, my old friend, old hunter; for you not all is to be pleasant. That's why so many things seem so strange to you."
Mimich seemed to lose his strength as he said this, and he sank to the ground. The girl rushed to him, pulling at the mask; and just as quickly, Xiuhnel was there too, pulling off the body skin. Mixcoatl noticed it has dried out unbelievably rapidly, turning a golden yellow color in the process.
It also stank, abominably. Xiuhnel and the girl quickly buried it in the cornfield, while Mimich sat naked on each on the ground for a while, staring off into space. The snakes were nowhere to be seen.
Mixcoatl became aware that Xiuhnel was asking him if they should butcher Ahuizotl's corpse for the meat. For an instant he was appalled, but that was a regression to his old life, he realized; today that was not an unreasonable question.
"He was as my own beloved son," Mixcoatl said haughtily. "Shall I then eat of my own flesh and blood?"
Xiuhnel shrugged, and they dragged the man's body off somewhere. When they returned, Mimich seemed to have come out of his trance-like state. He suggested that they now tie the girl to the scaffold and shoot her with arrows also. She looked terrified and hid behind Xiuhnel.
"We can't do that," Mixcoatl said. "She carries the essence of the Night-Drinker. You yourself made sure of that. It is not in her tonalli to die here, this day!"
"Tonalli?" Mimich asked, looking blank. It dawned on Mixcoatl that he didn't really know the meaning of that word.
"Something like fate, or destiny," Xiuhnel interjected. "But he's right. We can't kill her. I know what you want from her, but you can't have it."
"I'll take it, then, in another way!" Mimich snapped. He went to his clothes, rooted around, and came up with his knife. Turning, he started to approach Xiuhnel and the girl.
But immediately Mixcoatl put an arrow on his bow and aimed it at the man. "I am the leader here," he said coldly. "And I say she does not die!"
Mimich stared at him for a moment, looking a little surprised. But he put away the knife, and started to get dressed.
The confrontation with Mimich apparently over, Mixcoatl turned to the girl. "It is enough. Where will you go?" he asked her.
"North, as he bade me," she replied, picking up her torn dress and putting it on. "Away from here. My task is done, and there is no reason for me to stay. But of course, I at least have to say my good-byes to Chimalma."
"Chimalma?" Mixcoatl asked. "Who is she?"
The girl smiled at him. "Oh, she's quite a lady!" she said. "A very unusual woman indeed. We take her as our leader, even though some of us are older than she in years. She took me in when I came here, let me live in their village, actually kept me from going insane, which is what I thought had happened to me."
"Where is this village?" Mixcoatl asked her.
She pointed to the southeast. "About a half mile down there, in the valley."
Mixcoatl took her arm. "Let's go there, then," he said. "Since we're headed that way ourselves." Xiuhnel collected his load of meat, Mimich the pike--with obvious deer heads on it now--and they started off.
"I still say we should kill her," Mimich grumbled as they walked along.
"We don't have to kill everyone we see," Mixcoatl pointed out reasonably.
"Sometimes it's easier that way," the other man told him.
At last they came to the village, which turned out to be merely a collection of small huts. They could see people down there, and it had been a long time since they'd seen anyone other than the girl and Ahuizotl that Mixcoatl thought might have been normal people. He glanced back at the other men, wondered if they should leave the carcass and the trophy heads here in the hills. But both seemed to have stabilized as deer, so it didn't seem to matter much. They started down the hill toward the houses; and as they did, the girl suddenly broke away and ran on down the trail ahead of them. Immediately Mimich drew an arrow and took aim at her, but Mixcoatl pushed it aside.
"But she'll warn them we're coming!" Mimich cried. "Besides, she knows - "
Mixcoatl didn't even look at him. "We can't kill that one," he said again, his voice distant. "She carries the essence of the Night-Drinker, of Xipe Totec. You yourself made sure of that! She has to take it to the north." He had a sensation of deja vu; hadn't he just said that, or something very like it? He couldn't be sure.
"What are you talking about?" Mimich asked him.
"I have no idea," Mixcoatl said honestly, continuing on down toward the little village.
Five women came out to meet them, one of them being the girl that had just run away. The leader took Mixcoatl by surprise, however. She was really striking--very long, thick black hair, huge dark eyes, as beautiful as the deer-women had been. She was also totally nude except for her sandals and her weapons--a bow, a shield, and a quiver of arrows. She looked strong and athletic, the muscles in her shapely arms and legs well-defined. She stood in front of him on the trail, her arms crossed.
"You can come no further," she told him. "My sisters and I do not wish you to be in Huitznahuac."
"We mean no harm to you," Mixcoatl said. "Are you Chimalma?"
"I am indeed called Chimalma," she told him. "And these are my sisters, as I have said. "Now, you go, the way you came!"
"No," Xiuhnel said suddenly. "We need rest, and your village is the only one we've seen for miles."
She looked very resolute. "You'll have to go through me to do that," she declared.
With a very fast motion, Mixcoatl brought his bow to bear and pulled an arrow from the quiver. "We take what we want," he said.
The woman gave him a cold look. "As you will!" She flung her bow and shield on the ground, then stripped off the quiver and threw it down as well. "As you know, my Chichimec, four arrows. If I do not die, you must go. Agreed?"
For just an instant, Mixcoatl felt the urge to explain that he was not one of the legendary Chichimecs, but that, he understood, really wasn't true. Instead he just nodded, and he quickly loosed the arrow at her. She was only ten or twelve feet away, it would have been difficult for him to miss.
But he did. She moved her head and shoulder just a little, and the arrow flew by harmlessly. Mixcoatl nocked another, fired again; this one she slapped at, she deflected it to her left. The third she knocked away to her right, and the fourth, which he aimed low to avoid her deflections, passed between her legs.
"Four arrows, and I stand!" she cried. "Now you will go!"
Mixcoatl turned on his heel and walked away, motioning for the other two to follow. He did not understand why he was limited to four arrows, but his hands would not pull another from the quiver. He felt terribly humiliated. This woman, he decided, must also be a Nagual like the deer-women, a magical being. There was no other way she could have done what she did.
As night came on, the three men camped in the hills above the village. Mixcoatl and Xiuhnel ate some more of the venison, but Mimich, for whatever reason, refused to touch it. After a while, they tried to sleep, but Mixcoatl was very restless.
He had just closed his eyes when something disturbed him; he didn't know what. Without moving, he opened them again, stared at the cold eyes in the yellow-banded face, very close this time, staring into his face.
He reached for his bow; but the face spoke to him in a low whisper. "You should go home, little Snake," it said. "There is nothing here for you but death. You think Itzpapalotl will protect you, but you're wrong. Nothing can protect you from me!"
"Who are you?" he whispered back.
"Ah, my warrior friend, you have forgotten me! But no matter. Soon enough, you'll remember. But it'll not happen this time, Mixcoatl. Not this time." The voice and the face faded away, leaving Mixcoatl staring at the darkness, at the stars. A little puff of smoke hung on the air where the face had been, then vanished.
When Mixcoatl finally fell asleep, he was tormented by dreams, dreams in which the primary character was the impressive Chimalma. He was able to observe an incident that he felt had taken place a couple of weeks earlier; it seemed that a group of five men, a raiding party from some neighboring tribe, had stumbled across the little enclave of women. Observing the village for a short time from the hills, they had determined the nature of the inhabitants, and Mixcoatl heard them discuss their plans to attack the village, steal anything of value there, and, finally, rape and then kill the women. These men, Mixcoatl noticed, bore no similarity at all to the group that had attacked him and his party, the people Itzpapalotl had called Mimixcoas.
In the dream, Mixcoatl watched them try to sneak down the path into the village. They didn't manage their surprise attack, however; one of the women spotted them and raised an alarm. They'd fired at her, missed, and shortly all the women were in the streets, led by Chimalma, nude except for her sandals and weapons. Mixcoatl noticed that this day she was carrying another, a heavy sword or perhaps a battle-ax, made of wood and edged with obsidian glass. Oddly, he knew a name for it, though he'd never seen one before--it was called a macuahuitl.
In this instance, Chimalma did not throw down her weapons; rather, she put her shield on her forearm and nocked an arrow to her bow. "You are not Chichimecs," she told the men. "You must leave immediately, or your lives are forfeit!"
The men, naturally, laughed at her. There were after all, five of them, all heavily armed with arrows and lances, and they were being given an ultimatum by one naked woman armed with bow and sword. "Now, I think you better put that down before we have to hurt you," one of them said, taking a step forward and gesturing toward her with his long lance.
In response, she twisted her body to the side, an odd movement, and fired the arrow. Mixcoatl saw then what the movement was for; she'd lined up two of them, and she'd fired the arrow with such force that it had passed completely through the first man's chest and had buried itself in the man behind him, so deeply that only the feathers remained visible. Both men looked stunned as they began to collapse.
Chimalma didn't hesitate; she took advantage of the instant the others were occupied staring at their fallen comrades, and another dropped, his head literally shattered by the force of the arrow that struck it. One of the remaining two got his senses back and dropped to the ground. He raised his lance to throw it her and managed to launch it, but she avoided it easily. She in turn fired an arrow at him, pinning his arm to the soil. Almost instantly another arrow was on her bow, and the last man turned to run. He didn't get a single step before an arrow transfixed his torso, and he joined his fellows in the dust.
The man whose arm was pinned had gotten free, and was diving for one of his comrades' lances. But Chimalma had already put down her bow, and she was on him in an instant, the macuahuitl drawn. Before he could reach the weapon the sword whistled through the air, and, just that quickly, he had no hand to pick it up with. With a disgusted look, she put the sword down and pulled the quaking and bleeding man to his feet.
"You are the lowest kind of scum," she said coldly, and put her right hand on his throat. As if he were a toy, she lifted him up by his neck and clamped her fingers down. Mixcoatl heard the bones splinter. The body jerked for a few moments, then hung limply. It looked very strange, the man--well over six feet tall--hanging from her hand; Chimalma was only about five-six. She cast it aside, then told the other women to bury what she referred to as "the garbage."
After watching the women dispose of the bodies, Mixcoatl awoke momentarily, and looked at the night sky. He felt that it hadn't really been a dream; if he were to look in the place where he'd seen the bodies buried, he'd find those five bodies there. And he knew he'd have to test Chimalma again. And again, if necessary, until there was no question as to which of them was the best. He smiled grimly. Tomorrow was, after all, a good day to die.
The sky was already bright when Mixcoatl opened his eyes again; but the first thing he saw was Xiuhnel's face. Crouching beside him, the other man was asking him what they were going to do now.
Instantly awake, Mixcoatl sat up, glanced around. "Go back down to that village," he said. "I'm not through with that woman yet!"
Once again, the three men went down the hill to the little cluster of houses. Four of the women were out on the streets; Chimalma was nowhere to be seen. Like a marauding army, the men ran into the village, making effective captives of the women.
"Where the hell is everybody else?" Mixcoatl yelled at one of them.
"There is no one else, except Chimalma, and she is at the great ravine. Please don't hurt us!" the woman cried.
"No men?"
"No! Just us!"
"You trying to tell me there's no men living here at all?"
"Yes, it's true!"
With no warning at all, Mixcoatl backhanded her across the mouth, knocking her to the ground. She got up slowly, wiping blood from her lips. "I want the truth," he told her coldly. "If I don't get it, I'll kill you."
Remaining in a crouch, she looked up at him. "Look around you," she said. "Isn't it obvious that this isn't just an average village?"
Mixcoatl did glance around. There were five women that he and his comrades held captive, and, although he'd not yet conducted a house to house search, no one else had appeared. He also realized that the girl they'd captured the previous day wasn't there.
"Where's the other one?" he asked. "The one who came back yesterday?"
"She is gone. She left this morning, to go to the north."
That made sense; it was where she said she was going. "All right," he said, looking away from her. "Find some ropes or something and tie these women up. Out here, to the doorposts or whatever. Where we can see them all."
Mimich was apparently ahead of him; he'd already gotten some rope from somewhere and was busily tying one of the women. When all their captives were secured, Mixcoatl told Mimich to watch them while he and Xiuhnel searched the village. It did indeed appear strange. Only three of the houses showed any signs of recent habitation, and they found no one else around at all.
At last Mixcoatl came back to the woman he had previously questioned. "I don't understand," he said. "What the hell are you women doing here? And you said Chimalma is in the ravine? Where is that?"
"We don't really know what we're doing here," she told him. "We came from all over; I myself came from the coast, in the west. The others have all come from different places, from different directions. All we have in common is we all had dreams. We were told in those dreams that we had to come here, but we weren't told why. And all of our experience were similar; for some reason we just couldn't ignore it, we had to come, no matter what."
"What's your name?" he asked her.
"Kaiina."
He scowled. "What kind of a name is that?"
"It is a common name for a woman among my people. We dwell far from here."
"And you came here because of a dream," he said sarcastically. It really wasn't a question.
"Didn't you?" she asked. "A dream or something like it?"
That stopped him for a moment, but then he told her curtly that he'd ask the questions. He crouched in front of her, bouncing on his knees. "Tell me about these dreams," he said at length.
"There really isn't too much to tell. All of them were a little different; but in mine, for example, I had a dream in which I was walking in a field, and I was snatched up by an eagle. It took me to some dark place--a cave, I think--where someone was speaking to me. I couldn't ever see him, but he showed me--like a landscape, sort of like a map, but more real--pointed out this place, and said I had to go there. He was very insistent. He said when I woke up, I'd have a mark that would prove this wasn't a dream, and he touched my left thigh. Look at it."
Mixcoatl pulled her skirt up; high on her left thigh was a tiny brownish mark, very suggestive of the silhouette of an eagle carrying someone in its talons. "It wasn't there before?" he asked.
"No, it wasn't. And when I saw it, it was like something snapped in my head. I left, by myself. I thought I would be killed on the way, but I had no trouble getting here... and when I got here, only Chimalma was here. The others came later."
He glanced at the others, and they all nodded their agreement; one volunteered that her story was very similar. He turned back to Kaiina. "So Chimalma here when you came?" he asked her. The woman nodded. "How long ago was that?"
"About two years ago," she told him.
Mixcoatl decided this wasn't getting him anywhere at all. Besides, he really wasn't that interested; he was interested in Chimalma. "You said Chimalma was in the 'ravine'?" he asked. "Tell me where that is."
"I can't," she said. "No one may know where the ravine--"
Mixcoatl stopped her by standing up and ripping off her dress in a single violent movement. He pulled out an arrow, unslung up his bow, and aimed it directly at her heart. "You have just a few seconds to tell me!" he shouted.
"No!" she cried. "You don't understand, I can't--"
Mixcoatl drew the bow a little tighter, then made a different decision. He turned quickly to his right, aimed his arrow at the woman tied to the next post, and let it fly. The shot was very accurate; it struck her left breast a little below and inside the nipple, and the point pierced her heart. She stiffened, then slumped down into the ropes holding her without a sound, her blood pouring out on the dusty ground.
"NO!" Kaiina screamed. "I can't tell you because I don't know! Only Chimalma knows!"
He stopped, faced her; she was crying, and the other women began to wail for their dead comrade. "I don't believe that," he said. He pulled out another arrow and toyed with it ominously.
"But it's true!" Kaiina sobbed. "She only tells us that she's going 'to the ravine,' she's never told us where it was! But all you have to do is wait--if it's Chimalma you want, she'll come back, she always does!"
"Maybe so," Mixcoatl said. "But I don't know. You hear my words now: every hour, until you tell me where she is, or she returns, one of you dies. And that one,"--he indicated the dead woman--"has died the quickest and most painless death of all! You'll be last, Kaiina, and you'll take a very long time dying. Understand?"
"Yes," she said. "But I cannot tell you what I do not know!"
Turning away from her, Mixcoatl looked up at the sun, and started to wait out the first hour. Sitting on the low stoop in front of one of the houses, he wondered why he was doing this. Pulling the flint out of his pocket, he tried to listen for Itzpapalotl's voice again, but heard nothing. As he sat there ruminating, Mimich approached him and told him that he and Xiuhnel were going to take two of the women into one of the houses "for a little fun". He just shrugged; he didn't feel it was any of his business. But a few moments later, it became so--one of the women burst out of a house and ran full tilt down the street. Instinctively, Mixcoatl stood and loosed an arrow at her, but he missed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mimich, naked, run out the door. Mixcoatl ignored him and started to run after the fleeing woman himself.
He hadn't gotten very far into the hills when he found the woman, and in the process also found Chimalma. The other woman was cowering behind her; Chimalma was again nude except for her sandals, and again she carried her shield, her bow, and her arrows.
"You have been mistreating my sisters," she said accusitorily. "I thought we had settled this yesterday!"
"Yesterday is gone," Mixcoatl told her. He nocked an arrow to his bowstring, drew it back.
"Yes," she said, again throwing her shield, bow and arrows to the ground. "Today is different. Again, my Chichimec; four shots. But this time, if I am not dead, then you are mine, to do with as I will! Is it agreed?"
"Agreed," Mixcoatl said. He took two steps closer and aimed at her chest. There was simply no way he could possibly miss.
But again, he did; she managed to duck it. He fired another, and just like the previous day, she batted it away with her hand. But this time she didn't knock it far enough, and it pierced her side. She gasped and looked down at it. It had almost missed, but not quite, and was lodged just under the skin--not a serious wound. Mixcoatl took such satisfaction in finally hitting her that he failed to press his advantage, and when he fired again she was ready. Batted away by her quick hands, his arrow skipped harmlessly away among the maguey plants.
She took a step closer to him; there was only five feet distance between them. He loosed his fourth and last arrow, and he watched in disbelief as she caught it in her hand. It would have struck her in the pit of her stomach, but she'd caught it six inches away.
She held the arrow up, twisted a finger around it, and snapped the hardwood shaft like a dry twig. "And now, my Chichimec!" she said. "You are indeed mine! Put down your bow and your arrows." Pressing her hand against her side, she pulled his other arrow out and snapped that one, too. A trickle of blood ran down her hip, but she ignored it.
He obeyed, and she took hold of his hair, leading him back into the village. He didn't seem to be able to resist her at all. Oddly, Mimich and Xiuhnel didn't really seem surprised or disturbed about this turn of events. Meekly, they released the women, who spat on them, called them dogs, and beat them with sticks. They endured this without protest.
"What do you want from me?" Mixcoatl asked.
"It isn't a matter of wanting anything," she said. "You don't know what happens now?"
"No."
She smiled. "You will see, soon. Take off your clothes, leave them here, and go into that house. I'll come for you in a moment."
Wondering what she had in mind, Mixcoatl did as he was told. Torture, probably. Death. He didn't care. The humiliation he'd experienced by his defeat at her hands was worse than any physical torture. But when she came to him, it was immediately clear that she was not at all interested in torturing him. She told him that he was now her husband, by her decision, and she rolled into the bed with him, initiating a violent lovemaking session that lasted quite a while. Mixcoatl was far beyond trying to understand, but he found this far less unpleasant than the torture and death he'd been anticipating. All the while, he could hear the other four women outside beating and abusing the two white men. He wondered if they would be killed.
"I suppose we'd better put an end to it," Chimalma said at last. "If Xiuhnel or Mimich were accidentally killed, well, it certainly wouldn't be good!"
"Why?"
"Never mind. Come on."
He'd left his clothes outside, and as far as he knew, Chimalma didn't have any clothes; so they went back outside in the nude. Mimich and Xiuhnel were cowering in the street, enduring a virtual pounding from the women. But, at a word from Chimalma, it was stopped.
She grinned at them as they picked themselves up off the ground. "Get them cleaned up," she told the girls. "And ready to travel. It's time to leave Huitznahuac, time to move on."
"Where're we going?" Mixcoatl asked.
"South," she said, pointing. "Two days' walk." She gave him a meaningful look; to him, it looked like it was tinged with a certain sadness. "To Culhuacan, the place where I was born. You are the ruler of that city now, and you should take your place on your throne."
"Culhuacan? That name sound familiar somehow... and yet..."
"It is," she said, "and it is not. You are still dreaming, my Mixcoatl, my Camaxtli. As you must; as you must."
"Your words," he said slowly as they strolled near the edge of the village, "make sense to me and yet they make no sense. I feel as if I have reached the end of my journey, I'm willing to go on to Culhuacan with you but it seems to me as if I've done what was--was--needed. What do you know of this?"
She smiled at him. "Because you have," said explained. "You've gone where you were supposed to go, you've done what you were supposed to do. You don't know it, but I do--I'm pregnant, from our lying together just a few moments ago. That, my Chichimec, was the point of the whole thing." She patted her stomach, and he noticed that the wound in her side had disappeared. Right now, that didn't seem at all odd to him.
"Why do I feel such an urgency, then?" he asked her. "Like I have to do things quickly or not at all?"
She looked away, glancing at Mimich and Xiuhnel, who were watching them from a distance. "Because," she said levelly, "In your soul you already know it. You'll never live to see your son born. You will rule in Culhuacan, but only for a short while. Someone will kill you; someone always does. Either one of those two will kill you, or my brother, or your brother, when he returns. That's the way it always happens."
"My brother? No, my brothers are all dead. Those men--the ones you and Itzpapalotl called the Mimixcoa--they killed all three of them." He meant to ask her about her brother as well, but even the fact that she had one seemed to go out of his head before he could formulate the question.
She smiled at him enigmatically. "Sometimes things aren't always what they seem, Mixcoatl! What you have to understand is that you'll be held responsible for your sister's death, even though that was, of course, an absolute necessity, and no one knew that better than she did!"
The image of Itzpapalotl screaming in the fire swirled up before him, and for a moment he couldn't say anything. But then he turned back to more immediate problems. He glanced at the other men. They were, he felt, the main threat. "Why can't I just kill them first?" he asked at last.
"You'd find you could not, just as you could not fire a fifth arrow at me. It's necessary that they live on; they have daughters to father, both of them, very significant daughters. Unless they already have, with the girls here in Huitznahuac... Parts of these things are determined, you know. And parts are not."
"How do you know all this?"
"I know many things. I know your sister, Itzpapalotl, killed the Mimixcoas. I know you carry her essence in the white flint. It has guided you, it helped you get here. But we have only a little time, my Chichimec--enjoy it with me. And remember, you are only waking from a long nightmare, and you don't have to dream again. I, I have it worse than you--I have to wake as well, and then I must dream again!"
Mixcoatl had no idea what she was talking about, but he decided to take her advice. He realized that she was right--he had some kind of mental block, something in his mind that totally prevented him from killing the other two men. Therefore, he was effectively at their mercy; if they wanted to kill him, they could, at any time. Gathering Chimalma up in his arms, he kissed her.
And, as he did, the sky darkened like a sudden storm was coming on, and he heard an odd little noise, a little click, from behind him. That sound--he'd never before heard it, but in some way he knew what it was. He was hearing the sound a dart, the short lance the city-dwellers to the south used, made as it was fitted into an atlatl, a spear thrower.
That little tiny sound--in some way it altered his whole world. He felt like his mind was expanding at incredible speed, horizontally and vertically at the same time, freeing itself from the confines of his body, racing out in all directions, even into the past and the future.
He saw this scene, as it had happened before and as it would happen again--and he saw the times when he did not react quickly enough to this minuscule cue. He saw and felt the dart as it flew toward him and Chimalma, as it tore through both their chests, pinning them together. He could see Chimalma's face, only an inch from his, suddenly contorting, her brilliant turquoise eyes flying wide open, her mouth open as well, and froze in that position. But no, no, he told himself. Not this time. This time she was dark-eyed. The turquoise eyes, that was another her, yet to be....
All the thought, all the memories, took only an instant. In the next, he flung himself and Chimalma together to the side, and the thrown dart, moving faster than any missile thrown by a human being could possibly move, whizzed harmlessly past them.
He did not fall, and neither did she. He spun her away from himself, saw her come to her feet in a fighting position, and he adopted the same kind of posture himself as he turned in the direction the dart had come from.
The hazy image of a tall, coldly handsome man stood there looking at them. He was dressed in a kind of an open capelike garment; his face was painted jet-black, with broad yellow bands across his eyes and mouth. His legs appeared to be engulfed in smoke. Mixcoatl became aware that the newcomer was not altogether material; he could see the stones and bushes of the hillside through the man's body.
"Tezcatlipoca," Mixcoatl said with a grin. Now, in this moment, he remembered everything, he understood everything. "It's amazing that I keep forgetting that you always try this."
The newcomer, the ghostly man, shrugged. "You can't fault me for trying, old friend," he said. "Sometimes it works, you know."
"Oh, it does not!" Chimalma cried. Her hands on her hips, she looked exasperated. "It does not and you know it! What does happen, every time? Well?"
Tezcatlipoca, smiling at her, held up his hands in a helpless gesture. "I cut you open. I try to take my brother from you. But he knows, and he's transformed himself into a piece of jade with four hundred hummingbird wings. He takes off for the north and finds Coatlicue. I get pissed off. You die."
Chimalma laughed. "You do, you really do. You know it isn't going to work and you try it anyway, and then when it doesn't--as you know it won't, because it can't--you get pissed off."
"Yes," Tezcatlipoca agreed, still grinning. "And you do too. You always yell at me, while I'm killing you, that you were supposed to have nine months more to live. As if you really want to go on dreaming for another nine months!"
"I," she said haughtily, "don't try to break the rules!"
"But I do," he said. He tried to look innocent, failed, and they all three laughed.
"You," Chimalma said, "are incorrigible." Obviously not afraid of him now, she stepped forward and tried to hug him, but her arms passed right through him.
"Sorry," he said. "Let me fix that." He became corporeal and hugged her back. "Well," he said, stepping away, "I guess I'd better be going." He glanced down at her abdomen. "Quetzalcoatl already has a head start on me, I'd better get busy and get myself born!"
"You had indeed, you don't want to end up being a lot younger than he is. You know what he does when you let that happen."
"Yeah," he said. "He tries to kill me before I can get a chance to grow up. You know, he just has no respect for the rules!" Again they all laughed; Tezcatlipoca became misty again, and he gestured with his hand. At the gesture, a spiderweb, fine and delicate, dropped down from the sky. Mixcoatl looked up at it; it rose to infinity. With a final nod to them, Tezcatlipoca grabbed it and, effortlessly, began climbing it. As he went it disappeared below him, and after just a few seconds, both he and the spiderweb were gone.
Seconds after he'd vanished, Mixcoatl felt the heightened awareness he'd felt throughout this encounter beginning to fade. In one instant, he knew exactly who Tezcatlipoca was--his old friend, his companion on the flaming desert at the time the knives fell from the sky. In the next, he was staring upward, unable to comprehend or even accept what he'd just seen.
Wild-eyed, he looked back at Chimalma. Her eyes were sympathetic. "You have to dream again, Mixcoatl," she told him. "Your wakefulness would prevent what must happen from happening."
"But--but--who was that, what was that?"
"That," she informed him bluntly, "was Tezcatlipoca. He is Teotl--a god. As am I. As are you. As was your sister."
"Teoteo? Spirits? Me? You?" He felt like he was babbling, but he wasn't able to stop.
She pursed her lips. "You must dream too deeply," she said, "for this." She took his face in her hands and gazed deeply into his eyes; his agitation began fading away.
And with it, his memories. "You were saying we're traveling south?" he asked her.
"Yes. To Culhuacan."
"Where's that? I never heard of it."
"I know."
The next morning, they left the little village behind them, traveling, as Chimalma had said, toward the south. After what seemed to Mixcoatl like a very short trip, they were in sight of the city she'd mentioned.
It was very different from the village where he'd lived, very different from the collection of huts that made up Huitznahuac. This was a true city, a city of stone buildings and paved streets, dominated by a sizable ceremonial pyramid in its center. As they approached it, he had a sense of deja vu. He had, he was sure, been here before--and yet at the same time he knew he hadn't, he'd never been anywhere near this far south in his life.
At the edge of the city, they were greeted, formally, by some nobles and a group of well-armed warriors that guarded the way in. These men obviously knew Chimalma, they greeted her warmly, they called her by name, and they bowed to her as if she were their queen. Although the eyes of some of the men roamed all over her, the fact that she wasn't wearing clothes wasn't commented on, it seemed to be normal, accepted. She introduced Mixcoatl to them as her husband, and immediately they were all bowing to him, as well.
"And this," she told Mixcoatl, "is my brother, Apanecatl." A tall man with a long thin face bowed to him and offered him a small smile.
"Apanecatl?" he asked. "That's strange, one of my own brothers was named Apanecatl, as well..."
"An honor to me," Apanecatl said. To Mixcoatl, he didn't seem sincere. "I would make you welcome to your city, my Lord Mixcoatl."
"My city?"
"Yes, of course. By birthright, the rulership of this city belonged to Chimalma, she is the rightful ruler here." He glanced at his sister. "But before she left on her journey, she called us before her and told us that she'd had a vision, a vision that she'd meet a man while she was traveling that she would marry. If that came to pass, she said, then she would cede her claim to the throne of Culhuacan to him. She has just said, just now, that you are that man, you are her husband, well-met during her travels. By her own noble decree, then, you are the king in this city. We are your loyal subjects." Mixcoatl glanced at Chimalma, who nodded and smiled. "But for now, my Lord, I assume you and your friends are weary from your travels? Let us make you comfortable..." He and his party were taken into the city, then led to a magnificent palace--which seemed somehow oddly familiar to him--where they were bathed and fed by attentive and expert servants. After their baths, Chimalma gave him a royal mantle to wear and donned one herself--the first time he'd ever seen her wearing any sort of clothing.
Quickly, over the next few days, he found himself settling into a routine; the mantles of kingship fitted him well. Culhuacan was a wonderful city; the army was a well-oiled machine with loyal and intelligent captains, the artisans were the finest in the known world, the people were honest and diligent. His first public appearances, his first state meetings with other chieftains, made him nervous; but he always seemed to know what to do, it was as if he'd done all this before. Xiuhnel and Mimich had, as far as he knew, vanished. If they were still even in Culhuacan, he didn't know about it. At one point he had a discussion with Chimalma about them, and was told that they were off doing what they had to do; both of them, she said, were carrying "daughters"--and he remembered what she'd said about them in Huitznahuac, when the women were beating them. When he asked, confused, if she meant the men were somehow pregnant themselves, she hesitated--but then she nodded.
"Not as I am, though," she'd said, explaining. "They carry within themselves the essences of Xochiquetzal and Tlazolteotl, who must yet dream in the world. They are men, they cannot nurture such essences, all they can do is find fertile soil in which to plant them. This they must do, and, though they aren't aware of it, is what they're doing." She laughed. "Assuming they didn't already. In which case they're doing nothing, just wasting time and staying out of the way."
Again, the names had a familiar ring but he could not place them, and again, Chimalma told him he'd probably remember them, soon enough; in any case their births were not his concern, his concern was with Culhuacan, with making it the greatest city in the valley. This he was attempting to do, and he felt he was succeeding. Setting aside the concerns of some of his military captains--and of Apanecatl, who agreed with the army men--he scaled back the operations of the military, bringing the expansion of the area under Culhuacan’s control to a standstill. At the same time, though, he kept the army active enough and well-trained enough to discourage any attempts by their neighbors to reduce their holdings. Under his direction, the energy of the city was transferred, quickly, from military might to learning, culture, and craftsmanship. Why he, an old warrior himself, was doing this, he couldn't have said--it just seemed correct to him. And it was having its results, too; very quickly, Culhuacan was becoming respected as a center of culture rather than a military power.
If there was a negative, it was that he wasn't seeing enough of Chimalma. Though she had relinquished control of the city to him, she still had matters of state that kept her busy--and she spent a lot of her time with the woman she called Quilaztli.
He'd met Quilaztli just a few days after they'd entered the city. A very dark-skinned and very beautiful woman who was about the same age as Chimalma, he'd liked her and trusted her on sight; again, he felt he'd seen her somewhere before, but knew he hadn't. By then, that experience had become unremarkable; the sense of deja vu seemed to pervade everything he did. Almost every time he saw her, Quilaztli apologized for keeping Chimalma busy, but she declined to answer his questions about what they were doing, saying only that, because of Chimalma's pregnancy, she had to do certain "exercises," which Quilaztli was helping her with. Mixcoatl had tried to press her about this--in his old village, women continued to work the fields through at least their seventh month, and Chimalma at that point wasn't even showing any signs she was pregnant at all--only to have his queries gently but firmly turned aside. Curious about these "exercises" and unable to get an answer from either Quilaztli or Chimalma, he'd gone to the extreme of spying on them.
It had happened one morning, when Quilaztli had come to their bedroom to take Chimalma to her exercises. Mixcoatl, hoping on that particular day to keep her to himself and in their bed for a while--he still felt, persistently, an urgency about things--was a little resentful. But the two women were firm.
He'd followed them, and they'd gone to an odd walled courtyard not far from the city's center. There was a gate there, firmly guarded by four women-warriors from Chimalma's personal guard, who let them in and then locked the gates behind them.
He didn't even try the gates, he was sure that, king or no, the women would not let him pass in violation of Chimalma's commands, and he was equally sure that she'd given such a command. Circling around the back, he'd found a place where the stones were uneven enough to permit scaling the wall. With many a nervous glance around--certainly it would be embarrassing if he were caught climbing the wall like a burglar while he was wearing the royal robes--he went quickly up and over. Once inside, he concealed himself behind a low wall near the top of the outer wall. Finally, when he was sure that no one had seen him, he peeked up and over.
The courtyard, he realized, was a ballcourt. Along the two long sides were bleachers for the spectators, set apart from the playing field itself by an inner wall. At the midpoint of the inner wall, there was a stone ring fitted to it, standing vertically, about eight feet off the ground. As he looked at it, he could almost see a game in progress, the two teams of players trying to control the hard rubber ball without using their hands, hitting it with their hips and shoulders, trying to drive it through the ring. He blinked; it all seemed so very familiar, yet he'd never seen the ballgame played.
The two women on the field, though, were not playing ball. Peeping over the wall, he watched them. Chimalma stripped naked, which didn't surprise him, not if she were planning to do any sort of exercise--she did not, based on past experience, seem overly fond of wearing clothes. He was only a little startled to see Quilaztli do the same.
He was much more startled when they went to opposite ends of the ballcourt, took up weapons--bows, arrows, and macuahuitls--that had evidently been stored there, and then came at each other as if this were to be a fight to the death.
Halfway across the field, Chimalma dropped gracefully to one knee, strung an arrow to her bow, and let it fly. Incredibly fast, far faster than he was used to seeing arrows fly, it streaked toward Quilaztli. But the dark woman swung her macuahuitl, catching the speeding shaft in mid-air and slicing it in two. Almost in the same motion she'd fitted an arrow to her own bow and fired it toward Chimalma, but, just as she'd done with his arrows, Chimalma batted it aside with her open hand. In quick succession, as they closed on each other, several more arrows flew from either side, and all of them were deflected one way or another.
Until Quilaztli missed one. At first Mixcoatl had believed she'd struck it squarely, as she had all the others, but it was a clean miss.
And the arrow, driven with massive force, buried itself in the dark woman's right breast, going in all the way to the feathers. The head and most of the shaft, blood-covered, protruded from her back. She gasped, grabbed at it, and sank to her knees. Blood began to course down across her smooth satiny skin.
As Chimalma rushed to her, Mixcoatl stood and stared, wide-eyed. Quilaztli had been killed! He was sure, absolutely certain, that this had been an accident, in spite of the ferocity with which they'd been shooting at each other.
"Good shot," Quilaztli said in a choked voice as Chimalma came to her. "Can't believe you... got it past me."
"Fooled you with a curve technique," Chimalma said with a big grin. "I spun it in reverse with my fingertips as it left the bow. It causes it to swing right, then left."
"Good... technique..." She leaned over, coughed, and spat blood on the ground.
"I thought so!" Still smiling--Mixcoatl couldn't understand why she was smiling, with her friend so near to a useless, accidental death--Chimalma reached down and effortlessly broke the rear of the arrow off. Quilaztli gasped again, and her gasp was even louder when Chimalma grabbed the other piece of the arrow and steadily pulled it through her body and out.
"Could you hurry?" Quilaztli gurgled. "There's a lot of pain and there's no purpose in it."
'You're getting soft," Chimalma said brightly. She made an odd gesture with her hands, clamping her forefingers and index fingers tightly together and extending them fully and stiffly. On each hand her other two fingers were folded back; her thumbs were lying parallel to her forefingers. She then held the tips of her extended fingers near the entry wound in Quilaztli's breast and the exit wound in her back.
Mixcoatl's eyes grew wider. Some liquid, glowing brilliant blue-green, began flowing from the valley formed between her fingers. Falling on Quilaztli's skin, it vanished into her. As Mixcoatl watched, disbelieving his eyes, almost all the blood that had flowed out of the wounds turned around, defied gravity, and flowed right back into them. Once all the blood had vanished from her body, the wounds seemed to suck inward and close. A second later, there wasn't a trace of them left, and the flow of the blue-green liquid ceased.
Quilaztli stood up, licked the blood on her chin away with her tongue, and smiled. "Better," she said. "Thanks."
"My pleasure. Shall we continue?"
"Of course."
Mixcoatl didn't crouch back down; he fell, hard, on his rear end, all the strength in his legs gone. The two women below hadn't seen him, and they continued their fight, with the deadly macuahuitls this time. For a long time they jumped and sprang at each other, never seeming to tire, each one of them thrusting and stabbing with her weapon, the other parrying every blow. Finally, Quilaztli aimed a sweep that would've decapitated Chimalma if she failed to catch it. Chimalma raised her macuahuitl to parry, but at the last moment Quilaztli shifted the strike to a thrust. Chimalma couldn't recover, and, with a sudden explosion of blood, the big weapon sank into her body under her ribs on the left, going in deep. With a loud groan she fell backwards; the macuahuitl tore its way out of her, bringing pieces of her insides with it and leaving a gaping hole in her upper abdomen. Chimalma collapsed in a rapidly-forming pool of blood.
This time Mixcoatl couldn't contain himself. "No!" he cried. He jumped up, and, taking the steps three at a time, ran down toward the field. When he reached the wall he cleared it with a smooth jump, not even noticing that he'd jumped some nine feet up. Chimalma, squirming on the ground in agony, didn't see him coming, but Quilaztli did.
She stared at him and sighed. "What," she demanded, "are you doing here, Camaxtli?"
"She's dying!" he yelled. He knelt beside her and cradled her head. "Chimalma!"
"So was I, a few minutes ago," Quilaztli reminded him. "You want to fix it, or should I?"
He looked up at her. "Huh?"
"No, you aren't ready. You won't be ready, not quickly enough." So saying, she rather casually pulled the pieces of organs off her macuahuitl and began stuffing them, at random, back into the hole in Chimalma's side.
"What're you doing?" Mixcoatl demanded. "That isn't going to help!"
"Yes, it will. Just wait. Oh, could you grab that piece of her stomach over there?" He didn't move. "Never mind, I'll get it." She crammed in the torn piece of stomach, then held her hand over the wound, posing it exactly as Chimalma had done earlier.
This time the fluid was scarlet, but the result was exactly the same. Mixcoatl not only saw the blood flowing back in, he could even see the organs inside crawling around, reassembling themselves. Even before they'd finished her skin was pulling back over them; within a minute or two some random spots of blood, mostly on the ground and on Quilaztli's macuahuitl, were the only reminders of the event still visible.
Chimalma sat up. She didn't speak, she just looked at Mixcoatl, shook her head, and smiled.
"It's a problem, Chimalma!" Quilaztli said.
"Are you two some kind of witches?" Mixcoatl demanded. "I--"
"His memory," Chimalma said, "gets to be a problem."
"It has to be this way," Quilaztli reminded her.
"Yes, I know." Chimalma stood up and give him a quick hug. "Yes and no," she answered to the "witch" question. "It isn't anything that you can't do, my Chichimec. You just can't remember that you can."
"I'm not a sorcerer! I'm a--"
"Problem," she finished for him. "Quilaztli's right. We have to practice, we have to be at our best when the time comes. We're pretty good, but we--"
"Pretty good! You could defeat my whole army, just the two of you!"
The women exchanged glances. "Maybe. Probably. That isn't good enough. It has to be 'certainly.' Because we may have to."
"Huh?"
"When you're killed," Quilaztli said, "the baby that Chimalma is carrying will be the rightful heir to the throne. Naturally, that means whoever seizes power will send the army to kill Chimalma--and the baby, if he's been born yet. We can't have that, of course."
"Me?" he demanded. "Who's going to kill me?"
Quilaztli shrugged. "Somebody. That's the way it has to be. Meanwhile, I guess we have to find a way to keep you distracted, don't we?"
"You can't distract me!" he bellowed. "Somebody's planning to kill me and seize power? I'll find out who, and there'll be--"
Just as Chimalma had before, Quilaztli put her hands on his cheeks and gazed into his eyes.
"What exactly is this place?" he asked a moment later. He was embarrassed to ask how he'd come to be here--even though he couldn't remember, he couldn't remember anything after than being irritated when Chimalma left his bed that morning.
"A ball court," Chimalma answered with a sigh. Her eyes looked sad. "I'll tell you about that later. Right now we have to introduce you to someone. The new personal servant Quilaztli has found for you."
The girl they brought to him--Quilaztli made a point of specifying that she was his servant, not his slave--could, easily, lay just as much claim to beauty as Chimalma or Quilaztli. Unlike them, she seemed to be in awe of her new employer. Small, slender, and delicate of features, she looked like a living artwork.
Her name was Yeuatlicue. "It is such a privilege," she kept saying, "to be here, to be named as your personal caretaker." She flashed a bright smile. "You will have no cause to be disappointed with me, my Lord, Mixcoatl, Camaxtli. None at all."
After five minutes, he was charmed by her. She presented such a contrast, he told himself, to Chimalma and Quilaztli; he knew, though he couldn't really remember how he knew, that those two were far from delicate regardless of their looks.
As the days continued to pass, she more than proved her point. She managed to be ever-present, ever-attentive, without being annoying; he wasn't at all sure how she did that, but she did. She seemed to know, always, when to speak and when to be silent; once in a while, when he wrestled with some difficult problem of state, he asked her advice, and when he did he discovered that she was bright and insightful, as well. In just two weeks he was given to wonder how he'd managed to run the city without her help; she'd become his primary adviser and his best friend. More, she had her own opinions about many matters of state, and somehow, whenever they disagreed on anything, he found himself coming around to her point of view, time after time.
At the same time, he was seeing less and less of Chimalma. This at first made him sad, and he was certain she felt the same, but she kept to an ever-increasing schedule of mysterious "exercises" arranged by Quilaztli, a schedule that had begun, on occasions, to keep her away for a day or two at a time. On more than one occasion he'd decided to follow them, to satisfy his curiosity about these "exercises," but he never was able to arrange it. Mostly, it was because of Yeuatlicue's presence; he would’ve had to give her some explanation about his absence, and he didn't feel good about lying to her.
But he would've been lonely if it hadn't been for her. She was always there; she was there to see him to his chambers in the evening and she was always among the first to greet him in the mornings. Her whole life, it seemed to him, was devoted to making sure his every need was met. And all his needs were being met--except for one, which was being met less and less often as Chimalma, now finally beginning to show a few slight physical signs of her pregnancy, was absent more and more of the time.
Soon, he even trusted her enough to tell her about the white flint, the one he'd taken from the fire where Itzpapalotl had died and had kept on his person at almost all times since, in a pouch at his side, and to show it to her.
After asking his permission to do so, she'd touched it lightly with her fingertips. "It is a thing of Power," she declared. "Surely. But I could not have understood you correctly, my Lord. You said you killed your sister, with fire and arrows. Yet you did not say why."
He paused for a long moment; this wasn't something he'd discussed with anyone as yet, except briefly with Chimalma. "I did not say why," he told her, "because I do not know why." Haltingly, he went through the whole story. "It was not," he concluded, "as if it were something I did to her. It was something we did together. It seemed to me, and I believe it seemed to her, as if it were something that needed to be done. Later, Chimalma said as much to me." He shook his head and stared at the flint. "And yet I do not understand myself, even now. I know, I'm sure, that my sister is not truly dead, that she lives in this flint. Sometimes she's spoken to me from it. It's madness, Yeuatlicue."
"No," the girl declared. "No, not madness. A thing of Power. A matter of spirits. I have, or so it has always been said, been aware of matters of Power, since I was a young girl, though I have little Power of my own. I am sure, somehow, that you have that crystal because you will need it again at some time." She shrugged. "But I of course do not understand either, my Lord. Even so, I can feel the Power in the crystal." She'd given him a curious look. "As I can feel the Power in you, my Lord..."
They spoke of it no more, and another week or so slipped by. For the most part, state matters weren't occupying too much of his attention; his pet project--really as much Yeuatlicue's as his own--the new Calmecac, the school for would-be priests, was on schedule, and the Telpuchcalli, the military academy, was even further along. No military actions were being contemplated at the moment, and for the most part, potential enemies were not threatening.
But still, it was prudent to remain alert. When Apanecatl and his chief captains brought him word that a neighboring tribe, one with which the peace was uneasy, was building fortifications near a pass commonly used by travelers and merchants going to and coming from Culhuacan from the west, he felt he should look into the matter personally. The next morning, well-supplied for a trip that wasn't planned to last even a full day, Mixcoatl and a dozen warriors from his personal guard set out for the pass.
With Mixcoatl setting the pace and the warriors keeping up easily, they reached it ahead of schedule. Travel was easy; it was an overcast day, not very hot. Here, the trail lay between steep mountains. On the south the slope was fairly gradual, but the north side was guarded by a high, nearly-vertical, cliff. Less than a hundred feet up the side of the cliff there was a broad ledge, and here the other tribe was building a ten-foot wall. Not bothering with cover at the moment--his reconnaissance had told him there were masons here right now, with only a small party of warriors to defend them--he studied it. At various points along it, loopholes were being cut into it; there wasn't a doubt that it was being built to ambush people moving along the trail below. Possibly, he thought, the other tribe meant to demand tribute from passers-by. Since this was a major road in and out of Culhuacan, he didn't feel he could allow that.
As he studied the construction, trying to decide on the merits of a pre-emptive strike versus an offer for negotiations--with a group he knew wasn't prone to settle matters by talking--the clouds in the west began to darken and roil about ominously. He looked up, only to have large drops of rain spatter his face. Just a few seconds later, the storm broke with full fury. Fat blue lightning bolts danced between the clouds and the mountain peaks, the wind swirled up the canyon, and the rain began pouring down in a torrent. Very quickly, what had been dusty semi-arid soil turned into thick slippery muck.
Up on the cliff, where the lightning bolts were striking uncomfortably close, the masons and warriors were scurrying for cover. Rivulets of water that rapidly turned to substantial streams under the onslaught poured from the top of the cliff onto their construction site, occasionally bringing a few pieces of rock clattering down. A few minutes later a huge lightning bolt struck the top, right at the edge; down in the canyon, where Mixcoatl and his men were, the sound was deafening. He saw a large piece of stone, a several-ton chunk, that was left rocking after the bolt had struck. As the rainwater rushed under it it continued to rock--and finally it tipped over the edge and began to fall.
"Back!" Mixcoatl yelled to his men. "Back!" Slipping on the muddy ground, the men started running, all of them moving as quickly as they could. Above, the boulder dug into the ground, flipped over, came onward. But as it did it loosened the earth, turning it into a slurry of water, mud, and small stones, a thick mix that began adding pieces of the mountainside to itself as it roared down.
Seconds later, it struck the partially-completed wall, and the force of the strike blew it apart. The pieces of the wall, along with most of the ledge itself, joined the avalanche, adding stone and the bodies of some of the men to itself as it smashed its way on down into the canyon. There the mixture leveled itself out, adding itself to the canyon floor.
Mixcoatl and his men almost made to complete safety before the avalanche reached the canyon floor, but not quite. As they ran, the sloshing mixture, flowing both directions in the canyon, reached them. Mixcoatl felt it collide with the backs of his legs, a stream the consistency of thick chocolate. It swept his feet forward and he was dumped unceremoniously into it, then tumbled over and over several times. His men suffered similar fates, but, when it was over, none of them had been seriously hurt. Mixcoatl himself felt he'd sprained his right wrist, but that was the extent of the damage. They picked themselves up and looked at each other, and after a moment, Mixcoatl burst out laughing. All of them were covered with mud from head to foot, their robes muddy and askew, their fine plumed headdresses broken and tattered. After a moment, the other men joined in the laughter; they truly did look ridiculous.
But there wasn't a reason to stay and there wasn't a reason to worry. Not only had the wall been destroyed but so had the ledge; there would be no fortification here. No action at all on their part had to be taken.
Some hours later, tired, still covered with mud that had partly dried--there'd been more rain, but not enough to wash the muck away--they re-entered Culhuacan. At least a dozen times on his way back to his palace, Mixcoatl had to repeat the explanation to some concerned citizen, assuring him that no, they had not been in a fight, they'd been caught at the fringe of a mudslide. The last person he had to explain it to was, of course, Yeuatlicue. Her initial concern quickly turned to giggles, but even so, she took charge quickly, summoning servants to prepare his bath. Soon enough it was ready, and he started to remove his mantle. As he did the sprained wrist shot fiery pain through his forearm, and he winced.
Yeuatlicue, though she'd been in the act of leaving him to the bath, didn't miss it. "What's wrong?" she demanded, coming back to him. "What's wrong with your arm? Are you injured, my Lord? Should I summon the physicians?" He shook his head, reassuring her that it was merely a sprain. But it was, obviously, causing him trouble when he tried again to remove the mud-covered and ruined mantle and the broken-up headdress.
"You will have to let me help you," she declared. He protested, but it was weak. She brought a stool, had him sit on it, and removed first the headdress and then the mantle. After that she removed his sandals, leaving him clad only in his maxtlatl, his tied loincloth.
She pursed her lips and cocked her head. "You can untie that, can't you?"
He waved her away. "Of course."
"Let me see."
He laughed. "Yeuatlicue, I am not a helpless child! Of course I can untie--I can easily untie--" He started trying to show her, but the pain in his wrist made it very difficult to complete the demonstration.
"You are not," she said firmly, "going to be able to deal with this by yourself, not right now. My Lord, you must let me help you." She reached for the knot holding his maxtlatl on and he moved away slightly. "My Lord," she said with exasperation, "please, let me help you, there is no cause for any embarrassment..."
"Hm! Hah! I am not embarrassed!" he told her. He waved his hands at the maxtlatl. "Yes, fine, proceed, help me."
She was obviously suppressing a smile, but she said nothing more as she untied and removed the maxtlatl. She paused for just a moment when he stood revealed in the nude, but he paid no attention. As she helped him climb into the spacious tub, he took a certain comfort in the knowledge that Chimalma was away with Quilaztli today. He had no idea how she'd react to this if she were to walk in right now.
But she would not, he reminded himself as he relaxed into the warm water. Yeuatlicue handed him a soft cotton cloth and a pot of yucca soap; he thanked her, dipped the cloth into the water, and tried to wet down his neck and shoulders. But again, the wrist spasmed, and again he winced.
"It appears," Yeuatlicue said, "I will have to help you further, my Lord."
He started to argue but gave it up. He didn't get anywhere arguing with her anyway, she always managed to get him to do whatever she wanted him to. Some great king, some great warrior you are, he snorted to himself as she began gently splashing water over his shoulders. Chimalma can beat you senseless anytime she chooses and your little helper here has you wound round her finger. He relaxed against the edge of the tub and closed his eyes. Might as well enjoy it, he thought.
Working industriously, Yeuatlicue wetted and then soaped his face, hair, shoulders, back, and chest. After she'd rinsed his face, he opened his eyes a bit and started watching her delicate little long-fingered hands as she scrubbed down his stomach. His gaze flicked up at her face, and he caught her looking back at him. With a guilty-looking smile she looked back down at his belly and continued to work. He kept watching her. Her shoulders, her upper arms, are so smooth, he thought. Her skin is so finely-textured. She's very different from Chimalma but certainly no less appealing...
And she was, he realized as she washed on down his belly, getting very close to some sensitive areas.
He started to say something to her but couldn't decide what. As if reading his thoughts, she glanced up almost furtively, then bypassed the critical zone and moved on to his legs and feet. In a way, though, it didn't matter. The idea of those finely-sculptured fingers washing his penis had already been implanted in his head, and, as she moved on down his shins toward his ankles, he started having a not-surprising physical reaction to that idea. He groaned aloud. The damn thing, he said silently. Always, it has a mind of its own.
Yeuatlicue heard the groan and looked up quickly. "Am I hurt--?" she started to say. Then she noticed, and her eyes widened. She said no more, she immediately returned to his feet and began scrubbing them with a vengeance. She was leaning over the edge of the tub on his left side and she was, apparently, distracted. As she reached for his right foot again, she slipped in soap scum on the floor--and fell headlong into the tub with him.
Instinctively, he reached for her and pulled her, sputtering, up out of the water. She was as light, he thought, as a bag of plumes of equal size. She shook her head, pushed her dripping hair back away from her face, and looked at him with chagrin.
"My Lord, I am sorry!" she cried. "I slipped, it was--"
"An accident," he told her. Effortlessly holding her just above the surface of the water, one arm under her shoulders and one under her knees, he noticed that her huipilli and cuietl--her blouse and skirt--had become almost totally transparent on being wetted. He could see her small, softly rounded breasts and pink nipples clearly--and that did not help stop the physical reaction he was having, not at all.
And, just when he was sure it could get no worse, it did. He started to try to turn her around to sit her down, but her cueitl was bound tight between her thighs and his arm. The seam, the thread weakened by wetting, split--and the cueitl fell right off her, ending up draped over his arm.
Her eyes flew wide open, and she grabbed frantically at the hem of her huipilli, trying to pull it down; but it was only long enough to reach her upper thighs. Her legs, he thought, were really lovely, impressively so. Smiling secretly--the embarrassment was hers now, not his--he found himself wondering about that split seam. The cotton thread used to make these things wasn't normally that weak, it usually took some considerable force to break it.
But it had been weak, obviously. Continuing the movement, making no comment on the fallen cueitl and trying to avoid staring at her legs, he finished turning her around and set her on her feet in the tub. He tried to be casual about it, but he was terribly aware that her legs were rubbing against his arm; he let her go as quickly as he could.
She tugged her huipilli down again, covering her groin at least, and pushed her hair back once more. "My Lord," she said, "I cannot understand this, I can't imagine how all this happened! You must think I'm--I can't even conceive what you must be thinking!"
"I'm thinking," he said mildly, "that we had a series of accidents. Nothing else."
She suddenly reached out and picked up his right arm. "Your wrist!" she cried. "You must have really hurt it, catching me like that!"
That was peculiar, he thought. The wrist didn't hurt at all now, and he hadn't noticed any pain when he had caught her. "No, it's okay.."
"Oh, it cannot be! Oh, my Lord, I cannot tell you how sorry I am!" She stamped her right foot on the floor of the tub to show her frustration, splashing the water.
And that, as it turned out, was another mistake. The floor of the tub was slick with yucca curds as well, and as she stamped, her left foot shot out from under her. Looking amazed, she started falling again, this time straight down, her legs splayed awkwardly outwards and forward. Instinctively again, he grabbed for her with both hands; she was going to come down on her rear end in the tub and she was going to come down hard. As he did, his hands caught her waist but her huipilli slipped up her body, leaving him holding her by her armpits and leaving her whole body exposed. All he could do was pull her forward slightly so she'd land on his outstretched legs, and he did that. But she was so light he pulled her a little further than he'd intended, and she landed, butt-first, on his belly instead. From there she slid down his soap-slick body.
To the point where his now-full erection struck her between her widely-spread legs. Somehow it found the entrance to her vagina, and it found it very wet. It slipped right in, all the way, and she ended up sitting on his lap, his erection fully inside her.
Her eyes enormous, she sat perfectly still. He looked down her body; her huipilli was now bunched up under her armpits and covered nothing at all. Looking confused, she stared at him.
"My Lord," she said after a moment. Her voice quivered. "My Lord, this is... is... tragic. No one would ever believe this came to pass this way. I do not believe this came to pass this way!" She kept staring at him. "You should have me executed, my Lord. I believe I have accidentally raped you." He burst out laughing at this, but she pushed on. "No, my Lord, you should." She moved a little, as if she were going to try to get up, but she moaned, her eyelids fluttered, and she became still again. "My Lord, I will confess. I wanted this, I wanted it more than anything. I believe that I have somehow contrived to make it happen, against your will. I do not know how, I did not think I was capable of such and I certainly did not intend it, but that does not matter, you still should have me executed, you should--"
"Yeuatlicue," he cut in, his voice soft, "would you shut up?"
Her lip trembled. "Yes, my Lord."
"You say you wanted this, but did not intend it. I feel the fault is mine. I was the one who wanted this, and I was the one who must have caused it. I believe I pulled you forward deliberately, so you would fall where you fell."
Her eyes grew even wider. "You wanted this?"
He pushed her huipilli up over her head and tossed it onto the floor. "Yes, little one, I did. I'd refused to admit that to myself until now, but I did. If anyone has been raped it is you. If anyone should be executed for that crime it is me."
She leaned forward, looking into his eyes, and touched his face; her touch felt like a butterfly's wings. "Oh, my Lord, what will we do now?"
He ran a hand down over her breast, causing her to shudder. "What we will do now," he told her firmly, "if you are still willing, is to finish what we have begun!"
She leaned on forward and touched each of his eyelids with her lips. "My Lord, you cannot know how willing I am..." she whispered.
As always, the days moved on, but for Mixcoatl, things were different now. Now that the ice had been broken, he and Yeuatlicue made love often, usually more than once daily, whenever the opportunity presented itself. He did not ignore Chimalma--when she was present, which seemed to be less and less often--but, for him, the affair with Yeuatlicue occupied more of his attention, he found himself looking forward to their chances to be alone together and he made efforts to create more of them. It wasn't merely because she was new and different for him, but because she was so eager, so enthusiastic. Even at the outset, back in Huitznahuac, Chimalma hadn't been like that. She'd been passionate, she'd been an exquisitely skilled lover, but she'd certainly never behaved as if he were her whole world, or that she could not, if necessary, do without him. Yeuatlicue made him feel, on a daily basis, as if he were the center of her universe, that nothing else truly mattered much to her.
It was flattering. It was flattering even though he was the king. As king she already knew him, and more, she knew perfectly well how to manipulate him, she'd demonstrated that often enough. She gave him the clear-cut impression that her attitude toward him as a man wouldn't have been different if he'd still been the rude wanderer in the desert he had been, not so very long ago.
She in fact loved him, and, he realized slowly, Chimalma, in spite of her passion and her affection for him, did not. For him it was a new experience, and he didn't quite know how to handle it--especially when he began to understand that he felt the same about her. More, he did not feel it changed anything at all between himself and Chimalma.
He was far from sure, however, that Chimalma, were she to find out what he was doing with Yeuatlicue, would see things the same. He remembered, very vividly, how she'd snapped hardwood arrow shafts with three fingers. He remembered his vision of her and the marauders, how she'd crushed a grown man's neck with one hand, effortlessly, and he did not doubt in the slightest that that vision had represented reality. She certainly could, he worried, break Yeuatlicue as easily as she'd broken those arrow shafts. Whether she would or not was another matter--he wasn't sure--but he was entirely unwilling to take a chance, already he cared too much for Yeuatlicue to risk it. More and more, his attention was focused on keeping the affair secret. Not just from Chimalma, but from Quilaztli as well, and especially from Apanecatl. Thus far his brother-in-law had given him no reason to mistrust him, but, since he'd learned that Apanecatl had always felt he should be king in Culhuacan--and would have been, had Chimalma failed to return from her quest in Huitznahuac--he could not imagine that Apanecatl would not be quick to inform Chimalma of Yeuatlicue's new status if he should find out about it.
Unfortunately, Mixcoatl was not used to hiding things, he'd never had much practice at being devious, he hardly knew how to lie. Neither Chimalma nor Quilaztli created any problems; neither of them ever asked much of anything about what he was doing day-to-day, and Yeuatlicue was rarely mentioned in any context.
Apanecatl was another matter. Not a week had passed before the man had sensed that something had changed in Culhuacan's royal chambers, and he made it apparent quickly that he meant to find out what. Almost immediately, he started focusing on the fact that Mixcoatl and Yeuatlicue spent more time in private and less time in the throne room.
And it didn't take very long before he mentioned it directly. "There is a belief among the citizens of the city, my Lord," he told Mixcoatl one morning, "a belief that you are planning something new, a military campaign perhaps, or possibly some new construction to be started even before the schools are complete. You are absent so much, it is believed that nothing else could explain such absences." He lowered his voice. "It is even rumored," he said, "that you are secretly meeting with diplomats from foreign cities. That you are making alliances and planning exchanges that no one knows about save you." He glanced meaningfully at Yeuatlicue, who was kneeling quietly by Mixcoatl's dais, but he didn't mention her by name. "Such things make the people uncomfortable, my Lord. It erodes their trust."
Mixcoatl, leaning his head against his fist, stared at the man. The people are getting uncomfortable because you and your cohorts are making them uncomfortable, he thought. They're losing faith because their minds are being poisoned. "I have heard," he said mildly, "that you have been talking about things such as this to the chief priests, to the masters of the high noble families, to the captains of the army. Do you not think, Apanecatl, that it would have been well to have spoken with me about these matters first? You have upset people unnecessarily, Apanecatl. There are no secret plans, there've been no secret meetings."
"Then how may your absences be explained, my Lord?"
He didn't have a ready answer for this, not even a ready lie; until now, Apanecatl had been hinting around, not asking directly, and Mixcoatl hadn't expected it. "What I do," he answered after a moment, "in my time away from this throne room, is not your concern, Apanecatl. Am I answerable to you for my time? Am I your slave, your property?"
Apanecatl looked down at the floor. He'd overstepped, and he knew it. "No, my Lord," he answered hastily. "Of course not. I merely wished to silence the rumors, my Lord Mixcoatl. I have no answers for the accusations of the stranger."
He frowned. "Stranger? What stranger?"
"A few days ago," the other man answered, "a stranger came to Culhuacan. He has the bearings, the manners, of a lord. He says his name is Cameuh, and he says he is from a land far to the north. Further, he says he knows you. And he says you are not a man who can be trusted. So he has been saying to the lords and to the people of Culhuacan."
Mixcoatl's frown deepened. "Why," he asked, "haven't I been informed of this? Didn't anyone consider this important?"
Apanecatl gave an exaggerated shrug. "I tried, my Lord. I came to you with the news the day Cameuh arrived. You were not here. Then, on the next day, I sent a captain to tell you Cameuh was meeting with the priests at the new Calmecac. You were not here. On the third day I returned. You were not here. Today, I have told you of this."
Mixcoatl sighed. "Very well. Apanecatl, I wish to see this Lord Cameuh, I wish to speak with him. Have him brought to my chambers."
"My Lord, it has been suggested by myself, by the priests, and by the captains that he come here and speak with you. He says he will not come. He says he fears for his life in your presence."
Mixcoatl stood up suddenly. "Am I the king here?" he cried. "Are my commands to be denied by some stranger? Have this man brought here! If he will not come, send warriors to bring him by force!"
"My Lord, I do not think that is wise," Apanecatl said. "Cameuh is a great lord from a foreign land. To have him dragged through the streets..."
"Is there no other way, Apanecatl?" Yeuatlicue asked, speaking for the first time.
"Yes, there is," Apanecatl said. "Cameuh is staying with the lord Itzcalli, my cousin. He has said he would see you there, in Itzcalli's home. So that he may feel safe, he asks that you come without your personal guards."
"So. I am to go to him. I am to be so commanded in my own city."
"It is a request, my Lord. From a dignitary from a land we know nothing about."
Mixcoatl ruminated about it for several minutes. "Very well," he said at last. "I do wish to hear from this Cameuh, I want to know who he is and why he claims to know me. I will come. When the sun stands at the zenith, I will come to Itzcalli's house."
Apanecatl rose. "Very good, my lord. I will hasten there that they may make ready for your visit." Mixcoatl nodded, and he left.
"Do you think," Yeuatlicue said, "that it is safe for us to go without your guards?"
He grinned at the way she'd automatically included herself. "It has been a while since I've been at war," he admitted. "But I am not poor in a fight, my little one. It would take more than Apanecatl and some foreign lord to threaten me. No, we will go. We will find out what this is about." Although she assured him that she had every confidence in his ability as a warrior and she did not really argue with him, she still seemed dubious. Saying she had a few matters to attend to before this meeting, she then left him for a while. When she returned, she was dressed in her finest huipilli and cueitl; she'd bathed, as well, and her hair was freshly washed and scented with flowers. Taking up her usual position beside his dais, she reached up and held his hand for a while. She seemed to be holding it very tightly, but he made no comment.
Finally, at the appointed time, she and Mixcoatl, alone, came to the door of Itzcalli's home. Apanecatl's cousin himself greeted them and showed them inside. He offered them food and drink, but Mixcoatl declined, saying that he wished only to meet the mysterious Cameuh. Nodding, Itzcalli showed him down a hallway to a spacious room at the end, where Apanecatl was waiting. Another man, dressed in a royal tilmatli, was seated with him, but this man was facing the wall.
"I am glad," the stranger said, "that you came, Mixcoatl. You cannot know how this delights me."
The voice sounded familiar to him. "Turn and face me, stranger," he said. "I wish to know why you speak ill of me in my own city, in Culhuacan where you have been welcomed."
"I speak ill of you," the man said, "because you are a murderer and a torturer. Because you have no loyalty. Because you are a poor excuse for a man, and completely unsuited to be a king."
Mixcoatl felt his cheeks grow warm. "Turn!" he commanded. "Turn, and explain these accusations to me!"
The man did turn, then. As Apanecatl smiled, the man turned. And Mixcoatl was stuck silent in an instant.
"Huemac?" he whispered. "Huemac, my brother? It cannot be!"
"It is, brother," Huemac said, spitting the word out contemptuously. "Your little brother. The one who worshipped you, you and our sister Itzpapalotl. The one who was wounded in the desert, the one you left there to die!"
"Huemac, I did not know," he whispered. "We believed you dead..."
"You did not make sure!" Huemac shouted. "You did not! You did not notice, you did not see, how I was dragging myself along, arrows piercing me, trying to cry out when I could not speak! You were more interested in torturing and murdering our sister!'
"No, Huemac, you do not understand..."
"I understand," the younger man answered, "very well." He gave a hand signal, and he looked over Mixcoatl's shoulder as he did. Mixcoatl started to turn to see who he was signaling to.
He didn't manage to make the turn. There was a sudden blinding pain; Yeuatlicue screamed. It took a moment before he realized that Itzcalli and some men, strangers, men from some tribe Huemac had apparently fallen in with, were standing behind them. One of them had thrown a lance that had pierced Mixcoatl's back deeply.
He groaned, reached around and jerked the lance out, and drew his macuahuitl. But before he could ready it for a swing, Apanecatl and Huemac were on him, knives in their hands. He felt their blades sink into his belly, he felt his blood come gushing out, and he felt his strength rushing away at the same time.
As he dropped the macuahuitl, Yeuatlicue snatched it up. Itzcalli was rushing forward too, a lance in his hand, ready to add his strength to the assassination, but the girl swung the heavy weapon at him and it sank deeply into his side. Fatally wounded, he howled; one of Huemac's warriors, using a stone ball-end war club, rushed forward and struck Yeuatlicue in the head with it. She reeled back, dropping the sword, blood already visible in her black hair. The warrior followed her and hit her again, across the back of her head. She went down, sprawled on the floor.
Apanecatl shoved his blade deep in Mixcoatl's belly again. "Come, come, we must go!" he shouted at Huemac as he jerked it out. "He is dead and so is my cousin; this is an opportunity! If we go now, the fault will lie with Itzcalli! Come, we have to deal with my sister and the child she carries!"
Huemac grinned, nodded, and aimed a vicious kick at Mixcoatl's midsection. "Yes, it's good," he agreed. "Let him die here, alone. As he left me to die." In a fog, Mixcoatl heard the sound of running feet. In an instant there was no one left in the room but himself and Yeuatlicue. He groaned and called her name; she did not move.
But she was not dead. A few moments later she stirred, she lifted her head; her hair was painted red with her own blood. Painfully, slowly, she got to her hands and knees and crawled to Mixcoatl.
"We are dying, my Lord," she said, her hand on his face. "Dying... I knew it would be so."
"You... should not have come, then," he told her. "You should have warned... Chimalma..." He coughed and spat blood. "You may yet not die," he went on. "Maybe you can still warn--"
"I already did," she amazed him by answering. "She and Quilaztli told me that you would die in this way, and soon, and that no power in the world could change it. I am sure she has already fled the city."
Mixcoatl closed his eyes for a moment. She'd told him the same thing, more than once; sometimes he was able to remember, sometimes not. "Surely," he said, "she did not tell you you had to come here and risk dying with me."
"No. That was my choice, mine alone." She reached for the pouch at his waist. "I told you once," she said, "that you would need this. And I told you there was power within you, my Lord Mixcoatl, my love." She pulled out the white flint and laid it on his chest, over his heart. "And now that power must be freed."
Forcing herself--she was obviously badly hurt, though perhaps not fatally--she came up to her knees. Struggling with it, she pulled her huipilli up over her head. Then she drew out the flint knife he carried at his belt and offered it to him.
"Take it, my Lord," she urged, offering him her bare chest as well. "Take it, take my life. Take my power and use it."
He smiled faintly. "Yeuatlicue, I cannot. I would not if I could; keep your power, follow Chimalma and Quilaztli in their flight. Live."
"No. You must take my power, now."
"I cannot, little one. My arm will not rise. And I say again, I would not."
"Then," she said, "I will have to do it for you." She leaned over and kissed him. Then she put the sharp edge of the knife under her own chin.
He groaned again. He could not move to stop her. "Yeuatlicue, no..."
"I have given you my love, Mixcoatl, my Lord. I will give you my life as well. My life, and the power of my life's blood." With that, she started drawing the blade across her throat, pressing hard. Her lower lip trembled, but hand was perfectly steady, and she kept her eyes fixed on his face as the sharp blade slipped easily through her soft skin. Blood streamed out; she finished her first cut and prepared for another.
Lowering herself over his chest, she let her blood spill over the white flint, and it seemed to vibrate. Pushing even harder she cut deeper, and now the blood was coming out in spurts, one for each beat of her heart, washing over the flint and over his body. Still she watched his face, her lips slightly parted as she finished her second, much deeper, cut. Satisfied, she laid the knife aside and laid down on him, her throat over the flint and over his heart, and put her arms around him. She wasn't able to stop herself from fighting to breathe, even though now, having sliced through her windpipe, she could not. Still, as she bled, as she was dying, she watched his eyes. With a supreme act of will he managed to lift his arm and put it around her. She smiled at him, just a little--and then he saw the life leave her body. Suddenly, like a bird frightened from a branch...
Under her neck, the flint vibrated and glowed. "Come, my brother!" a voice called to him, as if from a great distance. "Come! It is time for you to awake, ah, at last..."
He felt the world expanding around him as he'd felt before, and he rose from his now-lifeless body. Itzpapalotl, resplendent in the fullness of her divinity, stood there waiting for him. "Ah, yes," he sighed. "It seems I've been dreaming for an eternity, dreaming I was living a human life..."
"Over now," she said. "It's done."
He looked down at Yeuatlicue’s body, still lying atop his own. A broad white band of light rose from it, passing through the wall and headed off into the sky. Where it joined the girl's body, near her waist, it was beginning to fade. "That one," he told Itzpapalotl, "was special. Special, precious to me. So I say, I, myself, in person."
"And she travels now to Tonatiuhchan, the House of the Sun," Itzpapalotl said. "She died a hero, a warrior's death. Without her power, you would not have been whole for some hours yet."
"I know." He took Itzpapalotl's hand. "Come," he said. "We must see how Chimalma and Quilaztli are faring. Usually I cannot help them, but this time, because of Yeuatlicue and her sacrifice, I can!" The two of them moved away, passing like ghosts through the walls, moving with incredible speed. Behind them, the white flint that lay trapped between the two blood-covered bodies suddenly ceased to glow--it became a piece of stone, nothing more.
Moving as they were, it didn't take them long--a matter of a second or two--to locate and catch up with Chimalma and Quilaztli as they moved along the road back toward Huitznahuac. As they always did when they were fighting or were prepared to fight, they'd both stripped naked. At the moment more than a mile tall, Mixcoatl searched back along the road toward Culhuacan. Obviously, Apanecatl and Huemac hadn't known which way they'd gone, and so they'd divided the searchers. A small party, a dozen men, were on following the women, and currently they were a mile or two back. Shrinking himself down, Mixcoatl reformed himself into a solid body.
"Well, Mixcoatl," Chimalma said with a smile, "done with your dreaming again, I see." She still only showed her pregnancy slightly; her breasts were a bit larger, her nipples a bit darker, and her belly showed a tiny bulge.
"Yes," he answered. "All has proceeded as it must." He gestured back down the trail. "There are some pursuers, twelve of them," he told her. "You want to let them catch up and deal with them yourself, or should Itzpapalotl and I do it for you?"
"You do it, would you, Mixcoatl?" she asked. "Those men are without blame--they mean only to take me back to Apanecatl, not knowing that he'll then kill me. If they catch up we'll have little choice but to kill them all. Not that that'd be hard."
"I will then, my Lady," he said. He patted her bare stomach. "The baby is well?"
She grinned. "Oh, yes! He makes his presence known!"
"Do you have a sense yet of the end of your own dream, my Lady?"
She shook her head. "No. So far there is no sign of any problem with the pregnancy, I'm sure I'll survive the childbirth this time." She sighed. "I hope so. Ending my dream by dying in childbed is not pleasant. I much prefer to feel an arrow or a knife entering my breast, feeling my blood spilling out."
"Yes, I understand--having just experienced it. Perhaps it could be arranged so that Apanecatl could catch you shortly after the baby is born."
"He'll torture her to find the baby. And he won't find it, I'll see to that," Quilaztli said.
"Hm. Possibly. You could of course fight him, Chimalma. Force him and his warriors to kill you on the battlefield, with arrows or darts. You can avoid them, of course, but you don't have to if you don't want to."
"That sounds like a nice idea, Mixcoatl. Can you arrange it?"
He grinned and tipped his head. "Of course, my Lady. I'll be happy to." As he stood there, he structured the plan in his mind, how he'd arrange for a lone hunter to catch sight of Chimalma while she was out alone, about six months after the baby was born. He saw the hunter rushing back to Culhuacan and reporting to Apanecatl that she'd been seen. With a large contingent of warriors, a hundred or so, Apanecatl would rush out to the site, not really expecting to find her.
But he would find her, and he'd find her in a narrow canyon--the Great Ravine, her favorite haunt, a potent power spot--but one that offered her no chance for escape. He could see her, naked as always, turning and running when she saw Apanecatl and his warriors entering the ravine from the north, and he saw her laugh, knowing that Mixcoatl had kept his promise and that her time had come, when she found the south end already blocked by warriors.
He saw her turn back to confront Apanecatl himself and the larger group of warriors that would be entering from the north. Finally in sight of her, Apanecatl would call on her to surrender herself, and she would merely laugh at him in response. Instructing his warriors to take her alive, he'd order them forward. Not able to resist defending herself at least for a while, she'd unsling her bow and fire on them, and each of her deadly arrows would take down at least two men--well before they'd gotten within range themselves. Their courage might have failed in such a situation, but Mixcoatl would play a trick on her, one she wouldn't be expecting--he'd put a small fissure, a hairline crack, in her bow. As she drew it for another shot, it would snap in half.
That wouldn't mean, though, that she'd be helpless. He could see the warriors rushing forward, yelling, sure that it would be easy to take her now. It wouldn't be. Discarding the useless bow, she'd begin launching her arrows at them by hand, throwing them like miniature spears. But now, she would not have the range advantage on them; and, when Apanecatl realized she'd probably kill them all if they tried to rush her, he'd order his archers to fire on her, commanding them to wound her only.
By this time, Apanecatl would've sent word to his men on the other side of the canyon to begin closing in; Chimalma would be under attack from two sides. The archers would begin firing, aiming at her legs and hips, trying to bring her down.
At first, she'd instinctively dodge the arrows or bat them away, an easy thing for her to do. Finally, carrying out the plan, she'd deliberately stand still and let one of the arrows strike her in her thigh, biting deep into her leg. The warriors, emboldened by drawing blood, would close in on her a little. One would stray too close, and she'd take him down with one of her thrown arrows. But then another, from behind, would shoot one into her hip.
She'd feel the pain; she'd groan, but she'd deign to touch the arrows. Still batting them away, she'd make the archers work for their hits, but she'd let them get them--although she'd deny any hits to her knees, which would make it impossible for her to stand. Soon she'd have a couple sticking in each thigh, one all the way through her left calf, and three in her hips and buttocks; her legs would be streaked with blood.
Still she'd stand, still she'd bat the arrows away with her hands, and still, she'd kill any warrior who dared come too close. Apanecatl would become frustrated with the continuing losses of his warriors and with their inability to bring her down. And, finally, he would give the command to shoot higher, at her body. Hearing this, she'd laugh again. Mixcoatl saw her point at a particular archer and then stand facing him, her feet slightly apart and her arms spread to the sides. He wouldn't react, not immediately. It hadn't been that long; the man--a man slightly older than most of the other warriors Apanecatl had brought on this expedition, a man of honor, and selected by Chimalma for this first shot because he was honorable--would remember that she had been their beloved queen, he'd be reluctant to fire a shot that might kill her.
"Let your arrow fly," she'd call out to him, pointing to her belly. She'd then spread her arms once again. "Let it be done. I will never surrender, and my brother will never leave here as long as I live and stand free. It is a good day for me to die. Let your arrow fly!"
And at last, he would. It would fly true, and Chimalma would make no move to stop it. She'd stand perfectly still and let it strike her naked belly, a little below her navel, and it would enter her body deeply. She'd groan and she'd throw her head back, blood would spurt out beside the shaft, but still she would not fall. After just a moment she'd look back at the archers, standing as proudly as before in spite of the arrow buried deep in her belly. Another would fly, it would strike her breast, it would slip far inside her. Then one in her back, taking her by surprise, and another in her belly. Weakening at last, she'd twist to the side, her arms upraised, and another arrow would find a space between her ribs. Her whole body would by then be covered with blood, and, when another found its way to the small of her back, her strength would begin to leave her. She'd sag, she'd finally fall to her knees, her body studded with arrows.
Even then, she'd remain dangerous to the warriors. As she fell, one would rush forward only to have his heart pierced by one of her own thrown arrows. The warriors' bows would twang again, and, in quick succession, three more arrows would sprout from her breasts and two more from her back. Finally, after another had gone deep between her ribs, her fingers would lose their grip on her arrows and she'd fall over onto her side, blood gurgling from her mouth, her fingers clawing at the ground, nearly twenty arrows piercing her body.
Sure now that it was safe, Apanecatl would approach her and demand to know the location of the baby. She'd just grin up at him and shake her head. In a rage, he'd drive a lance into her right side, he'd stand over her and grind it down into her and through her until the blade had ripped her heart, until her shuddering and squirming body finally became still, until her spirit left her.
He would never, of course, find the baby. Whose motivation for revenge would then be doubled...
Mixcoatl blinked, coming back to the present, as Chimalma stepped forward and hugged him. "Nice to have you fully aware like this so soon," she said.
"Thanks to Yeuatlicue. She was perfect."
The women grinned. "She did seem like a find, yes..."
"You just have to remember," he cautioned, "when Apanecatl and his men are killing you, you can't kill him."
Now she patted her stomach. "Oh, I know. That's for him to do."
"Indeed." He covered his hand with hers. "Ah, he will be strong this time," he said. "Very strong. I wish you a good dream, my son, Topiltzin, Ce Acatl, Quetzalcoatl! Don't forget now, be sure you take revenge for me on Apanecatl and Huemac!" Chimalma laughed as he took his hand away reluctantly. "I will see you again," he said, "in the months to come. For now, let me go discourage some warriors!"
She laughed and hugged him again; then she and Quilaztli moved on down the road, headed for Huitznahuac, where the great god Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, would be born into the world. Accompanied by Itzpapalotl in the form of a large black butterfly with eagle talons, he went the other way. Coming close to the pursuing warriors, he stopped. Remaining hidden among the trees and reaching out with his consciousness, he searched their minds--seeking their nightmares.
He found them--enough of them. Though he remained physical, he willed his form to shift. He came larger; a rack of sharply-pointed antlers sprang from his head, his face elongated, fangs sprouted from his mouth, his eyes became as large as plates, bright red with elliptical white pupils. His body, red-and-white striped as always, became almost spherical, bulbous; each leg and each arm split in two and they all changed to long jaguar-spotted appendages, each terminating in a taloned hand. In this form he waited, and before long the unsuspecting warriors came around a bend in the trail. He started making some noise to attract their attention, and it didn't take long before they came creeping forward, weapons ready, to see what or who was moving around in the trees.
As they drew close, he extended one leg and grabbed a tree root four or five inches thick with his talons and slowly pried it up out of the ground. The closest man jumped back, his eyes huge. As he did, Mixcoatl exploded from cover, climbing into the trees, using several to support his elephant-sized body, then turning upside-down and glaring at them. His tongue, at least ten yards long, coiled out and rolled along the ground toward the men.
Nothing else was needed. The men's courage vanished totally. Screaming like small children, they turned almost as one and fled back toward Culhuacan.
Itzpapalotl, still in butterfly-form, fluttered near his face. "Well, that was no fun," she said. "Are all your warriors that cowardly?" She laughed. "And are you aware of how ridiculous you look?"
"It worked, didn't it? They're gone." He resumed human form and dropped to the ground.
"Yes, I have to admit it, it worked. We are through here, aren't we?"
He nodded. "You're going back to Tamoanchan?"
"Yes. Aren't you?"
"Not right away. I have one more thing to do."
"Oh?"
"Yes. You'll see."
"Okay. I'll see you there." She turned, flapped her wings, and shot off into the southern sky, disappearing quickly. Standing with his hands on his hips, he looked up into the sky, searching for the spectral white band that indicated the path Yeuatlicue was walking to the House of the Sun. After just a moment he located it. In the guise of a great white eagle with red eyes and feather-tips he flew to it, lighting on it ahead of her and resuming his human form instantly. Seeing him, she gave a cry and ran to him.
"I was wondering where you were," she said, trying to hug him. Her form was rather insubstantial, though, and her arms passed through him. "You too died a warrior's death, you too should have on your way to Tonatiuhchan," she continued, looking a little disappointed. "I didn't imagine you might've been ahead of me..."
He shook his head. "Little one, I must tell you--I am not as you are, I never was. I am Teotl; I am Mixcoatl, I am the patron of the hunt, of wild things and wild places. That I was a man, as you were a woman, was only a dream I was having, a dream from which I have now awakened."
She looked stricken. "Oh... oh, my Lord, I did not know..."
"No. You did not. The name 'Mixcoatl' is not yet known among your people. It will be, and when it is, then I will use another name for my dreaming. For I must dream again, little one, in times yet to be. As must we all."
"I see." She looked down. "I thank you for coming to speak to me, my Lord Mixcoatl, on my way to Tonatiuhchan. For explaining things to me..." She was looking more disappointed than ever.
He grinned at her. "That's not quite the reason I came."
She looked up again, and she looked puzzled. "Why, then?"
"In a time long ago," he said, "I was as you were. I was but a man, a man playing a part in a drama repeated over and over through the centuries. There came a time when I played that part very well, well enough that the Teteo took note of me. Do you understand?"
"No."
"Let me explain a bit further, then. In times past, there has been a 'Yeuatlicue.' Not always, not every time, and not always by that name. But, at times, there has been someone, someone to keep me distracted so I do not follow Chimalma and Quilaztli and come to know who and what I am too soon. You see, the baby Chimalma carries is Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl, He who will recover the bones of mankind from Mictlantecuhtli in the underworld of Mictlan, He who will restore humankind to the earth after the world is destroyed yet again. He is required to test himself by taking revenge for my assassination upon Huemac and Apanecatl. For him to do that, I must be assassinated! You see?"
Her eyes were wide. "I think so," she answered. "My Lord, it is a great honor for me to have been a part of this..."
"I can imagine," he said dryly. "But there is more still. I did not stop you on your way to the House of the Sun simply to explain to you what you'd been part of. That you would've learned when you reached Tonatiuhchan."
"Why did you stop me, then?"
"As I said, I was once but a man. Then one of the Teteo noticed me, and I became more than that. Now, Yeuatlicue, one of the Teteo has noticed you." She stared; she didn't seem to be able to speak. "I have noticed you, Yeuatlicue," he continued, his voice soft. He reached out his hand and slipped it inside her ethereal form, near the center of her body. "And now you will become as We are. So I say, I, myself, in person."
She looked down at herself as he withdrew his hand. "You mean--you mean--I--"
"Yes. You are of the Teteo now. You are one of us."
She looked up, then lunged forward to hug him again, but she was still insubstantial. He laughed and explained to her that she could change that if she wished; she understood, she did, and the hug at last took place. Afterwards, he told her he was taking her to Tamoanchan, her home now.
"My Lord Mixcoatl, I do not know what to say..." she murmured as the traveled southward.
"I've been considering this for a while," he told her. "It means, of course, that you must dream and wake as we all do. That's not always pleasant. A man or woman dies only once; we must die thousands of times over."
"That doesn't matter," she answered. "Doesn't matter at all. Ah, Mixcoatl, my Lord, this seems like some dream..."
"No. This is real. When you are reborn, when you again become a human woman, that will be your dream." She nodded. "Though you may not be aware you are dreaming," he continued. "As I was not, most of the time. Sometimes you'll find yourself able to do things that normal women cannot do, and it may seem to you as if it is just an accident--as it seemed to me that day I caused you to fall into my bathwater, caused the seam of your cueitl to break away, and caused you to slip and fall in just the right manner to--"
She stopped; it took him an instant to realize she wasn't by his side anymore. He stopped too, and looked back. She was standing there with her hands on her hips, an amazed expression on her face. "You did that?" she demanded. "That was not truly an accident?"
"Uh, yes... many things which seem to be chance to human men and women are things caused by the Teteo, and--"
"You did rape me!" she cried.
"What?"
"You did rape me! As you said, that day! It was true! I didn't believe it, but it was true!"
"Yeuatlicue, the part of me that was awake could easily see that you wanted to--"
"What I might've wanted does not matter! Rape it was, Mixcoatl!" With her chin high, she stormed past him. "I do not know," she said stiffly as she walked on ahead, "if I can forgive you for this. I do not know."
"Yeuatlicue..."
"Do not speak to me. I do not want to hear your voice." She paused. "Which way did you say Tamoanchan was?"
"That way. Yeuatlicue.."
She turned, and in silence she walked on. With a sigh, he followed at a short distance. There was a buzzing in his ears, and he glanced around to see Itzpapalotl, still in her butterfly form, flying alongside him. She had a human face, though, and she was laughing so uncontrollably she could hardly fly. He swatted at her, but she evaded him with an easy maneuver.
"You," she said, "had best go pay a visit to Xochipilli, husband of Xochiquetzal and god of love and flowers, when you reach Tamoanchan," she advised. "You need some lessons, my brother!"
He swatted at her again with no more success. Women, he thought sourly. Whether human or Teotl, they make no sense.