head of you is a low flat-topped pyramid with a building--a Teocallis, a temple--atop it. There are a number of people milling about, and you find yourself, by chance, close to a couple of them. One is a man, the other is a young boy, evidently his son. The sun is bright and hot, and they have taken shelter in the shade of the pyramid's staircase, sitting on the ground with their backs against the wall.
"And in a little while, we will go up the pyramid's steps and go inside," the man is saying. "The overseer will take a little blood from your ear. It will hurt some, but you must give no sign. This blood shall serve to strengthen Mixcoatl. Everyone in the city will draw their blood this day."
"What will happen then, papa?" the boy asks eagerly, apparently not at all disturbed about the prospect of someone cutting his ear. You wonder if he really understands. He's very young, about five or so.
"After all the arrows are made, the hunters will be chosen; and tomorrow, they will hunt the deer. Then we shall feast. Afterwards, the man who has been named Mixcoatl and the woman who is called Yeuatlicue will give their service in the temple. It is a most solemn occasion, my son."
"Why do they have to give their service?"
"To give the Teotl Mixcoatl and Yeuatlicue the strength they'll need in the days to come. But enough. Come now. We must go to the Teocallis."
"Yes, papa," the boy says, climbing to his feet and taking his father's hand. Together they begin to mount the stairs. At a little distance, you follow them. The pyramid is low and broad, the climb is short; at the top you enter the Teocallis, and you find it to be a larger building than you'd imagined it to be when you were looking up at it from below. Across the back, opposite the entrance, is a raised stagelike area, open to the outside and close to the edge of the pyramid, where it would be visible from below. At one side there is a beaded curtain, creating a sizable "backstage" space shielded from the view of the audience. At each end of the stage are stone braziers, and a silent Indian wearing only a maxtlatl--a white, tied loincloth--stands guard over each. The floor in front of the stage is tiered, a series of steps rising toward the back, allowing everyone to have a clear view of the stage.
A long line of children and parents stretches across the floor. At the center of the stage a man whose body is painted black cuts tiny nicks in the ears of the children, then daubs the blood onto their temples; if any drips it is collected in a wooden tub. The children, stoic, are silent as their ears are cut, though a few of the younger ones show their pain with grimaces, some exaggerated, and weep as they move away.
Behind the priest is a large rock, shaped only by nature, its surface carved with odd patterns. On beyond this is an open area, and in the center of it is a precisely-carved piece of stone, shaped like a truncated cone, between three and four feet tall, its round flat top seven or eight inches in diameter. Set on a platform so that it rises above the rock, it's clearly visible from the floor. You do not have to ask what this stone is for.
Down on the sunken floor itself, alongside the lines of patient children, a group of men are busily engaged in the manufacture of arrows. They are carefully cutting reed shafts according to a model they have, and they are taking great pains to insure that all the shafts are of the same length--and they are unusually small, only about eighteen or twenty inches in length. Others are chipping out flint arrowheads from prepared cores, and others still are fastening the arrowheads to the shafts with pitch and twine. Yet another group is fletching the shafts, which completes their manufacture. The uniformity of the finished products is quite amazing; each is exactly like the next. As they're completed, they're tied into bundles of twenty each, carried up to the stage and added to the piles already there. The men must have been at it since sunrise at least, considering the quantity of arrows on the stage.
For several hours, nothing else happens. You become somewhat bored with watching the arrows being made and watching the seemingly endless chain of children waiting to be bloodied. You quit watching for awhile. When you look again, the children are gone, but a similar chain of adults has replaced them, and they're undergoing the same ceremony.
After what seems like an endless time, the line of people thins out and stops, and this seems to be a signal to the arrow-makers. They finish their last bundles of twenty, tie them up, and put away their manufacturing paraphernalia. Then they begin to string bows, which have been made at some previous time. When they'd done forty, they stop this as well, they carry them on the stage and lay them out in neat rows. As hunting or combat bows they look very inefficient; they're less than thirty inches long, too short to put much power behind the little arrows.
Most of the arrowmakers leave, and they are replaced by a group of young men who seem to be in a competitive mood. From the stage they each take a bow, and the arrowmakers remaining set up the thick leaves of a maguey plant as a target. When this is done, the young men begin shooting at it. It's obviously a sort of tournament; whenever someone hits the leaf, he steps to the right, while anyone who misses steps to the left, returns his bow, and departs the building. This continues until the group has been culled to the ten best marksmen, each of whom are then given four of the short bows and several bundles of arrows. Considering the small bows, they are remarkably good archers; the distance involved is a good seventy-five feet. Many times during the competition, an arrow hit the leaf but didn't have the force to pierce it. Such cases seemed to have been counted as hits, though.
When the ten had been selected, they sit down with their bundles of arrows and began to paint the shafts, each man using a different color pattern of rings. They also paint these same patterns on their bows. When the painting is done, they each take one bow and one bundle of arrows to the stage, where they are first censed by a black-painted priest, then placed in a brazier and, with considerable ceremony, burnt.
After this, everyone except the silent guards of the braziers and the black-painted men leaves the building. For a little while nothing happens; but, just you're beginning to think that perhaps the day's proceedings are over, a group of young women enters the building and sits down as a group in the middle of the sunken floor. Two more men, both with their bodies painted black, also come in; they sit on the stage, seemingly waiting for something. After another short hiatus, another man comes in. His face is also painted black, but he wears a headdress and heavy black robes that clearly mark him as some sort of leader. You hear someone address him as "Xolotl." He's carrying a wrapped bundle with him, which he deposits on the stone altar.
All eyes are on him as he turns to face the group of women seated on the floor. "The men are at the hunt," he says solemnly. His voice is deep and impressive, he's clearly experienced at public speaking. "Tomorrow, ten of you shall be Mixcoacihuatl. Is there anyone here by other than their own free will?"
The girls look around at each other, but no one says anything; evidently no one is.
"Good," Xolotl says, after giving them ample time for a response. He steps down from the stage and passes among them; there are probably thirty or forty women there, and he carefully looks each one in the face. Then he passes among them again, and as he goes he touches ten of them on the shoulder. These look delighted, and they bound up to the stage; the others look crestfallen as they get up and shuffle out of the building.
They remaining ten gathered closely around Xolotl, and he begins talking to them in a low voice. Though you strain your ears, you cannot make out what is being said. The black-robed man periodically points to one of them and shows them some small object he's taken from a pouch. You can't see what it might be, since Xolotl keeps it cupped in his hands.
Finally the ten leave, all smiling faces; you imagine that they've been granted some singular honor by Xolotl, possibly leading parts in some ceremonial dance. Xolotl and the black- painted priests confer for a long time, obviously planning tomorrow's festivities. You cannot hear it all, and the few snatches you do get are mostly uninteresting:
"--here is where the deer will be brought when--"
"--don't forget to have the cloths out here, and--"
and so on. You yawn, it's getting late and you're feeling tired, and now you're sure that the day's festivities are over. You wander out; some kind-hearted stranger shows you to a hut where you can sleep, and you do. The next morning, when you arise, you're hungry--but you're told that a fast is in effect until the "fiesta" later today, at which time there will be plenty of food. You're told to return to the Teocallis--everyone is expected to be there--and you do.
You walk inside. A number of priests, all dressed in robes and their faces painted black, are on the stage, waiting silently, their arms crossed across their chests. The young women selected yesterday are milling about behind the curtain, and they've been joined by four young men, also priests to judge from their long hair and black-painted faces. People are coming in in large groups, arraying themselves around the stepped area of the floor. Finally, as if in response to some silent signal, two door-keepers go to the large doors and close them. Evidently, everyone who is coming in is in.
Mounting the stage, Xolotl picks up the bundle he'd brought the previous day and faces the audience, which falls silent in response. He folds back the cloth and shows them four arrows. "The arrows of Mixcoatl," he says in a strong, solemn voice. They don't look much different from the ones that you've seen being made, except that these have hardwood, not reed, shafts.
"We will go to the east, we will shoot an arrow," Xolotl says with a chanting cadence. "We will go to the center, toward Mictlan, and we will shoot again. We will go toward Huitzlampa, and we will shoot again. We will go to the fields of flowers and we shall shoot again. When our arrows have been shot we will have found that we have struck the real thing, the real thing."
As he chants, two more men wearing only cotton loincloths set up drums on the left edge of the stage. As Xolotl finishes, they began a soft rhythm. "THEY were the Chichimecs!" Xolotl continues, the first word being accented by a sharp strike on the drum. "THEY were our forefathers! THEY learned the ways of Mixcoatl, of Itzpapalotl, of Quilaztli, of Yeuatlicue, of Xiuhnel, of Mimich! WE will do them honor! WE will shoot our arrows! WE will hunt the deer!"
The drumming dies down to a quiet background as Xolotl replaces the four unwrapped arrows on the altar. Now, as he steps to the side, the ten young women and four men who've been hiding behind the curtain come out, walking slowly in single file. They array themselves on either side of the rock in the center, the men on the right, the women on the left. For a short time they just stand there, while the drums play and the audience gazes at them.
Then one of the black-painted priests steps up in front of them, and some command is given. The young people respond by removing their clothing, standing naked before the onlookers. The priest goes to the rear of the stage and gathers up some pieces of fur; at first you think they might be blankets.
But, as they're distributed to the nude men and women, it becomes obvious that they're deerskin costumes. Each has a buck or doe head attached, as was appropriate to the sex of the wearer. The painted men help them into the costumes, which have sweater-like sleeves but no legs; they're attached by lacings across the front and by a pair of belts passing between the legs. When the body costume is in place, the head, missing the lower jaw, is pulled down over the person's forehead like a helmet. A broad "tail," hanging to the knees, remains attached in back.
The drum rhythms come up to a higher volume, and the costumed people begin cavorting about the stage as if they really are deer, drawing laughter from the audience. One of the men gets down on his hands and knees and noses around the stage as if searching for grass. A girl runs off the stage and across the sunken floor, leaping into the air with amazing agility, as if just for the pleasure of it. Another pair, a "stag" and a "doe," rub the noses of their deer-masks together, and you notice that the young man is getting an erection; his penis, refusing to be denied, pushes out alongside the belt that holds his costume in place. The girl, noticing, turns around and drops to her hands and knees, her rear end high. The young man uses his teeth to push her "tail" aside and undo her belts, with enough incidental contact to cause her to squirm with pleasure. Still without using his hands, the man leans over her back, his arms stiffly down alongside her sides like a deer's front legs, and pushes his erection into her. Then his hips begin moving rapidly. They really do look like rutting animals, and the audience thinks it's hilarious. They laugh and applaud.
Finally they are finished; the girl requires help from one of the priests to refasten her belts. He ignores the streak of semen running down the inside of her right leg. Once her costume has been fixed, two of the black-painted men go to the doors and fling them open again. This too seems to be a signal; from places scattered in the audience, the men who'd previously won the archery contest start toward the front. As they did, the women who're dressed in doe costumes run for the door at full speed, and they vanish outside. Only the women run out; the "stags" remain on the stage.
You move quickly to the doorway yourself. From the top of the pyramid you can see the ten deerskin-clad women racing through the city. They scatter in all directions, many of them entering brushy or wooded areas. It looks like they're trying to hide.
Hearing a rumble of many people moving, you look back; the rest of the audience is leaving, many of them running too, laughing and cheering. Soon the whole floor is cleared, leaving only the painted men, the drummers, brazier guards, "stags", and the ten archers inside. There's a pause, then a signal from Xolotl. The archers leave, the short bows on their shoulders, each carrying a quiver of the recently-made arrows.
You walk down the pyramid steps. The townspeople are running all about, laughing and shouting, apparently searching for the women in the deer-costumes. The archers are not taking part in this; they've split up, and they're more methodically walking among the celebrating populace. Of the deer impersonators, nothing can be seen.
You pick out a group of townspeople and you follow them, a little unsure of what you should do. They're like children playing a game. Almost constantly laughing, they run through the streets, looking into houses, beating the bushes with thin sticks.
And as luck would have it, they're apparently the first of many such groups to actually locate one of the "does". She was hiding in a clump of bushes, and when they beat it with their sticks, she erupts from it, running at top speed toward an area where a number of the large, thick-leafed, and formidably-thorned maguey plants are growing. The group gives immediate chase, several of them calling out that a doe has been found. You follow them, and you notice that now one of the young men carrying the short bows and arrows has joined your group. The girl, running at top speed, disappears momentarily around one of the cottages. Rounding the corner of the house, you see that the group had again flushed the woman, and she is again running, for the cover of the maguey plants now. The archer looses an arrow at her, but the bow is so small that his shot fell hopelessly short. The hunt must be symbolic, you decide. Otherwise, they'd be using more efficient bows.
But there is no doubt that the young woman is desperately trying to escape. She races out among the maguey plants, easily outdistancing most of her pursuers. Only the archer, loping along with long strides, is keeping up with her. She snags the loose sleeves of her costume on the thorns of a maguey, and she's jerked backward. With a fluid motion, she slips out of it, and she runs on naked. She only lost a minute, but it allowed the archer to gain a few strides. For a few seconds, you lose sight of them.
Then, when you see them again, you see that the girl has been trapped. The archer pursuing her has more or less cornered her in a patch of maguey plants; she has to either run by very close to him or risk much of her skin among the heavy thorns. Her coppery skin is gleaming with the sweat of the chase; she keeps moving around, just as a real deer might. Keeping to the center of the broad entranceway to the natural trap, the archer approaches her slowly. The rest of the group remains outside, watching. Some are yelling encouragement to the girl, some to the archer. He has one of the little arrows strung on his bow, but you can't imagine that he hopes to bring the girl down with this tiny weapon.
Still, as you watch, he looses an arrow at her. She sees it coming, she twists her body sideways and avoids it. It strikes a maguey leaf behind her and remains there, vibrating. The archer fires again, and again, moving like a gymnast, the girl jumps and twists away, avoiding his arrow. But, in doing so, she comes down somewhat off-balance--and facing the wrong way. The archer doesn't hesitate to take advantage, and this arrow strikes her in the small of her back, far to one side.
She stops, she looks back over her shoulder at the arrow. It is not deeply imbedded--even the flint point is not fully buried--but a little trickle of blood runs down below it. She flutters her hands, as if she wants to pull it out. But, in the end, she doesn't touch it. As the crowd roars and cheers, she prepares herself to try to avoid the archer's next attack.
It is not long coming. He aims carefully, then feints with the bow. She takes the bait and jumps too soon. He fires, a good clean shot, but he misses. Trying to take advantage, she attempts to dart by him while he's fitting another to his bowstring, but he's too quick for her. He looses the arrow just as she approaches him, it strikes her bare body with a solid thunk! and it sinks several inches deep into her lower abdomen, just inside her leg. She gasps, she stumbles, but she tries to keep running. As she goes the shallowly-buried arrow in her back strikes a maguey leaf and falls out.
"I am sorry for hurting you," he says formally as she runs by. But, even as he speaks, he strings another arrow and fires at her again, missing again.
But now she is free from her trap, and the chase is on again. She's running reasonably fast, but it's pretty obvious that she's being slowed substantially by the arrow sticking in her belly. The shaft waves around wildly as she runs--and you understand that this means that the point is moving around inside her, causing more damage and undoubtedly causing her pain, but she doesn't show it. The crowd, still laughing and yelling, follows along behind the archer, and they all catch up with her again near a cornfield. She runs along, glancing down the rows as she goes by, trying to find a way to lose herself in there.
But the smoothly running archer overtakes her before she gets a chance. Twice he fires, and his second shot hits her in the back of her right thigh. Blood wells out; she stumbles again and this time she actually falls. The crowd closes on her quickly, but they only make a half circle, they are careful to give her an escape route if she manages to run.
You move in close as the girl struggles to her feet. Amazingly, though her face twists and she clenches her eyes closed periodically against the pain, she is actually laughing, as well! The archer, smiling at her, holds his fire for a moment, and she does succeed in getting up.
On her feet again, she starts to run once more, but the arrow in her thigh hampers her considerably. The best she can manage was a limping trot; it seems incredible that she can manage that.
The archer shows her no mercy. He runs ahead of her, spins around, takes aim, and fires another; this one strikes her belly, just above her navel, and it goes in deep. Again she falls to her knees, staring down at the blood flowing from her wounds. But, after a moment, she forces herself to her feet again and, turning away from the archer--who's been waiting for her--she starts off again. As she goes the archer takes very careful aim and shoots an arrow into the back of her left knee. This time she screams, and she falls once more, grabbing at her leg. When she tries to get up, she finds that her left leg will not support her, no matter how hard she tries to force it. Sitting on the ground, she looks up at the hunter.
"I can run no more, my Chichimec," she says, wincing and holding onto the shafts in her belly. "I am yours, as you will."
With a nod, the hunter walks to her, slings his bow on his shoulder, and apologizes to her again for hurting her. He motions to the crowd, and two women come forward; the voice in your head pushes you forward. You join the hunter, and each of the four of you take one of her feet and hands, and you pick her up gently. You began to carry her away toward the Teocallis. Her head bobs up and down gently as you go. One of the women helping to carry her seems to know her, and they talk as you walk along. The injured woman even laughs once, but that provokes a new flow of blood from her stomach wound and her laughter is brief.
You carry the girl directly to the Teocallis and take her inside. As soon as you're in you can see that they've now erected a wooden frame of some sort up on the stage; the top beam has four large wooden hooks attached to it. You carry the woman up on the stage. Once you're there, one of the black-painted men ties a short length of rope around both her wrists, leaving a connecting loop about a foot long between them. He helps you hoist her up, looping the rope over the wooden hook so that she's left dangling from her wrists. Then you and the rest of your group leave her there; some of the others pause to pat her hip with seeming affection, and you do the same. She smiles at you as you go, though her smile is strained and doesn't last long. The archer stays beside her; he caresses her face, he brings her water in a little pottery jar. He acts like he's her lover, and if you look closely, you can see that there are tears on his cheeks.
A short time later, another group comes in, bringing another captive. This one is much less severely injured; she has only one arrow in her leg, in her calf. But her ankle is twisted at an odd angle, obviously broken. You surmise that she probably fell when she was struck by the arrow and broke the bone, and thus she'd been unable to run. That seems to be the key, and you find yourself wondering why the woman you helped carry in hadn't just fallen down after the first arrow had struck her; she'd be in a lot better shape if she had.
As they hang the second woman on the frame, a third girl is brought in. She's much worse off than the first two; her body is pierced by at least a dozen arrows in various places. She seems to be only half-conscious as they hang her up. In both cases, the archers that had downed them stay with them, attending to their needs, treating them very tenderly.
A half hour passes, and finally another captive arrives. She's been hit by only two arrows, but one of them is buried deeply in her chest. The end of it is splintered and covered with soil as if she fell on it. She's definitely not conscious, her head rolls to the side and blood runs from the corner of her mouth as they hang her up. The archer offers her water, but she's unresponsive; the only indication that she's alive is the ragged jerking motion of her breathing. All of the captives have at some point discarded their deerskin costumes; all are completely naked.
From outside, you hear someone calling in a loud voice, saying the hunt was over. You've assumed that was the case, since there are only four hooks. Obviously, these four were the unlucky ones, the ones who had been discovered first and run down. The other six impersonators obviously were free.
There's a long pause while the townspeople, followed by the archers and the remaining deer impersonators, come back in. A few of these still have their costumes on. They enter cautiously, as though they think this might be a ruse, until they see the four hanging on the rack. Then they relax and mingle with the others. Two of the impersonators, you notice, are themselves wounded; one girl has an arrow standing in her thigh, another has one in her hip and another between her ribs. You watch these two; they seat themselves on the floor and rather casually go about pulling the arrows out of their bodies. After removing the arrow from her hip herself, the girl who'd been hit twice asks a young man to help her with the one piercing her chest. Holding her with his left hand, he carefully pulls the arrow--which was deeply buried--straight out. She groans a little as it comes; once it's free blood foamy with air streams down her side. She leans against the young man after he lays the arrow aside, her breathing labored and blood pooling around her hips. She makes no effort whatever to tend the wound or stop the bleeding. The townspeople keep filtering in; a couple pause to pat the wounded girls on their backs or shoulders as they pass them.
When the audience is in and has settled down, one of the black-painted men unwraps some new objects from a white cloth. They're little jade figurines, each in the shape of a human in a crouching posture, except that the head is that of a deer. He hands one of these to each of the archers, then stands in front of the four captives and addresses them, apologizing once again for their pain. He explains to them how it was necessary, going through a long speech about how the deer was identical to the maize and how that was identical to man, to the villagers.
"And more," he says, "We honor the memory of the Teotl Xiuhnel and Mimich, they who with Mixcoatl and Itzpapalotl defeated the Mimixcoa, they who hunted the deer, they who were successful hunters! We honor them with the arrows of Mixcoatl!"
So saying, he picks up one of the short bows and the hardwood arrows that Xolotl had brought in at the beginning. Starting with the woman who seemed so near death, he moves to within six feet of her and, without warning, shoots the arrow deep into her left side, just below her ribs. She stiffens, then slowly relaxes. Apparently the shock is too much; her breathing has stopped. The archer who was attending her stretches up to her, holding her head and putting his face quite close to hers. It looks like he's about to kiss her, but he doesn't. After a moment he pulls away, then holds the figurine close to his face. Then he sits it on the floor in front of her limp body.
Moving down the line, the black-painted man shoots the next one into badly-wounded woman's side; the arrow's placement is exactly the same. The woman reacts only a little, her body flexing, then relaxing. She, however, continues to breathe.
Next, he aims his arrow at the girl with the broken ankle. She looks down at him, then closes her eyes; her face is calm, she does not appear to be afraid. The bow twangs, the arrow tears into her body; she frowns, but, beyond a low grunt, she doesn't cry out. As he moves toward the last captive, her face has already become expressionless once more.
He then shoots the last captive, the one whose capture you've witnessed, in the same way. She too frowns, she moans a little, she squirms a little. The painted man then steps back and examines each of them in turn. A steady red line runs down each body, though much more slowly in the case of the dead woman.
Bowing to the captives, he replaces the bow on the altar. In all of these cases, the archer attending each girl watched them very closely as the arrows struck them, but there was no repetition of the odd behavior of the first one. He seems dejected, as if that was not exactly what was supposed to happen.
After another long pause, a four men dressed in loincloths bring four wooden tubs from behind the curtain. These they slide into place under each of the captives. When that's done, they go to the center of the stage and go about building a fire on a set of flat stones evidently laid out for that purpose. After the fire is built, they set a group of four large pots partly filled with water on them.
Once again, the black-painted man who had shot the dangling captives with the ceremonial arrows comes to stand in front of them, again examining each one carefully. He gives a sign, and the four men dressed as stags take positions behind each girl. They hold them by their waists, holding their bodies steady. The archers then began pulling the arrows out of the captives, leaving the ceremonial arrows for last.
The badly-injured woman is almost as unresponsive to this as the dead one; her body only twitches a few times as the arrows were ripped free. The girl with the broken ankle also doesn't show pain as the single reed arrow in her leg was removed. But the third, the woman you've seen caught, groans and twists as the arrows are pulled out. A considerable quantity of blood flows from the women's wounds, dripping into the tubs below them.
When all the reed arrows had been removed and cast aside, they start pulling out the ceremonial hardwood arrows, being very careful with these. Two of the women cry out as these arrows were slowly twisted free, and again the archers give the formal apology. As they're removed, these arrows are laid on a clean white cloth.
There's another hiatus, as if to allow the anticipation to develop. Then, while the "stags" hold the hanging bodies tightly by their waists, each of the archers is handed one of the familiar tecpatls, the obsidian knives. Standing close in front of their captives, they start slitting open the abdomens of the captives, beginning just under their breastbones, working slowly and carefully downward.
The women pull up their legs against the pain, their faces go tight, their bodies quiver. As they make their cuts, the archers pause occasionally and study the faces of their victims intently. When they reach the victims' genital areas, they slide their fingers into the cuts and pull them open, allowing the girls' internal organs to bulge out.
The girl with the broken ankle starts to scream and thrash, and her assailant stops, caressing her face until she calms down again. You can see him speaking to her though you cannot hear what is being said, and you see her nod her head, several times, vigorously. Once she's been quieted the archer thrusts his hands into her body cavity and pulls her entrails out in a mass. Her eyes fly wide open; he uses his knife to quickly cut them free, first at the bottom, then at the top. The other three men have done the same, and the organs from all four victims is piled on the stage. The archers stay very close, watching the girls' faces as their blood drains rapidly into the tubs. For a long time, three of the bodies continued to jerk and spasm. As first one woman, then the next, breathes for the last time, their attendant puts his face very close to theirs, then near that of the little deer figurines.
Finally, only the girl with the broken ankle seems conscious. She has been whipping her head from side to side, but abruptly she stops. She says something to her attendant, and just like the others, he puts his lips near hers. Finally you understand what he's doing; he's inhaling her dying breath and blowing it onto the figurine of the deer. She watches him as he does, but then her body relaxes and her head hangs. The only movement, the only sound now, is that of the blood dripping into the tubs.
When this girl has finished her dying, the "stags" help the archers take them down from the hooks and then retire from the stage. The archers stay; using their obsidian knives, they begin cutting the bodies up. Opening the women's chests and abdomens widely, they remove any remaining entrails, the lungs, the hearts, and the livers. They cut off the girls' arms, then their legs, and finally their heads. As if they were real deer, each piece was skinned out, butchered, then cut up into manageable strips. The work is hard, and it takes quite a while.
Once it's done, the pieces of the bodies--looking remarkably like beef or venison--are carried to the fire where the cooking pots are now steaming. Large flat pans like skillets are set on the flames, and the pieces of meat, along with generous handfuls of dried and fresh chili peppers, are tossed in. Meanwhile, other loincloth-clad men are filling the pots with tomatoes, corn, and beans--and even more chilies. It's pretty clear what's being cooked, and even more so when the "venison," now browned, is scooped into the huge pots. Once the skillets are cleared of meat, they are used to cook ordinary tortillas, and stacks of these begin to accumulate.
Not all of the meat has been put into the skillets and pots, though. The girls' skinned thighs have been saved whole, they are hung on racks like hams, presumably to be later cured. The four "stags" were eating the girls' livers raw, and little cups full of blood, taken from the tubs, were being distributed among the villagers. Meanwhile, some women were cleaning the intestines; nothing was to be wasted.
The girls' heads, though, are to be put to a different use. They've been placed on the stage beside the tubs after they'd been severed, and now the black-painted priests pick them up. Using a sharply-pointed rod, each girl's head was pierced through, ear to ear, so that the ends of the rods emerged equally from each ear. They were then hung on a rack, as if to allow the dead girls to observe the feast that was about to start.
A group of men and women, the men dressed in white loincloths and the women dressed in loose white dresses, makes their appearance, and they are carrying pottery bowls and cups, and jugs of some liquid. These are passed out among the onlookers; you yourself are given a set, of course. The people are lining up in front of the steaming pots, and now you must decide if you mean to partake in the feast.