BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue008 Read online

  Her gaze rested on me, and would not move away. “An odd thing to say.”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.”

  For a moment I thought I had convinced her. And then she spoke, sinking her barb as deep as she could. “Not all of us are fortunate enough to have gone to calmecac, and become a priest.”

  Now that I had seen where she lived, the oppressive atmosphere of the house, more than ever I regretted not coming to visit her. I should have insisted when her family rejected me. I should have done something, not turned away like a coward. So I kept my peace, and said only, “They say your husband died in odd circumstances.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “The servants told you,” Huchimitl said, with an angry stabbing gesture. “They talk too much, and most of that is lies.”

  I kept hoping she’d give me something, anything I could use to understand what was going on. “Do you deny that his death wasn’t normal, Huchimitl? All I have to do is ask the slaves, or check the registers—”

  “There was nothing odd about my husband’s death,” she snapped, far too quickly.

  Nothing odd? The hollow in my stomach was back. Had Xoco been right about Huchimitl’s guilt? “Why do you say that?”

  “Because my husband’s death has nothing to do with Citli’s illness. Tlalli had a weak heart. He exerted himself too much on the battlefields abroad; and he died of it. That is all.”

  “They say you quarrelled.”

  Huchimitl nodded; the reflections on the mask moved as she did so. I felt queasy just seeing that. “We did, often,” she said. “Do you want me to lie and say it was a happy marriage?”

  “No,” I said. “Though I truly wish you’d found happiness.”

  “We don’t always get what we wish for,” Huchimitl said. “Acatl. Trust me. I saw Tlalli die. It was a heart failure. This has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with Mazahuatl. He has enemies—”

  “You told me that already,” I said. She had sounded sincere when swearing to me it had nothing to do with Tlalli’s death, but I could be mistaken. “Why did you come to me, Huchimitl?”

  Her voice was low, angry. “I thought you could do something. I thought you could help. A curse, after all, is easily lifted. But it seems you cannot manage even that.”

  “I—” I said, but words had deserted me. I remembered a time when I could read every one of her expressions, could guess her thoughts before she uttered them. I knew I no longer could do any of that. I suspected I could not help her, and it made me angry at myself for being so incompetent—for failing her.

  “I am no worker of miracles,” I said.

  “Clearly not,” Huchimitl snapped. “I thought you would—” And then she stopped, as if she had uttered too much.

  “Do what? You tell me nothing. You hide yourself from me, under that mask. You lie to me.”

  “No.” The mask turned towards me, expressionless.

  “Then tell me what is under that mask. Please.” Talk to me, I thought, silently, desperately. Don’t hide your secrets from me, Huchimitl. Please.

  “Nothing,” Huchimitl said. Her voice was quiet. “Nothing that concerns you, nothing you can repair, Acatl. I am beyond help. My son is all that matters.”

  “Then tell me more about your son.”

  “Mazahuatl talks little of his life among warriors.” There was longing in Huchimitl’s voice, clear, unmistakable. “But I’m no fool. I can guess that things go ill. That he is not liked. That some would like to see him fall. But I have no names.”

  “I see,” I said, and rose to leave. “I’ll ask Mazahuatl, then. Where can I find him?”

  The mask moved towards me with the speed of a pouncing snake. “It’s not the solution.”

  “Then tell me what would be.”

  “No.” Her voice was fearful. I could not help remembering the girl I’d played with, the girl who had once climbed the festival pole and stood at the top, laughing, daring me to come up and catch her. Not once had she shown fear.

  “Huchimitl—” I said, but she shook her head.

  “You’ll find Mazahuatl on the training grounds,” she said. Her voice was emotionless again—an unnerving change of tone.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Mazahuatl was on manoeuvres with his regiment. I walked to the training grounds, my mind filled with memories of Huchimitl and of my days as a boy—of all the races we’d run through the fields of maize around Coyoacan, of all the quiet moments when we’d dream of our futures.

  Had I loved her?

  For years I’d told myself that I had not. But I knew now that I had always cared for her. I knew that even though I had felt no regrets on entering the priesthood, still I had left something behind, something infinitely precious that I could no longer recover.

  On the training grounds, the warriors were fighting each other wielding maquahuitls, wooden swords with shards of obsidian embedded in the blades.

  Several warriors had finished, and stood to the side, their bare arms gleaming with sweat. I walked up to them and said, “I’m looking for Mazahuatl.”

  One of them gave a short bark, and the others snickered. “Are you now?” he said.

  The warrior’s face was heavily scarred, and he wore the quetzal-feather tunic and braided leather bracelets characteristic of tequiuas, those warriors who had taken more than four prisoners and been ennobled. He had their arrogance, too. I said, “Yes, I am looking for Mazahuatl. In what way would it concern you....”

  “Yohuacalli,” he said, curtly. “I’m in the same regiment as Mazahuatl. Tell me, priest, why would you be looking for him?”

  Yohuacalli had a faint aura about him: a talent for magic, though whether sorcerous or not I could not tell. Still, he looked dangerous enough—as dangerous as a coiled snake.

  “Tell me why it should matter to you,” I said.

  He turned to me at last, transfixing me with a gaze the colour of the sky at noon—an uncanny shade for a Mexica. “Mazahuatl is not a true warrior.” I heard depths of hatred within his words. “His father was tequiua, and Mazahuatl never lets us forget it. But his prowess in battle is non-existent. He has no right to such arrogance.”

  “He took a prisoner.”

  Yohuacalli shrugged. “A sick, infirm man? Such a feat of arms.”

  “The man has been cursed,” I said, waiting for his reaction. “After he was taken prisoner.”

  “So they would have you believe. I know the truth.”

  “So do I.” I looked him in the eye. “Surely it would be no great matter for a determined warrior to take a dead man’s hand, and bury it into the earth before your enemy’s house, and speak the spell to make him fall from grace.”

  Yohuacalli flinched, but soon rallied. “I have no talent for sorcery.” His eyes would not meet mine, and I knew he was lying. “There is Mazahuatl,” he said, pointing to a warrior who was leaving the field.

  Yohuacalli was obviously in a hurry to change the subject, but I let it go. I looked at the warrior designated as Mazahuatl: he was no longer a boy, yet he still wore the braid of the untried warrior—the sacrifice of Citli would enable him to shave his head. His face was flushed with exertion, but even then I could see past that, and make out Huchimitl’s traits, Huchimitl’s beauty. He looked so much like her that my heart ached.

  Had things gone differently, he could have been my son, not Tlalli’s. It was an odd, uncomfortable thought that would not leave my mind.

  When I approached him, he looked at me with contempt. “What do you want?”

  I introduced myself and explained that his mother had sent me, whereupon his manner grew more relaxed. He took me away from the training grounds, out of earshot of his fellow warriors, before he would talk to me.

  I had observed him carefully during our small walk. If Citli, his beloved war-son, had an aura of coiled, malevolent power about him, Mazahuatl was cursed, though not by the underworld. It was small, barely v
isible unless one stopped and considered him, but he did have an aura. And it was dark and roiling, like storm clouds bursting with rain—an odd kind of curse, one I had never encountered.

  But it had touched him, as it had touched everyone in the house. I thought of the mask again. That had to be why Huchimitl was wearing it—because she’d been disfigured by the curse, just as Citli had been paralysed.

  But the most worrisome thing was that the curse was still spreading. Citli’s paralysis wasn’t stopping—and I didn’t think Huchimitl was safe, not for one moment. The curse would not stop. Not until I found out what was truly going on in that house.

  “How long have you been cursed?” I asked Mazahuatl, and saw him start.

  “You know nothing.”

  “I’m a priest. I know enough, I should say.”

  He turned away from me. “Mother sent you? Go away.”

  “She thinks you have enemies,” I said, softly. “And I’d wager Yohuacalli is among them.”

  He would not meet my gaze. “Go away.”

  “Do you care so little about your reputation?”

  “Mother cares,” Mazahuatl said. “I’m no fool. I know I won’t be raised within the ranks.”

  “You captured a prisoner,” I pointed out. “Single-handed. There is no reason it shouldn’t happen.”

  He laughed, a sick, desperate laugh. “That’s what I told myself at first, trying to make myself believe. But of course it won’t work. Nothing ever does.”

  “That’s the hallmark of a curse. Won’t you tell me anything?”

  “No,” he said. “Just go back, report to Mother that you’ve failed, and stop bothering us.” And he would not talk to me any more, no matter how hard I pressed him.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I did two things before coming back to Huchimitl’s house: the first was to stop by the registers and check on the death of Tlalli. There was not much to go on. The date of death was listed as the seventeenth day in the Month of Izcalli or Resurrection, in the year Thirteen Rabbit—four years ago. An ironic time to die, if nothing else, for Izcalli is the month when the plants are reborn from their winter beds, and a time to rejoice in the coming of spring.

  Search as I might, I found no additional mention of that death, which meant that it had not been found suspicious. I exited the registers in a thoughtful mood—for, in spite of what I had just read, I didn’t think Tlalli’s death was irrelevant. It was too much of a coincidence that the curse on the house had started just after his death.

  Which left me with the second thing: if no one was going to tell me what had happened four years ago, I was going to have to look into the past myself.

  I stopped by the marketplace and made my way through the crowd to the district of animal-sellers. There I bartered for a peccary and the hide of a jaguar—a transaction that had me hand over most of the cacao beans in my purse to a beaming vendor. It did not matter. Though not wealthy in the slightest, I’ve always lived comfortably on the gifts the families of the dead make to me.

  The peccary was small: barely reaching my knee, it followed me docilely enough on its leash, but kept rubbing its tusks with a chattering noise, an indication that it was unhappy. Peccaries were aggressive; I did not look forward to sacrificing this one, but it was necessary for the ritual I had in mind.

  The slaves in Huchimitl’s house had been given instructions to let me enter; the tall, sturdy individual who stood by the gate raised his eyebrows when I passed him, but said nothing.

  I went straight to Citli’s room, deliberately avoiding Huchimitl—the last thing I needed was her trying to prevent me from investigating her husband’s death.

  On my first visit, I had noticed a small hearth by the bed; it was by that hearth that I settled down. From my belt I took three obsidian knives and laid them on the ground. I threw into the hearth a handful of herbs that soon filled the room with a sharp, pungent smell; I laid the jaguar hide on the ground and coaxed the peccary onto it.

  Citli watched me with interest but did not speak. I said, all the same, “I need to do this if you want help.” He may have nodded, but it was hard to tell with the smoke that had filled my eyes.

  As I had foreseen, the peccary attacked me when I raised my knife; I narrowly avoided the sharp tusks, then buried my blade deep into its throat. Blood fountained up, staining my hands, pooling on the jaguar’s hide. I spoke the words of the ritual, calling on Quetzalcoatl, God of Creation and Knowledge:

  “I sit on the jaguar’s skin

  And from the jaguar’s skin I draw strength and wisdom

  I have shed the precious blood

  The blood of Your servant

  Lord, help me walk the circling paths backwards

  Help me look past the empty days

  Help me look into the years that have died.”

  The throbbing in my head that I had first experienced in the courtyard resumed, growing stronger and stronger until my world seemed to have shrunk to that beat. The smoke grew thicker and thicker, billowing around me like the aura of Mazahuatl’s curse. Now was the time I could seize control of the spell, and turn the years back until my visions showed me the day of Tlalli’s death.

  But the spell would not yield to me. Years of visions passed by, showing me tantalising glimpses of the past.

  ...a man’s angry voice, and a man’s shadow, raising a hand to strike at something I could not see...

  ...a warrior stumbling in combat...

  ...a girl with the wooden collar of slaves, her cheeks flushed with pleasure...

  ...a mask of ceramic inlaid with turquoise—Huchimitl’s mask, gradually materialising to cover the girl’s face....

  And then nothing.

  I came to myself, crouching on the blood-stained jaguar’s skin, the smoke from the herbs since long gone. Outside, it was night, and the Evening Star shone in a sky devoid of clouds. Citli was sleeping, racked from time to time by a coughing fit. I lifted the curtain, wincing at the small tinkle of bells, and went out.

  One thing would not leave my thoughts: the slave girl’s face, a face that seemed oddly familiar.

  I walked up to the slave by the gates, and asked, “There is a girl slave, in this house?” I described, as best as I could, the face I had seen in my vision.

  The slave shrugged. “There are many girls in this house. Maybe the others will know—”

  “Yes,” I said. “Please.”

  He led me into the slaves’ quarters. I found myself in a series of smaller rooms, adorned with faded frescoes. Within, several men were playing patolli, watching the game’s board intently as the dice were cast—no doubt they had bet heavily on the outcome.

  One of the players looked up, quivering to go back to his game. I described, once again, the face of the slave I had seen in my visions, and he shrugged. “Ask Menetl. She’s in charge of the female slaves.”

  I found Menetl in the girls’ quarters, watching a handful of giggling girls as they painted their faces with yellow makeup. She was a tall, forbidding woman who clearly looked upon me as an invader in her little world. I was about to repeat my question to her, when I saw Xoco, crouching at the back of the room.

  Now I knew where I had seen the girl’s face. It was there, in the old woman’s features, tempered by age, by the glare of the sun, but still close enough to be recognised.

  “So?” Menetl asked.

  “I want to talk to her,” I said, pointing to Xoco—who rose, fear slowly washing over her face.

  “My Lord?” she asked.

  I motioned for her to follow me out of earshot of the others. We walked out of the slaves’ quarters and back into the courtyard, which now was deserted.

  “I have something more I want to ask you.” I watched the way she shrank back into herself, and remembered how angry Huchimitl had been when she had guessed one of the servants had been talking to me. No doubt she would have reprimanded the slaves for that offence. “It’s not about what you told me earlier.”

  Xoco
looked at me, her hands falling to her side. Waiting.

  I said, “There was a girl slave, in this house. Four, five years ago?”

  “We see so many girls.” Her voice shook.

  “Don’t lie to me. You know who I am talking about. Who was she?”

  The old woman stared at the ground for a while. “She was my daughter.” Her voice was low, dull. “Yoltzin. She used to run in the courtyard, daring me to catch her—it was when the master was still alive—he was always generous with his girl slaves—” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. Even in the dim light I could see the tears in them. “Such a pretty child,” she whispered.

  “Yoltzin. What happened to her?”

  “She’s in the heavens now,” the old woman said.

  “In the heavens?” Only warriors dead in battle, women dead in childbirth, or sacrifice victims ascended into the heavens. The rest of us fell into Mictlan, the underworld, to make our slow way to the God of the Dead, and to oblivion.

  “They chose her,” the old woman said. “Five years ago. The priests of Xilonen came here and took her, to be the incarnation of the Goddess of Young Corn on earth and bless the fields. The High Priest wore her flayed skin for twenty days afterwards, and the rains came sure and strong that year,” she said, and there was a note of pride in her voice.

  The priests of Xilonen—looking for a maiden sacrifice, as innocent as the Young Corn. And the girl. Yoltzin. Little Heart.

  Her image would not leave my mind—her face with such bliss on it, but it had not been the bliss of sacrifice. “You said the master had always been generous with his girl slaves,” I said, slowly. “How generous?”

  Xoco would not look at me.

  “Xoco,” I said. “What happened four years ago has tainted everything in this house. You can’t pretend it hasn’t.”

  For the longest while, she did not speak. “They came,” she whispered. “A procession of priests like you, with feather-headdresses and jade ornaments. They asked if she was a maiden. Who was I, to shame her, to shame the master in front of the whole household?” Tears, glistening in the starlight, ran down her cheeks. “She was my daughter....”