Captive Universe

1

Chimal ran in panic. The moon was still hidden by the cliffs on the eastern side of the valley, but its light was already tipping their edges with silver. Once it had risen above them he would be as easily seen as the holy pyramid out here among the sprouting corn. Why had he not thought? Why had he taken the risk? His breath tore at his throat as he gasped and ran on, his heart pulsed like a great drum that filled his chest. Even the recent memory of Quiauh and her arms tight about him could not drive away the world-shaking fear — why had he done it?

If only he could reach the river, it was so close ahead. His woven sandals dug into the dry soil, pushing him forward toward the water and safety.

A sibilant, distant hissing cut through the silence of the night and Chimal’s legs gave way, sending him to the ground in a spasm of terror. It was Coatlicue, she of the serpent heads, he was dead! He was dead!

Lying there, his fingers clawing uncontrollably at the knee-high corn stalks, he struggled to put his thoughts in order, to speak his death chant because the time of dying had come. He had broken the rule, so he would die: a man cannot escape the gods. The hissing was louder now and it sliced through his head like a knife, he could not think, yet he must. With an effort he mumbled the first words of the chant as the moon rose above the ledge of rock, almost full, flooding the valley with glowing light and throwing a black shadow from every cornstalk about him. Chimal turned his head to look back over his shoulder and there, clear as the road to the temple, was the deep-dug line of his footprints between the rows of corn. Quiauh — they will find you!

He was guilty and for him there could be no escape. The taboo had been broken and Coatlicue the dreadful was coming for him. The guilt was his alone; he had forced his love on Quiauh, he had. Hadn’t she struggled? It was written that the gods could be interceded with, and if they saw no evidence they would take him as a sacrifice and Quiauh might live. His knees were weak with terror yet he pulled himself to his feet and turned, running, starting back toward the village of Quilapa that he had so recently left, angling away from the revealing row of footprints.

Terror drove him on, though he knew escape was hopeless, and each time the hissing sliced the air it was closer until, suddenly, a larger shadow enveloped his shadow that fled before him and he fell. Fear paralyzed him and he had to fight against his own muscles to turn his head and see that which had pursued him.

“Coatlicue!” he screamed, driving all the air from his lungs with that single word.

High she stood, twice as tall as any man, and both her serpents’ heads bent down toward him, eyes glowing redly with the lights of hell, forked tongues flicking in and out. As she circled about him the moonlight struck full onto her necklace of human hands and hearts, illuminated the skirt of writhing snakes that hung from her waist. As Coatlicue’s twin mouths hissed the living kirtle moved, and the massed serpents hissed in echo. Chimal lay motionless, beyond terror now, accepting death from which there is no escape, spread-eagled like a sacrifice on the altar.

The goddess bent over him and he could see that she was just as she appeared in the stone carvings in the temple, fearful and inhuman, with claws instead of hands. They were not tiny pincers, like those of a scorpion or a river crayfish, but were great flat claws as long as his forearm that opened hungrily as they came at him. They closed, grating on the bones in his wrists, severing his right arm, then his left Two more hands for that necklace.

“I have broken the law and left my village in the night and crossed the river. I die.” His voice was only a whisper that grew stronger as he began the death chant in the shadow of the poised and waiting goddess.

I leave

Descend in one night to the underworld regions

Here we but meet

Briefly, transient on this earth…

When he had finished Coatlicue bent lower, reaching down past her writhing serpent kirtle, and tore out his beating heart.

2

Beside her, in a small pottery bowl set carefully in the shade of the house so they would not wilt, was a spray of quiauhxochitl, the rain flower after which she had been named. As she knelt over the stone metatl grinding corn, Quiauh murmured a prayer to the goddess of the flower asking her to keep the dark gods at bay. Today they drew so close to her she could scarcely breathe and only long habit enabled her to keep drawing the grinder back and forth over the slanted surface. Today was the sixteenth anniversary of the day, the day when they had found Chimal’s body on this side of the riverbank, torn apart by Coatlicue’s vengeance. Just two days after the Ripening Corn festival. Why had she been spared? Coatlicue must know that she had broken the taboo, just as Chimal had, yet she lived. Every year since then, on the anniversary of the day, she walked in fear. And each time death had passed her by. So far.

This year was the worst of all, because today they had taken her son to the temple for judgment. Disaster must strike now. The gods had been watching all these years, waiting for this day, knowing all the time that her son Chimal was the son of Chimal-popoca, the man from Zaachila who had broken the clan taboo. She moaned deep in her throat when she breathed, yet she kept steadily grinding the fresh grains of corn.

The shadow of the valley wall was darkening her house and she had already patted out the tortillas between her palms and put them to bake on the cumal over the fire when she heard the slow footsteps. People had carefully avoided her house all day. She did not turn. It was someone coming to tell her that her son was a sacrifice, was dead. It was the priests coming to take her to the temple for her sin of sixteen years ago.

“My mother,” the boy said. She saw him leaning weakly against the white wall of the house and when he moved his hand a red mark was left behind.

“Lie down here,” she said, hurrying inside the house for a petlatl, then spreading this grass sleeping mat outside the door where there was still light. He was alive, they were both alive, the priests had simply beaten him! She stood, clasping her hands, wanting to sing, until he dropped face down on the mat and she saw that they had beaten his back too, as well as his arms. He lay there quietly, eyes open and staring across the valley, while she mixed water with the healing herbs and patted them onto the bloody weals: he shivered slightly at the touch, but said nothing.

“Can you tell your mother why this happened?” she asked, looking at his immobile profile and trying to read some meaning into his face. She could not tell what he was thinking. It had always been this way since he had been a little boy. His thoughts seemed to go beyond her, to leave her out. This must be part of a curse: if one broke a taboo one must suffer.

“It was a mistake.”

“The priests do not make mistakes or beat a boy for a mistake.”

“They did this time. I was climbing the cliff…”

“Then it was no mistake that they beat you — it is forbidden to climb the cliff.”

“No, mother,” he said patiently, “it is not forbidden to climb the cliff — it is forbidden to climb the cliff to attempt to leave the valley, that is the law as Tezcatlipoca said it. But it is also permitted to climb the cliffs to the height of three men to take birds’ eggs, or for other important reasons. I was only two men high on the cliff and I was after birds’ eggs. That is the law.”

“If — that is the law, why were you beaten?” She sat back on her heels, frowning in concentration.

“They did not remember the law and did not agree with me and they had to look it up in the book which took a long tune — and when they did they found I was right and they were wrong.” He smiled, coldly. It was not a boy’s smile at all. “So then they beat me because I had argued with priests and set myself above them.”

“As so they should have.” She rose and poured some water from the jug to rinse her hands. “You must learn your place. You must not argue with priests.”

For almost all of his life Chimal had been hearing this, or words like it, and had long since learned that the best answer was no answer. Even when he worked hard to explain his thoughts and feelings his mother never understood. It was far better to keep these thoughts to himself.

Particularly since he had lied to everyone. He had been trying to climb the cliff; the birds’ eggs were just a ready excuse in case he were discovered.

“Stay here and eat,” Quiauh said, putting a child’s evening portion of two tortillas before him, dry, flat corn-cakes over a foot wide. “I will make atolli while you eat these.”

Chimal sprinkled salt on the tortilla and tore off a piece which he chewed on slowly, watching his mother through the open door of the house as she bent over the fire stones and stirred the pot. She was at ease now, the fear and the beating finished and forgotten, her typical Aztec features relaxed, with the firelight glinting from her golden hair and blue eyes. He felt very close to her; they had been alone in this house since his father had died when Chimal had been very young. Yet at the same time he felt so distant He could explain nothing to her about the things that troubled him.

He sat up to eat the atolli when his mother brought it to him, spooning up the corn gruel with a piece of tortilla. It was rich and filling, deliciously flavored with honey and hot chillies. His back was feeling better as were his arms: the bleeding had stopped where the skin had been broken by the whipping stick. He drank cool water from the small pot and looked up at the darkening sky. Above the cliffs, to the west, the sky was red as fire and against it soared the zopilote vultures, black silhouettes that vanished and reappeared. He watched until the light faded from the sky and they were gone. That was the spot where he started to climb the cliff; they were the reason he had climbed it.

The stars were out, sharp and sparkling in the clear air, while inside the house the familiar work noises had ceased. There was just a rustle as his mother unrolled her petlatl on the sleeping platform, then she called to him.

“It is time to sleep.”

“I’ll sleep here for awhile, the air is cool on my back.”

Her voice was troubled. “It is not right to sleep outside, everyone sleeps inside.”

“Just for a little while, no one can see me, then I will come in.”

She was silent after that but he lay on his side and watched the stars rise and wheel overhead and sleep would not come. The village was quiet and everyone was asleep and he thought again about the vultures.

He went over his plan once more, step by step, and could find no fault in it. Or rather one fault only — that a priest had happened to pass and had seen him. The rest of the plan had been perfect, even the law which permitted him to climb the wall had been as he remembered it. And the vultures did fly to the same spot on the cuff above. Day after day, and for as long as he remembered this had interested him and he had wanted to know why. It had bothered and annoyed him that he did not know the reason, until finally he had made his plan. After all — was not the vulture the totem of his clan? He had a right to know all that there was to know about them. No one else cared about it, that was certain. He had asked different people and most of them had not bothered to answer, just pushing him away when he persisted. Or if they had answered they had just shrugged or laughed and said that was the way vultures were and forgotten about it at once. They didn’t care, none of them cared at all. Not the children, especially the children, nor the adults or even the priests. But he cared.

He had had other questions, but he had stopped asking questions about things many years ago. Because unless the questions had simple answers that the people knew, or there were answers from the holy books that the priests knew, asking just made people angry. Then they would shout at him or even hit him, even though children were rarely struck, and it did not take Chimal long to discover that this was because they themselves did not know. Therefore he had to look for answers in his own way, like this matter with the vultures.

It had bothered him because although much was known about the vultures, there was one thing that was not known — or even thought about. Vultures ate carrion, everyone knew that, and he himself had seen them tearing at the carcasses of armadillos and birds. They nested in the sand, laid their eggs, raised their scruffy chicks here. That was all they did, there was nothing else to know about them.

Except — why did they always fly to that one certain spot on the cliff? His anger at not knowing, and at the people who would not help him or even listen to him, was rubbed raw by the pain of his recent whipping. He could not sleep or even sit still. He stood up, invisible in the darkness, opening and closing his fists. Then, almost without volition, he moved silently away from his home, threading his way through the sleeping houses of the village of Quilapa. Even though people did not walk about at night. It was not a taboo, just something that was not done. He did not care and felt bold in doing it. At the edge of the open desert he stopped, looked at the dark barrier of the cliffs and shivered. Should he go there now — and climb? Did he dare to do at night what he had been prevented from doing during the day? His feet answered for him, carrying him forward. It would certainly be easy enough since he had marked a fissure that seemed to run most of the way up to the ledge where the vultures sat. The mesquite tore at his legs when he left the path and made his way through the clumps of tall cacti. When he reached the field of maguey plants the going was easier, and he walked straight forward between their even rows until he reached the base of the cliff.

Only when he was there did he admit how afraid he was. He looked around carefully, but there was no one else to be seen and he had not been followed. The night air was cool on his body and he shivered: his arms and back still hurt. There would be bigger trouble if he were found climbing the cliff again, worse than a beating this time. He shivered harder and wrapped his arms about himself and was ashamed of his weakness. Quickly, before he could worry anymore and find a reason to turn back, he leaped against the rock until his fingers caught in the horizontal crack, then pulled himself up.

Once he was moving it was easier, he had to concentrate on finding the hand and toe holds he had used that morning and there was little time for thought. He passed the bird’s nest that he had raided and felt his only qualm. Now he was certainly higher than three men above the ground — but he was not trying to climb to the top of the cliff, so he could not really be said to be breaking the law… A piece of rock gave way under his fingers and he almost fell, his worries were instantly forgotten in the spurt of fear as he scrabbled for a new hold. He climbed higher.

Just below the ledge Chimal stopped to rest with his toes wedged into a crack. There was an overhang above him and there seemed to be no way around it. Searching the blackness of stone against the stars his glance went over the valley and he shuddered and pressed himself against the cliff: he had not realized before how high he had climbed. Stretching away below was the dark floor of the valley with his village of Quilapa, then the deep cut of the river beyond. He could even make out the other village of Zaachila and the far wall of the canyon. This was taboo — Coatlicue walked the river at night and the sight alone of her twin serpent heads would instantly kill you and send you to the underworld. He shuddered and turned his face to the stone. Hard rock, cold air, space all around him, loneliness that possessed him.

There was no way to know how long he hung like that, some minutes surely because his toes were numb where they were wedged into the crevice. All he wanted to do now was to return safely to the ground, so impossibly distant below, and only the wavering flame of his anger kept him from doing this. He would go down, but first he would see how far the overhang ran. If he could not pass it he would have to return, and he would have done his best to reach the ledge. Working his way around a rough spire he saw that the overhang did run the length of the ledge — but an immense bite had been taken from the lip. At some time in the past a falling boulder must have shattered it. There was a way up. With scratching fingers he hauled himself up the slope until his head came above the level of the ledge.

Something black hurtled at him, buffeting his head, washing him in a foul and dusty smell. A spasm of unreasoning fear clamped his hands onto the rock or he would have fallen, then the blackness was gone and a great vulture flapped his way unsteadily out into the darkness. Chimal laughed out loud. There was nothing here to be frightened of, he had reached the right spot and had disturbed the bird that must have been perched up here, that was all. He pulled himself onto the ledge and stood up. The moon would be rising soon, and was already glowing on a high band of clouds in the east, lighting the sky and blotting out the stars there. The ledge was clear before him, empty of any other vultures, although it was foul with their droppings. There was little else here of any interest, other than the black opening of a cave in the rising wall of rock before him. He shuffled toward it, but there was nothing to be seen in the blackness of its depths: he stopped at the dark entrance and could force himself to go no further. What could possibly be in it? It would not be long before the moon rose and he might see better then. He would wait.

It was cold this high up, exposed to the wind, but he took no notice. The sky was growing lighter every moment and grayness seeped into the cave, further and further from the entrance. When at last the moonlight shone full into it he felt betrayed. There was nothing here to see. The cave wasn’t a cave after all, just a deep gouge in the face of the cliff that ended no more than two men’s lengths inside the opening. There was just rock, solid rock, with what appeared to be more rocks on the stony floor. He pushed his foot at the nearest one and it moved squashily away from him. This was no rock — what could it possibly be? He bent to pick it up and his fingers told him what it was at the same instant his nose identified it.

Meat.

Horror drove him back and almost over the edge to his death. He stopped, at the very brink, trembling and wiping his hand over and over again on the stone and gravel.

Meat. Flesh. And he had actually touched it, a piece over a foot, almost two feet in length, and as thick as his hand was long. On feast days, he had eaten meat and had watched his mother prepare it. Fish, or small birds caught in a net, or the best of all, guajolote, the turkey with the sweet white meat, cooked in strips and laid on the mashed beans and tortillas. But how big was the biggest piece of meat from the biggest bird? There was only one creature from which pieces of flesh this big could have been wrenched.

Man.

It was a wonder he did not keep going to his death when he slid over the edge of the cliff, but his young fingers caught of their own accord and his toes dug in and he climbed downward. He had no memory of the descent. The stream of his thoughts broke into drops like water when he remembered what he had seen. Meat, men, sacrifices the zopilote god had placed here for the vultures to eat. He had seen it. Would his body be chosen next to feed them? Trembling uncontrollably when he reached the bottom, he fell and long moments passed before he could force himself up from the sand to stumble back toward the village. Physical exhaustion brought some relief from the terror and he began to realize how dangerous it would be if he were discovered now, coming back this way. He crept cautiously between the brown houses, with their windows like dark, staring eyes, until he reached his own home. His-petlatl was still lying where he had left it; it seemed incredible that nothing should have changed in the endless time that he had been away, and he gathered it up and pulled it after him through the doorway and spread it near the banked but still warm fire. When he pulled the blanket over himself he fell asleep instantly, anxious to leave the waking world that had suddenly become more frightening than the worst nightmare.

3

The number of the months is eighteen, and the name of the eighteenmonths is a year. The third month is Tozoztontli and this is when the corn is planted and there are prayers and fasting so that the rain will come so that in the seventh month the corn will ripen. Then in the eighth month prayers are said to keep away the rain that would destroy the ripening corn…

The rain god, Tlaloc, was being very difficult this year. He was always a moody god, with good reason perhaps, because so much was asked of him. In certain months rain was desperately needed to water the young corn, but in other months clear skies and sunlight were necessary to ripen it. Therefore, in many years, Tlaloc did not bring rain, or brought too much, and the crop was small and the people went hungry.

Now he was not listening at all. The sun burned in a cloudless sky and one hot day followed another without change. Lacking water, the small shoots of new corn that pressed up through the hardened and cracked earth were far smaller than they should have been, and had a gray and tired look to them. Between the rows of stunted corn almost the entire village of Quilapa stamped and wailed, while the priest shouted his prayer and the cloud of dust rose high in the stifling air.

Chimal did not find it easy to cry. Almost all of the others had tears streaking furrows into their dust-covered cheeks, tears to touch the ram god’s heart so that his tears of rain would fall as theirs did. As a child Chimal had never taken part in this ceremony, but now that he had passed his twentieth year he was an adult, and shared adult duties and responsibilities. He shuffled his feet on the hard dirt and thought of the hunger that would come and the pain in his belly, but this made him angry instead of tearful. Rubbing at his eyes only made them hurt. In the end he moistened his finger with saliva, when no one was looking, and drew the lines in the dust on his face.

Of course the women cried the best, wailing and tearing at their braided hair until it came loose and hung in lank yellow strands about their shoulders. When their tears slowed or stopped, the men beat them with straw-filled bags.

Someone brushed against Chimal’s leg, pressing a warm and yielding flank against him. He moved further down the row, but a moment later the pressure had returned. It was Malinche, a girl with a round face, round eyes, a round figure. She stared, wide-eyed, up at him while she cried. Her mouth was open so he could see the black gap in the white row of her upper teeth, she had bit on a stone in her beans and broke it when she was a child, and her eyes streamed and her nose ran with the intensity of her emotions. She was still almost a child, but she had turned sixteen and was therefore a woman. In sudden rage he began to beat her about the shoulders and back with his bag. She did not pull away, or appear to notice it at all, while her tear-filled round eyes still stared at him, as pale blue and empty of warmth as the winter sky.

Old Atototl passed in the next row, carrying a plump eating dog to the priest. Since he was the cacique, the leading man in Quilapa, this was his privilege. Chimal pushed his way into the crowd as they all turned to follow. At the edge of the field Citlallatonac waited, a fearful sight in his filthy black robe, spattered all over with blood, and thick with embroidered skulls and bones along the bottom edge where it trailed in the dust. Atototl came up to him, arms extended, and the two old men bent over the wriggling puppy. It looked up at them, its tongue out and panting in the heat, while Citlallatonac, as first priest this was his duty, plunged his black obsidian knife into the little animal’s chest. Then, with practiced skill, he tore out its still beating heart and held it high as sacrifice to Tlaloc, letting the blood spatter among the stalks of corn.

There was nothing more then that could be done. Yet the sky was still a cloudless bowl of heat. By ones and twos the villagers straggled unhappily from the fields and Chimal, who always walked alone, was not surprised to find Malinche beside him. She placed her feet down heavily and walked in silence, but only for a short while.

“Now the rains will come,” she said with bland assurance. “We have wept and prayed and the priest has sacrificed.”

But we always weep and pray, he thought, and the rains come or do not come. And the priests in the temple will eat well tonight, good fat dog. Aloud he said, “The rains will come.”

“I am sixteen,” she said, and when he did not answer she added, “I make good tortillas and I am strong. The other day we had no masa and the com was not husked and there was even no lime water to make the masa to make the tortillas, so my mother said…”

Chimal was not listening. He stayed inside himself and let the sound of her voice go by him like the wind, with as much effect They walked on together toward the village. Something moved above, drifting out of the glare of the sun and sliding across the sky toward the gray wall of the western cliffs beyond the houses. His eyes followed it, a zopilote going toward that ledge on the cliff… Though his eyes stayed upon the soaring bird his mind slithered away from it. The cliff was not important nor were the birds important: they meant nothing to him. Some things did not bear thinking about. His face was grim and unmoving as they walked on, yet in his thoughts was a twist of hot irritation. The sight of the bird and the memory of the cliff that night — it could be forgotten but not with Malinche’s prying away at him. “I like tortillas,” he said when he became aware that the voice had stopped.

“The way I like to eat them best…” the voice started up again, spurred by his interest, and he ignored it. But the little arrowhead of annoyance in his head did not go away, even when he turned and left Malinche suddenly and went into his house. His mother was at the metatl, grinding the corn for the evening meal: it would take two hours to prepare it. And another two hours of the same labor for the morning meal. This was a woman’s work. She looked up and nodded at him without slowing the back and forth motion.

“I see Malinche out there. She is a good girl and works very hard.”

Malinche was framed by the open entranceway, legs wide, bare feet planted firmly in the dust, the roundness of her large breasts pushing out the huipil draped across her shoulders, her arms at her side and her fists clenched as though waiting for something. Chimal turned away and, squatting on the mat, drank cool water from the porous jug.

“You are almost twenty-one years of age, my son,” Quiauh said with irritating calmness, “and the clans must be joined.”

Chimal knew all this, but he did not wish to accept it. At 21 a man must marry; at 16 a girl must marry. A woman needed a man to raise the food for her; a man needed a woman to prepare the food for him. The clan leaders would decide who would be married in such a way that it profited the clans the most, and the matchmaker would be called in…

“I will see if I can get some fish,” he said suddenly, standing and taking his knife from the niche in the wall. His mother said nothing, her lowered head bobbed as she bent over her work. Malinche was gone and he hurried between the houses to the path that led south, through the cactus and rock, toward the end of the valley. It was still very hot and when the path went along the rim of the ravine he could see the river below, dried to a sluggish trickle this time of year. Yet it was still water and it looked cool. He hurried toward the dusty green of the trees at the head of the valley, the almost vertical walls of stone closing in on each side as he went forward. It was cooler here on the path under the trees: one of them had fallen since he had been here last, he would have to bring back some firewood.

Then he reached the pond below the cliffs and his eyes went up along the thin stream of the waterfall that dropped down from high above. It splattered into the pond which, although it was smaller now with a wide belt of mud around it, he knew was still deep at the center. There would be fish out there, big fish with sweet meat on their bones, lurking under the rocks along the edge. With his knife he cut a long, thin branch and began to fashion a fish spear.

Lying on his stomach on a shelf of rock that overhung the pool he looked deep into its transparent depths. There was a flicker of silver motion as a fish moved into the shadows: it was well out of reach. The air was dry and hot, the distant hammer of a bird’s bill on wood sounded unnaturally loud in the silence. Zopilotes were birds and they fed on all kinds of meat, even human meat, he had seen that for himself. When? Five or six years ago?

As always, his thoughts started to veer away from that memory — but this time they did not succeed. The hot dart of irritation that had been planted in the field still stirred at his mind and, in sudden anger, he clutched at the memory of that night. What had he seen? Pieces of meat. Armadillo, or rabbit perhaps? No, he could not trick himself into believing that. Man was the only creature who was big enough to have furnished those lumps of flesh. One of the gods had put them there, Mixtec perhaps, the god of death, to feed his servants the vultures who look after the dead. Chimal had seen the god’s offering and had fled — and nothing had happened. Since that night he had walked in silence waiting for the vengeance that had never arrived.

Where had the years gone? What had happened to the boy who was always in trouble, always asking questions that had no answers? The prod of irritation struck deep and Chimal stirred on the rock, then rolled over and looked up at the sky where a vulture, like the black mark of an omen, soared silently out of sight above the valley’s wall. I was the boy, Chimal said, almost speaking aloud, and admitting to himself for the first tune what had happened, and I was so filled with fear that I went inside myself’ and sealed myself in tightly like a fish sealed in mud for baking. Why does this bother me now?

With a quick spring he was on his feet, looking around as though for something to kill. Now he was a man and people would no longer leave him alone as they had when he was a boy. He would have responsibilities, he must do new things. He must take a wife and build a house and have a family and grow old and in the end…

“No!” he shouted as loudly as he could and sprang far out from the rock. The water, cool from the melting snows of the mountains, wrapped around and pressed onto him and he sank deep. His open eyes saw the shadowed blueness that surrounded him and the wrinkled, light-shot surface of the water above. It was another world here and he wanted to remain in it, away from his world. He swam lower until his ears hurt and his hands plunged deep into the mud on the pool’s bottom. But then, even while he was thinking that he would remain here, his chest burned and his hands of their own thinking sent him arrowing back to the surface. His mouth opened, without his commanding it to, and he breathed in a great chestful of soothing air.

Climbing out of the pool he stood at the edge, water streaming from his loincloth and seeping from his sandals, and looked up at the wall of rock and the falling water. He could not stay forever in that world beneath the water. And then, with a sudden burst of understanding, he realized that he also could not stay in this world that was his valley. If he were a bird he could fly away! There had been a way out of the valley once, those must have been wonderful days, but the earthquake had ended that. In his mind’s eye he could see the swamp at the other end of the long valley, pressed up against the base of that immense rabble of rock and boulders that sealed the exit. The water seeped slowly out between the rocks and the birds soared above, but for the people of the valley there was no way out. They were sealed in by the great, overhanging boulders and by the curse that was even harder to surmount. It was Omeyocan’s curse, and he is the god whose name is never spoken aloud, only whispered lest he overhear. It was said that the people had forgotten the gods, the temple had been dusty and the sacrificial altar dry. Then, in one day and one night, Qmeyocan had shaken the hills until they fell and sealed this valley off from the rest of the world for five times a hundred years at which tune, if the people had served the temple well, the exit would be opened once again. The priests never said how much time had passed, and it did not matter. The penance would not end in their lifetimes.

What was the outside world like? There were mountains in it, that he knew. He could see their distant peaks and the snow that whitened them in winter and shrank to small patches on their north flanks in the summer. Other than that he had no idea. There must be villages, like his, that he could be sure of. But what else? They must know things that his people did not know, such as where to find metal and what to do with it. There were still some treasured axes and corn knives in the valley made from a shining substance called iron. They were softer than the obsidian tools, but did not break and could be sharpened over and over again. And the priests had a box made of this iron set with brilliant jewels which they showed on special festival days.

How he wanted to see the world that had produced these things! If he could leave he would — if only there were a way — and even the gods would not be able to stop him. Yet, even as he thought this he bent, raising his arm, wailing for the blow.

The gods would stop him. Coatlicue still walked and punished and he had seen the handless victims of her justice. There was no escape.

He was numb again, which was good. If you did not feel you could not be hurt His knife was on the rock where he had left it and he remembered to pick it up because it had cost him many hours of hard work to shape the blade. But the fish were forgotten, as was the firewood: he brushed by the dead tree without seeing it. His feet found the trail and in welcome numbness he started back through the trees to the village.

When the trail followed the dried up river bed he could see the temple and the school on the far bank. A boy, he was from the other village of Zaachila and Chimal did not know his name, was waving from the edge, calling something through his cupped hands. Chimal stopped to listen.

“Temple…” he shouted, and something that sounded like Tezcatlipoca, which Chimal hoped it was not since the Lord of Heaven and Earth, inflicter and healer of frightful diseases, was not a name to be spoken lightly. The boy, realizing that he could not be heard, clambered down the far bank and splashed through the thin stream of water in the center. He was panting when he climbed up next to Chimal, but his eyes were wide with excitement.

“Popoca, do you know him, he is a boy from our village?” He rushed on without waiting for an answer. “He has seen visions and talked about them to others and the priests have heard the talk and have seen him and they have said that… Tezcatlipoca,” excited as he was he stumbled over speaking that name aloud, “… has possessed him. They have taken him to the pyramid temple.”

“Why?” Chimal asked, and knew the answer before it was spoken.

“Citlallatonac will free the god.”

They must go there, of course, since everyone was expected to attend a ceremony as important as this one. Chimal did not wish to see it but he made no protest since it was his duty to be there. He left the boy when they reached the village and went to his home, but his mother had already gone as had almost everyone else. He put his knife away and set out on the well trodden path down the valley to the temple. The crowd was gathered, silently, at the temple base, but he could see clearly even where he stood to the rear. On a ledge above was the carved stone block, cut through with holes and stained by the accumulated blood of countless years. A youth was being tied, unprotesting, to the top of the block, and his bindings secured by passing through the holes in the stone. One of the priests stood over him and blew through a paper cone and, for an instant, a white cloud enveloped the young man’s face. Yauhtli, the powder from the root of the plant, that made men asleep when they were awake and numbed them to pain. By the time Citlallatonac appeared the lesser priests had shaved the boy’s head so the ritual could begin. The first priest himself carried the bowl of tools that he would need. A shudder passed through the youth’s body, although he did not cry out, when the flap of skin was cut from his skull and the procedure began.

There was a movement among the people as the rotating arrowhead drilled into the bone of the skull and, without volition, Chimal found himself standing in the first rank. The details were painfully clear from here as first priest drilled a series of holes in the bone, joined them — then levered up and removed the freed disk of bone.

“You may come forth now, Tezcatlipoca,” the priest said, and absolute silence fell over the crowd as this dread name was spoken. “Speak now, Popoca,” he told the boy. “What is it that you saw?” As he said this the priest pressed with the arrowhead again at the shining gray tissue inside the wound. The boy replied with a low moan and his lips moved.

“Cactus… in the high bed against the wall… picking the fruit and it was late, but I was not finished… Even if the sun went down I would be in the village by dark… I turned and saw it…”

“Come forth, Tezcatlipoca, here is the way,” the first priest said, and pushed his knife deep into the wound.

“SAW THE LIGHT OF THE GODS COME TOWARD ME AS THE SUN WENT…” the youth screamed, then arched up once against his restraining bonds and was still.

“Tezcatlipoca has gone,” Citlallatonac said, dropping his instruments into the bowl, “and the boy is free.”

Dead also, Chimal thought, and turned away.

4

It was cooler now as evening approached, and the sun was not as strong on Chimal’s back as it had been earlier. Ever since leaving the temple he had squatted here in the white sand of the riverbed staring into the narrow trickle of stagnant water. At first he had not known what had brought him here and then, when he had realized what was driving him, fear had kept him pinned to this spot. This day had been disturbing in every way and Popoca’s sacrificial death had heated the ferment of his thoughts to a boil. What had the boy seen? Could he see it too? Would he die if he saw it?

When he stood his legs almost folded under him, he had been seated in the squat position so long, and instead of jumping the stream he splashed through it. He had wanted to die earlier under the water, but he had not, so what difference did it make if he died now? Life here was — what was the right word for it? — unbearable. The thought of the unchanging endlessness of the days ahead of him seemed far worse than the simple act of dying. The boy had seen something, the gods had possessed him for seeing it,, and the priests had killed him for seeing it. What could be so important? He could not imagine — and it made no difference. Anything new in this valley of unchange was something that he had to experience.

By staying close to the swamp at the north end of the valley he remained unseen, circling the corn and maguey fields that encircled Zaachila. This was unwanted land, just cactus, mesquite and sand, and no one saw him pass. The shadows were stretching their purple lengths along the ground now and he hurried to be at the eastern wall of the cliff beyond Zaachila before the sun set. What had the boy seen?

There was only one bed of fruit-bearing cactus that fitted the description, the one at the top of a long slope of broken rubble and sand. Chimal knew where it was and when he reached it the sun was just dropping behind the distant peaks of the mountains. He scrambled up on all fours to the top of the slope, to the cactus, then clambered to the summit of a large boulder. Height might have something to do with what Popoca had seen, the higher the better. From his vantage point the entire valley opened out, with the village of Zaachila before him, then the dark slash of the riverbed and his own village beyond that. A projecting turn of the cliffs hid the waterfall at the south end of the valley, but the swamp and the giant stones that sealed it to the north were clearly visible, though darkening now as the sun slipped from sight. While he watched it vanished behind the mountains. That was all. Nothing. The sky went from red to a deeper purple and he was about to climb down from his vantage point.

When the beam of golden light spun out at him.

It lasted only an instant. If he had not been looking intently in the right direction he would never have seen it. A golden thread, thin as a slice of fire, that stretched across the sky from the direction of the vanished sun directly toward him, bright as the reflection of light upon the water. But there was no water there, just sky. What had it been?

With a sudden start that shook his body he realized where he was — and how late it was. The first stars were coming out above him and he was far from the village and his side of the river.

Coatlicue!

Ignoring anything else he hurled himself from the boulder and sprawled in the sand, then came up running. It was almost dark and everyone would be bent over the evening meal: he headed directly toward the river. Fear drove him on, around the bunched darkness of the cactus and over the low, thorny shrubs. Coatlicue! She was no myth: he had seen her victims. Reason fled and he ran like an animal pursued.

When he reached the bank of the riverbed it was completely dark and he had only the light of the stars to show him the way. It was even darker below the bank — and this was where Coatlicue dwelled. Trembling, he hesitated, unable to force himself down into the deeper blackness below.

And then, far off to his right in the direction of the swamp, he heard the hissing as of a giant snake. It was she!

Hesitating no longer he threw himself forward, rolled over and over on the soft sand and splashed through the water. The hissing came again. Was it louder? Tearing with desperate fingers he climbed the far bank and, sobbing for air, ran on through the fields, not stopping until a solid wall loomed up before him. He collapsed against the side of the first building, clutching the rough adobe bricks with his fingers and sprawling there, gasping, knowing he was safe. Coatlicue would not come here.

When his breathing was normal again he stood and made his way silently between the houses until he came to his home. His mother was turning tortillas on the cumal and she looked up when he came in.

“You are very late.”

“I was at another house.”

He sat and reached for the water bottle, then changed his mind and took the container of octli instead. The fermented juice of the maguey could bring drunkenness, but happiness and peace as well. As a man he could drink it when he wanted to and was still not used to this liberty. His mother looked at him out of the corners of her eyes but said nothing. He took a very long drink, then had to fight hard to control the coughing that swept over him.

During the night there was a great roaring in his dreams and he felt that he had been caught in a rockslide and that his head had been hurt. A sudden blaze of light against his closed eyelids jerked him awake and he lay there in the dark, filled with unreasoning fear, as the great sound rumbled and died. Only then did he realize that it was raining heavily; the roar of drops on the grass thatch of the roof was what had penetrated his dreams. Then the lightning blazed again and, for a long instant, illuminated the ulterior of the house with a strange blue light that clearly showed him the fire stones, the pots, the dark and silent form of his mother sleeping soundly on her petlatl, the billowing of the mat in front of the doorway and the runnel of water that ran in onto the earthen floor. Then the light was gone and the thunder rolled again with a great noise that must have filled the entire valley. The gods at play, the priests said, tearing apart mountains and throwing giant boulders about as they had once thrown them to seal the exit here.

Chimal’s head hurt when he sat up; that part of the dream had been true enough. He had drunk too much of the octli. His mother had been worried, he remembered that now, since drunkenness was a sacred thing and should only be indulged in during certain festivals. Well, he had made his own festival. He pushed aside the mat and stepped out into the rain, let it wash over his upturned face and run down the length of his naked body. It trickled into his open mouth and he swallowed its sweet substance. His head felt better and his skin was washed clean. There would be water now for the corn and the crop might be a good one after all.

Lightning streaked across the sky and he thought at once of the spear of light he had seen after the sun had set Had it been the same sort of thing? No, this lightning writhed and twisted like a beheaded snake while the other light had been straight as an arrow.

The rain no longer felt good; it was chilling him, and he did not want to think about what he had seen the evening before. He turned and went quickly back inside.

In the morning the drums drew him slowly awake as they had every day of his life. His mother was already up and blowing the embers of the banked fire into life. She said nothing, but he could feel the disapproval in the angle of her back as she turned away from him. When he touched his face he found that his jaw was bristly with stubble: this would be a good tune to take care of it. He filled a bowl with water and crumbled into it some copalxocotl, the dried root of the soap tree. Then, taking the bowl and his knife, he went out behind the house where the first rays of the sun struck him. The clouds were gone and it was going to be a clear day. He lathered his face well and found a pool of water on the rock ledge that reflected his image and helped him to shave cleanly.

When he was through his cheeks were smooth and he rubbed them with his fingers and turned his head back and forth to see if he had missed any spots. It was almost a stranger who looked back at him from the water, so much had he changed in the last few years. His jaw was wide and square, very different from his father’s everyone said, who had been a small-boned man. Even now, alone, his lips were tight shut as though to lock in any stray words, his mouth as expressionless as a line drawn in the sand. He had many years of experience in not answering. Even his deep gray eyes were secretive below the heavy brow ridge. His blond hair, hanging down straight all around his head and cut off on an even line, was a concealment that covered his high forehead. The boy he used to know was gone and had been replaced by a man he did not know. What did the events of the past days mean, the strange feelings that tore at him and the even stranger things he had seen? Why was he not at peace like all the others?

As he became aware that someone had walked up behind him a face moved into view in the reflection, swimming against the blue sky: Cuauhtemoc, the leader of his clan. Graying and lined, stern and unsmiling.

“I have come to talk about your marriage,” the imaged head said.

Chimal hurled the bowl of soapy water into it and the reflection burst into a thousand fragments and vanished.

When he stood and turned about Chimal discovered that he was some niches taller than the leader: they had not met to talk for a very long time. Everything that he could think to say seemed wrong, so he said nothing. Cuauhtemoc squinted into the rising sun and rubbed at his jaw with work-calloused fingers.

“We must keep the clans bound together. That is,” he lowered his voice, “Omeyocan’s will. There is a girl Malinche who is the right age and you are the right age. You will be married soon after the ripening corn festival. You know the girl?”

“Of course I know her. That is why I do not wish to marry her.”

Cuauhtemoc was surprised. Not only did his eyes widen but he touched his finger to his cheek in the gesture which means I am surprised. “What you wish does not matter. You have been, taught to obey. There is no other girl suitable, the matchmaker has said so.”

“I do not wish to marry this girl, or any other girl. Not now. I do not wish to be married at this time…”

“You were very strange when you were a boy and the priests knew about it and they beat you. That was very good for you and I thought you would be all right. Now you talk the same way you did when you were young. If you do not do what I tell you to do then…” he groped for the alternatives. “Then I shall have to tell the priests.”

The memory of that black knife slipping into the whiteness inside Popoca’s head stood suddenly clear before Chimal’s eyes. If the priests thought that he was possessed by a god they would release him from the burden as well. So it was like that, he suddenly realized. Only two courses were open to him; there had never been any other choice. He could do as all the others did — or he could die. The choice was his.

“I’ll marry the girl,” he said and turned to pick up the container of nightsoil to take to the fields.

5

Someone passed a cup of octli and Chimal buried his face in it, breathing in the sour, strong odor, before he drank. He was alone on the newly woven grass mat, yet was surrounded on all sides by noisy members of his and Malinche’s clans. They mixed, talked, even shouted to be heard, while the young girls were busy with the jugs of octli. They sat in the sandy area, now swept clean, that was in the center of the village, and it was barely big enough to hold them all. Chimal turned and saw his mother, smiling as he had not seen her smile in years, and he turned away so quickly that the octli slopped over onto his tilmantl, his marriage cloak new and white and specially woven for the occasion. He brushed at the sticky liquid — then stopped as a sudden hush came over the crowd.

“She is coming,” someone whispered, and there was a stir of motion as everyone turned to look. Chimal stared into the now almost empty cup, nor did he glance up when the guests moved aside to let the matchmaker by. The old woman staggered under the weight of the bride to be, but she had carried burdens all her life and this was her duty. She stopped at the edge of the mat and carefully let Malinche step onto it. Malinche also wore a new white cloak, and her moon face had been rubbed with peanut oil so that her skin would glisten and be more attractive. With shifting motions she settled into a relaxed kneeling position, very much like a dog making itself comfortable, and turned her round eyes to Cuauhtemoc who rose and spread his arms impressively. As leader of the groom’s clan he had the right to speak first. He cleared his throat and spat into the sand.

“Here we are together for an important binding of the clans. You will remember that when Yotihuac died during the hunger of the time when the corn did not ripen, he had a wife and her name is Quiauh and she is here among us, and he had a son and his name is Chimal and he sits here on the mat…”

Chimal did not listen. He had been to other weddings and this one would be no different. The leaders of the clans would make long speeches that put everyone to sleep, then the matchmaker would make a long speech and others who felt moved by the occasion would also make long speeches. Many of the guests would doze and much octli would be drunk, and finally, when it was almost sunset, the knot would be tied in their cloaks that would bind them together for life. Even then there would be more speeches. Only when it was close to dark would the ceremony end and the bride would go home with her family. Malinche also had no father, he had died from a bite by a rattlesnake the year before, but she had uncles and brothers. They would take her and many of them would sleep with her that night. Since she was of their clan it was only fair that they save Chimal from the ghostly dangers of marriage by taking whatever curses there were unto themselves. Only on the next night would she move into his house.

He was aware of all these things and he did not care. Though he knew that he was young, at this moment he felt that his days were almost over. He could see the future and the rest of his life as clearly as if he had already lived it, because it would be unchanging and no different from the lives of all the others around him. Malinche would make his tortillas twice a day and bear a child once a year. He would plant the corn and reap the corn and each day would be like every other day and he would then be old, and very soon after that he would be dead.

That was the way it must be. He held his hand out for more octli and his cup was refilled. That was the way it would be. There was nothing else, and he could not think of anything else. When his mind veered away from the proper thoughts that he should be thinking he quickly dragged them back and drank some more from his cup. He would remain silent, and empty his mind of thoughts. A shadow swept across the sand and touched them with a passing moment of darkness as a great vulture landed on the rooftree of a nearby house. It was dusty and tattered and, like an old woman arranging her robe, it moved its wings and waddled back and forth as it settled down. First it looked at him with one cold eye, then with the other. Its eyes were as round as Malinche’s and just as empty. Its back was wickedly curved and, like the feathers of its ruff, stained with gore.

It was later and the vulture had long since departed. Everything here was too alive: it wanted its meat safely dead. The long ceremony was finally drawing to its end. The leaders of both clans came forward solemnly and laid hands on the white tilmantli, then prepared to tie the marriage cloaks together. Chimal blinked at the rough hands that fumbled with the corner of the fabric and, in an instant, from nothing to everything, the red madness possessed him. It was the way he had felt that day at the pool only much stronger. There was only one thing that could be done, a single thing that had to be done, and no other course was possible to take.

He jumped to his feet and pulled his cloak free of the clasping fingers.

“No, I won’t do it,” he shouted in a voice roughened by the octli he had drunk. “I will not marry her or anyone else. You cannot force me to.”

He strode away in the dusk through a shocked silence and no one thought to reach out and stop him.

6

If the people of the village were watching, they did not reveal themselves. Some of the door covers stirred in the breeze that had sprung up just after dawn, but nothing moved in the darkness behind them.

Chimal walked with his head up, stepping out so strongly that the two priests in their ground-length cloaks had trouble keeping pace with him. His mother had cried out when they had come for him, soon after daybreak, a single shout of pain as though she had seen him die at that moment. They had stood in the doorway, black as two messengers of death, and had asked for him, their weapons ready in case he should resist. Each of them carried a maquahuitl, the deadliest of all the Aztec weapons: the obsidian blades that were set into the hardwood handle were sharp enough to sever a man’s head with a single blow. They had not needed this threat of violence, quite the opposite in fact. Chimal had been behind the house when he heard their voices. “To the temple then,” he had answered, throwing his cloak over his shoulders and knotting it while he walked. The young priests had to hurry to catch up.

He knew that he should be walking in terror of what might await him at the temple, yet, for some unaccountable reason, he was elated. Not happy, no one could be happy when going to face the priests, but so great was his feeling of rightness that he could ignore the dark shadow of the future. It was as though a great burden had been lifted from his mind and, in truth, it had. For the first time, since he had been a small child, he had not lied to conceal his thoughts: he had spoken out what he knew to be true in defiance of everyone. He did not know where it would end, but at this instant did not really care.

They were waiting for him at the pyramid and there was no question now of his walking on alone. The priests blocked his way and two of the strongest took him by the arms: he made no attempt to free himself as they led him up the steps to the temple on the summit He had never entered here before; normally only priests passed through the carved doorway with its frieze of serpents disgorging skeletons. When they paused at the entranceway some of his elation seeped out before this ominous prospect. He turned away from it to look out across the valley.

From this height he could see the entire length of the river. From the grove of trees to the south it emerged and meandered between the steep banks, cutting between the two villages, then laid a course of golden sand until it vanished into the swamp near at hand. Beyond the swamp rose the rock barrier and he could see more tall mountains in the distance…

“Bring the one in,” Citlallatonac’s voice spoke from the temple, and they pushed him inside.

The first priest was sitting cross-legged on an ornamented block of stone before a statue of Coatlicue. In the half light of the temple the goddess was hideously lifelike, glazed and painted and decorated with gems and gold plates. Her twin heads looked at him and her claw-handed arms appeared ready to seize.

“You have disobeyed the clan leaders,” the first priest said loudly. The other priests stepped back so that Chimal could approach him. Chimal came close, and when he did so he saw that the priest was older than he had thought. His hair, matted with blood and dirt and unwashed for years, had the desired frightening effect, as did the blood on his death-symboled robe. But the priest’s eyes were sunk deep into his head and were watery red: his neck was as scrawny and wrinkled as that of a turkey. His skin had a waxy pallor except where patches of red powder had been dusted on his cheeks to simulate good health. Chimal looked at the priest and did not answer.

“You have disobeyed. Do you know the penalty?” The old man’s voice cracked with rage.

“I did not disobey, therefore there is no penalty.” The priest half rose with astonishment when he heard these calmly spoken words, then he dropped back and huddled down, his eyes narrowed with anger. “You spoke this way once before and you were beaten, Chimal. You do not argue with a priest.”

“I am not arguing, revered Citlallatonac, but merely explaining what has happened…”

“I do not like the sound of your explaining,” the priest broke in. “Do you not know your place in this world? You were taught it in the temple school along with all the other boys. The gods rule. The priests interpret and interpose. The people obey. Your duty is to obey and nothing else.”

“I do my duty. I obey the gods. I do not obey my fellow men when they are at odds with the word of the gods. It would be blasphemy to do that, the penalty for which is death. Since I do not wish to die I obey the gods even though mortal men grow angry at me.”

The priest blinked, then picked a bit of matter from the corner of one eye with the tip of his grimy forefinger. “What is the meaning of your words,” he finally said, and there was a touch of hesitancy in his voice. “The gods have ordered your wedding.”

“That they have not — men have done that. It is written in the holy words that man is to marry and be fruitful and woman is to marry and be fruitful. But it does not say what age they should be married at, or that they must be forced to marry against then: will.”

“Men marry at twenty-one, women at sixteen…”

“That is the common custom, but only a custom. It does not have the weight of law…”

“You argued before,” the priest said shrilly, “and were beaten. You can be beaten again…”

“A boy is beaten. You do not beat a man for speaking the truth. I ask only that the law of the gods be followed — how can you punish me for that?”

“Bring me the books of the law,” the first priest shouted to the others waiting outside. “This one must be shown the truth before he is punished. I remember no laws like these.”

In a quiet voice Chimal said, “I remember them clearly. They are as I have told you.” The old priest sat back, blinking angrily in the shaft of sunlight that fell upon him, The bar of light, the priest’s face, stirred Chimal’s memory and he spoke the words almost as a dare. “I remember also what you told us about the sun and the stars, you read from the books. The sun is a ball of burning gas, didn’t you say that, which is moved by the gods? Or did you say the sun was set in a great shell of diamond?”

“What are you saying about the sun?” the priest asked, frowning.

“Nothing,” Chimal said. Something, he thought to himself, something that I dare not say aloud or I will soon be as dead as Popoca who first saw the ray. I have seen it too, and it was just like the sun shining on water or on diamond. Why had the priests not told them of the thing in the sky that made that flash of light? He broke off these thoughts as the priests carried in the sacred volumes.

The books were bound with human skin and were ancient and revered: on festival days the priests read parts from them. Now they placed them on the stone ledge and withdrew. Citlallatonac pushed at them, holding first one up to the light, then the other.

“You want to read the second book of Tezcatlipoca,” Chimal said. “And what I speak about is on the thirteenth or fourteenth page.”

A book dropped with a sharp noise and the priest turned wide eyes upon Chimal. “How do you know that?”

“Because I have been told and I remember. That is what was said aloud, and I remember the page number being spoken.”

“You can read, that is how you know this. You have come secretly to the temple to read the forbidden books…”

“Don’t be silly, old man. I have never been to this temple before. I remember, that is all.” Some demon goaded Chimal on in the face of the priest’s astonishment “And I can read, if you must know. That is not forbidden either. In the temple school I learned my numbers, as did all the other children, and I learned to write my name, just as they did. When the others were taught the writing of their names I listened and learned as well and therefore know the sounds of all the letters. It was really very simple.”

The priest was beyond words and did not answer. Instead he groped through the tumbled books until he found the one Chimal had named, then turned the pages slowly, shaping the words aloud as he read. He read, turned back the page and read again — then dropped the book.

“You see I am correct,” Chimal told him. “I shall marry, soon, to one of my own choosing after I have consulted long and well with the matchmaker and the clan leader. That is the way to do it by law…”

“Do not tell me the law, small man! I am the first priest and I am the law and you will obey me.”

“We all obey, great Citlallatonac,” Chimal answered quietly. “None of us are above the law and all of us have our duties.”

“Do you mean me? Do you dare to mention the duties of a priest, you a… nothing? I can kill you.”

“Why? I have done nothing wrong.”

The priest was on his feet, screeching in anger now, looking up into Chimal’s face and spattering him with saliva as the words burst from his lips.

“You argue with me, you pretend to know the law better than I do, you read though you were never taught to read. You are possessed by one of the black gods and I know it, and I shall release that god from inside your head.”

Angry himself, but coldly angry, Chimal could not keep a grimace of distaste from his mouth. “Is that all you know, priest? Kill a man who disagrees with you — even though he is right and you are wrong? What kind of a priest does that make of you?”

With a wordless scream the priest raised both his fists and brought them down together to strike Chimal and tear the voice from his mouth. Chimal seized the old man’s wrists and held them easily even though the priest struggled to free himself. There was a rush of feet as the horrified onlookers ran to help the first priest. As soon as they touched him, Chimal released his hands and stepped back, smiling crookedly.

Then it happened. The old man raised his arms again, opened his mouth wide until his almost gumless jaws were pinkly visible — then cried out, but no words came forth.

There was a screech, more of pain than anger now, and the priest crashed to the floor like a felled tree. His head struck the stone with a hollow thudding sound and he lay motionless, his eyes partly open and the yellowed whites showing, while a bubble of froth foamed on his lips.

The other priests rushed to his side, picked him up and carried him away, and Chimal was struck down from behind by one of them who carried a club. If it had been another weapon it would have killed him, and even though Chimal was unconscious this did not stop the priests from kicking his inert body before they carried him away too.

As the sun cleared the mountains it shone through the openings in the wall and struck fire from the jewels in Coatlicue’s serpent’s eyes. The books of the law lay, neglected, where they had been dropped.

7

“It looks like old Citlallatonac is very sick,” the priest said in a low voice while he checked the barred entrance to Chimal’s cell. It was sealed by heavy bars of wood, each thicker than a man’s leg, that were seated into holes in the stone of the doorframe. They were kept in place by a heavier, notched log that was pegged to the wall beyond the prisoner’s reach: it could only be opened from the outside. Not that Chimal was free to even attempt this, since his wrists and ankles were tied together with unbreakable maguey fibre.

“You made him sick,” the young priest added, rattling the heavy bars. He and Chimal were of the same age and had been in the temple school together. “I don’t know why you did it. You were in trouble in school, but I guess we all were, more or less, that is the way boys are. I never thought that you would end up doing this.” Almost as a conversational punctuation mark he jabbed his spear between the bars and into Chimal’s side. Chimal rolled away as the obsidian point dug into the muscle of his side and blood ran from the wound.

The priest left and Chimal was alone again. There was a narrow slit in the stone wall, high up, that let in a dusty beam of sunlight. Voices penetrated too, excited shouts and an occasional wail of fear from some woman.

They came, one after another, everyone, as word spread through the villages. From Zaachila they ran through the fields, tumbling like ants from a disturbed nest, to the riverbed and across the sand. On the other side they met the people from Quilapa, running, all of them, in fear. They grouped around the base of the pyramid in a solid mass, shouting and calling to one another for any bits of news that might be known. The noise died only when a priest appeared from the temple above and walked slowly down the steps, his hands raised for silence. He stopped when he reached the sacrificial stone. His name was Itzcoatl and he was in charge of the temple school. He was a stern, tall man in his middle years, with matted blond hair that fell below his shoulders. Most people thought that some day he would be first priest.

“Citlallatonac is ill,” he called out, and a low moan was breathed by the listening crowd. “He is resting now and we attend him. He breathes but he is not awake.”

“What is the illness that struck him down so quickly?” one of the clan leaders called out from below.

Itzcoatl was slow in answering; his black-rimmed fingernail picked at a dried spot of blood on his robe. “It was a man who fought with him,” he finally said. Silence stifled the crowd. “We have the man locked away so we may question him later, then kill him. He is mad or he is possessed by a demon. We will find out. He did not strike Citlallatonac but it is possible that he put a curse on him. The name of this man is Chimal.”

The people stirred and hummed like disturbed bees at this news, and drew apart. They were still closely packed, even more so now as they moved away from Quiauh, as though her touch might be poisonous. Chimal’s mother stood in the center of the open space with her head lowered and her hands clasped before her, a small and lonely figure.

This was the way the day went. The sun mounted higher and the people remained, waiting. Quiauh stayed as well, but she moved off to one side of the crowd where she would be alone: no one spoke to her or even looked her way. Some people sat on the ground or talked in low voices, others went into the fields to relieve themselves but they always returned. The villages were deserted and, one by one, the cooking fires went out. When the wind was right the dogs, who had not been watered or fed, could be heard barking, but no one paid attention to them.

By evening it was reported that the first priest had regained consciousness, but was still troubled. He could move neither his right hand nor his right leg and he had trouble speaking. The tension in the crowd grew perceptibly as the sun reddened and sank behind the hills, ( Once it had dropped from sight the people of Zaachila hurried, reluctantly, back to their village. They had to be across the river by dark — for this was the time when Coatlicue walked. They would not know what was happening at the temple, but at least they would be sleeping on their own mats this night. For the villagers of Quilapa a long night stretched ahead. They brought bundles of straw and cornstalks and made torches. Though the babies were nursed no one else ate, nor, in their terror, were they hungry.

The crackling torches held back the darkness of the night and some people laid their heads on their knees and dozed, but very few. Most just sat and watched the temple and waited. The praying voices of the priests came dimly down to them and the constant beating of the drums shook the air like the heartbeat of the temple.

Citlallatonac did not get better that night, but he did not get worse either. He would live and say the morning prayers, and then, during the coming day, the priests would meet in solemn assembly and a new first priest would be elected and the rituals performed that established him in that office. Everything would be all right. Everything had to be all right.

There was a stirring among the watchers when the morning star rose. This was the planet that heralded the dawn and the signal for the priests to once more beg Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird Wizard, to come to their aid. He was the only one who could successfully fight the powers of darkness, and ever since he had brought the Aztec people into being he had watched over them. Each night they called to him with prayers and he went forth with his thunderbolts and fought the night and the stars and defeated them so that they retreated and the sun could rise again.

Huitzilopochtli had always come to the aid of his people, though he had to be induced with sacrifices and the proper prayers. Had not the sun risen every day to prove it? Proper prayers, that was the important thing, proper prayers.

Only the first priest could speak these prayers. The thought was unspeakable yet it had been there all the night. The fear was still there like a heavy presence when priests with smoking torches emerged from the temple to light the way for the first priest. He came out slowly, half carried by two of the younger priests. He stumbled with his left leg, but his right leg only dragged limply behind him. They took him to the altar and held him up while the sacrifices were performed. Three turkeys and a dog were sacrificed this time because much help was needed. One by one the hearts were torn out and placed carefully in Citlallatonac’s clasping left hand. His fingers clamped down tight until blood ran from between his fingers and dripped to the stone, but his head hung at a strange angle and his mouth drooped open.

It was time for the prayer.

The drums and the chanting stopped and the silence was absolute. Citlallatonac opened his mouth and the cords in his neck stood out tautly as he struggled to speak. Instead of words he emitted only a harsh croaking sound and a long dollop of saliva hung down, longer and longer, from his drooping lip.

He struggled even harder then, writhing against the hands that held him up, trying to force words through his useless throat, until his face flushed with the effort. He tried too hard, because, suddenly, he jerked in pain, as though he were a loose-limbed doll being tossed into the air, then slumped limply.

After this he did not stir again and Itzcoatl ran over and placed his ear to the old man’s chest.

“The first priest is dead,” he said, and everyone heard these terrible words.

A wail of agony rose up from the assembled mob, and across the river in Zaachila they heard it and knew what it meant. The women clutched their children to them and whimpered, and the men were just as afraid.

At the temple they watched, hoping where there was no hope, looking at the morning star that rose higher in the sky with every passing minute. Soon it was high, higher than they had ever seen it before, because on every other day it had been lost in the light of the rising sun.

Yet on this day there was no glow on’ the eastern horizon. There was just the all-enveloping darkness.

The sun was not going to rise.

This time the cry that went up from the crowd was not pain but fear. Fear of the gods and the unending battle of the gods that might swallow up the whole world. Might not the powers of the night now triumph in the darkness so that this night would go on forever? Would the new first priest be able to speak powerful enough prayers to bring back the sun and the daylight that is life?

They screamed and ran. Some of the torches went out and in the darkness panic ruled. People fell and were trampled and no one cared. This could be the end of the world.

Deep under the pyramid Chimal was awakened from uncomfortable sleep by the shouting and the sound of running feet. He could not make out the words. Torchlight flickered and vanished outside the slit. He tried to roll over but found that he could barely move. At least his legs and arms were numb now. He had been bound for what felt like countless hours and at first the agony in his wrists and ankles had been almost unbearable. But then the numbness had come and he could no longer feel if these limbs were even there. All day and all night he had lain there, bound this way, and he was very thirsty. And he had soiled himself, just like a baby; there was nothing else he could do. What was happening outside? He suddenly felt a great weariness and wished that it was all over and that he was safely dead. Small boys do not argue with priests. Neither do men.

There was a movement outside as someone came down the steps, without a light and feeling the wall for guidance. Footsteps up to his cell, and the sound of hands rattling at the bars.

“Who is there?” he cried out, unable to bear the unseen presence in the darkness. His voice was cracked and hoarse. “You’ve come to kill me at last, haven’t you? Why don’t you say so?”

There was only the sound of breathing — and the rattle of the locking pin being withdrawn. Then, one by one the heavy bars were drawn from the socket and he knew that someone had entered the cell, was standing near him.

“Who is it?” he shouted, trying to sit up against the wall.

“Chimal,” his mother’s voice said quietly from the darkness.

At first he did not believe it, and he spoke her name. She knelt by him and he felt her fingers on his face.

“What happened?” he asked her. “What are you doing here — and where are the priests?”

“Citlallatonac is dead. He did not say the prayers and the sun will not rise. The people are mad and howl like dogs and run.”

I can believe that, he thought, and for a few moments the same panic touched him, until he remembered that one end is the same as another to a man who is about to die. While he wandered through the seven underworlds it would not matter what happened on the world above.

“You should not have come,” he told her, but there was kindness in the words and he felt closer to her than he had for years. “Leave now before the priests find you and use you for a sacrifice as well. Many hearts will be given to Huitzilopochtli if he is to fight a winning battle against the night and stars now when they are so strong.”

“I must free you,” Quiauh said, feeling for his bindings. “What has happened is my doing, not yours, and you are not the one who should suffer for it”

“It’s my fault, true enough. I was fool enough to argue with the old man and he grew excited and then suddenly sick. They are right to blame me.”

“No,” she said, touching the wrappings on his wrists, then bending over them because she had no knife. “I am to blame because I sinned twenty-two years ago and the punishment should be mine.” She began to chew at the tough fibers.

“What do you mean?” Her words made no sense.

Quiauh stopped for a moment and sat up in the darkness and folded her hands in her lap. What must be said had to be said in the right way.

“I am your mother, but your father is not the man you thought. You are the son of Chimal-popoca who was from the village of Zaachila. He came to me and I liked him very much, so I did not refuse him even though I knew it was very wrong. It was night time when he tried to cross back over the river and he was taken by Coatlicue. All of the years since I have waited for her to come and take me as well, but she has not. Hers is a larger vengeance. She wishes to take you in my place.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said, but there was no answer because she was chewing at his bindings again. They parted, strand by strand, until his hands were freed. Quiauh sought the wrappings on his ankles. “Not those, not yet,” he gasped as the pain struck his reviving flesh. “Rub my hands. I cannot move them and they hurt.”

She took his hands in hers and massaged them softly, yet each touch was like fire.

“Everything in the world seems to be changing,” he said, almost sadly. “Perhaps the rules should not be broken. My father died, and you have lived with death ever since. I have seen the flesh that the vultures feed upon and the fire in the sky, and now the night that never ends. Leave me before they find you. There is no place I can escape to.”

“You must escape,” she said, hearing only the words she wanted as she worked on the bindings of his ankles. To please her, and for the pleasure of feeling his body free again he did not stop her.

“We will go now,” she said when he was able to stand on his feet at last. He leaned on her for support as they climbed the stairs, and it was like walking on live coals. There was only silence and darkness beyond the doorway. The stars were clear and sharp and the sun had not risen. Voices murmured above as the priests intoned the rites for the new first priest

“Good-bye, my son, I shall never see you again.”

He nodded, in pain, in the darkness, and could not speak. Her words were true enough: there was no escape from this valley. He held her once, to comfort her, the way she used to hold him when he was small, until she gently pushed him away. “Go now,” she said, “and I will return to the village.”

Quiauh waited in the doorway until his stumbling figure had vanished into the endless night, then she turned and quietly went back down the stairs to his cell. From the inside she pulled the bars back into place, though she could not seal them there, then seated herself against the far wall. She felt about the stone floor until her fingers touched the bindings she had removed from her son. They were too short to tie now, but she still wrapped them around her wrist and held the ends with her fingers. One piece she placed carefully over her ankles.

Then she sat back, placidly, almost smiling into the darkness.

The waiting was over at last, those years of waiting. She would be at peace soon. They would come and find her here and know that she had released her son. They would kill her but she did not mind.

Death would be far easier to bear.

8

In the darkness someone bumped into Chimal and clutched him; there was an instant of fear as he thought he was captured. But, even as he made a fist to strike out he heard the man, it might even be a woman, moan and release him to run on. Chimal realized that now, during this night, everyone would be just as afraid as he was. He stumbled forward, away from the temple with his hands outstretched before him, until he was separated from the other people. When the pyramid, with the flickering lights on its summit, was just a great shadow in the distance he dropped and put his back against a large boulder and thought very hard.

What shall I do? He almost spoke the words aloud and realized that panic would not help. The darkness was his protection, not his enemy as it was to all the others, and he must make good use of it. What came first. Water, perhaps? No, not now. There was water only in the village and he could not go there. Nor to the river while Coatlicue walked. His thirst would just have to be forgotten: he had been thirsty before.

Could he escape this valley? For many years he had had this thought somewhere in the back of his mind, the priests could not punish you for thinking about climbing the cliffs, and at one time or another he had looked at every section of wall of the valley. It could be climbed in some places, but never very far. Either the rock became very smooth or there was an overhang. He had never found a spot that even looked suitable for an attempt.

If he could only fly! Birds left this valley, but he was no bird. Nothing else escaped, other than the water, and he was not water either. But he could swim in water, there might be a way out that way.

Not that he really believed this. His thirst may have had something to do with the decision, and the fact that he was between the temple and the swamp and it would be easy to reach without meeting anyone on the way. There was the need to do something in any case, and this was the easiest way. His feet found a path and he followed it slowly through the darkness, until he could hear the night sounds of the swamp not far ahead. He stopped then, and even retraced his steps because Coatlicue would be in the swamp as well. Then he found a sandy spot off the path and lay down on his back. His side hurt, and so did his head. There were cuts and bruises over most of his body. Above him the stars climbed and he thought it strange to see the summer and fall stars at this early time of the year. Birds called plaintively from the direction of the swamp, wondering where dawn was, and he went to sleep. The familiar spring constellations had returned, so an entire day must have passed without the sun rising.

From time to time he awoke, and the last time he saw the faintest lightening in the east. He put a pebble into his mouth to help him forget the thirst, then sat up and watched the horizon.

A new first priest must have been appointed, probably Itzcoatl, and the prayers were being said. But it was not easy; Huitzilopochtli must be fighting very hard. For a long time the light in the east did not change, then, ever so slowly it brightened until the sun rose above the horizon. It was a red, unhappy sun, but it rose at last. The day had began and now the search for him would begin as well. Chimal went over the rise to the swamp and, splashed into the mud until the water deepened, then pushed aside the floating layer of green with his hands and lowered his face to drink.

It was full daylight now and the sun seemed to be losing its unhealthy reddish cast as it climbed triumphantly up into the sky. Chimal saw his footprints cutting through the mud into the swamp, but it did not matter. There were few places in the valley to hide and the swamp was the only one that could not be quickly searched. They would be after him here. Turning away, he pushed through the waist-high water, heading deeper in.

He had never been this far into the swamp before, nor had anyone else that he knew of, and it was easy to see why. Once the belt of clattering reeds had been crossed at the edge of the water the tall trees began. They stood above the water, on roots like many legs, and their foliage joined overhead. Thick gray growths hung from their branches and trailed in the water, and under the matted leaves and streamers the air was dark and stagnant. And thick with insect life. Mosquitoes and gnats filled his ears with their shrill whining and sought out his skin as he penetrated into the shadow. Within a few minutes his cheeks and arms were puffing up and his skin was splotched with blood where he had smashed the troublesome insects. Finally he dug some of the black and foul-smelling mud from the bottom of the swamp and plastered it onto his exposed skin. This helped a bit, but it kept washing off when he came to the deeper parts and had to swim.

There were greater dangers as well. A green water snake swam toward him, its body wriggling on the surface and its head high and poison fangs ready. He drove it off by splashing at it, then tore off a length of dry branch in case he should encounter more of the deadly reptiles.

Then there was sunlight before him and a narrow strip of water between the trees and the tumbled rock barrier. He climbed out onto a large boulder, grateful for the sun and the relief from the insects.

Swollen black forms, as long as his finger and longer, hung from his body, damp and repellent looking. When he clutched one it burst in his fingers and his hand was suddenly sticky with his own blood. Leeches. He had seen the priests use them. Each one had to be pried off carefully and he did this, until they were all gone and his body was covered with a number of small wounds. After washing off the blood and fragments of leech he looked up at the barrier that rose above him.

He would never be able to climb it. Lips of great boulders, some of them as big as the temple, projected and overhung one another. If one of them could be passed the others waited. Nevertheless it had to be tried, unless a way could be found out at the water level, though this looked equally hopeless. While he considered this he heard a victorious shout and looked up to see a priest standing on the rocks just a few hundred feet away. There were splashes from the swamp and he turned and dived back into the water and the torturous shelter of the trees.

It was a very long day. Chimal was not seen again by his pursuers, but many times he was surrounded by them as they splashed noisily through the swamp. He escaped by holding his breath and hiding under the murky water when they came near, and by staying in the densest, most insect-ridden places that they were hesitant to penetrate. By the late afternoon he was near exhaustion and knew he could not go on very much longer. A scream, and even louder shouting, saved his life — at the expense of one of the searchers. He had been bitten by a water snake, and this accident took the heart out of the other hunters. Chimal heard them moving away from him and he remained, hidden, under an overhanging limb with just his head above the water. His eyelids were so swollen from insect bites that he had to press them apart with his fingers to see clearly.

“Chimal,” a voice called in the distance, then again, “Chimal… We know you are in there, and you cannot escape. Give yourself to us because we will find you in the end. Come now…”

Chimal sank lower in the water and did not bother to answer. He knew as well as they did that there was no final escape. Yet he would still not give himself up to their torture. It would be better to die here in the swamp, die whole and stay in the water. And keep his heart.

As the sky darkened he began to work his way carefully toward the edge of the swamp. He knew that none of them would stay in the water during the night, but they might very well lie hidden among the rocks nearby to see him if he emerged and tried to escape. Pain and exhaustion made thinking difficult, yet he knew he had to have a plan. If he stayed in the deep water he would surely be dead by morning. As soon as it was dark he would go into the reeds close to shore and then decide what to do next. It was hard to think.

He must have been unconscious for some tune, there near the water’s edge, because when he forced his swollen eyelids open with his fingertips he saw that the stars were out and that all traces of light had vanished from the sky. This troubled him greatly and in his befuddled state he could not be sure why. A breeze stirred the reeds so that they rustled behind him. Then the motion died away and for a moment the air held a hushed evening silence.

At this instant, far off to the left in the direction of the river, he heard an angry hissing.

Coatlicue!

He had forgotten her! Here he was near the river at night, in the water, and he had forgotten her!

He lay there, paralyzed with fear, as a sudden rattle of gravel and running footsteps sounded on the hard ground. His first thought was Coatlicue, then he realized that someone had been hidden close by among the rocks, waiting to take him if he emerged from the swamp. Whoever it was had also heard Coatlicue and had run for his life.

The hissing sounded again, closer.

Since he had escaped in the swamp all day — and since he knew there were men lying in wait for him on shore — he pulled himself slowly back into the water. He did it without thinking: the voice of the goddess had driven all thought from his mind. Slowly, making not a sound, he backed up until the water reached to his waist.

And then Coatlicue appeared over the rise, both heads looking toward him and hissing with loud anger, while the starlight shone on the outstretched claws.

Chimal could not look anymore at his own death; it was too hideous. He took a deep breath and slipped under the water, swimming to keep himself below the surface. He could not escape this way, but he would not have to watch as she trod through the water toward him, then plunged down her claws like some monstrous fisher and pulled him to her.

His lungs burned and still she had not struck. When he could bear it no longer he slowly raised his head and looked out at the empty shore. Dimly, upriver in the distance, there was the echo of a faint hissing.

For a long time Chimal just stood there, the water streaming from his body, while his befuddled mind attempted to understand what had happened. Coatlicue was gone. She had come for him and he had hidden under the water. When he had done this she could not find him so she had gone away.

One thought cut through the fatigue and lifted him so that he whispered it aloud.

“I have outwitted a god…”

What could it all mean? He went out of the water and lay on the sand that was still warm from the day and thought about it very hard. He was different, he had always known that, even when he was working hard to conceal the difference. He had seen strange things and the gods had not struck him down — and now he had escaped Coatlicue. Had he outwitted a god? He must have. Was he a god? No, he knew better than that. Then how, how…

Then he slept, restlessly, waking and sleeping again. His skin was hot and he dreamt, and at times he did not know if he was dreaming awake or asleep. He could have been taken then, easily, but the human watchers had been frightened away and Coatlicue did not return.

Toward dawn the fever must have broken because he awoke, shivering, and very thirsty. He stumbled to the shore and drank from his cupped hands and rubbed water onto his face. He felt sore and bruised from head to toe, so that the many little aches merged into one all-consuming pain. His head still rang with the effects of the fever and his thoughts were clumsy — but one thought kept repeating over and over like the hammering of a ritual drum. He had escaped Coatlicue. For some reason she had not discovered him in the water. Had it been that? It would be easy enough to find out: she would be returning soon and he could wait for her. Once the idea had been planted it burned in his brain. Why not? He had escaped her once — he would do it again. He would look at her again and escape again, that’s what he would do.

Yes, that is what he would do, he mumbled to himself, and stumbled off toward the west, following the edge of the swamp. This is where the goddess had first come from and this is where she might reappear. If she did, he would see her again. When the shoreline turned he realized that he had come to the river where it drained into the swamp, and prudence drove him back into the water. Coatlicue guarded the river. It would be dawn soon and he would be safe, far out here in the water with just his head showing, peering through the reeds.

The sky was red and the last stars were fading when she returned. Shivering with fear he remained where he was, but sank deeper into the water until just his eyes were above the surface. Coatlicue never paused but walked heavily along the riverbank, the snakes in her kirtle hissing in response to her two great serpents’ heads.

As she passed he rose slowly from the water and watched her go. She went out of sight along the edge of the swamp and he was alone, with the light of another day striking gold fire from the tops of the high peaks before him.

When it was full daylight he followed her.

There was no danger now, Coatlicue only walked by night and it was not forbidden to enter this part of the valley during the day. Elation filled him — he followed the goddess. He had seen her pass and here, beside the hardened mud, he could see signs of her passing. Perhaps she had come this way often because he found himself following what appeared to be a well trodden path. He would have taken it for an ordinary path, used by the men who came to snare the ducks and other birds here, if he had not seen her go this way. Around the swamp the path led, then toward the solid rock of the cliff wall. It was hard to follow on the hard soil and among the boulders, yet he found traces because he knew what to look for. Coatlicue had come this way.

Here there was a cleft in the rock where some ancient fissure had split the wall. Boulders rose on both sides and it did not seem possible that she had gone any other way unless she flew, which perhaps goddesses could do. If she walked she had gone straight ahead.

Chimal started into the rocky cleft just as a rolling wave of rattlesnakes and scorpions poured out of it.

The sight was so shocking, he had never seen more than one of these poisonous creatures at a time before, that he just stood there as death rustled close. Only his natural feelings of repulsion saved his life. He fell back before the deadly things and clambered up a steep boulder, pulling his feet up as the first of them swirled around the base. Drawing himself up higher he threw one hand over the summit of the rock — and a needle of fire lanced down his arm. He was not the first to arrive and there, on his wrist, the large, waxy-yellow scorpion had plunged its sting deep into his flesh.

With a gesture of loathing he shook it to the rock and crushed it under his sandal. More of the poisonous insects had crawled up the easy slope of the other side of the boulder and he stamped on them and kicked them back, then he bruised his wrist against the sharp edge of stone until it bled before he tried to suck out the venom. The greater pain in his arm drowned out all the other minor ones on his ravaged body.

Had that wave of nauseating death been meant for him? There was no way of telling and he did not want to think about it. The world he knew was changing too fast and all of the old rules seemed to be breaking down. He had looked on Coatlicue and lived, followed her and lived. Perhaps the rattlesnakes and the scorpions were one of her attributes that followed naturally after her, the way dew followed the night. He could not begin to understand it. The poison was making him lightheaded — yet elated at the same time. He felt as though he could do anything and that there was no power on Earth, above or below it, that could stop him.

When the last snake and insect had gone on or vanished among the crevices in the rocks, he slid carefully back to the ground and went on up the path. It twisted between great ragged boulders, immense pieces that had dropped from the fractured cliff, then entered the crevice in the cliff itself. The vertical crack was high, but not very deep. Chimal, following what was obviously a well-trodden path, found himself suddenly facing the wall of solid rock.

There was no way out. The trail led to a dead end. He leaned against the rough stone and fought to get his breath. This is what he should have suspected. Because Coatlicue walked the Earth in solid guise did not mean that she was human or had human limitations. She could turn to gas if she wanted to and fly up and out of here. Or perhaps she could walk into the solid rock which would be like air to her. What did it matter — and what was he doing here? Fatigue threatened to overwhelm him and his entire arm was burning from the insect’s poisonous bite. He should find a place to hide for the day, or find some food, do anything but remain here. What madness had led him on this strange chase?

He turned away — then jumped aside as he saw the rattlesnake. The snake was in the shadow against the cliff face. It did not move. When he came close he saw that it lay on its side with its jaws open and its eyes filmed. Chimal reached out carefully with his toe — and kicked at it. It merely flopped limply: it was surely dead. But it seemed to be, in some way, attached to the cliff.

Curious now, he reached out a cautious hand and touched its cool body. Perhaps the serpents of Coatlicue could emerge from solid rock just as she could enter it He tugged on the body, harder and harder until it suddenly tore and came away in his hand. When he bent close, and pressed his cheek to the ground, he could see where the snake’s blood had stained the sand, and the crushed end of the back portion of its body. It was squashed flat, no thicker than his fingernail, and seemed to be imbedded in the very rock itself. No, there was a hairline crack on each side, almost invisible in the shadows close to the ground. He put his fingertips against it and traced its long length, a crack as straight as an arrow. The line ended suddenly, but when he looked closely he saw that it went straight up now, a thin vertical fissure in the rock.

With his fingers he traced it up, high over his head, then to the left, to another corner, then back down again. Only when his hand had returned to the snake again did he realize the significance of what he had found. The narrow crack traced a high, four sided figure in the face of the cliff.

It was a door!

Could it be? Yes, that explained everything. How Coatlicue had left and how the snakes and scorpions had been admitted. A door, an exit from the valley…

When the total impact of this idea hit him he sat down suddenly on the ground, stunned by it. An exit. A way out. It was a way that only the gods used, he would have to consider that carefully, but he had seen Coatlicue twice and she had not seized him. There just might be a way to follow her from the valley. He had to think about it, think hard, but his head hurt so. More important now was thinking about staying alive, so he might be able later to do something about this earth-shaking discovery. The sun was higher in the sky now and the searchers must already be on their way from the villages. He had to hide — and not in the swamp. Another day there would finish him. Clumsily and painfully, he began to run back down the path toward the village of Zaachila.

There were wastelands near the swamp, rock and sand with occasional stands of cactus, with no place to hide in all their emptiness. Panic drove Chimal on now: he expected to meet the searchers coming from the village at any moment. They would be on their way, he knew that. Climbing a rocky slope he came to the outskirts of the maguey fields and saw, on the far side, the first men approaching. He dropped at once and crawled forward between the rows of broad-leaved plants. They were spaced a man’s height apart and the earth between them was soft and well tilled, Perhaps…

Lying on his side, Chimal scraped desperately with both hands at the loose soil, on a line between two of the plants. When he had scooped out a shallow, grave-like depression he crawled into it and threw the sand back over his legs and body. He would not be hidden from any close inspection, but the needle-tipped leaves reached over him and offered additional concealment Then he stopped, rigid, as voices called close by.

They were just two furrows away, a half a dozen men, shouting to each other and to someone still out of sight. Chimal could see their feet below the plants and their heads above.

“Ocotre was swollen like a melon from the water snake poison, I thought his skin would burst when they put him on the fire.”

“Chimal will burst when we turn him over to the priests—”

“Have you heard? Itzcoatl promises to torture him for an entire month before sacrificing him…”

“Only a month?” one of them asked as their voices faded from sight. My people are very fond of me, Chimal thought to himself, and smiled wryly up at the green leaf above his face. He would suck some of its juice as soon as they were gone.

Running footsteps sounded close by, coming directly toward him.

He lay, holding his breath, as they grew loud and a man shouted, right above the spot where he was hiding.

“I’m coming — I have the octli.”

It seemed impossible for him not to see Chimal lying there, and Chimal arched his fingers, ready to reach out and kill the man before he could cry for help. A sandal thudded close beside his head — then the man was gone, his footsteps dying away. He had been calling to the others and had never looked down. After this Chimal just lay there, his hands shaking, trying to force a way through the fog that clouded his thoughts, to make a coherent plan. Was there a way to enter the doorway in the rock? Coatlicue knew how to do it, but he shivered away from the idea of following close behind her or of hiding nearby in the rocks. That would be suicide. He reached up and tore a leaf from the maguey and, with one of its own thorns, he made thin slashes so the juice could run out. He licked at this and some time later he was still no closer to a solution to his problem than he had been when he began. The pain was ebbing from his arm and he was half dozing there in his bed of earth when he heard the hesitant shuffle of footsteps slowly coming near him.

Someone knew that he was here and was searching for him.

Cautiously, his fingers crept out and found a smooth stone that fitted neatly into his palm. He would not be easily taken back alive for that month of torture the priests had promised.

The man came into sight, bent low to take advantage of the concealment offered by the maguey plants and looking back over his shoulder as he went. Chimal wondered for a moment what this could mean — then realized that the man was escaping his duty in the swamp. Days of work in the fields had been lost already, and the man who did not work went hungry. This one was going off unseen to take care of his crops: in the confusion that existed in the swamp he would not be missed — and he was undoubtedly planning to return later in the afternoon.

As he came close Chimal saw that he was one of the lucky few in the valley who owned a corn knife made of iron. He held it loosely in one hand and when Chimal looked at it he had a sudden understanding of what he could use that knife for.

Without stopping to think it out he rose as the man passed him and struck out with the stone. The man turned, surprised, just as the stone struck him full in the side of the head. He fell limply to the ground and did not move again. When Chimal took the long, wide-bladed knife from his fingers he saw that the man was still breathing hoarsely. That was good: there had been enough killing. Bending just as low as the man from Zaachila had done he retraced his steps.

There was no one to be seen: the searchers must be deep into the swamp by now. Chimal wished them luck with the leeches and mosquitoes — though the priests were welcome to these discomforts, and perhaps some water snakes as well. Unseen, he slipped up the path between the rocks and once more found himself facing the apparently solid wall of rock.

Nothing had changed. The sun was higher now and flies buzzed about the dead snake. When he bent close he could see that the crack in the stone was still there.

What was inside — Coatlicue waiting?

That did not bear thinking about. He could die here, or he could die at her hands. Hers might even be a quicker death. This was a possible way out of the valley. He must see if he could use it.

The blade of the corn knife was too thick to be forced into the vertical cracks, but the gap below was wider, perhaps held open by the snake’s crushed body. He worked the blade in and pulled up on it. Nothing happened, the rock was still immobile rock. Then he tried pushing it in at different spots and levering harder: the results were the same. Yet Coatlicue was able to lift the rock door — why couldn’t he? He pushed deeper and tried again, and this time he felt something move. Harder now, harder, he pried up with all the strength of his legs. There was a loud crack and the knifeblade broke off in his hands. He staggered back, holding the worn wooden handle and looking in disbelief at the shining end of the metal stub.

This had to be the end. He was cursed by destruction and death, he saw that now. Because of him the first priest had died and the sun had not risen, he had caused trouble and pain and now he had even broken one of the irreplaceable tools that the people of the valley depended upon for survival. In an agony of self-contempt he jammed the remaining bit of blade under the door again — and heard excited voices on the path behind him.

Someone had found his spoor and had trailed him here. They were close and they would have him and he would be dead.

In anger and fear now he jabbed the broken stump into the crack, back and forth, hating everything. He felt a resistance to the blade and pushed harder, and something gave way. Then he had to fall back as a great table of rock, as thick as his body, swung silently out and away from the cliff.

Sitting there, all he could do was gape. A curved runnel stretched out of sight into the rock, carved from the solid stone. What lay beyond the curve was not visible.

Was Coatlicue waiting there for him? He had no time to think about it because the voices were closer now, just entering the crevice. Here was the exit he sought — why did he hesitate?

Still clutching the broken corn knife he fell through, scrambling on all fours. As he did this the rock door swung shut behind him as silently as it had opened. The sunlight diminished to a wedge, a crack, a hairline of light — then vanished.

Chimal turned, his heart beating louder than a sacrificial drum in his chest, to face the blackness there.

He took a single, hesitating step forward.