Aztec

who will take you even more quickly by sea.'

So that is what Zyanya and I did. Had I been traveling alone, I would not have been so particular about choosing an easy route. However, I was to discover that the girl was a hardy traveling companion. She never spoke a word of complaint about bad weather, about camping in the open, about eating cold food or none, about being surrounded by wilderness or wild beasts. But that first trip outbound was an agreeable and leisurely one. It was a single day's journey, a pleasant stroll, down the flat riverside plains to the port of Nozibe. That name means only Salty, and the 'port' was only a scattering of palm-leaf roofs on poles, where the fishermen could sit in shade. The beach was littered with swathes of netting spread for drying or mending; there were dugout canoes coming or going through the breakers, or drawn up on the sand.

I found a fisherman who, rather reluctantly, admitted that he had occasionally visited the Zyu stretch of the coast, and had sometimes supplemented his own catch by purchasing some of theirs, and spoke a smattering of their language. 'But they only grudgingly allow me to call,' he warned. 'A totally unknown foreigner would approach at his own peril.' I had to offer an extravagant price before he would agree to paddle us along the shore to that country and back, and to interpret for me there—if I was given any chance to say anything. Meanwhile, Zyanya had found an unoccupied palm shelter and spread on the soft sand the blankets we had brought from the inn, and we slept that night chastely far apart.

We pushed off at dawn. The boat stayed close inshore, just clear of the line of breaking water, and the boatman paddled in morose silence while Zyanya and I chatted gaily, pointing out to each other the jeweled sights of the landward scenery. The stretches of beach were like powdered silver prodigally spilled between the turquoise sea and the emerald coconut palms, from which frequently burst flocks of ruby and gold birds. As we progressed westward, however, the bright sand gradually darkened through gray to black, and beyond the green palms reared a range of volcanoes. Some of them smoked sullenly. Violent eruptions and earthquakes, Zyanya said, were frequent occurrences along that coast.

In midafternoon our boatman broke his silence. 'There is the Zyu village at which I call,' and he waved with his oar, as our canoe turned toward a huddle of huts on the black beach.

'No!' Zyanya exclaimed, suddenly and excitedly. 'You told me, Zaa, that I might remember other things my father said. And I do! He mentioned the mountain that walks in the water!'

'What?'

She pointed ahead of the boat's prow. About one-long-run beyond the Zyu village, the black sands ended abruptly at a formidable crag of mountain, an outcrop of the range inland. It stood like a wall across the beach and extended far into the ocean. Even from our distance I could see, through my crystal, plumes and spouts of seawater dashing nigh and white against the mountain's skirts of giant boulders.

'See the great rocks the mountain has shed!' said Zyanya. 'That is the place of the purple! That is where we must go!'

I corrected her, 'That is where I must go, my girl.'

'No,' said the boatman, shaking his head. 'The village is dangerous enough.'

I took up my maquahuitl and held it where he could see it, and I thumbed its edge of obsidian, and I said, 'You will put the girl ashore here. Tell the villagers that she is not to be molested, that we will return for her before dark. Then you and I will make for the mountain that walks in the water.'

He grumbled and predicted dire things, but he turned through the surf to the shore. I assumed that the Zyu men were out fishing, for only a few women emerged from the huts as we grounded. They were filthy creatures, bare-breasted and barefooted, wearing only ragged skirts, and they listened to what the boatman told them, and they gave ugly looks to the pretty girl being stranded among them, but they made no untoward movement as long as I had them in sight. I was not happy about leaving Zyanya there, but it was preferable to taking her farther into peril.

When the boatman and I were out from the shore again, even a landsman like myself could see that any landing on the seaward slope of the mountain was impossible. Its rubble of boulders, many of them as big as the smaller palaces of Tenochtitlan, extended forbiddingly far about it. The ocean broke among those rocks into vertical cliffs and towers and columns of white water. Those lifted incredibly high, and hung there poised, and then tumbled down with a roar like all the thunders of Tlaloc booming at once, and then slithered to sea again, making whirlpools that gulped and sucked so powerfully that even a few of the house-sized boulders could be seen to shake.

The ocean's turmoil extended so far that it took all the boatman's skill to bring us safely to the beach just east of the mountain. But he did it, and, when we had dragged the dugout up the sand out of reach of the tumultuous surf, when we had finished coughing and spitting out the salt water we had swallowed, I sincerely congratulated him:

'If you can so bravely best that vicious sea, you have little to fear from any of these contemptible Zyu.'

That seemed to embolden him to some degree, so I gave him my spear to carry and motioned for him to follow me. We strode along the beach to the mountain wall and found a slope we could climb. That brought us to the ridge of the mountain about halfway between sea level and its summit, and from the ridge we could see uninterrupted beach continue on the westward side. But we turned left along the ridge until we stood on the promontory above that spreading fringe of great rocks and the fury of great waters. I was at the place of which Zyanya's father had spoken, but it seemed an unlikely place to find a precious purple dye—or fragile snails, for that matter.

What I did find was a group of five men climbing the ridge toward us from the direction of the ocean. They were obviously Zyu priests, for they were as unwashed, tangle-haired, and slovenly as any Mexica priests, with the added inelegance that they wore not ragged robes but ragged animal skins, whose rancid smell reached us before the men did. They all five looked unfriendly, and when the foremost barked something in his native language, it sounded unfriendly.

'Tell them and tell them quickly,' I said to my boatman, 'that I come offering gold to buy some of their purple dye.'

Before he could speak, one of the men grunted, 'No need him. I talk enough Loochi. I priest of Tiat Ndik, Sea God, and this his place. You die for put foot here.'

I tried to convey, in the simplest Loochi words, that I would not have intruded on holy terrain if I could have made my proposal in any other place or manner. I begged his indulgence of my presence and his consideration of my offer. Though his four subordinates continued to glare at me murderously, the chief priest seemed slightly mollified by my obsequious approach. At any rate, his next threat on my life was not quite so blunt:

'You go away now, Yellow Eye, maybe you go alive.'

I tried to suggest that, since I had already profaned those holy precincts, it would take only a little longer for us to exchange my gold for his purple.

He said, 'Purple holy for Sea God. No price can buy.' And he repeated, 'You go away now, maybe you go alive.'

'Very well. But before I go, would you at least satisfy my curiosity? What do snails have to do with the purple dye?'

'Chachi?' He echoed the Loochi word for snails, uncomprehending, and turned for interpretation to my boatman, who was perceptibly quaking with fright.

'Ah, the ndik diok,' said the priest, enlightened. He hesitated, then turned and beckoned for me to follow. The boatman and the other four Zyu stayed atop the ridge while the chief priest and I clambered down toward the sea. It was a long descent, and the thundering walls and spouts of white water broke higher and higher around us, and showered a drizzle of cold spume down upon us. But we came at last into a sheltered depression among the massive boulders, and in it was a pool where the water merely sloshed back and forth, while the rest of the ocean boomed and pounded outside.

'Holy place of Tiat Ndik,' said the priest. 'Where the god lets us hear his voice.'

'His voice?' I said. 'You mean the ocean's noise?'

'His voice!' the man insisted. 'To hear, must put head under.'

Not taking my eyes off him and keeping my maquahuitl at the ready, I knelt and lowered my head until I had one ear under the sloshing water. At first I could hear my own heart making a pulse beat in my ear, and that is an eerie sound, but then there came a much stranger one, beginning softly but getting louder. It could have been someone whistling under the water—if anyone could whistle under water—and whistling a melody more subtle than any earthly musician could play. Even now, I cannot liken it to any other sound I ever heard in my life. I later