news of occurrences since you left. Now shall we enjoy—?'
'You wait!' I said fiercely, clutching the shoulder knot of his mantle. 'You walking fragment of Mictlan's darkness! Tell me the rest! What became of Tzitzitlini? What did you mean about that gift having come from her?'
'She bequeathed to you the entire sum she received—and Ahuitzotl paid a handsome price—when she sold herself to his menagerie here in Tenochtitlan. She would not or could not tell whence she came or who she was, so she was popularly known as the tapir woman.'
Except that I still clutched his shoulder, I might have fallen. For a moment, everything and everybody about me disappeared, and I was looking down a long tunnel of memory. I saw again the Tzitzitlini I had so adored: she of the lovely face and shapely form and willowy movement. Then I saw that revolting immobile object in the menagerie of monstrosities, and I saw myself vomiting at the horror of it, and I saw the single sorrowful tear trickling from its one eye.
My voice sounded hollow in my ears, as if I really did stand in a long tunnel, when I said accusingly, 'You knew. Vile old man, you knew before Red Heron ever confessed. And you made me stand before her—and you mentioned the woman I had just lain with—and you asked me how would I like to'—I choked, nearly vomiting again at the recollection.
'It is good that you got to see her one last time,' he said, with a sigh. 'She died not long after. Mercifully, in my opinion, though Ahuitzotl was most annoyed, having paid so prodigally....'
My vision returned to me, and I found that I was violently shaking the man and saying rather insanely, 'I could never have eaten tapir meat in the jungle if I had known. But you knew all the time. How did you know?'
He did not answer. He only said blandly, 'It was believed that the tapir woman could not move that mass of bloated flesh. But somehow she toppled over, face forward, so that her tapir snout could not breathe, and she suffocated to death.'
'Well, it is now your turn to perish, you accursed foreseer of evils!' I think I was out of my mind with grief and revulsion and rage. 'You will go back to the Mictlan you came from!' And I shoved into the throng of banquet guests, only dimly hearing him say:
'The menagerie keepers still insist that the tapir woman could not have died without assistance. She was young enough to have lived in that cage for many, many more years—'
I found Blood Glutton and rudely interrupted his conversation with his soldier friends: 'I have need of a weapon, and no time to fetch one from our lodgings. Are you carrying your dagger?'
He reached under his mantle to the back binding of his loincloth, and said, with a hiccup, 'Are you to do the carving of the deer meat?'
'No,' I said. 'I want to kill somebody.'
'So early in the party?' He brought out the short obsidian blade and squinted to see me better. 'Are you killing anyone I know?'
I said no again. 'Only a nasty little man. Brown and wrinkled as a cacao bean. Small loss to anybody.' I reached out my hand. 'Please, the dagger.'
'Small loss!' Blood Glutton exclaimed, and withheld the knife. 'You would assassinate the Uey-Tlatoani of Texcoco? Mixtli, you must be as drunk as the proverbial four hundred rabbits!'
'Assuredly somebody is!' I snapped. 'Cease your babbling and give me the blade!'
'Never. I saw the brown man when he arrived, and I recognize that particular disguise.' Blood Glutton tucked the knife away again. 'He honors us with his presence, even if he chooses to do it in mummery. Whatever your fancied grievance, boy, I will not let you—'
'Mummery?' I said. 'Disguise?' Blood Glutton had spoken coolly enough to cool me somewhat.
One of the soldier guests said, 'Perhaps only we who have often campaigned with him are aware of it. Nezahualpili likes sometimes to go about thus, so he may observe his fellows at their own level, not from the dais of a throne. Those of us who have known him long enough to recognize him do not remark on it.'
'You are all lamentably sodden,' I said. 'I know Nezahualpili too, and I know, for one thing, that he has all his teeth.'
'A dab of oxitl to blacken two or three of them,' said Blood Glutton, with another hiccup. 'Lines of oxitl to feign wrinkles on a face darkened by walnut oil. And he has a talent for making his body appear crabbed and wizened, his hands gnarled like those of a very old man....'
'But really he needs no masks or contortions,' said the other. 'He can simply sprinkle himself with dust of the road and seem a total stranger.' The soldier hiccuped in his turn and suggested, 'If you must slay a Revered Speaker tonight, young lord host, go after Ahuitzotl, and oblige all the rest of the world as well.'
I went away from them, feeling somewhat foolish and confused, on top of all my other feelings of anguish and anger and—well, they were many and tumultuous....
I went looking again for the man who was Nezahualpili—or a sorcerer, or an evil god—no longer intending to knife him but to wring from him the answers to a great many more questions. I could not find him. He was gone, and so was my appetite for the banquet and the company and the merriment. I slipped out of The House of Pochtea and went back to the hostel and began packing into a small bag only the essentials I would need for traveling. Tzitzi's little figurine of the love goddess Xochiquetzal came to my hand, but my hand flinched away as if it had been red hot. I did not put it into the bag.
'I saw you leave and I followed you,' said young Cozcatl from the doorway of my room. 'What has happened? What are you doing?'
I said, 'I have no heart to tell of all that has happened, but it seems to be common gossip. You will hear it soon enough. And because of it I am going away for a time.'
'May I come with you?'
'No.'
His eager face fell, so I said, 'I think it best that I be alone for some while, to plan what is to become of the rest of my life. And I am not now leaving you a defenseless and masterless slave, as you once feared. You are your own master, and a rich one. You will have your share of our fortune, as soon as the elders convey it. I charge you to keep safe my share, and these other belongings of mine, until I return.'
'Of course, Mixtli.'
'Blood Glutton will be moving from his former barracks quarters. Perhaps you and he can buy or build a house—or a house apiece. You can resume your studies or take up some craft or set up in some business. And I will be back again, sometime. If you and our old protector still have the spirit for traveling, we can make other journeys together.'
'Sometime,' he said sadly, then squared his shoulders. 'Well, for this abrupt departure of yours, can I help you prepare?'
'Yes, you can. In my shoulder bag and in the purse sewn into my loincloth I will carry an amount of small currency for expenses. But I also want to carry gold, in case I should come upon some exceptional find—and I wish to carry that gold dust secreted where any bandits will not easily find it.'
Cozcatl thought for a moment and said, 'Some travelers melt their dust into nuggets, and hide those in their rectum.'
'A trick every robber knows too well. No, my hair has grown long, and I think I can make use of it. See, I have emptied all my quills of gold dust onto this cloth. Make a tidy packet of it, Cozcatl, and let us devise some way to secure it on the back of my neck, like a poultice, hidden by my hair.'
While I finished packing my bag, he folded the cloth meticulously over and over. It made a pliant wad no bigger than one of his own small hands, but it was so heavy that he needed both his hands to lift it. I sat and bowed my head and he laid it across my nape.
'Now, to make it stay...' he muttered. 'Let me see...'
He fixed it in place with a stout cord tied to each end of the packet, run behind my ears and across the top of my head. That was further secured and hidden by my putting a folded cloth across my forehead, like the band of a tumpline, and tying it at the back. Many travelers wore such things to keep their hair and sweat out of their eyes.
'It is quite invisible, Mixtli, unless the wind blows. But then you can always make a cowl of your mantle.'
'Yes. Thank you, Cozcatl. And'—I said it quickly; I had no wish to linger—'good-bye for now.'
I had no fear of the Weeping Woman or the many other malevolent presences haunting the darkness to
