Aztec Blood

the conquest incinerated its library of picture-writing scrolls collected by the Aztec doctors.

'They feared what they did not understand and burned what they feared,' the fray once lamented.

Of course, failing herbal remedies, the ancient priests would have drilled into her skull and summoned the demon to leave.

The Healer was, of course, a tititl, a native doctor skilled in the use of herbs and chants; but unlike the Spanish herbalists called curanderos, a tititl used herbs, potions, and chants and magic ceremonies to heal. But that was the smallest part of the Healer's medical art. He had his own methods. At the moment he was whispering secret incantations into the woman's ears, designed to draw out her evil spirits.

While I know that the course of an illness, anymore than a life, is not determined by dice throws, we are from time to time engaged by demons. I have never confessed this to the fray, but I have seen people discourse with the devil; and it is an article of indio truth that fiends can spirit themselves into the brain through ears, nose, eyes, and mouth.

As I watched the old medicine man mouthing his sacred incantations, his lips brushed her ears. Suddenly, his eyes bulging, hand at his mouth, he jerked back. A writhing snake, which he'd sucked from her ear, thrashed in his teeth. The woman screamed, convulsing in his arms.

'Ahhhh!!!' rose from the crowd.

I dismissed it as legerdemain. The Healer had slipped a snake up his sleeve, then secreted it in his mouth. How could I think otherwise? I was by training and predilection a truth-teller. I'd studied Socrates; his disciple, Plato; and in my heart of hearts, I detested the mendacity surrounding me at every turn. I worshipped at Truth's Altar. Part of me wanted to roar with skepticism and expose him as a fraud. He was an indio puro, without power or protection. Yet I remained silent. Why, I do not know.

Then, as if reading my mind, his eyes picked me out amid all those faces in the crowd.

'Come here, boy.'

Everyone stared at me—even the yellow dog.

The next thing I knew, I was standing on the rock slab beside him.

'You do not believe I drew the snake from her head?'

I could have said nothing. Given the plethora of enemies I was rapidly accumulating, I didn't need anymore. Dissimulation was undoubtedly the better part of valor. Somehow I couldn't lie.

'You hid the snake in your mouth or hand,' I said evenly. 'It was a trick.'

The Healer's hold over the crowd snapped, and they began to hiss.

Still he was not chagrined. 'I see indio blood in your veins,' the old sage said, shaking his head sadly, 'but you favor your Spanish ancestry.'

'I favor knowledge over ignorance,' I said.

'The question is,' the old man said smiling, 'how much knowledge can a boy bear?'

Chanting quietly in Nahuatl, his hands passed over my eyes. Swaying, my face flushed fevishly, and my eyes teared. Breath whooshed out of me, and all my skepticism died.

I was especially taken by his eyes. Black, bottomless wells filled with world weariness and tacit understanding, they gripped me like a vise. Helpless in their gaze, they wrung everything from me, knew everything about me, my people, my past, my blood—before the conquistadors, before the Aztecs, before the Mayans, time immemorial, time out of mind.

Reaching for my crotch—as if he was about to grab my garrancha—he drew a long, black snake out of my pants, writhing and hissing and spitting. The crowd erupted into laughter.

TWENTY-SIX

After the crowd dispersed, I sat with him. Still dizzy from his magic spell, I now felt humbled. Handing me a piece of locust cake, a bit of maize, and a gourd of mango juice, he said gently, 'Never forswear your indio blood,' he told me. 'The Spanish think they subjugate our flesh with whips and swords, with guns and priests, but there is another, separate world beneath our feet, above our heads, and dwelling in our souls. In this blessed realm, the sword slays not, and the spirit holds sway. Before the Spaniards, before the indio trod the earth, before the earth itself was blasted and forged out of the void, these sacred shades wrapped us round, nourished our souls, and gave us form. Forever they cry to us, 'Respect! Respect!' Forsake your blood, grovel before the Spaniard's inane gods, spurn the specters of our hallowed pale, you do so at your peril. Their memories are long.'

He gave me a black stone—two fingers wide, one long and iron hard. One side glistened, a gleaming ebony mirror. Its interior glinted eerily, and I could feel myself falling into its lightless depths, as if its center were not mere rock but the pit itself—an infinite abyss, eternal as time, its heart the heart of an ancient star.

'Our indio ancestors traversed the stars,' he said, 'were the stars and carried in their hearts star-stones that foreordained our fate—all fate. Look into the smoking mirror, boy.'

I was no longer of this earth but staring into a world before light and time. My hand trembled at its touch.

'It is yours,' he said.

He had given me a piece of a star.

I dropped to my knees... overwhelmed.

'It is your tonal, your destiny, to have it.'

'I am not worthy.'

'Really? You have not asked what you must give in exchange.'

'All I have are two reales.'

His palm passed over mine without touching it, and the money vanished as if it had never been.

'The gift is immaterial. In the heart the blessing dwells, and your heart harbors the gods.'

TWENTY-SEVEN

I found Fray Antonio under the tree where we had set up camp. I told him of my experience with the Healer, including the snake concealed in my loins. He was singularly unimpressed.

'Describe to me what happened—every detail.'

I told him of the Healer's incantation, his hand sweeping by my face, my feeling of being both elated and dizzy—

'Ha! Your head went around in circles, you almost lost your balance, your eyes watered, your nose itched, you felt wonderful.'

'Si! From his incantation!'

'It was yoyotli, a powder that Aztec priests used to subdue sacrificial victims. Cortes first learned of it during the battle for Tenochtitlan, when he saw his indio allies, who had been captured by the Aztecs, singing and dancing on their way up temple steps where priests would rip out their hearts. Earlier the prisoners had been given a drink called obsidian knife water, a concoction made from cocoa, the blood of sacrifice victims, and a debilitating drug. Before they mounted the steps to the top, yoyotli dust was thrown in their face. Yoyotli makes one have visions. It is said that the warriors to be sacrificed not only went willingly but thought they were in the arms of the gods.'

He explained that it was a trick known by enchanters. 'Your 'Healer' had a little of it in his pocket. When he chants his incantations, he sweeps his hand in front of you so the dust flies in your face.'

'No, I saw nothing.'

'Of course. Only a tiny bit of dust is necessary. You were not going to be sacrificed. He just needed to stun you a little, weaken your mind, so you believed everything he told you.'

'But he gave me the heart of a star!'

'Chico, Chico,' the fray tapped his temple, 'what have I taught you? Do you really think he steals stars from the sky? Or that he flew down to earth with Andromeda in his hand?'

I examined the black stone with the polished side.

'It is a shadow mirror,' the fray said, 'obsidian from a volcano, burnished until it blazes with a deep gloss. The indio magicians tell fools it foretells their tonal, their fate. If one breaks, they peddle the pieces to other idiots, saying they sell them the hearts of stars. You could buy mountains of them for a reale—or gather them by the wagonful on volcanic slopes. What did you offer the fraud for it?'

'Nothing,' I lied.

The Healer was not at the stone slab, nor the spot where he robbed me of my dinero. I went looking where