Obsidian & Blood

  Ahead, the circle shimmered – broken still. I couldn't see Palli, but the three darker silhouettes shimmering with magic were presumably Mihmatini, Moquihuix-tzin and Nezahual-tzin. I passed them by – a hair breadth's away, and I thought they would turn, or feel me, but they were too engrossed in flinging magic at each other.

  I trudged on – only walking mattered, step after tottering step, ignoring the dead and their twisted faces, ignoring the memory of Matlaelel's blood-filled eyes. When my feet finally met the edge of the circle, it felt like a miracle, like a god's blessing descended to me, who had least deserved it.

  I knelt in the dirt, and rubbed open the previous slash across my palm – there was a slight stinging pain, such as when I made an offering to the gods, and then blood flowed again.

  The faces in the dust hovered closer – it shouldn't have been possible, but they were pressing against me, their mouths opening as if to taste my blood. If they did so – I didn't even want to think about it. Blood was many things, among which an entry point into the body – and the illness, carried through my veins, would surely kill me as it had killed Matlaelel.

  There was no time for finesse – I rubbed at the wound again, feeling it open further, the blood greedily pouring out – and tottered across the circle, trying to seal it shut before the plague faces could touch me – I could feel their foul breath on my skin, smell the dry, musty smell of their approach, like fire-crinkled mummies suddenly springing to life…

  Step after step after step – the circle grew wider and wider, and it was almost complete…

  The woman with the cut-up face was a finger's width away from my bleeding hand. I could see her body now, pulling itself out of the morass of faces, her arms and legs covered in similar wounds, her breasts hacked away and a pulsing mass of blood between her legs….

  Almost there… The words of the hymn welled up as irrepressibly as the blood, spilling out into the Fifth World as the woman's teeth brushed my skin.

'Above us, below us,

The heavens, the place of heat

Above us, below us,

The region of the fleshless, the land of mystery…'

  I felt the plague, coursing within my body – the pressure in my veins and arteries, travelling to my heart and liver – my vision blurred and became red, and my body shook, and I was on my knees, struggling to remain standing…

'The path out of the Fifth World, into the city of the Dead

The city where the streets are on the left, where the houses have no windows…'

  Dark green light washed across the pattern – starting at the circle and rising like an unstoppable tide as the sounds of battle receded and became a lament for the Dead, and the stretched emptiness of Mictlan expanded, shrivelling my heart a fraction of a moment before the rising tide of blood caused it to burst.

  And then everything went blessedly dark.

There was dust in my eyes and a gritty taste in my mouth, but the air smelled wrong – too wet and scorching to be that of the underworld. I lay on something hard and unyielding, feeling the Dead passing through me – hearing, like a distant mumble, their endless prayer to Lord Death:

  'Not forever on Earth, but for a little while

  Even jade crumbles, even gold is crushed

  Not forever on Earth, but for a little while…'

  Hands held me down – stroking me like a mother stroked her child – there was something wrong with them, but I couldn't remember what…

  Everywhere they touched, fire blazed – not the conflagration of war, but rather that of a funeral pyre, tightening and drying flesh, shrivelling bones. Something impossibly heavy was tightening around my chest, squeezing my lungs until it hurt to breathe – and before the flames, the last touch of the fever on my mind receded, crushed into utter insignificance; there was nothing left but a familiar, stretched emptiness in my bones and sinews.

  I opened eyes gummed with secretions, struggling to form anything from the blurred darkness around me. But I knew, or suspected, what I would be seeing.

  'My Lady. My Lord.'

  The hand on my arm had the sharpness of finger bones, and a skeletal face swam in and out of focus – Mictecacihuatl, Lady Death, Her grin the wide one of skulls – and behind Her, looming out of the darkness, Her husband Mictlantecuhtli, fingering the bloody eyes of his necklace.

  'Acatl. What a surprise.'

  My vision was returning, little by little – I stood on the dais of bones that marked Their seat of power; below me was a sea of pallid souls, ghostly hands lifting up the offerings that had been buried with them, from sewing tools to toys, from macuahitl swords to fragments of weaving looms. A cold wind blew through them all and lifted up the faint, translucent shapes of bodies to face the gaze of the gods, under which they seemed to shrivel and vanish.

  Mictlan. The deepest level of the underworld – no, wait. If I focused enough, I could hear the sounds of battle, the cries of ahuizotls, and Acamapichtli's sarcastic laughter. 'I stand on the boundaries,' I whispered.

  The underworld wavered, in and out of focus; the bare outline of the courtyard began to appear again, with the shadowy shapes of ahuizotls leaping onto the beaten earth. I banished it with an effort, to focus on the scene before me – my gods required no less than my full attention.

  'Of course you stand on the boundaries. You always have,' Mictecacihuatl said, shaking Her head.

  'I – ' Everywhere I turned, I saw only the Dead – an innumerable crowd flowing from the shadows of ruined buildings – the furthest ones mingling together like the waters of some great rivers, their faces receding into