The land became drier, the lakes forgotten behind us, and the ground deepening into valleys and hills, with grass and conifers gradually replacing the sparse marsh vegetation.
Neutemoc didn't speak much. From time to time, he'd point out a place, and say things such as, 'This is where we fought the first Chalca regiments.' But he was again sunk into that melancholy mood he'd shown in Chalco, reliving the past and the carefree days of his youth.
Towards mid-afternoon, we reached Amecameca, a small town nestled at the foot of a hill. Neutemoc pointed to the heights above us. 'That's the place,' he said. 'The hill of Our Mother.'
I craned my neck. At the top of the hill was a small, ornate adobe building with red flags: a shrine to Teteoinan, Mother of the Gods.
'We took it sixteen years ago,' Neutemoc was saying. 'A hardfought battle.'
'That's where Eleuia buried her child?' I asked.
'You'll see,' Neutemoc said.
It was a small hill, dwarfed by the much larger volcanoes behind it. The ascent wasn't long. A steady flow of pilgrims came from Amecameca to make their offerings at the shrine: peasants, with their hands full of maize and feathers, and a procession of merchants leading a woman slave in a white cotton tunic, who would be sacrificed to the goddess.
Neutemoc stopped halfway up the hill, on a grassy knoll. Not knowing what else to do, we stopped as well.
'Let's see,' he said. He closed his eyes for a moment, and a fleeting expression of nostalgia crossed his face. 'That way,' he said.
He walked to a place in the middle of the knoll, and stopped. 'Here.'
'You're sure?' I asked. Not that I disbelieved him. But still, it had been sixteen years.
Neutemoc pointed to a handful of rocks, arranged in a circular pattern. 'I remember those.' He knelt, rummaged within the grass, and gave a small grunt of triumph. 'Her marker's still here.'
Eleuia's marker was a small rock, engraved with two fragmentary glyphs: one for 'water', and one that might have been 'blessing' or 'luck'. They looked much like the ones she'd tried to draw in the Floating Gardens – while she was held captive by the beast of shadows, waiting for those who would torture her and push her into the lake. Odd. It wasn't any spell I recognised; and no magic that I could see hung over the tomb.
I turned to Palli. 'Can I see the contents of that pack?'
The young offering priest smiled. 'Of course, Acatl-tzin.'
He'd brought many things: obsidian blades, herbs to heal wounds, to curse a man; a variety of containers for blood, their shapes ranging from eagles with an open beak to chac-mools, small men holding a blood-stained bowl in their outstretched hands. Among them, I finally found what I was looking for: a small, pointed shovel, which I withdrew from the pack. 'Thank you.'
'Do you need help, Acatl-tzin?' Ezamahual asked.
I shook my head. 'There's only one shovel, and it's not a large grave. I'll work faster if I do it alone.' I whispered a brief prayer to Mictlantecuhtli and to the Duality for what I was about to do – disturb the rest of an innocent child – and hoped They'd understand, if not forgive.
I hoped my instincts didn't turn out wrong about this.
It was harder than I'd thought: the ground was mostly rocks, mixed with a little soil. I had to go carefully in order not to break the bones, which would be small and fragile. Neutemoc had stepped away with a stern, disapproving face, and didn't offer any help.
At last, I overturned something that was neither earth nor rocks: a cloth with faded colours, sewn closed at both ends. I withdrew it from the hole, and brushed the earth from its folds, gently. Then, using one of my obsidian knives, I sliced through the threads.
Small, yellowed things spilled into my hands: the pathetic, familiar remnants of someone who hadn't had a chance at life.
'Bones,' Palli whispered, by my side.
Yes, bones. But they felt wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong. They were the right shape, they had the right touch. But my skin was crawling, and the longer I held them the more ill at ease I felt.
'Neutemoc?' I asked.
My brother turned, saw what I was holding. 'You've found what you wanted,' he said, flatly.
No. I hadn't. They were wrong, subtly wrong, but I couldn't see why.
'You were with her when she buried the child?' I asked.
'Yes,' Neutemoc said. His gaze said, 'I told you it was a waste of time.'
'Did she do anything particular?' The bones were still in my hand, and everything in me wanted to throw them down.
'Particular?' Neutemoc looked at me as if I were mad. 'No,' he said. 'She sewed them in that cloth, buried them, and carved the marker.'
'That's all?' I asked. What was wrong with those bones?
Neutemoc said nothing for a while. 'She went into a cave to say a prayer to the Duality,' he said. 'The same one where she gave birth.'
'A cave?' I laid the bones down in the clothes. The uneasy feeling on my skin abated, but didn't cease. Nausea welled up in me, sharp, demanding – I struggled to focus through it.
A cave was a good shelter to give birth in with impunity, especially in this arid country. And praying to the Duality for a child wasn't extraordinary, since They watched over the souls of babies. But the Duality was worshipped in the open air, or on pyramid temples. I'd never heard of such a temple in a cave.
I took the baby's bones and wrapped them back into their cloth. 'Can you take us to the cave?' I asked.
• • • •
It was further away than Neutemoc remembered: we had to go down the hill to another one. Shelves of rock rose around us as we trudged on the steep path. The air was cold, crisp with a bitter tang that insinuated itself into my bones.
The cave had a small entrance, half-obscured by a fall of debris. Faded paint stretched on both sides, and
