‘Who are you? How did you get here?’ The voice sounded like a child’s: a little girl’s. I replied with a grunt.
‘You’re not drunk, are you?’
If I could have summoned up the energy then, I would have shouted at her to go away and leave me in peace. All I managed was another grunt.
‘My brother said he thought you might be sleeping it off. I said I thought you might be ill.’
I forced myself to turn over and open my eyes. The pale blue of a late morning sky and the bright light of the sun shining between tall stems made me squint.
‘But my brother said he’d go and get the parish police, because they’ll have you beaten to death. That’s what happens if they find you drunk. I know, my dad told me.’
It took a moment for the girl’s words to penetrate my fogged, aching head, but when they did they were enough to jerk me at last into wakefulness. I did not need the girl to tell me what would be done to a commoner found drunk in public without a lawful excuse. It had happened to me once. I had been hauled off to the emperor’s notorious Cuauhcalco prison and had barely escaped with my life. I sat up with a cry of terror.
‘No!’ I yelped.
The girl leaped backward in surprise. She looked to be about seven or eight, old enough to wear a blouse and skirt, both of which had evidently been made up out of material cut out of larger garments and roughly sewn together and patched.
I glanced around anxiously. ‘Your brother – Where is he now?’
‘Over there. I dared him to come and wake you up but he wouldn’t. He’s scared.’
‘Nothing to be scared of,’ I declared hastily. There was a boy of about ten in a short cloak and breechcloth peering nervously at me from between two rushes. He appeared to be ready to bolt if I threatened him. ‘I’m harmless, really. I wouldn’t hurt a beetle.’ I smiled ruefully. ‘That’s even if I had the strength to! And I’m not drunk.’ I hesitated before adding the unavoidable question. ‘Er… that doesn’t mean I have any idea where I am, though. I sort of got lost. Can you tell me?’
The girl looked at me through eyes that had suddenly narrowed with suspicion. ‘This is Atlixco, of course. Or at least the wetlands belonging to it. How come you don’t know that?’
So I had gone around almost in a circle, ending up not far from where I had set out. Blundering aimlessly through darkened streets, it would have been easy to do. At least I had saved myself a long walk back.
With the memory of how I had come to be here came all the other things that had happened in the night: the funeral procession, the terror that had snatched me and the other men from sleep, the chase across the darkened city; all that, and the knowledge that whatever monster had been after me, it had known my name. I had not just been another unfortunate caught out of doors at night, at the mercy of ghosts and malicious spirits. I had been the thing’s intended quarry. But what had it been? What little I had seen of my pursuer had not looked human; and as Handy had pointed out, the captain, whatever else he might be, was a man. Or had he somehow been transformed – by sorcery or by the will of a god – into something else?
‘Who were you?’ I whispered. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ I was struck by another grim thought. It was too much of a coincidence for my follower and me to have encountered each other by chance, at night, in a part of the city I had not been to lately. But where had he – he or it – picked up my trail? At Handy’s house? At the shrine? Earlier?
‘What are you talking about?’ asked the girl. ‘Are you sure you’re not drunk?’
‘Quite sure. I don’t suppose you have any food?’
‘He has,’ she said, tossing her head to indicate her brother. ‘We were taking our father his lunch, because he forgot it again. But my brother won’t share it with you, because father will tie him up and stick cactus spines in him if there’s any missing.’ I considered offering to buy some, thinking a bagful of cocoa beans would be enough to deflect her father’s anger, but then I remembered I had no money.
‘Never mind.’ I stood up. ‘Where is your father now?’
I did not want to scare the children off by telling them what had happened to me but I asked them whether they had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. They had not, but as the girl, whose name was Xochiyotl – ‘Heart of a Flower’ – pointed out, they had only just come out from the city. Their father was more likely to be able to help me, having been fishing at the edge of the lake since before dawn.
We found him where the rushes thinned out and gave way to open water, forlornly inspecting his mostly empty nets. At the sound of our approach, the splashing and slurping noises our feet made and rustle of tall stems being pushed aside, he whirled around as though in fear of being attacked from behind.
I saw a solid looking man in a frayed and soiled breechcloth. When he first caught sight of us his eyes widened in shock, but they quickly narrowed with anger. His first words were to me: ‘Who are you? Where did you find these two?’
‘Well, it was more the other way round…’ He was not listening to me. He had already turned on his children, scolding
