I recalled the strange, hulking form that had chased me, how its movements had not seemed quite human. ‘You said “or something”. What makes you think…’ My voice faltered at the look on the man’s face, the widening of his eyes, the slight slackness of his mouth and cheeks that betrayed the horror he felt.
He hesitated before speaking again, and when he did open his mouth it was to whisper in a confidential tone, as though he did not want his children to overhear him. ‘I don’t know what it is. I haven’t seen it, but the ones who have, or who’ve heard it moving about… they don’t think it’s a man.’
‘What do they think it is, then?’
‘How should I know?’ His voice became hoarse with strain. ‘I don’t know if it’s a water monster, an ahuitzotl, or something worse, but from what I’ve heard… It moves wrong, it’s too big, it’s the wrong shape, and the one man who thinks he saw it up close – before he ran for his life, that is – he told me it doesn’t have a face.’
2
I left the fisherman squatting disconsolately on a bank at the water’s edge, picking at the severed strands of net and trying to splice them while his children ate his lunch. The only other thing I learned from them was that so far as anyone knew, whatever man or monster was prowling among the rushes had so far only ever struck at night.
I assumed a fish-thief, whether human or not, would be driven by hunger: a motive I could easily understand. But what reason could he or it have for sinking a canoe? That looked like an act of pure spitefulness – unless, of course, the fisherman had been right, and the intention was to scare people away from the neighbourhood.
‘Why would anyone do such a thing?’ I asked myself, but the answer was, unfortunately, all too obvious. Whoever or whatever lay behind the reports the chief minister and my elder brother had told me about was hiding out in the marshes, and the fewer people there were about, the less chance he had of being found. So this was no petty thief or vandal. There was a purpose behind what had happened: a purpose which evidently involved me. I, like the fisherman, was afraid of something that had appeared at night and had not seemed human, and it was hard to believe this was a coincidence. ‘Why me?’ The last thought came with a rush of self-pity. ‘As if I haven’t got enough to worry about!’
I needed to decide where to go next. I thought of returning straight away to Lily in Tlatelolco, but there was somewhere else I had to go first. I had to find out what had happened at the shrine and to Handy and the others guarding the grave. Once I was out of the marshes and able to think of something other than my own immediate peril, I began to be afraid that whatever had attacked us all might have finished them off before coming after me. ‘Maybe there wasn’t time for that, though,’ I told myself hopefully. ‘If it was really me he was after, maybe he left them alone.’
I returned to the centre of Handy’s parish in the middle of the morning, to find it busier than I would have expected, its paths and canals choked by a chattering throng, nearly all commoners to judge by their haircuts and plain dress. I fell in with them readily enough, as they seemed to be heading in the same direction as I was – towards the plaza in front of the temple where we had buried Star, and where the parish’s marketplace would be – but it surprised me to find them here now, with sun so high. Most traders and their customers would have arrived before dawn, and there was something in the way some of them walked, the men taking long, rapid steps and women tugging impatiently at the children’s hands, that told me whatever they were after, it was not just cheap cloth or dried chillies.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked an old man hobbling arthritically in the crowd’s wake. ‘Where’s everyone going?’
He glowered at me. He probably thought he needed all his breath for walking and resented having to waste any of it on some tramp who looked and smelled as though he had been sleeping rough for a month. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ he wheezed.
‘No, I only just got here.’
‘Then it’s probably none of your business.’ He kept his eyes on the people in front. ‘But a man had to bury his wife here last night, and there was a lot of running about and shouting at daybreak, so work it out for yourself.’
I stopped, staring at him in astonishment. ‘What happened?’ I demanded. ‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘If I knew that I wouldn’t have to go and look now, would I?’ he responded irritably. ‘But what I heard was, the body was stolen and two of the men guarding it have disappeared.’
‘Two of them?’ I yelped, but I was too late: he was still going and I was speaking to the back of his neck.
But it was obvious enough what had happened. I shut my eyes then, as if that could keep at bay the horror I felt creeping towards me. For all our and the women’s care, someone had interfered with the body. And assuming I was one of the two who had supposedly vanished, then it seemed as though my attacker might have claimed
