‘You didn’t get a good look at him?’ I asked anxiously.
The answer was interrupted by a loud yell from Kite as the three local men heaved him onto the blanket. Quail whispered some reassuring words to him; the two must have been old friends.
‘No,’ the young man said mournfully. ‘It was all too quick. I don’t know that he was moving that fast, but he obviously knows how to keep hidden. I didn’t see anyone until I ran into these people.’
‘We were gathering stone dung at the edge of the city,’ Quail’s daughter said. ‘Father says it’s as far out as we dare go at the moment, with the demon roaming about.’ I realised they must be desperate. Gathering scum from the lake’s surface was always a disagreeable, slimy job, and it required particular care the edge of the city because of all the jars of poisonous whitewash that got emptied into the water. ‘I had my throwing stick just in case I had a chance to catch a bird. We’ve not had meat or fish lately.’
‘You didn’t see anyone else at all?’ I asked.
‘Only others like us. Mostly old people stooped over the water.’ Quail and his comrades lifted Kite off the ground and began carrying him slowly in the direction of the city.
‘Wait a moment!’ Spotted Eagle cried. ‘What about my mother? We can’t leave her here!’
‘And Red Macaw,’ I added. ‘He died. He’s in this hole too!’
Quail did not look back. ‘They’re already dead,’ he said indifferently. ‘Let’s see if we can keep Kite alive. Then we’ll worry about them.’
10
Dusk had fallen by the time Spotted Eagle and I had made it back to his father’s house. Quail and the others had gone directly to the parish hall, while Heart of a Flower ran to find a curer. I hoped it would not be Cactus.
As we trudged wearily through the entrance to the courtyard, Lily came out and ran towards us. She stopped suddenly within a few paces of where we stood, and the whites of her eyes showed plainly as they widened with shock.
‘Yaotl!’ she gasped. ‘What happened? You’re hurt!’
‘What?’ I looked down and noticed that I was covered in blood. It soaked my breechcloth and cloak and was smeared over my belly and legs. The memory of dragging Red Macaw’s partly eviscerated body out of that hut came to me, and for the first time it made me feel faint. I staggered forward, doubled over as if it had been my stomach the captain had opened up.
Lily cried out and darted forward, catching me and crying out again as she felt the pain in her fingers.
‘It’s all right,’ I managed to gasp, although the world was starting to spin around me. ‘It’s all right, Lily. It isn’t mine!’
Then I fainted.
I came to beside the hearth.
The sleeping mat underneath me was firm and dry. The mantle I was wrapped in smelled of freshly laundered cloth. Half of my body – the side nearer to the flames – was bathed in delicious warmth. A woman cooed gently in my ear, telling me to rest, and a hand – bandaged but still comforting – lay on my brow. I sighed contentedly, and turned over, to feel the fire’s heat on my face.
A voice that was anything but soothing barked: ‘Awake, is he? Come on, Yaotl. Up you get! We need to talk.’
Handy’s voice shattered my mood. I groaned and rolled onto my back.
‘Leave him be!’ Lily cried. It had been her voice that had been on the point of lulling me back to sleep. ‘He’s tired.’
‘We’re all tired,’ Handy said. ‘But Yaotl’s got some explaining to do!’
I sat up stiffly, shrugging off both the cloak and Lily’s hand. ‘All right,’ I muttered irritably. I looked about me.
I must have been carried indoors and laid by the fire. A sweat bath would have done me good but it was too late in the day for that: a glance at the doorway showed me it was now dark outside.
The little room was crowded, mostly with members of Handy’s family, although I recognised the face of Quail, the fisherman, among those around me. I caught a glimpse of movement through the doorway and sensed that the courtyard outside was crowded.
‘It’s busy in here,’ I muttered.
Quail said: ‘Kite told us all to come here, just before we handed him over to the curer and the bonesetter. He was afraid whoever was out there last night would try again. Well, the more fool them if they do! We’ve got just about every unoccupied man in Atlixco out there.’
Handy said quietly: ‘What happened today, Yaotl?’ I looked at him. In the weak light in that room his features looked sunken and more sallow than ever. His eyes seemed to stand out as having more life in them than the rest of his face, and in their unblinking gaze I saw an unasked question.
‘We found her,’ I said.
He seemed to hesitate. ‘Yes. Spotted Eagle told me.’
I glanced at the youth. ‘He’ll have told you where...’
‘Where,’ the commoner agreed, ‘and in what state. Yes, I know. We’ll have to go and get her.’
‘Not until tomorrow,’ Quail advised. ‘We had our hands full with Kite this afternoon. The demon – the otomi, apparently – is still at large, and you can’t ask anyone to go out into the marshes at night while he’s prowling around. How many has he killed now?’
‘Three men, at least,’ I said. ‘Red Macaw and... Well, we still don’t know for sure who the others are.’ I glanced at a dark corner of the room where I knew Handy’s sister-in-law was kneeling silently, no doubt wondering even now whether one of the mangled corpses we had found had been her husband’s.
I explained what I had seen and done in the fields that day. ‘Knowing that your demon is really the otomi accounts for a good deal,’ I concluded. ‘The monster Spotted Eagle and I saw, which some of
