Hunger's Brides (151 page)

As it is with magic charms, so is it also with good-byes. Or with refusing even choice itself, so as not to lose the path not taken. But if I have not lost him, and not lost them, it is not because there is something I have not let the holy officers strip from me, or even because the sod remains undisturbed in a shady spot beneath a cedar tree. We do not always get good-bye, but moments such as these. And who is to say if Time itself can take these back from me.

Heraclitus has written that one never enters the same river twice. But the greatest of rivers and the smallest streams share a destiny, however obscure it may remain as they run to the sea. Though their currents be muddy or clear, shallow or deep, though they run swift in the shadow of their
rives
, yet do they bear up, in the trains of their passing, gold and ochre and russet leaves. To spin slowly, dreamily, on their surfaces.

And even as the Nile brings the cargo of her seasons in tribute to the sea, these, all these have come down to me through the intervening years, and down through this night … as afterthoughts.

It is almost light, the square of sky pales beyond the window. Beneath it on the table, my collection of two. The newest, the most ancient; the oldest, the first. One I have made with my hands. The other I have brought from the convent archives. A battered book, the husk of its bindings split. I take it into my lap one last time before returning it to its hiding place in the shelves. I close my eyes….

What is a childhood but the end of all past times forgotten, beginning again? And to leave the highlands of childhood for the valleys and currents of one's own time is to lose something akin to prescience, to lose sight of the far ranges at our life's end. Now I cannot see ahead an hour and yet, looking back, how curious to remember, only now, the place where I was born at the hacienda in Nepantla: the gaps in the walls, the breezes blowing through, the stars … a hut of pale fieldstone that the people of our region sometimes called the cell. Remember with pleasure, remember it all again, for yourself, remember for them.

More than by the little of the world I knew, my mind has been shaped by books. So it is not so strange that I had come to think of my own life as a book, strongly bound, beautifully made. I had never doubted I would find there my legend and my destiny, and even if its end escaped me until
the last page, the last day, I had never doubted it would on that day feel necessary, even familiar, the page already marked. And though I now see at last the briefest glimpses of that text, its language I know well. I learned it as a child. A broken book is still a book. To be mistaken in this is to make of it another kind of destiny, to succumb to the patterns already woven there, even of broken threads. Or, I had thought them broken, but the body offers up its own evidence. For as night ends, I feel that ache even now, so fresh … and in my legs, a honey-gold thread of pain.

What is the path that is no path, to an end that is a return? Each time without precedent, to an embrace that is a relinquishment.

What is the collection that cannot be taken, the text that cannot be erased? The silence that cannot be broken.

In the silence in the darkness there is a spiral stair. It leads up and out and into the night, where at a crossroads in the desert, at a secret spring, an unknown god waits, hidden even as the soul is from itself.

And offers us water.

But here I let fall the invocations of the famous poets, the herbs and the potions, the magics, the charms and enchantments, the brilliant feasts and the sable rams. And this last charm with the battered spine, which has been my life, this too do I lay aside. For there is other work, and it will soon be light.

I R
EED
        

I
N THE YEAR
1 R
EED
, it is told, the precious twin came down to live among the people of the centre, he who would one day be called Our Dear Prince Topiltzin 1-Reed Quetzalcoatl.

In that time they say the manner of his coming was a thing of great wonder; wondrous and mysterious was his advent. His mother, LadySerpentSkirt, lay dreaming. Dreaming of her king and husband, Mixcoatl, doing battle in the west. And in that dream he sent her an emerald. She woke to find it on her tongue.

Waking she swallowed it.

For four years did Topiltzin grow within her like a promise. For four more did he struggle to come forth. But when at last he had succeeded, when at last he had broken free of her she was already dead.

As though he were her own, another serpent raised him. And though he could not know it yet, she raised him an orphan: for in the night of his mother's dreaming, his father had died in the western desert, betrayed by his brothers. So also was Topiltzin called Son of the Lord of the Dead Lands.

Came the years 2 Flint, 3 House, 4 Rabbit; 5 Reed, 6 Flint, 7 House, 8 Rabbit; 9 Reed.

In the year 9 Reed, Prince Topiltzin asked to know his father.
What did he look like, who did he resemble? What was the manner of his passing? Where is he buried?
But in that time no one could answer him. Then did he set forth into the western deserts, asking on the road for news of the King. So it was that he came to be known in the West as Nacxitl, the Traveller.

Came the years 10 Flint, 11 House, 12 Rabbit; 13 Reed, 1 Flint, 2 House, 3 Rabbit; 4 Reed, 5 Flint, 6 House, 7 Rabbit; 8 Reed, 9 Flint.

In the year 9 Flint in the depths of despair in the heart of the desert he was found by a vulture. Taking pity she showed him how to open the earth and find the bones where the King's brothers had heaped them with sand.

And terrible was the vengeance Our Prince wrought upon his uncles.

Yet returning he discovered himself twice an orphan; returning he discovered the Serpent Woman dead. And so her bones he buried next to his fathers in her temple on Serpent Mountain.

Back to the desert, to the land of the vulture did he take his grief and the guilt of his blood sins. And great was his penance. He bled his ears. He pierced his thighs with thorns, and the thorns he used were of jadestone. For seven years he fasted. Nothing but earth did he eat. Terrible was his sorrow, pitiful his remorse as he cried out to the heart of heaven, to the Place of Duality.

And the heart of heaven heard him.

Nearby, upon the once great city of Tollan the weight of drought and famine had fallen, for great were the sins of its people. And though the priests of Tollan had sacrificed the four times four hundred captives that its warriors had taken, still did the drought continue—the famine spread like a stain unabated, even unto the nobles of the city.

And so in the year 5 House, the nobles sent for him, asking that he rule over them and restore Tollan to its former greatness. But only when the sacrifices of the captives had ceased, when their cooking pots had been overturned and their shinbones buried did Our Prince agree to enter the city.

Came the years 6 Rabbit, 7 Reed; 8 Flint, 9 House, 10 Rabbit, 11 Reed; 12 Flint, 13 House, 1 Rabbit, 2 Reed.

During that time did Tollan grow prosperous once again, and flowers returned to the land of the Toltecs. The fruit of the cacao was everywhere plentiful and the cotton grew already tinted—they had no need to dye it. Easily did Our Prince enter the bowels of the earth and bring forth what many before him had sought: emeralds and jade, gold and silver, amber and turquoise. And truly was he a great artisan, truly did the grandeur of the Toltecs return with him: first, he made the sacred calendar that measures the gaits of the gods in their passage, that charts the stars in their courses; then the painted books, and the precious featherwork and pottery, the fine working of metal and stone. A great builder, in the heart of Tollan did he build his round palace of jade and turquoise, his palace of redshell and whiteshell and bone, his house of penance. And he lived there alone. For though he had brought the Toltecs art and knowledge and plenty, though he was worshipped as one worships a god, yet was he strict in his observances, severe in his fasting, and his penance was harsh.

In the year 3 Flint, Tezcatlipoca descended to earth and sent sorcerers to plague Our Prince in Tollan.

Came the years 4 House, 5 Rabbit, 6 Reed; 7 Flint, 8 House; 9 Rabbit, 10 Reed, 11 Flint.

All the statues the Toltecs had raised in his honour the sorcerers toppled. Our Prince's sacred mirror of augury they stole. In his house of penance they beleaguered him. They mocked him for the meagreness of his offerings to the gods—only the sacrifice of serpents and birds and butterflies would he permit. They mocked the poverty of his fasts.

For nine years did they bait and taunt him, commanding him to return to the harvest of the precious eagle fruit, but Our Dear Prince resisted. Out of love for the Toltecs came his refusal, for the people were precious to him and he to the people.

And the sorcerers grew angrier.

So it happened, so it came to pass that resisting the sorcerers for so long had filled Our Prince with a great weariness. Less and less often did he leave his house of penance to walk among the people. Tired and solitary, he fell ill, he grew feverish. The Toltecs were troubled and uncertain for he appeared greatly aged.

Came the year 12 House. Came the season when the people of Tollan made preparations for the Feast of Toxcatl, for the twenty days of feasting and pleasure, for the time when DrumCoyote came to walk among them, came to lead them in the dance. Then did all the sorcerers gather together with Tezcatlipoca and say:
Let us make pulque. Make him drunk with it. We will make him drink his health
. And they laughed, for they were playful.

For four days did they brew the
octli
, the sacred drink, and in only four days more they had decanted it and blended it with wild honey. In the body of an old woman came Tezcatlipoca to the palace of redshell and whiteshell, to Our Prince's house of beams. In the guise of a healer, SmokingMirror appeared to the palace guards, saying:
I bring strong food and drink to Our Prince that he may recover himself
.

And after he had eaten well of the spicy stew, the strong meat, Our Prince, feeling strength and also a great thirst, said:
Grandmother, what else have you brought, for before you came my flesh felt as though cut to ribbons
.

And the SmokingMirror answered:
I have laboured across a great distance to bring you pulque—taste it, it's strong, it's newly made
. She set it before him saying:
You will find it tempting. It will tempt you like your own fate
.

Only with the tip of his finger did he taste it, but the taste was good. And so she cajoled him to taste it four times, though only with a fingertip; but the fifth time, when she saw him drink deeply, she laughed harshly and said:
This shall be your sacrament, priest
.

Then did she make each of the palace guards drunk with just one
taste of the
octli
. Returning to Our Prince where he lay on his mat of gold and feathers she showed him the smoking mirror and in its surface his sister, Quetzalpetlatl, fasting amidst flowers on the slopes of Iztaccihuatl. Among the priests of the Four Year Fast she fasted, and for three years she had tasted nothing but earth.