Hunger's Brides (152 page)

Authors: W. Paul Anderson

Tags: #Fiction, #General

BOOK: Hunger's Brides

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And she was beautiful.

Seeing her then in his drunkenness did Our Prince Topiltzin 1-Reed Quetzalcoatl send for his sister. PreciousFeatherMat sat beside him, and four times did he bid her taste the sacred
pulque
. And tasting it a fifth time, she too was besotted. No longer were they fasting, no longer forcing thorns through the flesh of their thighs. Never again would they bathe themselves in the Turquoise Waters.

As though in a dream he saw her; through mirror smoke he saw her and tried to approach in the manner of the CloudSerpent, his father, Mixcoatl. The first time his seed fell onto a rock and opened a hole in it. Laughing playfully she seemed to say:
Raise your aim, brother
. Into the hole in the rock she leapt and fled him. And into the Underworld as a bat he swooped down after her. The second time she appeared to him as a two-headed deer. As he drew near her the precious fluid of his body burst into flame. Laughing she leapt into the flames and fled him, and as a crippled dog he limped after her. The third time she stood and fought him. Fiercely she resisted him with her shield hand, and only after a great struggle did he finally possess her.

Through mirror smoke he first saw her; into mirror smoke she vanished, and this time he could not follow. On a mat of precious feathers she left him lying as though deadâ¦.

Then over him did the sorcerers bend and hover, mocking and laughing, until Tezcatlipoca said:
Now, let us give him his body
.

Then the sorcerers woke him and made him gaze again into the SmokingMirror. And for the first time Our Prince saw himself horrible to look upon, body withered and crippled and palsied, skin covered with sores and yellowed, all wrinkled and sallow.

And his face was a pitiful thing, like a great stone battered, eyelids inflamed, one eye sprung from its orbit and ruptured.

Unable to look away from the SmokingMirror he cried:
Can this be, truly? Can this be what I resemble? Am I so vileâhave I always been?

But the sorcerers replied, ever playful:
These things, your youth and beauty and virtue, have only fled you. They can be recovered. Have faith
.

Fled where? Where am I to find them?

And the sorcerers answered him:
Toward Tillan Tlapallan shall you go. A man stands guard there, one already aged. You and he shall take counsel together. And when you return you shall have again been made a child.
⁴¹But go now and celebrate with your people
.

And even as they said this the sounds of a great drumming reached his ears.
But how can I go out among them like this? They will be terrified and run from me
.

But the sorcerers said, smiling:
Have we not come to help you?
And for him they made a turquoise mask. Finely wrought it was, and beautiful, with tracings of gold in the forehead, and topped with a crest of quetzal plumes. And red was the mouth and filled with fine, curving serpent's teeth.

Then in the SmokingMirror did he appear truly majestic, truly splendid, and his spirits were lifted, though only for the briefest of times, only for a brief moment did it last. For as he emerged to walk among his people his eyes were met with a scene of devastation.

Withered and blighted were the cacao trees, twisted and bent like mesquite. Blanched of its colours was the cotton. Gone, the precious birds. Filled with smoke lay the streets; heaped with corpses locked fiercely together were the temple precincts where Tezcatlipoca had raised the dancers in the palm of her hand andâsending them into a frenzyâdanced them to death.

And when Our Prince had emerged from his round palace of shell and jade to see the ruin of the Toltecs, when he saw the horror loosed upon his people while he had lain gazing into the SmokingMirror, weltering in drunkenness and sin upon his mat of feathers, the spell was lifted; it faded like the memory of a dream.

Then in four hundred pieces did he smash the grinning turquoise maskâ

To the sorcerers did he turn to wreak his vengeanceâbut they had vanished, leaving him to himself.

And the empty city, the dead streets echoed with the song of his lament:

She will nurse me no more
,
She, my mother, an ya'!
She of the Serpent Skirt
,
Ah, the holy one!
⁴²

He who had produced so many great and beautiful works, who had brought to Tollan flowers and song, wisdom and knowledge, he who could trace each footprint of the gods through the heavens and through time itself, was now undone, now overthrown. Now only shame and misery, remorse and horror did he know.

And so it came to pass that he ordered his pages to construct him a stone casket, and closely did it fit him as he lay in it as though dead. For four days did he lie in his jewelled casket, waiting for death. And all who had fled the city returned at the news of his dying. But it was not yet time.

On the fourth day he arose and commanded his pages:
Bury all these vain treasures I have createdâbury them somewhere deep in the earth or send them to the bottom of the Lake of Texcoco
. And they did what he had commanded.

Seeing him preparing his departure, the people cried out in despair:
Our Dear Prince, where are you going?

The story of his journey into the East, the journey of Our Dear Prince Topiltzin 1-Reed Quetzalcoatl, has since been many times told. How he was attacked by sorcerers on the road. How he and his pagesâdwarves with backs hunched and twistedâhid in the bowels of WhiteLady, and for four days and for four more struggled to find their way out again. How at last they emerged in a high mountain pass next to SmokingStone, where the dwarves and the hunchbacks were frozen.

How as Our Prince wept at the foot of a tree and his tears pierced the rock he sat upon, the sorcerers returned and challenged himâ
Where are you going?

How Our Prince answered:
The sun is calling me
.

How the sorcerers would not let him pass until he had surrendered to them all the precious Toltec arts.

How the Traveller wandered on alone.

Alone he arrived at the coast in a place called Coatzalcoalcos and mounting a litter of serpents, a serpent mat, he sailed east, he sailed towards the sun.

There as every child should know he arrived at last in Tlillan Tlapallan, the Red Land and Black, the place of burning, the place of knowledge and death. And there donning his precious feather cape, his wind jewels, his headdress of quetzal plumes did he cast himself into a
great fire of his own making. The flames of his burning rose high to the first level of heavenâas a flight of precious birds, scarlet and blue, citron and ochre and vermilion they rose, even as the souls of painted books.

And after four days of burning, from the ashes ascended the heart of Quetzalcoatl, ascended the heart of the morning. Pure and splendid as fine beaten silver did MorningStar rise into the eastern sky. High in the heavens did it rise, into the ninth level of heaven. As Lord of the House of Dawn he rose, he who rises first in the red fields of combat to await the sun.

And every child should know of his promise to return to reclaim his place near the end of the world. And terrible shall be the manner of his coming.

And if he comes in 1 Reed, he strikes at kings.

In 1 Reed was he born, in 1 Reed did he die. And so for fifty-two years, for a bundle of years did he live among the people of the centre.

And this is the story of his coming and of his passing and of his return, in the time, in the year, 1 Reed.

J
UANA
I
NÃS DE LA
C
RUZ

B. Limosneros, trans
.

Guided by a silent Clarion
along a path that is no path
,
blundered across, stumbled upon
,
in search of an end that has no end
.

Jerome sat in contemplation of
the Trumpet of the Judgement,
but soon was troubled
to be hearing the very echo
of what he feared most;
and thus, pondering an event
to strike terror in the heart
of the most exalted Seraphim,
advanced a step, without moving,
guided by a silent Clarion
.
Â Â He walks toward that City
where his spirit dwells
in ardent Charityâ
and though the road is unknown to him,
in truth God is the wayâ
and, in the manner of a pilgrim, spans
in one long peregrine flight,
the gulf from earth to Heaven
without ever losing his way,
along a path that is no path
.
Â Â
Leaving the track stained redâ
holding his blood scant price
to have covered such terrainâ
he came to be thought mad
and was subjected to brutal stonings â¦
these, the Holy Doctor answering:
âSince by an easy path
no one to heaven has ever ascended,
let none wonder it should at last have been
blundered across, stumbled upon
.
Â Â That it comes to me by happy accident
dampens not the ardent
fire that enkindles my soul:
to find the end of my love's quest
in One who has no end.
Thus, eagerly do I go
spilling all of the carmine
that these veins enclose,
till now not a drop is left
in search of an End that has no end
.