Hunger's Brides (40 page)

These were the details.

That day at Ixayac, I had just these few incidents to offer, and endless questions. For all their horror, they danced and japed about like tantalizing clues to a riddle whose answer I felt must seem one day, as in all the best riddles, obvious once found. Why had Hypatia in a time of such danger been out alone, driving her chariot through the salt marshes of Wadi n'Natrun? How could it be that the warlike men of God were led by an illiterate named Peter the Reader, that the manner of her death was in Alexandria the penalty for witchcraft—inflicted now on superstition's great opponent …?

Hypatia's murder was the end of Alexandria as a great centre of learning as the students and scholars and mathematicians and librarians began to drift apart and leave for other places. And as the Dark Ages began, the pages of seven hundred thousand books heated Caliph Omar's baths for six months. Six months of heat and light for a thousand years of darkness. What sort of equation was this?

And yet, despite my confusion, from the expression in Amanda's eyes I was convinced she
had
understood—everything, even why I was telling her. And seeing this I was so sure the silence, this new, dark shape between us, would just dissolve and we could talk about everything, and my fears for us—

“We should go down now.”

She'd said it not unkindly, but infuriatingly all the same.

I led all the way, not once looking back. Down the ridge of Ixayac's nose, through the woods, past the trout pool and across the river. I skirted the maguey plot and then, instead of cutting through the cornfields for home, I waved her on and turned for the far paddock. Baggy grey clouds hid El Popo's tip, and through them rose a plume of brownish smoke and steam. The sky was otherwise clear, the deep blue of late afternoon. Hummingbirds and bees wavered and mumbled over sprays of wildflowers. The pastures were a furnace, moist as the
temazcal
, the air a bellows—the cows' heavy calls, the cicadas' eddy and pulse, a bright grist of sound milled in its intervals and ratios…. To walk in that air was to eat, to feel it fill my mouth with moist earth, life.

I walked to the fence of the far paddock where we had watched the black bull among the cows. The bull on whose sharp horns Amanda had hung for me a cornflower crown. Just a year ago, but so much was now different. My twin had had the change that would make her a woman. My own time floated near like an intimation. I felt my breaths shorten, a diffuse, liquid sensation in my knees and in the soles of my feet. It was like standing barefoot in warm shallow mud.

T
here was a mild earthquake just before dawn. I found the kitchen door open and Amanda already outside, her black hair plaited with blue ribbons. She wore her best
huipil
. In the dim light her knees and shins were dark against the whiteness of her cotton skirt. She had cleaned and oiled the leather of her
huaraches
. I glanced down at my own, the sandal straps dusty and spattered.

“Where have you been?” Now she was eager to go—would I ever truly know her? Maybe she had understood after all what I'd been trying to tell her, or maybe Xochitl had said it would be all right. “It's
late
already.”

It
was
late, but I had been up for an hour packing my satchel with magnets, pyrite, flint, a fire-bow just in case, the
Metamorphoses
, the Bible, a block of oily black chocolate, a knife to cut it with, our lunch, then, on top, cornflowers,
cempasuches
and agave spikes.

We spoke very little, having decided to run almost all the way up to give ourselves more time. She took the lead easily. I was carrying the heavier satchel but I didn't mind at all and didn't once ask her help. Though I was not quite out of breath, my knees felt weak as we reached the lower bench. We made our way up the stream then clambered up to the
temazcal
.

“Let's go see the falcons first,” Amanda said.

We usually went there last but I did want the day to be different. Still, I wouldn't leave until we had started the fire so that the coals would be ready when we came down. I laid fresh pine boughs to one side as a covering for the roof. Then I refilled the clay jar we used to splash water over the stones and drink from. We'd just reached the upper bench when the falcons launched themselves out into the valley in single file, up and up, far above a long vee of ducks arrowing towards the lake in the distance below them. Today was to be a hunting lesson.

I was anxious to come down and get started. I laid the bundle of
cempasuche
flowers at the threshold of the
temazcal
, so as to have to step over them going in and coming out. But Amanda wanted to swim first, though that too we usually did afterwards. I saw how the cloth was attached as she undressed. It was of the same dark, tightly woven cotton we used for
rebozos
, folded half a dozen times and tied front and back to
a sash around her waist. She undid the sash. She looked at me anxiously, as though I might laugh or even be repelled. But as she stood, otherwise naked, half turned from me—her breasts like little barrels, small spigots at the tips—my breath caught in my throat.

“You look like a warrior, now, NibbleTooth.”

At that her head dipped, a little nod of modesty, as in surprise, as if to check:
Was it true …
? And I remembered how just last year we used to stand on the slate rock above the pool and stick our bellies out like the women with child who had once come here to await their time. Now she could
have
a child. For a moment we were both serious, a little shy. But she grew more animated as we smeared ourselves with the honey-avocado cream. Almost immediately the wasps began to circle and her quickness made a spectacular game of it as she dodged and whirled, squealing madly, away from them. I had already leapt into the pool.

“Amanda, hurry!”

She faltered then and had to launch herself in a long running leap into the pool to keep from being badly stung. As we stood in the sun to dry off, I noticed our two turtles sunning themselves too, as they often did, on a small rock next to the waterfall.

“Do you do your dance first or should I do my poem?”

Her eyes wavered and I had the distinct impression she'd forgotten about the dance she was to prepare.

“Your poem.”

It still wasn't finished but I gave what I had so far, the refrain, two verses. When she said nothing, I asked her to teach me her dance. She improvised the most dispirited little shuffle, hardly better than I could have come up with myself, and I knew I was right. She had forgotten all about it.

We'd put this off long enough.

“The
temazcal,”
I said, and stalked off ahead of her. Brusquely I laid the pine boughs overtop, grabbed my satchel, stepped over the flowers at the threshold and squatted in the heat. A full minute later she ducked in after me. She really didn't seem to care about this at all. Well, I did care, and I knew how we had to do this, and with great seriousness. The heat was intense. Taking the knife from the satchel I reached up and pried little beads of dried sap from the branches, then threw them into the fire for incense. From beyond the walls the little waterfall plashed and a smoky light fell through the doorway. Once I had tipped all the water
from the clay jar onto the stones, the air was too hot to breathe through our noses. As we squatted there, heads bowed, our breaths came in little gasps through our lips. Runnels of sweat puddled under us. Through the pine smoke and steam and the sweat blinking into my eyes it was hard to say how much blood was under her but it didn't seem like much.

“Listen carefully. What we do next is daub ourselves in blood. You do me, I do you. We draw signs. On me: sun, hourglass, quarter moon, pyramid. On you: lighthouse, quarter moon, jaguar, cotton flower. All right?” She nodded without looking up. “Then, when we're ready to come out, we each dip a finger into the mud and place it in our mouth.” There was a formula I had heard somewhere that came to me now.
Dare Terram Deo
. Render the earth unto god. “That's it, we say this first,
then
we put our fingers with the mud into our mouths.” This was the Heart of the Earth after all.

“Repeat it.”

“Dare Terram Deo.”

That was better. She'd said it just right. Once outside, we would stand by the pool while I read from Proverbs. After that we'd dry off on the slate rock and weave crowns of cornflowers and agave. We'd put them on and it would be like rising through a plane of loveliness,
ornaments of grace
upon our heads. Then, solemnly, we'd take each other by the hand and plunge into the pool—head first, for once. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then we eat the chocolate.
Yollotl, eztli
, right?”
Heart and blood
.

“Yes,” she said. “Heart and blood.”

And last of all, when we were ready to go down we'd leave the lunch we'd brought as an offering. Was she ready?

A stillness settled around us.

She was facing the door. I edged next to her, facing the back of the hut, and turned slightly towards her, my right shoulder to hers. The coals glowed red in the shadows. I dipped my finger into the puddle under her. She started nervously when I touched her back with my fingertip. It left only a dirty little track, with hardly any blood at all. I dipped again and scooped but with all four fingers now. Again, sweat, a little mud, the faintest hint of blood.

“Is that
all?”
I said.

“There was more yesterday.”

“But this is the most important
part.”
Blood was for the mixing of the
secret salts and balms, blood was the essential agent, blood was for binding the spirits and resins.
Blood
. Wasn't that obvious?

“I—I'm sorry.”

It must have been the way we were squatting, facing past each other, my shoulder to her side, but I had the idea it might be like milking a cow. You didn't just wait for the milk to fall, after all. So I put my fingers there. She flinched, then held still and quiet. There wasn't anything really to squeeze but I did a kind of kneading with my fingers, as we did with the cornmeal, or when squeezing water through the muslin for the curd. I raised my fingers to my face to see better. Just plain dirt on the knuckles, and on the tips was nothing like paint at all, only the thinnest smears of rust. I shook my head, disgusted, furious.

“What should we do?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“We need blood.”

I picked up the knife where it lay next to the green rabbit satchel.

Slowly, gravely, Amanda offered her arm.

I looked into her eyes.

“Not you,” I said, mollified. “We need something to collect it in.” And then I remembered. “Wait here, I'll be back.”

The turtles were still there sunning themselves on the far side of the pool. I snatched one up and sprinted back to the
temazcal
, ducking in out of breath and suddenly dizzy. For a moment I kneeled, bent double, my elbows in the mud. When the dizzy spell passed I looked up at Amanda still huddling where I'd left her. I settled back on my heels, the knife still in my left hand, the turtle waggling his legs in the other.

“Why do you want to hurt it?”

“I don't, but we
need
to now.”

“But
why
do we need to?”

“If you'd warned me there'd be so little blood we could have brought a jar of it—collected some from you yesterday, if there was as much as you said.”

“But why our turtle?”

Why was she making such a fuss? We could get another. There were dozens down by the river. How many chickens had I seen her plucking with Xochitl? How many lambs had we seen Isabel slice through the throats of? And we had
eaten
them. This was just for blood. “Where else are we going to get blood
and
a shell?”

“Why do you want to use his shell?”

“Are you so stupid or just pretending? Like a dish, like a mortar for alchemical elements, like a palette for paints.
Now
do you see?”

She stood suddenly, knocking the boughs away as she straightened up. The sudden light was bright. Her face was a hard mask with thin tracks through the grit beneath her eyes.

I squatted there, exasperated and a little embarrassed now.

“Aren't we just like them?” she said.

“The turtles?”

“The priests.”

“What priests?”

“From the desert.”

“What
des—”

What desert.

She was asking me a question.

To this simple question, there must be an answer.

I could say they were not priests but monks. After all, I was very learned. All the correct words came to mind. Desert monks. Hermit, eremite, anchorite. How should I answer?

I set the knife down, carefully. And the turtle.

“We're
not
like them.”

It bumped over my toes on its way out of the hut and began working its way through the tangle of
cempasuche
stalks strewn across the threshold. “We're not, NibbleTooth.
You're
not.”

She said nothing.

“Do you think
I
am? After everything I've told you? I wanted to do this for
us
. Something just for us and Ixayac. Weren't we doing this together?” Her eyes skimmed mountains we had looked at hundreds of times. “You're the one who talks about real rituals. I wanted this to be
real
for you. As real as Xochita's.”

She was at least looking at me now.

“You have your mother, Amanda.”

“Well you have your grandfather.”

Abuelito …
Yes,
I
had my grandfather. I remembered his face the day of the storm as he handed me Hesiod, the day he sat quietly waiting for me to ask for help with my geometry. And it felt then as if I hadn't seen him, truly talked to him in years.