"If all our Rememberers have spoken truly, those people who departed took only what belongings they could pack in a hurry, and only meager rations for the march. And they took the image of their villainous new god: a wooden image newly and roughly and hastily made, because of the urgency of their going. But that was untold sheaves of years ago. I daresay your people have built many finer statues to replace it since then. We of Aztlan have a different high deity, and only the one image of it. Oh, of course we recognize all the other gods, and have recourse to them when necessary. Tlazolteotl, for instance, cleanses us of our sins; Atlaua fills our fowlers' nets, and so on. But only one reigns supreme. Come, cousin, let me show you."
He took me out of the house and along the city's shell streets. As we walked, his birdlike little black eyes flung an occasional look sideways from their nests of wrinkles, a shrewd and humorous glance at me, and he said:
"Tepetzalan, you have been courteous, or at least discreet. You have not spoken your opinion of us, the remaining Aztéca. But permit me to guess. I would wager that you consider us the dregs that were left in Aztlan when the more worthy ones went away."
True, that was my opinion. I might have said something to put a slightly better face on it, but he went on:
"You believe that our forefathers were too lazy or listless or timid to raise their eyes to some beckoning vision of glory. That they feared the risk and so lost the opportunity. That your own ancestors, by contrast, ventured boldly forth from here in the certain knowledge that they were destined to be exalted above all other peoples of the world."
"Well..." I said.
"Here is our temple." Canautli stopped at the entrance to a low building of the customary crushed-shell plastering, but with many fine shells of conch and other sea creatures inset entire. "Our only temple, and a humble one, but if you will enter..."
I did, and with my topaz I looked at what stood there, and I said, "That is Coyolxauqui," and I said truthfully, admiringly, "That is a superb work of art."
"You recognize her?" The old man sounded a trifle surprised. "I should have thought that your people would have forgotten her by now."
"I confess, venerable one, that she is now regarded only as a minor goddess among our many gods. But the legend is one of our oldest, and it is still remembered."
To tell it briefly, reverend friars, the legend was this. Coyolxauqui, whose name means Adorned with Bells, was one of the godling children of the high goddess Coatlicue. And that goddess Coatlicue, though already a mother many times over, became gravid again when one day a feather floated down upon her from the skies. (How that could impregnate any female, I do not know, but such things happened in many old stories. And it would seem that the daughter-goddess Coyolxauqui was also skeptical when her mother told of it.) Coyolxauqui gathered her brothers and sisters and said, "Our mother has brought shame upon herself and us her children. We must put her to death for it."
However, the child in Coatlicue's womb was the war god Huitzilopóchtli. He heard those words and he sprang instantly out of his mother, full grown and already armed with an obsidian maquahuitl. He slew his scheming sister Coyolxauqui and cut her in pieces and flung those dismembered parts to the sky, where their blood stuck them to the moon. He likewise threw all his other sisters and brothers to the sky, where they have since been stars indistinguishable from the older stars. That newborn war god Huitzilopóchtli, of course, was ever afterward the chief god of us Mexíca, and we accorded to Coyolxauqui no importance whatever. We erected no statues of her or temples for her, and we dedicated no feast days to her.
"To us," said the old historian of Aztlan, "Coyolxauqui has always been the goddess of the moon, and always will be, and we worship her in that guise."
I did not understand, and I said so. "Why worship the moon, venerable Canautli? I ask in all respect. But the moon is of no benefit to mankind, except for its night light, and that is dim at its brightest."
"Because of the sea tides," said the old man, "and those are of benefit to us. This lake of ours, at its western end, is separated from the ocean by only a low rock barrier. When the tide rises, it spills fish and crabs and shellfish into our lake, and they stay here when the tide waters recede. Catching those creatures for our food is much easier in this shallow lake than it would be in the deep sea outside. We are grateful to be so lavishly and punctiliously supplied."
"But the moon?" I said, perplexed. "Do you believe that the moon somehow causes the tides?"
"Causes? I do not know. But the moon certainly gives notice of them. When the moon is at its thinnest, and again when it is at its full round, we know that at a determinable later time the tide will be at its highest, and its spill of provender the most bountiful. Clearly the moon goddess has something to do with it."
"So it would seem," I said, and regarded the image of Coyolxauqui more respectfully.
It was not a statue. It was a disk of stone as perfectly round as the full moon and nearly as immense as the great Sun Stone of Tenochtítlan. Coyolxauqui was sculptured in high relief, as she looked after her dismemberment by Huitzilopóchtli. Her torso occupied the center of the stone—of the moon—her breasts bared to view and hanging slackly. Her decapitated head was in profile at the top center of the moon; it wore a feather headdress, and on the visible cheek was incised the bell symbol from which she took her name. Her severed arms and legs were distributed around her, adorned with bracelets and anklets. There was no picture writing anywhere on the stone, or course, but it still bore traces of its original paint: a pale blue on the stone background, a pale yellow on the goddess's various parts. I asked how old it was.
"Only the goddess knows," said Canautli. "It has been here since long before your forebears went away, since time past all remembering."
"How do you pay homage to her?" I asked, looking around the room, which was otherwise empty except for a strong smell of fish. "I see no signs of sacrifice."
"You mean you see no blood," he said. "Your forefathers also sought blood, and that is why they left here. Coyolxauqui has never demanded any such thing as a human sacrifice. We offer to her only lesser creatures, things of the sea and things of the night. Owls and the nightflying herons and the great green moon moths. Also there is a small fish, so oily of flesh that it can be dried and burned like a candle. Worshipers light them here when they feel the need of communing with the goddess."
As we stepped out of the fishy-smelling temple into the street again, the old man resumed, "Know now, cousin Tepetzalan, what we Rememberers have remembered. In a time long past, we Aztéca were not confined to this single city. This was the capital of a considerable domain, stretching from this coast high into the mountains. The Aztéca comprised numerous tribes, each of many calpultin clans, and they were all under the rule of a single Tlatocapili who was not—like my grandson-by-marriage—a chief in name only. They were a strong people, but they were a peaceable people, satisfied with what they had, and they deemed themselves well cared for by the goddess."
"Until some of those people showed more ambition," I suggested.
"Until some showed weakness!" he said sharply. "The tales tell how some of them, hunting in the high mountains, one day met a stranger from a far land. That one laughed in scorn to hear of our people's simple way of life and their undemanding religion. The stranger said, 'Of all the numberless gods there are, why do you choose to worship the one most feeble, the goddess who was so deservedly humiliated and slain? Why do you not worship the one who overthrew her, the strong and fierce and virile god Huitzilopóchtli?' "