Not forever, but a little while…"
Shadows moved within the murky gloom. I made for the only thing I could see, which was the gaping emptiness within the circle.
"Acatl-tzin!" Palli's hand on my arm almost made me jerk in surprise.
He was pale and wan, but more from loss of blood than anything else – and covered in the brackish ichor of wounded ahuizotls. Blood covered his hands, welling up from a dozen cuts.
"We need to finish the circle," I said. "Coatl–"
"Nezahual-tzin and your sister are keeping him busy," Palli said grimly.
Mihmatini? I ought to have known.
"Fine. Then we're headed for the other side of the courtyard. Can you see it?" I assumed Acamapichtli would be able to take care of his own problems; perhaps a mistake, but he certainly wasn't incapable.
"Yes, but–" Palli's face was pinched with fear.
I could have lied, made promises about how the plague couldn't touch him, but I had never had the ruthlessness for that. "We need to close that circle," I said. "Or more people will die. Not only us, but everyone here."
Palli grimaced, but he nodded. "Let's go."
As courtyards went, it wasn't a large one – at least, I was sure it hadn't been. As we fumbled around in the dust cloud, it didn't appear so small anymore. The shadows twisted and shifted, and even Palli seemed impossibly far away – I soon lost him, as veil after veil of reddish dust rose to cover everything. A dark silhouette loomed through the fog: a huge snake which had to mark Nezahual-tzin's location. My gaze swept left and right – where were the ahuizotls – surely they hadn't disappeared? But all I saw were the faces, slowly coalescing into focus, distorted with pain, their mouths open in soundless screams – men, women and children, with the shadows of rich headdresses and jewellery.
I couldn't tell at which point the nagging suspicion at the back of my mind coalesced into certainty as heavy as a stone in my belly – perhaps it was the woman, with the fine line of cuts across her face, or perhaps the child with sticky blood clogging his hair, gathered all in the place of the single wound that had dashed his brains out, or perhaps the dour warrior who looked hauntingly familiar, until I realised he could have been Yayauhqui's father.
Tlatelolco. The dead of Tlatelolco, weighing us down like stocks on a guilty man's neck. But there hadn't been so many of them – and they were dead, they had been dead for years and years, enough time for their souls to have moved on, found their true rest…
I'd been wrong, then. This was a plague passed on by the dead, by all the ghosts flittering through the diminished boundaries. It couldn't have existed without what we had done, Quenami, Acamapichtli and I.
Focus. Focus. Breathe, slowly, calmly – every step I took seemed to be through mud or tar; the faces swam in and out of focus, all crying out for revenge.
I wasn't a warrior, or a devotee of Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird. But, in the end, it didn't matter. The god had chosen us, and favoured us, and we had grown and grown, taking over our neighbours. It was sheer survivaclass="underline" everything that lived had to grow, or ossify and die. Nevertheless… I could understand their anger at what had been done to them.
I could have told them this, but they wouldn't have listened, or understood.
I walked on. The dust thickened, and every step seemed to cost me. The dead wailed and screamed and pleaded, demanding to be acknowledged – but I closed my ears to their pleas, and went on.
Ahead, the circle shimmered – broken still. I couldn't see Palli, but the three darker silhouettes shimmering with magic were presumably Mihmatini, Moquihuix-tzin and Nezahual-tzin. I passed them by – a hair breadth's away, and I thought they would turn, or feel me, but they were too engrossed in flinging magic at each other.
I trudged on – only walking mattered, step after tottering step, ignoring the dead and their twisted faces, ignoring the memory of Matlaelel's blood-filled eyes. When my feet finally met the edge of the circle, it felt like a miracle, like a god's blessing descended to me, who had least deserved it.
I knelt in the dirt, and rubbed open the previous slash across my palm – there was a slight stinging pain, such as when I made an offering to the gods, and then blood flowed again.
The faces in the dust hovered closer – it shouldn't have been possible, but they were pressing against me, their mouths opening as if to taste my blood. If they did so – I didn't even want to think about it. Blood was many things, among which an entry point into the body – and the illness, carried through my veins, would surely kill me as it had killed Matlaelel.
There was no time for finesse – I rubbed at the wound again, feeling it open further, the blood greedily pouring out – and tottered across the circle, trying to seal it shut before the plague faces could touch me – I could feel their foul breath on my skin, smell the dry, musty smell of their approach, like fire-crinkled mummies suddenly springing to life…
Step after step after step – the circle grew wider and wider, and it was almost complete…
The woman with the cut-up face was a finger's width away from my bleeding hand. I could see her body now, pulling itself out of the morass of faces, her arms and legs covered in similar wounds, her breasts hacked away and a pulsing mass of blood between her legs….
Almost there… The words of the hymn welled up as irrepressibly as the blood, spilling out into the Fifth World as the woman's teeth brushed my skin.
"Above us, below us,
The heavens, the place of heat
Above us, below us,
The region of the fleshless, the land of mystery…"
I felt the plague, coursing within my body – the pressure in my veins and arteries, travelling to my heart and liver – my vision blurred and became red, and my body shook, and I was on my knees, struggling to remain standing…
"The path out of the Fifth World, into the city of the Dead
The city where the streets are on the left, where the houses have no windows…"
Dark green light washed across the pattern – starting at the circle and rising like an unstoppable tide as the sounds of battle receded and became a lament for the Dead, and the stretched emptiness of Mictlan expanded, shrivelling my heart a fraction of a moment before the rising tide of blood caused it to burst.
And then everything went blessedly dark.
There was dust in my eyes and a gritty taste in my mouth, but the air smelled wrong – too wet and scorching to be that of the underworld. I lay on something hard and unyielding, feeling the Dead passing through me – hearing, like a distant mumble, their endless prayer to Lord Death:
"Not forever on Earth, but for a little while
Even jade crumbles, even gold is crushed
Not forever on Earth, but for a little while…"
Hands held me down – stroking me like a mother stroked her child – there was something wrong with them, but I couldn't remember what…