Jaguar Princess (26 page)

“Mixcatl,” came Huetzin’s voice. “You asked me not to speak, but you look so troubled that I must. What is happening to you?”

Brokenly, she told him, fearing that her words were clumsy and that he wouldn’t understand.

“We must summon Nine-Lizard,” he said. “This is not something you can fight alone.” He stood up beside her and gave a long high whistle.

Soon the figure of the old scribe appeared on the path. He was brushing leaves from his cape and was blinking as if he had been asleep. Huetzin gave an impatient gesture with his hand.

Nine-Lizard stooped down beside Mixcatl. She spared her attention from the tile just long enough to give him one agonized look and to see that he understood.

“It is coming on you again,” said Nine-Lizard. “But why?” He turned to Huetzin. “Did you not send the deer all up to the hills.”

“I can still catch their scent,” Mixcatl whispered.

“From that distance?”

Numbly she nodded.

Nine-Lizard muttered to himself. “This is ominous. She is much more sensitive than I expected and the beast nature less willing to be confined.” To Mixcatl he said, “Can you hold off the changes you feel coming?”

“If I think only about this,” she answered, touching her brush to the tile. “But it is getting so much harder.” The brush faltered as she felt a bout of trembling take her and her vision flashed again, losing color. She saw both Huetzin and Nine-Lizard move toward her; but she held out her hand, warning them off.

Whatever this evil is within me, I will not let it free
.

She bit her lip until blood came as she willed her attention to her work. She asked Nine-Lizard to hold clay to her nose to block out all smells but that of the earth. But the restless thing that circled within would not be defeated. She could see this by the looks on her companions’ faces when she shuddered in the grip of spasms that grew stronger each time she fought them off.

Yet, in the end, it was exhaustion that ultimately won. A weariness so deep that it seemed to grind her bones to dust made the brush slide from her hand and she felt herself toppling sideways. She felt the tile and brush being taken from her, tried to grab for it and realized that she had won, that the piece still had meaning for her and she felt alarm.

She felt herself being gently taken into someone’s lap. From the sweet, dusty stoneworker’s scent,
she knew that it was Huetzin. His arms went around her, cradling her. From a dimness far away, she heard his voice and fought to stay close enough so that she could still make out his words.

“Is she asleep, Nine-Lizard?”

“Yes.” The old man’s tone was weary. “You can carry her back to her quarters.”

“Let me just hold her here for a while.” He paused and Mixcatl thought he had faded into silence, then he spoke again in a low voice. “When I saw her, I thought she was only a gifted child, but she has grown into my heart like a woman.”

“Huetzin,” began Nine-Lizard in his aged rasp.

“What are these strange fits that ail her? What is it that rips her art away from her? If there was a torment worse, I could not imagine it. Did you watch her? It seemed to me as though a part of her died each time, then was reborn only to die again.” Huetzin paused and though his voice wavered in Mixcatl’s ears, she still could make sense of his words. A new coldness came into them. “Old man, I feel that you know what this sickness is and you have known all along. Why have you withheld answers from her and from me?”

“I felt that she was not ready to understand or accept. To tell her would only frighten her and make it worse. As for you, young sculptor, your entry into this has come about much faster than I had anticipated. I feared and still fear that the truth will turn you from her.”

“Then you do not know me well enough, old man,” said Huetzin fiercely. “Tell me.”

“She looks asleep, but she may be listening,” began Nine-Lizard.

“All the better if she is. Whatever this affliction, it is wrong to keep the knowledge from her. Or from me and my father.”

“Your father already knows,” said Nine-lizard, and Mixcatl heard Huetzin draw a breath. “That is why she and I are here. The history that we are writing is not the real reason.”

There was another silence. Mixcatl could feel Huet-zin’s arms tense about her and she knew he was waiting.

“You are right,” said Nine-Lizard. “You deserve an explanation. So does she, but I would rather that she be awake enough to grapple with the fears it will raise.” There was a rustle of cloth as the old scribe got to his feet. Huetzin shifted his weight and Mixcatl felt herself being lifted.

“Can you manage her?”

Huetzin grunted with effort and surprise. “She is heavy! The last time I carried her to the palace, I thought it was my imagination.” Mixcatl could feel the youth struggling with her and wished she could shake off enough of the weariness and lassitude to walk. “But I have lugged stone blocks to my workshop. I can carry her. Lead the way, old scribe.”

Later that evening, the three sat together in the scribes’ guest quarters at Tezcotzinco. Mixcatl lay on a pallet, still feeling drained by the struggle she had gone through that afternoon. She had managed to eat after resting and now was awake enough to take part in the conversation. Huetzin
sat on the pallet with her, holding her head in his lap. Gently he stroked her hair as Nine-lizard spoke. Beside him, on the floor, stood the greenstone statue of the kneeling jaguar man. Nine-Lizard had asked Huetzin to bring it from Wise Coyote’s library.

Mixcatl cast a cautious glance at the figurine and recalled how the sight of both it and its companion had so unnerved her. Perhaps she sensed somehow that it held a clue to what she was and why these strange episodes were coming down on her.

Nine-lizard picked up the figurine and cradled it between his two hands. The look in his eyes was an unreadable mixture of emotions as he looked at it. Suddenly Mixcatl knew that the statuette unsettled him as much as it did her, and not only because it held the explanation to the mystery of her peeling sickness.

Her lips moved almost soundlessly. “What is it?”

“An Olmec jaguar shaman. The image of a man casting off his human skin to free the jaguar beneath.” Nine-lizard paused. “You are a descendant of the Olmeca, Mixcatl, as am I. There is nothing of the Aztec in your face, which is why to many men, you are ugly.”

Huetzin slowly touched the statue as if it might spring to life. “My father showed me this in the library. I thought that it was just an image, a metaphor of the savagery inside men. I never thought to take it literally.”

“You saw its literalness when Mixcatl’s skin peeled at the sight of the deer.”

“Give me the statue,” said Mixcatl, a cold calm seeping through her. Wordlessly Huetzin gave it to her. She ran her fingers over the greenstone face, then touched her own. “Is this what I am?”

“Yes.”

“Why I get the peeling sickness and other things as well?”

The old scribe nodded.

Mixcatl felt fear strike her. She was different, as she had long suspected. Now that it had come into the open, she would be looked at with suspicion, cast aside, driven away. Yet at the same time, she felt a strange sort of relief. Now she had at least the beginning of an answer.

“The jaguar beneath,” she mused, feeling strangely distant. She turned her face to Nine-Lizard. “But I have never peeled off all my skin. When that happens will the…thing inside…come out?”

“In time, yes.”

Huetzin broke in, shaking his head angrily. “I can’t believe this. People do not become animals. Perhaps in myths or in tales of the gods, but those are only ways to tell certain truths. Yes, part of me can believe when a priest dons the skin of a beast that he has become the creature, but part of me knows that the body of a man lies beneath.”

“Perhaps I am the opposite,” said Mixcatl, feeling oddly calm. “A beast wearing the skin of a woman. It would explain so many things.” She lay quietly, thinking of how the deer smell
excited her and no one else, how her skin loosened and peeled when she became excited, how the intensity of her art had diminished as the change came closer. A beast cares nothing about beauty, she thought, and felt cold.

“I still do not believe,” said Huetzin, stroking Mixcatl’s hair. “The eyes that look at me, the hand that holds the brush; they speak of a woman’s spirit, not a slit-eyed cat’s.”

“The beast is there,” said Nine-Lizard. “And it will emerge. Trust me. I know. And that is why Mixcatl must go back to the land of her birth and be among the people whose gift she carries.”

Again Mixcatl stared into the old scribe’s eyes and saw the remains of an ancient agony that might have once matched her own. She sensed that he did know what would happen to her. And not just from reading about it in a book of glyphs.

“Then if it is important that she go, take her,” said Huetzin. “I will miss her, but it is better if she can experience this with people who understand it. And surely she will come back to me?”

Mixcatl reached up to Huetzin’s arm. “Yes, I will come back,” she said softly, but her mind was in confusion. Suppose the jaguar within became free? If it had no care for art, would it care about Huetzin?

“I would take her at once, if your father were not standing in the way,” said Nine-Lizard, with a steady gaze at Huetzin.

The young sculptor shook his head in a puzzled manner. “This is what grieves and frightens me most about this. The change in my father. He has never before kept things from me. He has never let his desires overrule his wisdom and he has never hurt anyone willingly. But perhaps he has only misunderstood,” Huetzin said, his mood brightening. “If he knows that sending Mixcatl to these people will help her, surely he will not oppose that.” His manner grew more determined. “I will speak to him. I know he will listen.”

“I hope for her sake and yours that he will,” said Nine-lizard softly.

Wise Coyote sat in his chambers across from his son Huetzin and the slave-scribe Nine-Lizard. Out of courtesy he had given them both reed icpallis to sit on, but he also kept his turquoise crown on his head.

He saw that Huetzin noticed that he did not put the crown aside, as he often did when meeting with his sons. The young sculptor’s face stiffened, yet he did not hesitate to speak.

Taking a deep breath he said,’ ‘My father, these words come hard because I have never had to say anything like this to you before.” Huetzin gulped and clenched his fists to still his trembling. “I have always admired your wisdom and it disappoints me to see that you have departed from it.”

Wise Coyote waited, thinking,
this is not the first time, Huetzin, but you were too young to know the others
.

“When you brought the girl Mixcatl here, why did you not tell me about the illness that causes her so much torment? And now, why do you not allow her to be sent to those people who can offer her help?”

“I did not tell you about her because I had no idea that you would become involved,” said Wise Coyote mildly. “You are always at your workshop; you have shown little interest in the company of women or the arts of courtship. Perhaps I should have foreseen that the gift of craftsmanship that you both share would have drawn you together.”

“It was not only that,” said Huetzin slowly. “When you see someone in pain, your heart goes out to them, father.”

Wise Coyote remembered how Huetzin had come to comfort him as he stood alone on the hill after his eldest son’s death.

“What is this thing that possesses her? Why does she start sniffing like a beast and scratching off her skin when she sees or smells my pet deer? Is it true, as Nine-Lizard says, that she will transform into a jaguar?”

Under the steady but guileless gaze of his son’s eyes. Wise Coyote had no course but to retreat. “You have seen her—during one of those times?”

“Twice,” said Nine-Lizard. “Lord king, I think it would be simpler if the young man were told the full story.”

Wise Coyote sent the old scribe a sharp glance, but Nine-lizard did not flinch or quail. The king sensed that he was being faced by two wills as strong as his own. He also felt a strange aching jealousy. He thought he was the only one who had gotten close to the strange young woman whom he had taken under his protection. He remembered how she had walked with him in the garden and shared his hopes and his quest for a gentle god that would be worthy of his devotion.

“Wait here,” he said abruptly. “I must go to the library.”

When he returned, he carried the second of the two statues, the Olmec carrying the snarling jaguar-baby. He put it down beside the kneeling jaguar man and said to Huetzin, “We spoke about these once before.”

“You said that they were from an ancient tradition that has gone.”

Wise Coyote smiled tiredly. “Not entirely, Huetzin. Look closely at the kneeling man. It was you yourself that said that his skin was peeling off, revealing the animal beneath.”

Wide-eyed, Huetzin stared at the statue, then at Wise Coyote’s face. “So you really believe it,” he said, and Wise Coyote saw him glance at Nine-Lizard in amazement.

“Huetzin, listen to me,” Wise Coyote said. “It is not an illness that Mixcatl has. It is her nature, struggling to surface. And it is a savage, dangerous, vengeful nature. I know, for I saw it emerge.”

Briefly he told Huetzin what he had seen when Mixcatl had been cornered and teased by the children in Tenochtitlan. He watched as the young man’s pupils grew wide with fear and uncertainty. “She was going to rip out the boy’s entrails, Huetzin. It was only luck that weariness overpowered her in time. As it was, the youth escaped, but he still bears deep scars on his thighs. And his memory.”

“No,” Huetzin whispered. “In my workshop, I could see her spirit. She is a gentle and gifted artist.”

“She is both, Huetzin,” said Nine-Lizard sadly. “It would be better if she were not graced with an artist’s soul, for it wars with that of the beast and makes the struggle even harder.”

“I have seen that struggle,” said Huetzin, then added defiantly, “and the artist won. You saw. Nine-lizard. When she concentrated on painting, she held the beast away. She does not need to give in to that side of her nature. She can fight it and I will help her.”