The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) (26 page)

“My mother’s name is Juliana. She lives in Chicago, where I’m from.”

The snake flicked her tongue up and over her head, and it came right near my breast. The triangular tips looked sharp enough to cut my skin.

“This path on the canyon is the place where I remember my experiences with my own mother,” the snake said. “I come here often to remember it. Your description of your mother is curious. She has so much hair, so much life and red blood inside her limbs. She has strange eyes. Do you know that?”

“How do you know what my mother looks like?” I said.

“You spoke her name, Juliana.” The way the snake spoke my mother’s name became a short symphony in the dark. “In that single word, you told me her tale in your music and in your voice.”

I considered quieting my thoughts, but instead, I relaxed. I felt like the snake was really listening to every thought that I emitted through my speech and my movement.

“Are you a mother?” I asked.

I heard a hollow cracking sound behind me, and I turned around. The snake was coiling her body from the tip of her rattled tail forward, covering thousands of miles as it approached our spot. She was making herself comfortable, coiling herself around me. I wanted to scream, but I had to keep my cool.

“No, I am not a mother,” the snake said. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because that is my role down here. To transport beings throughout the Coil. I do not make life.”

“I see,” I said. I got down on my knees to get a better grip on the snake’s skin in case she decided to yank me. I still couldn’t hear or feel any trace of my brother.

“But I have a mother, and we share our love sometimes,” the snake said.

“What is your name?” I said.

The word that flowed out from the snake was long, twisted, gnarled and gorgeous. Its sound made an image in my mind, and I saw a dazzling bird with wings that sparkled like jewels. That bird was as blue as Lake Michigan.
 

“Your name is Blue Hummingbird?” I said.

The snake flexed her muscles beneath me and sent out a thick pulse of music. It was a yes.

“What is your mother’s name?” I said.

Blue Hummingbird sang, using her body and the hiss inside her jaw. And in just a few bars of that song, I could suddenly grasp the memories of the snake’s mother. The music showed me an image of a monster, bigger than Blue Hummingbird, a planet-sized giant made of bone and hard muscle, with several limbs that exploded like needles from her stomach and her lower back, radiating in shimmering waves. That body looked nothing like a human’s. Her upper body had four arms, and on her lower body, six muscled limbs lunged forward, covering thousands of miles with each step.
 

This gigantic mother moved on a vast plain, alone, radiating music around her in cones, just like the Xolotl and the other beings in Mictlán. Water circled the mother’s neck like a collar, and it sparkled in kaleidoscope colors, some which I had never seen before. At the mother’s waist, thousands of snakes curled, forming a skirt. Many of these looked just like the snake poised in front of me now. And instead of a head, two thick rattlesnakes sprouted from the colossus’ bleeding neck.

I know her. I know her name. She was in José María’s books!

“Is your mother Coatlicue?” I said.
 

The snake quivered, and she pulled back her lips, revealing the hundreds of teeth in her mouth. The sound she made was a definite yes.

Coatlicue, whose name meant Skirt of Snakes, had captivated me in those books, with her monstrous appearance. Yet, the image of Coatlicue that the snake showed me shocked me more than I could imagine.

I knew that the Nahuatl names for these gods that José María and I brought with us into this world didn’t exactly match the names of these creatures, but in the case of the Xolotl, he had acknowledged the name. Perhaps in the time of the Aztecs, this was as close as their language could come to describing these beings.

“Your word ‘Coatlicue’ is close enough, Clara. My mother’s real name is too long to say to you. You do not have enough wheels to understand that name, but yes. Coatlicue will do.”

“Does your mother live down here in Mictlán?” I said. I hoped the answer was no. The giant I saw in the vision felt foreign, like something beyond time.

“Oh, no, there’s not many of my mother’s kind down here, Clara,” Blue Hummingbird said. “Ironically, Mictlán welcomes all children and siblings, and their parents. But the Major Beings, those that are like my mother—they left this canyon a long time ago. You may not understand this, but those elder beings are still evacuating now. There are only two parents who still live in the Coil: the Lords.”

“But the Lords are not your parents?” I said.

“That’s correct. They have no real children. They were here before all the other beings. All they do is eat other people’s children. You know the Lords?”

I took a deep breath as I shivered.

“Yes, I have heard about them. They’re at the bottom of the Coil. Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacíhuatl—the Lords. I am trying to find them.”

“Then surely you are ready to die,” the snake said. “Are you filled with the joy of death, Clara?”

The question scared me. I felt my skin grow cold.

“Why would I be filled with joy over death?” I said. Suddenly, the small hedges of black plants stirred, and I felt a presence in them, as if they too could feel me standing next to them. The jungles and the woods of this part of the canyon looked hungry, feral. If it was possible for plants to want to eat me, this was that time. By now, I had really grown used to being able to locate and understand all the beings and the topography in Mictlán based on how their music bounced off of their surfaces.

“You will be happy when the Lords tear your limbs apart, Clara.”

No, thanks.

“I’d like to give you my phone in exchange for a favor,” I said.

The snake rose into the air, singing, growing thicker. She smacked her mouth open and shut, evaluating me each time she flickered her tongue.

“You want to trade, Clara. I love trades. What do you want in return for your weapon object?” she said.

“You tell me where my brother might be, since you seem to know so much.”

“Your sibling… Yes. Yes. This is a pleasurable exchange. Give me your object.”

Blue Hummingbird traveled down toward me again. Her mouth gaped open, as if she wanted me to step into it.

No way.

“Okay, but first, you have to explain something to me,” I said, holding the phone behind my back. “Why does the Xolotl have an object? He carried one too, in his loincloth. That means that you lied when you told me there were no object here in the Coil,” I said.

Blue Hummingbird flexed and spat sideways. The gob struck the wall and made a hole in it as if the saliva were made of acid. Her eyes grew wide in rage.

“His arrogance,” she screamed. “So much arrogance. You have seen that dog-headed intruder, I take it.”

“Yes, I have. He tried to eat me,” I said.

“Of course he did. And Xolotl gave you the power of speech—“

“Yes, with his knife. He cut me, and he cut himself. And since then, I could speak in this place.”

“He brings objects from your world, because he’s always been in love with your kind,” Blue Hummingbird said. “Now that I have seen you and your sibling up close…I can see why.”

“But why a knife?”

“To tear his way into your world. There are gates that lead to other worlds, and he’s mastered his gate by tearing a hole at the top of the mountain with his knife.”

“Are there other kinds of travel through the worlds?” I said.

The snake’s musculature swelled, and her brow furrowed, as if she were considering a thought.

“Beware of mirrors,” the snake said. “Because they offer access to gates, too.”

The snake hissed, and she put her head down directly in front of me so I could see right into her multiple eyes. Her teeth had the texture of glass, but I knew they were as hard as steel. They rose about twelve feet into the air. Too high for me to reach. I had to toss my iPhone over the fangs, like throwing a ball over a fence. It landed inside her mouth with a wet sound.

The snake hummed like a live wire while she inspected the mobile phone in her mouth. Then she tossed it back into her throat.
 

She grunted and flicked her tongue, lashing the empty air hundreds of times.

“This object has no real knowledge inside of it, Clara.”

“In our world, it does.”

“I will need to think about this.”

“Can you tell me why the Xolotl would attack me?”

“He plays with what he loves, child.”

It occurred to me then that I had been wrong to think of the Xolotl as a being with human attributes.
 

“Now, why would that filthy cur give you the power of speech?” the snake said.
 

“I don’t know. He called me a Wanderer.”

The snake raised her head to taste the air with her forked tongue. Its lashes were alert, full of energy.

“We haven’t seen a Wanderer here in millions of wheels,” the snake said. “And you claim to be a mere human?”

I nodded.

“Then you can’t be a Wanderer. Speech is only given to Wanderers, and there has
never
been a human Wanderer in Mictlán. Only the Major Beings can be Wanderers.”

“That’s what Xolotl called me. And he gave me speech.”

“He gave you blood, and you gave him yours. So sensuous. So irresponsible.”

“Well, I don’t care,” I said. “I came here to find my tonal, and I demand that you help me find it,” I said.

I only spoke this way in the outside world when I dealt with oppressive right wingers, with homophobes and racists. The tone of voice came from somewhere deep in me, and it always got my point across. I mean to hold it until I got some answers.

“The Feathered Snake
was
a Wanderer, Clara,” the snake said. Her voice filled me with its music, and I felt drawn toward her. What would it be like to touch the ridges on top of her head?

But then my mind returned to the clue she had given me.

The Feathered Snake.

“Quetzalcóatl,” I said.
 

“He’s one of four children who grew up in the Coil but left the canyon. They were four babies, each bathed in one of four colors. Most of those children seem to have forgotten Mictlán. Except for Quetzalcóatl, as you call him. Quetzalcóatl came back to the Spiral Canyon to stay with us. But the neglect of the other three brothers—it’s lamentable.”

She talks as if they are family
, I thought.
Back at home, this could very well be the same conversation about how La Negra stopped going to family gatherings.

“Do you have siblings?” I said.

“Sure, many. But I am the only one that lives down here, with the Lords. The rest live in the outer worlds, beyond the Mountain Above The Coil. Many of my siblings still live with my mother.
Inside my mother.
”

I didn’t understand exactly what this meant. Just as soon as I seemed to find a trace of something human in this snake, she surprised me with the utter alienness of her personality.

“Well, then, maybe you can tell me where to find my
sibling, José María.”

The snake squealed and rose in the air, thickening as she flexed her muscular body in rage.

Blue Hummingbird’s flesh lost some of its solidity, and I realized she wasn’t made of conventional flesh and bone.
 

She’s braided. She’s made of billions of snakes. Woven so tight that they form this snake.

The woven snakes parted, and for a second, I could see right into her flesh as if a butcher had made an incision. Buried inside, cocooned, lay José María. He looked dazed, as if he were high, and he waved from the gap in the snake. It was a lazy wave, full of pleasure and relaxation.

“Hey,
reina
,” he said, winking. Then the snakes covered him up again.

“Bring him back!” I demanded.
 

I sprinted and jumped off the ground, lending inside the aperture in the snake, just in time to slam into my brother.

And then the snakes knitted themselves together to seal us in like linens around a corpse in a grave.

None of the snakes bit me, but they ran their bodies over every bit of exposed skin, and in some cases, they slithered up my jeans and into my shirt sleeves.

But I didn’t scream. I didn’t want to upset the snakes. They each made their own song, and though I lost my ability to feel objects around me, I could tell there was a solid human body not far from mine.

“José María, can you hear me?”

“Yep,” he said. “Loud and clear.”

“How’d you get in here?” I said.

“I asked her if I could step inside her folds.”

“But why?” I said.

“It was her voice,” he said. “I couldn’t resist.”

My body felt as if it had been suspended in a thick liquid, and I discovered that if I relaxed, my fear of the snakebites receded. They flowed over my lips and my hair, slow as lava.

“There are giants that move through the cosmos,” said the snake. She was speaking through us right inside her flesh, without the need for a voice. Her words felt closer than ever before.