Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  While the girls cooked and dried pinóli meal, and ground and mixed chocolate powder for our provisions, I went to Tecuantépec’s marketplace to buy other traveling necessities. At an armorer’s workshop, I hefted and swung various weapons, finally selecting a maquáhuitl and a short spear that felt best to my arm.

  The smith said, “The young lord prepares to meet some hazard?”

  I said, “I am going to the land of the Chóntaltin. Have you heard of them?”

  “Ayya, yes. That ugly people who live up the coast. Chóntaltin is of course a Náhuatl word. We call them the Zyú, but it means the same: The Strangers. Actually, they are only Huave, one of the more squalid and bestial Huave tribes. The Huave have no real land of their own, which is why everywhere they are called The Strangers. We tolerate their living in small groups here and there, on lands fit for no other use.”

  I said, “Up in the mountains, I once stayed overnight in one of their villages. Not a very sociable people.”

  “Well, if you slept among them and woke alive, you met one of the more gracious tribes. You will not find the Zyú of the coast so hospitable. Oh, they may welcome you warmly—rather too warmly. They like to roast and eat passersby, as a change from their monotonous diet of fish.”

  I agreed that they sounded delightful, but asked what was the easiest and most expeditious way to reach them.

  “You could go directly southwest from here, but there are mountains in the way. I suggest that you follow the river south to the ocean, then go west along the beaches. Or at our fishing port of Nozibe, you might find a boatman who will take you even more quickly by sea.”

  So that is what Zyanya and I did. Had I been traveling alone, I would not have been so particular about choosing an easy route. However, I was to discover that the girl was a hardy traveling companion. She never spoke a word of complaint about bad weather, about camping in the open, about eating cold food or none, about being surrounded by wilderness or wild beasts. But that first trip outbound was an agreeable and leisurely one. It was a single day’s journey, a pleasant stroll, down the flat riverside plains to the port of Nozibe. That name means only Salty, and the “port” was only a scattering of palm-leaf roofs on poles, where the fishermen could sit in shade. The beach was littered with swathes of netting spread for drying or mending; there were dugout canoes coming or going through the breakers, or drawn up on the sand.

  I found a fisherman who, rather reluctantly, admitted that he had occasionally visited the Zyú stretch of the coast, and had sometimes supplemented his own catch by purchasing some of theirs, and spoke a smattering of their language. “But they only grudgingly allow me to call,” he warned. “A totally unknown foreigner would approach at his own peril.” I had to offer an extravagant price before he would agree to paddle us along the shore to that country and back, and to interpret for me there—if I was given any chance to say anything. Meanwhile, Zyanya had found an unoccupied palm shelter and spread on the soft sand the blankets we had brought from the inn, and we slept that night chastely far apart.

  We pushed off at dawn. The boat stayed close inshore, just clear of the line of breaking water, and the boatman paddled in morose silence while Zyanya and I chatted gaily, pointing out to each other the jeweled sights of the landward scenery. The stretches of beach were like powdered silver prodigally spilled between the turquoise sea and the emerald coconut palms, from which frequently burst flocks of ruby and gold birds. As we progressed westward, however, the bright sand gradually darkened through gray to black, and beyond the green palms reared a range of volcanoes. Some of them smoked sullenly. Violent eruptions and earthquakes, Zyanya said, were frequent occurrences along that coast.

  In midafternoon our boatman broke his silence. “There is the Zyú village at which I call,” and he waved with his oar, as our canoe turned toward a huddle of huts on the black beach.

  “No!” Zyanya exclaimed, suddenly and excitedly. “You told me, Záa, that I might remember other things my father said. And I do! He mentioned the mountain that walks in the water!”

  “What?”

  She pointed ahead of the boat’s prow. About one-long-run beyond the Zyú village, the black sands ended abruptly at a formidable crag of mountain, an outcrop of the range inland. It stood like a wall across the beach and extended far into the ocean. Even from our distance I could see, through my crystal, plumes and spouts of seawater dashing high and white against the mountain’s skirts of giant boulders.

  “See the great rocks the mountain has shed!” said Zyanya. “That is the place of the purple! That is where we must go!”

  I corrected her, “That is where I must go, my girl.”

  “No,” said the boatman, shaking his head. “The village is dangerous enough.”

  I took up my maquáhuitl and held it where he could see it, and I thumbed its edge of obsidian, and I said, “You will put the girl ashore here. Tell the villagers that she is not to be molested, that we will return for her before dark. Then you and I will make for the mountain that walks in the water.”

  He grumbled and predicted dire things, but he turned through the surf to the shore. I assumed that the Zyú men were out fishing, for only a few women emerged from the huts as we grounded. They were filthy creatures, bare-breasted and barefooted, wearing only ragged skirts, and they listened to what the boatman told them, and they gave ugly looks to the pretty girl being stranded among them, but they made no untoward movement as long as I had them in sight. I was not happy about leaving Zyanya there, but it was preferable to taking her farther into peril.

  When the boatman and I were out from the shore again, even a landsman like myself could see that any landing on the seaward slope of the mountain was impossible. Its rubble of boulders, many of them as big as the smaller palaces of Tenochtítlan, extended forbiddingly far about it. The ocean broke among those rocks into vertical cliffs and towers and columns of white water. Those lifted incredibly high, and hung there poised, and then tumbled down with a roar like all the thunders of Tlaloc booming at once, and then slithered to sea again, making whirlpools that gulped and sucked so powerfully that even a few of the house-sized boulders could be seen to shake.

  The ocean’s turmoil extended so far that it took all the boatman’s skill to bring us safely to the beach just east of the mountain. But he did it, and, when we had dragged the dugout up the sand out of reach of the tumultuous surf, when we had finished coughing and spitting out the salt water we had swallowed, I sincerely congratulated him:

  “If you can so bravely best that vicious sea, you have little to fear from any of these contemptible Zyú.”

  That seemed to embolden him to some degree, so I gave him my spear to carry and motioned for him to follow me. We strode along the beach to the mountain wall and found a slope we could climb. That brought us to the ridge of the mountain about halfway between sea level and its summit, and from the ridge we could see the interrupted beach continue on the westward side. But we turned left along the ridge until we stood on the promontory above that spreading fringe of great rocks and the fury of great waters. I was at the place of which Zyanya’s father had spoken, but it seemed an unlikely place to find a precious purple dye—or fragile snails, for that matter.

  What I did find was a group of five men climbing the ridge toward us from the direction of the ocean. They were obviously Zyú priests, for they were as unwashed, tangle-haired, and slovenly as any Mexíca priests, with the added inelegance that they wore not ragged robes but ragged animal skins, whose rancid smell reached us before the men did. They all five looked unfriendly, and when the foremost barked something in his native language, it sounded unfriendly.

  “Tell them and tell them quickly,” I said to my boatman, “that I come offering gold to buy some of their purple dye.”

  Before he could speak, one of the men grunted, “No need him. I talk enough Lóochi. I priest of Tiat Ndik, Sea God, and this his place. You die for put foot here.”

  I tried to convey, in the sim
plest Lóochi words, that I would not have intruded on holy terrain if I could have made my proposal in any other place or manner. I begged his indulgence of my presence and his consideration of my offer. Though his four subordinates continued to glare at me murderously, the chief priest seemed slightly mollified by my obsequious approach. At any rate, his next threat on my life was not quite so blunt:

  “You go away now, Yellow Eye, maybe you go alive.”

  I tried to suggest that, since I had already profaned those holy precincts, it would take only a little longer for us to exchange my gold for his purple.

  He said, “Purple holy for Sea God. No price can buy.” And he repeated, “You go away now, maybe you go alive.”

  “Very well. But before I go, would you at least satisfy my curiosity? What do snails have to do with the purple dye?”

  “Chachi?” He echoed the Lóochi word for snails, uncomprehending, and turned for interpretation to my boatman, who was perceptibly quaking with fright.

  “Ah, the ndik diok,” said the priest, enlightened. He hesitated, then turned and beckoned for me to follow. The boatman and the other four Zyú stayed atop the ridge while the chief priest and I clambered down toward the sea. It was a long descent, and the thundering walls and spouts of white water broke higher and higher around us, and showered a drizzle of cold spume down upon us. But we came at last into a sheltered depression among the massive boulders, and in it was a pool where the water merely sloshed back and forth, while the rest of the ocean boomed and pounded outside.

  “Holy place of Tiat Ndik,” said the priest. “Where the god lets us hear his voice.”

  “His voice?” I said. “You mean the ocean’s noise?”

  “His voice!” the man insisted. “To hear, must put head under.”

  Not taking my eyes off him and keeping my maquáhuitl at the ready, I knelt and lowered my head until I had one ear under the sloshing water. At first I could hear my own heart making a pulse beat in my ear, and that is an eerie sound, but then there came a much stranger one, beginning softly but getting louder. It could have been someone whistling under the water—if anyone could whistle under water—and whistling a melody more subtle than any earthly musician could play. Even now, I cannot liken it to any other sound I ever heard in my life. I later decided it must be a wind which, following the chinks and crevices among the rocks, was simultaneously made to warble and was deflected under the water. Its telltale bubbles no doubt came up somewhere else, and the pool revealed only the unearthly music of it. But there at that moment, and in those circumstances, I was ready enough to take the priest’s word that it was the voice of a god.

  Meanwhile, he was moving around the pool and studying it from various points, and finally he bent to plunge his arm in to the shoulder. He worked for a moment, then brought up his hand and opened it for me to see, saying “Ndik diok.” I daresay the creature is some relation to the familiar land snail, but Zyanya’s father had been mistaken to promise her a necklace of polished shells. The slimy slug carried no shell on its back, and had no other distinction that I could see.

  But then the priest bent his head close to the slug in his palm and blew hard upon it. That evidently annoyed the creature, for it either urinated or defecated into his hand: a little smear of pale yellow matter. The priest carefully replaced the sea snail on its underwater rock, then held his cupped palm out for me to observe, and I shrank from the stink of that pale yellow substance. But, to my surprise, the smear in his hand began to change color: to a yellow-green, to a green-blue, to a blue-red that deepened and intensified until it was a vibrant purple.

  Grinning, the man reached out and rubbed the substance onto my mantle front. The brilliant smudge still smelled abominable, but I knew it for the dye that would never fade or wash away. He gestured again for me to follow him, and we climbed the tumbled rocks while, with a combination of hand signs and his laconic Lóochi, the priest explained about the ndik diok:

  The men of the Zyú collected the snails and provoked their exudations only twice a year, on holy days selected by some complicated divination. Though there were thousands of the sea snails clinging among the rocks, each gave only a minute quantity of that substance. So the men had to go far out among those cataclysms of crashing water, and dive into them, to pry the slugs loose, make them excrete onto a hank of cotton thread or into a leather flask, then replace the creatures unharmed. The snails had to be kept alive for the next time of extraction, but the men were not so indispensable; in each of those half-yearly rituals, some four or five divers were drowned or dashed to death upon the rocks.

  “But why go to all that trouble, and sacrifice so many of your people, and then refuse to profit from it?” I asked, and managed to make the priest understand. He beckoned again, and led me farther into a clammy grotto, and said proudly:

  “Our Sea God whose voice you heard. Tiat Ndik.”

  It was a crude and lumpy statue, since it consisted only of piled round rocks: a big boulder for the abdomen, a smaller for the chest, a yet smaller one for the head. But that whole worthless heap of inanimate rock was colored the glowing purple. And all about Tiat Ndik were stacked flasks full of the dye, and hanks of yarn colored with it: a buried treasure of incalculable value.

  When we had climbed as far as the ridge again, the red-hot disk of Tonatíu was just sinking into the far western ocean and boiling up a steam of clouds. Then the disk was gone, and for an instant we saw Tonatíu’s light shining through the sea out there where it thins at the brink of the world—a brief, bright flash of emerald green, no more. The priest and I made our way back toward where we had left the others, while he continued explaining: that the offerings of the purple dye were essential, or Tiat Ndik would entice no more fish to the nets of the Zyú.

  I argued, “For all these sacrifices and offerings, your Sea God lets you eke out a miserable fish-eating existence. Let me take your purple to market and I will bring you gold enough that you can buy a city. A city in a fair and pleasant country, brimming with far better foods than fish, and with slaves to serve them to you.”

  He remained obdurate. “The god would never allow. The purple cannot be sold.” After a moment he added, “Sometimes we not eat fish, Yellow Eye.”

  He smiled and pointed to where the four other priests stood around a driftwood fire. It was broiling two fresh-cut human thighs, spitted on my own spear. There was no sign of the rest of the boatman. Forcing my face to give no indication of the trepidation I felt, I took from my loincloth the wadded packet of gold dust and dropped it on the ground between me and the chief priest.

  “Open it carefully,” I said, “lest the wind get at it.” As he knelt and began to unfold the cloth, I went on, “If I were to fill my canoe with your purple, I could bring back the boat almost as full of gold. But I offer this amount of gold for only as many flasks as I can carry in my own two arms.”

  He had the cloth open then, and the heap of dust gleamed in the sunset light, and his four brother priests approached to ogle it over his crouching figure. He let some of the dust run through his fingers, then, holding the cloth in both hands, he bounced it gently to judge its weight. Without looking up at me, he said, “You give this much gold for the purple. How much you give for the girl?”

  “What girl?” I said, though my heart lurched.

  “Her behind you.”

  I flicked only a quick glance backward. Zyanya stood directly behind me, looking unhappy, and a little way behind her stood six or seven more men of the Zyú, eagerly craning to see around her and me, to eye the gold. The priest was still kneeling and weighing the packet between his hands when I turned again and swung my maquáhuitl. The packet and his clutching hands dropped to the ground, though the priest barely swayed, staring in shock at the blood gushing from the stumps of his wrists.

  The lesser priests and the fishermen rushed to converge—whether to grab for the liberated gold or to aid their chief, I do not know—but in that same instant I whirled, seized Zyanya’s han
d, plunged through the closing circle of men, and dragged her after me in a headlong run along the ridge and down its eastern side. We were briefly out of sight of the milling Zyú, and I made an abrupt left swerve to dodge among some boulders higher than our heads. The Zyú would give chase, and they would expect us to bolt for our canoe. But even if we could have reached and launched it, I had no experience of rowing a seagoing craft; the pursuers could probably have caught us merely by wading after us.

  Some number of them did go running and shouting past our temporary hiding place—running in the direction of the beach, as I had hoped. “Uphill now!” I said to Zyanya, and she wasted no breath in asking why, but climbed along with me. Most of that promontory was bare rock, and we had to pick our way carefully through clefts and crevices, so that we should not be visible to those below. Higher up, the mountain sprouted trees and shrubbery in which we could more effectively lose ourselves, but that green haven was still a long climb distant, and I worried that the local birds would give away our position. At every step we seemed to startle into flight a whole flock of sea gulls or pelicans or cormorants.

  But then I noticed that the birds were rising not just from around us, but from all parts of the mountain—land birds as well: parakeets, doves, rock wrens—twittering and flying about aimlessly. And there were not just birds; animals normally furtive or nocturnal were also strangely in evidence: armadillos, iguanas, rock snakes—even an ocelot loped past without giving us a glance—and all the animals, like us, were moving uphill. Then, though the dusk had still a while to last before dark, I heard a coyote’s mournful keening from somewhere on the heights, and not far ahead of us a sinuous skein of bats came spewing from some cranny—and I knew what was coming: one of the convulsions so common to that coast.