Aztec Autumn a-2

by Gary Jennings

  However, as I have said, it was a long time—fully five years—before I again had occasion to think, and then only briefly, of Yeyac's having made advances to me. I was now twelve years old, my voice just beginning to change, alternating between rumble and squeak, and I was looking forward to putting on my own loincloth of manhood before long. And what happened, absurdly enough, happened just as it had the other time.

  As I keep remarking, the gods derive their merriest entertainment from putting us mortals in situations that could seem to be mere coincidence. I was in my room at the palace, my back to the door, when again a hand stole under my mantle, gave my genitals an affectionate squeeze—and propelled me to another prodigious leap.

  "Yya ouíya, not again!" I squealed, as I went up in the air and came down again, and spun to face my molester.

  "Again?" she said, herself surprised.

  It was my other cousin, Améyatl. If I have not earlier mentioned that she was beautiful, well, she was. At sixteen, she was more fair of face and form than any other girl or woman I had seen in all of Aztlan, and, at that age, probably at her veriest pinnacle of beauty.

  "That was most unseemly," I chided her, my voice now coming out as a growl. "Why would you do such a thing?"

  She said forthrightly, "I hoped to tempt you."

  "Tempt me?" I piped, like a wee child. "To what?"

  "To prepare for the day when you will wear the maxtlatl. Would you not like to learn, before that day, how to perform like a man?"

  "Perform?" I grunted. "Perform what?"

  "The private act that a man and woman do together. I confess, I should very much like to learn. I thought we might teach one another."

  "But—why me?" I said in a thin peep.

  She smiled mischievously. "Because, like me, you have not yet learned. But that one touch I gave you, just now, tells me that you are full-grown and able. So am I. I shall undress and you will see."

  "I have seen you undressed. We have bathed together. Sat in the steam hut together."

  She waved that away. "When we were sexless children. Since I donned my own undergarment of womanhood, you have not seen me naked. You will find me much different now, both here... and here. You can touch, too, and so will I, and we will go on to do whatever we are next inclined to do."

  Now, I and my childhood companions had often solemnly discussed, as I imagine even Christian youngsters do, the differences between male and female bodies, and what we believed men and women did in private, and how it was done, and with which on top, and with what variations, and how long did the act take, and how often could it be done in succession. Each of us, first in secret, later in competitive gatherings, found out how to verify that our tepúltin were reliably erectile and that our olóltin eggs contained manly omícetl in a quantity" and projectile capability not inferior to that of our fellows.

  Also, whenever we were put to assist at one of the city's never-finished works of improvement, we listened with avidity to the adult workers' bawdy banter, and their reminiscences of their adventures with women, almost certainly exaggerated in the telling. So I, and every other boy I knew, possessed only vague and secondhand information, a good deal of it misinformation, ranging from the implausible to the anatomically impossible. If we boys came to any consensus at all in our discussions, it was simply that we were more than eager to delve into those mysteries ourselves.

  And here was I, being offered the body of the loveliest maiden in Aztlan—not a cheap and common maátitl or even an expensive auyaními, but a veritable princess. (As the daughter of the Uey-Tecútli, she was entitled to be addressed—and was by the common folk—as Améyatzin.) Any of my usual companions would have snatched at the offer without demur, but with glee and gratitude and fulsome thanks to all the gods that be.

  But remember, even though she was four years my senior, I had grown up with this princess. I had known her when she was just a grubby girl-child, her nose often running, her knobby knees frequently skinned, and sometimes her picking at the scabs on them, and her occasional crying fits and temper tantrums and being a general nuisance, and, later, her spiteful older-sister teasing and tormenting of me. She had, of course, become more ladylike since those days, but I still regarded her as a big sister. So, to the same degree that she held no mystery for me, she held no compelling attraction. I could not look at her, as I could at just about any other pretty woman I encountered, and think: Now... what if we two...?

  Nevertheless, this was an opportunity I could hardly—as we say—pick my teeth at. Even if coupling with this cousin should prove as boring, even distasteful, as my long-ago brief experience with her brother, I was being offered the chance to explore an adult female body and all its secret places, and to find out what no one yet had credibly explained to me: how the act of coupling was actually done. Still, to my credit, I put up an argument, however feebly:

  "Why me? Why not Yeyac? He is older than us both. He should be able to teach you more than—"

  "Ayya!" she said with a grimace. "Surely you must have realized that my brother is a cuilóntli. That he and his lovers indulge only in cuilónyotl."

  Yes. I did know that, and by now I had learned the words for that sort of man and that sort of indulgence, but I was fairly astonished that a cloistered maiden would know such words. I was even more astonished that a cloistered maiden could, as Améyatl was now doing, so casually take off her blouse, leaving herself bare to the waist. But suddenly her expression of pleased expectancy turned to one of dismay, and she cried:

  "Is that what you meant when you said 'again'? That you and Yeyac—? Ayya, cousin, are you a cuilóntli, too?"

  I could not reply on the instant, for I was dumbstruck, gaping at her divinely round, smooth, inviting breasts, each tipped with a russet bud that I was sure would taste like flower nectar. Améyatl was right; she was different now. She had used to be as flat there as I was, and her nipples as indistinct as mine. But, after that spellbound moment, I hastened to say:

  "No. No, I am not. Yeyac did once grab at me. As you did. But I repulsed him. I have no interest in cuilónyotl lovemaking."

  Her face cleared and she smiled and said, "Then let us get on with the right sort of lovemaking." And she let her skirt drop to the floor.

  "The right sort?" I repeated, like a parrot. "But that is the sort by which babies are made."

  "Only when babies are wanted," she said. "Do you think I am a baby myself? I am a grown woman, and I have learned from other grown women how to avoid pregnancy. I daily take a dose of the powdered tlatlaohuéhuetl root."

  I had no notion of what that might be, but I took her at her word. Still—again to my credit, I think—I tried one last argument:

  "You will want to be married one day, Améyatl. And you will wish to marry a píli of your own rank. And he will expect you to be a virgin." My voice went up into a squeak again, as she began slowly, almost teasingly, to unwind the felted tochómitl garment that wrapped her loins. "I am told that a female, after even one single time of lovemaking, is not a virgin, and that the fact is manifest on her wedding night. In which case you would be fortunate if you were accepted as a wife by even a—"

  She sighed as if much exasperated by my nervous maundering. "I told you, Tenamáxtli, I have been taught by other women. If ever I do have a wedding night, I shall be prepared. There is an astringent ointment to make me tighter than a virgin only eight years old. And a certain sort of pigeon's egg to insert inside me. Unnoticed by my husband, it will break at the proper moment."

  My voice gone gruff again, I said, "You certainly seem to have given this considerable thought before you invited me to—"

  "Ayya, will you be quiet? Are you afraid of me? Cease your blithering, idiot cousin, and come here!" And she lay back on my pallet and drew me down beside her, and I surrendered utterly.

  I found that she had spoken truthfully, also, about her being different in that place, too. The earlier times that I had seen her naked, there had been only a small, barely defi
ned crease at her groin. The tipíli there now was rather more than a crease, and within it were marvels. Marvels.

  I am sure that anyone observing our inexperienced fumblings, even a totally disinterested cuilóntli, would have been overcome with laughter. In my unreliable voice, which wavered through every tone from reed flute to conch trumpet to turtleshell drum, I kept stammering inanities like "Is this the right way?" and "What do I do with this?" and "Would you prefer that I do this... or this?" Améyatl, more calmly, was saying things like "If you gently spread it open with your fingers, as if it were an oyster shell, you will come upon a little tiny pearl, my xacapíli..." and, not calmly at all, "Yes! There! Ayyo, yes!" And, of course, after a while she abandoned all calm, and I was no longer nervous, and we were both crying inarticulate noises of rapture and delight.

  The thing I remember best, about that coupling and all the subsequent others, is how well Patzcatl-Améyatl personified her name. It means "Fountain of Juice," and when we lay together, that is what she was. I have known many women since then, but have found none who was so copious of juices. That first time, my first mere touch of her started her tipíli exuding its water-clear but lubricant fluid. Soon we were both—and the pallet, too—slick and shiny with it. When we finally got to the act of penetration, Améyatl's virginity-protecting chitóli membrane gave way without resistance. She was virginally tight, but there was no forcing or frustration at all. My tepúli was welcomed by those juices, and it glided right in. On later occasions, Améyatl started her fountaining as soon as she unwound her tochómitl—and later still, as soon as she entered my room. And sometimes, still later, when we were both fully dressed and in the company of others and were behaving with impeccable propriety, she would cast me a certain look that said, "I see you, Tenamáxtli... and I am moist beneath my clothes."

  That is why, on my thirteenth birthday, I was secretly a little amused when Améyatl's father, my uncle, inelegantly but with good intentions, bade me accompany him to the foremost house of auyaníme in Aztlan. and selected for me an auyaními of prime quality. Smug young sprig that I was, I thought I already knew everything a man could know about the act of ahuilnéma with a female. Well, I soon discovered—with delight, with several moments of real surprise, even now and then with mild shock—that there were a great many things I did not know, things that my cousin and I would never once have thought to try.

  For example, I was briefly taken aback when the girl did to me with her mouth what I thought only cuilóntli males did between themselves, because it was what Yeyac had once tried to do to me. But my tepúli was more mature now, and the girl so expertly excited it that I erupted with glorious gratification. Then she showed me how to do the same to her xacapíli. I learned that that inconspicuous pearl, though so much tinier than a man's organ, can likewise be mouthed and tongued and suckled until, all by itself, it impels a female to virtual convulsions of joy. On learning this, I began to suspect that no woman ever actually needed a man—that is to say, his tepúli—since another woman, or even a child, could give her that same sort of joy. When I said so, the girl laughed, but agreed, and told me that that lovemaking between females is called patlachúia.

  When I left the girl the next morning and returned to the palace, Améyatl was impatiently waiting for me, and urgently hustled me off to where we could converse in private. Though she knew where I had spent the night, and what I had been doing all the night long, she was neither jealous nor distressed. Quite the contrary. She was almost aquiver to find out if I had learned any novel or exotic or voluptuously wicked things to impart to her. When I grinned and said that I certainly had, Améyatl would that instant have dragged me off to her room or mine. But I pleaded for time to rest and recover and revitalize my own juices and energies. My cousin was no little annoyed at having to wait, but I assured her that she would much more enjoy the new things she would learn when I had regained the vigor necessary to teach them.

  And so she did, and so did I, and we went on enjoying one another at every possible private moment during the next five years or so. We never were caught in the act, never even suspected, as far as I knew, by her father or brother or my mother. But neither were we ever really in love. Each of us simply happened to be the other's most convenient and ever-willing utensil. Just as on my thirteenth birthday, Améyatl never evinced any displeasure or indignation on the few times when surely she was aware that I had sampled the charms of a servant wench or a slave girl. (Very few times, and I kiss the earth to that. None of those compared with my dear cousin.) And I would not have felt betrayed if ever Améyatl had done the same. But I know she did not. She was a noble, after all, and she would never have hazarded her reputation with anyone she could not have trusted as she did me.

  Nor was I heartbroken when, in her twenty-first year, Améyatl had to forsake me and take a husband. As with most marriages between young pípiltin, this one was arranged by the fathers involved, Mixtzin and Kévari, tlatocapíli of Yakóreke, the community nearest ours to the southward. Améyatl was formally betrothed to become the wife of Kévari's son Káuri, who was about her own age. It was obvious to me (and to Canaútli, our Rememberer of History) that my uncle was thus allying our people and Yakóreke's as a subtle step toward making Aztlan again—as it long ago had been—the capital city of all the surrounding territories and peoples.

  I did not know whether Améyatl and Káuri had even got to know one another very well, not to say love one another, but they would have been obliged to obey their fathers' wishes in any case. Besides, in my view, Káuri was a passably personable and acceptable mate for my cousin, so my only emotion on the day of the ceremony was some slight apprehension. However, after the priest of Xochiquétzal had tied the corners of their separate mantles in the wedding knot, and all the traditional festivities were over, and the couple had retired to their finely furnished quarters in the palace, none of us wedding guests heard any scandalized uproar from there. I assumed, with relief, that the tight-making ointment and the tucked-inside pigeon's egg, as prescribed by Améyatl's old-crone advisers all those years before, had sufficed to satisfy Káuri that he had wed an untarnished virgin. And no doubt she had further convinced him with a maidenly show of ineptitude at the act she had so artfully been practicing during those years.

  Améyatl and Káuri were married only shortly before the day that I and my mother Cuicáni and Uncle Mixtzin departed for the City of Mexíco. And I deemed that my uncle showed perspicacity in appointing not his son and presumptive heir Yeyac, but his clever daughter and her husband to govern in his place. It would be a long, long time before I would see Améyatl again, and then in circumstances that neither of us could remotely have imagined when she waved good-bye to us wayfarers that day.

  V

  So I stood in what had been The Heart of The One World, my knuckles white from clenching tight in my hand the topaz that had belonged to my late father, my eyes probably fiery, and I demanded of my uncle and mother that we do something to avenge that Mixtli's death. My mother merely sniffled miserably again. But Mixtzin regarded me with sympathy tempered by skepticism, and asked sardonically:

  "What would you have us do, Tenamáxtli? Set the city aflame? Stone does not readily catch fire. And we are but three. The whole of the all-powerful Mexíca nation was unable to stand against these white men. Well? What would you have us do?"

  I stammered witlessly, "I... I..." then paused to collect my thoughts, and after a moment I said:

  "The Mexíca were taken by surprise because they were invaded by a people never previously known to exist. It was that surprise and the ensuing confusion that caused the downfall of the Mexíca. They simply did not recognize the white men's capabilities and cunning and lust for conquest. Now all of The One World does. What we still do not know is in what way the Spaniards may be vulnerable. They must have a weak point somewhere, a soft underbelly where they can be attacked and gutted."

  Mixtzin made a gesture encompassing the city about us, saying, "Where is it? S
how it to me. I will gladly join you in the disemboweling. You and I against all of New Spain."

  "Please do not mock me, uncle. I quote to you a bit of one of your own poems. 'Never forgive... at last you lunge and reach for the throat.' The Spaniards surely have a pregnability somewhere. It has only to be found."

  "By you, nephew? In these last ten years, no other man of any of the defeated nations has found a penetrable crack in the Spanish armor. How will you?"

  "I have at least made a friend among the enemies. That one called a notarius, who speaks our tongue. He invited me to come and talk to him at any time. Perhaps I can pry from him some useful hint of—"

  "Go then. Talk. We will wait here."

  "No, no," I said. "It is bound to take me a long time to gain his full confidence—to hope for any helpful disclosures. I ask your permission, as my uncle and my Uey-Tecútli, to remain here in this city for as long as that may require."

  My mother murmured dolefully, "Ayya ouíya..." and Mixtzin pensively rubbed his chin.

  At last he asked, "Where will you live? How will you live? The cacao beans in our purses are negotiable only in the native markets. For any other purchase or payment, I have already been told that things called coins are necessary. Gold and silver and copper pieces. You have none and I have none to leave with you."

  "I shall seek some kind of work to do, and be paid for it. Perhaps that notarius can assist me. Also—remember—the tlatocapíli Tototl said that two of his scouts from Tépiz are still here somewhere. They must have a roof over them by now, and may be willing to share it with a onetime neighbor."

  "Yes." Mixtzin nodded. "I remember. Tototl told me their names. Netzlin and his wife Citláli. Yes, if you can find them..."

  "Then I may stay?"

  "But, Tenamáxtli," my mother whimpered. "Suppose you should come to accept and adopt the white men's ways..."

  I snorted and said, "Not likely, Tene. Here I shall be as the worm in a coyacapúli fruit. Making it nourish me only until it is dead itself."