We slid over the wall, and I screamed as we dove. The ridges held me in place like a harness.
How to describe the terrible vision of the depths of the canyon? I felt my stomach tighten and quiver, and adrenaline shot through my body. We slid past several thousand miles of canyon wall. I saw more hummingbirds made of smoke in a structure that looked like a beehive, and farther down, we passed a lake swimming with scorpions. We zigzagged through a vast plain inhabited by mushrooms the size of skyscrapers, and we even came upon a grotto of creatures that resembled rabbits on stilts.
She lowered me to a clearing, and I drank water from the grotto. My thirst was incredible, and I felt the coolness ease my throat. I felt hungry, and I ate from a plant shaped like starfish. Its flesh was sweet and salty, like a pineapple dusted with lime and salt.
“We rest here until you’re satiated. Then we continue,” she said.
The snake did not speak while I rested in the grotto. Her head floated about fifty feet above me, still as stone. She blinked and came toward me.
She returned me to her back, and the ridges and protuberances held me in place. We traveled along the walls of the canyon again, and flowers sprouted from its wall by the billions. Black flowers, whose petals looked as soft as baby skin.
The snake’s flesh felt good under my hand, and I stroked her scales. Was I the first human ever to do this? I felt electricity in my arms and a tingle in my breastbone.
I still had too many questions, and though José María’s safety was still on my mind, I didn’t want to anger this being.
She spoke again, and the proximity of her voice felt good. She said, “Tell me about your mother, eh…—”
“Clara,” I said.
“Clara,” she repeated. The way she said my name sounded like a flock of seagulls combined with a lullaby. The word left her jaw and spun through the air in waves of sound.
“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.
“And those giants move through the gates,” José María said. His phrase rhymed with the snake’s words, and I realized they were singing together.
He’s in love.
“Like the gate we walked through in Lake Michigan,” I said.
“Yes,” replied my brother and the snake together, in a chorus of gauzy music.
They were singing a song together, even as her flesh of snakes imprisoned us.
“Many wheels ago, this canyon unfurled itself from the navel of the darkness. The Coil wound unto itself, while at the same time it expanded outward, up to the highest levels, close to the ground. That is how things began. And the Lords of Mictlán took residence inside its center,” the snake sang.
“Mictl
án was just a home.” José María added. “A home made of flowers and rivers that run like veins.”
“Just one home in the cosmos,” the snake said. “A home for us.”
“A home for us,” José María said, as if he had known this song all his life.
“Two Great Beings, older than old, became lovers. The female swelled with pregnancy. And she bore four children, as the wheels rotated, touched and collapsed. Four children, four colors,” José María continued.
“Those beings are so old that we cannot see them anymore. They are even older than the Lords,” Blue Hummingbird said. “But they are there always, beyond this spiral canyon.”
I felt my brother stir inside this sea of reptiles. He was turning around to face me.
“And those four were powerful gods—” José María whispered to me. He was close, maybe just two or three feet in front of me.
“Four children, all of them Tezcatlipocas,” Blue Hummingbird said.
“And three of those children left Mictlán. They didn’t visit often.”
“But the Lords continued to devour,” the snake said.
The music continued, but the lyrics faded off to an echo.
“Clara,” the snake said. “Can you hear me?”
“Of course,” I said.
“You are here for reparations, yes?”
“To reclaim my tonal,” I said.
“And you know how your tonal got lost, don’t you? You felt the presence of the Ocullín, did you not? You felt his cold body, his roving eyes and his need for violence?”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“I will take you there, I will show you what the Ocullín did. I will show you why the gates are opening and why the Ocullín followed you. I will show you what he can do if you don’t stop him.”
“Show me, yes, show me.” I said.
“I will help you find your tonal,” the snake said as she looped her body over cliffs in the distance.
“Thank you” was all I could think to say.
“But first, our trade,” Blue Hummingbird said. “You can keep your metal object from your world, Clara. Those objects are dull and useless. They contain no real knowledge. What I want is you.”
The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) Page 19