Nine Jaguar-Feather

by Christine Morgan

had been spoken, if only that once, by Five Yellow Coati when he'd told me what my parents had planned to name their firstborn son. While I'd never been able to say it myself, I had written it. I often drew the symbols in the dirt, so that I wouldn't forget.

  It would never be carved in stone, made eternal on a stela. When I was gone, no one would have any reason to remember.

  Nine Jaguar-Feather.

  That was my true name.

  The breeze from the entrance was cool and steady and moist, like a calm exhalation that went on and on. It felt soothing against my face. I could hear water dripping, the sound echoing up from far below.

  Moving between the stelae, I stepped into the shadows and paused so that my eyes could accustom themselves to the gloom. The path was steep and a single misstep might send me tumbling to the bottom with a broken neck.

  Would a fall like that, I wondered, be a violent enough death to avoid Xibalba? Or would it be a certain route there, given what lay beneath?

  The narrow tunnel slope was lined with a long ladder-stair, made from peeled logs bound together with twists of vine. The echoing plinks and plunks of water became louder as I descended. I could hear the soft lapping of ripples. Drops fell on my cheeks and the back of my neck, clammy touches trickling over my skin.

  Woven through the liquid melody of the cenote, like strands of paler thread in dark blue cloth, were other sounds. Sounds that sometimes seemed like rustling movement, and sometimes like whispering voices.

  The ladder-stair ended. I moved over wet, slick stone, setting my sandals carefully with each step. Damp, chilly air swirled around me. Enough daylight reached down from the opening above to make the water glimmer.

  I heard a splash, as of a leaping fish. But nothing lived down here. Other cenotes around Axcanan were life-places, surrounded by dense greenery, teeming with fish and frogs and turtles. Those were where the women went to draw the water to soak the corn before it was ground and cooked and eaten – if they did not, the gods visited sickness on the people.

  This cenote was a death-place. A well into the heart of the world. Depthless blue shading away into black. No plants. No creatures. Not even insects.

  Only dark water and stone.

  I shivered despite myself.

  Again, something splashed. I heard a hiss, and a low noise like a chuckle. It made my throat tighten and my stomach squirm. The surface undulated, rippling, lapping, sloshing up to the rim where I knelt.

  I still saw nothing.

  Quickly, I dipped one gourd after another, holding them under so that the water rushed and gurgled in to fill their hollow cores. Having to submerge my hands made me feel uneasy. It was water, only water, and nothing was going to sting me or bite me or grab my wrist or surge up from the deep with a sudden lunge and yank me down and drown me …

  My shivers intensified and I nearly dropped a full gourd.

  In the silence of my mind, I chided myself. Perhaps I could not be a man, but that did not mean I was a child. It wasn't as if I had never been here before.

  When the gourds were stoppered up with clumps of grass mixed with clay to keep them from spilling, I slung them on my back and climbed out. The sun was a glare, the white walls blinding, the colors leaping into my eyes and making me squint.

  Once I was above, the dark cave behind me, I felt foolish. I was glad no one had been there to witness my senseless moments of shivering and fear.

  Weighed down by my heavier burden, I trudged through the city toward the palace of the Chosen. It rose above the rest of Axcanan's buildings, its sculptures and stelae brilliantly painted and sparkling with pieces of jade, obsidian and other precious stones.

  Everything was being made ready for the ceremony. I slipped around busy groups of women preparing the feast, and men bringing armloads of offerings. I glimpsed Clever Sun-Fox fidgeting and complaining as he was made to try on his rich new robes adorned with shining blue-green queztal feathers. He caught my eye, and wrinkled his nose in long-suffering, then grinned and winked.

  I was going to miss him. And Red Flower Hummingbird. Of all the Chosen I'd known while serving Seven Thunder-Eagle, they had been the kindest to me. They'd never mocked my ugliness, or my silence. We'd almost been friends, if a slave could be said to be friends with the Chosen.

  Tomorrow, a new pair of twins would be brought to the palace to sleep on the softest beds, wear the finest garments, and dine on the sweetest fruits and most succulent meats. The new Chosen would be permitted to enjoy the frothy brew made from cacao, and have all the honey they desired.

  Would they be as kind, as friendly? I doubted it. Most of them had taken arrogant delight in the power of their position. If it was their will, I could be beaten with sticks or knotted cords, and given only the leftover scraps to eat. I'd endured that before.

  Seven Thunder-Eagle was waiting for me, tall and lean. He kept the hairs plucked from his face, eyebrows and head, which made his large hooked beak of a nose appear even more prominent. The lobes of his ears had been split and he wore large jade disks in them. Every single one of his teeth was filed sharp, and drilled, and set with jade.

  As always, the sight of the mark on his neck unnerved me. It was not a scar or tattoo, not the mark of a man or a warrior. It was a dark blotch, blue-black against his brown skin. It looked like the smudged print of a tiny hand. And that, he'd told me, was exactly what it was. The infant handprint of his dead twin, Moon-Water Maiden.

  I emptied the gourds into a large clay basin, and Seven Thunder-Eagle put me to work chopping and grinding and mixing. It took half the night, the priest burning leaves to inhale the smoke, his voice rising and falling in the rhythms of prayer. When the sacred drink was almost ready, he sent me staggering off to collapse onto my blanket.

  My sleep was thin and troubled. I woke with a startled gasp to the sound of hide-covered drums and conch-shell trumpets. My body ached. I felt unrested. And I was late. The eastern sky was already streaked pink and orange. Soon the sun would rise, shedding its fiery rays to touch the carved stone pillars of Itzama and Ixchel. In the west, the full setting moon hung above the horizon, yellow-white as a picked skull.

  I scrambled into clothes and sandals, and rushed to retrieve the basin from where it had been left to simmer over a bed of embers. The clay was warm to the touch, the liquid reduced to a thick syrup. Wincing at the heat baking through into my palms, I hurried up the rear steps and emerged onto the platform atop the palace.

  My arrival was barely noticed by the throngs below.

  Every man, woman, child and slave in Axcanan had gathered. Warriors and nobles stood on the steps of the pyramid, arranged according to rank and wealth. The rest of the people jostled for position, trying to get the best view. Everyone gazed upward, at the pillars, at the twins in their quetzal-feather robes and elaborate headdresses. And at the tall form of the priest between them, arms outstretched.

  Seven Thunder-Eagle shot me a look as quick and piercing as a dart hurled from an atl-atl, but did not pause as he proclaimed, in powerful rolling tones, how the god Itzama and his sister-wife Ixchel had chosen this place to be their worldly home, and how their twin sons had married the twin daughters of a great king, and so given rise to our people.

  I knew the story, and I scurried as unobtrusively as I could to the double chacmool, a sculpture in the shape of two stone figures reclining on their elbows with their heads turned. The sun-crowned head of Itzama faced east, the skull-crowned head of Ixchel faced west. The flatness of their middles made a shelf, where I placed the warm bowl.

  Clever Sun-Fox managed for once not to grin. He held a properly solemn, somber expression for the benefit of the onlookers. He did give me a slight upward eye-roll and shake of his head, as if inviting me to see how silly he looked, his cheeks striped with red and gold rays.

  Red Flower Hummingbird glanced at me, and her lips quirked in the faintest of smiles. I nearly couldn't bear how beautiful she was, in all her finery, with the white and
blue marks of Ixchel painted on her face.

  I retreated, knowing what came next and already feeling a throb of anticipated envious pain.

  Signaled by Seven Thunder-Eagle, the Chosen stepped forward. Each held up the dyed and decorated ceremonial stingray spines. Together, they tipped their heads back, opened their mouths and stuck out their tongues.

  The spines stabbed. The blood flowed. I was close enough to see their involuntary tears, but neither of them so much as uttered the smallest stifled cry.

  Twin scarlet streams dribbled into the basin, mixing the blood of the Chosen with the cacao, ground chili peppers and corn and spices, ashes, water of the cenote, and whatever other secret ingredients Seven Thunder-Eagle had added after sending me away. The sacred drink was complete.

  At a nod from the priest, the twins dipped their cupped hands in and drank. Only I was close enough to see how they shuddered, how their faces twisted. Red Flower Hummingbird gagged, and hesitated, but a severe scowl from the priest made her finish draining the dark, muddy liquid. She and her brother held up their stained palms to the crowd. A collective cheer arose.

  Nodding, satisfied, Seven Thunder-Eagle dipped his own hands, drank, and showed his palms. From off in the jungle, a flurry of birds took sudden shrieking flight. Macaws, vivid red and yellow against green. They whirled in chaotic patterns above the palace and then