By Aliette de Bodard
Issue #8, January 15, 2009
“He’s in here,” Huchimitl said.
I stood in the courtyard of her opulent house, amidst pine and palm trees, breathing in the smell of dust and fallen pine needles. Just outside, a few paces from me, was Coyocan, one of the busiest suburbs of Tenochtitlan; but the bustle from the crowded streets and canals was barely audible, cut off by the walls of the courtyard. Around us were several doorways, closed by coloured entrance-curtains; and it was before one of those that Huchimitl and I stood.
Not for the first time, I wished Huchimitl wasn’t wearing that accursed ceramic mask—so I could read her face. Or, failing that, that she’d at least tell me why she was wearing it. The only people in the city I’d seen wearing that kind of mask were disfigured warriors. But I’d asked the question twice on my way there, and been met with silence.
“I’m not sure I can do anything—” I started, but Huchimitl cut me off.
“Please, Acatl. Just take a look at the man. And tell me whether he’s cursed.”
Curses, unless they were from the underworld, weren’t really my province. If I’d had any sense, I’d have refused Huchimitl when she’d arrived in my temple.
But she’d been wearing that mask, hiding her face from me. Surely....
Surely the girl I remembered from my childhood, the one who’d turned the heads of all the boys in our calpulli clan—including mine—couldn’t possibly be injured?
I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. There had to be some other explanation for that mask. And I had to know what it was.
Huchimitl was still standing before the door, waiting for my answer. “Acatl,” she said, shaking her head in that disturbingly familiar fashion, halfway between exasperation and amusement.
My heart twisted in my chest. In truth, I’d never had been able to refuse her, and even though it had been years since we’d last seen each other, it still did not change anything. “I can’t promise you much,” I said, finally.
Huchimitl shook her head—sunlight played on her mask as she did so, creating disturbing reflections on the ceramic, like a breath from Mictlan, the underworld. I fought an urge to walk up to her and tear off the mask. “Acatl, please.”
Gently, I drew aside the hanging mat that closed the door, trying not to disturb the bells sewn into it. I paused halfway through, stared at Huchimitl. She stood unmoving, the mask drinking in the sunlight.
“I’ll wait for you in the reception area,” she said.
I sighed and entered the room.
Its walls bore frescoes of Patecatl, God of Medicine, holding a drinking cup and an incense brazier, and of Quetzalcoatl, God of Creation and Knowledge, who stood with the bones of the dead in His outstretched hands. A strong smell of herbs rose from the back of the room, where the sick man lay on a reed mat. His legs were curled in an unnatural position.
He did not move as I came in, save that his eyes opened and stared straight at me. It was the gaze of a strong, shrewd man.
Citli, Huchimitl had called him. A warrior captured by her son on the battlefield: a strong, healthy sacrifice who would be offered on the altar, for the glory of the gods—and for that of his captor.
That was the way it should have worked. Someone, obviously, had had a different idea.
“A priest. So she’s brought you into this, too?” Citli’s voice was reedy and thin, on the verge of breaking with every word. But still, the humor came through, a sign that whatever had affected his body had not yet reached his mind.
“I am Acatl, priest for the Dead,” I told him.
Citli made a thin, rasping sound, which I realized was laughter. “I’m not yet dead, priest. Save your rituals for those who need them.” He fell silent for a while, and then said, “I am Citli, warrior of Mixteca.”
I nodded, acknowledging the introduction. I had already gotten a good look at him, and what I had been half-expecting—the green aura that was the mark of the underworld—was not there. But there was something—a shimmering in the air, a hint of a coiled, alien power around him—something that did not belong. Huchimitl had been correct: he was cursed.
Citli was staring at me. “You’re not like the other priests.”
“You’ve seen many priests in Coyoacan?” I asked, moving away from the reed mat and searching the room, overturning wicker chests and ceramic pots.
He laughed again. “Priests are the same everywhere. But you—you don’t have dried blood in your hair, or thorns in your earlobes.”
I shrugged. “I had them, once. But now I only perform sacrifices for the Dead.” My search of the small room had revealed nothing useful. My only recourse lay in speaking to Citli, and hoping he would know something of importance. “How long have you been sick?”
The humor left his eyes. “Thirteen days. A full week. Why does a priest that sacrifices to the Dead worry about that? They told me I would be healed in time for the ceremony.” There was fear in his voice, now. I knew why: if he did not die a warrior’s death on the altar, he would not go to the Sun God’s Heaven with his peers, but be condemned to the ignominious underworld.
“I’m not here for the last rites,” I said. “Huchimitl thought perhaps I could determine was wrong with you. Do you have any idea of what’s ailing you?”
His voice was sullen. “No. All I know is that I want to be healthy for the ceremony. I won’t be cheated of my glory.”
“You don’t know why? Huchimitl says her son is not popular among the warriors—” She hadn’t said much in truth, just hinted that Mazahuatl might have made some powerful enemies. And I’d been too busy worrying about the mask to ask the proper questions.
A mistake. How could I help her, if I couldn’t control my own feelings?
Citli’s upper body moved slightly, in what appeared to be an attempt to shrug. “Her son Mazahuatl is young and arrogant, and an upstart. But he is my beloved war-father, the one who captured me on the battlefield, and he will make me ascend to the Sun’s Heaven. The rest shouldn’t concern me.”
“Shouldn’t it? If Mazahuatl has enemies, they’ll want to strike at you as well,” I said. “They might have cursed you, just to make him look like a fool.”
“Making his beloved war-son unable to walk to his sacrifice?” Citli’s voice was bitter. “They’re cowards, all of them.”
“I know. But until we know who they are, they can’t be punished.” I paused, then asked, “When did you first notice something was wrong?”
“It started with my legs. Now I have no feeling anywhere in my body, only above my neck.”
I was no healer; his affliction, if it had no magical cause, would truly be beyond me.
“And you have no idea why?” I asked.
He shook his head, forcefully. “No. Look. I wasn’t here a month ago. Whatever is going on, I have no part in it.”
I could see that; clearly he was not lying, and equally clearly he didn’t know anything.
Which wouldn’t get me, or Huchimitl, anywhere.
Curses.
“Do you have people who take care of you?” I asked.
Citli looked at me, almost offended. “Of course,” he said. “Mazahuatl knows the proper care for a prisoner.”
Warriors. Always quick to take offence. It would have been amusing, had the situation not been so serious. “And they noticed nothing?”
Citli shook his head. “You might ask them,” he said. “There’s an old woman named Xoco. She brings food, and gossip, and whatever I cannot get, lying here.” He was angry again—for a young, energetic man, falling ill and being confined to a bed must have been the worst of fates.
I finished my examination of him, which didn’t yield anything more. He was indeed paralysed; and the curse seemed to spread as time passed. But I couldn’t determine its cause—nor reassure myself that whatever had struck Citli down wouldn’t strike again within the house.
I took my leave of him, with no answers, just a growing feeling of unease in my belly.
What was going on? What was Huchimitl embroiled in?
Finding Xoco wasn’t hard: I asked the slave at the gates, and he pointed me to the other end of the courtyard—to a door closed with a simple, unadorned cactus-fibre curtain. In front of that door, an old woman was kneeling, grinding maize in a metate pestle.
Xoco looked up when I arrived; her eyes widened. “My Lord....”
I cut her off. “I’m just here for a few questions. Citli thought you might know something.”
“Lord Citli?” Xoco nodded. “About his illness?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m not sure I can help,” Xoco said, with a slight grimace. She laid aside her mortar, and rose, keeping her gaze to the ground. “It was sudden, that thing. One morning he couldn’t rise anymore.”
“You didn’t notice anything?” I had a feeling I was just duplicating my conversation with Citli—running around in circles.
“No. I’m just a slave woman, my Lord. I can’t see magic, or converse with the gods, as you do.” Xoco’s voice radiated the awe most common folks had for priests—something which wasn’t going to facilitate my task.
I sighed. I’d learn nothing new here; I might as well go back to Huchimitl and question her further.
But then I remembered the mask. “Have you been here long?”
“In this household? Five years or so. I was a gift, for the master’s marriage.”
“You know them well, then. The master and mistress of the house,” I said, and bit my lip. It had nothing to do with the investigation, and it was a prying, improper question to ask. But I couldn’t get that mask out of my head. “When did Huchimitl start wearing that mask?”
Xoco was silent, for a while, and then she said, “It started four years ago. When they found Master Tlalli dead in his room.” Her voice was a whisper now, and she kept her head bowed to the ground, making her expression unreadable. “He was a generous man, but she only married him for his prestige.”
I wished I could have denied the accusation. But I remembered the morning Huchimitl had told me she was marrying Tlalli—just after I’d come back from the calmecac school, bursting with joy at the idea of sharing my experiences with her. I hadn’t expected her to be angry. I hadn’t expected her to fling her future husband’s feats of glory in my face, or to mock me for choosing the priesthood.
But she had been a little too proud of his prowess—a little too forceful. Later, when I had cooled down enough to think, I remembered how she used to come to me, always standing a little too close for propriety—and the day when she’d danced for the Emergence of Flowers in her white cotton shift, swaying to the rhythm of drums, fierce and beautiful, unmatched by any of the other dancers. It was you, she’d said, when I congratulated her. I only did it because you were here.
How could have I have been so blind?
Her marriage.... Why should it have been happy, if she’d contracted it out of disappointment, out of spite?
“They fought all the time,” Xoco was saying. “She’d always reproach him, always nag him for not being good enough, brave enough. There’d be bruises on both of them, come morning. On his arms, on her face. Except that night, it went worse than usual. Something happened. Something—”
Her fear was palpable—radiating from her to settle in the growing hollow in my stomach.
“I don’t know what exactly, my Lord. I wasn’t there. All I know is that they found him dead, and she shut herself in her rooms and wouldn’t let anyone close to her. Afterwards, she started wearing the mask, and never took it off—they say it was to hide what he’d done to her.”
The hollow in my stomach would not go away. For years I had told myself that Huchimitl had found happiness with her husband, that if I came to her house I would only intrude on her.
Lies, all of it. Useless lies.
They’d fought. Every night, perhaps. They’d hit each other, and left traces—bruises.
But it wasn’t only a few bruises Tlalli had given her, was it, if Huchimitl was still wearing that mask?
“So the master is dead.”
Xoco looked at me, and her eyes shimmered in the sunlight. “Yes. Gone down into Mictlan with the other shades, and not coming back.”
“I see,” I said.
She shook her head, as if finally remembering to whom she’d told her tale. “I wasn’t there. I couldn’t do anything. But—” Her face twisted again, halfway between fear and hatred. “But I know one thing. They said Master Tlalli died of a weak heart, but I don’t believe that.”
“The physicians ascertained that,” I said, quietly, not liking what she was telling me.
Xoco looked down again. “She never loved him. Not truly. And there are poisons....”
This time I cut her off before she could voice the hateful words. “Yes,” I said. “I understand. Thank you.” Xoco was sincere; and that was the worst. She really believed that Huchimitl had killed her own husband.
But that was impossible. Huchimitl would never do such a thing.
The girl I remembered, no. But the woman she had become—the woman I had scorned in my blindness?
Xoco waited until my back was to her to speak again. “The house hasn’t been right since, my lord. Never. The mistress will say what she wants, but it’s never been right since Master Tlalli died.”
“It’s empty,” I said, turning back to her. “Without a master. That’s all.”
She shook her head again. “No. I’ve been in empty houses. This one isn’t empty. There’s something in it. Something that will suck the soul out of you. Be careful, my Lord.”
Xoco had unsettled me more than I had thought possible. To calm myself, I walked through the courtyard.
Huchimitl hadn’t loved her husband. They’d quarrelled, often and bitterly: a loveless, angry marriage. Xoco had been right in that respect at least.
After that fateful morning, I’d never spoken to Huchimitl again. Something had broken between us. Her betrothed was a tequiua, a warrior who had taken four prisoners and was entitled to tribute and honors—I remembered Huchimitl’s angry gaze when she’d flung his feats of glory at me. Only later did I understand that it had not been anger, but unrequited love, that had made her so forceful. By then, it was too late. My meager gifts of apology were returned intact; when I came to her father’s house, her family would not speak to me, and Huchimitl herself was never there.
Would things have been different, I wondered, if I had understood her that morning? For years I had told myself that it would have made no difference—that it was the gods that I wanted to serve, that Huchimitl did not matter. But I knew she did.
I looked at the house again. Why had Xoco been so frightened of it?
It was a normal house for an affluent warrior: a courtyard enclosed by adobe buildings, with a few pine trees and a pool in the center. The entrance-curtains to each building were elaborately decorated, but the walls themselves were not painted: odd but not sinister. It was, to be sure, a bit unsettling to see adobe stark white, shining under the sun as if it held some secret light, but—
My eyes had started to water, and there was a throbbing in my head that had not been there before, a throbbing like some secret heartbeat uniting the earth beneath my feet and the buildings scattered on its surface. And then I realized that the throbbing was the beat of my own heart, rising faster and faster within my chest, singing like pain in my whole body, sending waves of heat until my skin was utterly consumed, and everything beneath it was revealed, blistered and smarting....
No. I tore my eyes from the house as fast as I could, but it took a while for my heartbeat to calm down. I had seen enough strange things in my life to know this was not a hallucination. Xoco was right. There was something about this house. Something unpleasant, and it was spreading—from the house to Citli, and the gods only knew where it was going to stop.
I didn’t like it. It meant that everyone could be struck down.
Everyone.
After that experience, I was not keen on entering a room in the house again, but Huchimitl was waiting for me inside—and I would not leave her alone in there, if I could help it. I asked the slave at the gates where the reception area was, and he showed me through another door into a large, well-lit room.
The brightly-colored frescoes adorning the room were a relief after the blank adobe of the outer walls. All of them represented sacrifices to the gods: young children weeping as their throats were slit to honor Tlaloc, God of Rain; a maiden dancing to honor Xilonen, Goddess of Young Corn, later replaced by a priest wearing her flayed, yellow skin; a warrior, his face thrust into burning embers as a sacrifice to Huehueteotl, God of the Hearth.
Again, those were not unusual. I well knew that only human blood and human lives kept the end of the world at bay. I had abased myself before gods, offered them what they needed, from human hearts to flayed skins; I had wielded many obsidian knives myself in many sacrifices. But the concentration of images in that room seemed almost unhealthy.
I found Huchimitl sitting on the dais in the center. She turned her masked face towards me. “So?”
“Something is wrong.” I looked at her, sitting secure between her walls, never suspecting about the curse affecting more than just Citli. “The house is wrong.”
Her gaze rested on me, and would not move away. “An odd thing to say.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.”
For a moment I thought I had convinced her. And then she spoke, sinking her barb as deep as she could. “Not all of us are fortunate enough to have gone to calmecac, and become a priest.”
Now that I had seen where she lived, the oppressive atmosphere of the house, more than ever I regretted not coming to visit her. I should have insisted when her family rejected me. I should have done something, not turned away like a coward. So I kept my peace, and said only, “They say your husband died in odd circumstances.”
“How would you know?”
“Does it matter?”
“The servants told you,” Huchimitl said, with an angry stabbing gesture. “They talk too much, and most of that is lies.”
I kept hoping she’d give me something, anything I could use to understand what was going on. “Do you deny that his death wasn’t normal, Huchimitl? All I have to do is ask the slaves, or check the registers—”
“There was nothing odd about my husband’s death,” she snapped, far too quickly.
Nothing odd? The hollow in my stomach was back. Had Xoco been right about Huchimitl’s guilt? “Why do you say that?”
“Because my husband’s death has nothing to do with Citli’s illness. Tlalli had a weak heart. He exerted himself too much on the battlefields abroad; and he died of it. That is all.”
“They say you quarrelled.”
Huchimitl nodded; the reflections on the mask moved as she did so. I felt queasy just seeing that. “We did, often,” she said. “Do you want me to lie and say it was a happy marriage?”
“No,” I said. “Though I truly wish you’d found happiness.”
“We don’t always get what we wish for,” Huchimitl said. “Acatl. Trust me. I saw Tlalli die. It was a heart failure. This has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with Mazahuatl. He has enemies—”
“You told me that already,” I said. She had sounded sincere when swearing to me it had nothing to do with Tlalli’s death, but I could be mistaken. “Why did you come to me, Huchimitl?”
Her voice was low, angry. “I thought you could do something. I thought you could help. A curse, after all, is easily lifted. But it seems you cannot manage even that.”
“I—” I said, but words had deserted me. I remembered a time when I could read every one of her expressions, could guess her thoughts before she uttered them. I knew I no longer could do any of that. I suspected I could not help her, and it made me angry at myself for being so incompetent—for failing her.
“I am no worker of miracles,” I said.
“Clearly not,” Huchimitl snapped. “I thought you would—” And then she stopped, as if she had uttered too much.
“Do what? You tell me nothing. You hide yourself from me, under that mask. You lie to me.”
“No.” The mask turned towards me, expressionless.
“Then tell me what is under that mask. Please.” Talk to me, I thought, silently, desperately. Don’t hide your secrets from me, Huchimitl. Please.
“Nothing,” Huchimitl said. Her voice was quiet. “Nothing that concerns you, nothing you can repair, Acatl. I am beyond help. My son is all that matters.”
“Then tell me more about your son.”
“Mazahuatl talks little of his life among warriors.” There was longing in Huchimitl’s voice, clear, unmistakable. “But I’m no fool. I can guess that things go ill. That he is not liked. That some would like to see him fall. But I have no names.”
“I see,” I said, and rose to leave. “I’ll ask Mazahuatl, then. Where can I find him?”
The mask moved towards me with the speed of a pouncing snake. “It’s not the solution.”
“Then tell me what would be.”
“No.” Her voice was fearful. I could not help remembering the girl I’d played with, the girl who had once climbed the festival pole and stood at the top, laughing, daring me to come up and catch her. Not once had she shown fear.
“Huchimitl—” I said, but she shook her head.
“You’ll find Mazahuatl on the training grounds,” she said. Her voice was emotionless again—an unnerving change of tone.
Mazahuatl was on manoeuvres with his regiment. I walked to the training grounds, my mind filled with memories of Huchimitl and of my days as a boy—of all the races we’d run through the fields of maize around Coyoacan, of all the quiet moments when we’d dream of our futures.
Had I loved her?
For years I’d told myself that I had not. But I knew now that I had always cared for her. I knew that even though I had felt no regrets on entering the priesthood, still I had left something behind, something infinitely precious that I could no longer recover.
On the training grounds, the warriors were fighting each other wielding maquahuitls, wooden swords with shards of obsidian embedded in the blades.
Several warriors had finished, and stood to the side, their bare arms gleaming with sweat. I walked up to them and said, “I’m looking for Mazahuatl.”
One of them gave a short bark, and the others snickered. “Are you now?” he said.
The warrior’s face was heavily scarred, and he wore the quetzal-feather tunic and braided leather bracelets characteristic of tequiuas, those warriors who had taken more than four prisoners and been ennobled. He had their arrogance, too. I said, “Yes, I am looking for Mazahuatl. In what way would it concern you....”
“Yohuacalli,” he said, curtly. “I’m in the same regiment as Mazahuatl. Tell me, priest, why would you be looking for him?”
Yohuacalli had a faint aura about him: a talent for magic, though whether sorcerous or not I could not tell. Still, he looked dangerous enough—as dangerous as a coiled snake.
“Tell me why it should matter to you,” I said.
He turned to me at last, transfixing me with a gaze the color of the sky at noon—an uncanny shade for a Mexica. “Mazahuatl is not a true warrior.” I heard depths of hatred within his words. “His father was tequiua, and Mazahuatl never lets us forget it. But his prowess in battle is non-existent. He has no right to such arrogance.”
“He took a prisoner.”
Yohuacalli shrugged. “A sick, infirm man? Such a feat of arms.”
“The man has been cursed,” I said, waiting for his reaction. “After he was taken prisoner.”
“So they would have you believe. I know the truth.”
“So do I.” I looked him in the eye. “Surely it would be no great matter for a determined warrior to take a dead man’s hand, and bury it into the earth before your enemy’s house, and speak the spell to make him fall from grace.”
Yohuacalli flinched, but soon rallied. “I have no talent for sorcery.” His eyes would not meet mine, and I knew he was lying. “There is Mazahuatl,” he said, pointing to a warrior who was leaving the field.
Yohuacalli was obviously in a hurry to change the subject, but I let it go. I looked at the warrior designated as Mazahuatl: he was no longer a boy, yet he still wore the braid of the untried warrior—the sacrifice of Citli would enable him to shave his head. His face was flushed with exertion, but even then I could see past that, and make out Huchimitl’s traits, Huchimitl’s beauty. He looked so much like her that my heart ached.
Had things gone differently, he could have been my son, not Tlalli’s. It was an odd, uncomfortable thought that would not leave my mind.
When I approached him, he looked at me with contempt. “What do you want?”
I introduced myself and explained that his mother had sent me, whereupon his manner grew more relaxed. He took me away from the training grounds, out of earshot of his fellow warriors, before he would talk to me.
I had observed him carefully during our small walk. If Citli, his beloved war-son, had an aura of coiled, malevolent power about him, Mazahuatl was cursed, though not by the underworld. It was small, barely visible unless one stopped and considered him, but he did have an aura. And it was dark and roiling, like storm clouds bursting with rain—an odd kind of curse, one I had never encountered.
But it had touched him, as it had touched everyone in the house. I thought of the mask again. That had to be why Huchimitl was wearing it—because she’d been disfigured by the curse, just as Citli had been paralysed.
But the most worrisome thing was that the curse was still spreading. Citli’s paralysis wasn’t stopping—and I didn’t think Huchimitl was safe, not for one moment. The curse would not stop. Not until I found out what was truly going on in that house.
“How long have you been cursed?” I asked Mazahuatl, and saw him start.
“You know nothing.”
“I’m a priest. I know enough, I should say.”
He turned away from me. “Mother sent you? Go away.”
“She thinks you have enemies,” I said, softly. “And I’d wager Yohuacalli is among them.”
He would not meet my gaze. “Go away.”
“Do you care so little about your reputation?”
“Mother cares,” Mazahuatl said. “I’m no fool. I know I won’t be raised within the ranks.”
“You captured a prisoner,” I pointed out. “Single-handed. There is no reason it shouldn’t happen.”
He laughed, a sick, desperate laugh. “That’s what I told myself at first, trying to make myself believe. But of course it won’t work. Nothing ever does.”
“That’s the hallmark of a curse. Won’t you tell me anything?”
“No,” he said. “Just go back, report to Mother that you’ve failed, and stop bothering us.” And he would not talk to me any more, no matter how hard I pressed him.
I did two things before coming back to Huchimitl’s house: the first was to stop by the registers and check on the death of Tlalli. There was not much to go on. The date of death was listed as the seventeenth day in the Month of Izcalli or Resurrection, in the year Thirteen Rabbit—four years ago. An ironic time to die, if nothing else, for Izcalli is the month when the plants are reborn from their winter beds, and a time to rejoice in the coming of spring.
Search as I might, I found no additional mention of that death, which meant that it had not been found suspicious. I exited the registers in a thoughtful mood—for, in spite of what I had just read, I didn’t think Tlalli’s death was irrelevant. It was too much of a coincidence that the curse on the house had started just after his death.
Which left me with the second thing: if no one was going to tell me what had happened four years ago, I was going to have to look into the past myself.
I stopped by the marketplace and made my way through the crowd to the district of animal-sellers. There I bartered for a peccary and the hide of a jaguar—a transaction that had me hand over most of the cacao beans in my purse to a beaming vendor. It did not matter. Though not wealthy in the slightest, I’ve always lived comfortably on the gifts the families of the dead make to me.
The peccary was small: barely reaching my knee, it followed me docilely enough on its leash, but kept rubbing its tusks with a chattering noise, an indication that it was unhappy. Peccaries were aggressive; I did not look forward to sacrificing this one, but it was necessary for the ritual I had in mind.
The slaves in Huchimitl’s house had been given instructions to let me enter; the tall, sturdy individual who stood by the gate raised his eyebrows when I passed him, but said nothing.
I went straight to Citli’s room, deliberately avoiding Huchimitl—the last thing I needed was her trying to prevent me from investigating her husband’s death.
On my first visit, I had noticed a small hearth by the bed; it was by that hearth that I settled down. From my belt I took three obsidian knives and laid them on the ground. I threw into the hearth a handful of herbs that soon filled the room with a sharp, pungent smell; I laid the jaguar hide on the ground and coaxed the peccary onto it.
Citli watched me with interest but did not speak. I said, all the same, “I need to do this if you want help.” He may have nodded, but it was hard to tell with the smoke that had filled my eyes.
As I had foreseen, the peccary attacked me when I raised my knife; I narrowly avoided the sharp tusks, then buried my blade deep into its throat. Blood fountained up, staining my hands, pooling on the jaguar’s hide. I spoke the words of the ritual, calling on Quetzalcoatl, God of Creation and Knowledge:
“I sit on the jaguar’s skin
And from the jaguar’s skin I draw strength and wisdom
I have shed the precious blood
The blood of Your servant
Lord, help me walk the circling paths backwards
Help me look past the empty days
Help me look into the years that have died.”
The throbbing in my head that I had first experienced in the courtyard resumed, growing stronger and stronger until my world seemed to have shrunk to that beat. The smoke grew thicker and thicker, billowing around me like the aura of Mazahuatl’s curse. Now was the time I could seize control of the spell, and turn the years back until my visions showed me the day of Tlalli’s death.
But the spell would not yield to me. Years of visions passed by, showing me tantalising glimpses of the past.
...a man’s angry voice, and a man’s shadow, raising a hand to strike at something I could not see...
...a warrior stumbling in combat...
...a girl with the wooden collar of slaves, her cheeks flushed with pleasure...
...a mask of ceramic inlaid with turquoise—Huchimitl’s mask, gradually materialising to cover the girl’s face....
And then nothing.
I came to myself, crouching on the blood-stained jaguar’s skin, the smoke from the herbs since long gone. Outside, it was night, and the Evening Star shone in a sky devoid of clouds. Citli was sleeping, racked from time to time by a coughing fit. I lifted the curtain, wincing at the small tinkle of bells, and went out.
One thing would not leave my thoughts: the slave girl’s face, a face that seemed oddly familiar.
I walked up to the slave by the gates, and asked, “There is a girl slave, in this house?” I described, as best as I could, the face I had seen in my vision.
The slave shrugged. “There are many girls in this house. Maybe the others will know—”
“Yes,” I said. “Please.”
He led me into the slaves’ quarters. I found myself in a series of smaller rooms, adorned with faded frescoes. Within, several men were playing patolli, watching the game’s board intently as the dice were cast—no doubt they had bet heavily on the outcome.
One of the players looked up, quivering to go back to his game. I described, once again, the face of the slave I had seen in my visions, and he shrugged. “Ask Menetl. She’s in charge of the female slaves.”
I found Menetl in the girls’ quarters, watching a handful of giggling girls as they painted their faces with yellow makeup. She was a tall, forbidding woman who clearly looked upon me as an invader in her little world. I was about to repeat my question to her, when I saw Xoco, crouching at the back of the room.
Now I knew where I had seen the girl’s face. It was there, in the old woman’s features, tempered by age, by the glare of the sun, but still close enough to be recognised.
“So?” Menetl asked.
“I want to talk to her,” I said, pointing to Xoco—who rose, fear slowly washing over her face.
“My Lord?” she asked.
I motioned for her to follow me out of earshot of the others. We walked out of the slaves’ quarters and back into the courtyard, which now was deserted.
“I have something more I want to ask you.” I watched the way she shrank back into herself, and remembered how angry Huchimitl had been when she had guessed one of the servants had been talking to me. No doubt she would have reprimanded the slaves for that offence. “It’s not about what you told me earlier.”
Xoco looked at me, her hands falling to her side. Waiting.
I said, “There was a girl slave, in this house. Four, five years ago?”
“We see so many girls.” Her voice shook.
“Don’t lie to me. You know who I am talking about. Who was she?”
The old woman stared at the ground for a while. “She was my daughter.” Her voice was low, dull. “Yoltzin. She used to run in the courtyard, daring me to catch her—it was when the master was still alive—he was always generous with his girl slaves—” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. Even in the dim light I could see the tears in them. “Such a pretty child,” she whispered.
“Yoltzin. What happened to her?”
“She’s in the heavens now,” the old woman said.
“In the heavens?” Only warriors dead in battle, women dead in childbirth, or sacrifice victims ascended into the heavens. The rest of us fell into Mictlan, the underworld, to make our slow way to the God of the Dead, and to oblivion.
“They chose her,” the old woman said. “Five years ago. The priests of Xilonen came here and took her, to be the incarnation of the Goddess of Young Corn on earth and bless the fields. The High Priest wore her flayed skin for twenty days afterwards, and the rains came sure and strong that year,” she said, and there was a note of pride in her voice.
The priests of Xilonen—looking for a maiden sacrifice, as innocent as the Young Corn. And the girl. Yoltzin. Little Heart.
Her image would not leave my mind—her face with such bliss on it, but it had not been the bliss of sacrifice. “You said the master had always been generous with his girl slaves,” I said, slowly. “How generous?”
Xoco would not look at me.
“Xoco,” I said. “What happened four years ago has tainted everything in this house. You can’t pretend it hasn’t.”
For the longest while, she did not speak. “They came,” she whispered. “A procession of priests like you, with feather-headdresses and jade ornaments. They asked if she was a maiden. Who was I, to shame her, to shame the master in front of the whole household?” Tears, glistening in the starlight, ran down her cheeks. “She was my daughter....”
“I see,” I said, finally, embarrassed by such grief. “Thank you.” I watched her retreat inside the slaves’ quarters, leaving me alone in the courtyard.
The priests had checked Yoltzin’s innocence, but there were ways, if one were prepared, to make it seem as though the maidenhood was intact. They were more commonly used before a wedding, to fool the go-betweens, because cheating the gods was a grave offence.
The sacrifice had been a sham. Rain had come, because the gods can be merciful, and because Yoltzin had not been the only maiden in the Empire to be sacrificed to Xilonen on that day. Rain had come, but the sin had not been forgiven.
With a growing hollow in my stomach, I thought of Huchimitl, alone in that house, with only the memories of her husband to sustain her—memories that were not happy or comforting. It did not look as though Tlalli had had much regard for her at all. It did not look as though she had ever been happy.
I had been such a fool to let her go without a word. I had been such a fool to abandon her.
I rose, came to stand at the heart of the courtyard. The buildings of the house shone under the light of the stars, white walls shimmering as if with heat, and once more I felt myself on the verge of vertigo. Once more the throbbing rose within me, the slow, secret rhythm linking the earth to the buildings, but this time I knew it to be the song of the corn as it slept in the earth. Pain sang in my bones and in my skin, and I knew it was the pain of a flayed woman, waiting for her skin of green maize-shoots to grow thick and strong.
I whispered Her name. “Xilonen.” And Her other name, the one we seldom spoke: “Chicomecoatl.” Seven Serpents, the earth that had to be watered with sweat and blood before it would put forth vegetation.
In my mind’s eye I saw Her, coiled within the house, feeding the buildings with Her light. Gradually, She coalesced at the heart of the courtyard: a monstrous human shape with translucent skin the color of ripe corn, with hollow eyes that swallowed the light and gave nothing back.
“Priest,” She said, and Her voice, echoing around the walls, was amused. “You are clever.”
“Not clever enough. I should have guessed that a curse that did not come from the underworld had to come from the heavens.”
“Humans could have done this,” Xilonen said, still amused. “But they did not.”
“Why do you punish them? They did not cheat you of your sacrifice.”
Xilonen smiled, an utterly inhuman expression. “Let the sins of the beloved father fall on the beloved son, and onto his beloved war-son, and the sins of the husband be taken up by the wife. I was cheated of My revenge.”
So Tlalli had died a natural death after all. “And is there nothing they could offer, that would make you forget?”
Xilonen shook Her head. “They are Mine. They amuse me: Mazahuatl, that pathetic excuse for a warrior, refusing to acknowledge his bad luck on the battlefield. That arrogant, misguided mother who thinks they can fall no lower. Who thinks I have punished them enough, that I would not dare touch her son’s prisoner. My son has enemies,” She said, mimicking Huchimitl’s voice with a chilling, contemptuous precision. “They have no enemies but Me. And you think to bargain for either of them, priest? You serve no one.”
“I serve Mictlantecuhtli, God of the Dead,” I said, drawing myself to my full height.
The goddess recoiled at the mention of Mictlantecuhtli, He in Whose country nothing grows. I pressed my slim advantage.
“There are rules, and rituals.”
“They offered Me a tainted sacrifice.” Xilonen was growling like a jaguar about to pounce. “They cheated Me of my proper offerings. And you dare bargain for them?”
“There is such a thing as forgiveness. Such a thing as ignorance.”
“Ignorance is not innocence. I will not be cheated, priest, whether knowingly or unknowingly.” Her head, arched back, touched the sky; Her feet were rooted in the earth of the courtyard. She was utterly beyond me: wild, savage, cruel. She could have crushed me with a thought, had I not belonged to a god She had no mastery over.
It had been a long time since my days in calmecac, a long time since I had learnt the hymns for every one of our gods and goddesses. I searched through my faltering memories, and finally said,
“I will offer You sheathes of corn taken from the Divine Fields
Lady of the Emerald
Ears of maize, freshly cut, green and tender
I will anoint You with new plumes, new chalks
The hearts of two deer
The blood of eagles—”
Xilonen was crouching at the heart of the courtyard, watching me, but Her face had taken on an almost dreamy expression.
I went on,
“Let me fill Your hands with snake fangs
With white flowers still in the bud
Turquoise mined from the depths
Goddess of the Barrel Cactus
Our Mother
Our Protector.”
She was smiling at me now, the contented smile of a child. I was not fooled. There is a reason for all those rituals, for all those hymns. They know what things are pleasing to the gods, what things will appease Them. But it had been a great wrong Tlalli and Yoltzin had dealt Xilonen; and still She had quickened the seeds; still She had made the corn grow. She felt entitled to some compensation.
“Will You bargain with me, Lady?” I asked, kneeling before her in the dirt.
Her smile widened—though I could barely see Her, I could feel Her amusement quivering in the air. “You are tenacious, priest—and not unattractive.”
To Chicomecoatl, who was also Xilonen, we gave the hearts of beautiful girls and boys, that they might forever serve Her in heaven. “Is that the price?” I asked.
She smiled. “It is tempting, priest. But not enough.”
“What else would you want?” I asked. “I have nothing else to give but myself.”
“I know that,” She said, reaching out with Her gigantic hand. It shrank as it came near me, until it was only twice the size of mine. She cupped my chin in Her palm, and raised my face to look into Hers. Her touch was warm, slightly moist, like the earth after the rains. Her eyes held the depths of the night.
I held on to my memories of Huchimitl, to what she had meant, and still meant, to me. For too long, I had preserved myself; for too long, I had denied my feelings for her. Now was the time for a true sacrifice. “Is that the price?” I asked again, through lips that seemed to have turned to stone.
Xilonen’s smile was that of a jaguar given human flesh. “Such a beauty,” She whispered. I saw myself in Her eyes, as I had been in my youth, tall and beautiful and arrogant, and then as I was now, older and greyer, kneeling before Her in abject obedience. “Yes,” She said. “It is most satisfactory.”
My skin started itching, as if sloughing away, and then the tingling sensation became stronger and stronger, and I realized what I felt were hands, stroking my back, my chest, the nape of my neck; lips, slowly caressing my fingertips and earlobes until my whole body ached with a desperate need. It was not an unpleasant feeling; although some part of me, clamoring at the back of my mind, knew that it was not natural, that I had just sold myself away.
“Acatl? No!”
The sound pierced my torpor, and I realized it was a voice I knew, calling my name. Xilonen released me; I became aware of the dampness of the ground, crawling up my legs; of the light of the stars above.
Of Huchimitl, who stood before the main doors, her mask glimmering in the cold light. It was an effort to raise my head and look at her.
“He is not Yours,” she said, anger in her voice.
Xilonen laughed. “He offered himself. Freely, to undo the great wrong your husband did to me.”
“He is not Yours,” Huchimitl repeated.
“Whose would he be?” Xilonen asked, mocking. “Yours? You could not hold him.”
“No.” Huchimitl’s voice was toneless. Calmly, she walked forward, until she stood before Xilonen. “If a life has to be sacrificed, let it be mine.”
“Yours?” Xilonen laughed. “You denied yourself to Me all those years. You hid yourself from My face, cowering in your house, for fear that others would catch a glimpse of you and be forever marked. And you think you are a worthy sacrifice?”
I could not speak. I could not drag myself upwards, to shut Huchimitl’s mouth before she said the irreparable. I could just remain where I was. Watching. Listening. Unable to affect anything.
Huchimitl’s voice, when she spoke next, was very quiet. “You made me a worthy sacrifice,” she said. “You removed me from the human world.” And slowly, deliberately, reached upwards with both hands, and took away her mask.
I heard it clatter to the ground. But it mattered little. I had thought it hid the ruins of the curse, that it would be the face of some monster, painful to look at.
In a way, it was worse.
There was a face, under the mask. It was no longer human. Every feature, transfigured, gleamed with a merciless light. The skin was the color of burnished copper; the eyes shone like emeralds. The cheekbones were high, ruddy in the starlight, the lips parted to reveal blinding-white teeth, each like a small sun, perfect, searing. If it was beauty, it was the kind that would burn away your eyes: nothing ever meant for human minds to hold or comprehend. My eyes had started to water with that mere sight, and I knew I would be blinded if I had to endure it for much longer. No wonder Huchimitl had not been able to bear that face.
Xilonen turned to stare at Huchimitl, Her head cocked as if admiring Her creation.
“Am I not beautiful?” Huchimitl asked, throwing her head back. Even that mere gesture was alluring. I could not look away, even though my eyes kept burning, burning as if someone had thrown raw chilli powder into my face. “Am I not desirable?”
Xilonen did not answer. Huchimitl came closer, hands outstretched, and laid her fingers on the goddess’ arm. Even I felt the thrill that raced through Xilonen, making the whole world shudder.
“My life for my son’s, and his beloved war-son’s,” Huchimitl said. “Is that not a worthy bargain?”
Xilonen stared at her. She said, at last, “You are not amusing any more. You have accepted My gift.”
Huchimitl cocked her head, in a gesture reminiscent of her creator. “Perhaps,” she said. “Do we have a bargain?” She gestured towards me, contemptuous. “He is nothing.” And this time I knew she was lying.
Xilonen smiled at last, and the feeling of that smile filled the courtyard like a ray of sunlight. “Yes, he is nothing. But do not think you have fooled me into thinking you do not care either.” She laughed. “Nevertheless...we have a bargain.”
The light around Huchimitl grew stronger and stronger, sharpening her features. I kept on looking, even though I knew that my eyesight would be forever dimmed. I kept on looking as she and the goddess vanished from the courtyard, taking away the unearthly light. I thought that, at the last, Huchimitl looked towards me, and that her lips mouthed some words. Perhaps, “I am sorry.” Perhaps, “I love you.” Something, anything to help me bear the grief that now burnt through me.
The buildings were adobe, no longer stark white or wavering; the feeling of oppression had disappeared. I pushed myself to my feet, and met Mazahuatl’s gaze. The young warrior was standing in the doorway, staring at the place where his mother had disappeared. Even with the memory of Xilonen’s light clouding my sight, I could tell his dark aura had vanished. I could guess that Citli would walk to his sacrifice and join the Sun God in the heavens, and that Mazahuatl would receive his promotion.
I did not care.
“Mother?” Mazahuatl asked.
“Remember her,” I said.
I made my unsteady way through the courtyard, passed the gates, and found myself in a deserted street. It was not seemly that a priest for the Dead should grieve, or have regrets. It was not seemly to cry, either.
I stood alone in the street, staring at the stars, and saw them slowly blur as tears ran down my cheeks.
© Copyright 2009 Aliette de Bodard
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Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a computer engineer. In addition to four stories in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, her fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy and Asimov's. Her first novel, Servant of the Underworld, was released by Angry Robot/Harper Collins in January 2010. She has been a Writers of the Future winner and a Campbell Award finalist. Visit http://www.aliettedebodard.com for more information.
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By Megan Arkenberg
Issue #8, January 15, 2009
“Don’t lie to me, Leonide.”
Celeste’s heart-shaped face appeared at the edge of my mirror, plum-colored lips pursed deliciously in a scowl. I lowered the kohl pencil I had been using to line my eyes and frowned at my reflection.
“I haven’t said a word to you, darling.”
“But you’re going to.” She took what passed for a deep breath through the tight lacings of her corset. “I’m going to ask you a question, and you must promise not to lie to me.”
“Must I? You’re being delightfully mysterious.” I set my maquillage aside and turned around in my chair. We were in the tiny dressing room of my suite at Chateau Décembre, putting the final touches on our guises for the Midwinter Masque. Celeste had robed herself as the Medusa, in a gown of pale green velvet that left her white arms bare from the shoulder, her soft black hair held in a mass of ringlets by a combination of emerald ribbons and sugar water. I myself dressed as a femme mousquetaire, in a loose gentleman’s coat over a gown of checkered black and gold that displayed my waist and the curve of my breasts to full advantage. A pasteboard saber and feathered mask, both gifts from Celeste, completed the look.
“Leonide!”
“Very well.” I took her tiny hands in mine and drew her down until she was kneeling on the floor in front of me. “I promise to answer any question you put to me with complete and honest candor, complete and candid honesty, and honestly candid completeness.”
She glanced up at me, and I was startled to see tears shining on her cheeks. “You’re a Sang d’Hiver, aren’t you?”
My blood ran cold down to the base of my spine. I hadn’t heard my family’s name said aloud in nearly fifteen years. “Yes,” I whispered, looking at the delicate golden lacings of her sandals so that I wouldn’t need to see her eyes.
“Oh!” I could hear her bracelets jangling as the wrung her hands. “Darling...are the stories true?”
“Which ones?” I asked, though I knew full well. “That the Lord of Winter himself comes on Midwinter of the eldest daughter’s twentieth year, to drink her blood and turn her soul into a buttercup?”
“I heard....” Her voice caught in her throat; it was an annoyingly sentimental trait. “I heard it was a white rose.”
“No, love,” I said, brushing my lips across her knuckles. “It isn’t true—at least, it isn’t anymore. Oh, I suppose some great-great-grandmother of mine may have sold her soul to the devil for a cup of hot soup in midwinter, and I suppose he may have developed a taste for my family’s blood....” A shiver rippled through her arms, and I laughed softly. “Besides, I don’t turn twenty until midnight.”
Celeste wasn’t going to let me off that easily; I could feel it in her grip tightening around my fingers. “Pascal said your mother was taken. He said when you were three—”
“When I was three,” I said sharply, “my mother died of influenza. Now please, darling, don’t talk like that. You know how I hate it when you talk nonsense.”
She nodded, dabbed at her nose with a silk handkerchief, and flashed a quick smile. I placed a hand under her chin and raised her head until our eyes met. With enough gentleness to mask my agitation, I covered her tiny lips with mine and began to kiss her.
She responded with the combination of eagerness and trepidation that made her such a wonderful lover, her hands clutching at mine as I twined my fingers into her curls, her lips parting wetly beneath my tongue. She moaned, a low, animal sound in the back of her throat.
I lifted my mouth from hers, just long enough to whisper, “I won’t leave you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” I kissed her again, a light touch at the corner of her lips. Then I turned back to the mirror to finish my preparations for the Midwinter Bal Masqué.
It was the fifth masquerade I had attended at Chateau Décembre, and I swear Pascal fought to outdo himself each year. The ballroom was decorated as a winter wonderland, with strings of crystal wrapped around the columns and dangling from the chandeliers. Thick folds of white diamond-studded linen hung over the balcony railing, dripping all the way to the floor like a frozen waterfall. In place of the customary ice-sculptures and wax fruits, thousands of beadwork roses served as centerpieces on the massive banquet table.
Like his sister, Pascal had chosen his costume from the Metamorphoses: Orpheus, in a loose cobalt robe that brought out the blue in his eyes just as Celeste’s gown deepened the green. Instead of ribbons, he wore a crown of silk leaves in his black hair.
He greeted us at the foot of the balcony staircase, kissing his sister on the cheek and me on the wrist. “Leonide, love, I’m so pleased to see you’ve brought your own weapons to the ball this time.” He nodded towards the sword at my waist.
“Your grandfather’s suit of armor wasn’t using it, darling, and we all know Yvon was asking for it.” I smiled at the memory. “What about you, Orpheus? Do you plan on playing us a song?”
“Do you see a lyre anywhere?” Pascal gestured broadly, making his golden armlets ring together like bells. “If you’re looking for music, I’m sure Celeste will be happy to sing for you.”
I laughed and turned to ask Celeste’s opinion on the matter, but she was gone.
“Now where in the world....”
A silvery laugh sounded across the room, and I looked over to find Celeste standing at the far end of the banquet hall, deep in conversation with the Lord of Winter himself.
I’m not one for omens, but the young man’s costume sent a shiver down my spine. In addition to the black coat, white half-mask, and silver riding quirt that were the distinguishing features of my family’s legendary nemesis, he also carried a white rose in his pocket; a detail that, so far as I knew, was only included in the Sang d’Hivers’ tale. It didn’t help that the young man in question was extraordinarily beautiful, and Celeste clung onto every word he said.
“Who is that?” I asked, lowering my mask to get a better look. His hair and eyes, both the deep brown of a sparrow’s wing, seemed to trap the candlelight and grow darker by it.
“The lovely young man who seems to have attracted my sister’s attention? Who knows?” Pascal shrugged. “I’ve never seen him before. Some new pet of Rosemonde’s, no doubt.” He must have seen the expression on my face then, because his smile softened. “Never fear, Leonide. You know Celeste isn’t the flighty sort....”
“But she has a preference for men—particularly beautiful ones.” I raised my mask again. “No matter. I’d had or could have had every man and woman at your Bal Masqué last year, Pascal. Your wife’s exquisite little jewel will not put a stain on that record.”
“I wish you luck, love.” Another couple appeared in the doorway, and Pascal started off to great them. “But I suggest you practice on Sabine de la Fontaine first. It should give me time to get good and drunk before Rosemonde sees you flirting with her lover and demands I show some husbandly sympathy.”
As it happens, I did practice on lonely Sabine, and got more than a little drunk, before cornering the Lord of Winter in the winter-garden adjoining the ballroom. It was a little past midnight. He leaned against one of the blue marble caryatids near the fountain, fingering the petals of his rose.
I came up behind him and closed my hand around the stem, directly below his fingers. Something sharp dug into the base of my thumb. A thorn, I realized. The rose was genuine, not silk.
I cleared my throat to cover the gasp of pain. “I noticed you not looking at me, my lord.”
The young man’s eyes fixed on my face, his straight, dark brows elegantly raised. I pressed myself against him and forced down a shiver. It may have only been the wine, but it seemed to me that, even through the layers of silk and brocade, I could feel the cold radiating from his flesh.
“Do you not find me pleasing, my lord?” I whispered.
He shrugged out of my embrace and dropped the rose to cup my chin in his hand, turning my face this way and that, as if I were a crystal goblet and he was trying to guess my price. His red lips flowed into a sneer. “You are exquisite,” he replied, and released me with a flick of his wrist.
I would not be lost so easily, I thought, and imagined the feel of that vibrant mouth under mine. His lips would be soft, I decided, like a woman’s, and they would taste like blood and rose petals. “You see someone you prefer,” I said. “Who is it?”
He said nothing, merely looked in through the glass windows to the dance floor. I followed his gaze, expecting to see Pascal’s Rosemonde, and met a most unwelcome surprise.
“Oh!” I forced a laugh. “The Medusa, is it?”
He nodded. “She is a vision,” he said, and the sparkle in his eyes seemed to say he was laughing at me. “Like the first shoot of green at the end of a long, harsh winter.”
“You’ve had too much wine. She is a pet,” I said, “and a Gorgon compared to me. Come now, my lord, I think I understand your kind better than that. You’re not looking for a dog on a leash.”
“Then what am I looking for?”
I raised my mouth to his ear. My breath came out in little white wisps, tangling with the silver strands in his hair. Blessed Tyche, I was drunk. “A wolf on a chain.”
For one blissful moment, I saw nothing but the astonishment in his eyes. And then he kissed me.
It was not like kissing Celeste; it was not like anyone I had ever kissed before. His tongue played across my lips as though I were a taste he half-remembered, and my mouth opened beneath him as though he were a delicacy I longed to devour. We strove against each other, not out of desire or a wish to give pleasure, but out of a desperate hunger for power, a need to make the other ache with wanting.
I drew away first, breathless, and lay my cheek against his shoulder. He clutched my chin and pulled my mouth back up to his. I managed to get my hands around his wrists and push him close against the pillar until we three seemed to meld into one, the cold of our flesh melting into the cold of the marble.
“Leonide,” he whispered, with just the trace of a sneer. “You are exquisite.”
I had not told him my name, and I had not stopped kissing him.
He felt the fear through our embrace; I heard his laughter, high and cold in the back of my skull.
“Leonide,” he said again, and everything went dark.
I woke in the back of a carriage, my head throbbing like it had been caught beneath the wheels. The pain was only magnified by the loud chattering of my teeth; and even beneath the layers of my gown, coat, and the coach’s wolf-fur blanket, gooseflesh roughened by skin.
“Cold?”
I winced as my eyes cracked open, letting in a flood of harsh blue moonlight. The young man sat on the seat across from me. Gone were the white half-mask and silver hair ribbons; instead, dark circles rimmed his eyes, and his hair hung lank and sweat-dampened around his face. I could think of many reasons for his fevered expression, and every one of them made me feel like an ice statue melting to water.
“I’m freezing,” I hissed. Even through my shivering, I could feel my heart flinging itself against my ribs. Blessed Tyche, what was happening to me? Desire mixed with fear like the taste of spices in mulled wine. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see soon enough. If you don’t know already.” He pursed his lips for a moment, then slipped out of his black brocade coat and lay it across my lap. Some part of my mind was still alive enough to be amazed that he didn’t shiver, though he wore only a thin silk shirt underneath.
A very thin shirt. An appreciative sound rose in the back of my throat, and impossibly, I felt a different sort of warmth stirring the fear in my gut.
He seemed neither pleased nor disturbed at the thought of his willowy, elegant body so clearly on display. The silver riding quirt, which he had worn in a loop at his waist, now dangled from his hand, and he tapped it lightly against his thigh in an impatient gesture.
I cleared my throat and looked away from him, focusing instead on the white landscape flying past the carriage window. “Celeste will notice that I’m missing,” I said, trying not to wonder if it would make any difference. “Pascal will send out a search party. Surely they don’t thing I left willingly—”
“Surely it doesn’t matter what they think, Sang d’Hiver.”
I buried my face in the wolf-skin. Pain that had nothing to do with wine or cold pounded behind my eyes—the deep, hollow pain of nightmares. “It’s true, isn’t it?” I whispered.
“Of course it’s true.”
“My mother?”
He laughed softly, snapping the quirt. “Your mother was nothing like you, Leonide. But I have more than one way of earning my prize.”
I winced, raising my head from my hands. Dread of the inevitable made my voice hard. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Who knows?” He shrugged. “We’ll see what the morning brings.”
It was still dark when our carriage stopped, though that meant little; it was, after all, the longest night of the year. The young man—the Lord of Winter, I corrected myself, only half-sneering—helped me down and lead me across a wide, ice-slickened courtyard to a pair of iron-bound doors, like a prisoner escorted to her dungeon. Against my better judgment, I glanced over my shoulder as I crossed the threshold, only to see the carriage rolling away with neither a driver to steer it nor horses to pull it.
Blessed Tyche, let it be the wine! I prayed, knowing full well that the cold had sobered me hours before.
I heard the click of a lock sliding into place behind me and turned to examine my prison. It was a large room, though not nearly the size of the ballroom at Chateau Décembre. The spaciousness and warm furnishings reminded me of a hunting lodge; a mammoth fireplace covered the entire south wall, and the stone floor vanished beneath rugs of wolf and bear skin. Without meaning to, I found myself backing up against the door. The place was a far cry from the ice-glazed dungeons of my imagining, but its heat was like my warmest smiles; it served only to intensify the chill by comparison.
“Welcome,” my captor said, with only the slightest trace of irony. He crossed the room in front of me and knelt on the pile of skins by the hearth, snapping his fingers to start a fire. The light flickered softly across his face.
A memory came unbidden to my mind. That previous autumn, Pascal’s entire household had gone up to Vivien Roux’s hunting lodge and ventured out on a fox hunt in near-blizzard conditions. Celeste and I had stayed behind, alone, and made love on a magnificent bear-skin carpet in front of the fireplace.
My captor had looked up from the fire, his eyes narrowed slyly, as if he knew what I had been thinking. I felt my face flush and looked away.
“So what should I be calling you, my lord?” I asked, my voice as level as I could make it.
“Whatever you like.” I nearly bit through my tongue as I felt his cold hands close over my shoulders. Icy panic fluttered between my breasts, pooled in the small of my back. His fingers began to toy with the leather strap holding my sword. “Athos, perhaps.”
“Athos,” I repeated. In my voice, the name sounded harsh and ungainly.
Meanwhile, Athos’s hands moved down my back, sliding the coat from my shoulders and working at the laces of my overgown. I shrugged out of his grasp, only to jump at the sound of my sword clattering to the floor.
“Leonide....” His icy lips pressed against the bare skin of my shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!”
“As you wish.” He shoved me away, hard enough to send me sprawling on the floor. I scrambled back on hands and knees, tangling myself in the thick skirts of my gown. Athos turned and walked out of the room, letting the courtyard door slam behind him in a swirl of snowflakes.
I pulled myself to my feet and stumbled to the nearest wall, nauseous with anger and repugnance, sullied in a way no human lust had ever left me. As I grabbed at the stone for support, I felt something smooth and watery beneath my hand. It was a wall-mirror like the one in my dressing room at the Chateau, surrounded by little tokens hanging from nails and silver ribbons.
With shaking fingers, I lifted the closest one from its hook; a golden thimble, too tiny to fit on even my littlest finger. A scrap of embroidery hung nearby, and a bright scarlet feather from someone’s masquerade. Near the top of the mirror, a gray-eyed woman smiled out of a delicate miniature. My stomach clenched as I recognized my great-aunt Joelle, who had died childless...leaving my grandmother’s daughters to face her curse.
“Blessed Tyche,” I whispered, my eyes flitting across the mementos. Sang d’Hiver, every one of them. I tried not to think of the other women who had stood here before, tainted from his touch, looking on the evidence of their successors hanging about them like so many satchels of grave dust. Disgust boarding on horror crawled up my spine as I glanced over the ghastly inventory.
At the very bottom of the frame, I found what I was looking for.
A golden locket, trimmed with chips of turquoise, glinted dully in the firelight. The lock, I knew, had been broken since before I was born, and I pried the body open with my fingernails. Strands of thin, dark hair curled inside.
I remembered when my mother cut that lock of hair. It was getting on towards the end of autumn—her last full season, and though I hadn’t known it at the time, I think she did—and I had just come in from the garden with a handful of ivory chrysanthemums. Mother lifted me up onto her lap and combed out my hair as I chatted on about the weather, and the flowers, and the thousands of foolish things children talk about. It wasn’t until much, much later that I began to hate myself for wasting my dying mother’s time with such nonsense.
I had pressed my cheek against her chest, listening to the strange rattle of her breath in her lungs, when she took the scissors out of her sewing basket and snipped a few strands from the locks around my face. She twined them up in a silver wire and tucked them away in her locket.
Until the day she died, that locket never left her chest.
“It gets lonely, sometimes.” The sound of Athos’s voice made me jump; I hadn’t heard him come in. He wore his coat again, the black one from the masquerade. Strangely, the heavy shapelessness obscuring his body made him seem more exposed than he had been before. “I thought you might understand that.”
My laugh sounded hollow even to me. “Some of us can’t turn our lovers into roses,” I said. “Some of us don’t want to.”
Athos’s reflection grew in the mirror until he stood directly at my shoulder. I felt the gentle pressure of his hands wrapping around my waist, pulling away the laces they had already loosened.
“I’m not my mother’s daughter,” I said.
He laughed and pulled the sleeves of my bodice down over my shoulders.
“I paid a man to sleep with me once,” I continued, drawing strength from my revulsion as he kissed the back of my neck. “I don’t even like men, and he would have done it anyway. But I wanted him to see what it was like to be the whore for a change.”
Halfway down my shoulder, the kiss turned into a bite. My breath came in a hiss as Athos pulled away. “Why are you telling me this?”
“So you know exactly who you are taking. I’m not a frigid little virgin like Joelle, or a chaste wife like my mother.”
“I know what you are.”
I turned in his arms and clasped my hands behind his neck, pulling him down into a kiss. It was nothing like winter-garden at the Chateau; it was like the kiss Celeste and I had shared in my dressing room, slow and sweet, a parody of the softened passion Athos must have shared with every other Sang d’Hiver maiden. “When we first became lovers,” I murmured, lifting my lips from his, “I let Celeste find me in bed with other women, just to see the look in her eyes. She gave me a ruby earring at the Spring Equinox this year, and the first time we fought afterward, I used it to buy a prostitute in Pont sur Montagnes.”
“You aren’t going to shock me,” Athos said, but I felt his hands stiffen beneath the fabric of my bodice.
“You don’t want me,” I whispered. I pulled away from him, and he made no move to touch me again. “Who would?”
“I would.”
The voice came from the door, along with a gust of snow-dusted air. Celeste stood at the threshold, her hair tangled and loose from its ribbons, her green robe torn and water-stained. She held one hand behind her back, but from the strange bend of her shoulder, I knew it was injured.
“Celeste!” Every question that came into my mind after that was hopelessly stupid, so I settled for the least foolish of the lot. “How in the nine hells did you get here?”
She flashed a smile at me, but her answer was for Athos. “Not everyone has heard the complete Sang d’Hiver tale, you know. But my grandfather did a lot of talking after papa died.” She took her injured hand from behind her back and opened the fist. A white rose spread its petals, darkened with sticky splotches of blood. “Blood drawn from the thorn of the Lord of Winter’s rose and sprinkled on the snow will flow into a trail to his stronghold. Grandfather said everyone who tried before had their blood freeze before they could get here.” Another smile, this time all in her eyes. “But I have warm blood, my lord.”
“You’ll never take her from me,” Athos said, and whether it was anger or irony that lent an edge to that cool voice, I knew enough to take another step away. “I have waited seventeen years—”
“Then surely you can wait for one more.”
I knew what she was suggesting a second before he did. “No!” I cried. “Celeste, you can’t!”
For the first time in my life, Celeste ignored me.
“I don’t turn twenty for another six days,” she said. “But next Midwinter, I’ll be ready.”
“And what makes you think I’d want you?”
“I can be as cruel as Leonide, in my own way.” She drew herself up, and despite the blood stains on her gown and the tattered hair hanging in her eyes, she looked like an empress. “But my cruelty is subtler. And you yourself said I looked fairer.”
“I’ve plenty of both beauty and subtlety,” Athos said. He crossed the floor to Celeste in three strides and laid one hand against her cheek. “I ask you again, what makes you think I’d want you?”
She turned her face and placed a kiss against his palm. I stifled a snarl and fell back against the wall, drawing a thin line of blood across my wrist from the mirror’s sharp edge. The cold intensified the pain beyond endurance.
“Leonide is the last of her kind,” Celeste said, glancing at me for the first time. Her eyes looked frozen. “If you take her, you will never have another Sang d’Hiver. My brother has children, and Tyche willing, I may have a daughter by next Midwinter. You won’t have to be alone.”
Athos smiled at me, a sharp-edged sneer that sent my limbs quivering. I could not look away. He bent down over Celeste’s tiny body and covered her mouth with his.
“No,” I hissed. I averted my gaze with a physical effort, only to find the reflection of their entwined bodies in the mirror.
The cry that had been building in my chest broke free. I slammed both fists into the glass, pounding the mirror to rubble, driving bits of it deep into my palms until I couldn’t feel the pain. Scarlet blood ran between my fingers, blurring Celeste’s reflection and staining the shards that glistened around me like a thousand blades of ice.
The sleigh lurched through the snow towards the line of red dripping up the horizon. Beside me, Celeste wound the reigns around her wrist and snapped them, urging our horses into a gallop. The poor creatures were exhausted by Celeste’s race from Chateau Decembré, and clearly disquieted by the strange sled of the Lord of Winter. I could sympathize. With its moldings of silver and blue-white, the thing reminded me entirely too much of a suitor’s bridal gift.
“Why did you do it?” It was the seventh time I’d asked her, and still she didn’t answer. I threw the heavy furs off of my lap and grabbed her shoulders, ignoring the pain from my shredded hands. “Damn it, Celeste, tell me!”
“Any bets on if this sleigh will disappear at dawn?” she said lightly, shrugging out of my grasp. “I think gifts of this kind always do, but Grandfather never told me that part of the story.”
“Because no one was ever so fucking stupid as to hand themselves over to the Lord of Winter!”
“Some great-great-grandmother of yours was.” She turned to me with a softness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “A cup of hot soup, you said? Aren’t you worth more than that?”
I sighed and rested my head on her shoulder. “Am I?”
“Sweetheart.” She pressed a cold kiss to my forehead, but her breath was warm. “I love you because you are cruel, and capricious, and untamable. I don’t want a dog on a leash.”
I laughed, tilting my head back until her lips met mine. “Do you really think you’ll have a child by next Midwinter?”
I felt her smile against my cheek. “I’m not really the child-bearing sort—and truth be told, neither is Rosemonde. Do you think he’ll give us another year?”
“Maybe.” I laughed again and raised a hand to stroke sweat-damped curls away from her forehead. “Celeste, I’ve been thinking—”
“If you think you’re going to apologize, spare me,” she interrupted. “I love you, Leonide. I’m not like your winter Lord—I don’t want purity and subtlety. If I did...well, I imagine I’d end up just like him.”
“Lonely?”
“Empty.” She lowered the reins and turned to wrap her arms around me. “I couldn’t live like that, Leonide—passionless, unsatisfied. It’s like being frozen to death.”
After a moment’s hesitation, I returned her embrace. The horses could find their own way home.
© Copyright 2009 Megan Arkenberg
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Megan Arkenberg is a student in Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in Ideomancer, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Fantasy Magazine, among other places, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She procrastinates by editing the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance and the historical fiction e-zine Lacuna.
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