The Seventh Sun

by Lani Forbes

  Oh. The hair on Mayana’s arms stood. She must not have heard him correctly.

  Tenoch started to cry. Her four older brothers all shifted uncomfortably. Their actions verified the truth Mayana was struggling to grasp.

  After a minute of silence, everyone refusing to meet her eyes, the tears finally started to build.

  “Father.” Her voice cracked for the second time that evening. “You can’t let this happen. Please, you must do something.”

  “There is nothing I can do. This is the ritual and we must respect it.”

  His words were firm, but Mayana could hear the pain in his voice. He did not like this, but he would not challenge the codex. Anger flared hot within her chest like a flame. She was sick of the stifling and suffocating shackles of the rituals. She had fought against her heart for years to submit to them, constantly wrestling between what she wanted to do and what she should do. They had stolen the joy from her life. Now, they demanded her actual life.

  “Would you see me die to uphold some ancient ritual?”

  Her father’s eyes flashed, and he clenched his fists.

  “You must learn to respect our way of life, Mayana,” he said. “You, born into a time of privilege, do not know the pain of drought or famine. You have not watched your family be swept away by waves of fire or water. You have not seen whole cities succumb to sickness or fall to the jaws of ravenous beasts.”

  “Neither have you,” she mumbled, glaring at her feet. It had been hundreds of years since the Sixth Sun perished.

  “Thank the gods I have not,” he roared. “But I can imagine. And I understand the importance of the rituals, of honoring the gods who protect us and making sure I never do have to know that pain.” He slammed his fist against the wall.

  Her tears spilled over.

  “This can’t be the will of the gods,” her scream ripped through her throat. “I don’t believe they would want this. And I do know pain. We lost Mother. All the rituals in the world did not save her.” The words tumbled out before she could call them back. Shame bit at the back of her mind like an irritating wasp, sudden and sharp.

  The lord of Atl did not answer. The shadow of a grief far worse than her own crossed his face. He did not like to think about her mother any more than she did. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, more understanding.

  “The rituals protect us as a people, not as individuals. Had Nemi been there, she could have saved your mother, but she was not. We cannot change the past, Mayana, we can only affect what happens in the future.”

  “I may not have a future.” She sniffed.

  “Then you must be chosen,” her father said with finality. “There is no other way.”

  Tenoch wiped his nose, a watery smile on his face. “Of course the prince will choose Mayana. She is so beautiful!”

  Mayana gave him an appreciative smile.

  Her oldest brother, Chimalli, was not so hopeful. “Is there someone else we can send? Surely Mayana is not our only option.”

  “Mayana has seen seventeen cycles of the calendar. The next oldest female blood relative who is not already married has only seven. She is our only daughter of marriageable age.” The lord of Atl rubbed his temple as though a headache were forming.

  Chimalli tried to speak out of the corner of his mouth. “But … she will sabotage herself.”

  “What do you mean, I will sabotage myself?” Mayana narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Well, you tend to follow your heart above your duty. You are beautiful, yes, but I worry your compassion will get you in trouble. It can make you seem … disrespectful to the gods, like you follow your own will above theirs.”

  Mayana curled her hands into fists and suppressed the urge to slap him. Her father would scold her if she did.

  “That’s enough, Chimalli. I am confident Mayana can rein in her rebelliousness for the sake of saving her own life.”

  “Rebelliousness? Just because I won’t …”

  “Now is not the time, Mayana.” He silenced her with a look. Mayana bit her lip and did not respond.

  “So, what happens now?” Tenoch asked, tugging at his father’s hand.

  “Mayana will leave at first light with the servant from Tollan. She will impress the prince and the matchmaker and become our empress.” Her father said the words so firmly it was as if he were attempting to force them to become reality.

  “And if not, she dies,” Chimalli added in frustration, but Mayana knew her oldest brother. She reached out and placed her hand on his arm.

  “I will not be sacrificed,” she told him softly. Jerking his arm away with tears gleaming in his eyes, he turned his back to her.

  “We must return to the feast and show the proper respect Ometeotl deserves. Tomorrow, we will say goodbye to Mayana and pray every day that she is chosen.” The lord pulled the curtain aside to lead them back.

  The festival would now feel less like a celebration and more like a farewell.

  For the rest of the evening, Mayana could not eat. The tamales tasted like sand and stuck in her throat whenever she tried to swallow. Her eyes were drawn, continually, to the servant with the white-and-gold cloak. Tomorrow that man would take her away, to a glorious future or a gruesome death.

  Normally, the Chicome saved human sacrifices for the beginning of a new calendar year, or for major events like a looming battle, and even then, the victims were captured enemies. Outside of the New Fire ceremony that took place every fifty-four years, she had never heard of sacrificing a noble before. She couldn’t imagine the power contained in the blood of five noble young girls. Maybe that was why it was reserved for the coronation of kings.

  The ritual didn’t feel right either way. Five innocent young women killed for nothing more than the use of their blood? She knew she was supposed to see it as an honor, but how could gods who supposedly loved the people enough to die for them demand so much pain and suffering?

  After the feast ended, she wandered the labyrinthine halls of the palace, aimlessly searching for some kind of distraction. The towering columns cast ominous flickering shadows in the light of the flaming torches, the engraved faces of the gods following her with uncaring eyes. Several servants rushed past with baskets full of animal furs. They averted their eyes as she passed, their pity hanging in the air like a foul stench.

  Mayana ended up in one of the steam-bath rooms, curled in a ball in the corner. Not able to bring herself to cry again, she let the sweat run off her skin in place of the tears she could not shed. Her heart drummed a rhythm so deep it pounded inside her ears, making her wonder how many beats it had left. Would they cut it from her chest and burn it on an altar? She shuddered, pressing her hand against it as though she could shield it from such a fate.

  Chimalli peeked around the corner.

  He did not speak. Instead, he inched over to her, waiting for her to decide she was ready. Mayana appreciated the gesture. After several stubborn minutes, she finally found her voice.

  “I don’t want to be an empress.” She rested her head on her knees and refused to meet his eyes.

  “I know.” He chuckled. “You’ll be terrible at it. You can’t even sacrifice a bird. How are you supposed to follow all the rules and rituals in Tollan?”

  She groaned loudly. “Is this supposed to be helping?”

  “No.” His eyes danced with humor. “But this might.”

  He handed her a small, beautifully woven bundle of cloth. She ran her fingers over a hard bulge beneath the folds.

  Chimalli smiled encouragingly.

  Mayana pulled aside the detailed fabric to reveal an obsidian dagger. Unlike her simple ceremonial knife with the wooden handle, this dagger’s handle was made of an almost translucent green jadeite. The blade was the size of her hand, and the edges were impossibly sharp.

  “You really think stabbing the prince will make him
like me?”

  Her brother snorted a laugh.

  “No, if you stabbed the prince of the sun, I imagine the power in his blood would cause the sun itself to burst and rain fire down upon us all.”

  She sighed. “Which would defeat the whole purpose of trying to save myself from him.” Her forehead dropped back down to her knees.

  “I want you to have something to remember your family by, and something you can use to summon your power if you need to.”

  She turned her head to look at him.

  “My dagger can bring forth blood just fine.” She showed him her healed palm for emphasis.

  “Yes, it can. But it is the plain dagger of a lord’s daughter. You need a dagger beautiful enough for an empress of the Chicome.”

  Just when she thought she had no more tears to shed, her eyes pricked again and she choked back a sob. Throwing her arms around her brother’s neck, she whispered “Thank you” in his ear.

  “Just promise me you will try to follow the rules while you are there? If you do, I don’t see how he could refuse you.”

  She laughed into his shoulder. “I can promise, but that doesn’t mean he’ll choose me.”

  “He has to.” Chimalli hugged her tighter. “I can’t lose you too.”

  A fine line existed between laughing and crying, life and death. She now walked between both on a knife blade sharper than obsidian.

  Chapter

  6

  Mayana wandered back to her room long after everyone else had gone to bed. She didn’t expect that she would actually be able to sleep, and she was right. She tossed and turned on her bed mat all night, burying her face into the soft rabbit skins to no avail. Her father had told her to rest so that she would be refreshed and beautiful, that first impressions were important in politics. Mayana argued that choosing a wife was a personal decision, not a political one, but her father had just laughed.

  “Everything is political, Mayana. You will do well to learn that now,” he had said.

  She continued to stare at the ceiling, willing herself to fall asleep. It looked as though she was going to disappoint him again. The night seemed to stretch on far longer than usual. When the glowing face of the sun peeked above the horizon, Mayana gave up and decided to find something to eat.

  She had taken barely two steps toward the doorway when a flock of aunts and female cousins wrenched the curtain open and flooded into the room. An explosion of sound threatened to shatter her eardrums as the older women squawked like a bunch of parrots, grabbing her by her upper arms and marching her out into the hall.

  Before Mayana could object, they stripped her naked and threw her into a temazcalli steam room like the one she had hidden in the night before. Her aunt splashed water against the blazing hot wall and mist filled the room with a hiss. Mayana tried not to dwell on the fact that she was being cleansed for a wedding—or a sacrificial ceremony.

  “I always wondered if you possessed the proper curves to entice a husband under all those modest dresses.” Her aunt gave her a teasing wink, and Mayana’s face burned hotter than steam. She certainly flaunted those curves now.

  A cousin brought in a clay basin, and Mayana’s head was immediately forced into the water. She bit her lip to keep from crying out as her aunt rubbed her skin raw and plastered her hair with some kind of conditioning concoction. Once her hair was rinsed, she could smell the black clay mixed with acacia bark that would be used to dye her hair even darker than it already was.

  “Can we please be a little gentler?” Mayana asked her aunt.

  “No, we don’t have time. You will reach Tollan before sunset, and you have many people to impress.” The large, motherly woman smeared yet another cream of some kind across her cheeks.

  “What is that?” Mayana wrinkled her nose at the putrid smell of the cream.

  “Combination of senna, yarrow … and pigeon droppings.”

  “Pigeon what?” Mayana shrieked.

  “Makes your skin shine and glow.” Her aunt shrugged.

  Her well-meaning family finally dragged Mayana out of the steam room. She was now thoroughly cleansed and, in her opinion, smelled like the floor of the aviary. She hoped the prince would not get too close to her face.

  They hustled her to one of the common rooms usually reserved for women, and Mayana’s mouth dropped open at the collection of potions and ornaments. Necklaces, headdresses, bracelets, and feathers were draped across cushions and baskets. Small pots of auxin, charcoal, paints, and pastes sat waiting upon the floor. She didn’t know the ingredients in most of them, and probably didn’t want to.

  Two of the older cousins set to work on braiding Mayana’s dark hair and securing it in some noble fashion that would communicate her important royal standing. They reminisced about their own weddings, giggling together and ignoring her completely. Mayana’s stomach dropped as she realized she would never have a wedding if she did not marry the prince.

  Her breathing grew shallow and frantic. Relax, she reminded herself.

  Several of her aunts began bickering about which headpiece would be most impressive, while Mayana remained silent, praying desperately that they would avoid the heavy golden helmet shaped like a half sun. The younger cousins dashed in and out carrying different fabrics and pieces of jewelry.

  At least the flurry of activity distracted her from focusing too much on how hard her heart was hammering, or the dizziness she feared would overtake her at any moment. She wondered vaguely what her aunts would do if she keeled over face first into the pot of bright-yellow paste.

  “I think a dark-red stripe, right across her eyes,” someone said. There were excited murmurs of consent before the cold tip of a paintbrush pressed against her eyelid.

  Mayana felt like a piece of pottery they were decorating to sell in the marketplace.

  Her aunts painted designs onto her arms and face, finally deciding on a feathered headpiece that framed Mayana’s face with long, curving, bright-blue feathers. Jade earrings hung from her earlobes, and a gold and jadeite pendant that matched her many bracelets dangled around her neck. The Chicome considered jade a symbol of water, so Mayana understood their significance. Someone secured feathered cuffs with tiny golden bells around her ankles and slipped her feet into simple sandals.

  “Do I need to be showing so much skin?” Mayana asked, turning on the spot and looking down at the outfit they had chosen for her.

  “Absolutely.” Mayana’s aunt surveyed her work and grunted in approval.

  Narrow strips of blue fabric crossed her chest to form a strategically placed x, while her stomach was entirely bare. The skirt looked more like a long loincloth than a woman’s skirt, and the skin of her legs was visible right up to her waist. Mayana gritted her teeth—her fingers itched for her new dagger, which was, unfortunately, back in her room. She longed to summon the water from the steam baths and drench herself, washing away everything that was not her.

  “I’m really not comfortable …” No one was listening. She sighed and allowed the preparations to continue. She would never be able to replicate this look by herself in the capital. She had asked about bringing a female servant with her, but her father assured her that all of her needs would be taken care of in Tollan.

  Mayana’s thoughts drifted to Tenoch. Her heart ached as she thought of leaving her youngest brother, but an idea came to her as she fingered the strips of fabric discarded upon a cushion. She grabbed a small strip and filled it with a fluff of wool. She tied it closed with a cord and set it aside, a secret little present to give him a positive memory of today.

  By the time her aunt deemed her “ready,” Mayana had been sufficiently buried beneath ornaments and potions. She looked at her reflection in the surface of a water jug and did not even recognize herself. Her face looked more like that of an ancient goddess—beautiful, terrible, and utterly perfect. She splashed her hand against the su
rface to make the goddess disappear before it devoured her, like the stories of the Tzitzimimeh star demons.

  “Mayana, you will meet your father in the palace courtyard in several minutes.” Her aunt handed her some leftover tamales from the night before. Mayana’s stomach grumbled and she took them gratefully.

  “May I go back to my room for a moment? I have something important I want to take with me.” Mayana was already shoving the tamales unceremoniously into her mouth.

  Her aunt nodded her approval and chuckled as maize crumbs fell from Mayana’s face. Running back to her room, she noticed the sun rising higher through a window. Either way, this would be her last day in her home. She took one last look around her small room. It was unusually bare. Someone had packed most of her things during her cleansing and preparation.

  But there, on a small stone table, the colorful bundle from Chimalli sat next to her old ceremonial knife. Mayana opened it and removed the new dagger, admiring the sharpness of the jet-black blade. It matched her freshly dyed hair exactly.

  Mayana hesitated for a moment, her eyes darting back and forth between the old knife and the new, and then turned her back on the dagger with the wooden handle. It was part of an old life, one to which she could never return. Several tears escaped and traced their way down her cheek, and she swiped them away with a finger. She mustn’t ruin the face paint, or her aunt would never forgive her.

  Having no place to hide a dagger in the scant clothing, she managed to wedge it into the cuff around her ankle. The jadeite handle protruded like an additional turquoise feather.

  Mayana hoped no one would notice.

  Chapter

  7

  “Mayana!” Tenoch’s high voice carried through the courtyard. “She looks beautiful, doesn’t she, Father? Like a bride.”

  “Indeed, she does.” Her father rarely smiled, but Mayana took the twitching at the corners of his mouth as a good sign.

  “What is today?” her brother asked.