Jaguar Princess

by Clare Bell

  The boys fled, leaving the half-choked boat-boy and the youth who had fainted. Her fallen tormentor lay on his front, his arms outflung. Bent over in a strange crouch, she circled back and went down beside him on hands and feet. She reached to turn him over, but her arm no longer moved in the way she was used to. Dexterity was fading from her hands, her thumb and fingers stubbornly lying together so that she could only make pawing motions. She had to hook her nails into the boy’s clothing to drag him over. The cotton cloth tore and fell away.

  Attracted by the sight and smell of warm flesh, she sniffed along his belly and then an ancient instinct came and she bared her teeth for the bite into his gut.

  Something made her lift her head and stare into the boy’s face, now made relaxed and childlike by the faint that had come over him. It raised a feeling of disquiet and she moved away from the body, staring out over the canal. She had seen something once, a vision that danced in gold and fire. A vision she wanted to capture and keep. With these new eyes, she could no longer see the beauty, and something locked away inside her felt the loss and mourned.

  What came from her mouth was not the cry of a young girl but a thundering growl that seemed to reverberate off the walls. A part of her spirit felt trapped, frightened. Moving on hands and feet, she began to circle at a rapid pace, so fast that everything blurred before her eyes.

  Suddenly she was seized by a feeling of weariness so deep and overwhelming that her head fell until her nose was near the ground. She staggered and toppled, landing heavily on her side. The almost unbearable intensity of her smell sense faded, the itching and burning in her skin ended and color returned to her vision before darkness closed down around her.

  Wise Coyote ran down the path that led to the courtyard, listening to the sound of the children’s shrieks. He had forgotten how fast children could run when hunting down and tormenting an enemy. Or perhaps Mixcatl’s visit to the market without being attacked had made him relax his guard, thinking that the youngsters had given up.

  Raising a fist, he charged in, yelling, but he saw that something else had put the boys to flight before he arrived. A diminishing clatter of sandals told him that most of the gang had gotten beyond his reach. Three figures were left, two down, one still moving.

  One was the canal brat he had seen earlier. The boy lay on his stomach, his head turned away, a stick still lying across his neck. He was gasping, as if he had been choked nearly to insensibility. Wise Coyote stooped beside the half-strangled boy, took the stick off his neck and rolled him over. He could do nothing else except leave him alone to gather his breath.

  Another youth lay on his back nearby, thighs gashed, loincloth torn. Over him crouched the girl. Wise Coyote could not see her face, but the way she held her body and moved her limbs made him think of a great cat, an animal that had somehow become trapped inside a human form.

  Or was her form entirely human? Her torso seemed to have deepened, lengthened, pulling apart the ties of her skirt. Her limbs had become more powerful and massive, stretching the sleeves of her blouse. Her entire figure seemed to have become larger.

  No. It was his imagination. It was the glare of the sun on the pavement and the fear beating through him. He took a step closer and saw something else. The copper of her skin was shadowed by an indistinct darkness, especially on her arms.

  He watched as she lowered her face to the fallen youth’s loins and then his belly. Was it a distortion in his vision caused by fear, or had her face taken on not only the feral grimace of a beast but the very lines of an animal’s skull? Her lip drew back, exposing teeth that gleamed and seemed to grow longer, but her hair fell across her face, curtaining off his view.

  Wise Coyote was already fighting off feelings of unreality, but he felt a stab of pure horror when he heard the growling and coughing sounds coming from her. The flash of sunlight on teeth told him that she was about to savage her prey before his eyes.

  With the canal boy’s harsh gasping still in his ears. Wise Coyote rose into an attack crouch, his hand starting toward the dagger in the hipband of his loincloth.

  Before he could draw the dagger, she lifted her head and seemed to study her victim’s face. As if in revulsion, she turned away, stared out at the canal. She shivered, threw back her head and gave a mixture of roaring and wailing, with an anguish so deep it tore at the heart.

  Beside her victim she circled and then abruptly fell on her side. With a shudder and sigh she was still.

  Wise Coyote eased his weight from one foot to the next. What would happen next? There were no other people nearby; they were all in the major plazas for the market. He took a step toward the girl, trying not to imagine how she might suddenly rise up and turn on him.

  Behind him, the canal boy sat up, coughing. The boy on the ground lay still. Beside him was Mixcatl, motionless on her side. No. Wise Coyote looked again. She was moving—shrinking—like something damp drying in the sun. Perhaps the unknown change was reversing itself. In another few steps he was sure. The animal grimace was gone, the lines of her face once again the same as they had been when he watched her leaving the House of Scribes.

  He bent first beside the young male victim, whose eyes were fluttering. Quickly he dragged the boy aside, into the shelter of an oleander bush. The youth had been raked along both thighs, but other than that and the ripped loincloth, he had suffered no injury except fright.

  He patted the boy’s cheeks, none too gently. From a distance he had heard the puerile chant and its message of degradation. With a sudden jerk the youth came awake.

  “No! Keep her away!” His voice cracked to a whisper. His eyes were wild in remembered terror.

  “May your mouth be filled with your own filthy water,” Wise Coyote hissed at him. “The gods have dealt you punishment. May you find a lie to explain your disfigurement that your teachers will believe. Be gone!”

  Shuddering, the youth got to his feet, took one look at the girl, still motionless on the pavement, and fled.

  Wise Coyote turned to the canal boy, hoping for some explanation, but the boy was still in the midst of a coughing fit.

  With a deep sigh, the king wiped his hands on his robe and carefully approached Mixcatl. Now she looked normal again—she could have been a young slave who had passed out in the growing heat and had crumpled to the ground. For an instant Wise Coyote’s mind played tricks on him, making him wonder if he had really imagined the incident that had just taken place.

  Carefully he knelt beside her, slipping his fingers between the hot moist skin of her arm and the sun-warmed pavement in order to feel the wrist pulse. He found it, fast and strong, but lost count when he saw something strange. On both forearms her skin had split deeply and peeled back, leaving a raw area. In the red and oozing flesh, he saw an odd stubble, like the hairs on a shaven head. Fighting a surge of alarm and revulsion, he studied her face, struck again by the way her features echoed those of the Olmec statuette. Yet there was something else that reminded him of the jaguar-baby that the Olmec figure was holding. He couldn’t tell what, but some obscure impulse made him put his other hand on her head, feeling in her hair. The jaguar-infant in the composite statuette had been depicted with a definite cleft in the skull. No doubt that was symbolic or iconographic, not the true representation of a living being.

  He was still telling himself that even as his fingers felt beneath her hair, traveling over the bones of her head, and slipped into a strange indentation that split the crown of her head so that her skull was slightly double-domed. Hidden beneath her hair, the malformation was not something that would be visible to mar her appearance, but it was definitely present.

  So the statuette wasn’t just a flight of morbid fancy, he thought, feeling cold, despite the sunlight spilling into the plaza. As he finished the pulse count and pulled his hand away, her skin broke like a water blister, a piece of it coming away on his fingertips.

  Repulsed despite his sympathy for the girl, he shook his hand as if he had touched something fi
lthy, then wiped his fingers on his robe. He wondered if he had perhaps pressed too hard in his haste and somehow injured the girl’s wrist. No. Skin didn’t break like that unless it was blistered, burned or diseased. He had spent enough time among his healers, watching them tend the sick, to know that this was not normal.

  Disquieted, he bent over, trying to examine Mixcatl without touching her again. Curiosity won out over caution, if only for an instant. Folding his hand in the fabric of his robe, Wise Coyote lifted Mixcatl’s left hand, seeing that the raw area, with its odd growth of stubbled hair, extended all the way around her forearm. A band of thin, whitened skin—her own. Wise Coyote thought, with another jolt of horror—hung loose about her wrist like a macabre bracelet.

  Part of his mind screamed that she was a demon or one accursed by the gods, perhaps even a black deity. Another part sought for a rational explanation. Was this the strange peeling away of skin shown on the Olmec statuette?

  A sound behind the king warned that the canal boy had recovered enough to get to his feet. Wise Coyote turned to meet him, but instead of attacking, the youth tried to drop down on his knees beside Mixcatl. Wise Coyote seized him and held him away.

  “She wounded the other boy. Do not go near her.”

  The boy ignored the warning, then called out as Wise Coyote tried to restrain him, “Mixcatl!” The girl stirred weakly in response.

  “What? You know her name?” Wise Coyote said in surprise.

  The youth looked at him with astonishment and suspicion. His breathing was still hoarse. “How do you know who she is? Who are you?”

  “One who does not like to see anyone mistreated,” answered Wise Coyote mildly. “What is your name?”

  “You didn’t give me yours,” the boy retorted, but he shrank a little under Wise Coyote’s glower. “All right. Latosl.”

  “Those boys were choking you. Did you attempt to interfere?”

  The boy squinted at Wise Coyote, the black-marked side of his lip drawn up. A bruise showed along the side of his chin where his jaw had been shoved against the pavement. He nodded, rubbing the bruise.

  Wise Coyote studied him, a suspicion growing. As an apprentice in the House of Scribes, Mixcatl rarely went outside it. He himself would not have known of her departure unless word had come from Nine-lizard via his own spy. How could a scruffy canal brat have gotten the same information? And that gang of boys?

  “They found her by watching me,” Latosl confessed after some questioning.

  “And how did you know she would be leaving the House of Scribes?”

  “I talk with her on the dock when I come by to dump the jars. We are friends.”

  The answer came too quickly and glibly for Wise Coyote’s taste. Even though he and the boy seemed to be on the same side, the youth was evasive and tricky. He grabbed Latosl’s upper arm.

  “You know more than you are telling,” he said, watching the boy’s face. “Someone sent you to watch her.”

  Latosl couldn’t meet Wise Coyote’s gaze. “Yes,” he said softly.

  “Who?”

  “I do not know.”

  Wise Coyote shook him.

  “I swear. I hear only a voice. I never see a face.”

  “Someone must come and give you money for your services.”

  “No.” Latosl shook his head.

  “If you are not paid, why then do you do it?”

  Latosl gave an odd little smile. “You would not believe the reason.”

  Try as he might. Wise Coyote could get nothing more out of the boy. At last he said, “We waste time chattering. We must move the girl away from here, for her own good and for that of others.”

  “The House of Scribes is too far and we will surely be noticed,” said Latosl. “If we load her on my boat, I will return her to the House.”

  Wise Coyote was suspicious, but he couldn’t think of any other alternative, so he agreed.

  Wise Coyote stripped off his cloak and used it to make a sling to carry the girl. The boy took the front, since he knew where he was going. Wise Coyote, clad only in his loincloth, grasped the rear.

  By Quetzalcoatl’s feathers, she’s heavy!

  The boatboy moved with surprising speed, despite the weight of his burden. Wise Coyote was sweating and beginning to wonder if they were carrying a human body or a stone statue. He also felt a sense of trepidation. Here he was, following a lower-class youth through the city. Did the boy have any idea that his fellow stretcher-bearer was the king of Texcoco?

  The morning only grew hotter as the two neared the canal. Wise Coyote had expected at least a market boat or peasant’s dugout; when he saw the old refuse barge, he groaned.

  “Help me get Mixcatl aboard,” said the boy coldly. “Then go.”

  Wise Coyote was tempted to do just that, for the stink of the barge, the boat boy’s rude manner and the girl’s peeling skin all repelled him. He wanted to go and cleanse himself in a steambath and make offerings to ward off any malign influence.

  The boatboy helped him lower Mixcatl to the deckedover bow. Wise Coyote arranged his cloak to form a pallet and pillow for her. She was still deeply asleep.

  The boatboy scrambled along the barge, casting off ropes, then halted before he let go of the last one, expecting Wise Coyote to jump off.

  The king felt irritated. He had given up his cloak, been thoroughly frightened by the incident he had witnessed, endured Latosl’s rudeness and was now being dismissed. He had learned a little, but it had only served to mystify him further. And Latosl wouldn’t give him any more answers.

  For an instant, he was tempted to reveal his status and demand that the boatboy explain everything. Then, inwardly, he laughed at his foolishness. He didn’t have a shred of proof to back up his claim to royalty.

  He jumped down and stood on the dock. Somehow even proving that he was tlatoani of Texcoco would not impress this strong-willed youth. He would probably have to throw Latosl into the canal a few times to get any more answers and this might attract attention that he didn’t want.

  The boat began to drift away from the bank, swinging outward in the sluggish current.

  The boatboy waved at him and called, “Do not worry about Mixcatl. She will be fine.”

  Wise Coyote stood on the quay, the sun beating down on his bare shoulders, for he had left his cloak on the boat. Inside the band of his loincloth was a small pouch of cocoa beans, enough to buy another cheap garment for the walk back to his quarters in the palace. With a shrug, he turned toward the marketplace.

  The same evening that he returned to his retreat at Tezcotzinco. Wise Coyote studied the two serpentine statuettes that stood on the window ledge where he had left them. He kept his hands together behind his back, fearing to touch either figure. If the tradition they represented had true power, they might be dangerous. He trembled a little inside, recalling how the skin on Mixcatl’s wrist had loosened and then fallen away beneath his fingers.

  Again he wiped his fingertips on his tunic, an act that had become an obsession in the few days since he had returned from Tenochtitlan. His fears of witchcraft had so far been shown unnecessary; neither he nor anyone in his household had suffered any illness or accident. But his fingers could not forget the strange feel of the girl’s flesh as it split and tore, and the bracelet of sloughed-away skin that hung about her flayed wrist.

  He looked hard at the statuette on the right, the single form of a jaguar-man, the figure Nine-Lizard had given him. It gleamed in the sun’s light. He remembered when he had last talked about it with his sculptor son. Yes, Huetzin was right. The image was flayed. The carver had sculpted definite lines that showed a boundary between human skin and jaguar flesh. The jaguar part was recessed, showing that the skin had once overlaid it. Wise Coyote could clearly see the skin rolling away over the crown of the head, resembling a hood being drawn back. A tendril of skin curled down, meeting and blending with the line of a still-human ear. Exposed blood vessels writhed like snakes from the figure’s temples and acr
oss the scribed muscle fibers on its breast.

  It was easy not to see such features in shadow, but in daylight they stood forth almost obscenely. As the girl’s skinless flesh had shown in the full sun of the courtyard.

  The flaying on the figure was a depiction of reality—Wise Coyote knew that now from what had happened to Mixcatl. What about the rest of the figurine; the paws, the face which showed the human nose broadening into the muzzle of a great cat, the upper lip splitting, the forehead and cheekbones reshaping themselves?

  Wise Coyote felt cold. The statuette itself was almost a caricature, a grotesque, a joke. But if it meant that living flesh would change in this way, it became sinister. And how far would the transformation go?

  He narrowed his eyes. He had seen many things that men called magic; appearances of gods in human form, portents, signs, events. And he had even accepted them as real in a detached way, even though his sharp eyes saw through the charades of the priests. This was a different sort of reality, like the sting of peppers or the warning buzz of a rattlesnake’s tail. It slapped you across the face with a truth you couldn’t deny.

  And if Mixcatl was the being depicted in the statuette, then the traditions of the Olmec Magicians were true and the power behind them was real.

  He had managed to trace the origins of Tloque Nahaque, his gentle god, to Tepeyolotli, Heart-of-the-Mountain, the divine jaguar. Tepeyolotli was only an Aztec name for a divinity that had been worshipped by the Magicians.

  Wise Coyote had spent most of his life wishing for a god that was not just part of a hopeful human imagination. Could it be that he had found what he sought?

  And if he had found the trail that led to the divine in the form of Tepeyolotli, would the Jaguar be any less bloodthirsty than Hummingbird on the Left?