by Clare Bell
“You young fool! And your father, too. I warned him that having pet deer on the grounds was a mistake.”
Suddenly the voices had names. Huetzin. Nine-Lizard. Mixcatl’s vision shivered several times between monochrome and color, then stabilized in color.
“Fill your hand with clay and hold it over her nose,” said Nine-lizard’s voice. Mixcatl felt a hand—Huetzin’s—dig into the mud where her face was buried and bring up a clump of clay, pressing it hard against her nostrils so that she had to breathe through her mouth.
She felt him lifting her and had to suppress the instinctive urge to struggle. That she did once again have control over her will brought her a strange sort of relief.
“Gods,” Huetzin choked. “Look at her face. And her skin too. What happened, old man?”
“Do you want me to take her?” came Nine-Lizard’s voice.
“No. You may have the stomach, but you haven’t the strength.”
“Very well. Bring her into my quarters in the palace,” said Nine-Lizard. “Is your father here?”
“No. He is bathing in the high garden.”
‘“Then he will know none of this. Quickly.”
Mixcatl felt herself being laid against a strong shoulder and carried back over the lawn, up the steps and into the cool hallways of Tezcotzinco.
15
MIXCATL WOKE TO the feel of salve being rubbed onto her forearm. From the slant of the sun as it warmed her face and the dewy breeze blowing in the window, she could tell that it was dawn even before she opened her eyes.
The hand on her arm paused as if Nine-Lizard had felt her waking. Then the massage began again, old fingers skillfully working the ointment into her skin. She lay, eyes still shut, enjoying the feeling until she woke up enough to remember what had happened. Her eyes flew open and she stiffened as if to sit up.
A pair of gray-brown eyes in a lined and wrinkled face hovered over her. A hand moistened with ointment gently pushed her back down on the pallet. She turned her head and gazed down at her bared arm. From wrist to elbow, the skin was tight and pink, as if she had been burned or scarred.
The old man resumed working salve into the skin. “Do not worry. This ointment will help it soften and soon it will be the same color as the rest.”
An odd taut feeling in the skin around her jaw told her that the strange thing had happened there as well. And on her legs, about her calves. Nine-Lizard had rubbed salve on all these places.
“What is this illness?” she whispered to Nine-lizard, fighting off the sob that was threatening to choke her.
“Your skin—“
“No, it is not just my skin. Whenever this happens, I feel strange. The color goes from my vision. I do not know what is wrong or right and it seems not to matter.”
Nine-Lizard sighed heavily and sat down on the pallet beside Mixcatl. “Do you remember what happened yesterday afternoon?”
“I had my paints. I was going to Huetzin’s workshop. Somehow I got…distracted. There was a smell. I remember an animal. A deer. I wanted the animal.” She halted, stared deep into Nine-Lizard’s eyes. “I jumped on the deer. I tried to kill it.” She began to giggle, not knowing why. “But that is silly, isn’t it? I couldn’t kill a deer with my teeth and fingernails.”
Nine-lizard was looking at her steadily, with something like sadness behind the ancient gray-brown of his eyes. He smoothed back her hair from her forehead, touched away a frightened tear that had leaked from the corner of her eyes.
“You know what this sickness is,” she said, watching as he nodded silently. “Why won’t you tell me. Why haven’t you told me?”
“It would not help you to know.”
She studied his face, quelling the panicked questions that rushed through her mind. She asked only one. The illness seemed to be getting worse each time she had an attack. Would she eventually die from it?
No, he answered. She would not die—not from the attacks themselves. But when she lost her good sense and control, she did things that brought other people’s wrath down upon her.
“Such as trying to kill the deer,” she said, and again Nine-Lizard nodded.
She chose another question from the flood inside her mind. Was there anything that could help her?
“There are those who understand this…sickness. If things were as they should be, you would be with those people.”
She asked him to say more, but he only laid a finger on her mouth, hushing her gently. There was a troubled look on his face and a pain behind his eyes, almost an anger as he muttered, “I will speak to Wise Coyote to tell him you must go to your people. To keep you from them now is wrong.”
“My people?” she asked, her eyes wide. “Who are my people?”
Nine-Lizard only smoothed her hair once more until she fell back into sleep.
She woke again, telling from the feel and smell of the day that it was late afternoon. Nine-Lizard was sitting across the room from her, mixing paints. She glanced down at her arm again and was surprised to see that the fierce pinkness had faded and the flesh on her arm was almost the same in suppleness and texture as the rest of her skin.
She touched it, wondering why she had healed so rapidly. She had seen other people with bums or wounds and knew that such injuries did not mend in a day. Carefully she got up, feeling her face and her legs. They were also healing. By tomorrow, she guessed, there would be no trace left, not even a slight discoloration.
A tray of food sat on the floor nearby. Tortillas and beans; simple fare but she was famished. Nine-Lizard did not speak until she had finished eating.
“Huetzin came by while you were still asleep. He hopes that in a few days, when you are well enough, you can come down to his workshop.”
She swallowed her last mouthful and looked at him in surprise. “He wants me to come? After I tried to…kill one of his pet deer?”
“He knows that what happened to you is not your fault. I spoke to him a bit while you were asleep.” Nine-Lizard paused. “It seems that he has grown fond of you.”
Mixcatl sat on the floor, staring at the ornate floral pattern on the tray that had been used to serve them. Huetzin had come back.
“He is not disgusted or afraid? If I had been with someone who suddenly began behaving like an animal and peeling off their skin, I wouldn’t want to come near them again.”
Nine-Lizard raised his eyebrows and chuckled gently. “Well, it is good that he is not you. He did come. And it was as much as I could do to keep him from coming into this room and seeing for himself that you were healing.”
The young sculptor was worried about her. He cared about her. Not just about the tile-painting she had done but about herself as well. She remembered his gentle smile and a little happiness made its way up through the uncertainty and gloom that had settled about her. He liked her and wanted her to come back.
“I want to go, Nine-Lizard, but what if it happens to me again? The deer…”
“Have been moved to the higher mountain meadows and he has set herders to watch them to be sure none stray near the palace. He told me so himself and I believe he is truthful. I took a walk in the garden this noon and saw no deer.”
Mixcatl paused, remembering her times in the outdoor workshop with her paints, her tile and Huetzin quietly chipping a stone figure close by.
“Do you think it is safe for me to go?”
“I think that his companionship is good for you. I have noticed that there are fairly long intervals between your attacks so that you shouldn’t have one while you are there. Now that he has moved the deer, you should be free to go outside.”
“Could you come with me, Nine-Lizard?” She hesitated. “Not all the way—but far enough so that you can hear if anything does happen.”
The old scribe raised his eyebrows. “If you wish me to come, I will. A walk along the paths and a nap beneath the trees would refresh me.”
“Do not sleep too soundly,” said Mixcatl, trying to make her voice light.
; “I have never been a heavy sleeper, although I doubt if there will be need for me. Rest now and we will go tomorrow afternoon.”
When the two scribes had put aside their paints on the following day, eaten the noon meal and watched servants clear away the dishes, Mixcatl began to feel eager and anxious. She was restless at having been kept inside and was longing to get out into the warm sun and fresh breezes that teased her through the window. Most of all, she wanted to see Huetzin, smell the odor of carved stone and watch him while he worked his sculptor’s magic. Perhaps too he would have a smile for her, a warm clasp for her hand and a gaze that said she was missed and would be welcomed back.
Yet everything would not be as it had been before. He now knew about the strange shadow that hung over her. He had been beside her when the illness struck, had seen the changes that it wrought. Would she see that knowledge in his eyes? Deep inside, would he be frightened or repulsed, even though he tried to cover it with affection?
At the last instant, she almost decided not to go, but Nine-Lizard was already pushing aside the door flap from their chambers into the hall. Mixcatl felt so nervous and unsure that she had to make a quick visit to the little water room before finally setting out with her companion.
Nine-Lizard parted from her a little way before the path reached Huetzin’s workshop and Mixcatl went on alone, clutching her paints and brushes to her chest. As she approached the workshop, she heard a high “clink, clink,” the sound of Huetzin’s horn chisel against greenstone.
When the young man saw her, he put his tools aside and opened his arms. “Mixcatl, I thought you might never come again. My workshop seemed so quiet without you.”
She carefully set her paints and brushes on one of his benches, then ran into his embrace. He hugged her, rocking her back and forth. She laid her cheek against his and put her arms about his neck. “I missed you. I was afraid that after what happened to me when you showed me the deer, you might not want to see me again. When Nine-lizard told me you had come, it made everything bearable.”
“Sickness will not make me turn away from people I care about,” said Huetzin, releasing her and looking deeply into her eyes. “Besides,” he added in a brighter tone, “you are all well again.”
Mixcatl glanced down at her arms and saw that her flesh was brown and smooth, the way it had been. Only a light itching that only she could notice marked the site where pieces of her skin had peeled away. Within a few days she had healed completely. Perhaps it might never happen again, she thought, and hoped so.
Huetzin gave her a tile. It was white, smooth and four times the size of the others. She sought about for a suitable subject and finally found it in a stone. Not one of Huetzin’s greenstone blocks that stood about his workshop waiting to be transformed by his skill, but a weathered old garden rock that stood in the shade with a cape of moss growing over it. To Mixcatl’s eyes, it was rich in shades of color and texture and she wanted to capture those with her brush. She propped the tile before her and began.
The afternoon crept away in a trance of sheer bliss. Somehow there was magic in her brush or in her hands, for the lines she placed and the colors she daubed were somehow just right. She knew she could capture the image of the weathered stone on her tile and do even more. Already the painting was infused with an inward luminosity that was not part of the real stone itself, at least not visible from outside. She wondered if she could dare to capture the intangible essence of the rock, the thing that others called spirit.
She was so engrossed in her work that she barely noticed when the late afternoon wind began to stiffen and blow in strong gusts, sending up swirls of dust and leaves from the ground about the workshop. With it came the scent of the high mountain meadows, swiftly running streams and just a hint of the musky aroma that now meant “deer.”
She froze, her brush in her hand. The faint residual itching on her arms had grown more intense. She felt suddenly restless, with an impulse to cast the tile aside. Irritated at the urges that had interrupted her work, she shook off the feelings. The wind died, the smell faded and again she immersed herself in her work.
But she was not left alone for long. The wind came again, first fitful, then steady, bringing her the scent of the creatures she wanted and dreaded. The itching and restlessness seized her again. Her vision flashed briefly, from color and warmth to grayed pastel with hard edges. Again she paused, brush in the air. No. She wanted to concentrate on her painting. By staring at the moss-covered rock—by looking as hard as she could to find the subtle shading and shadowing, the veining and speckling, even the odd red-green halo that seemed to surround the stone when she squinted at it through half-closed eyes—she could drive off the uncanny feeling that was creeping over her.
She glanced over at Huetzin, who was carefully polishing the ribs on his coyote statue. Should she tell him what was happening, ask him for help? No. She could hold off the threatening change by force of will, by seeking refuge in the artistry of her hands and mind.
But the smell of the deer, though faint, continued in her nostrils, making her body tremble with longing. Her brush remained steady, her teeth clenched. She would not give in. The painting was all that mattered. She would not be torn away from it.
In desperation she pinched her nose shut with one hand while the other guided the brush, but it was not enough. The maddening scent crept into her mouth, becoming an equally distracting taste that grew stronger and made her salivate.
Gradually the colors faded from her vision. Everything was edges, movement. It was hard to keep her mind on the moss-covered stone. The images in her mind that she was transferring to tile seemed to lose their clarity. She found herself struggling to capture lines that had, a few instants before, flown effortlessly from her brush. And then, suddenly, she found herself staring at the stone, unable to see it with the artist’s eye, and even worse, wondering why she had even been trying.
Gods, what was happening to her? What kind of sickness was this that would steal from her not only her will and her good sense, but even the wish and the impulse to create beauty?
“No!” she hissed fiercely under her breath and stared at the stone she had been painting. With force of will, she brought back the richness of color and detail into her vision, regained the need to paint and taught her hand once again the mastery of brush and line.
A shadow fell across the half-completed tile, startling her and nearly making her vision slip once again into grayness and edges. It was Huetzin, stooping down beside her.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
She found it hard to force words from her tongue. “It is happening again. I can smell the deer in the wind from the meadow.”
“I can take you back to the palace,” he said, laying a hand on her arm. She felt the skin loosen where he had grasped and felt a pang of dismay.
“No. If I stay here and paint, I can fight it off. Nine-Lizard is nearby. I asked him to come with me, just in case this should happen.”
Huetzin asked if he should summon Nine-Lizard.
“No,” Mixcatl answered. “Just sit down beside me, upwind so that I can smell you instead of the deer. Do not speak. Just let me paint.”
Silently Huetzin did as she asked. The scent of stone-dust on his garments mixed with the sweat of his working helped turn her mind from the deer smell, although it created distracting thoughts of a different nature. But she was too shaken and wary to explore her feelings about the man sitting near her. Instead she turned back to the tile, struggling for the same depth of concentration she had reached earlier, searching for the same will to create that had been so strong in her only a short time before. She made a line, frowned. No. It wasn’t working. It wasn’t right. Whatever strangeness was possessing her, it was stealing her gift as well as her self.
“Mixcatl,” came Huetzin’s voice. “You asked me not to speak, but you look so troubled that I must. What is happening to you?”
Brokenly, she told him, fearing that her words were
clumsy and that he wouldn’t understand.
“We must summon Nine-Lizard,” he said. “This is not something you can fight alone.” He stood up beside her and gave a long high whistle.
Soon the figure of the old scribe appeared on the path. He was brushing leaves from his cape and was blinking as if he had been asleep. Huetzin gave an impatient gesture with his hand.
Nine-Lizard stooped down beside Mixcatl. She spared her attention from the tile just long enough to give him one agonized look and to see that he understood.
“It is coming on you again,” said Nine-Lizard. “But why?” He turned to Huetzin. “Did you not send the deer all up to the hills.”
“I can still catch their scent,” Mixcatl whispered.
“From that distance?”
Numbly she nodded.
Nine-Lizard muttered to himself. “This is ominous. She is much more sensitive than I expected and the beast nature less willing to be confined.” To Mixcatl he said, “Can you hold off the changes you feel coming?”
“If I think only about this,” she answered, touching her brush to the tile. “But it is getting so much harder.” The brush faltered as she felt a bout of trembling take her and her vision flashed again, losing color. She saw both Huetzin and Nine-Lizard move toward her; but she held out her hand, warning them off.
Whatever this evil is within me, I will not let it free.
She bit her lip until blood came as she willed her attention to her work. She asked Nine-Lizard to hold clay to her nose to block out all smells but that of the earth. But the restless thing that circled within would not be defeated. She could see this by the looks on her companions’ faces when she shuddered in the grip of spasms that grew stronger each time she fought them off.
Yet, in the end, it was exhaustion that ultimately won. A weariness so deep that it seemed to grind her bones to dust made the brush slide from her hand and she felt herself toppling sideways. She felt the tile and brush being taken from her, tried to grab for it and realized that she had won, that the piece still had meaning for her and she felt alarm.
