Jaguar Princess

by Clare Bell

  Wise Coyote nodded silently. He did not tell her that a few of the tame herd still survived, kept in a hidden pen and cared for by a servant that he had sworn to secrecy. He had done so as soon as he suspected that Huetzin’s mother might destroy the animals. He had not saved the buck and two does out of compassion; he had observed that the smell of prey excited Mixcatl and stimulated her transformation.

  After more words that he hoped would be reassuring, he left Huetzin’s mother in the outer rooms and was admitted, alone, into his son’s chamber.

  Huetzin sat on an icpalli, his bandaged hand cradled in his lap, the five parallel gashes on his face now crusted and scabbed over. Wise Coyote felt remorse sweep through him like a strong tide, threatening to wash out the truth. The sight of those brutal wounds on what had been a handsome and sensitive young face, a face that many said was a reflection of his own, was almost too much to bear. Wise Coyote had to steel himself before he could kneel down beside his son.

  “Huetzin,” he said, but the shocked eyes stared straight ahead without recognizing Wise Coyote. “Huetzin, I’m here. Your father. It is over. You are safe. You will be healed.”

  Slowly the youth’s gaze turned to Wise Coyote, the pupils wide with a grief that could not be banished. The eyes seemed to be windows through which Wise Coyote could glimpse a deeply riven soul. He knew then that the words he had spoken to the youth’s mother were lies.

  “You are safe here,” he said, grasping his son by the arms. “It is over. She is far away. She will never come near you again.”

  Great tears rolled out the corners of the agonized eyes, then, abruptly, Huetzin’s gaze focused in a moment of lucidity. “You told me what she was, how she would change. But it never meant anything to me until I saw her there in the moonlight.”

  “Now you do understand,” Wise Coyote whispered.

  “Her face—it was bleeding and horrible, yet my lips still longed to kiss it. Her eyes—I could see that she knew me, yet….” Huetzin’s voice trailed off as he touched the gashes on his face. The glassiness came back into his eyes and suddenly he screamed. “Gods, no! Get it away! Bleeding on me, dropping horrible bits of skin on me. Hot breath, woman’s eyes, yet I love, I still love…”

  “Put it all from your mind, Huetzin.”

  “Oh, father, I cannot. Every stab of pain in my hand reminds me. I thought she loved me.” He lifted his maimed hand, his arm shaking. “She is an artist; she knows what it feels to have her gift torn away, yet she has done this to me. Why?”

  The last word came out as an agonized cry.

  “She lost herself,” Wise Coyote tried to say, but Huetzin only cradled his wounded hand against his breast like a dead child and rocked back and forth, weeping.

  At last Huetzin subsided, staring dully at nothing, a few tears still seeping from his eyes. He was caught in a maze of love, terror and loss, each one warring against the other and making the sensitive artist’s soul the battleground. The wounds on his face would heal, but unless his hand regained its ability, the torture that had descended upon the young man’s mind would never end.

  Watching him. Wise Coyote thought. My war has started. Huetzin and Mixcatl are the first casualties. How many more will there be?

  “Rest and try to find peace, Huetzin,” he had said, kissing the youth on the brow before rising.

  Now, sitting on his sleeping mat, remembering all that had happened, he feared he might never find peace until he sought it with the point of a dagger aimed at his own heart.

  No. His death, without a legitimate heir to carry on the line of Texcoco, would spell the end of his city as an independent state. He must carry through on his plans, whether or not he had the heart. With a heaviness in his breast, he rolled over and at last managed to find sleep.

  18

  WHEN MIXCATL WOKE from her healing sleep again, she found that she had been moved back into the wooden chamber originally used to confine her. Torches in their brackets cast a low shadowed light over the heavy plank walls and floor. The room had been scrubbed with agave wash and the sweat and bloodstained bedding replaced with fresh blankets. She rolled her head wearily.

  At least he has cleaned my cage before putting me back in it.

  The thought began as irony and ended in despair. She wondered if the drop-door was barred again on the outside.

  She knew she had regained her strength and could rise from her pallet to see if the door would give when she pushed outward, but somehow she didn’t want to try. The heaviness and lassitude of grief weighed her down and kept her lying there, staring up at nothing.

  She wanted to wipe her mind of all feelings or memories, leaving it gray and featureless as a shroud. For a while she managed it, but gradually the painful thoughts crept back. Huetzin. She had attacked him, slashed his face and driven her fangs into his hand. Yet she didn’t remember. The last image in her mind was of the youth’s face as he lay in a faint before her. The last thing she remembered was drawing him close in a clumsy embrace. She knew him, loved him, even while the jaguar wildness was raging inside her.

  But after that moment, she remembered nothing. Was this lack of recollection also a legacy of her nature? Did the transformation steal her memory as it did her need to create beauty? If so, she was doubly cursed.

  The grinding creak of the door as it lifted made her start and sit up. For a moment she thought her visitor was Wise Coyote; then she recognized the bald pate and paint-stained cloak of her fellow scribe.

  Nine-Lizard clambered through awkwardly, for the door was heavy and not made for easy opening. Then he came over to Mixcatl, knelt beside her pallet. The torchlight made his watery eyes seem to shimmer and there was a graveness in his face that spoke of more grief to come.

  Yet he only sat silently and stroked her hand.

  “I did not maim Huetzin. Please. Tell me that I did not.” She seized his robes, hands clutching in desperation.

  The graveness in his face grew deeper. “Mixcatl, I cannot tell you that. The young man bears wounds made by teeth and claws.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, ducked her head in shame. “If I did it, why do I not remember?” The next question was even harder to ask. She lifted her face to his and stared into his eyes. “Did you…see…me attack Huetzin?”

  “I did not arrive until Wise Coyote had pulled you off the youth,” Nine-Lizard said, and she felt him gently trying to disentangle her fingers from his robes.

  “Huetzin was…he is my friend,” she choked as he eased her back down upon the pallet. “I would not have hurt him. If I did, why can I not remember feeling his hand in my mouth when I bit or the skin of his cheek open beneath my claws?”

  Nine-Lizard tried to soothe her. “You were confused, pain-maddened. You did not know what you were doing. Do not try to live it again, Mixcatl.”

  She lay, feeling defeated. Bitterly she said, “I will live it again. Whether or not that is my wish.” She paused. “Is that what this change does to a person? When I wake up after having been an animal, will I be unaware of what I have done, whom I have killed?”

  He leaned over her, the wattles on his neck shaking, and startled her with the violence of his reply. “No! It must not happen that way!”

  “Must not?” Mixcatl asked quietly after a long pause.

  Nine-Lizard was trembling, one fist in the air. Slowly he lowered his hand. “I am an old fool, shouting at empty air. My words do not matter. What has happened cannot be changed.”

  There was a change in his eyes as he looked down at her. The sudden rage shrank away. In its place crept pity and then a strange dispassionate gaze as if he were forced to admit that something he had done was a failure and that now he had to put it aside.

  That frightened her more than anything he had said, even his shouting. Again she felt the impulse to clutch at him as if to save herself from falling into a pit that was opening beneath her. Instead the panic came in hurried words.

  “When I changed before, I was aware of myself. I w
as confused, but I knew what I did. This time was no different. I knew what I did. Until…” She faltered.

  “The time that you cannot remember,” said Nine-Lizard.

  “Why should this time have been different from the others?”

  “You went further into the transformation,” Ninelizard answered. She felt his dry, callused fingers as he clasped her hands between his, yet the distance that had come between them was still there. “Mixcatl, I do not know what happened. The likelihood is that you did lose yourself in the shock of change and that you did not recognize Huetzin.”

  “If you were not there…,” she began.

  “Are you asking me to doubt Wise Coyote’s words? How else could the boy have been so wounded?”

  “I do not know. Huetzin was angry at his father for the same reason that you are.”

  “Anger may beget anger,” said Nine-Lizard, “but it would take more than that to make a man like Wise Coyote speak untrue words or turn against his son.” He paused. “Is there anything that you can recall to suggest otherwise?”

  Mixcatl closed her eyes. The last moments of the scene were so clear. She could still see Huetzin’s face, bathed in moonlight. And then the memory became murky.

  “No,” she answered.

  The truth is that I do not know what happened. I am only accusing Wise Coyote because I cannot face what must lie within myself.

  Nine-Lizard asked, “Then there is no reason for me to doubt him, is there?”

  Again, she felt her lips form a soft “No.”

  “It does us no good to turn away from the probable truth. However,” he added, as Mixcatl felt despair begin to choke her, “you are not to blame. How could you be if you were in the grip of something beyond your control?”

  Whether or not I am to blame does not matter. You know that the thing within me is evil and must be destroyed. That is why you look at me so.

  She let the words speak only inside her head, for they were, like the beast that had torn Huetzin, too dangerous to let free. Nine-Lizard would have no answer. He would only turn and walk away, leaving her even more alone.

  There was a silence between them until she felt him shift his weight on her bed. Perhaps he was feeling that he could say no more or give her no more comfort. Even if that was true, she could not bear for him to go.

  “Nine-Lizard,” she said after a long time. “I was fighting the change. When I painted on the tiles Huetzin gave me, I could keep the strange feelings away. If Wise Coyote hadn’t taken the tile from me, I would not have lost myself.”

  The old scribe made a chuckle that turned into a sigh. “How long do you think you would have been able to hold off the transformation?”

  “As long as I had to.”

  “Yes, and when the tiles ran out, you would have covered Tezcotzinco’s walls with frenzied pictures.” Nine-Lizard gave her a sad smile.

  “It would have been better than…”

  He smoothed her brow. “Whatever mistakes Wise Coyote made, he was right about one thing. One cannot deny one’s own nature. It must and will emerge.”

  “No. It must not,” said Mixcatl in a low, shaking voice. “You do not know what this thing is. It has no wish for art or beauty or love. It is all hate and hunger.”

  Again the intensity came to Nine-Lizard’s face. “That is not all. That cannot be all. Give yourself time to understand.”

  Mixcatl looked away. After another long silence she asked, “Is there any way to rid me of this curse?”

  Nine-Lizard’s voice was sharp. “It is not a curse. It is your heritage and history. You were born with the jaguar in your blood. It will be with you until you die.”

  “Then perhaps I should return to Tenochtitlan and accept the death that awaits me there.”

  “Feeding the blood gods that you despise?” Ninelizard leaned over her fiercely. “No! Neither I nor Wise Coyote will permit you to be sacrificed.”

  “Then what will you do? Keep me shut up in this cage until I go so mad that I no longer care what I do?” She wanted to shout the words, but she felt too weary.

  “No. I have sent word to the Jaguar’s Children. I have told them what you are and what you need. They are sending someone to take you.”

  “Where?”

  Nine-Lizard shook his head. “Where I do not know. The Jaguar’s Children have a refuge for those of their own kind. A canoe will arrive to take you to their settlement. They will teach you how to deal with the transformation.”

  Mixcatl folded her arms. She did not want to learn how to manage her jaguar nature. She wanted only to be rid of it.

  “When their contact comes, go with him.”

  “You will not be here?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  “How will I know who he is?”

  “I can only say that when you see him, you will know.”

  “If you want me to go to these people, why do you not take me?”

  He stared away into the shadows. “My connection with the Jaguar’s Children is tenuous. They will allow me only so close and that is not enough to get you to where you must be.” He paused, leaning over her, grasping one shoulder. “You must promise me that when you see and recognize the contact, you will go with him without resisting or questioning.”

  “Very well, I will go.” She rolled her head restlessly. “I no longer want to stay here. I cannot bear to be close to Huetzin without being able to see him, and Wise Coyote…” She stopped, fighting a sob. “I thought he was a good and gentle man. I was growing fond of him; perhaps as much as I was of Huetzin. He is right when he tries to struggle against such gods as Hummingbird on the Left.” Her voice grew low and angry. “But that does not justify his trying to make me into a weapon or a goddess.”

  “You will find,” said Nine-Lizard softly, “that men have a strange attitude to those who are different. They will cast themselves at your feet and worship you, or they will condemn you as the blackest demon. It will not be first time nor will it be the last.” The shelf supporting the pallet creaked as he shifted his weight and stood up.

  “Do not go, Nine-Lizard,” she said as she felt her hand slip from between his callused palms.

  “You must sleep. I have work to complete.”

  “When will the boat be here?”

  “Soon enough, I hope,” he said and moved toward the door. When he had gone through, he poked his head back in and said, “I regret that I must bar it again on the outside, Mixcatl.”

  She let her head fall back on the blankets. If he had left the door unblocked, she might have been able to escape. And what then? Try to see Huetzin and risk frightening him into deeper madness? Try to flee Tezcotzinco and be seized again by the transformation? Run to the cliffs overlooking Lake Texcoco and fling herself down?

  She felt her lips curve in a bitter smile. Wise Coyote might have barred the door for the first two reasons, but Nine-Lizard had done it for the last.

  None of those things would probably happen. As soon as she came out of the door, she would be stabbed or speared by one of Wise Coyote’s guards. It would be a stupid way to die. And it would do nothing to help Huetzin.

  And perhaps, just perhaps, the mysterious people

  Nine-Lizard called the Jaguar’s Children might be able to help her find a compromise between the demands of her beast nature and the needs of her art.

  The next morning. Wise Coyote knelt at the same low worktable that he had used to draw plans for the aqueduct to Tenochtitlan and many other building projects. This time, however, two documents were spread before him and he was not the executor but only the judge of how well the work had been done.

  Behind him, the old scribe Nine-Lizard Iguana Tongue waited patiently. Wise Coyote knew that the last part of each history had been completed rapidly, in the cold hours of the night. He examined the final sections closely, but could find not even the most subtle flaw.

  He studied the old man’s haggard face, the darkened flesh beneath the eyes. Yes, he had done wha
t he claimed, even though Wise Coyote could scarcely believe that so much work of such quality could be done in one night. He wasn’t sure why the scribe had put forth so much effort. Was it to make up for what the girl could not do, or had Nine-Lizard decided that it was best to complete their obligation so that he and the girl could leave Texcoco?

  He reached for his stone seal, dipped it in a shallow bowl of blue pigment and affixed it to the end of the book. “I will send a messenger to notify him that it is complete and he can send an escort to fetch it. Once he has examined it for himself and declared it satisfactory, your obligation to me is ended.”

  Carefully he folded up the rigid pages of the book and bound it with a richly woven strap before setting it aside.

  “Thank you, Speaker-King,” said Nine-Lizard formally. “Is there anything else, or am I dismissed?”

  Wise Coyote rose from the table, straightened his shoulders. Was there anything else? Only a life that was coming down around him like a collapsing temple. Only the rumors that had spread from his palace retreat to his capital city and then around the countryside—rumors that the king of Texcoco had dabbled in sorcery and was now paying for his folly by the maiming and madness that afflicted his son. As soon as those rumors reached Tenochtitlan, its ruler’s wrath would build and not even the completion of the history would be enough to compensate for Texcoco’s misdoings.

  That was his own responsibility, not Nine-Lizard’s.

  “Will you be returning to the House of Scribes?” Wise Coyote asked.

  “For a short time. I was loaned from the court of Tlacopan and I will soon be recalled there.”

  Tlacopan. A small, powerless kingdom. A member of the Triple Alliance in name only, its ruler only a figurehead. Ilhuicamina had swallowed it completely, as he soon would Texcoco. Nine-Lizard would find refuge there, away from the gathering storm.

  “What of the girl?” Wise Coyote asked.

  “According to orders from the House of Scribes, she is to return with me. Those orders are meaningless now; you hold her within the cage you built. If you choose to keep her, there is nothing I can do, except repeat the warning I have already given.”