Christopher Evans - Aztec Century

When some semblance of consciousness returned, I found myself being led into the Quetzalcoatl temple, through the great gaping mouth.

Still wearing his royal diadem, Extepan stood in front of an obsidian mirror just like the one in Crystal Palace Park. I was brought before it. I searched for my reflection but saw only an opaque blackness that nevertheless had depth. I was certain that if the guards pushed me forward, I would plunge down into a pit of nothingness.

‘You betrayed your vows to me,’ Extepan said, ‘but I intend to honour one of mine to you. Come forward.’

The guards’ hands fell away. Extepan was standing right next to the mirror. I teetered, steadied myself. Took a step towards him. He caught me by the hand.

Figures watched from the shadows around us. My lips were numb, my mouth parched.

‘Once we Mexica believed the world was destroyed and renewed four times,’ Extepan said. ‘Now we know that it has countless existences, all occurring together but apart from one another, like multiple reflections in a mirror.’ His smile was like a leer. ‘Did you know we’ve found another world similar to our own, Catherine? A different Earth, recognizable yet changed in many important respects from our own. We know it’s there because this –’ he gestured at the mirror ‘– is a doorway into it.’

My ears were filled with a buzzing, and I couldn’t tell whether it came from outside or within me.

‘That is what you found in England,’ he said. ‘A doorway. A passage to another place. My father had several built at different locations so that we could send our people through to explore. They return with fascinating stories, Catherine, of people and places so like yet unlike the ones we know.’ He paused. ‘Of course, they travel secretly, a few at a time, disguising themselves. For the moment.’

I wanted to sleep, to flee into darkness and oblivion. But he held me up, drew me close to him. To the mirror.

‘Perhaps you still imagine I intend to have you killed?’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘Not so, Catherine. Not so. I’m sending you into exile, your sister, too. Somewhere very far away.’

I barely heard him; I felt myself slipping away. Then he put a hand under my chin, raising my head. At first I thought he intended to kiss me, but my jaw opened under the continued pressure of his fingers, and a figure stepped forward to press something into my mouth, something crumbly and sweet which dissolved on my tongue.

The small crowd in the shadows loomed close, and it was as if I saw them through a fish-eye lens, grinning down at me. As I fell forward, plunging into blackness, I was almost certain that one of them, at the very last, was Bevan.

In my dreams, I dreamt of Aztecs, lighting New Fires on mountain tops to celebrate the rebirth of the world, offering human hearts in sacrifice to the sun, aloft in huge solar fleets which flew over vast uncharted landscapes, hungry for conquest.

I dreamt vividly, and at great length.

I remember waking, yet not waking, because my eyes were still closed. I couldn’t move or speak. An Aztec-accented voice was talking in persuasive, hypnotic tones, telling me that Victoria and I had been taken to another Earth, where we were unknown and would lead a simple life of anonymity. All the essentials had been provided for us: a place to live, new identities, a fixed income which would allow us to survive with a modicum of comfort. We were banished utterly, with no hope of returning to our old world. There would be no contact with it, nothing.

The voice was quietly insistent, and I was in a receptive, accepting state of mind. I listened calmly and carefully, absorbing everything. At length the voice fell silent, and I sank back down into sleep again.

When I next awoke, it was to a bright morning. I was lying in a bed in an eggshell green room, flower-patterned curtains drawn back at the window.

I sat up sharply, feeling fragile and brittle but very clearheaded. The room was warm, though a veil of condensation hung on the lower pane of the window. Victoria lay asleep in a bed next to mine.

I rose and went over to her. She was breathing slowly and regularly, her face tranquil.

A cream towelling robe hung on the back of the door. It fitted perfectly. I turned the tortoiseshell handle of the door, opened it very slowly.

A narrow landing gave access to a bathroom and a second bedroom. Both had a newly decorated look, and they had not been used. Very gingerly, I descended the stone stairway.

Downstairs was a furnished living room with a television and a Welsh dresser stacked with crockery. There was a book-lined study, and a new fitted kitchen with oak-panelled cupboards and a wall-clock that said eight twenty. A pristine water boiler thrummed and swished high on one wall.

The windows looked out across a valley which I immediately knew to be the same one where we had spent our years in hiding. And yet it was not the same: where the Ty Trist colliery had stood were flat-topped landscaped mounds, one of them with a football pitch on top.

Cautiously I opened the door and went outside into a neglected garden whose lawn had, nevertheless, recently been mown. The valley was the same yet different, trees and fields wrongly placed, all the contours of the land subtly or starkly changed. A car passed by on the road which wound up the valley to Tredegar – a petrol-driven car of a design that looked old-fashioned to my eyes. Farms, houses, even the russet stretches of bracken – they were not as I remembered them.

Though the sun was shining, the spring air was chill. I went back inside, opening the kitchen cupboards and finding them stocked with food. I inspected the cartons and tins and jars. Their labels were unfamiliar to me, though they looked just like products that might have existed in my own world. The fridge hummed away in one corner, eggs and several cartons of UHT milk inside. There were two sliced loaves in the freezer, another one in the breadbin. I squeezed it; it was fresh.

The whole place was spotless, and yet it had an unoccupied feel, as if we were newly arrived. I plugged the television into its primitive socket and switched it on. Two presenters, a man and a woman, were talking to a British movie star whom I had never seen or heard of before. Then there was a brief report about a phenomenon called the Greenhouse Effect. A plump, smiling man came on screen with astrological forecasts. Then a relentlessly jovial woman began doing exercises.

On the wall above the fireplace was a print of an oil painting showing a vase of sunflowers.

I heard Victoria scream.

I raced upstairs and found her cowering in the corner of her bed, knees up to her chest, bedclothes drawn around her. She looked terrified. I went to her and she clung tightly to me, whimpering uncontrollably and making inarticulate sounds.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, feeling as if I was living a dream.

I began to stroke her hair while she trembled in my arms. For a long time I did nothing else. I thought then that she was merely suffering a shock reaction to the strangeness of her surroundings and all the terrors which had preceded it. I thought that she would eventually calm down and that we would be able to talk about what happened, to draw comfort and reassurance from one another, to face our bizarre new circumstances together. But I was wrong. Downstairs, the television blared unfamiliar theme music and advertisements for products I felt I should have known, yet didn’t. When at length Victoria seemed calm enough to speak, when I raised her head from my breast, it was damp with the saliva which had been drooling from her mouth. She gazed at me with eyes that had hugely dilated pupils. There was nothing behind them.