Gary Jennings - Aztec

Of course, Xaltócan has no such thing as farmland. There is not enough arable topsoil for staple crops like the maize, which requires deep earth for its nourishment. So Xaltócan, like all island communities, grows the bulk of its vegetable foods on the wide and ever spreading chinampa which you call floating gardens. Each chinamitl is a raft of woven tree limbs and branches, moored at the lake edge, then spread with load upon load of the richest soil, freighted out from the mainland. As the crops extend their roots season by season, new roots twining down old ones, they eventually clutch the lake bottom and hold the raft firmly in place. Other gardens are built and moored alongside. Every inhabited island in all the lakes, Tenochtítlan included, wears a wide ring of fringe of these chinampa. On some of the more fertile islands, it is difficult to discern where the god-made, land leaves off and the man-made fields begin.

It takes no more than mole eyesight or mole intellect to tend such gardens, so I tended those belonging to our family and neighbors in our quarter. The work was undemanding; I had plenty of free time. I applied myself—and Chimali's gift of paints—to the drawing of word pictures: training myself to make the most complex symbols ever simpler, more stylized, smaller in size. Unlikely as it then seemed, I still nursed the secret hope that my self-education might somehow yet improve my lot in life. I smile pityingly, now, to recall my young self sitting on a dirt raft among the sprouting maize and beans and chilis—among the reeking fertilizer of animal entrails and fish heads—while I scribbled away at my writing practice and dreamed my lofty dreams.

For example, I toyed with the ambition of becoming one of the pochtéa traveling merchants, and thus journeying to the Maya lands where some wonder-working doctor would restore my eyesight, while I should become rich from my shrewd trading along the way. Oh, I devised many a plan to turn a trilling amount of trade goods into a towering fortune, ingenious plans that I was sure no previous trader had ever thought of. The only obstacle to my assured success—as Tzitzi tactfully pointed out, when I confided some of my ideas—was that I lacked even the trifling amount of capital I reckoned I would need to begin with.

And then, one afternoon when the workday was done, one of the Lord Red Heron's messengers appeared at our house door. He wore a mantle of neutral color, signifying neither good news nor bad, and he said politely to my father, "Mixpantzinco."

"Ximopanolti," said my father, gesturing for him to enter.

The young man, about my own age, took only a single step inside and said, "The Tecutli Tlauquecholtzin, my master and yours, requires the presence of your son Chicome-Xochitl Tlilectic-Mixtli at the palace."

My father and sister looked surprised and bewildered. I suppose I did too. My mother did not. She wailed, "Yya ayya, I knew the boy would one day offend the nobles or the gods or—" She broke off to demand of the messenger, "What mischief has Mixtli done? There is no need for the Lord Red Heron to trouble himself with whipping or whatever is decreed. We will gladly attend to the punishment."

"I do not know that anyone has done anything," said the messenger, eyeing her warily. "I merely obey my order. To bring him without delay."

And without delay I accompanied him, preferring whatever waited at the palace to whatever my mother's imagination might conceive. I was curious, yes, but I could not think of any reason to quake. If that summons had come in an earlier time, I would have worried that the malicious Pactli had contrived some charge against me. But the young Lord Joy had himself gone off, two or three years before, to a Tenochtítlan calmécac which accepted only the scions of ruling families, themselves rulers-to-be. Pactli had since come back to Xaltócan only on brief school holidays. During those visits, he had paid calls at our house, but always during the working day when I was not at home, so I had not even seen him since the days of our having briefly shared Offal of the Gods.

The messenger stayed a respectful few paces behind me as I entered the palace throne room and bent to make the gesture of kissing the earth. Beside Lord Red Heron sat a man I had never seen on the island before. Though the stranger sat on a lower chair, as was proper, he considerably diminished our governor's usual air of importance. Even my mole vision could make out that he wore a brilliant feather mantle and ornaments of a richness that no nobleman of Xaltócan could flaunt.

Red Heron said to the visitor, "The request was: make a man of him. Well, our Houses of Building Strength and Learning Manners have done their utmost. Here he is."

"I am bidden to make a test," said the stranger. He produced a small roll of bark paper and held it out to me.

"Mixpantzinco," I said to both the nobles before I unrolled the thing. It bore nothing I could recognize as a test; only a single line of word pictures, and I had seen them before.

"You can read it?" asked the stranger.

"I forgot to mention that," said Red Heron, as if he had taught me himself. "Mixtli can read some simple things with a fair measure of comprehension."

I said, "I can read this, my lords. It says—"

"Never mind," the stranger interrupted. "Just tell me: what does the duck-billed face signify?"

"Ehecatl, the wind, my lord."

"Anything else?"

"Well, my lord, with the other figure, the closed eyelids, it says Night Wind. But—"

"Yes? Speak up, young man."

"If my lord will excuse my impertinence, that one figure does not show a duck's bill. It is the wind trumpet through which the wind god—"

"Enough." The stranger turned to Red Heron. "He is the one, Lord Governor. I have your permission, then?"

"But of course, of course," said Red Heron, quite obsequiously. To me he said, "This is the Lord Strong Bone, Snake Woman to Nezahualpili, Uey-Tlatoani of Texcóco. Lord Strong Bone brings the Revered Speaker's personal invitation that you come to reside and study and serve at the court of Texcóco."

"Texcóco!" I exclaimed. I had never been there, or anywhere in the Acolhua country. I knew no one there, and no Acolhuatl could ever have heard of me—certainly not the Revered Speaker Nezahualpili, who, in all these lands, was second in power and prestige only to Tixoc, the Uey-Tlatoani of Tenochtítlan. I was so astounded that, unthinking and unmannerly, I blurted, "Why?"

"You are not commanded," the Texcóco Snake Woman said brusquely. "You are invited, and you may accept or decline. But you are not invited to question the offer."

I mumbled an apology, and the Lord Red Heron came to my support, saying, "Excuse the youngster, my lord. I am sure he is as perplexed as I have been these several years—that such an exalted personage as Nezahualpili should have fixed his regard on this one of so many macehualtin."

The Snake Woman only grunted, so Red Heron went on, "I have never been given any explanation of your master's interest in this particular commoner, and I have refrained from asking. Of course, I remember your previous ruler, that tree of great shade, the wise and kindly Fasting Coyote, and how he used to travel alone throughout The One World, his identity disguised, to seek out estimable persons deserving of his favor. Does his illustrious son Nezahualpili carry on that same benign avocation? If so, what in the world did he see in our young subject Tlilectic-Mixtli?"

"I cannot say, Lord Governor." The haughty noble gave Red Heron almost as gruff a rebuke as he had given me. "No one questions the Revered Speaker's impulses and intentions. Not even I, his Snake Woman. And I have other duties besides waiting for an irresolute stripling to decide if he will accept a prodigious honor. I return to Texcóco, young man, at tomorrow's rising of Tezcatlipóca. Do you go with me or not?"