“It’s not an easy hike to get to Mictlantecuhtli’s tomb. All the buildings this far out are obstacles more than anything. Window dressing and not much else. I know a bit of a shortcut nearby. It sucks, but it beats slogging through all this crap.”
I nod toward Mexico City and the bone pyramids. “And that?”
If I’m oriented right, on the living side that area would be either Tenochtitlan or Tlatelolco, two Aztec cities that sat where Mexico City is today. But these pyramids here are larger than I recall from the books I’ve read about them. Instead of clean lines and geometric steps, these are misshapen, lopsided, twisted in weird ways.
“A joke,” she says. “Mictlantecuhtli built those to ‘honor’ Huitzilopochtli. Tenochtitlan was his home and he demanded sacrifices at his temples. Sun god, warrior god. Mictlantecuhtli thought he was an asshole, so he made a mockery of his temples and the city.”
The landscape isn’t exactly based on the area today, and it isn’t exactly from five hundred years ago. Out here on Isla de las Mu?ecas it’s largely the same as it is in the living world. But further afield, with the pyramids in the distance, it’s clearly Tenochtitlan. Which means that red reflected light is probably Lake Texcoco where the city sat on an island before the Spanish started draining the water.
A canal full of blood is one thing, but a whole lake? Ugh.
“Nothing for Tlaloc?” Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, sun god and rain god, ruled in this area, sometimes sharing space, certainly sharing sacrifices. I think back to the map of Mexico City. I passed their twin temples out by the Mexico City Cathedral. That gives me a reference point. I feel a little better knowing roughly where we are.
Tabitha shrugs. “Mictlantecuhtli didn’t much care about him.”
“Isn’t Quetzalcoatl supposed to be here to usher the dead into Mictlan? I don’t see him.” And of course I don’t expect to. He wants this place to burn. If he were here, he’d do it himself. But I’m curious about why.
“At the main entrance down in Mitla, not here. And he hasn’t done it in about five hundred years. There was a disagreement. He sided with the Spanish.”
“Why? Domestic disputes between gods seem to be a thing around here.”
Interesting. Mictlantecuhtli told me about how a Spanish priest led an army of Conquistadores into Mictlan in the hopes that they could use it as a springboard to take the other lands of the Aztec gods. He said he lured them into a trap, cut them off from their weapon, but never said what that weapon was.
Was it Quetzalcoatl? It might explain how the Spanish did so well against the Aztec gods, if not the Aztecs themselves. But why side with the Spanish? Did he see the way the tide was turning?
I remember reading about a battle at Cholula, where the Aztecs had a small force and were hoping to use Quetzalcoatl’s power against the Spanish. They got their asses handed to them.
Did Quetzalcoatl forsake them? Or was he powerless to help? That’s the funny thing about gods. So much of their power is smoke and mirrors. Real world influence is sketchy at best. They’re much better with belief and magic than they are with cold, hard fact.
Trying to figure out the motives of gods gives me a headache so I shut down that line of thinking. I’ll figure it out. Or I won’t. He’s not really my problem. I have an agreement to keep with him. That’s all.
“Shit happens. Isn’t that true for everybody?” She stands up from her pile of skulls, stretches until her back pops. “Come on. It’s a long way off.”
“You said you know a shortcut?”
“Yeah. It’ll get us up into another mountain range near Teocoyocualloa.”
My head spins as she pronounces it. So many Nahuatl words give me a headache. “That’s the part of Mictlan where wild animals try to eat your heart?”
“Yeah. Don’t let them do that. Hope you’ve been keeping up with your cardio. Come on.” She leads me to the banks of the blood river. The thick, coppery stink of it is overwhelming.
“We are not swimming through that.”
Tabitha makes a face like she’s just bitten into a cockroach. “Ew. No.” She puts her hand out over the shore, palm down. Then jerks it up while making a fist.
The air fills with the scent of roses and smoke and I feel . . . something. It’s not magic like I normally know it, and it’s not the same energy that I feel when I call up Mictlantecuhtli’s power. I’ve never felt this with Santa Muerte, but it’s obviously her power Tabitha’s tapping into. The scent gives it away.
The bones at our feet shudder, leap into the air like they’re on strings. They clack together, strands of sinew wrapping themselves around connections, joints snapping into place like some nightmare museum exhibit. A few moments later the bones stop dancing.
“It’s a boat,” I say.
“You’re very perceptive. I can see why La Se?ora chose you.”
It’s less a boat and more a barge, like the trajineras that take tourists down the canals, only not as large or as colorful. A pole made up of linked together femurs wrapped in tendons leans up against its side.
“Help me get it into the canal,” she says. We push and it slides easily off the shore. Tabitha hops in and I follow, picking up the pole and pushing us off.