She Walks in Shadows (37 page)

“What did I do wrong this time, Tonantzin? How did I make a mistake, Mother?!” T’la-yub asked in a scream when she was able to stand on her feet.

But there was no answer. Why should there be? So, she half-closed her eyes and held the amulet with such strength that its borders made her left hand bleed.

Then she said the words which, though they came from her mouth, sounded as if they had been said in a very deep place. Then T’la-yub’s entire body turned into blue light. Then into nothing.

We came to the Mictlán, the place of the dead, which the ancient people called Xinaián, because my grandmother had a vision.

“They say there, far north of the great Tenochtitlán, is the land of the dead. Farther than the mountains which encircle that city of water. Farther than the place of the herons and the deserts where the ancestors of the people who live here come from. There, where live the red people who adore the other eagles. There lived our families before Quetzalcóatl used his bones to create humanity and Cihuacóatl cried for us. There remains a door which we must watch because we are the key,” Grandmother had said, the
pulque
gushing from her trembling lips, when she slipped from her prophetic trance.

“Rest, grandmother. You are no longer strong enough to speak so much to the gods,” I said, as I held her hands. She was freezing.

“May no one have heard you, girl. Where we go, the gods rule and they will speak to you with their forked tongues. There, you shall learn the hidden words of duality and also, how to hide and change shape as we have done since we arrived in this world. There, you will be guardian and lady, spectre and goddess, T’la-yub. From there, there is no return.
Iä! Iä!
”

Despite this terrible promise, I agreed to travel with her because, in some way, I was certain she would not enter the underworld as a living being and that someone must prepare her body for the journey of death.

The preparations for our departure were quick and silent. We hung from our shoulders the rolls of
petate
and from our waists the gourds with
pulque
. We released the animals. We left the house without a lock. Nobody, alive or dead, returns from Mictlán.

We walked through many unknown paths for countless moons until we arrived at the place where the hills meet: the entry to the underground kingdom, the door of my family. I remember that the dogs howled as if they meant to announce our arrival at the place which was once the home of our ancestors.

My grandmother died the next day and she began her descent, like all the dead.

I cleansed her body. I tied it with papers full of praises for the gods and I placed a green stone inside her mouth — the jade of Mictlantecuhtli Iä! With a bit of food, I managed to attract one of the dogs that moved around the hill, a lean, reddish specimen that seemed to accept, docile, its destiny as a guide.

On the fourth day, I set fire to the funeral pyre.

Her grandmother had told her that it was a metal which came from beyond the stars, which had fallen like scorching rock and that the gods had indicated how it must be carved.

“In dreams, Grandmother. You always knew everything thanks to your visions. But the gods do not speak to me. They don’t tell me what I’m doing wrong,” muttered T’la-yub. The scars the artefact had left on her left hand were healing and had already turned into a circular callus.

The amulet was of a green so dark it was almost black. On one side was engraved the image of a great serpent and on the other, a strange creature that agitated its eight arms ominously.

“Why did you give it to me if you would die without it? Why would you bring me here to leave me alone, making conjurings I do not comprehend?”

Four years it takes for the dead to descend through the nine lands of the underworld and arrive at the abode of the lords of death. They say some forget the journey and remain here with the ancient people without being able to recall if they are alive or dead. They say they become specters without a will, slaves. I have seen them walk laboriously through golden streets. I have also seen them guard the entrance of the places that here they call amphitheaters, but which are nothing more than the place with blinding gray mist and obsidian wind that mutilates the dead.

I was in the amphitheater. I saw how those who were once alive tried to escape and reach the chamber of the lords of death where the sun rests at night. I saw, too, through the mist, a woman who wore a skirt of snakes. Her hands and feet had very sharp claws, and from her neck hung a necklace made with human hands and hearts, which covered her flaccid breasts.

“ I am Tonantzin, your mother, the Mother of All,” said Coatlicue, who gave birth to the moon and the stars when she noticed I was looking at her. “I am the one the ancient people called Yig, for I am also father. Here lies the mystery of duality.”

As she spoke, one of the ones who is neither dead nor alive came close with his obsidian knife and decapitated her with one stroke. A thick and blackish liquid spouted. It reeked. Two great serpents slid from the neck to substitute the old head.

“Life and death. The lands of the surface and the underworld. To make a whole, you need two parts and two parts, though distant, will always be a whole. You have done nothing wrong, Daughter. The body is also a whole that is formed of duality,” the serpents said. “Search for the man with red hair on his face and his head. He will be your crimson dog. Throw him on the pyre when you begin your own descent.”

The serpents intertwined their forked tongues and disappeared into the gray mist.

I begin the journey of death being alive still. I descend to Mictlán protected by my mother Coatlicue, who showed that the art of dematerialization is the instrument of duality. I understand, at last, my grandmother’s vision.

I look at the amulet: The two gods exist as one. I think that everything functions like this: in pairs, in dualities. I paint my face: one half-red, the other black. I dress in a skirt of snakes and a headdress of feathers. I am Cihuacóatl, the serpent woman. But I am also Mictecacíhuatl, lady of the dead.

I hear them come to drag me into the amphitheater where the mist blinds and the wind cuts like a knife: the last step before the arrival at the abode of the gods.

The doors open. The wind slices my cheeks. I half-close my eyes, though I can see nothing. I begin to salivate. I arch my back. My mouth already tastes like vomit, but I manage to pronounce the words that come from most deep, from the mouths of the gods with a thousand tongues who are not of this world.

Everything is blue.

The decapitated body of T’la-yub guards, by night, the door of her ancestors, which leads to Mictlán. Walking in dreams, she presents herself to the ashes of her grandmother. In the eternity of the mound, the time of dreams is not the same as the time of death.

In the principal chamber of Mictlán, time is also different. In the
tzompantli
of the lords of death, there is eternally a new head. The long black hairs writhe like tentacles. Her red-and-black lips sing to receive the dead, who, at last, have finished their tortuous journey. She kisses them like a mother and makes them rest in the same bed where the sun sleeps.

The head of T’la-yub opens her eyes, which are the stellar eyes of Mictlantecuhtli. They see everything and see themselves in them. The light of the stars is born and extinguished in that same instant.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Laura Blackwell
is a writer, editor and journalist. She was raised in North Dakota, where the snow and dirt mingle, and become “snirt.” Her publications include
PC World
,
Strange Horizons
,
TechHive
, and various speculative fiction anthologies. You can follow her on Twitter
@pronouncedlahra and visit her website at www.pronouncedlahra.com.

Nadia Bulkin
writes scary stories about the scary world we live in. She is more a fan of Hole than 311. It took her two tries to leave Nebraska, but now she lives in Washington, DC, where she tends her garden of student debt sown by two political science degrees. You can read her other Lovecraftian work in the anthologies
Sword and Mythos
,
Letters to Lovecraft
,
Lovecraft’s Monsters
, and
The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu
— or visit nadiabulkin.wordpress.com.