Hunger's Brides by W. Paul Anderson Read Free Book Online Page B

was watching from the day their ships landed. He sent his artists to paint them. From hiding places all along the road.”
    â€œSomeone told you?”
    â€œI saw it. The ships and men. The horses …”
    â€œYou’re not
that
old, Xochita.”
    She smiled again. “No, bold-tongue, in a book.”
    â€œYou read
books?”
    â€œOurs, not yours. It was my family’s place to keep the painted books.
Intlil, intlapal in ueuetque…
. † My ancestor was the wizard Ocelotl.”
    â€œYour ancestor was
a
jaguar?”
    â€œThere are limits, Ixpetz, even for the young.”
    â€œI’m sorry….” I felt a flush rushing to my cheeks.
    From the way she smiled I could tell she was not angry. “And
your
ancestor also, daughter,” she said, squinting one eye at Amanda. “One bold tongue is enough.”
    Xochitl talked lightly on, her face mobile and relaxed, its triangles tilting this way and that. I snuggled in against Amanda to watch the mountains as we listened. The keeper of the painted books, it seemed, was himself part of that book, and in speaking it the keeper kindled a fire in the hearer’s mind. Whereas the book itself was only the ashes of the fire the morning after, cool and delicate and precious, but not the same. To one who loved to sketch, how beautiful this notion of a book not written but painted.
    â€œUp there—you see, near that big rock? There is a hidden opening. Some of the old wizards escaped through it and under the volcanoes, when the sea and fire descended on our people.” † Her eyes scanned the hills. “Every few years now, early morning or dusk, one of the old ones is seen, wearing the ancient dress and speaking words of jade, the old songs of heart and blood….”
    She glanced around to get her bearings. As she looked away, my eyes followed the windings of the braid coiled tightly at her nape. The strands of grey and black through the thick white coils were like the graving lines of fine chisels in soft stone.
    â€œHere the ground is holy,” she said quietly. “The words are simple but we lose what it is like….” She seemed reluctant to go on.
    â€œWhat is it like, Mother?”
    Her eyes had not left the mountains. I thought she wouldn’t answer. I wondered where exactly she had fallen from the horse and if maybe she was remembering this.
    â€œHere, Amanda, every step you take, you walk in halls of jade.”
    We lay back quietly, propped against each other and the sacks of maize. I was getting drowsy. The road wove in and out among those trees that had been too large to cut down and uproot. We watched thesky pivoting on its axis. Once, these volcanoes had
been
the East; now they could be in any direction at all.
    I slept. And dreamed of being carried off on enormous wings … by a bird with an eagle’s head and talons, and the long white neck of a swan.
    I awoke just before Amanda did. A light rain tickled my face. The sun, not far above the western hills, seemed lower than we were, as if the last light rose past us to strike the peaks far above, still radiantly lit. Quietly we watched the soft rain beat traces of silver through the sunbeams where they slanted up among the boughs.
    The trees were thinning. We were entering the town of Amecameca, less than a league from Grandfather’s hacienda. María and Josefa were standing up in the lead cart, gawping shamelessly at the refinements of the largest settlement we had ever seen, and would traverse in under five minutes. Xochitl pointed out the school. “For girls like you.” She looked at me with a crooked smile.
    Then we were off the main road. The track bent sharply east. A gold light poured over our shoulders and cast ahead of us the shadow of a giant with two tiny heads—for Amanda and I were standing now, behind the driver. As we clung to his backrest, Xochitl clung grimly to our skirts to keep us from