Nine Jaguar-Feather



  Nine Jaguar-Feather

  by Christine Morgan

  https://christine-morgan.com/

  https://facebook.com/ChristineMorganAuthor

  Copyright 2012 by Christine Morgan. All Rights Reserved.

  Nine Jaguar-Feather

  "Ulli, Ulli! Ulli fetches water like a woman!"

  The jeering boys were my own age, but some of them had already earned their first marks of manhood. They bore the ritual scars of young warriors, the tattoos proclaiming their skill in the hunt.

  I would never win such marks.

  "Ugly Ulli! Ugly Ulli!"

  Fierce Macaw and Crested Macaw sprang in front of me, blocking my way. Large and strong, they were alike as two corn-kernels and had always been the loudest, most constant of my tormentors.

  They stuck out their tongues so that I could see the still-healing wounds where stingray spines had been driven through the soft flesh.

  I would never be allowed to let blood, either.

  "Ulli Round-Head! Ulli –"

  "Stop that!"

  The voice was a girl's, but it was sharp as an obsidian blade. And, like an obsidian blade, it cleanly sliced the mocking cries and laughter.

  We all turned. Red Flower Hummingbird, in her brightly woven huipil, stood on the steps leading down from the high palace. Her brother Clever Sun-Fox was behind her, grinning with amusement.

  "And you shouldn't call him Ulli," Red Flower Hummingbird went on. "It's not nice."

  Most of the boys were properly abashed, shifting and muttering and shuffling their feet. Fierce Macaw made an indifferent, swaggering shrug to show his insolence, and prove to the others that he was not afraid of a girl, even if she was the Chosen. "It's his name," he said.

  "No, it isn't." She stamped her foot.

  "Isn't it?" Crested Macaw widened his eyes, all innocence. He looked at me. "Isn't your name Ulli?"

  Curtly, I shook my head.

  "Oh." Crested Macaw shared a glance with his brother, both of them smirking. "What is it, then?"

  My lips pressed tight together.

  "What did he say?" Fierce Macaw cupped a hand by his ear. "Did you hear anything?"

  "Nothing," Crested Macaw said. "He must have no name. The adults call him One-Slave, but that doesn't seem very nice either."

  "Then we'll have to go on calling him Ulli," Fierce Macaw said.

  My hands were clenched into fists. The same lifelong, familiar, useless brew of anger and humiliation bubbled inside me, making me shake so hard that my burden of gourds rattled together on my back.

  I did have a name! A fine name, a proud warrior name, a man's name!

  Or so I had been told. Once. Long ago. By Five Yellow Coati, an old man who had known my parents. He had died and now no one knew it but me. And I could not speak it.

  "You will go away and leave him alone," Red Flower Hummingbird said.

  "Or what?" challenged Crested Macaw.

  Clever Sun-Fox cleared his throat. "Or Seven Thunder-Eagle will want to know why his water hasn't been fetched yet. Without the water, there won't be the sacred drink. Without the sacred drink, there won't be the ceremony tomorrow. Without the ceremony …" He trailed off, but raised the plucked arches of his eyebrows.

  Several boys murmured, sounding nervous and unhappy. None one wanted to risk the wrath of the gods. Or of Seven Thunder-Eagle, who knew and spoke their will.

  He, like me, had no twin.

  Once, though, he had. A sister. Moon-Water Maiden. She'd died young and all of her power had gone to him. He'd had a family. He had become high priest.

  Me?

  I was a slave.

  I had been born alone, and I was a slave.

  A brotherless, sisterless, motherless, fatherless, voiceless slave.

  The boys dispersed. I nodded my thanks to the Chosen and hurried on my way, the empty gourds clunking and clattering at the end of their cords.

  The sky was blue, the sun yellow, the land green. The flowers that gave the city its name – Axcanan – bloomed red and rich like great spills of blood over the limestone-whitened buildings.

  Men and slaves toiled in the milpas with digging sticks and stone-bladed hoes, sweating under the heat. On the walls, spear-warriors stood tall and majestic in their headdresses, the dried heads of slain enemies tied at their waists.

  From the hom, the great ball-court, came the thuds of bare feet on hard-packed earth, of wooden hip-yokes striking the ball, of bodies slamming heavily down. I could hear the players' grunts of effort or pain, and their cries of frustration or victory. I did not linger to watch. The game of pokatok was one more pleasure and honor that would forever be beyond my reach.

  Besides, I hated the ball. The hard, round, heavy ball. It was made from thick sap leached from the weeping-wood tree. The ball was called ulli.

  I trudged past women grinding corn on flat rock metates, cooking, making baskets and weaving colorful cloth. Their chatter was as loud, lively and constant as that of monkeys and macaws. Earrings gleamed as heads nodded, jade decorations flashed from point-filed teeth as they smiled.

  The adults barely noticed me, but the children did. The children always did. The young ones who stayed with their mothers – little boys playing in the dust with wooden toys or play-weapons, little girls with dolls or bits of yarn to weave on their own toy looms – stared at me with wide eyes and open mouths.

  They did not need to fear me. I wished I could tell them that, but of course, I could not. And I did not blame them for their stares. Had I been one of them, I would have done the same.

  Sudden pain stung my ankle. I jumped, and looked down, expecting to see a wasp or an ant. There was only a small jagged-edged stone. It had left a reddish mark above my sandal cord, but had not broken the skin. A boy nudged his friends, then flicked a second stone at me. It bounced past my foot. All three of them snickered, until a woman barked a rebuke.

  I went on, the harness-strap digging into my forehead, the gourds clattering together with their hollow sounds.

  Ahead was a place where wide, deep basins had been carved into flat terraced stone plateaus. Girls with long wooden paddles stirred corn as it soaked. Unmarried girls, wearing huipils and jade earrings like grown women. Girls my age. With their high, sloping foreheads and crossed eyes, each was more beautiful than the last.

  It almost hurt to look at them.

  An ancient grandmother, Two Sky-Owl, scolded them when they paused to gossip and giggle. My face burning, I lowered my head and hurried past.

  No warrior's marks for me. No wife. No sons, no daughters. No gloriously violent death to win me entrance to Heaven. My death, like my life, would be low and mundane. Xibalba waited for me. Only Xibalba, the underworld, with its cruel gods of pestilence and pain.

  I neared the edge of the city, where the walls of Axcanan butted up against steep and rocky hillsides. Carved and painted stone heads – jaguars, gods, eagles, serpents – frowned out from tangles of vines and red flowers. Birds twittered and flapped, and somewhere off in the distance, a monkey shrieked a warning cry.

  I had been born alone, I would live alone, and I would die alone.

  The shame of my single birth had killed my mother. The loss of her had killed my father. Their families wanted nothing to do with me and would have left me to starve, rather than take a child so unlucky into their homes and hearts.

  Unlucky? Unnatural … even cursed. I did not even have a voice with which to cry or speak. I should not have been allowed to live.

  But Seven Thunder-Eagle said that it must be the will of the gods. He saw to it that I was fed and tended enough to survive.

  And so I was. Enough to survive.

  I came to a cleft in the s
teep hillside, a cave entrance flanked by twin stelae carved with images and symbols. The pillar-slabs of stone rose twice my height.

  There had been no one to care for me the way other babies were cared for. No one to bind my skull between boards to coax the soft bones into an appealing shape, and dangle a bead from my brow so that my eyes would grow crossed.

  Perhaps they all expected, even hoped, that I would sicken and die anyway. I had not made it that easy for anyone. I'd been healthy and strong from the very start, almost as if in defiance. Healthy and strong, and ugly.

  Ugly Ulli. With my round ball of a head and my forward-staring eyes. My ears had never been pierced. My skin was blank and dull, and would never be marked by anything but the most ordinary of accidental scrapes and scars.

  No manhood ceremony would be held for me. When I had first been old enough to walk, no obsidian blade had sliced my foreskin into strips to make the Fringed Serpent.

  No stingray spine would pierce my tongue and let my blood fall onto the bark-paper to burn and carry my prayers to the gods in the smoke.

  Did the gods even know my name?

  They must. It