Spine of a Mexican Princess

When I was a child I feared the night cats. Gods of the jungle, invisible, silent, with skins so soft, so warm, so dark, they made me feel invisible and safe. My attendants said they'd keep the bad spirits away.

No attendants anymore. I will always remember the night they went away.

I could run no further so I hid in the dark, under the leaves of the great canopy that surrounded my ill-fated city on the lake. I sang for him to come -- or her -- and thought I was rewarded. A musky smell, a sharp taste in the air, a tremble in my heart. Was I mistaken? Why did I not feel teeth on my throat? I continued the song, low and distinct, fearful that the devils who followed would find me first, and I rustled the bush like wounded game, picking the wounds I'd gotten in my fight as I willed them to bleed.

I once met a hunter in the palace. He sat next to my father in front of me for the entire evening. They smoked and ate the black dream powder. They laughed so hard. I laughed, and even Chipnek's stoic face broke into a grin. When my father fell asleep the hunter told us tales in a hushed whisper. He explained how he worked, how he called the birds from the sky, the fish from the stream. He boasted how his net and bag were never empty. He told of providing meals for a small village who's hunters had all been injured in a recent war, a task that took him, so he said, two whole seasons.

My heart aches when I remember what the royal court whispered about him.

The hunter told me how all animals may be lured if you make their song. I'd always been a good singer, at least that was what the servants told me. As the hours of the night wore on I began to fear my songs were worthless and no God would come. Instead, devil soldiers in metal came, making noise in the brush. I could also make out the voice of the traitor who was helping them follow my tracks. I cursed and found new breath and sang my song into the air.

The sound in the brush grew near. Voices became distinct, the babble of the bearded ones. Maybe they'd kill the traitor for being too slow if I hid well enough or (if the Gods were on my side) managed to kill myself.

A man screamed in the distance. Then came the percussion-like sound from one of the fire-spitting weapons. It was so dark I could not tell if my eyes were open or closed, and I prayed for death. My fingers found the edge of a wound on my leg and I pulled and dug the flesh as words fell into my mouth. I have no real memory of what I sang in my last hoarse breaths.

Another man screamed. I heard someone running along the game trail. Before I knew it he was tripping over my huddled form. He tumbled into the tall grass in front of me, his metal carapace glinting in the moonlight. Without looking back the fallen man scrambled to his feet.

A piece of darkness flew out of the night, brushed against my arm, and fell upon the man. An unmistakable musk washed over me. Then the night exploded with the flash of devil's weapons, and I joined the blackness.

For a long time I drifted in darkness, but I was not alone. My God was with me, and we spoke. We walked for a long time in the dark, and I felt his warm embrace, his touch. Then, like my former life, he was gone. With him went my fear.

I woke in a thin walled hut smelling of sick. Trash was everywhere – the things the invaders did not want they destroyed. Ripped feather tapestries, broken furniture, soiled mats, burnt cloth. Pieces of a shattered mosaic littered the dirt floor. They even burned the books.

Under guard I walked with women and children to our prison, down roads lined with corpses and fields that crawled with rats and maggots, under clouds of flies so thick they blotted out the sun. Dogs ran about dragging body parts, but not fighting over meat.

The hell of Mictlan had arrived. I would never see the gardens of Tamoanchan, or know the embrace of my father, or win a husband, or speak to my ancestors. There was no hope and no end to hell, for the fifth age had come. My feet felt no earth, just the surface of Mictlan, where devils smiled and walked the streets, proud of what they had done.

My friends, family, all dead. Every person I knew. And the nightmare continued.

I watched as they burned every home and village they came upon. I saw how they killed the old men and women, how they murdered children, burned the babies. The worse part about it, a final enduring insult, was the continual presence of traitors, those of my kind that joined the bearded devils to destroy us.

Finally someone said we'd reached Tlatotelca. How could that be? It was ten days from the sacred city on the lake. I remembered only two.

They made me one of their own with the words I was taught to mimic like a trained bird. I became the property of a devil. Remembering what my God had said was the only thing that prevented me from cutting my wrists.

I learned their words. I played their games. I became one of them. I even pretended to revere the evil cross and the white faced horror in the cloak with the albino-skinned demon at her breast. But the spine of a Mexican princess is too stiff to bend. The invisible stalker of the night cloaked my soul with a dark shield that nothing could penetrate, not even the worst of the beatings.

I met more of my blood in time, slaves, servants, laborers, and other so-called “wives” of the bearded devils. I trusted those I found suitable and all but a few joined me. I killed the ones who did not, or if I suspected they would betray us.

When our time is right and when we are not watched we collect the seed of our warriors. We get it from any surviving man, the wise men and wizards reduced to the worst of lots, even the lowly merchant class, and slaves. With fingers, reeds, fruit, sticks, and even the long part of that hated symbol, we put the seed to use. Our children come with our features but with skins light enough to fool the one that calls me his wife. It is the promise of the invisible God.

Each night my so-called husband rapes me. I smile. I moan. I make him happy while I think of the obsidian knife with the panther engraving that is hidden under the bed. When it is over I turn away from his reeking form and smile. Inside I laugh.