1. A Sorceress''s Name Becomes Mine A SORCERESS''S NAME BECOMES MINE Long ago, our world, with all its mystery and magic, was carried on the back of a crocodile. One misstep and we would all plunge into darkness. By the time I was born, the earth had already been created and destroyed four times. The land of my birth rested near a winding river called the Coatzacoalcos. Water was everywhere. Silty creeks. Clear streams.
Turquoise lagoons. Our house sat within palms of green so deep with color that the leaves appeared blue. My mother''s pregnancy had been a difficult one, and my grandmother, mindful of the capricious natures of the gods, had requested that the wisest of the midwives tend to Mother. And so it was Toci who prepared the opossum tail broth for my mother to drink, who carried my mother into the sweat lodge. Bathed in sweat, the two women roared like Jaguar Knights on the battlefield, their war cries shaking me free. But as I wailed my first damp breaths, my mother continued to scream. After swaddling me in a cotton blanket and setting me on the earth, Toci returned to my mother and guided my brother into the world. Upon hearing the news of our creation, a few of the duller villagers ran into the jungle to hide.
In small, faraway towns, parents were often so fearful of the power possessed by twins that one of the babies was put to death. In my village, most people believed that twins were the creators of order. We were the monster slayers. Quetzalcoatl--the Feathered Serpent, benevolent god of wind, had been born a twin. I was the daughter of Jade Feather and Speaking Cloud, and the twin sister of Eagle. The blood of the Toltecs ran through my veins. My father, Speaking Cloud, a learned nobleman and warrior, believed it a sign of great favor that the gods had entrusted twins into his keeping. His ancestral line included magicians--the firstborn of every family attended the House of Magical Studies in Tenochtitlan--so he understood the deep meaning of such occurrences.
Toci had related all of this to me when I was old enough to understand. With her wrinkles, crown of silver hair, and deep-set brown eyes, she appeared older than time. I never tired of hearing the story or the prayer she invoked at my birth: "My beloved daughter, my precious jade necklace, my treasure. You have arrived, captured by your brave mother, to live on this earth, this vast and lonely place. Let the gods hear your cries! You have come to tend the fire, to sit by the hearth. Your world is here, within these strong walls." It was our tradition that within days of being born, a child would have his or her fate read by Crooked Back, the town''s calendar priest. After accepting my parents'' offering of twenty lengths of white cloth, the old seer turned to his sacred books of names and destiny.
The air crackled as the priest unfolded the stiff pages until they covered the ground. He then consulted another book of divination, then another, talking to himself as he studied the painted symbols, the figures of the gods and spirits that had been in attendance at the exact time of our births. He fingered some pages carefully and stabbed at others, turned the books this way and that, peering closely one moment and backing away wide-eyed the next. When, at last, Crooked Back was satisfied with what he''d seen, he proclaimed that our formal name would be Malinalli, Wild Grass, and that due to godly influences and the position of the stars, my brother and I were doomed to be "carried away by the wind" and live "miserable lives" far from home. Alarmed, Father challenged the priest. Old Crooked Back sputtered with indignation, for no one had ever questioned his authority before. Committed to improving our fate, and by combining their strengths of will and through magic, my parents moved time: they changed the moment of my brother''s entry into the world so he could take the day-sign name Eagle, Cuauhtli. To shield me from my fate, my father decreed me Malinalxochitl.
In Nahuatl, it means Wild Grass Flower. A name filled with sunlight. For Eagle and me, the world seemed wide and open. In our home, white stucco rooms led from one into the next, with high-beamed ceilings. The finest rooms were decorated with paintings of gardens and colorful shrines dedicated to the gods--all faced a courtyard shaded by rubber trees. Pots brimming with epazotl and iztauhyatl and flowering jasmine and sunflowers colored the air with their scents. There was a sweat lodge and a granary, where we stored the harvested ears and kernels of elotl. Our house was an endless palace, and the wilderness beyond it was our empire.
We tumbled through cornfields, crawled in mud, ran between grasses that soared over our heads, and splashed through lagoons and swamps governed by mysterious forces and the beasts of our dreams. I was easily distracted. Butterflies, hummingbirds, snakes, croaking frogs, and birds in the trees all called me to come play. Eagle was never without a stick in his hands and a plan in his mind. He poked and prodded holes and dark crevices, waved that stick as if he had already achieved the illustrious rank of Jaguar Knight. He always took the lead, shouting, "Sister! Sister! Follow me!" Seeing the light dancing in his eyes filled me with such joy, it was as if I were being lifted off the ground. Peering into still water at the river''s edge, two reflections greeted us, two identical faces framed by dark hair. Like most children, we played tricks on each other--sneaking up like shadows to scare, hiding a favorite toy, cheating at patolli, our favorite game.
Eagle was always the honorable knight; his tricks were obvious and teasing. I, however, liked scaring him. Knowing how much he hated snakes, I hid their skins in his clothes and set loose live creatures beneath his sleeping mat. He was quick to forgive me. We spoke a special language that no one else could understand, not even our parents, who spoke Nahuatl--the language of the nobility--and Popoluca. By the age of two, Eagle and I mimicked these sounds like parrots. But when we River Twins were alone, we preferred our secret words. Aside from Eagle''s dislike of snakes, we were fearless.
Much of that invincibility we owed to our father. Not even the shape-shifters on the darkest of nights frightened him. He was knowledgeable about demons and monsters despite the fact that he never attended the famous magicians'' school; he wasn''t firstborn. He said nighttime was the time favored by Tezcatlipoca, the trickster god, who enjoyed disguising himself as a shrouded corpse. That was when the Blood Drinkers emerged from the shadows with their sharp teeth bared. Whenever Father told these stories, he''d jump and growl at us, clawing at the air. He would open his eyes wide, then scrunch them up, contorting himself to make us laugh. My father wanted to put us at ease with the dark.
Eagle and I would shiver with glee as he recounted tales about the horrors that awaited us outside. We desired nothing more than to venture into the night, but our mother forbade it. My mother, Jade Feather, kept an obsidian knife in a bowl of water near the door to keep us safe from night demons. She believed that such an arrangement could destroy these creatures. To distract us from our fascination with the dark, she would sometimes let us look at her amatl-paper books. The one Eagle and I favored most was a wondrous creation made up of large, many-folded sheets of crushed fig tree paper containing red-and-black paintings that represented our calendar''s twenty day signs--crocodile, wind, house, lizard, snake, death, deer, rabbit, water, and so on--and images of the gods. We would tuck ourselves against her on a reed mat plumped with pillows and, holding our breath, wait patiently for her to turn back the cover. With each unfolding, the thick pages crackled like my grandmother''s knees on a rainy day.
Some of my mother''s books opened into sheets so long, they stretched across the hearth room. While snuggling against my mother and twirling strands of her rose-scented hair between our fingers, we discovered gods and goddesses dressed in all of their finery: feathered headdresses, nose rings, earspools, and thick-soled sandals. Eagle and I would carefully point to our favorite drawings. His was an Eagle Knight dressed for battle in a padded vest with feathery wings and a helmet with an eagle''s beak. I favored an image--smaller than all the other pictures--of a woman in a long black cloak painted with stars. Underneath, she was dressed in a white huipilli and skirt, and her long hair was held back with a circlet made of heron feathers. The first time I saw her, my mother said, "That is the sorceress Malinalxochitl." Hearing my name filled my heart with pride, but a harsh tone singed my mother''s words.
I leaned closer as my brother teased, "Look at you , Malinalxochitl," which I did, for as long as I could. When I was young, I knew nothing about my name except that the villagers of my town spoke it with fearful reverence. Later I would learn that in the time of the ancestors, the first Wild Grass Flower was a mighty sorceress. She was the older sister of Huitzilopochtli--Southern Hummingbird--the god of war. She was his equal, the ancients said, who saw through the darkness of men''s minds. And though the people in my village had stopped honoring her long ago, the memory of her avenging nature still lingered. She frightened them. Along with the stories, a question had taken root in my mind: What had she seen that upset her enough to make her seek revenge? As if my mother knew that I longed to touch.