Free Jaguar Princess by Clare Bell Page B

scraggly gray hairs had sprouted from his chin. He knew all that went on in the calmecac, even down to the doings of the drudges and the slaves. He even knew about her, Mixcatl was told. If he had not given his consent for her to stay, it would not have mattered what Maguey Thorn orSpeaking Quail thought about her.
    From the sadness that fell over the school, Mixcatl knew that Cactus Eagle was valued by everyone there. Even Maguey Thorn, who was the first to spread a juicy piece of gossip about anyone, spoke of him with nothing but respect. And the sadness deepened as the old man grew worse.
    At night Mixcatl watched through the belled curtain by the light of a bonfire as priests and students together knelt in the courtyard. They prayed fervently and shed their own blood in sacrifice, using agave thorns to pierce their fingers, earlobes and lips. Mixcatl could smell the blood, mixed with the odors of sweat and black body-paint. As the praying grew more frenzied, some slashed their palms with obsidian blades and made cuts on their arms so that the blood ran freely and dripped into bowls carved from lava. Mixcatl had watched without feeling more than a slight tinge of revulsion, for she was no stranger to the sight of wounds and bleeding. When the supplicants set the vessels into the fire, she shivered and crept away, unable to bear the acrid smell of burning blood.
    She retreated to the kitchen, with its great raised firepit. No one was there, for they were all at the old man’s side or in the courtyard, praying. The fire had died down to coals and Mixcatl knelt on the adobe brick, warmed by the heat radiating through. She stared at the glowing embers as if in a trance. Then she noticed that the great tiles that surrounded the firepit were blackened by soot. A few twigs lay near her feet, spilled from the kindling used to light the fire that morning. Mixcatl’s hand groped among them and picked one up.
    She looked at the twig, then touched its end to the sooty tile. It made a mark, for the tile was of fired white clay. Idly she drew a squiggle, then a few lines that crossed each other, but they dissatisfied her and she rubbed them out. In her mind the images of the sacred book still flickered, begging to come out. She knew that despite her sharp memory, she could not keep all of the details. Some had already started to fade.
    A tear started at the comer of her eye. If she did not re-create the figures, she would lose them and there was little chance she would be able to see the book again.
    She took another twig, one that had a sharper point than the first and could make a finer line. The figure she wanted most to make was that of Smoking Mirror. How wonderful he had looked, with his crest of plumes, his feathered cape and his jaguar claws. And the great roar he gave, shown by the sound scrolls issuing from his open mouth. Yes, he was there in her head. And she felt he would die and wither if he were not set free.
    With her tongue clamped between her teeth, Mixcatl bent over a soot-blackened tile. She drew his head and body, the spotted arms with wristlets, the elaborate knotting of the loincloth. She drew his clawed feet, and then, beneath one foot, the shape of a strange shining circle, ornamented and patterned. Speaking scrolls also emerged from the disk, as if it too had a voice.
    As she made Smoking Mirror, her heart beat faster. How beautiful he was. How could he be evil? She went back to the head and frowned. How did the headdress go? And how did it fit about the jaguar ears? There were so many bands and curls and plumes and drapes and she couldn’t remember how they all fit together. She tried, but it didn’t look quite right. But it had been years since she’d glimpsed the picture and all the details weren’t there.
    She leaned over the drawing, feeling tears of frustration well up in her eyes. He must be perfect. He must! But her attempts to repair the headdress only smudged it. She tried to scrape up more soot