Free Song of the Hummingbird by Graciela Limón

clamored for their destruction; the other for their appeasement. In the end it mattered little. War or worship, it concluded as foretold. Our world terminated the moment the first white man set foot on our land, and I believe now that Moctezuma was the only one who truly saw that irreversible truth.”

Chapter
    VIII
    It took a long time for the gatekeeper to open the convent door for Father Benito. He didn’t mind because the autumn morning was mild; the usual chill was missing, and so he waited patiently, thinking of what another day with the Indian woman would be like. He looked in different directions as he distractedly whistled under his breath.
    He tried to imagine how much had changed in this city since her youth. The woman had told of an ancestral home, where she had been born and which was now the site of this convent. She had spoken of the Hill of the Stars, Iztapalapa, a sacred place to her people but which was these days an open market bustling with Spanish-speaking merchants and buyers. She had described the main temple, and Benito thought of the cathedral taking its place; its twin spires now dominating houses built in the Spanish manner.
    He pulled on the bell cord again, impatiently this time, making the clanging metal sound out shrilly. But no one responded. He rearranged the strap of his leather case because it was beginning to cut into his shoulder, then he took a few paces away from the entrance. Two native boys startled him as they came around the corner, prodding a donkey loaded with hay. He noticed their faces as they trotted by him: round, brown faces. Then, as if pulled by a string, the boys turned in his direction; he saw the flinty, oval-shaped eyes gazing at him.
    â€œ ¡Buenos días, Padre! ”
    â€œ ¡Buenos días, Niños! ”
    They disappeared in seconds, leaving the monk amazed at himself for having, for the first time since his arrival in Tenochtitlan, seen how different the boys were one from the other. Even though they seemed of an age, and had the same color, they were distinct. This had not yet occurred to him because, up until then, all those faces had blurred into one.
    Now he wanted to run after them to ask if their fathers remembered the same things as did the Indian woman. But then Father Benito realized that it would have been their grandfathers instead who would have such memories, maybe even more likely their greatgrandfathers.
    Suddenly, the monk wished that he had been born sixty years sooner so that he could have seen the city as it was during the days of the Indian woman’s people, of the great-grandfathers of those boys. He stared in concentration at his feet: his callused toes peeked out from under the leather thongs of worn-out sandals.
    A thought was taking shape in his mind as he fixed his eyes on one of the straps. Slowly, an idea crept forward into his consciousness, and he finally understood that something deep within him was beginning to share
    Huit-zitzilin’s melancholy for what was irrevocably gone. This impulse took Father Benito by surprise, and he shook his head trying to take a fresh approach to his mission. He was in this land to convert, not to be converted, he told himself.
    Because he was lost in his thought, Father Benito was startled by the heavy hand that suddenly tugged at his arm. He twirled around to see who was pulling him with such energy, and he was greeted by the tiny eyes of the nun who usually opened the convent doors.

Chapter
    IX
    â€œThey came!
    â€œMoctezuma had prayed that they would not come, but his petitions were futile, because they did come. The moment finally came when your captains stood knocking at the gates of Tenochtitlan, and we were powerless to stop them from entering.
    â€œWhen that day dawned, the priests approached our king to inform him of the white intruders who awaited him in Iztapalapa. Later on we heard that Moctezuma was sweeping the stairs of the temple, and that without looking