Free The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

gave her a temple with a garden for birds. And for her son, a temple for human sacrifice. Its door was a serpent’s mouth, a lacuna leading deep into the temple where a surprise waited for visitors. Towers were built from all their skulls. The priests walked about with their bodies blackened with the ashes of burnt scorpions. If only Mother had brought us here five hundred years sooner.
     
    Every day it rains buckets, the alley is a river. Women do their washing in it. Then it dries up, flotsam everywhere. The maid says it’s a law that everyone has to clean a section of the street, so we should pay her husband for that. Mother says no dice, if we have to huddle like pigeons upstairs we aren’t paying any damn street cleaner.
    Mother’s room has a tiny balcony facing outward to the alley, and this room is opposite, facing a courtyard inside the block of buildings. The family across keeps a garden there, hidden from the street. The grandfather wears white cotton trousers rolled to his knees, tending squash vines and his pigeon house, a round brick tower with cubbyholes around the top where his pigeons roost. The old man uses a broom to chase away parrots eating his flowers. When the moon is D como Dios , his pigeons cry all night.
     
    Cortés is an adventure story, better than the Three Musketeers. He was the first Spaniard to find this city, which was Tenochtitlan then, capital of the Azteca empire. Somehow it was in a lake at thattime. They had causeways crossing the water, wide enough for Cortés and his horsemen to ride abreast. He heard of the great city and sent messages first so the Azteca wouldn’t kill him the minute he arrived. A good plan. King Moteczuma met him with two hundred nobles all dressed in nice capes, and gave Cortés a necklace made of gold prawns. Then they sat down to discuss the circumstances. Moteczuma explained that long ago their ancient lord went back to his native land where the sun rises, so they were expecting one of his descendants to come back any time and subject the people as his rightful vassals. Cortés had sent messages about being sent hither by a great king, so they thought he must be their natural lord. That was good luck for Cortés, who rejoiced and took leisure from the fatigues of his journey. Moteczuma gave him more gold things, and one of his daughters.
    The Azteca in other cities were not so friendly to the Spaniards, and killed them. One was a big troublemaker, Qualpopoca. Cortés demanded him brought in for punishment, and to be safe decided to put Moteczuma in chains, but on a friendly basis. Qualpopoca arrived fuming, insisting he was a vassal of no Great King from anywhere, and hated all Spaniards. So he was burned alive in the public square.
    Mother is tired of hearing bits of the story. She says she is not the damned queen of Spain, put the candle out before it falls on the bed and burns you alive.
     
    She says we can’t keep the book even if it is the best adventure ever. And a birthday present. It is too long to copy the whole story out, only the main parts. Cortés let Moteczuma go free again and they were still friends, which seems strange. He showed Cortés the buildings and marketplaces, fine as any in Spain, and stone temples higher than the great church of Seville. Inside some, the walls were covered with the blood of human sacrifice. But the people had great culture and politeness of manners, with good government everywhere maintained, and stone pipes to bring water down from the mountains. Moteczuma had a grand palace and lattice houses where he kept every manner of bird, waterfowl to eagle. It took three hundred men to look after them all.
    But really Cortés wanted a tour of the gold mines. Playing dumbdora, he told Moteczuma the land looked very fertile, so the Great King should like to have a farm there (over the gold mine). They fixed it up with maize fields, a big house for His Majesty, even a pond with ducks. Crafty Cortés.
    Next, the Governor