"You did not fool the cacique or the elders; they know you are a mestizo."

I was shocked. "Why didn't they tell the Spaniard?"

"Their enemy is your enemy," the Healer said. "The cacique's son was forced to labor in a hole the Spanish have dug in the ground to steal silver. These holes are to the north, in the land of the Mictlan, the dark place where the dead go. The silver is put into the mountains by Coyolxauhqui, the Moon G.o.ddess. It is her excrement and she puts it in the mountains as a gift to her fellow G.o.d, Mictlantecuhtli, the G.o.d of the underworld. Digging the holes to steal the wealth of Mictlantecuhtli angers him, and he causes the tunnels to cave in. Many indios die there, some from the cave-ins and others from starvation and beatings. The cacique's son pa.s.sed from sorrow to the Dark Place while working in one of the holes.

"The Spanish have recently come again to this small village and taken men. All are the sons, grandchildren, or nephews of the elders. The young men are being forced to dig a hole through a mountain to drain the lake surrounding Tenocht.i.tlan, the city the Spanish called Mexico. Mictlantecuhtli is again angered by this violation, and many indios have died digging through this mountain."

"But there is a reward offered," I said. "Ten pesos is mucho dinero, probably more than the cacique or anyone else in the village see at any one time."

"The Spaniard's gold is stolen from Huitzilopochtli, the sun G.o.d, who excretes it for Mictlantecuhtli. The villagers do not want the gold. These are vengeful G.o.ds, who take many indio lives. The cacique and the other elders want their sons to live and the Spanish to stop forcing them to anger the G.o.ds."

Any Veracruz indio or mestizo, household servant, or street trash would have slit my throat and turned my dead body in for a reward of ten pesos. They would have revealed me to the Spaniard just in the hopes of a small reward. I learned something about the indios of New Spain: The domesticated indios, raised like work animals on haciendas and in cities, were different than the ones who were not corrupted by the conquerors. There were still indios who followed the old ways and to whom honor was more important than gold.

I asked the most important question. "How did the cacique know I'm not indio? The color of my skin? Hair? My facial features? Did I expose any pale skin? What was it?"

"Your smell."

I sat up. "My smell?" I was indignant. That morning I had washed with water from a creek. Late that afternoon both the Healer and I had used the cacique's temazcalli, his steam hut. While the Spanish did not bath as much as an indio, I bathed more than a Spaniard.

"How could he tell from my smell? Don't people all smell the same?"

The only response from the Healer was birdlike twittering.

"I must know," I insisted. "What do I have to do to make sure I smell like an indio? I don't have access to a temazcalli every day. Is there a special soap I can use?"

He tapped his heart. "Sweat and soap cannot take away what is in the heart. When you walk the Way of your indio ancestors, you will be an indio."

Before we left the village the Healer treated several others for ailments. Like Fray Antonio, who "doctored" the poor of Veracruz, the Healer was also a man of practical medicine, although the fray would not have recognized his methods.

A woman brought a small child to be examined for a stomach problem. The Healer held the child over a trough of water, studying the reflection. He twittered a bit and then prescribed pulverized avocado seed and crushed plantain in raw, unfermented maguey juice.

He examined a man suffering from a bad cough with his smoke mirror. The man, emaciated and in obvious discomfort, described pains in his chest, abdomen, and back. The Healer prescribed pulque and honey.

I was surprised that he had not drawn snakes from either person. "You told me that all illness is caused by the invasion of the body by evil spirits and they take the form of snakes that wiggle around the body. Why didn't you draw the evil snakes from the child and the man today?"

"Not all sickness can be sucked out. The woman whose dead husband has been forcing her to have s.e.x at night believes his ghost is attacking her. When she sees the snake come out, she realizes that the ghost is gone. The man suffers from los aires, bad spirits in the air, which have entered his body. The snakes are too small and too many to suck out. They are everywhere in his body. He will die soon."

That shocked me. "The child will die, too?"

"No, no, the child's stomach is just upset. It would be a waste of a snake to use it with a child who would not understand that the evil had been withdrawn."

I knew that the snakes were not evil spirits in the body but were stored in a basket hauled around on the Healer's donkey. What he seemed to be telling me was that what he took from people's heads were bad thoughts. The thoughts themselves were maladies.

Although I had a.s.sisted the fray in cutting off a prost.i.tute's leg and many lesser medical treatments, bad thoughts were a strange malady to me. Yet it seemed to work. Each person who had the snake removed smiled and was noticeably happier afterward.

The woman who suffered from the abuse of her husband brought us corn cakes and honey for breakfast and told the Healer that she had had the first good night's sleep in months. Had the woman gone to a Spanish doctor and complained of a ghost, he would have sent her to a priest for an exorcism. The priest would have used prayers and the cross to drive the evil from her-and perhaps solicited the help of the Inquisition to inquire whether the woman was a witch.

Whose method was the more humane? The more effective?

I was beginning to understand what the Healer meant when he said the Spanish had conquered the flesh of the indio but not the spirit.

FORTY-TWO.

When I awoke in the morning, the Healer had already left his blanket. I went to the creek to wash and saw him in a small clearing between the trees. He was surrounded by birds, one of which was on his shoulder and eating from his hand.

Later, when we were traveling to the next village, he told me that he had been given knowledge about me.

"You have died once," he said, "and you will die again before you know your name."

I had no clue as to the meaning of this prophecy; he refused to say anything more.

The Healer began to guide me in learning the Aztec Ways as we journeyed between villages.

The Aztec way of life was to honor one's family, clan, tribe, and G.o.ds. Children were taught and strictly disciplined from birth about the way they must act and live and treat others.

The umbilical cord of a male child was given to a warrior who buried it on a battlefield, thus ensuring that the boy grew up to be a strong warrior. The umbilical cord of a girl child was buried under the floor of the house to keep her close to home.

"When an Aztec child is born," he said, "the father calls upon a soothsayer to read the child's path in life. The day sign the child is born under will affect him throughout life. There are good signs that bring happiness, health, and even wealth, and bad ones that bring failure and sickness."

"How are the paths determined?"

"The Tonalamatl, The Book of Fates, which sets forth the good and bad days, must be consulted. The day and week signs of your birth and other events surrounding it must be probed. A favorable birth sign brings rewards in life... but only if you lead your life according to the sign. An evil life will turn a fortunate birth sign bad."

He asked me questions about the day and time of my birth. That much I knew, along with the fact that the fray had hinted at ominous events surrounding my birth. I also knew from street talk something about good and bad days. The days of the Aztec calendar were numbered and named. One Crocodile, meaning the first time in the calendar day crocodile occurred, was considered a fortuitous day to be born on. Five Coatl, serpent, was a bad day. I was only familiar with the character of a few signs I heard street people talking about, but I knew there were days named for deer, rabbit, water, wind, and other things.

The Healer disappeared into the forest for two hours. Upon his return, we ate a meal I had prepared over our campfire. While he was gone, I had foretold the future for a pregnant india who had had two girls and was desperate to birth a boy. After examining the ashes in her cooking fire and muttering some Latin at a flock of birds, I advised her that she would indeed have a boy. The grateful woman gave me the duck I'd roasted for our meal.

I dared not tell the Healer that I was telling fortunes.

I listened to him as I attacked the duck with great enthusiasm.

He spoke solemnly. "Each of us has our destiny cast by the G.o.ds. For some there are clear signs of good fortune, while pain and misfortune will be the circ.u.mstance of others." He shook his head. "You fall within the Shadow Fates, the destines the G.o.ds have left uncompleted. Your day is Four and the sign is Ollin, motion. The G.o.ds do not cast the destiny of those born under this sign because motion is changeable. It runs here and there and changes direction many times. It is under the control of Xolotl, the Plumed Serpent's evil twin. You see Xolotl blazing in the night sky at certain times of the year, the dark side of the star, while the light side blazes in the morning."

From the description I a.s.sumed Xolotl was the evening star, the nighttime manifestation of Venus, as opposed to the morning star. Xolotl, a dog-headed monster, was another favorite character at mascaradas.

"It is said that those born under the motion sign change their path in life frequently and often become rogues and tale bearers."

Eh, that caught my attention.

"Because they are so fluid, they are able to change shapes. The darkest side of those born under the sign of motion are the shape changers who are able to take on different forms, even the shape of animals."

"Why is that considered the dark side?" I asked.

"Because there are evil persons who do much harm under the guise of animals or in the shape of another person."