When I entered she was sitting crosslegged on the dirt floor. Before a small fire she heated green leaves on a flat rock. The seared, shriveling leaves gave off a pungent, smoky smell. Inside the hut was no less bizarre than the outer doorway. Animal skulls, some of which looked human and I hoped were monkeys, were scattered about and connected to a unearthly collection of misshapen forms.

Her name meant Snake Flower in the Aztec tongue.

Snake Flower was neither old nor young. Her india features were dark and sharp, her nose thin, her eyes black as obsidian but flecked with gold. Some villagers believed those orbs could steal souls and pull out eyes.

She was a t.i.titl, a native healer skilled in herbal remedies and chants. She was also a pract.i.tioner of the darker arts-secret skills that Spanish law and logic would never comprehend. When the village cacique feuded with a mule train overseer, Snake Flower placed a curse on the overseer. After she shaped a clay doll in his image-but with the doll's guts hard as rock-the man's bowels impacted, and he was unable to eliminate waste. He would have died if the t.i.titl in his own village had not made a duplicate doll with hard guts and smashed it to break the spell.

You say that this is foolishness and not magic? The play of childish savages? Is a t.i.titl's magic anymore the work of savages than a priest's envisioning the devil in the shape of a man's garrancha? Or his dream of salvation from a dead man nailed to a cross?

Snake Flower did not look up when I entered her hut.

"I need a sleeping potion for my mother."

"You have no mother," she said, still not looking up.

"What? Even mestizos have mothers, witch-woman. It is sorcerers who are sp.a.w.ned from dirt and bat droppings. My mother needs a potion to help her sleep so the sleep spirits can fight the sickness."

She kept stirring the green leaves, sizzling and smoking on the rock slab. "A mestizo enters my hut and asks for favors and brings insults as his gifts. Have the Aztec G.o.ds grown so weak that a half-blood can insult one of pure blood?"

"My apologies, Snake Flower. My mother's injuries have made me forget my place." I had softened my tone. While I did not believe in the power of G.o.ds and spirits, there are many mysteries that sorceresses know and many secret paths they walk. I did not want to find a snake in my bed or poison in my bowl because I had offended her.

"My mother needs the sleep medicine that only an Aztec spirit woman can prepare. I offer not only grat.i.tude but a gift of magic."

I tossed a small doeskin pouch on the dirt beside her.

She stirred the smoking leaves, not looking at the pouch or me.

"And what is this? The heart of a monkey? The ground bones of a jaguar? What magic does a mestizo boy know?"

"Spanish magic. A medical potion not as powerful as yours," I added hastily, "but different."

I could tell she was intrigued but too proud to admit it.

"Magic from pale-skinned weaklings who cannot withstand the sun G.o.d without burning and fainting?"

"I brought it so that you can show the others in the village how weak and foolish Spanish medicine is. The powder inside is used by Fray Antonio to burn off skin growths. It is mixed with water and spread over the growth. After it disappears, a lesser amount is applied to keep the growth from returning."

"Bah!" She flung the pouch across the room. "My medicine is stronger." She sc.r.a.ped green matter from the hot rock into a small clay cup. "Here, mestizo, take this to Miahauxiuitl. It is the sleeping potion you seek."

I stared at her. "How did you know I would come for sleeping medicine?"

She laughed shrilly. "I know many things."

I reached for the cup, but she withdrew it. She stared at me, taking my measure. "You shoot up like a corn stalk under a hot, wet sun. You are no longer a boy." She pointed a finger at me. "I give you this medicine to bring the sleeping spirits to Miahauxiuitl, but you will serve me in return."

"In what way?"

She laughed shrilly again. "You will see, mestizo, you will see."

I hurried back to my mother, leaving the doeskin pouch with the sorceress. She had a growth on the back of her hand, the same type of growth that I had seen Fray Antonio treat on Spaniards with the mixture of mercuriales I left her. I knew her concern. Because she was unable to get rid of the growth on her own hand, villagers had begun to question her skills. How could she drive away the demons that bring sickness, when she could not cure herself?

On the way back to our hut, I smelled her potion and was curious to learn its ingredients. My nose detected honey and lime and octli, a powerful drink similar to pulque made from the fermented sap of the maguey. There were other herbs in it, one of which I later realized was yoyotli, a concoction Aztec priests used to sedate sacrificial victims before their hearts were cut out.

SEVEN.

Three days later the sorceress collected her debt. She came in the night and took me into the jungle to a place where children were once sacrificed to the G.o.ds by my Aztec ancestors.

She was covered from head to foot in a cape. I followed her with apprehension. I could not see her hands, but her toes were exposed and each toe had a claw attached. I wondered nervously what else was under the long cape.

It was with some relief that I was taken off on this unnamed adventure even though it raised the hair on the back of my neck. Fray Antonio and Miaha had argued on several occasions since the incident with the majordomo, each time sending me away so I could not hear what was being said. I did not have to hear the words to know that I was in some manner the source of their controversy.

For an hour I followed Snake Flower into the jungle-until we came to a pyramid that was almost covered by vines and other jungle growth. I had not been to an ancient Aztec shrine before but knew of this one from the village talk.

The fray forbade all from going to it, and to be discovered worshipping at it was blasphemy.

Under the glow of a half moon, Snake Flower bounded up the stepped slope of the temple like a jungle cat and waited for me near the large, flat, altar stone. She took off the reed cape, and I gawked at what she wore underneath. A snakeskin skirt covered her lower body. Above the dangling snakes, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bare, full and plump. Hanging between her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s was a necklace of tiny hands and hearts. I stared intently in the darkness and could not readily see if the hands were those of monkeys or infants.

The temple was fifty feet high-a dwarf compared to many of the great Aztec temples I'd heard of-but it appeared gigantic to me in the moonlight. As we approached the top I trembled. On this summit children had been sacrificed by the thousands to angry Aztecs.

She was dressed as Coatlicue, Serpent Woman, the earth G.o.ddess who is the mother of the moon and the stars. Some say that the grisly necklace Coatlicue wears holds the hands and hearts of her own children, whom she had murdered when they disobeyed her.

We were at the right place for such dark deeds. Here was where young children were slaughtered, sacrificed to Tlaloc, the rain G.o.d. The tears of the children symbolized falling rain, and the more they cried, the better chances for rain to feed the life-giving maize.

"Why have you brought me to this place?" I put my hand on the bone knife I carried. "If you want my blood, witch, you will find it costly."

Her laughter shrilled.

"It is not blood I desire, young one. Pull down your pants."

I stepped back in fear, instinctively covering my virile part.

"Foolish boy, this will not hurt."

She took a small bundle from beneath the reed cape and removed the sacred deerskin she used in healing and a clay cup. To those items she added the rib bone of an animal and emptied a rawhide bag into the cup. She knelt on the sacrificial stone and began crushing the contents with the bone.

"What is that?" I asked, as I knelt beside her.

"A piece of dried jaguar heart."

She cut an eagle feather and deposited it into the cup. "The jaguar has power, the eagle soars. Both abilities are necessary if a man is to please his woman and produce many children." She sprinkled a fine, dark powder into the cup. "This is snake blood. A snake can unhinge its jaws, swell its belly, and devour something several times its size. A man needs a snake's expansive power to fill his woman's hole and satisfy her." She carefully stirred the mixture.

"I will not drink it."

Her laugh rang through the jungle night. "No, little fool, it is not for you to drink but to add to its power. The potion is for another man who can no longer swell his tepuli to please and impregnate his woman."