With a growing hollow in my stomach, I thought of Huchimitl, alone in that house, with only the memories of her husband to sustain her a memories that were not happy or comforting. It did not look as though Tlalli had had much regard for her at all. It did not look as though she had ever been happy.

I had been such a fool to let her go without a word. I had been such a fool to abandon her.

I rose, came to stand at the heart of the courtyard. The buildings of the house shone under the light of the stars, white walls shimmering as if with heat, and once more I felt myself on the verge of vertigo. Once more the throbbing rose within me, the slow, secret rhythm linking the earth to the buildings, but this time I knew it to be the song of the corn as it slept in the earth. Pain sang in my bones and in my skin, and I knew it was the pain of a flayed woman, waiting for her skin of green maize-shoots to grow thick and strong.

I whispered Her name. "Xilonen." And Her other name, the one we seldom spoke: "Chicomecoatl." Seven Serpents, the earth that had to be watered with sweat and blood before it would put forth vegetation.

In my mind's eye I saw Her, coiled within the house, feeding the buildings with Her light. Gradually, She coalesced at the heart of the courtyard: a monstrous human shape with translucent skin the colour of ripe corn, with hollow eyes that swallowed the light and gave nothing back.

"Priest," She said, and Her voice, echoing around the walls, was amused. "You are clever."

"Not clever enough. I should have guessed that a curse that did not come from the underworld had to come from the heavens."

"Humans could have done this," Xilonen said, still amused. "But they did not."

"Why do you punish them? They did not cheat you of your sacrifice."

Xilonen smiled, an utterly inhuman expression. "Let the sins of the beloved father fall on the beloved son, and onto his beloved war-son, and the sins of the husband be taken up by the wife. I was cheated of My revenge."

So Tlalli had died a natural death after all. "And is there nothing they could offer, that would make you forget?"

Xilonen shook Her head. "They are Mine. They amuse me: Mazahuatl, that pathetic excuse for a warrior, refusing to acknowledge his bad luck on the battlefield. That arrogant, misguided mother who thinks they can fall no lower. Who thinks I have punished them enough, that I would not dare touch her son's prisoner. My son has enemies," She said, mimicking Huchimitl's voice with a chilling, contemptuous precision. "They have no enemies but Me. And you think to bargain for either of them, priest? You serve no one."

"I serve Mictlantecuhtli, God of the Dead," I said, drawing myself to my full height.

The goddess recoiled at the mention of Mictlantecuhtli, He in Whose country nothing grows. I pressed my slim advantage.

"There are rules, and rituals."

"They offered Me a tainted sacrifice." Xilonen was growling like a jaguar about to pounce. "They cheated Me of my proper offerings. And you dare bargain for them?"

"There is such a thing as forgiveness. Such a thing as ignorance."

"Ignorance is not innocence. I will not be cheated, priest, whether knowingly or unknowingly." Her head, arched back, touched the sky; Her feet were rooted in the earth of the courtyard. She was utterly beyond me: wild, savage, cruel. She could have crushed me with a thought, had I not belonged to a god She had no mastery over.

It had been a long time since my days in calmecac, a long time since I had learnt the hymns for every one of our gods and goddesses. I searched through my faltering memories, and finally said,

"I will offer You sheathes of corn taken from the Divine Fields Lady of the Emerald Ears of maize, freshly cut, green and tender I will anoint You with new plumes, new chalks The hearts of two deer The blood of eagles a "

Xilonen was crouching at the heart of the courtyard, watching me, but Her face had taken on an almost dreamy expression.

I went on,

"Let me fill Your hands with snake fangs With white flowers still in the bud Turquoise mined from the depths Goddess of the Barrel Cactus Our Mother Our Protector."

She was smiling at me now, the contented smile of a child. I was not fooled. There is a reason for all those rituals, for all those hymns. They know what things are pleasing to the gods, what things will appease Them. But it had been a great wrong Tlalli and Yoltzin had dealt Xilonen; and still She had quickened the seeds; still She had made the corn grow. She felt entitled to some compensation.

"Will You bargain with me, Lady?" I asked, kneeling before her in the dirt.

Her smile widened a though I could barely see Her, I could feel Her amusement quivering in the air. "You are tenacious, priest a and not unattractive."

To Chicomecoatl, who was also Xilonen, we gave the hearts of beautiful girls and boys, that they might forever serve Her in heaven. "Is that the price?" I asked.

She smiled. "It is tempting, priest. But not enough."

"What else would you want?" I asked. "I have nothing else to give but myself."

"I know that," She said, reaching out with Her gigantic hand. It shrank as it came near me, until it was only twice the size of mine. She cupped my chin in Her palm, and raised my face to look into Hers. Her touch was warm, slightly moist, like the earth after the rains. Her eyes held the depths of the night.

I held on to my memories of Huchimitl, to what she had meant, and still meant, to me. For too long, I had preserved myself; for too long, I had denied my feelings for her. Now was the time for a true sacrifice. "Is that the price?" I asked again, through lips that seemed to have turned to stone.

Xilonen's smile was that of a jaguar given human flesh. "Such a beauty," She whispered. I saw myself in Her eyes, as I had been in my youth, tall and beautiful and arrogant, and then as I was now, older and greyer, kneeling before Her in abject obedience. "Yes," She said. "It is most satisfactory."

My skin started itching, as if sloughing away, and then the tingling sensation became stronger and stronger, and I realised what I felt were hands, stroking my back, my chest, the nape of my neck; lips, slowly caressing my fingertips and earlobes until my whole body ached with a desperate need. It was not an unpleasant feeling; although some part of me, clamouring at the back of my mind, knew that it was not natural, that I had just sold myself away.

"Acatl? No!"