The Demon of the Air

2

According to the old slave, Costly, Crocodile’s village lay just outside Coyoacan. Skirting the town itself, we found ourselves walking up a gentle slope, between narrow fields edged with tough, fleshy, broad-leaved maguey plants. The maguey had been planted in rows running across the hillside and their robust leaves and strong roots shored up the earth above them to form shallow terraces. Scattered among the fields were thatched huts made of mud bricks.

“Not much happening,” Handy said to me.

I glanced warily up toward the crest of the slope and down toward the town and the lake. “I can’t see anyone at all,” I said. “Should it be busy at this time of year?”

“It’s always busy,” the big commoner assured me. “You should try some honest toil in the fields! Look over there-there are some winter squashes they haven’t got in yet. They’ll lose them if they don’t get a move on.”

The fat vegetables lay, apparently neglected, among their tangled foliage. Just beyond them was a low, dark mound that I took to be earth until I saw a dark plume lifting from its surface in the breeze, and recognized the blackened and pulverized remains of mud bricks embedded in its surface.

Despite the Sun’s warmth on my back I felt a sudden chill.

“What happened here?” I asked slowly.

The big commoner’s brow creased in an expression of concern as he looked at the heap of ash. “It probably belonged to whoever was growing those squashes. I expect someone kicked over a hearthstone and the Old, Old God took offense and burned the place down.”

I laughed nervously. “I hope it wasn’t Crocodile’s.”

“Me too, after coming all this way. We’d better have a lookaround. Maybe we can find someone to tell us where this sorcerer lives.” He raised his voice to call his sons to order, but they took no notice. They were busy bickering and pushing each other about.

“I’ve carried this bag for long enough,” Buck snapped at his brother. “Now it’s your turn. Go on, pick it up!”

Snake replied by aiming a sly kick at his brother’s leg and then, very prudently, running away. I could not help smiling as I watched him go. He was the younger and, I suspected, the smarter of the pair, and he had my sympathy for that. I had been a little bit like him once.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with those boys,” Handy grumbled. “The sooner at least one of them gets some manners beaten into him by a Master of Youths, the better.”

“Leave them to it,” I said. “Let’s find our man and get it over with.”

“All right. You two!” he called. “We’re going up the hill. Mind you look after that bag or we’ll all go hungry!”

I kept looking over my shoulder as we climbed the slope toward the nearest house, as if I expected to see someone following us, but apart from the two boys chasing each other between the rows of maguey plants there was nobody in sight.

The house was a shabby affair of crumbling mud bricks and moldy thatch, with a soiled cloth screen in the doorway that flapped listlessly in the breeze because no one had bothered to secure it at the bottom. The back and sides were surrounded by trash: shattered plates, maize husks, chipped obsidian knife blades, gnawed bones, a broken turkey pen. At the front squatted an old woman, her face tanned by a lifetime in the fields to a leather mask that gave nothing away as she watched us walking up the hill.

“Crocodile? Never heard of him.”

Handy looked at me. I looked away, in case the sense of foreboding I felt showed on my face.

“You must have,” the commoner said. “He’s a sorcerer. He lives here.”

“There are no sorcerers here,” the old woman snapped. “Never have been. You got the wrong village. Go away.”

Handy took a step backward, repelled by her sheer hostility. “What’s going on here, Yaotl?”

I shot a nervous glance at the heap of ash down the hill behind us.Was it my imagination, or had something disturbed it? The plume I had seen earlier had become a large black cloud that hid the ruin itself. My stomach lurched as I realized there was no sign of either of the boys.

I turned back to the old woman. “Who lived in that house?”

The leather mask stayed fixed in place. Only her eyes responded to my question. They blinked once.

She hesitated for what seemed like ages before saying, slowly and quietly but distinctly, “I can’t remember.”

Handy and I stared at each other. We both opened our mouths to speak at the same time, but shut them again when we heard a sharp, shrill cry from the hillside below us.

“Father!”