Aztec

But I regret to report that I was not yet done with making blunders, or of being desolated by new revelations. At one point I asked, "Does your mother tend the i

"Our mother is dead," she interrupted, her face going momentarily bleak.

"What?" I exclaimed. "When? How?"

"More than a year ago. In this very hut, for she could not well pass her confinement at the hostel among the guests."

"Confinement?"

"While she waited for the baby's arrival."

I said weakly, "She had a baby?"

Zyanya regarded me with some concern. "The physician said you are not to trouble your mind. I will tell you everything when you are stronger."

"May the gods damn me to Mictlan!" I erupted, with more vigor than I would have thought I could summon. "It must be my baby, must it not?"

"Well..." she said, and drew a deep breath. "You were the only man with whom she had lain since our father died. I am sure she knew how to take the proper precautions. Because, when I was born, she suffered extremely, and the doctor warned her that I must be the last child. Hence my name. But so many years had passed... she must have believed she was past the age of conceiving. Anyway"—Zyanya twisted her fingers together—"yes, she was pregnant by a Mexícatl outlander, and you know the Cloud People's feeling about such relations. She would not ask to be attended by a physician or midwife of the Ben Záa."

"She died of neglect?" I demanded. "Because your stiff-necked people refused to assist—?"

"They might have refused, I do not know, but she did not ask. A young Mexícatl traveler had been staying at the i

"What help, if she died?" I said, silently cursing the meddler.

Zyanya shrugged in resignation. "She had been warned of the danger. It was a long labor and a difficult birth. There was a great deal of blood and, while the man tried to stanch the bleeding, the baby strangled in its navel string."

"Both dead?" I cried.

"I am sorry. You insisted on knowing. I hope I have not given you cause for a relapse."

I swore again, "To Mictlan with me! The child... what was it?"

"A boy. She pla

"A boy. My son," I said, gritting my teeth.

"Please try to be calm, Záa," she said, addressing me for the first time with warm familiarity. She added, compassionately, "There is no one to blame. I doubt that any of our doctors could have done better than the kindly stranger. As I say, there was much blood. We cleaned the hut, but some traces were indelible. See?"

She swung aside the doorway's cloth curtain to admit a shaft of light. It showed, on the wooden doorpost, the ingrained stain where a man had slapped it to leave his signature of a bloody hand.

I did not suffer a relapse. I continued to mend, my brain gradually clearing of its cobwebs and my body regaining its weight and strength. Béu Ribé and Zyanya continued to wait upon me alternately, and of course I was careful nevermore to say anything to either of them that could be construed as paying court. Indeed, I marveled at their tolerance in having taken me in at all, and in lavishing so much care upon me, considering that I had been the primary cause of their mother's untimely death. As for my entertaining any hope of wi

The day came when I felt well enough to be on my way. The physician examined me and pronounced my pupils again normal in size. But he insisted that I give my eyes some time to get used to full daylight again, and that I do so by going outdoors only a little longer each day. Béu Ribé suggested that I would be more comfortable if I passed that time of adjustment at the i

It was not hard to see why the i

"Where did you get those blouses?" I asked the sisters, out of the hearing of the other tradesmen and travelers.

"In the market," said Béu Ribé "But they were plain white when we bought them. We did the decoration ourselves."

The decoration consisted of a pattern bordering the blouses' bottom hems and square-cut necklines. It was what we called the pottery pattern—what I have heard some of your Spanish architects, with a seeming amazement of recognition, call the Greek fret pattern, though I do not know what a Greek fret is. And that decoration was done not in embroidery thread, but in painted-on color, and the color was a rich, deep, vibrant purple.

I asked, "Where did you get the color to do it with?"

"Ah, that," said Zyanya. "It is nice, is it not? Among our mother's effects we found a small leather flask of a dye of this color. It was given to her by our father, shortly before he disappeared. There was only enough of the dye to do these two blouses, and we could think of no other use for it." She hesitated, looked slightly chagrined, and said, "Do you think we did wrong, Záa, in appropriating it for a frivolity?"

I said, "By no means. All things beautiful should be reserved only to persons of beauty. But tell me, have you yet washed those blouses?"

The girls looked puzzled. "Why, yes, several times."

"The color does not run, then. And it does not fade."

"No, it is a very good dye," said Béu Ribé, and then she told me what I had been delicately prying to find out. "It is why we lost our father. He went to the place which is the source of this color, to buy a great quantity of it, and make a fortune from it, and he never came back."