I said good-bye only to Tirípetsi and Grandmother, not to any of the other women, lest they try to detain me. I could not now take the child with me, because of where I was going, and I knew she would be lovingly cared for by all her aunts and cousins of the islands. At dawn, I put on the elegant skin mantle Ixínatsi had made for me, and I took my sack of pearls, and I went to the southern end of the island, where my acáli had waited all this time, stocked with the provisions put into it by Ixínatsi, and I pushed off and paddled eastward.
So The Islands of the Women are still The Islands of the Women, though I trust they are now a more convivial place by night. And any Yakóreke fishermen who visited after my time could have had no cause to resent my having been there. Those who may have come immediately after me could hardly have sired any children—surely every possible mother-to-be was already on her way to being one—but the men must have been so riotously welcomed and overwhelmingly entertained that they would have been ingrates indeed if they complained about a mysterious outlander's having preceded them.
But I thought, and I hoped, as I went away, that perhaps I would not be gone forever. Someday, when I had finished doing what I must do, and if I survived the doing of it... someday, when Tirípetsi had grown to be the image of her mother, the only woman I ever truly loved... someday toward the end of my days...
XXVII
My heart was so heavy and my thoughts so melancholy that I felt no alarm, scarcely even noticed, when the islands sank out of sight behind me and I was again alone on the fearsomely empty open sea. What I was thinking was this:
"It seems that I somehow confer a curse upon all the women toward whom I feel love or even affection. The gods cruelly take them away, and cruelly leave me alive, to live with regret and grief."
And this: "But ayya, when I bemoan my bereavement, I am being callously selfish, because what happened to Ixínatsi and Pakápeti and Citláli was so much worse. They lost the whole world and all their tomorrows."
And this: "Ever since childhood, my cousin Améyatl and I have been merely fond of one another, yet she nearly died of imprisonment and degradation."
And this: "The little mulata girl Rebeca and I considered one another only an experiment. But, when she went from my arms into a convent's suffocating confinement, she too could be said to have lost the world and all her tomorrows."
Thus it was that, then and there, I made a decision. I would live the kind of life, from now on, that would be most prudent—and most considerate of every woman remaining in The One World. I would never again let myself be lured into love of any of them, or let any of them love me. For myself, the remembrances of the idyll I had shared with Cricket would sustain me for the rest of my days. For the women, I would be doing a mercy, not endangering them with whatever was the curse I carried with me.
If, when I got ashore at Yakóreke and walked north to Aztlan, I should find the city still intact and Améyatl still ruling there, I would decline her suggestion that we wed and reign side by side. Henceforth, I would devote myself entirely to the war I had instigated, and to the extermination or expulsion of the white men. I would let no woman, ever again, into my heart, my life. If and when my physical needs got overwhelmingly urgent, I could always find some female to use, but that would be all she would mean to me—a handy yet disposable receptacle. I would never love again; I would never be loved again.
And in all the time since I swore that vow to myself in the vast expanses of the Western Sea, I have kept steadfast to that oath. Or I did until I found you, querida Verónica. But again I get ahead of my chronicle.
While I thought those thoughts, I was occupied with something else as well. I cut small slits in the inner skin of the sea-cuguar mantle Cricket had made for me—sixty-five slits—and in each of them secreted one of the pearls I carried, and sewed them invisibly there, using the bone hook and fishing line Cricket had provided. What with my preoccupation of mind and hands, I was often neglecting to paddle as steadily as I had been instructed, and forgetful of the fact that the sea's current was carrying my acáli farther southward than I should have let it do.
In consequence, when at last the mainland came into view on the eastern horizon, I saw there no Yakóreke or any other village. Well, small matter. At least I was back on the solid ground of The One World, and I did not much mind having a longer journey to make along the coast to Aztlan. As I neared the shore, I saw a beach on which several rough-clad men of my own complexion were busily engaged at some employment I could not make out, so I steered my craft toward them. When I got closer, I could see that they were fishermen, mending their nets. They all dropped their work to watch me wade and drag my acáli up onto the sand among their own acáltin, but they did not seem overly surprised at seeing a rather luxuriously mantled stranger suddenly appear out of nowhere.
When I called "Mixpantzínco!" to them and they replied with "Ximopanólti!" I was relieved to hear them speak Náhuatl. It meant that I was still somewhere in the Aztéca regions, and had not drifted into totally unfamiliar lands.
I introduced myself only as "Tenamáxtli," without elaboration, but one of the men was uncommonly acute and well informed for a mere fisherman. He asked:
"Would you be that same Tenamáxtli who is cousin to Améyatzin, the lady of Aztlan who once was wed to the late lord Káuritzin of our own Yakóreke?"
"I am he," I admitted. "So you are men of Yakóreke?"
"Yes, and rumor reached us long ago that you are traveling over all The One World on some mission in behalf of that lady and our late lord."
"In behalf of all our peoples," I said. "You will soon hear more than rumors. But tell me. What are you doing here? I know not where I have landed, exactly, but I know it is south of the Yakóreke fishing grounds."
"Ayya, there were too many of us crowding the waters there. So we few wandered hither to try our fortunes and—ayyo!—found abundant nettings and a new market for them. We supply the white residents of the town they call Compostela, and they pay handsomely. It is yonder"—he pointed due east—"only a few one-long-runs."
I realized that I had veered farther off course than I had supposed. I was uncomfortably close to those same Spaniards from whom I had escaped. But all I said to the fishermen was, "Do you not worry that you will be snatched into slavery when you go there?"
"For a wonder, no, Tenamáxtli. The soldiers have lately ceased to exert themselves to impound slaves. And the man called the gobernador seems even to have lost interest in grubbing silver from the earth. He is busy equipping his soldiers—and gathering others from other places—in preparation for some grand expedition to the northward. As best we can discover, he is not marching against Yakóreke or Tépiz or Aztlan or any other of our communities still free of subjugation. It will not be an expedition of raiding or conquering or occupying. But whatever he is planning, it has caused a fever of excitement in the town. The gobernador has even relinquished the governing of Compostela to a man called an obispo, and that one seems leniently disposed toward us unwhite persons. We are let freely to come and go and peddle our fish and set our own prices."
Well, this was interesting news. The expedition certainly must have something to do with those mythical rich Cities of Antilia. And the bishop had to be my old acquaintance Vasco de Quiroga. I was meditating on how to turn these matters to my advantage, when the fisherman spoke again: