As I went to examine it his father joined me. “What’s the matter?”
“Take a look at this.” Handing him the thigh bone Snake had found, I knelt down and began raking through the ashes.
“It doesn’t look as badly burned as the others.”
“No,” I agreed. My fingers closed around something hard and jagged. “Nor does this,” I added as I pulled it free and stood up.
“Hey,” Buck protested, “that’s not fair! I might have found that!”
“Shut up,” his father snapped.
“That’s another jawbone, isn’t it?” observed Snake. “How come it’s so much smaller than the first one I found?”
“Because it’s a child’s,” I told him, “and so is that thighbone your father’s holding. I think it might be a good idea if we all had another look at the little collections you two have made, don’t you? Let’s see exactly what you’ve got.”
We sorted the bones out. The process of turning their heaps into skeletons enthralled the boys far more than their contest had, and in no time we had assembled three incomplete specimens.
“This must be a tibia, so it goes here …” Snake was saying, placing the bone as precisely as a feather-worker gluing a plume onto a ceremonial shield. “Father, have you noticed both the small skulls are broken?”
His father stood next to me. “What do you make of all this?”
I looked at the bones. Two of the reconstructed skeletons werenoticeably smaller than the third. “A man or woman and two children. What’s odd is that the adult’s bones look more badly burned than the children’s. And your son’s right-his skull, her skull’s in one piece and theirs aren’t. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know. I wonder how the place got set on fire. It must have been pretty quick, to get all three of them. A spark from the hearth catching the thatch, maybe?”
“Maybe.” I began pacing around the perimeter of the demolished house. What had been the interior had been churned and trampled by boys looking for bones, but some of the soil and ash outside was relatively untouched, except at the back around the rubbish heap. I scanned the ground around my feet, hoping it still held some clue to what had happened, although I had no idea what I was looking for until I found it.
“I suppose the roof would have caved in,” Handy was saying, “and maybe it caught them all unawares, but that still doesn’t explain why the children’s bones are almost white.”
There was something half buried in the earth, near where the doorway would have been: a flash of bright color among the grays, blacks and browns around me. I dropped on one knee to get a closer look.
“And then again, where … Yaotl? What have you found?”
I scraped the ash off the thing and lifted it carefully, holding it between finger and thumb as if it were a venomous insect. It was made of leather, dyed yellow, slightly charred at one end and badly frayed at the other, and large; oversized, in fact.
I showed it to Handy. “A sandal strap.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “I doubt if many people from around here own a pair of sandals. It doesn’t tell us what happened, though.”
I had already worked out whom the sandal must belong to, and it was as much as I could do not to turn and run down to the lake and all the way along the causeway back to Tenochtitlan.
“It gives us a pretty good idea.” I looked nervously up and down the hillside once more. “This fire wasn’t an accident. And whoever left this strap wasn’t making a social call. We’d better think about getting out of here-the sooner the better.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then look at this strap again.” I waved it in front of him, scatteringflakes of soot. “It’s too big for any sandal you or I are ever likely to wear. Ask yourself who wears sandals with big, floppy straps. Remember the Shorn One we saw on the causeway this morning?”
“The Shorn One,” Handy said dreamily. “They’re the greatest warriors in the army, you know, along with the Otomies.” Abruptly he seemed to wake up. He stared at me with his mouth hanging open in astonishment. “No, wait, you can’t mean …”
His expression hardened as he added, in a dangerous voice: “Yaotl, just what were you expecting to find here?”
I had been dreading this moment. As quickly as I could, and keeping my voice low so that the boys could not hear me, I told him what my brother had told me, adding the story of my abduction and the bird and Costly’s suggestion for good measure. “So you see,” I concluded lamely, “I was hoping to see a sorcerer, really I was, it’s just that I thought something might have happened to him.”
“And now you’ve got us involved with the army! You idiot!”
“Keep your voice down-do you want the boys to hear?”
“Why do you think I’m so angry? What am I going to say to their mother, have you thought of that?”
“I did tell you not to bring them.”
Handy’s answer to that was a furious growl and a stamp of his foot which showered ash over us both. “I knew you were bloody trouble as soon as I set eyes on you,” he muttered. “So what happens now? You reckon they’ll be back?”
“How do I know?” I could almost see the column pounding up the hill after us, the wind ruffling their feathered shields and tunics as they ran, their swords’ obsidian blades glittering in the sunlight, their teeth bared like a hunting animal’s. “I think we should get out of here as soon as we can.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, we’re off as soon as I’ve found our lunch bag. You needn’t think we’re sharing it with you! Buck! Snake! Which of you had the food?”
“He did,” said Buck without looking up from his work.
“Snake?”
“I left it over there,” the younger boy said casually, “under one of those maguey plants, near where Yaotl’s standing now.”
Automatically I peered into the shadow cast by the nearest plant and those on either side of it. “Are you sure? I can’t see it here.”
Handy swore. “I don’t believe this! I tell you boys to do a simple thing …”
“But it was there!” Snake’s voice was an outraged squeal. “I put it there when you went up the hill!”
I stepped over to the row of plants and stood on the edge of the little bank of earth above them. “It’s probably just fallen over into the field below us,” I said, pulling two broad glistening leaves apart and peering into the space between them.
Two round pale eyes stared back at me.
Startled, I stepped back, letting the leaves flop back into place to cover the eyes again. Then I recovered myself, plunging into the foliage once more just as the owner of the eyes began to move. Dropping Handy’s bag, he scuttled along the edge of the field, keeping his head down level with the top of the bank.
“Thief!” I yelled. “There he goes! Catch him!”
The boys liked a live quarry even better than old bones. They exploded out of the wrecked house in a shower of dust and ash and hurled themselves straight at the bank, diving over it to emerge just in front of their prey.
Confused by their joyful cries, he stumbled to a halt. He might have got away if he had turned and fled straight down the hill immediately, since for a moment Buck and Snake were as surprised and disoriented as he was. He left it just too late, though, and even as he was turning to run Handy appeared at the top of the bank, roaring like a bear, and threw himself on him.
“Got you! And if you’ve eaten all our tortillas …”
His captive said nothing, although since the big man was lying across his chest this was not surprising.
I let myself gingerly down the slope and picked up the bag. “I think it’s all here,” I said. “Let’s go!”
Handy began to get up, although he kept one knee on the would-be thief to pin him down. “I want a quick look at this one first.”
Then a strange expression came over the big man’s face. As he looked down at the child he had caught-and he was just that, I realized, no more than nine or ten years old-Handy’s eyes and mouth opened wide, while at his sides his fists clenched and unclenched in a gesture of indecision. He did not seem to know whether to fight or run.