Epigraph – A Sacred Son for the Masked Bull of the Dead
Xayacatltecuani sings:
Tum, tum, tum—el suelo llora,
al compás del muerto sol.
No relincha, no respira,
su jade ruge el tambor.
Fémur tenso, piel ausente,
cada paso, un funeral,
cada nota, un juramento,
cada zancada, un final.
No me sigas, flor dormida,
no me mires, colibrí—
que si escuchas esta danza,
ya estás muerto para mí.
Tum, tum, tum—el son resuena,
no en la tierra, sino en mí,
y si mi reina ya te nombra,
ven, camina junto a mí.
La Danza de la Reina del Silencio
First, there was rhythm.
Not from drums, but from hooves—four, then none, then everywhere at once.
A rattling—not like chains, but like marigolds in the wind.
The serpent-body slithered unseen, but the wings brushed the soul.
Six sets of vulture wings—feathers like blades—cut through sound until all that remained was silence.
Echequitzli had arrived.
The bull-skull stared ahead with obsidian calm,
the jade hooves never touching earth—
for the earth itself recoiled.
Upon its back, Mictecacihuatl did not ride—she danced.
A dance that flickered, flame-like—
never quite there, always just at the edge of your vision.
Turn, and she vanishes.
Blink, and she is behind you.
Her steps echoed old Son, but no strings played.
Only the flute-tail, trailing behind like a serpent of breath,
sang her cempoalxōchitl verses to the wind.
And in that moment, they understood:
This was not the end.
This was the offer.
Just one kiss—
to stay by her side.
A kiss of ash and silence,
given freely,
taken completely.
---
The Garden Under the Moon
The crescendo burned like copal smoke in the lungs of the world.
Echequitzli reared—not violently, but ceremonially—letting the bone-flute tail exhale one final sigh into the silver-lit void. Six wings folded in unison. The serpent-body slowed. The bull-skull bowed.
And then—silence.
The kind that has weight.
The kind that holds judgment.
Echequitzli stepped forward.
The beach below them was not sand, but fine-grained memory—glittering as though each grain were a name once spoken and now forgotten. The water lapped at their feet like a mother's hush. Overhead, the stars didn't twinkle. They watched.
And on the shoreline, she clapped.
Xarátenga—in robes of night-lily and riverlight, beneath the arch of a weeping moon. Her eyes sparkled not with mockery, but with warmth earned across aeons.
"It's always a pleasure, sister," Xarátenga smiled, her voice carrying like silk across obsidian waves.
"What brings you and your cempoalxōchitl to my garden under the moon?"
She stepped forward from the shadow of a twisted ceiba tree whose roots bent toward the stars, and whose leaves were shaped like tears. Around her feet, monarch butterflies spiraled in the air, forming quiet halos. Her companion, Quetzalmictli, exhaled from a still pool—his antlers faintly glowing with silver breath.
Mictecacihuatl did not speak.
She merely offered the silence like a blade.
"Hello, sister."
It was Ix Kame, standing within the shadow of a flowering yucca whose blossoms bled threads of red light. Her voice carried a tone sweet as venom.
"Did your show tire you out? Is that why you haven't said a word?"
Mictecacihuatl remained still, crown of marigolds undisturbed, her eyes glowing dimly above her skeletal smile.
"I didn't realize we were having a reunion today," she replied, voice steady, flat, cold as a tomb door.
"I came to carry on with the trial I have assigned."
From the space between them, Xarátenga chuckled softly, her hands still loosely clasped from her applause.
"They were tired," she said lightly, tracing a swirl in the sand with her toe.
"So they stopped to rest in my realm. Now that you're here…"
She tilted her head.
"You can carry on with your trial, dear sister."
There was no malice in her words, only deliberate ambiguity—the kind that lets roots curl beneath you before you realize they've coiled around your ankles.
Mictecacihuatl said nothing at first. She turned, the bones of her jaw creaking like dry branches. Her gaze fell upon the ahuizotl, still crouched in wary silence.
Her voice dropped lower than before, a near whisper—but every soul heard it clearly.
"I couldn't help but overhear," she said,
"that you don't have a name."
"Don't worry, little one."
Her green-painted face tilted like the mask of a weeping doll.
"I remember all the names of the dead."
"You will have your name… before you come to see me in my realm.
As one of the souls belonging to me."
The ahuizotl stepped forward, his gilled head lowered—not in shame, but in reverence.
"What must I do," he asked, "to earn my name?"
Mictecacihuatl tilted her head, and then she laughed.
It wasn't cruel.
It wasn't joyful.
It was a laugh like a haunting medley, woven from bone flutes and funeral drums.
It was the laugh of judgment, the tone of inevitability.
"All things have a name," she said.
"Sometimes… they just haven't been discovered."
Ix Kame's smile stretched like a knife pressed flat.
"Little one," she said mockingly.
"If a name you so desire, I'll grant you one—magnanimously, if I say so myself."
She circled him.
"Now… it should be something with *Yax*, yes?"
"You were born from the sacred cenote after all—water and stone, blood and bloom."
"Or maybe… something that comes from your very nature itself. Let's see. You where bound to the realm…"
She paused, then smirked.
"Ajpakal Kame. The one who binds the dead."
"Ajpakal Kame… Ajpakal… Kame…" he repeated his own name various times. At first in wonder and excitement, afterwards with pride. The tail with a hand on it swung back and forth in excitement and merriment.
Mictecacihuatl stepped forward.
"That name is not yours to give."
Ajpakal Kame's ears drooped down at hearing that his name might be taken from him.
"Oh? Then whose is it?"
"He is born from Tlaloc's wrath. That makes him mine."
"He was born in a cenote. That makes him mine," Ix Kame snapped.
"That land belongs to neither of you," Xarátenga interrupted, voice calm but firm. "That is Chaak's domain… or Bolon Dzacab's, depending on the tongue you speak."
She looked at the ahuizotl. "Why not name him together?"
Ajpakal' tail started wagging again in excitement
And as if spoken from three mouths at once, the name emerged:
"Kamelotl."