“Maybe we should head over to Finch’s party,” Marla said. “It’s getting to be that time.”
“Yeah,” Rondeau said. “Let’s hope we don’t run into any more birds along the way.”
As they walked through the parking garage, Marla saw a shadow near one of the ramps to an upper level. She stopped, blinked, whispered a spell to turn on her night-eyes, and looked again. There was a man, not very tall, slim, holding a cane. He wore something like a top hat, but it was vaguely furry, and he was looking straight at her, probably thinking himself safely hidden in shadow. “Beaver hat,” she muttered. “Who was it who said something about a beaver hat?”
“What are you talking about?” Rondeau said, stepping toward her, briefly passing between her and the man. When his next step carried him out of her line of sight, the man was gone. Marla cursed—though her profanities were less destructive than Rondeau’s, they were more heartfelt.
“Somebody was watching us, a little guy with a cane, wearing a fur hat.”
“Huh,” Rondeau said. “Should we worry?”
“I don’t have time to worry about crap like this,” Marla said. “I’ve got enough problems already.”
“Probably just another spy,” Rondeau said. “If he gets close again, we grab him. Otherwise, as long as he just watches, who cares? It’s not like you’re planning to be stealthy, right?”
“Yeah. It just irks me, being followed.”
“Every time a strange sorcerer passes through Felport, you have them followed,” Rondeau pointed out.
Marla glared at him for a moment, then strode off, out of the parking garage.
As they were walking back across the park, Rondeau’s phone rang. Marla took it out of her bag, flipped it open, and put it to her ear. “Speak.”
“I found out about your frog-monster,” Hamil said. “An Aztec deity, though ‘primordial earth-monster’ might be a better term, called Tlaltecuhtli.”
“I won’t be able to pronounce that without practice,” Marla said. “I’ll just call him Mr. Toad if I run into him.”
“Let’s hope you don’t,” Hamil said. “I hope it’s just a monster from myth, without any basis in reality.”
“Give me the vitals,” Marla said, pausing in the shadow of the giant chair.
“Often described as female, though that’s not entirely consistent, she was one of the first gods, a giant froglike creature with mouths on her elbows, knees, and—ominously—‘other joints.’ She had a taste for meat of all kinds. While the other gods were trying to create the world, Tlaltecuhtli was merrily devouring what they made, which finally drove Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl to kill her. They ripped her in two, and her upper body became the Earth, while her lower half became the heavens.”
“Big girl,” Marla said.
“Some of the myth is quite poetic,” Hamil said. “Tlaltecuhtli’s body became the basis for most geography and all plant life—trees and flowers come from her hair and skin, the contours of mountain ranges follow the shape of her face, her eyes are the source of wells and springs, while her mouth is the beginning of all the great rivers. All the deepest caverns of the world lead inside her body.”
“Pretty,” Marla said.
“Except for the part where she still craves meat and sacrificial blood, or else she withholds the fruits of the Earth, causes natural disasters, etc.,” Hamil said. “You know how the Aztecs were—any excuse to spill blood. They used to offer Tlaltecuhtli fruit sprinkled with the stuff. She was the dark side of an Earth goddess—her image was usually carved on the bottom of statues, where the carving could make contact with soil. She has other qualities, more ambiguous. Her mouth is sometimes described as the gateway to the underworld, and I found one depiction of her disgorging the souls of dead warriors in the shape of butterflies and hummingbirds.”
Everything went crystalline in Marla’s mind. “Hummingbirds?”
“Yes. I don’t know how much you know about Aztecs—”
“Just what I’ve read in bad horror novels,” Marla said. That wasn’t quite true—she knew a bit about some of their artifacts, and had a general impression of them as bloody-minded heart-eaters, at least among the ruling class—but their myths were more or less unfamiliar to her.
“Ah. Well, apart from the fact that they sacrificed something on the order of twenty thousand people a year, with the limbs and hearts of victims providing the main source of meat for the ruling class, they had quite a sophisticated theology. They believed that blood was the true source of life, and that only blood sacrifices could appease the gods and, thus, keep the universe running smoothly. They called the life force teyolia, and thought it most potent when extracted from those whose hearts were filled with fear.”