Chapter 11: Black Chlorophyll

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Author’s Note: Just as I continue to release Hall of Mirrors, we are now seeing also some Mesoamerican themes rise to world-wide visibility thanks to the new version of Namor that will be featured in Marvel’s upcoming film Wakanda Forever. I reacted to the trailer this week in a TikTok you can watch here After all, I am sharing space with other writers and designers who tell stories about Mesoamerican myth and art. Don't forget that you can chat with me about Hall of Mirrors inside my Discord server.

-Cesar Torres
Chicago

Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres
Copyright @ 2022 Cesar Torres. All Rights Reserved.

Hall of Mirrors by Cesar Torres

CHAPTER 11: BLACK CHLOROPHYLL

NESTOR BUÑUEL

Nestor carried Puttock with hardly any effort. The decades he spent weightlifting had some payoffs. As he approached the building, he also began to understand its shape and form. This was no skyscraper from Manhattan, Dubai or Chicago. The structure was awe-inspiring — more daring in its design, and also more terrifying in its execution.

What he was staring at was a vast pyramid, black as night, with a wide base, steep incline and narrow peak, foreboding and high as the sky. Nothing about it inspired confidence, but he had no choice to move forward, because the forest behind him seemed even less welcoming than this.

It took him a moment to adjust his thinking. Just moments ago, he had been wrestling with Puttock in a federal prison. But this landscape was not upper New York state. It was a place where there was absolutely no sun, no stars, no light. But he was able to move corporeally, as if the world of dreams had swapped itself with the waking world.

A shadow crept into his thoughts, and it spoke a name. It was a name Felix had taught Nestor very well, but even now, Nestor was afraid to even think of that name.

Mictlán.

Nestor drank in all the details of this massive building using his nose, skin, ears and even tiny bits of information that landed on his tongue. There were twin stairways on the front of this behemoth. And so much ornamentation: abstract and vegetal shapes combined, making swirls, right angles and patterns that defied logic. As the building came into sharper relief, Nestor gasped.

“I’ve seen this shape before,” Nestor said out loud. “It looks like Templo Mayor...”

“I need a doctor. Please,” Puttock said in between moans. The man needed help; Nestor could smell Puttock’s blood, which was seeping from a large cut. The smell was magnified to such a degree that it flooded his nostrils.

Nestor reached the first riser on the stairs of the pyramid. A wind current swept by, and it carried with it smells that didn’t seem to belong together: cedar, hot chocolate, moldy cheese, bananas and talcum powder. The scents roiled and whizzed by, carried by a breeze that felt both cool and hot. This short burst of wind also carried music with it—a soft melodic whisper.

“We see you,” the voice from the pyramid said. The words slithered through the dark, vanishing against the wide open sky.

“Please let us in,” Nestor said. “We need shelter and medicine.”

The uncanny breeze swept by again, this time carrying with it the smell of cinnamon, new car smell, petroleum and freshly baked bread. It took Nestor a moment to process what was happening, but he understood that this bouquet of smells, just like the one that came before it, was a greeting from the pyramid.

It was introducing itself.

“Before I climb all these stairs, can you please confirm that you’ll help us?” Nestor said.

The voice coming from the building let out a cackle, and its laughter sounded foreign, like the throaty roar of a toad.

“You can both pass,” the voice said. “But every visitor that enters here must bear a gift. Without a gift, you will be sent to Iztepetl.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Iztepetl is the mountain where thousands of glass needles will tear your flesh and shatter your bones.”

“Fuck,” Nestor said, shaking his head and letting out his own nervous laughter. He had a fear of heights. “Let’s go.”

Nestor took each step carefully, making sure not to look down. 

For a second, he went back to the idea that he was probably having some sort of dream. Maybe there indeed had been some sort of disaster at the prison, and it was altogether possible that he was hallucinating, all the while his body may be laid out on an ER bed or under rubble.

But in his heart, Nestor didn’t think that was the case.

The sound of his shoes clicking on the steps beneath him, the weight and density of his own flesh, the very real presence of Puttock on his shoulders like a meat backpack, felt as much a part of reality as what he experienced before this incident.

When Felix and Nestor had encountered the monster Tecolotl in the woods, the whole world had changed for Nestor. He had come to realize that reality, that thin membrane of lucidity and sensory data that allows humans to filter input in order to survive, held surprises that the human mind could not prepare for. Tecolot and his two burning pairs of eyes, and his voice, which rumbled like a synthesizer—had changed his life forever.

But Nestor had kept that knowledge secret between him and Felix, who had been more willing to believe.

Nestor knew that talking about ancient children of dead gods would only relegate both of them into the category of lunatics and Internet fringers. So he had learned to do something his mother and father taught him to do well—which was to keep a secret.

But there was a problem: Tecolotl wasn’t the single secret Nestor had to keep in his heart. The monster was only one node in a giant network of secrets, and it was hard to contain them all.

The stories of the Aztec myths that Felix had taught Nestor suggested that there were millions of more secrets, and if Tecolotl was proof of their existence, the implications made Nestor very uneasy.

From several hundred miles away, Nestor heard a sound that tore through the darkness. At first it sounded like a geyser bursting with hot steam, but amplified  a thousandfold. It hissed for what seemed like millennia, yet it also lasted just a few minutes, in a paradox of smell and time.

And using his unusually heightened senses, Nestor could almost visualize the shape of the thing making this sound. Its source was narrow, but long, and it pooled and dripped, as if made of liquid. It was embedded somehow into the ground.

From its location in the far distance, it let out another long hiss, and it emitted a series of short, staticky soundwaves that sounded like both guitar riffs and sandpaper.

Then it went silent for a few seconds.

Nestor felt the thing shift inside the ground.

And then it screeched. It screeched so loud that the earth rumbled beneath him. And even though there was no perceptible sky in the darkness before him, whatever had made that scream exploded into the air, and took off, flying fast and furiously, flapping velvet wings made of darkness and screaming as it sped off into the void. 

It had not been a geyser at all.

Nestor took a few more steps upward, and a chill ran from his head down to his toes. In the far-off distance, he heard soft flapping sounds.

He couldn’t fight off the knowledge in his heart anymore: Mictlán was real.

And as far he could tell, this could really be Mictlán.

The sounds that bounced off the surfaces of the pyramid revealed the textures of the building’s materials. The pyramid wasn’t made of stone, brick, mortar, or even clay. It was extremely firm under the soles of his feet as they took on each riser, yet it had a bit of give to it, a softness. In some places it even felt spongy.

Nestor wondered if these steps could crumble or give way underneath him. He was very high up on this stairway. At least 400 feet above the ground.

“The door is up here,” the voice said from above. From his vantage point, Nestor could sense and visualize the upper half of the building.

Nestor marveled at the way in which the architecture was a mirror image of Templo Mayor in Mexico City, a central temple that the empire had built to honor two deities: Huitzilopocthlit the Blue, steward of war and the sun; and Tlaloc, the god of rain. Each one of them had been honored with their own individual chambers at the top of Templo Mayor, and this version that existed in darkness, seemed identical.

Tears rolled down Nestor’s face as he marveled at the terror and beauty of the structure before him, and he felt the presence of living sculptures at its base. Up here, halfway the pyramid, the air was thin, and he felt lightheaded all of a sudden.

A bird circled the chamber at the very top. It let out a thin, reedy screech, and Nestor craned his neck up, even though he was blind. It was a barn owl, gigantic in size and unlike any barn owl on Earth. Its wingspan was easily forty feet across. It glided with soft, downy feathers, owning the sky. 

This was not the Tecolotl monster, but something similar to it. The Tecolotl had looked more like a great horned owl, and its body and feathers were made of smoke, including its sharp claws. This new beast had no talons. Instead, it had a pair human forearms and hands that it used as its claws. Each of those hands ended in nails that were sharp as razors, and long as a hacksaw. It also had a necklace of skulls as ornamentation around its neck. And its flesh as altogether new. The way sound bounced of the bird’s body, confirmed for Nestor that it was more firm than muscle and tissue. It’s as if it was made of something akin to porcelain. The owl circled the chamber endlessly, gliding on air currents, never having to flap its wings.

Nestor and Puttock were tiny compared to this flying beast, and that meant they were also easy prey.

Nestor panted, tasted his own sweat as it ran in rivulets down his face, and every molecule flooded his nostrils with smells. In that liquid he could taste and smell the actual essence of water, but also the salt loaded inside it, as well as several notes of sweet scents, emanating from the bacteria that lived on his skin and hair. He was just halfway up the building, and there were still about 500 more feet in the air to climb.

Nestor’s fear came flooding back. At this height, he couldn’t move any further up the staircase. He started to hyperventilate.

But he had made promises to his parents, to himself, and to Felix. Promises spoken, and promises he had made silently inside his head and heart, too. He took a deep breath and lifted his right foot, climbed one riser, switched to his left foot, then climbed the next one. There were hundreds of risers ahead, But he kept his head up, minding the owl with the human hands, as he rose up into the air, using the smells and sounds in the darkness to keep his journey stable and steady.

“I think my leg’s broken,” Puttock said. He moaned again, and muttered something incomprehensible under his breath.

“Sit tight,” Nestor said. “I’m getting us help.”

Nestor’s lstruggled to breathe the thin air. But as he started to climb the last quarter of the building, the atmosphere up near the top of the pyramid changed. It was now dense with new information: the smell of marigolds and roses also had something else in it, like lavender, and also an undercurrent of spice, like the bite of black pepper. It was altogether pleasant, but also overpowering, overwhelming. The smells of the woods had faded away, and the air had grown a lot cooler, so much in fact, that Nestor’s skin broke out in gooseflesh. It was very chilly up here.

For a few moments, the wind sang a forlorn song, and nothing else was heard.

Just about thirty more steps to go.

The flying monster had disappeared behind the pyramid for now, but it let out a series of clicks from inside its body, and they carried through the air into Nestor’s ears. These clicks carried information in them, just like the Tecolotl monster had carried knowledge inside its alien synth-like sounds, but this time, Nestor could not understand what these tiny pitter patter rhythms might mean. This creature’s body spoke a new language that Nestor didn’t understand.

He had lost count of how many steps he had climbed, but he knew he and Puttock were very high up in the air. Much too high.

Nestor wanted to give up. It was better to just take a break, to sit on the risers until his panic died down, but he knew that if he stopped climbing, he might never resume again.

As this thought nestled itself in his mind, a loud snap broke his concentration.  He stumbled sideways, and he almost missed a step. He lost his balance for a second, and his heart quickened. He and Puttock could plunge to their death in a single fall. But Nestor found solid footing in the next riser. The sound of beating wings and those infernal clicks rose all around him, and though he tried to focus his hearing, he had a time making a mental image of the thing that was making it.

The owl with hands was only getting closer, circling tighter each time, and its eyes deep pits of an even stricter darkness. Nestor knew owls could fly silently if they chose to, and he got the sense that this monster had chosen to make loud flapping noises to taunt and scare Nestor as he climbed.

Just fifteen more risers to go, and no end in sight for the pummeling of those wings in his eardrum. He bit down on his lips and pressed ahead. 

Ten more steps to go.

Just as he neared the landing at the top of on the right half of the building, a flute-like screech filled the air. Nestor could see the two chambers in full auditory and olfactory detail. Each of the shrines rose about 80 feet in the air, and each one featured a wide portal that functioned as a door at their base. The shrine tapered near the top, and it featured many geometrical shapes carved into its front and sides. The small crevices in these carvings gave off faint traces of music. Mournful polyphonic melodies and atonal weepings.

Nestor felt a thirst so deep that he thought he may faint if he didn’t get a drink of water soon, but the temple entranced him. 

Nestor stepped with his right foot onto the landing of the pyramid, and he felt hot tears of joy run down his cheeks. He had made it. But the joy faded in an instant. His ears and nose detected a danger that lay very close to where he stood.

From behind the temple, the owl monster rose in the air, flapping its wings, releasing a burst of energy that resembled black flames from its tips. It opened its beak wide, and its four eyes stayed hungry, unforgiving. 

“What the fuck is that thing?” Nestor screamed. The sound his throat released was sheer terror, primal, wet.

The owl’s eyes were unlike any eyes he had ever seen on a bird. Instead of circular orbs, this monster had four black cross-shaped incisions on its face. It looked as if someone had carved out its eyes with a sharp scalpel and left the wounds to heal in the shape of a cross. Inside each of the four holes, blackness spewed forth, a deeper blackness than Nestor had ever known.

 The bird flapped its wings and unfurled on of its human hands that substituted for legs. Each digit on those hands had a long talon, sharp as a steel blade, and the clicking sounds it made by bringing them together sounded like a turning fork. The skin on those hands young, supple, healthy. But the talons were caked with bits of dirt, blood, and even hair.

Around its neck hung a necklace featuring three skulls that looked frighteningly human. The monster flapped its wings with fury, and the energy it released emanated almost like light, except it black as the night sky. The creature swept itself up into the air, swooped back down, and it landed before Nestor, blocking the entrance of the temple.

“Not now,” Nestor said. “Please don’t do this to me now.”

The monster was easily as tall as Tecolotl, six to seven feet tall. The black crosses it had for eyes forgave nothing. The creature craned its head downward, to inspect Nestor and Puttock. As it did so, the perfume of dead bodies rolled down with it.

“Are you one of the great stars?” the creature said.

“I don’t know what you’re asking..”

“But are you one of the great stars?” it said.

“I’m just trying to get us some medical help,” Nestor said.

The creature whistled, and as it did so, its eye holes widened. The  cross-shaped slits almost became almost like circular pits, the way a camera shutter opens itself when snapping a shot. The edges of those slits showed black, wet flesh, like that of a moist mushroom. Copper and incense emanated from their depths.The effect was sickening, like watching a gaping wound flesh expand. The bird purred in a low, thrashing gravel-like texture.

“You shouldn’t be here, Nestor,” the bird said.

“You know me. My name.”

“Answer the question. Are you one of the great stars?”

Nestor had written about alien races so many times in his novels, practicing this moment with his own fictional characters when they met for the first time, and now he had a chance  to interact with an intelligence that he was pretty sure was completely unlike what was possible on Earth. He answered the way one of his clever characters would answer.

“Is one a lonely number?” Nestor said.

Riddle against riddle.

The monster took four steps backward when it heard this question. It tightened its wings around its body, and the necklace of skulls rattled, sending plumes of foul-smelling powder from their eye sockets. The creature’s four eyes narrowed back again to thin crosses, this time pencil thin, so imperceivable that the owl’s face now seemed as if it had no eyes at all. It cocked its head to the side, twisted it all the way around to 180 degrees, then returned it to a forward position. It remained silent, its eyeless face a mystery.

The bird was thinking. As it did so, its low murmuring music inside its body throbbed and warbled.

Answering the monster’s question with a question had worked, just like it had for Maria, the protagonist and heroine of Nestor’s longest book series Mutant Tactical. In fact, Nestor had stolen the question from Maria herself. She had asked it at a tribunal and bought herself some time before she was executed for religious heresy in her home galaxy.

The owl monster snarled, then began to circle Nestor, as if it were examining a found piece of treasure. It sniffed him with slits in its breast that looked like gills. They opened and closed. They too smelled of wet earth and death. But with each inhale, they drank in Nestor and Puttock’s essence.

“Is one a lonely number…?” the owl finally said out loud to itself, as it tried working out a solution. It paced up and down the platform, deep in thought. “No one, and I mean no one, has ever asked me that question.”

It flapped its wings and hovered ten feet up in the air, rubbing its human hands together, clicking the nails at the tips, ruminating.

“It’s a valid question,” Nestor said.

“The number one is extremely important, because by definition, it’s not the number two,” the birds said.

“I am not sure I follow,” Nestor said, playing the ingenue in order to buy himself more time. Something about this creature’s smell continued to trigger memories for Nestor: the smell of his mother’s Nivea face cream in the last year before her death; the musty smell of his grandfather’s house in summertime; and the tang of Marlene’s blood in the movie theater in which she had been murdered. If he could, he would cover up his nostrils, so he could stop the flow of memories that the bird’s smell triggered for him.

Puttock was getting heavy. And now that he had the bird’s attention, and he was safely on this platform at the top of the building, he felt the real weight of his human cargo. He had to rest, he had to put Puttock down, but he was scared to do so. If he let down his guard, no one knew what this monster would do to him.

“I’ll explain my logic,” the monster said. Its presence seemed almost impervious to Nestor’s existence, as if the bird inhabited a reality so different than that of humans that it was indifferent. 

The owl’s voice turned smooth, silky, unlike the harsh clicks that burst from its body earlier. “The number two governs this realm and defines the rest of the cosmos, but yet, the number one is the one I know best. That is a riddle in itself.” The bird dragged its human hands on the floor, so that the talons scraped along the landing of the stairs. The sound they made was intolerable, maddening.

The creature flapped its wings incessantly, bringing with them the scents of marigolds, rose and honey again.

“So is one a lonely number?” Nestor repeated.

“That’s a question I wish I could have asked my mother,” the monster said. “She’s dead now, so there’ no way we can ask.”

The monster flew up into the air about two hundred feet, then dove back down to the temple. It landed with a soft thud onto the platform and puffed up its feathers. From inside its body cavity, a hard growl emerged. It was the sound of a large predator snarling before unleashing violence. Nestor looked for a door that he could run to in the temple that lay just fifty feet beyond, but the monster blocked the path with its body.

“Sorry to hear about your mother,” Nestor said.

The monster laughed, and its cackles hissed and popped like fireworks. “I wish her a painful journey full of razor cuts, pustules of fire, and the despair of drowning.”

Nestor recoiled. Heat was starting to radiate from the owl.

“Her death is passing through us—all around us—right now,” the bird said.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“My mother was one of the Eldest Gods. She died and dies inside many wheels, and she will keep dying in the wheels for a long time. Death is timeless. As is life.”

Everything the monster said was nothing but a riddle, and Nestor was starting to feel the cold whip of the air up here. His legs were burning with exhaustion, and for a moment, this extreme darkness he was living in robbed him off all hope and courage. But he still had this creature’s attention, and just like he had done so all his life with rapists, con men, extortionists, murderers and thieves, he would use his interrogation techniques to gather the intelligence he needed. He had to trick this thing into letting him walk through, and into the building, where hopefully the person he heard would help him.

“Tell me…How can your mother still be dying?”

“She died in the past, she is dying now in the present, and she will keep dying in the future.”

“Would you mind telling me a story about her?” Nestor said.

“No one has ever asked me to do that,” the monster said. Its cruciform eye slits widened and became moist, like wet clay, and their smell changed. This time, they gave off notes of chamomile, mint, and even honey. “My mother ruled over the rivers, seas, streams and oceans of all realms, including your planet. And she helped every creature give birth. She was so powerful, in fact, that she helped this vast kingdom you see all around you flourish, even though she has never been here.”

“She sounds incredible.”

“I don’t understand that word.”

“Spectacular, amazing.”

“Those other two words mean nothing to me. She was my mother is all. I have no affection for her. Just hatred.”

Nestor nodded and gave a small grunt of acknowledgement. The monster seemed to respond well to it.

“Her flesh and her breath were made of a color so green, so lush, that nothing, not even the darkness of this kingdom, could stand up to it,” the monster said. “That green breath is a gift I certainly did not receive.”

“Perhaps then, one is a lonely number,” Nestor said.

The creature hissed, and screeched so loud that it left Nestor’s ears ringing. Puttock moaned in pain as well, even in his delirium.

“Her name was Chalchiutlicue,” the monster said. The name didn’t come out of its throat in human speech, but instead as a series of hisses and clicks. Yet, Nestor had understood it perfectly in his own brain. Chalchiutlicue.

He knew who that was. Felix back in Chicago had taught him. Chalchiutlicue had been the Aztecc goddess responsible for the Fourth Age of the cosmos. In the old myths, she had taken on the role of becoming the sun and providing sustenance for the universe. She had also been very much a protector of humans, whom she had liked very much. She had fought against the rain god Tlaloc, and she too, was another lady of snakes, like several of the other goddesses, including the colossal mother goddess Coatlicue. Chalchuihtlicue’s name meant Jade Skirt in Nahuatl. Nestor was surprised at how much he remembered from the the chats he and Felix had shared in the front room of the apartment, Nestor sipping a beer, and Felix staring off into space as he spoke about Mictlán and the celestial beings of the past.

Yet, nowhere in the legends Felix told had Chalchiuhtlicue’s death been mentioned. 

“I didn’t know Chalchiutlicue was mortal,” Nestor said.

“She’s not. But your mind is too small to understand what death means for one of the Elders,” the monster said.

“Perhaps,” Nestor said. “But I have heard the stories about your mother before.”

The monster’s head bobbed up in alert when it heard this. It took two steps toward Nestor, widening the gills in its breast, revealing a darkness as deep as outer space inside their depths. It was smelling Nestor even more deeply than before.

“You have a scent on you... the smell of someone who’s touched the Coil,” the monster said. “You are very close to a person has been here before.”

“I don’t think so,” Nestor said.

“He’s a male, just like you. His soul is wrapped in melancholy. That melancholy brought him here to the Coil for a few brief moments. He’s younger than you,” the monster said. “Like a sibling. But at this time, he is still weak.”

Nestor felt a chill run down his spine.

Felix.

Felix had tried to commit suicide in the woods near the estate of the filmmaker Samuel Kahan, but it had been the Tecolotl bird who had brought him back from his own death. If a place such a as Mictlán really existed, it was possible that Felix might have entered this place in the moments right after he pulled the trigger on the gun he had tucked into his mouth. 

The monster clicked and hummed, as if reading Nestor’s  mind. “Your friend tried ending his life.”

“How do you know all this?” Nestor said.

“I can smell it on you, and it’s in your voice. It’s a story you carry in your body. Your friend touched The Coil.”

“What else do you know about me?”

“No one sets foot in Mictlán and returns back to Earth, Nestor,” the monster said. “It’s a one-way trip.”

“Then how could my friend get here, then go back home again?”

“It’s paradox.”

The air cooled around them, and Nestor heard painful screams and lightning in the distance, about 300 miles to his left. And from below, he also heard new sounds that only deepened his terror.

“Can you help me go back to my world?” Nestor asked the owl.

The creature laughed, once, twice, ten times.

“My mother Chalchiuhtlicue would have extended that kindness to you, but I am not as generous as she was. You bore me.” The bird groomed its feathers with its human talons, and it spread its wings to fly off. 

“Don’t go away please, I need help,” Nestor said.

“Why should I help you?” the owl said. It opened its beak, where its tongue slithered and crawled with wet anticipation.

“You should help us because I still want to hear about your mother, and plus, you never answered my question about the number one.”

The creature released a long wash of sound, sullen and forlorn. And instead of flying away, it moved aside so Nestor could walk toward the door of the temple. Nestor took a few steps forward, and the creature walked alongside him. Its voice was intimate, close, like a lover’s whisper.

“When I was young, my mother used to tell me I was ugly. I had been born ugly, and I would always be ugly. That’s how she used to speak to me. But she did praise her other sons and daughters for their beauty. She showered them with gifts and affection. I know what the indifference of a parent really feels like.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“She had her ways.”

“Why did she pick on you?”

“Because when I was born, she wished I was female. And that’s not what she got.”

Between them, more smells and sounds passed back and forth, providing nuance and detail to what the owl had just said.

“Do you see that city near the foot of the mountains, Nestor?”

Nestor turned his head toward the land beyond the building. Though he couldn’t see with his eyes, his ears, and his skin showed him a metropolis made of glass spires that bent and bowed like ribs on a colossal animal carcass. The towers emitted a soft melody like that of a harpsichord, even though the place seemed thousands of miles away.

“I see it,” Nestor said.

“It’s called Tochtlán, the Place of the Rabbits. It is made of ice, volcanic glass, and bone. The city is the home of Centzón Totochtin, the four hundred rabbits. I architected and built that city for them, all by myself.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“When I built it, the lords of Mictlán were pleased. The Lord and the Lady gave me many gifts as a reward and payment, including headdresses, bracelets, rings, and even this necklace. But my mother forced me to turn all of them over to her. I had to steal this necklace back from her, before I was exiled. But my siblings never had to make any sacrifice like that. What they earned, they got to keep. She treated them differently. Throughout my whole existence, I have never had the autonomy to be in charge of my own destiny.”

“How did Chalchiutlicue die?” Nestor said.

“Through prophecy and neglect. The time of jade, sky and water came to an end. And it’s still coming to an end.”

“That sounds like a riddle,” Nestor.

“It’s been predetermined. The only timeless place is Mictlán. It’s where everything is born, grows, and dies.”

“I’m not quite sure I understand.”

“I am not going to eat you, Nestor. Your riddle was a gift for me, and I am grateful.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you think your mother loved you?” the owl said.

“Of course she did,” Nestor said, “though God only knows how much heartache I brought her. I started climbing trees at the age of four. Broke bones many times. Drove my mother mad, I did.”

“Yet you were born different than other children, like I was.”

“I was not what my parents expected. Do you have a name?”

“You haven’t earned that privilege yet, Nestor.”

“But you know my name.”

“Your species’ arrogance never ceases to amaze me. You seem to want everything, whenever you want.”

The creature craned its neck downward and backward, and it stared right into Nestor, taking deep breaths. The smell that wafted from the cross-shaped eyes sweetened, and Nestor recognized that smell from his grandmother’s kitchen when he was a child. It was the smell of atole, the drink made with corn, water, piloncillo sugar and cinnamon sticks.

“When you go inside the right-hand temple atop this pyramid,” the creature said, “Be sure to tiptoe. If you make any sort of loud noise, They will suffocate both of you, and you will suffer.”

Nestor wondered who They was, but he felt afraid to ask. The smell of his grandmother’s atole made him feel uneasy, confused. This monster was offering him help after all.

“Thank you for the advice.”

“And don’t forget to bring them a gift.”

The creature took two steps forward on the wide platform of the building, and flapping its wings, burst into the air, leaving a cloud of dark energy that was perceptible as sound, heat and smell, and which Nestor visualized mentally like a burst of fireworks or perhaps like a long-dead galaxy glimpsed through a telescope. The smell it gave off was deeply green, like moss, cilantro, limes and grass. The monster vanished into the darkness, and in a fraction of a second, it was gone. As the trail of scent faded, a bitterly cold wind whipped Nestor’s face.

He was now just a few steps away from the doorway of the temple. It had no solid door, but instead a waterfall that made a curtain through which he would have to pass through. He heaved Puttock higher on his back, took a deep breath, and walked into the water.

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