Before leaving home, I had tried to tell Zyanya about the Purémpecha's predilection for inventive, voluptuous, and even perverse sexual practices. We had agreed that we would not evince surprise or disgust, whatever hospitality of that nature our hosts might offer us, but would decline it as graciously as possible. Or we thought we had so agreed. By the time the hospitality was provided, and we recognized it for what it was, we were already partaking. And we did not then recoil because—though she and I could never afterward decide whether it was wicked or innocuous—it was undeniably delightful.

As he led us toward the upper floor, Tzimtzicha turned and gave me an imitation of my own pimplike smirk, and inquired, "Will the knight and his lady wish separate rooms? Separate beds?"

"Certainly not," I said, and I said it in a chilly voice, before he might next suggest, "Separate partners?" or some other indecency.

"A conjugal chamber then, my lord," he said, agreeably enough. "But sometimes," he went on, casually, conversationally, "after a hard day's travel, even the most devoted couple may be fatigued. The court of Tzintzuntzani would think itself remiss if its guests should feel, ahem, too tired to indulge each other, even for a single night. Hence we offer a facility called atanatanarani. It enhances the adequacy of a man, the receptiveness of a woman, perhaps to an extreme they have never before enjoyed."

The word atanatanarani, as best I could unravel its elements, meant only "a bunching together." Before I could inquire how a bunching together could enhance anything, he had bowed us into our chambers, backed himself out, and slid shut the lacquered door.

The lamplighted room contained the biggest, deepest, softest bed of piled quilts I had ever seen. There also awaited us two elderly slaves: one male, one female. I eyed them with apprehension, but they merely asked our permission to draw our baths. Adjoining the bedroom was a separate sanitary closet for each of us, complete with its own bathing trough and already hot steam room. My servant helped me sponge myself in the bath and afterward briskly pumiced me in the steam room, but he did nothing else, nothing untoward. I assumed that the slaves, the bathing and steaming were what the Crown Prince had meant by "a facility called atanatanarani." If so, it was but a civilized amenity, nothing obscene, and it had worked well. I felt refreshed and tingly-skinned and more than "adequate," as Tzimtzicha had put it, to "indulge" my wife.

Her slave and mine bowed out, and she and I emerged from the sanitary closets to find the main chamber dark. The windows' draperies had all been closed and the oil lamps extinguished. So it took us a moment to find each other in that big room, and another moment to find even that immense bed. It was a warm night; only the topmost quilt had been turned back; we slid under it and lay side by side, sprawled on our backs, content for the moment just to enjoy the cloud-softness under us.

Zyanya murmured sleepily, "Do you know, Záa, I still feel as drunk as a bee." Then she gave a sudden small twitch and gasped, "Ayyo, you are eager! You took me by surprise."

I had been about to exclaim the same thing. I reached down to where a small hand was gently touching me—her hand, I had supposed—and said in amazement, "Zyanya!" just as she said:

"Záa, I can feel... it is a child down there. Playing with my... playing with me."

"I have one, too," I said in awe. "They were waiting for us, under the quilt. What do we do?"

I expected her to say, "Kick!" or "Scream!" or to do both those things herself. Instead, she gave another small gasp, and then a honey-drugged giggle, and repeated my question: "What do we do? What is yours doing?"

I told her.

"So is mine."

"It is not unpleasant."

"No. Decidedly not."

"They must be trained for this."

"But not for their own satisfaction. This one, anyway, is far too young."

"No. To enhance our pleasure, as the prince said."

"They might be punished if we rebuffed them."

I make those exchanges sound cool and dispassionate. They were not. We were speaking to each other in husky voices and in phrases broken by our involuntary gasps and movements.

"Is yours a boy or a girl? I cannot reach far enough to—"

"I cannot either. Does it matter?"

"No. The head is smooth, but the face feels as if it might be beautiful. The eyelashes are long enough to—ah! yes!—with the eyelashes!"

"They are well trained."

"Oh, exquisitely. I wonder if each is trained just to... I mean..."

"Let us trade, and find out."

The two children did not object to changing places under the quilt, and their performance was not diminished by it. Perhaps my new one's mouth was a trifle more warm and wet, having just come from...

Well, not to linger too long on that episode, Zyanya and I were soon in a frenzy, ravenously kissing, clutching, and clawing at each other; doing other things above the waist while the children were even busier below. When I could hold back no longer, we coupled like jaguars mating, and the children, squeezed out from between us, swarmed all over our bodies, tiny fingers here, tiny tongues there.

It happened not once, but more times than I can remember. Whenever Zyanya and I paused to rest, the children would snuggle for a time against our panting and perspiring bodies. Then very delicately they would insinuate themselves again, and start to tease and fondle. They would move back and forth from her to me, sometimes individually, sometimes together, so that for a while I would be attended by both of them and my wife—then both they and I would concentrate on her. It did not end until she and I were simply capable of no more, and we collapsed in the slumber of surfeit. We never did find out the sex or age or appearance of our accomplices. When I was awakened very early in the morning they were gone.

What woke me was a scratching at the door. Only half conscious, I got up and opened it. I saw nothing but the predawn darkness of the balcony and the great well of the hall beyond, but then a finger scratched at my bare leg. I started and looked down, and there were the Lady Pair, as naked as myself. They were on all fours—on all eights, I should say; the crab again—and they were both grinning lasciviously up at my crotch.

"Happy thing," said Left.

"His too," said Right, jerking her pointed head—in the direction of the old man's room, I assumed.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, as ferociously as I could in a whisper.

One of their eight extremities reached up and put Yquingare's dagger in my hand. I peered at the dark metal, even darker in that gloom, and ran my thumb along it. Hard and sharp it was, indeed.

"You did it!" I said, feeling a rush of gratitude, almost affection, for the monster crouching at my feet.

"Easy," said Right.

"He put clothes beside bed," said Left.

"He put that in me," said Right, poking my tepúli and making me jump again. "Happy."

"I get bored," said Left. "Nothing to do. Only be jiggled. I reach to clothes, feel around, find knife."

"She hold knife while I have happy," said Right. "I hold knife while she have happy. She hold knife while—"

"And now?" I interrupted.

"Finally he snore. We bring knife. Now we go wake him. Have more happy."

As if they could hardly wait, before I could even thank them, the twins scuttled crabwise along the dark balcony. So I silently gave thanks instead to the apparently invigorating properties of mammalian milk, and went back inside the chamber to wait for sunrise.