It had been a long time since I had lain with a woman, and that one, clean and comely, was a powerful temptation. But I remembered another woman—impaled on a stake—and I did not go near the pool until the girl finally, reluctantly left it.

During all my wanderings with the various Chichimeca tribes, I took care not to trifle with their women or to disobey any of their few laws or to offend them in any other manner. So I was treated by every tribe as a fellow wanderer and an equal. I was never robbed or mistreated, I was given my share of whatever pitiful fare and comfort they themselves could wrest from the desert—except for the occasional treats I declined, like the bliss-giving urine. The only favor I asked of any of them was information: what they might know of the long-ago Aztéca and their long-ago journey and the rumor that they had buried stores of supplies along their route.

I was told by Meat of the Tecuexe, and by Greenery of the Tzacateca, and by Banquet of the Hua, "Yes, it is known that such a tribe once came through some of these lands. We know nothing else of them except that, like us, like all Chichimeca, they carried little with them and they left nothing of it behind."

It was the same discouraging reply I had kept hearing from the very beginning of my quest, and I continued to hear that same discouraging reply when I put my query to the Toboso, to the Iritila, and to every other tribe with which I traveled for even the briefest time or the shortest distance. Not until my second summer in that accursed desert, by which time I was unutterably sick of it and of my Aztéca ancestors as well, did my question elicit a slightly different response.

I had attached myself to the tribe called Mapimi, and its habitat was the hottest, driest, most dismal desert region of all those I had yet crossed. It was so incalculably far north of the living lands that I would have sworn there could be no more desert beyond. But indeed there was, said the Mapimi, illimitable expanses of it, and even more terrible terrain than any I had seen. That information was naturally distressing to my ears, and so were the opening words of the man to whom I wearily put my stale old question about the Aztéca.

"Yes, Mixtli," he said. "There was once such a tribe, and they made such a journey as you describe. But they brought nothing with them..."

"And," I finished for him, my voice bitter, "they left nothing when they were gone."

"Except us," he said.

It took a moment for those words to penetrate my dejectedness, but then I gaped at him, struck dumb.

He smiled a toothless smile. He was Patzcatl, chief of the Mapimi, a very old man, shrunken and shriveled dry by the sun, and he was even more incongruously named than most other Chichimeca, since Patzcatl means Juice. He said:

"You spoke of the Aztéca's journey, from some unknown homeland called Aztlan. And you spoke of their ultimate destination, the great city they founded far to the south of here. We Mapimi and other Chichimeca, during all the sheaves of years we have inhabited these deserts, we have heard rumors of that city and its grandeur, but none of us has ever approached anywhere near enough to glimpse it. So think, Mixtli. Does it not strike you as remarkable that we barbarians, so distant from your Tenochtítlan and so ignorant of it, should nevertheless speak the same Náhuatl you speak there?"

I considered and said, "Yes, Chief Juice. I was surprised and pleased to find that I could converse with so many different tribes, but I did not pause to wonder why that should be possible. Have you a theory to account for it?"

"More than a theory," he said, with some pride. "I am an old man, and I come from a long line of fathers, all of whom lived to a great age. But I and they were not always old, and in our youth we were inquisitive. Each asked questions and remembered the answers. So each learned and repeated to his sons what knowledge had been preserved of our people's origins."

"I should be grateful for a sharing of your knowledge, venerable chief."

"Know then," said old Juice. "The legends tell that seven different tribes—among them your Aztéca—departed long ago from that Aztlan, The Place of Snowy Egrets, in search of a more pleasant place to live. The tribes were all related, they spoke the same language and recognized the same gods and observed the same customs, and for a long while that mixed company traveled amicably. But, as you might expect, among so many persons on such a long journey, there arose frictions and dissensions. Along the way, various of them dropped out of the march—families, whole calpuli clans, even entire tribes. Some quarreled and left, some stopped from sheer fatigue, some took a liking to a place in which they found themselves and decided to go no farmer. It is impossible now to say which of them went where. Over the sheaves of years since then, those truant tribes themselves have often fragmented and moved apart. It is known that your Aztéca continued all the way to wherever your Tenochtítlan now stands, and perhaps others also traveled that far. But we were not among them, we who are now the Chichimeca. That is why I say this. When your Aztéca crossed the desert lands, they left no stores for future use, they left no trace, they left nothing behind them but us."

His account sounded all too believable, and it was as disconcerting as the assertion of my earlier companion Meat: that the term Chichimeca embraced all peoples of our skin color. The implication was that, instead of finding anything of possible value, like the allegedly hidden hoards of stores, I had found only a horrid rabble eager to claim kinship as my cousins. Quickly putting that ghastly possibility out of my mind, I said with a sigh:

"I still would like to discover the whereabouts of Aztlan."

Chief Juice nodded, but said, "It is far from here. As I told you, the seven tribes came a long way from their homeland before they began to separate."

I looked northward, into what I had been told was an even more awful and limitless desert, and I groaned. "Ayya, then I must keep on through this blighted and accursed wasteland—"

The old man glanced in that direction. He looked mildly puzzled and he asked, "Why?"

Probably I also looked puzzled, at such a foolish question from a man I had thought fairly intelligent. I said, "The Aztéca came from the north. Where else should I be going?"

"North is not a place," he explained, as if I were the dullard. "It is a direction, and an imprecise direction at that. You have already come too far north."

I cried, "Aztlan is behind me?"

He chuckled at my dismay. "Behind, beside, and beyond."

I said impatiently, "And you speak of imprecise directions!"

Still laughing, he went on, "By keeping to the desert all the way, you moved always in a direction west and north, but not enough to the west. Had you not been misled by the notion of north, you might have found Aztlan long ago, without ever braving the desert, without ever leaving the living lands."

I made some sort of strangled noise. The chief continued:

"According to my fathers' fathers, our Aztlan was somewhere southwest of this desert, on the seashore, on the coast of the great sea, and surely there was never more than one Aztlan. But from there, our ancestors—and yours—did much circuitous wandering in those sheaves of years. Quite possibly the Aztéca's last march, as remembered in your Mexíca leg-ends, did bring them directly from the north into what is now Tenochtítlan. Nevertheless, Aztlan should lie almost directly northwest of there."