Though the Aztéca of Aztlan spoke Náhuatl, they used many words that I suppose we Mexíca long ago discarded, and others that they obviously had adopted from neighbor tribes, for I recognized some of them as Kaita and corrupt Poré. On the other hand, the Aztéca were uncomprehending of many Náhuatl words I used—words that I suppose had come into the language after the migration, inspired by things and circumstances in the outside world of which those stay-at-homes knew nothing. After all, our language still changes to accommodate itself to new situations. Just in recent years, for example, it has added such words as cahuayo for horse, Crixtanoyotl for Christianity, Caxtilteca for Castilians and Spaniards in general, pitzome for pigs....

The city's "palace" was at least a decently constructed house, faced with shining shell plaster, and of several rooms. I was met at the entrance by a young woman who said she was the wife of the Tlatocapili. She did not bid me enter, but nervously asked what I wanted.

"I want to see the Tlatocapili," I said, with the last of my patience. "I have come a long way, especially to see him."

"You have?" she said, biting her lip. "Few come to see him, and he cares to see even fewer. Anyway, he is not home yet."

"May I come in and wait?" I asked testily.

She thought it over, then stood aside, saying indecisively, "I suppose you may. But he will be hungry, and wanting to eat before anything else." I started to remark that I would not mind something of that sort myself, but she went on, "He desired to eat frogs' legs tonight, so he had to go to the mainland, since the lake is too salty for them. And the catch must have been scant, for he is very late coming home."

I nearly backed out of the house again. But then I thought: can the punishment for ducking the Tlatocapili be any worse than spending the night trying to avoid him by wandering this vile island among the pestilent mosquitoes? I followed her through a room where a number of young children and very old folks sat eating a meal of swamp greens. They all goggled at me, but said nothing, and offered me no place at the cloth. She led me to an empty room, where I gratefully sat down on a rough icpali chair. I asked her:

"How does one address the Tlatocapili?"

"His name is Tlilectic-Mixtli."

I almost fell off the low chair, the coincidence was so startling. If he was also Dark Cloud, what should I call myself? Certainly a man whom I had kicked into a pond would take me for an impudent mocker if I introduced myself with his name. Just then, from the outer room, came the noise of his arrival, and his timorous wife ran to welcome her lord and master. I slid my knife around to the back of my waistband, out of sight, and kept my right hand near it.

I heard the murmur of the woman's voice, then the roar of the husband's: "A visitor to see me? To Mictlan with him! I am starving! Prepare these frogs, woman! I had to catch the cursed things twice!" His wife murmured meekly again, and he roared more loudly, "What? A stranger?"

With a savage jerk, he tore aside the curtain at the doorway of the room where I sat. It was indeed the same young man; he still had some of the pond weeds in his hair and he was clotted with mud from his waist down. He glared for an instant, then bellowed, "You!"

I bent from my chair to kiss the earth, but I made the gesture using my left hand, and I still had my right on the haft of my knife when I politely got to my feet. Then, to my great surprise, the young man burst into a peal of hearty laughter and leapt forward to fling his arms around me in a brotherly hug. His wife and several of the younger and older relatives peeked around the door frame, their eyes wide with wonder.

"Welcome, stranger!" he shouted, and laughed some more. "By the splayed legs of the goddess Coyolxauqui, I am pleased to see you again. Just look what you did to me, man! When I finally got out of that sump, all the canoes had gone for the night. I had to wade home across the lake."

I asked cautiously, "You found that amusing?"

He laughed some more. "By the cold hole of the moon goddess's dry tipíli, yes! Yes, I did! In all my lifetime in this weary and wearisome backwater, it was the first occurrence not ordinary and expectable. I thank you for making one unusual thing happen at last in this abyss of monotony. How are you called, stranger?"

I said, "My name is, er, Tepetzalan," taking that of my father for the occasion.

"Valley?" he said. "Tallest valley I ever saw. Well, Tepetzalan, do not fear any retaliation for your treatment of me. By the flabby teats of the goddess, it is a pleasure finally to meet a man with testicles under his loincloth. If my tribesmen have any, they display them only to their women." He turned to bark at his own woman, "There are frogs enough for my friend and myself. Prepare them while I steam away some of this muck. Friend Tepetzalan, perhaps you would also like a refreshing bath?"

As we stripped at the steam house behind the residence—and I took note that his torso was as hairless as mine—the Tlatocapili said, "I presume you are one of our cousins from the far desert. No nearer neighbors speak our language."

"One of your cousins, I think," I said. "But not from the desert. Do you know of the Mexíca nation? Of the great city Tenochtítlan?"

"No," he said carelessly, as if his ignorance was nothing to be ashamed of. He even said, "Among the various miserable villages in these parts, Aztlan is the only city." I did not laugh, and he went on, "We pride ourselves on our self-sufficiency here, so we seldom go traveling or engage in traffic with any other tribes. We know only our closest neighbors, though we care not to mingle with them. To the north of these swamps, for instance, are the Kaita. Since you came from that direction, you must have recognized them as a paltry people. In the swamps south of here, there is only the single insignificant village of Yakóreke."

I was pleased to hear that. If Yakóreke was the nearest community to the southward, then I was closer to home than I had reckoned. Yakóreke was an outpost village of the Nauyar Ixu lands subject to the Purémpecha nation. From anywhere in Nauyar Ixu it was not an impossibly long journey to Michihuácan, and beyond that country lay the lands of The Triple Alliance.

The young man continued, "Eastward of these swamps are the high mountains, in which dwell peoples called the Cora and the Huichol. Beyond those mountains lies a desert wasteland where some of our poor relations have long lived in exile. Only once in a great while does one of them find his way here to the home of his forefathers."

I said, "I know of your poor relations in the desert. But I repeat, I am not one of them. And I also know that not all of your distant relations are poor. Of those who left here so long ago to seek their fortune in the outside world, some of them did find a fortune, a fortune beyond your imagining."

"I rejoice to hear it," he said indifferently. "My wife's grandfather will be even more pleased. He is Aztlan's Rememberer of History."

That remark made me realize that, of course, the Aztéca could have no knowledge of picture writing. We Mexíca had attained it only long after the migration. So they could not possess any history books or other archives. If they relied on an old man to be the repository of their history, then he would be only the latest in a long line of old men who had handed that history down through the ages, one to another.

The other Mixtli went on, "The gods know that this crack in the buttocks of the world is no joyous place to live. But we live here because it has everything we need for life. The tides bring us seafood to eat, without our even having to seek it. The coconut gives us sweets, and oil for our lamps, and its liquid is fermented into a most enjoyably intoxicating drink. Another kind of palm gives us fiber from which to weave cloth, another yields flour, another bears the coyacapuli fruit. We need not trade for any resource with any other tribes, and the swamps protect us from molestation by them...."