It was not like my one military campaign, when events had taken me and many others into a foreign land. To this place I had come on my own, and in this place I felt that I was a stray, and an inconsequential one, and reckless rather than fearless. During my nights with the army, there had always been a tumult of talk and noise and commotion, there had been the realization of a crowd about. But that night, behind me in the glow of our single campfire, there was only the occasional quiet word and the subdued sound of the slaves cleaning the utensils, putting wood on the flames and dry brush under our sleeping blankets, the sound of the dogs scuffling for the leavings of our meal.

Before me, in the darkness, there was no trace of activity or humanity. I might have been looking as far as the edge of the world and seeing not another human being or any evidence of another human's ever having been there. And out of the night before me, the wind brought to my ears only one sound, perhaps the loneliest sound one can hear: the barely audible faraway ululation of a coyote wailing as if he mourned for something lost and gone.

I have seldom in my life known loneliness, even when I was most solitary. But that night I did, when I stood—deliberately, to try whether I could endure it—with my back to the world's one patch of light and warmth and my face to the black and empty and uncaring unknown.

Then I heard Blood Glutton order, "Sleep as you would at home or in any bedchamber, entirely undressed. Take off all your clothes or you will really feel the chill in the morning, believe me."

Cozcatl spoke up, trying but failing to sound as if he were joking, "Suppose a jaguar comes, and we have to run."

With a straight face, Blood Glutton said, "If a jaguar comes, boy, I guarantee that you will run without noticing whether you are dressed or not. Anyway, a jaguar will eat your garments with as much gusto as he eats little-boy meat." Perhaps he saw Cozcatl's lower lip tremble, for the old soldier chuckled. "Do not worry. No cat will come near a burning campfire, and I will see that it goes on burning." He sighed and added, "It is a habit left over from many campaigns. Every time the fire dims, I awaken. I will keep it fed."

I found no great discomfort in rolling myself into my two blankets, with only some brittle scrub piled between my bare body and the hard, cold ground, because for the last month in my palace chambers I had been sleeping on Cozcatl's thinly cushioned pallet. During that same time, though, Cozcatl had been sleeping in my billowy, soft, warm bed, and evidently he had got accustomed to comfort. For that night, while snores and wheezes came from the other bundled forms about the fire, I heard him restlessly shifting and turning in his place on the ground, trying to find a reposeful position, and whimpering slightly when he could not. So finally I hissed over to him, "Cozcatl, bring your blankets here."

He came, gratefully, and with his blankets and mine we arranged a double thickness of both pallet and cover. Then, the activity having chilled both our naked bodies to violent shivering, we hastened to get into the improved bed, and huddled together like two nested dishes: Cozcatl's back arched into my front, my arms around him. Gradually our shivering abated, and Cozcatl murmured, "Thank you, Mixtli," and he soon was breathing the regular soft breaths of sleep.

But then I could not doze off. As my body warmed against his, so did my imagination. It was not like resting alongside a man, the way we soldiers had lain in windrows to keep warm and dry in Texcala. And it was not like lying with a woman, as I had last done on the night of the warrior's banquet. No, it was like the times I had lain with my sister, in the early days of our first exploring and discovering and experimenting with each other, when she had been no bigger than the boy was. I had grown much since then, in many respects, but Cozcatl's body, so small and tender, reminded me of how Tzitzitlini had felt, pressed against me, in the time when she too was a child. My tepúli stirred and began to push itself upward between my belly and the boy's buttocks. Sternly I reminded myself that Cozcatl was a boy, and only half my age.

Nevertheless, my hands also remembered Tzitzi and, without my commanding them, they moved reminiscently along the boy's body—the not yet muscular or angular shape, so much like a young girl's; the not yet toughened skin; the slight indentation of waist and the childishly pudgy abdomen; the soft, cloven backside; the slim legs. And there, between the legs, not the stiff or spongy protuberance of male parts, but a smooth, inviting inward declivity. His buttocks nestled in my groin, while my member burrowed between his thighs, against the furrow of soft scar tissue that could have been a closed tipíli, and by then I was too much aroused to refrain from doing what I did next. Hoping I might do it without waking him, I began very, very gently to move.

"Mixtli?" the boy whispered, in a wondering way.

I stopped my movement and laughed, quietly but shakily, and whispered, "Perhaps I should have brought along a woman slave after all."

He shook his head and said sleepily, "If I can be of that use..." and he wriggled backward even more intimately against me, and he tightened his thighs about my tepúli, and I resumed my movement.

When later we were both asleep, still nestled together, I dreamt a jeweled dream of Tzitzitlini, and I believe I did that thing once again during the night—in the dream with my sister, in reality with the little boy.

I think I can understand Fray Toribio's abrupt and flustered departure. He goes to teach a catechism class of young people, does he not?

I myself wondered if overnight I had become a cuilóntli, and whether I would henceforward yearn only for small boys, but the worry did not long persist. At the end of the next day's march we came to a village named Tlancualpican, and it boasted a rudimentary hostel that offered meals, baths, and an adequate dormitory, but had only a single private sleeping cubicle to let.

"I will crowd in with the slaves," said Blood Glutton. "You and Cozcatl take the room."

I know my face flamed, for I realized that he must have heard something the night before: perhaps the crackling of our brush pallet. He saw my face and burst into a guffaw, then stifled it to say:

"So it was a first time on the young traveler's first long journey abroad. And now he doubts his manhood!" He shook his gray head and laughed again. "Let me tell you, Mixtli. When you truly need a woman and there is none available—or none to your taste—use whatever substitute you will. In my own experience on many military marches, the villages in our path have often sent their females fleeing into hiding. So we used for women the warriors we captured."

I know not what expression my face wore, but he laughed again at me and continued:

"Do not look so. Why, Mixtli, I have known soldiers in real privation to utilize the animals an evacuating enemy left behind: pet does, the larger breeds of dogs. Once in the Maya lands, one of my men claimed to have enjoyed himself with a female tapir he ran down in the jungle."

I suppose I looked relieved then, if still somewhat abashed, for he concluded:

"Be glad you have your small companion, and that he is to your taste, and that he loves you enough to be compliant. I can tell you, when the next appealing female crosses your path, you will find your natural urges undiminished."

But just to be sure, I made a test. After we had bathed and dined at the inn, I wandered up and down the two or three streets of Tlancualpican until I saw a woman seated in a window, and saw her head turn as I went by. I went back and went close enough to make out that she was smiling and that she was, if not beautiful, certainly not repugnant. She showed no signs of carrying the nanaua disease: no rash on her face; her hair abundant, not scanty; no sores about the mouth; none anywhere else, as I soon verified.