I Am The Feathered Serpent

Ô Quetzalcoatl, Precious Serpent, Wisest of Men and Second Sun, please heal my daughter, though she has been cursed. Tlamacazqui says the White Teotls have hexed her with disease brought with the morning from across the vast ocean, and only you can save her, he says. Ô Quetzalcoatl, Precious Serpent, Creator of Worlds, God of the Winds and Mover of Cycles, please accept this offering and in return, heal my daughter as I send her to you.

Do you remember your birth?

I never do. All I remember is pain, and the transformations, at least the recent ones. Blood, scorching sun, screams, poison, bones, betrayal. My brother's spear, my sister's lips. Memories blur and become dreams. Or is it the reverse? I do not know anymore. Too long I have roamed this world; molts are coming more and more often, more and more painful.

The end is near, I feel it.

I see doom in the smell of burning wood, in the pestilence of smoking wounds and the White Bearded Riders trampling on the earth's rot. I taste it in green turned black, flesh turned carrion and sanity, madness. I know the world is coming to an end, because I am.

I have been fire, comet, thunder, hurricane. Yesterday I was the wheezy breeze; today I awoke river, meandering lazily through the primal forest. I know not what I must become next, but I do know it shall be my last transformation.

In the branches bowing to me as I wander on, the resplendent quetzal whistles his tired song. They say he looks like me, how wrong they are! I am the river, and no more do I sing.

When the child comes to me, wading through my waters, I shudder at the feeling of her material body penetrating my incorporeal staleness. She carries around her neck a basket heavy with corn, marigolds, golden effigies, and a sacrificial quail. Trinkets! I go on snaking along the shore, passing the child and her quickly decaying offerings. My flow sweeps her along, and the basket drops into the river with all its contents. I swallow them, then think better of it. If I accept the offering, I must answer the prayer, and look at this child: lesions have spread all over her face, her body. Pimples are deforming her eyes and mouth, and her hands as she lifts them in silent pleading are black and puffy. There is no saving her: the world is ending. Soon she will be Mictlantecuhtli's, soon she too will join the underworld.

So I push the offerings ashore. Taking the drowning girl in my bosom, I carry her out of the water as well. She may be doomed, but I do not have the courage to take her life. She cradles into the black sand, bowing to me all while she sobs. I can feel the pain of her sickness, and it reminds me of mine. My body, just like hers, is failing.

The child reaches into a pocket sewn to her skirt, and takes out the ultimate offering. Her mother must have hidden it there along with her prayer just before she sent the diseased child to me. In the girl's puffy dark hands trembles a bloodied ear. It's the mother's, a worthy sacrifice to go along with her prayer, one I cannot refuse now.

"You should have offered me this first, child!" I say, but only ripples reach the girl. So I sigh, making my waters bubble, and in a single wave I swallow ear and child at once.

The journey will be long, for I am the lazy river and I go slowly. This leaves plenty of time for the remnant of my powers to work on her decaying body. Lesion by lesion, pimple by pimple, deformity by deformity, I restore the child to health. As I do so, I can feel the energy seeping away from me.

Leaves fall and worms feast all around us.

When finally we reach the mounted rocks elevated by the corn-eaters as their own dwellings, I am but a weak stream that can barely carry the child any further. Just as well that she is able to walk on her own now. The end comes as I watch her waddle toward her mother in the crumbling dwellings. I finally take in the futility of my last act in its whole magnitude. Here has come the final transformation. I am now lesser than a stream, and thus it takes very little to turn into dust. The waning sun does all the work, when I am left with no power at all.

Forests shake, skies tear open, the air fumes and I do nothing. All the fear and the pain of the world as it dies fill me, excruciating then numb, until I hear only silence.

This world has ended.

Settled dust, I wait. A millennium, perhaps a bare second. Particles hold their breath.

Then, a stir. Wind rises, gushes through my dust until I become the very roar of the earth, brimming with power and life force. Reborn from the ashes, stronger than ever, look at me! Claws, teeth, scales and fur click together as though they've always been mine. Look, I say, I am the Feathered Serpent! I am the Dragon of the West, Master of the Wind and Human Creator, and I am renewed! Born again, this is my final transformation, and it's also the original one. The atmosphere clears, rot and pestilence purged. I smell a new age coming, a brand new world sailing to replace the dying one. Better or worse, I cannot say, but the scorching white sun is rising all the same, and so am I.

I AM QUETZALCOATL.

The day after Christmas, on the Holy Year 1520.

Today we depart Tlaxcala on my flotilla of sloops. We will take the savages' capital - Tenochtitlan - by the waters; through sheer intimidation if possible, by force otherwise. Too long has Cuauhtemoc scorned me and the Crown; no more. When I have the Aztec leader's head under my heel and his city under my yoke, I will strip her of all her gold and claim her for Spain. She will be Tenochtitlan no more, since - as promised - it is México that I will deliver to Your Majesty.

Lost missive from Hernán Cortés, conquistador of the New World, to His Majesty the King of Castile (translated from Spanish).

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