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Intro: This is a historical fiction piece. I've done extensive research to make sure this is as historically accurate as possible. Also, parts that history can't confirm, I've based in folklore and legend. I've used the more common variations, so anyone familiar can hopefully identify.

About the piece: Sacrifice is the story of the fall of the Aztec empire. I thought the Aztecs were one of the more fascinating American civilizations, since there was so much conflict between them and everyone and everything. Even amongst themselves, there was conflict. Conflict=drama, so it was pretty interesting.


Prologue
The old mid-wife bemoaned the newborn’s fate.

“She is born under an unlucky star, on the day of Malinal, the goddess of the grass, the miserable one,” she warned.

She waved an obsidian stone covered in sacred herbs over the writhing baby’s face to lull it to sleep. She had previously used the obsidian to sullenly carve Malinal’s likeness into the child’s wrist, as Malinal was her patron goddess. In the dim light, its wrinkled, tiny form looked pale against the colorful cotton that cushioned her cradle.

“What do you expect me to do?” the mother snapped. She was much too agitated for someone who had just given birth.

“You could not give birth any earlier, and could not have delayed any later. It is fate that has chosen this child for a weary path, for reasons unknown to us. Kill it, while it is still new and unaccustomed. Once its soul connects to the earth, its spirit will be angry and want vengeance if we kill it. Kill it now,” Spiruna advised.

The old woman hopped from foot to foot and waved a pendant of eagle feathers over the mother to ward off disease.

Ignoring the wildly swinging pendant of feathers, the mother exclaimed, “I cannot kill my own child! What will I say to Lord Panyala who will cast me away for a more fertile wife if I present him a dead baby?” she cried.

“The problem rests with you then. What is easily begotten is easily lost. I can call upon the shamans to pray to the goddess Coatlicue for fertility, but you must kill this child first. Then you must present a reasonable sacrifice to Coatlicue,” Spiruna said. She paused for a moment, started humming and hopping from foot to foot. Dancing was said to ward off the evil eye.

She opened a flask of jaguar skin and downed its contents.

“It was not easily begotten. How dare you,” the mother threatened.

“Kill it now, and kill it soon. You have but a few minutes. It will wake up, and want to feed. And if it does, its soul will be connected to the earth forever.” Spiruna was in a deep trance; her voice was hollow and echoed off the walls. Her withered face looked ghoulish in the dim light.

“I must go. I shall leave you with a bit of advice. Do not tempt fate.”
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The Goddess of Fire and Fertility

Coatlicue, the mother goddess, was sweeping a temple when she was impregnated by a ball of feathers that had fallen from the sky. Subsequently, she gave birth to the twins Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl.

Ashamed that her mother had become pregnant in a shameful way, Coyolxauqui, one of her daughters, rallied Coatlicue’s other children to kill their mother. As a powerful magician, she almost succeeded but for Huitzilopochtli, Coyolxauqui’s newborn brother.

The god of the sun and war emerged fully grown and fully armed. Without vengeance but without mercy, he cast Coyolxauqui’s head into the sky to become the moon, so his mother would be comforted by her daughter’s face every night. He thrust his four hundred siblings into the sky, to become the stars for their shameful deed. His soul created the first fire with the help of Xolotl.

From the fire, Xolotl’s twin brother Quetzalcoatl created the half sun. It brought life upon the dark, empty world of Aztlan. Xolotl believed that wherever there was light, there should be dark, and so created the other half from the underworld.

Quetzalcoatl was the guardian of the morning star, protecting it and balancing it in the sky during the day, while his dark twin Xolotl was the guardian of the evening star, and protected the sun as it journeyed to the underworld. They labored at their tasks only if mankind made sufficient sacrifices in their names. Otherwise, Xolotl took their souls, or withheld rain, while Quetzalcoatl scorched them with the sun, or did not make it rise at all.

During the times that the twin gods were idle, they selected creatures to represent them in the world of man. Quetzalcoatl selected the serpent, which depended on the sun, which he meticulously nurtured, for warmth. Meanwhile, Xolotl chose the eagle, since it was proud and was never eaten by another animal.
Ultimately, the eagle consumed the snake, as darkness consumed light in the world of man.

The Aztecs were mankind that lived in Aztlan. Huitzilopochtli, wishing to secure Aztlan for the gods, ordered them to abandon Aztlan, and find a new home. He demanded they journey through the land until they find a lake with the sign of the gods. The sign was an eagle eating a serpent perched on a cactus. The Aztecs found the eagle, and it bowed to them. They built Tenochtitlan.
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So...what did you think? surprised

It's good, definitely an interesting story. My only complaint is that maybe you relied too heavily on the details you researched, it lessened the emotional impact of what was going on. You might also need a bit more backstory interwoven in it: is Lord Panyala her husband, and was it not a marriage of love? How hard had she been trying for a baby, were there difficulties? Etc.

Also, to echo ego, was the second part meant as a historical/folklore background? It didn't seem to tie in, unless you were trying to parallel the attempts on their lives?

Hope it helps!

The next chapter. Hopefully it shed some light on why I did some things the way I did in the first?

Cacama

Ultimately, it was not Lord Panyala who remarried, but his wife. When Malinalli was five, Lord Panyala died in battle, and his wife married another of the Shorn Ones, the most elite of the Aztec army. She bore him a son, who was named Cacama.

Cacama was set out to be a fierce warrior, to become at least a warrior of the Jaguar, or at the best, one of the Shorn Ones.

The Shorn Ones were the fiercest of warriors, and a select few were in Tenochtitlan. They were identified by their hair, which was shorn except for a braid over their left ear. Their heads and faces were painted half blue and half red in war, and they vowed to never retreat from an enemy. If they did, they would instantly be killed, and their family would be put to shame.

However, Cacama seemed to be intent on bringing his family to shame. No matter how his father taught him to kill with speed and without mercy, Cacama would always question why. The four year old worried his parents greatly, as they didn’t think he could be prepared by the time he was six to begin formal military training. Surely, he completed his work swiftly and dexterously, but he was too inquisitive.

Aside from that, he was the spirit of the household. His mother doted upon the darling boy, who always had a clever quip to tell, or a gift to bring. His father was pleased by his son’s expert skills with animals. He had befriended a deer, which his father openly disapproved of, but secretly admired. All members of the household had come to love the curious little boy with the dancing eyes.

The same could not be said for Malinalli. She had grown up sickly, thin and pale. She was not set out to do housework, as she often fell ill. Spiruna would not give her medicine to heal, but somehow she always healed, but not completely. Her mother pitied the child, and decided that she would better be a scholar or a priest rather than an ordinary girl. Her father was indifferent, for all his attention was focused on Cacama. All was bleak in Malinalli’s world, but for a few days of the year.

The day of the seventeenth month of the year marked the only day which Malinalli could enjoy herself, and not worry about her family. It was the day in which all the young boys would throw pillows at the women in the market and streets, and in turn, the women had nopal, cactus, hidden beneath their robes which they chased the boys with. It was a day filled with merriness and laughter.

Cacama, always the clever one, devised ways to catch his elder half-sister by surprise. He would hide behind stands in the marketplace and fling pillows at her. Malinalli usually laughed, but this time around she did not. How could her parents buy that little charlatan’s act as charming? She hated his gap toothed grin, his raucous giggles and how he seemed to find everything so funny.

“Cacama! Come here!” she commanded.

“No, then you’ll catch me,” he called from behind and adobe hut.

“No, I’m not playing games. I don’t have any napol with me. Now come,” she told him.

He agreed and stepped out from behind the adobe. Malinalli stretched out her hand to him and held his firmly in hers. Though he was five years younger, he was almost as tall as she was.

“So, where are we going?” he asked, gazing up at her with his bright eyes.

“To the market in Tlatelolco. We’ll fetch some crabs to eat,” she told him.

“How many are you going to buy?”

“We won’t be buying them. We’ll catch them instead,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. A steady breeze was blowing, and it was ruffling
their white cotton capes.

White cotton capes, or quachtli, were used as a currency if there were no cocoa beans at hand. One was worth three hundred fine cocoa beans. Malinalli didn’t intend to sell her cape though.
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