Independence Day

T. L. Morganfield

Coyotl wore an eagle knight costume for the Independence Day celebrations, complete with feathers and a hood with a curved plastic beak. At his side he carried the traditional flat wooden sword, but with duck down for blades. "Stay out as late as you want," his mother told him as started out the front door.

His best friend Titic, who lived next door, met him on the sidewalk, and they chewed vanilla-flavored chicle as they walked to the shuttle bus stop. Titic wore a fluffy jaguar knight costume that zipped up in the front, his face masked with a cat head with bared plastic fangs. "I wish my folks would let me stay out all night. They never even let me out past dark." His mother feared the Night Wind would snatch her son if he stayed out too late.

Coyotl's own parents didn't subscribe to superstition and so gave him considerable leeway curfew-wise, but tonight was something completely different. It was a peace offering of sorts, an apology for something they didn't do but felt horrible about anyway. For yesterday they'd found out that their only son was the Divine Fire and he would die by the end of the summer.

"We're going to do the Chase, right?" Titic asked as they sat at the back of the rumbling tram.

"Sure." Titic had talked about it endlessly for the last week, and though Coyotl really didn't want to, he couldn't crush Titic's excitement. For most boys their age saw running in the Chase as a rite of passage.

The crowded shuttle raced over the causeway crossing Lake Texcoco, into Tenochtitlan's sacred heart. They disembarked outside the Snake Wall, with its line of feathered flags whipping in the breeze, one for each of the nations of the One World. The sounds of flutes and drums floated in the air. The main precinct teemed with visitors: Incan businessmen, Algonquin shaman, Polynesian and Cheyenne ethanol executives, Inuit fisherman, Cherokee, Seminole, Navajo, Mayan, Nazca, Huari, Juruna, Cofan, many dressed in their colorful traditional garb and selling native delicacies and art.

"Let's go to the Boulevard," Titic suggested as they wormed through the crowd toward the Temple Square. At the east entrance, they climbed up onto the wall, to see over the crowd. Thousands filled the streets, with only the one parallel to the Temple Mayor remaining clear, for the Chase.

The Revered Speaker, Emperor Cuauhtémoc stood atop the Great Pyramid, dressed in a jaguar pelt cape and a brilliant green feathered headdress. The war chief—a real jaguar knight, with animal DNA intermingled with his human genes—stood next to him, sniffing the air watchfully and twitching his tail. Huge braziers at the temple doors burned orange, spreading the spicy aroma of copal on the wind. The flames mesmerized Coyotl.

What will it be like, to feel them wrapping around me like hot snakes? His father had told him the priests would anesthetize him first, but still, the thought of his skin turning to ash and the marrow in his bones boiling—

"Here he comes!" Titic shouted. "Let's get down."

Coyotl squinted over the crowd outside the wall, searching. The drums signaling the approach sounded distant but rose quickly, like wildfire spreading across the city.

Voices raised in cheer as a man ran for his life down the boulevard, his silver chest glimmering in the sun. Behind him swarmed a horde of thousands, all dressed as traditional jaguar and eagle knights, their feather-edged swords raised as they shouted and gave chase.

"Coyotl! You're going to miss your chance!" Titic shouted and Coyotl finally climbed down. All around them, the crowded hooted and stamped their feet.

When the man ran through the opening in the wall, the two men standing in front of the boys leaped out onto the road, their swords raised and their jaguar capes fluttering after them. Titic sprinted out too.

Coyotl jumped out just as the warrior horde streamed into the precinct, sweeping him up in the shouting throng. He struggled to keep from stumbling lest someone trample him. He cut to the side and spotted Titic several long strides ahead of him, the horde overtaking him.

The silver-chested man ran a ways out in front of everyone, but exhaustion was slowing him down. And he didn't see the rope the crowd pulled taut across the boulevard until it was too late. He skidded along the stone road for a few tumbles before finally stopping, moaning and bleeding.

The horde descended on him, and several men wrenched him to his feet. Titic got right among them, hauling the man further down the boulevard, but when the other five warriors tossed their prey to the ground, he fell forward with the prisoner and landed sprawled at the feet of Emperor Cuauhtémoc. Titic peered up at him, terrified.

"You dare touch the Emperor of the One World?" the war chief snarled, whipping out his sword—not a feather tipped one, but one of the real, obsidian-edged metal ones; purely ceremonial but deadly nonetheless.

Coyotl rushed forward to Titic, fully expecting the jaguar knight to divide him in half with one swipe, but the Emperor set a steadying hand on his war chief's arm. Not many people ever stood this close to the Emperor, so Coyotl couldn't help staring up at him, at the thin lines of the eagle tattooed on the left side of his face, sharing his eye with it. Coyotl was too frightened to look away.

"Off with you now," the Emperor said, and Coyotl dragged Titic away.

Safely hidden among the warriors again, Coyotl peered at the man kneeling on the ground before Cuauhtémoc, the man everyone had come to see. He'd seen him every year on the television, during the broadcast of the Independence Day ceremonies. Sweat plastered the man's dark hair to his head, crowning his bearded, phantom-pale face. Horrible scrapes marred his left cheek. The afternoon sun glimmered on his metal breast plate, the customary costume for the Spanish Devil. He was cloned from the reconstructed DNA of Hernán Cortés, and as his incarnation, he was here to die for the entertainment and pride of every citizen of the One World.

"You've traveled a great distance," Cuauhtémoc began, taking the sword from his war chief. "Across the ocean, through treacherous storms, all to enslave us, to take our land, raze our cities, destroy our culture, and exterminate us. But the gods see your dark heart, and so today we again marched a force of one hundred thousand warriors to end your lust for conquest. Your arrival brings the nations of the One World together again in common cause, bringing us peace … giving us independence from what to come."

It was just propaganda and historical distortion, and everyone knew it, but the cheers were deafening. The petty skirmishes among nations had continued for another two hundred years after Cortés' death seven hundred and thirty years ago, and it was only the Europeans' continued attempts to invade up and down the coasts that eventually brought all the native lands into single-minded alliance. The modern One World, under the rule of a single emperor, only came into existence in the last two centuries.

But everyone celebrated the death of this one man as if he would have somehow single-handedly destroyed their culture, their heritage, and their religion—a religion that would send Coyotl to a fiery death to please gods he didn't think even existed. He'd seen Cortés die every spring for sixteen years, but standing now just a couple of paces away from him, watching him tremble and plead for his life ... Will that be me too, when I face my fate at the Feast of the Great Dead Ones? Coyotl felt sick.

As Cuauhtémoc leveled the sword to Cortés' neck, the crowd chanted for the Spaniard's blood. It burned Coyotl's ears. They might as well have been chanting for his as well. He pushed his way through the mass of warriors, back towards the Snake Wall, and once he broke free of the crowd, he ran. Already he felt as though he was afire.

After hours of walking the paths around Lake Texcoco, Coyotl arrived home carrying his eagle head under his arm. Titic sat on his courtyard wall; he must have been really worried to have convinced his mother to let him wait for him outside after dark. "What happened?" he asked, jumping down to walk with Coyotl. "Why did you leave?"

"Yesterday I found out that I'm Xiuhtecuhtli." Coyotl felt numb saying it.

"The Fire God?" After a shocked silence, Titic asked, "When?"

"This summer."

Titic struggled for words for a moment before sputtering, "But the incarnations are chosen at birth—"

"I'm an alternate."

"What's that?"

"Someone who takes the chosen's place if he dies of an accident or something. Apparently they're chosen at birth too, but the priests don't tell the parents unless the alternate is needed."

Titic stood silent for a moment, perhaps trying to find something comforting to say. "My mother says it's an honor to be chosen. She'll be happy for you."

"Of course she will," Coyotl said bitterly. "She believes the nonsense the priests spout about the Sun falling from the sky if they don't feed it blood." It's because of zealots like her that I'm going to die before I've even turned the eighteenth page of my life, he nearly added but he caught himself. He'd insulted Titic's mother enough, and he was lucky Titic hadn't already punched him for that dishonor. "I don't consider it an honor. I consider it murder," Coyotl finished.

Titic stared at him, shock in his eyes, but he said nothing, only nodded slowly.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Coyotl said, "The priest is coming to get me tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? But the festival isn't for another five months!"

"I need to be properly versed in the rites of the fire god and 'prepared for the sacrifice'," Coyotl replied, using the very words he'd seen in the letter the Department of Religious Affairs had sent to his parents. It had explained how the original vessel had died in a car accident and their son was designated to take his place. Rest assured that for your son's sacrifice, the gods will grant him paradise and eternal happiness. It had been signed by both the Emperor Cuauhtémoc and the high priest of Xiuhtecuhtli.

"This is just so sudden. How can they really expect ... they couldn't wait a couple years, to give you some time to get your stuff in order?" Titic asked, desperation in his voice.

"I guess the Fire God doesn't want to wait," Coyotl said with an unkind chuckle.

Titic's mother called from beyond the walled courtyard. "I have to go," Titic said, reluctantly turning away. "I'll come by tomorrow morning, to see you, to …"

To say goodbye, Coyotl concluded for him, for he obviously couldn't bring himself to say it. He waved to Titic as his friend closed the gate behind him.

At home, Coyotl's mother asked why he was back already.

"I'm tired," he told her.

"How was your Independence Day?" his father asked as Coyotl climbed the stairs.

"Eye-opening," Coyotl replied, then closed his bedroom door.

On his desk sat a picture of him and Titic, their faces so young and full of hope. It was only a few months old, from their last Jaguar Scout trip up to Mount Tlaloc. At night they'd stayed up late watching the stars travel across the sky and talked for hours about what classes they'd take when they went to school in Xochimilco next year. All year he'd looked forward to going back to Mount Tlaloc, to where his dreams had been alive and thriving, where he'd felt so free and at peace.

What he wouldn't give to feel like that now.

In the morning, after breakfast, a priest came to the house. He smelled foul with the blood of hundreds of sacrifices, his hair hanging in gnarled locks around his grimy face. A bored-looking yellow and black-spotted jaguar knight came with, wearing a blaster holstered under his hairless arm. He didn't even look at Coyotl's father when he humbly invited him and the priest inside the house.

"Are you ready to go?" the priest asked Coyotl, who was still sitting at the kitchen table, finishing his breakfast.

"Not really," Coyotl replied coolly. A night of restless sleep had left him surly.

"He still has to pack his bag," his mother hastily lied. She took Coyotl by the arm and dragged him upstairs. With the bedroom door closed behind them, she said, "I know this is difficult, Coyotl, but we all have obligations …" She set his duffel bag in his hands, crying as she spoke. Coyotl felt horrible for making her cry.

Downstairs, his father handed him a cloak and mumbled something about holding one's shoulders high and not letting anyone see his fear. "Because that will just bring ridicule, and no one in your position deserves that." He hugged Coyotl then held his shoulder with one hand, trying to hold back tears. Coyotl's mother kissed her son's cheeks and smoothed his hair, whispering how much she loved him. She nearly made Coyotl cry too.

"We really must be on our way," the priest said impatiently. "We have a car waiting outside."

Nearly the whole neighborhood was outside in the street or on the lawns, to watch Coyotl's departure. A few stayed behind the gates of their walled courtyards. Titic and his mother stood at the bottom of the walkway, near the car. She held a bundle of flowers in her hands and a smile on her face. She was older than Coyotl's mother, or maybe she only looked it because she notched her ears and scarred her cheeks with knives, like many very religious people did.

When Coyotl and the priest approached, she stepped forward and bowed. "May I bestow a gift on the young man?" she asked, and though the priest harrumphed, he allowed it. She placed the flowers around Coyotl's neck, strung together in a garland that looked eerily like the flower-bedecked garrotes used for the public execution of criminals. "Tonantiuh blesses you for your sacrifice," she said with a smile.

Her ecstatic, devote face infuriated Coyotl. "Your god can fall from the sky and drink my piss for all I care, woman," he growled.

She stepped back, appalled. Even Titic gritted his teeth in fury, and Coyotl expected his friend to take him to task for speaking to his mother like that.

But the priest got hold of Coyotl first. He grabbed him by the garland, and with three quick twists, he drew it tight against his throat. Coyotl collapsed to his knees, gasping. He tried to cram his fingers under the twine, to make room to draw a breath, but it was too tight. His head felt ready to explode, like a melon dropped from atop a house. He knocked at the priest's knees with his elbows, hoping to make him let him go, but the struggle quickly sapped his strength. He flailed, his lung burning for air and his heart thundering so loud he could hear nothing else. He welcomed the darkness when it finally took him.

But soon he awoke again, coughing. The morning sun scorched his eyes and he heard his mother sobbing. Everyone else was silent; even the birds seemed to hold their breath.

The priest stared down at Coyotl, his dark eyes intense. "You're unworthy of the paradise that awaits you after the sacrifice. Your parents failed to instill in you the proper respect for the gods, but I will teach you it, with a rod if necessary. And when your turn comes to honor Xiuhtecuhtli in the fire, you will go to it with relief in your heart and a smile on your face."

Coyotl cringed away from him. When he touched his neck, he felt blood. The priest had cut him with the garland. The jaguar knight flashed Coyotl a grotesque grin, then leaned over to type a pass code in the keypad below the car's rear passenger window.

Coyotl's parents stood on the sidewalk, his father holding his mother, her face buried in his shirt. He looked angry and exhausted, as if it had taken everything he had to keep from throttling the priest.

The priest spoke with Titic's mother in a low voice. Titic stood apart from them, staring at Coyotl, all traces of his anger gone, replaced instead with shock and fear. He held his friend's gaze for a moment then moved it away, as if staring at something over Coyotl's shoulder. Coyotl turned to look too.

The jaguar knight was still messing with the keypad, cursing under his breath about pass codes. His blaster rested right at Coyotl's eye level, dangling carelessly in his shoulder holster. Coyotl could pluck it out easily, then if the priest attacked him again, he'd have a weapon to protect himself. He turned back to Titic.

Titic's expression had changed again, back to anger. He lifted his chin.

So Coyotl grabbed the blaster.

Just as he got it free of the holster, the jaguar knight whirled on him. Thick, curved claws slid from his human fingers and he swiped at Coyotl's hand, cutting his arm. Coyotl dropped the blaster to the ground, but quickly grabbed it up with his other hand. The knight fell on him, hissing and snapping at his face. Around them voices raised in both terror and surprise.

Coyotl shoved his wounded arm into the knight's mouth, to hold him back long enough to adjust his grip on the blaster. He pressed his forearm right against the monster's jaw hinge but the knight still managed to gnaw away at it, trying to break the bone in half. Coyotl howled in agony but jammed the blaster against the were-jaguar's bare gut and pulled the trigger. Over and over.

The knight jolted with each shot. His eyes bulged. When he finally stopped sawing at Coyotl's arm with his molars, Coyotl shoved him aside. He let go of the blaster to free himself of the weight, then he sat in the grass, shivering and cradling his wounded arm.

When a shadow descended over him, he looked up to see the priest holding a long steel blade in his hand, raised to stab. Coyotl scooted back until he bumped into the car's side panel. Why did you leave the blaster behind? he cursed himself.

But someone hit the priest from behind. He fell onto the car above Coyotl and slid down the hood to the ground, his body laying half in the street. Blood formed a glistening black pool on the asphalt under his head.

Titic stood on the sidewalk, holding a large garden stone in both hands, his breath ragged as he stared down at the priest. When he finally tore his gaze away, he asked Coyotl, "Are you okay?"

"Are you okay?" Coyotl asked.

Titic dropped the stone as if suddenly realizing what he'd done.

Coyotl's mother rushed to her son and pulled him into her arms, covering his face with kisses and tears. His father came soon after, with bandages and medicine. The other neighbors gradually gathered around as his father cleaned his wounded arm and wrapped it with bandages. Everyone seemed to be talking at once.

"More knights will be here soon."

"They'll kill him on the spot when they see this."

"He needs a doctor."

"They can't take him to a doctor! They'll turn him over to the knights for sure!"

"He can go my brother, in Tlaxcala. He's a doctor, and he helps people escape the sacrifice all the time."

Coyotl looked at the last one to speak. It was a man who lived near the end of the street. Coyotl had never spoken to him and he didn't know his name, but the man pushed a slip of paper into Coyotl's hand and said, "He'll help you. And your friend." He nodded to Titic, who was paled but nodding.

"Take the car, son," Coyotl's father said, giving him the keys. He also gave him all the money out of his wallet, and Coyotl's mother emptied her own money purse.

"Are you all crazy?" Titic's mother screamed, and everyone turned to look at her. She wrung her hands together, her voice quaking as she spoke. "Who are we to interfere with the will of the gods like this? Xiuhtecuhtli chose him for his vessel, and if he doesn't get his blood, he'll torch the One World in an inferno of flames and fury." She turned to Coyotl when she said, "Do you really wish to bring about the world's end?"

Before Coyotl could answer, Titic told her, "If you're so concerned about that, mother, maybe you should go offer yourself to him. Your gods don't care whose blood they gets, just that they get it."

She stared at Titic for a moment then ran for the house, not looking back.

"Let's go, before she calls the knights," Titic told Coyotl and they headed for the garage around back of the house.

"Your own mother would really turn you in?" Coyotl asked.

"To her, the gods mean more than even me."

They made it to Tlaxcala before dusk, and the neighbor's brother greeted them when they arrived. He stitched up Coyotl's cuts and bandaged his arm. He also gave them a meal.

"A friend has a car for you to take, since the knights will be looking for that car," he told Coyotl over dinner. He unfolded a map on the table. "You'll need to leave early, before the patrols start canvassing outside of Tenochtitlan. Take the highway northwest to Huaxtepec, and from there just keep going. When you hit the coast, follow it north. It'll take you a week to get here, to Miztonatlan—" He pointed to a city circled on the map. "—but the empire's control isn't as strong in the north, and there are people there who will help you."

After dinner the man left them to sleep on the couches, but neither of them seemed able to. Coyotl watched the stars through the window and touched the bandages on his neck. It would undoubtedly leave a scar.

"We'll never get to go back home, will we?" Titic asked after they'd laid in the dark for a half hour.

"Probably not," Coyotl said. "I’m sorry I got you into this."

"You didn't get me into anything," he said. "After you told me about being the Divine Fire, I stayed up all night wishing there was something I could do to help you. It was so unfair. We were going to go to school together in the autumn, and when we finished, we were going to start that mountain climbing business down in Cuzco, remember? And someday we were going to climb Denali."

Coyotl nodded. "We had everything planned out."

"But then I realized that none of that was going to happen," Titic continued. "I felt so angry, but scared too, and so helpless. If I said anything to my mother about it, she'd curse me and make me rub chili powder in my eyes as penance for doubting the gods. And if I said anything to the priest … well, look what he did to you, and you're supposed to be the god-incarnate."

Coyotl pulled his hand away from his neck. "He certainly didn't seem too concerned about killing me, did he?"

"I'll never get that image out of my head, that look on your face when he ..." Titic swallowed hard. "I was sure he was going to kill you, right there in front of us, in front of your parents …"

"I suppose there are more than just one alternate, so why shouldn't he?"

Titic stiffened his jaw and said, "He at least should have had the decency to treat you like a god, with respect, but then these sacrifices aren't really about the gods, are they? They're about power, over you, me, our parents, and everyone else. It's about keeping that power in the hands of those that have it." He sat in silence for a moment then said, "I'm glad I killed him. He had the blood of thousands staining his hands, and I wasn't about to stand there and let him spill yours too."

So much gratitude filled Coyotl's heart that he couldn't form it into words. It only came out as a few tears that he promptly wiped away.

"And all these people who helped us, they felt just like me. We shouldn't be afraid to do what we think is right, and for just a moment you made them forget their fears of the priests and jaguar knights. And they'll tell others what you did, how you stood up and refused to go peacefully to a pointless death, and it'll spread hope to those that need it. Generations from now, when no one fears the sacrifice anymore, all the people will say, 'It was Coyotl who freed us. He's the one who started it all. We owe our independence to him'."

"Now you're being ridiculous," Coyotl said. "I'm nobody. No one's going to remember me for anything."

"The Spanish Devil was nobody too, yet we celebrate his death as if he was someone important, someone who was going to change everything. Don't underestimate the power of the dedicated individual. I can see it all now. Someday it'll be someone representing you in the Chase, accept when you reach the temple, the crowd won't trip you but instead stand with you against the mob of knights."

"Shut up already," Coyotl said with a laugh. They didn't talk anymore after that, but Titic's words played over and over in his head. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of a world that was just a little brighter than it was yesterday; he was a freer man than most, if only because most people lacked hope. And what more precious gift could one give others than hope?