Still there was laughter and gayety, but that one who in fantasy was a goddess of mountain crests had floating mists in her eyes while her lips formed a tremulous smile. On her black hair rested softly the hand of a lover, mortal at heart, but divine in a subtle play of mind over substance.
“O little Lady of the House of Mists, see how your white fogs cling to Ajusco, dropping dew on the cosmos flowers that Xochiquetzalli loves.”
“They are mists of a joyful sorrow, my Lord, they are mists of sorrow that obscure the world to-day that it may be fairer to-morrow.”
“Then tell me that no shadows shall lie across your heart to-morrow when the fishing boats enter the canal at sunset. Tell me there shall be no shadows but only content in what has been, O my precious Lady of Mists.”
“Youth of Toxcatl, there shall be no weeping.”
At a rocky point called Tlapitzahuayan the procession of canoes came to land. Here the courtiers and the four brides of the Youth of Toxcatl took merry leave of him, and he set out with his six boys for Tlacuchcalco, a nearby ancient temple, neglected and unused except on this one occasion of the year. A winding trail led to a rocky field of cactus and acacia to a temple mound overrun with desert growths. A broken stair climbed upward to a crumbling sacrificial chamber whose doorway was nearly closed by yellow orchids and thorny vines. Behind this humble screen, the thirsty knife of the great Magician awaited its draft of blood. The boys of the retinue followed in the footsteps of Five-eagle, and from the shore rang out a last sally of uplifting laughter.
At the foot of the temple stairs they took from his shoulders the white mantle of the god who must be kept youthful at the cost of youth, and they unwrapped from his waist the gayly brocaded breechcloth, and they took from his feet the sandals, and from his ears the disks of apple-green jade, the last symbols of his year of earthly power. Only around his neck remained the necklace of flutes. He was a naked mortal, come, in the last humility of all men, to make the sincere gift of his life itself to a jealous and implacable god. With a gallant smile Five-eagle dismissed his pages and mounted the broken stairs; pausing on each step to break a flute between his two hands. Only a moment later and a human body, naked, horribly gaping at the breast, came crashing down the temple stairs, staining the brambles and the stones with blood.
We can know the Past only as a masquerade of the Present. We can imagine only those smells and colors which have come into our nostrils and have passed before our eyes. To-day there are no gods, you say, and it is true that terrible Siva and the sweet face of Christ fade back into the haze that covers unbelief.
Yet, to-day, how many a young Icarus plunges gladly to his death from dizzy heights. Does Necessity make us invade the airy kingdom of the birds or the green depths of the sea? Or are we driven to these conquests by the lusts and sincerities of a new commanding over-soul, built out of song and fellowship and ordered lives of work and play? For the harnessed Powers enslave their busy masters, and the new-found gods of Speed and Thrill count victims as freely offered as that Youth of Toxcatl, who bravely climbed to the bloody altar of his sacrifice in Tenochtitlan that is no more. The soul of the Machine comes forth to rule the prostrate nations that another age may see a strange mirage thrown upward on the pale mists of romance.