Even outside the walls of warlike Teotihuacan can Lady Blood hear the sounds of festival. Even outside the great walls can the death goddess and her only companion, Old Spider Monkey, hear the noise of drunken worship, all the laughter and sounds of fucking and the ugly music of the Blood Moon festival spilling into the valley and the maiden Lady Blood can’t help but grit her teeth because she is the Blood Moon but the Blood Moon that they worship isn’t she and she came to set the record straight because she really doesn’t care who they worship but if they are going to worship the Blood Moon they might as well worship right and worship her or the Blood Moon not at all.
“I’m going to get so drunk,” says Old Spider Monkey.
The pair approach the gate.
“The fuck you’re not.” says Lady Blood. “We’re not here for the festival.”
“What? What are we here for then?”
“To set the record straight, remember?”
“Obviously. No, yeah. But also, you do owe me a drink.”
“No, I don’t!”
And Old Spider Monkey gives her a look.
“Oh yeah. Shit. Okay, yeah, one drink, one drink,” says Lady Blood.
“I’m going to get so drunk,” says Old Spider Monkey.
The pair pass beneath the gate.
***
The streets smell of blood and cum and cooking.
Unlike the amorphous layout of the cities of the Mayan kingdoms, the streets of Teotihuacan stretch out in a meticulous grid of squares and workshops and stadiums and palaces and towering limestone apartment complexes housing over two hundred thousand of its residents, all split down the middle by the Avenue of the Dead. The white road stretching ever northward past the Pyramid of the Sun and leading all the way up to the Pyramid of the Moon, the final pyramid at the end of the avenue.
But as they enter into the city, the death goddess pulls Old Spider Monkey away from that avenue and all its lifesick teeming.
Instead, Lady Blood finds them a spot, just off the white road, in the shadow of the Citadel, where they can join the city in intoxication and get drunk on pulque and listen to music and bide their time before heading out to set the record straight with the Ajaw of Teotihuacan.
The death goddess orders them each a cup and taps her feet along to ugly fluting as they wait, and the streets are so full, and two people fuck in an alley, and a warrior of the sun cuts down a moon cultist in the middle of the road. The tensions between cults already bubbling over and it’s not even dark yet.
And then their cups of pulque are brought to them and Lady Blood drains nearly half of hers in a single draught, so sloppy mean, pulque dribbling down her chin, and again she wonders if it was worth coming to set the record straight if it meant coming to this maggoty meat of a city, so far away from the Mayan kingdoms who pay Xibalba and its death lords homage.
A woman walks up to them off the avenue and tries to sell them a little wooden statue of the moon goddess Awilix and Lady Blood looks down at the little wooden statue of Awilix and scrunches her nose and shoos the woman away with her hand without saying a word, without another glance at the wooden statue of Awilix.
“You don’t have to be mean,” says Old Spider Monkey. “It’s not her fault they’ve confused you for Awilix. Stop sulking. We’ll set the record straight and then the city will honour you like they should.”
“I don’t care,” says Lady Blood, looking at Old Spider Monkey, before falling back into a pout.
“You don’t care?” says Old Spider Monkey.
“Nope.”
“Then why are you dressed like that?”
And Lady Blood blushes for she had hoped that Old Spider Monkey wouldn’t notice.
For though she usually wears her hair long and loose, in the manner of the lowborn, she came to Teotihuacan with her hair extravagantly bound in a bird headdress made of muwaan feathers, small jade earspools at her ears in place of her usual wooden ones, and all that regal green contrasting prettily against the red body paint uncharacteristically lathered across face and body, and she still wore no wedding huipil, only a low sarong wrapped at her waist and nothing covering her breasts but a jade necklace dangling from her neck with even more jewelry of greenest jade at her wrists and ankles too.
And okay, fine, maybe she dressed up more extravagantly than she normally does, but that’s just coincidence. Like, can’t a death goddess pretty herself up for no reason? Why does she have to have a reason? Does the reason have to be whatever reason that old smelly monkey is trying to reason and that old smelly monkey is full of shit, there is no reason, she just wanted to look pretty today but there’s no reason why today and
“Okay. Fuck this,” says Lady Blood, before standing up. She takes her cup and drains it.
“Where are you going?”
And then leaning over to take his cup and draining that one too.
“Hey!”
“We’re leaving,” she says.
“You know you owe me another drink, right?”
And Lady Blood can’t help but smile.
“Here, take Mourning,” she says, pushing her great spear into Old Spider Monkey’s hands.
“Why?”
And Lady Blood can’t help but smile.
“It’ll be funner without it.”
And then quick as baby death the death goddess leaves the side street, sees the gates of the citadel, picks up speed across the avenue, reaches the gates of the citadel and marks two soldiers of Teotihuacan. She marks them first by their skull-like faces, white shell goggles around their eyes all skeletal fearsome beneath feather headdresses, then by the rectangle shape of their shields, the pyrite mosaic mirrors on their backs and the atlatl-holders strapped around their shoulders, and the first one turns around just in time to see the maiden Lady Blood’s fist swing up into his jaw and now he’s dead-limp out against the wall and to the credit of the royal guards, the second soldier moves fast enough to knock his spear to his atlatl before whipping it full strength at the death goddess and any mortal would have been stuck like prey, would have been dead that day, but fast as first baby breath, the death goddess sidesteps the hurtling dart and then one more step and then she brings her fist down into the soldier’s face like no more pretty looking warriors of Teotihuacan.
Lady Blood hops onto a stone and soars up over the gate with Old Spider Monkey scrambling up behind her and then she and her only companion are in the courtyard dodging courtiers and soldiers alike as the pair sprint up to the palace, and the goddess, armourless, barely wearing any clothes at all, sidesteps all the chert tips of spears thrusted or thrown at her by atlatls, and she can’t help but smile as she beats all their fucking faces and sends them sprawling to the ground and then her and Old Spider Monkey ascend the palace steps, pour through its greeting hall and then a corridor and then another and then two-handed, the maiden Lady Blood crashes through the doors to the throne room of the Ajaw of Teotihuacan.
And the throne room goes rot silent.
And a man on a stone throne goes tumescent mad.
The maiden Lady Blood steps into the room.
The man on the stone throne is plainly dressed as is the old way. He wears no clothes but a short skirt. No headdress, jewelry, or body paint adorns his body. Across his torso, tattoos of unknown hieroglyphs. Scarification around his mouth and eyes. Leaning to the right of his stone throne, a massive macuahuitl. Leaning to the left, an axe of obsidian glass. His hands so close to the grip of each. His knuckles newly split. And emblazoned upon the hide of his shield discarded at his feet, a sun, a moon, a serpent nowed.
“Where are my guards?” says the man on the stone throne, voice like sifting gravel.
“I beat them up,” says Lady Blood, as her and Old Spider Monkey walk into the room.
And though the man on the stone throne looks them over, though he waits a beat for his guards to follow the pair into the room, when realization sets that no one’s coming, that his men are probably dead, never once does he look concerned.
“And who are you?” he finally says.
Lady Blood looks to Old Spider Monkey like he knows what to do.
And Old Spider Monkey turns to the man on the stone throne because he knows what to do and so Old Spider Monkey steps forward, fear-grinning all the while, and forces himself to speak.
“Noble Spearthrower Owl, Ajaw of Teotihuacan,” says Old Spider Monkey, “you have the honour to be in the presence of the maiden Lady Blood, daughter of Gathered Blood, a death goddess of underground Xibalba and exiled heir to Jaguar House. She is called Blood Moon by the dead—”
“—Blood Moon?” interrupts a naked shaman to the left side of the ajaw. “The lady Awilix is the Blood Moon.”
And the maiden Lady Blood chokes back her anger.
She takes a moment to compose herself. And then looks around the room for the one who spoke.
The throne room is all drunken bodies and elaborate colour. Red on gold and jade decorate the borders of the doors and walls. The walls themselves covered in elaborate murals of burning palaces and screaming crowds and on one side of the room, minor lords and ladies sip on pulque while surrounding another ugly flutist, no longer fluting, and across from them, on the other side of the room where the voice had come from, a score of shamans and more noblemen, naked upon a carpet, are on all fours while slave women with perfect bodies stick bone tubes up their anuses, the bone tubes working like bone syringes injecting honeyed liquids into their rectums so that the men can get high off balché through ritual enema.
It is to one of these shamans that Lady Blood turns to.
“Awilix is goddess of the moon,” the maiden Lady Blood says to him. “That is true. But I am the Blood Moon.”
The man motions for the slave woman to pull the bone syringe out his anus. He sits up and cuddles into the heavy breasts of the woman who penetrated him and then lifts his eyes, an intoxicated red, and meets the death goddess’s gaze.
“And who are you?” he says.
And Lady Blood frowns and looks to Old Spider Monkey like he knows what to do.
And Old Spider Monkey turns to the shaman because he knows what to do.
“You have the honour to be in the presence of the maiden La—”
“—Enough,” roars the ajaw. “This is ridiculous. Are not the moon and blood moon not one and the same moon?”
Lady Blood bites her lip.
“They are—”
“—Then how can you be the blood moon if the lady Awilix is the moon?”
“I was always confused by that too,” says Old Spider Monkey.
“Shush,” Lady Blood says to him and then to the ajaw, “it’s hard to explain, my lord. But it’s all a matter of perspective. With your eyes so mortal you see a pretty maiden standing in front of you. But I’m also just a concept. And I’m also something much more terrible. And tonight, when the blood moon rises, I’ll be that too. Even if most times the moon is the Lady Awilix.”
“So, you are not the moon?”
“No.”
“But you are the blood moon?”
“Yes.
“And a goddess of death. A lady of underground Xibalba.”
“Uh huh.”
Then Spearthrower Owl stands up, but he leaves his weapons leaning against his throne, and walks with all the confidence of a warlord towards a heap of charred remains that the maiden Lady Blood failed to notice upon entering the room. The fully charred remains of a man bound by flowery stalks, his arms and legs pinned atop his back.
“Do you know who this is, my lady of death?” says the ajaw.
“No,” says the maiden Lady Blood.
“These, my lady, are the remains of Great Jaguar Paw, the ajaw of the Mayan city Tikal. I sacked his city not two weeks ago.”
And then Spearthrower Owl brings his massive fist down onto the black skull that once belonged to the Ajaw of Tikal, fourteenth of his noble line, and pommels it into nothing more than cracked bone and soot, and when he finally pulls his hand away, the warlord’s knuckles are now fully split and dripping blood down onto the floor.
“Oh.”
“I don’t know if you are who you say you are, my lady of death. But if you are, I do ask myself, what is a death goddess of Xibalba doing so far away from the Mayan kingdoms who pay Xibalba and its death lords homage? Have you come to avenge Great Jaguar Paw? Have you come to defend the Mayan Kingdoms?”
Lady Blood looks to Old Spider Monkey then back to this tattooed fuck because she’s had enough of this.
“I don’t give a shit about the Mayan Kingdoms. I’ve just come to set the record straight.”
“So, you’ve set the record straight. Now what?”
“Call off your festival. You honour the wrong goddess.”
Then the warlord’s half beaten, bloody guards finally burst into the room.
Then the Ajaw of Teotihuacan stands up straight and smiles.
“Again, I tell you, I don’t know if you are who you say you are. But this is what I say. If you aren’t who you say you are, the Blood Moon Festival will go on as planned because I will not have Lady Awilix insulted because of the lies of an imposter. And if you are who you say you are, then the Blood Moon Festival will go on as planned because these aren’t the fucking Mayan Kingdoms, and we do not pay homage to Xibalba here. Because this city is the domain of the Great Goddess and The lady Awilix is the only Blood Moon that we need, even if she’s not the Blood Moon, even not at all, because Teotihuacan does not acknowledge the authority of a little brat drunk on pulque and her mangy monkey just as drunk as she.”
And the warlord’s warriors knock their atlatls.
And the maiden Lady Blood frowns so mean and turns to Old Spider Monkey.
“Mourning.”
“Mourning.”
And mortals are so boring slow, so Old Spider Monkey hands the death goddess back her great spear Mourning, whose pale shaft is a bone pulled from the murdered First Hen’s corpse, and whose point, one of her filed-down talons, and all so white from end-to-end it drinks up light like bright deicide, and fuck this stupid festival, it was barely even fun at all, and the death goddess plunges her spear tip deep into the neck of the first guard that she sees and his neck rips open so easily because all mortals yearn for death and
“Fuck this stupid festival.”
Then there goes the neck of another guard and then another’s chest and then another’s neck and another’s stomach and the great spear Mourning cuts through armour, glass, and flesh and the maiden Lady Blood is already awash in blood by the time the warlord can pick up his macuahuitl, but it’s already too late because the floor is already slick with gore and guts and dead warriors of Teotihuacan and before the warlord’s even taken a single step, she’s already burst through the doors out into a corridor, and then another, and then through palace’s greeting hall and then down its steps and up its gate with Old Spider Monkey scrambling after her and the two disappear into the bustling crowd of the avenue.
***
The maiden Lady Blood is lost in thought and all pouty sad as she slides over a small jade piece in exchange for two large vases of pulque.
“Where did you get the jade from? I thought you lost everything in the fight,” says Old Spider Monkey.
“No, yeah,” says Lady Blood.
“You stole it didn’t you?” says Old Spider Monkey.
“No, yeah,” says Lady Blood.
And the maiden Lady Blood hands Old Spider Monkey one of the vases before walking back into the bustle of the Avenue of the Dead. The white road bathed in orange light and the sun is nearly set and although the death goddess is still slick with drying blood, so too are so many in the crowd. The tensions between cults nearly bubbling over and it’s not even dark yet.
They sip their drink in silence as they walk the avenue. Neither bothering to even spare more than a glance as they pass the Pyramid of the Sun. And the death goddess feels so stupid, feels so embarrassed with her bird headdress made of muwaan feathers atop her head, her small jade earspools at her ears in place of her usual wooden ones, and all that red body paint lathered across face and body at least now she can pretend that its blood, and she doesn’t give a fuck about the Mayan Kingdoms, or if Teotihuacan pays Xibalba and its death lords homage, she’s not even allowed back in Xibalba, but all she had left was her name. She is the maiden Lady Blood, called Blood Moon by the dead, and now she has not even that.
“The Great Goddess. Did you hear him mention her?” she says.
“Yeah. At first, I thought he meant Awilix. But I actually think she’s someone else. Teotihuacan’s patron goddess, maybe.”
“Hmm. Yeah. The Great Goddess. I wonder what she’s the goddess of?”
“Greatness?”
“Fuck me.”
They continue walking, sipping on their pulque in continued silence, and continue getting drunk without either having to say a word.
Until they reach the end of the avenue.
The end of the white road.
The Plaza of the Moon.
In the shadow of the Pyramid of the Moon.
At the foot of the mountain named Tenan.
Even sulking, even pouting, Lady Blood cannot help, as she looks up to the northern sky, but marvel at the immensity of the pyramid. Seven layers built atop each other, connected by a staircase. Burial grounds on either side. A stage for human sacrifice. And having undergone the long walk down the Avenue of the Dead, past the Pyramid of the Sun, to gaze now upon the Pyramid of the Moon and the mountain beyond, having traversed the distance and all that long walk represents, the structure’s relationship to mountain, pyramid, and road suddenly feels so very clear to the death goddess now, and for only just a moment, she almost misses Xibalba, the decrepit city and all its dead.
“It’s beautiful,” says Lady Blood.
Before the plaza erupts in excitement.
A surging wave of bodies, all the city’s merchants and all the people deep in festival, all the sun cultists, and all the moon, as they all push and shove, it’s at first difficult to make out just what’s happening. Until it becomes clear that something comes from the south.
Something comes up the white road.
Something comes up the avenue.
Something comes to the Plaza of the Moon.
In the shadow of the Pyramid of the Moon.
At the foot of the mountain named Tenan.
And the crowd parts and bows in reverence.
And at first, the maiden Lady Blood cannot make out what it is that comes. Until slowly, the death goddess can make out the shape of woman. A woman slowly making her way down the avenue. The woman becoming clearer as she nears. She’s taller than any person in the crowd. She’s taller than any living thing. A bird headdress made of green quetzal feathers adorns her hair. Nothing covering her chest but a beaded necklace. Her colours are red and yellow.
But as the woman makes her way through the slowly hushing crowd, Lady Blood cannot help but think that her proportions are all wrong. Her body is too small for how much taller she is than everyone else around her. It does not immediately make sense.
Then the crowd parts and Lady Blood can see the woman’s lower half.
For below the woman’s midriff, so slim and delicate, her flesh stretches out into hard and see-through, yellow chitin. The soft abdomen of a woman ripping out into the bulbous one of a spider, all gravid and extended from the fertilized eggs that she carries. She skitters down the white road with her eight massive legs and the plaza fully parts down the middle in silent reverence.
“I am the Great Goddess,” she says, “wife of Tláloc, Lord of Rain. I am the patron deity of warlike Teotihuacan. And you’ve invaded my nest, pretty maiden.”
“I just came to get drunk,” says Lady Blood.
The Great Goddess smiles. Showing for the first time her sharp and little fangs. The gleam of venom on her lips.
“I could have forgiven that. But in all your festivities, you insulted the ajaw. And you insulted Lady Awilix. And maybe worse of all for you, you came to Teotihuacan smelling oh so pretty and divine. For all those reasons, and for none at all, I’m going to lay my clutch of eggs into that soft chest of yours. Pick up your spear, death goddess. I am so near to giving birth.”
And the festival goers of Teotihuacan push and part to the edges of the plaza to give the combatants room for battle. Lady Blood turns to Old Spider Monkey beside her and gently pushes him with the rest of the parting crowd and Old Spider Monkey looks up at her with eyes wide with fear but he backs away as he’s bade and all Lady Blood can do is give him a little drunken smile.
The Great Goddess and the maiden Lady Blood look at one another across the emptied plaza and torches begin to light as the sky darkens red but it is still not even night yet.
“Can I ask you a question?” Lady Blood says.
“Just the one,” The Great Goddess says.
“What are you the goddess of?”
“Greatness.”
“Fuck me.”
And the Great Goddess surges forward, legs all a skitter across the stone, and then she pulls, from a strap across her back, the longest macuahuitl Lady Blood has ever seen. Double the length as normal and twice as thin, more spear than club, but even still, prismatic blades of obsidian run down both its sides glimmering glasslike and gorgeous in the newly lighting torch light, and the Spider Woman of Teotihuacan swings the macuahuitl in a sweeping arc, impossibly fast, and the death goddess tries to skip away, but two volcanic shards nick her at her collar bone, opening flesh, as godblood wells and spills down her chest and the crowd cheers, drunk in festival, and Lady Blood tries to get some distance but her head is already dizzy from the blood loss.
“I’ve wet your chest, pretty maiden,” the Great Goddess says. “Sweet marinade for my hatchlings.”
But fuck this and fuck this festival, it wasn’t even fun, and the death goddess, with her great spear Mourning in her hand, moves on to the attack. Thrusting for the Spider Woman’s soft girl-tummy, belly button like a target, and blocked by the macuahuitl, she thrusts for the Great Goddess’s see-through, yellow chitinous abdomen instead, and blocked by one of her eight massive legs, she thrusts again, and then again, and then the Spider Woman of Teotihuacan scurries up a wall, the crowd parting quick, smiles on their stupid faces and laughter on their lips, and then one more thrust, but this one out of anger, and sloppily dealt, Lady Blood’s chest soaking with more blood, and the Great Goddess swings again her macuahuitl and catches Lady Blood just barely on the cheek but it sends her spinning down to the plaza floor and the death goddess is far too drunk for this.
And then night has come.
And the blood moon rises.
The Great Goddess skittering closer.
“I was going to lay my clutch of eggs into that soft chest of yours. With only the crowd and your monkey as witness. But now that the moment has come, I do feel that the offending party should really be here.”
The Great Goddess reaches up towards the sky. To the blood moon newly bloomed and bleeding red down onto the plaza.
“My lady Awilix,” she calls, “our blood moon in the sky, come down from your Moon Throne and join me in cutting down this pretender.”
And the maiden Lady Blood, daughter of Gathered Blood, a death goddess of Xibalba and exiled heir to Jaguar House, her godblood dripping down onto the plaza floor, stands up, her great spear Mourning in her hand.
“I keep telling you people. Awilix is not the Blood Moon. I am.”
And the maiden Lady Blood’s flesh erupts in sopping streams of crimson light, her skin sloughing off in bleeding moonlight, and for a moment the blood moon shines in both the sky and in a plaza within Teotihuacan.
The Blood Moon soars up into the sky and all her wounds are gone. She looks both just like herself and also not. Not a maiden but a woman grown. In place of bird headdress made of muwaan feathers, her hair flows down in two long braids, in place of a low sarong wrapped at her waist, she’s nude from head to toe, and a crown of blood adorns her head, haloed by the red moon behind her that is both her and not. Blood lactating from her heavy breasts and seeping out from between her legs, for tonight she is every step along the cycle, and for just a moment, though Old Spider Monkey would never admit this to her face, she almost looks just like the lady Awilix.
Then the Blood Moon hurls down her great spear Mourning and catches the Great Goddess in her lowest abdomen, all gravid and extended, as it bursts and spills clear and yellow liquid carrying sacs of eggs down onto the plaza floor.
Then the Blood Moon falls, like a collapsing planet, to beat the shit out the Great Goddess’s stupid face.
And somewhere in another world, sitting on her Moon Throne, so pearlescent and divine, the lady Awilix screams in rage.
And maybe it’s the act of seeing one’s patron goddess pummelled into paste. Or maybe the wrong sun cultist pushed the wrong moon one, but finally the tension bubbles over and the Plaza of the Moon erupts into civil violence to spread all across warlike Teotihuacan.
But only when the Blood Moon finishes stepping on all the humanoid spiderlings, hatching and crying out for their murdered mother, does she begin pushing her way out of the city with her only companion, Old Spider Monkey.
***
The maiden Lady Blood and Old Spider Monkey sit on the side of a river, while Teotihuacan burns in the distance. Neither says a word to one another. Neither knowing what to say. Teotihuacan will be fine, most likely. But now they’ve probably made an enemy. Just one more place they cannot go.
Cutting through the silence, a man and his sons, on many long canoes, approach from the river.
“Happy Blood Moon Festival,” calls the man.
Lady Blood rolls her eyes.
“The Blood Moon Festival was last night,” Old Spider Monkey calls back.
“Maybe. But it was a misstep. Tonight, we celebrate again.”
“Honouring Lady Awilix?” says Lady Blood, all grumpy mean.
The man looks at his sons then back to her.
“Do fathers not teach their daughters about the gods anymore? The maiden Lady Blood is the Blood Moon. They say there will be festivities in her name across all the villages leading to Tikal. They say she killed the Great Goddess. They say she fights for the Mayan Kingdoms.”
Lady Blood and Old Spider Monkey look at one another.
“Um, weird old man,” says Lady Blood, “can we come with you to these festivities?”
The old man looks to his sons, confused, then back to her.
“Uh, sure.”
“I’m going to get so drunk,” says Old Spider Monkey.
“No, yeah,” says Lady Blood.
— Xavier Garcia is a writer/editor from Toronto, Canada. His short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies published by hex, Cold Signal, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Cursed Morsels, Filthy Loot, Weirdpunk Books, and others. You can find him walking the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, or at twitter.com/xavier_agarcia.