Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The War-God Takes a Bride
THE WAR-GOD TAKES A BRIDE
IT is said that Huitzilopochtli wearied of mere punishment sacrifices—the offering of beaten armies on his altars—and longed for a fairer gift. He was lonely: he wished for a sister, a companion, a wife. So he afflicted the earth for a time, as a sign of his displeasure and his need, that the oracles might tell the inquiring people what to do. It may have been a long rain, a drouth, a plague, a series of hurricanes; whatever it was, the populace groaned and asked the priests how they might avert its continuance, and the priests, inspired by the god, bade the Aztec emperor send a princess to him. A messenger was despatched to the king of the Culhuacans, to beg that he would honor his favorite daughter by making her the bride of the war-god and sharer of his throne. Flattered and frightened, for he had reason to hold the Aztecs, as well as the god, in fear, realizing, too, that un-less he brought the affliction of the people to a quick end they would not be slow to avenge the selfishness of his love with the destruction of him-self and his family, the king took a tearful farewell of his daughter, who in gorgeous robes and flowers was escorted to the altar. The pomps having been observed and the murder committed, a ceremony followed which consisted in the flaying of the victim and a public wearing of the skin by the priest who had taken the life. With good intention, doubtless, but with a refinement of cruelty, the Aztec emperor asked the king to attend his girl's deification. He entered the temple after the killing, for that he could not bear, and was groping his way forward in the darkness, when a copal torch flashed up and he saw the priest beside Huitzilopochtli's statue, receiving the homage of the multitude and dressed in the freshly stripped skin, that still bore a ghastly suggestion of the victim. The king shuddered and moaned in grief and horror and rushed from the place to vent his sorrow beneath the stars. The stars? Yes, there was comfort. Was not one of them now his daughter? If only he could know the one!