Naamah's Blessing

shepherd to his people.
    I breathed slowly and deeply, my hands resting on my knees palm upward, feeling Achcuatli’s gaze on me.
    When the words came to me, they seemed to come from a distant point beyond the candle-flame, a place of tremendous brightness. “Blood is not the only sacrifice,” I heard myself say. “And heaven is not the only reward. The roots of the tree of Aztlan have been well watered. Let its branches spread far and wide, and its seeds fall on fertile ground.”
    Naamah’s grace settled over the chamber, as delicate and ephemeral as the feather cloak Achcuatli had given me.
    I glanced at him to see his obsidian eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Do you know the meaning of those words?” he asked me.
    “No, my lord,” I said softly. “Do you?”
    He nodded. “I believe I do.”
    Rising to my feet, I went to him. I laid one hand on his bare chest, feeling his heart beat beneath my palm. He put his arms around me, Naamah’s blessing doubly enfolding me. I felt his warm breath stir my hair.
    It had been a long time since I’d been with someone who was scarce more than a stranger to me. I had to own, there was a certain fearful thrill at the newness and difference of it, and in giving myself over wholly to Naamah’s will.
    Despite his abrupt kiss in the garden, Achcuatli was gentle. He undressed me with reverence, untying the feather cloak, setting aside the feather headdress with the long emerald
quetzal
plumes that were his gifts. He removed my clothing and left me adorned in golden armbands, gazing at me with heavy-lidded eyes.
    “You are very beautiful,” he said at length.
    I kissed him, learning how to angle my head to avoid the golden chin-plug. “Thank you.”
    In turn, I undressed him. His skin shone coppery in the lamplight. In the course of undressing him, I performed many of the kisses and caresses and love-bites that were part of Naamah’s arts, raising his desire to a feverish pitch. After I knelt to unlace his sandals, I wrapped my long hair around his erect phallus with a deft twist of my head, drawing back to pull away in a long, silken glide.
    At that, Achcuatli groaned and pulled me to my feet, his fingers digging hard into my shoulders. “Enough!” he said in a hoarse voice.
    The bed was soft, a pallet filled with feathers. I sank into it under the weight of Achcuatli’s body on mine. With Naamah’s gift beating in my veins, I spread my thighs to welcome him.
    Slowly and steadily, Achcuatli thrust himself into me. The absence of a shared
diadh-anam
brought home the strangeness of it all. His strong-featured, unfamiliar face hovered over mine, his gaze hard and intense as he moved in and out of me. I wanted to close my eyes, but some prompting of Naamah’s told me not to.
    Blood is not the only sacrifice
.
    I offered up my own pleasure as a sacrifice, my own deep wellspring of desire. I felt the fluttering of Naamah’s doves in my belly, the deeper waves of climax fluttering lower. I watched Achcuatli’s face break into a fierce grin of pride as my hips rose to meet his, my back arching, nails scoring his back.
    And I understood that there was a deeper wound beneath the slight that the Aragonians’ disgust and dismay had provoked, that it was symbolic of the profoundly injured pride of the entire Nahuatl folk, regarded as little better than animals by these strangers from across the sea who would gladly have razed Tenochtitlan to the ground if they could.
    Naamah’s blessing was not enough to heal the wound, but it could spread balm over it, that healing might begin.
    With a low groan, Achcuatli buried himself deep inside me and spent.
    Afterward, he lay quiet and thoughtful, idly stroking my skin, gazing at the ceiling with open eyes.
    “What did it mean to you?” I asked at last, unable to resist my curiosity. “The words I spoke?”
    He glanced at me. “It is a thing my advisors and I have discussed. I told you that the Aragonians made alliances with tribes who resent our rule.” I nodded. “We have discussed making our own peace with enemy tribes, and bringing them more fully into the fold of our empire.”
    “Instead of making war on them to gain captives to sacrifice?” I asked.
    “Yes.” Achcuatli studied me. “No one put those words in your mouth?”
    “No one but Naamah, I swear.”
    “Why would a foreign goddess speak to me through a stranger when our own gods are silent?” He shook his head in frustration. “I do not