Read Online Clash of Star-Kings by Avram Davidson - Free Book Online

say,
Dispenseme, yo busco mi bicho-gato….
”
    “I know,” she said, with a snuffle.
    “Boy! Are the natives ever restless tonight!”
    They didn’t say anything more for a very long time, and by the time they came again to the tottering old archway it was already daylight, though still misty, And here they paused. That is to say, Sarah stopped, and as she had been using Jacob as a sort of staff or crutch, he perforce stopped, too. “Whats-matter?” he grunted.
    “So are we going home now?” she asked, in a pity-me-for-surely-you-can-suggest-a-better-notion tone of voice.
    “Not necessarily…. We can go to the Los Remedios-Hilton, if you prefer? What kind of a question is that? Where else would we go?”
    In a teeny-tiny voice she said, “I thought we might go to Mac’s house….”
    “At this hour?” But a look at her woebegone and teary face stopped his sarcasm. “Well … he did invite us for breakfast … but even for breakfast it’s darned early. What say we go home awhile and rest up? —
then
we can go to Mac’s house. Okay?”
    But she, in a voice which was almost inaudible, said that she didn’t want to go home … because it was full of dirty dishes at home … And so he, knowing that her stubbornness was often in inverse proportion to the reasonableness of her request, and that if balked she was perfectly capable of simply sitting down under the archway until she took root, he said, “Let’s go to Mac’s….”
    Fortunately, the menage at Mac’s also included an aged aunt who retired and rose with the poultry; Tía Epifania had just returned from the
molina de nixtamal
with fresh-ground lime-boiled cornmeal for the breakfast tortillas, and greeted them as though it was the most natural thing in the world for anybody to be up and around at that hour. “Pass, Yourselves!” she cried, cheerily. “This is Your House!”
    Some question as to the house’s ownership evidently troubled her niece, however, from behind whose bedroom door a sleepy and puzzled
“
¿
Quien?”
proceeded.
    “Los paisanos de Roberto,”
shrilled the ancient, and blew on an ember. The niece-landlady, after an astonished invocation to the Virgin of Guadalupe (whom she addressed, companionably, as “Sweety!”), dug Roberto in the ribs with an audible thud. He broke off in mid-snore, and presently appeared, rather rumpled and sleepy-looking, but as amiable as usual. He looked at Sarah’s face and blinked.
    “Let me perform some quick hydraulics,” he said, “and I’ll be at your entire disposal.” He did and was. Then, tapped and drained and washed and combed, he sat down and lit a brown-paper cigarette and began to talk of some light and humorous matter until he thought that they were sufficiently relaxed for him to ask if anything was the matter.
    Jacob hesitated. “Well … we had a rather curious experience last night. Or, early this morning, to be more exact … maybe … I’m not sure of the exact time.” And he proceeded, with help from Sarah, to tell what had happened. The account took a while; Mac nodded and nodded, lighting a second Negrita from the first before they were finished.
    Then he laughed. “Well, if there were such a thing as a local chamber of commerce, they’d have printed leaflets which I’m sure would have taken a load off your mind … if you’d read them in advance.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He shrugged. “Simply that it’s customary to dress up in costume at this time of year. The hills around here have got more old customs and costumes and dances and fiestas and fieras of one sort and another than just about any area of comparable size in the country. You just happened to stumble across one of them without realizing it, that’s all.”
    Jacob, though somewhat relieved, was still somewhat dubious. “Dress up like the old Aztec gods, too, you mean?”
    Macauley shrugged again and smiled again. “Well, I hadn’t heard of that particular one. Or of the coyote skin one,