Chapter 5 – Forgotten Actions
Tlachinolli had had to use every scrap of willpower she possessed to get herself inside the confining walls of the house, and even now, after two days, she still sometimes felt as if the walls were closing in on her. This fear brought endless teasing from the two boys, Atl and Tototl, her father had had with the women he married after coming back to the city. The boys teased her endlessly when she was scared after just coming into the walls but when she told them her stories of the savage wilderness they sat in rapt attention and afterwards treated her with respect and even awe. When her breathing grew faster and faster and the walls threatened to crush her the boys would do what they could to help her, which sadly was not much.
Atl and Tototl went like good little boys to the calmecac, or noble's school. Atl studies to be a ruler and lead the people to victory and land but Tototl wants to live up to his name and honor the great bird god, Quetzalcoatl. They told Tlachinolli about their lives at school and she listened patiently while secretly dreading the thought of her own lessons relearning to weave from her stepmothers.
She tried desperately to learn from her stepmothers but there was something in the way they taught that kept her from truly learning what they taught. She had bad habits from living in the wilderness but she new almost every edible her, berry, or stalk and could heal a wound with relative ease. Unfortunately none of these skills could help her weave, cook, or cleaning the house. And while she suffered indoors her brothers were suffering in school learning math and singing and dancing and warfare and law and astronomy. Luckily she could help them with medicine, but it didn't do too much good.
Tlachinolli remembered the days of when she would dress as a boy to sell goods for her family, she had had to go to telpochcalli, or peasant/merchant sons went because, of course, the classes couldn't mingle. Oh heaven forbid!
She had learned to obey rulers and priests and how to fight, though she always had to work the hardest to be as good as the boys, and how to participate in the ceremonies. It had been living torture. Though not as bad as the torture that her brothers were forced to do, cold baths, no food, getting up in the middle of the night, digging ditches, sweeping floors, other crazy things… All to learn discipline they already new! And to top it all off, if they didn't they got stuck with cactus spines. Lovely life.