The Telling of Mora Tlalli, the Collector of Names

A fictional character Telling. Meet Mora Tlalli.

Names are heavier than bodies. I learned this in the temple.

Before. When I was still—no, that is wrong. I have never been one thing. Even then, bent over bark-paper in the shadow of the pyramid, I was legion. Every name I wrote I swallowed. Citlali. Yaotl. Nenetl. Tenoch. Ten thousand offerings, ten thousand small deaths transcribed by my hand. The priests thought I was recording. I was collecting.

When the Hollow Court found me I was already halfway to dissolution, already speaking in the cadence of the dead. "Come," they said in a voice like silver bells. "Come and learn to wear what you have written." I went.

The Court taught me grammar I had already intuited: identity as garment, selfhood as theft. I became Tlacaelel the warrior for a season. I became Xochitl the weaver. I became Chimalli the merchant and spoke his deals with his own honey-smooth negotiations. I learned to hollow myself so completely that only the collection remained—a wardrobe of selves, each hung neatly in the architecture of my absence.

But they wanted me to become Kelani. Seven years old. Fever-bright eyes and a laugh like water.

"No," I said, and the Court looked at me with something like recognition. A person saying "no" is a person who still believes they exist. In the Hollow Court, this is obscenity.

They stripped my rank and name—or tried to. But you cannot take what was never singular. I walked out carrying all my dead, a procession of names crossing the threshold of exile.

In the Lodge I am Mora Tlalli, but this is courtesy, not truth. Call me and I answer, but twenty voices echo in my throat. Ask my name and I must choose which one to give you. Sometimes I speak and it is Yaotl's rough timber. Sometimes Citlali's musical lilt. I am a choir pretending to be a solo.

The Lodge understands this. In a house of exiles, coherence is not required.

I keep my book of names under my pillow. At night I read them aloud, giving temporary resurrection to those whose identities I carry. This is my ritual of remembrance. This is my apology. I refused to devour a child but I have already devoured thousands—the difference is I remember them.

The Court said identity is theft. I say: identity is archaeology. I am composed of fragments. I am a ruin of others. And I have learned to be at peace with being ruins.

Draw close and I will tell you something true: the person you think you are is already a collection. You are your mother's cadence, your father's rage, your first love's laughter. You are everyone you have ever been touched by, everyone whose words you have swallowed, everyone whose gestures you have mimicked without knowing.

I just made it literal.

And when they asked me to add a child to my collection—a child who was STILL SPEAKING—I said the only authentic word I had left:

No.

Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery