Starfields

by Carolyn Marsden

  Rosalba nodded, knowing that Antonio had already called Mexico City.

  “Don’t cry, Rosalba,” Alicia said again. “We’ll come back next year.”

  “If there are any frogs left,” Rosalba said glumly. But then a thought startled her. “The world may not be here next year! We may not be here!”

  Alicia’s eyebrows pinched together, as if she too might cry. But then she smiled and patted Rosalba’s arm. “The world will be here. We will be, too. Because we’re going to do our big things.” She walked over to a large black duffle bag, rummaged inside a moment, then pulled out the book with the pyramid on the cover, the book of prophesy. “This is for you.”

  “But I can’t read,” Rosalba protested.

  “You should have this anyway. You’re the one who’s Mayan.”

  Rosalba tucked the book under her arm. Even if she couldn’t read, it would remind her of Alicia.

  After Antonio handed Martín Xicay a stack of pesos, Martín roped together his donkeys and led them away.

  “It’s time,” said Antonio to Alicia, climbing into one of the trucks.

  Rosalba hugged Alicia with all her might.

  Alicia hugged her back, just as hard, then let go, holding Rosalba at arm’s length. “I’ll be here next year.”

  As Rosalba waved with both arms, Alicia got into the truck beside her papi. As she turned to wave good-bye from the back window, Rosalba noticed that Alicia still wore the yarn bracelet. She herself reached up to touch her friend’s pretty butterfly sparkling in her hair.

  Floating along the river of life, the girl fast approaches a waterfall. She is soon to drop off into the Great Destruction. She is a blink of the eye away from the End of the World.

  But she can prevent that end from being oblivion. Instead of succumbing to One Death and Seven Death, she can bring forth a dominion of holy corn, fragrant and heavy on multitudes of stalks.

  I crawl deep into the cave. Alone I must heal myself. I summon the strength of the ancestors, of all shamans who have come before me, of those whose flesh is my flesh.

  I crawl inward, descending to the four crossroads of Xibalba: the Black Road, the White Road, the Red Road, and the Blue-Green Road.

  I enter my familiar House of Darkness. I am accustomed to its black passages. There, like the Hero Twins, I plant an ear of unripe corn. The corn may die. Or it may sprout, indicating true life.

  From there I pass into the Shivering House, where a howling wind clatters. With my very body, I warm that cold, emanating the heat of the sun itself.

  In the Jaguar House, the cats gnash and snap their teeth. I manifest bones to feed them. I breathe the strength of the jaguars into my heart.

  At the Bat House, multitudes await me. They fly at my head, shrieking, their snouts like knives. I transmute the din of their flapping wings into the great stillness that I am.

  This I do to save her.

  That night the shaman came to Rosalba again with his painted face, his heavy jewelry, the eyes that looked as if sunlight hurt them.

  He stared at her, as if to make sure he had her full attention.

  Then he lifted his hands. When he drew them apart, an image of a cornfield appeared. But it wasn’t a healthy cornfield, flourishing with green life. Instead it lay dried and brown.

  Rosalba didn’t want to look at that cornfield. Dead, it represented all that everyone worked to avoid. Everyone guarded against such bad luck through ritual and prayer, by weaving, by planting according to the sun and stars.

  The boy showed her another cornfield and then another. He showed her a mountainside covered with dead cornfields. And then many more mountains, brown and desiccated, crackling with death.

  Rosalba wished she could close her eyes against these visions.

  “Show your people,” the boy commanded, his voice flat and stern. “Warn them.”

  He pressed his palms together, waited a moment, and spread them wide again. A huipil appeared, stretched flat as if it had just come off a loom.

  With a start, Rosalba recognized this huipil as her own. The designs were those she’d already woven.

  But when she looked at the back panel, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Instead of the careful designs, the huipil was brocaded with crosshatchings of ugly black and brown.

  Like a dying cornfield.

  The boy stood silently before her. His eyes no longer blinked against the light, but commanded her.

  And then the boy swayed. He grew white, then translucent. He was gone. Rosalba reached out for him. What had happened? Had he died?

  When the dream faded, Rosalba woke up, her blood pounding.

  It took her a few moments to realize she’d been dreaming. Everything in the hut was normal: Adelina lay curled beside her. Mama and Nana slept on the other side of the hut, Nana gently snoring.

  The embers released puffs of sweet smoke, and a light rain drizzled softly on the thatched roof.

  Rosalba lay recalling the dream. Dead cornfields were a sign of global warming. Yet how could the boy request that she brocade such a design — no design at all? How could he ask her to create such a picture of destruction? There could be nothing worse than dead cornfields. For corn was life.

  To brocade a huipil picturing death, destruction, and ill health would be taboo.

  Rosalba pulled the blanket over her head and closed her eyes tight. It had been only a dream, after all. Not a real thing.

  Not a real thing like the way Alicia had left. What could a mere dream matter compared to that? As a tear slipped down her cheek, Rosalba wondered if Alicia was still riding in the truck with her papi. Perhaps she’d arrived home at a place Rosalba couldn’t imagine, perhaps in one of the sky-touching buildings. Would she ever see her friend again?

  Dawn broke with the cries of the roosters. Water dripped from the eaves. Rosalba listened to the soft pat-pat-pat as Mama and Nana slapped masa into tortillas.

  This would be her first day without Alicia.

  In my apprenticeship I have transformed myself into an eagle soaring among the clouds, into a serpent slithering in oneness with the earth, and into the jaguar who rules all. In my enchantments, I have become even a lowly pool of blood lying warm and sticky under the blinding gaze of the sun.

  There is nothing of me that cannot become other than myself.

  I will become a crow for her. A lowly crow that only she shall notice. For a dream is only a dream. A manifestation bears more power.

  In my transformation, I first become nothing but my head. The rest of my body vanishes. I wink until my head shrinks to the size of a crow’s body. From my chin grow wobbly crow legs. I hop back and forth until I lose my stiffness.

  The tail extends from my neck like a fan, sweeping the floor of the cave. Long and beautiful wings unfold from my cheeks. In growing the beak, my breath diminishes.

  Finally, I must see as a crow sees. I look out of one eye, shake my head down, and look through the other.

  I am ready for sacred flight.

  Rosalba tied the loom carefully to the tree, the other end around her waist. She straightened her skirt and placed herself in front of her half-finished huipil.

  In spite of herself, Rosalba couldn’t forget the dream. The shaman’s instructions had been so clear. Yet she’d be called a bruja if she did as he requested. She’d be shunned like Catarina Sanate.

  Rosalba decided to weave the back side of the huipil exactly like the front, just as she’d planned. She wouldn’t think of anything but the work ahead.

  Just when she started to insert the red yarn into the tight threads, a large black bird swooped down onto the loom. Staring at Rosalba with bright eyes, the crow tugged at the weaving with its sharp beak.

  “Go away!” Rosalba shouted.

  But the bird refused to leave. It kept tugging until it flew off, a red thread dangling from its beak.

  Rosalba stared at the spot in the blue sky where the bird had disappeared. And then she began to shake: loose ends of red yarn poked out
of her beautiful huipil. It was ruined! She wiped at tears with the back of her hand.

  A lizard darted onto the patio, stopped to study Rosalba with its black eyes, then slipped into the bushes. A dog roamed close to the house, sniffing for scraps.

  Just as Rosalba began to relax, a new thought quickened her breath. Had the attacker been a bird at all? Shamans were known to take animal shapes. Like the mysterious boy in her dreams, the bird had given her an unmistakable sign.

  Rosalba sighed. There was only one thing to do.

  She looked down into her basket of bright yarns, pulled out the ball of black, then shoved the basket to the side. She’d have no use for the rest of the colors. Yet she still needed brown, and didn’t have any.

  She retrieved the skein of white yarn, then cut long strands of white. She dipped the strands into cold coffee, letting the yarn absorb varying amounts of color, then hung the lengths over a tree branch.

  When the brown yarn was dry, Rosalba brocaded it, along with a little black, onto her white background.

  By weaving the traditional patterns, Rosalba had always assisted the Earthlord. By manifesting these designs, she made sure that the world moved properly. With her help, the sun traveled across the sky, down to the Underworld, and back up to shine all day.

  Now every time she inserted her pointed stick, she created disorder. She went against all she’d been taught, against all good sense. How could it be right to weave the colors of a dead cornfield?

  She sensed the Earthlord looking down on her. Was he filled with displeasure or merely puzzled?

  Some said the Earthlord took those who angered him to labor in the Underworld.

  Because Rosalba created no pattern, the work went quickly. With trembling fingers, she worked until her neck ached and her shoulders were sore.

  When the shadows stretched long, she heard Nana’s gentle footsteps behind her.

  “What are you doing, Rosalba?” Nana asked, bending to examine the huipil. “Your colors . . .”

  “An ancestor told me to weave this,” Rosalba said quietly. “I had a dream.”

  “A dream . . .” Nana mused, looking up into the tree. Then she shook her head, as though shaking away a memory. “Hide your work, Rosalba,” she cautioned.

  Yet when Sylvia slipped into the patio, Rosalba couldn’t roll up her loom fast enough.

  “Oh!” Sylvia exclaimed, then stepped closer, her huge eyes growing even larger.

  “I don’t like it, but an ancestor came to me in a dream.” Rosalba raised her face to look straight at Sylvia. “He showed me this design.”

  “That’s no design, Rosalba. It’s . . . it’s the opposite of a design. It wasn’t an ancestor but a demon who sent you that dream,” said Sylvia. “If you keep going, bad things will happen.”

  Rosalba didn’t answer, but wondered if Sylvia was right. By her rash actions, was she hastening the end of the world?

  Coming back, I find one arm still a glittering black wing. It takes me until Icoquih rises to transform it, to find myself completely human again.

  Traveling out of the cave, back to the place where we shamans live, I pause in the House of Darkness. I check on the ear of corn planted. It is not yet dead.

  Mauruch did not notice my absence. For in truth, I have not been gone for any earthly time. I sit against the wall of the cave, listening to the stalactites form.

  Sometimes I am strong enough to glimpse that girl at her loom. She is a wise girl. One who listens.

  I sink into rest. Or am I falling into the Underworld? Am I to be trapped forever in Xibalba?

  The next day, thunderheads formed, heavy with moisture. Surely it would rain. Yet as Rosalba set up her weaving inside the hut, the clouds drifted away. When the sky should have been washed with rain, bright yellow sunshine streaked across the patio.

  That night the wide band of stars seen only in winter paraded across the black sky.

  No rain fell the next day, or the next. By the end of the week, the sky remained a clear azure from one horizon to the other. Hot winds parched the air.

  Papa complained that the new corn shoots were shriveling. For a few days, he and the boys carried jars of water on their heads to the plants. But that did little good. Soon it was no use at all going to the cornfield.

  “There’s no corn to eat. No corn to trade. No seeds to plant next year,” Papa declared to Mama one day.

  Rosalba looked down at her dusty sandals, at her dusty brown toes. She thought of Sylvia’s warning. Had her ugly weaving brought on the drought?

  “Maybe I should go to the fincas to find work,” Papa went on.

  The fincas were the coffee plantations in the Lowlands. Only men without cornfields went down there to work for the ladinos. Men without cornfields were men without true connection to life.

  Throughout San Martín, the men swung in hammocks, sleeping, smoking, talking of the fincas.

  Rosalba continued her weaving. Instead of tying the loom across the open space of the patio, she retreated to the side of the hut where she couldn’t be easily seen.

  The drought wasn’t her fault, she kept telling herself. The Earthlord’s toads were dying of fungus. They’d died because of the road. She knew this, yet with every new line she wove, she trembled.

  “You can’t keep this up, Rosalba,” said Mama. “You’ll bring a bad name to our family.”

  “That’s such an ugly huipil!” Adelina declared.

  Nana remained silent.

  Rosalba heard the voices of Sylvia and Tía Yolanda in the patio. They were asking Nana if they could borrow some salt. She heard Sylvia and Tía Yolanda moving behind her. She sensed their gaze on her huipil.

  The next day, as she was doing laundry at the river, Rosalba noticed glances, heard whispers. She heard the dreaded word bruja.

  Mauruch speaks to the shamans: “In his weakened state, hovering perilously between life and the Underworld, Xunko engages in a battle I know nothing of.”

  He begins a slow chant: “You, Bundled Glory, and you as well, Tohil, Auilix, and Hacavitz, Womb of Sky and Womb of Earth, the Four Sides and the Four Corners . . .”

  I breathe in the incense of copal.

  Later Mauruch comes to me. “Open your eyes, Xunko. You are young yet. You are to live in this world.”

  But I cannot. Fate urges itself upon me.

  If I fail, if the girl fails, the world will veer toward the Black End.

  At the market, Rosalba helped Mama lay out the calla lilies, the eggs, and Nana’s woven cloths. K’in, instead of hiding behind a gray blanket of moisture, showed his bright face. Instead of being a friend, the sun was now an enemy. When the hot breeze stirred the dust, women covered their faces with their shawls, grumbling.

  “The rains should never have begun if they were going to stop like this.”

  “It must be evildoing.”

  Some of the women flashed looks in Rosalba’s direction. It seemed the gossip of her weaving had spread beyond San Martín.

  When Mama had sold some of the lilies and a basket of eggs, she gave Rosalba a few pesos.

  For once Rosalba didn’t look forward to going out into the market. She wished she could sit quietly, pretending to study the woven lines of her skirt.

  “Go on, Rosalba,” said Mama.

  “But they’ll look at me. They’ll talk about me.”

  “They’re doing that anyway. Plus most of that is your imagination.”

  Reluctantly, Rosalba stood up. With the coins heavy in her hand, she entered the crowd of sellers and shoppers. She held her head high in spite of the looks, the conversations that stopped when she drew close.

  She bought the things Mama had asked for — matches, a handful of limes, coffee, chili flakes, more kerosene — loading up the nylon bag. Then she made her way to Catarina’s stall, where the usual tourists clustered.

  Rosalba studied a painting of men working a cornfield. Bean vines climbed the corn stalks, sprouting new leaves and red flowers. Squash vines stre
tched their wide, flat leaves, shading the ground so that herbs and wild greens grew underneath.

  But there was something at odds with this fertile scene. Around the border, Rosalba noticed the tiny monkeys and vultures who represented the chaotic world. Sometimes women wove them to remind people of the destruction that would come if they acted badly. Then she peered more closely — in the background, high on the mountain, Catarina had painted a small brown square. It was a dead cornfield.

  She shivered.

  Rosalba felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Catarina.

  “I’ve heard about what you’re doing,” Catarina whispered in Mayan. “Don’t worry about what others say. Do what you need to do.”

  “Even that . . . ?” Rosalba nodded toward the tiny dead cornfield.

  “Yes, even that.”

  “It’s so hard,” said Rosalba.

  “Very.” For a moment, Catarina locked Rosalba’s eyes with her own large, dark ones, then said, “Such work makes us sisters.”

  Rosalba smiled, but shivered nonetheless. She had now joined herself with Catarina, the outsider. But at least she wouldn’t be alone, as Catarina had always been. “Did a shaman come to you in a vision?” Rosalba asked in a whisper.

  Catarina’s eyes darted over the crowd, and she put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. Later.” She patted Rosalba’s shoulder. “Come see me anytime.” Then she turned back to her customers.

  The girl and I stand at the crossroads, in need of the holy power of the gods.

  May there be only light within your mouths and before your faces, O gods.

  I send precious gems and glittering stones. I send cotinga feathers, oriole feathers, and the feathers of red birds. I bring tribute to the enchanted lords Cucumatz and Co Tuha and also before the faces of Quicab and Cauizimah, the Ah Pop of the Reception House, Magistrate and Herald.

  May there be only light within your mouths and before your faces, O gods.