Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky

by David Bowles

  The god of the smoking mirror coldly resolved to exterminate all the giants. Calling up vast reserves of divine energy, Heart of Sky sent his huge jaguar nahualli down to the sea-ringed world. Mountainheart sought out giants whose calendar day sign, determined by their birth, was jaguar. He taught them dark sorcery, how to transform into their nahualli and bend the minds of others, then he twisted them to his own purpose. When he had trained them to despise other giants utterly, he led them in a vicious war against their brothers and sisters.

  In the year 1-Reed, on the day 4-Jaguar, Mountainheart and his army of jaguars devoured nearly every giant on the face of the earth. It was the 676th year since Heart of Sky had become the sun, the end of the thirteenth calendar cycle. A handful of men and women survived in the mountains. They cried out to Feathered Serpent, who descended to find his beloved creation despoiled and bereft. Seeing Mountainheart leap up at the sun to rejoin with his divine form, the creator god knew his brother was to blame.

  Driven by indignant rage, Feathered Serpent attacked the sun at its zenith. Their struggle was great. It nearly rent the heavens in its violence. Twinning into Feathered Serpent and Xolotl, the creator simultaneously gripped Heart of Sky, his own plumage aflame, and uprooted one of the World Trees. Wielding it like a gargantuan club, he struck his brother from the third heaven, sending him plunging into the cosmic sea with such force that the god of the smoking mirror was nearly obliterated.

  Thus did the first age of the world come to a tragic end.

  The Second Age

  Soon the gods descended once more to repair the damage done to the sea-ringed world.

  The Divine Mother worked with Feathered Serpent to carve new humans from wood. Once he had bled life into them—his own chalchiuhatl, precious liquid—the men and women arose and lived their lives much as the giants had before.

  This time Feathered Serpent became the sun, smiling down on his creation as they begot and bore children, erected wooden homes and temples, lived their small lives in honor, worshipping their magnanimous gods.

  As the cycles wore on, however, a dark swirl began to form unnoticed in the cosmic sea, slow at first, but spinning ever faster down the years, a furious typhoon of spite and vengeance.

  Then—at the end of the seventh cycle of this second age, on the day 4-Wind of the year 1-Flint, the 364th since Feathered Serpent had become the sun—Heart of Sky, Hurricane, the Smoking Mirror emerged from the trackless ocean and stormed across the earth.

  His winds blasted and scoured the mountains, shredded fields and forests, emptied lakes and wore boulders down to pebbles. The wooden abodes of humans were ripped entirely from the face of the earth, and people themselves—much lighter than giants—were lifted by the gales and flung into the void.

  Feathered Serpent, horrified and impotent, reached out to the few remaining men and women and gave them a desperate gift: tails to anchor them to whatever trees remained and feet that gripped the branches like a second set of hands. Thus were born the tlacaozomahtin, ape-men, who still live in dark corners of the world.

  Mere moments after saving this small remnant, Feathered Serpent was beset by the howling, apocalyptic winds of his brother’s long-simmering wrath. Though he lifted flaming wings to beat aside the blast, the sun was torn from the sky and hurled beyond oblivion.

  Thus did the second age of the world end in vengeance.

  The Third Age

  Hurricane—for he had truly ceased to be Heart of Sky—spent his ire and then stood alone upon the rocky, desolate earth. He called down the gods to begin again the work of creation, restoring flora and fauna, filling rivers and lakes, smoothing the rugged contours of the world.

  With his red and blue sons, the god of the smoking mirror took clay from the guts of the earth and fashioned beings to serve and worship him. Wanting to more closely watch and rule them, he persuaded Tlaloc, lord of rain and lightning, to leave his paradise and his new bride Xochiquetzal to become the sun.

  For several calendar cycles, Hurricane was content with the sacrifices and adulation of his creations. But the envy that had taken root in the dark god continued to grow. He looked upon Tlaloc’s wife Xochiquetzal and saw that she was the most beautiful being in the universe. It was intolerable that she pair herself with a lesser god.

  So Hurricane entered Tlalocan and stole the goddess of fertility, forcing her to marry him and live within his dark heaven. Tlaloc, devastated, burned even brighter in the sky, glowering with betrayal and anger. With no lord or lady to instruct them, the tlaloques—servants of Tlaloc, the goggle-eyed god—ceased pouring water from the sky. Rain stopped falling. A great drought swept the world.

  The people of the Third Age cried out to Tlaloc, begging for rain and a surcease from his anguished heat. But their prayers annoyed the sun. This attempt at humanity had been fashioned by his enemy’s hands, so why should he care? He spitefully refused to provide moisture, insisting that every thinking creature suffer as much as he did without his beloved. The men and women of earth continued to beg him as the rivers and lakes gradually dried up.

  Hurricane allowed the suffering for a time, enjoying the constant stream of supplications and sacrifice. But he finally tired of Tlaloc’s tantrum. He descended to confront the god of rain.

  Tlaloc would not heed the commands of his betrayer. They clashed above the parched earth, the sun bombarding Hurricane with massive waves of fire that were churned and spun away by typhoon whorls—toward the sea-ringed world. The whole earth burned, great storms sweeping across the land on screaming, furnace-like winds. Most people died, but a few found shelter in mountain caves. Furious that any of his foe’s creations should survive, Tlaloc had his servants draw magma from deep within the earth, making it explode out of vast volcanoes and flow hungrily over the surface of the world.

  At that moment, 312 years after being expelled from creation by his brother, Feathered Serpent returned, glowing with renewed power, determined to save what he could. Struggling against Hurricane and Tlaloc both, he subdued them and forced them to their respective spheres before they could wreak the utter devastation of the world.

  The small bands of survivors now begged Feathered Serpent to have mercy on them. The creator god transformed these last people, giving them wings and pulling quills from his own flesh to cover them. Now gifted with flight, his brother’s creations rose above the lava sear, borne aloft by drafts of heated wind.

  Feathered Serpent knew that remaking this burning world would task the very limits of the gods’ abilities. He hoped that he could avoid the mistakes and envies of the past as he sought to craft humans who could be his partners in preserving the order of the cosmos. But the winged survivors of this destruction he allowed to make their homes in the high crags and cliffs of the new world as long as they kept to themselves.

  For their age, the third, had ended in conflagration after only six calendar cycles, on the day 4-Rain of the year 1-Flint.

  The Fourth Age and the Hero Twins

  Convocation

  Follow me now into the dim beginnings of the Fourth Age. The cataclysm is over, the conflagration has snuffed itself to ash, and the sea-ringed world is dark but for the light of the stars and a faint smear of perpetual dawn on the eastern horizon.

  It is an epoch of gods, great and small, who strive to restore the shattered earth.

  Some bend their knee to the cosmic order, to the competing wills of Feathered Serpent and Hurricane, carrying out their appointed tasks without a word of complaint.

  Others choose to forge a different path.

  A few become heroes.

  Two in particular survive down the years in some form or another throughout southern Mexico: bright paint in crumbling friezes, curling lines on rotting pages, stone statues in which their young profiles are captured forever, rebellious and brave.

  Two brothers. Twins.

  They are depicted again and again with distinctive headbands, one dark, the other sewn from a jaguar’s pelt. We often find
them with their father, a god of maize.

  The millennia have effaced their names from most Mayan tongues. Archeologists, crafting a code to categorize forgotten deities, call the father God E. His sons are God CH and God S.

  But in the highlands of Guatemala, despite all odds, the K’iche’ Maya preserved these ancestral stories, even after the glyphs of mighty empires had fallen into disuse. With letters learned from Spanish priests, they transcribed those ancient words in their native tongue.

  The Popol Vuh, they called this sacred scripture. The Book of the People.

  Come closer, friends. Let me open that tome, let me find the right page, and I will tell you of the wondrous deeds of the Hero Twins: Xbalanque and Hunahpu, as the K’iche’ name them, playful and courageous young men who mocked death itself.

  Then let us weave strands of Aztec lore into this epic to explore the short but unforgettable age that ended—as peoples across the globe affirm—with the greatest flood our world has ever seen.

  The Hero Twins

  The Tragedy of Their Fathers

  During the long night before the dawn of the fourth sun, two brothers were born, minor gods of the milpas, those tangled fields of corn and bean and squash. They were named One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, for the day signs of their respective births. They lived with their mother, Ixmukane, a maize goddess.

  In time One Hunahpu married Lady Egret, and she bore him two sons: One Monkey and One Artisan. The small family continued to live with One Hunahpu’s mother and brother in the gloom of a world with no sun.

  Other gods hailed One and Seven Hunahpu as knowledgeable and wise, the foremost seers on the earth. They taught young One Monkey and One Artisan many skills, and in time the boys became like their father and uncle: singers, musicians, poets, sculptors, and workers of jade and metal.

  Though the brothers possessed a singular, innate goodness, they tended to shirk their responsibilities in order to roll dice and play ball. Every day the boys played with their father and uncle, two against two in the ball court. As each game began, a falcon would descend to watch them, sent by Hurricane and his sons. The falcon could fly in an instant from the sea-ringed world to Hurricane’s abode in the sixth heaven, or just as well descend to the Land of the Dead to do his master’s bidding there.

  Lady Egret left the earth, returning to the Divine Mother, but the four ballplayers remained behind. Their ball court was located at Great Hollow, on the road to the Underworld, the dark land that men would one day call Xibalba, Realm of Fright. The King and Queen of Death could not help but hear them.

  Disturbed by the riotous sounds, the god and goddess called together their council, all the dark lords in that place of fear, tasked with bringing death to humans in a variety of savage ways.

  “Who are these middling fools that shake the earth with their running and that disturb the stillness of the grave with their shouts?” demanded the King of Death. “They show no proper fear and run roughshod over the natural order. We should bring them here to play ball. Since they have no respect for us, we shall beat them at their favorite game and then destroy them.”

  The dark lords all agreed with their sovereign, adding that upon winning they could seize the brothers’ gear, the pads, yokes and plumed helmets that made up their kits.

  The task of summoning One and Seven Hunahpu was given to the Royal Guard, four fearsome owls from the very throne room of the Land of the Dead. They flew from the Underworld in an instant, alighting in the stands above the ball court. The four players halted their game and approached the messengers.

  “We have been sent by the Lords of the Underworld,” announced Strafer, chief among them. “Harken unto the words of the King and Queen of Death: ‘You must come. Do us the pleasure of playing ball in our dark courts. Your skill amazes us. Bring your gear, your yokes and pads and rubber ball.’”

  “Is that what the gods of that fearful place truly said?” asked One Hunahpu.

  “Yes. Now, come along. We shall accompany you.”

  “Fine, but wait while we let our mother know. She’ll have to watch over my sons while we’re gone.”

  One and Seven Hunahpu took the boys back home and explained the situation to Ixmukane, their mother.

  “We’ve no choice but to go. These are messengers of the King of Death himself. But we’ll be back, we promise. Here, we’ll leave our ball behind as a token.” They hung the rubber sphere in the rafters. “Don’t worry, we’ll be kicking it around again very soon.”

  One Hunahpu turned to his sons. “You two keep practicing your music, your art, your skill at games. Keep this house—and your grandmother’s heart—warm in our absence.”

  Their mother began to weep at their words.

  “We’re off on a journey,” they told her, “not to our deaths. Don’t be sad.”

  Then the brothers left. Guided by the Royal Guard, they headed north toward the entrance to the Underworld. They descended through strange canyons, past streams of scorpions, over rivers of blood and pus. None of these obstacles slowed them down.

  But then they came to a vast crossroads that offered four paths to the Land of the Dead: the Red, the Black, the White, and the Green. The messenger owls indicated the Black Road. “That is the one you should take. It is the King’s Road.”

  And here was the beginning of their defeat, for the brothers heeded the Royal Guard, not suspecting that this was the path of the dead. They were led along its gruesome length to the council chambers of the dark lords, where their doom was further sealed. The horrid aristocrats of that fell place were seated in a row, but the first two—the king and queen themselves—were clever statues carved and arrayed by the artisans of the netherworld.

  “Greetings, Your Majesty,” they said to the first statue.

  “The dawn shine upon you, Your Majesty,” they said to the second.

  The chambers erupted with laughter, for the brothers had failed again. Chortling, the dark lords mocked them.

  “Foremost seers, indeed! Those are mere manikins, fools!” In their hearts the nobility of the Realm of Fright felt certain they had already won.

  The real king and queen entered, smiles on their skeletal faces.

  “Perfect. You have arrived. Tomorrow you will show your skill with yokes and guards. For the present, however, take a seat upon the bench we have prepared.”

  When the brothers sat down, they realized the bench was a burning hot slab. They squirmed around for a time, trying to save face, but finally they had to leap to their feet or risk real damage. The dark lords once more burst out in howls of laughter. They laughed so hard their innards ached. Even writhing in pain, they could not stop their chuckles and hoots.

  Now the Underworld is full of torments of every kind, among them five terrible houses of torture. But as fate would have it, the brothers would only experience one. They were escorted to their supposed sleeping quarters by the rulers of that fearful place, who smiled and said:

  “Enter, friends. Get some rest. In a moment you will be brought a torch and two cigars.”

  One and Seven Hunahpu went inside, greeted by inky blackness. Unbeknownst to them, the brothers were lodged in Dark House, a place devoid of light.

  Meanwhile, the dark lords conferred. “They are certain to lose. Let us sacrifice them tomorrow. It will be quick. We shall use our bone-white blade to kill them both, and then we shall keep their gear.”

  The king and queen sent a messenger with a torch of ocote wood and two lit cigars. “Here you go. You are expected to return these in the morning—whole, just as they are now.”

  The brothers took the torch and the cigars, and once again they were defeated. They let the torch burn down to ashes. They smoked the cigars down to stubs. In the morning they were led back to the council chambers, fear mounting in their hearts.

  “Where are my cigars? Where is the torch that I lent you last night?” demanded the King of Death.

  In that moment of terror, a vision winged its way to the brother
s from the heavens above. They saw their doom.

  Then, in the depths of their despair, they also saw their victory.

  So they admitted defeat. “They’re all gone, Your Majesty.”

  “Very well. Today your days are ended. You will die here. You will be ripped from the world. Your faces will remain hidden. You will be sacrificed!”

  And there and then the brothers were slaughtered. Their bodies were buried together in a single grave near the ball court, except for the head of One Hunahpu, which was removed at the king’s command.

  “Take his head,” the god of death instructed, “and set it in the forked branches of that bare tree beside the road to serve as a reminder of our might.”

  But as soon as the head was fixed in place, the tree miraculously bore fruit, round and heavy like a skull. It was the calabash, and it hung now from every branch so that it was no longer clear where the head of One Hunahpu had been deposited.

  The dark lords gathered round in amazement. It was clear that the sudden appearance of fruit was an ill omen. So the king and queen issued an edict:

  “Let no one pick fruit from this tree. Let no one even sit beneath its boughs.”

  And all the inhabitants of that dreadful realm obeyed. Except a maiden.

  The Victory of their Mother

  The dark lord Blood Gatherer had a daughter, a maiden named Lady Blood. He told her of the tree and the prohibition of their king, trusting that she would obey. But Lady Blood was curious. She wondered about the taste of the fruit and pondered its possible origin.

  Finally, she could not resist looking on the miracle herself, so she went alone to where the tree stood, near the ball court and the graves of sacrificial victims.