Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky

by David Bowles

  “Arise!” he shouted, and his brother was restored immediately to life. The dark lords roared their approval. The King and Queen of Death celebrated as if they themselves had wrought the miracle. So caught up were they in the spectacle that they felt part of the dance.

  The king surged from his throne. “Now do the same to us!”

  The queen stood, trembling. “Yes, sacrifice us in the same way!”

  Xbalanque and Hunahpu nodded. “As you wish. No doubt you will be revived. After all, are you not the gods of death? And we are here to bring such joy to you, to your vassals, to your servants.”

  Dancing forward, they seized the king of that fearful place and slaughtered him, ripping away his limbs, tearing out his heart. They reached for the queen, but she saw that her husband was not revived, and she began to grovel and weep.

  “No! Have pity on me!” she cried out, disoriented.

  But the brothers stopped their ears to her laments as they eviscerated her as well.

  The dark lords and their servants fled along the Black Road to the canyon en masse, filling it up, packed tight in that gloomy abyss. Then the ants came, millions of them, herded by the brothers’ power, streaming down the canyon walls. They drove those twisted nobles from their hiding place. When the rulers of the Land of the Dead arrived once more before the twins, they bowed in abject and silent surrender.

  “Listen! It’s time to tell you our names and the names of our fathers. Behold us, little Hunahpu and Xbalanque, sons of One and Seven Hunahpu, the ones you killed. We’re here to avenge the torment and afflictions of our fathers: that’s why we put up with your torture. Now we’ve got you where we want you, and we’re going to kill you, every last one!”

  But the dark lords pleaded and begged for their lives. They showed the twins their fathers’ grave and the tree in which a skull still sat.

  “Fine. We’ll spare you,” the brothers agreed. “But you’ll never be what you were. The great and noble sacrifices of humanity aren’t yours to savor. You will never again touch the souls of men and women born in the light, good and honest folk there above. No, your offerings will be broken things, clumps of sap, insects and worms. And only the scum of the earth will offer themselves to you: the wicked, the corrupt, the wretched, the deviant. Only when their sins are clear can you attack—no more snatching the innocent!”

  On the sea-ringed world, their grandmother—anguished and bereft for days at the signs of her grandsons’ death—rejoiced at the sprouting of new corn in the heart of her home. And in the fearsome depths of the netherworld, the brothers resurrected their fathers, who curled up through the earth like tendrils and burst through the crust, emerging as a maize god, forever renewing that precious source of human sustenance. The place of their emergence was called Paxil—Rivenrock—revered down the ages as a most holy site.

  And the hero twins? They were swept up into heaven, there at the heart of all light, to guard the sun and moon as they poured their brilliance out upon the heads of a newborn human race.

  The long dawn had ended, and the fourth age had begun.

  The Fourth Sun and the Flood

  While the Hero Twins’ adventures wound down to their finale, the work of restoring the earth neared completion. Feathered Serpent and the Divine Mother stood together and gave each other counsel.

  “The dawn approaches, and our labor has not reached an end. No humans exist to populate the sea-ringed world, to glory in the light of the coming sun.”

  So they joined their minds in the midst of the gloaming, pondering how best to form a new race of women and men. During that long twilight, they discovered an answer to their need.

  Feathered Serpent called out for aid, and four animals rushed to his side: Sly Coyote, lover of games. Stealthy Fox, sharp of hearing. Eloquent Parrot, clever and colorful. Crow, black and wild and oblivious.

  “Stone and clay and wood were poor materials, our first creations flawed and weak. New humans we shall craft from richer stuff. Loyal birds, fly south in search of maize, staple of life, gift of the Divine Mother. Coyote and Fox, find me a spring, sulfur-rich and warm, bubbling from below.”

  So Parrot and Crow spread their wings and took to the sun-bright skies. After many days of searching far and wide, they spied a tor, crested with wild corn, cloven by some mighty force. This was Rivenrock, the place where the maize god had emerged from the Underworld. Hungry, Crow landed and devoured the blue kernels and the red. Parrot winged her way back to the Feathered Serpent to report their rich discovery.

  Coyote and Fox had slunk through jungles, glens and mountain meadows, hunting for the perfect fount. After a time they found a brackish pool fed from nether streams not far from the craggy hill and its crown of hearty maize. Naming the water Bitterflow, Coyote stopped to drink and bathe while Fox hurried to inform the Divine Mother.

  The animals guided the gods to Rivenrock and Bitterflow, where they delighted in the abundance of rich foods, not only yellow and white corn, but also cacao and papaxtli, zapote and jocote—every vital, edible plant.

  The Divine Mother took the white and yellow corn and ground it down nine times in her metate. Feathered Serpent fetched water from Bitterflow, sprinkled it with lime, rinsed the hands of the goddess, and used the liquid to form a paste which he kneaded and worked, molded and modeled, making arms and legs for the first man and woman, giving them frame and shape and expression as dawn lightened the sky. The man they named Tata, his wife Nene, and they bade them repopulate the sea-ringed world.

  A new sun was needed, but the gods wanted to avoid the disputes of the past. After a time they looked to Chalchiuhtlicue, she of the jade-green skirt of living water, new wife of Tlaloc and mother to Tecciztecatl, handsome young god of shell and stone. Powerful enough to sustain the world yet sufficiently loving and gentle to care for her charges, Chalchiuhtlicue seemed an ideal candidate.

  Hurricane agreed immediately, seeing her selection as a way to further avenge himself on Tlaloc, who would be separated from his love. Feathered Serpent approved for nobler reasons. In the end even her husband and son, filled with pride at her fate, joined their votes to the unanimous acclamation.

  So the goddess was transfigured and began her daily track across the heavens. Tata and Nene had many children, and those had many more. The earth began to fill up with human beings whose praise and sacrifice sustained the sun and pleased the gods.

  Twelve calendar cycles passed in this way, idyllic and serene.

  Then the heavens began to fill with water.

  It is not clear precisely why or how, but some say that Chalchiuhtlicue wept for fifty-two years, her tears accumulating in the sky until it bowed with the weight of her sadness. The source of that weeping will be forever a mystery, though circumstances suggest that Hurricane was somehow responsible. He was, at least, the only god aware of the danger.

  “Tata and Nene,” he said, descending from his black heaven to greet the ancient parents of the human race. “Cease your foolish labor. A deluge is coming. Fell a cypress tree and hollow it out. Fill it full of ripened corn. When the skies begin to fall, get inside. After you have consumed the last of the corn, the waters will have receded. Then will I instruct you further. Do not leave your ship or eat anything else until you have heard my commands.”

  The couple prepared their log. Then it began to rain in spectacular torrents that seemed to efface the very air. The man and woman quickly entered the cypress and sealed themselves within.

  Then the firmament shuddered, cracked, and ripped wide open. The heavens fell, flooding the sea-ringed world till it seemed a part of the cosmic sea, obliterated from existence entirely. Most of humanity drowned, but Feathered Serpent, rushing into the breach, attempting to staunch the tide, transformed a small number of survivors into merfolk, doughty sirens and tritons who dove deep to avoid the pounding storm. Their descendants, it is said, live there still, harrowing sailors and fishermen alike.

  So the fourth sun was snuffed by a deluge in the year
1-House, on the day 4-Water. It was the 676th year since Chalchiuhtlicue had begun to shine, the end of the thirteenth calendar cycle.

  Feathered Serpent called upon his brother. “The heavens must be lifted back into place, supported again by the World Trees.”

  Hurricane agreed. His sons Blue and Red Tezcatlipoca joined them, and together the four knelt at the edges of the sea-ringed world and took the multi-tiered sky upon their backs, heaving up against the void to restore order to the cosmos. To prevent another celestial collapse, the brothers created four Bacabs or sky bearers, powerful beings who would protect the World Trees and shoulder the heavens if the need arose.

  With heaven settled back in place, the brothers looked up into the massive fracture the water had caused in the sky. Together they walked into it, sealing the wound as best they could with stars and magic, but a black scar remained, limned with ghostly light. Men, who grasped it was a road of sorts to places beyond their ken, would later call it the Milky Way.

  It was dark for twenty-five years. The waters receded little by little until the mountains began to appear again. The ageless Tata and Nene finished the last of their corn, and their log came to rest on a mountain peak. They emerged onto the starlit summit and saw fish scales glittering in the water. Avidly hungry, they caught a few fish and set to drilling fire from the cypress log in order to cook a meal.

  The lord and lady of the stars, Citlalatonac and Citlalicue, first noticed the curling wisps of smoke. “Gods, who has started a fire before the appointed time? Who sends cypress ash wafting into heaven?”

  Hurricane spun from his black realm to confront the human couple.

  “What are you doing? Did I not tell you to wait for my instructions? What possessed you to start a fire now of all times?”

  Furious, he lopped off their heads. But death was not punishment enough. With a snarl, he reattached their heads above their buttocks and blazed dark energy at them until they transformed into dogs, their capacity for speech forever gone.

  Such was the end of the last two humans of the Fourth Age.

  The Fifth Age and the Reign of Demigods

  Convocation

  Watch with me as the floodwaters slowly subside, as the great deluge is absorbed into the cosmic sea. We stand on a growing expanse of dry land, contemplating a sunless sky once more.

  It is 4-Movement, the first day of the Fifth Age. The present era. Our time.

  The gods, having learned from their mistakes, make a better race of people. Humanity. Yet before we can rise to prominence across the sea-ringed world, we must be nurtured, taught, guided.

  The gods sacrifice much to ensure our survival, to give us light and sustenance. And then they set wise creatures and demigods over us, agents of order who keep us on the path of sacred fate.

  Feathered Serpent is determined that we will succeed and thrive, that we will make ourselves worthy of his love and trust.

  Heart of Sky—Hurricane—mocks our attempts, jeers at our failures, ignores our progress. Ever hungry for chaos, he seeks allies and vassals who will destroy the world once more.

  We look into this distant past through the tales of the ancients, passed down through the centuries in the cultures of the Mixtec, Cora, Mazatec, Otomi and Huichol. The words of the Aztec elders were themselves written down after the Conquest on the broad leatherbound pages of what we know today as the Florentine Codex and the Codex Chimalpopoca.

  Let us turn to those precious books, friends, casting our eyes from time to time as well at the Popol Vuh and that lovely collection of Maya verse from the heart of the Yucatan, the Songs of Dzitbalché.

  Once more we raise the chorus of our voices, point and counterpoint, combining melodic lines of old into a new harmony.

  The Creation of Human Beings

  The Fourth Age had come to an end. The gods, saddened at the destruction of the earth, gathered in Teotihuacan.

  “The sea-ringed world emerges. The heavens have been restored. But who will sing us songs? Who will worship us? Who will keep the cosmic wheels turning?”

  Feathered Serpent turned to the Divine Mother. “We must once more strive to make human beings. Let this new attempt combine all the strengths of the previous.”

  “To do so,” she told him, “we will need the bones of those who have died.”

  Hurricane smiled. “Brother, if you want them, you will have to descend to the Land of the Dead and petition the king and queen of that fell demesne.”

  “So be it,” Feathered Serpent declared, departing.

  He came to the river at the edge of the Underworld, which the dead can only cross on the back of a hound. Twinning himself so that his nahualli stood before him, he addressed that hairless spirit dog:

  “Xolotl, double of my heart, bear me across broad Apanohuayan so that on its farther shore I may seek the bones of the dead.”

  “Gladly, my plumed master. Seize the folds of flesh upon my back, and I will swim you to your destination.”

  And so all dogs buried with their owners for this purpose are called xoloitzcuintle to honor the nahualli of Feathered Serpent.

  With Xolotl’s aid, the creator god easily navigated the next eight obstacles and stood before the King and Queen of Death in their eldritch, windowless palace at the heart of the Underworld.

  “What brings you to our realm now, after so many years, O Feathered Serpent?” asked the king, his eyes like pinpricks of fire in the black orbs of his skull, framed by his owl-plume headdress. The god’s tilma and breechcloth were spattered with blood, and round his neck he wore a chain of human eyeballs.

  “I am come to take the precious bones that you have guarded with such diligence.”

  “And what will you do with them, Lord Creator?” asked the queen.

  “The gods in Tamoanchan need humans to ease their sadness. With these remains, I will fashion a new race of men and women to praise and honor us. They will be mortal, so their bones will return to your hands, as will the bones of their children and their children’s children, for as long as this Fifth Age shall last.”

  “Very well,” replied the king. “First, however, as a sign of honor, take this my conch and travel four times round my realm, sounding an exultant call as you go.”

  Feathered Serpent agreed, but as he prepared to sound the shell trumpet, he realized the conch had no hole for blowing. Summoning worms, he had them burrow in at the apex of the spire and smooth its hollow interior. Then he had bees and hornets fly inside, adding their distinctive buzz to the air he sent rushing through the whorls of the conch. The resulting call could be heard in every corner of the Underworld, even in the very throne room of Lord and Lady Death.

  After his fourth circuit of the Land of the Dead, Feathered Serpent made his way back to its center and stood once more before the sovereigns of that realm.

  “Very well, take the bones,” growled the King of Death.

  Once Feathered Serpent had departed the palace to collect the bones, however, the skeletal god called together his council, the lords of that frightful realm.

  “Go after that plumed snake, my vassals, and tell him that I have changed my mind. He must leave at once without the bones.”

  The ghastly messengers caught up to the creator god and repeated their sovereign’s command.

  Feathered Serpent reluctantly agreed. “I will leave then. Tell your king and queen.”

  The lords of the netherworld watched him fly off, heading out of the Land of the Dead by the eastern route the sun once took to emerge at dawn each day. They themselves traveled back to the eerie castle to inform their masters.

  But they were deceived. Earlier, when Feathered Serpent had heard in his heart the command of the King of Death, he had told Xolotl:

  “I must take these bones, forever. I need you to change shapes with me. Having assumed my form, you will agree to the king’s wishes. Once you and the messengers have gone, I will steal the remains and flee.”

  So it was that he emerged from a place of hid
ing in the form of his nahualli, gathered the bones of men and women, wrapped them in a bundle, then rushed like the wind to avoid detection.

  The god of death became aware of the ruse, however, and he called again to his council: “Lords, Feathered Serpent is at this very moment stealing the precious bones! Use all haste to cut him off before he emerges in the sea-ringed world: dig a pit into which he will fall and be trapped!”

  Using hidden routes known only to the rulers of the Realm of Fright, the dread lords raced ahead of the Feathered Serpent and fashioned a vast and cunningly disguised pit. The creator god, startled by a covey of quail that swirled about him on the king’s command, tumbled into the trap, smashing the bones into smaller bits.

  Shooing away the birds, which had begun pecking and nibbling at the fragments, Feathered Serpent gathered up the remains and assumed once more his true form. “Ah, Xolotl, how was I so easily deceived? Not one of them is whole.”

  The twin of his heart answered from within. “All is as it must be. The bones have been shattered, but they will have to suffice.”

  Feathered Serpent seized the bundled bones in his jaws and ascended to Tamoanchan. He placed the bones in the Protector’s hands, crying out:

  “Divine Mother, the bones are broken! What can we do?”

  The Divine Mother smiled. “All must be broken before it is made whole. We will now grind the remains into powder, my sister and I. Then all of us must do the proper penance to moisten the bone flour so it can be kneaded and shaped.”

  When the Divine Mother and the Protector had used metate and mano to pulverize the bones, Feathered Serpent pierced his flesh and bled into the flour. Then each of the gods in turn did the same. The resulting dough was shaped into men and women who were brought to life by the spirits wending their way down from Omeyocan, sent by our grandparents to inhabit the sturdy new forms.