Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky

by David Bowles

  Today, in the loose tropical soil of Yucatan, you can still find these clay dwarves, testimony to a people’s enduring love for their very unusual king.

  The Rise of Hunak Keel

  After the death of the Dwarf King, Uxmal was ruled by the Tutul-Xiu dynasty. Their king, Ah Mekat Tutul Xiu, was a visionary. Using economic and religious pressures, he allied Uxmal with Chichen Itza and the burgeoning city-state of Mayapan to form the League of Mayapan. Together, the three kingdoms began to absorb other communities through diplomacy or battle: Zama, Ichpatun, Izamal. At last the League controlled nearly the entire Yucatan Peninsula, and a new period of peace began.

  Over time, of course, the ties among nations began to fray as each vied for supremacy within the League. Squabbles broke out here and there. Rebellions were quickly squashed by the alliance, though these rebellions came with greater and greater frequency.

  Two hundred years after the founding of the League, the pivot of change arrived. In the city of Mayapan, a child was born to the Cauich, an aristocratic family of the Kokom tribe. As he was prone to shivering at the slightest breeze, his parents named him Ah Keel—“the cold one.” The name would prove prophetic.

  As he grew older, Ah Keel Cauich began to chafe at the dominance of the Itza. It was true that those arrogant Water Witches had founded Mayapan as an outgrowth of Chichen Itza centuries ago under Kukulkan’s direction. Now, however, the Kokom people had become the majority in the city. Ah Keel found himself drawn to other disaffected young Kokom warriors wanting to assert their tribe’s ascendence.

  Because of his eloquence and cold, implacable nature, Ah Keel became the leader of this insurgent group. They attacked the Itza strongholds in Mayapan, killing many. But in the end, the superior military forces of the Itza defeated them.

  Ah Keel Cauich, along with his men, was taken to Chichen Itza to stand before the four leaders of the city, who spoke together with the authority of a king. Each of them bore as title the name of a powerful elemental: Chak Xib Chaak, Red Rain God of the East. Sak Xib Chaak, White Rain God of the North. Ek Xib Chaak, Black Rain God of the West. Kan Xib Chaak, Yellow Rain God of the South.

  Speaking for this council was Ah Mex Kuuk, the given name of the Red Rain God of the East. He would declare their collective will as to judgment and penalty.

  “Valiant Kokom!” Ah Mex Kuuk cried. “Though rebels, you have acquitted yourselves well in battle. Therefore will you be permitted a great honor as sacrificial victims, plunged into the Sacred Cenote as an offering to Chaak, mighty Lord of Rain! Your commanders will look on in awe as the men they led slake the thirst of the god.”

  Ah Keel Cauich raised his voice in protest.

  “My lord, it is not proper that my men should leap to their deaths while I am allowed to live. I prefer to join them in this glorious destiny.”

  Ah Mex Kuuk, impressed at his opponent’s valor, nodded. “So be it, Cauich.”

  Not long after, the captives stood at the rim of a massive sinkhole at the heart of Chichen Itza, their hands bound behind them. The murky water glinted jade green sixty-five feet below, its 200-foot diameter ringed by a steep, jagged wall of rock.

  The rain priest took his place nearby on a stone platform and intoned the Cha Chaak, a ritual prayer required by the god.

  “O puissant lords of mist and storm, of wind and thunder, look upon us now with mercy. Intercede for us with your volatile king, there upon his mountain fortress in that verdant paradise, ever-jeweled with holy dew. Stream your heavy clouds across our scorching skies, crack your lightning bolts down rocky slopes. Open the sluice gates of heaven, and let our sustenance flow once more. We remand into your power these men, hearty and proud, blood teeming with divine power. Accept them as a willing token of our debt to Chaak, sacred source of all life.”

  Prodded by the spears of many guards, Ah Keel Cauich and his warriors leapt into the abyss, most smashing to an instant death against the flat green surface of the cenote.

  Ah Keel struck the water feet first, dropping immediately into the blackest of blacks. As he sank, he struggled with his bonds to no avail. He was pulled deeper and deeper, his lungs burning until he could bear the effort no more and opened his mouth to breathe in the cold water that would surely end his life.

  Before he could drown, however, Ah Keel slipped from the sinkhole, falling to his knees in a thick, luxurious glade. Shaking water from his eyes, he peered around at an impossible scene—a paradise stretched on every side, green trees resplendent with flowers of every hue to which millions of birds flocked, flitting through the air, and calling to each other in the most harmonious and breath-taking tones.

  His reverie was snapped as lightning cracked behind him. He felt a quick burning sensation on his wrists and realized that his bonds had been cut. Turning at once, he saw a group of four unearthly beings floating in the air—forged of wind and rain and veined through and through with thunderbolts, the creatures encircled him as their voices pealed like distant claps.

  “Ah Keel Cauich, you have been chosen to stand before Chaak himself, yonder in his chamber of storms.”

  They gestured as one at the mountain that loomed impossibly large at the heart of the paradise. Wreathed in clouds at its summit was a glittering pyramid of jade and gold.

  Ah Keel understood at last that he was in Chaak’s heaven, that southern afterlife called Tlalocan by the Nahuas. These beings were the true chaakob—elementals in service to the rain god, carrying out his will on Earth. The Water Witches of Chichen Itza had usurped their names for titles, but their might could not be rivalled.

  Without another word, they spun a whirlwind around Ah Keel that lifted the warrior into the air. Then with nudges from their staffs, he was carried up the teeming slopes to Chaak’s palace on high.

  Ah Keel was deposited before a massive throne shrouded in fog and mist. A towering figure leaned out of the haze to contemplate the visitor.

  Chaak’s body was like that of a gigantic man, though tinged green and covered in amphibian scales. His head, however, was not human at all—strange eyes goggled from an amphibian face with a long, pendulous nose. The god sneered at Ah Keel, and dagger-like fangs jutted below his lower lip. Turtle shells dangled from his ears, dancing as he made menacing gestures with his awe-inspiring lightning-axe.

  “I have a purpose for you, mortal,” that voice rumbled, the sound of mudslides and tornadoes and thunder combined. “Thus do you still live. The Itza and their simpering cult of Kukulkan displease me. Yet none of you within the League have sufficient might to break them. I shall give you what you require, Ah Keel. You will emerge from my realm and prophesy to those you hate. You will win their trust—they will lift you up, put power in your hands. Bide your time. Let them not see what is in your heart. The moment will come that I will send a messenger, one who will help you bring about the destruction of Chichen Itza itself.”

  Ah Keel Cauich, kneeling in dread obeisance, listened and smiled.

  The acolytes sweeping the edges of the Sacred Cenote could hardly credit their eyes when the man pulled himself over the lip of that sinkhole and stood dripping in the light of dawn.

  “Tell your leaders,” he gasped, “that Cauich has a message for them from Beyond.” It did not take long for guards to guide the survivor to the house of governance. There Ah Mex Kuuk and the other elders of the city stared at him in naked disbelief.

  “How is it you stand here,” Ah Mex Kuuk asked, “alive and breathing?”

  “By the will of the god, my lord. He preserved me so that I might prophesy before you today. The rains will come late this year. We must wait two additional weeks before planting our next batch of crops. Chaak himself told me so, there at the heart of his watery realm.”

  The leaders of Chichen Itza consulted with their diviners and priests, but the signs were inconclusive. Finally Ah Mex Kuuk declared to all assembled:

  “We will heed the prophesy the Kokom commander has made. But he will stay with us through harvest time.
If his predictions prove truthful, then we will know he has the favor of the god.”

  So Ah Keel spent the better part of the season in the midst of his enemies, treated with respect but watched by wary eyes.

  The rains were indeed late. The crops, having been planted on the new schedule, grew hardy and plentiful. Ah Keel was celebrated throughout the city of the Water Witches.

  Ah Mex Kuuk, impressed with this spokesman of the god, threw his support behind Ah Keel.

  “You will enjoy the goodwill of the Itza,” he declared. “We will see to it you are given titles and great responsibility, that you serve on the council of Mayapan’s king. You are our representative in our sister city, Ah Keel Cauich.”

  The commander inclined his head. “In everything I do, I will exalt the name of Ah Mex Kuuk, chief among his peers. Though the Water Witches claim no sovereign, I pledge my allegiance to you, my lord, with Chaak as my witness.”

  But as he was escorted back to Mayapan with much pomp and circumstance, the Kokom warrior felt the divine path of vengeance freezing his heart. By the time he presented himself before his king, he had selected a new name as a reminder of that secret purpose: Hunak Keel, “the forever cold.”

  Years went by. Hunak Keel rose to prominence in Mayapan. He married the haughty princess, Ix Taakin Ek, who bore him a lovely daughter. Sak Nikte, they named her—“snow-white blossom.”

  When the old king finally died, Chaak’s chosen one was asked to sit on the throne.

  And there in his great palace, Hunak Keel plotted and planned, waiting for the promised messenger to arrive and herald the destruction of Chichen Itza and all its vaunted Water Witches.

  Sak Nikte and the Fall of Chichen Itza

  To this day those who live in the Mayab speak the sweet name of the princess Sak Nikte, pale flower of the ancient Maya. She was like the moon, peaceful and distant, looking upon the world with tranquil love—a moon adrift upon the still waters, fluid light that all may drink. She was like the ringdove that, when it sings, causes the woods to shudder and sigh.

  Like the dew that beads on leaves, filling them with coolness and clarity.

  Like silvered cotton drifting on the wind, adorning the air.

  Like the shining of the sun, renewing every life.

  To her people, Sak Nikte was the flower that blooms in the month of Muwan: joy and perfume of the fields, soft to the touch, joy to the ears, love in their hearts.

  That was Sak Nikte during that long peace of the three nations, that pinnacle of glory. She was born early one morning as the sun climbed the sky beside Venus, the smoking star. Her father was Hunak Keel, king of Mayapan, warrior and prophet. Her mother was Ix Taakin Ek—“the golden star”—wise and fierce, of haughty mein.

  Under Hunak Keel, Mayapan—the banner and crown of the Mayab—had risen to dominate the League. Uxmal and Chichen Itza had spent their time glittering in the sun: now their sister city lifted a proud head above them.

  The rulers of the three nations still showed one another deference and love. Those living within the Mayab traveled freely from community to community without obstacles or armies. Peace reigned and people were content.

  But all things come to their end at last.

  Hunak Keel looked out upon his city from a vantage point in his stone palace. Twenty years had passed since he had clambered from the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza with a word of prophecy from the god Chaak. He had been promised revenge for the sacrifice of his men, for the usurpation of his city. His long, cold patience had reached its limit.

  “Lord of Rain,” he muttered through gritted teeth, “today is the last day I wait for your messenger. Then I take matters into my own hands.”

  “Then it is fortunate that I have arrived today,” came a strange voice from behind him. The king spun about to find a diminutive figure sitting cross-legged on his throne. Though Hunak Keel had never seen such a being in person, he recognized it from sculptures and paintings throughout the Mayab.

  It was an alux, one of the Little Folk.

  “I believed your people gone from the Earth forever,” Hunak Keel replied, his nerves as calm and cold as always.

  “Indeed. For the most part we are. Myself, I serve at Chaak’s command. He has sent me to you. Together, we will bring the Water Witches to their knees and remove their collective head.”

  Then Hunak Keel, his heart brimming at last with hot hate, sat like an eager student at the feet of that magical elf and listened to its plan.

  In Chichen Itza, the great Ah Mex Kuuk had died not long after Hunak Keel’s coronation, vacating the title of Chak Xib Chaak, Red Rain God of the East. But he had left behind his son, Kaan Ek—the obsidian serpent of the Water Witches, handsome and noble like his father, destined to lead his people.

  Kaan Ek was a dreamer. He was also deadly cruel. When he was but seven years old, he killed a butterfly and shredded its wings between his fingers, staining them with brilliant color. That night, he dreamt he became a black caterpillar, fat and blotchy.

  When he was fourteen, he found a small deer caught in a hunter’s noose. With his obsidian blade he gutted the fawn, which cried out weakly for its mother, and tore out its heart to offer it to the dark gods that grant sorcerous skills to their followers. His hands were covered in blood. That night he dreamt he was a ravenous jaguar. When he awoke, the vision stayed with him all day, dimpling his smooth cheeks with a strange smile.

  When Kaan Ek turned twenty-one, he was selected for the position of Chak Xib Chaak, Red Rain God of the East, one of the four leaders of Chichen Itza. Rulers of every nation in the League of Mayapan attended the ceremony, including Hanuk Keel, whom Kaan Ek revered as an uncle because of his father’s debt to the man. But there was no love in his heart for the sovereign of Mayapan—their ties were political, expedient, tenuous.

  “Lord Kaan Ek,” the king said after the ceremony had ended, “my congratulations on your well-deserved position. You do remember my wife, Queen Ix Taakin Ek? And this is our daughter Sak Nikte. You have not seen her since she was a child, I believe.”

  Kaan Ek greeted the princess with the formality and deference that custom demanded. But that night he did not dream. He did not sleep at all. He wept till morning, the first tears his cruel eyes had ever shed.

  That morning he knew sadness. Desire. Despair.

  Determination.

  When Sak Nikte was five years old, she gave a weary traveler fresh water to drink. As she handed him a clay bowl, the water reflected the compassion in her features. A flower blossomed in the bowl.

  When she was ten, the princess took a stroll amidst the cornfields. A dove spiraled down and perched upon her shoulder. Sak Nikte fed the bird grains of maize from her hand before kissing it upon the beak and loosing it to fly away free.

  When she was fifteen, she met Kaan Ek, newly selected leader of the Itza.

  Her heart burned like flames from a nascent sun. All night she slept with a smile upon her lips. She awakened joyous as if her soul had been lit up by some marvelous light.

  She knew her moment had arrived. For the hidden flower the sunny days of Muwan arrive, helping it bloom, making it blush with lovely hues. Then the clear breeze of dawn brushes those petals, spreading their aroma throughout the countryside.

  So did the heart of Sak Nikte blossom that fateful day in the land of Mayab, stirred by the inscrutable will of the gods.

  Hunak Keel suspected nothing.

  That morning, Kaan Ek had his aides arrange for Sak Nikte to spend some time alone in the sacred gardens near the temple of Ixchel. As she hummed lovely little tunes to the hummingbirds and quetzals, the young Itza approached unannounced.

  “You fit perfectly, dear Princess, among the birds and blossoms of the goddess.”

  Sak Nikte turned slowly, her eyes wide in surprise and joy.

  “My lord Chak Xib Chaak,” she breathed, making a small gesture of obeisance.

  “Please call me Kaan Ek, my dearest bloom.”

  As he
stepped closer, her honey skin glowed with blush.

  “Such an unexpected pleasure,” she remarked, regaining her composure, “coming across you in these gardens. But you, too, seem a part of the natural beauty…like a stealthy predator emerging from the shade of some tree.”

  Her tone was teasing. Kaan Ek’s smile broadened.

  “If so, just a mewling cub, Princess. Yesterday I was born at last,” he murmured, taking her hand in his. “The twenty-one solar years before were merely gestation, two decades spent within a darkened cocoon, insensible to the glow of the sun. Your smile cracked open my chrysalis, Sak Nikte. See me now, spreading tremulous wings, nervous as I taste your perfume on the air.”

  Her heart fluttered like the hummingbirds that flitted about them. “When my parents stood beside me as your eyes locked with mine, they could not see the invisible dart that flew from the heavens to pierce my heart.”

  “That arrow plunged into mine as well, Sak Nikte, pinning our souls together. Such is the will of the gods, that we be united in love’s sharp yet sweet embrace.”

  The princess sighed, drawing closer to him. “Never had I thought that Chichen Itza, White House of the Sacred Sun, held within her mighty ziggurats a resplendent light that would make all my former days gloomy in hindsight.”

  “It was the destiny that Itzamna and Ixchel, our divine parents on high, inscribed for us at the dawn of time, my dear, a love that only the ineffable hieroglyphs of heaven could adequately express.”

  And bending his face to hers, Kaan Ek kissed Sak Nikte amidst the bowers of that garden, sealing not only their fate, but that of the League of Mayapan itself.

  The Itza lord swore to his beloved princess that, once fully installed in his new position, wielding his stately power, he would travel to Mayapan to petition her father the king for her hand in marriage.