by Pete Kahle
Tuapecmal raised the offering-bowl of atole, the drink brewed from honey-sweetened cornmeal. It was very weak, very watery. The gods might not be pleased, but what else was there to do? He did not know. He was no priest. He was no prince.
They had tried the ritual bloodletting, piercing the flesh of every person in the village with spines of dried and sharpened corn-stalk, dripping it onto scraps of corn-husk paper and burning it to waft as smoke. The hunters had trapped a live tapir, which had been adorned with flowers and thrown into the dark sinkhole that led to Xiabalba.
Finally, in desperation, Great Ixlat their leader ordered his own son taken to the altar-stone. Ixatalan was the best of them, a fine youth, strong and handsome, a hunter and a skilled player of the ball game, loved by all. He went bravely to his fate, with his last words imploring the gods to have mercy and bring favor upon the People. Then the obsidian knife, wielded by his father’s hand, had cut the beating heart from his breast.
Such a noble sacrifice, the People believed, must appease the gods!
It was therefore a terrible surprise to them when, a few days later, they woke to find the Great House empty. Ixlat, his queen, and the high priest were gone, along with most of the household and many treasures of gold, jade, and quetzal-feathers as could be carried.
Their leader-king had abandoned them.
Abandoned them to suffer, to wither under the heat of the worst dry season they had ever known.
Had the gods abandoned them as well?
No one wanted to believe it. Were they not the Corn-People, the Blood-People, the God-People made from blood and corn? Were they not the favored ones? The chosen of all creation?
So it was, so had it always been, so had they been told. How Sky-Heart, in loneliness, made the world, filling it with plants and animals… but when those could not sing his praises, the other gods suggested he give life to creatures that could think and speak.
First, Sky-Heart had formed the People-of-Mud, but they sat and did nothing, and he let them melt away in the rain. Next, Sky-Heart fashioned the People-of-Wood, who walked and talked but were empty in the head, so he destroyed them with flood and fire.
Then, at last, Green-Maize-Woman brought Sky-Heart the ripe corn, and showed him how to grind the grain upon the flat metate, and wet it with his own god-blood, and from the resulting clay-paste he shaped the first true People. They honored him with sacrifices, sang his praises, and were faithful and good.
Each day, they reaffirmed this in their chant to the rising sun. As they had done this morning. As they did every morning.
Yet, now …
Could Sky-Heart have turned his back? Did the god no longer watch over his creations? Would he not protect them from injury and sickness? Had they failed to please him? Had he not been entertained by the ceremonial ball-games? By the offerings?
Why did he leave them to the cruel predations of Black Macaw, Bringer-Of-Thunder-Without-Rain, who had countless hungry, greedy offspring?
Or did Sky-Heart test the People? Test their loyalty with hardship, so that if they won through, they would be rewarded?
Tuapecmal had no answers for these many questions. He had no answer for why it was that the villagers looked to him. All he had been, before, was Ixatalan’s closest friend, the prince’s inseparable companion since boyhood.
Now, Ixatalan was dead, the life bled from him on the altar-stone.
And all, it seemed, for nothing. The three eldest of Black Macaw’s brood – called Drought, and Blight, and Swarm – continued to plague the People. Their myriad younger siblings swept down in feathered numbers to peck the corn-grain from the new stalks or the fresh-planted milpa rows. They tipped over baskets, raided any grinding metate left unattended, and the bolder ones might snatch pieces of corn-dough from a child’s hand.
They were relentless in their thievery. Relentless.
The village women had tied cloths on lines in hopes their wind-stirred waving might scare the birds away. But with no wind to stir them, the cloths hung limp, fading in the sun’s glare, gathering field-dust.
When chased off or struck at, the birds returned at once. Barking dogs did not deter them. Nor did boys throwing rocks. The flap and flutter of their wings was mocking laughter. Each caw and chirp was taunting insult. Trick-likenesses of men, made from cornstalks, sticks, and rags, only provided places for them to perch. There, they preened and chattered.
The sun climbed higher. The day warmed further. The offering of atole that Tuapecmal had poured upon the altar-stone dried to a smear, explored by buzzing flies. He returned the bowl to the Great House, then stood there in its vacant, unaccustomed silence.
He closed his eyes, though not with any foolish hopes that, when he again opened them, he would see it as it used to be.
Tears stung behind his eyelids. A lump felt lodged within his throat. Tightness gripped his chest, as if his heart – the heart he would have gladly given up, taking Ixatalan’s place on the altar-stone beneath the obsidian blade – was caught in a god-fist. His breath shuddered.
“Tuapecmal,” whispered a voice.
A familiar voice. A voice he knew. A voice he loved. A voice he never thought he’d hear again.
A voice that, although known and loved and familiar, sounded different somehow. Cool and dark, damp, with a hollow echo that made him think of the deep cenote.
His eyes opened. While he still did not see the Great House as it used to be, neither did he see it as he knew it was. It, too, was cool and dark. Shadows rippled on the floor like the surfaces of pools.
And, like an upright reflection on the rippling surface of such a pool, the vague image of his friend appeared before him.
“Ixatalan,” he said, or tried to. His mouth mutely shaped the name.
“Tuapecmal.”
It was Ixatalan, it was. Not as Tuapecmal had last seen him – back arched, head back, arms splayed, awaiting the cold, sharp touch of the sacrificial knife – but as Tuapecmal remembered him best. Smiling. White teeth shining. Leaning, almost lounging, at his ease. His gaze welcoming and warm.
A breechclout swathed his lean hips, its ends beadwork-decorated. Around his shoulders, he wore a strip of jaguar-skin knotted at the chest. Jaguar claws hung from it, pale curves against his unmarked, muscular flesh. Another such strip of jaguar-skin bound his black hair back from his high brow.
Yes, it was Ixatalan.
The tears he had withheld threatened to return. A single one succeeded, trickling down Tuapecmal’s cheek. He slowly extended a trembling hand. Ixatalan’s folded around his, fingers insubstantial as smoke. The sensation of that spirit-touch sent a chill through him.
“You must help the People,” Ixatalan said in his cool and hollow voice. “They look to you now.”
“Me?” Tuapecmal shook his head, uttering a ragged laugh. “Why me?”
“They know you were dear to me, dearer than any friend or brother.”
Another god-fist seemed to clutch at Tuapecmal’s heart, to crush it with grief.
“But, Ixatalan, what can I do?”
“If Black Macaw’s hungry children are not driven away, the People will starve.”
“We’ve tried. There are too many. As soon as we plant more grain, they peck it from the earth. They devour the corn faster than it will grow!”
“Then find another way.”
“How? They are bolder than ever. Nothing frightens them.”
“Nothing?”
Tuapecmal paused. He again felt a chill course through him. He could not speak.
“Nothing?” Ixatalan said again. His familiar smile changed, the white teeth still shining, but shining in narrow, elongated points. His warm and welcoming gaze changed as well, becoming less welcoming and far warmer, a warmth like the smoldering glow of an ember. “In all the old stories, what does Black Macaw most fear? Who is Black Macaw’s dreaded, hated foe?”
“In the stories?”
“When Seven Deaths sent Black Macaw to kidnap Green-Maize-
Woman’s daughter. Surely you remember. Black Macaw carried the girl high into the Great Kapok tree, where she could not get down. And Green-Maize-Woman asked the creatures of the jungle for their help.”
“Ah yes.” Tuapecmal said, recalling how they had listened raptly to the tales when they were boys. “Root-Sniffer, the wild pig, was willing but could not climb. Loud-Howler, the monkey, was the best climber but too noisy. Only Soft-Walker, the jaguar, could do both.”
He understood then the change in aspect that had come over Ixatalan’s features, the long teeth, the ember-glowing yellow eyes, the spotted fur that seemed to sweep along his chest and limbs, as if the jaguar-skin he wore grew to cover his body.
“And Soft-Walker,” Ixatalan said, his whisper almost a growl, “climbed the Great Kapok tree, frightened away all the birds that Black Macaw had left to guard Green-Maize-Woman’s daughter, and rescued her before Seven Deaths could come to claim her. Since that day, Black Macaw and Soft-Walker were sworn enemies. You know what you must do.”
Tuapecmal nodded. “But what about you, Ixatalan?”
“Soft-Walker the jaguar goes between the worlds,” he said, not quite in answer. “Soft-Walker goes by day and night, by land and water, by earth and tree, and between underworld and heavens.”
As he spoke, his image began to fade and his voice to turn more ghostly. Tuapecmal sought to cling to his friend’s hand, but there had been nothing of substance for him to grasp in the first place, and his fingers curled in on emptiness until they touched his own palm.
“Stay,” he begged.
Then a dark sleep fell over him, and when he roused he found himself sprawled on the Great House’s floor. Ixatalan, if he had ever been there, was gone. The vision, if vision it was, had ended.
He made a new likeness out of corn-stalks, sticks and rags. This one did not have the shape of a man, but was half again the size. It stood long and low upon four legs, with a thick tail of strung-together corn-cobs and a round-eared head carved from a lump of wood.
Into the hollows for its eyes, Tuapecmal set disks of polished jade. Into its gaping jaw went sharp white teeth, and into its cloth-padded paws went hooked slivers of honed obsidian.
Last of all, he wrapped the likeness in a spotted jaguar-skin, which Ixatalan had given him as a gift. He hefted it onto his shoulder and carried it through the village.
The People stared at him as he passed with his awkward burden. It was a crude, clumsy, shabby thing. They must have thought that he’d gone mad. No one spoke to him, though they murmured to each other behind his back.
He did not care. He did not speak to them, either, or acknowledge their astonished looks.
In the milpas, birds flitted and hopped from row to row, scratching at the dirt, pecking for planted grain. They perched on posts, flapping their wings, fanning their tails. They puffed their chests. They strutted. They chirped, cawed, called, and chittered. Their droppings splattered white and greenish-black.
Men swung at them with their digging-sticks, cursing. Boys, armed with nets and stones and branches, chased them off again and again. Dogs ran around, barking, yipping wildly. When disturbed, the birds rose scattering in a bright flurry of colored feathers, but no sooner had the disturbance moved on than they went back to what they had been doing.
Thieving. Feasting. Gorging themselves on the corn.
Some even flew at the men and boys and dogs, darting at their heads, battering with rapid-beating wings, jabbing with beaks and talons, drawing thin lines of blood. It even seemed the birds licked at the redness, lapping it up with thirsty greed.
The Corn-People… the Blood-People… Tuapecmal thought as he approached.
A flock descended on a girl who had been bringing the laborers a midday meal. Her basket tumbled into the field, spilling thin rolls of corn-dough stuffed with a cold mash of boiled beans and squash. She shouted furiously at the birds, slapping with both hands, until a scarlet-banded one gouged a deep wound in her cheek. Then she fled, wailing and sobbing, with her arms crossed over her face.
The largest of the birds was a brilliant blue macaw with jagged yellow markings and an insolent plumed crest. It screeched, shifting from claw to claw, atop the tattered remnants of one of the man-shaped likenesses.
That one – Blue-Lightning-Crest, Tuapecmal decided he would call it – must have been their leader, a favored child of Black Macaw. Its cries seemed both mocking and triumphant as it watched its brethren tear apart the spilled bounty of squash and beans and corn-dough until not a scrap was left.
Blue-Lightning-Crest broke off its screeches as Tuapecmal brought his burden into the dusty rows. The plumed head tipped to one side. Black eyes glittered, fixed on him. The other birds also ceased their noise. The sudden hush made Tuapecmal shiver despite the sun’s heat glaring through the haze.
Men with digging-sticks and women with buckets also stopped to watch, heads tilted in much the same inquiring manner. A dog yapped, took a step, then sat on its bony haunches with its tongue lolling.
He felt foolish. The skin-wrapped likeness was not fearsome. It was absurd. It more resembled an oversized child’s toy made from twigs than it did a jaguar. He set it on the ground and it promptly fell over.
A single harsh and jeering caw from Blue-Lightning-Crest was the only sound. Tuapecmal’s face burned with shame. He righted the likeness, balancing it on its four padded cloth paws. The disks of polished jade shined blankly. Its jaw gaped at nothing. Its corn-husk tail drooped in the dirt.
Tuapecmal sighed. He crouched beside his ridiculous construction, elbows braced on his knees and his head hanging. His shadow puddled beneath him.
What had he been thinking? He must have dozed off in the Great House, had a dream, and mistaken it for a vision or spirit-visit. He sighed again. The ground upon which he crouched had been recently turned, for all the good it did. Already, the ravenous birds had pecked up most of what had been planted. Glimpsing one that they’d missed, he pinched up a tiny, dry, wrinkled piece of corn-grain. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, sighing a third and heavy time.
“I am a fool,” he said to the jaguar-likeness. “If Ixatalan could see this, he would laugh until he split. What kind of Soft-Walker could someone like me create?”
He stuck the grain of corn into its mouth as if feeding it, and only further proved his foolishness by pricking his finger on the point of a sharp tooth. He winced at the quick stab of pain, got up, and turned to trudge away with shoulders slumped and head still hanging.
A streak of blue and yellow glided past him. He looked back with dull and useless anger, already knowing what he’d see. Blue-Lightning-Crest alit on the stick and corn-stalk spine of the likeness, claws plucking at the spotted skin. The bird’s wings ruffled proudly. It waggled its tail-feathers and shifted its stance, as if debating where first to void its splatter.
The dog that had been sitting with tongue lolling gave a startled yelp and lurched backward, kicking puffs of dust. A bare heartbeat later, the corn-stalk jaguar whipped about with all the sinuous strength and speed of a living jungle-cat. Its jaws snapped shut on Blue-Lightning-Crest’s neck. The teeth sank deep. The bird flapped and shrieked in pain. The jaguar shook it in a furious, violent motion. Blood splashed the earth. Blue and yellow feathers flew. Hollow bird-bones cracked.
Then every other bird gathered around the milpas took in terror to the air. The sky darkened from the masses of wings and bodies. The air splintered with a thousand panicked cries.
Tuapecmal ducked, raising his arms to shield his face. A couple of birds smacked into him and fell dazed into the rows. One pecked at his ankle and he stamped it flat under his sandal.
When it seemed safe to do so, he lowered his arms and looked. He saw others doing the same, digging-sticks let fall, buckets of cenote-water overturned. The dogs had dashed from the fields. Villagers called out alarmed questions.
And the birds…
The birds, except for those few feathered corpses such as the one he�
��d crushed, were gone.
The corn-stalk likeness of a jaguar stood just as he had placed it. Unmoving and unmoved, jade-disk eyes gazing blankly at nothing. But thick red wetness, and flecks of blue and yellow, stuck to its wooden jaws. Shredded tufts and entrails, and a lone stiffened claw, were all that appeared to remain of Blue-Lightning-Crest.
“Soft-Walker,” Tuapecmal said, without realizing he intended to. He glanced at his finger. He thought of the piece of grain he’d been putting into its mouth when the sharp tooth pricked his flesh.
The Corn-People… the Blood-People…
They gathered, the People. They stared at him again. This time, the stares were of a very different nature. None suggested he might be mad… unless they all were, because enough of them had seen it too. The jaguar, that swift strength and lithe grace. The large blue macaw ripped to tatters. The milpas, deserted of the countless birds.
No one spoke.
Perhaps no one could. Perhaps no one had to.
The first to move was an older woman, not a grandmother but not far from it, with scrawny but tough brown arms and legs and a grubby huipil with faded embroidery at collar and hem. She retrieved the buckets she’d been using to bring water from the cenote, peered into them, tutted, poured the dregs, and swept the rest of the villagers with an impatient look.
They resumed their labors.
All the rest of that day, and the next, and the next day after, the People worked in the milpas. The men turned the earth, dug the rows, planted what they still had saved to plant. The women carried water, bucket after cool bucket from the deep cenote.
And the birds did not return. Not in their previous numbers, coming nowhere near the village or the fields. Some might be seen in the jungle, quick flashes of color against the green as they darted from tree to tree. Their calls and cries could still be heard, but distant.
Soft-Walker remained in place. Tuapecmal cleaned the bloodied feathers from the jaguar’s muzzle. The girl who’d been taking the men their meal that day, the girl with the wound upon her cheek, collected the other blue and yellow feathers to fashion into an ornament for Tuapecmal to wear.
