Alone he makes his earthly rounds, alone he will rise tomorrow, our life, our god, our mirror.
GRANDMOTHER
MOON
WEAVES the WORLD
Long ago, when the world was new and time was learning how to walk straight, the crooked and crazy one who limped along, or speeded up, or glided in perfect circles—
Our Grandmother Moon—floated like a beautiful girl into the arms of a ceiba tree.
Her long lizard tail whipped the ground, her wild white hair curled around the branches.
The pools of her eyes, the shadows of her fangs, shone brighter than day.
The Mother of Waters swayed in the tree as if she were poling a long canoe across the night sea.
The ancestors thought she was fishing. They thought she was grinding corn.
But her net was made from silken strands of her chin hair, her paddle was her weaving sword, and the grinding stone
she was sweating over
was a loom made of giant boughs.
“You pitiful, naked excuses!” said Grandmother Moon. “I’ll show you how to make threads like mine to cover up those lazy bones.”
Round and round her spindle spun. All night the stars moved round, all night she wove and worked herself into a frenzy, and when morning came, her blouse was a world of flowers and toads.
All the earth’s creatures are
woven together
in our clothes,
all rhythms,
all cycles,
all songs.
These the goddess
showed us.
LADY
YELLOW RAMON LEAF
Once the great sorcerer Itzamna fell in love with the young goddess of the moon. When he saw her gathering shafts of moonlight for her loom, he fell into a swoon and lost count of the stars and planets.
He followed her day and night, disguised as a blue iguana, disguised as a red-throated hummingbird. He watched her weave the south wind, he watched her when she went down to the river to bathe, disguised as the boulder she leaned on, disguised as the pebble under her left foot, disguised as the water rushing around her ankles. Instantly she felt an odd shiver and leapt onto the bank. He was the cattail reed she clung to, the leaves she used to dry her toes. She tried to escape, but he was everywhere, in the humid air, in the racket of the birds, in the oncoming night.
She tossed down her comb and ran. Her comb turned into brambles, but he changed into a quail and flew after.
She took off her jade earrings. They turned into a cornfield, but he changed into a fox and chased her.
She sent a rabbit to distract him, but Itzamna wasn’t fooled.
She threw down her necklace of pearls, which turned into the midnight mist, but he changed into the north wind and came after.
She dropped her silver sandals. They turned into shadows, but he became the Night Terror and pursued her past the dawn.
She unfastened her silver gown. It turned into a mirror, and he saw himself glowing like the rising sun. She disappeared in the light.
He turned into a cloud and caught her. The goddess gave him her love, because she loved everyone who loved her.
But she was as wayward as he, rising and setting in different places on the horizon, racing or rambling across the sky and always changing faces.
“Be still,” he cried. “Be constant.”
“I am the moon,” she said with a bewitching smile.
Itzamna was exhausted by her fickleness. He was an old god after all, and even though he possessed all the magic in the world, he couldn’t dream of enough ways to keep her. And so he turned the young moon into a ramon tree, older than creation.
Brown and motionless, she stood at the southern tip of paradise. Her roots reached deep into the Underworld and her branches brushed the sky. Her enormous leaves provided shade for the eternal flowers. Her graceful limbs provided nuts for the animals, nesting places for the birds, and a soft bench for old Grandmother Moon when she paused on her nightly journey.
Eons passed without a rustle or a sigh. Lady Yellow Ramon Leaf became the mother tree of the forests and the mother tree of the gods. Out they stepped, one by one, whole and fully formed, from a cleft in her wide trunk. She cradled her divine children in her arms.
Itzamna was growing so absentminded he forgot about everything in the world. His heart turned to stone, his mind turned to sleep. Moths and butterflies lost their wings, the corn withered and died. Hunger tightened people’s bellies, and they could barely pray.
Lady Yellow Ramon Leaf leaned down and spoke to them in a soothing voice. “Why bother shaking him?” she whispered. “He may wake up as thorny as the wilderness, as mean as a swamp. Even if he loves you, he may chase you until your feet turn to lead. It’s better to leave him be.”
Ever since, the wild nuts of the ramon tree provide food during times of famine. When the gods of wind and rain send plagues and torments, the goddess offers bread that tastes like chocolate. Those whose bones are twisted and feeble, those whose mouths are as dry as straw call her the moon tree, because inside every nutshell is a little moon that cures all sickness and heals all wounds.
CHAK
THE RAIN GOD
Chak, the rain god, was sitting in his cave, rumbling and grumbling. Far off he heard a song that rattled and rocked like a summer storm:
Rain, rain,
it’s falling again.
The fields are flooding,
the sun is black,
the wings of the corn
are yellow and damp.
Stop the lightning,
Stop the thunderclap!
Tin, tin, tin,
Pim, pom, pim!
“What kind of song is that?” he spouted. “Why, I’ll just spatter them, drown them, strike them with lightning bolts and more floods.” Oh, he was getting angrier by the minute.
“On second thought, maybe I will go away. Let them try to live without me!”
The rain slowed to a drizzle, then a drop. The land became so dry the palm trees curled and the brown earth cracked. It got so dusty under the hot sun that people’s throats ached and their skin burned like fire. Then their minds started to sizzle, and they began to wonder if the rain would ever come again to soak their thirsty plants and provide enough water for cooking and bathing or just a little thimbleful to drink. It is then they offered prayers to Chak, the rain god.
Chak listened to the prayers with his big shell-shaped ears. He rubbed his long, runny nose and scratched his serpent scales. The mirrors on his skin flashed and his eyes rolled like ball lightning.
“Dragnats!” he fumed. “Platitudinous paupers!” Then he threw his axe, and thunder shook the whole earth.
“Let’s see now,” he roared. “Should I be good or should I be wilder? Should I sprinkle or should I pour? Should I dampen their souls or destroy them? Just which Chak shall I be?”
He thought and thought until his head ached and he began to twitch.
“Oh, enough of this insufferable pitter patter! I’m powerful enough to be all four!”
All at once he rushed from the four directions, east, west, north, and south. All four Chaks were carrying axes, spears, and darts as they whirled across the sky.
The Yellow Chak charged in from the south with blinding lightning storms.
The White Chak whipped out of the north on icy squalls that stung like frozen needles. The Black Chak came dancing with the wicked west wind, holding his blazing torches aloft and brimming over with disease and death.
The Red Chak raced from the east, dumping buckets of bean rain and corn rain, though the crops weren’t even in the ground yet.
Oh, the sky was torn every which way, churning and hissing like a barrelful of snakes.
“The weather’s gone crazy again,” farmers said. It was the worst record in history.
“Yes,” Chak spat, “and it’s only March. Just wait till June. I’ll pepper them with purple hailstones. I’ll do something even stranger.” And he
delivered a bath of black ashes followed by a rain of green frogs. “I’m un-pree-dict-able,” he boomed, and broke into gales of laughter.
Frogs were croaking in the mountains, frogs were croaking by the sea. “Bah, they can call all they want. Sounds like a band of bass drums and a tuba to me. But before I bring on the deluge….”
Chak looked down upon the tattered world, and a tear came to his eye. He waved the lightning serpent in his right hand, and a luminous fog rolled across the face of the earth. “I’ve ruined everything,” he groaned. Then he retreated glumly to his cave.
There he sat, melancholy and sad, in the darkest recesses. His slinky serpent daughters, who usually spent their days weaving in the grand salon, put away their looms and tried to console him. “Cheer up, papa,” they said. “Take a rest,” they said. But he paid no attention. All he did was sob.
At dawn they brought him a cup of sulfur tea, at noon, a plate of eels. At night they hauled out his treasure chest and lifted the creaky lid. The chest was overflowing with gold.
“Brackets! Brillfire!” he bawled.
“Oh, papa, you should be happy,” his daughters told him. “After all, you own everything on earth—all the land, mountains, rivers, streams, jewels, silver, and gold.”
“And you’re so generous, papa. When you’re in a good mood.”
“Well, I’m not in a good mood now! I’m not sharing my land, my water, my emerald nuggets, or the slightest stroke of good luck. If anyone tries to build a house without asking my permission, I’ll blow it away. They only love me for my money.”
Chak’s daughters could see he was in the midst of one of his famous fits, feeling sorry for the world and sorrier for himself, and they decided to let him sulk. “We’re going out for a stroll now, papa. See you soon.”
“Don’t bring home any of those farmers!” Chak mumbled and went back to counting his coins. “Two trillion, ninety-six billion, fifty-five million, seven thousand, eight hundred and three. Two trillion, ninety-six billion, fifty-five million, seven thousand, eight hundred and four.” He had a coin for every rainy day since the beginning of the first creation.
The moment they left the house, his serpent daughters changed into beautiful women wearing green silk ribbons in their long braids and fine brocaded blouses woven in a diamond design.
That day a young man who was out chopping wood caught sight of three mysterious maidens passing lightly along the trail. He was enchanted. Despite the heavy mist, he followed the daughters’ delicate steps to the door of the cave.
“Oooh, this looks like the entrance to the Underworld,” the woodcutter said to himself. But he didn’t care. He knocked three times, and a toad let him in. As soon as the woodcutter arrived in the grand salon, the girls turned into horrible snakes. The cave filled with sulfurous smoke. Thunder roared, lightning crashed, sparks went flying in every direction. The woodcutter ran for his life!
“And don’t come back!” Chak bellowed. Then he turned to his three daughters. “Thanks, my girls. That’s just what I needed. Now I’m feeling as right as rain.”
It was the end of April, and Chak was in good spirits again. He mounted his white-tailed stag and went riding to Guatemala, to buy gunpowder for his lightning bolts.
While he was gone, his daughters stayed home, spinning cotton into clouds. The clouds piled up at the cave door, then rose and billowed in the sky. The frogs began their operatic croaking. Scorpion crawled out from under the rock where he was hiding and pricked the clouds with his long black tail.
Soon Chak will stomp and roar and lose his temper. Soon the water will fall like silver. Soon it will rain.
How the
GOD OF DEATH
LOST HIS HAT
No one knows his name, but he is the great ruler of the Underworld. The other deadly lords wander in the darkness, bone-naked, without skin or hair, but not him. He often walks on the surface of the earth, and since he does, he can hardly go about his business looking like a skeletal rack of bones. No, he’s a dignified old man, a little stooped and worn and skinny but nevertheless fit for polite human company.
You can tell he’s a god and not an ordinary human being by the odd way he dresses. His cape is made of a jaguar skin, tail and all. The flaps of his loincloth are two rattlesnakes coiled at both ends. Instead of wearing sandals, he shuffles along in a pair of jaguar-paw slippers.
“Old Jaguar Foot” they call him when he’s skulking beside the road in winter.
He skulks beside the road because he is also the patron god of merchants, especially merchants who travel the roads on winter nights. Most of them are chocolate sellers who need to deliver freshly picked cacao beans to their high-paying customers as fast as they can. They say they can make better time at night getting from one place to another. What they don’t say is that merchants are notorious spies, gossips, talebearers, and worse, and often have to leave town in a hurry. Of course, night is the time when demons wander, and traders who are lost or being chased know they can depend on Death for help. Old Jaguar Foot is a master of disguise in his old man’s body. He knows the road and the right direction. Just follow the footprints painted on his loincloth and the spots on his jaguar tail!
And so he seldom sleeps. How could he? The hat he wears on his wrinkled head is a giant, black-winged screech owl. It’s Old Jaguar Foot’s pride and joy. Innumerable creatures would give everything they had to own that fabulous hat.
One night he was relaxing on his throne, smoking a cigar and drinking hot chocolate. As usual, Rabbit was seated on the floor, writing in his journal, but tonight there wasn’t much to write about, and he was just sucking on his ink brush, bored to tears. Finally he looked up.
“P-p-perhaps, your m-m-majesty, your lordship,” Rabbit stammered, “p-p-perhaps you would let me borrow your, uh, m-m-magnificent hat.”
“What’s in that chocolate you’ve been drinking? You must be mad or tipsy,” Old Jaguar Foot roared.
“P-p-perhaps for one night only, your p-peripatetic eminence. Or just an hour, s-s-sire, say the hour between midnight and one, or the p-p-precious hour before the drowsy dawn picks up his broom and sweeps the path of the sun.”
Old Jaguar Foot was amused by Rabbit’s persistence. “All right,” he whispered. “I’ll let you try it on for one minute. But only if you tell me a story.”
“Well, s-s-sir, how about that golden moment during the creation when you were seated in the Underworld and ordering all the gods around?”
“No, no,” sighed Old Jaguar Foot. “It always makes me sad to remember my past glories.”
“Then perhaps your highness would care to hear the story of how you and the other Lords of Xibalba got your heads cut off by the Hero Twins?”
“You insolent little creature!” snarled the Lord of Death. “Why not tell the story of how you tried to steal Deer’s antlers and got your tail pulled off instead?”
That made Rabbit mad. He jumped up, grabbed Death’s hat, clothes, and walking staff, and ran away. You could hear the owl screeching all the way to the surface of the earth. Owl brought some corn seeds with him and appeared at the same time as the rains. Everyone on earth was happy.
But Old Jaguar Foot was stark naked! Shaking and shivering, he went off to complain to Lord Sun. He wandered up and down the cold, windy corridors of the Underworld until he heard the Sun snoring in his cave.
“Don’t you know it’s after midnight and I have so much work to do tomorrow? Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the days are getting longer.”
“Yes, but I have no clothes. And Rabbit stole my hat!”
“You won’t be needing them now. After all, it’s springtime. Why not let that wily Rabbit have a turn. And let me get some sleep!”
Old Jaguar Foot waited and waited, and finally the days grew shorter and the nights longer. One crisp autumn day, Rabbit came scurrying back with the hat.
“It’s about time!” said Old Jaguar Foot. “Do that again and I’ll grab your ears and throw you as far a
s the moon!”
But the next spring, just when the days were getting longer, Rabbit stole the hat again! “One more time and I’ll trade you in for an armadillo!” shouted Old Jaguar Foot and snuck off to borrow a loincloth.
The hat he wears on his wrinkled head is a giant, black-winged screech owl. It’s Old Jaguar Foot’s pride and joy.
Innumerable creatures would give everything they had to own that fabulous hat.
Old Jaguar Foot got his hat back by the darkening days of fall. He breathed a sigh, and life returned to normal. The plants withered, the flowers were gone, and only chocolate merchants were out traveling. All the birds had flown away, except for the screech owl, who was busy delivering messages. “Come down and pay me a visit,” said the message. But no one wants to visit the Lord of Death. All alone he sat on his throne, smoking his cigar and drinking hot chocolate.
“Tell me a story, Rabbit, to while away the time. Tell me a story about my adventures on the road.”
“I can think of nothing d-duller,” said Rabbit. “I m-m-mean greater, sire. Certainly your l-l-lordship has acquired immense wealth and accomplished many remarkable feats. Frankly, I have often wondered how you manage to walk so far with a s-s-snake hanging in front and in back of your knees.”
“Every once in a while, you may recall, I send helpers to do my trading for me.”
“Ah, yes,” said Rabbit. “I remember when Chak, the rain god, paddled a bundle of goods in his canoe, in exchange for…”
“My great owl hat!”
“What I’ve been really wondering, your lordship, sir, is what you have in that b-b-bundle? Cigar ashes, papayas, a dead body?”
“Hah! You’ll never guess, even if you guess from now until the end of time, which, as we know, has no end. Not like your miserable little tail!”
Maya Gods and Monsters Page 3
