‘If the stories are not accurate then they are lost,’ Yax K’in said quietly, fondly to his daughter. He could not remain angry or disappointed with her. So much depended on her, the plans of the gods were in her hands and he had confidence in her abilities.
Pep’Em Ha had altered the story. She had added the character of her own brother to the ancient tale of the Finder of Caves, she had described the milpa of the old man so that it was the same as her family’s milpa, she had made the hunter’s village resemble her own, and she had made the intervening god in the image of her own father. She wanted to closely associate herself and her own times with those of the hunter in the story.
‘We must be careful,’ Yax K’in continued, ‘and accurate. Accuracy is paramount, Pep’Em Ha. Everything from now on depends on it. You will depend on it, for the sake of all our lives.’
Yax K’in drew on his cigar. ‘Inaccuracy has caused many problems, I believe.’ As he spoke his voice was illustrated by his exhaled smoke, ‘We must be careful since what is added for entertainment will remain with the story. Stories easily become other stories.’
Pep’Em Ha’s audience sat quietly, after Yax K’in’s voice fell to silence, and listened to the sounds of the nighttime jungle. They waited for Yax K’in to decide if the story-telling would continue. After a short time, he inclined his head and Pep’Em Ha continued the ancient tale.
Chapter 4
“Many years passed since the world was re-made. The people of that creation aged and died, however, the hunter remained unchanged from the moment she had been re-made. She thought often of the old man. The few words he had said to her became clearer as the years passed and her wisdom increased. She often searched for the place where she had been healed but over countless hunts, over countless years, she never found it. She provided for her people. She was the first ruler of all people.
Years passed that counted the end of many lives. The seasons repeated over a thousand times.
The hunter had been on a hunt of many days, and she was alone in the jungle, when she failed to kill an ancient animal, like a peccary, and its tusks had gored her leg. In the long years of her life it was the second, and last, time she had known failure while hunting. She provided for her people.
She lost a lot of blood and her leg was painful but she continued to track the injured peccary. She cornered it against a rock wall. She allowed herself a moment of triumph before she killed her prey. Although she was weaker with her loss of blood, her skill would prevent her prey from a second escape. However, before she could make the killing blow the peccary turned and disappeared. She waited, anticipating its return, but it did not rush at her from out of the rock. She approached the rock wall and saw that it was not whole. There was an opening through which the peccary had vanished.
She did not hesitate, her people depended on her.
She crawled through the opening with her weapons ready in her hands. The aperture was wide enough to crawl unimpeded but not high enough to stand. It sloped gently down. The light dimmed quickly as she crawled along the passageway. She decided to give up her hunt for the injured peccary, and start a new hunt, but then the passageway dipped sharply. The rock surface was slippery. She lost her grip and began to slide. Her hands were full of her hunting weapons. She reluctantly let them go as she slipped further. She tried to grab hold of the rock floor but it was too slippery. She grasped frantically at the rock above her. The rock vanished from beneath her. She was suspended in a dark space. Her skin shivered with the undisturbed cold of a large enclosed area. She was falling but could feel and see nothing.
She struck the bottom of the cave and lost consciousness.
Chapter 5
She woke and did not know how much time had passed. There was a dim light inside the cave as the daylight outside beamed through the narrow entrance like a beacon, far above where she lay. Her leg shivered in silver that she knew was blood that had flowed from the re-opened wound. Her other leg rested at an unnatural angle. It was painful. She had broken it. An arm caused a similar pain. It was broken also. She lifted her head. An intense pain shot through her mouth. She felt warm blood stream and eddy over her chin. She saw its sticky shine on the rock underneath her. She knew that pain. It was same pain she had endured during her other unsuccessful hunt. She had, once again, pierced her tongue with her teeth.
She saw the form of the dead peccary. It had fallen further into the cave, carried there by its greater speed. She tried to move, to gather it, to return with it to her people. Her pain was too great. She could not move. It was only then that she thought of her plight. She could not climb to the entrance with a broken leg and arm. She was weak from loss of blood. She would die next to the peccary. Her pain and suffering was great. She hoped her death would be quick. She lay her head back on the rock floor and waited to die.
She had fallen into a sacred place. What separates our world from the world of Xibalba, the abode of the gods, is thin there. Her suffering called to Xibalba.
She was answered.
The dim cave light coagulated, it formed around a single point, then it extended into a sinuous stream of smoke. It expanded into the shape of a serpent. She lifted her head, although her pain was intense, when she was aware of the change in the cave.
The shape moved and grew. A serpent’s head formed on the changing stream and its mouth split and opened until the open mouth filled her vision. She watched with fascination as if she saw her approaching death. She was not afraid to die. She was the greatest hunter, of any creation.”
‘Her suffering had summoned a Vision Serpent,’ Pep’Em Ha said, as an aside from her story-telling, as an explanation, ‘the way our people communicate with the gods and with our ancestors.’
“She saw movement within the mouth of the Vision Serpent,” Pep’Em Ha continued with her tale. “A shape approached. A young man stepped out of the mouth of the serpent and into the cave. She stared at him. He held himself like a king although the days of the Story of the Finder of Caves were before kings. She lifted her head further as he approached. He stopped next to the dead peccary.
She knew him.
She tried to speak. Her voice garbled with the blood that pooled in her mouth. Each word she used, each breath, added to her pain. She fought the words like they were adversaries.
‘Where have you come from? Why are you here?’ Her breath failed on the last word. She was braver than any person had been or would be, she could suffer agony in silence but she was afraid in the presence of great power. She, also, knew his compassion was arbitrary. He had watched her suffer before. He could do nothing and have no concern as to consequences.
His answer surprised her. ‘You brought me here,’ he said softly.
She struggled with another word but it came out of her mouth easily. ‘How?’ she asked. She tried to speak more words. ‘How could I have brought you here?’ she said clearly.
‘Your suffering summoned me,’ he said quietly.
‘Why are you so interested in watching my suffering?’ She exploded with anger. ‘You have no compassion!’ Her fear made her angry. She was familiar with fear and she had learned how to overcome it. When she hunted dangerous prey she attacked. She did that with him.
‘You watched my suffering,’ she said with explosive wrath. ‘That’s twice now. You only helped me, reluctantly, after I pleaded. I am a hunter, I do not accept help easily. It is demeaning to ask for help. You changed everything. You explained nothing. Not in a meaningful way. Not with any sense.’ She listed her grievances.
‘Then,’ she continued. ‘You say, I have been re-made. What’s that? No-one knew me but they all knew my name. My new name. Then you disappear. You leave me like that.’ Tears formed in her eyes as her anger was overcome by her sadness, her loneliness. She went on in a softer voice. ‘You left me like that for years and years and years. Everyone aged and died. Again and again. Then, you turn up again.’ She lifted her arm and pointed it at him, clenching her fist as if she mig
ht strike him.
She looked at her hand that hovered in front of her face. She then realised she had stood up while she was angrily arguing. She was no longer lying on the rock floor of the cave. She had no pain in her legs, her voice was clear, her mouth was clean and whole and her arm moved as if it had never been broken. She gazed at his face in wonder. He had not moved from next to the peccary. In the gloom of the cave she saw the serious look on his face.
‘Compassion was not required,’ he said. ‘Not on my part and not at that time. I re-made you. I re-made your people. The day you found me was the first day of this creation. The time of the world is counted from that day. It was because of you. This world is yours. I did tell you that. We shall see what happens this time.’
‘This time? What does that mean?’ she asked. She was less angry now that her pain had gone.
‘I’ve done this before. A long time ago and with methods that were,’ he hesitated and she thought she saw a bitter smile on his face. ‘They were catastrophic and crude. I caused a lot of damage. Perhaps, because of you, this time will be better. More acceptable to others,’ he said.
Her anger had gone. She said in a soft, contrite voice that still managed to transfer blame to him. ‘I could have died. I expected to die. Again.’ She wondered how his apparent plan for creation could proceed if she had died in the cave.
To her surprise, he laughed. His laugh forced on her an ecstatic joy, as if the world was wonderful despite everything to the contrary. She had no choice but to share his happiness. It was not a contagious laughter, quite the opposite. It felt inappropriate, sacrilegious even, to add to the sound he was making. His laughter was a gift but not to be shared on equal terms. In the many years that followed, his laugh erupted at unexpected times and she rarely anticipated its arrival.
‘No,’ he said when his laughter had subsided. ‘Well, yes. You could have died the first time and the fact that you didn’t is the reason for, well,’ he hesitated to find the right word as if his vocabulary was newly learned. He said, ‘everything. However, this time?’ He appeared ready to laugh again. ‘No. You can’t die.’
‘You mean you won’t let me? You’re protecting me? I do not need anyone’s protection.’ She was upset again. She did not like how lightly he took her injuries, her pain and her suffering. Twice.
‘Your current situation proves the opposite, I would have thought,’ he said clearly but with kindness. ‘I created this world because of you. For you. You cannot die. Not by accident, disease and not from ageing. You are the ruler of this creation. Perhaps I did not make that clear enough. This world is yours. I created this world but I do not own it.’
He waited for his words to be understood. He was surprised to see that she did understand. Amazing, he thought. He knew for certain, then, he had made the correct choice. He also knew that he had made a mistake in leaving her alone.
‘However, it is, perhaps,’ he said, ‘time I stayed with you.’”
Pep’Em Ha finished the tale. She drew her eyes around her audience as if seeking confirmation of a task well done. No-one interrupted the poignant silence.
Arthur and Michelle glanced at each other. Arthur remembered his years living in the village. He had participated in the KulWinik rituals. He had heard the old stories. All of them, he had thought. He wondered, with some disappointment, what else Yax K’in had neglected to tell him.
Michelle was excited. She had also spent years in the KulWinik village, all of them living with Arthur. She also knew the rituals. She knew the stories, from Arthur and from Yax K’in. An ancient creation tale centred on a female leader was unprecedented. She wondered what else there was but with anticipation, not disappointment.
Arthur’s old friend Hamish, a retired geologist, listened to the silence after the story, revelling in the profound effect the story-telling had on him. He could visualise the relationship between the woman and the god she had summoned. He saw the scenes Pep’Em Ha vividly described as if he had lived them himself. Her story-telling of the beginning of the world moved him as only a few good movies and books had done in his long life. He tried to remember the god’s name and the woman’s name. He wondered how the story of the hunter and the god would end.
Jim, Hamish’s late-teenage grandson, was the first to speak. ‘That was cool, Pep’Em Ha,’ he said in English, which Yax K’in, alone among those around the table, did not understand. Jim added, in KulWinik Maya, ‘Are there more stories?’
That was the question, for different reasons, everyone around the table wanted answered.
Part 2
Chapter 1
The Story of the First Day
The air in the cave had shimmered and they had immediately appeared back with her people. The dead peccary had been taken away by others, who prepared it to be eaten by the group. The hunter stood a short distance away and warily watched the man dressed in a white tunic seated next to a smouldering cooking fire. The rest of her people had left her alone with him, fearful after her re-appearance. She looked over his body as if his appearance was unusual but he looked like any other man except for his dominant dark red hair and a large regal nose that drew attention to itself. She liked how he looked, strong and also gentle. His physical age seemed to be near to hers although she knew well how deceptive that was. She had stopped counting the years of her life.
‘Do you have a name?’ she asked. She kept her distance like he was dangerous prey. She spoke strongly as if she was not afraid.
‘Yes,’ he said.
She waited for him to say more. She sighed when he didn’t.
She spoke clearly and succinctly, asking a question with one possible answer, ‘What is your name?’
‘I have many names.’
She sighed with frustration. His conversation was impossible.
‘I prefer to be called Hachakyum,’ he eventually said.
‘You chose my name?’ she asked. ‘Are you the one who put K’ul Kelem into their heads?’ she asked as she waved her arm in the direction of the people preparing the peccary.
‘Yes. It is a powerful name. It signifies strength, wisdom and authority. Do you not like the name I gave you?’ He smiled.
Her fear and consequently her anger subsided. She said in a soft voice, ‘It’s a good name.’
She had questions. Her voice hardened, as if preparing for a battle with him.
‘I am no older,’ she said. She lifted her hand so it was in front of her face. She examined the back of it as if it was not hers. She held it before her eyes and marvelled at the thing that had remained unchanged for years. Her eyes slipped off her hand and fell across the space between them to meet his eyes. She felt as if her gaze met an unyielding force mid-way between them. She did not flinch.
She waited but he said nothing. She returned his silence like it was a game of strength.
‘I still feel pain,’ she said after waiting a long time for him to reply. ‘I injure, I tire, I am sad, I am happy, I am hungry, I’m sick. I’m exactly the same as before I first met you.’
She waited again. He said and did nothing but watch her eyes.
‘But, I am no older,’ she repeated. She lowered her hand to her side.
She waited again.
‘My family did not remember me,’ she said. ‘They had never known me as one of them. I had never existed to anyone I knew or,’ her voice faltered. ‘Or cared for.’
He made no sound. She watched him watching her.
‘They all aged and died. Babies aged and died. I had no-one. During all those lifetimes, I was alone,’ she said. She remembered loved ones dying while her old life, before meeting Hachakyum, remained unknown to them. She became angry again as she remembered those lonely years. It was his fault. She raised her hand again and examined it. This time she rotated it backwards and forwards to examine all sides of it.
‘Do you own me?’ she asked firmly. She switched her eyes immediately from her hand to him as if trying to catch him unawares. She said with anger
, ‘Is this yours? Have I no choice?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘No?’ she queried his answer. ‘Are you sure? I’m not so sure that I do have a choice.’
‘No,’ he repeated. He spoke clearly and firmly, ‘I do not own you. No-one owns you. No-one is owned.’
‘Hmm,’ she readied herself to argue with him. ‘But, you made me. You named me.’
When he did not reply, she moved the hand she had been examining so that it pointed to the other people.
‘They knew my name,’ she said. ‘The name you gave me, but they did not know me.’ She placed her other hand on her chest as if to make sure he knew which “me” she meant. She stood in a confrontational attitude, with one hand pointing and the other on her chest. She wanted him to understand her fear and her loneliness. She wanted compassion. She did not know what he felt, if anything.
‘I do not own you,’ he said forcefully. He was unused to being questioned and his answers not believed. He thought of his mistake, leaving her alone for so long, and he tried to show some of the compassion he knew she hoped for. ‘I did not make you or anyone else. I can’t do that. No-one can create life from nothing. I re-made you. I re-made your people. I own you less than a parent owns a grown child.’
She let her hands drop to her sides. A question burned to be asked.
She asked softly, as if scared of the answer, ‘I can’t die?’
He faltered. He recovered and then, quickly, gave her an answer she could understand. ‘No, you can’t die,’ he said.
‘I’m immortal am I? I’m one of the gods.’ She began to raise her arms but then let them fall. They hung limply pointing to the ground.
The First Genesis Page 2
