by Ian Gibson
“There was already mud on your shoes,” Itzel says, sticking out her tongue at him. She’ll never understand why her brother cares so much about his shoes, and she likes to tease him about it.
Their parents are too preoccupied to pay attention to their squabble.
“We’re stuck here until it clears," the father says resignedly. He gets out his old portable radio and tries to get a signal to listen to a weather report, but all the stations play nothing but static as he flips through them. “First the phone, now the radio! Does anything work here? It’s like this whole village is in a sinkhole!”
The mother helps the grandmother back to her bed to rest. Itzel comes up to her, and when she's closer she notices that there are dark marks all over her skin, especially her arms and hands, which weren't there the day before. They're faint but still noticeable when she's up close.
"What's wrong with your skin?" Itzel asks her.
"Oh, my child, don't worry about little old me," her grandmother says, "Before you know it, I'll be right as rain again!"
The father scoffs at that. "There's nothing right about this rain."
Her grandmother notices the distressed look on Itzel’s face, but knows precisely how to cheer her up. “Let’s have some chocolate, shall we?”
Itzel's face lightens up slightly, and she nods, and her mother heats the chocolate in the kitchen hut and pours some for her, her grandmother, and Miguel, then passes it to them through the window. Her father doesn’t have any—he’s one of those strange people who don’t like chocolate.
“You know how much your grandmother loves her chocolate every morning,” the mother tells Itzel as she passes her the cup for her grandmother.
Itzel brings the cup to her grandmother, who blows on it to cool it off. The rain is still pouring outside.
Her grandmother whispers, "When it rains like this, it's a perfect time for a story." She beckons Miguel over, who's also sipping chocolate, and he joins Itzel in sitting at the bottom of their grandmother's bed.
"The mischievous twins, Itzel and Miguel," she says. "Do you know how special twins are?"
"Not as special as triplets,” Miguel says dryly.
Their grandmother laughs. "Twins are still special. Have I told you the story of the Hero Twins who went to the Underworld and tricked the god of death himself?"
They shake their heads.
“Come closer, then,” their grandmother tells them, and they move up the bed closer to her. Her voice is weak now, so they wouldn’t be able to hear properly even from the bottom of the bed, especially over the rain. Miguel sits on the floor, and Itzel crosses her legs and sits on the bed against the wall, with their grandmother lying between them.
“They were a brother and sister, just like you,” she tells them. “They lived a long, long time ago, when the gods and spirits were free to roam our world not just during the five unlucky days of Wayeb, but throughout the whole year, and all the peoples of our land between the seas hadn’t scattered to live in separate cities and speak different languages, but still all lived in one, enormous, ancient city that they called Tulan—the First City where we all lived as brothers and sisters. The brother and sister that this story’s about grew up in this ancient, forgotten city, and it’s not a place you’ll find in any of your history books.”
“Why not?” Itzel asks.
“I’ll get to that. Be patient!” their grandmother says. “In this First City the people worshipped the many gods of the sky, the earth, and even the land of the dead below. But when one particular queen ruled over it, she made sure that one god was worshipped above all others—the god of death. Under her reign, the city became one big cult of the Death god, and their most sacred object was a jade stone they kept in their temple that was made to look like his head.”
“What did his head look like?” Itzel asks.
Their grandmother's face bears a wrinkled frown of disgust. “Ugly.”
Itzel and Miguel laugh at their grandmother’s very succinct answer.
“Anyway, this city had a very long history of bad luck—its people had suffered from droughts, from earthquakes, from plague, from war. Maybe the city was cursed, maybe it was founded on the unluckiest day—like today is—but for all its time on this earth, death had haunted it like a shadow.”
“Why didn’t they, just, I don’t know… move somewhere else?” Miguel asks.
“Because it was the First City, and it was their home,” their grandmother says, assuming it a sufficient answer.
“They could have found a new home without all the earthquakes and diseases and death and stuff,” Miguel says.
“Home was a very sacred thing back then. If your home had problems, you confronted them head-on. You didn’t just run away from them.”
“Is that why you won’t move to the city even though mama and papa keep telling you to?” Miguel asks her.
Their grandmother pokes him on the nose. “Smart boy.” She sips her chocolate. “Mmm, how delicious, Itzel! But it could use just a bit more honey. Now where was I in my story?”
“Lots of bad things were happening to the city with the ugly Death god head,” Itzel says.
“Ah, yes! You could understand why the people of this unlucky city were so desperate to appease the cruel Death god. Death was all around them. When this queen came to power, she devoted Tulan’s main temple to the god of death and demanded that offerings and even human sacrifices be made to him every day. She ruled the city like this for years, until one day she made one final offering to him—her own life. She had made a special pact with the Death god, and when she died, the war priests used her blood to paint the four corners of the city, and this rite tied the foundations of her city to the Death god’s great power. This way she ensured that the First City would become the ‘undying city’—no disaster or enemy could ever conquer it. Much time passed since her rule, but the city’s war priests continued the queen’s tradition, demanding that people give as much as they could—which was often even their lives—to the Death god to uphold their great city, and when these special twins were just children, no older than you two, they lost their whole family as sacrifices to him.”
Itzel gasps. “That’s so mean!”
“The Death god was a mean god, so he wanted people to do mean things,” their grandmother says. “The twins had grown up in a family of peasants and, had the two of them not been out playing in the forest when their family was taken, they would have been taken, too. They were like you two, always wanting to go into the forest.” She looks at Miguel. “Well, maybe not you anymore.”
“Yea, you didn’t come for our walk last evening!” Itzel shoves Miguel’s shoulder scoldingly.
“I’ve been down that path so many times that it’s boring now,” Miguel says. “It’s just the same old trees over and over again. What’s so interesting about that? But that cenote was pretty cool.”
Itzel groans, not at all able to understand her brother.
“If you were thrown into a cenote with your hands bound, you might think of them a little less cool,” their grandmother warns him sternly, then continues, “So, that’s why the twins started to not like the Death god very much, nor did they any love for the high priests of the city that took their family from them. That’s what happened above ground.” She points downward to the floor. “Now let’s get to what was happening below, shall we? That’s the very interesting part.”
“The Underworld?” Itzel asks.
Their grandmother nods. “They call it Xibalba. It means ‘the place of fright’.”
“Xibalba,” Miguel utters it amusedly. He thinks it’s a funny word and sounds more like a kind of dance than a scary place.
“Xibalba is the land of the dead. It’s where we go when we die. And naturally, as the land of the dead, you can guess who ruled it.”
“The Death god,” Itzel says.
Their grandmother nods. “Like all the gods, he became stronger when people made him offerings, especially of blo
od and sacrifice. And thanks to cities like this cursed Tulan that worshipped him above all the other gods and made many sacrifices in his name, the Lord of the Underworld became so strong that he set about to defy his other gods, trapping even the sky gods in his land below the earth, and in so doing became the king not just of his Underworld, but of all the gods of the sky and earth. Xibalba was a very nasty place back then—very dark, very cold, very miserable, and very, very, very stinky! It was covered in stinky fumes made from the Death god’s magic, which choked the whole land in a stench worse than rotten fish.”
Itzel wrinkles her nose at the thought of it.
“And the only source of light in Xibalba was a sun that shone red—they called it the Blood Sun. But as bright as it was, it was a false sun—nothing but a trick. The real sun was no more. It once journeyed through the Underworld whenever it dipped below the horizon in the West, but it was weaker and vulnerable down there. Because of this very weakness, a powerful sky god would always descend into the Underworld and escort it across so it could rise again in the East, until one night the Sun’s escort didn’t come, and the Death god destroyed it. Then he climbed a great tree to the lowest level of the heavens and abducted the Moon, taking it down to his Underworld where he could destroy that too.”
“Why did he do that?” asks Itzel.
“He thought they were watching over him like two big eyes,” their grandmother replies, opening her eyes wide at them, “and he couldn’t get up to too much wickedness with their gaze bearing down on him.”
“The Death god sounds crazy,” Miguel says.
“He was!” their grandmother says with a wheezing laugh. “His brain must have been rotten, because he was really and truly out of his mind. And his false sun—the Blood Sun—cast a bewitching light that fooled even the gods into thinking it was the real sun, even though it gave them no warmth. You see, the Blood Sun wasn’t actually a sun at all—it was a scarlet macaw with magical feathers that could mimic a sun’s light.”
Itzel is immediately reminded of the hint of red she saw at the top of the ceiba tree, that she thought might have been a macaw. The red she had glimpsed was vividly bright, but it would’ve needed to be a lot brighter to fool her into thinking it was any kind of sun.
“Having fooled the other gods, the Death god was free to reign with terror across his land of the dead and our land of the living. He demanded more and more sacrifices and even sent his own servants to our world to capture the living to enslave or consume them. Everything was going his way for a long time, until one fateful day, one of the gods—their former king, Kukulkan—was flying blindly in the sky over Xibalba in the form of a giant feathered snake, and he accidentally bumped into the tricky macaw posing as the fake sun, breaking its spell on him. He could now clearly see what had become of Xibalba and the other gods, and what the Death god was up to, but fearing the powerful Death god’s wrath, he decided to flee the Underworld and he came to our land of the living, where he took the shape of a man and lived discreetly among the people of the First City, thinking that would be the cleverest way to hide.”
“Why not hide in the forests as a snake instead?” Itzel asks.
“Itzel just really hates being in the city,” Miguel says.
“Can’t blame her. And it’s a good question. The Death god had many spies in the forest, especially the bats. But the First City was under his protection, so he left it alone—provided, of course, that offerings were regularly made to him.
“Back to those two twins. They’re older now, in their late teens, and they were very clever twins, who became very good at performing tricks of the hand, and they sang and danced and performed tricks for the people of their city, who thought these two teenage twins were a wonderful distraction from the ills of the world. In fact, the two of them became so good at what they did, and so popular, that they performed for the city’s nobles, even the king and queen.
"Needless to say, these talented twins caught the eye of Kukulkan, especially the sister, as she was very flexible—one of her best tricks was that she could bend her body all the way back so that her feet stood on her head. It was like she had no bones in her at all! It reminded Kukulkan very much of a snake, and he was a snake god after all, so of course he’d like that. Not to mention she was a very pretty young lady—I’m sure that didn’t hurt. He became a regular among their audience, and after watching many of their performances he approached the twins and told them that even though they were just mortals, they had the confidence and poise of gods. It was quite the compliment—certainly the most eloquent one they had ever gotten.
“He met with the sister in private, and she told him what happened to their family—how the war priests of their city took them years ago and offered them as sacrifices to the Death god, and she despised them for it. Over time Kukulkan grew to trust her, and one day, he revealed his true identity to her, and told her of the terrible reign of the Death god and all the suffering he was bringing upon Xibalba and their world. Of course, the sister had no love for the Death god either, nor did her brother, so Kukulkan made them a deal—he would transform into a snake and sneak into the beds of the war priests while they slept that night and bite each one of them with his deadly venom, and in return, he would invite the twins to come with him to Xibalba to help him trick the Death god out of his throne. The sister ran to tell her brother about this, and they both accepted Kukulkan’s offer without hesitating. They would love nothing more than the opportunity to take the Death god down. Together they devised a plan for how to trick the Death god—Kukulkan told them Xibalba was a very dark and murky place, so they thought that they might use that to their advantage and bring a black cloth to conceal what they wished to not be seen during their tricks.
"That night, Kukulkan did exactly what he said he would—he sneaked into rooms of the war priests and bit them, and when they fell ill, he went up the steps of the city’s temple, and he took the jade stone in the shape of the Death god’s head.”
“The ugly head?” Itzel asks.
“The ugliest,” their grandmother answers. “Except that it was made of jade. It’s a very pretty green stone, so it was an ugly head made of pretty stone. He gave this stone to the twins and told them to guard it with their lives.”
“What’s so important about it?” Itzel asks.
“It was a stone imbued with magical power, called a ‘stone of light’. Most such stones are used for healing the sick, some might even let you glimpse into the future, but a magical stone of green jade is by far the most special of them. It has a very unique power—it can trap one’s soul in it! And such a stone was very important to Kukulkan’s master plan. The sister took the jade stone and hid it on her, and the brother took a black cloth, and they walked with Kukulkan to a cenote just outside their city. The young brother and sister held each other’s hands and jumped into it, and the cenote transported them to the Underworld.”
Itzel and Miguel both think of the cenote they saw earlier that morning—the large sinkhole in the ground that had mysteriously appeared. It looked very deep and dark, and they can’t imagine holding each other’s hand and just jumping into one willingly, especially if there was a crazy Death god on the other end.
“Now if you normally had a giant flying snake in the sky that suddenly went missing, you’d probably notice it, so it didn’t take the Death god long to see that Kukulkan was missing from his Underworld, and he sent his vast army to look for him. But when Kukulkan and the twins came to Xibalba, instead of hiding from the Death god, he took them straight to the throne where he sat, and he presented the twins as offerings to him as an apology for his disappearance. The Death god gave one brief look at the twins Kukulkan brought for him and was very disappointed by these so-called gifts. He asked Kukulkan, ‘What’s so special about these twins?’” She makes her voice very deep and gravelly.
Itzel laughs. “Is that what the Death god sounded like?”
“I’m a fine actress, so yes,” their grandmo
ther says.
The father overhears the laughter. “You should be resting, not straining yourself and doing silly voices.”
“I’ll rest later,” the grandmother tells him, but she does it in the same affected deep voice and coughs. “And stop interrupting me in the middle of my performance.” She turns back to Itzel and Miguel. “Kukulkan told the Death god that these twins were special and assured him that he would not be disappointed. The Death god was intrigued by this, so he let the twins perform before him, and even summoned the other gods to watch. On the steps of a tall temple, they sang, and danced, and performed their magic tricks for him, and though the Death god laughed and applauded their skills, he breathed upon them with his stinky breath. ‘You can do great tricks for mere mortals, but you cannot do the greatest trick of all—cheat death itself!’ The twins took one look at each other and decided they would do one last trick. As I said, Xibalba was a very dark and murky place back then because of all those stinky black clouds in the air, so they thought they might be able to use that to their advantage. Remember that the sister was so flexible it was almost like she had no bones at all?”
“Like this?” Itzel tries to pull her leg over her own head but fails halfway and drops backwards on the bed.
Their grandmother smiles. “Almost.” “Itzel, no horseplay on your grandmother’s bed,” her mother scolds her.
The grandmother goes on, “The brother asked for a table and a long saw and they did a trick where he pretended to cut his sister in half along her waist, covered the middle of her with that black cloth he tucked away with him, and she bent herself backward so much that, in the darkness, it looked a lot like she was in two pieces, and her brother was holding up her legs for the Death god to see. And she did her very best job at pretending to be dead—she must have been a fine actress too! Then the brother looked like he put her back together again, and she arose back to life.”
Miguel scoffs sceptically. “I don’t think that trick would fool me even in the dark.”
