by Ian Gibson
“Of course not, but your brain isn’t rotten,” their grandmother says.
“Yes, it is,” Itzel says.
Miguel turns to their father. “Papa! Itzel’s saying my brain’s rotten!”
The father has given up on his phone and radio and is sipping coffee while standing by the door, staring into the rain as if entranced by it. “A few more years in front of the TV and it will be.”
“It’s why I’d never have one,” the grandmother says.
The father mutters under his breath, “You’d need electricity first.”
Itzel laughs. “Who needs that when you have the forest right outside your door?”
“Thank you, Itzel,” the grandmother says. “At least you understand me. The Death god, unlike Miguel, had a rotten brain. Or maybe he was too busy taking people apart to know how flexible some could be if he kept them together.”
“Maybe,” Miguel concedes that.
“But the trick was enough to impress him. He wondered how it was possible for two mortals to have the power he thought only he had—the power to cheat death itself. The twins smiled and said they would like to perform the same trick on the Death god himself. He laughed and said it’s a clever ploy, but it won’t work on him because it’s impossible for them to kill a god. In fact, it’s impossible even for other gods to kill gods, too. Only the Death god could do that! The twins were amazed to hear this—or at least they pretended to be amazed, since Kukulkan told them this already, but they didn’t want the Death god to know that they knew. They asked him to show them this trick.
“The Death god was as arrogant as he was smelly, or at least almost as much, so he couldn’t resist the chance to show off this most frightening power of his—the power he used to threaten even the gods. He summoned his loyal servant, the god of bats, stood up from his throne, and took a very sharp black knife. He cut through the Bat god’s chest and took out a ball of light that beat like a heart. But the Bat god was still alive! The Death god told them that this glowing heart was the soul of a god, and then he crushed it in his hand. Everyone was shocked to see the Bat god’s little, lifeless body fall over dead. But then, as the Dead god reopened his hand, the soul was there again, shining and beating like a heart just as it did before, and he put it back into the Bat god’s chest and he rose from the dead. Everyone cheered.
"The twins told him that it was a spectacular trick, but what would be even more spectacular is if he tried it on himself. And the Death god simply laughed and told them he can’t be killed. But the twins said, ‘You are truly matchless in your power, oh great and foul Yum Kimil—that was the stinky god’s name, by the way—but how can you be the god of death, if you yourself cannot die?’”
“Oh, that’s sneaky,” Itzel says.
Miguel is only half-paying attention at this point, and Itzel wonders if he’s still seething from her remark about his brain rotting.
“The twins were sneaky,” their grandmother says. “That’s why Kukulkan trusted them so much. Being a snake god himself, he trusted sneaky people more than honest ones. Yum Kimil thought for a moment about what the twins had told him. The Death god couldn’t refuse the chance to show off to the other gods, so he agreed to do it. And in the same way as he took out the Bat god’s soul from his heart, he cut open his own chest and took out his own, which instead of a shining heart was a stinky black rock—I guess his soul was rotten too—and he crushed it in his hand and fell to the floor, dead.”
“And the Death god died!” Miguel said. “The end!”
Itzel shoves her brother. “Stop interrupting!”
Their grandmother smiles. "He did indeed die, but you must remember that the Death god could cheat even his own death. Before he brought himself back to life, the twins sneakily switched out the crushed black heart in his hand with the jade stone that Kukulkan took from their city’s temple. When Yum Kimil’s corpse came back to life, and he placed his soul back in his chest, it was instead the jade stone that he put in there. A green smoke engulfed his body, and the stone sucked up all of his power, like a fat tick sucking up blood.”
Itzel winces at this comparison. Her grandmother's storytelling can be a little too descriptive at times.
“When the smoke cleared, the Death god had become so weak that his body rotted away into a skeleton, and the jade stone just fell out of his chest through his ribs. And you know what happened to that ancient city whose queen had made that magical bond with Yum Kimil, so it could never be conquered? The entire city just got swallowed up by the ground and sank into the Underworld. Its people ran for their lives as the ground beneath them cracked and opened, and when they fled the First City, they scattered across our land between the seas to build cities of their own, and speak other languages, but in some form or another we still worshipped all the old gods. Maybe the Death god a little less than the others from that point on.”
Miguel starts clapping.
“There’s more!” their grandmother says.
“Oh.”
“Kukulkan flew into the sky and struck the tricksy macaw shining as a false sun so hard that all its feathers fell off, and all the other gods were at last freed from its spell. The skeleton of Yum Kimil tried to escape, but the gods captured him and threw him in a prison deep beneath the temple, and they all cheered that they had finally been ridden of their terrible leader, and Kukulkan reclaimed his throne as the king of the gods.”
Miguel tries to clap again, but Itzel grabs his hands and glowers at him.
“You really should be resting,” the father says exasperatedly. “Doctor’s orders.”
“After this story, I promise. I’m almost done anyway,” the grandmother tells him dismissively. “Kukulkan sat upon the throne and thanked these Hero Twins, but they asked him how he could ensure that he, as the new Lord of the Underworld, wouldn’t be as hungry for power as the god who sat upon the throne before him. Kukulkan thought about this for a time and told them that the shadows of Xibalba could only be kept in check by the light of the Sun and Moon, so they needed new ones. The twins agreed to offer themselves, and as they held the jade stone between them, Kukulkan took out their hearts with each hand, and their hearts rose into the sky and shone as the new Sun and Moon. ‘We shall be the light that dispels the shadows’, the twins said, and the light of their hearts cast away the black, stinky fumes that choked the land, so that plants could grow, and animals could frolic, and people and gods could exist in harmony. The Underworld became a different place from then on.” She leans forward and whispers, “And most importantly, it stopped stinking so much.”
It sounded very much like the end of the story this time, so Miguel hesitantly claps again, and much to his surprise their grandmother doesn’t interrupt him. Instead, he interrupts his own clap to say, “What I don’t get is…”
“Yes, my dear Miguel?” their grandmother asks.
“You said the Death god destroyed the Sun and Moon in the sky, right?”
She nods.
“And then they made new ones in the Underworld when all the gods got trapped in there, right?”
She nods again.
“Then what’s the Sun and Moon in our sky now?”
Their grandmother smiles. “The Sun and Moon you see are not the real ones.”
Miguel frowns disappointedly at such a cryptic response, but Itzel’s smiling from ear to ear. She always loves it when their grandmother is being mysterious, whereas her brother just thinks their grandmother does it to hide the fact that she doesn’t have an answer to something.
“And what happened to the jade stone?” Itzel asks her.
“They kept it at the top of the temple in the centre of the Underworld, and Kukulkan swore to guard it always.” As she says this, she starts coughing much more intensely.
“Story time’s over, hero twins,” their father says, walking to them and picking Itzel up from the bed. “Now be heroic by leaving your grandmother alone. She needs her rest.”
“And your breakfas
t is getting cold.” The mother comes holding the baby. “I had forgotten the one about the Hero Twins. Used to give me nightmares that a crazy, stinky death god could be hiding under my bed! I used to burn incense at night in case it would keep him and his smelliness away.”
While her mother’s talking, Itzel notices something moving by the doorway—a green snake is crawling into the house. The mother screams, causing the father to jump.
The grandmother shakes her head slowly. "My children, there's no reason to be afraid of snakes."
The father grabs a machete and walks toward the snake.
“No, don’t!” Itzel tells him, then carefully steps behind the snake, and, almost without thinking, she picks it up and takes it outside to release it. It hisses a bit testily, but slithers away into the grass. The family just gawk at her in shock, especially Miguel.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he says with wide eyes and his feet up on his grandmother’s bed.
The grandmother chuckles. “Itzel the snake-charmer.” She beckons Itzel back to her bed. “Your grandfather was like that too. The first time I met him, he had a big boa constrictor around his shoulders! He was definitely a charmer.” She taps Itzel’s nose. “You’re like him—not scared of snakes at all.”
“I’m surprised,” the mother says. “You almost never want to talk about him.”
The grandmother sips her chocolate again, taking a moment to relish it—or perhaps because she wants to change the subject. “Mmmm, do you know that chocolate is the nectar of the gods? Anyway, I have a very special gift for you, my big birthday girl.”
“Really?” Itzel asks. “What is it?”
The grandmother nods at the mother, who walks to one of the baskets next to the bed and takes out a traditional white dress. It has patterns of blue flowers along its collar and the bottom hem.
“It’ll suit you nicely,” the grandmother says, smiling at Itzel. “I made sure of it.”
“And it’s time for you to start wearing dresses,” her mother says with a big grin. “You’re a big girl now. Isn’t it beautiful? We can’t wait to see you in it!”
Itzel frowns. “A… dress?” She hates wearing dresses. She can’t run through the forest and climb trees in one.
“Thank your grandmother,” her mother says. “She made it just for you.”
“Thanks, grandma,” Itzel says, and gives her grandmother a hug.
“Don’t you like it?” her grandmother asks.
“Yes, I do!” she replies.
Her grandmother laughs hoarsely. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Come on, Itzel,” her mother tells her. “It’s what our people have worn for centuries. But your grandma even made it shorter and simpler for you. I wanted it to be long with a lot more flowers, like mine and your grandmother’s, so I don’t want to hear any complaints, and you should put it on after breakfast so we can see you in it.”
“Are you giving Miguel a dress too?” Itzel asks sourly.
“How did you know?” the grandmother says with a laugh but starts coughing again. Her voice is becoming hoarser and weaker with each word.
“Very funny,” Miguel says, glaring at his sister.
The father comes over and hands him a shoebox. “No point wrapping it as you already know what it is. Now get off your grandmother’s bed and let her rest like she’s supposed to be doing.”
Miguel hops off the bed excitedly, opens the box, and takes out a brand-new pair of white football trainers. He sits on the floor and takes his old ones off to try them on right away. “Thanks, mama and papa!”
Itzel is visibly annoyed. She’d have loved a pair of hiking boots instead of a dress with flowers on it.
The grandmother drifts back to sleep quite suddenly, and the mother hurries over and takes her cup of chocolate before she spills it on the floor, then draws the curtain beside her bed to give her some peace.
They eat breakfast together, trying to be quiet so the grandmother can sleep.
The morning passes by, but the heavy rain still shows no sign of letting up. Miguel is wearing his new shoes and bouncing his football between his feet, though his father keeps telling him not to do it indoors. He wishes he could go out and play in them. The mother is already wondering if she’ll need to make lunch soon, as it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to leave. The father is sitting on their small bed and is back to tinkering with the radio to get it to work, but he’s getting frustrated because it continues to play static noise on all the stations. All the while, the grandmother is still sleeping peacefully. Itzel is with her baby sister, who’s grasping Itzel’s thumb with her little hand.
“Are you Tata Duende, trying to take my thumb?” Itzel asks Itzayana, who laughs as Itzel makes scary faces at her.
The father gives up on the radio and looks at them. “Have you seen this trick?” And he does a trick where he pretends to pull his thumb off of one of his hands, and then puts it back on again, and the baby giggles and Itzel claps softly.
“I didn’t know you were a magician too,” Itzel tells him. “I bet you could have tricked the Death god with that.”
The father stands up and takes a bow.
The mother places Itzel’s dress on her bed. “Why don’t you wear it? It would be a nice surprise if your grandma saw you in it when she wakes up.”
“Maybe later,” Itzel says disinterestedly. She wanted to spend her birthday trekking through the forest, but now she’s stuck indoors with her mother urging her to wear a dress—not exactly the birthday she was hoping for!
They have the leftover tamales for lunch. Even by the late afternoon, the rain still hasn’t stopped. The mother and father are getting very anxious and are standing outside whispering to each other. Miguel’s put his brand-new football shoes back in their shoebox and is lying in bed, idly tossing his football up and down in his hands just as he was doing the night before.
“I’m so bored,” he laments quietly, so as to not wake his grandmother.
“You brought your homework with you,” his mother reminds him. “Your papa would be happy to help you with your math problems.”
“I don’t want to do homework,” Miguel protests annoyedly. “It’s my birthday.”
“It’s your sister’s birthday too and she’s doing hers.”
Miguel glances at Itzel, who is lying on their parents’ bed and writing in one of her school notebooks. “That’s because she’s little miss goody two shoes.”
But Itzel has stopped working on her math homework halfway through the list of problems—even she can’t bring herself to do all of them today—and is instead drawing a hummingbird and a hibiscus flower in her ever-growing catalogue of animals that she’s seen in her lucky forest.
The father draws open the curtain to check on the grandmother while she’s sleeping, then hurriedly calls the mother outside the front door while putting on his boots. “She’s deteriorating rapidly,” he tells her.
“Talk to me as a husband, not a doctor,” the mother says, her voice shaking.
The father sighs. “Her heart—it’s just… giving up.”
The mother draws a deep breath in a desperate effort to stay calm, but she’s on the verge of tears. “B—but what can we do?” A loud whimper escapes her lips, and Itzel looks at her parents standing outside the door, their faces much more sombre than they were before, though she can’t hear what they’re saying over the roar of the rain.
“I’ll ask if they can at least get a boat across the river and I’ll walk to the nearest town to call for help,” the father says.
The mother gazes into the rain, her teary eyes losing themselves in it. “In this storm?”
“Your mother doesn’t have much time left.” He covers himself in the tarp from the car and rushes down to the village. “I’ll be as fast as I can!” he shouts back to her.
The mother anxiously waits for him outside, her arms trembling—not just from the coldness of the rain. Itzel gets out of bed to check what’s happening.
Her grandmother wakes up, but she can barely manage to open her eyes, and she softly whispers to Itzel before she reaches the front door, “Come here, my dear.”
Itzel turns to her. “I’ll get mama.”
“No, no, just you,” her grandmother tells her. “I want to tell you something. It's a secret, just between us. Close the curtain behind you.”
Itzel draws the curtain beside her grandmother’s bed and sits on the bed next to her. “A secret?” she asks.
“The dress wasn’t your only gift.” Her grandmother slowly takes out her jade pendant from her dress collar. “I want you to have this too.”
Itzel shakes her head and whispers, “No, no, grandma, you should keep it. It's yours.”
“Don’t be stubborn. I insist you have it. Or do you not like this either?”
“Of course I like it, grandma,” Itzel says. “It’s very pretty. I think the dress is pretty too!”
Her grandmother takes the necklace off, struggling to do so because she has no energy left in her, so Itzel helps her with it. She places the pendant in her granddaughter’s hand and closes her fingers over it. When she does so, Itzel notices that her hand is worryingly cold to the touch.
“It’s yours now. It’ll suit you, especially in the dress.” Her grandmother tries to smile, but she looks like she’s so weak that she can barely manage to keep her eyes open, and her neck and cheeks are mottled with the dark spots Itzel saw on her arms earlier. “If you ever wear it.”
“Of course I’ll wear it!” Itzel says. She’s never seen her spunky grandmother like this before. She finds herself regretting that she didn’t put the dress on like her mother had asked, just so her grandmother could see her in it, and decides she’ll put it on right after she calls her parents in.
“But you must promise me to never lose this,” her grandmother says. “Don’t let any of those bad spirits take it.”
“I won’t,” Itzel whispers. “I promise.”
Her grandmother cups Itzel’s cheek with her hand, and stares at her with a smile, yet it looks like she’s using all the strength she has left in her just to keep it. “I know this. You are brave, my dear Itzel. I've always known this. Not even a snake can scare you.” She stares quietly into Itzel’s eyes for a moment, and then, when she’s not able to hold her smile any longer, she closes her eyes, and her hand slowly drops from Itzel’s cheek onto the bed.
