by Ian Gibson
The children laughed when he took that tone earlier, but they don’t pay him any mind now—perhaps he’s given this speech so many times it’s lost any impact on them, or perhaps they’re just too busy eating their corn gruel.
Itzel, on the other hand, is very disturbed by it and stares vacantly at the floor. She tries to change the subject. "Is it possible to go east from here if these storms keep coming?"
One Reed jolts his head in surprise. “East of here? You mean… across the lake? Right into the heart of the storm?”
She nods. “I guess so.”
“But what in the thirteen heavens for?” he asks, his eyes wide, bewildered by the idea that anyone would be going that way, especially a little girl with no company other than a pet snake. “Don’t you belong in the city?”
Itzel thinks about how ridiculous it would all sound—to say that she’s going to a swamp to make an offering to a frog so that it’ll help douse out a fire in a rainforest, because the frog that is supposed to be doing that is currently trapped in a jar underneath her bed—so instead she says, “I have something that Kukulkan asked me to do for him.”
One Reed spits out his food. "Are you serious?" He asks with his mouth agape.
His wife scolds him, “Don’t spit out your food! Where are your table manners? We have a guest!”
But One Reed ignores her, as he’s too flabbergasted. “You spoke with Kukulkan?”
Itzel nods again.
“The Kukulkan?”
“There’s only one big snake with feathers around here!” She remembers a certain coati telling her those words, so they just fell out of her mouth without her even thinking.
One Reed is so awestruck that his bottom lip trembles. “I wasn’t expecting this at all! We have a truly honoured guest with us on this blessed night-day! A new arrival charged with an errand from the king of gods himself!” He springs to his feet, leaving the rest of his food on the table, struts outside, and starts walking downhill towards the shed. “If it is a matter of urgency for the great Kukulkan, then you must go quickly before another storm comes! Wait here while I fetch your boat for you.”
Itzel gets to her feet also, picks up Mister Scales, and slings him around her neck.
“I guess I need to go already," she says, bowing her head to the family. She feels a bit saddened by this, because having the company of other people comforted her. It was the closest thing to normality that she’s experienced so far, even if they happened to all be dead, but it’s not like she noticed much of a difference. "Thank you again for your kindness to Mister Scales and me.”
The family all take a bow to her, the children returning to their feet to do so, before quickly squatting back down to return to their meal.
“May your onward journey bring you good fortune, Itzel, and that our paths cross again,” the old woman tells her.
“I still can’t believe Cabrakan has a brother, and Hurakan is a woman!” the old man says. “How are we only just finding this out?”
“Grandma, could the Merchant god be a woman too?” asks the little girl.
“No, dear,” replies the old woman as she collects the bowls to wash, now that they’ve finished their night-breakfast. “Ek Chuaj is just an extremely flowery-smelling man.”
Drifting on Memories
One Reed comes back, holding her small, dwarf-sized canoe above his head. It must be very light for him, as he makes it look like it’s no trouble at all to carry. He places it down next to the hut, and points in the distance. “The quickest way is to go uphill and walk closer to the embankment. Not only is it a shorter path if you cut across like that, but it’s also much drier up there than down here!”
“Thanks for everything, Mister Reed,” Itzel tells him. She starts to pull the small canoe, but One Reed takes it back and picks it up completely, holding it over his head again.
“Oh no, you’re not going alone!” he tells her with a big grin. “I’ll take you and your snake friend. I can row stronger than you, after all. Come with me. We’ll borrow a proper canoe on the eastern shore, and I’ll row you out with this dinky little boat onboard, and you can continue the rest of the way with it.”
Itzel is floored by his kindness. “Wow! Thank you so much!” She knows that with his help there would be a much stronger chance she’ll get there before another storm hits.
The old woman brings Itzel a canteen made from a calabash gourd. It’s filled with water, but still light enough for her to travel with it easily, and it’s even tied with a cord so that she can conveniently carry it around her shoulder. The woman also presents her with three corn tamales, which she wraps in a banana leaf and ties with a string for her. “And please, take these for your journey.”
Itzel happily takes the calabash canteen, but politely declines the tamales. “Thank you so much, but I can’t take these. You must have such little food of your own!”
But the old woman insists, “Doing a favour for the gods is doing a favour for us all. We wish you well.”
His wife walks to them and tells her husband, “I’ll come along too. You know men shouldn’t go into the lake without a woman to protect them.” She heads out the doorway.
“What’s your name?” Itzel asks her, realising she still doesn’t know.
“I’m Seven Deer,” the woman answers.
“You have very strange names,” Itzel confesses.
Seven Deer laughs. “Itzel is a very strange name to us. Most of us are named after the days on which we were born.”
“Wouldn’t that mean there are a lot of people with the same name?”
“Yes,” Seven Deer answers, “but a name is simply what we are called. It doesn’t define who we are.”
One Reed whispers to Itzel, “And it means we never forget each other’s birthdays.”
Itzel laughs—she hadn’t thought of that.
They walk uphill along the stone pathway towards the embankment, the strong farmer effortlessly carrying her small and light canoe over his head, and they pass through many corn fields—it seems most of the island is devoted to growing corn.
“Why can’t men go alone?” Itzel asks them. She remembers Seven Deer mentioning something about that.
“Because of the Lady of the Lake,” Seven Deer replies. “She’s a shape-shifting lake demon who lures men with her bewitching songs so she can devour them! But she leaves them alone if she sees them with a woman.” She smiles smugly. “She must be intimidated by us.”
One Reed turns to Itzel. “She’ll eat children too!” He says it in the same voice he used to try to scare his children.
Itzel finds his voice more funny than scary, but she’s unnerved that there’s a lake demon who tricks and preys upon the dead. She thought that being dead meant you no longer needed to worry about being preyed upon by anything. What would happen if a demon found someone who’s alive like her? The thought makes her feel very uneasy, so she’s even more glad she has company across the lake this time.
“For men, she takes the form of a beautiful young woman, but for children, she can appear as an old woman, even someone kind, someone familiar to you,” One Reed warns. “You must be very careful when you’re out on the lake alone. Don’t trust what you see or hear.”
“Many fishermen have disappeared out there,” Seven Deer says. “Women either accompany the fishermen to protect them, or simply do the fishing themselves. I was a fisherwoman myself, but now I help my husband on the farm.”
“Not that it matters much anymore,” One Reed says. “With these storms, fishing is too dangerous for everyone unless you just do it on the piers.”
Itzel looks at the sky and gawks at how surreal it is. Just as it's darkening in the West, a new dawn emerges in the East. Looking eastward, over the walled city, the sky is now painted with that familiar blood red she saw when she first emerged from the cave—the Night Sun is rising. They walk along the shore eastward with haste, the farmer carrying the dwarf-sized canoe above his head. Itzel turns to the City of t
he Dead, looking at it and the great pyramid towering above everything, bathed in an even starker red from the light of the Night Sun.
“I see it every day, yet I’m still just as amazed by it now as I was the first time I saw it,” Seven Deer says. “It still gives me neck cramps looking at it. It’s where the gods convene and stand before us to accept our offerings.”
Itzel’s astonished that people managed to build something as tall as it with just stones—if it were in her city back home it would still be the tallest building there by far. “I promise I’ll come back soon and find you, grandma,” she whispers to herself. She then glimpses something out of the corner of her eye, moving amidst the cornstalks, and hears a rustle of leaves behind her, but she doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary when she takes a look. A moment later, she hears the rustle again, so she stops and turns around.
There’s a cornstalk right behind her, which definitely wasn’t there a moment ago when she walked past, but it’s not moving. She’s baffled by the possibility that they’re being stalked by a cornstalk.
She calls to the others, “Mister Reed and Misses Deer, I might be going crazy, but I think we’re being followed by a... stalk of corn.”
The husband and wife turn around, see the cornstalk, and One Reed hurriedly drops the canoe and falls to his knees along with his wife, their heads lowered to the ground so they’re not even looking at the plant that has crept up behind them.
“Lady Ixim, the goddess of maize!” One Reed whispers, still looking at the ground before the plant, not daring to raise his gaze.
“You humble us with your presence,” Seven Deer says, her head also remaining bowed.
Itzel still stands casually and waves at the cornstalk, “Hello, miss maize!”
The cornstalk rustles its leaves ever so slightly, and Itzel’s not sure if it was from a breeze or a movement of its own accord.
One Reed sees Itzel is not only neglecting to kneel, but even has the audacity to look directly at the cornstalk. “Get down!” he whispers and pulls her arm to the muddy ground, and she falls to her knees.
“Sorry!” Itzel whispers. “I didn’t know I had to kneel.”
He whispers angrily while keeping his head down, “Of course you have to kneel before the gods! And don’t look at them directly!”
Itzel lowers her head and looks sadly at the bottom of her dress that’s been muddied from kneeling.
One Reed steals a glance upwards, but upon realising that the cornstalk is still there, as if waiting expectantly, he quickly and embarrassedly lowers his head to the ground again. “Lady Ixim the great and bountiful,” he says, “Your sacred milpas have fed us generously even in the face of floods, quakes, droughts, and storms. Please accept my utmost gratitude on behalf of my family and my people. We farmers live but humble lives, and I fear we have nothing we can offer you in return—nothing befitting of a goddess as yourself.”
Itzel sees the farmer’s arms are trembling. She wonders if she might have something to offer the Maize goddess on his behalf. She looks at the red bracelet on her arm—the birthday gift from her mother. She gets to her feet, despite One Reed’s protests.
“What are you doing? Don’t stand up!” he whispers at her, trying to pull her back down, but Itzel steps forward.
She takes off her red bracelet and presents it to the cornstalk. “I offered this to Kukulkan, but he said he doesn’t have any arms. You don’t have any arms either, but maybe it could go on one of your leaves?”
The cornstalk is motionless.
Itzel steps forward again.
“Are you crazy?” One Reed says. “Don’t you dare touch her! She’s a goddess!”
Seven Deer is so aghast that she’s utterly speechless, frozen with her arms trembling just as much as the farmer’s.
Itzel takes one of the leaves and slips the bracelet onto it. She smiles. “My mother gave it to me for my last birthday, so it’s a very special bracelet. But I think it suits you more than me!”
The cornstalk rustles its leaves. It was definitely not from a breeze this time, and Itzel hopes it wasn’t an angry rustle.
One Reed grabs Itzel’s leg and yanks her back. “You’re going to bring famine upon us!”
Itzel looks at the plant with the bracelet still around its leaf. If it didn’t like the bracelet, it could have easily lowered its leaf to drop it. “I think she likes it.”
The cornstalk then uproots itself from the ground, and with another rustle of leaves, it begins crawling away, using its roots like many little legs, which reminds Itzel a bit of how an octopus walks across the seafloor. It does this very shiftily, to hide among the other cornstalks in the milpas—except, of course, that it’s the only cornstalk wearing a bracelet.
“See?” Itzel smiles with satisfaction. “That wasn’t so bad.”
One Reed raises his head and blinks.
“Where did she go?” Seven Deer asks.
Itzel points at the cornstalk wearing a bracelet.
One Reed grabs her hand. “Don’t point at the gods!” he shouts in utter horror. He’s sweating profusely from the whole encounter.
“I’m sorry!” Itzel says. “I didn’t know there were so many rules!”
The farmer and his wife take a bow to Lady Ixim, and One Reed picks up the small canoe so they can continue walking.
Seven Deer tells Itzel, “You seem like a very nice girl, but you need to know your place in the presence of the gods.”
Itzel shrugs. “I’ve already met three before her, including mister high and mighty Kukulkan. He was a huge snake in the clouds, with great big fangs. I don’t think a cornstalk is all that scary.”
“Don’t speak like that about Lady Ixim!” One Reed whispers scoldingly at her. “All the gods are worthy of our awe and fear.” He then mumbles, “And she definitely gives me the creeps, but at least I can spot her more easily if she’s wearing that.”
Itzel steals one more furtive glance at the cornstalk over her shoulder. “Just so you know, I really liked that bracelet.” She turns forward again, and to her right she sees a long wooden pier that juts out into the lake, lined with canoes on both sides.
Seven Deer notices her looking at the immense pier. “That’s how they bring the new arrivals. Though we don’t get nearly as many as we used to. Nothing is as it once was, what with the storms here, and more recently with the wildfires in the forest.”
“But people still do come here, right?” Itzel asks.
The woman nods. “A few here and there.”
Itzel sees a crowd of people, mostly women, undocking some of the boats from the pier, but they have fishnets with them, so they must be going out to fish in the lake. She wonders if most of the boats are just used for fishing, and hardly any are for bringing the newly dead. “Who brings them?”
“The aluxes,” One Reed explains. “They’re little spirits who live in the forest—or used to, before the forest fires. They look like us, except with long noses, beady eyes, and they’re usually barely as tall as my knee, and they wear hats that are far too big for them.”
“I know, I’ve met one of them before.”
One Reed looks impressed. “You must have a good eye then. I haven’t seen them much, especially as they can turn invisible. They’re mysterious folk, so I don’t know much about them, either. They’re skilled carpenters and craftsmen, though. The Merchant god comes to the city to sell their wares for them. They work unbelievably quickly with their hands, too, such that we wonder if there’s some magic to their craft. But they’re not good boatmen at all, though I can’t blame them for that—must be difficult to row properly with such tiny arms.”
Itzel wonders if that’s the journey her grandmother took—down the river leading from the cave to this lake—and she hopes the little people who took her were nicer than the one she encountered, seeing as he whipped a poor ocelot and tried to eat her thumbs.
“I used to constantly see their little boats carried away by the storms,” One Reed adds, �
��but nowadays they’ve largely given up fishing on the lake. They mostly hunted in Gibnut Forest, but seeing as that’s been burning like the rest of the rainforest, I’m clueless how they’re getting by now.”
As they reach the corner of the city wall and turn left to the eastern side of the island, Itzel gasps at the sight of what lies ahead. This part of the island is a complete and utter shamble, and almost entirely underwater, despite the stone dike they’ve built to barricade it from the storm waves. The cornstalks in the milpas are completely flattened, and all the farmhouses are either smashed to pieces or flooded, and some of their roofs are even on fire. A few people are rowing in canoes trying to salvage what they can, but it looks like this side of the island has largely been abandoned. It’s a shocking sight for her.
“The wrath of the gods spares little, as you can see,” Seven Deer says upon seeing Itzel’s stunned expression. “Yet we still must always rebuild. It’s an endless cycle. But that’s what time is—little cycles within bigger cycles within one great cycle.”
Itzel turns her sights to a flight of steps leading up the embankment to a grand arched entrance into the city. She finds it strange that the main entrance into the city has been built on the eastern wall where it’s most vulnerable to the hurricanes, but she guesses the city had been built this way long before they became a problem.
Seven Deer sees her gawking at the entrance and smiles. “Go on,” she tells Itzel. “Run up the steps if you want to take a look inside. But you must be quick.”
Itzel doesn’t take a moment to think it over before she’s halfway up the flight of steps. The city gates have been opened so she can look inside the city. A wide, white road of limestone leads from the entrance straight down to a plaza and the tall red pyramid at the very end. Many of the city dwellers have gathered on the white road to sweep off the debris and water from the storm, while others are assessing the damage outside and repainting the red stone wall where the paint has been flayed off by the whipping winds. They’re wearing colourful dresses and shawls with ornate patterns, and their heads, necks, and arms are adorned with jewellery, much unlike the farmers and fishers outside the city, who are wearing nothing more than plain tunics or loincloths. The houses within the city walls are larger and sturdier, too, and thanks to the protection of both the high walls and the embankment they’re clearly weathering the storms far better than the settlements she’s seen outside. As impressive a sight the great City of the Dead is, she doesn’t want to take long, as she knows they’re all in a hurry, so she rushes back down the steps.
