The Land of the Night Sun: Book One of The Jade Necklace

by Ian Gibson

  Another dancer—a young, slender woman wearing a headdress tufted with bright green quetzal feathers, and who appears to be the leader of the troupe—comes up to Itzel. “How well can you dance for him?” she asks.

  “Who?” Itzel asks. She has to shout over the sound of the drums and can feel her heart pounding in her chest.

  “For the great Kukulkan, of course!” the woman shouts back. “He hasn’t come to us in a very long time! We need to get his attention, so we must put on a great show for him!” She then bends herself completely backwards and places the palms of her hands on the ground behind her.

  Itzel stares in awe at the woman who seemingly has no spine. She finds it a bit creepy to look at.

  The rest of the snake-dancers raise their arms to the sky and chant, “Do you see us, Oh Great Feathered Serpent? Do you hear us, king of gods? Come to us! Answer our calls!”

  Itzel finds the performance around her very dizzying, and she’s nervous about suddenly being the centre of attention—after all, she’s trying to be as discreet as possible—so she slips past them the moment she finds a gap in their circle, ducking underneath one of the snake tails streaming from the back of their heads, and runs out into the plaza.

  “I guess she’s new here!” the flexible woman shouts when she sees her flee, and the others laugh.

  The rain cloud emerges from above the tents and floats high above the plaza, still following Itzel loyally while she looks around the plaza. It’s scattered with many small puddles from the recent storm, but there’s a network of deep grooves cut through the limestone floor in the shape of many squares, which she imagines must be there to drain most of the rainwater, just like all the ditches and channels she had seen in the city streets. When she looks up again, what catches her attention the most is the Temple of the Sky in front of her, with its steps coming down to the far side of the plaza. The pyramid is so enormous that it dwarfs all the other buildings around it, as large and impressive as they may be if they were to be taken on their own.

  There’s another pyramid to the right of the plaza, with two statues of jaguars at the base of its steps. It doesn’t surprise her that there’s a temple devoted to jaguars here, and she wonders if one of them is supposed to be the Sun god, Kinich Ahau, who had helped her in the wetlands. She hopes he wasn’t blown away by Hurakan’s storm too, but he’s probably a lot more used to them than she is.

  To the left of the plaza, there’s a large building that looks to be a palace, with a colonnade stretching from one end to the other, and a tall tower rising above it. It looks like a very important place, not only from how grandiose the palace is, but also judging from the garrison of many guards armed with spears at the bottom of its steps and along its colonnade, standing almost as still as the columns and statues. She wonders if this palace might be where this supposed Dead Queen lives, as it’s the only large building within eyesight that doesn’t look like a temple.

  An old woman is kneeling in front of a tall red monument in the plaza, wearing a shawl over her head to protect herself from the Sun as it rises in the East. “They’re the cult of the Great Feathered Serpent,” she tells Itzel as she comes closer, though her back remains turned to her—she must have overheard the shouts of the snake-dancers and seen Itzel running away from them. “Every day they march up and down the white road and sing and dance around his monument. You’ll find it in the middle of this plaza. If you stand next to it, you’ll be standing at the very centre of the Underworld.”

  Itzel looks farther ahead, towards the centre of the plaza, and can see another stone monument there—it’s much taller than the red monument and painted green.

  “But so far, Kukulkan the great and watchful hasn’t answered their calls,” the old woman says. She’s lit a small pot of incense and placed a bowl of ears of corn at the base of the red monument. “I hope and pray that Chaac will answer mine and at last bring an end to the drought plaguing the rainforest.”

  Itzel looks up and notices the rain cloud far above her. “I think he has, but he says he doesn’t like corn anymore.”

  The old woman glances at her over her shoulder. “I’ve never known the Rain god to be a picky eater before.”

  Itzel shrugs and steps closer to the red monument in front of them. An intricate relief has been sculpted into it, showing an upside-down shark at the bottom, with a fat frog squatting on a lily pad that rests on the shark’s belly, and an eagle perched on the frog’s head. “Hurakan and Chaac,” she whispers to herself, remembering their names. She doesn’t know who the shark is, but it looks a bit silly since it’s floating upside-down, even if its mouth is lined with sharp teeth.

  “Don’t forget Lady Xoc,” the old woman says, pointing to the shark.

  “Why is she upside-down?”

  “The gods work in ways we might not always understand,” the old woman says before bowing her head in reverence.

  Itzel sees other tall stone monuments across the plaza. She counts five in all—including the one beside her—and they’re placed at four opposing points, with the tall green one standing in the very middle of them. She guesses this red monument represents the East—the wetlands she had journeyed to—and that the others placed around the middle one must represent the other corners of Xibalba, for the South, West, and North. They’re all spread apart, but she can tell from afar that they all bear depictions of other gods.

  “As you’re new here, why not introduce yourself to them?” the old woman tells her, gesturing to the other monuments in the plaza.

  “There are so many,” Itzel remarks.

  The old woman chuckles. “There were many more, but they’ve fallen out of memory. I believe they’re still with us, even if their names escape us now, just like our forebears are with us long after they’ve been lost to time. It means we always have someone to hold us up, even when we think we’re alone. All we have to do is call for their help.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Itzel says. As she walks past her to continue to the centre of the plaza, she hears the old woman reciting a prayer loud enough for her to hear it:

  “Lend me your strength,

  Heart of Sky,

  so that I may climb

  to the stars.

  “Lend me your wisdom,

  Heart of Earth,

  so that I may see

  in the darkness.

  “Lend me your courage,

  Plumed Serpent,

  so that I may strike

  the face of fear.

  “And lift me from my guilt,

  my grandmothers,

  my grandfathers,

  so that I may at last be free.”

  The old woman smiles at her. “This is an ancient prayer that has stayed with us even after the First City fell and our tribes went their separate ways. There is magic to these words, so you might find that they stick with you once you’ve heard them. Call on them when you ever need help.”

  Itzel smiles back. “Thanks, miss.” She sets onward, cutting diagonally across the plaza, in the direction of the building that looks to be a grand palace. Once she’s closer, she sees the palace guards are all wearing tunics with five dots on them—one on the left and right, one on the top and bottom, and one in the middle—the same arrangement that the monuments on the plaza are placed in. She thinks the design might be the symbol for the City of the Dead, because she remembers seeing the same pattern painted along the white road. She finally notices some slight movement among the guards, as they’re staring at the small rain cloud coming closer to them as it follows her movement. A few of them place their spears on the ground and take bows to it.

  “Look!” shouts one of the palace guards as he points to the sky. “The great Chaac has sent us his cloud! Could it be a herald? Quickly! Summon the Queen!”

  “The Queen is having breakfast and shall not be disturbed!” another guard shouts from the colonnade above the steps. “She’d come if Chaac himself graced us with his presence, but not just for a little cloud. She
has more important things to do!”

  Itzel overhears them and realises she had been right in thinking that this palace was where the Dead Queen lives. She comes to the stone monument standing in front of it—it’s painted yellow, with a relief of a howler monkey squatting on a peccary. The howler monkey is covering its mouth with one hand, and the other arm is raised above its head and holding a bat that is hanging upside-down from its fingers. The bat has a squashed snout like a vampire bat, and its wings are spread and its mouth open to reveal its fangs, but it doesn’t look very happy that the monkey is holding it over its head, like it’s meant to be some kind of headdress.

  “Ek Chuaj,” she whispers when looking down at the peccary at the bottom—as she recalls, that was the name of the peccary who was very insistent about selling her perfume. She also remembers the howler monkeys saying their god was in their shrine, practising how to control its voice. And it’s not difficult for her to remember her encounter with the bloodthirsty bats in the cave—not a very pleasant first impression of Xibalba. Do the bats have a god too? If so, she’d prefer to never encounter it. She guesses this monument represents the Rainforest of the South.

  She takes another diagonal path across the plaza to the one for the West, which is the closest to the steps of the great temple. It’s painted black and has a relief of a crocodile sleeping in water with a tapir standing on its back, and a deer leaping in the air over the tapir. “Cabrakan and Zipacna,” she says, remembering the two rival brothers both claiming to be mountain gods. She doesn’t remember a deer, but she didn’t venture far into the Mountains of the West, so she’s sure she missed a lot.

  The stone monument in the centre is much taller than all the others, and it’s placed on a circular pedestal to make it even higher. It’s painted green, and when she walks to it to get a closer look, she sees that it depicts a familiar feathered serpent, winding upward into the sky. His tail is buried in the ground at the bottom, and his head stretches all the way to the stars at the top. “Kukulkan,” she says. She’s not surprised he has a monument all to his own, seeing as he’s the king of the gods. Her eyes then follow the steps of the temple to its very top, where she thinks she can just make out a seat placed on its summit, but it’s empty. She wonders if Kukulkan would be sitting there in his human form. Maybe he did a long time ago, at least before deciding that he didn’t care much for doing his job anymore.

  She looks down at the circular pedestal on which Kukulkan’s monument is mounted, and notices a shallow relief engraved on the top, showing a sun with light rays radiating around it, and a crescent moon placed inside it. She recognises it instantly—it’s the exact same design of the amulet she’s wearing around her neck! She places her hand to her chest, feeling the jade stone tucked inside her dress.

  When she finds her grandmother, she’d very much like to ask her how she got this very special stone in the first place.

  She sets off to the street where Itzamna’s hut should be, just to the left of the palace, but she stops, as it dawns on her that she’s missing one of the monuments—the one for the North. It’s the one most out of her way, but when she turns to look at it, she decides she’s just too curious to skip it, especially as she’s taken the time to see all the others, so she walks to it.

  It's painted white and shows a bald man with blackened eyes and a pot belly squatting on a pile of bones. He’s smoking a pipe, which looks like it has a head carved into it, and he’s wearing a necklace of eyeballs, as well as a sinister grin on his gaunt, ugly face. She knows right away from the bones and the ugliness that this must be the Death god, but she struggles to remember his name.

  “I’ll just call you Death,” she whispers to herself.

  She surprisingly doesn’t see any other gods depicted on this monument either—it’s only showing the Death god. She finds it unusual that he has a monument all to himself, like Kukulkan, but she remembers being told that the Death god used to be not just the Lord of the Underworld, but also even the king of all the gods at one point, having taken the throne from Kukulkan. She thought the other gods looked either cute, silly, or elegant—even the Bat god had amused her, the way the monkey was holding it upside-down like it was toying with it—but she has an uneasy feeling in her stomach when she looks at the Death god. Could a god as terrible as this still be out there somewhere, even if nobody has seen or heard from him in a long time? She again looks up at the enormous temple in front of the plaza and wonders what it must have been like to have such a cruel god sitting on the throne at its summit, and how many must have suffered when he reigned supreme in his Underworld.

  “My grandma said you were ugly and mean,” she says to the grinning face of the Death god. “She was right.” She stares at his sickening grin for a while, and a rage boils up inside her. “You’re the one who really took her from me. I hate you!” She quickly checks to see if there’s anyone nearby—the few people on the plaza have either left to find shade or have gathered around the snake-dancers and drummers, so there’s no one to see her when she gives the base of the monument a hard kick. “Ow!” In her anger she had forgotten she was wearing sandals. Her big toe throbs with pain, and she hops on her other foot while holding the one that hurts, whimpering from the pain, a tear trickling down her cheek. And yet, amidst the pain, she feels a sense of release that she’s at last able to vent her anger, even just a little. She kicks it again and again, this time with her other foot, and more lightly so she won’t hurt that one too. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

  She’s distracted by the playful shouts of children and tilts her head to peek around the white monument. She wipes the tears from her eyes and sees a group of children running around on what appears to be a ballcourt, flanked by two sloped walls between a small pyramid and the much larger pyramid decorated with the two big jaguar statues. The children are dressed just in loincloths and knee guards, and they’re laughing and taunting one another while running in puddles and mud from the storm, bouncing a rubber ball off their hips and thighs. They’re often slipping in the mud, and some look like they’ve practically bathed in it, but from the big smiles on their faces they don’t seem to care the slightest bit. They must be making the most of their time outside while it’s calm from any of Hurakan’s storms, and not too hot as the Day Sun is still low in the sky.

  Itzel’s curious about the ballgame they’re playing—she thinks it might be the ancient game she had learnt a bit about in school. She remembers the sport has a few names, but the ancients called it “pitz”. From what she remembers, they have to use their hips to hit the ball through a small hoop placed above the sloped wall. She can’t imagine it’s at all easy to play, and she wonders what her brother might think of it, since he’s gotten pretty good at football over the years.

  The little rain cloud hovers above her and calls her attention with a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder.

  She looks up at it and thinks it might be reminding her to not get too distracted, since she has urgent things to do. “I know, I know! It’s just that there’s too much to see here,” she tells the cloud. She wipes sweat off her forehead, as the plaza isn’t shaded like the streets—which might explain why hardly anyone else is there but her.

  She decides that her tour of the plaza needs to end, so she turns around and starts crossing it to the other side of the city, the rain cloud following her from far overhead. The snake-dancers are still dancing in a circle to the sound of drums, but the four men swinging around the pole have already descended to the bottom with their ropes, while the fifth is hurriedly climbing down a ladder built into the side of the pole. They must be finishing their performance hurriedly now that the heat is setting in.

  One of the snake-dancers sees Itzel and shouts to her, “Come join us, new girl! Bring your stick!”

  Itzel just waves to them awkwardly and hastens her pace to leave the plaza.

  The Old Man and the Desk

  On the left-hand side of the grand palace lies a bustling st
reet, which she assumes to be the one where Itzamna’s hut is, judging from what the Daykeeper had told her. She slips into the throngs of people rushing around as they tend to their daily errands—she’s guessing that they’re making the most of their time outside too, just like the children playing pitz in the ball court. She’s soon swallowed up by the dense crowd, and they’re rushing around so much that they keep bumping her back and forth and side to side. The small rain cloud drifts above the rooftops and canopies—it’s sheltered from the Sun just like the other streets—which Itzel thinks is a very smart idea as it won’t be jostled around like she is, especially as it might end up just spilling more of its precious rain.

  The city dwellers push Itzel around so much that she can hardly see where she’s going, and she stumbles into a woman before falling backward onto the street. The tall woman stands over her—she has a strong build, with powerful legs that are covered in tattoos of all sorts of patterns and animals. Among them Itzel recognises a frog and eagle on one leg, and a monkey and bat on the other—she suspects they might represent the gods, just like the reliefs on the monuments in the plaza. As Itzel tilts her head up, she sees many more tattoos covering the woman’s arms, and even her face, which is also adorned with a nose bridge ornament and various piercings. She looks young, but also very authoritative in the way she carries herself, like she’s ready to run into battle at any moment—not least thanks to the bow and quiver of arrows she has slung around her shoulder. She also wears her hair in two round buns atop her head—one large bun with a smaller one on top of it, and the shape immediately reminds Itzel of a calabash. Such a distinctly odd hairdo makes her seem a little less scary, but it’s mostly that she’s wearing a gentle, disarming smile, and offering her hand to help Itzel up.

  “Sorry I didn’t see you there. I’m in a rush to the archery range,” the woman says. “Though it looks like I’m not the only one in a rush this morning.”