by Ian Gibson
Itzel thinks about her twin brother, Miguel. She wonders if he's worried about her and looking for her. She starts to worry about her parents too. They both remain in a solemn silence for a moment, before she says, "Mister Kinich Ahau, I know you think all people are bad, but I knew my grandma well and she was a good person. I came here to look for her, because she shouldn't be here. It's my fault she is. Please tell me, is there any way at all to bring my grandma back?”
The Sun god takes a deep breath. “You are a good granddaughter, little Itzel, and I respect that you want to right a wrong, but as I said, only the Death god had the power to bring mortals back to life, and he’s gone now. And even if he were still here, he’s not exactly the sort of god you’d want to be asking any favours from. You need to worry more about saving your own life now. If your grandmother is here, she’s here to stay.”
She presses her hand against the jade amulet behind her dress collar. “What if you had the power of the Death god to do it?”
Quashy’s ears prick up curiously upon hearing this.
“That power is no longer here, that I’m aware of.” Kinich Ahau narrows his eyes as they regard her suspiciously. “How did you really get here, Itzel?”
“I fell into the cenote, like I said.”
“And I’m beginning to think that it wasn’t completely by accident,” he says, his tone accusing. “What were you doing next to the cenote in the first place?”
Itzel glances at the forest on the other side of the river—the Forest of a Thousand Eyes. It’s far denser than the forest on their side—so dense, in fact, that there’s pure blackness between its trees. She can imagine many eyes in that blackness, staring at her. “I saw many eyes in a dream, and a voice told me to follow the snake,” she says. “So, I followed the snake, just like it said. I saw my grandmother fall in here, and then I fell in too. Whoever that was in my dream, I think there’s a reason why I was brought here. I think it’s because I can bring my grandma back.”
Kinich Ahau sighs. “You’re not listening. Dead is dead.” He points with his paw out towards the centre of the lake. “If she’s here, she’ll be in the City of the Dead. She’s not coming with you, no matter how much you want her to. But you can at least tell her goodbye before you leave, assuming you can leave. The borders between our worlds are supposed to be closed now for living folk like you.”
“She’s not there. Or at least that’s what the old man said. And I didn’t have time to look around.”
“Not to mention that the Dead Queen came after us with her soldiers,” adds Quashy.
Kinich Ahau’s eyes open wide and light up like flames. “Lady Xux Ek chased you?” The jaguar snarls, like the mere mention of her name is enough to anger him. “Why was she after you?”
Itzel hesitates to answer.
“Well?” he asks insistently. “Do you not know?”
“I think she wanted my jade necklace,” she says.
The jaguar tilts his head and blinks his golden eyes curiously. “What jade necklace?”
For a moment Itzel wonders if she can even trust any of the gods to know about it anymore, but if there were any god she feels she could trust, Kinich Ahau would be the one. She takes the amulet out from behind her dress collar to show him. “Look,” she says, pointing to the design delicately etched in the stone. “It has your sun on it, and your sister’s moon.”
Kinich Ahau stoops low so he can get a very good look of the jade stone. “The stone of light with the power of the Death god. Then this is how you came here.” His gaze returns to Itzel’s eyes. “How did you get this?”
“My grandma gave it to me, right before she passed away.”
The jaguar raises his head and squints his eyes as they peer far across the lake, as if searching for any sign of boats. He then turns to trot upriver again. “Follow me,” he says to them over his shoulder.
Itzel and Quashy look at each other.
“It’d be great if you joined me, but you really don’t have to,” she tells him. “Our deal is done, after all.”
“I was going upriver myself anyway,” he says. “I have some friends I'd like to see.”
“You have friends?” she asks, somewhat surprised.
“Of course I have friends!” Quashy says. “I'm great!”
“Are they coatis too?”
“Not these ones, no. But they have striped tails too, so... close enough?”
Riding the Sun
Itzel picks up her basket with Lady Chel's plant, and they follow the giant jaguar upriver along the riverbank, keeping underneath the overhanging trees to shelter themselves from the rain. Kinich Ahau is so large that his body can barely fit on the riverbank, and he often brushes aside tree branches as he passes them and has to step his right paws into the shoal of the river. The sunbeam follows him through the thick layer of clouds, reminding Itzel a bit of how the little rain cloud had followed her around so loyally. She wonders if giving a name to a sunbeam would be a bit too much, though.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Away from the Lake of Tears,” Kinich Ahau says. “You don’t want to be seen.” He glances at her. “Were you followed?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Another one of Hurakan’s storms came just as we left.”
“And the Dead Queen saw you with the jade stone of light?” he asks.
“No, but she went to the old man after I visited him. I saw her come out of his hut, and then she saw me, and she and her soldiers chased after me.”
Kinich Ahau growls. “If Lord Itzamna knows you have it, then the Dead Queen knows. She’ll have asked him, and the god of knowledge doesn’t lie.”
“He could have just said he doesn’t know,” Quashy says.
The jaguar glances at the coati. “Do you really think the god of knowledge would dare say he doesn’t know something?”
He concedes to that, “Fair point.”
Kinich Ahau looks at Itzel again. “And does Lord Itzamna know where you’ll be going?”
She thinks for a moment. “I told him I would be going to the village in the mountains. Sleeping... Lake? I think that’s what it’s called.”
“Then I suggest you don’t go there,” he warns. “The Dead Queen will already be on her way to Sleeping Lake now that the storm on the Lake of Tears has passed. She'll need many of her troops also, as she won’t have a warm welcome there. That at least buys you some precious time, but you still need to hurry.”
“For all she knows, we capsized in the storm and the jade stone’s at the bottom of the Lake of Tears,” Quashy says. “We were just lucky that didn’t happen.”
“Hummingbird luck,” Itzel explains to the jaguar. She’s relieved that the hummingbird wished her good luck, and even helped her to contact the chief of Sleeping Lake without even needing to go there herself, but she’s worried about how nervous Kinich Ahau has become ever since the Dead Queen was mentioned. “Who is she?”
“She is the oldest of the dead who remain here in the Underworld,” he explains. “A very long time ago, before she came here, she was a queen in the land of the living too—the Queen of Tulan, the First City.”
Itzel remembers her grandmother mentioning a “First City” in her tale about the Hero Twins.
“Tulan had been suffering a very long, severe drought, and no matter how many offerings were made to the Rain god, they continued to suffer and starve without the rains. One day, her husband—the king of Tulan—sought to throw their own children into a cenote as sacrifice to Chaac. In a desperate attempt to protect her children, she took her own blood and used it to write an oath on amate paper, and she burnt it to pass the oath on to the gods."
"An oath of what?" she asks.
"She swore her undying loyalty to the Death god, Yum Kimil the Foul.”
Itzel now realises she’s heard this before—in her grandmother’s tale. She had spoken about an ancient queen who made a deal with the Death god to protect the lives of her children. And
the very same queen came after her! She hugs herself and shivers, although she can’t tell if it’s from the cold rain or the thought of that woman aiming her arrow right at her from the pier.
“Who would want to make a deal with a god like that?” Quashy asks. “I’ve heard she’s a clever woman, but that doesn’t sound very clever at all.”
“Perhaps not,” Kinich Ahau says. “But she was a loving mother, and she thought only the Death god, in his great power, could help her.”
“But why not ask Kukulkan?” Itzel asks. “Isn’t he powerful too?”
“He is, and he was much stronger back then than he is now because he wasn’t trapped in the Underworld. But the Lord of the Sky has never had much of an interest in interfering in the land of the living unless he felt it absolutely necessary. The old Lord of the Underworld, however, jumped at any opportunity to do so, so the Dead Queen knew she’d have better luck asking him. The next morning, the king and his soldiers took their children to the cenote, but when they stood near its edge and were about to throw them in, the king and his men all suddenly dropped dead at once, falling into the cenote themselves, so that the Death god could claim their souls. The children were saved, and their mother ruled in the king’s place, converting the whole city into a cult that worshipped Yum Kimil. They even made a jade sculpture of his head which they kept in their temple. It was very—”
“Ugly?” she interrupts him.
He stops and stares at her, completely taken aback. “How did you know?”
“My grandma told me about all this in a story. I can’t believe it was the Dead Queen she was talking about! And she said the jade head of the Death god was very, very ugly.”
The jaguar sticks out his tongue in disgust. “Your grandmother was right. His hideous head bearing his hideous grin. That’s why Kukulkan used his magic to change the design into something a lot more pleasant.” He continues walking, often having to duck under the tree branches just because he’s so large. “The city of Tulan prospered for several years under the rule of the Dead Queen, but its prosperity attracted many envious eyes, and the city fell victim to constant attacks and raids from outsiders. To protect her people, she offered the Death god the ultimate sacrifice—her own life. Her war priests then painted her blood across the four corners of the city, bounding its foundations with the Death god’s power. In return, the Death god and his vast armies of the dead would destroy all enemies who dared to conquer Tulan. The Undying City never fell, or at least not for a very long time. My sister and I grew up in Tulan also, or at least that’s what the inscriptions on the Chronicle stones say.”
“You don’t even know where you grew up?” Itzel asks. She finds it very strange that he wouldn’t.
“When my sister and I became gods, we started to lose the memories of our mortal lives.” the jaguar says. “That’s just the cost of a mortal becoming a god—losing every leftover memory of your mortal self, drop by drop, into the Lake of Tears. The only things we do know are what’s inscribed on the Chronicle stones about the story of the Hero Twins. They’re a collection of large stones on both sides of the Temple of the Sky—one side tells the story of the Heavens and Earth, and the other tells the story of Xibalba. Lord Itzamna taught us how to read them.”
“Huh! I really need to learn how to read,” Quashy says.
“When my sister and I came to Xibalba and used that very jade stone to trap the Death god’s power, the great, unconquerable city of Tulan at last fell—all the way into the Underworld. The earth underneath it opened up and swallowed it whole from corner to corner. They built more temples in the City of the Dead with its stone, such as the Pyramid of the Jaguars in honour to us, but most of its ruins still lie in the dark depths of the lake, untouched and forgotten.”
Itzel remembers seeing a large stone pyramid with jaguar statues beside the central plaza in the city, on the side opposite the Dead Queen's palace. The ball court where she saw the children playing pitz was not far from its steps. It's the temple she thought would have looked quite impressive on its own had the Temple of the Sky not been around to suck up all the attention.
Quashy’s mouth hangs open and his tail bristles. “Just imagine how much treasure could still be at the bottom of the lake!” He slaps his forehead with his tail. “Huh! I really need to learn how to swim too!”
The jaguar eyes the little coati perplexedly. “Why does a furry snake have an interest in treasure?”
“He has a problem,” Itzel whispers to him.
“You mean a gift!” Quashy corrects her. “And I’m a coati,” he says to the jaguar.
But Kinich Ahau seems to have ignored him again. “The Dead Queen has remained in the Underworld ever since she gave up her own life to the Death god—before even the City of the Dead had been built—even when the souls of her children have long since passed on from here to the heavens above. Because of her blood oath, her soul is trapped here until Yum Kimil himself releases her, if he ever will—especially now that he’s vanished completely.”
“Then she serves the Death god?" Itzel asks.
"Served,” Kinich Ahau corrects her. “She was loyal to him above all others, but she is a servant of all the gods—except for my sister and me, whom she’s always despised.”
“Why?”
“We became gods, and she didn’t,” he answers succinctly.
“Ah, that would probably do it,” Quashy remarks, then mumbles under his breath, “I personally wouldn’t mind being a god myself.”
“That said, she's the only human allowed to have a say in the council of gods. She has risen the ranks to be respected and revered as one of us, but the gods have never given her the divine honour to be one herself. Instead that honour was given to my sister and me, and that’s precisely why the Dead Queen has never had any time for either of us. And though she may have gained the favour of the other gods, I for one don't trust her at all."
Itzel recalls just how terrifying the Dead Queen was when she pursued them. It was a fear that she hasn't felt in the presence of any god—not even Chaac, who tried to eat her, or Hurakan, who flung her across the lake, or Cabrakan, who threatened to trample on her, or even Kukulkan, the giant snake in the sky who bared his enormous fangs and shook a whole mountain with his mere voice. But she realises that she hasn't encountered the Death god, either—she only saw a monument dedicated to him in the central plaza in the city, and he didn’t look like someone she’d want to meet. "I don't trust anyone who would serve that Death god. He sounds mean and evil. But of course he would be—he's the god of death.”
"Then she wants the jade stone so she can present it to her master whenever he returns, assuming he ever does,” Quashy says. “Maybe she thinks that in return the Death god will finally release her from her oath, so she can pass onward from Xibalba to join her children?”
“Or to become a god herself,” Kinich Ahau suggests. “Just imagine the Dead Queen as our new goddess of death.”
“I’d prefer not to imagine that at all, thanks,” Quashy says with a shudder.
“Nor I,” says the jaguar. “Either way, she shouldn’t have it.”
"What should I do with it?" Itzel asks.
"King Kukulkan would want it, but he’s not exactly the best guardian anymore. When it was kept in the Temple of the Sky, he always had one of his forms watching it with unblinking eyes. But now he might as well be blind and deaf, because he pays attention to almost nothing here. The only thing he seems to have even the slightest concern for is the land of the living, but not the Underworld he rules.”
Itzel can’t disagree. Kukulkan hadn’t even noticed the forest fire until she pointed it out, and she can’t imagine how anyone could have not noticed such a widespread catastrophe of smoke and flame, but he seems to guard the land of the living far more closely, seeing as he hunts down Chaac whenever he escapes into it.
“As far as I’m concerned, the safest place for the jade stone is outside of Xibalba entirely,” Kinich Ahau says. “When you
leave—which should be sooner rather than later—keep it with you and don't ever come back with it."
"I will,” she says. “I'm just waiting for a message from Sleeping Lake. The hummingbird said I should wait for it somewhere near a fork in the river. She’ll send a falcon there with her message for me. Do you know how to get there?"
The jaguar nods. “It’s the old watchtower.”
“That's my favourite spot!” Quashy says. “I can show you around.”
“You’re a good guide, Quashy,” Itzel tells him.
They come to a large flamboyant tree standing atop a steep hill near the river, setting the green jungle afire with its strikingly vivid flowers of scarlet and orange, which appear to have a subtle, warm glow to them under the grey and rainy sky.
“It’s so pretty,” she remarks, gazing at the tree. She’s reminded of the flamboyant in her grandmother’s village, but it wasn’t blossoming like this one is.
“The Flame Tree,” Kinich Ahau says, pleasantly surprised to see it again. “The tree of the Sun god. It’s my favourite tree.”
Itzel doesn’t find that at all surprising considering how beautiful it is. It looks to her like it’d be a good tree to climb, too.
“I used to sleep underneath this tree at night—back when we had nights, of course,” he goes on. “I would come here after meeting with my sister on the lakeshore at dusk and sleep until we met again at dawn. Such a pleasant sleep it was.” He says this with a tired, longing sadness. “Back in those days I spent so much time beside this very tree that I must have passed on some of my sunlight to it unwittingly, because its flowers would shine in the night like flames. But even if there were any of my sunlight left in its flowers, there’s not much darkness for them to shine in anymore. It’s a pity, since it was quite the sight at night. Then, when the wildfire first broke out, I gave it even more of my magic so it would resist the flames.”
Itzel was enchanted enough by the flamboyant even before discovering that it’s a fire-resistant tree with glowing petals, but now she’s smitten by it! She finds herself wishing Xibalba had nights again so she could see it in its blazing glory, especially if the Sun god himself was so impressed by it.
