White Bird (A Mayan 2012 Thriller)

by Tom Rich

  Yax Pac sends emissaries to other cities proclaiming Ukit Took as the reason for the drawing of breath in Copan to be a labor of sorrow. The king offers daughters and allegiance to anyone that turns over the astronomer. He promises war with any harboring the traitor.

  And Yax Pac sends raiding parties into the forest. These men are not noble trackers of prey. They destroy fruit groves and poison water sources. They make great circles of fire upon the land, then sift through ashes seeking human bone. Their smoke obscures the sun. All life in Copan Valley feels the wrath of Yax Pac.

  The Winaq settle in to witness Creation undone by a man.

  Then comes the season of the opening of the bromelia flower.

  In this time of blooming, raids into the forest stop.

  The Winaq fear a greater effort being mounted to find them. They send a spy to Copan to learn the nature of this effort. When he returns, he tells these things: how trees surrounding the city now know great serenity from not being hewn for hearths; that bromelias sprout from their branches; that Copan’s soil is no longer poisoned but bears flowers that live and die where they sprout; that the work of man has ceased, that tools lay next to unfinished structures now covered with hanging mosses. Birds light on temples. Deer graze in plazas. Not one person is to be found. A city once crowded with people like leaves fill a ceiba tree is entirely abandoned.

  Ukit Took warns that Yax Pac’s wrath may have grown subtle and devious; the illusion of an unpopulated Copan might be a trap. But his people believe the gods have finally acknowledged their claim to Copan over that of a mere sixteenth king in a house proven to be an enemy to all life in the valley. Still, the Winaq approach Copan cautiously. They watch from outside the city for several days, then move in at night.

  The trap is sprung!

  Columns of shadows advance upon the Winaq. Through some magic Yax Pac has un-bodied his army.

  No longer having the will to flee, the Winaq resign themselves to the onslaught of shadow arrows.

  Then the shadow army withdraws.

  Beneath the rising moon columns of sculptures in Copan’s Plaza of the Stelae stand forth.

  They have been gone so long, endured so much, the Winaq have failed to recognize stelae of their own carving.

  A new, inferior stela stands among those of fifteen previous kings. The stone depicts Yax Pac, First Dawned Sky Lightening God, sixteenth in the line of Yax K’uk Mo’, descending into the jaws of Underworld. The inscription reads, “Founder’s house destroyed.”

  Never in the time of Fourth Creation has there been such an admission of failure.

  Ukit Took now sees himself as chosen to restore Copan Valley to the grace of Creators. The surviving Winaq carve Ukit Took’s name onto a blank stela. Once they depict him seated in the cross-legged fashion of a king, they will place the stela opposite Yax Pac’s. In this manner all that enter Copan will know Ukit Took as rightful claimant to the seventeenth seat in House Yax K’uk Mo’. The Winaq make a ceremony of the stela’s installation. They insist Ukit Took climb Hieroglyphic Stairway.

  Ukit Took stands before the seventy steps. He speaks these words:

  “Man’s desire to sit high among gods has corrupted k’ulel. The grandiosity of kings has corrupted that which passes through all life. One city’s ambition has unhinged the unity of all things. To climb to the sky is to change nothing. To rival gods is to insult gods. Our ways no longer honor Creators. We must purify our intentions. We must purify k’ulel that passes through us. If you would have me lead you, then destroy this stela and follow me into the forest. The gods have acknowledged the long history of the Winaq in this valley. Now you must return to living within that history.”

  The Winaq heed Ukit Took. They leave Copan and follow him into the forest. They consult the stars and find a valley that will sustain their bodies and their k’ulel. Ukit Took asks for a modest pyramid to be built. After many months of labor, Ukit Took has a pyramid that reaches no higher than the treetops. He then approves a stela no larger than what two men could carry to be hewn. But Ukit Took asks that no story of his ascension to kingship be carved. He says to his followers:

  “My ascension has yet to begin. The people of Copan have brought much corruption to the world. I must enter Underworld and challenging Lord of Death in the manner of Hero Twins. Only then can I purify k’ulel. Only then can People of the Maize regain favor. My trial in Underworld will write itself upon on my stela.”

  Ukit Took constructs the ch’ak that will remove his head from his body and allow him entry to Underworld. It is placed inside his pyramid. His people take vigil before the blank stela. Either they will read of his success in Underworld, or the corruption of humans will have grown so great the sun will be blindfolded in shame.

  Death will then rule over all things.

  ~ ~ ~

  When the girl didn’t continue Aly nudged Tencho. “How does she know I saw the ch’ak and the stela?” she whispered.

  Tencho opened his eyes. He looked at Aly, then turned away.

  “You didn’t talk to anyone on the trail. I didn’t see a phone. Or a radio. You’re not carrying anything like that, are you?”

  Tencho closed his eyes. He shook his head.

  15: Ol

  Kurtwood Franz removed his shirt. He took an obsidian knife from a ledge in an alcove. He held the blade before the torchlight. The flame leapt into the obsidian.

  “In the chaos of that morning, twenty-five years ago, everyone referred to the killing of the soldier as brutal. Not one person used the term ritualistic.”

  He turned to face his temple’s ol—the open shaft next to the elevator—and held out the knife. The ol drained the flame from the blade.

  “The blackness of obsidian is absolute; a blackness independent of arbitrary comparisons.” Franz stepped his right foot forward, brought his left foot even and halted. “The blackness of the ol is indefinite; a hazy, mutable void.” He stepped his left foot forward, brought his right foot even and halted.

  He tightened his grip on the knife. “This knife is a thing graspable by the hand; a tool with value commensurate to its application.” Franz stepped his right foot forward, brought his left even and halted. “This shaft to the Underworld is an ungraspable conduit; its value commensurate to belief in its existence as a communication device.” He stepped his left foot forward, brought his left even and halted.

  “The sacrifice in the cave took place in a time other than my own. Yet the victim of the sacrifice was found in my time. Did his death exist in two different times?” The circling of the blade above the altar, its terrible plunge; the heart of the man who’d taken my place lifted high, his tongue severed and cast into the ol.

  “The body is flesh, the body is finite.” He took another half step forward. “Life is essence, its duration after the body’s death commensurate to ones beliefs.” Another half step forward.

  “Blood, life force of the body, carries oxygen to nourish the organs.” Half a step forward. “K’ulel, life force of the universe, flows through humans via blood.” Another half step.

  “Drawing blood leads to the death of the body.” Half a step. “Drawing blood to release k’ulel maintains the cycle of life outside a given body.” Half a step.

  “Taking a human life subjects one to the justice of modern nations.” Half a step closer to the darkness of the ol. “Human sacrifice acknowledges laws more binding than those of modern nations.” Half a step further from the light of the torch.

  “I summoned Alvaro Xaman to contact those who came to me from another time.” Half a step closer. “Does Xaman’s head hanging in a basket outside the ball court facilitate the bridge of time being crossed?” Half a step further.

  “Myth, language of the soul, exists in the realm of uncertainty.” Closer. “Mathematics, language of economy, creates certainty.” Further.

  “Yax Pac forced the uncertainty of hopelessness on his people by creating the symbol of the devouring of Quetzal Serpent. This hopelessness br
ought Ukit Took into power as king.” Kurtwood Franz took half a step away from his past. “Now I need to know how my own confrontation with hopelessness has empowered me. As the builder of an empire, was I chosen to take up where Ukit Took left off?” He took half a step closer to his future.

  “No one else heard the screaming tongues that night. No one else awoke to the absolute silence after the storm. No one else was directed by the light of the moon.”

  Franz now stood before his ol, his toes to the very edge of its darkness.

  “No one else observed the Rite of the Cult of the Quetzal Serpent.”

  Franz unzipped his pants and withdrew his penis. “I’ve built an empire. A return of an empire vanished?” He closed his eyes to remember how he endured the brutal pain inflicted upon him that night. He pulled up his penis and jabbed the underside with the sharp end of the obsidian blade. He gasped, but didn’t cry out. He’d broken the skin just enough.

  He squeezed until a drop of blood fell into his ol.

  16: Delucia

  There was a vessel sitting on the ground next to the girl who had told the story; a brightly painted, hollowed-out gourd like the ones Aly had seen being transported on the trail. The girl picked it up, stood, and held it across the fire pit. The gesture surprised Aly. The story of Ukit Took was obviously told for her benefit, but she hadn’t felt welcomed by the girl. There’d been no exchange of names, and barely any opportunity for Aly to ask a question or interject a thought. She’d either been stared at or ignored. Now there was this.

  Tencho nudged Aly. He nodded to the vessel. Aly stood and took the gourd. The girl sat. So did Aly, rather abruptly. Liquid sloshed inside the gourd.

  The guardian motioned that Aly should take a drink.

  Aly brought the vessel to her lips and tilted it back. It was chocolate. But unlike any she’d ever tasted. It wasn’t chocolate milk. It was more like a liqueur, but the warmth going down didn’t relax her throat and stomach like alcohol did. The taste had a clarity that evoked a memory of sitting in a mall cinema at thirteen, sharing a box of Milk Duds with a friend, half of which they lobbed at casual intervals onto a piled up hairdo several rows forward. Aly smiled. The memory was like being carried home.

  Aly craved another taste but passed the gourd to Tencho. He took a sip and passed it to the girl. The guardian went last.

  And the old storyteller? Gone. Maybe an updraft from the fire had taken him.

  Aly wanted to ask how the girl knew she’d been to Ukit Took’s pyramid; that she’d seen the ch’ak and the blank stela before they were taken. She also wanted to know what the old storyteller had meant by calling her “sad chick.” But posing questions would only diminish the magic she felt rising since the taste of chocolate had opened a side door between worlds. And if magic was afoot? Perhaps these people had conjured that door to glimpse Aly’s life in her world.

  “Not something one readily accepts,” said the girl.

  Aly shook her head. “I don’t… You mean a story from the Underworld carving itself onto a stone?”

  The girl looked away.

  “Look, I don’t mean to make light of your history,” said Aly. “I mean, I know a little something about metaphor. As for your guy’s quest in the Underworld? That goes on in literature the world over. Accepting the call, recognizing the task—”

  “Accepting one’s role can be the most difficult task of all,” interrupted the girl.

  “Yeah, well, the whole thing sounds pretty cut and dried to me. The astronomer decapitating himself for—damn! That wasn’t an intentional pun.” The girl certainly knew English. Could she negotiate its colloquialisms? Aly wished Tencho or the guardian would say something.

  “There is more to tell,” said the girl.

  The silence of the darkened forest amplified the soft roar coming off the burning embers. The sound wavered. A hunk of charred wood expanded, trembled, collapsed into a pile of black ash.

  “Okay.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The followers of Ukit Took kept vigil at the site of his sacrifice. Such became the occupation of their descendants. And the descendants of their descendants. All the while Ukit Took’s stela remained blank, his story in the Underworld untold.

  Even though seasons changed and lives began and ended, the colony recognized themselves as existing outside of time—much like all People of the Maize do during the unnamed, unlucky five days at the end of each year—but for all days, of every year.

  Outside of time, awaiting a new history, they could only be nameless as a people, and so ceased calling themselves the Winaq.

  The land provided for the nameless as it had for their ancestors. Yet they kept their numbers small so as not to succumb to the grandiosity Ukit Took attributed to Copan’s downfall. To the east, vines and roots found their way between stones that raised high the pyramids and palaces of the abandoned city. Rain-washed facades crumbled to dust. Pieces of the Hieroglyphic Stairway dislodged and fell away, thus erasing auspicious events of Copan’s history. Creators were eradicating another mistake, so intent was the Underworld on swallowing Copan.

  The purging of the gods grew widespread. Occasional travelers passed through the colony of the nameless telling tales of other cities of the People of the Maize finding descent and ruin.

  Then came word from the north of men who sprouted from the backs of beasts. Moss grew on the cheeks and chins of these strange creatures, and it was said they worshiped a false sun. They carried roaring weapons that killed many, and brought diseases that killed more. The trickle of people fleeing the north became a great wave. All warned the nameless that their land would be taken and any survivors enslaved.

  The men of responsibility spent long hours considering the strange beings that could not decide if they were beast or men. Had Creators released these creatures in anger over the Winaq, so many generations ago, befriending the mistakes of the first three Creations? Could the nameless coexist with these strange beast-men as their ancestors had with the animals, the mud people, and the effigies of wood? And if these beast-men were so strong as to vanquish everyone in their path, what darkness would their false sun cast upon Creation?

  Too few in numbers to fight, the nameless decided to leave Ukit Took’s pyramid. The forest would quickly conceal it. The nameless would preserve the legacy of Ukit Took however they could until time once again included them.

  The nameless traveled west until finding a fertile valley. They built a village they called Wuqub’ Kaqix, after Seven Macaw, the self-aggrandized one who aspired to be the sun. Throughout the village they erected carvings of Seven Macaw boasting his claims of brilliance: how he shone the pathway for the people when the faces of the sun and moon were dim; how he did this with eyes that sparkled like precious metals and with teeth of flashing jade; how his beak shone like the far-away moon; and when he rose from his throne of silver and gold, how he carried with him its brilliance. Now, when those worshipers of a false sun arrived, they would believe the nameless also worshiped a false sun, and perhaps not treat them so harshly.

  While hiding behind the façade of Seven Macaw, the nameless would preserve their ways in stories secretly told to their children. No matter how destructive the invaders, they could never be so evil as to harm children.

  They pranced into Wuqub’ Kaqix wrapped in shiny breastplates that swelled their chests like women. They wore pointed headdresses made of beaten metal and the plumage of strange birds. They smelled of flowers, and fussed endlessly with dust on their leggings. Their beasts were cross-eyed from the worry of insects, and sticks carried across their chests were weapons that sparked and roared.

  But when the Spanish took the land, it was not by use of these noisy weapons, but by the rank and efficient parceling of mayors, administrators, magistrates and governors. Nor did the Spanish force their false sun upon the natives. It was spoken of with the insistent, often humble words of friars, Superiors, bishops and priests.

  The method of the Spanish holy men was to cap
ture the souls of the nameless by asserting the superiority of the sun of their One God over the brilliance of Seven Macaw. With this, the nameless had no dispute. Seven Macaw was nothing but a self-important boaster, easily fooled and defeated by the Hero Twins. In the comparison of false suns, accepting the invaders’ sun of their One God, who walked the earth like a man and was charitable to the sick and poor, over a prideful boaster who claimed a throne in the sky and offered only material wealth as the glory of life, was not difficult for the nameless. For this acceptance, the nameless felt rewarded as the Spanish offered tools of iron and steel in place of those of flint and obsidian. And those that adapted most quickly to the Spaniards’ methods for improving the soil’s yield were invited to come out from huts of mud and wattle and live beneath roofs of red tile.

  And how the many images of Seven Macaw erected throughout Wuqub’ Kaqix caught the Spanish eye. Finding the craftsmanship so excellent, the shaping of materials so successful in engaging the eye and mind in a discussion of what was seen and what was implied, the Church commissioned the native sculptors to carve altars and pulpits for their holy men to carry into the forest when further spreading their religion. This work, the sculptors accepted. Though in every piece they slyly disguised the glyph for Seven Macaw as imperfections in the wood. In this way, to any People of the Maize they stood before, the Spanish holy men would be marked as worshippers of a false sun.

  Then came a day when a new governor was appointed to the region.

  On a plantation to the north, Felipé Bustillo had proven his worth to the Spanish Crown by greatly increasing the production of the natives under his charge. Powers in Spain now backed him to create his own plantation, thus the opportunity to create his own wealth. An innovative man that took bold risks, Governor Bustillo came south with an original plan. Instead of growing maize, which he considered an inferior grain, his plantation would produce shiploads of wheat for export to Spain.