The shaman turned away from the spring, leading the procession upward, higher onto the cone-shaped peak of the Earthlord. Tall pines swayed and fragrant needles covered the forest floor.
Usually, Rosalba felt happy on this festival day that celebrated the rain and the new crops. But today she felt twisted, at odds with Sylvia and her aunties.
As the procession moved up the mountain, the air grew cooler and small clouds drifted across the sun. Just before the peak, a meadow spread in front of the Earthlord’s cave. A collection of wooden crosses stood propped up by piles of stones. Sheltered from the breeze, candles burned in small pits.
Christians said that the crosses stood for the cross where Jesus died. But in San Martín people believed they stood for the sacred tree of life.
As Tía Mirsa and other women knelt to tie three branches of geranium flowers to the crosses, Rosalba whispered to Alicia, “They’re opening the gate to the sacred world.”
Men were busy lighting numerous fire altars, throwing gourdfuls of grainy copal incense into the flames, releasing clouds of sweetness.
At an altar in front of the cave, people laid offerings of cigarettes and corn seed, bowing slightly with palms pressed together. The women added offerings of calla lilies and sweet-smelling tuberoses. The men offered gourds of sugarcane liquor, then passed the gourds among themselves.
Alicia looked on, wide-eyed.
The boys from town tapped away on their cell phones.
A woman handed Rosalba a box of matches, saying, “Please light those candles over there.”
Rosalba and Sylvia took turns lowering the lighted matches into the tall glasses, touching the flame to the wicks.
When they’d finished, the same woman gave them a basket filled with herbs.
Alicia fingered the leaves and seeds.
“Sprinkle them like this,” Rosalba said, casting a handful onto the ground. “The Earthlord likes the sweet smell.”
As the men lit the ends of pieces of sugarcane, rockets took off into the air, leaving behind a smell of gunpowder. The musicians once again set up — this time joined by a slit drum player — their music punctuated by the explosions of these fireworks.
Holding a sharp knife in one hand, the shaman lifted a black chicken toward the sky. It flapped its wings briefly, then cried out.
Alicia turned her head away and covered her ears.
“It’s no problem,” Rosalba reassured her. “There’s plenty of chickens. They’re not dying of fungus.”
As Señor Tulán began his prayer, Rosalba moved close, listening carefully. Maybe instead of speaking to the villagers about the road, he’d talk directly to the Earthlord. He’d talk about the dying frogs, the bulldozer at the bottom of the mountain. He’d even talk about 2012. The Earthlord would do something about those things.
At the prayer’s end, Alicia looked at Rosalba, her eyebrows raised in question.
“He only said the usual things. You know — asking the gods for rain and good crops.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” answered Rosalba. For once, she understood more than Alicia did.
Alicia scuffed at the grass with the toe of her sandal.
Now that the ceremony was over, the women set out the feast, balancing the dishes on large rocks at the edge of the meadow.
Rosalba and Alicia carried their plates to a spot overlooking the forest below.
“It looks so small from up here,” Alicia said, pointing to the scar cut by the bulldozer.
“But it’s going to my village. . . . And it might come all the way here,” said Rosalba, looking around, trying to picture cars and trucks parked here in the lovely green meadow. Suddenly, she didn’t feel hungry for the bean-paste tamales.
Alicia sighed. “Then it’s really going to be up to us. Have you thought of what you’ll do?”
Rosalba shook her head. Her own big thing.
“Well, before I go, I’m going to make posters and put them all over. Even in town.”
“What will they say?”
“Don’t burn trees. Pick up trash. Don’t make roads and kill frogs.”
Rosalba set aside her plate of food. She didn’t want to think about Alicia leaving. And she couldn’t write words to make posters.
“You have to decide on something, Rosalba. I’m leaving in a few days.”
“You can’t!” Rosalba scooted closer to her friend.
“Papi has his job at the university. And I have school.”
“But what will I do without you?”
Alicia put an arm around Rosalba’s shoulder. “You’ll be all right. You were fine before I came.”
As clouds began to cover the blue sky, blotting out the sunshine, Rosalba shivered.
Just then she saw Catarina Sanate, sitting alone, overlooking the valley.
“See that woman over there?” Rosalba said. “No one likes her because she does folk paintings.”
“Why?”
“Only men are supposed to paint.”
“In Mexico City, lots of women paint.”
“In our culture, men are supposed to do their things and women theirs.”
“Is that why she’s sitting alone?”
“She doesn’t fit in,” Rosalba explained.
As a light drizzle began, people started to pack up.
Rosalba stood and brushed off her skirt, saying, “The Earthlord has had enough of the festival. He’s asking everyone to leave his mountain.”
She noticed that Catarina remained seated, her shawl pulled over her head. She wondered if she felt lonely on this feast day when everyone was celebrating together.
“Stay here,” Rosalba said to Alicia, then took a square of candied watermelon squash from her plate. With only one dish of the sugary treats, not everyone had gotten some.
She walked hesitantly down the green slope. When she reached Catarina, she touched her lightly on the shoulder.
Catarina started, but on looking up, she smiled.
“Would you like this?” Rosalba held out the candy.
Catarina gave a quick laugh, then lifted her open palm. “Of course. How thoughtful of you.”
For what feels like many passages of the Long Count, I lie still in our dark cave. My bones cannot hold me. They are ground like fine cornmeal. Sometimes I sink through the blanket, passing through the floor of the cave and into the Underworld.
Mauruch brings me nourishing liquids, whispering, “I am sorry, Xunko. I didn’t know. . . .”
My return was not guaranteed. I almost did not come back from the great Underworld of the night sky.
I want to see nothing. I want to sleep and forget all that I have witnessed. But, as if my eyes were still bandaged, behind them I see the codices. Codex after codex foretelling death, destruction, chaos, annihilation, obliteration. . . .
My fellow shamans increase their rituals, bleeding themselves, chanting, begging the gods for the lives of all Mayans. For the life of the earth itself. “O Heart of Sky! O Youngest Thunderbolt and Sudden Thunderbolt!”
The shamans burn offerings. They eat only the fruits of zapotes, matasanos, and jocotes. They deprive themselves of corn, the food of life. They lift their faces to the sky, pleading before the gods.
Do they beg for my life, too?
No one comes to me for blood.
I meet One Death and Seven Death. I meet them both and sometimes do not know if I survive on this earth or have already drifted to Xibalba. Perhaps I have been sacrificed after all.
I instruct the ants to bring me flowers from the garden of One Death and Seven Death. These I offer back to them, hoping to appease those who would steal me.
One night during the chanting, a vision of a young girl appears to me. Her braids are looped close to her ears. She wears the traditional huipil of those who live in the jungle after the empire’s fall.
But around her I see animals that shine with the brilliance of gold. They have round feet that roll, traveling quickly down wide bla
ck pathways. I see gleaming animals — or are they temples? — moving through the sky.
This girl is not of my time. Nor of any I have foreseen.
She lives close to the end of the Fifth Sun. The calendar year of 13.0.0.0.0 fast approaches.
Perhaps that is why her face is sad. Why she is worried. She is alone. I am sad with her, worried with her, alone with her. Her flesh is my flesh, her blood my own.
Keeping this vision a secret from Mauruch, I gather my strength. I must become more than I have ever been.
That night a strange dream came to Rosalba. A boy, just a little older than Mateo, appeared before her. His cheeks were painted with blue stripes. A heavy shell necklace encircled his throat. Pointed bones dangled from his earlobes.
He squinted at her as if the light hurt his eyes. And then he passed a hand over his forehead — the hand shaking — and disappeared.
All morning Rosalba had relived the dream. Who was this boy? What did his coming to her mean?
Hearing the fluttering and squawking of chickens, Rosalba turned to see Alicia entering the patio. She stood with her light hair shining, wearing a pale-blue dress.
“Alicia! How did you find the way here?”
“I followed the trail. I asked people.”
Rosalba glanced toward the path that led from the cornfields. But it was too early for Papa to come down and find Alicia here. Mama and Nana were again tending the small cornfield near the orchard.
Adelina peeked around the door of the hut, then darted back inside.
“Look what I’ve made.” Alicia unrolled a big piece of paper. The poster had a picture of a frog lying on its back. “This says,” Alicia said, pointing to each word, “don’t build roads.”
Rosalba looked away, a blush of shame rising into her cheeks.
Alicia rolled up the poster, saying, “Don’t worry. Someday you’ll learn to read. It’s not hard. In any case, the designs you weave are like a language. Instead of a pen, you use thread.”
Rosalba smiled. It was true that each design told a story. Stories that she, not Alicia, could write. Stories that she, not Alicia, could read.
“You could weave a kind of poster.” Alicia tapped her rolled-up paper. “You can weave designs that say what my words say. That way when you wear the huipil, everyone will get the message.”
What Alicia said was wrong. It wouldn’t be right to weave a huipil that said anything different from what huipiles always said: This is the way the universe is ordered.
“Last night I had a dream,” Rosalba said, changing the subject. “A boy came to me. I think he was a shaman. I think he was from the old times.”
Alicia’s eyes grew wide. “From the time of the pyramids?”
Rosalba glanced at Alicia, then at the chickens hunting for bugs in the damp soil. Had the boy really come to her from such a far-off time?
Alicia fished in her pocket, then held out two tiny blue eggs. They matched her dress. “I found these near a tree those men had just cut. They’ll never hatch now.”
Normally, Rosalba would have thought of the eggs as food. She’d have been glad to find them on the ground. But now she saw the delicate ovals through Alicia’s eyes.
“We have to hurry,” Alicia said. “The road is getting closer.”
Rosalba stared at the white cylinder of Alicia’s rolled-up poster. “But what can I do?” she asked.
Alicia shrugged. “Listen to your dreams?”
I enter the House of Cold. Thick with hail, it freezes my bones.
“Drink this, Xunko,” says Mauruch.
I push the gourd away.
He shoves it close again. “This is not a potion, Xunko. This is a healing tonic. You have lain too long. Your skin is cold to the touch. Come into your power. See the world that is now yours.”
But I do not want to see. The outer world is only my Second World. I cannot go there yet. The very dance of the firelight stirs what needs to be quiet in me.
“Bandage my eyes again, Mauruch!” I plead.
But he refuses.
When I wrap my eyes myself with strips of cloth, he tears the strips off. “Open your eyes, Xunko! Your apprenticeship is at an end.”
I keep my eyes shut, defying my master. I guard my darkness.
I come to the gods bearing quetzal feathers. I come to them bearing tribute. “O Quetzal Serpent! Show me what I must do!”
Though I have partaken of no potion, I am swept far away from this cave, from this earth. I hang in curtains of blackness.
Like the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, I meet Bloody Teeth, Skull Staff, Jaundice Demon, and Flying Scab. But I hold no conversations with those demons. It is not they who hold my answer.
“O Heart of Heaven!” I implore.
The path I walk upon is dim, but wide. A pathway through the reaches of time. When I meet 13.0.0.0.0, I find myself at a juncture. One way leads to oblivion, a great abyss where not even stars can live. Gone from that place are even the bloodletters and the sacrificers, the strife makers, traitors, and tempters to chaos.
Quetzal Serpent appears before me. Writhing, with his plumes fluttering, he extends his clawed hand. He invites me to journey down the juncture’s other side.
Instead of a void, I find a dominion of green cornfields, stalks climbing toward the skies. Here the people, children of the light, begotten in light, smile. The very clouds rise from the mountains singing. The sun, moon, and stars truly appear. Everything on the face of the earth has its dawn.
Like the Hero Twins, these people have defeated the gods of the Underworld. They have done battle with One Death and Seven Death, with Hun Came and Vicub Came. They have gone into Xibalba and they have triumphed.
To take the way toward abundance and harmony, this, then, the girl must do. She must declare her name before Xibalba.
Rosalba waded into the shallows, wetting the hem of her skirt. Today Alicia would go home, flowing away like this river. And she, Rosalba, would be unmoved, like one of these pale-yellow river stones.
Mama and the other women already squatted by the river, pounding clothes against flat stones, scrubbing them until the white cloth sparkled. Pants and blouses, shawls and woolen tunics, rippled across the grass and shrubs, drying in the warm sun.
Rosalba returned to the bank and took up a shirt to wash. Just as she plunged it into the cool water, she heard a clatter of rocks on the path above. She looked up to see Antonio and Roberto descending the trail, followed by Alicia. In their khaki clothes, they almost blended with the forest.
Rosalba stood, the ball of wet cloth in her hands. Alicia had obviously come to say good-bye — she’d promised she’d find a way — but why had the men accompanied her?
“Greetings!” Antonio called out, lifting a hand.
The women stared. Mama and Tía Sandra rose to their feet.
Alicia scrambled down the last bit of trail and crossed the sandy shore. She greeted Rosalba with a kiss on each cheek, then took her hand.
Rosalba squeezed Alicia’s fingers hard, as if she could hold her here.
“As you know,” Antonio began, his voice rising over the sound of the rushing water, “a road is being built from the main highway.”
A few women nodded.
“If the road is cut all the way to your village, it will change the environment forever. With vehicles coming in, you’ll have pollution. Your children will breathe dirty air. Already the road building has dumped soil downriver, interrupting the flow.”
The women stopped washing as the señor talked. They listened with respect. But Rosalba guessed they were remembering the days of the Zapatistas when they’d been in conflict with ladinos like these. Surely, they were concerned. But they didn’t want to hear this news from Antonio and Robert.
“Your sacred peak will be degraded,” declared Roberto. “You could sign a petition. . . . I can give you some phone numbers of people in Mexico City. . . .”
No one spoke.
At the scientists’ camp, the t
ents had been folded neatly on the backs of donkeys. The donkeys were owned by Martín Xicay, who was busy making sure that the loads were securely fastened. Even the plastic boxes of frogs had been tied on, a thin rope looped through the handles.
The clearing, once full of activity, was barren.
When Antonio gave the word, the group followed the donkeys, accompanied by the metallic clattering of pots and pans and the softer sounds of plastic boxes knocking against each other. As if the day were a happy one, white butterflies danced back and forth in grass grown high with the rains.
At the edges of the sky, clouds formed like the wool of sheep at shearing time.
When they approached the bulldozer, still growling its way through the brush, Rosalba couldn’t bear to look. She hurried along, ignoring the driver and the other man hacking at the bushes.
“Your papi and Roberto didn’t change the women’s minds,” she said to Alicia when they reached the other side of the bulldozer, walking along the wide gash of the newly turned earth. “They didn’t listen.”
“Not today, maybe. But maybe they’ll think it over.”
But Rosalba knew the women could be stubborn. It would take more than the words of two ladinos to get them to see things differently.
At the trail that led to Frog Heaven, Rosalba and Alicia paused. Looking down onto what had been the pool, now filled with rocks and dirt, Rosalba wiped away tears. “We used to come here. And now it’s gone.”
Alicia slipped an arm around Rosalba’s waist. “Don’t cry, Rosalba. Maybe someday the bulldozer will dig all that dirt out. Then it’ll be just like before.”
But Frog Heaven would never be as it had been. Rosalba dried her face with the edge of her shawl and moved on.
At the highway, the men unloaded the donkeys’ burdens. They stacked the boxes of frogs inside the cabs of the trucks and threw the tents and other bundles into the back, the cookware clattering.
“Maybe Papi can talk to someone about the road,” said Alicia.
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