by Bryan Hall
A temple priest approached the young men. He carried a turquoise-decorated wooden box containing the ceremonial atl-atl and javelins. The target, a painted deer hide stretched over stacks of bundled grass, had been set up at one end of the ball court.
Tlinoc threw first. It was a good throw, good form, good distance and aim. The javelin’s gilded tip struck the edge of the second sun-circle. The onlookers murmured their approval.
Makchel threw next, with three short running strides and a powerful heft of his arm. The javelin traced a smooth arc and lodged just within the boundaries of the innermost sun-circle.
Amid cheers, Makchel and Tlinoc fell together in a hearty embrace of congratulatory back-slapping. Women tossed flower petals. Men scattered fistfuls of dried tobacco. A few daring children scrambled down the walls, rushing to try and touch them for luck.
More priests emerged to lead the young men out of the Hom. The nobles, God-King’s family, and Corn Maidens followed. Warriors armed with spears and fringed shields cleared a path through the immense and busy Sun Plaza. The procession grew as others joined in, forming an excited throng.
A steep flight of shallow steps climbed from the temple pyramid’s base to its height. At the top, awaiting them, stood Yaxcoatl ... the High Priest of Kuk, the Guardian of the Sun-Snake.
Though short of stature and squat of build, round of face and of belly, bowlegged, Yaxcoatl nonetheless presented an imposing figure, resplendant in his mantle embroidered with patterns of interlocking red and yellow winged snakes. The fiery gold of his headdress blazed in the brilliance of the summer sun nearing its zenith.
A living sun-snake, scales shining, draped in sinuous loops and coils around the High Priest’s neck. Its slim, forked tongue flicked at the air. A feathery frill surrounded its head, and more feathers made winglike ridges in twin lines to either side of its body.
Makchel glanced back down, dizzied by the view. The steps plunged away at a severe angle toward the crowded plaza below. All around him were the buildings of Kukmatlan—the God-King’s palace, temples to the other gods, the Law Court, the houses and monuments, the walls and stelae covered in glyphs that told the grand history of the People.
He could not recognize any friends from their own village in the mass of upturned faces and colorful clothing, but knew that they would be there. They had come bearing tribute, and they would go home bearing word of this glorious honor.
One of the priests guided him to a spot between two tall sculptures, winged snakes that faced inward with chunks of rough crystal gripped in their fanged jaws. The crystals flashed in the strong noon sunlight. Makchel stood feeling the sun’s strong rays on his bare shoulders.
Tlinoc went to the altar and lay down upon it. He turned his head once to grin with delight at Makchel, then lifted his chin to the sky. A deep breath of pride swelled his chest.
Yaxcoatl’s powerful voice rang out in prayer. His teeth, the incisors filed to points and studded with disks of crystal, sparkled. The sun-snake at his neck writhed and slid. Four strong temple priests took hold of each of Tlinoc’s limbs, while a fifth held a basin at the ready. The Corn Maidens chanted a song of praise.
Obsidian glinted glass-black. The knife parted Tlinoc’s flesh. A single cut, sure and swift, opened from breastbone to armpit. The blood had barely begun to gush when Yaxcoatl plunged his hands into the gap of the ribs.
A choked gasp erupted from Tlinoc’s throat. His eyes bulged. His back arched. His legs tried to kick but the priests held his ankles.
With a wet sound like the ripping of sodden, heavy cloth, Yaxcoatl wrenched a pulsating knot of muscle, gristle, and spurting veins from the ribcage. He thrust it aloft toward the sun, shouting to Kuk.
The heart throbbed wildly in the High Priest’s grasp. Red blood ran down his arm and rained in thick splatters over Tlinoc’s shocked face and aware eyes. The sun-snake, with another quick flick of its tongue, sampled the offering and found it acceptable.
More blood gushed up from the gaping hole in Tlinoc’s chest, coursing over the carved stone sides of the altar, trickling along channels in the platform’s floor. His head rolled to the side again. His gaze found Makchal, his expression a mix of exaltation and bewilderment.
Then he went limp, staring past Makchal into a world the rest of them could not yet see.
They burnt Tlinoc’s heart in the basin, burnt it to blood-ash and charcoal.
To this, they added a liquid made from fermented corn paste, the venom of a sun-snake, sea salt, water from a sacred cenote, and medicines gathered in the deep jungles.
It tasted of life and death.
Makchel’s mind reeled. He laughed. He screamed. He wept. He moaned.
His perceptions both sharpened and dulled.
He saw each fine line of the feathers in Yaxcoatl’s headdress in the tiniest, clearest detail, but the sun and sky overhead melted into a glimmering puddle ... he heard each subtle golden bead-clink as the Corn Maidens moved, but the sounds of the Great City were far away and distant as the sounds of the sea ... he smelled the strange, cold, spicy scent of the snake but not his own sweat ...
... and he felt every deft slice of the sharp, brittle blade ...
... but it did not hurt.
There was pain. Makchal knew that there was.
How could there not be pain as the obsidian knife slit his leg in a single long, shallow stroke from the top of his inner thigh to the sole of his foot?
How could there not be pain as other incisions were made, leading out crossways from the first so that a flap of skin could be peeled up like a damp leaf, peeled up and folded back, revealing raw muscle that seeped sluggish blood onto the bed of corn paper underneath him?
How could there not be pain as the same was done to the other leg, the skin flap of that one peeled and folded the other way?
He felt it, every thin cut, every flaying and peeling sensation.
He felt it when they slathered the exposed flesh with an ointment boiled from bakalche bark, herbs, and rubber-tree sap ... gluey, sticky, stinging like fire nettles, soothing like the cool balm of aloe.
They pressed his legs together and pulled the skin flaps taut to seal the joining seams, the Corn Maidens stitching the edges with needlework more delicate than the finest embroidery. Priests wrapped him from hips to toes in a plaster of cloth strips and clay.
Makchel dreamed while waking and spoke while sleeping. The skies wheeled above him, light and dark, sun and stars, the gods of the Thirteen Heavens passing in rapid succession. The Lords of Night stalked him, hungry jaguars with jaws poised to rend and devour.
The priests split his tongue. They did not pierce it with a stingray spine, or pull a thread-of-thorns ... they split his tongue’s end with the obsidian knife, so that it forked and curled.
Through shaving, plucking, and scouring by porous stones, all the hair of his head and body was removed.
Where his eyebrows had been, and through his lips, they affixed rows of tiny golden hoops.
The outer cartilage of his ears, they trimmed off, so that only a small ridge remained around the openings. They did the same with his nose.
When they broke the dried clay plaster and unwrapped the cloth strips, his legs had melded together into a single limb from the loins and buttocks on down.
Next came the scarification, more deft knife-work, hundreds of small semi-circular cuts in his skin ... the cuts then packed with a gritty powder of ash, gold flecks, and ground corn ... the scars healing into raised marks in a pattern of scales.
More hoops of gold were pierced through his foreskin, and rounded gold beads inserted beneath the skin of the shaft, until the length and swelled girth of his manhood was knobbled, textured like ripe maize.
As he’d climbed step by step to the temple’s great height, now each new cut, scar, and piercing was another step, bringing him closer and closer to the gods.
So was each feather, as they embedded the pointed quills into him one by one. Scarlet and yellow an
d orange ... set into his naked scalp to form a crest of bright, fiery plumage ... tracing his jawline to make a feathery frill ... in rows along the backs of his arms from shoulder to elbow to wrist.
He was the Sun-Snake.
The god embodied.
His joined legs could support him to balance upright, but not walk. Temple slaves carried him from place to place on a litter. He slept in a luxurious bed heaped with rushes. The nobles of Kukmatlan brought him rich gifts.
The Corn Maidens served him banquets unlike anything Makchal had ever known in the humble village life he’d led before. He feasted at dawn on porridge sweetened with agave and honey, at noon on rare fruits, at dusk on meat and fowl and shellfish, and at night was given all the frothed brew of spiced cacao he could drink.
The Corn Maidens bathed him and oiled him, sang to him, danced for him, and eagerly saw to his other needs as well. His split tongue plied and savored their succulent flesh; the penile hoops and beads enhanced each thrust’s intense pleasure.
On sacred days, he breathed the smoke of burnt offerings to speak divinations. He listened at the Law Court as judgments were passed. He appeared with the God-King when ambassadors from other empires visited, or when conquered enemies were sacrificed.
He was the Sun-Snake.
The god embodied.
The warm summer went on, the rains regular, the weather favorable.
In the milpas, where the field workers toiled with their digging sticks, the corn and amaranth grew tall. The beans thrived.
On their vines, squash and melons fattened toward ripeness.
In their temple chambers, so did the Corn Maidens, bellies great with child.
The harvest was plentiful.
The dry season came. The lakes fell. The rivers shrank.
Atop the Temple of Kuk, the priests tracked the movements of the sun. They followed how it rose and set in relation to the positions of the stelae, and the winged-snake sculptures, and the rays engraved into the stone.
They kept the calendar.
The days shortened.
Each one saw the sun’s rising and sinking paths passing closer to the solstice markers.
Until the shortest day of the year.
In Kukmatlan, shadows lengthened. Darkness pooled in the streets until only the tops of the highest structures remained touched by daylight.
A crowd filled the Sun Plaza.
All that day, they had fasted and prayed. They had taken no tobacco. All that day, they had gone without washing, without cleaning their teeth with salt and charcoal. They dressed in their simplest clothes and flimsiest sandals. They wore no jewelry. Even the God-King and his family appeared as humble as any peasants or slaves.
Every lamp and cookfire in the Great City had been extinguished. Every clay oven for the baking of maize cakes had been left to go cold.
The temple priests chanted and the Corn Maidens sang, swaying into a frenzy as the smoldering red-gold ball descended. Yaxcoatl led them, overcome with such fervor that the tears poured from his eyes.
He uncoiled the snake looped around his neck, holding its body aloft. With his filed, crystal-set teeth he severed the head, whipping the flailing body by the tail so that its blood sprayed out and fell like red rain.
For this was the moment ... the cycle ... the year’s end ...
To bring back the light, or be cast into Night forever.
Makchel raised his feathered arms and lifted his face to the last rays of the setting sun as it came perfectly poised in the center of the solstice marker’s engraved stone ring.
Gold gleamed and flashed from his facial piercings, from the crown of gold hoops at the end of his jutting, engorged erection.
He was the Sun-Snake.
The god embodied.
The oils with which the Corn Maidens had anointed him ignited.
Fire swept over him, surrounded him in a blazing corona.
A cry of exultation burst from his throat.
A powerful push of his serpentine lower body launched him from the high platform into the open air, arms outstretched as extended blazing wings.
He hung there a moment as if suspended.
Then he arced into a long dive, trailing streaks of flame.
His burning body plunged into a mound of kindling, dried grasses, and corn paper sprinkled from the sacrificial bloodlettings.
It flared into a conflagration, a sudden roiling heat, sending sparks and embers spinning up in a whirlwind.
The ancient God-King, supported by two of his wives, came forward to light a ceremonial cornstalk torch from the bonfire. He touched it to the torches of his sons, who then turned to touch theirs to others. The nobles of Kukmatlan, the chiefs and the warriors, the wealthy merchants ... torch by torch, the fires increased ... spreading outward through the plaza like sun’s rays, branching off into the streets like snakes of flame ... until the entire Great City glowed its defiance against the Night.
And the People celebrated the rebirth and the renewal of another year.
KNOWLEDGE
BY KATE MONROE
They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Ever since he had first peeled back his eyelids from the bionic replacements that now sat resplendent beneath them, however, Peter Smith had come to know the agonizing and incredible truth behind that oft-used saying.
Peter was an accountant. The foundations of his delightfully uninteresting life were logic and rationale. As a child, he had been taught that everything had a steadfast, scientific explanation, and he had built his life with that sole thought in mind. He was employed in the same reliable job since the age of eighteen. Each month, without fail, he had squirreled away his wages until he was able to afford the house he aspired to.
His house was neat and tidy, a carbon copy of every other one in his neighborhood in all respects save one—of the house’s five bedrooms, three had never been occupied. He and Marie slept separately in two rooms these days, but the other three had never been filled.
He had long ago come to terms with the only black mark on his life’s plan. The doctors had told him the reason why his wife could never conceive, and he was satisfied with their emotionless explanation. So long as he understood why something could or could not happen, Peter was satisfied. He thrived upon constancy and reason, and his dull life provided that in abundance—until recently.
He defiantly refused to believe in the claptrap and mumbo jumbo about auras or the soul that others parroted as if it were fact. We live, we die. There was nothing more to it. Yet what could not be denied was that, since his new eyes had been fitted, he had seen much more than he had ever known it was possible to see.
The eyes. Therein lay the problem.
Peter’s new eyes were a window to everyone else’s souls.
It all started one week ago. Since the children he and Marie so studiously saved for had not arrived, they now had a surfeit of money. So, when one of his clients visited the office to rave about his new bionic eyes, Peter’s logical mind concluded he should get a pair for himself. With a quiet word from the client he had helped without censure for twenty years, the next day he entrusted his sight to the skilled cut of the surgeon’s knife.
His trust had not been misplaced. In return for the many thousands of pounds now lining the surgeon’s pockets, Peter’s vision was far superior to anything that nature could create. Functions previously limited to mechanoids and soulless technology were his to command. With just a blink of his eyes, he could zoom in to faraway items or focus upon even the tiniest of objects, and the sheer clarity of vision was truly astounding.
However, the one side effect that had consumed his thoughts ever since had not been mentioned in the gleaming brochures that the clinic handed out like sweets to gluttonous children. Peter had scanned it over and over with his newly enhanced vision, desperate for some rational explanation for what he was experiencing, but no peace of mind could be found within its coaxing words. He hadn’t dared mention it to anyone, for who would possibl
y believe someone who said they could see the color of everyone’s souls?
Peter could hardly believe it himself. At first he had attributed it to nothing more than a temporary disturbance, a mere quirk of the technology as his neural pathways adapted to the bionic technology that had replaced his flesh. Taking it all in stride, as he always did, he neglected to mention it to the surgeon when the initial checks were performed—after all, work awaited, and he wanted no delay in returning to it. He convinced himself that any oddities would surely settle down within days.
They did not. To the contrary, he found the more people he encountered, the stronger his newfound ability became. Each soul was unique and ever-changing. So far as he could tell, the soul’s aura was fluid, a constant reflection of its owner’s moods and deepest, most private thoughts. Perhaps one more sensitive than Peter to such things would be better able to interpret the colors he saw, but he had always kept his emotions and intuition on a tight leash. The habits of a lifetime were difficult to shake, for they were now the one constant in a world that had irreversibly shifted around him.
“Mr. Smith?” A smiling, perfectly made-up receptionist tapped her heel against the polished floor of the clinic as she glanced down at her clipboard one more time. “Mr. Smith, the surgeon will see you now,” Emerald said.
Almost without realizing, he had begun to mentally refer to each person he met by the predominant color of his or her aura. The receptionist’s was a dazzling emerald green, interspersed by sparks of incandescent white and a dash of turquoise that danced merrily around her head. It really is remarkable, he mused, how much happens around us that we are blithely unaware of until something sparks off a new level of consciousness. If this truly was a side effect of the bionic eyes, then he simply could not understand why the clinic did not advertise it. People would surely pay millions to experience this!