Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky

by David Bowles

  Feathered Serpent bowed his head as the humans opened their eyes. “Thus is our hope born. We did penance to ensure their existence. Now they will do penance to preserve ours.”

  Hurricane looked down on the fragile forms. “And what do you propose they eat, my brother? There is no sun, no vegetation. The work of restoring the earth has barely begun. Behold. Even now they wander about, searching for nourishment.”

  Casting his gaze wide, Feathered Serpent spied a red ant bearing a kernel of corn upon its back. “Tell me where you found this, my friend.”

  The ant did not at first wish to respond, but Feathered Serpent persisted. “Follow me then. It is over there.”

  The ant led him to what remained of Rivenrock, that mountain of edible plants. Feathered Serpent transformed himself into a black ant and accompanied the red ant through the cleft in the tor and found a vast store of maize, set aside for such times by the clever deities of the milpas. He gathered up all he could carry and returned to Tamoanchan. The gods chewed the kernels and placed the food on the humans’ lips to nourish and sustain them.

  So that humans would have ready access to the maize, Rivenrock needed to be split wide open. Tlaloc had his vassals, the tlaloques, puissant lords of rain—who could smash open the great jars of rain in Tlalocan—do this. None of them could widen the crack, though, not the Blue or the White or the Yellow or the Red Tlaloque.

  Feathered Serpent then called upon a new god, covered in pustules, decrepit and old. “Nanahuatzin,” he commanded this stranger. “Burst Rivenrock open!”

  The ugly god nodded with a sigh and lifted a bolt of lightning, hurling it toward the sea-ringed world. The tor fairly exploded, exposing its rich stores to the starlight.

  The men and women, seeing such an abundance of food, rushed to horde what maize they could. The rest, however—beans, chia, amarath—was stolen away by the tlaloques, shamed and jealous at the power of the strange new arrival.

  “Who is he?” the other gods demanded.

  “He is my son,” Feathered Serpent simply said, offering no further explanation.

  Now there were four human couples at the dawning of the age: Jaguar Forest with his wife Sky Sea House. Jaguar Night with his wife Shrimp House. First Crown with his wife Hummingbird House. Black Jaguar with his wife Macaw House. They came to be individuals, able to speak, to converse, to look and to listen.

  These excellent people, these chosen ones, were far-sighted and wise. Because their sight was perfect, so was their knowledge of everything under the heavens. Everywhere they looked, they immediately saw and comprehended all that was in the heart of earth and sky. There was no need to travel the breadth of the sea-ringed world. From where they stood, they saw and understood it all.

  Knowledge crowded their minds. Their vision passed beyond the trees and rocks, the lakes and seas, the mountains and valleys. Those couples, our ancestors, were greatly esteemed.

  Then the four eldest gods—the Divine Mother and the Protector, along with Feathered Serpent and Hurricane—put questions to the men and women:

  “Explain your existence. Do you grasp it with your senses? You can look and listen, your speech and stride are sturdy. Now behold, therefore, the root of the sky. Are the mountains not clear to your eyes? Can you see the valleys?”

  At that moment, the humans’ vision was complete. They gave thanks to their creators:

  “In truth twice, thrice over, we give you thanks for creating us, giving us mouths, giving us souls. We speak and listen, ponder and move. Much do we know, for we learned far and near. We saw the great and the small at the four corners, on the four sides, in the heart of the earth and sky. Thank you for giving us shape and form. We exist because of you.”

  Conferring alone, the divine brothers and sisters, original children of Ometeotl, were concerned at these words.

  “They claim to have learned everything in the heavens and on earth,” Hurricane reminded them. “Such knowledge is inacceptable and dangerous. They are creations, shaped and framed by greater hands. By letting them become like gods, we have committed a grave mistake.”

  The Protector agreed. “What can we do to them so that their vision is foreshortened, so that only a little of the sea-ringed world is visible to them?”

  Feathered Serpent urged caution. “We must not go too far, however. If they do not multiply and increase in number, when will they begin to plant? When will the dawn begin?”

  “Then we must merely undo them a little now,” the Divine Mother said. “That is best.”

  Hurricane rumbled in satisfaction “Yes. We cannot allow their deeds to be equated with ours. If their knowledge continues to spread, it will reach into every corner of the cosmos, and they will see everything.”

  The task fell to Hurricane. He simply blurred their eyes. Like breath upon a mirror, a haze clouded their vision so that objects and creatures were only clear when they were close. Likewise their understanding was limited to the surface of earth and sky—no longer could they peer into the heart of things. Thus the wisdom of the first four couples was lost there at the beginning, at the very root of human existence.

  The Fifth Sun and the Harbingers of Darkness

  Once people had been created for the fifth time, all the gods came together in the darkness that had engulfed Teotihuacan, and the Lord of Time built a great fire in the sacred hearth. For the cosmos required a sun, and the only way to bring it into existence was for one of their number to sacrifice himself.

  At first, none of them seemed willing to volunteer. Finally, Feathered Serpent approached his scarred and ugly son. “You are the one who must sustain the heavens and the earth, Nanahuatzin.”

  “But how? Look around you, Father, at all these mighty gods. I am but a scabby invalid at their side. Understand me: I speak not out of fear. Let me instead become the moon, that lesser light. I am not worthy to be the sun.”

  Tlaloc spoke as well to his son, handsome god of shell and stone. “Tecciztecatl, both your mother and I have served as the sun. Think of the glory you would bring to Tlalocan, to your parents, to yourself.”

  Tecciztecatl immediately agreed. “There is none more apt than I. Of course I will accept the charge.”

  So the two young gods began their preparations, fasting and doing penance for four days. Nanahuatzin took maguey spines and pierced his flesh to draw holy blood in offering. Tecciztecatl used feather shafts and shards of jade.

  On the final day, they bathed and dressed in ritual paper robes. They were then blanched with chalk and festooned with feathers, as would ever be the custom for sacrificial victims.

  The others had fed the bonfire till it raged hot enough to anneal divine flesh with sacred flames. They called out to Tlaloc’s son:

  “Come, Tecciztecatl—your time has come!”

  Puffing up, he strode toward the hearth, but the flames leapt so high and the heat was so intense that he quailed in fear, pulling away. Grim before the disapproving stares of his elders, he rushed again toward the fire, but once more stopped short and retreated. After four tries, the other gods pushed him aside.

  “You, Nanahuatzin! Will you enter the hearth first and become the new sun?”

  And the sore-covered, humble god closed his eyes and leapt into the fire, which began to screech and sputter as it devoured his body.

  Tlaloc glared at his son in rage. Tecciztecatl, overcome with shame, threw himself onto the slackening flames and glowing coals.

  As the fire burned down, leaving only cooling ashes, the gods knelt and waited for the newborn sun to emerge. They had been waiting for some time when finally the sky began to glow red all about them, dawn splintering the dark in seemingly every direction. Confused, many of the deities thought the sun might ascend the sky not in the East, but elsewhere. They began to spin about, each trying to determine the exact location of Nanahuatzin’s arrival.

  Only Feathered Serpent and Hurricane were looking to the East when two lights began to shine upon the horizon, illuminating th
e cosmos with equal brilliance. Feathered Serpent looked upon the glowing orbs and was not pleased. He addressed the others:

  “It is not just that both the sun and the moon should burn with the same splendor. Nanahuatzin was the more valiant of the two. He should be revered as the sun. We must diminish Tecciztecatl to some degree.”

  They agreed with him completely, so Feathered Serpent took up a rabbit and hurled it at the son of Chalchiuhtlicue and Tlaloc, dimming his brilliance and leaving the dark marks we see on the moon to this day.

  But the sun would or could not blaze a path across the sky. The gods sat and watched it wobble redly on the horizon, its rays spraying wild and deadly in all directions.

  Feathered Serpent entreated his son to continue his circuit, but the brilliant god remained where he was.

  Indignant, the first Lord of the Dawn, the deity who accompanied the sun as both Morning and Evening Star, cried out:

  “Move! Do you not see the destruction you cause by sitting there on the horizon?”

  So saying, the Lord of the Dawn strung his bow and unleashed a hail of arrows against the sun, every one of them missing its mark. Nanahuatzin, reacting instinctively to defend himself, sent a sizzling flare like a massive plume from a scarlet macaw. It struck the irate god of Venus and sent him hurling to the heart of the Underworld, his face covered forever by nine layers of death.

  At that moment, Feathered Serpent understood the true price of giving humanity enduring light: the gods would have to offer themselves up in sacrifice in order to set the sun in motion. He called them together in council and explained what must be done. They all agreed except for Hurricane, who insisted on certain conditions.

  “This sacrifice demands an even greater one from human beings, dear brother. If our lives are required to give vitality and movement to your son, then he will continue to require an infusion of teotl. Every cycle, the turning of great cosmic wheels brings the two calendars, sacred and solar, back into alignment. That will become a perilous time, the universe unstable for five nameless days, time enough to snuff the sun. To stave off apocalypse, humans will cease their laboring, perform ablutions, fast and pray and draw blood from their flesh. Everything old in their homes must be destroyed: crockery, clothing, footwear and mats. All fires will be extinguished. Silence will fall across the sea-ringed world.

  “On the final day of the cycle, as the sun sets perhaps forever, a man must be sacrificed and new fire drilled to life in his hollowed chest. Thus will the former years be bound and a new calendar round begun. The flames will be fed into a bonfire that will light bright torches to be carried to every temple so holy hearths may be quickened and feed each family’s private coals—ten thousand glowing points of hope, infusing the sun with energy till the first dawn of a new year splinters the eastern dark.”

  Feathered Serpent, respectful of the balance between entropy and creation, approved these terms. Then he killed each and every god gathered there in Tamoanchan, releasing their essential sacredness. Drawing this energy into himself and assuming his aspect of Ehecatl, Lord of the Wind, Feathered Serpent released a gale of divine power at the sun, restarting its climb to zenith.

  As the only god still able to accomplish the task, Feathered Serpent then twinned himself and took on the responsibilities of the fallen Lord of the Dawn. His nahualli Xolotl became the Evening Star, accompanying the sun into the Underworld at twilight, leading it to the great hearth where the god of fire would feed Nanahuatzin at night. Feathered Serpent performed the labors of the Morning Star, guiding his son out of the Land of the Dead at dawn each new day.

  The gods were reborn in Tamoanchan and resumed their several roles. But he of the smoking mirror, Hurricane, resolved to use the binding of the years as a way to bring about the destruction of the Fifth Age. He enlisted the aid of Itzapapalotl, Taloned Butterfly, patroness of women who died giving birth and children who died in infancy. Together they established the tzitzimimeh, an order of goddesses who would ensure that humanity remembered the necessity of sacrifice, willing to threaten the very sun itself.

  These harbingers of darkness worked with the moon to mount attacks on the sun. During these eclipses, Tecciztecatl attempted to cover and consume Nanahuatzin with the help of the tzitzimimeh, who would leap from the heaven of stars in terrifying skeletal forms. Human beings would have to sacrifice light-skinned victims to keep the moon from devouring the sun and the harbingers from falling like vicious arrows on the sea-ringed world to annihilate the inhabitants of the Fifth Age.

  The tzitzimimeh would also bring misery to the earth during the five nameless days at the end of each solar year. They were aided in this dark task by the King and Queen of Death, who were permitted within that span of time to unleash banes upon the world. No one could stop them. Goodness seemed to disappear, leaving groans and cries.

  Eighteen months of twenty days—one whole year named and closed. Now it began: sorrowful nights of sinister black on forsaken earth. During five days the gods would measure the sins of every human: woman and man, great and small, rich and poor, foolish and wise. From the bishop to the chief of the town to his deputies, officers, sheriff and councilors to the priests of the rain god: every last man.

  All human transgressions are measured during those days, for it is said the time will come that they will mark the end of the world by earthquake, on the day 4-Movement, sometime in the unknowable future. Hence the need for a careful count of human crimes. To accomplish this task, the wise ones say, the gods molded a jar of tree-termite clay. And there they deposit every last tear wept for the evils we do in this world. When it is filled to the brim, everything ends.

  Thus is Hurricane’s lust for destruction sated, and the balance of chaos and creation maintained.

  Feathered Serpent and the other gods looked down at the darkness and apprehension in the lives of human beings. They took council together: “Men and women will be quite sad if we do not craft something to make them rejoice so they take pleasure in living on this earth, praising us through song and dance.”

  And the lord of creation pondered for a time until he realized what was needed: a liquid that, being imbibed, would gladden the human heart. A plan unraveled in his mind. He thought of the perfect goddess to help him: the beautiful Mayahuel, jealously guarded by her fearsome grandmother, one of the tzitzimimeh.

  Feathered Serpent winged his way immediately to the heaven of stars and found the goddesses asleep. He awakened Mayahuel and said to her:

  “I have come to take you with me to the sea-ringed world.”

  She agreed at once, and the two descended, Mayahuel upon his plumed and scaly back. As soon as they arrived on earth, they transformed themselves into trees whose boughs lovingly intertwined: he an arroyo willow and she a wild olive.

  When the grandmother of the young goddess awoke and could not find Mayahuel, she called out to the other tzitzimimeh. Together, the fierce harbingers of darkness rained upon the earth like splintered arrowheads and began to search for Feathered Serpent, whose trail they discovered spiraling downward from the sky.

  As the tzitzimimeh neared, the two trees pulled away from their arboreal embrace, untangling their branches. The old skeletal star goddess recognized Mayahuel at once. Seizing her granddaughter, she uprooted and shattered her, handing limbs and roots and splinters to her celestial sisters. They tore away bark, devouring leaf and fruit and fleshy pulp.

  None of them touched the arroyo willow. The lord of creation watched their frenzied feeding impassively. It was part of his design. He required raw, broken materials for his craft.

  When the tzitzimimeh had returned to their starry realm, Feathered Serpent assumed again his accustomed form. Gathering up the bones left from the cannibalistic feast, he buried them deep. In time a new plant grew from Mayahuel’s remains: the maguey, destined to be the source of pulque and mescal, potent liquors that enliven the spirit.

  Resurrected within agave plants, Mayahuel became goddess of maguey and fertility. Wit
h Patecatl, god of medicine and discoverer of peyote, she brought scores and scores of sons into being: the Centzontotochtin or Four Hundred Rabbits, minor gods of drunkenness. Soon this family would help bring the double-edged sword of drink to humanity.

  Lord Opossum Brings Fire to Humanity

  Lord Yaushu, the Great Opossum, ruled the sea-ringed world in the early years of the Fifth Age, when animals still spoke and mankind had not yet usurped the earth. He was a kindly king who governed by virtue of his clever mind. Nothing pleased him more than to see his subjects happy.

  Yaushu, in fact, once used his nimble hands to dig deep into a mature maguey plant and draw forth the delicious sap waiting within. Directed by the goddess Mayahuel, he stored this aguamiel in gourds and discovered fermentation. So the joy-bringing drink we call pulque was invented. Soon animals up and down his vast kingdom were producing the beverage. In celebration Lord Yaushu went on a binge, stumbling from tavern to tavern, leaving behind a meandering set of trails that eventually became the rivers of the sea-ringed world.

  Most creatures were content with the quiet ebb and flow of the world, safe and at ease within Lord Yaushu’s broad realm.

  Except for men.

  It was not enough that food aplenty was within Man’s grasp: he wanted more.

  It was not enough that prey surrendered themselves to Man according to the natural order: Man wanted to cook his prey.

  Man had discovered fire when lightning struck and set a tree or two alight, but he was clumsy and greedy and stupid and could not keep the flame alive.

  In vain Man rushed after the sun as it plunged each evening past the edge of the earth into Mictlan, the vast and daunting underworld. He hoped to catch a falling ray of heat to take back to his cave.

  But all these foolish plans came to naught, so in desperation the Tabaosimoa—the most respected women and men on the sea-ringed earth—came before Lord Yaushu.