by Ian Gibson
Itzel is immediately worried. She glances down to see if her necklace is tucked into her dress.
“... do you have any hiccups?” the farmer asks, his face still very serious.
She pauses—that wasn’t quite the question she was expecting. “Um, I don’t think so.”
The farmer relaxes his shoulders in relief. “It didn’t look like you did, but I just needed to check. We’ve heard that hiccups have been going around like a plague lately, so one must be cautious with strangers, especially if they’ve just come from across the lake. What’s your name, child?”
“I’m Itzel, and yours?”
“You can call me One Reed,” the man says with a smile.
She finds the name a bit odd—any name with a number in it would seem odd to her—but she politely keeps that to herself. As soon as they walk outside and she looks uphill, her mouth hangs open in disbelief at the enormous red pyramid at the very top of the hill. She didn’t have a good look at it earlier as she was much too occupied looking for shelter, not to mention everything was very dark during the storm, but now the sky is clear again.
One Reed chuckles when he sees her staring at it. “I take it this is the first time you’re seeing the Temple of the Sky. It’ll give you neck cramps if you look up at it too much, so we’ve learnt to keep our heads down.”
They trudge uphill through the mud and puddles left from the surge of waves and come to a series of stone steps elevated above the ground, where they can walk more easily. They cross a couple of narrow wooden bridges over ditches dug deep in the ground, overflowing with water that’s draining back down into the lake. Itzel gathers that they’re used to these floods, judging from all the paths of high stone steps and the many interlinking ditches that feed into bigger ones. She sees a few canoes have washed up quite far inland and some are even poking out between the cornstalks.
One Reed notices Itzel staring at a canoe as they walk past—an odd sight for her in the middle of a corn field. “Sometimes no matter how securely they moor the boats, they still end up halfway up the island,” he says.
“Those big waves come here a lot?” she asks.
“Once or twice a day. Strange as it may sound, waves from the West are a sign that a storm is brewing in the East.” One Reed stops and points down to the shore, where a mound of stone rubble peeks through the lake water with what looks to be remnants of walls around it. “We had built a temple to the great Cabrakan in hopes that it would calm his temper, as he brings these waves when he stomps the earth in anger. But one day he was so angry his stomping split the bottom of the lake and shook the whole island, and his temple crumbled.” He turns back and continues walking uphill. “We weren’t sure why he did it, but some of us thought they heard a godly voice shouting from all the way across the lake. It said the temple looked ‘too small and puny’. But we simply don’t have enough stone to build anything bigger, as the city uses most of it.” He gestures to the Temple of the Sky on the hilltop. “Besides, anything we build down here is going to look small compared to that.”
Itzel can understand that. Not only does the Temple of the Sky look grander and more impressive than any building she’s seen even in her world, but it’s also been built on the top of a hill, as well as a terrace resting on a high stone embankment on top of that, which makes it tower to such a spectacular, neck-aching height. It’s behind a tall wall, painted in the same bright red as the temple, which stretches along the top of the embankment. She guesses the rest of the City of the Dead is behind the wall, but the wall is so high that she can’t see any of it, aside from other temples poking up above it—quite large in their own right, but still dwarfed beside the Temple of the Sky.
“Still, we have a lot to be thankful for,” One Reed tells her. “We have it a lot easier here on the leeward side of the island. We get earthquakes and floods from the waves, and the rain from the storms, but at least we don’t have to worry so much about the winds.” He points to a large cluster of huts farther uphill, huddled together around a small temple close to the high embankment and the great city wall built on top of it. “That’s Leeward Town, as we call it. It’s the safest and driest spot outside the city wall since it’s sheltered from the strongest winds that come from the East. It’s the only protection we get outside the wall. There used to be a Windward Town on the other side of the island, but…” He smiles at Itzel, but it’s a sad smile. “Well, you can probably imagine what became of that. A lot of them had to move here, so this part of the island has become very crowded.”
They come to One Reed’s home—a small hut with a thatched roof and walls of dried mud. He waves to his wife, who’s dressed in a plain, cream-coloured tunic and is kneeling outside and stirring a pot over a fire in a shallow pit in the ground lined with stones.
“We have a guest!” One Reed announces excitedly.
The wife bows her head to Itzel. “You have wearied yourself! And you’re just in time for night-breakfast!” she says with a warm smile.
When they walk inside, One Reed introduces Itzel to his children—an older girl and younger boy—and an elderly couple who must be the grandparents. They’re all squatting on the floor around a low stone table, ready to eat their “night-breakfast”. The children stand up and take a bow, and their grandparents lower their heads. Their hut is a single room—much like her grandmother’s, except even smaller—and is quite empty aside from a few pots, some mats made with sticks of sapling trees placed where they presumably sleep, and the stone table.
“Tiring has been the journeys that bring us together as one on this blessed night-day,” the old woman tells Itzel, “and we welcome you with open arms and hearts into our home.”
Itzel bows to them also. It seems to her like everyone is very polite here.
The old woman smells the perfume that Itzel is wearing. “You smell nice! Are you a noble from the city? We don’t get many city dwellers outside the wall.”
“Itzel is new here,” One Reed says. “Or at least that’s what I’m guessing from the way she looked at the Temple of the Sky.”
The whole family gasps in response. The little boy pokes Itzel’s arm as if she were a ghost—which she can’t help but find ironic, seeing as she’s presumably the only one among them who’s actually alive.
“A very special guest indeed!” the old woman says. “And you’ve come to us instead of the city! Welcome to Xibalba, my dear!”
“She even rowed across the lake herself,” One Reed says. “Took one of the aluxes’s little canoes. I guess they haven’t been doing their jobs properly if the new arrivals are having to row themselves!”
The old man slaps his knee and laughs. “This is what happens when you have a dwarf doing a man’s job! You must be very tired and hungry, then.”
Itzel sits at the table and looks at the family with great curiosity. Can these people really be dead? She sniffs the children seated next to her, and the girl looks at her quizzically, probably wondering why she’s being sniffed. Itzel quickly apologises—she realises it’s rude to sniff people like that, especially now remembering how brashly the perfume-obsessed peccary god had sniffed her.
"Can I ask you something a bit personal?" she says to One Reed.
He nods. “Of course, a guest in our home is like one of the family.”
"Are you… dead? Because you don't smell dead."
One Reed laughs. "I hope you realise the dead bathe themselves too! Only gods and spirits could smell the difference. Of course we’re dead. The living don’t come here, at least not anymore."
"Anymore?" she asks.
One Reed’s wife comes inside with the pot and serves them bowls of warm corn gruel. A hen starts clucking and pecking at Mister Scales, who is curled on the floor beside Itzel's feet. He hisses and lunges at the hen just to shoo it away, and the hen flaps its wings, running out of the hut with terrified squawks. Itzel has a taste of the gruel and doesn’t find it all that appetising—it’s almost completely flavourless. She finds hers
elf already missing her grandmother’s cooking. But the family has been so kind to her, not to mention she’s hungry, so she starts tucking it away anyway with a big smile on her face.
"There was a time, long ago, when the Underworld was ruled by the Death god, and the cenotes opened up as pathways during the days of Wayeb,” One Reed explains. “Back then, anyone who fell into a cenote would fall into Xibalba, even if they survived. That’s how some of the living came here. The Death god preferred them alive to begin with, so he sent his armies to capture the living and bring them to his Underworld, by the hundreds, even thousands. But that all changed when he lost the throne, and when the Sun and Moon appeared in the sky, the borders between Xibalba and the land of the living closed. Since then, the living can't come here anymore, or so they say. It’s just a passage the dead can take these days.”
“So all the people who come to the Underworld really end up here, in this city?” Itzel asks. This is at least what Kukulkan had told her, but it couldn’t hurt to hear it from people, not a crotchety flying snake god who likes to speak in riddles.
One Reed nods. “All of us come to the City of the Dead, yes—at least at first. But some who have fallen out of favour with the gods are then taken to the North to suffer for their wicked ways!” He says this in an affectedly scary voice to try to scare his children, but they just squeal with laughter with their mouths full of cornmeal gruel.
“Rumour has it that there’s also a settlement of people like us who live in the highlands in the West, in Sleeping Lake,” the old man says. “They can’t grow much up that high, so they must have chosen it simply because it’s the remotest point in this land, and they wanted to get away from everything and everyone, especially the gods.” He laughs but begins to cough dryly. “Doesn’t seem such a bad idea anymore, considering what all we have to deal with here.”
“Don’t say that,” One Reed’s wife whispers to him. “If you talk like that, they’ll send you to the North, too.”
“Who knows, maybe even there would be an improvement!” he says with another laugh, but no one else seems to share his humour.
"Then why do you stay on this island at all?” Itzel asks. “Why not just move somewhere else?"
"Many had tried clearing land in the rainforest,” One Reed says, “where the soil is also rich with blessings from the gods, and it's safe from the constant storms and floods, but Kinich Ahau forbids any humans from settling there, and those who try are punished severely. Besides, look at what has become of the forests. They’re up in flame and have been for well over a year! Better to be here than there!"
Itzel looks at Mister Scales after hearing this, having been reminded of her mission. Mister Scales is still curled up at her feet, and she worries that he must be hungry too, but she’s not sure if a snake-that-was-a-coati would care for bland cornmeal gruel.
The farmer's wife adds, "People settle on this island because it's the most sacred part of the Underworld, where the great World Tree once grew, not just to the land of the living, but all the way to the heavens above. This was the centre where the worlds all once connected. This is why it’s always been the place where we can be closest to the gods."
Itzel glances outside at the milpas flooded by the rain, and the debris floating in the big puddles of water and begins to doubt that being close to the gods is such a good thing.
One Reed’s wife notices that she’s stopped eating the rest of her gruel. “Do you not like it?”
Itzel quickly grabs her bowl again, smiles, and nods very enthusiastically. “Yes, I like it very much! Thank you!”
But apparently her act was unconvincing, because the woman laughs. “We know the food isn’t so good here compared to where you’re from. But the constant heat and wind and rain have given us little to work with. We’re at least thankful to the Maize goddess, Lady Ixim, that we can grow maize in her sacred milpas on the leeward side of the island, because the ones on the windward side have long since been decimated by the storms.”
“Each of Lady Ixim’s four incarnations closely watches over a portion of this island to help us grow her corn,” the old woman says. “Thanks to her, it can even grow in these floods. We would be starving without her help.”
“Do dead people even need to eat?” Itzel asks. It’s a question that had been on her mind ever since she saw Quashy devouring a fish.
One Reed’s wife laughs. “You’ll find that being dead is a lot like being alive, except everything lasts much longer. We still eat and drink because we still feel hunger and thirst. We still sleep and dream because we still get tired. We don’t have to do these things to exist anymore, but it’s not any less unpleasant for us if we don’t. I guess it also makes us feel a little less… dead.”
“And if you don’t eat your corn gruel you’ll end up as a walking skeleton!” One Reed says. “Now eat up!”
“Without Lady Ixim’s kindness, we would be a city of walking skeletons by now. She’s been the kindest to us of all the gods.”
“To Lady Ixim, the great and bountiful!” the family all say, raising their bowls in honour to the Maize goddess.
Itzel sees them all doing it, so she raises her bowl too. After a moment of respectful silence, they return to their meals.
“That’s why we protect her shrine no matter what, to make sure it doesn’t end up like the one we had built for the Mountain god Cabrakan,” One Reed says. “Her shrine’s the one you saw in the middle of Leeward Town.”
From what she’s heard, Itzel thinks that the Maize goddess sounds much kinder than any of the other gods she’s met so far, especially Hurakan and Cabrakan who constantly bombard this island with storms and quakes just because they’re having a very rough, drawn-out breakup. “I think he’s a hill god,” she says.
One Reed raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean a ‘hill’ god?”
“Cabrakan says he’s a mountain god, but he’s actually god of... hills.”
His wife panics. “Please don’t talk about the gods this way in our home!” she whispers.
“You’ll bring another earthquake!” One Reed warns.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Itzel says embarrassedly. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just what his brother said about him.”
The family all look very surprised by this.
“Cabrakan has a brother?” One Reed asks her.
“Yes, he sleeps next to the lake,” she says.
“Then may he sleep peacefully, because the last thing we need is another angry mountain god!” the old man says. “Next thing you’ll tell me is that we have two storm gods. We’d never see a clear sky again!”
The family all look at each other nervously, dreading the mere thought of having another storm god, as Hurakan is quite enough.
"How long have these storms been happening?" Itzel asks.
"For almost as long as we’ve been here. However long that’s been, because I don’t know anymore, but I can assure you it’s very, very long!” One Reed says with another laugh. "It's truly a miracle that the city is still standing. It's held up well from the floods, but a long time ago the island used to at least have some respite from the storms during the night. But there are no true nights anymore—I can scarcely even imagine what they were like now. We’ve just the days and the ‘night-days’, so Hurakan must barely sleep, and the storms he brings come down hard and often.”
“‘He’?” Itzel asks. She remembers Cabrakan and Quashy saying Hurakan was a goddess. “I thought Hurakan was a ‘she’?”
The family all stare at her as if she were saying something crazy.
The grandfather breaks the silence with a laugh. “Well, she looks like a man to me!”
“We haven’t seen Hurakan in person,” the wife confesses. “Just depictions on murals in the city. I thought they were of a man too, but she could be a very big, muscular woman.”
“I always thought that angry voice in the wind sounded more like a woman’s than a man’s,” says the grandmother.
The fam
ily all nod to each other, having found a lot of sense in that too.
“Be they from a man or woman, those storms wreak havoc on our milpas,” One Reed says gravely. “And to make matters worse, during the day the air is so hot that the storms sometimes rain down scalding water and carry fire! We’ve lost count of how many times we’ve had to move and rebuild our home."
Itzel is speechless, even after she gulps down her gruel. She remembers that she had seen the glow of flames in the thunderstorm, but she thought she was just imagining it, as she didn’t think it possible that a storm could have fire in it. She looks outside at all the flooding—the milpas are practically underwater, and she can understand how they’d need the Maize goddess’ help to grow anything in these conditions. There’s another hut nearby made of stone, and when she looks more closely, she notices a series of water lines on its wall marking the levels of past floods, which means the lake water has sometimes come up even this high. Do these people suffer this much just because of a lovers’ squabble between a tapir and a storm goddess? Itzel finds it as sad as it is bizarre. Her parents squabble sometimes, which can make her and Miguel a bit uncomfortable, but she can’t imagine an entire city crumbling from it.
The old man chimes in, "When we took in people seeking refuge from the windward side of the island, we’ve had more mouths to feed and fewer crops to feed them with, yet we still offer most of our harvest to the gods to beg them for relief from this nightmare. But as time passes, things have only gotten worse, and now with storms of fire I do often wonder if we're any better off here than in the Pits of Torment in the North."
“Stop saying that!” One Reed’s wife scolds him again.
“Pits of Torment? Is that where bad people are punished?” Itzel asks. It sounds like the sort of place for that—in other words, a place she’d want to avoid.
“All we know is from whispers around the city,” One Reed says. “They say they’ve dug immense fire pits in the Desert of the North, where they burn and torture souls to the point that the soul itself is split apart—into blood, breath, and bone—and then put back together again so they can be burnt and tortured again, over and over, for thousands of years!” He says it all very dramatically, in a tone that someone would use to tell a ghost story around a campfire.