by Ian Gibson
“No, child. The dead linger in Xibalba for a very, very long time, but we pass on from here, too. We have a cycle to complete—from the forest we all came, and to the forest we shall return. We must seek and reconnect with our spirit animal, if we are to ever have any hope of finding true, lasting peace with ourselves. This is the true purpose of the Underworld, and just as the Yaxche’s roots once grew through here, we must trace our own roots if we are to ever have any hope of ascending from this place. For some of us, this can be a very long path to travel indeed.” His finger travels up the trail of smoke hanging in the air, until he points at its very top, where it thins out and curls until it dissipates. “Once our cycle ends, either we are taken to the Upperworld above, or we are no more.” He blows on the smoke to dispel it. “No one knows for sure except for the Great Feathered Serpent and the Heart of Sky, for they created the sky and the earth.”
Itzel is silent for a while, staring into the smoke and wondering for a moment about that impossible question herself—what happens to everyone at the very end? She thought this Underworld was where everyone went, but there’s something beyond it? She decides to ask a question that the Daykeeper might be able to answer. “What’s our spirit animal?”
The Daykeeper seems very pleased that she asked. “Each of us is born with a spiritual animal companion, and our souls are deeply entwined with them, just as the gods themselves are free to transform between their human and animal forms. For each and every human soul here in this City of the Dead, there’s a companion animal somewhere in the domains of Xibalba.”
“Is that why a lot of them can talk?” Itzel asks.
The Daykeeper grins widely. “Then you hear them too.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” she asks. She thinks of the howler monkeys. “Some can even be really loud.”
“Most cannot hear them. Only those of us who are more in tune with their spirit animal are capable of speaking with the animals of Xibalba. And that number has dwindled greatly over time, so count yourself among the lucky few! You see, in the early days of humanity, we were in harmony with our animal companions, but over time we’ve grown apart. Why? Because of our hubris. It’s been humanity’s greatest mistake to think that we are above our animal friends—that when we stepped out of the forests, we had made one great step closer to the gods. But we didn’t. In fact, the beautiful irony is that, when we turned our backs on the forests from which we came, we didn’t take one step closer to the gods, but two steps backwards. That’s why many of us are trapped in the Underworld—we are unable to reconcile ourselves with our forgotten spirit animals, but this reconciliation of our divided souls is our only way for us to pass to the heavens above. That is our path across the Middleworld in life and the Underworld in death, and only by shedding our earthly burdens and finding inner peace will we at last be free to rise to the Upperworld beyond. If your soul becomes light enough, you might find that you won’t even need a heavenly tree to climb there.”
“Then why are you stuck here, Mister Daykeeper?”
“Miss-Mister,” the Daykeeper says to correct her. “Technically speaking.”
Itzel blinks in confusion. “What?”
The old man laughs. “As I told you, I’m the Mother-Father of the Dead—in spirit I’m neither just a man nor just a woman, but both. And it’s a very good question! Some of us remain here because we have obligations to fulfil. The Dead Queen, for instance, but also myself. I have been charged with the duty as a spiritual guide, for lost and stranded souls.” He beckons her to come closer to him. “Indeed, this is exactly why I have called you—to show you what your spirit animal is!” He places his thin, wrinkly hand on Itzel’s forehead and strokes through her hair fringe, then with a sudden jolt he plucks out one of her hairs.
“Ow!” she yelps, as it not only hurt quite a lot, but it was very unexpected. “Why did you do that?” she asks angrily, holding her head protectively so he won’t try it again.
The Daykeeper puts his finger to his lips, gesturing for her to be quiet, and he places her plucked hair in the fire burning in the clay pot in front of him. He feeds the fire from a small pile of tinder beside him, and when the smoke rises, he closes his eyes again. “Ah, yes,” he says. “I see it now.” He picks up the stick next to him and puts it to his lips—Itzel realises that it’s actually a very long wooden flute.
She winces almost instinctively, as her last experience with someone playing the flute was a mean-spirited dwarf who was very terrible at it. But this time she finds the tune deeply calming rather than grating to her ears. She quickly finds that her body is becoming so relaxed that she almost feels like she has no bones in them at all, and she might just float down to the floor and flatten over it like one of the rugs. She sways back and forth without even meaning to, staring intently into the smoke hanging in the air between them. She thinks she sees movement in it, like a shape is forming from the cloud. The smoke slowly clumps together and then stretches and curls upwards, forming the head of an animal at its peak. It turns to her, and she realises it’s the head of a snake. It opens its mouth to bare its fangs and lunges at Itzel. She flinches, closing her eyes as she’s somehow lost control of her body, but when she reopens them, there’s nothing but a shapeless wisp of smoke in front of her.
The Daykeeper opens his eyes also and stops playing the flute. “You have seen it, too. I’m impressed, although I figured you’d be an easy one seeing as you can already talk to the animals.”
Itzel is brought out of her trance the moment the music of the flute stops, and she’s able to move her body again. She shakes her head and blinks in bafflement, waving the smoke from her face. “My spirit animal is a… snake?”
A giddy smile emerges on the Daykeeper’s wrinkled face as he takes a red seed from his bag and places it on the glyph of a snake on the stone dial. “You were born on the day of the snake. It comes as no surprise, judging from the staff you carry with you.” He points to her snake-stick, then clasps his hands as if in praise. “And such a high honour it is to be a snake! The highest honour of any, in fact, for it means that the Great Feathered Serpent Kukulkan is by your side.”
Itzel’s face hangs crooked with disappointment. She was hoping for something more impressive, and secretly wished that the image in the smoke was a lie, and the Daykeeper would have placed his seed on the glyph of the jaguar instead. A snake? It’s not exactly what she had in mind. She also doesn’t think Kukulkan is by anyone’s side, since he seems to always be in the clouds busily minding his own business—whatever his business even entails.
The Daykeeper laughs at her contorted face. “Your path through the Underworld will be a long one if you keep that face. But to achieve happiness you must learn to embrace your inner snake.” He presses his teeth together to make a hissing sound.
“Are you sure it isn’t a jaguar?” she asks. “Maybe you made a mistake?”
“The vision in the smoke never lies.” The Daykeeper waves his hand to dismiss her. “Off you go now, child. You look like you’re in a rush, so I don’t want to keep you. The first reading is always free—especially as you’re new here, I can’t expect you to have anything to barter with! If you’re looking for the great and all-knowing Itzamna, he’s across the plaza on the other side of the city. It’s always easy for us to know where he is because he never leaves his hut. Though with our weather I can’t blame him!” The old man grins, showing his many missing teeth. “He’ll be buried in his books, no doubt, so you might have to knock several times to get his attention.”
Itzel picks up her snake-stick, gets to her feet, bows her head, and leaves. “A snake!” she mumbles to herself disappointedly. She looks at her snake-stick, who flicks its tongue at her. She smiles at it—she’s always found it rather cute—and begins to think that maybe having a snake as a spirit animal isn’t so bad after all.
The City of the Dead
She starts climbing the steps at the end of the street and comes onto the white road. The road is elevated a
bove the ground by more than twice her height, with culverts cutting through the bottom so the complex network of ditches and channels can flow underneath. Large tents have been erected along its sides which, like the canopies over the smaller streets, protect the bustling street market from the hot Day Sun. She recognises it as the main avenue of the city she had seen before, as when she walks to the middle of the road and looks to her left, she sees that it leads to the same arched city entrance on the eastern wall, and when she looks to her right, the road continues straight onward to the large plaza at the base of the Temple of the Sky on the westernmost side.
Before she retreats to the shade of the tents, she takes in the view of the red temple from afar, as tall and tremendous as mountain. “Whoa,” she mouths as she gawks at it, almost bumping into a few of the marketgoers.
The temple’s bottom still lies in shadow, but its top is set alight by the early morning Sun. She feels like she’s walking through one of her history schoolbooks, though the pictures in those books really couldn’t do this justice. Rooftops beside the avenue are still being ravaged by stubborn fires, and there’s a particularly beastly fire on the roof of one of the huts right next to the street market—it’s much more intense than any of the others she’s seen, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s even trying to put the flames of this one out.
She walks past many street vendors displaying their wares on rugs on the side of the white road, and she’s lured by the smell of food to one of the vendors—an old woman is kneeling next to a rug with a large pile of corn, pots of beans, bundles of chaya, and jicamas sliced into sticks. Itzel’s stomach groans—she’s been so distracted that she didn’t even realise how hungry she was until now.
The vendor is wearing a colourful hair wrap—it’s very long and it’s been wrapped around her head so tightly and thickly that it makes her look like she has a wheel on her head. She’s stirring a pot of atole—a hot drink made from corn masa—over a small fire, and notices Itzel staring yearningly at her food. She beckons her closer. “Good morning, my dear! What would you like?”
“A lot more than I can buy,” Itzel says, very disheartened.
The woman laughs and inspects her customer more closely. “I haven’t seen you around before.”
“I’m new here,” she says. She’s beginning to suspect that she’ll be saying that a lot in this city.
“A newcomer!” the woman gasps, and she stands up and leans over her rug to hug Itzel.
Itzel hugs her back. She’s taken aback by this woman’s friendliness.
The woman throws her arms in the air. “Welcome to Xibalba, and most of all, welcome to our glorious City of the Dead!” She announces this very proudly, her arms stretched wide to show the magnificent, timeless city around them.
A loud crash sounds from behind the vendor, startling Itzel, who tilts her head to see what caused it. The hut with the burning roof has collapsed, and its smouldering wreckage coughs up a tall plume of black smoke into the air. The vendor seems completely unfazed by it and doesn’t even turn around to look. All the city dwellers around them ignore it too, as if it were so regular an occurrence that they failed to even acknowledge it.
While she stares in shock as the disaster unfolds, the woman continues chatting merrily with her, “You’ll find most people here aren’t all that excited about greeting newcomers, at least not anymore, but I still am as I’m fairly new myself! Could you tell me, has the war ended yet?”
Itzel turns back to her. “What war?”
The vendor smiles contentedly. “Ah, so it has! Wonderful news!” But then her face quickly becomes very concerned. “You’re far too young to be here, my dear. It’s such a shame to see children arrive. Was it sickness?” She covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh, forgive me! I really shouldn’t ask, and I very much doubt you want to think about it anymore.”
“I… fell.” She’s decided to stick to this answer for now, as it’s technically true.
“How tragic! You should be more careful!” the woman says scoldingly, although there’s a playful tone to her voice. “But I guess it’s too late for that now. Just don’t fall off this high road, all right? I’ve done it a few times myself already. And just so you know, it hurts just as much even when you’re dead.” She laughs, then points to the strangler vine around Itzel’s arm. “Lady Chel has her work cut out for her with clumsy folk like us, hasn’t she?”
Itzel nods, touching the vine on her arm.
“Oh, best not to mess with it, dear. If you try to pry it off, it’ll get tighter. I’m sure she’s sent you on an errand. She’s very bossy like that, isn’t she? Has she told you off about having your shoes on?”
“Yes!” Itzel says, nodding vigorously this time.
The woman laughs. “As you’re new here and burdened with chores already, why don’t you take anything you like?” She gestures to the food presented on her rug. “You’ll find that our city is very welcoming to newcomers. We want you to feel right at home! And what better way to feel at home than to eat some familiar, delicious food?”
Itzel looks at the selection eagerly. The woman pours her a small bowl of warm atole while she decides. Itzel sips it, and finds it rather bland, as it doesn’t have any sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, chocolate, or anything at all to give it much flavour. Her grandmother’s atole is much tastier, especially with chocolate. She’s reminded of the bland corn gruel she ate with the farmer’s family.
“Do you have any cinnamon?” she asks the vendor. “Or any spices?”
The woman shakes her head. “Spices are a very precious commodity here. Our soil can’t grow much but the basics anymore. I hope you like corn, because that’s what it grows best, thanks to our great and bountiful Maize goddess!” She points to her large pile of ears of corn, which dwarfs anything else she has on offer.
Itzel remembers Chaac’s gripes about always being offered nothing but corn, and she’s actually beginning to understand where he’s coming from.
“Only Lady Chel has the power to grow spices,” the woman tells her, “but she keeps them all for herself for ‘medicinal purposes’. We then resorted to buying them from Ek Chuaj, but he sells them at too high a price and keeps flogging his perfumes on us instead. At least we get salt from the Lake of Tears.” The woman asks with a smile, “Would you like some salt from the tears of memories? They could be bitter memories, or sweet memories, or even bittersweet memories, but I’m afraid they all taste salty.”
Itzel laughs. “Maybe on the jicama sticks, please.”
The woman takes some of the sticks of jicama, sprinkles some salt and lime juice on them, and wraps them in a banana leaf for her. Itzel chugs down the rest of the atole and hands the bowl back to her, letting out a small burp.
The woman recoils in fright, almost dropping the jicama sticks. “Was that a hiccup?” she asks, her face suddenly grave.
Itzel is still presenting the empty bowl to her, confused by the woman’s reaction. “No, it was just a burp.”
The woman relaxes and sighs with relief. “Phew. Sorry about that. You should know that there’s a curse of hiccups going around the land. It’s highly infectious and Lady Chel has struggled to find a cure for it. Fortunately, the city has finally managed to keep it from spreading, but the guards at the gate still routinely check anyone who enters.”
Itzel remembers that the farmer had also asked her if she had hiccups before allowing her into his home. She’s never heard of hiccups being contagious before, but when the woman hands her the jicama sticks, she’s too distracted by her hunger to give the matter much thought. She munches on one of the jicamas and finds them a bit blander than she remembers them to be—they’re usually a bit sweet in her world—and she’s beginning to realise that this is a recurring theme with the food here, but it’s still the closest thing to flavour she’s tasted on this island so far. The woman is staring eagerly at her as if expecting to hear her opinion, so Itzel just smiles and pretends it’s far better than it actually is. “These ar
e great! Thanks so much, miss!”
The woman gives her a smile and a bow of the head before tending to another customer, but as Itzel walks away, she shouts to her, “Oh, newcomer! You should take a tour while you can.”
“Before another storm hits?” Itzel asks.
The vendor stares at her blankly. “What storms?”
Itzel at first laughs, thinking that she’s joking, but upon realising she isn’t, she just waves awkwardly and briskly walks away, munching on more of her jicama sticks. The rain cloud follows her along, but it’s risen high above the tents to avoid the big crowd of people.
A long, feathered snake brushes her shoulder as it cuts through the crowd. “Kukulkan?” she whispers.
She follows it but finds that it’s not any form of the king of gods—it’s just a dancer wearing an elaborate costume, with the mouth of a snake around his head, its very long body trailing behind him as he joins a troupe of other dancers in similar feathered serpent costumes. They continue up the white road, passing through the bustling street market, until the avenue meets the large central plaza made with stone as white as the road. A high wooden pole stands at the end of the road, towering over the tents and pavilions beside it, and the snake-dancers dance in a loop around the pole to the sound of tortoise shell drums. Itzel looks up the pole—four men are swinging by ropes in circles around the top of the pole, while a fifth balances precariously in the middle, dancing while playing the flute with one hand and beating a drum in the other. She gawks at the sight of them—she doesn't have much of a fear of heights given her vast experience of tree-climbing, but even that looks a little too scary for her.
She walks around the circle of dancers at the base of the pole, but one of them notices the snake-stick she’s holding. He whispers something to the others, and, to Itzel’s dismay, soon all the snake-dancers come to encircle her instead.
“We’ve found a new recruit!” one of the snake-dancers says excitedly.