Starfields (17 page)

My eyes avoided Icoquih in the morning. I retreated before the evening stars appeared. There will come a time when Mauruch commands me to return to the Great Sky Serpent, but that time is not yet.

From large to small, my vision oscillates. And thus I absorb gradually the glories of sight.

Tonight when I crawl into the House of Darkness, I find that my ear of unripe corn has sprouted.

I burn copal before that corn because I shall live. I do the dance of the Whippoorwill and the dance of the Weasel because I shall live. I abandon my heart to the dances of the Armadillo and the Centipede.

All the great animals and small animals rejoice in the sprouting of my new life. I look upon them as they come up from the rivers and from the canyons. I see them on the mountain peak. As one we turn our faces to the coming forth of the sun. The first to sing is the parrot. The pumas and jaguars cry out. The eagles and the white vultures spread their wings as we rejoice.

Thus I live until Mauruch shall decree that I drink the bitter potion. Until I return to my duties as the Seer, the Shaman, the Holy Man. Whether the world end or not end, I do not know. But I will continue to extend my being into the vast stretches of the Long Count, transforming into bird and beast and the Great Emptiness, transporting myself, traveling through eternity.

R
osalba lifted her face to the sunshine as Mama combed her hair. She felt the comb making a neat part, front to back. She felt Mama separating her hair, making two braids, winding in the blue and pink ribbons.

When Mama had looped the braids up, tying them close to Rosalba’s ears, Rosalba laid her hands over the tight plaits, saying, “Thank you, Mamacita.” She beckoned to her little sister. “Adelina, do you want to help me feed the chickens?”

Reaching into the basket of dried corn, Adelina grabbed a handful. Together they walked across the patio, singing out,
“T’ikt’ike,”
to mimic the sound of a hen. In short leaps, the chickens came running and flying.

While the chickens were busy eating, Rosalba searched the broken cooking pots tied under the eaves. She handed the eggs down to Adelina, who cradled them in her shawl.

“The hens are happy today,” Rosalba proclaimed.

Harmony had returned. Rosalba knew that all over the hillsides her aunts, great aunts, and cousins were also braiding each other’s hair, tending to the chickens, hanging balls of ground corn out of reach of the animals. Everyone helped the Earthlord do his job of running the world just right.

She too must do those things. Whether the Earth would die, she couldn’t know. The shaman hadn’t made any promises. But she could do those things. And she could do more. She’d helped stop the road, hadn’t she?

Maybe Alicia would come back. And now there was Catarina.

That night the shaman came again to Rosalba. He showed her the
huipil,
once again stretched out. This time, both sides were identical, brocaded with the traditional designs of the ancestors.

He showed her a sky filled with clouds, their gray bellies heavy with moisture. He showed her a green cornfield, its stalks loaded with ears of golden corn.

This he wanted her to manifest.

When he looked back at her, his eyes were unblinking, as if the sunlight no longer troubled them.

“These are for you,” Sylvia said, holding up several lengths of hair ribbon. “I heard what you did,” she said. “That was brave.”

Rosalba slipped the ribbons through her fingers. Bright yellow was her favorite color. “There won’t be a road now,” she said. “Are you happy about that?”

Sylvia sighed. “I’ll get used to the idea.”

“Later on you’ll be glad.”

“Maybe.”

“You can help me.” Rosalba fastened one end of her loom to the tree. Today she’d work in the open instead of hidden on the side of the hut. “Tie this end around your waist and sit down.”

With the loom stretched out, Rosalba gently plucked the brown and black colors from the
huipil.
As she laid the loose threads in a small basket, she thought of how each had been like a word sending a message to the elders. “My friend wrote her message with words,” she said to Sylvia, “and I wrote with this yarn.”

Sylvia giggled.

Rosalba wondered if she’d ever tell her cousin about the shaman. A wide smile crossed her face at the thought of him.

Tomorrow she’d do his will. She’d start on the identical back panel, weaving the patterns of creation. She’d weave the design of the universe line by line, cornfield by starfield, bringing, for now, the rain of life to Earth.

brujo/a
— (Spanish) witch

chico/a
— (Spanish) child, “little one”

chytrid
— a type of fungus that causes chytridiomycosis, an infectious disease found in amphibians

coati
— an animal related to a raccoon

codex/codices
— sacred Mayan texts

copal
— a tree resin

cotinga
— a dovelike tropical bird with turquoise plumage and a purple breast and throat

dzonot
— (Mayan) a limestone sinkhole, also called a cenote

finca
— (Spanish) a lowland coffee plantation

hola
— (Spanish) hello

huipil
— (from Nahuati) a woven blouse made by indigenous women in central and southern Mexico

Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the Hero Twins
— mythical twins who defeated the gods of Xibalba in a ball game

Icoquih
— (Mayan) a star that appears before sunrise

jocote
— (Spanish) a sour yellow plum

K’in
— (Mayan) the sun

Kukulcan
— (Mayan) the feathered serpent god, also known as Quetzalcoatl

ladino/a
— (Spanish) the term for those of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, used in Guatemala and southern Mexico

Long Count
— the Mayan way of counting time. 13.0.0.0.0 is the Mayan equivalent of 12/21/2012. The number 13 refers to the number of
baktun
s, or 144,000-day periods.

“Los de adelante corren mucho, y los de atrás se quedarán, tras, tras, tras, tras.”
— (Spanish) part of a Mexican nursery rhyme that accompanies a game like “London Bridge Is Falling Down” and that roughly translates as “Those in front run fast while those behind will have to wait.”

Mamacita
— a diminutive form of
Mama,
an endearment

masa
— cornmeal dough

matasano
— (Spanish) a sour tropical fruit

nopal
— (Spanish) prickly-pear cactus; its pads can be cooked like green beans

pasamontaña
— (Spanish) ski mask worn by the guerilla group the Zapatistas

pataxte
— (Mayan) a type of cacao

refresco
— (Spanish) soda

stela/stelae
— an inscribed stone pillar

tía
— (Spanish) aunt

tío
— (Spanish) uncle

Xibalba
— (Mayan) the Underworld

zapote
— (Spanish) a sweet tropical fruit, also called sapodilla

I’d like to acknowledge those who’ve spent time among the modern Mayans, inspiring me with words and photographs; my agent, Kelly Sonnack, who had the idea of adding the 2012 element to a discarded manuscript about the Zapatistas; and Deborah Wayshak for her writerly intuition in guiding this story to its truest expression.

Decades prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World, an ancient civilization flourished in the dense jungles of Central America. These people, known as the Mayans, developed a written language and a calendar. They built grandiose stone cities and made significant astronomical discoveries.

In spite of the Mayans’ achievements, between the eighth and ninth centuries AD their civilization abruptly fell. No one knows exactly why the great metropolises were abandoned, why the people scattered to live modest lives in the jungle. The collapse may have been due to a combination of drought, misuse of land, and overpopulation.

While the descendents of the pre-Columbian Mayans live on, they have lost almost all the cultural knowledge of their ancestors. In order to study the ancient civilization, anthropologists have had to decipher the Mayans’ writing, known as glyphs. Glyphs remain on the stone walls of ruins, on fragments of pottery, and in the sacred texts known as codices. These beautifully illustrated accordion books speak of ancient kings, gods, the calendar, the history of the world, and predictions for the future. Because the Spaniards burned the codices, only four remain in existence.

Through the glyphs, anthropologists have learned that centuries before Galileo invented the telescope and Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, the ancient Mayans accurately calculated the 26,000-year trip of the solar system through the Milky Way galaxy, recognizing that instead of spinning in place, our sun and group of planets whirl in a gigantic loop through space. The Mayans kept track of this span of time with a precise calendar, using a numerical system called the Long Count.