Read an Excerpt
The Beginning
Here we are. All is still.
All is still silent and waiting.
All is silent and calm. Hushed and empty is the womb of the sky.
These are the first words.
This is the first speaking.
There is not yet one person,
one animal, bird, fish,
crab, tree, rock, hollow,
canyon, field or woven forest.
The broad sky is all alone.
The face of the earth is not yet here.
The expanse of sea is all alone,
along with the womb of the sky.
Nothing has been gathered.
All is at rest. Nothing stirs.
All is drowsing. Nothing stands.
Only the breadth of water, only the tranquil sea.
There is no thought of what might be.
All lies dark and silent in the only night.
All alone are the Framer and the Shaper,
the Sovereign and the feathered serpent,
the ones who have borne children and the ones who have planted them.
They are luminous in the waters,
wrapped in feathers of quetzal and cotinga.
Brilliance glimmers through the gaps.
And so they are called Quetzal Serpent,
and hold deep wisdom in their bones.
And so they are called Heart of Sky.
And this is said as the name of the god.
***
Then came the word.
Heart of Sky arrived in the dark of the only night.
Heart of Sky arrived with Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent.
They talked together then.
They pondered and wondered.
They reached an accord,
braiding together their words and their thoughts.
They heartened one another and it came clear: the conception of humans born beneath a luminous sky.
Then they conceived the generations of trees and the generations of thickets,
the germination of all life in the darkness of pale dawn,
by Heart of Sky, who is called Hurricane.
Lightning Hurricane is first.
Newborn Thunderbolt is second.
Sudden Lightning is third.
These three as one are Heart of Sky.
They came together with Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent.
Their joining conceived both light and life:
“How shall it be sown?
When should dawn come?
Who will feed these worlds?
Who will sustain them?”
“Let it be like this.
Let the water clear away so the plate of earth comes toward the light.
Let the land gather and level out.
Then it can be sown.
Then the dawn can come.”
“But there will be no words of praise or prayer to sing of what we frame and shape until humanity is born, until true people have been made,” they said.
When it was time to make the earth:
it only took a word.
To make earth they said, “Earth”
and there it was: sudden as a cloud or mist unfolds from the face of a mountain,
so earth was there.
Then mountains were called from the water and instantly the mountains rose.
It was simply their pure spirit,
their glinting spark of insight that conceived the mountains and the valleys,
whose face grew sudden groves of cypress and pine.
And the feathered serpent was pleased with this:
“It is good you came, Heart of Sky.
Lightning Hurricane, Newborn Thunderbolt,
and you as well, Sudden Lightning.
The shape of our work will turn out well.”
And so the earth formed first,
folded in mountains and valleys,
and water channeled the land and streams threaded the slopes,
divided by the land as it rose.
This was the formation of things called forth by Heart of Sky and Heart of Earth,
as they are called, for they were the first to conceive it.
The sky was set apart and the earth was set apart within the water.
So the world was made complete when they pondered and they wondered.
*****
Lady Blood and The Tree of One Hunahpu
This, then, is the story of a maiden:
the daughter of the lord named Gathered Blood.
She was the daughter of a lord,
and thus was known as Lady Blood.
When she heard the account of the fruit tree from her father,
she was astonished by the tale.
“Can’t I somehow see this tree,
to better understand its strangeness?
I’ve heard that the fruit is truly delicious,” she said,
and she left alone to wander beneath the calabash tree at Devastation Ballcourt.
“Ah!
What is this fruit?
How could it not be delicious,
the fruit borne by this tree?
I will not die.
I will not be lost.
Who would even hear if I picked one?” asked the maiden.
Then the skull spoke there in the midst of the tree:
“What could you desire from this?
It’s just bone, a round thing stuck in the branches,”
said the head of One Hunahpu when it spoke to the maiden.
“You do not desire it,” she was told.
“But I do desire it,” said the maiden.
“Then open your right hand and reach up into the branches so that I can see it,” said the skull.
“Very well,” said the maiden,
and she stretched her right hand
up to the face of the skull and it squeezed out a little spit into her open palm.
Then she looked into her hand—
she wasted no time, but the skull’s saliva was gone.
“The saliva was a sign that I have given you.
This head of mine no longer functions:
a skull without flesh just doesn’t work.
It is the same with the head of even a great lord:
it is merely the flesh that makes it look good
and then when he dies,
people are frightened because of the bones.
His son remains behind,
spat into the world:
his spittle, his essence.
If his son becomes a lord, a great sage,
a master of speech,
nothing is lost:
the line continues to be fulfilled and made complete.
The face of the lord is not ruined or extinguished.
The warrior, the sage abides in his daughters and sons.
Thus it will be so,
as I have now done to you.
Climb, then, to the face of the earth.
You will not die. You have entered
into the word. So be it,” said the skull of One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu.
This came from the mind,
from the thoughts of Hurricane,
Newborn Thunderbolt, and Sudden Lightning:
This was their word.
And so the maiden returned home,
having been given much instruction.
Children were created straightaway in her womb.
They came simply from the saliva.
This, then, was the creation of Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
Once the maiden had arrived and spent six moons at her home,
she was found out by her father,
Gathered Blood was his name.
