At yesterday’s zenith I was called to the palace.
I left Auxila’s daughters in the cave at the noon sun, knowing my spirit animal would watch over them in my absence. Jaguar Imix, his holiness, newly returned from his distant star war, had called me to the palace to reveal to me the meaning of the god Akabalam, so that I might continue to educate the true prince.
When I came within a few hundred paces of the city center, less than a thousand paces from the king’s newly ordained burial temple, I could not believe what I saw. Thick black smoke rose above the tops of the towers of the minor temple, our sacred catacomb. And as I turned the corner, I saw the largest gathering of the men and women of Kanuataba I had seen in six hundred suns.
I knew a large gathering was called for this day, but I could not have imagined its size and splendor. There are no words to describe the feeling I had upon seeing Kanuataba alive again then, as it was in the days of my youth, when my father would walk me through the merchant causeways atop his mighty shoulders. There were whispers among them the people gathered Jaguar Imix had brought a miracle, that he would feed the masses with this mighty feast, that there would be enough to sustain us until the harvest.
I watched men carry large offerings of spice and wood and jade toward the south stairs to the palace. Others carried salt and allspice and cilantro, combined with burn-dried chilis to make the seasoning for turkey and deer meat. Even my stomach growled with hunger. There are no deer or turkey or agouti within two days’ walk, of that I was certain. Had Jaguar Imix and his mighty army plundered stores of meat during their star war?
The royal dwarf approached me. I will recount his words to reveal what machinations he was capable of. He spoke:
—If people knew you as I do, scribe, knew that you would never touch those girls, you would lose those concubines you’ve taken. Your life could be cut short by ten thousand suns and with it the lives of those girls. So I suggest you never displease me again.—
Never have I felt a greater urge to drain the blood from a man’s body and rip his heart out. I longed for some commotion in the causeways, loud enough that I might muffl e Jacomo’s screams. I would tear him into pieces and bury them in unmarked graves.
Before I could raise my hand, a boisterous sound filled the plaza. A line of blue-painted captives, fifteen in number, were dragged into the causeways. Each captive was tied together to a long pole, lashed by both hands and neck to the man in front of him. Several men were stumbling. Many appeared half dead already.
Tattoos on his torso proved one of the prisoners was of high standing, and I have never seen a noble so afraid of sacrifice. He screamed and writhed as the captors of Kanuataba ushered him along, dragging his feet across the dirt, exciting dust everywhere. From the look on the captors’ faces, I knew that even they had never seen anything like it. Such indignity! Only a sickness of the mind could have damaged this nobleman’s soul so that he would not accept his fate!
I went into the palace, and navigated past the housekeepers, tailors, and concubines. The sweat house is on the top floor, a domed room in the tower, a most holy place for divination and communication with the overworld. As with the secret meals and other rituals, it is most often restricted to the king’s retinue.
When I arrived in the sweat bath, I found the king alone, an event I cannot remember in a thousand suns. His face was gaunt and looked less holy than I had ever before seen. There was not even a slave or lower-rank wife in the room, ready to satisfy his urges.
The king spoke:
—I have brought you here to see the creation of the great feast, Paktul, so that you may record it in the great books for all posterity.—
I bent down on both knees beside the hot coals, and the heat was unbearable. But to be inside the sweat house was considered a great honor, and I would show no sign of suffering. I spoke:
—Highness, we must record the great feast, yes, but I would ask you again to explain how the gods have blessed us with this feast but have shown us no mercy elsewhere. So that I may record it in the great books with proper care, may I understand why we feast today, when all other days there is famine?—
The king’s jaw clenched. His crossed eyes looked beyond me, as if he was trying to control his anger. His grasp on the royal scepter was rigid. When I finished, he did not rise or bellow; he did not call for the guards to take me away. He only looked down at my hand and pointed at my ring, symbol of the great monkey scribes who came before me.
And he spoke again:
—This ring you wear, the monkey-scribe ring, symbol of your station, how do you think it compares to the crown of the gods I wear upon my head? There is nothing I desire more than to be able to share this burden with my people and to explain the compromises I make to ensure the gods are at peace. This burden is not one that can be learned through books but only by those who came before me, my fathers, who once ruled over our terraced city. It is hardly a burden one who wears the monkey-scribe ring can fathom.—
With this, the king rose in his nakedness. I thought he might strike me, but he only instructed me to rise from my knees. He wrapped himself with a loincloth around his waist and commanded me to follow him into the royal kitchen.
It is rumored there is nothing in the world the royal cooks cannot prepare to the king’s taste. They will send assistants for a week’s walk to secure guava or mombin that grows only in the highest mountains or to trade with tree people for sweet potato that grows only in the shade of a single ceiba in winter.
I followed his holiness, Jaguar Imix, and I saw the great serpentine flow of these men, devoted to their art, working to finish the preparations for the great ceremonial feast. Every man had an assignment. There were those devoted to the preparation of the sauces and garnishes, who added florets of manioc plant to the various mixtures of chili paste, cinnamon, cacao, allspice. The actual cooking was assigned to others, who presided over large open spits in every corner of the room, grilling meats before adding them to the rich stews stirred in enormous vats at the kitchen’s center.
We passed through the tremendous heat of the cooking fires, almost as stifling as the sweat house itself. We were headed for the slaughterhouse, I knew. When we arrived at the door, the king flashed a beaming smile of jade at me.
He spoke:
—Low scribe, there can be no greater divination than the one I received twenty moons ago, the commandment from Akabalam, which will change Kanuataba forever and be our salvation. For nearly a year I have taken in this blood, and it is time for my people to share in my great source of strength. According to my royal spies, these rituals have become commonplace in other nations. Not just among the nobles but also among the lower tiers, and they have sustained themselves by them for many moons.—
I followed him into the slaughterhouse.
Blood coated the floor and soaked my sandals. More than two dozen carcasses hung, skinned and decapitated, disemboweled, blood-drained, and disjointed. The slaughter men were separating meat from the bone, each leg and arm providing a different cut that went into a pile of thick fillets. The slaughter cooks used blades of chert to prepare the meat for cooking, trying to conserve every precious sliver for the feast. It took me a moment to comprehend what these appendages were.
Men’s bodies from meat hooks!
The king spoke:
—Akabalam has commanded that we should partake, that, through this meat, we will absorb the power from those souls that inhabited these corpses. I and my closest minions have gained such power from feasts on flesh, having consumed more than twenty men in the three hundred suns past. Now Akabalam has divined that he wishes to concentrate the strength of ten men in every man of our great nation. Mantises consume the heads of their mates to survive; blessed are they, and, like them, we will all consume the flesh of our own kind.—
And as he finished speaking I knew: This was no god ordained for re-commitment of piety. This was something much more terrifying, which no one ever had to teach me to fear.
Much has passed in Kanuataba since the last inscription. Sixty suns have been born from the color of rebirth and died into blackness. Akabalam is spread to every corner of the city, on word that the king had sanctioned it at the feast in the great plaza, when Jaguar Imix fed the meat of our enemies’ noblemen to his own. With no rain come to feed the milpas, cooking pots are filled with the meat of the dead, not a single part wasted, every scrap pulled off the bones. The sole prohibition dictated by the king was that no man should eat his own son or father,
