daughter or mother, as the gods had forbidden it. But I have seen child slaves forced to prepare meals without the meat, only to be sacrificed as animals, salted in seasoning baths of their own making.
I have not partaken in Akabalam, nor have I allowed Auxila’s daughters. We survive on leaves and roots and small berries alone. One Butterfly and Flamed Plume would have already become food for the masses were they not protected by my station. The orphans of the city were among the first sacrificed, but in my cave they have been saved. They are watched over by my spirit macaw. The girls do not leave, as I have commanded them, for the savages in the streets are many and ruthless, and they would take the life of any child as sustenance.
The king has disappeared into the recesses of the palace for a royal divination, and none but Jacomo the dwarf, the queen, and the prince are permitted to visit him. The council was disbanded. Jaguar Imix proclaimed that no man can hear the call of the overworld but he and that the council was filled with false prophets! Jacomo the dwarf stands on the palace steps every sunrise. He reads the demands of the king and the sacrifices that must be made to please the gods.
By every setting of the sun, the sacrifices have been made; men and women and children, some noble, brought to the top of the altar by the executioners, their hearts extracted and innards cut out before being fed to the masses.
Yet with each sacrifice, there are more doubts in the streets of Kanuataba of Jaguar Imix’s power. I have heard dissent among the commoners. The people live in fear that they shall be sacrificed next. They whisper that Jaguar Imix has lost his channel to the gods, that a curse in his mind has confused his thoughts.
And what power has Akabalam given us? No rain has come to the milpas, no reprieve sent from the overworld to nurture the crops that sustain us.
So much is changed, so much horror! Death is all around us, the city in its cold black embrace. More than a thousand are dead by last report, and many more are cursed, awaiting death. I was right to fear as I did. The curse of Akabalam has fallen over many, sucking out their spirits into nothing, leaving them unable to pass into the dream world, where they may commune with their gods.
The numbers of cursed are growing with each turn of the sun, cursed for their trespasses against their fellow man. The streets overflow with violence day and night, as peaceful men turn against one another, unable to invoke the spirits in their dreams, fighting over what few valuables are left in the markets.
Jaguar Imix and his retinue consumed the flesh of men for many moons in good graces of the gods without being cursed. But whatever god protected them before does so no longer. The king is cursed, his nobles are cursed, and Akabalam has swept our land and destroyed everything.
Akabalam has turned men into monsters, just as I have feared. The time of dreams is the time of peaceful reconciliation with the gods, the time of communing with spirit animals, the time of giving ourselves to the gods as we do in death. But those cursed cannot dream, cannot surrender themselves to the celestial gods or be in touch with their wayobs, who watch over them.
Here is the account of my final sojourn to the great palace, where the men of the council once adjudicated. By night I came, carrying the bird on my shoulder, for it was too dangerous by the light of day for any pious man to show his face in the city plazas. I came, guided only by the light of the moon.
I came for the prince, Smoke Song, my pupil, whom I planned to take from the palace. That the boy is not cursed reveals Jaguar Imix’s own confusion; when he did not give his own son human flesh, he revealed cracks in his belief.
But Smoke Song is not the only child who will carry on the stories and legend of the terraced city. Flamed Plume and One Butterfly waited back in my cave, from which we planned to retreat to the forests of the lake that my father once sought. As I have still not allowed them to, Auxila’s girls have eaten no human meat in my care. We will live off the land, where we will be safe from the dreamless and those who follow them into ruin.
I had not been to the palace or seen the king in twenty suns, and there was a strange falseness to all I bore witness to, a strange suspicion that this way of life in the palace and in Kanuataba was over, that appearances could no longer be maintained. The guards themselves were nowhere in sight, and I made my way to the royal quarters unimpeded.
Because the prince was absent from his own room, I took myself to the king’s quarters. The prince must have gone to see his father, which terrified me, for I did not believe that the king would let him leave the palace.
I went to the king’s chamber and entered it boldly.
Stepping inside, I saw the prince kneeling at his father’s bedside. I knew then that Ah Puch had carried the king’s spirit into the afterlife, to spend the cycles of time with other kings, as it is ordained. There was no breath from his lips or beat of his heart. As I had taught him, Smoke Song was not touching the corpse, only waving incense sticks all around the body.
Smoke Song looked up at me with tears in his eyes.
Then the voice came from behind us:
—This is the king’s chamber, and his alone, and you will not be forgiven your trespass here, lowly scribe.—
I turned to face the dwarf, who stood ten paces behind. His beard had not been cut in many moons.
I spoke:
—You have spilled your lies onto the causeways and beckoned the people of Kanuataba with your tongue, and they shall hear these lies no more. They shall know that the king is dead!—
—You shall tell no one of this, or I shall have it known that you have not taken Auxila’s daughters as true concubines, that you have made no copulation with them and can therefore lay no claim to them. I shall take them as my own, and they will blossom and bear my sons! The king’s guards will take them by force!—
I struck the dwarf with my walking stick over the crown of his bulbous head, struck him with the end of it adorned with the pointed jade, and let forth the blood inside him. He fell to the floor, screaming out and calling for the prince’s help.
Smoke Song did not move.
The dwarf flew at me and clenched his jaw around my leg. The pain seared through me like fire. I gouged out his eyeball with the point of my jade knife, and he let go. I drove the jade point into his belly with all my strength, and his spirit was extinguished.
Then I turned to the prince:
—You must leave me here now. You must take Flamed Plume and One Butterfly and leave the city.—
When the prince heard this, he spoke to me with new power:
—As supreme ajaw of the city, I command you to come with us, Paktul. I will make you the daykeeper wherever we go. This I command you as king!—
But I knew that what remained of the royal guards would come after me, bound by duty to avenge the dwarf. They would have a thirst for my blood, and I did not wish to endanger the children’s lives. I told the prince:
—That you would honor me and make me your daykeeper, Smoke Song, is prize enough for me, prize enough for entry into the sacred world of scribes above. But you must abandon me here, that you may be protected by Itzamnaaj, holy god.—
He spoke:
—Holy teacher, the renouncers are come. I hear their screams! As your new king, I command you to follow me.—
I told the prince:
—Then let me lead you in the direction of my family whom I have lost, King, in the direction of all those that came before me.—
Holy Itzamnaaj, may I lead them in the direction of salvation in the recesses of the great forests, where my ancestors once lived and shall live forevermore. Where we may worship the true gods and bring forth a new people to usher in the turn of the next great cycle. Flamed Plume will become wife to Smoke Song, and the union shall bless a new beginning, shall generate a new race of men, a new cycle of time. I can only dream of the generations Smoke Song will father with Flamed Plume and her sister, men who will lead their people with decency. And the people of Kanuataba will live on.
