Joely Sue Burkhart

Continuing the Maya short story, Well of Sky (read part 1 here):

The crowd roared with approval. Five Shield seized his defeated opponent by a shank of hair and dragged him up the pyramid steps. Cheering, stomping, the crowd was hungry for blood. Lady Jade Mirror could well imagine the noise shaking the very earth, disturbing the gods of Xibalba.

Head splintering, she wished she could silence the entire crowd. She longed for the solitude of her hut, the secret dark places of the jungle, and her haunting jaguar.

At the top of the pyramid, Five Shield and his brother bound the defeated warrior foot to bent knee, knee to chest, hands wrapped around himself, bending him tightly into a man-sized ball.

And then they tossed him down the steps.

She made herself watch. Sacrifice, blood, death–it was all crucial. Enough blood might persuade the sun to shine again after the eclipse. Enough sacrifice might bring the rains. The captive’s head smashed open, splattering brains and blood down the final steps, and at last, she looked away, swallowing the bile rising up in her throat.

Please, don’t ask me to jump.

Light-headed and fingertips tingling with cold, she stood with Lord Itzam and bowed to her future husband. Five Shield held out the severed, very battered head of his opponent, dripping blood onto the obsidian mirror at their feet. “Tell us of the eclipse, great sorcerer. Tell us of the coming rains.”

Lord Itzam took her hand. “Sit, child, and see with me.”

Dread rolled in her stomach, seizing her lungs. Her breath turned to ash in her mouth; her blood thick and heavy like tar. Knees trembling, she collapsed on the mat opposite Lord Itzam with the mirror between them.

Chanting softly, he took a cup–her jaguar cup–of water and filled the mirror. Blood stained the water, a pink cloud of sacrifice.

I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see.

Swirling clouds of blood began to coalesce. Itza’s Well. The Pyramid of Kukulcan, reaching to the sky. The smaller yet still impressive buildings: the House of the Sorcerer, the Temple of the Jaguar, the Temple of the Warriors, the Great Ballcourt. Yet there were no people clamoring and betting in the court.

The city in the vision was deserted.

Weeds and saplings grew in the courtyard. Fire pits long burned out. Buildings crumbling to nothing. The proud display of skulls along the Great Ballcourt were scattered, mixed with more bones.

Her people were dead.

The mirror darkened, and a fearsome pressure built. A rolling weight of rock crushed her mind, a mountain of stone on her chest. Her ears echoed, blood rushing and pumping through her body as if eager for sacrifice. Her lungs felt too full, as though she had no right to breathe.

In the vision, she stood at the edge of the Sacred Cenote. A bottomless pool of water waited fifty paces below. Shadow crept across the land. She glanced up at the sun in time to see it swallowed by the black maw.

Pain stabbed her tongue, so badly it was surely severed. She couldn’t speak. Blood choked her, metallic and thick and hot.

People lined the Sacred Cenote. Terror clawed her heart from her chest.

Don’t throw me in again!

Instead, someone jumped. Tears poured down her face, and she was so ashamed. So terribly relieved.

It wasn’t me.

A ragged, shrill sound like a dying animal’s cry penetrated the vision. She whimpered, a horrible mewling sound of pain and terror. Scrabbling back from the mirror, she looked at Lord Itzam. His face was reverent and calm, with such hope and love as he stared into the vision waters.

Her gaze darted among the onlookers. Five Shield, his mouth even tighter than usual, pale around his lips. He flinched when she looked at him. Others backed away, dropping their eyes, hands rising up to block her gaze.

No. No, she couldn’t bear it.

She staggered to her feet and fled, ripping the heavy ornaments from her body and dropping them on the ground. Down the steps of the Temple of the Jaguar, across the plaza in the opposite direction of the Sacred Cenote, through the stretching sinuous shadow of Kukulcan’s Pyramid, down the rows of quiet huts, she raced. Yet she saw it all as in the vision: abandoned, overgrown, dead.

Sobbing, she fled into the trees. She ran where the people feared to go alone, so deep into the heart of jungle that she found hints of green. Lush, cool, a balm for her terror.

In this great time of need, why am I such a coward?

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Writing, Friday Snippets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.