Welcome to Tiny Worlds!
We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.
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(An excerpt from "Shadows and Echoes" a collection of interpreted Mayan legends)
The Mosquito Spy
A booming sound rang through the underworld kingdom of Xibalba.
Thunderous, it rattled the sky and shook the walls below. The echoes ran everywhere—along the arguing roads and over the rivers that stank of wounds. The petty, vindictive lords grew angry. Their sleep was disturbed; their pride pierced.
Above, in the middleworld of humans, twin boys named Hunahpu and Xbalanque played their ballgame. The rubber struck stone and sprang back with such force that it shook the court with a percussive thud. The sound carried on day and night, daring the underworld to listen.
So the lords below — jealous, cruel, and deceitful — devised a plan. As with their father before them, the boys would be summoned, deceived, and killed.
The great owls rose as messengers. Feathers full of air and eyes always watchful, they swept over the low places and up toward the world of light to deliver the summons.
Receiving the invitation, the Twins recognized the trap at once. It was the same summons their father, Hun Hunahpu, and their uncle, Vucub Hunahpu, had once accepted.
The memory of that descent stung the Twins like a scar.
Their relatives had walked into the hall of Xibalba unprepared, their eyes fooled by carved wood set up like kings. They bowed to lifeless effigies, thinking them lords. They sat upon a bench disguised with ash, only to leap up blistered, their honor mocked. Trick after trick stripped them bare until the laughter in Xibalba drowned their protests. At last came their death. Hun Hunahpu’s head was severed and hung in a tree, where it bore strange fruit.
The Twins carried all this knowledge with them. They had grown up in the shadow of that humiliation, their father’s fate whispered like a warning. Now the same game was being played again, the same crooked summons. But they would not bow to wood, nor burn on the lords’ fire. They would not be caught the same way.
So in the village they sought a companion — not a warrior, not a god, but something smaller: winged, quick, and piercing of mouth. They made their choice and said no more.
The Twins set out on the long road of descent. The air cooled and grew sour. Along the banks, scorpions clicked over black stones; the River of Blood carried a copper reek; the River of Pus bubbled and filmed over the banks at their feet. They crossed them all and came at last to the maze of roads — red, white, yellow, and black — each road with a voice, each urging them astray.
At the crossing they stopped. Hunahpu bent; Xbalanque leaned close. No words were heard, only a look passed between them, and they went on.
They entered the hall of Xibalba.
Rows of figures sat in silence. The tableau felt rehearsed—some shapes carved from wood, some alive and waiting. The lords hid their smiles as they watched. The boys would bow, they thought; then the boys would burn, as their father and uncle had burned.
But Hunahpu and Xbalanque did not hesitate. They did not bow. They stepped forward.
One by one they spoke the names of the lords. The effigies remained blank and steadfast. The true lords startled, hands flew up, breath caught at the sound of their own names thrown back at them.
When they had finished and the lords continued to stammer, the Twins only glanced at one another, for they knew the truth. The lords did not see what had come before: a small conspirator riding the drafts of that great hall, settling like dust, and striking. A sting at the ankle, and one cried out, “I am One Death!” Another bite, another flinch—“I am Seven Death!”—and so it went down the line, each voice declaring itself into the dark while the wooden faces said nothing. When it was done, the spy departed the way it had come.
At the crossing of the roads, the Twins had heard the report from the mosquito and knew at once what waited in the hall, and how to answer.
So the trap was broken, and shame fell not on the boys but on the rulers of Xibalba. Murmurs moved among the carved and the living. None had expected to be unmasked in their own court.
The Twins did not lower their eyes. They stood in the middle of that hot, ash-smelling chamber and waited.
The lords shifted on their seats, first trick undone, pride refusing to yield.
“Very well,” they said. “You may stay. But first you will rest in our houses.”But the balance had shifted. The lords were unsettled.
The Twins were armed with the blade of wit and the shield of cunning.
The boys had crossed the rivers, walked the maze, and named the nameless. Now the houses waited—of razors and jaguars, of darkness and hail and cold.
So the trials began.
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Gotta love the Maya name of the ballgame Pok-Ta-Pok. If anything ever had an alliterative grace about the naming, this is it.
I have a comicbook version of this legend which is pretty special.
Are the chicken twins an iteration of this ancient pair?