Starfields (13 page)

Rosalba looked away, a blush of shame rising into her cheeks.

Alicia rolled up the poster, saying, “Don’t worry. Someday you’ll learn to read. It’s not hard. In any case, the designs you weave are like a language. Instead of a pen, you use thread.”

Rosalba smiled. It was true that each design told a story. Stories that she, not Alicia, could write. Stories that she, not Alicia, could read.

“You could weave a kind of poster.” Alicia tapped her rolled-up paper. “You can weave designs that say what my words say. That way when you wear the
huipil,
everyone will get the message.”

What Alicia said was wrong. It wouldn’t be right to weave a
huipil
that said anything different from what
huipiles
always said:
This is the way the universe is ordered.

“Last night I had a dream,” Rosalba said, changing the subject. “A boy came to me. I think he was a shaman. I think he was from the old times.”

Alicia’s eyes grew wide. “From the time of the pyramids?”

Rosalba glanced at Alicia, then at the chickens hunting for bugs in the damp soil. Had the boy really come to her from such a far-off time?

Alicia fished in her pocket, then held out two tiny blue eggs. They matched her dress. “I found these near a tree those men had just cut. They’ll never hatch now.”

Normally, Rosalba would have thought of the eggs as food. She’d have been glad to find them on the ground. But now she saw the delicate ovals through Alicia’s eyes.

“We have to hurry,” Alicia said. “The road is getting closer.”

Rosalba stared at the white cylinder of Alicia’s rolled-up poster. “But what can
I
do?” she asked.

Alicia shrugged. “Listen to your dreams?”

I enter the House of Cold. Thick with hail, it freezes my bones.

“Drink this, Xunko,” says Mauruch.

I push the gourd away.

He shoves it close again. “This is not a potion, Xunko. This is a healing tonic. You have lain too long. Your skin is cold to the touch. Come into your power. See the world that is now yours.”

But I do not want to see. The outer world is only my Second World. I cannot go there yet. The very dance of the firelight stirs what needs to be quiet in me.

“Bandage my eyes again, Mauruch!” I plead.

But he refuses.

When I wrap my eyes myself with strips of cloth, he tears the strips off. “Open your eyes, Xunko! Your apprenticeship is at an end.”

I keep my eyes shut, defying my master. I guard my darkness.

I come to the gods bearing quetzal feathers. I come to them bearing tribute. “O Quetzal Serpent! Show me what I must do!”

Though I have partaken of no potion, I am swept far away from this cave, from this earth. I hang in curtains of blackness.

Like the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, I meet Bloody Teeth, Skull Staff, Jaundice Demon, and Flying Scab. But I hold no conversations with those demons. It is not they who hold my answer.

“O Heart of Heaven!” I implore.

The path I walk upon is dim, but wide. A pathway through the reaches of time. When I meet 13.0.0.0.0, I find myself at a juncture. One way leads to oblivion, a great abyss where not even stars can live. Gone from that place are even the bloodletters and the sacrificers, the strife makers, traitors, and tempters to chaos.

Quetzal Serpent appears before me. Writhing, with his plumes fluttering, he extends his clawed hand. He invites me to journey down the juncture’s other side.

Instead of a void, I find a dominion of green cornfields, stalks climbing toward the skies. Here the people, children of the light, begotten in light, smile. The very clouds rise from the mountains singing. The sun, moon, and stars truly appear. Everything on the face of the earth has its dawn.

Like the Hero Twins, these people have defeated the gods of the Underworld. They have done battle with One Death and Seven Death, with Hun Came and Vicub Came. They have gone into Xibalba and they have triumphed.

To take the way toward abundance and harmony, this, then, the girl must do. She must declare her name before Xibalba.

R
osalba waded into the shallows, wetting the hem of her skirt. Today Alicia would go home, flowing away like this river. And she, Rosalba, would be unmoved, like one of these pale-yellow river stones.

Mama and the other women already squatted by the river, pounding clothes against flat stones, scrubbing them until the white cloth sparkled. Pants and blouses, shawls and woolen tunics, rippled across the grass and shrubs, drying in the warm sun.

Rosalba returned to the bank and took up a shirt to wash. Just as she plunged it into the cool water, she heard a clatter of rocks on the path above. She looked up to see Antonio and Roberto descending the trail, followed by Alicia. In their khaki clothes, they almost blended with the forest.

Rosalba stood, the ball of wet cloth in her hands. Alicia had obviously come to say good-bye — she’d promised she’d find a way — but why had the men accompanied her?

“Greetings!” Antonio called out, lifting a hand.

The women stared. Mama and Tía Sandra rose to their feet.

Alicia scrambled down the last bit of trail and crossed the sandy shore. She greeted Rosalba with a kiss on each cheek, then took her hand.

Rosalba squeezed Alicia’s fingers hard, as if she could hold her here.

“As you know,” Antonio began, his voice rising over the sound of the rushing water, “a road is being built from the main highway.”

A few women nodded.

“If the road is cut all the way to your village, it will change the environment forever. With vehicles coming in, you’ll have pollution. Your children will breathe dirty air. Already the road building has dumped soil downriver, interrupting the flow.”

The women stopped washing as the
señor
talked. They listened with respect. But Rosalba guessed they were remembering the days of the Zapatistas when they’d been in conflict with
ladinos
like these. Surely, they were concerned. But they didn’t want to hear this news from Antonio and Robert.

“Your sacred peak will be degraded,” declared Roberto. “You could sign a petition. . . . I can give you some phone numbers of people in Mexico City. . . .”

No one spoke.

At the scientists’ camp, the tents had been folded neatly on the backs of donkeys. The donkeys were owned by Martín Xicay, who was busy making sure that the loads were securely fastened. Even the plastic boxes of frogs had been tied on, a thin rope looped through the handles.

The clearing, once full of activity, was barren.

When Antonio gave the word, the group followed the donkeys, accompanied by the metallic clattering of pots and pans and the softer sounds of plastic boxes knocking against each other. As if the day were a happy one, white butterflies danced back and forth in grass grown high with the rains.

At the edges of the sky, clouds formed like the wool of sheep at shearing time.

When they approached the bulldozer, still growling its way through the brush, Rosalba couldn’t bear to look. She hurried along, ignoring the driver and the other man hacking at the bushes.

“Your
papi
and Roberto didn’t change the women’s minds,” she said to Alicia when they reached the other side of the bulldozer, walking along the wide gash of the newly turned earth. “They didn’t listen.”

“Not today, maybe. But maybe they’ll think it over.”

But Rosalba knew the women could be stubborn. It would take more than the words of two
ladinos
to get them to see things differently.

At the trail that led to Frog Heaven, Rosalba and Alicia paused. Looking down onto what had been the pool, now filled with rocks and dirt, Rosalba wiped away tears. “We used to come here. And now it’s gone.”

Alicia slipped an arm around Rosalba’s waist. “Don’t cry, Rosalba. Maybe someday the bulldozer will dig all that dirt out. Then it’ll be just like before.”

But Frog Heaven would never be as it had been. Rosalba dried her face with the edge of her shawl and moved on.

At the highway, the men unloaded the donkeys’ burdens. They stacked the boxes of frogs inside the cabs of the trucks and threw the tents and other bundles into the back, the cookware clattering.

“Maybe Papi can talk to someone about the road,” said Alicia.

Rosalba nodded, knowing that Antonio had already called Mexico City.

“Don’t cry, Rosalba,” Alicia said again. “We’ll come back next year.”

“If there are any frogs left,” Rosalba said glumly. But then a thought startled her. “The world may not be
here
next year!
We
may not be here!”

Alicia’s eyebrows pinched together, as if she too might cry. But then she smiled and patted Rosalba’s arm. “The world will be here. We will be, too. Because we’re going to do our big things.” She walked over to a large black duffle bag, rummaged inside a moment, then pulled out the book with the pyramid on the cover, the book of prophesy. “This is for you.”

“But I can’t read,” Rosalba protested.

“You should have this anyway. You’re the one who’s Mayan.”

Rosalba tucked the book under her arm. Even if she couldn’t read, it would remind her of Alicia.

After Antonio handed Martín Xicay a stack of pesos, Martín roped together his donkeys and led them away.

“It’s time,” said Antonio to Alicia, climbing into one of the trucks.

Rosalba hugged Alicia with all her might.

Alicia hugged her back, just as hard, then let go, holding Rosalba at arm’s length. “I’ll be here next year.”

As Rosalba waved with both arms, Alicia got into the truck beside her
papi.
As she turned to wave good-bye from the back window, Rosalba noticed that Alicia still wore the yarn bracelet. She herself reached up to touch her friend’s pretty butterfly sparkling in her hair.

Floating along the river of life, the girl fast approaches a waterfall. She is soon to drop off into the Great Destruction. She is a blink of the eye away from the End of the World.