The Sacrifice: a short story Read online

  The Sacrifice

  A Short Story

  by Resa Nelson

  Copyright Information

  The Sacrifice: a short story

  Copyright © 2015 by Resa Nelson

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary way to entertain. Any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  The Sacrifice

  The Sacrifice

  “This is the last time we meet,” Kaypahl said to the ruins. She reached out to touch a patch of stone peeking through the vines covering it, many of them turning brown and brittle from weeks without rain.

  “I thank you for all the days you allowed me to sit with you and tell you my stories. I thank you for all the comfort you’ve given me simply by listening when no one else would.” She paused, feeling wistful, wondering what her life might have been like if only she’d looked different. “Not even my own parents will listen, and you know my sister won’t.”

  For a moment she thought the ruins sighed, but Kaypahl knew it must be the wind rustling through the jungle. “You know we suffer from lack of rain. Remember how I told you about the gifts we’ve made to Chaac? Some of the warriors captured during the winter battle?” Kaypahl rolled her eyes. “Obviously, Chaac wasn’t impressed with them because the skies have stayed clear and bright. I can’t blame him. I saw those captured warriors one day, and they were horrid. They shouted terrible things at everyone, including me. Why would a god like Chaac want them?”

  A rustling sound behind Kaypahl made her spin to make sure no jaguar had discovered her. She sat at the foot of the abandoned temple, located far enough from her city to see its white limestone temples towering above the trees but close enough to run back to it should she run into trouble. Many years ago when the men who created her city had first begun to build this temple, jaguars attacked them, leaving many dead and even more wounded. Everyone realized the attack had been a sign from the gods, signifying that their sacred ground had been desecrated by mere mortals. This temple, intended to be placed at the heart of the city, had been abandoned instead. Everyone claimed this site to be haunted by the ones who had perished here, but Kaypahl thought those were just superstitious rumors. She’d adopted it as her special hideout long ago, a place where she could get away from the cruelty of those who tormented her.

  She sighed in relief when instead of a jaguar she saw three black turkeys stalking a female, her narrow breast colored dark reddish brown like dried blood. Ignoring them, she resumed her conversation with the ruined temple. “Next, an old man volunteered to be sacrificed, but that was last week and there’s still no sign of rain. Last night the king and queen themselves sliced their skin, collected their blood on fig bark, and offered it to Chaac by burning it in fire. But he refused even that gift. Mama said if the rain doesn’t come soon, we will all starve by next winter.”

  The ground trembled slightly beneath Kaypahl. She’d often heard rumors of an underground cave running beneath and around her city, a passageway used by the gods to escort the dead to the afterlife. Like she’d done so many other times, she pressed her ear to the ground. Like always, she thought she heard the sound of water rushing beneath her.

  Sitting up again, she said, “Anyway, I decided I should be next. It makes sense. No one likes me. You’re my only friend, but you can’t tell me you like me or that I look nice today or that you like being with me. All I am is the Fat-Bottom Girl.”

  Kaypahl sighed, remembering the time when her only friend was her sister, Paknim. They’d both had odd-shaped bodies. When Paknim had become a woman, her body had slimmed and reshaped itself into something curvy and appealing. It seemed that overnight every boy noticed her and every girl wanted to become her friend, magically forgetting that just the day before they’d ridiculed her. Kaypahl assumed she’d enjoy a similar fate. But when she’d reached womanhood earlier this year, her shape had become even more appalling, even wider and chunkier than before. She had no hope of attracting a husband, only boys who wanted to use her and be done with her.

  And without a husband, she’d have to live with her parents forever. What would happen when they died? Who would protect and feed her? Certainly not Paknim, who now ridiculed her just as much as everyone else. Why couldn’t Paknim be like the king’s daughter, Leepak? Slightly older than Kaypahl, the princess showed kindness toward everyone, no matter how big their bottoms might be.

  “I have no reason to live. But if I offer myself as a sacrifice to the gods, I can bring great honor to my parents. Maybe they’ll have an image of my face carved onto a temple wall and people will change their minds about me. My life will have meaning.” Kaypahl shrugged. “I don’t like the people in the city, but no one deserves to die of starvation. Not even them. Why shouldn’t I save them if I can? Everyone knows the greatest sacrifice you can make to a god is a young woman of your own people.” She rested her hand on a belly that would never bear children.

  Kaypahl patted the exposed stone again. “They hate me now but maybe they’ll love me when I’m dead. And then the rains will come because my death will please the gods. That is all I came to tell you. Thank you for being my friend when no one else would.”

  A girl’s voice drifted from the ruins. “When the time comes, run fast and hard. When you fly through the air, stand tall and proud but point your toes. When you sink, spread your arms like a bird taking flight.”

  Kaypahl stood, looking all around her but seeing no one.

  Perhaps the rumors about the ghosts were true, after all.

  The voice from the ruins spoke again. “When you sacrifice yourself for the sake of your people, I will meet you on the other side.”

  Kaypahl bolted toward the tops of the stone temples peeking over the tree line, never knowing that she could run so fast.

  ###

  The next day, all of Kaypahl’s female relatives attended to her in the morning: mother, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and even her hateful sister Paknim, all crowded inside their house of stone walls and thatched roof. First, they stripped and washed her, scrubbing away the sweat and dust of everyday life. After rubbing Kaypahl’s skin dry, they smeared bright blue dye upon it, smoothing it into her pores. Once it had dried, her mother wrapped a pale cloth around her to form a dress. Finally, her cousins, who had collected arms full of orchids from the jungle, laid the necklaces they had created from them around her neck, their gentle fragrance making Kaypahl’s nose twitch.

  Kaypahl took a deep breath when she heard the approaching drums. Soon they were joined by the sounds of flutes and rattles, all made from the bones of their defeated enemies. Her female relatives led her out of the stone house and presented her to the leader of the parade, a lower priest dressed in a simple loincloth and many layers of jewelry, necklaces and bracelets made of bone, jade, and gold beads. He extended his hand and Kaypahl accepted it, willingly although not eagerly.

  Briefly, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. She hadn’t lived long in this world.

  Too late. What’s done is done.

  Kaypahl believed in the importance of keeping one’s word. She had promised her life to the god Chaac, and she needed to keep that promise, no matter how scared she felt.

  She allowed the enthusiasm and hopefulness of the parade to buoy her spirits. She held on tight to the lower priest’s hand, and he gave it an encouraging squeeze. The parade wove through the major streets of the city, lined with thousands of people cheering and chanting Kaypahl’s name.

  They walked by the temples, magnificent and fat stone buildings with squared stone roofs and elegant archways, ever
y surface carved with glyphs held within squares the size of an outstretched hand. Other geometric designs surrounded the squared glyphs, and Chaac’s long curved nose decorated many buildings, ready to catch rainwater and guide it into small wells standing below. When they passed the king’s palace, towering above all other buildings, she saw the royal family in all their regalia standing at the top of an impossibly long set of steep and narrow stone stair steps. Even from here she could see the jade slab that rested along the bridge of the king’s nose and his enormous gold earrings. Kaypahl let a wave of honor wash over her.

  This is right. Perhaps this has always been my destiny. Perhaps it is why I was born.

  Those thoughts gave Kaypahl even more encouragement, and she soon felt enthusiasm and hopefulness of her own, not just that of the crowd’s. The parade marched past a ceremonial slab where countless enemies had been beheaded. Dozens of skulls, picked clean by birds and bleached by the sun, stood mounted on stakes at the top of the wall covered in carvings of skulls, rows and rows of them.

  The parade left the edge of the town and continued on a narrow dirt path for several minutes until they reached the cenote, an enormous limestone basin of rainwater. The cenote’s depth surpassed the height of the tallest pyramid in the city, and its level of water stood far lower than Kaypahl had ever seen before. A few hundred people lined its edge, all shouting with joy. Still holding onto Kaypahl’s hand, the lower priest raised both his arms to the sky, and the crowd hushed.

  “Behold,” the lower priest announced to the sky. “Our greatest possible sacrifice. We give you our beloved. If she pleases you, we ask that you bless us by pouring your blood, pure and clean and clear, from the heavens upon us.” The priest let go of her hand, and stepped back.

  Aware of the thousands of people thronged around the cenote and around her, Kaypahl suddenly felt terribly alone.

  But then she remembered the words a ghost at the ruined temple had spoken to her. Believing she had nothing left to lose, Kaypahl decided to embrace those words.

  She ran as fast as she could toward the cenote and leaped from its edge, keeping her body straight. Feeling herself hurtling toward the water below, she remembered at the last moment to point her toes. She hit the water cleanly, but the cool shock of it knocked the air from her lungs. Nonetheless, now fully submerged below the water’s surface, she spread her arms like a bird ready to take flight. Looking up, the light streaming through the water shined yellow-green.

  The moment before she lost consciousness, Kaypahl felt a hand grab her ankle and pull her into the murky depths below.

  ###

  When she woke up, confusion overwhelmed Kaypahl. She sensed solid rock beneath her sprawled body, and it surrounded her on all sides, its pale yellow surface glowing in soft firelight. She became aware of a hovering figure and pressure on her chest.

  Kaypahl coughed, and water poured from her mouth. She rolled onto one side to let it spill out more easily.

  The figure leaned back, coming into the light from the fire, a small pile of sticks burning on the rock’s surface. She’d been kneeling over Kaypahl and now she sat back on her heels. Lithe and trim, the figure of a young woman wore a simple dress but a magnificent headdress sporting what must have been 100 feathers of the prized quetzal bird, long and sweeping feathers colored an iridescent green. Drenched, her dress clung to her body, but the headdress looked as dry as if she’d just put it on. Yellow paint covered the left half of her face, and black paint covered the right half. The rest of her exposed skin had been colored yellow and decorated with black dots. Like the paint used to color Kaypahl’s skin blue this morning, it had smeared slightly but otherwise made the remaining water droplets bead upon it. “You live.”

  Confused, Kaypahl studied her surroundings and the figure before her. “You can’t be Chaac. You’re a girl.”

  “Even gods have daughters.” A quetzal feather curved along the side of the young woman’s face, seeming to tickle the hollow of her neck. Her eyes looked black in the dim light, like the depths of the cenote into which Kaypahl had thrown herself. “This is not your time to die. Chaac himself asked me to retrieve you. Revive you.”

  “No!” Kaypahl protested.

  Chaac’s daughter reached toward the fire and withdrew a burning stick from it. She held it in her lap, and its light cast eerie shadows across her face and disturbing shadows from her large feather headdress across the limestone walls behind her. “What did you say to me?”

  Kaypahl remembered her place. If Chaac had sent his daughter to retrieve her from the cenote’s waters, she must pay due respect, no matter what. “Pardon me, please.” Kaypahl steadied herself. “I come to you to beg for the lives of the people in my city. Without rain, the corn crops surrounding our city will wither and die. Without corn, they will starve.”

  “Why should you care? Have they not rejected you? Ridiculed you?”

  For some reason, Kaypahl felt more confident knowing she had died. Could anything worse happen to her? “Why shouldn’t they? I was a fat-bottom girl in a city of small-bottom people. I never belonged.”

  Chaac’s daughter shook her head, staring at Kaypahl all the while with her black eyes. She spoke with passion. “All people have value. If we were all the same, the city would be weak and vulnerable. Different people have different talents, different value, different skills. If we do not have that variety of talents and value and skills, we suffer. Your people would suffer without you.”

  Odd. For a moment, Chaac’s daughter reminded Kaypahl of Leepak, the king’s daughter. Not that Kaypahl had ever spoken to the princess or even heard her speak more than a few words from a distance. The entire city loved Leepak because whenever she appeared in public, she had nothing but warm smiles and happy waves for her father’s subjects. Instead of standing stiffly among her family members, Leepak would sometimes dart into the surrounding crowd to accept offerings of orchids and other flowers from small children, often kissing them on the cheek to thank them.

  “No one will miss me.” Kaypahl forced herself to look directly into the goddess’s black eyes, willing away any fear of her. “I have done the right thing. Chaac hasn’t liked any of the sacrifices we have made to him, and my sacrifice is the thing that has value. This is how I bring value to my people.”

  Chaac’s daughter scoffed. “Your people.” She shook her head in dismay. “They do not deserve you. I say let them suffer.” Rising slowly, she said, “Follow me.”

  Obeying the goddess, Kaypahl walked behind her along a smooth limestone path flanked by streams of water. Kaypahl had heard of underground rivers but of course had never seen one. Throughout the land, no rivers above ground existed, but people had always told stories of how the rain that fell into the cenotes wound their way in secret passages below. The limestone path wound upwards, leaving the gurgling waters behind. Dark shadows danced around them, and Kaypahl hurried to stay close to the goddess just in case there might still be something to fear.

  The goddess stepped aside and pushed Kaypahl forward. “Go,” Chaac’s daughter said. “The gods appreciate what you have done, but we want you to live.”

  Someone else’s hand took Kaypahl by the wrist and pulled her outside into a world of blindingly bright light. Kaypahl squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly realizing the voice she’d heard yesterday, thinking it to be the voice of a ghost, sounded like Chaac’s daughter. She’d been the one who’d advised Kaypahl how to jump into the cenote.

  Of course, Kaypahl had witnessed many sacrifices at the cenote. She’d seen many people land badly on the water far below the cenote’s edge, screaming in pain. She’d seen their limbs break at the hard contact against the water. Once she’d seen someone’s neck snap on impact. She’d never thought twice about it. A sacrifice is a sacrifice. Does it really matter how you die?

  But what if Chaac’s daughter had told her how to jump into the cenote because she wanted Kaypahl to survive the jump?

  Kaypahl’s heart sank. First, everyone in her cit
y rejected her. Now the gods rejected her, too. Why didn’t they think her sacrifice was worthy?

  The grip around her wrist tightened. Slowly, Kaypahl opened her eyes against the bright light, letting her vision adjust. She saw that she stood at the foot of the ruined temple. She must have been pushed through an opening in the vines that covered it although she couldn’t see one. She turned to see who gripped her wrist, and the sight of him terrified her.

  Princess Leepak’s Pet Jaguar stood next to her, a tall young man wearing a simple white loincloth. Like Chaac’s daughter, yellow paint covered his skin, also dotted in black. Wide stripes of black crossed his face, making him look menacing. He growled at her, his tongue having been cut from his mouth years ago at the hands of an enemy army that he’d later escaped.

  He jerked his head toward a direction leading north and dragged her away from the city that had been her lifelong home.

  ###

  By the time the sun began to sink in the west and the surrounding hills cast long shadows across the jungle canopy, Kaypahl felt exhausted. Her foot caught on a gnarled tree root, causing her to stumble and fall onto her hands and knees. “I’m tired! I can’t take another step.”

  Pet Jaguar stopped, several steps ahead on the narrow path, and turned to look down at her.

  She’d heard stories of Pet Jaguar but hadn’t really believed he existed until now. After all, no one had ever seen him, not even when the royal family made a rare public appearance. Some said the king used him as a scout and that Pet Jaguar spent most of his days roaming the land and looking for signs that warriors from other cities might be on the attack. They said he was a prince from a distant city who had come to help the king. Kaypahl had heard a different rumor that Pet Jaguar pleasured the king’s wife because the king had little interest in women, which seemed to amount to little more than spiteful gossip. But she liked to believe the story that said Pet Jaguar was Princess Leepak’s closest friend and ally, possibly even her cousin, someone who would do anything she wished because of their loyalty to one another.