earth, making it explode out of vast volcanoes and flow hungrily over the surface of the world.
At that moment, 312 years after being expelled from creation by his brother, Feathered Serpent returned, glowing with renewed power, determined to save what he could. Struggling against Hurricane and Tlaloc both, he subdued them and forced them to their respective spheres before they could wreak the utter devastation of the world.
The small bands of survivors now begged Feathered Serpent to have mercy on them. The creator god transformed these last people, giving them wings and pulling quills from his own flesh to cover them. Now gifted with flight, his brother’s creations rose above the lava sear, borne aloft by drafts of heated wind.
Feathered Serpent knew that remaking this burning world would task the very limits of the gods’ abilities. He hoped that he could avoid the mistakes and envies of the past as he sought to craft humans who could be his partners in preserving the order of the cosmos. But the winged survivors of this destruction he allowed to make their homes in the high crags and cliffs of the new world as long as they kept to themselves.
For their age, the third, had ended in conflagration after only six calendar cycles, on the day 4-Rain of the year 1-Flint.
The Fourth Age and the Hero Twins
Follow me now into the dim beginnings of the Fourth Age. The cataclysm is over, the conflagration has snuffed itself to ash, and the sea-ringed world is dark but for the light of the stars and a faint smear of perpetual dawn on the eastern horizon.
It is an epoch of gods, great and small, who strive to restore the shattered earth.
Some bend their knee to the cosmic order, to the competing wills of Feathered Serpent and Hurricane, carrying out their appointed tasks without a word of complaint.
Others choose to forge a different path.
A few become heroes.
Two in particular survive down the years in some form or another throughout southern Mexico: bright paint in crumbling friezes, curling lines on rotting pages, stone statues in which their young profiles are captured forever, rebellious and brave.
Two brothers. Twins.
They are depicted again and again with distinctive headbands, one dark, the other sewn from a jaguar’s pelt. We often find them with their father, a god of maize.
The millennia have effaced their names from most Mayan tongues. Archeologists, crafting a code to categorize forgotten deities, call the father God E. His sons are God CH and God S.
But in the highlands of Guatemala, despite all odds, the K’iche’ Maya preserved these ancestral stories, even after the glyphs of mighty empires had fallen into disuse. With letters learned from Spanish priests, they transcribed those ancient words in their native tongue.
The Popol Vuh, they called this sacred scripture. The Book of the People.
Come closer, friends. Let me open that tome, let me find the right page, and I will tell you of the wondrous deeds of the Hero Twins: Xbalanque and Hunahpu, as the K’iche’ name them, playful and courageous young men who mocked death itself.
Then let us weave strands of Aztec lore into this epic to explore the short but unforgettable age that ended—as peoples across the globe affirm—with the greatest flood our world has ever seen.
The Tragedy of Their Fathers
During the long night before the dawn of the fourth sun, two brothers were born, minor gods of the milpas, those tangled fields of corn and bean and squash. They were named One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, for the day signs of their respective births. They lived with their mother, Ixmukane, a maize goddess.
In time One Hunahpu married Lady Egret, and she bore him two sons: One Monkey and One Artisan. The small family continued to live with One Hunahpu’s mother and brother in the gloom of a world with no sun.
Other gods hailed One and Seven Hunahpu as knowledgeable and wise, the foremost seers on the earth. They taught young One Monkey and One Artisan many skills, and in time the boys became like their father and uncle: singers, musicians, poets, sculptors, and workers of jade and metal.
Though the brothers possessed a singular, innate goodness, they tended to shirk their responsibilities in order to roll dice and play ball. Every day the boys played with their father and uncle, two against two in the ball court. As each game began, a falcon would descend to watch them, sent by Hurricane and his sons. The falcon could fly in an instant from the sea-ringed world to Hurricane’s abode in the sixth heaven, or just as well descend to the Land of the Dead to do his master’s bidding there.
Lady Egret left the earth, returning to the Divine Mother, but the four ballplayers remained behind. Their ball court was located at Great Hollow, on the road to the Underworld, the dark land that men would one day call Xibalba, Realm of Fright. The King and Queen of Death could not help but hear them.
Disturbed by the riotous sounds, the god and goddess called together their council, all the dark lords in that place of fear, tasked with bringing death to humans in a variety of savage ways.
“Who are these middling fools that shake the earth with their running and that disturb the stillness of the grave with their shouts?” demanded the King of Death. “They show no proper fear and run roughshod over the natural order. We should bring them here to play ball. Since they have no respect for us, we shall beat them at their favorite game and then destroy them.”
The dark lords all agreed with their sovereign, adding that upon winning they could seize the brothers’ gear, the pads, yokes and plumed helmets that made up their kits.
The task of summoning One and Seven Hunahpu was given to the Royal Guard, four fearsome owls from the very throne room of the Land of the Dead. They flew from the Underworld in an instant, alighting in the stands above the ball court. The four players halted their game and approached the messengers.
“We have been sent by the Lords of the Underworld,” announced Strafer, chief among them. “Harken unto the words of the King and Queen of Death: ‘You must come. Do us the pleasure of playing ball in our dark courts. Your skill amazes us. Bring your gear, your yokes and pads and rubber ball.’”
“Is that what the gods of that fearful place truly said?” asked One Hunahpu.
“Yes. Now, come along. We shall accompany you.”
“Fine, but wait while we let our mother know. She’ll have to watch over my sons while we’re gone.”
One and Seven Hunahpu took the boys back home and explained the situation to Ixmukane, their mother.
“We’ve no choice but to go. These are messengers of the King of Death himself. But we’ll be back, we promise. Here, we’ll leave our ball behind as a token.” They hung the rubber sphere in the rafters. “Don’t worry, we’ll be kicking it around again very soon.”
One Hunahpu turned to his sons. “You two keep practicing your music, your art, your skill at games. Keep this house—and your grandmother’s heart—warm in our absence.”
Their mother began to weep at their words.
“We’re off on a journey,” they told her, “not to our deaths. Don’t be sad.”
Then the brothers left. Guided by the Royal Guard, they headed north toward the entrance to the Underworld. They descended through strange