The First Genesis Page 8

  ‘It may come to that,’ she said. ‘If we are weak they will kill us all. I saw it in their eyes. But, if we are strong and can resist, after some deaths, reason may prevail. They could not sustain such killing.’

  ‘I will not leave you,’ he said. ‘I may be old but I will fight.’

  Chapter 18

  K’ul Kelem arranged her people on high ground and waited. Soon the jungle disgorged men and women. K’ul Kelem’s heart sank. Such a hostile horde had never before existed.

  The invaders swaggered in a rag-tag line, no strategy except superior numbers. The man who had insulted K’ul Kelem led them on. He called to his people, he yelled encouragement that their task would be easy, he hurled insults towards K’ul Kelem and her people.

  Even at that final moment she thought of fleeing, leaving before the battle. But it was too late, if they ran they would be overtaken and killed like injured prey. The invaders began climbing the slope. She hesitated. Lakam Pakal saw her reticence. In a flash of insight he understood that she could not be the one to begin the greatest and first battle of people.

  Lakam Pakal began human warfare. He yelled a command to throw spears at the enemy as they climbed towards them. After a short hesitation a few did and hit their marks. Some attackers fell to the ground. The line of approaching people halted as a dozen men lay on the ground, roaring their pain from spear wounds.

  The attackers had assumed a fight where there would be equal injuries, even deaths, but by their superior numbers they would prevail. They hesitated. They could all be killed before being close enough to fight. A few threw their spears up the hill in retaliation but had no effect.

  The leader understood their problem. They needed to get close to their enemy quickly, before more spears could be thrown. He yelled encouragement and ran up the hill. Most of the others followed his example.

  The waiting people hesitated and no more weapons were thrown until Lakam Pakal yelled at them to again throw spears. A few more of the ascending army fell before they were upon K’ul Kelem and her people.

  K’ul Kelem understood hand-to-hand combat. It was like evading an attacking predator. She had done that often. She threw herself into the climbing army, stabbing with the point of her spear and slashing with her stone axe and with her knife. Her people followed her example.

  The fighting was ugly and vicious. Ungainly wrestling matches were common. In close, with so many people it was difficult to strike with weapons. However, by the weight of numbers the opposing force gained supremacy. People in one-to-one combat found themselves slashed and stabbed at their back. Soon the sound of groans from injured people, no longer able or willing to fight was louder than the sounds of confidence building yells and the clash of stone and wood weapons.

  K’ul Kelem fought well. She had not engaged in wrestling her adversaries, she understood that fighting at close quarters was pointless, like wrestling a long-tooth cat would be fatal. She kept her distance and fought with weapons. She was soon surrounded by a sea of groaning men she had injured.

  There came a lull in the fighting, as if both sides stopped to assess progress. K‘ul Kelem had alone accounted for more than a few attackers. The leader of the invaders decided to kill her and then finish off the rest of her people.

  Hachakyum appeared out of the jungle above the battle ground and watched the melee. The intruders were frightened by his unusual appearance, his white tunic that covered him from his neck, to his elbows and down to his ankles. But he carried no weapons.

  A group of men ran towards K’ul Kelem, intending to overwhelm and kill her.

  Hachakyum walked slowly down the hill, through the fallen men and women and around continuing skirmishes.

  He reached the place where K’ul Kelem was fighting the group of men.

  ‘Leave this nonsense,’ Hachakyum said to her. She glanced at him as she fought off her many attackers. Clubs and knives were also aimed at Hachakyum but they all missed their mark. He ignored the attacks.

  ‘Leave these people to argue and fight each other,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to be your way as well.’

  She glanced at him again as she fended off blows and struck her own.

  ‘You said I’m their ruler,’ she said, her voice gasped with the effort of fighting. ‘Well, I’m ruling.’

  She slashed a man with her stone axe, who fell down dead at her feet. She stepped back out of the way of his body as other attacks were renewed.

  ‘A show of strength seems to be all they understand,’ she said. A stone axe slashed her arm and her blood flowed freely. She killed the man who had injured her.

  ‘You are the ruler of everything, K’ul Kelem,’ Hachakyum said. He spoke to her softly as if they were alone. ‘Not just your own people. You also rule these people you’re killing.’

  She stopped fighting, for a second, and glared at him.

  ‘You do not need to fight to show strength,’ he said.

  ‘If you know a better way,’ she said as she resumed her efforts. ‘Then, please, tell me. I don’t want to fight these people. I assure you.’

  More men joined in the battle focussed on K’ul Kelem. The few of her own people that remained uninjured joined in and attacked her attackers from behind. For a short time this relieved the pressure of battle as some of her assailants turned away.

  Hachakyum watched on for a moment. ‘There are other ways,’ he said softly.

  Her people who had come to her assistance were disabled and the focus of the battle was, again, on K’ul Kelem.

  ‘They don’t work,’ she yelled angrily as the noise of shouting around her grew as the confidence of her attackers increased. It was only a matter of a short time, they believed, before she would be killed and the battle won.

  ‘I’ve tried to reason with them,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It quite simply,’ she paused and two blows fell onto two of her assailants as she punctuated the end of her sentence with the deaths of two men, ‘doesn’t, work.’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t work,’ Hachakyum said, with some annoyance. ‘Nothing works all the time, you have to keep trying.’

  ‘I am working at it,’ she said with difficulty. ‘And quite hard at the moment.’ She dodged a spear that had been recklessly thrown at her. The spear thrower had hoped to kill her without exposing himself to danger but had, instead injured one of his fellow men. A deep blow struck her arm and another wound opened above the previous one. She yelled in pain as she grabbed at her injury but then quickly resumed fighting as blows began to rain down on her.

  She dismissed Hachakyum. ‘Let’s talk about this later, shall we?’

  Hachakyum watched her fight for a few seconds before he turned his back and began to climb the slope. He turned sharply when he heard K’ul Kelem cry in genuine agony.

  A volley of spears had been thrown at her. Men outside the circle of battle had realised the usefulness of the prior attempt. One had struck her in the chest and had embedded itself deeply. She clutched at it with one hand, to pull it out. As she did that, a man behind her stabbed his spear into her back. She fell to her knees with the pain. She stabbed and slashed at the legs around her as she stood again.

  She clubbed to death the man who had stabbed her but the spear protruding from her back provided a hand-hold and a man grabbed it and held on. She swung her body, lifting the man off his feet. He let go of the spear and fell to the ground.

  She stood over the fallen, petrified man with such anger and hatred in her eyes that the man wailed as if he had already been injured to death. He covered his head with his arms as if that would ward off the blow to come. K’ul Kelem raised her club to kill the man as another spear was lodged in her back.

  The world echoed with Hachakyum’s angry shout.

  ‘Enough!’

  He raised his arm and the sun flickered as if it turned off and on again in quick succession.

  Chapter 19

  The battlefield was quiet. It was deserted. There were no assailants. There were no de
fenders. There were no discarded weapons. There were no injured people. The dead had vanished. There were none of K’ul Kelem’s people. Lakam Pakal no longer existed, had never existed. K’ul Kelem remained in the position to attack her fallen then vanished assailant but she was alone.

  The world was silent.

  She looked to Hachakyum, as the pain in her body reduced. She was made whole, there were no embedded spears and her cuts had vanished.

  ‘What just happened?’ she asked. Her voice easily carried to him in the eery silence after the din of battle.

  ‘I’d had enough,’ he said in an emotionless voice.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked. She scanned the cleared area of battle, she turned around as she searched.

  ‘They never existed,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she asked. Her face contracted in disbelief.

  ‘None of these men and women ever existed,’ he said and swept his arm over the vacant land as if it still contained the remnants of battle. ‘There were never born. They are not mourned. They are not remembered. They never existed,’ he repeated.

  ‘Why?’ She was shocked.

  ‘It’s not difficult, not for those of us with skill. I used a substantial part of the sun’s output, just for a moment.’

  Hachakyum resumed walking up the slope as if her query had been satisfied and that she would follow him.

  She did not move, she watched him walk away. She had never seen the full power of Hachakyum before and she was unable to understand what he had done. The fact was too monstrous.

  ‘I asked why, not how,’ she called to him.

  He turned to look at her.

  ‘They’re all gone?’ she asked plaintively.

  He came back and stood before her. He took one of her hands, gently holding it by the ends of her fingers.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She was unsure that she understood the extent of his power.

  ‘Everyone?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. All people. Just the people,’ he said.

  Tears formed in her eyes. ‘We’re alone?’ she asked.

  ‘Not on the whole planet, but in this land we are the only ones. People will return. Eventually.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked again. Her voice was quiet.

  He looked down at the hand he held. She asked again, softly, ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Remember when we were returning from the village to the north and you asked what I was dependant on? You were not ready then. Perhaps you are now,’ he said.

  He placed her hand against his chest. She gasped. She lost the sensation of having a body. She was inside his mind but was wrapped and protected as if buffered from an attack that would overwhelm her if she felt its full fury. She knew what he knew. She saw his life. She knew his race. She saw an elder brother. She felt Hachakyum’s anger, fear and respect for him. She saw images from the beginning of her own world, vast destruction on a planetary scale. She felt Hachakyum's sadness and his brother’s dissatisfaction. She experienced Hachakyum’s rage and frustration. She felt his regret, and his affinity, his love for the place in the world where he had caused catastrophe. Her birthplace.

  There were other feelings that were foreign to her. Feelings she had never experienced and could not name. One strong emotion was a unique mixture of admiration, respect, subservience, protection, authority, attraction and love. It was overpowering, it consumed her as she knew he must also be consumed by it’s intensity. She could not sustain an emotion of such strength. She knew it would kill her. Her body jerked and her hand pulled away from him. She fell to the ground, like she had lost the use of her legs after lying in sickness for a week. That overwhelming, powerful emotion within him was accompanied by her own, focussed image. She raised her head to look at him. Tears streamed from her eyes. She wondered how anyone, even a god, could appear composed containing such a feeling. She put her head in her hands and began to cry. She was overwhelmed. She could never return his love for her, which was more than love.

  No human could.”

  ‘That completes the story of the second creation,’ Pep’Em Ha said to her audience. She looked from one eager face to another and knew she had told the stories well. She was glad to have provided enjoyment. Jim beamed his pride at her as if he had discovered she had a world-class, hidden talent.

  ‘All the inhabitants of the Americas were erased by the anger of Hachakyum,’ she said quietly, punctuating the end of her storytelling.

  A steady stream of insects attacked the light from the kerosene lamp, the parched bodies of previous assailants piled on the table near the light.

  ‘My people have not kept records of the passing of time, not since the Spanish came,’ she added, ‘but the ancient story tellers tell that Hachakyum and K’ul Kelem lived alone in this land, the land of my ancestors, while the seasons repeated more than twenty thousand times.’ She carried on quickly, worried at the sceptical looks of the others. ‘My ancestors had been told, by Hachakyum himself, and as my father told me,’ she looked for reassurance from her father who gave none, ‘that it was more than fifteen thousand years ago, that people again moved into this land.’ She stopped, hesitant but wanting to clarify what she had said. When she used her own words she became the teenager she was, the free-flowing narration of an ancient story was replaced with staccato and jumbled phrases. ‘That means these stories were from thirty-five thousand years ago. Of course, that’s not exact,’ she smiled diffidently knowing she was not believed. ‘So, people returned fifteen thousand years or so before Hachakyum told my ancestors but we don’t know when that was. That must have been a few thousand years ago, or more. I don’t know. I’m not sure.’ She stopped, leaving her audience more confused.

  She looked down at the table and then at her father.

  ‘Should I tell the stories of the third creation?’ she asked him. She wondered if that was enough storytelling. It was the middle of the night, she had chanted for hours and she was tired but was willing to continue if asked.

  Yax K’in looked to Arthur to allow him to decide but it was Jim who answered.

  ‘That’d be awesome,’ Jim exclaimed.

  Part 3

  Chapter 1

  “For twenty thousand years, Hachakyum and K’ul Kelem lived alone on the lands near this place, where the KulWinik now live,” Pep’Em Ha resumed her storytelling. Her voice had again become cadence rich and confident.

  “At times there was jungle here, at other times it became colder, with less rain and the trees thinned and there were grasses and smaller plants. K’ul Kelem watched the jungle recede and return, she remembered jungle trees as seedlings that grew to giants, then fell at the end of their lives and returned to nothing. She remained untouched by the passing of time.

  K’ul Kelem and Hachakyum often journeyed over this land. He showed her the erupting volcanoes, he showed her the wildness of the Pacific Ocean in full storm, he showed her the greater storms that came from the Caribbean and he showed her the beauty of the Yucatan when the weather was placid. He took her to the far north and they stood on the shore. He showed her the place of the catastrophe of his making. He told how his hasty action had, eventually, led to the world of people, and then her life.

  Hachakyum took her hand as the quiet ocean lapped at his feet. He imagined how it must have been to stand in that place millions of years before. He told her of his disappointment with the people he had re-made, when he tried to replicate her example.

  ‘No-one is perfect,’ she laughed at his sadness. His rare, darker moods no longer affected her as they once had. She had learnt to resist them. ‘Not even me,’ she exclaimed playfully. ‘The world’s template.’ She hugged him, no longer wary of his power. She had felt his love.

  One day, they worked in the hot sun harvesting food from plants they had tended through a growing season. K’ul Kelem stopped her labour and watched Hachakyum as he dug in the earth and wrestled with the roots of a plant. It had suddenly surprised her that he did that and
she asked him why he bothered working with his hands and using his muscles.

  He stopped work.

  ‘Simply because you are able to do something extraordinary doesn’t mean you have to do it,’ he said. ‘I enjoy the results of labour. It’s simple, it requires patience and it requires rigour. And the results,’ he held up a tuber they would roast and eat, ‘are amazing. This,’ he held the root a little higher, ‘is no less wondrous than my re-making this world.’ He smiled and she laughed at his silliness. She resumed her work in the hot sun but after a few minutes looked up and saw that he was staring at her. She laughed again.

  ‘There is much work to do, old man,’ she said. ‘If we are to harvest these wondrous things.’

  He laughed and her heart filled with joy. She returned to her labour.

  He took another long look at the human woman he loved and returned to his own labours.

  Chapter 2

  K’ul Kelem was alone and hunting during what turned out to be the last day of their solitude. She still enjoyed the stealth and skill required to track, corner and kill difficult and dangerous prey. Hachakyum could provide for them but she preferred to supply their meat and use the bones and skin of her prey for useful items. She knew she could not be harmed to death, but still felt the thrill of the possibility of fatal failure. She did not know why that feeling remained but she thrived on that flush of adrenaline that flooded her body when a dangerous kill was close.

  She had tracked for most of a day a large, dangerous when cornered, herbivore. It’s hide would be used to cover her shelter and the meat would last her and Hachakyum for weeks. It was dangerous when aroused, it’s tusks could cause serious injury, as she knew from the time she had hunted the same species when she had first met Hachakyum. She stopped suddenly at that thought. It was so many years ago. The world had changed and re-changed. In her reverie she lost focus on her prey. The animal saw her and thinking it was cornered, it attacked. K’ul Kelem was in danger, she would have to be quick and skilful. She smiled with the rush of adrenaline, as the large animal, enraged with fear, thundered towards her. She would have one instinctive opportunity to make the kill.