and the fourth age had begun.
While the Hero Twins’ adventures wound down to their finale, the work of restoring the earth neared completion. Feathered Serpent and the Divine Mother stood together and gave each other counsel.
“The dawn approaches, and our labor has not reached an end. No humans exist to populate the sea-ringed world, to glory in the light of the coming sun.”
So they joined their minds in the midst of the gloaming, pondering how best to form a new race of women and men. During that long twilight, they discovered an answer to their need.
Feathered Serpent called out for aid, and four animals rushed to his side: Sly Coyote, lover of games. Stealthy Fox, sharp of hearing. Eloquent Parrot, clever and colorful. Crow, black and wild and oblivious.
“Stone and clay and wood were poor materials, our first creations flawed and weak. New humans we shall craft from richer stuff. Loyal birds, fly south in search of maize, staple of life, gift of the Divine Mother. Coyote and Fox, find me a spring, sulfur-rich and warm, bubbling from below.”
So Parrot and Crow spread their wings and took to the sun-bright skies. After many days of searching far and wide, they spied a tor, crested with wild corn, cloven by some mighty force. This was Rivenrock, the place where the maize god had emerged from the Underworld. Hungry, Crow landed and devoured the blue kernels and the red. Parrot winged her way back to the Feathered Serpent to report their rich discovery.
Coyote and Fox had slunk through jungles, glens and mountain meadows, hunting for the perfect fount. After a time they found a brackish pool fed from nether streams not far from the craggy hill and its crown of hearty maize. Naming the water Bitterflow, Coyote stopped to drink and bathe while Fox hurried to inform the Divine Mother.
The animals guided the gods to Rivenrock and Bitterflow, where they delighted in the abundance of rich foods, not only yellow and white corn, but also cacao and papaxtli, zapote and jocote—every vital, edible plant.
The Divine Mother took the white and yellow corn and ground it down nine times in her metate. Feathered Serpent fetched water from Bitterflow, sprinkled it with lime, rinsed the hands of the goddess, and used the liquid to form a paste which he kneaded and worked, molded and modeled, making arms and legs for the first man and woman, giving them frame and shape and expression as dawn lightened the sky. The man they named Tata, his wife Nene, and they bade them repopulate the sea-ringed world.
A new sun was needed, but the gods wanted to avoid the disputes of the past. After a time they looked to Chalchiuhtlicue, she of the jade-green skirt of living water, new wife of Tlaloc and mother to Tecciztecatl, handsome young god of shell and stone. Powerful enough to sustain the world yet sufficiently loving and gentle to care for her charges, Chalchiuhtlicue seemed an ideal candidate.
Hurricane agreed immediately, seeing her selection as a way to further avenge himself on Tlaloc, who would be separated from his love. Feathered Serpent approved for nobler reasons. In the end even her husband and son, filled with pride at her fate, joined their votes to the unanimous acclamation.
So the goddess was transfigured and began her daily track across the heavens. Tata and Nene had many children, and those had many more. The earth began to fill up with human beings whose praise and sacrifice sustained the sun and pleased the gods.
Twelve calendar cycles passed in this way, idyllic and serene.
Then the heavens began to fill with water.
It is not clear precisely why or how, but some say that Chalchiuhtlicue wept for fifty-two years, her tears accumulating in the sky until it bowed with the weight of her sadness. The source of that weeping will be forever a mystery, though circumstances suggest that Hurricane was somehow responsible. He was, at least, the only god aware of the danger.
“Tata and Nene,” he said, descending from his black heaven to greet the ancient parents of the human race. “Cease your foolish labor. A deluge is coming. Fell a cypress tree and hollow it out. Fill it full of ripened corn. When the skies begin to fall, get inside. After you have consumed the last of the corn, the waters will have receded. Then will I instruct you further. Do not leave your ship or eat anything else until you have heard my commands.”
The couple prepared their log. Then it began to rain in spectacular torrents that seemed to efface the very air. The man and woman quickly entered the cypress and sealed themselves within.
Then the firmament shuddered, cracked, and ripped wide open. The heavens fell, flooding the sea-ringed world till it seemed a part of the cosmic sea, obliterated from existence entirely. Most of humanity drowned, but Feathered Serpent, rushing into the breach, attempting to staunch the tide, transformed a small number of survivors into merfolk, doughty sirens and tritons who dove deep to avoid the pounding storm. Their descendants, it is said, live there still, harrowing sailors and fishermen alike.
So the fourth sun was snuffed by a deluge in the year 1-House, on the day 4-Water. It was the 676th year since Chalchiuhtlicue had begun to shine, the end of the thirteenth calendar cycle.
Feathered Serpent called upon his brother. “The heavens must be lifted back into place, supported again by the World Trees.”
Hurricane agreed. His sons Blue and Red Tezcatlipoca joined them, and together the four knelt at the edges of the sea-ringed world and took the multi-tiered sky upon their backs, heaving up against the void to restore order to the cosmos. To prevent another celestial collapse, the brothers created four Bacabs or sky bearers, powerful beings who would protect the World Trees and shoulder the heavens if the need arose.
With heaven settled back in place, the brothers looked up into the massive fracture the water had caused in the sky. Together they walked into it, sealing the wound as best they could with stars and magic, but a black scar remained, limned with ghostly light. Men, who grasped it was a road of sorts to places beyond their ken, would later call it the Milky Way.
It was dark for twenty-five years. The waters receded little by little until the mountains began to appear again. The ageless Tata and Nene finished the last of their corn, and their log came to rest on a mountain peak. They emerged onto the starlit summit and saw fish scales glittering in the water. Avidly hungry, they caught a few fish and set to drilling fire from the cypress log in order to cook a meal.
The lord and lady of the stars, Citlalatonac and Citlalicue, first noticed the curling wisps of smoke. “Gods, who has started a fire before the appointed time? Who sends cypress ash wafting into heaven?”
Hurricane spun from his black realm to confront the human couple.
“What are you doing? Did I not tell you to wait for my instructions? What possessed you to start a fire now of all times?”
Furious, he lopped off their heads. But death was not punishment enough. With a snarl, he reattached their heads above their buttocks and blazed dark energy at them until they transformed into dogs, their capacity for speech forever gone.
Such was the end of the last two humans of the Fourth Age.
The Fifth Age and the Reign of Demigods
