Chapter Four: STRANGERS

Chapter Four: STRANGERS

And so Malinali trudged through the forest and swamps to Pontochan, where Forearms sold her to the King and she moved into the palace – living in a palace again, but now as a slave and not a princess.

Malinali became very appreciative of Ciuacuatl’s lessons, for with her skills at sewing, cooking, and medicine, she was assigned to the household staff and not put out into the maize or cacao fields for manual drudgery.

Five winters passed. She became fluent in Maya, and learned how to do her work well and quietly, so as to be noticed as little as possible. She listened attentively, however, and began hearing talk of mysterious strangers who lived in gigantic war canoes. No one knew where they came from. Their skin was light and they had hair on their faces. Some wore metal on their bodies. Their canoes had carried them across the salt water from the south. They stopped at the mouth of the Pontochan River and talked to a group of Mayas but no one could understand what they were saying. They continued across the water to the north and were never seen again.

The palace hummed with talk of who these strange people could be, and soon it turned into an uproar. Various sub-chiefs appeared before the King and demanded to know why these strangers were allowed to land in Pontochan. “They should have been repulsed!” was the charge.

“But the strangers did us no harm,” the King protested. “Why should we have done harm to them?”

“Because we know warriors when we see them,” said a sub-chief. “These were men of war. They were dangerous and yet we did not fight them. Now all of our neighbors are laughing at us and calling the Pontochans cowards. Should they ever come back, we must attack, kill them, and rescue our honor.” All the other sub-chiefs loudly concurred.

“Very well,” concluded the King. “When they return we will be ready.”

But the strangers didn’t come back. The summer passed, then the winter. By springtime, Malinali and everyone else had forgotten about them. Then, one morning, the huge white cloths of the strangers’ giant canoes were spotted on the horizon.

By the time the giant canoes came into the mouth of the river, hundreds of Pontochan warriors lined the banks. The giant canoes continued up the river to a small island across from the Pontochan capital. Malinali came out of the palace with everyone else to see. She was stunned at the size of the strangers’ canoes. She heard one of the sub-chiefs say, “These are not the same men as were here before – but obviously they are the same kind of men, and we shall fight them anyway.”

The next morning, all the women and children were taken out of town and to the edge of the forest. Malinali managed to place herself where she could see the strangers on the island. Over a thousand Pontochan warriors were awaiting the 200 or so strangers as they rowed in small canoes across the river towards them. When they got close, one of them stood up and started talking to the warriors in a loud voice. The warriors responded with a volley of spears, stones from slings, and arrows, accompanied by derisive yells and blasts from conch shell horns.

Immediately afterwards, there came large bursts of fire and smoke from the giant canoes, and small bursts of fire from metal tubes the strangers were carrying. Suddenly the Pontochan warriors were falling down bleeding and wounded by the dozens. The strangers poured out of their small canoes, struggled through the mud and mangrove trees on the bank, and began cutting down the warriors with metal swords. Then from out of the forest to her right, Malinali saw another group of 100 strangers attack the warriors from the rear. “They must have prepared well for our attack,” Malinali noted grimly, as she saw the Pontochans caught in pincers and cut to pieces. The remaining warriors fled into the woods.

The strangers then marched into the town, past the two big temples and a number of adobe houses to the town square. In the middle was a large ceiba tree. The man who first stood up and spoke in the small canoe, which prompted the Pontochan attack, seemed to be their leader. He took out his sword and with powerful strokes cut three deep gashes in the bark of the tree, then said something to his men. They responded with cheers.

Malinali was fascinated. She felt little sympathy for her Pontochan masters, who after all, had instigated the battle. But now she was hustled away with the others. They all marched inland for some distance to a valley called Centla. All day long, Pontochan warriors from surrounding villages streamed into Centla. At night, the bonfires burned high as all the sub-chiefs rallied their men to annihilate these “white skins” who had come from nowhere.

By the next morning, 30,000 Pontochan warriors were formed into five divisions, all armed with bows and arrows, slings for throwing darts and stones, and charred-tipped wooden spears. They wore thick quilted cotton armor, had painted their bodies as colorfully and as menacingly as possible, and had proudly donned their feather headdresses. Their chiefs positioned them cleverly on a slope of cleared ground called the Plains of Centla. They outnumbered the strangers by 100 to 1.

Again, Malinali managed to secure a good vantage point to watch the spectacle. Surely, said those around her, the strangers were about to be destroyed.

When the strangers appeared, they did not hesitate. Immediately, the few hundred men facing 30,000 warriors… attacked! They ran straight into the center of the mass of warriors and began hand-to-hand fighting. “These are the bravest men I have ever seen,” Malinali thought. Then she saw a detachment of strangers struggling to pull these large metal tubes on round rolling circles across the swampy mud of the field. As a swarm of warriors sent a cloud of arrows and darts at them and wounding several, the tubes flashed fire and the swarm was swatted away.

But thousands came after them, yelling cries of vengeance. After almost an hour of incredibly fierce fighting on both sides, the warriors were finally pushing the strangers back into the swamps. Then Malinali heard something like thunder.

Another group of strangers had made its way around Centla and was attacking the warriors from behind. Malinali screamed in terror as did everyone with her. For this group of strangers weren’t men – they had transformed themselves into huge godlike animals with four legs and two arms, racing faster than any man could run, crushing warriors underneath them and slashing with swords from above.

All the others around her ran away into the trees, but Malinali was transfixed. She watched as, with wild shrieks of utter terror, the warriors broke and fled – leaving thousands of their fellows dead on the Plains of Centla.

Malinali found the King and his retinue where they had retreated to a nearby village. Nobody could say anything. Their minds had gone blank with awe and fear. No one slept well that night, but the next morning, two sub-chiefs appeared whom the King thought had been killed. Instead they had been captured by the strangers – and were bringing a message.

“There is one among them who speaks our language,” they said. “Through him, their chief says that this battle was our fault and we must blame ourselves for all of our dead. He says that he will do us no further harm if we remain peaceful. To show we intend to be peaceful, he orders us to bring food and presents at once.”

Thus forty sub-chiefs, dressed in their finest cotton robes and caparisoned with jeweled feathers, appeared at the strangers’ camp in the town square, accompanied by several dozen slaves bearing turkeys, fish, maize, and honey. Malinali was among them.

On July 29, 2005, we initiated the serialization of a novel I am writing entitled The Jade Steps.

The Jade Steps has a two-fold purpose. The first is to tell Malinali’s story, as fascinating as it is unknown. The second is to bring peace to the civil war raging in the soul of Mexico. I hope you all enjoy it. — JW