Starfields by Carolyn Marsden Page A

Rosalba had relived the dream. Who was this boy? What did his coming to her mean?
    Hearing the fluttering and squawking of chickens, Rosalba turned to see Alicia entering the patio. She stood with her light hair shining, wearing a pale-blue dress.
    “Alicia! How did you find the way here?”
    “I followed the trail. I asked people.”
    Rosalba glanced toward the path that led from the cornfields. But it was too early for Papa to come down and find Alicia here. Mama and Nana were again tending the small cornfield near the orchard.
    Adelina peeked around the door of the hut, then darted back inside.
    “Look what I’ve made.” Alicia unrolled a big piece of paper. The poster had a picture of a frog lying on its back. “This says,” Alicia said, pointing to each word, “don’t build roads.”
    Rosalba looked away, a blush of shame rising into her cheeks.
    Alicia rolled up the poster, saying, “Don’t worry. Someday you’ll learn to read. It’s not hard. In any case, the designs you weave are like a language. Instead of a pen, you use thread.”
    Rosalba smiled. It was true that each design told a story. Stories that she, not Alicia, could write. Stories that she, not Alicia, could read.
    “You could weave a kind of poster.” Alicia tapped her rolled-up paper. “You can weave designs that say what my words say. That way when you wear the
huipil,
everyone will get the message.”
    What Alicia said was wrong. It wouldn’t be right to weave a
huipil
that said anything different from what
huipiles
always said:
This is the way the universe is ordered.
    “Last night I had a dream,” Rosalba said, changing the subject. “A boy came to me. I think he was a shaman. I think he was from the old times.”
    Alicia’s eyes grew wide. “From the time of the pyramids?”
    Rosalba glanced at Alicia, then at the chickens hunting for bugs in the damp soil. Had the boy really come to her from such a far-off time?
    Alicia fished in her pocket, then held out two tiny blue eggs. They matched her dress. “I found these near a tree those men had just cut. They’ll never hatch now.”
    Normally, Rosalba would have thought of the eggs as food. She’d have been glad to find them on the ground. But now she saw the delicate ovals through Alicia’s eyes.
    “We have to hurry,” Alicia said. “The road is getting closer.”
    Rosalba stared at the white cylinder of Alicia’s rolled-up poster. “But what can
I
do?” she asked.
    Alicia shrugged. “Listen to your dreams?”

I enter the House of Cold. Thick with hail, it freezes my bones.
    “Drink this, Xunko,” says Mauruch.
    I push the gourd away.
    He shoves it close again. “This is not a potion, Xunko. This is a healing tonic. You have lain too long. Your skin is cold to the touch. Come into your power. See the world that is now yours.”
    But I do not want to see. The outer world is only my Second World. I cannot go there yet. The very dance of the firelight stirs what needs to be quiet in me.
    “Bandage my eyes again, Mauruch!” I plead.
    But he refuses.
    When I wrap my eyes myself with strips of cloth, he tears the strips off. “Open your eyes, Xunko! Your apprenticeship is at an end.”
    I keep my eyes shut, defying my master. I guard my darkness.
    I come to the gods bearing quetzal feathers. I come to them bearing tribute. “O Quetzal Serpent! Show me what I must do!”
    Though I have partaken of no potion, I am swept far away from this cave, from this earth. I hang in curtains of blackness.
    Like the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, I meet Bloody Teeth, Skull Staff, Jaundice Demon, and Flying Scab. But I hold no conversations with those demons. It is not they who hold my answer.
    “O Heart of Heaven!” I implore.
    The path I walk upon is dim, but wide. A pathway through the reaches of time. When I meet 13.0.0.0.0, I find myself at a juncture. One way leads to oblivion, a great abyss where not even stars can live. Gone from that place are even the bloodletters and