Francisco turns to the rising sun. Flames of crimson fan across the eastern sky—the breast of the quetzal. He has not seen a quetzal in at least eight Mayan years, yet he believes they still exist. He dares not imitate the bird in its very presence.     

 

     The quetzal ascends. Its rounded, red shape swells as it soars over the rim of Mundo Quilaja. It rises higher, and its tail—three times as long as its body—feathers into cirrus. At the sky’s apex, rosy plumes dissolve into daylight blue. Could this rare vision be a sign that Black Butterfly will return to avenge his people? Black Butterfly’s spirit familiar was the quetzal. Francisco Vico looks away. Black Butterfly died fighting against the Spanish conquistadores centuries ago. Impossible that he would return. Still, such a quetzal as this on 2 Aq’ab’al is unsettling.     

 

     A rooster’s cry splits the air with a second warning.

 

     Francisco has yet to fill the morning with his quetzal call.

 

     At the foot of Paklom the man’s dark form, still striding toward the town center, cradles something shrouded in black. Firewood from the mountain brush? Within moments, the man becomes Momostenango’s priest. His battered Panama hat casts a mask of shadow over his face. His footsteps—relentless—grate against the cobbles and street gravel.

 

     Father Sauvage’s sleeve is ripped, his cheek scratched and bloody. Whatever he carries has an odd geometry, as if someone shaped wings from pine branches and draped them in black, creating a disjointed butterfly—dark, rigid, strangely still. The priest approaches the cathedral. A single toe dangles below the edge of the cloth; a clump of black hair nestles in the crook of his elbow. Father Sauvage passes. Francisco measures the heaviness of the priest’s breath against the weight of his own.

 

     The priest ascends steep stairs to the church door. He turns toward the street, and like an early Mayan priest offering a sacrifice at a stone altar atop a pyramid, he lifts the black bundle.     

 

     Francisco joins the gathering at the foot of the steps—women on their way to the market to sell woven blankets or copal incense, men to their tiny hillside milpas to slash and burn withered crops. All wait in silence while Father Sauvage lays the bundle on the top step and lowers the head. The black jacket over the figure slides to one side, and an elbow sticks up awkwardly, bent like a stalk a farmer turns down after harvesting corn. One knee remains crooked, one leg stiffly prone. The priest brushes hair back from the face, caresses the broad forehead, now a chalky brown. His fingers bless the prominent cheekbones, pass over the bridge of the nose to the dark indigo of the full Mayan lips. He loosens the jacket still wrapped around the torso, and the red that soaks the shirt over the chest flashes in the sunlight, angry as a bloody fist. Francisco draws in his breath. In ancient times, onlookers would have witnessed their priest wrench out the victim’s heart and hold it high, blood streaming down his arms, the promise of a fertile harvest.     

 

     Father Sauvage rises and steps back, towers above the crowd’s upturned faces. Shadow from the cross on top of the church falls across his face, settles over his heart. Alone, Francisco Vico climbs the stairs, step by step into the deeper shadow of one of the church’s towers. He halts on the stair below the child’s body. There, the two men’s eyes meet, over the child’s blood, before the cock’s third crow.