Starfields Read Online Free Page A

looking within.
    The priests paint his skin with pigment as blue as the winter sky. They lead him to a blue-painted stone, where they lay him face-up.
    The victim is grasped by his arms and legs. His mouth opens in a wide circle, but I hear no scream. He squeezes his eyes shut. Against the merciless eye of K’in. Against the sight of the flint knife.
    The priest wearing the largest headdress lifts that knife high into the air.
    In spite of my drowsiness, I sit up and stare into the world behind my eyelids.
    The high priest brings the knife down, dividing the victim’s chest. The man’s mouth closes, and his eyes open. My breath leaves me.
    The priest reaches inside to bring out the still-beating heart. He holds it high to a roaring crowd. He drinks the blood, hot red liquid oozing down his chin and onto the feathers he wears.
    I wake, clutching my own heart and crying out,
“Why? Why, Mauruch?”
    Mauruch rouses himself from his own dreams. He stirs, then says, “The gods demand it. They gave us blood to live, and now we must give our own. Without such sacrifice, the sun won’t shine. The earth will shrivel. Without the blood of life, our people will perish.”

T hat night as Rosalba lay with Adelina breathing softly beside her, she thought again of Alicia’s prophesy. It
couldn’t
be true. The earth had always been the same way it was now, and always would be. As Mama had pointed out, beautiful flowers still bloomed. To ensure that sameness, men tended the corn, women wove.
    Rosalba’s own life was as it had always been. Inside the hut, the dampened fire glowed, the air smelled of sweet smoke. Mama’s bucket of shelled corn mixed with lime water simmered gently. Outside, the night rang with the cries of crickets and frogs.
    Tonight another sound wove itself in and out of the outdoor sounds. Rosalba leaned up on her elbow to listen. Were the crickets louder than usual? Or was it — she could hardly believe this — the roar of trucks on the highway? But that couldn’t be. The highway was too far away.
    The noise was like the buzz of a pesky mosquito. Why had she never noticed it before? Was it because in meeting Alicia, she was paying attention to new things?
    Rosalba pulled the blanket over her head, but couldn’t block out the sound. She’d always considered her village completely separate from the highway and its activity. The village seemed like a nest of tranquility. But it wasn’t really. She’d been fooling herself.
    Plugging her ears, Rosalba began to toss. Adelina cried out in her sleep and Rosalba hushed her, yet she too felt like crying out.
Be quiet!
she wanted to shout at those trucks.
    Rosalba turned over so quickly, she yanked the blanket off Adelina. She wished she’d never met Alicia, had never heard her story.
    The next day, Rosalba didn’t go to Alicia. She didn’t want to know more about the prophesy, didn’t want to see the dying frogs at Alicia’s camp.
    Instead she carried her backstrap loom outside. She tied one end to a tall tree, then unrolled it and slipped the other end around her waist. The loom stretched in front of her, the bright-red yarn of the warp shining against the green forest.
    Nearby, Adelina played at making tortillas with round leaves.
    When she’d been just a little older than her sister, Rosalba had learned to weave plain blue-and-white striped cloth. At first it had been like weaving spider webs, the threads had gotten so tangled, but with practice she’d gotten good at making napkins, tablecloths, and even simple
huipiles.
    Mama and Nana had taught her more than just weaving. She was learning to brocade, using a pointed stick to insert colored yarns into the woven fabric.
    She had planned a very traditional design for her
huipil
:
the squarish figure of the Earthlord and his squatting toad. A line running across the bodice would show the path of the sun through the heavens and the Underworld.
    The front and back of the
huipil
would be identical.
    She’d