Starfields by Carolyn Marsden Read Free Book Online

her.
    “Where were you?” Sylvia asked when Rosalba had settled herself.
    Rosalba glanced at Mama.
    Mama gave a slight nod.
    Rosalba plunged forward: “I was seeing my new friend. She’s a
ladina.
”
    Sylvia wrapped her shawl more tightly around her, staring at Rosalba with her large black eyes.
    Rosalba bit her lip. Now Sylvia was unhappy. Another girl had come between them.
    Sylvia stirred the embers with a stick of green wood, asking, “What do you do together?”
    Rosalba recalled how she and Sylvia had once played house, taking turns being the papa, making Anselmo be the baby. They’d cooked mud stews. One spring when Rosalba had broken her ankle, Sylvia had sat with her, telling stories. Nowadays they liked doing each other’s hair, winding bright ribbons into the braids.
    “We looked at frogs in boxes. Many many frogs,” she finally answered. “They’re sick. A fungus is killing them. . . .”
    The embers popped and sparks flew.
    “Dying frogs means the world is going to end,” Rosalba persisted.
    Sylvia rolled her eyes.

The man-beasts advance into our jungles, searching out our people in their small huts.
    Believing in the return of the Blond God, our people bow down in gratitude and submission. They do not fight these hairy men, but make offerings. When they make offerings of gold, the men clench their fists tight around the yellow metal dug from our land.
    But it’s more than gold they seek. They want our people to make offerings to their god. And only to their god. The man-beasts defame our gods, smashing the stelae of our temples. They burn the sacred texts, the codices that the people, even living so simply in the jungle, have still guarded. Into the heavens the truth of our gods rise as smoke.
    They carry their own god on two crossed sticks. He sheds blood from his palms, feet, chest, and the crown of his head. The hairy ones proclaim him to be the only god. But how can one be god of creation and of destruction? Of the moon and the sun? Both god of life and death?
    This leader does not proclaim himself to be Kukulkan. Perhaps he is not. The Green Morning Star, after all, still hangs in the sky.
    When the slaying of our people begins, the Golden One kills the most. He bears down on innocent women and children until the rivers run red with their blood. How could he be the long-proclaimed Feathered Serpent?

A s Rosalba completed the last row of the front of her
huipil,
she lifted her hands in triumph.
    “Congratulations,” said Nana. “You’re halfway finished.”
    “It’s pretty, Rosie,” said Adelina, lightly touching the threads.
    Mama brought out four bright red
refrescos,
saying, “I’ve kept these to celebrate this moment. Congratulations, Rosita.”
    Rosalba smiled at the way Mama had called her “Little Rose.”
    “Ooh, strawberry!” Adelina exclaimed when Nana handed her a bottle with the cap twisted off.
    Ever since she’d begun the
huipil,
Rosalba had looked forward to this day. Now, sipping the bubbly drink, surveying her work, she felt proud of the way she’d continued the ancestral tradition, connecting herself to something larger.
    Maybe Alicia was wrong in thinking that weaving couldn’t be her one big thing. Alicia didn’t know what it meant to be a Mayan. Rosalba lightly touched the bright threads stretched across the loom. If she kept weaving, all would be well.
    In the early afternoon, Rosalba called through the door of Sylvia’s hut: “Would you like to go with me to the spring?”
    The spring was located uphill, on the way to the cave of the Earthlord.
    For a moment, Sylvia made no response. At last she said, “Well, yes. We need water.”
    Rosalba and Sylvia walked up the mountain, empty clay jars on their heads. The sky was still as yellow as ripe corn. The smoke made Rosalba long for the upcoming rains.
    Now that the fires had died down, the men had gone to the cornfields with gourds filled with seed. Across the slopes, Rosalba could see the tiny