Quetzalcoatl Goes to the Land of the Dead
As told by Aztec oral tradition (recorded by Bernardino de Sahagún and others)
Four worlds had been made and four worlds had ended. The First World had been the world of jaguars and was eaten by jaguars. The Second World was the world of wind and was blown apart. The Third World was the world of fire and burned. The Fourth World was the world of water and drowned. Each time the gods had to begin again.
Now they had begun the Fifth World. The sky was up. The earth was down. The sun was burning. There were no people. The gods had done all the work and there was no one to bring them offerings, no one to keep their names. The gods sat in council in their high place, Tamoanchan, and asked: who will get the bones of the people from the past worlds, so that we can make new people?
The bones of all the dead from the past worlds were in the underworld of Mictlan, kept by the lord of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli, and his lady, Mictlancihuatl. Mictlantecuhtli was a skeleton with eyes like sharp stars, who guarded the bones jealously.
The god Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, the wind, the bringer of knowledge, said: "I will go."
He took with him his twin Xolotl, who was small, ugly, and had the head of a dog. Together they descended into the nine layers of Mictlan.
They came at last before Mictlantecuhtli. Quetzalcoatl bowed and said: "Great lord, I have come to ask for the bones of the people of past worlds, so we can make people for the Fifth World."
Mictlantecuhtli laughed, a dry laugh like dry leaves moving. "I will give them to you. But first you must blow my conch shell trumpet, and you must walk four times around my throne."
He handed Quetzalcoatl a conch shell. The shell had no holes in it. It was solid. It could not be blown.
Quetzalcoatl held it up. He thought. He called the worms of the earth, who came up out of the dust, and the worms bored a small hole in the shell. He called the bees, who came in their dark cloud, and the bees flew into the shell, and made the shell sing with their humming. Quetzalcoatl held it up to his lips, and the shell roared like the wind across mountains.
Mictlantecuhtli was startled. He had not thought it could be done. He said: "Walk around my throne four times. Then take the bones." He turned away.
Then he changed his mind. He could not bear to lose the bones of his dead. He gave a quiet order to his servants to dig a deep pit in the path Quetzalcoatl would walk and to fill it with traps.
Quetzalcoatl gathered the bones from the great heap where they lay. He had picked up the bones of men and the bones of women, and he was walking past the throne the fourth time, carrying them, when a quail flew up suddenly from the ground in front of him. The quail had been frightened by Mictlantecuhtli's servants on purpose. Quetzalcoatl, startled, stepped back, and his foot went through the soft earth and into the hidden pit. He fell. The bones in his arms scattered around him on the floor of the pit. Some broke. Some did not. Quail came down and pecked at the bones.
Quetzalcoatl was bruised. He climbed out of the pit. He gathered up all the bones again, broken and unbroken, mixed together. The bones were not as neat as they had been. He took what he had and ran out of Mictlan with Xolotl beside him, while the wind made by Mictlantecuhtli's anger blew at his back.
He brought the bones to the upper world, to the goddess Cihuacoatl, who was the snake-woman, the grinder. She ground the bones in a stone mortar, the way maize is ground for tortillas, until they were a fine white meal.
The gods gathered around the mortar. Each of them, one by one, opened a vein and let blood drip into the meal. They mixed their own blood with the bone-meal of the dead. From this paste Cihuacoatl shaped the bodies of the new people.
That is why we are the way we are. The bones we are made of are the bones of the people of the past worlds. The blood we are made of is the blood of the gods. We are not all of one piece, because the bones broke in the pit. Some people are large, some small. Some live long, some die young. Mictlantecuhtli's quail did this when it scattered us. Even our heights are different because the bones came up from the underworld in pieces.
But we live. The gods made us at cost to themselves, with their own blood. We owe them for it. The Aztec people remember this when they offer.