Tzitzimitl by Xanthe Gresham-Knight

Summary

Xanthe Gresham-Knight opens with a playful nod to being an original Star Trek fan. Space may be “the final frontier” for humanity, she suggests, but goddesses have been there since the beginning—if time even has a beginning.

Her myth begins in a “black, black cave,” where Tzitzimitl, the grandmother of bones, lives among the stars. Each day, she dances and gathers energy from the goddesses sleeping in her cave. No one has ever visited—until Quetzalcoatl, a serpent-and-bird deity searching for something he can’t name, turns himself into wind and slips inside. There, he finds the gentle Mayahuel and pleads with her to come to Earth:

“Come away… come with me to Earth.”

Mayahuel opens her eyes, and the pair fall for each other in a moment that seems to last only a second—though, as the storyteller wryly wonders, who knows how long that second really was? They become a spiky, emerald-green tree with two trunks and intertwining branches. When their branches touch, Mayahuel’s side blooms with soft pink flowers.

Tzitzimitl discovers them and, furious that Quetzalcoatl has “stolen from infinity,” chops the tree apart and returns to her cave. But Mayahuel’s heart is full of nectar. The sleepy goddesses try to eat the fragments, and pieces of bark, leaf, and flower spill from their mouths.

A hawk gathers the scraps, carries them back to Earth, and buries them. Quetzalcoatl’s winds help Mayahuel grow again—this time as the maguey cactus, whose nourishing milk becomes a source of sustenance and pleasure for people. The story closes with Quetzalcoatl still circling the plants and scientists still searching for Tzitzimitl’s cave, whose secret may last until the end of time.

Personalities and Figures

• Xanthe Gresham-Knight, storyteller
• Tzitzimitl
• Quetzalcoatl
• Mayahuel