"What do you think of it, grandmother? They have made fun of us. Our field, which we had worked, has been turned into a field of stubble and a thick woods. Thus we found it, when we got there, a little while ago, grandmother," they said to her and to their mother. "But we shall return there and watch over it, because it is not right that they do such things to us," they said.
Then they dressed and returned at once to their field of cut trees, and there they hid themselves, stealthily, in the darkness.
Then all the animals gathered again; one of each kind came with the other small and large animals. It was just midnight when they came, all talking as they came, saying in their own language: "Rise up, trees! Rise up, vines!"[157]
So they spoke when they came and gathered under the trees, under the vines, and they came closer until they appeared before the eyes [of Hunahpú and Xbalanqué].
The puma and the jaguar were the first, and [Hunahpú and Xbalanqué] wanted to seize them, but [the animals] did not let them. Then the deer and the rabbit came close. and the only parts of them which they could seize were their tails,[158] only these, they pulled out. The tall of the deer remained in their hands, and for this reason the deer and the rabbit have short tails.
Neither the mountain-cat, the coyote, the wild boar, nor the coati fell into their hands. All the animals passed before Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, who were furious because they could not catch them.
But, finally, another animal came hopping along, and this one which was the rat, [which] they seized instantly, and wrapped him in a cloth. Then when they had caught him, they squeezed his head and tried to choke him, and they burned his tall in the fire, and for that reason the rat's tail has no hair. So, too, the boys, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, tried to poke at his eyes.
The rat said: "I must not die at your hands. And neither is it your business to plant the cornfield."
"What are you telling us now?" the boys asked the rat.
"Loosen me a little, for I have something which I wish to tell you, and I shall tell you immediately, but first give me something to eat," said the rat.
"We will give you food afterward, but first speak," they answered.
"Very well. Do you know, then, that the property of your parents Hun-Hunahpú and Vucub-Hunahpú, as they were called, those who died in Xibalba, or rather the gear with which they played ball, has remained[159] and is hanging from the roof of the house: the ring, the gloves, and the ball? Nevertheless, your grandmother does not want to show them to you for it was on account of these things that your parents died."
"Are you sure of that?" said the boys to the rat. And they were very happy when they heard about the rubber ball. And as the rat had now talked, they showed the rat what his food would be.
"This shall be your food: corn, chili-seeds, beans, pataxte, cacao;[160] all this belongs to you, and should there be anything stored away or forgotten, it shall be yours also. Eat it," Hunahpú and Xbalanqué said to the rat.
"Wonderful, boys," he said; "but what shall I tell your grandmother if she sees me?"
[157] Are puch tiquil u qux agab ta x-e petic, x-e chauiheic conohel ta x-e petic. Are qui chabal ri: Yaclin che, yaclin caam.
[158] The original is: Xa cuch u he x-qui chap vi. It seems to me that this is an error, and that it should read xa cu u he, etc., and I have so translated it.
[159] In his transcription from the Quiché text, Brasseur de Bourbourg omitted the words ri qu'etzabal x-e quel canoc, which I have translated as it is here. Etzan is "to play" and etzabal is the playing gear.
[160] These were practically the daily foods of the ancient Quiché. Of cacao beans (cacau in Maya and in Quiché), they made a very nourishing drink, and in the same way they used a kind of cacao, Theobroma bicolor, which the Quiché called pec and which is commonly known by the Mexican name of pataxte.
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