Maya and the Hidden Sun

The heat left its mark on every little sand particle in the desert but that year was different, the Year of Maya as we call it today. The ground began to fade and grew lines until it looked like chapped lips. The little bugs with their bell-like ringing began to die out from thirst. Maya remembered finding their black carcasses burning under the unyielding sun. Because the bugs began to die out, the desert jackals became hungry and starved. Maya still shudders to this day when she remembers finding a half-eaten jackal while playing with her kite one orange-colored afternoon. She understood immediately that the poor jackals had to eat each other to survive.

Yet the biggest concern was the health of the plants. The plants couldn’t pollinate through the tiny bugs since there were so few left. Rainfall lessened and the tomatoes and carrots and apples and many other crops died out. Maya used to hold onto her stomach and whisper to it, “Please stop churning. We’ll eat at some point.”

The people of the desert became very angry. The elders used to tell stories of the former planet, the one humanity lost centuries ago. “We lost it,” they said, “due to a drought.” But they couldn’t remember what had started the drought. Now, hopeless and starved and frenzied, the people of Miraj turned to the Sun, and against it. They used to worship the Sun and bear witness to its turns, drawing from its healing warmth and building their pillars and temples pointing toward its divine dimension. Yet now they were ready to destroy their own God out of pure despair.

On that night, Maya was sound asleep and so were most villagers. From the sand-colored huts, witches and wizards wearing black and blue gathered and began whispering. Their meeting was later known as the Secret Trial of the Sun. They formed a circle deep in the desert and kindled a green fire. The green flames grew closer and closer to the Sun as the wizards and witches chanted their spells. Suddenly, a black circle grew on the Sun as their mad voices intensified. The circle began to cover the Sun and erase every sunray like an eclipse though the people of Miraj did not know what an eclipse was. It engulfed the Sun completely and left behind an eternal night.

Maya woke up that morning but the sun did not. She looked outside to find the comfort of the sun rays but they were gone. At first, she thought the curtains were obstructing the light. But then she went outside and was astonished to find out it was night. The clock said it should be the start of the day. The sundial was silent.

Weeks passed and the people slowly went mad. Many fell into an overwhelming depression. Riots broke out as the Mirajans fought for food. Dreams were slowly being replaced by nightmares as the night held onto its eternal reign.

One day, Maya’s mother gave her a hug and with tears in her eyes whispered, “Maya, you have to be strong and take care of yourself and of Inti. Lock the door and don’t leave the house. Your father and I will have to take a long trip to reach your grandparents. Hopefully, we will find food there.” Then, with bodies shivering from the pain of separation, her parents left.

Maya looked at Inti, her fluffy beige dog. “It can’t end like this, Inti.” Then her blue eyes looked toward the spot where the Sun used to hang at noon. “I mean, the Sun gave us everything we needed to survive. And still, the people were angry. They forgot what they’ve received from the Sun and blamed its sunlight for the drought. I love the Sun, Inti. We must bring it back. Aren’t you tired of sitting around and waiting for something to happen?” As they were sitting on the porch, staring at the distant fires, something became illuminated like a tiny sun within Maya’s mind. “I know! We must go and look for the Sun. Maybe… maybe it’s hiding below the horizon.”

She rushed inside and prepared the provisions: twelve sandwiches, seven apples, a couple of hefty scoops of dry dog food, and all the water that could fit within two flasks. Maya stashed them all within the big backpack and off they went. They decided to go West since Maya thought, “It’s possible that the Sun set that night and then, for some reason, it just never rose again.”

Valleys and canyons passed them by as they walked through the night. Maya and Inti were lucky. They were always one step behind the starving jackals. They would find fresh prints in the sand and could feel the frustration lingering in the air. A couple of days after they left, they ran out of water. Maya tried to spare as much as possible but the desert was relentless in its austerity.

They reached a dried canyon when, suddenly, splotches of darkness lurked on the ground. Maya and Inti raised their sight to see vultures trying to hide behind the cliffs. Inti started to run in circles, barking with despair, trying to scare off the winged raptors. Maya froze. She looked at the vultures soaring toward them. A heavy tension tightened her body.

Yet, a couple of seconds later, Maya felt a strange power surrounding her. Her intuition spoke to her and, after a short moment of deliberation, she knew what she had to do. She caught Inti with her arms and tried to calm him down, whispering, “Inti, there is no use in trying to fight the vultures. Do you see how many there are? If they want to eat us, we won’t stand a chance. Let’s walk through this corridor slowly, showing them we are not afraid.” Inti didn’t understand her so Maya showed him by walking onward, emanating dignity and confidence.

A vulture plunged off the cliffs, eyeing Maya, and still she was not afraid. It landed on her shoulder and stared with one eye into Maya’s soul. She felt that the bird was somehow talking to her. Within her mind, she could hear a voice.

“You’re not like the others,” the voice said. “The others would’ve run to save their featherless behinds.”

Maya opened her mouth. “Y-you can talk?!”

“Of course I can talk. Vultures can always talk. It’s just that no one listens. But now that the night doesn’t end and the light is gone, thoughts and dreams are much easier to be seen… and heard.”

“Thoughts and dreams? Am I dreaming?”

“You aren’t. But you are listening to the thoughts around you, to the thoughts floating through the air.” The bird blinked. “We’ve been tracking you for dozens of miles and we know your intention. You’re trying to find the Sun, are you not?”

“How do you know this?”

“Your thoughts are as transparent as mine. Listen, we are looking for the same thing. Though vultures can see pretty well in the dark, it’s so easy to mistake a rabbit for a rock or a dried-up bush. And though I enjoy seeing so many stars swaying in the night sky, I really miss eating. And so, I miss the Sun.”

“Oh poor little bird,” Maya uttered with empathy while gently rubbing its head.

After letting itself be pet the vulture continues, “Maya, there’s a river not far away. You can fill your bottles there.”

Half an hour later, Maya, Inti, and a committee of vultures crouched down to drink the refreshing water of a shallow river. The helpful vulture, Nezhy, then asked Maya, “See that cliff over there?”

“Barely.” Maya had to squint. Though she did realize that her eyes had adapted incredibly well to the perpetual darkness.

“Well, if you go there, you’ll soon find an opening, a dark hole. It’s a large cave. We don’t usually mess with caves but the bats inside are friendly and we sometimes chat. They told me of a man living inside. He’s waiting for you, Maya. I think he knows how you could find the Sun.”

“Then that’s where I’ll have to go. You have been so nice to us, Nezhy. I promise I’ll bring the Sun back for all of us.”

Inti barked into the blackness and his bark echoed lower and lower. Maya looked into his eyes while gulping heavily. “Well, since we’ve come all this way… might as well… .“

They walked through a narrow corridor when it suddenly branched off into four distinct paths. Maya sang a little counting-out rhyme – “Show the way and I will sway…” – and chose the third path. As they walked for an hour, the road forked again and again. It was as if the cave was a gigantic tree and they were traveling along its roots.

Inti stopped as his tiny ears twitched. Maya stared at him. An echoing burst of wind grew louder. Then, a brown bat with a large mouth landed next to them, hanging upside-down. “Hello, outsiders! What brings you to my cave? Have you heard about its massive size and lavish corridors?”

“We’re looking for a man living here. A vulture told us he could help me find the Sun.”

“Sun? What’s that?”

Maya laughed. Then she understood the cave-dwelling bird’s confusion. Her mouth dropped slowly like a growing stalactite as the implications sank in. “Well… the Sun is a gigantic ball of light and fire which hangs on the sk… erm, above our heads, giving us warmth and life and everything we need.”

The bat took flight in circles of fright. “You… allow yourselves to live under a gigantic ball of fire?! You outsiders are weird. Indeed, outsiders are weird.”

“Mister Bat, we are in desperate need of some help. Could you help us find this man?”

“Can you not hear him,” the bat inquired.

“Hear him?”

“Shhh! Listen.” They listened for a couple of seconds, then minutes. Silence grew and engulfed them completely. Then, out of nothingness a faint murmur made itself known. It was a chant. They began to follow it, running from corridor to corridor until the chant grew louder and with it, a golden light.

Deep inside the caverns they discovered a man sitting on a leather armchair with his toes lying on a Persian rug. Behind him a circular lamp cast a strong light.

He used his green staff to stand up. The man had a very long, white beard though he couldn’t have been older than forty. As he saw Maya, he sighed with relief.

“Finally, you showed up. I was getting a bit bored.”

“Who are you sir,” Maya demanded to know. “And how do you know about us and our journey?”

The man bowed. “My name is Aleph. I am a magician. Actually, I was there on the eve of the eternal night. I was part of the group of wizards and witches that have made the Sun disappear.”

“And why have you done such a thing?! Don’t you have any heart,” Maya asked angrily.

“I’m trying to find my heart. We… I was wrong. I actually realized that we were doing something vile the moment those green flames began to lift. I tried to stop the others but they put me to sleep. When I awoke, the sunlight had long gone. I am sorry, Maya. We were desperate and angry, terribly angry. But now I have to mend things. You, Maya, will be the one who will save us.”

“Me?” Maya felt an enormous burden push her toward the ground. “Why me? What is it that I can actually do to bring the Sun back?”

Aleph smiled. He had a deep scar running diagonally over his mouth. “Well, first of all, you are a child. Can’t you see that the old people only tried to curse this and that, to destroy and to hope for the worst the moment the drought arrived? You, on the other hand, have the power of imagination on your side. You can imagine a new future since you are not bound by rigid thinking.”

“And, second of all,” Aleph continued, “you are the only child who embarked on this journey. You accepted your fear and the dangers of the road and left your home to find the heart of our world, the Sun.”

Maya stared at Inti’s brown eyes. She then noticed that his tongue was turning arid, like the desert. Every piece of skin was. She turned to Aleph. “Alright, what do we do?”

“I will teach you how to meditate. You will learn to navigate the world of imagination and find the moon.”

“Moon?”

“Yes. You see, a moon is a large rock that orbits around planets. Our planet didn’t have one… well, it didn’t have one until our curse made one appear in front of the Sun. You have to tell the moon to step aside and let the Sun shine.”

And so Aleph taught Maya how to sit in lotus position and imagine herself entering a portal and entering the world of imagination. The first time she meditated, Maya opened her mind’s eye to see a gigantic Inti. He was rolling around in a field made of pink wool. He came and licked her with his enormous tongue. She felt bliss.

Then she opened her eyes to remember that she was still inside the cave, sitting next to Aleph and Inti and Mister Bat.

“Now you have to learn to fly, Maya,” Aleph told her. Within her mind, she saw herself standing next to a cliff. Aleph appeared as a golden vulture. “Just believe that you can fly and jump. You will begin floating before you know it.” He jumped off the cliff and began soaring.

Maya jumped as well but she couldn’t lift her body. She tried flapping her arms desperately. Then she fell into a dark pit and kept falling. The longer she fell, the more discouraged she became. “Maybe I’ll never find the Sun,” she told herself. “Maybe it’s all lost.”

She woke up from the meditation crying. She ran into the darkness of the caverns and was gone. Inti followed her, barking with concern. Aleph started to shout, “Maya! Maya! Come back, you’re doing a great job!”

Maya was hiding in a fetal position in a narrow opening in the rock. The tears kept falling and she felt as if the Sun within her chest was also turning dark. Inti came as quickly as he could and licked her tears vigorously.

Maya froze. She remembered the way Inti used to lick her cheeks when she was a baby. She remembered her mother’s embrace and her father’s voice. A small sliver of hope grew like saplings in the soil of her mind. Within herself, she felt an orange sliver of light shining the way the Sun shines its first morning light into the world.

Aleph was pacing to and fro when Maya arrived. “I want to try again.” He smiled and hugged her before whispering, “If desperate people are able to create a moon out of nothing, then you can fly, my dear Maya.”

This time, Maya made sure to concentrate and to dispel any fear. Within her mind, she stood at the edge of the cliff and looked at Aleph, the golden vulture. “If I repeat an idea long enough, it becomes true, right?”

“Right.”

She closed her eyes and began telling herself over and over again: “I can fly, I can fly, I can fly… .” The fact that it did not happen right away didn’t stop her from repeating the words again and again. And after one thousand and one utterances, her feet began to float. She began to rise like the Sun. “Look, Inti! I can fly!”

Floating like the wind, the powers of her imagination took her into space. She passed through the petals of lilac flowers the size of planets, through nebulas made of gold and turquoise spots. Finally, she reached the Moon.

It was a great silver sphere with an ethereal face of a woman. She landed on her surface and found a crater. Inside the crater, one of the many ears of the Moon, Maya whispered, “Please, Moon, could you step aside so we can see the Sun once more? We miss it dearly.”

“But I want to be seen too,” cried the Moon. “Why should the Sun be the only one in the sky?”

Maya didn’t have an answer so she sat on the gray surface and glanced at the slimy lunar monsters creeping about. She noticed the way in which the monsters gave each other space to move. ‘Polite little monsters,’ she thought.

Then an idea struck her and the Sun inside her heart grew strong. “Oh, Miss Moon! I know what you can do! Why don’t you let the Sun have the sky for the entire day as you hide somewhere in the corner. Then, at night, you’ll shine as the brightest sphere out there, brighter than any star. Wouldn’t you like that?”

The Moon began to glow from excitement and joy. “What a beautiful idea, young child! Alright, if the Sun is so important to you, I’ll let him honor you with his presence.”

Maya woke up with a smile on her face. When she saw her eyes open, Aleph felt as if he was reborn. Inti was ecstatic to find his most beloved creature petting him once again.

As they came closer to the surface, they said goodbye to Mister Bat. “I hope you find your light again, you crazy outsiders,” the bat said before flying away.

Maya stared at the blinding light just beyond the gate. She took a deep breath and then she jumped like a golden vulture into the sunlight. There was joy in the air. Every cell in Maya’s body felt reawakened by the heat, just as every sand particle glowed like a tiny Sun.