Читать книгу The City of the Sacred Well онлайн

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“The high priest enters the little temple at the brink of the well. The dirge ceases, the drums are stilled. He performs his devotions to the Rain God. He lights the sacred incense-burners and the fragrant blue vapor floats, curling, upward. Again the slowly chanted dirge starts, to the muted beating of the drums. He lights a basket of sweet-smelling copal incense, holds it aloft, and casts it into the well. The chant grows louder, the drums beat faster.

“Two powerful nacons, or lesser priests, lift the maiden from her couch, their muscular brown arms forming a sling in which she lies as lightly as a leaf on the bosom of a stream. They advance with her to the edge of the well. The pitiless sun glares down into her upturned fear-stricken eyes and she throws one slender arm over her face. Her gauzy garments reveal the tender flesh and adolescent contours of a girl in her early teens.

“Slowly the nacons swing the feather-light body backward and forward to the beat of the drums and the rhythm of the dirge; forward and backward in an ever wider sweep, while the drums and chant swell to a roar. At a sign from the high priest the drums are suddenly stilled; the chant ends in a high-pitched wail. A last forward swing and the bride of Yum Chac hurtles far out over the well. Turning slowly in the air, the lithesome body falls faster and faster till it strikes the dark water seventy feet below.