This happened when Uxmal was just the residence of a ruler who lived in his white stone palace. At that time, nearby, in a clay hut with a roof made of palm leaves, on the very edge of the village of Nokhpat, there lived an old witch who communicated at night with dwarfs from the surrounding mountains. The old woman knew a lot of things that no one else knew about, either in those days, or even more so now.
One day, feeling the approach of death, the old woman decided to get a son-heir. At night, in a mountain cave, nimble dwarfs gave her a huge egg. She barely dragged it home, where she hid it in the ground to ripen.
When the time came, a boy with the face of a man hatched from this egg. Having stretched up to one and a half meters, he suddenly stopped growing. But he was as agile as a squirrel, could speak from birth, and knew so much that his neighbors never ceased to be amazed.
Every day the old woman walked with a jug of water to the well, and at that time the dwarf remained in the house and looked at everything that was in it.
What aroused his greatest interest was the hearth, which the old woman always carefully closed when leaving. The curious dwarf decided to find out what was hidden there.
To do this, he came up with a little trick: he made a small hole in the jug, and when the old woman goes to get water, she will not be able to fill it and will linger at the well for a long time. In the meantime, the cunning man will have time to stir up all the ashes in the hearth.
While the old woman waited in vain for her jug to be filled with water, the dwarf turned over the entire hearth and discovered a bell in the farthest corner. Prankster, take it and hit it lightly with your stick.
In response, a terrible thunder was heard, thundering over the entire Mayan land and shaking it.
The old woman, of course, came running and began to reproach the wretch for what he had done. But he denied everything, since he had already managed to hide the bell in its original place under the ashes. Meanwhile, a terrible commotion occurred in the village. And here's the reason.
“The time will come,” the ancient people said, “when the Ruler of Uxmal will come. A magic bell will fall into his hands. This will happen at the exact appointed hour, neither earlier nor later. He will be able to find it, although it will not be easy. Only he can make it sound.
It is he who will become our ruler. And it will be useless to try not to recognize him and not obey.
It is the ringing and rattling of the bell that will announce the appearance of a real ruler to the people of Uxmal. He will have to be placed on the throne, paid taxes and obeyed. Everything that is predicted will definitely come true.
Once this happens, people will see something they have not seen before. Uxmal will reach its power and become the capital of the Mayan state."
That's what the prophecy said. Therefore, upon hearing the ringing thunder of the bell, everyone realized that a new ruler had appeared.
The Old Ruler of Uxmal, who woke up in a cold sweat in his white house, also realized this.
He immediately sent soldiers everywhere with the order to immediately find the one who produced this terrible music. The messengers rushed to search.
Having finally reached the hut of the old woman from Nokhpat, the servants of the Old Ruler dragged the dwarf to his square under a spreading centuries-old tree, where he sat waiting.
The ruler wanted to make sure that in front of him was exactly the one who was mentioned in the prophecy. The old ruler invited the dwarf to prove that he was worthy of becoming the New ruler.
The dwarf easily coped with the difficult task of immediately answering how many fruits hung on the branches of that shady ceiba under which the Old Ruler was sitting.
The next task seemed more difficult to the Old Ruler: they had to chop a whole measure of heavy fruits on the dwarf’s head with a stone hammer.
But this was supposed to happen the next day, but for now the dwarf went home to prepare for the test. On the way back, in just one night he created that beautiful road paved with smooth and even stones that connects Nokhpat and Uxmal. It was along this line that the dwarf came the next morning to pass the next test. With a heavy stone hammer they began to break the prepared fruits, hard as flint, on his head one after another.
But the Dwarf only chuckled quietly. His adoptive mother hid a magic copper plate under his hair, and he was not hurt at all.
However, the Old Ruler did not want to give up power, and he urgently came up with a new test, inviting the Dwarf to spend the night in Uxmal, in his white house, and the next morning to undergo another test.
The dwarf agreed to stay in Uxmal, but not in the ruler's house. He promised to build himself a palace in one night.
In just one night, opposite the white house of the Old Ruler, the beautiful huge palace of the New Ruler of Uxmal arose. By the way, it still stands today.
The next morning the Dwarf took ordinary damp clay and sculpted a statue similar to himself. Then he put it on the fire. And the more she was burned in the fire, the stronger the clay figure became. And all the statues of the Old Ruler, made of wood, limestone and metal, burned, crumbled or melted,
Thus began the reign of the Dwarf.
...The next morning, the great Uxmal already shone with the splendor of its palaces and temples, and to this day evokes constant admiration from everyone.
A huge palace towered over the city. The dwarf who became the ruler settled there. Every new moon he appeared and spoke to the people.
Uxmal flourished like no other city in the world. The most beautiful arts reached perfection, and all the inhabitants became rich and powerful. They learned to cast metals brought from afar, make elegant designs on stones and spin threads of bright and varied colors, weave, decorate clothes and shields with fur. We learned many secrets of herbal treatment and determined the value of green and yellow stones. They learned to speak so beautifully that they played with words like arrows in the air. They became excellent musicians and invented many new instruments. And most of all they succeeded in making figures from clay.
When, having lived sixty human lives and making the life of his people beautiful, the Dwarf Ruler died, grateful people, in memory of him, made magnificent clay statues with his image and covered them with wonderful bright colors.
A copal tree bloomed on his grave, emanating a wonderful scent, and warriors kept constant guard.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru