Beautiful Sacrifice

AUTHOR’S NOTE

THE WRITTEN, PHONETIC VERSION OF THE MAYAN LANGUAGE is a work in progress. Scholars disagree about when or whether to use apostrophes to indicate a vocal hitch in a word. C and K are often used interchangeably. Names are spelled one way by one expert source and a different way by the next. About all I could find consistent agreement on was that “Maya” refers to the people, their customs, their artifacts, everything but their language. That is called “Mayan.”

I also was confronted with many choices as to accent marks. If a word is commonly understood and printed in the United States without any accents—for example, Mexico, Cancun, the Yucatan—I didn’t use accents, even though they are used in Mexico.

Some Maya scholars agree there is a God K. Some don’t.

Kawa’il, his cult, and his artifacts are my own invention.