The Hero Twins and the Lords of the Underworld
Classical Stories · No. 64 — Two ballplayers take on the lords of death — and cheat better.
- Classical Stories
- 51 min
- Ages 8–13
- 6 chapters
About this audiobook
The Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, are gifted ballplayers whose noise annoys the Lords of Xibalba, the Maya underworld, who summon them down to play — as they once summoned the twins' father, and killed him. The road to Xibalba is full of tricks and traps, and the Lords set deadly tests: a night in the House of Cold, the House of Jaguars, the House of Bats, each meant to destroy them. But the twins are cleverer than death: they see through every trick, survive every house, win the ball-game, and finally turn the Lords' own love of spectacle against them — offering a magic 'trick' the greedy Lords demand for themselves, which ends their reign. The twins rise from the underworld and take their places as the sun and the moon.
Why it's worth a listen
From the sacred book of the Maya comes a story like nothing else: two clever twin brothers are summoned to the terrifying underworld to play a deadly ball-game against the Lords of Death themselves — a place of trick houses, cold and knives and bats — and they win not by strength but by out-tricking death at its own tricks. An ancient Mesoamerican epic of wit, courage, and transformation.
A question to keep
When the game is rigged against you, can cleverness beat the ones who make the rules?
Chapters
- The Ball Court of the Sun
- The Summons to Xibalba
- The Road of Falsehoods
- The Houses of Night
- The Great Game and the Grand Illusion
- A Question to Keep