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This story comes from the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the K'iche' Maya people of Guatemala. Long ago, two brothers, One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, loved to play the ball game. They played so loudly that the noise traveled down, deep under the earth, to Xibalba, the world of the dead.
The lords of Xibalba were angry. The noise bothered them, so they invited the brothers to play a game below the earth. It was a trap. The lords defeated the brothers with tricks and killed them. But One Hunahpu left behind two sons: the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
When the twins grew up, they found their father's ball game equipment hidden in the rafters of their house, and they began to play. Once again, the noise went down to Xibalba, and once again the lords were angry. They sent messengers with an invitation: "Come and play with us." The twins knew what had happened to their father. They were not afraid, but they were careful, and they decided to go.
In Xibalba, the lords tried to destroy them with a series of trials. Each night, the twins had to survive in a dangerous house. One of them was the House of Bats. The brothers hid inside their blowguns to stay safe, but Hunahpu looked out for a moment, and a bat flew down and cut off his head. The lords used the head as a ball! But the twins were clever, and Xbalanque found a way to get his brother's head back.
Finally, the lords made a last plan. They prepared a huge fire, and the twins jumped into it on purpose. Their bones were ground into powder and thrown into a river. The lords laughed, because they thought they had won.
But five days later, two poor travelling performers appeared in Xibalba. They could do amazing tricks. They could burn a house and bring it back, and they could even kill each other and bring each other back to life. The lords loved the show. "Do it to us!" they begged. So the twins sacrificed the two most powerful lords, One Death and Seven Death. And this time, they did not bring them back.
With the lords defeated, Xibalba lost its power. The twins left the dark world and rose into the sky. One of them became the sun, and the other became the moon. Since then, the story says, one brother lights the day, and the other watches over the night.
