Such tall tales were common in Everlost, but when it came to Yax K’uk Mo’, The Supreme King of the Middle Realm, every tale was true. He had been in Everlost for many thousands of years, and his true name and true life were long forgotten . . . until one day, he unremembered the fact that he wasn’t a Mayan king. So suddenly he was. And as a king he felt he should set up court in the halls and temples of Chichén Itzá, and declare dominion over all lands that had once been Mayan. He unremembered that he had no actual claim to those lands—yet by the awesome power of his unmemory, every Afterlight existing in those places instantly believed that he was their king without knowing or meeting him.

And shouldn’t a Mayan king have power over the heavens and glow brighter than all the other Afterlights? So suddenly he did, because he couldn’t remember that he shouldn’t. Naturally it was easy for him to speak all languages when he couldn’t remember a single language he didn’t know. It was the same way with the flying red-winged spirits. Being from Mesoamerica, he had never seen people with red hair, and so when he did, he thought them beautiful, like the red-crowned parrot of the Yucatan jungles. He unremembered that these spirits didn’t have parrot wings, and so all spirits he saw with red hair instantly grew wings the color of their hair, and could fly—which thrilled the spirits, unless they had a fear of heights.

The power of unremembering made King Yax the mighty ruler that he was—and when it came to unremembering, the only limit to the things he couldn’t not do, was his imagination.

Unfortunately, King Yax did not have much of an imagination, so mostly he just spent his time being amused by Mayan sports, loud parties, and admiring his own glow.

Lately, however, his attentions had been elsewhere.

For many years an ironsmith had been laboring to create a statue in his image by melting down the coins of all fresh souls who came to his kingdom. Until recently it hadn’t been much of a statue—a thin, headless, and armless thing on a huge black obsidian base. There simply had never been enough metal to finish it—and in Everlost, nothing else made of metal melted. Things were annoyingly permanent. But the coins, which behaved like nothing else in Everlost, did melt. Where, then, was a king to find more coins? It was useless trying to unremember his lack of coins, because, try as he might, he couldn’t forget he had none left.