Eighty-Six-Rabbit woke up with a hangover. As far as he could remember, he had woken up with a hangover every morning since he and his three hundred and ninety-nine siblings, the Centzon Totochtin, were born of the union between Patecatl, god of fermentation, and Mayahuel, goddess of alcohol. It didn't seem to be getting any more enjoyable.

He wobbled his nose, sending ripples of pain across his skull like wind through a field of maize, and lolloped unsteadily over to the big obsidian mirror. His eyes might have been two beads of dried blood, the skin inside his ears was pale, and when he poked out his tongue it was frosted with white.

"This has got to stop," he said to himself.

"Hey! Keep the noise down!" Three-Twenty-Three-Rabbit staggered into the burrow, still clutching an empty bottle which had, at some stage, contained pulque. "What a night, huh? That was one amazing party. Wasn't it?"

"Was it?" Eighty-Six-Rabbit eyeballed his brother. Late-born and late-numbered, Three-Twenty-Three was ranked among the lowest in seniority of the four hundred sibling gods. The real big quesos, Twelve-Rabbit and upwards, wouldn't even have given him the time of day. He had a nerve, telling Eighty-Six to keep it down.

"What was so great about it?" Eighty-Six asked. "Tell me one thing."

One of Three-Twenty-Three's ears drooped. He pushed it upright with a paw, only for the other to flop down over his eye.

"Well...there was...how about..." He scratched his whiskers. "Actually, Eightsy, I can't remember the first thing about it. And that's what made it so amazing!" he finished triumphantly.

"Don't you ever want to do something different with your evenings? And don't call me Eightsy."

"Different?" Three-Twenty-Three's eyes bugged out as he thought. "Like...drinking mezcal instead of pulque?"

"No, I mean, like dancing. Playing rubberball. Going to watch a human sacrifice. We could even just stay in and talk. When was the last time two of us had a conversation that wasn't about who took the last aspirin?"

"But what about our duties?"

Each of the rabbit siblings was in charge of a particular aspect of drunkenness. Eighty-Six was the god of attempting to chat up your best friend's betrothed. His favourite sister Fifty-Five was the goddess of attempting to chat up your best friend. Three-Twenty-Three, being a more junior rabbit, was responsible for the inability to tie your shoelaces. Since shoelaces would not come to Mesoamerica for another three hundred years, he was frequently at a loose end.

"We don't all need to be at every single party, all the time. I'm pretty sure a few of us could take the night off every now and then."

Eighty-Six became uncomfortably aware that Three-Twenty-Three was wearing the expression of someone who has opened a bottle of pulque, only for the god Quetzalcoatl to fly out of it in the form of a winged serpent.

"I just think there might be more to life than getting drunk," he concluded.

"More to life than...!" Three-Twenty-Three's eyes bulged, and he clapped a paw over his mouth. Eighty-Six thought he was probably going to be sick, but instead he went haring out of the burrow and down the warren, tripping over his paws and crashing into walls as he tried to hop and thump his hind foot for danger at the same time.

"Two-Rabbit, Two-Rabbit!" he yelled. "Come quick! Eighty-Six-Rabbit has lost his mind!"

Two-Rabbit was the leader of the siblings, and, on the frequent occasions when their parents were busy with other affairs of fermentation and alcohol, represented their ultimate authority. None of the three hundred and ninety-nine had ever seen One-Rabbit; legend had it that the moment he was birthed he had embarked upon a binge of such divine proportions that his corporeal elements had fractured across space and time, allowing him simultaneously to attend every party since the age of the Jaguar Sun, as well as those yet to come. This bending of the laws of the universe was thought to be the origin of the term 'bender'.

"This had better be good," Two-Rabbit pronounced, glaring at Eighty-Six, Three-Twenty-Three, and sundry brothers and sisters who had popped out of their burrows to see what was going on. "I'm trying to draw up the duty roster for the party Tlazolteotl, Goddess of Sexual Misdeeds And Their Forgiveness, is holding tonight."

That was a top gig. The rabbits drew themselves up, trying to look alert, bright-eyed, and ready to party; not easy when the effects of the last party are still draining from your system.

"I'm just saying." Eighty-Six swallowed. "I know we do important work, helping people relax, enjoy themselves and make stupid, regrettable decisions, but we've been doing it since we were born and, frankly, it's getting a bit dull. Tiring, too. I'm sure we'd all be better for a night off every once in a while. Maybe stay in and read a good codex. The humans have invented this stuff called cocoa, it's quite nice apparently..."

Two-Rabbit's bloodshot eyes looked him disapprovingly up and down, and Eighty-Six trembled.

"Eighty-Six-Rabbit, you are a deity. An anthropomorphic personification of drunkenness, no less. Anthropomorphic personifications of drunkenness don't get bored. We don't get tired. And we don't put our feet up with a mug of hot mashed beans when we could be out partying!" Her glare swept the assembled rabbits, daring them to disagree. "Am I right?"

There were hasty cheers. Paws punched the air.

"Party! Party! Party!"

With a twitch of her ears, Two-Rabbit silenced the chant.

"Eighty-Six-Rabbit, I am disappointed in you," she said. "This is not the behaviour I expect from a rabbit of double figures."

Eighty-Six waited to see what punishment would be meted out. He had heard that Two-Rabbit could demote her siblings to more menial jobs, though it hadn't happened for centuries. He didn't fancy being the divine personification of slamming your finger in the taxi door, or of why not make it a vindaloo instead of a madras.

"Since you think so little of our sacred customs," Two-Rabbit continued, "you are welcome to try this crazy notion of 'sobriety'. But you will try it away from here, so none of your brothers and sisters are tempted to follow your example. Depart, now, and return when you have learned some sense."

Eighty-Six hopped slowly up the warren and into the world above, his white scut bouncing as he went. His sibling gods watched him go with twitching noses and quivering whiskers, but nobody said a word. Only Three-Twenty-Three mouthed something that might have been 'sorry'.

"Sobriety," Eighty-Six-Rabbit said out loud. Until Two-Rabbit used the word, he had not even known how to describe the opposite of drunkenness. Now, for only the fourth time in his life, he was sober to watch the sun go down.

That first drinkless night had been hard. It wasn't just the longing for pulque, a hunger and thirst rolled into one that no amount of cocoa, maize or beans could sate. Only his fierce determination had kept Eighty-Six dry. In the end, he had broken leaves off a maguey plant and drunk the honey-water, the base from which pulque was made, just to get the faintest shadow of the taste which had been mother's milk to him.

What was a divine sober rabbit supposed to do in the evenings? It was all very well to talk about rubberball and priestly ceremonies, and on the second evening, when he felt a little less like a dried-up husk of last year's corn than he had on the first, Eighty-Six tried both these entertainments. But they were no fun without his brothers and sisters there to talk to. Besides, whenever someone in the audience opened a bottle of pulque, he felt the pull of his divine duty to keep them company, and he had to move away before one of his siblings showed up.

The next night he tried going to a dance, but it seemed nobody could do anything fun without involving alcohol, and he crept away early. He made himself a nest in the grass and tried to sleep through the partying hours, but he was too used to keeping nocturnal time to get much rest. As soon as the sun rose he started walking, in the hope of tiring himself out before the next empty night.

Foregoing pulque was still hard, but he had become used to his body's grumbles about it. Worse than the pain of sobering up, right now, was the pain of homesickness. He missed his brothers and sisters powerfully. Of course they had argued; how could they not, with three hundred and ninety-nine of them, plus the mysterious One-Rabbit who may or may not have been present, all crammed into a burrow, and all in a permanent state of either inebriation or its aftermath? But Eighty-Six, like all rabbits, was a sociable creature.

The world felt very cold and silent without the warmth and noise of his family. He wanted to sing off-key with Two-Hundred-Four while Thirty-Three played the log drum. He wanted to be grabbed round the middle by One-Hundred-Fifty-Three, who got all huggy after the first few bottles. He wanted to discuss the question of life, the universe and everything with Forty-Two. He wanted to form a line with his paws on the hips of the rabbit in front and and conga until his feet left the earth and they were dancing across the sky, the way they did at particularly good parties when the entire tribe was gathered together. That always really annoyed the Four Hundred Gods of the Southern Stars, snooty, fun-hating bunch that they were.

He missed his job, too. He hadn't asked to quit, just to take a little time off every now and then. Sure, it had been hard, but at least he went to bed feeling as if he'd achieved something. On the occasions when he could remember going to bed, that is. He had been good at his job; everyone had said so, even Two-Rabbit, before she cast him out. Who was encouraging partygoers to chat up their best friends' betrotheds now? Three-Twenty-Three, probably. He was bound to be making a mess of it.

Weary of his wandering and his thoughts, Eighty-Six lay down on the side of a hill and stared at the sky. He had never before noticed the colours, how the daytime blue faded through yellows and pinks to the deep red of blood, then a rich indigo across which trod the moon and the stars. The breeze brought him scents of flowers and the nighttime noises of scurrying animals.

With a bottle in his paw and a few dozen of his favourite siblings around him, it would have been just perfect.

Maybe if he went back and told Two-Rabbit he was really, really sorry...

"No," Eighty-Six said to the moon and stars. He'd only been trying for four nights; he wasn't about to admit defeat. He just needed to stop hanging around the places that reminded him of home--and anywhere alcohol might be found. Let Two-Rabbit wonder and worry about what had happened to him, if she cared. He had already discovered sunsets. Now Eighty-Six was going to find out what else there was in the world.

After that night, he avoided human and divine company alike. He wandered the arid regions and the lush, tropical forests, climbed cloud-capped mountains, and swam in the turquoise sea. Lonely though he was, he could not help noticing the new clearness in his mind, and his sharpened senses. The foods he ate tasted better than they had done when his tongue was dulled with pulque. He was awake for sunrise and sunset, and he could enjoy both without screwing his eyes up in agony. When he hopped and skipped in the sand, he neither lost his balance and fell over nor felt as if his head might be going to come off.

Above all, he could think properly. His brain was like a cocoa bean freshly popped from the woolly enclosure of its pod, all glossy and gleaming. He could remember things he had long forgotten, like obscure minor deities with seven-syllable names. He composed little songs and poems in his head as he travelled. To pass the time, he listed his siblings in numerical order, analysed their characters, and remembered a nice thing about each of them. The sights he had seen and the thoughts he had had during the course of one day, he actually remembered when the sun came up again. What's more, they were worth remembering.

It was in this state that he happened upon Tlacuache, the opossum, whose place in the world was to create rivers. No one was entirely sure how this task had fallen to him, but he was pretty good at it, for an opossum. One moment Eighty-Six saw something gleaming in the distance, the next he heard a rumble, and before he knew it a river was flowing past him, with Tlacuache panting after it.

"Oh, no, you don't, friend Rabbit," said Tlacuache when he saw him. He held up a pink paw. "I know who you are--you're one of the Centzon Totochtin. Well, I can't get drunk today. I have to finish this river. Isn't she a beauty?"

They admired it together as it coursed across the plain, straight and wide, and glittering like a lost temple full of treasure.

"Don't worry, Tlacuache. I'm not here in an official capacity. I'm...taking a break."

The opossum's beady little eyes grew beadier and littler, but he didn't press Eighty-Six for the details.

"Want to help me for a while?" he offered.

"Sure."

So they drove the water across the plain, herding it along the correct path as it carved a channel and flowed into it. Sometimes Tlacuache grabbed himself a fish, while Eighty-Six-Rabbit nibbled the plants that sprang up along the banks. When evening came they rested and watched the sunset together. Eighty-Six, exhausted from his hard work, fell asleep at Tlacuache's side. In the morning, when Tlacuache asked if he would help him again, he readily agreed.

Together, they brought water down from the mountains and across the deserts. Plants sprang up in their wake, and little fish jumped for joy in the currents. Eighty-Six and Tlacuache caught the fattest and least cautious of them for dinner. With each river, Eighty-Six had lasting, physical proof that he had helped to do something good. His old job never delivered that, although he supposed there were a few happily married couples out there who, without realising it, had Eighty-Six to thank for their union.

The opossum was peaceful company, and he called Eighty-Six-Rabbit simply Rabbit, as there was no need to distinguish him from his brothers and sisters. He taught his new friend to make cocoa, and they drank it while they watched the sun sink into their river, turning it blood-red, and the moon rise to coat the ripples in silver. Life was...cosy.

One evening, as they dangled their feet in the day's newborn river, Eighty-Six-Rabbit told Tlacuache all that had happened. The opossum listened quietly, with the occasional nod or hiss.

"I'm sorry for your troubles, Rabbit. I really am," he said at last.

"It's not your fault."

"Well, it kind of is. You see, I invented pulque. Didn't you know?"

Eighty-Six-Rabbit supposed that he had known, once, before the fog of alcohol took the knowledge from him.

"I gave it to the humans and they really ran with it. Hit it right out of the rubberball park." Tlacuache wiffled his nose. "I sometimes wonder if I did the right thing."

"Keeps them busy, I suppose."

Tlacuache nodded. "Beats all that war stuff. They haven't got the recipe quite right yet, though. Mine's still better."

"Yeah?"

The opossum produced a bottle. "Try for yourself...oh. I suppose not."

He sighed deeply, pulled off the bamboo stopper with his teeth, and upended the bottle. Eighty-Six watched his white throat bob as he swallowed. It had been a long day of river creation; he was hot, tired, and most of all thirsty.

"I suppose one can't hurt," he said. "Just...open it quietly. I don't want any of my siblings showing up."

When he woke, the sunlight stabbed at his eyes, and he slammed them shut again. Why was his burrow so bright? Then he remembered, and cautiously raised his eyelids to see Tlacuache peering anxiously down at him.

"I guess your tolerance isn't what it was," said the opossum, helping Eighty-Six to sit up. "Are you all right, Rabbit?"

"What did we do last night?"

Tlacuache didn't answer. Eighty-Six stared out across the landscape. It was moving and shimmering, and it continued to move and shimmer even after he blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. He held a paw in front of his face. It was in perfect focus.

He looked again. From horizon to horizon, a wide band of shining water ran. It looped. It meandered. It went back on itself. It even flowed briefly uphill, though as Eighty-Six watched it ran out of energy and fell back, leaving a lake behind.

"Yeah." Tlacuache scratched the back of his head and yawned. "We made a river."

Eighty-Six-Rabbit said goodbye to Tlacuache, and apologised for the river.

"Don't worry about it! Happens to me all the time!" Tlacuache said. "Are you sure you want to go? You've been a big help."

Eighty-Six took a last, wistful look at the bright morning and its brand-new river, then shook his head.

"No--I need to go back and do my duty. Two-Rabbit was right; you can take the drunken rabbit god out of the party, but you can't take the party out of the drunken rabbit god."

And he hopped away, while Tlacuache watched him go from the river bank.

It was a long journey back to the warren, and all Eighty-Six wanted when he arrived was a nice eight-hour nap in his burrow, but when he arrived he found that Ninety-Two had promoted herself into it. By the time he had kicked her out, with a great deal of noise and foot-thumping, it was evening, and the rabbits' duties were beginning. Eighty-Six checked the roster and found he had been already been assigned to a party in the Underworld, which suited him fine; he was feeling pretty low anyway.

The Lord and Lady of the Underworld welcomed them with open armbones. As the pulque began to flow, Eighty-Six felt himself growing loud and brash and happy, just like he used to be. Warmth spread through his body. Why had he cut himself off from who he was? This worked. This was right. He couldn't escape his destiny? Well, then, he would embrace it. He would be the loudest, brashest, happiest drunk of the family. He would drink more and party harder than any other rabbit.

He shook himself from ears to scut, and resumed his role as if he had never left it. Now he had tasted Tlacuache's original recipe, the regular mortal pulque was as water to him, and he downed it at a rate that astonished his siblings and had the Lady of the Underworld checking the cellar anxiously in case her supplies ran out.

As he urged a recently deceased spirit to try it on with the long-dead fiancé of her best friend, on the grounds that the best friend was scheduled for several decades more of a long and happy life, he felt the thrill that comes with doing your job, and doing it well.
It was a long, loud and successful party, which broke up only when the God of the Morning Star had to leave in order to create the new dawn. Then Tonatiuh, Lord of the Sun, said he'd better be going too, and the rabbits went home. Except for Twenty-Rabbit, the deity of Risky Showing Off, who accompanied Tonatiuh for a while in the hope of persuading him to bounce the sun along the sky instead of carrying it as usual.

The resulting hangover wasn't easy to shake. It took several bottles of pulque, so that when Eighty-Six arrived at the next night's party he was already feeling lively. It was only a mortal wedding, but it ended up lasting nine days, during which time no fewer than fifty of the guests made advances on their best friends' betrothed. Of these, thirty-two were coldly rebuffed, six were slapped, eight were removed from the happy couple's Atemoztli card list, and four discovered that they and their best friend's betrothed had, in fact, been made for each other all along.

From then on, Eighty-Six's status as the guarantor of a great evening was legendary. Gods and goddesses booked his presence at their parties months in advance. He did feast days, wakes, birthdays and religious ceremonies, although for some reason he was never in great demand at engagement parties. He drank and danced with his brothers and sisters, and carried on long after they had collapsed. He slept through sunset and partied until the morning star had faded into the day. He had no time to sober up between parties, so he suffered no aches, pains or troubling thoughts, and he forgot that he had ever wandered the world as a solitary rabbit. Once or twice, when the room was whirling hard around him, he even thought he glimpsed the shadowy form of One-Rabbit, always dancing a few steps ahead and out of reach.

He might have gone on this way for all of eternity, if one evening he hadn't staggered, pleasantly buzzed, into the wrong burrow, and found Three-Twenty-Three frantically splashing water over his ears.

"What's wrong, bro?"

Three-Twenty-Three turned his bedraggled head.

"Oh, hey, it's the poster boy for alcohol poisoning. Don't worry. You wouldn't understand."

Eighty-Six took a seat with the exaggerated care of the drunk pretending to be sober. "Try me."

"I'm tired, Eightsy. My throat's like sandpaper and if you picked me up by my tail, my eyeballs would fall out. I don't think I can get through another night of this."

Eighty-Six crinkled his forehead. A memory from the dim and sober past was thundering towards him, flooding his mind with the force and brightness of a river flowing true.

"Have you ever seen a sunset?" he asked his brother. "Really seen it?" He reached out a paw to smooth Three-Twenty-Three's rumpled fur.

"Hey, knock it off. I'm not your best friend's betrothed, you know."

"Oh, please. I mean: let's take the night off."

Three-Twenty-Three stared at him with bulging eyes, just as he had so long ago, but this time the eyes were filled with hope.

Eighty-Six made cocoa, and the two rabbits sat cosily together as their siblings set off for their assigned parties. They enjoyed a pleasant conversation, went to bed early, and awoke to watch the sun come up. Nobody appeared to have noticed their absence, since three hundred and ninety-nine rabbits are hard to keep track of, although Eighty-Six's favourite sister Fifty-Five did tell him that if he didn't wipe that self-satisfied smirk from his muzzle and stop looking so indecently cheerful, she would clock him one.

That night he threw himself back into the proper lifestyle as if the break had only sharpened his thirst, and the next night, and the next. The night after that, he noticed that One-Four-Four was looking a little ragged around the edges, and he took her dancing. When he woke refreshed, Two-Hundred-Eighteen, who had feasted on flatbread and milk before going out and thus remained more sober than his siblings, asked him if he fancied playing a board game.

Word spread, and soon more of his brothers and sisters came in secret to question him about the mysteries of time off. Eighty-Six found himself writing down cocoa recipes, then organising a rubberball league. In order to fit all this into his daylight hours, he drank less at night, so he spent less of his free time feeling like a hollowed-out gourd. He even began, when he found one of his siblings drinking hard on the eve of an important match, to tap them on the shoulder and suggest they call it a night.

It wasn't long before he extended his services to the human and divine partygoers, whispering a hint into receptive ears that stopping now would result in an evening of slurred speech and pleasantly lowered inhibitions, rather than an embarrassing scene, apologies, cleaning bills, and nicknames like Mixcoatl Who Should Not Mix Pulque And Mezcal.

Curiously, he was more in demand than ever before.

As he hopped down the warren on the eve of the rubberball finals, feeling better than he had for centuries, he caught sight of a paw sticking out from one of the burrows. It clasped a bottle of pulque, and it trembled. Automatically, Eighty-Six reached for the bottle.

"You!" The head and shoulders of Two-Rabbit emerged from the burrow, followed by the rest of her. Her eyes glowed dull and red, and her upper lip was pulled back to show her buck teeth. Eighty-Six noticed for the first time how sharp her claws were--for drawing up the rotas, he supposed.

Eighty-Six had known he was living on borrowed time. His actions could not forever escape the notice of Two-Rabbit, who made it her business to know the departures, arrivals and blood alcohol levels of all her siblings, and now he had delivered himself to her on a golden platter. If he apologised right now, and downed a few pulques for good measure, he might escape demotion to God of Projectile Vomiting, which was the nastiest thing he could dream up at the moment.

Instead, he tightened his grip on Two-Rabbit's bottle, and drew it from her grasp with a firm, practised motion.

"How dare you, Eighty-Six-Rabbit? I'm going to make you the God of Being Projectile Vomited Upon! What have you got to say for yourself?"

Two-Rabbit was larger than the other siblings, so that Eighty-Six had to stand on his hind legs to look her in the eye, and speak the six words that would undoubtedly seal his doom.

"When did it stop being fun?"

Two-Rabbit's top and bottom teeth clicked together. Eighty-Six covered his eyes with his paws and braced for the attack. When it didn't come, he peeped cautiously through his claws at Two-Rabbit. She was shaking.

"When...when One-Rabbit left," she whispered. "When he left me in charge of you all. I draw up the rotas and then I have a drink to forget what a dull job it is, and to wash away all the complaints I get from rabbits who think they deserve to go to different, better parties, and then I have to get up and do it all over again, day after day until Huitzilopochtli is born of Coatlicue to destroy us all."

Eighty-Six blinked. He hadn't known about Huitzilopochtli, and he didn't much care for the knowledge.

"I've worked so hard," Two-Rabbit continued, staring glassily at a point above Eighty-Six's head, "and I still can't keep up with One-Rabbit. I can't even keep up with you!"

She swung her gaze back to her brother. It was filled with loathing, but also, Eighty-Six thought, with fear.

"Me? I haven't had a drink for..." Eighty-Six tried to work it out. He hadn't deliberately stopped drinking; it had just happened, as he found other things to do. "It doesn't matter!" he burst out, as it dawned on him that it really didn't. "We don't need to be drunk all the time. What's fun and free about that?"

"I think you'll find," Two-Rabbit said, shuffling her paws, "that 'drunken rabbit god' is both your classification and your job description."

"We're the gods of partying! You said so yourself! Shouldn't things be a little more relaxed? Why can't we party because we want to, not because we have to?"

"This is anarchy, little brother. We were put into this world to preside over social situations where alcohol is present." Two-Rabbit was sounding dangerously like her usual self again.

"And we're doing it. Have you heard anyone, god or mortal, complain that their parties didn't have enough drunken rabbits? Someone's always in the mood, even if they're not on the rota. It just works. This is what you were afraid of, isn't it? This is why you sent me away when I suggested we might all drink a bit less. You didn't want anyone to sober up and discover the secret--that we don't need the rotas, and we don't need you."

It was a long time since Eighty-Six had made such a long speech. With three hundred and ninety-eight siblings, he hadn't had much opportunity. That was probably why his mouth was so dry.

Two-Rabbit lay on the floor of the warren, deflated. Her ears lay flat and limp along her back, and her eyes were like obsidian mirrors.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" she asked.

"There's a whole world out there, Two-Rabbit. Take a break. Wander. Learn to play the turtle drum. You can even make rivers!"

"That's disgusting, Eighty-Six."

"Not like that!" He cocked an ear. Somewhere in the distance, above his head, he heard the sound of rushing water. If Two-Rabbit hurried, she would catch up with Tlacuache before night fell. "Go on! Quick, before anyone sees you!"

Two-Rabbit hesitated. "You'll be all right without me?"

"Of course. We're drunken rabbit gods! We're always all right!"

He touched noses with his sister, then Two-Rabbit hopped away to where the golden late-afternoon light was spilling into the warren. She didn't look back.

Eighty-Six was still holding the bottle of pulque he had confiscated from Two-Rabbit. He inspected it. Talking Two-Rabbit around had been hard, thirsty work. If ever a rabbit deserved a drink, he deserved one now.

"Come on, Eightsy!" Three-Twenty-Three scampered past him. "The first match is about to start!"

He put the bottle down, and lolloped after his brother. Maybe he'd feel like a drink tomorrow, and maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd party all night and maybe he'd stay in. There was room in his life for both. And for sunsets. Always for sunsets.