DECEMBER 17, 2012
CHAPTER 15
Stars faded into the brightening sky as Ah Bahlam and fifteen others gathered at the gates of Zama. He shifted his stance to balance the weight of the wooden shield on his arm with the spear and bow and arrows he carried. His glance slid to a young man standing beside him, Ah K’in’ca. His friend stared down the road they would run along soon, apprehension momentarily showing on his face. “It will be a good journey,” Ah Bahlam said, as much for him as for his friend. “We will be safe.”
Ah K’in’ca raised his shield. He spoke loud enough to cover the uncertainty in his eyes. “We will travel well.”
They would. Their clothing, spears, shields, and helmets shone from the long peaceful season at Zama, which had been full of warm evenings with time to talk while their hands polished and mended their tools and dress. They would be an imposing sight.
Three women stood in a bunch: Hun Kan, Nimah, and Kisa. All were from ruling families, all maidens, all sent here to prepare for noble sacrifice, or to become wives of important men; women with roles to play in the squabbling elite. But for now, they all looked beautiful and solemn as they stood watching the travel preparations.
Five older men ranged back and forth along the slowly forming line, joking about returning to their families. Guards for families of the Lord of Itzá, they had accompanied the students from Chichén and would return with them.
Ah Bahlam looked back at the temples of Zama, catching the exact moment the sun rose over the gray water and brought them to life for the new day. He would miss this moment, this crack between night and day that was far more beautiful here on the coast than inland. He offered a silent prayer to K’inich Ahaw . . .
God of the sun . . . protect this place even while I and my spear leave it.
Ah Bahlam understood Hun Kan’s tears about leaving Zama, but he would look ahead now, look toward seeing his father and toward the ceremonies of equinox. The ball game. He had dreamed all his life of this return to Chichén, to becoming part of the blood and heart of the powerful city.
Cauac and the other teachers would surely appear soon and start the rites.
He went and stood a small distance from Hun Kan, watching her. She wore a loose dress designed to allow free movement and, if she was needed, hand to hand fighting. Her dark hair had been caught up in a knot on top of her head. Wooden sticks with round jade beads held her hair in place. A wide strip of beaded leather wrapped around her wrist, covering the bright blue ornament she had received from the golden-haired girl, Ni-ixie. The single bead hung around her neck.
She smiled at him, silent, ready, all traces of sadness gone or buried. Seeing her reminded him of the scent of their mingled blood, and copal, and the strength of the ceremony. He wanted to touch her. He returned her smile and went on, walking past her so her beauty wouldn’t distract him from being ready.
The beginning of a journey mattered.
The stars had all disappeared by the time the teachers lined up in front of the travelers. An apprentice, barely five summers old, carried a shell full of embers, herbs, and copal, fanning the smoke onto each of them with a serious and intent look. Cauac, Ah K’an, and K’ahtum followed the boy, blessing each warrior. When it was Ah Bahlam’s turn to stand in front of Cauac, he stood as straight as he could, held as much control as possible. He might never see the old man again. He looked into Cauac’s eyes and flinched at the unexpected worry he saw there. Had he dreamed more disturbing dreams? There was no time to ask.
The other four teachers waited for the full shamans at the head of the line, until the seven made a long barrier in front of the travelers, forming the top of the World Tree.
Dressed in bright red, green, and blue finery, all of them except for Cauac wore masks made of feathers, bone, shells, and wood. Their chests were adorned with necklaces to match, including jaguar teeth, puma and tapir teeth and bones, and even the small sharp teeth of vipers bleached harmless by three seasons of sun on top of the walls.
The procession began to move, led by two of the seasoned warriors.
As he passed Cauac for the last time, Ah Bahlam kept his face forward and looked to the path in front of him. It was time to know all that he learned in Zama and bend that knowledge to a safe journey, to watching for signs of bandits and people-of-unrest along the roadside, to keep his feet sure on the path and his spirit balanced with the jungle.
With any luck, stories would return to Cauac to make him proud of his student.
CHAPTER 16
Nixie felt a hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. She’d fallen asleep in the car. The car door was open, and her mom’s voice called her name from far away. She couldn’t tell what her mom’s face looked like since it had grown dark, and the only light came from above and behind her mom’s head. “Are we home?” Nix asked.
“Yes. At the hotel. Come on, wake up and eat something. You need dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.” She and Oriana had eaten empanadas and fried tortillas with sugar, and drank sweet orange sodas in little round glass bottles. She struggled out of the car, dragging her backpack after her.
Her mom led the way up the steps, calling back, “I’m sorry you had to stay in town all day.”
“I still want to go snorkeling. Surely the beach is safe enough.”
“When I can go with you.”
Nixie winced at the sharp tone in her mom’s voice. “Look, mom, I don’t know why it happens, or what places make it happen, but I don’t want to spend my whole time here wandering around hotel lobbies and stupid tourist shops. Cancun is like when you took me to Vegas last winter. Same stuff.”
Her mom held the door open, frowning down at her. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you. But if I lost you . . . ” She smothered Nixie in her arms, making it hard to breathe. “Maybe you and Oriana can go to Isla Mujeres tomorrow and look in the shops there.”
Nixie pulled away. “Look, nothing bad happened.” She remembered Hun Kan’s face shining up at her, dark eyes alight with curiosity. “I want to see Hun Kan. I want it to happen again. Maybe we should go to Tulum and you can try and go with me.”
The look on her mom’s face said she’d just pushed it too far, so she changed subjects. Sort of. “Do you have the necklace, Mom?”
Her mom dug the towel-wrapped necklace out of the bottom of her purse and started to set it on the counter. Nixie reached a hand out. “Can I have it?”
Her mom hesitated.
It was hers. Hun Kan had given it to her. Nixie stared at her mom, willing her to do the right thing.
It took a long time, but finally her mom set the whole bundle in her outstretched hand. “Take care of it.”
“What did the man say about it?”
“The materials are worth a lot of money.”
She didn’t care about that. It was her link to Hun Kan. “Did he say it’s old?”
Her mom shook her head. “He says it was made like the old ones, but the materials are new.”
Nixie clutched it to her. “I’m tired, Mom. I’m going to bed.” She walked to the fake mantle over the fake fireplace and picked up her quetzal feather, then headed for her room.
Nixie felt a hand on her shoulder and then her Mom’s voice, too cheerful, saying, “Let’s get in our pj’s and read in bed. I’ll sit with you in your bed until you go to sleep.”
Great. A moment. But then again, she was tired. “All right, but first I want to put the necklace away.”
“Put it someplace where it can’t fall.”
Right. Like she didn’t know that. She carried it carefully to her bedside table, nestled the towel into the drawer beside a Gideon Bible that no one had apparently opened in years, and laid the necklace out carefully. She could wait until her mom went to bed and take it out and look at it. She set the feather on top of the dresser since it was too long to fit in the drawer.
She managed to put her pajamas on and get into bed before her mom got there, adjusted the light so it was just perfect, tucked the covers around her bare legs, and opened the book in her lap. She was interested in the story by the time her mom climbed under the covers, but having her mom there made it hard to concentrate. She stared at the words, frowning, and turning a page every once in a while.
Her mom wasn’t reading her book either, and Nixie wondered which one of them would say something first, and then decided it wouldn’t be her. She was too tired to talk about something she didn’t have any answers for, and nothing interesting had happened today, except she and Oriana snuck into one of the hotel pools and dangled their feet in the water; the sneaking in had been exciting.
Her mom would never sneak in anywhere.
As she expected, her mom broke the silence first. “Do you want to talk?”
Nixie set her book down. “I wasn’t really reading anyway. I was just pretending, like you.”
“Were you scared when . . . when you got the feather and when you met Hun Kan?”
Nixie shook her head so hard her hair flew across her cheeks, but she smoothed it away before her mom could do it. “No Mom. I wasn’t scared. I think it’s exciting. I want it to happen again.”
“I don’t want it to happen again.” Her mom breathed the words out slowly, and Nixie tried not to be sucked into feeling sorry for her. She picked up the feather and ran her hands along its broken spine. Maybe her mom was jealous? She studied the old times, but Nixie had gotten to see them firsthand. “Even if it happened to you? Would you mind then?
“Especially then. Who would take care of you?”
Nixie turned her face up to look at Alice, and said something that surprised her. “Why is it happening to me?”
“I don’t know.”
Some help adults were. She set the feather down carefully and rolled over on her side, pretending to sleep so her mom would leave her alone.
CHAPTER 17
Alice listened closely as Nixie’s breath slowed into the neat rhythm of sleep. Her features relaxed, releasing the face of a younger Nixie, a true child. Alice timed her breath to Nixie’s, comforted by the feeling of connection brought by such a simple thing.
She should get up and go to her own bed in the living room. Her limbs felt like lead weight, and her eyes couldn’t quite stay focused on the yellow-orange wall in front of her.
It just felt so warm, so perfect, to lay still and breathe with her daughter.
Macaws called above Alice’s head, and she pushed aside the leaves of a strangler fig and peered through the opening she created. The sharp edge of a dry leaf brushed the back of her hand. She jerked at the sensation and opened her eyes to the dimly-lit hotel room, then slammed them shut again, immediately finding herself standing where she had been, fully aware this time that she dreamed.
Vividly.
Winter orchids blooming somewhere nearby released a sweet, almost sickly scent. A road of white stones with white mortar ran in front of her, raised, clearly built by hand, and largely smooth. Here and there, small jungle plants poked up through the stones, particularly at the edges, but no more than a few.
A sacbe. A Mayan road. Sacred.
She had seen the remnants of sacbeob, unearthed from dense covering foliage, or sometimes even still largely holding their own against the hungry jungle for yards at a time.
This road stretched far on either side, a tree-lined oasis in the midst of dense jungle.
Alice stepped toward it, moving slowly, leaves rustling against her calves. She shuffled her feet to avoid tripping on uneven roots, to feel the ground hold her weight even in the dream, finally reaching the edge of the road. She hesitated, her stomach light yet full of a sense of impending change. Stepping up onto the road would change her. There was a stretch of restored sacbe on the grounds of Chichén Itzá. But not like this, whole and long, and surely recently dedicated with blood and ritual.
She lifted her foot, stopped in mid-stride, took a breath, and set it down, stepping on fully, lifting the other foot, walking. She couldn’t quite feel the road, but it held her up—like walking as an avatar in a full-sized virtual world. Except that the trees and the stones, and even the smells were better than any virtual rendering she’d ever seen.
“Mom!”
She halted. Nixie. Here, in her dreams. She looked back to where she had stepped out of jungle. Not there.
“Mom! Here.”
Nixie was ten feet in front of her, standing easily on the roadbed that had been empty and clear before, her head cocked. “Mom, come on. Someone’s coming.” Nixie reached her hand out, and Alice took the steps needed to grab it, surprised to find Nixie’s hand warm and a touch sweaty, as if they were in the middle of a normal day.
They walked up the road quietly, holding hands.
Nixie stopped, then pulled Alice to the side, scrambling up a pile of rocks Alice hadn’t even noticed. It wasn’t a natural pile, nor was it a building. A place where the Mayans quarried?
“Mom!”
Her attention had wandered. She would have to watch her dream self. “Who’s coming?” she whispered.
“Get down behind here,” Nixie said, crouching so that only the top of her head, from her eyes up, showed above the rocks. Alice scrambled around to crouch next to her, a sharp corner digging into her knee until she shifted. So she could feel here, but the pain felt odd—not as sharp or intense as in the waking world.
Since when did dreams hurt at all?
Nixie pointed back the way they had come.
A group of people walked toward them at an easy, ground-eating pace. Maybe fifteen or twenty of them. It was hard to count, to focus. Every new thing caught her attention, a feast of information and glory.
A lifetime of study, given flesh.
Sunlight glinted off beads, shells and metal worked into breastplates, helmets, and around calves. The men carried shields and spears, and in two cases, arrows. Trained Mayan warriors, at least in the front. Real ones, not made up for tourist shows. They were both shorter than she expected, and fiercer. Their foreheads slanted back. Their bare sun-touched thighs and calves showed deeply defined musculature, and thick belts clung to their waists over skirts made of leaves.
They continued toward Alice and Nixie’s hiding place on silent footsteps, watchful, alert. They seemed to belong on the sacbe, in the jungle; they moved like big cats; easy and powerful, almost as if they were dancing instead of walking.
The first two rows of three warriors carried only shields and spears. The next row carried bulging sacks across their back, but the weight hardly seemed to affect the carriers at all. Behind the burdened men, three women walked apace, heads forward and up, warriors flanking. They too wore artifacts of the natural world, including bright macaw feathers that hung from their necks on strings over simple woven dresses. Behind the women, two more warriors walked nearly sideways, able to see behind the group.
Nixie whispered. “See her?”
Alice squinted. The woman to the left could be the one from the picture. It was hard to tell with her hair pulled up and away from her face, but she seemed to have the same eyes that had looked so intent in Nixie’s pictures. She wore a single bead on a string around her neck. Ian’s bead. “Hun Kan?” she asked, verifying,
Nixie nodded. “Shhhh . . . ”
The jungle around them had quieted, as if honoring the presence of the travelers.
Nixie’s hand squeezed hers so hard pain shot up Alice’s arm. What is it?” she mouthed.
“Him.” Nixie’s whisper sounded so soft Alice could barely hear it. “The man who gave me the feather. He has his bird with him.”
The man closest to Hun Kan in fact did have a bird on his shoulder. Alice had missed it in all his feathered finery. A quetzal, perched easily on a wide strip of leather that ran from the man’s neck to his left shoulder.
Could the Mayans see them? She had to resist the temptation to stand up and find out. Surely she and Nixie dreamed, but these people walked the sacbe in the real world.
The group came close enough to hear the muted jangle of shells and beads. Alice held her breath. Did Nixie have her camera? No, this was a dream. Nixie was dressed in jeans and a favorite T-shirt, but had no purse or electronics with her.
Along with the beauty, danger and the ability to deal death surrounded the Mayans, sending a cool heat up Alice’s body, as if her dream-self carried more nerves than her real one, every one alight with what must be the wariness of prey.
The first warriors were almost directly across from them now.
Sound slammed into her. The high scream of macaw fear, the roar of a jungle cat, the chattering of monkeys. All talking to each other.
Wrong.
It sounded wrong, felt wrong,
sang
wrongly in her body.
The warriors stopped, eyes scanning the jungle, dark bodies crouching lower.
She gathered Nixie close to her, curling her slender form inside the cage of her arms and legs, feeling Nixie tremble.
Arrows and spears flew through the air toward the travelers.
A warrior in the second row crumpled, a spear protruding from his neck. Blood stained the white road.
Nixie screamed. Alice clapped a hand over her mouth. Nixie’s teeth closed on the flesh of her palm.
Alice tried to wake up in the hotel room. Her eyes were already open here and opening them wider didn’t help. Blinking failed. Her heart pounded with fear, worse than in real life, worse than in the real world. A dream become nightmare.
Men boiled around them, nearly naked, carrying spears and shields but simply dressed. Nixie turned a terrified face toward a pair that leaped over the top of the stones two feet from her, but the men seemed to look right through them. Still, Alice kept her hand clamped over Nixie’s mouth. Men kept streaming from behind the rock, behind trees, from the ground behind thick vegetation. Twenty, thirty of them. More from the other side. The original warriors on the sacbe surrounded the women, facing out, lifting their spears and shields.
The attackers closed.
An obsidian blade glinted in Hun Kan’s hand. The women stood back to back to make a triangle, hand-to-hand combat now swirling about them, too fast for Alice to follow.
The quetzal bird flushed up in a bright-colored startle and landed in a tree above Alice and Nixie, chirping loudly, almost a bird-scream.
Attackers fell. Warriors, too, but three or four of the others to each of the original warriors.
Ambushers swarmed over the fallen, ripping the spears and even the clothing from the bodies. A warrior stood over a man struggling to strap on a stolen shield, yanked up his head, and slit his throat, roaring like a bear or a cat, triumphant, turning on the ball of his foot, kicking at another man before four of the attackers brought him down.
The warriors were better, but there were too many of the others.
Openings appeared where the attackers could get near the Mayan women. Two men grabbed the smallest one—not Hun Kan—and covered her face with a cloth, taking her away, kicking, melting into the jungle. Others advanced on Hun Kan and the remaining woman, now standing back to back, their faces as fierce as the warriors’.
Nixie ripped Alice’s hand from her mouth and stood, yelling, “Hun Kan! Hun Kan!”
Alice grabbed her around the waist. “No!”
“Hun Kan,” Nixie hissed, twisting in Alice’s grasp.
An attacker grabbed at Hun Kan, ripping at her necklace. The bird man broke his spear over the man’s back and grabbed Hun Kan’s hand, looking around frantically.
A jungle cat’s roar drove a physical shiver through Alice’s bones. The sound filled the air and bounced from the jungle, the stones, a sound so great and so long and so demanding that nearby leaves quivered.
The fighting below paused as attacker and attacked all stopped, eyes drawn to the top of the stones where a jaguar stood just above Alice and Nixie. Alice sat down, hard, pulling Nixie onto her lap.
The cat stank of power and blood and sweat and glory.
Nixie stilled, her eyes fastened on the strong jaw and the gleaming white teeth. Close to them, so close. Alice could have touched it.
The black jaguar roared again.
The black on black of its coat rippled, great uneven squares of darkness on an ebony background. It stood looking down at the carnage, completely focused, its golden eyes bright and intense. The tip of its tail moved, slowly.
It turned its head, and its gaze rested on Nixie. Mesmerizing. Dangerous. Alice herself had gone beyond fear into silence. Into acceptance. The jaguar had all the power of the world inside its eyes, all the speed and danger and savageness of the jungle, but it had not come for them.
Movement resumed below them, and the jaguar’s gaze returned to the road.
The bird man and Hun Kan broke free and raced
toward
the cat, toward them all. A man started to follow. One of the three remaining warriors grabbed him by the neck and twisted, throwing the limp form down in the ground and turning to face another attacker.
Hun Kan and her companion stepped close to Alice, between her and the jaguar. A gash on the man’s leg dripped blood. Hun Kan’s hair had come down, falling in a dark wave around her small shocked face.
The cat leaped down the stones, flowing more than running. The bird man and Hun Kan followed, fast, scrambling on all fours, coming so close Alice or Nixie could have reached out and touched them, but neither stopped in their rush toward safety. The cat paused in a small cleared spot just beyond the rocks, waiting. As the Mayans reached the bottom of the rock pile, it turned and all three disappeared into the jungle.
Alice blinked at the place they had gone, mesmerized by the swaying leaves until they stopped and there was no sign of their passage except their footprints.
“Look,” Nixie whispered. She reached a hand out and picked up the necklace. It must have fallen from Hun Kan’s throat in the mad dash up and over the pile of stones. Broken leather protruded from Nixie’s fist.
Alice glanced back at the melee. One Mayan warrior from the original group raced away, in the direction they had first been going. Someone to report the deaths of all the others?
He wasn’t followed.
The attackers had already stripped the bodies of clothing, weapons, and finery. They melted into the forest, all of them leaving from the far side, taking the other girl as well. At least they weren’t following Hun Kan and the bird man.
The white road in front of them was littered with bodies, the two groups different even in death; the Mayan warriors all well-formed and well-fed, healthy. The attackers looked thinner with rougher hair and clothing and scarred bodies. They shared the same features, though. Not Toltecs then, but Mayans. An underclass. Maybe farmers? Evidence in front of her that civil unrest had helped bring down the Itzá.
Alice swallowed hard, wanting to hide Nixie’s eyes, knowing it was too late. But Nixie wasn’t watching the road or the bodies; her attention was on the necklace. She held it out toward Alice, her eyes wide and shocky. Alice reached out for it, but her hand passed through the cord as if it were not there. She shook her head. “I can’t . . . ”
Nixie looked away from her, back the way they had come. “We have to go.”
Alice felt it too, a pulling, as if her dream body wanted to lose its form.
Nixie stood, disentangling herself from Alice. “I have to leave this here.”
The jungle and the road fuzzed in her vision, but she wasn’t touching Nix, couldn’t—wouldn’t—return without her. She forced her energy into feeling the stone, her body to movement. “Why?”
Nixie shook her head. “It belongs here.”
Alice swallowed, suddenly in awe of her own daughter. “Set it on the stone.” Nixie jumped down a level in the stone pile. “I need to hide it.” She climbed all the way down, carefully not looking at the bodies and the road.
Birds chattered again, and the incessant drone of insects filled the white space between their conversations. Wind sang in the trees above her. Alice looked up for the quetzal, but it was gone. She climbed down beside Nixie, staying close enough to reach for her. The chalky, iron scent of blood wafted toward them on a soft breeze.