Most of the rest of the meeting— aside from shield-building, telekinesis, and energy-sending— was taken up with talk about how to get supplies for the Uxmal session.
It was finally decided that they could all use their newfound glamour techniques for food and drink stealing. But meanwhile, since the discussion was heavy on fantasies of food that I wasn’t going to be eating, I kind of let my attention wander, something I seldom did in a focus.
I was kind of in a state of psychic limbo, maybe more receptive than usual. All I know is that I heard another voice… definitely not A.B.’s voice… in my head. I need to talk to you, it said. After the meeting.
Startled, I met Cooper’s eyes. Huh? I telegraphed back, really talking mostly to myself.
To my embarrassment, he didn’t react at all, only dropped his gaze. But I could have sworn he turned ever so slightly pink.
I’d probably imagined the whole thing, but just in case, I made an excuse for Carlos, with whom I always walked back to the dorm— (just had to check out a library book, which I went ahead and actually did)— and when I went outside, Cooper was waiting for me.
“Carlos already left,” he said. “I told him I’d walk you home.”
“Cooper, listen, did you… um… send me a message? To meet you after the meeting?”
“You mean write you a note? Or what?”
“I mean telepathically.”
“Whoa.” He drew back, startled. “Umm… yeah. Yes, I guess I did. But I didn’t know you’d actually get it. You know how sometimes you wish you could tell someone something, but you just can’t get their attention? So you send them a telepathic message just because?”
I laughed. “Yeah. But it never works.”
“Guess I should be more careful.”
“Yeah. It’s spooky.”
“Bears looking into.” Well. Definitely time to leave that subject, but neither of us knew how.
We were standing on the library steps shifting from one foot to another, a little embarrassed, marking time, really, a conversational situation I can never stand. So I finally just blurted, “What did you need?”
“Huh?”
“What I got was, I need to talk to you. What’s up?”
“Oh. Well. I was hoping to walk you back.”
I looked at him quizzically, sending him my own telepathic message: Could you be more specific?
But he didn’t seem to get it. “Okay,” I said. “Sure. Let’s walk.”
So we walked, chattering awkwardly about the importance of high-energy, high-carb snacks, such as Ho-Hos and doughnuts, for the impending energy vigil. The subject couldn’t have interested me less, but I didn’t know how to get on something more substantive.
This time Cooper was the blurter. As we neared the dorm, he said, “Listen, I’ve never gotten a chance to say I’m… um… really sorry about Haley and that… you know… we’re all rooting for her.”
This was a boy? Talking to me like this?
“And I wanted to say something else. Remember the first time we met?”
“Ummm. Not sure.”
“Think back. It was your first day and you asked me for directions.”
“Oh, yeah. I think you insulted me.”
“Big surprise. But before that…”
It was the strangest thing, but I really could remember something before Cooper had opened his mouth that day. He’d looked at me as if…
“I was trying to send you a message,” he said. “I didn’t know I was psychic, but I was still trying to communicate with you. Telepathically.”
“But why?”
“Because I couldn’t talk to you. You know, because I couldn’t talk to anybody. So I was trying really really hard to tell you I knew I was about to completely gross you out and I was sorry because…”
“Because what?”
“Guess it didn’t work, huh?”
I smiled. “No, but we seem to be getting there.” Omigod, I was flirting!
Taking the cue, he instantly abandoned whatever incredibly sincere thing he’d been about to say and just settled for, “You are without question the weirdest chick I ever met in my life.”
“You are so sweet!”
“Yeah, right. Well, I wanted to apologize for that day.”
“That’s all? You’ve said much worse stuff to me since then.”
“Well, a couple of other things. I wanted to thank you for, like, making it possible for me to rejoin the living.”
“It wasn’t exactly single-handed.”
“And for going to Uxmal.”
I grimaced. “Only under duress. Wish me luck.”
“Well, see, that’s exactly what I want to do. Because you know what’s the luckiest thing you can do before you take off on something like that? You need to go out and get a good-luck kiss.”
Uh-oh. I hadn’t seen that coming. I wondered what colors I was turning. “Well, I was going to,” I said, “but I wasn’t sure where to find one.” And then, bold as anything, I turned up my face, and he leaned closer, the lime-green of his aura washing over me. His energy felt warm and so… enticing.
How is this done? I wondered. Do I… or does he…?
And next thing you know, both of us had our arms around each other— don’t ask how it happened, I think it was some kind of magic— and his lips went on top of mine and I closed my eyes, and…
Ummm, boy. So that was what a kiss was like.
When we stopped and breathed, we were still so close together it kind of shocked me, still looking straight into each other’s eyes, still feeling strangely dazed and woozy. Or at least I was. It was kind of wonderful, maybe the best part.
“You’ll be okay now,” Cooper said. And then he whispered, “Bon voyage!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE—GRAND ENTRANCE
How was I supposed to sleep after that? How was I even supposed to feel? Because the way I felt was complicated— kind of syrupy delicious and maybe a little scared. Did I like this boy? Yes! I thought. I’ve always liked him, even that first time he mentioned, when he insulted me on sight. I’d pulled for him, rooted for him all that time we’d worked to un-curse him, but I’d kept Cooper himself— the real boy under all the oily olive mask— at a distance. Still, I wasn’t kidding when I blurted out to Manny Diaz that he was a “really nice boy.” In my heart, I knew that. (I’m psychic, right? Of course I did.)
When I repeated it to myself, it didn’t sound romantic, but the kiss? Definitely romantic.
“Reeno, would you go to sleep?” Kara said. “Do you suddenly have restless leg syndrome?”
“Sorry. Nervous, I guess. About Uxmal.”
“Oh, hell. Close your eyes and listen.” She spoke softly and slowly. “You are in a beautiful place that only you know about… a place in the woods with a soft floor of moss… a perfect place for the best nap you ever had…”
Yow. Even Kara was being nice to me. I guess what she did was technically hypnosis, which is just another kind of trance. At any rate, it worked. Kiss or no kiss, I got a great night’s sleep, zombied through my classes, and ended up at the Rangers meeting exactly at the appointed time, with Mom’s brooch in my pocket.
I was the first one there— except for the Beast, of course, who was always so punctual you’d have to question whether he ever left if you didn’t see him everywhere else. Except, oddly, not in my bed the night before. Could he have been giving me privacy to contemplate my personal conflicts?
Naaah. It just wasn’t him.
“You underestimate me, Traveler.”
“Ah. Awake, I see. Just testing. Listen. Listen, about Uxmal. Can we arrive a little outside the town— in the village where the poor people live?”
“Certainly. May I ask why?”
“I’ve got a plan.” I told him what it was and, to my amazement, he seemed to approve: “As plans go, it will do.”
“And one more thing— how am I supposed to know the book when I see it?”
“You will.”
&n
bsp; He could be such a know-it-all. “I will? That’s all you have to say?”
“You will.”
I shrugged. “Okay, Fuzz-button. I will.”
That was all we had time for before everyone arrived with contraband sandwiches, sodas, and who knew what else— Ho-Hos and doughnuts if they had their way. We were all on edge and nervous, like people waiting for a plane or something. I needed to get out of there.
“Ready, A.B.?”
“Not merely ready. Impatient.”
“Okay, everybody,” I said, “A.B. says this is it. Wish me luck.”
They did— loudly. But I heard two words under the din— or perhaps I only imagined that Cooper whispered them once again:
“Bon voyage.”
“Watch this, everybody!” I grabbed A.B.’s tail and we were off.
***
We arrived almost immediately in the same Mayan hut where we’d left the Guatemalan bag, and once again, there seemed to be no one home unless you counted a fluffy little calico cat. “Say hello to Spot,” A.B. said.
Aloud, I said, “Hi, Spot— how you doing, girl?” The cat let me pet her.
Then I got to work getting the little mini candy bars out of the bags, unwrapping some of them and leaving some in their paper and foil wrappers. I emptied all the chocolate kisses into a pile, leaving most of them in their foil, and made sure all the cookies and things were good and handy.
A.B. fluffed up his fur while I worked and Spot watched in Cat Position Four, Chicken Kitty. Finally I rolled up my sleeves so my snakes showed, grabbed the bag, said to Spot, “Don’t wait up,” and reached out for A.B. “Let’s go.”
A.B. said, “Next stop, Uxmal.” And before you knew it, we were boogying back eleven hundred years and I don’t know how many miles— falling down, down, down the stairs of time, hitting each one, it felt like. And there must have been thousands of them. But I was used to it by now. I just hung onto the cat and the bag and tried to keep breathing.
When we landed, it was late afternoon on a bright sunny day. We were on a path near a little thatch-roofed village where not a lot was happening, except women making tortillas and taking in clothes that were drying on bushes. Some kids playing too. Very quiet and peaceful, much like a Mayan village would be today, according to my reading, the men still in the fields, everyone else getting ready for dinner.
A.B. and I touched down far enough away that no one could have sworn we hadn’t simply come around a bend. We stayed on that path, me carrying the bag, both of us relaxed, just a girl and her cat having an afternoon walk. Perfectly ordinary except for two things— I looked about as Mayan as Cortes did, and no one here, if I understood correctly, had ever seen a domestic cat before. The Mayans had several kinds of dogs (one of them barkless), but so far as I knew, they didn’t keep cats. These people knew all about jaguars and pumas and ocelots, but a little orange fluffball? Uh-uh. And who doesn’t like little animals?
So I was counting on A.B. to do his nice-kitty impersonation and charm the little Mayan kids into eating out of my hand. I hoped their mamas hadn’t warned them about taking candy from strangers.
Sure enough, pretty soon we had an adoring circle of admirers— or at least A.B. did. The kids all pointed and giggled, and A.B. let me pet him so they could see what that was about. A few dogs arrived, all huffy about this strange new animal, but A.B. lost no time showing them who was the alpha animal, which amused the kids no end.
He had a lot of nerve telling me to “act” in these situations. That cat was the Johnny Depp of felines. You would have thought from his performance that day that his name really was Sweetie-Fluff or Snookums. He let the kids pet him and he rubbed his head against them, and he even purred for the second time in our acquaintanceship.
And then, when he pretty much had them in love with him, I opened the bag, took out a piece of chocolate, and ate it. You can imagine that that got their interest. I took out another and held it to the nose of the nearest kid, a naked little boy about four, I guess. “Um,” he said, or maybe it was “yum”. And then, “Cacao.” Well, it sounded like that, anyhow. The Mayans used the cacao bean both for money and to make chocolate, so I was pretty sure the kid had identified the scent. I gave him the candy.
You should have seen what happened next. He popped it into his mouth, and his eyes brightened up like headlights. Such a look of bliss crossed his sweet little face that you’d have thought I’d handed him an entire hot fudge sundae.
Shouting that word again, “Cacao!” (or whatever it was), he grabbed for more, but I held back.
By now the other kids had caught on. I doled out a few more naked pieces. Then I unwrapped a chocolate kiss, to show them how, and gave the kiss to one of the kids. But to my surprise, another grabbed for the foil wrapper. I was afraid she’d put it in her mouth, and then I’d be in trouble with the moms, who were starting to gather. But she turned it over and over instead, examining its shininess, feeling its tinny texture, finally tearing it and rolling it into a little silver ball.
This was wonderful news— now I had twice as many gifts as I’d thought.
And by now, we had a really good crowd— dozens of kids, and maybe a dozen moms, some of whom tried to talk to me. I told them politely that I didn’t understand their language, which they seemed to get, and then offered chocolate. Adults or not, even they went nuts for it. Not only that, they wanted to pet the kitty cat. I was the most popular kid in the village and I’d only been there twenty minutes.
“What do you think, A.B.?” I asked. “We doing okay?”
“You mean if you don’t count the petting? I’ve spent hours grooming this fur, and now look!”
“You look good,” I said.
I pointed toward the Great Pyramid, the tallest building in Uxmal, and said “Palak.” The king’s name. “I have gifts for Palak.”
Of course all they got was the name, which I probably mispronounced, but they seemed to catch my drift. They fell into step both in front of us, leading the way, and behind us, protecting our rear, and we marched on Uxmal.
The more we walked, the bigger the parade got. Some of the men were returning now, and the women chattered to them like birds, describing the amazing taste treats they’d experienced, not to mention the soft little kittykins, so like a jaguar, yet so tame and loving. (You can sure fool some of the people some of the time.) I passed out a few more chocolates, to keep the good will going, and the men were as enthusiastic as the rest of their families. Everyone was very polite, not grabby at all, perhaps due to the intervention of little Kitty-Cream Puff when someone got pushy. He was doing a pretty good job of teaching them what cats were like.
When we got to the gates of the city, I didn’t even have to do any work. The villagers explained in their strange language (strange to me, anyhow) that the weird snake-woman had gifts for the king. All I had to do was cross a few palms with silver— silver-wrapped kisses, that is— so the soldiers could see what I had for their glorious king. And boy, were they into it! These people were chocoholics on a major scale. And they hoarded the foil like money.
Once they were converted, the soldiers more or less took over. They conferred among themselves and must have decided to send the king a messenger, because one of them took off at a gallop. Then they surrounded us importantly, making the villagers bring up the rear, and we continued our march, more or less in the manner of a Roman triumph, I fantasized, but without the laurel wreath. More and more citizens, many of them better dressed than the villagers, joined our procession, and it was a beautiful thing— a girl, a candy store, a pussycat, and about two hundred chocoholic Mayans.
At Uxmal, the Great Pyramid towers over palaces that archaeologists now call the Governor’s Palace, the House of the Turtles, the Nunnery Quadrangle, and the House of the Magician. I’d seen pictures of the ruins, but of course none of it looked anything like the photographs. For one thing, all the buildings were gorgeously painted and carved in ways that more or less made you want to sit do
wn and stare at them for a week or two. For another, I couldn’t really tell from the books which one was which. All I know is that the king came out of his palace and stood on the steps, surrounded by about fifty people, some men, some women, some children, all of them dressed in amazing feathers and embroidery and jaguar skins and jewelry. I didn’t know if they’d dressed up just for little old me (after the messenger came) or if they always looked like that.
If the Mayan city at Cozumel had seemed like Oz, the Uxmal spectacle was like something from another planet. Triple wow! Was this thing a treat for the eyes! The costumes from Hollywood on drugs, the magnificent buildings, the funny thatches atop the amazing architecture, the art covering every inch of everything, and— how can I say this?— the peacefulness of the whole scene. It was magnificent and incredible and beyond imagining and yet, it was so— like, sweet. Like these were just people living the way they lived, maybe getting dressed up for a visitor, yet completely comfortable in their splendiferous surroundings. This was the most impressive thing anyone from my century had ever thought of seeing, and it was everyday stuff for them.
“Call me Horatio,” I said to A.B. “This is a little outside my philosophy.”
“Even for the Alpha Beast,” he said, “it’s a bit on the grand side.” It was the humblest statement I ever heard out of that furry little brain.
I knew from Cozumel how the Mayans greeted each other at the time of the conquest. What I didn’t know was whether it was something they did four hundred years earlier. But I tried it anyhow— I touched the ground with my hand, and then I touched my head.
The royal party wasn’t about to do that, because for one thing, it was probably beneath their dignity, and for another, they’d have fallen off those narrow steps. But some of the people on the ground did the same thing in response. So I figured I’d managed to say hello.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX—THE KING AND I
The king said something that may have been “Welcome,” and I said back that I was happy to be there and I had gifts for him. After that, one of the soldiers took my bag for me and two others escorted me up the steps, A.B. scampering ahead like a scout.
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