Mayan December

by Brenda Cooper

  Nixie shook her head, glancing over at a family with two young boys that had settled near them and were pulling out a picnic lunch. “I don’t want to lose our place. But I’m hungry, too.”

  “All right. I won’t be long.” Oriana pointed at a silver cart with pictures of bottled water and ice cream sandwiches on it. “I’ll get a snack, and we can have a real meal back at the hotel.”

  She thrust her journal into her pack, shouldered the pack, and headed off. What did Oriana write in there? Had she written anything about Nixie and the quetzal feather? Nixie sighed and shifted her position to keep her right foot from falling into pins and needles.

  A soft sob rose from her left.

  There was no one there when she glanced over. Must be someone on the beach.

  But it hadn’t sounded like a kid, more like an adult, and adults didn’t cry in places like this. She bent her head back to her drawing, listening carefully. There it was again, so quiet she was sure whoever cried didn’t want to be discovered. The deep sadness of the cry sank into her bones, making her feel light and cold.

  She set her journal down carefully and crawled the three yards over to the edge of the rock on her knees, leaned over, and looked down.

  Below her, three rough canoes were pulled up on the beach, and a young woman with black hair sat between the canoes and the rock, her face buried in her hands.

  There was a way down, if Nixie was careful. A thin scrabbly path she hadn’t seen from the beach.

  She glanced back toward her stuff.

  It wasn’t there.

  It was happening again.

  She drew in a deep breath and looked around. Two men with towels or something wrapped around their waists walked away from her, toward the temple. She gaped at the bright blues and reds, skewered in place by the liveliness of temples that had been dead to her eyes five minutes ago. The sky seemed deeper blue and the air clearer, as if everything in this time breathed sunshine.

  She shouldn’t be here. She hadn’t known before, but this time her blood raced.

  A muffled noise below her reminded her why she’d come to the edge of the rock. Carefully, she let herself down, toes scrabbling for purchase. She risked a look down. Not far, but steep. The young woman’s head jerked up as Nixie’s feet scraped a trickle of small stones down the rock. She had dark hair, swept back from her face and held with bone clips, and a round face with dark eyes rimmed in red. With her big eyes and thin frame, she almost looked like a Mexican anime character.

  She stood, scrambling back, watching Nixie carefully. She wore a rich red, green, and brown woven smock, and a string of bright green and brown beads hung to her waist. Her fright was so palpable Nixie could feel it. More than anything in the world, Nixie didn’t want to scare her away, not when she’d been crying so. She froze on the rock, looking down. How old was the girl? Maybe fifteen, maybe less. It was hard to say.

  It seemed like a long time before either of them moved. The Mayan girl said something softly. It sounded like “ba-ox,” or “hello” in Mayan, a word Nixie had learned. But the accent was so far off it took her a breath to figure out.

  Nixie licked her lips and dug her toes in further. He hands hurt where she gripped the rock. She said, “Hello,” and then, “I won’t hurt you.”

  The girl looked puzzled, but ventured another step closer.

  Nixie took two steps down, and stopped. When the girl didn’t move again, Nixie finished her trip down to the warm white sand. “Are you okay?” she asked, sure the girl wouldn’t understand her. She extended a hand, slowly, remembering a school lesson on the Lewis and Clark expedition where the teacher said an open hand was a universal sign for coming in peace.

  The girl slowly closed the distance between them, reaching out to touch Nixie’s hand. She drew her hand right back in surprise, then touched Nixie again, then again, feeling her hand and her arm and then touching her hair.

  Maybe these people had never seen a blonde. She recalled the man who gave her the feather looking surprised when he clasped his hand over hers to drag her from the cenote. She probably did look different from them, but that didn’t stop it from feeling weird to be stroked all over.

  To make it even, Nixie reached out and fingered the long necklace. The girl gasped and brought a hand to the stones, then stood still, shaking. Nixie dropped the necklace. Maybe now they could stop touching each other. She looked the girl in the eye and pointed to herself. “Nixie.”

  The girl was quicker than the man she’d met, because she pointed right at herself and said, “Hun Kan.”

  Nixie repeated it, and shortly they had each other’s names. The tears in the girl’s eyes had dried.

  There was no way to tell how long she’d have here. The beach was empty, but the idea of seeing a lot more people made Nixie nervous. Surely Oriana was worried by now. Maybe her mom, too, if she noticed Nixie wasn’t in her world. Nixie still had her camera in her pocket. She slid it out slowly and pointed it at Hun Kan. She held her breath as she pressed the button to take a picture, smiling when the camera gave a satisfying little click. She took two more pictures in quick succession, then circled the girl and took another one from a different angle, hoping it wouldn’t scare or offend. After all, the girl couldn’t know what a camera was anyway.

  Hun Kan smiled at her, and sat on her knees on the sand, patting a spot beside her. Nixie took the hint and sat down with her legs crossed.

  Hun Kan took off her necklace and handed it carefully to Nixie. Nixie took it, and ran it through her hands, feeling the smoothness of the green beads. When she handed it back to the Mayan girl, Hun Kan draped it over Nixie’s head in two big loops that tinkled against each other. The weight of it felt solid and comforting, making the girl and the beach and the strange time seem more real.

  Could she take it? She remembered the bead Ian had given her, and fished it off her neck. It was only a simple bead on a leather string, nothing like the finely worked necklace she now wore. But Hun Kan’s eyes glittered approval as Nixie dropped it into her hand.

  She seemed more enamored of the string than the bead. It was a rounded leather string, probably made with machines of some kind. Maybe Ian hadn’t thought of that.

  Ian hadn’t said anything about bringing things back, but the necklace was far more beautiful than the bead.

  Hun Kan reached for Nixie’s arm and fingered her watch. She couldn’t give it to her, not according to Ian, but it was just a little thing. Not as big a deal as money. She could buy another one with the cash her mom had given her this morning. The weather feature didn’t work in this time, but Hun Kan wouldn’t know what she didn’t have. Nixie took it off and held it out. Her unease almost evaporated as Hun Kan held her wrist out delicately, like a small bird, her face glowing with pleasure.

  The neon blue band showed bright against Hun Kan’s tanned skin. Nixie struggled to fasten the tricky hidden clasp around the girl’s slender wrist so the watch was a cool, unbroken circle of color. Hun Kan stood up and twirled slowly in the sun, watching her wrist the whole time.

  Noisy calls came from the path down to the beach. Boys. They sounded like boys from 2012, laughing and jeering. She couldn’t see them yet, but surely they were coming this way.

  Hun Kan’s eyes widened.

  Nixie stroked the back of a hand gently across Hun Kan’s cheek, looking deep into her new friend’s eyes.

  Hun Kan took Nixie’s hand in hers and smiled. Surely now they were friends. Nixie squeezed Hun Kan’s dark hand in her light one and vaulted up the path, hoping it would lead her home.

  CHAPTER 12

  Cauac twisted and turned, his face bathed in the sweat of an old man’s dreams. He sensed more than heard someone call his name, and sat up on his sleeping bench, hot even under the palm thatch roof.

  “Cauac!”

  He opened his eyes. It was Ah Bahlam, crossing the central space of the compound that Cauac shared with seven other teachers. The girl, Hun Kan, was with him. It jolted him into a mem
ory of them together in his dreams, walking a dark path, their feet bathed in strange lights. “I’m here,” he called out.

  Hun Kan stopped to pour Cauac a dipper of water from the clay vessel outside in the common area. She’d given thought to his needs even though something had agitated her so much that her hand trembled as she handed him the ladle. A ring of too-bright blue glowed on her arm. Brighter than a feather, brighter than the sky, or the sea.

  He drank slowly, giving her a few moments to calm down, then handed her back the oiled wood dipper. “Thank you.” He inclined his head and waited for Ah Bahlam to start.

  After he and Hun Kan sat, Ah Bahlam said, “She saw the same vision. The golden-haired girl. Here. On the beach.”

  Cauac took three breaths to think. “How do you know it is the same one?”

  “Can there be two?” Ah Bahlam asked.

  There were many in his dreams. There could be as many as there were Maya. “Please, each of you describe this girl.”

  He listened carefully and asked for another dipper of water. After he drank, he sighed heavily. “I believe it is the same girl. After all, Ah Bahlam, you saw her wearing the bright blue thing she gave Hun Kan on her own arm.”

  Hun Kan fingered the odd bracelet and then took a single bead on a string from her neck and held it out to him.

  Once it was in his hand, he knew that it too was from the same spirit world as the green leaves and the blue bracelet. But only because the stone and the leather cord both felt too smooth. He bit into the leather near the back, away from where the stone bead hung. His teeth left marks. All of this was real, if unknowable.

  “But why did she come to me?” Hun Kan asked.

  She was so earnest and so innocent. So young. And truly beautiful. He glanced from her to Ah Bahlam. “The gods often choose hard roads for those they love the best. This year has been one of preparation. Perhaps she is a sign of favor for your journey.”

  “She is not a god!” Hun Kan exclaimed. “I touched her, and she touched me.”

  “Do you not think the gods can touch us?”

  Hun Kan fell silent at this, but doubt rimmed her eyes. He had his own doubts, tied with his dreams, but what else could she be? The smooth leather in his hand and the way the green papers felt had convinced him the golden girl was not Toltec. Maybe albino, like the animals sometimes born as if the gods had forgotten their color brushes? But such animals were weak and sickly, and this girl wasn’t described that way.

  “I gave her an offering,” Hun Kan said. “She . . . she found me crying and came to offer comfort.” The girl’s dark eyes bored into his, wanting answers. “We touched each other.”

  “Why were you crying?” Cauac asked softly.

  Hun Kan averted her eyes. “I don’t want to go back. There is so much trouble in the outside now, and Chichén has so much death.” She glanced at Ah Bahlam. “I have been very happy here this year.”

  Cauac let her fall silent. He had chosen to turn his back on his own duties to Chichén many years ago. It had taken a long time for the world to find peace with him over it. “So she has come to each of you in times of great emotion.” He glanced at Ah Bahlam. “When you could not call your Way,” and back to Hun Kan, “and when you could not see your direction.”

  Ah Bahlam asked, “What should we do?”

  “Let us gather the god’s favor for your journey.” He stood, reaching for a puma-skin bag he kept high on the shelf. “Bring fire,” he said to Ah Bahlam, “and water,” to Hun Kan. He started toward the temple. He did not look back until he had climbed the steep steps and ducked under the figure of the Descending God. Inside, sun splattered the brightly colored walls through the single window that faced the sea. Cauac sat on one wide stone bench, waiting for the other two to join him with fire and water.

  Earth would be the ground they sat on, and the sky was above them.

  Silently, Hun Kan and Ah Bahlam entered and sat across from him.

  “We will give blood?” Ah Bahlam asked.

  Hun Kan looked pleased as he nodded in reply. Good. Both of them were brave. And each might be called for far greater sacrifice at the end of the journey home.

  Perhaps if he set up the journey well, Ah Bahlam would begin to find his Way, so that he would run with the jaguar instead of watching it run away. It was a good sign that it had come to him, and progress. If Ah Bahlam found the heart of his Way, he would be truly formidable.

  Cauac set shells out in the four corners of the stone room and sprinkled dried leaves in the pearled bottoms, then bits of whitish copal highlighted with amber-yellow. He spoke quietly to the two young people. “Enter this ceremony as you enter your Way. Bring all of yourselves to this time, this place, this moment. Be your breath and be the temple and be the sacred place dedicated to the Descending God.”

  He stood, breathing in the place, the time, the world, breathing out everything that separated him from these things. Even though this temple was young, its power drew from a place that must have had a natural sacredness. It thrust through him with a shock of recognition, and at the same time, slew him so that he stood as someone that Cauac watched, more than someone that he was.

  He reached for the wooden bowl that Ah Bahlam held out for him, and carefully slid the loose stones that sheltered the coals aside. Using two long leg bones from a puma, Cauac picked up one small coal for the south shell. “Bless this corner of the world. Let the centering world tree that holds up the sky hear our prayers and let them waft up to the gods.” Slowly, slowly, the southern gods and stars enveloped him, a silence and a weight that strengthened his blood as the gods of the stars joined him, filling his heart.

  He repeated the ritual words again in the north, and then in the west and east.

  When he finished, he stood in the center, full of stars and gods.

  He slid a worn gray stone bowl from his pouch, setting it on the floor in the middle of the four shells, in the place of the tree-that-holds-the-world, and next to the still red-bright coals. He freed his ritual knife from the pouch, the obsidian glittering in the window light as he plunged it into the coals, heating and cleaning it. His hands rose high over his head, reaching toward the low top of the temple, and he pulled the Descending God down into the stone knife so it quivered and bucked in his hand, and then rested, hot and full.

  He gestured for Hun Kan to pour a small amount of water into the bowl, and then he held his arm out above it. Using the knife, he made a sharp, sure cut near his wrist, but not all the way across the life-veins. A thin trickle of blood turned the water rose-colored. Cauac held his arm bleeding over the bowl until the water was dark with it.

  Ah Bahlam then took the blade, purified it in the coals, and drew his own blood. His face remained stoic and his body only tensed once, at the moment of incision. Good.

  Hun Kan bit her lip to keep from crying out, but her hand was steady.

  Their blood mingled in the water.

  Together, the three said, “We call the Descending God and his family with this blood.”

  Cauac spoke next. “Guide Ah Bahlam and Hun Kan on this journey. Grant them signs and portents. Let them stay true in their hearts and perform the duties of the gods of the Itzá. We will live or die in peace and power.”

  If only he, Cauac, could be sure the power in Chichén was clearly dedicated to the gods.

  Silence descended on them all, and Cauac offered up his heart prayer to the silence. Help me understand the dreams you send me. Help me harness your strength and glory for the good and beauty of all my people. The chaos of the new non-Mayan people, the brown-haired ones from the north, and the decline in food and trade all seemed worth praying about, but something held his tongue, and instead he added, Keep the golden-haired and the dark-haired ones to their path. Keep the Way in front of them, the Earth below them, and the sun and the sacred tree above them. Keep them within the four corners of the world.

  In ceremony, what his heart chose to speak, especially into the silence, often surp
rised him.

  He let the silence remain, the copal smoke teasing his nose.

  Ah Bahlam shifted. Hun Kan’s left eye blinked, then closed tightly again. Cauac smiled, but let the silence stay longer. He was still not entirely shrunk to the being that was Cauac, and there was no reason to hurry the gods. After they had all been still ten more breaths, he nodded and said, “It is so.”

  He poured the bloody water onto the stone, adding the power of their life to the power of the stone. He emptied the shells, leaving the copal to continue burning on the bare floor.

  Stepping outside, the force of the naked sun fell on Cauac as a man reborn with new skin, bathing him in heat and light.

  CHAPTER 13

  Alice breathed a sigh of relief as she watched her employers drive away in a green Land Rover, the sun glinting off of a metal rack on top. She dug into her pocket and dialed Nix, and her daughter’s hello on the other end sounded like heaven.

  “How was your day?”

  Nixie sounded tired. “You were right, Mom, Tulum was fun.”

  Alice started toward the queue for the buses. “I heard about the turtle.”

  “It was big, and it seemed like it wanted to swim with me. It let me touch it, and ride on its back. I’ll tell you about the ruins when you get home.”

  “You were there the whole time?”

  “Sure.”

  “I couldn’t see you half the day. I hate the tracking chips.”

  “Does that mean I can take mine out?” Nixie asked.

  “No.” She’d probably get home after Nixie went to sleep. Better to tell her now. “Honey? I have to work tomorrow morning. Something came up that I need to do.” Alice winced at the word “need” as she took her place in line, the soft voices of the Mexican women waiting with her making it harder to hear.

  “Then can Oriana take me swimming?”

  Nixie didn’t even sound upset. Must have been some turtle. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. I’ve got to get on the bus. Don’t forget I’m going to the party.”