After they all drank and sat for a few minutes, Peter stretched his long skinny legs out in front of him, his socks the only purple in view. “Let me get this straight. We’re out here looking for a single bead that got buried in this jungle roughly a thousand years ago?”
Ian laughed. “Think of it as an act of faith.”
“Because it sure isn’t an act of archeology,” Nixie’s mom said.
Oriana laughed. “At least it’s pretty.”
The trees around them had clearly been cut when the railroad was made. They’d grown back of course, but the taller canopy started a good hundred feet or so from the road. Lianas, bromeliads and mosses decorated the trees. A burst of orange and yellow flowers hung almost twenty feet above them.
Nixie’s mom glanced at her watch. “We’ll have to start back in an hour. Maybe we should move faster.”
Not faster, better. This would be her only chance; they wouldn’t get back out here. Nixie closed her eyes and imagined her dreamscape, the white road glistening in the green jungle, the monkeys in the trees, and the flash of bright bird wings. The smooth slap of feet on the road.
Her mom’s voice, quiet, near her. “Are you okay, Nix?”
“Yes.” She opened her eyes, keeping them soft, trying to keep the glowing dream in front of them and still see the tumbled rough road of today. She shuffled forward slowly so she wouldn’t stumble, trying not to look at the tracks. Sweat salted her forehead and she tugged scraps of flyaway hair back into her clip.
She wanted a breeze.
Her mom said something to Ian, too soft for her to hear, but she heard his answer. “Leave her. Watch.”
So she ignored them, made them not there in her mind.
A breeze did come up, from behind her. She stood in it, smelling the jungle dust and flowers. She found a good flat place for her feet and closed her eyes again, listening. Leaves rattled softly against each other. Small birds chattered in the trees by the road, and somewhere further off, a pair of macaws scolded each other.
Oriana started to say something and Nixie held up a hand, her eyes still closed.
The breeze was almost wind higher up in the canopy, a warm breath. She imagined Hun Kan and the bird man. The black jaguar with the golden-yellow eyes. The jaguar’s coat clarified in her imagination. As the black on black of his coat began to shimmer, she knew how far they had to go. She licked her lips and turned back to the others. “We aren’t there yet. We’re not very close. But I know where it is, so we can hurry.”
Peter looked puzzled, but Oriana winked at her. As they neared her, Nixie spied a flash of fear coming through the determination in her mom’s eyes and reached out for her hand, holding it in hers. “It’s okay, Mom.”
“I know.”
Nixie kept going, moving faster. The others followed her, sticking close. When Peter started talking to Oriana, Nixie shushed him. She needed to hear the jungle and the wind, needed to smell her way, feel her way. She needed as little of today as possible inside her senses.
Her mom stayed really close to her, so Nixie could reach back and touch her if she wanted to. A guardian. Someone to keep her in this time while she was half in that time.
She didn’t want to see the dead warriors again.
The wind freshened more and the blue sky faded to soft gray that darkened to deeper gray, and then to charcoal. The air felt full of water and electricity.
“Nix?”
Nixie turned to find her mom handing her one of the cheap clear plastic rain ponchos that she always bunched in the bottom of her pack. Nix stopped and gave her mom a hug. The hour had surely almost passed, and they still had a ways to go. She couldn’t let them stop and think, let them get all adult and turn around. “We have to hurry.”
“But we can all stay dry,” her mom noted, using her mom-voice.
For answer, Nixie pulled the poncho over her head and turned back. Her legs were tired, but she made them move a little faster.
The air stayed hot and damp and the clouds above Nix felt like anvils that could fall and crush her.
The poncho made her feel like a sandwich in a plastic bag in the sun. She bunched it up over her shoulders, walking so fast she was nearly running, pushing her way through the small trees that poked up in the middle of the path.
The trees thickened, becoming a wall decorated with strangler figs and flowers. The tall buttressing roots of kapoks grew across the remains of the sacbe, becoming barriers up to a few feet tall in some places.
What remained of the road was a white stone here, clutched in a twisting root, and another one there, half-buried under dirt and rotting leaves.
The clouds emptied on them, a waterfall of rain. They huddled under the tree canopy while the rain sheeted the more open sacbe behind them as if glass covered it.
“It’s the end of the railroad,” Ian said.
“Why would they stop a railroad in the middle of the jungle?” Peter asked.
Her mom answered. “Because they ran out of chicle contracts.” Nixie’s mom looked at her sadly. “We’ll have to turn back.”
“Not,” Oriana interrupted, “until this stops.”
They couldn’t turn back. They were too close. The rain wouldn’t last long. Fifteen minutes or so. The Yucatan’s daily splash bath. In an hour, the jungle would look as dry as when they started. Nixie struggled up onto a kapok root, balancing on one foot, trying to look through the dense jungle. This hadn’t been cut in years, maybe hundreds of years. She couldn’t see a path.
She closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 22
Late afternoon sun slanted through the trees. Hun Kan’s mud baskets were nearly empty, and Ah Bahlam still hadn’t seen the jaguar again. Julu flew above them, always staying nearby.
They had found one pool so far today, a small rushing sliver of water beside a thickening in the animal trail they followed, the lips of an underground river kissing the sky.
“We’ll be late,” Hun Kan said.
Yes. They should be arriving tonight, and have two full days of preparation before the equinox. “If we get there at all.”
A human call floated through the jungle. He stopped, feeling Hun Kan stop beside him. Bandits? Or the people-of-unrest? Monkeys chattered above him and Julu fluffed his feathers, muttering softly in the language of birds.
Hun Kan took his arm, and he looked into her eyes, finding a trace of fear, but more of determination. He smiled to see it, happy she was the one who had been spared to accompany him. A fierce companion.
It was hard to tell the direction the single voice had come from. They could stop, but waiting might not avoid any enemies. What would Cauac do? Or his father, for that matter? He was stuck between Zama and Chichén, and needed to choose between a sorcerer’s way and a warrior’s.
Perhaps, in this, the two ways were not far apart.
He closed his eyes, feeling Hun Kan’s hand still resting on his arm. He drew a picture of the jaguar in his head, letting it fill him, black spots on a black coat, until he could see the eyes. The yellow-gold orbs in his mind stared at him, unblinking, full of power and purpose. He would be like the cat, whether it came to him in the flesh or not.
Ah Bahlam started forward again, slowly, being careful to keep his steps uneven and not to snap twigs. He ghosted forward, following the thin tracks of a pig family he had been hoping would lead to more water and perhaps a meal.
It did not take long to come to a dusty fork where animal tracks mixed with humans. Bare feet, and so people of the jungle, whatever kind.
Should he follow the pigs or the people?
He stood in the fork listening to his breathing, to Hun Kan’s, watching for a sign.
None came, except a deep conviction that this was his choice. In fact, Julu, too, had disappeared, a further sign that he must decide. He wanted to keep Hun Kan safe, but safety might not lie in either direction.
He followed the people.
He was destined to be a Lord of Itzá, and anyone this clos
e should pay tribute to Chichén. Perhaps he would learn something that his father needed to know, bring information back to Chichén. If not, well, they could have died yesterday and instead they had been saved. That was something to trust in.
The human tracks were fresh. The path was wider, allowing for slightly faster travel.
Dusk had made the forest-of-shadows taller than the living trees, when he smelled burning wood and heard the deep, measured rhythm of many drums. They slowed, keeping even their breath low. The sky was nearly dark when he detected the murmur of humans and the crackle of bonfires.
He led Hun Kan in a circle around the people, carefully, staying unseen. The flat ground kept them from being able to see anything, and the thick undergrowth made walking silently hard and slow. They were close enough to hear men calling back and forth to each other and the thunk of new wood being thrown on the fires.
He looked up, searching for a thick trunk with good handholds and strong upper branches. The last of the light let them shinny up a kapok tree, using the twisted vines of a strangler fig for handholds. They surprised three green tree-frogs with bright red feet. A good sign, the frogs.
He clambered out on a sturdy branch, followed by Hun Kan, seeking a clear view through the thick forest. Her breath blew warm on his thighs, then his shoulder, as she inched carefully up beside him.
Flames flickered and lit the rising smoke from below, turning it blood-red. Copal had been thrown on the fires, and the scent of it drew him into the memory of other ceremonies, small ones for blessing the morning hearth and large ones for blessing the year’s crops. Dizzy, he squinted, trying for details.
He looked over the roofs of rough palm-thatched huts and storage buildings that edged a large manmade clearing. On the far side of the clearing, the dark hole of a deep cenote was edged in golden light. From here, he could not see the water, but such hard cliff edges nearly always led to deep pools.
Warriors danced circles around the fires. Ragged warriors. Tens, many tens of tens, a full hundred or more, bodies glistening in the last of the day. And around them, more men, older and younger and all ragged. People-of-unrest.
The number of them took his breath away and he gripped the branch tighter. He listened, trying to make out what was happening, but the voices were a jumble. Power filled the clearing. Many kinds: The raw power of shamans—an angry power calling out to the gods, the complex power of the cenote and the jungle, and the simple power of so many men. They were not gathered here for nothing. All this power and anger was directed at Chichén, at his home, his family.
This was more news than he had expected to gather.
Hun Kan gripped his hand, then pointed. Her eyes were wide and dark, her jaw clenched. He looked in the direction she looked, following her brown and shaking finger.
Nimah. She had been painted blue, dressed in white robes, decked in yellow and white winter-blossoming orchids, and stripped of all other ornamentation.
He saw no sign of Kisa.
Between Nimah and the cenote, a small wooden platform had been built.
She had been prepared for sacrifice.
Ah Bahlam swallowed, nodding at Hun Kan to tell he had seen. Smoke blew the scent of the fires to them.
Nimah’s blood would strengthen these people greatly, add to the threat they presented for Chichén. It made him dizzy to think of it, and to think of the danger to Hun Kan. To him.
Hun Kan’s gaze slid back to Nimah. She was completely still. He had seen Hun Kan and Nimah together at Zama, sometimes swimming and other times gathering flowers or roots or sitting in the sun weaving baskets. They had laughed like two young girls laugh, and sometimes wore each other’s clothes.
Hun Kan would know there was nothing they could do, not two people against a small army. This must be Nimah’s fate. Her Way.
When he had imagined what might happen to the two women who had been captured, a full sacred sacrifice for the good of an enemy had not crossed his mind.
They should leave now, and use the last scrap of light to see by. He could protect Hun Kan from Nimah’s sure fate and Chichén from the damage that could be done by losing Hun Kan, too.
He swallowed hard and gestured to Hun Kan to back down the trunk. She looked blankly at him for a moment, her face pale. Then she shook her head and mouthed, “No. I need to see.”
He understood. Without them to witness, Nimah would go to her death with no friendly spirits to mark her passage. He licked his dry lips and resettled on the wide branch, watching.
It would not take long. The cracks between day and night held the most potential for communion with the gods. Hun Kan drew in a sharp breath as two men came forward, taking Nimah’s hands. They led her to the front of the platform and laid her down, and two other men came to take her feet, so that she was well pinioned.
She did not scream and the platform was too far away for him to see if she cried or moved her lips in prayer or trembled.
A man dressed in a quetzal feather headdress, a polished bronze chest-plate that might have come from any of the warriors they’d traveled with before the ambush, and a simple leather skirt with matching leggings walked out of the smoke from the nearest fire and stood beside Nimah. A priest. Or a man who styled himself as one.
The false priest should be killed. But he couldn’t do it from here. Not with Hun Kan to protect.
The priest stood beside Nimah until the entire clearing stilled, all eyes watching him, waiting.
Drums began a heartbeat rhythm, soft and sure, a promise to the gods. The Priest began to chant and the crowd returned his words, as proper as if the ceremony happened at the grand Chac-Mool in Chichén. The sound made Ah Bahlam shiver and sweat.
He wanted to reassure Hun Kan but couldn’t take his gaze from the scene below them. His stomach lurched and he felt dizzy. He smelled the tree they clung to, the moss above his head, the sweat and fear and hope of the men and women below them, the acrid fires. He clutched the tree harder, digging his toes in to keep from sliding free of the branch. He blinked and his vision sharpened and grayed all at once. The lights of the fires fuzzed to indistinct brightness. Light appeared also over the people, and a brightness enveloped Nimah.
The jaguar’s vision.
This could be his fate, or Hun Kan’s. Here, or at Chichén. They could be called to do what Nimah did, to give up their lives with honor. If that is ever me, let my death serve my own people.
Ah Bahlam pulled his own small knife out and held it poised over the place he had cut in the ceremony with Cauac.
The priest’s arm came up and his obsidian blade caught the last flash of the sun god’s rays. As it fell, quickly, to pierce Nimah’s pale chest, Ah Bahlam brought his own blade down on his arm, whispering, Gods of Chichén, take this sacrifice to the glory of Chichén, twist it away from any use meant to harm us.
The priest held Nimah’s heart up triumphantly, cupping it with two hands. At that same moment she cried out, the last cry she would ever make, the cry coming moments after the priest raised his hands full of her severed heart.
The four men holding her took her four limbs and tossed her body into the cenote at the same time that the priest cast her heart onto the nearest fire.
Noise rose, the crying and calling of many voices reaching for their gods, so Ah Bahlam did not hear Nimah’s body hit the water.
When Ah Bahlam looked back at her, Hun Kan’s cheeks were damp and her eyes burned with fierce anger and loss. But she, too, had not cried out. He reached a hand back and wiped the water from her cheeks. In that moment, a terrible purpose seemed to flow between them, a bond deeper than any he’d ever felt with anyone. Her eyes told him she felt it, too. “We will bring this news,” she hissed quietly.
“Yes.”
A few moments later, they dropped to the forest floor, and began edging slowly away from the clearing.
Someone nearby called out, “Stop!”
He took off, racing, checking to make sure Hun Kan followed. Their baskets f
ell to the side of the path, crunching together. Starlight threw faint shadows, helping them step around twisted roots and depressions in the jungle floor.
Their pursuer called out sharply, clearly trying to bring others to help him. Ah Bahlam caught sight of him once, a big man with long hair, a spear in one hand.
The trees and underbrush seemed to rise up against them, threatening to trip them or tangle them in roots.
Ah Bahlam called on his inner jaguar yet again, trying to see like the cat did, to have the dark be as much a friend as the light.
Other voices cried out, more pursuers. But only the one was still close.
The great cat roared. Behind them. Between them and the others.
Ah Bahlam didn’t hesitate, or turn. He raced as fast and hard as he could. Julu appeared in front him, Julu who did not normally fly at night.
He followed the bird and trusted the cat to keep their back path free. He breathed the jungle, felt it, heard and felt its creatures. He knew where each root was, each bush, each down tree, each hole in the limestone floor. He was Hun Kan and the jungle and the bird and the cat. One being, with one purpose. To get two humans home to Chichén Itzá.
CHAPTER 23
Alice watched rain obscure the path they’d just rushed down and hide the top of the trees so only the five of them seemed bright colored and alive. Water stuck like jewels to Nixie’s hair and Oriana’s, dripped from Ian’s dreads and Peter’s hat. It fell so fast it pooled in the hollows of the porous limestone under their feet.
She’d been so sure they’d find Ian’s bead.
But the dream was years from this broken road, and Peter’s words kept sticking in her head. A single stone bead in a jungle was worse than a needle in a haystack.
At least a needle would be shiny.
Nixie had been so sure of herself, and dammit, Alice had trusted that sureness. She blinked again, feeling the close-in walls of the torrent holding them here at the end of hope.
Maybe they could come back tomorrow and find a way to start from here. Except there wasn’t time. When she’d called to put the Secret Service people on hold for a day, the woman she’d talked to had been incredulous, and had barely promised to let Alice come in the next morning, early.
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