Mayan December

by Brenda Cooper

  If their positions were reversed, she wouldn’t believe herself. “A lot of strange things are happening. And a lot of them are happening to me.”

  He knew her fairly well, even after all these years. “But you believe this picture is real? That it’s what, from some other place or some other time?”

  She managed a small nod, but couldn’t meet his eyes.

  He sighed. When he spoke his voice was his old teacher’s voice rather then her friend’s, cool and professional. “Go home. You need to get some sleep. The next two days will be busy.”

  She needed him to believe. But his chin was set tight and his eyes cool and distant.

  She understood.

  He couldn’t follow her down this path or he might become as crazy as she felt. Or as alone.

  CHAPTER 28

  Ah Bahlam woke to the scent of corn cakes. His belly swore it was the best smell in the world, better even than a woman or the sweat of mock battle. The thought brought back the stench of true blood and fear mixed with courage, the smell of real battle, the eyes of the High Priest and Hun Kan’s pleading look. These things would have driven the hunger from him if his body didn’t need food so badly.

  He pushed himself up from the thin mat on the stone bench, swinging his legs onto the floor. He found his mother and two sisters just outside the door, watching over two kitchen slaves doing the hot work of baking corn cakes over fire-heated stones.

  His mother smiled at him, her eyes warm and pleased. When he saw her earlier they had been red from tears of mourning, but she had not cried at his return, only held him.

  She had held him a long time.

  When she stepped back, his two younger sisters and one younger brother had leapt on him, clambering for news of his journey, of the fight. His mother had watched while he answered their hundreds of bird-like questions, and finally taken him and made him lie down, shooing his siblings off into the market, saying, “Go get something to sacrifice for the coming war and make us strong.”

  Now, he came up to her and kissed her. “Thank you for the rest.”

  “In a moment, you may have the first corn cake.”

  “Father is not home yet?” He had not been here when Ah Bahlam arrived, either.

  “He’s in the city.”

  It would be time to light the torches and small marking fires shortly. “I am pleased to be home.” She was smaller than he was, smaller even than Hun Kan. It was something he had barely noticed before, and it saddened him a bit. Surely she was not yet old enough to shrink and so he must have grown. He touched her cheek gently, noticing even in the fading light that more gray showed now. “Has it been a hard year?”

  “It is a good year that has brought you home alive.” She gestured to the older of the two slaves. “Bring my son the first corn cake and pour him some bal balché che.”

  Ah Bahlam had eaten three corn cakes with avocado and fish by the time his father returned. When his father came in, he too, appeared smaller than Ah Bahlam remembered. Still, he had to look up a bit to meet his eyes. “It’s good to see you.”

  His father nodded, giving away his pleasure with his gaze. “I have been in the city meeting with Ah Beh and the War Chief.”

  “Will they increase the guard outside the city?”

  His father smiled broadly, clapping him on the back and sitting down beside him. His mother brought him a plate herself, and then went back for one of her own. “The news is that my oldest son is home, and that he brought both news and mysteries. Yes, they’ll increase the guard, and no, you don’t have to go tonight. Tell me what has happened to you. I wish to hear it from your mouth.”

  Stars filled the sky by the time Ah Bahlam finished. His father had asked many questions, and his mother cried out when he spoke of Nimah’s death. When he finished, his father swallowed and said, “You did well. Truly the gods brought you home to us.”

  Ah Bahlam inclined his head in respect, and the three of them watched the fire in silence for a long time. “The extra guards, will they be enough?”

  His father shrugged. “The priests prepare additional sacrifices. Our warriors are stronger and better fed than theirs. If I knew how many, if any, will be brave enough to attack us, I could tell you how many of our men may die. But we will be enough.”

  Ah Bahlam sat back, watching the small fire in front of them. Because it had been so dry for so long, firewood was plentiful, and the flame burned brightly. “We will not be enough forever, Father. There are many people who depend on us, and yet we have not given them the water they need. We must do better this year.”

  “The gods give them what they need,” his father said. “Or not. It is not us. That is a belief for little boys.”

  Ah Bahlam cringed, but continued. “And a belief the priests have spread widely. We had best hope that we can influence Chaac to send rain.”

  His father sighed. “We have all prayed to Chaac for three years. He appears to have turned his back on us. There are rumors that we need a king, and rumors that all of the priests should themselves be sacrificed, and rumors that Chichén will fall. It will not fall this year, and kings do more harm than good.”

  “But what about the priests, Father? I did not like what I saw in the high priest’s eyes today when he looked at the gift from Ni-ixie. He looked like he felt Hun Kan is a threat to him.”

  “You’d best hope he does not think that. He is looking for sacrifices.”

  “I want to marry Hun Kan.”

  His father frowned and when he answered his eyes looked sad. “You may not get what you want.”

  “I can imagine a life with her, but I cannot imagine one with anyone else.” Ah Bahlam looked into the fire. “For the first time today, I’m not sure that I should trust a priest.”

  His father put a hand on his shoulder. “Never speak such a thing where they can hear.”

  DECEMBER 20, 2012

  CHAPTER 29

  At 4:00 am, Alice was already sipping her second cup of coffee, staring out over the balcony of the new—and bigger—room the hotel had assigned her and Nixie as refuge for the turtle girl. Elite and private, it was near enough to the sea to hear waves washing on shore. Darkness still wrapped the world loosely; faint stars dusted the sky.

  She scratched notes on a single sheet of hotel paper. A dream. Not a dream like the one that eventually led to the bead, but a normal dream. A dream with Ian in it, with his neat dreads and wild smile. Not a proper academic boyfriend. Not safe. A wild man, a force, a worry. In her dream, she had nestled beside him on the steps of an old temple, a gray and lifeless one from today, so generic it could have been a partly-restored-at-best small building at any of the sacred sites along the coast. Xel Ha, or even one of the ruins here at the resort, like the one Nixie walked through when the bird-man gave her the feather.

  The stars in her dream had been now-stars, dull and lonely compared to the rich starlight of the old times. Would stars always look dull, now? Or would she forget?

  She jotted a few words, “Ian,” and “Alice,” and “Nixie.” Like a school girl. She glanced at the picture Nixie had snapped of her and Ian kissing. She’d found it propped up by the coffee pot, waiting to greet her when she turned it on. Nixie had framed the shot well. Both in near-profile, their lips locked. Ian’s hand rested on her shoulder. She hadn’t seen the picture until this morning, which was probably exactly what Nixie had meant to happen. A sticky note on it said, “Good luck.” Maybe a wish for luck with Ian, maybe a wish for Ian, gone still, or a wish for Alice’s day with Marie. Impossible to tell; Nix and Oriana were still fast asleep.

  She forced herself back to the fading wisps of dream. She and Ian had talked the way conversations run in dreams, spinning from the feel of silk to the taste of green tea in Japan. A normal dream and a dream-normal conversation as much with herself as with Ian. Except she had smelled him, the sweaty, wild, jungle smell of him: limestone chalk and palm leaves and orchids and salt. Even now, she sniffed the air for some trace of him, a
s if he had truly been in her bedroom. But she only smelled the ocean.

  It made her breath shallow and fast even to think about him.

  If she could walk out in the wild now, walk the beach barefoot and watch the dawn, she would. Maybe it would center her, make it easier to think about Ian, or to see Marie, or to ponder the trip down the white road.

  But what if she ended up in the wrong time and didn’t make it to Chichén Itzá this morning? She wouldn’t have Nixie or Don Thomas Arulo to help her. Best to stay someplace that couldn’t be in both times, because it was only in this now. Like this room, on the second floor of a resort, filled with computers and televisions and machine-made clothes.

  She wrote words on the paper in front of her. A quote she’d heard more than once, used a few times, but hadn’t thought of directly before the words came out in blue ink all over the bottom of her paper under her scrawls about Ian. “Advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

  She didn’t believe in magic. In hope, yes. Like Ian believed in hope, like Nixie swimming with the turtles looked like hope. But hope wasn’t magic, and whatever was happening wasn’t either.

  She wouldn’t be herself any more if it was magic.

  Would she?

  By the time she finished her coffee, the stars had dulled in the firmament above her, and it was late enough to turn on the shower and think about getting ready, about starting early to make sure she was on time.

  Alice drove all the way to Chichén Itzá, without even checking Nixie’s GPS signal once. Whatever mystery engulfed them, Nixie rolled with it. She was scary-competent there. Something inside Alice had clicked over enough to trust Nix—oh, not to trust the world, not to trust what was happening, but to trust Nix. Still, she left the sound on her phone so she’d know if Nix called.

  Or if Ian called.

  At the gate, guards checked a list and her picture, radioed someone she couldn’t quite hear, and then bowed and let her in.

  She climbed the temple of K’uk’ulkan and sat at the top, feet barely touching the next stair. Below her, the decorated Temple of Warriors glowed with promise even though the morning was sultry and had grown overcast, the air thick with rain. Beginning tomorrow at dawn, there would be a market set up down there. A real one, where tourists rich enough or lucky enough to get in could spend money on a vague hope or a thing they didn’t need.

  For now, it was empty. Strings of Federales and American soldiers wandered in and out of the open places. Some of the Americans led dogs. She was too high up to tell the breeds, but as they stood their backs were near their handler’s waists. Big dogs. Alice laughed, the sound slightly bitter. A conference about saving the world that needed bomb-sniffing dogs.

  “Alice?” A soft voice, almost tentative.

  She turned her head to see a tall slender woman with shoulder-length hair stride toward her. “Marie?”

  “May I sit?”

  Wow. “Are you here with no handlers?”

  Marie shook her head. “They’re nearby.” She smiled wryly. “Sometimes they give me fifty feet of rope.”

  Good enough. Alice patted the hard stone next to her. She’d seen pictures and news articles and speeches, of course, but she remembered the college girl, a bit older than she was, a tad more beautiful. In those days they were both beautiful. It wasn’t something they thought about. In Marie, beauty had been replaced by dignity and worry-lines. She now looked a decade older than Alice, older even than Alice of death and single parenthood and money-worries. Marie’s hair was shoulder-length, and no longer the original color. Something redder and full of fake sun stripes: hair colored for the camera.

  As Marie settled next to Alice, she gazed out of the same shockingly blue eyes Alice remembered from college coffee-houses, except now they were surrounded by thin wrinkles. Alice swallowed. “Thank you for asking me.”

  “I wanted to see you. After I got scheduled into the conference, I asked my advisers for a list of women scientists who studied the Mayan people. I saw your name.” Marie hesitated. “I know I didn’t bother to keep in touch, but I’m busy. You were always honest with me, and I don’t know if anyone is anymore. So I asked for you.”

  Alice liked being remembered as honest. She was, she always had been, but since she didn’t speak up that often, how would most people know?

  Marie pushed the hair from her forehead. “Remember when we flummoxed Dr. Liebert? When we emailed his whole class bad instructions about the lab?” Alice laughed in spite of herself. The air in the lab had been so dense with smelly fog that everyone’s clothes were soaked. “Remember his face?”

  Marie giggled, and Alice joined her, reveling in an image of the laughter of the obscure scientist and the most politically important scientist in the world mingling and flowing down the steps of K’uk’ulkan. It carried so far on the wind that one of the soldiers below looked up and shook his or her closest neighbor, who did the same. Soon the whole line waved assault rifles in one hand. Their faces were brown and white flowers looking up.

  Marie waved back. She picked up Alice’s hand, asking her to wave, too. Alice grinned wryly, caught in a moment that wasn’t hers. “They aren’t waving to me.”

  “But you can still wave to them.” Marie lifted Alice’s arm above her head. “You can still appreciate them. Thank them for keeping you safe.”

  Alice waved. She blushed. And not because the Secret Service had told her to do what the director wanted, but because Marie had always been able to get her to do silly things.

  Like Ian, who had gotten her to dance on the sacbe.

  Did she always need someone else to get her to laugh? When was the last time she’d just laughed on her own?

  Marie grinned and shook Alice’s shoulder lightly. “Hey, I heard about your turtle kid. Did Nixie like it? What did she think?”

  “How did you know?”

  Marie was still grinning, but a touch of uncertainty had crept into her eyes and voice. “You’ve been watched ever since I asked for you. Surely that’s not surprising?”

  “Of course not.” They hadn’t watched too closely. No one had followed her into the past.

  Marie might have been reading her thoughts. “They lost you yesterday. They don’t lose people. They were following you through the jungle, and lost you. So they watched your friend’s jeep, and you just—oh, I dunno. They said you just showed up.” She laughed softly. “You should have seen their faces trying to explain it to me. And then the picture with the turtles and Nixie. They wanted to revoke your visit, but I overrode them. Losing followers you don’t know you have is no crime, nor is nearly drowning in turtles.” She searched Alice’s face. “That’s why I came early. Fabulous things are happening to you. I want you to show me.”

  Show her? Take the Science Advisor to the President of the United States of America back to a world where they threw captive women into wells as offerings to gods? She shook her head. “I don’t even know what’s happening.” She didn’t say: It might be dangerous so I wouldn’t show you anyway. How could I risk you? You are a hope of the world. She looked up at the clouds. “Besides, it’s about to rain. Feel it?”

  Marie fixed her blue eyes on Alice, her gaze one that demanded, expected, cooperation. The gaze of a power rather than a student. “So tell me. Tell me everything you know. We can work this out together.”

  An echo. Marie had been a year ahead, and she’d helped Alice pass her first calculus class, and Alice had helped Marie with basic astronomy. That was how freshmen and sophomores got through the tough early curriculum at Stanford. They’d lost touch in the later years, the ones full of even harder classes that told the real secrets of their disciplines. Alice shook her head. She was in awe of her old friend. “I wasn’t even there when Nixie swam with the turtles. I was getting cleared to meet you. I saw the picture on the news before I saw Nixie.”

  Marie put a hand on her arm. “What did she say when you saw her?”

  Alice laughed. “She said she loved the do
lphins. To get her away from reporters, the hotel gave her a free pass to swim with dolphins at Xcaret. She was so full of the dolphins I didn’t ask her about the turtles. I just . . . went home and slept. When I woke up, Nixie was getting ready for bed, and she told me about the feel of dolphin’s skin, and how they swam right up to her.”

  “Like the turtles?” Marie asked.

  “I think the dolphins at Xcaret are trained to swim up to everyone.”

  Marie let out a long, low whistle. “So there has been so much happening in your life the turtles were not a big deal?”

  Alice stared, flummoxed. Marie had always been smart, but wrapped in herself. Alice hadn’t expected her to have become this intuitive. She’d thought they’d smile at each other across a distance and remember they knew each other, but not that Marie Healey would ask about her life. “I don’t know how I could explain it all. But Nixie swam with turtles another day, not so many, and she has a quetzal feather she loves, and . . . ” Her voice trailed off. She’d love to talk about it. She needed to talk about it. But it was too crazy. “She’s had weird dreams, and I had a weird dream, too. And we both remembered the same thing when we woke up.”

  Marie’s voice was so soft Alice strained to hear her. “I dreamed of a tree growing in a sky so bright with stars it almost blinded me, and there was a snake, but it wasn’t the biblical snake or the biblical tree. They were Mayan. Stylized like the trees and snakes you see here.”

  “I can help you with that during the tour. It’s powerful Mayan symbolism.” Alice shivered in the heat. “Did you meet anyone in your dream?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “Not meet,” Alice said. “But we saw old Mayans. I mean young ones living a long time ago, like the stars you dreamed of were from a long time ago. ”

  “Were they? The stars?”

  “Sure. No light pollution.” It was like teaching her astronomy again. Maybe Marie remembered that, too.