Nixie pulled her cell phone from her pocket, turned it on and quickly texted I’m OK Mom, and then, as an afterthought, added Ian’s here. Maybe that would make her forget to be mad at Nix. She sent the message and turned the phone off again.
Cauac opened the second folded leaf and pulled out a lump of copal. He split the copal into a big and small lump, and lay the small one on top of the herbs, the dollar bill, and the shell. Even though it wasn’t burning yet, its scent tickled her nose.
Next, he reached into a different pocket and took out two stones, his movements fast but measured and flowing, his gaze gone inward a little bit. He rubbed the stones together, and then struck one on the other.
Ian got it before she did. He pulled out a lighter and showed it to Cauac, flicking the flame on and off a few times. Cauac grinned, his eyes wide. He held his hand out, palm up. Ian frowned but dropped the lighter into Cauac’s palm.
Cauac set the stones on his knee, lit the small pile, and held the lighter up, lighting it over and over. Ian stuck his hand out but Cauac slid the lighter into his pouch, along with the two stones.
If it had been her lighter, Nixie would have let him have it too. Then she remembered the watch and wanted Ian to take the lighter back.
Cauac pulled something dark and glittering from his pouch, and then held it and his other arm over the small fire. He whispered something in Mayan. Surely a prayer. His next movement was so quick his hand blurred.
A long thread of blood fell from his arm onto the edges of the bill, just a little way from the fire.
His prayer hadn’t stopped, hadn’t changed cadence or volume. The bleeding might have been as normal to him as breathing. She looked closer at the scars on his arms and understood.
She held her hand out.
Cauac stared at her, unblinking. She felt like she was failing a test.
He wasn’t going to do it.
She didn’t move. She sat there so long her arm began to tremble.
Finally, he smiled and dipped the edge of the knife into the fire. He took her finger and made a small cut, squeezing a tiny bit of her blood onto the flame.
The fire burned outward, touching the damp blood, releasing an iron scent.
Nixie closed her eyes, preparing to open them in the past.
CHAPTER 45
The gods of the directions had come to Cauac, even in this strange end-of-life dream. All around him, Chichén lay dead, shorn of most of her power. What were the gods telling him? Was this the result of turning his back on Chichén and choosing to live in Zama? Or was it a chance to rectify that, to use the strength of the turtle who changed worlds and birthed gods to help Chichén now?
The gods’ only answer was to fill him, like they always filled him, and as he opened himself and let blood, the grass beneath the burning copal twisted to dirt. The scent of home filled his nostrils. He breathed it in, breathing out the fear that accompanied these days, letting the deep sadness of Chichén’s death wash away from him in the smoke and smell of home. He breathed in again, filling himself and the gods with the sacred copal.
His vision no longer stuck to the grass or the dirt, but instead flitted both backward and forward before settling in the strange fog of the edges of Xibalba, the underworld, the otherworld, the place of the Hero Twins and the learning of the sky, the place the smokers of toad venom and the old dying dreamers went. He had not been here alone ever, and only twice before at all: his oldest teacher took him here to frighten him a long time past. He recognized it: the copal and too-sweet flowery smell of Xibalba had slept in his bones.
It took many beats of his heart to recall why he had ended up here.
He called the spirit of Hun Kan.
The fog had stubbornness.
He called again, louder, keening for her, demanding.
No change.
He fell deeper inside himself, remembering her scent (flowers and the sea) and the way her wide-set eyes often seemed contemplative, like the old turtles’ eyes, even though Hun Kan herself was young. She didn’t always obey—he remembered that, too. But she accepted what she must.
Fog parted.
She filled the place in between, her eyes wide, her mouth open as she recognized him riding the gods after her. He reached his bloody left arm toward her and with no hesitation, she took his hand, his blood smearing her smooth skin.
Now what?
He remained still, holding Hun Kan’s hand. He could return them both to his time, but there was Ni-ixie. Her self had not followed him to the underworld.
He jerked, and Hun Kan followed.
As his self locked back into his body, Cauac blinked, opening his eyes to find Hun Kan lying on the grass between him and the others, her head toward Ian and her feet toward Peter. She wore the red dress of sacrifice and her legs were bound. Blood covered one arm where someone had tried to cut Ni-ixie’s gift from her. His blood, fresher, stained her other arm. She was surely prepared to be blessed as a sacrifice, but the final commitment had not been made. Her skin was stained only with blood and limestone dust, and not with blue paint. Her eyes stared straight up at the sky, so far open that only the rise and fall of her chest said it was not a death stare.
The gods leaked away, their work completed, leaving him gasping at the memory of Xibalba.
Hun Kan’s hands closed on the grass and she clenched them deeply, as if trying to hang onto the green shoots for life. She had noticed that Chaac smiled on this time and brought these people rain. In spite of how they looked and smelled and felt, they must be aligned with the gods.
Hun Kan blinked up at him. A soft moan escaped her parted lips. She looked at Peter and pushed herself up, bringing her legs together and smoothing her skirt. She spotted Ni-ixie. A wide smile broke across her face and she reached a hand out. Ni-ixie took her small, cool hand and smiled at her, then spoke to her in the words of the far-time ones.
Hun Kan released Ni-ixie’s hand and turned to Cauac, her face bright and curious. “Did I die? What happened?”
“Tell me what you see,” he asked her.
She looked around, slowly, her gaze traveling across the gray buildings, the green grass, the strange small white paths, across Peter and Ian and Ni-ixie, and then back to the horizon. Her eyes were drawn upward by one of the strange birds Ian had called “planes,” and told him people flew in.
When she looked back at him her face had paled. She stumbled over her words. “It is Chichén and it is not. Is it Chichén in the underworld?” Her voice almost broke. “It frightens me.”
He nodded, unwilling to show her it frightened him as well. “It is a place that I dreamed and now we are come to. Tell me what you see,” he repeated.
She closed her eyes and opened them again. “Surely the gods did not kill Chichén just for my dream, my vision. If this is real, the years have worn on this place, like when we come across a village that has been abandoned to the jungle. But the jungle has not taken this. Did we protect it so well?”
“Wait,” he said. “The two men are Peter,” he nodded toward the tall thin one, “and Ian, behind you.”
She twisted her head to look at Ian, who had his ear to their talk. He smiled at her and said, “Ba’ax ka wa’alik,” the way an Aztec or Olmec traveler might. Emphasizing the wrong sounds.
She smiled at the greeting, and Cauac continued, feeling a need to hurry. “Ian told me the jungle did own this place, that jungle grew on the top of the temple of K’uk’ulkan, but that his people removed it all.” He licked his lips, wanting to tell her more, to tell her of all the things he had seen here. What joy to have a familiar companion to help him cope with such strangeness.
Ni-ixie bent toward Hun Kan’s bonds, but Hun Kan put a hand out, stopping her. Why didn’t she see that Hun Kan’s own hands were free, and she could free herself if she chose? Was she trying to help Hun Kan break her word to the high priest?
What did that mean?
“What was your Way?” he asked Hun Kan.
“Peo
ple-of-unrest attacked us and Ah Bahlam’s jaguar helped us get away. All others except Ah K’in’ca were lost.”
He flinched, seeing the faces of the dead. They had all been so earnest in their studies and had been looking forward to bringing new skills home. Chichén needed them. He breathed in hard. Stay now. Mourn later.
Death at the hands of the enemy honored the enemy.
He gestured to her: continue.
She looked very pale. “We came upon the same warriors later, with many more tens of warriors, and watched Nimah sacrificed to bring the gods to them.” She blinked, a tear glistening in the corner of her eye before she blinked again and took it back. “Ah Bahlam tried to turn that to us, to beseech the gods to make her sacrifice benefit Chichén.” She drew her brows together, thinking very hard. “He did some good. His jaguar kept them from capturing us and we had the blessing to get away and go back . . . ” Her voice trailed off and she looked around again. “Go back here. He saved us.”
Good. Necessity had taught Ah Bahlam.
She told him about a meeting in the Temple of the Jaguar, and how she was taken from there by force and left by the High Priest’s Temple. After, she twisted the brightness on her arm and looked at him with confusion filling her features. “Why did Nixie come to me? Why did she give me the gift that the priests want so badly and why do they want it?”
If only he knew as much as people believed he did. “Perhaps all we can do is trust.” It was not his place to speak ill of the high priest. To do so could add to the bad luck Chichén already faced.
Ian cleared his throat, wanting attention. Once he saw he had it, he turned his focus to Hun Kan, speaking slowly and directly to her in his odd version of their language. “Nixie dreamed of you. She was frightened for you. She wanted to go to you to help you. How can she help you?”
Hun Kan looked solemn and still, and a bit unsure.
“Did you understand?” Cauac asked.
She nodded and glanced at Ni-ixie—or Nixie—he repeated it in his head. Nixie had scooted over by Peter and was staring at a soft paper with bright colors on it.
What language did both girls speak? Cauac glanced at her bound feet. “Will you walk with her?”
She blinked and stared at her hands. “It does not matter. I am not where the priest placed me now.” Hun Kan removed her own bonds, tying the rope around her waist as if it were a belt. She rubbed at the red spots on her legs where the rope had been, and then stood, looking around her, wide-eyed. Her whole body shook.
Nixie stood, too. She took Hun Kan’s wrist, the one with the watch on it. Cauac had become convinced she was a girl like Hun Kan, fearless, and very real.
After all, she bled.
Nixie’s eyes burned with purpose, and she slid her finger under the band, leaving her thumb on the other side. She snapped her fingers, the way you did it to make noise, and the band slid silently open.
Hun Kan gasped and tried to hold the watch together.
Nixie put it back, then showed her again. She did it over and over until Hun Kan could do it with one hand. Hun Kan chose to leave it on in the end, and by then the exercise had calmed her.
They’d gotten about twenty steps from the others, still on the grass but close to the white path, when Hun Kan tugged on Nixie’s hand. Nixie turned. Hun Kan held her free hand out: an invitation.
Nixie took it. The two girls stood looking at each other on the grass, sideways to the sun so neither of them had to squint at it.
Hun Kan’s hips swayed. She picked up her right foot and, as she brought it down, she picked up her left. The pose held a moment, and then she stepped down a little to the side and started again. Nixie followed.
A dance.
Nixie looked into Hun Kan’s eyes and smiled, and the girls’ smiles bounced off each other and grew.
Hun Kan danced harder, the ends of the rope around her waist swaying back and forth. She was stronger and faster than Nixie.
Hun Kan led Nixie in the portal dance.
Cauac reached into his pouch and withdrew a small, short piece of heartwood, polished round with a stretched-leather cap tied to one end with sinew. He found a small rock and struck it experimentally. A little hollow, but not too bad. He started the steady heartbeat Hun Kan’s dance demanded. She looked over at him, mouthed a “thank you,” and turned back to the dance.
Aligning with the heart drum, Hun Kan began to turn the girls in the circle of creation, holding both of Nixie’s hands and leaning back away from her, each dancer dependent on the other one, needing the other for balance.
They circled.
Hun Kan laughed when Nixie laughed, and yet her eyes remained serious, her steps fast but careful. Precise.
Sweat ran down Nixie’s face.
Ian started to drum, too, rock on rock. He and Cauac shared a bright grin, and Ian drummed harder.
Peter sat hunched and staring at his moving pictures, not even noticing the dance in front of him, showing no sign he felt the shifts in energy as the girls danced the gods near.
Ian smiled like he was sleeping with a woman.
Cauac shifted the rock-drum to a different cadence and started to chant. Hun Kan heard him and picked up the pace. Both girls breathed hard. The late afternoon light turned their sweat gold. The gods were in them, of them, shining from their eyes.
They were beautiful.
The veil between now and then seemed to thin as they danced, as if they danced time open the way the Lords of Itzá did before the ball game. A dance of women balancing the dance of the men. Nothing showed this to his eyes, but it came in the scent of dry air in the breeze, the smell of corn soup cooking and a slight background noise that sounded like the laughter of slaves preparing for festival.
Finally, Hun Kan and Nixie collapsed, gasping, on the grass. He and Ian stopped on the same beat. Ian’s hand was bright red from holding the rock, and looking into his eyes, it seemed the gods might have visited him during the girls’ dance as well.
Cauac turned to compliment Hun Kan.
Nixie stared down at a bare patch of grass, one hand over her mouth.
CHAPTER 46
Ah Bahlam looked down on the Ball Court, waiting for the players to enter. He stood on top of the wide wall that the players would hit the ball against, near one of three small flame temples that sent prayers and messages out to the world on sacred smoke. Julu sat on his shoulder, ruffling his wings from time to time.
A sharp elbow stung his side. He turned to find a small page of the high priest’s attached to the elbow. The boy could not be older than seven. His high child’s voice cracked with excitement. “K’uk’ulkan requests you tell him the whereabouts of Hun Kan.”
Hun Kan was not in the high priest’s keeping? He struggled not to give away his happiness. He addressed the boy directly. “Tell K’uk’ulkan I have not seen her since she went with him. I offer myself to help him look.”
The boy bit his lip and backed away, then climbed down the steps like a monkey.
Should he have followed him? But he had not been asked.
Ah Bahlam forced his attention back to the Ball Court. He had wanted to play, had daydreamed all the long summer of playing well, or ill.
He had dreamed these things since he was five summers old.
Disappointment burned inside, only slightly cooler than his desire for Hun Kan beside him. A part of his very being was glad to be Ah Bahlam and not a sacred ball player, a man rather than a god. A man might yet save Hun Kan.
He had been given no place of honor. Instead, he chose this place available to all of the minor Lords of Itzá; it was near enough to see the place they held captives. Here, he would be able to see Hun Kan if she were brought to join the others, be close enough to exchange glances if not words. The dishonorable feel of hoping her Way was to live and bear his children rode him like a slight ill wind. But he could not stop hoping it.
He would not betray Chichén to save her. He couldn’t. Nor could he leave and let the night pla
y out without him.
Ah K’in’ca was the only one of his friends chosen to play. The others were defending Chichén or dead, the men chosen to game with the gods below all older. The faces of those who died on the white road home danced inside him with the jaguar and his guilt and his dream for strength for Chichén.
The game needed to be good.
Ah Bahlam bit his lower lip as Ah K’in’ca walked into the court, cotton pads covering his elbows and knees, the great yoke settled against his hips. There were four others beside him, and five on the opposing team. They all entered from the same side of the Ball Court and stood in the center, with the Ball Court marker directly in front of them.
The High Priest of K’uk’ulkan, Ah Beh, and the High Priest of War stood in front of the players, solemn, dressed in full regalia.
Silence started with the players and the three high priests, flowed over the Ball Court and up the walls to the spectators, damping whispers and movement on the steps of the Temple of the Jaguars.
All of Chichén rested in the silence.
Sound began as a low hum, like butterfly wings or bees, then rose slowly, the sound separating out into the words that spoke of the birth of the sun, the passage of the sun into the well of the world, the game as symbol for the movement of the sun. The next words belonged to Ah Beh alone. “Let all who attend the festival be of one heart. Let all be of one blood. Let all be of one purpose. Let the very gods attend our game!”
The High Priest of War’s turn was next: “Let all who defend Chichén be strong. May the Ways and the gods ride with them. May the enemy die! May the gods fight beside us.”
The High Priest of K’uk’ulkan spoke last. “Let the blood of sacrifice bless this game, this day. Let the sun flow through the wheel of power and the proper side win. Let the gods game with us.”
A rustling nearby told Ah Bahlam that one of the captives was being removed.
The chant of sacrifice started, the priests first, then the players and then the watchers, the sounds issuing from Ah Bahlam’s mouth as well as the mouths of thousands of others, rising up to the sky as the high priest slowly ascended the steps of the Temple of the Jaguar to stop by a stone altar shaped like a man holding a bowl for blood: the Chac-Mool.
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