by M. G. Harris
I shrug, keep walking. I concentrate on the future. Me with the codex in my hands. Me handing it over to a museum, the police, the NRO, whoever it takes; so long as they let my friends and Camila’s husband go free.
I’m curious about Pumas Girl and why she seems so out of place, like a city girl who’s completely at home in the jungle. She isn’t an obvious hottie or anything, but there’s something about her. She’s light and graceful on her feet. She bounces around roots and skips over fallen trees as easily as a deer. I find myself wondering how she’d be at capoeira, decide that she’d probably be superb. If I weren’t so afraid of falling apart in front of her, I might feel more talkative. But I’m just not in the mood.
For some reason, though, walking along with Ixchel, I feel a tiny shift inside me. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about her. It’s like a kind of recognition – the way I felt with Camila, but different.
Different. But just as strong.
Two hours and twenty minutes into our walk, the sky begins to light up behind us. Ixchel turns off the torch. Our eyes adjust to the blueish-grey light. We cross a small opening in the trees, wade through a light mist and pass a huge iguana sleeping on the stump of a tree. We stumble into a ravine and then climb up the steep bank on the other side. Then we’re lost again in a thick maze of trees. Frustrated, tired and thirsty, I call out, “How much further?”
Ixchel pulls up sharply, spins round and grins. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile and I’m momentarily disarmed.
“We’re here.”
“Becan? I don’t think so. Where are the restaurants, souvenir stalls, visitor centre?”
“That part of Becan?” Ixchel shakes her head. “I thought you meant the ruins.”
“The ruins? No. They won’t be open yet. I need to get some food and drink, find a place to stay.”
“You should have said,” she mutters. “You said Becan, so here we are. As for the ruins being open or not . . . you don’t need to worry.”
And she pushes back a hefty branch. I’m so stunned that I almost trip over. We’re smack-bang up against a huge stone pyramid that rises almost a hundred feet into the air. She’s led me right in the middle of the ruins of Becan – Chechan Naab – the last place my dad went before he disappeared.
“Becan, OK?” says Ixchel. “I did what I promised. And now I really, really have to go.”
“OK,” I say, shrugging. “Thanks.”
She gives a quick nod, turns to leave and then seems to think better of it. She gives me a strange look from out of the corners of her eyes, like she’s hoping I won’t notice or something.
“We probably won’t meet again,” she says, her voice suddenly very soft. “But whatever you hear. . .”
There’s a long pause, into which I interject, “What?”
Ixchel breaks off her gaze. Now it’s her turn to look embarrassed. I’m becoming more baffled by the second.
“Nothing,” she says, staring uncomfortably at her hands. “If anyone asks, tell them not to worry. And that my decision . . . it’s a matter of principle.”
“Principle,” I repeat, nodding. “Got it.”
“It’s not personal. OK?”
I’m still nodding vaguely as she backs away.
And then she really does leave. I call out after her, “But who’s going to be asking?”
Her answer stuns me more than anything she’s said so far. Because for the first time, she answers me in perfect English.
“The third layer on the western wall, Josh. And good luck!”
By the time I rush after her, she’s disappeared into the ravine. I don’t see her climbing up the other side. She simply vanishes into the undergrowth at the bottom. I now realize that the ravine is the dry moat that runs behind the towering pyramid and surrounds the ruins of Becan. I hear sounds of movement but it’s too late to give chase.
Ixchel knows me. It’s the only explanation. It even explains my strange feeling of recognition. Have we met before, maybe? Could she be one of the local kids I used to play with around the sites of my dad’s archaeology excavations?
She was looking for me. She’s delivered me to the exact place I wanted to be. The question is: who sent her? Who else wants me here?
It was as though she knew all about my mission. She saved my life in the jungle. She came prepared. That’s why she didn’t seem surprised when I told her I was looking for the codex. Her final shout had to be a clue to its location.
I gaze into the undergrowth where I last saw Ixchel. How do I know whether or not to trust her? She appeared from nowhere!
But what else am I going to do? Dad might have led me to Becan, but he hadn’t been helpful enough to leave a map. Ixchel – whoever she is – obviously knows her way around these ruins.
Did she know my dad?
All sorts of theories run through my head. Maybe she’s another long-lost sister? Maybe she was part of whatever led my dad here?
Maybe she saw my dad climb this very pyramid?
The dawn light is turning the sky salmon-red; the grey stones of the ruins glow with a pinkish hue. I push further through the undergrowth to find myself in a wide clearing. The massive pyramid is part of a city. It towers above a plaza, flanked by smaller buildings, including one with a wide staircase and two towers, each one almost as tall as the pyramid. The ruins stretch to the south and the east. Patches of morning mist hang low over the grass. Some of the ruins are fully excavated, but others are still partly covered with grass and trees. It’s as though buildings are crawling out from under the hills.
I’m surrounded by ancient history that’s being revived. This city is being rescued from the green of the jungle that choked it for the past few hundred years.
And it’s all for me.
This moment I share only with the beetles, the lizards and birds. I can almost hear them now, hopping around in the fresh morning dew. A sweet smell of warm grass and loam rises from the ground. There’s a stillness to the air that makes me catch my breath; a reverential, natural silence. I’m entranced.
And then I begin my climb.
The big pyramid that dominates the northern plaza is composed of five layered tiers, with a single front stairway that goes to the temple at the top. The dawn chorus begins – a huge racket starts up all from the trees behind the pyramid. When I reach the third tier, I step off the main staircase and follow the ledge towards the western face. In places the stones are loose. I have to watch myself or I’ll slip. The third tier is almost at the top and the view is amazing. With the sun behind me I can see all over the site, right across to the highway.
When I reach the western wall I lean against the stone and groan. This side hasn’t been restored properly. The ledge is narrow and looks treacherous. Worst of all – there’s no sign of any opening in the wall. I guess I was hoping for a convenient little tunnel. Can’t anything be easy?
Standing about halfway along, I notice that my clothes are still damp from the lagoon; swampy water mixed with sweat. It’s pretty grim. No wonder Ixchel kept her distance. I lie flat against the side of the pyramid, pressing my cheek right up to the stones. I reach up with fingers outstretched, grab all the stones in my reach, tugging and pushing to see if they come loose. Nothing.
I begin to scrabble around desperately, moving along the pyramid. I grip hard with my fingers and scramble up the side of the third tier. Not very successfully. I don’t have the footwear for sheer rock-face climbing – plus, I’ve never tried it in my life. Then, as I’ve just about given up hope, something unnerving happens.
My whole body falls against a rocky panel that suddenly lifts out of the side of the pyramid. Within seconds, it’s horizontal, and then it pitches me towards an opening in the wall. I can’t stop myself sliding. I fall straight down into a dark tunnel. The rock panel begins to slide back, upwards and out. The opening to the outside is being closed. I just lie there, mesmerized, watching it happen, watching myself being shut in. A moment late
r, the rock panel seals the opening.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, I really have to ask myself, am I making the right decisions here? The first decision resulted in Camila drowning, and now I seem to have buried myself alive.
Sometimes, instincts can mislead you.
I still have Camila’s torch. Who knows how long it will last, though – in the jungle we had the light on for most of the past two hours.
The tunnel is about three feet high and wide. The ground is hard-packed dirt. The air is warm but dry. It smells only faintly of limestone dust – a smell that takes me back to those summers on excavations with my dad. Usually the interiors of Mayan ruins smell of dank, rotting guano. This place hasn’t been recently infested with birds or lizards. I begin to crawl ahead on my hands and knees. Within a few metres, the tunnel slopes down, then straightens up. I switch on the torch. Straight ahead, the tunnel takes a right turn, towards the south.
The sound of my own ragged breathing echoes in the silence. I follow the tunnel a little further, until it comes to a dead end. There’s an opening to the left. I flash my torch around. It looks like a small chamber – tall enough to stand in. I crawl inside. The room is empty. I’m holding my breath, scared stiff. It looks as though I’m trapped inside this pyramid. I’ve no idea how to get out. But the thought of Ixchel keeps me going. I just can’t believe that she’d save me only to set me up for something worse.
I wait there for a few minutes. Nothing happens. I check all the walls and the floor, hoping to see some special stones or recesses. But no. I’m just about to give up when, without warning, the whole floor of the room begins to lower.
Down doesn’t look like a way out. Now I feel myself losing my grip – this really could be grounds for panic. The room stretches longer and longer until the doorway I came through is only a small, dark opening near the distant ceiling. Pretty soon, my torchlight won’t even reach that far.
I stare at the walls around me. The room is like some huge long elevator whose shaft was cut into the dirt, packed with occasional limestone bricks and mortar. I hear a mechanism whirring under the floor. I’m being lowered back to ground level and beyond, deep into the earth under the pyramid.
Minutes later, it stops. The entrance to a tunnel comes into view against the side of the room. There’s no other way to go. I could never climb up the shaft in a million years. I hear the mechanism moving again. The stone lift is about to head upwards again. The only thing I can do is to keep going.
This new tunnel is high enough to walk through. I walk ahead for about fifty metres, finally reach another opening. From the difference in the air quality, I can tell immediately that this is a large chamber. I flash my torch around. It’s a pretty big cavern, around thirty metres across. Water drips from stalactites and stalagmites, which form columns from ground to ceiling.
My guess is that I’ve walked into something like the Loltun caves. The Loltun is a network of naturally occurring caves and tunnels that riddle the Yucatan peninsula. There are some archaeologists who specialize in finds from these caves, but for my family they were just a fun place to visit once in a while; a way of getting away from the jungle’s heat. But with a guide! You didn’t want to go down there clueless – unless you wanted to disappear without a trace.
Then, from behind one of the columns, I see someone step out from the shadows. I shine my torch directly at him. A tall figure stands about twenty metres away, watching me. I freeze. He approaches, and I can only stand there. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Through the clammy air of that cavern, his voice resonates. “Good morning, Josh Garcia. I’m Carlos Montoyo. It’s about time we met. Your father and I, we had unfinished business.”
Maybe his words should mean something to me but right then, they don’t. I’m so tired, so bewildered that for a moment I wonder if the walls of my reality melted when I leaned against the pyramid. And whether, at some point, I’d crossed over into a parallel world.
Carlos Montoyo? For the first second or two, the name means nothing to me. I’m sorry, I want to tell him. What are you doing here?
It’s funny how context is everything. Carlos Montoyo; if I’ve imagined him at all it’s as a benevolent academic, some crusty old college professor who took an interest in my dad.
Definitely not a Bond-villain type of guy you’d meet in an underground lair beneath a Mayan pyramid.
Montoyo steps towards me. He’s solidly built, around fifty, wears black jeans with a silky shirt and a black leather jacket. His long hair is flecked with grey and pulled back in a ponytail. His brown eyes look sad, tired, deadly. His face is marked with deep crags. I can’t quite decide which he looks more like – a trendy college lecturer or a hired assassin.
Or maybe one of those trying to pass as the other?
He stops when he’s just two metres away, looks me over with a strange smile. He sticks out a hand. I answer him with a damp, limp gesture of a handshake.
“You seem confused,” he comments in fluent English, with a hint of an accent that I can’t place, but I don’t think Spanish is his first language.
I nod. “Yeah,” I manage. I want to say, You? Here? But how? But I don’t think it will come out quite so coherent.
“OK. First of all, I owe you an apology.”
“Uh huh,” I say, wondering what he’s going to apologize for. The burglary? Using some weird-but-helpful girl to lure me to a cave deep under a Mayan pyramid? Killing my dad?
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Long story.”
“Short version?”
He shrugs. “I live here. Nearby.”
I watch him closely. He doesn’t seem to be joking.
“Right, sure, in a cave? It’s, um, nice.”
He ignores that, instead saying, “I have to apologize for deceiving you. Or at least, for economizing with the truth.”
I’m none the wiser. “Um . . . OK?”
“Some weeks ago I became aware that you’d taken up your father’s quest to find the Ix Codex.”
“How?”
He stares at me, seems slightly irritated.
“Believe me, you’re gonna have more important questions. And you don’t have all the time in the world. You’ve been reported missing already. Every minute you are away, people are looking for you. So we’ll stick with the necessary, OK, Josh?”
I nod, trembling slightly from the sudden cool. Maybe it’s fear. Or maybe it’s excitement. I’m awash with adrenaline, tingling from head to toe with anticipation.
Montoyo gives a low whistle. “Hey, kid. You’re really scared. Aren’t you?”
I shiver, shaking my head. “No. I’m not.”
“Yes.” He nods once, slowly. “You are.”
Something about his tone makes me suddenly suspicious. In a firmer voice, I tell him, “I don’t think so.”
“Your sister,” he says softly, “I want you to know – I’m really sorry about her.”
That does it. I launch myself at him, aiming a high capoeira kick straight at his throat, and I scream something at him.
He’s definitely taken by surprise. I land a kick somewhere on his head as his tries to duck. He reels slightly. Before he can recover, I aim another kick to his ribs. But somehow he’s able to swerve out of the way, spin around and get behind me. It’s all done so fast that I don’t see it coming. Next thing I know I’m pinned to the ground and he’s on top of me, pressing my face against the cold rock floor of the cave.
“Bravo, Josh. Que barbaro! But now you’re gonna listen to me. All right?”
I give a quick nod, tears of frustration springing to my eyes.
“I didn’t kill your sister. You got that? I wasn’t in the car chasing you. OK? The fact that I know what happened under no circumstances makes me guilty of her death. Can we agree on that?”
I nod again and close my eyes. I’m really losing it now.
“And, in case you need to hear this too, I didn’t kill your fathe
r. OK?”
He releases me and sits back. I sit up, looking down all the time, ashamed of my tears.
“Grief is nothing to be ashamed of, son. You should cry for your father, you should cry for your sister. What happened to her – and almost happened to you – it’s very sad.”
I’m choked with emotion as I mumble, “I couldn’t save her.”
“Of course not,” Montoyo says soothingly. “A situation like that, every second counts.”
“I tried,” I tell him, staring straight into his eyes. “I really tried.”
He looks back, deep brown eyes studying mine. “I know.”
I breathe deeply, trying to get myself under control again. Watching me, Montoyo tells me, “I know what happened, because we were following you. Not from the road.” He glances upwards. “From the sky.”
“What. . .?”
Montoyo nods. “Yes. Later, I’ll show you. But first, tell me, what did you think of Ixchel?”
“The Pumas-shirt girl?”
Montoyo breaks into a grin. It transforms him entirely. “Yes, the ‘Pumas-shirt girl’.”
“She’s got a pretty big chip on her shoulder.”
Montoyo chuckles. “That’s true. But did you like her?”
“Why?”
“Hmm. Just wondered. Kind of hoped you’d get along.”
“I wasn’t really in the mood for getting along. Neither was she.” I shake my head, annoyed. “Will you please just tell me . . . what the hell is going on?”
“OK. That’s fair. But we need to get moving. Can we walk and talk?”
We both get to our feet.
“We’re going somewhere?”
“Going somewhere? Oh yes. You could even call it the adventure of your life.”
I hesitate. I don’t feel afraid any more, even though maybe I should. I’ve already thrown out the idea that Montoyo is a psycho, hell-bent on killing me. He’s had plenty of opportunity – he could have crushed my skull against the ground only a moment ago. Wherever he learnt to fight like that, he’s been taught well. I didn’t stand a chance.