12.21: A Novel

by Dustin Thomason

  It was too painful to explain what would happen to the girls, daughters of Auxila, so I said simply:

  —Yes, Prince, she survives, but you must put Flamed Plume out of your mind, for she is untouchable to you. You must focus on your studies.—

  The boy seemed sad, but he pointed at the macaw and spoke:

  —What is this, teacher? What do you bring me?—

  My spirit animal is most sociable, and so I let him out of his cage to show the prince. As we reviewed his knowledge of spirit animals, I explained that mine came to me in the form of this macaw and that I had become one with the bird through the drops of my blood. Then the bird, my animal form, flew about the room, which pleased the boy to see. We flew to the roof and back down; we circled him and landed on his shoulder.

  I told the prince my spirit animal had stopped in Kanuataba on the great path of migration every macaw makes with its flock. I told him that in a few weeks we would continue our journey in search of the land that our ancestor birds have returned to every harvest season for thousands of years.

  I told the prince:

  —Every man must transcend the everyday human world, and the animal self is the embodiment of that ideal.—

  Smoke Song’s animal self is a jaguar, as befits all future kings. I watched him taking in the bird, considering how the macaw could be my bridge to the overworld. I mourn that Smoke Song might never again see his spirit animal. Few holy jaguars roam the land anymore.

  When we finished talking of animal spirits, the boy spoke:

  —Wise teacher, my father the king has told me that I may accompany the army on their journey to fight on behalf of the people of Kanuataba. That we may go to Sakamil, Ixtachal, and Laranam and fight them as decreed by the morning star passing into darkness. It will be a great evening-star war. Are you not proud, wise teacher?—

  Anger swelled up inside me, and I let go words that could have cost me my life:

  —Have you been to the streets and to the barren markets, stricken by drought? It is difficult to witness, Prince, but you see the suffering of the people with your own eyes. Even the army is starving, whatever salting techniques they may have now. We can hardly afford to wage wars in distant lands!—

  But the boy snapped back:

  —My father has received a divination that we must wage the star war against the distant kingdoms! How can you know better than the stars? We will fight as our gods have commanded! I will fight with the warriors of Kanuataba!—

  I looked at the child with a pained heart and spoke:

  —Fire ripples through the heart of every man of Kanuataba, Prince. But one day you must lead us, and you must prove your wits. You are in the midst of your studies. I was not brought here to train you as a warrior with a blowgun or length of rope, so that you may die on the warpath!—

  The prince ran from the library, hiding the tears that poured from his eyes. I called after him, but he did not return.

  I expected the boy’s servant, Kawil, to follow the prince quickly, but to my surprise he did not move. Instead, he spoke:

  —I will bring him back to you, scribe.—

  —Go, then.—

  —May I speak first, holy scribe? It concerns Auxila.—

  I gave the servant permission.

  Kawil told me he was sitting outside the palace walls, several nights after Auxila’s sacrifice, and that he had seen Haniba, the wife of Auxila, with her two daughters.

  He explained:

  —They had come to worship at the altar where Auxila was sacrificed.—

  I was shocked to hear this. Every woman knows what she must do when her husband is sacrificed at the altar. Haniba had insulted the gods by failing to do her duty. Kawil explained that he followed her all the way to the Outskirts, where she was living.

  Now there was no question in my mind what I had to do.

  Someone had to remind Auxila’s wife of her duty. It is decreed by Itzamnaaj for all of our history that the wives of sacrificed nobles are to join their husbands in the overworld by an honorable suicide. Auxila was my close friend, my brother, and his wife deserved better than the horrors of the Outskirts.

  If she would not heed the call of the gods, I would have to help her.

  When the morning star passed through the reddest part of the great scorpion in the sky once more, I dressed in a commoner’s loincloth and leather sandals so as not to be recognized.

  The Outskirts shelter the dregs of Kanuataba, where men and women have been saved from death by omens but exiled from the city proper for their crimes. Here were thieves and adulterers who had escaped death by an eclipse, errant borrowers who lived only by the grace of the evening star, drug addicts, and even those we are told are the greatest sinners of all, bound to walk the earth for all eternity from the north to the south: those who stupidly worship only those deities who they believe favor them.

  No limestone or marble is wasted on the buildings in the Outskirts, and if any of the quarrymen are caught sneaking limestone, they are guaranteed a public death, so the buildings are made of mud and thatch. There are only the illegal trades—the market for dream mushrooms, gambling on ball court games, and whoring.

  I had obscured my face with my blotting towel, which I use to prepare the gesso for books. In the palm of my hand I carried several cacao beans and doled out each one as I spoke with women in the streets who might be able to guide me to Haniba. These women all offered me their bodies in exchange for the bean and were utterly confused when I refused them. Instead, I spoke with an old whore. She sent me another two hundred paces down the causeway to a series of stalls, which I had not seen since I was in the Outskirts as a young boy, where I lost my own virginity.

  In the back of one of the stalls, I heard a woman moaning. I went around and found a man on top of Haniba, a vile man thrusting himself into her. Haniba was defiling herself! There were four cacao shells laid neatly on the ground beside them, and in the midst of their copulation they could not hear as I leaned down to check the beans. I found no beans inside two of the shells. The man was a cheat.

  I picked up a large sitting stone in the corner of the stall and raised it above my head. I bore down with all my might. The man slumped on top of Auxila’s wife and she screamed, not understanding. I believe she thought the stone had come down from Iztamnaaj himself to punish her for her trespasses. But when I lifted the man off her and she saw my face, she turned away. Haniba was deeply ashamed. Yet there could be no deeper shame before the gods than that she was still living on this earth.

  She spoke:

  —They have taken everything from me, Paktul, my house, all of my clothing, and Auxila’s goods—

  —I know why you are here, and I am come to implore you, Haniba. You must act prudently. Your children starve because no one will take them until you are gone. People will learn you are still alive—

  The woman wept, barely able to breathe:

  —I cannot heed the order until I know my children are safe. Flamed Plume is turning to the age where she will be taken up by some old man who wishes to have a fresh girl! You have seen the way Prince Smoke Song himself looks at my Flamed Plume—she might have been queen, Paktul! The king was considering their betrothal, and the prince is good, deserving of her. But now that her father has been shamed, we all know they cannot be betrothed. So what good man will take Flamed Plume? Surely you understand, Paktul. Surely this shame is like the shame you felt when your father left you!—

  I was tempted to strike her for speaking this way. But when I saw the look of sadness in her eyes, I could not hit this woman I had known since Auxila and I were boys together.

  I spoke:

  —You must find yourself a length of vine and wrap it around your neck by the turn of the next sun. You must hang yourself proudly, Haniba, to fulfill your duties as wife of a noble sacrificed to the gods—

  —But he was not sacrificed to the gods, Paktul! He was murdered by a king! Jaguar Imix ordained his death because Auxila had the cour
age to speak out against him, and the king sacrificed him in the name of a god that does not exist! This god, Akabalam, surely cannot have called for Auxila’s sacrifice, having never revealed his power to us or to any other noble in a dream!—

  I said nothing of my own doubts about the new god. For just as a scribe should not question a divination, it is not for a widow to question a king.

  I spoke:

  —What can you know of the conversation between a king and a counselor he sacrifices? How can you know the king never revealed Akabalam?—

  Haniba buried her head in her hands.

  As a nobleman, seeing such a woman make such a transgression against the gods, my duty was to kill her.

  But I was powerless in the face of her sadness.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE CDC HAD ARRANGED SPECIAL DISPENSATION FOR CHEL TO BE on the roads, and the Getty security team provided an escort who followed her toward Mount Hollywood. From the top of Mulholland Drive, even against the night sky she could see smoke rising from distant corners of the city. Yet as she raced east, Chel felt the first glimmers of hope she had had in days. Patrick had agreed to meet her at the planetarium immediately.

  East Mulholland was eerily empty but for the occasional police car and National Guard jeep. Yet there was an acrid smell in the air—maybe the burning was closer than she thought. She started to roll up her window. Just then a woman in exercise clothes ran into the middle of the street, right in front of her car. Chel wouldn’t have seen her except for the flash of the woman’s reflective running shoes.

  Chel swerved, her Volvo’s tires skidding across the road, and finally she veered onto the shoulder, heart racing. In her rearview mirror, she saw the jogger keep on going, as if nothing had happened. The woman was on autopilot. Chel had heard stories of VFI victims raiding pharmacies for sleeping pills, drinking to the point of alcohol poisoning, and paying huge prices to drug dealers for illegal sedatives. But the woman now receding behind her was trying to do it naturally, attempting to exhaust herself into oblivion. It looked as if she might collapse in the street at any moment. Yet on and on she went.

  The security car following her pulled up alongside the Volvo. Once Chel had insisted she was okay, they wound their way up to the top of the mountain without further incident.

  Fifteen minutes later, their caravan reached Griffith Observatory. The massive stone structure had always reminded Chel of a mosque. Patrick had told her that, years ago, before the city lights made most stars too hard to see, this had been the best place in the country to study the night sky. Now it was better suited for city vistas; the entire Southland shined below. From here, the fires burning against the night looked almost beautiful. From here, Chel could almost forget that L.A. was at risk of its own collapse.

  The security detail peeled off, and Chel checked her phone before getting out of the car. No new messages. Nothing from her mom. Or Stanton. She wondered when she could expect another anything. The possibility that she’d have something to tell Stanton next time kept her going.

  She got out of her car, and a minute later Patrick was greeting her at the observatory entrance. “Hi there,” he said.

  “Hi yourself.”

  They held each other for a moment, fitting together perfectly at his very manageable five-foot-six. How strange it was that, after talking to this man every day, living with him, sleeping so many nights next to him, Chel was huddled against him and had no good idea what had been happening in his life for months.

  Patrick pulled back from their embrace. “Glad you got up here okay.” His blue eyes gleamed beneath his eye shield, and blond hair framed his face. He wore the striped button-down Chel had given him last Christmas, and she wondered if he’d put it on for a reason. He rarely wore it when they were together; it was she who’d used it more, as a nightshirt. He’d liked taking it off her.

  “I still can’t believe you were in there with patient zero,” he said. “Jesus.” He stepped back to look at her. “Pulling all-nighters again?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Hardly a first for you.”

  Chel could hear the note of longing in his voice, his desire to remind her of what they once shared. “I really appreciate you coming up here,” she said. “I do.”

  “All you had to do was ask,” he said. “A codex from the classic. Unbelievable.”

  Chel looked back over the L.A. basin behind them. A gray haze of ash filled the sky. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “It’s eerie out here—and the clock is ticking.”

  Patrick lingered behind her for a moment, squinting into the darkness. “Love the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night,” he said, paraphrasing his favorite epitaph.

  The three-hundred-seat Oschin Planetarium dome rose seventy-five feet from ground to apex and gave visitors the feeling of standing inside a great unfinished work of art, a basilica ceiling yet to be painted. They stood in the dark, lit only by the glow of the two red EXIT signs and a laptop. While Patrick focused on the images of the codex on the computer, Chel studied the strange contours of the star projector in the middle of the room. It looked like a futuristic monster, a mechanical hydra that projected thousands of stars onto the aluminum ceiling through cratered hemispheres.

  “Whoa, I’ve never seen this before in a codex, a reference to a star war timed to the evening star,” Patrick said. “It’s unbelievable.”

  The images of the book had swiftly worked their magic on him too. He dimmed the lights, flipped a switch on the projector, and now the dome filled with stars jetting across the night sky, rotating through hundreds of positions, magically transforming. Chel had been here a dozen times in the year and a half they were together, but every time it felt new.

  “There are dozens of astronomical references in what you’ve already translated,” Patrick said, pointing at the ceiling with a laser. “Not just the zodiac but positional references and other things we can use to anchor us.”

  Chel had never paid enough attention to the details of his work, and now she was embarrassed by how little she knew.

  “Come on,” he said. “You know this stuff. It’s a historical–astronomical GPS.”

  He was teasing her.

  “You’ll recall—Dr. Manu—that the earth rotates around the sun. And on its own axis. But it’s also oscillating back and forth with respect to inertial space, due to the moon’s tidal forces. It’s like a toy top that wobbles. So the sun’s path as we see it across the sky changes a little every year. Which is what 2012ers are all obsessed with, of course.”

  “Galactic alignment?”

  Patrick nodded. “The crazies think that because the moon, earth, and sun are lined up on the winter solstice, and we’re nearing the time when the sun will intersect with some imagined equator of the dark rift of the Milky Way, we’ll all be destroyed because of the tidal waves or the sun exploding. Depends who you ask. Never mind that the ‘equator’ they’re talking about is totally imagined.”

  Projected stars moved in slow concentric circles above their heads. Chel sank down into one of the cloth-covered seats, tired of craning her neck.

  “So the earth wobbles back and forth,” Patrick continued. “And not only does the sun’s path across the sky change as a result, but so do the stars’.”

  “But even if they shift over time,” Chel asked, “the stars we see here in Los Angeles aren’t very different from the ones they see in Seattle, right? So how are we supposed to get a good location from that? The differences are pretty imperceptible.”

  “Imperceptible to our eyes. We have too much light pollution. But the ancients’ naked-eye observations were more precise than ours could ever be.”

  Patrick’s own love affair with the Maya began while he pursued a PhD in archaeoastronomy. He became obsessed with the analyses that the Maya astronomers were able to do from their temples: approximations of planetary cycles, understanding of the concept of galaxies, even a basic grasping of the idea of moons attached to other plane
ts. The modern decline of stargazing was a tragedy, Patrick felt.

  They both stared up at the frozen sky. “So let’s start at Tikal,” he said. “This is what it looked like there on the vernal equinox on the approximate date you got from the carbon dating and the iconography. Let’s say: March twentieth, 930 A.D.” He used the laser to highlight a bright object in the western sky. “According to your scribe, on his vernal equinox, Venus was visible in the dead middle. So we rotate the coordinates of the star projector within the range of the Petén, until we get Venus in the right place.”

  The stars spun above them until Venus was at the apex of the planetarium ceiling. “Looks like about fourteen to sixteen degrees north,” Patrick said finally.

  But Chel knew enough to know that from fourteen to sixteen degrees north would span a range of more than two hundred miles wide. “That’s as close as we can get? We have to do better than that.”

  Patrick began to shift stars. “That’s only the first constraint. From what you’ve already translated, we’ve got dozens more to parse. We’ll go as fast as we can.”

  They worked side by side, with the projector and Patrick’s computerized star charts, the codex providing more inputs. Much of the work was done in silence, with Patrick entirely focused on the sky above.

  It was after two A.M., during a long stretch of silence, when Chel found her thoughts drifting uncomfortably to Volcy and his deathbed.

  To her relief, Patrick interrupted them. “So before this all started,” he said, “did you have a chance to take that trip to the Petén you wanted? Were you writing all the articles you’d hoped to?”

  When she’d ended their relationship and he moved out of her house, these were the excuses she gave.

  “I guess,” Chel said quietly.

  “After this, you’ll be a keynote speaker for the rest of your life,” he said.

  Patrick already seemed to have forgotten that she might be facing a jail term after this. Yet even now, in the midst of this catastrophe, Chel could hear the tinge of jealousy in his voice. Despite Patrick’s cutting-edge scholarship, there were few people who were interested in archaeoastronomy. He’d spent his career trying to convince the academy that what he did mattered. But he always found himself presenting at the ends of conferences, publishing in obscure journals, and having book proposals rejected.