The burdens they carried were of various shapes and sizes, wrapped in thick canvas and then bound with ropes. There was no way for an observer to tell what mysterious items lay within—but they were clearly heavy.
Yaotl watched one man approach. He was gaunt, and utterly exhausted; the joints of his limbs stood out like knots in a rope. His legs were bare and scratched raw by the acacia and catclaw he’d marched through. They shook unsteadily with each step.
His back and shoulders were crisscrossed with welts, and his hollow eyes were bereft of hope.
As the slave limped forward, two of his soldiers grabbed what he was carrying and stacked it.
Suddenly unburdened, he staggered backwards until another soldier snatched his arm and led him, stumbling, into a makeshift enclosure.
The pen used a rock wall and several sprawling stands of prickly pear to contain the slaves. A guard stood facing the miserable humans.
Yaotl was relieved to see none carried disease. He didn’t know how far the wrath of the Spaniards might extend.
In one quick glance, he knew none of the slaves had the energy to try to escape. But he could take no chances.
“Let them sleep in their chains,” he told the guard.
To the side, several Blue Men were cleaning and organizing the heavy Spanish tools. Each morning they applied a blue powder to their bodies, but after this day’s exertions it had become faded.
Now, through the smeared powder, Yaotl could see cuts and scrapes on their legs; and one man had a particularly nasty gash on his shin.
He was glad to see the man had attended to the steel before his own injuries.
He approached him, and the man sprang to his feet.
Yaotl nodded at his leg. “You are injured,” he said.
The man shrugged. “It is nothing.”
“Have it tended to after you are through with the steel,” said Yaotl.
The man nodded, and when Yaotl turned his gaze away, his comrade threw a handful of blue powder on his injury—as if that were medical attention enough—and they both laughed.
Several more Blue Men approached, carrying caged and tied-up sacrificial animals, including a jaguar suspended from a long pole. The cat hung limply, and Yaotl nervously approached it and nudged the feline with the tip of his foot.
The cat growled in irritation, and Yaotl exhaled.
The men lowered the jaguar, and Yaotl stepped forward and smacked one of them in the face.
“If he dies I will have your skins,” he warned the porters. “He needs to be alive for the sacrifice—give him water.” One of them scurried off to find water, afraid now that they’d been warned.
Another carried a cage with a golden eagle. And behind him a man held a basket that he knew contained a large viper. There would also be a human sacrifice, which Yaotl would determine in time.
There was a bear, too, an old Mexican grizzly. Four stout Blue Men were holding him by long rods attached to a metal collar, and although they’d kept him moving forward, the bear could lift them off their feet with a lunge.
This great beast wasn’t meant for the sacrificial ceremony Yaotl planned. But when he’d first seen it in the mountains far to the south, a sense of raw power had gripped Yaotl, and he felt they were somehow connected.
Soon his captain, Coatl, approached: his name meant Snake, and Yaotl thought it a good omen considering where they were going.
Snakes, after all, had access to the underworld.
Coatl wasn’t tall and muscular, like the Blue Men, but he radiated a fierceness, and an unflinching, uncaring attitude toward anything that stood in his lord’s way.
He wore a white scar on his face that ran from his now blind left eye to his chin, and he had a way of shifting his head from side to side regardless of where his one good eye wandered that had unsettled many of Yaotl’s more civilized relations in the capitol.
“It will take some time still for the last of the slaves to arrive, my Lord,” he said in a whisper, while bowing his head and avoiding Yaotl’s gaze.
Yaotl watched a bat circle in the sky before him, hunting the few insects which were still buzzing this late in the year.
“And this new camp your men located?”
Coatl nodded, bobbing his head. “As you know, the men are away, but I took precautions. Our warriors are surrounding them and will soon have everyone rounded up.”
Yaotl smiled with filed, pointed teeth.
“There should be one there who knows about Itzel Canyon,” he said. “If they don’t give up this person, enslave all of them.”
Coatl gave an evil grin and slipped backwards into the shadows.
Yaotl walked beyond the unloading area to a temporary camp that his men had set up. A low fire was burning in front of a small, round shelter with a sparsely thatched roof. His was the only structure, everyone else slept in the open.
Inside, a burning tallow lamp illuminated a chair and a blanket spread out for him to sleep on.
He stepped to the chair and sat down by the small flickering flame. Beside it lay a pile of his personal belongings. Reaching inside a leather satchel, he pulled out a handful of small, brown, oval seeds—Ololiúqui—from the morning glory plant.
He silently chewed the seeds, which contained psychedelic properties, and felt the spirit world opening around him.
He picked up a yellowed piece of parchment and held it before the soft light.
Before him glowed the only remaining page of Itzel’s Codex: It was the map. The edges were burnt, and the bottom of the image was missing altogether.
What was left showed the upper half of Oak Creek, the turn up the West Fork, and then Itzel Canyon.
Yaotl had no way of knowing that this parchment was more than seven hundred years old. But he did know it was valuable, for it pointed to a sacred place. More precisely, to a location which he hoped was a shortcut to that sacred place. His stomach churned with excitement when he thought of the potential.
The dark lord lifted his hand, gently touched the symbol that hovered over the location of the box canyon, and said, “Xibalba.”
Chapter Fourteen
I have always preferred the soft sounds of morning to those of night, or even sunset. There’s something about the freshness of a new day: the leaves dripping with dew, the deeply soothing scent of the earth, the twittering birds as they flutter about, and the golden, glinting rays of sunshine that spill into our valley.
Maybe it’s the potential; knowing all the things that need to be done—both fun and menial—that add up to more than just the end of something.
I don’t know why people like sunsets so much.
And night reminds me of my betrothed, Elan.
That’s why I’m alone tonight, away from the others—all the women and children. In the darkness, I’m barely visible as I sit inside the sinkhole, down by the water, missing my love.
I, Imala, would count my heartbeats if it would make time pass quicker. Having seen eighteen summers, I am ready to wed. My sisters tease me that I’ll soon be too old, and Elan won’t want me.
But I know that’s not true—he professes his love all the time.
These are difficult times. The lands are awash in sickness, and the happy times are far and few between. I would like to be married now, but I’m told by my grandmother that we must wait until spring. So, I must be patient.
She is a strong woman, as were all the women in our line. They would only be defied at great cost. My grandmother is the great-great-granddaughter of Cocheta, the Unknown, whose own mysterious daughter was born in the secret canyon one-hundred-and-twenty-six years ago.
When grandmother sets her mind to something you just have to go along. So… I’ll be getting married in the spring.
In the mornings, that doesn’t bother me so much. I lay there listening to the birds, trying to identify them from their song.
Sometimes I even sing back.
But when it is dark—especially on nights like this when my belov
ed is away—then all I do is yearn.
On this night there were no sounds in the sinkhole. No frogs. No insects. No people chatting in the distance, or even dogs barking. It was dead silent.
I barely noticed it as I sobbed a few times, missing Elan, and then I began to sing, my voice cutting through the darkness like rays of sunshine on a chilly day.
Yaotl stepped out of his tent when he heard the song. It was faint, but he knew it came from the ruined pueblo by the sinkhole. He grabbed a torch and walked that way, leaving his guards scurrying to catch up.
Down in the sinkhole, I sang, unaware of Yaotl, or even his procession; all other sounds were eclipsed, and I’d been alone there for hours.
When I walked up the stone steps to the rim of the sinkhole, I was startled to hear the crack of whips and people crying. I gaped, bewildered, and nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a voice behind me.
“Seize her,” said a demon-like man with filed teeth.
If only I had remained quiet and grieved in silence.
They grabbed me and dragged me back to his shelter where two of his guards tied my wrists behind my back and threw me on the ground.
An hour later they yanked me to my feet and led me down the path to our camp. My heart sank when I realized they knew were my people lived. I was in the company of the leader and about a half-dozen warriors, who walked silently with a determined step.
The ancient ones had dug canals and channeled the water that flowed out of the sinkhole, and some of them were still in use. The path we followed ran along one of these canals, lined by ancient trees, as it flowed away from the abandoned pueblo.
Before long we came to a clearing where the land slowly slanted down to meet the creek. A big cottonwood grew right where the canal terminated, and the water fanned out over its roots and onto the field.
Although the Sinagua were long gone, their fields remained, and we used them when convenient. We were not farmers, like the ancient ones, but we took advantage of fields like this when we could.
In the darkness, I could make out the harvested stalks of corn and withered vines from where we’d grown our squash. We grew what we could, harvested other plants when we traveled, and hunted for game wherever we went.
Our current home consisted of five wickiups. These circular, dome-shaped homes were made from a wooden frame held together with yucca fibers and then covered with brush. After our union, Elan and I would build our own wickiup, and I often daydreamed about it.
But today, the sight of my family’s wickiup filled me with terror. In front of it, everyone was cowering in the dirt.
My mother saw me approach, and ran to me, but a soldier stepped forward, club in hand, and knocked her on the head so hard she sank to the ground, unconscious.
I knelt beside her and leaned into her body, sobbing, unable to comfort her with my arms tied.
They dragged us to the others and tossed us in the dirt.
And then the leader began shouting at us as he held a piece of parchment in his hand.
He kept shouting one word.
“Xibalba! Xibalba! Xibalba!”
None of us grasped the meaning of it.
I caught my grandmother’s eye, and suddenly knew exactly what he wanted. And she knew it, too.
It was the place of power, and bad energy, that I had known about all my life.
We never talked about it openly, only on special occasions, but it was a part of our family knowledge, just like the blood in our veins that came to us from Cocheta. Generation after generation we learned about the hidden box canyon with the cave in the back, and the concealed tunnel there—and what it led to.
My mother always said it was a place that veered away from peace, not toward it. It was a place to be avoided.
The leader—whom I heard referred to as Yaotl—barked an order at his men, who began to drag people out of the crowd to beat them. I saw my cousin get clubbed in the back and sink to the ground, and then one of my sisters was backhanded.
And then they took my poor old grandmother and began to beat her—and it was too much for me. I watched as a savage blow knocked her to her knees, and when the warrior raised his club I screamed, “Stop!”
Everyone froze and stared at me.
My grandmother collapsed to the ground, unconscious, or dead, I didn’t know. In a weaker voice, I said, “stop,” again.
It suddenly dawned on me that they would kill us all unless one of us took them there.
I stood and faced the leader and said, “Xibalba.”
I had been there only once, but I knew I could find it.
He peered at me intently, and with a flick of his hand, the beatings stopped.
Chapter Fifteen
I lay in the dirt, arms bound, in front of Yaotl’s tent. The remnants of a fire smoldered beside me but gave no warmth. Sunrise was still an hour away, and in the dull, cold pre-dawn gloom I shivered, despite my efforts not to.
I will feel no pain, I told myself. I will feel no emotion. I will give them nothing. From now on, I am discipline. From now on, I am vengeance.
Eventually the horizon began to lighten, and I could make out the desert brush around me. The first living thing that entered my field of vision was a tarantula.
The spider should have been deep in a nest, riding out the winter, but it must have been unearthed when the soldiers made camp, tearing up shrubs, roots and all.
The spider twitched.
I barely took note. I had no other thoughts in my mind but the revenge I now plotted. I seethed with it.
But then the tarantula’s odd spasms got my attention.
I realized it had fallen victim to a tarantula hawk, or spider wasp. The wasp would have stung and paralyzed the spider weeks ago, and then dragged it to a brood nest and deposited an egg on it. Over the coming weeks the egg would hatch into a larva, which would feast on the still-living, but paralyzed spider.
A few days ago, the twitching spider would have filled me with revulsion. I would have been tempted to kill the spider and put it out of its misery—something my grandmother would have forbidden because to her all life was precious.
But now I don’t care what lives or dies. I have made the decision to lead the invaders to the evil place, and I doubt I will live beyond it, and this makes me cold inside, unfeeling.
No longer will I eagerly await the return of Elan or make plans for our spring matrimonial. No longer will I spend my mornings following the cool, shaded, creek banks with my mother, searching for food and medicine while we sing softly to the coming day.
Instead, I will be death.
Death for those who follow me.
For I know that once I lead the men there none can ever leave. I will not allow the poison to spread.
A ray of sunshine touched the spider, and suddenly the wasp larva emerged from the abdomen of the tarantula.
And when the slick creature began to crawl out of the tarantula’s body, I turned away.
With the first light, Yaotl stepped out of his shelter. He glanced at the sky and ignored me crouched before him. Coatl, his captain, almost stumbled over me in his haste to kneel to his commander.
“Great lord,” he said, “The men are ready to begin loading the slaves.”
Yaotl nodded. “And what are our numbers?”
The captain’s gaze slid over me, and he swallowed before he spoke. “Of the one hundred and fifty slaves there are only fifty-five left. We lost five of the Blue Men, too. Twenty remain.”
Yaotl flashed his pointed teeth, and Coatl quickly added, “We can continue with these numbers—you yourself said it is not much further. We will bring what we can, and then send the slaves back to get the rest. I’ll leave five men to guard everything until we return.”
Yaotl’s eyes simmered like hot coals. “No, we will take it all. Have my soldiers and the Blue Men divide whatever cannot be carried by the slaves. “
The Aztec lord paused then, his cold mind calculating their diminishing odds of s
uccess.
“And how are my soldiers?” he asked.
Again, the captain hesitated for a quick second.
He said, “We lost three yesterday, leaving seventeen. Two were killed by the bear, and one was lame.”
Yaotl glanced at the bear, who slept in the shadows, impressed that it still had the energy to kill. He didn’t ask about the lame man: He had standing orders that anyone who couldn’t keep up would be put to death. He would take no chances of someone revealing their location, or what they were carrying.
Then he walked up to me and pulled out the map.
“You know this place?” he asked.
I didn’t understand his words, and the parchment he held in front of me made no sense, but I knew where he wanted to go. It was the place, my grandmother had told me, where all weak men were drawn.
He pointed at the Mayan symbol near the top of Itzel Canyon. “Xibalba” he said.
I held his gaze and nodded.
“Xibalba,” I said.
I stood by Yaotl, at the head of the long line. He had cut my bonds, but after only a few moments he had my hands retied in front of me. When I looked back, all I saw were the forlorn, hopeless faces of the slaves.
Beside the loading area, there was now a pile of about twenty bodies. While I watched, several of the soldiers started a fire beside them, threw a dozen logs on top of it, and then hefted the bodies into the flames.
As we began marching, the acrid smoke floated toward us, and I sucked it in. This was death, and I would accustom myself to it.
In the distance, toward the far southern end of our valley, I could see a long tendril of smoke reaching skyward. The last pile of burning bodies.
I saw in my mind the line of such fires stretching south, all the way to the hot tropics where these invaders came from.
When we left my wickiup, I didn’t glance up to see if anyone was watching. I did not want to meet anyone´s gaze.
I concentrated instead on the turkey vultures circling above. They were here for the burning flesh and rotting bodies.
The Sirens of Oak Creek Page 7