by J; P Voelkel
Lola climbed into the passenger seat and slammed her door.
With a final wave at Nasty, Max ducked into the backseat with the monkeys, and soon they were eh-speeding south down the highway.
Max’s iPod had run out of juice somewhere over Ireland, so he settled down to watch the passing scenery.
As the suburbs of Madrid fell away, the apartment blocks and shopping malls were replaced by rolling expanses of tall yellow grass. Every so often a rocky hill would rise out of the plains, surmounted by a giant cutout of a black bull, silhouetted in all its magnificence against the blue sky.
Lola looked back over the seat. “See that bull? Santino says they’re billboards that were put up all over Spain to advertise a brand of sherry. Everyone liked them so much they’ve never been taken down.”
“How fascinating,” said Max sarcastically.
The monkeys had long since fallen asleep, and Max considered joining them. As he rested his head against the car window, he saw another huge silhouette looming up on a hill. Another of Santino’s fascinating billboards, no doubt. He regarded it without interest until, just as they drew level, he realized that it was not a bull but a hellhound, ten times larger then life.
“Look! Look!” he spluttered.
Rapt in their Spanish conversation, Lola and Santino ignored him.
By the time he’d persuaded them to look back, the car had crested the hill and the hellhound was out of sight.
It must be the jet lag, he told himself, shutting his eyes.
When he woke up, everyone was gone.
It was hot as a furnace inside the car.
And someone was banging on the window.
Chapter Five
GETTING HOTTER
She was slamming her palms on the glass, and shouting something at him.
“Lola?”
Max rubbed his eyes.
“Where are we?”
He realized she couldn’t hear him and tried to wind down the window.
It was electric and didn’t budge.
He tried to open the door.
That didn’t budge either.
Now the sweat was running down his face, and he was scared.
What scared him was the look of terror on Lola’s face. Her hair was wild and loose. Her face was tear-stained. Still she was shouting at him, maybe warning him about something, gesticulating that he should get away.
But he couldn’t get out of the car.
He fiddled with the door lock. The latch popped up and down, but the door mechanism was jammed.
“Lola! Lola! What’s happening? Is it Santino? What’s he done to you?”
She beat her fists violently on the window as if trying one last time to break the glass with her bare hands, then turned to run away. As she straightened up, Max was astonished to see that she was wearing a costume, a long yellow ball gown trimmed with lace.
He yanked at the door handle and kicked open the door.
“Lola?”
She was gone.
He staggered to his feet in the hot sun and looked around.
The car was parked under a tree in a scrubby wasteland. There was no highway in sight. In one direction, a parched yellow plain shimmered in the heat haze. The other way was a wall of jagged rocks. The sun blazed down and the air was thick with ochre-colored dust.
“Lola!” he called again, at the top of his lungs.
“There you are!” said Santino’s voice, from somewhere behind him.
Max saw a flash of steel and felt a sharp pain.
Warm blood trickled down his back as he fell to the ground.
“Hoop?” Lola came running, with Santino close behind. She was wearing her street clothes again. “Why are you shouting? Are you okay?”
“It was Santino,” groaned Max. “He stabbed me.”
“I did not eh-stab you,” said Santino indignantly.
“Let me see,” said Lola, crouching down and lifting Max’s T-shirt. She sucked air through her teeth. “You’ve been spiked by a thornbush. Brace yourself, Hoop; I’m going to pull it out.”
Actually, Max didn’t feel a thing. He was too busy replaying what had just happened. Was he going crazy?
“Put your hand here and keep pressing,” Lola instructed him. “I’ll find some yarrow to stop the bleeding.”
She ran over to a patch of tall weeds and pulled off a bunch of white lacy flowers. Then she lay the flowers on a flat rock, picked up a smaller rock, and began to grind the flowers between them.
As Max watched her, he wondered how she’d managed to get changed so quickly. Where had she hidden the dress? And what was Santino doing with a sword?
“You two are sick,” he said.
Lola smiled over at him. “Sick as in cool?”
“No,” said Max, “sick as in twisted.”
“What?” Lola slammed down her rock in outrage. “All we did was get out of the car to admire the view. You were asleep when we left you. Next thing, we heard you screaming and came to see what all the noise was about.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Max sarcastically, “so I suppose it wasn’t you in the long yellow dress, and it wasn’t your boyfriend here who stabbed me in the back with a sword?”
“Let’s get one thing eh-straight,” protested Santino. “I did not eh-stab you. I have no eh-sword.”
“And I’ve never worn a long yellow dress in my life,” added Lola.
Max noticed that neither of them denied Santino was her boyfriend.
“Perhaps you have sun eh-stroke,” suggested Santino.
“This should help,” said Lola, scooping up a handful of evil-looking paste. She wasn’t particularly gentle as she rubbed it on Max’s wound, but he refused to complain on principle.
“Where are the monkeys?” he asked, looking around. “Maybe they saw what happened.”
Lola gestured vaguely. “In the trees somewhere, eating leaves.”
Santino sniggered. “Even if they saw something, it’s not like they can eh-speak.”
Lola laughed along with him. “Talking monkeys, what an idea,” she said.
Max imitated her laugh.
“That’s not funny,” said Lola. “Don’t be so mean.”
“I got stabbed.”
“No, you didn’t. Here, follow me, and I’ll show you something to make you feel better. It’s just over these rocks.”
“Last time I followed you I got stabbed.”
“No, you got pricked by a thornbush. And you weren’t following me.”
“But it seemed so real.…”
“Hot sun can do that. You’ve heard of mirages, haven’t you?”
“I guess.”
On shaky legs, he followed her over the rocks.
“Ta-da!” announced Lola.
Max took in the view.
On the other side of the valley, clinging to the hillside, a little town sat at the foot of a medieval castle. Climbing up the castle walls, garlanding turrets, obscuring streets and courtyards, spilling out of balconies and window boxes, covering rooftops, was a living blanket of yellow flowers—a sight made all the more extraordinary by its contrast to the dried-up riverbed below and the arid plains all around.
“It’s awesome,” marveled Max.
“The yellow city,” whispered Lola. She passed Max a water bottle. “Drink,” she said. “You’re dehydrated. You scared me back there.”
“It’s the yellow city,” whispered Lola.
“You scared me.”
The water was warm and metallic-tasting from sitting in the sun, but Max’s parched mouth sucked down every drop.
“All around is dry as dust,” Santino pointed out, “yet in Polvoredo, flowers grow. But only yellow flowers. If you plant red, white, purple—all of them turn to yellow. It is magic, no?”
“I read about it online,” responded Max. “It’s a quirk in the local soil chemistry.”
“You do not believe in magic?”
“No,” said Max firmly. He wasn’t about to tell this
guy about all the freaky things he’d seen in San Xavier.
“Does anyone live in the castle?” asked Lola.
“Yes,” answered Santino, “if you believe in magic.”
Max rolled his eyes. Boy, this guy was annoying.
“Will you tell me the story?” asked Lola, sitting on the rocks and patting the space next to her. Santino sat down, like a lovesick lapdog, way too close to Lola for Max’s comfort.
“Excuse me,” he said, squeezing himself in between them so that they had to shuffle apart. “I was wondering if either of you had any food? I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving,” said Lola.
Santino patted his pockets and pulled out a tiny bag of peanuts. “From the plane. You are welcome to them.”
“Now let Santino tell his story,” said Lola.
“I hope it’s a short one,” said Max, tearing open the peanuts. “It must be nearly dinnertime.”
“In eh-Spain, we eat dinner very late,” Santino informed him.
“Great,” said Max glumly, watching a gray heron circling the dry riverbed in search of nonexistent frogs. It looked like they’d both go hungry. He lay back against the rock and closed his eyes. “Go on then,” he said unenthusiastically.
“And so,” began Santino, “the woman who lives in the castle, they call her Inez la Loca—’Crazy Inez.’ They say she is five hundred years old.”
“Ah,” said Lola, “a ghost story.”
“No,” replied Santino silkily, “a love eh-story.”
Max made a retching noise. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “A peanut got stuck.”
“Ignore him,” said Lola to Santino. “Please go on.”
“It begins in the time of the conquistadors—”
“Or the invaders, as I call them,” muttered Lola.
Santino looked hurt.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that word conquistadors—it makes my blood boil. It sounds so brave and noble, but they were just a rabble—a bunch of thieves and mercenaries. They destroyed everything they touched. It was their germs that wiped us out, not their fighting skills.”
Santino sighed. “I am not proud of their actions, señorita, but they were not all bad. Some eh-Spaniards defended the Maya.”
“And some Maya betrayed their own people,” admitted Lola. “But you know what they say: history is written by the winners. I’ve never read a history book that told the Maya point of view.”
Santino nodded. “It is true. The history books show conquistadors in their shiny armor, when most could not even afford shoes. They came from here, from Extremadura, from the poorest region in all of eh-Spain. Thousands of peasants sailing to the New World, to make their fortune—”
“To steal it, you mean,” Lola corrected him.
Santino shrugged. “In any case, most of them died in the jungle. And of the few who survived, most came home even poorer than before. But my eh-story is about a boy who left in rags and returned as one of the richest men in all of eh-Spain. His name was Rodrigo de Pizarro.”
Max sat bolt upright.
Grandma Isabella’s family name was Pizarro.
Santino noted his interest. “You know this name?”
“Why would I?” said Max. He still didn’t trust the young law student and he didn’t intend to tell him anything.
“He was from the same family as Francisco Pizarro, the famous conq—” Santino looked at Lola and quickly corrected himself. “The famous invader of Peru. But, by all accounts, Rodrigo was a good man. They say his heart was as brave as a lynx and his hair was as red as a fox.” He studied Max’s face intently. “You know, I have seen a painting of Rodrigo de Pizarro, and he looked like you—the eh-spitting image, as they say.”
Max shifted uncomfortably on the hard rock.
“So,” continued Santino, “before they sailed to the New World, the Pizarro family were eh-swineherds. But Rodrigo came home, not twenty years old, with fifty chests of treasure and a jade wedding ring on his finger. He built the castle for himself and his eh-spouse, a beautiful Maya princess.”
“I bet the townsfolk loved that,” said Lola drily, “an Indian in their castle.”
“At first, it was a great eh-scandal. Some said that, with his red hair, Rodrigo was in league with the devil. Others said that his bride was a witch who had put some sort of eh-spell on him. It was to eh-stop all the gossip and rumors about his wife that Rodrigo gave the town its motto: La Verdad Sobre Todo, ‘Truth Above All.’ He made it a crime to tell a lie.”
“Sounds like he really loved her,” said Lola wonderingly.
“Her favorite color was yellow. So he gave her yellow flowers every day.”
“How romantic. Did they live happily ever after?”
Santino shook his head. “Rodrigo was eh-stabbed in the back on the eve of their first wedding anniversary.”
Max’s wound throbbed. He remembered the girl in the yellow dress and the flash of steel. “Who did it?” he asked. “Who stabbed him?”
“It was a fellow swineherd-turned-conquistador, by the name of Landa.”
Lola looked up sharply. “Friar Diego de Landa? The nut job who burned my people’s books?”
“No, this was his cousin, Count Lorenzo de Landa. He was also, as you say it, a nut job. It seems to be a family trait. It is rumored that the present count, Antonio, murdered his own brother to inherit the estate.”
“Antonio de Landa? He lives near here?” Lola looked horrified at the thought of crossing paths with the cape-twirling maniac who’d kidnapped her in San Xavier and dragged her to the Black Pyramid, apparently with plans to sacrifice her.
“Antonio lives in Galicia, a wild region in the northwest of eh-Spain,” answered Santino.
“How far is that?” Lola pressed him.
“Driving? About seven hours.”
Satisfied that her tormentor was not within cape-twirling distance, she relaxed slightly. “So what happened to the Maya princess?”
“Lorenzo de Landa, her husband’s killer, announced his betrothal to her. Of course, all he wanted was the treasure. Every day, he brought her red roses, and every day she eh-spurned him, turning the roses yellow with the power of her love for Rodrigo. Years passed; Lorenzo grew old and died. Since then, generations of Landas have tried to claim Rodrigo’s fortune; but none has ever succeeded because it is guarded eh-still by his beautiful Maya princess.”
“And her name was Inez!” guessed Lola.
“That was her eh-Spanish name.” Santino pulled out his cell phone and looked at the time. “We must go,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
Across the valley, a bell began to ring. The sun was low in the sky, airbrushing the countryside with a golden glow, its rays reflecting off a window in the castle like the whirl of a yellow ball gown. The Yellow Jaguar was inside there, Max was sure of it.
“We’ve found what we’re looking for,” he whispered to Lola.
She shivered. “What we need right now is a place to stay. Are there any hotels around here, Santino?”
“I know just the place,” he replied, punching a number into his phone.
“I’ll call the monkeys,” said Lola.
She cupped her hands around her mouth to make the sound of a howler monkey, the loudest land animal on the planet. And if Santino Garcia was surprised to hear the girl of his dreams roaring like an angry dinosaur, he was too polite to mention it.
Chapter Six
THE HOTEL OF HORROR
I feel like I’ve been here before,” said Max as Santino drove them through the narrow, cobbled streets of Polvoredo. “Me, too,” agreed Lola. “Those little houses all jammed together like they’re holding each other up … the balconies … the shutters … the crumbling stone walls … even the holes in the road.… It all looks so familiar.” They drove on in silence, until she suddenly burst out, “I know! It looks like Puerto Muerto!”
She was right. This remote village in the middle of Spain was a dead ringer for the li
ttle town where Max had first met up with Uncle Ted, half a world away in San Xavier.
“Spooky,” he said.
Santino looked over his shoulder. “It is not eh-spooky at all. Puerto Muerto is a colonial town. It was built by colonists from Extremadura. What should they build but what they know?” He pulled up in front of a seedy doorway. “Welcome to Casa Carmela, the best hotel in town!”
Max surveyed the entrance of the run-down hotel, with its broken tiles and peeling paint. “It’s not exactly the Hilton, is it?”
“It is also the only hotel in town,” admitted Santino, smiling. “Not many tourists eh-stay in Polvoredo overnight.”
“You don’t say?” replied Max, feigning surprise.
Lola shot him a warning look and turned anxiously to Santino. “Do they allow animals here?” she asked.
He nodded. “I have called ahead and pulled some ehstrings for you. Doña Carmela, who runs this place, is the second cousin of the uncle of the sister-in-law of the wife of my brother. She is expecting you all.”
“Thank you for everything, Santino.”
“It is my pleasure, señorita,” he said. “And perhaps while you are in eh-Spain, you will do me the honor of visiting my home and meeting my family?”
Lola looked flustered. “Um … that’s so kind, but we … um … we have a busy schedule. I’m not sure there’s time.…”
“I will wait for you, señorita,” said Santino, “for as long as it takes.”
There was an awkward pause, during which Max sensed that the law student would be moving in for a kiss if he and Lola were alone in the car.
“No,” said Max, “there definitely won’t be time.”
A red sports car roared up behind them, unable to pass in the narrow street. Its driver revved its engine impatiently and thumped on the horn.
Santino sighed. “I have to go; I have a date with my mother.”
Max raised an eyebrow.
“It is her birthday,” replied Santino icily.
“Oh,” said Max. He got out of the car.
Santino ran around to open Lola’s door for her. “Don’t forget your flowers,” he said.
Lola picked up the roses and stared at them in amazement. “They’ve turned yellow!”