by J; P Voelkel
As Max surveyed the bustling scene, he realized how wrong his first impression had been. Now that he looked more carefully, he saw that the pennant on the palace read TOURIST OFFICE and the knight in armor was posing for photographs with passersby. Aside from himself and Lord 6-Dog, no one was wearing a baseball cap or Hawaiian shirt, so he guessed that most of these visitors were local. Or at least, not American. But that was all the more reason to try and fit in.
“Tourists never say no to free food,” he pointed out. “And we don’t want to act out of character and draw attention to ourselves.”
Lady Coco nodded in agreement, eyeing a bunch of juicy green grapes.
“Okay,” said Lola, “but only while Lord 6-Dog and I go to the tourist office and see what we can find out.”
Max and Lady Coco searched out the least-stinky cheese (heavy on grape garnish for Lady Coco) and stood around people-watching.
Across the square, a peal of laughter rang out. A woman in red was relating an anecdote to a table of revelers. Although he couldn’t hear what she was saying (and he wouldn’t have understood if he could), Max was transfixed by the way she flicked her long black ponytail as she acted out her story.
Something about her made him feel homesick.
He wished he could pull up a chair at her table and join in the laughter.
He wished he could trade places with any one of her carefree friends.
For them, history was just an exercise in photogenic costumes, an excuse for souvenir shopping, a chance to eat and drink, a mindless escape from reality.
Didn’t they know that what happened a thousand years ago could still bring the world to its knees? Didn’t they care that nothing is ever truly over? Didn’t they understand that greed and anger and a lust for revenge can fester in the human heart long after the flesh has rotted?
He saw Lola and Lord 6-Dog making their way back across the square.
“Let’s go,” he said to Lady Coco. “Time to save the world.”
Chapter Eight
EL CASTILLO
That tourist office was hopeless,” said Lola. “They wouldn’t even tell me how to get to the castle.”
“Did you ask them for a map?”
“I’m telling you, Hoop, they just wanted to get rid of me. They said Polvoredo is the dullest town in Spain, there’s nothing for tourists to do here, and if they were us, they would definitely go somewhere else.”
“They must be the only tourist office in the world that tells the truth,” mused Max. “That can’t be good for business. What about all this cheese?”
“They said the locals would die of boredom if it wasn’t for all the food festivals. Tomorrow they’re celebrating the art of meat pies, and it’s blood sausage over the weekend.”
“A meat pie festival sounds pretty good.”
“Max Murphy! How can you talk about saving the world one minute and meat pies the next?”
“But if we happen to be here tomorrow—”
“No.”
“Do you think certain pizza pies qualify?”
“Forget it.”
They were stumbling through a labyrinth of winding cobbled streets. Since the castle was the highest point, their plan had been to keep climbing upward, but the reality was not so simple. Unexpected dead ends barred their way. Streets that looked like they sloped uphill would somehow lead them back down to the cheesy ambience of the square.
“I feel like a lab rat in a maze,” said Max. “You think there’d be a sign to el castile.”
“El castillo,” Lola corrected him. She looked around. “If only there was someone to ask.” The streets were deserted, but curtains twitched at windows, and front doors slammed shut at their approach. “The people here don’t seem very friendly. I hope their Their Majesties are okay,” she said, suddenly concerned for the monkeys, whom she’d sent on ahead as scouts.
“Think the locals have made them into meat pies?” joked Max.
Lola cast him a stricken look and, before Max could stop her, she’d shinnied up the nearest lamppost, cupped her hands to her mouth, and let loose a series of increasingly urgent-sounding, loud, throaty barks that echoed down the narrow streets.
“Come down!” Max yelled at her. “We’re not supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves!”
Reluctantly, Lola climbed down. “A real howler call carries for three miles in the jungle,” she said. “I hope I was loud enough with all these buildings.”
“Trust me,” said Max. “You were loud enough.”
After several anxious minutes with no reply, a roar came back over the rooftops and Max saw Lord 6-Dog and Lady Coco bounding toward them.
“We found it!” called Lady Coco.
“The castle is both nearer and farther than it appears,” confirmed Lord 6-Dog. “It would seem that The City of Truth is built on an illusion.”
“It is an enchanted place,” agreed Lady Coco dreamily. “Magic hangs over it like a morning mist.”
“Good magic or bad magic?” asked Max.
Lord 6-Dog considered the question. “To the Maya, there is good and bad in all things.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Even Tzelek?”
Lord 6-Dog ignored the question. “Shall we stand and prattle or shall we march to the castle?”
“To the castle!” announced Lola, striding forward. “Ko’ox!”
With a heavy heart, Max followed her.
The difference between them, he reflected, was that every step brought her nearer to rescuing her beloved Hermanjilio, but every step brought him nearer to a grisly showdown with the Lords of Death. Now that they were getting close to the Yellow Jaguar, he found his courage melting like an ice cube in the sun.
But closer and closer they approached.
With the howler monkeys to guide them, Max and Lola discovered that many of the dead ends and blind alleys were optical illusions and actually quite passable. By heading downward, they gradually climbed high above the town, until they arrived at the top of the hill. Now the smell of cheese was replaced by the intense perfume of roses, thousands and thousands of yellow roses, spilling in fragrant tangles over the castle walls.
“This is it!” announced Lady Coco.
“I suggest we scale the walls under cover of all this greenery,” suggested Lord 6-Dog.
Max looked up. The walls were easily twenty feet high.
“Couldn’t we look for a door?” he asked.
They followed the walls around until they came to the gatehouse. It was fronted by a massive oak door, wide enough to admit a horse-drawn carriage and reinforced with metal studs the size of grapefruits. Inset into this door was a smaller door, with a square grating at eye level. Above it all, carved into the stone, was a coat of arms and the town motto LA VERDAD SOBRE TODO.
“Are those jaguars on the coat of arms?” asked Max.
“Yes! Yes!” cried Lola excitedly. She peeked through the grating and let out a whistle of surprise. “It’s literally a jungle in there: ceiba trees, cacao, mahogany, sapodilla, logwood, gumbo-limbo …”
Lady Coco licked her lips. “Oh, for some juicy young leaves,” she said.
“We are on a mission, Mother, not a picnic,” Lord 6-Dog reminded her.
“But after the fighting comes the feasting,” she countered with a wink.
Lola tried first the smaller door and then the big door.
“Locked. Both of them.”
She stood back.
Below the grating was an iron door knocker shaped like a jaguar head. Below the knocker was a very large, official-looking sign in blocky red letters.
“What does it say?” asked Max.
“ ‘Private property. Permanently closed. No entry. Danger. Go away. Forbidden to tourists. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Do not knock or else,’ ” Lola translated.
“Whoa!” said Max, putting up his hands in mock surrender. “Or else what?”
“Let’s find out,” suggested Lola.
“No—!” began Ma
x, but it was too late.
Lola lifted the knocker and let it fall against the wood. They all jumped back in horror as a deep booming sound reverberated up and down the street, bouncing off the castle walls and rolling down the hill, turning the whole valley into an echo chamber.
“A pox on it!” exclaimed Lord 6-Dog. “This din will be heard in Xibalba!”
“Make it stop,” winced Lady Coco, with her paws over her ears.
A large police officer on a small motor scooter screeched to a halt in front of them. He dismounted with surprising grace and brushed the dust off his shoulders.
“Buenos días,” he said.
They mumbled a greeting in reply.
“I am Officer Gonzales. And you? You are tourists?”
They nodded.
He looked them up and down. “So, the knocking, who did this?”
“It was me,” confessed Lola. She looked slightly surprised to have volunteered this information. Max guessed it was the ethereal arbiter of truth at work.
“Why you did this?”
Lola’s face twisted this way and that as her brain composed one untrue answer after another and her mouth refused to speak any of them. Eventually, her brain and her mouth reached a compromise. “I was hoping to see inside the castle.” She tried to look sweet and innocent.
The officer remained unmoved. “Is not allowed.”
Lola looked suitably devastated.
“Never mind, we’ll find you another castle,” Max said to her consolingly. “Let’s go back to the cheese festival.”
They turned to go.
“Not so fast,” came Officer Gonzales’s voice behind them.
Max’s stomach lurched.
“Was there something else, Officer?” asked Lola politely.
He pointed at the monkeys with distaste. “They are with you?”
“Yes,” said Lola. She held out her arms so that Lady Coco could leap into them.
Officer Gonzales curled his lip and pulled out a little notebook from his shirt pocket.
“Where do you stay?” he asked.
“Casa Carmela,” answered Lola.
“Your parents, they are with you?”
“No.”
“And yours?” he asked Max.
“No.”
The officer made little tutting noises as he scribbled furiously in his notebook, filling several pages before looking up again. Then he put the notebook back in his pocket and held out his hand expectantly. “Passports!”
“But—” began Max.
The officer’s fingers strayed toward his gun. “You want to argue with me?”
Glumly, Max handed over his passport.
“I left mine at the hotel,” said Lola.
“You must carry it at all times,” said Officer Gonzales, tucking Max’s passport into his shirt pocket. “It is the law.”
“I didn’t know; I’m so sorry,” said Lola, giving him her most dazzling smile. “I could go and get it right now.…”
He checked his watch. “I give you one hour to produce the passport and the paperwork for the beasts. Bring them to me at the police station, just off the plaza. Come, I show you where.…”
So they had no choice but to walk all the way back down to the square, with Officer Gonzales following them on his scooter like a sheepdog herding sheep.
“What is this, a police state?” grumbled Max.
“He’s just doing his job,” said Lola.
“He’s a bully.”
“Be nice to him, Hoop; he could ruin everything.”
When they arrived at the square, Officer Gonzales pointed out the police station. “One hour,” he said sternly. And with that, he puttered off down the street on his scooter.
Max groaned. “What a waste of time. By the time that guy has finished with us, the day will be over, and we haven’t got anywhere yet.”
“I’m so sorry, Hoop,” said Lola. “I promise I’ll be fast. You wait here, try some more cheese, and I’ll run back to Casa Carmela. If I’m too long at the police station, go without me.”
Max and the monkeys found chairs at the edge of the square.
“Wait,” said Max, a few minutes after Lola had gone. “Did she mean she’s coming straight back here or is she going to the police station first?”
The monkeys shrugged.
“I hope she gets back quickly. We’re supposed to find the Yellow Jaguar together, like the Hero Twins in Maya legend. Do you know Chan Kan in Utsal?”
Being forbidden to talk, the monkeys looked at him blankly.
“He said we make a good team.”
As he rambled on, sitting there talking to the simian equivalent of a brick wall, Max felt like he was in therapy. It was strangely relaxing. This was exactly how his mother wished he would open up to her. Why was talking to a howler monkey easier than talking to his own mother? Another mystery of adolescence that he would never understand.
Eventually, when he’d explained his favorite video game, his taste in music, the unfairness of having a name in the middle of the alphabet, and why he preferred thin-crust to deep-dish pizza, he looked around for Lola.
Still no sign of her.
The monkeys were dozing quietly in their chairs.
Some of the cheese merchants were closing up their tents for the day.
He had precisely three and a half days left to live, he was halfway through the time Lord Kuy had allotted him, and he was no closer to finding the Yellow Jaguar than when he’d stepped off the plane.
He pulled his chair up against Lord 6-Dog’s. “Wake up!” he whispered urgently.
“What …?” Lord 6-Dog woke with a start and clammed up the instant he remembered he was sworn to silence.
“It’s okay,” whispered Max, “we’re sitting in the shadows here. If we keep our voices down, I think we can talk.”
“Where’s Lady Lola?” asked Lord 6-Dog.
“She’s probably at the police station. I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”
“We cannot sit here all day, young lord.”
Max knew Lord 6-Dog was right. But he didn’t like the idea of going back to the castle without Lola. To play for time, he asked: “What day is it, anyway, in your ritual calendar?”
“In the Tzolk’in? It is 3-Ak’bal. 3-Darkness.”
“Is that a good day to attack a castle?”
Lord 6-Dog chuckled. “In truth, young lord, Ak’bal is said to be a good day to declare one’s love and plan a wedding.”
Max pulled a face. “You don’t suppose Lola has bumped into Santino, do you? Perhaps he took her for ice cream.…”
“The best ice cream in all of Spain!” whispered Lady Coco, waking up. The way she clutched her paws delightedly in front of her reminded Max of a bridesmaid holding a bouquet.
“Let’s go,” said Max, suddenly decisive.
Lord 6-Dog jumped to his feet, ready for action.
“But what about Lady Lola?” asked Lady Coco.
Max shrugged. “She knew the plan.”
“But what if she comes back and we’re not here?” persisted Lady Coco. “Why don’t I go and find her, and bring her to the castle?”
“Okay,” said Max. “But don’t bring Santino.”
“You’re worth two of him,” said Lady Coco with a wink.
Max and Lord 6-Dog set off back up the hill.
Max tried not to keep looking around to see if Lady Coco was following with Lola. “Any ideas how we’re going to get in?” he asked Lord 6-Dog.
“I could scale the walls, young lord, but thy puny legs could not follow.”
“I’m stronger than I look,” said Max tetchily. “I could climb up the roses.”
But when they reached the towering walls, Max was shocked to see how long and sharp and viciously barbed the thorns were on every stem.
“It’s no use,” he admitted, “I’d get ripped to shreds.”
“Never fear,” said Lord 6-Dog. “We will circumnavigate the perimeter. Perhaps an ingress will p
resent itself.”
“You mean, we’ll walk around the outside and look for a way in?”
“Just so.”
“This is pointless,” complained Max as they rounded the next corner. “And all these roses are making me feel sick. It smells like an explosion in a perfume factory.”
“Look,” said Lord 6-Dog. They had arrived at the great oak door in the gatehouse. “Is it my perception, or does it look different to thee?”
Max studied the door. “The sign is gone! The sign that tells you not to knock?” He stepped cautiously up to the door and ran his hand lightly over the jaguar-head knocker. “If I knock, do you think someone will answer? Or will Speedy Gonzales come zooming up on his scooter and arrest me?”
“That is the question,” said Lord 6-Dog.
But the question was never answered.
Because, as Max stood there looking through the grating at the rainforest beyond, the huge door creaked slowly open.
The huge door creaked slowly open.
Chapter Nine
THE SERPENT OF TRUTH
That’s weird,” whispered Max. “Should I go in?”
“Thou hast traveled halfway around the world and summoned me through space and time to be here. The gods themselves are watching thee, and the fate of humankind depends upon what happens here today. Yes, young lord, I think thou shouldst go in.”
“No need to be sarcastic about it,” said Max.
He took one last look for Lola, then gingerly he stepped through the door and into the tropical rainforest.
A canopy of treetops blotted out the Spanish sky. Scarlet macaws swooped among the emerald leaves, toucans picked wild figs with their rainbow bills, tiny hummingbirds flitted in search of nectar, and a neon blue butterfly warmed its wings in a shaft of sunlight. Yellow flowers as big as teacups climbed up the tree trunks, and yellow orchids hung from the branches. The humid air was alive with the buzzing of insects and the croaking of bullfrogs.
“Are we still in Spain?” asked Max, in awe. “It feels like San Xavier.”
“My forest,” murmured Lord 6-Dog. “If thou wilt excuse me, young lord, I believe I am going to brachiate.”
“You’re not sick, are you?”