by J; P Voelkel
“The smell of tamales seems to attract them.”
“But why did they appear to you?”
“Perhaps they likes my tamales. A lot of people do,” she said defensively. There was an edge in her voice. Max had never been a big fan of Zia’s tamales, and it was evidently still a sore point with her.
“Besides liking your tamales, Zia, what did Lord Kuy say?”
Zia hesitated. “He … He said that if I did my job properly, he would reward me.”
“And your job was …?”
“To help you find the Yellow Jaguar and deliver it to Xibalba.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Whose side are you on, Zia?”
Zia looked at him like her heart would break.
“How can you even ask that?” said Lola, coming over and putting a protective arm around Zia. “You should be thanking her, not interrogating her. If Zia wasn’t here, Lord 6-Dog would be dead on the roadside, Lady Coco would be lost in Spain, and I would be married to Tzelek.”
She was right.
“I’m sorry, Zia,” said Max. “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
“That is good,” she replied. “Tomorrow, when you go to Xibalba, you must trust no one.”
Max and Lola exchanged nervous glances.
“We’re going to Xibalba tomorrow?” he asked.
“It is Wak Kimi, 6-Death,” she said. “The day to visit the dead.”
“But how will we get there?”
“The easiest way,” said Zia, “is to take the bus.”
Max did a double take. “What? You’re telling me there’s a bus from Spain to the Maya underworld?”
Zia smiled. “This place is a lot like San Xavier. The people here are superstitious; they believe in magic and ancient myths and other worlds. They even have their own sacred stones, called dolmens.”
“But public transportation to Xibalba …?” said Max skeptically.
“It’s true,” Zia insisted. “The spirits of the dead get a bus to a village called San Andrés, and from there they take a boat to the underworld.”
Max stared at her. She really was insane. “Zia, we haven’t got time for—”
“Hoop!” interrupted Lola, jabbing a finger at the guidebook. “Zia’s right. It says here that if a Galician dies without visiting San Andrés, they will be reincarnated as a lizard or a frog. To avoid that happening, a relative buys two bus tickets, one for themself and one for the spirit of the dead. When they get to San Andrés, they stroll around a bit, and then the dead guy gets in a boat and follows the setting sun to the end of the world.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Max, shaking his head in confusion.
“Finisterre! The end of the world!” Lola was bouncing up and down with excitement. “Listen to this: ‘According to legend, Finisterre was the place where the souls of the dead entered the sea. It gets its name from the Latin finis terrae or “the End of the World.” The Romans referred to this stretch of the Atlantic as the Sea of the Dead, believing that the entrance to Hades was just over the horizon.’ ”
Max considered this information. “But Finisterre is not the end of the world for the Maya.”
“But here’s the thing,” said Lola, reading on, “it also says that pilgrims from Santiago follow the Milky Way to take them to Finisterre.”
“And?” said Max
“And it’s the same for the Maya! We call the Milky Way the Road to Xibalba!”
“There is a bus tomorrow afternoon,” said Zia.
Chapter Twenty-two
GHOST TOWN
The dead were a cheerful lot. Max couldn’t see them or hear them, but Lola could, thanks to the Yellow Jaguar necklet she still wore. (It seemed the safest place to keep it. It also lent a certain panache to the rest of her outfit, which was a black cocktail dress, borrowed from Zia.)
She squirmed in her seat. “This dress is so itchy.”
“Tell me about it,” said Max. “There’s so much starch in this shirt, it’s like wearing cardboard.”
It was Zia who had chosen their clothes for the day. “You must show the Death Lords respect,” she’d said. “It is an honor for a mortal to visit Xibalba. Your names will live on in Maya legend.”
“I’d rather live on by coming back alive,” Max had pointed out.
“This is no time for joking,” Zia chided him.
Eventually, she was satisfied with their appearance and they all said their good-byes. Zia promised to get the monkeys safely home to San Xavier, while Max and Lola took the bus to San Andrés and whatever lay beyond.
Now they were traveling along a winding road on a cliff edge high above the rocky coastline, sitting at the back of what to Max looked like a half-empty bus and to Lola looked like a full one.
When Max had first boarded, he’d noticed that every window seat was taken and every aisle seat was free. But whenever he tried to sit in an aisle seat, the window occupant would shout at him angrily.
And so on all the way down the bus.
“What’s the matter with you?” whispered Lola. “Don’t you remember Zia telling us that everyone buys two tickets—one for themselves and one for the spirit of their dead relative? Can’t you see those seats are taken?”
“They look empty to me.”
“Really? You can’t see the dead people sitting in them?”
“Meaning you can?”
“They’re kind of hazy, like faded sepia photographs, but yes.”
“Oh, yeah? So what are they doing, all these dead people?”
“The usual things. Eating sandwiches, reading newspapers, playing cards. They look pretty happy.”
Max peered along the aisle of the bus, trying to discern ghostly movement. “Maybe it’s not so bad to be dead,” he said, “if you can still eat sandwiches. Maybe I’ll get pizza when my time comes.”
“Don’t talk that way, Hoop. You’re creeping me out.”
“I’m creeping you out? And you don’t mind that the bus is full of dead people?”
“You know what I mean.”
Max saw something out of the corner of his eye and turned to look out the back window. “Now I’m seeing things,” he said. “I thought I saw a hellhound running after the bus.”
Lola turned and looked. “I think it’s gaining on us.”
“You can see it, too?” Max swallowed hard. “Shouldn’t we discuss strategy or something? What’s the plan when we get off the bus?”
“Well, I was thinking that we’d follow the dead and see where they go. I’m hoping they might lead us to a cave.”
“Why?”
“In San Xavier, they say that caves are entrances to Xibalba. This coast is so rocky, it must have hundreds of them.”
“Say we find the right cave. Then what?”
“Who knows? The Death Lords are desperate for the Yellow Jaguar, so you’d think they’d make it easy for us. We’ll trade the necklet for the two hostages, and get out of there as fast as we can.”
“But we can’t just hand it over, without a fight. Shouldn’t we try to reason with them? Plead for mercy for the citizens of Middleworld? Try to pull some kind of trick once they’ve released Hermanjilio and Lucky Jim?”
“And risk their lives? Forget it! Jaime’s mother would never forgive me. Besides, you can’t reason with the Death Lords. I’ve thought about this a lot, Hoop. We should do whatever it takes to get the four of us out alive—and worry about the rest of it later.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think there is a later. Once we hand over the necklet, Ah Pukuh will have all five Jaguar Stones. End of story. End of world.”
Lola shook her head. “I don’t buy it. This is not the end. You have to take a longer perspective. We’re not beaten yet, Hoop. I just have a feeling that the Jaguar Kings are watching over us.”
“You do?”
“We’re a team—like the Hero Twins, remember?”
He looked into her eyes. “You know, Nasty isn’t my girlfriend or anything.�
��
“I know that. She told me at the hotel when she brought me the Yellow Jaguar.”
“She did?”
Lola raised an eyebrow. “You sound disappointed. Did you want me to think she was your girlfriend?”
“Well, you were getting married at the time.”
Lola groaned.
“Just think,” continued Max, “you could be Mrs. Tzelek right now.”
“Stop!”
“Imagine what your children would have looked like!”
Lola hit him with the guidebook.
The bus lurched around a corner and plunged down a narrow switchback road toward the sea. “I think we’re nearly there,” she said. “The dead are getting very excited.”
At the bottom of the hill was a little parking lot. The bus pulled over and the passengers began to disembark. Of course, it took twice as long as it looked like it should and, being at the back, Max and Lola were last off.
“You go first,” said Max, “and see if there are any hellhounds. It’s me they go for.”
Lola stepped down and looked around the parking lot. “Just a few seagulls. You’re not scared of them, are you?”
“Hey, you’d be scared of hellhounds, too, if you’d ever met one. Even their drool is lethal. One of them burned a hole in our living room carpet.”
“I bet your mom loved that,” said Lola as they walked along a little path to the village.
“Zia covered it up before she saw it.”
“I like Zia,” said Lola. “I can’t believe you didn’t know she was Maya. You’re not very observant, are you?”
“Well, I can’t see dead people, if that’s what you mean. What are they doing now?”
Lola surveyed the scene. The narrow path through the village was lined with shops and stalls. “They’re looking at souvenirs, eating ice cream, taking photographs … the usual tourist stuff. Oh, wait a minute.… It looks like they’re going into that café. Come on!”
Max was about to follow her, when a muscular arm shot out and barred his way.
“Cuidado!” yelled the owner of the arm, a ruddy-faced man with bad breath and hairy ears.
“Lola! Come back! What’s happening?”
He heard Lola conversing briefly in Spanish with his captor.
“It’s okay, Hoop,” she assured him as the man released him. “He thought you were about to step on that.” Max looked to where she was pointing and saw a tiny brown lizard scuttling away down the path. “It could be the reincarnation of somebody’s relative,” she explained. “They’re very careful about not stepping on reptiles in this village.”
“That figures,” said Max, picking his way extra carefully.
Lola pushed open the door to the café. “Whoa, it’s busy in here!”
To Max, the café—like the bus—looked half empty. There were two chairs and one person sitting alone at every table, and every table had two glasses on it.
“Let’s squeeze in at the counter,” suggested Lola, raising her voice to make herself heard above the din of the merrymaking dead people.
“There’s no need to shout,” said Max, for whom the room was silent.
They found themselves a space and tried to catch the eye of the hunchbacked old woman dressed in black who was working behind the bar. While they were waiting to be served, Max studied the shelves on the back wall. They were filled with jars of murky ingredients: pickled eggs that looked like eyes, pickled gherkins that looked like fingers, pickled cauliflower florets that looked like tiny brains. The only decorations on the walls were posters of witches in various Halloween-type poses and a set of old photographs depicting real women dressed as witches. There were even little witch trinkets—magnets and key rings in the shapes of black hats and black cats and broomsticks—for sale at the register.
“What’s with all the witch stuff?” he whispered to Lola. “Do you think they’re into black magic around here? I don’t like it; it makes me think of Tzelek at the Black Pyramid.”
“I’ll ask,” said Lola.
When she ordered the drinks and phrased her question, all in Spanish, Max saw the old woman freeze for a moment. Then she cackled with laughter and looked straight at him. He couldn’t help but notice she had bulbous eyes, a hooked nose, jagged teeth, and a huge, hairy wart on her chin.
“She said there are no witches around here,” said Lola.
They drank their sodas in silence.
Suddenly there was a scraping back of chairs, and all the lone drinkers stood up as one.
“Time to go,” said Lola.
They followed the rest of the patrons out of the café, down cobbled streets, down steps, down alleyways, down, down, down, until they arrived at the beach. Like everywhere else in Galicia, the landscape was gray and green: gray with rocks and pebbles, green with glistening seaweed. The water was gray, too, interspersed with darker gray pillars of rock, and the sky was gray with just the faintest touch of watery pink where the sun was trying to call attention to its imminent setting. All down the beach, wrecked boats lay on their sides in the low tide, their wooden ribs sun-bleached to the color of old bones.
Max shivered. With no buildings to act as breakers, the full force of the wind roared in from the sea and cut like a sacrificial knife through his polyester suit.
“I’m freezing,” he complained. “What happens next?”
“The dead are saying good-bye,” said Lola. Her bottom lip quivered. “They’re saying good-bye to the people they love. They don’t know if they’ll ever see them again. They’re making promises they don’t know if they can keep.”
“I wish they’d hurry up,” said Max, hugging himself to keep warm.
He watched the waves battering a skeletal galleon. With each surge of the tide, it was lifting off the sand, until it floated upright again. All along the beach, the shipwrecks were righting themselves.
“Lola, what can you see?”
“The dead souls are walking down to the sea. They’re boarding the ships.…”
“What should we do?”
“We’ll follow them,” said Lola. She thought for a moment. “We’ll just walk along the beach like innocent tourists, and when all the dead have boarded, we’ll make a dash for the nearest boat. Stay close, Hoop, and follow my lead.”
“We’re going to board a ghost ship?”
“I’m sure the ghosts won’t mind. They look like a friendly bunch.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
As the living relatives lined up to wave off the departing spirits, Lola walked nonchalantly toward the sea, stopping every so often to pick up shells and sea glass. To make sure he didn’t tread on the toes of any spirits, Max stayed a few paces behind her.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m going in. Follow me.”
But as she waded into the shallows—“It’s freezing!”—a grizzled old man in a naval cap and dark blue turtleneck came huffing and puffing up the beach
“Turistas! Qué están haciendo?” he shouted over the howling wind. “Este mar es peligroso! Voy a llamar a la policía!”
“What’s he saying?” asked Max.
“He’s threatening to call the police,” said Lola. “He said that this sea is dangerous.”
The force of the waves crashing on a nearby rock took Max’s breath away. “You can see his point,” he muttered.
So Max and Lola walked along the beach, trying to look like they didn’t have a care in the world, as all their hopes and plans sailed away on a ship of dead souls toward the setting sun.
“What now?” said Max as the last boat slipped over the horizon.
“Let’s keep walking. I think we’re close to something. The necklace feels kind of warm. Maybe there’s a cave.…”
The relatives of the dead waved their last good-byes and began to make their way back up to the village, where the bus was waiting in the parking lot and honking its horn.
Soon the beach was empty.
The waves grew bigger and angrier. Seagulls s
creamed. The wind was heavy with salt and menace.
Lola stopped and peered at something down the beach.
Max followed her gaze, but saw nothing.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“There’s a boat!” she cried. “Come on!”
“Where?”
Max ran after her down the beach, trying to see what she saw. But still he saw no boats.
“Here it is!” She pointed to a pile of rotting drift-wood.
“No way,” said Max.
Lola began to clear the pile of debris and seaweed, until she revealed the remains of an ancient, barnacle-encrusted rowboat. As she worked, she nodded to herself and sometimes paused as if she was listening to the wind.
“You’re acting strangely,” said Max.
“It’s called getting the job done. Shall we launch our boat to Xibalba?”
“That thing won’t float. There’s nothing left of it.”
“Oh, come on!” said Lola. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Hoop?”
“That’s exactly what you said before we went down the underground river in that raft and I nearly drowned—”
“But the point is, you didn’t drown.” Lola put her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. “Trust me, Hoop.”
“It’s the boat I don’t trust.…”
“Help me turn it.”
They heaved it over, displacing a large colony of crabs, and pulled off most of the seaweed.
“Oars, oars …,” muttered Lola to herself. She looked around the beach and found two battered pieces of timber. “These will do.”
“Lola, stop; this is crazy. Have you seen the state of the sea? We’ll be smashed against the rocks.”
“The tide’s going out. If we’re lucky, it will wash us clear of the rocks.”
“What if we’re not lucky?”
“We are lucky.” She pointed out to sea like a conquistador pointing to El Dorado. “Your destiny awaits you, Max Murphy!”
Police sirens sounded in the distance.
“Hoop! We need to go!”
Max looked to and fro between the frail little boat and the huge, pounding waves. “It’s too dangerous. They don’t call it the Coast of Death for nothing.…”
“Okay,” said Lola, looking at something over Max’s shoulder. “I’ll go alone. But I hope the police get here before the hellhounds.”