The Book of True Desires

by Betina Krahn

  “¡Mire!” came Itza’s voice from behind them. When they looked he was standing in the water, pointing downstream. “¡Toma! Jaguar!”

  The question of who won was settled and, thankfully, the victor had decided to celebrate elsewhere.

  Ruz thumped his chest with a callused hand. “We find.”

  “No, really—” Hart’s protest fell unheeded as Ruz and Itza headed into the thick vegetation, determined to see the results of such an epic battle firsthand.

  He climbed off the rock and loped back up the hill to where he had left his gear. When he returned, Cordelia, Hedda, and the professor were waiting with questions.

  He couldn’t rest, he explained, and had gone out to look at the local flora. When he returned, he saw the snake and knew there wasn’t time to both wake and warn Cordelia. Their expressions ranged toward skeptical. He couldn’t blame them for doubting him as they watched him root around inside his shirt for a leaky fountain pen and stray pencils.

  O’Keefe avoided his gaze. “It’s time we moved on,” she said hoarsely. “Let’s pack up and be ready to leave when the Platanos get back.”

  A quarter of an hour later, the brothers came struggling up the stream bed, shouting, splashing, and straining as they carried something. Cordelia and the professor rushed to see what caused the excitement. Hedda, who remained behind with Hart, saw what they were carrying and promptly slid to the ground in a dead faint. Hart caught her and moments later, nearly lost his own lunch.

  It was fourteen feet long. Fourteen of Itza’s feet, for that was who measured it, heel to toe, when it was stretched out on the bank. The professor estimated its weight at somewhere near a hundred pounds, and Ruz was delighted to demonstrate with his finger where the bullet had gone— through the snake, just behind the head. Hart got woozy watching him demonstrate it again and again, then pantomime the snake’s last frantic gasps with the jaguar at his throat. Then the brothers gleefully explored the torn flesh and bite marks inflicted by the jaguar. Their verdict: without Hart’s shot to weaken the snake’s neck, the jaguar might not have been able to bite and crush the snake before the snake’s powerful coils crushed it.

  Itza and Ruz grinned toothily and addressed Hart with solemn regard.

  “Good omen. You shot. Jaguar fought.” The professor translated as Itza cupped and interlocked his hands, demonstrating a strong bond. “You and jaguar partners. Now Jaguar Spirit guides you to his home.”

  Hart reddened and continued waving the smelling salts under Hedda’s nose. He couldn’t remember aiming the bloody gun. All he could think about was hitting something, anything to keep the thing from attacking O’Keefe.

  Then he looked up and saw her staring at him with the softest, honey-taffy warmth in her eyes. It was respect. He hoped. He could use a little just now. He was tired of being thought a contrary, priggish, inept British domestic. And even more tired of thinking of himself that way.

  Squaring his shoulders, he strolled by her on his way to restow his equipment and lowered his head and voice as he passed.

  “You can thank me later.”

  February 9, Day 20

  Bagged first boa today with help of new chum: Gerald Jaguar. A real boost to my standing with O’Keefe. She’s quit looking at me like I’m intolerable. Graduated to not looking at me at all. This is what I get for helping to save her life. Why do I bother?

  Don’t understand women in general, but she’s a bigger mystery than most. Knows she’s beautiful. Quick as a whip. Not at all affected, except when she wants to put it on. Terrifying then. Could have parlayed that lot into a spot in some duchal family tree or a tycoon’s——hold up—— she already has one.

  She has designs on old Hardacre’s… what? Money? Prestige? Power? What is she trying to get from him? And what does that have to do with me?

  And that business with her father, old Hardacre’s disowned son. Turns out he was a physician who believed in helping people. Hardacre apparently has it in for doctors. Legions of fired gout specialists. His son. Me. All the more reason to find a lucrative cure and rub his nose in it.

  Well, at least I don’t have to worry about O’Keefe kissing me again. I doubt she’ll try, now that she knows I’m a crack shot.

  Twenty-four

  The remote hamlet of Tierra Rica was nothing like the village they had visited on the Tecolutla River. This collection of twenty or so structures was a bizarre mix of primitive thatch-roofed huts made of bamboo and ancient-looking stone buildings that seemed to have emerged from the very hills themselves. The dwellings were nestled among mature trees that had been harvested, here and there, to provide space for animals and human activity. The wooded valley around and beside them was shot through with clear-running streams that irrigated a varied patchwork of crops.

  The women tending vegetable patches on the edge of the village saw Cordelia’s party coming and dropped their hoes to run back to the village and announce their presence. The entire village turned out to welcome them. The women and young girls gathered to approach Cordelia and Hedda, touching them, stroking their hair and clothes, and giggling at Cordelia’s breeches. The men looked over the burros and went straight to Itza and Ruz, demanding to know who they were, why they’d come, and how much they would take to breed their jack to some local jennets.

  Through the professor, Cordelia asked to see the alcalde, mayor, and the people just looked at them, puzzled. A few more questions revealed that the Spanish system of governance had never reached this far into the hills. They operated on a far older system of rule by ancianos, literally “old men.” Four old men with weathered faces and hair liberally streaked with white stepped forward to accept the strangers’ respect.

  The professor, who had traveled to many villages in southern Mexico and understood the protocol, bowed and raised his hands skyward to call down a blessing on the village and these illustrious ancianos. Then he introduced Cordelia, Hedda, and Goodnight as explorers who had come all the way from America to learn of their ways and beliefs.

  The ancianos looked unimpressed.

  Goodnight leaned toward Cordelia and muttered, “You’ll need more than teacups for this crew.”

  Gifts were indeed presented: a telescope, a photo of the U.S. Capitol, several spools of ribbon, some lavender sachets, rose-scented soap, a tin of maple candies, four china teacups, and a bottle of Goodnight’s precious whiskey. The men seemed pleased with the gifts, especially when they tasted the candy and whiskey and the professor conveyed to them that Cordelia intended to make for them an important ceremonial drink called “tea.”

  Relations seemed to be off to a good start when a disturbance from the back of the onlookers drew attention from the proceedings. The crowd parted as people skittered out of the path of an old woman swaying forward with the help of a gnarled walking stick. She wore a red shawl over her head and as she approached, Cordelia thought she looked like one of the dried-apple people children in New England carve in autumn.

  Frizzy white hair was visible beneath the shawl, and she had dark, piercing eyes. Bone bracelets clacked on each wrist and there were carved talismans on leather thongs hanging around her neck. When she approached the ancianos, Cordelia could have sworn the men blanched.

  After giving the quartet of elders what appeared to be a royal dressing down, she investigated the gifts they held. Then with one eye narrowed, she lifted the apron she wore to form a sling and presented herself before each of them, allowing them to deposit the telescope, lavender, ribbons, soap, candies, and whiskey in her makeshift basket— spurning only Cordelia’s teacups. When she had collected her booty, she turned to inspect the visitors, nodding to Hedda, smirking cattily at Cordelia, poking the professor’s girth with a gnarled finger, and stopping before Goodnight to run her gaze up his long, muscular frame. She smiled flirtatiously, revealing that she hadn’t a tooth in her head.

  The crowd parted again as she left, melting out of her way as if by magic.

  That, Cordelia thought to herself,
was a woman with power.

  “Who is she?” she asked the professor, who in turn, asked the ancianos.

  “Yazkuz,” the eldest anciano declared with a dark look. “La bruja.”

  The professor clapped a hand to his forehead. “Of course. She would be,” he muttered in English before turning to Cordelia to explain. “Her name is Yazkuz and she is the local bruja. A Bruja rojo.”

  Cordelia frowned. “A bruja—that is a midwife, right?”

  “Wrong.” The professor sighed uneasily. “It is a witch.”

  She looked around her at the faces of the people.

  “Please,” she said, trying to keep her face neutral, “you can’t possibly believe she really is a witch, that she has any real powers.”

  “I see many things in this world that I cannot explain,” the professor said. “I cannot say for sure this woman has powers. But she has power over these people. That, my skeptical friend, is very real.”

  The ancianos decreed the visitors had permission to make camp at the edge of the houses, in a little-used pasture. Half of the village accompanied them to the spot and watched as they erected their tents, drew water, bartered for firewood, and released their burros for grazing.

  There was plenty of daylight left, so Cordelia insisted they take a tour of the village and get a closer look at the structures they had seen that seemed to be made of reclaimed stones. Leaving the Platanos to secure the camp, they strolled down a winding concourse between huts and houses, trailing onlookers and village children. Beneath their feet were paving stones that had been worn by centuries of foot traffic into distinct lanes.

  “This place looks like it’s been here for centuries.” She paused to nudge a stone with the toe of her boot. “Do you think it was part of an earlier village?”

  “It is likely,” the professor said, nodding to some brightly clad women watching them from a nearby doorway. “Where there are resources, people gather. They return and build in the same places again and again.”

  When they reached one of the buildings made of stone, Cordelia spotted some carvings on a corner block that seemed to be an upside-down face glyph. She tilted her head to make certain and smiled.

  “They not only come back to the same place, they use the same materials. I wonder where these blocks came from. Could you ask someone?”

  The professor obligingly approached the door of the stone house and discovered it belonged to one of the four ancianos. At their request, the elder led them through the village to a large paved area in which stone blocks of various sizes were stacked. Around the old plaza—for that was what it surely had been at one time—were the foundations of long-forgotten buildings. Only two structures now stood on those old foundations, clearly remade according to the edict requiring that old carvings be hidden. One bore a cross over the open door; a church. The other, much larger structure had many openings in the walls and a lattice for a roof, like a pavilion or summer house. As they neared, they could see long wooden benches inside and a few large tables. It was a meeting place, a market, a place for feasts and celebrations, a venue for conducting court and deciding village affairs.

  “A municipal building,” Cordelia said, running her hand over the cleanly cut stone. “But are there no original walls and carvings left intact?”

  Her question, translated, caused the anciano to glance instinctively at a large stack of stones that backed against the sheered hill behind them.

  “There are no walls of the old gods here now,” the anciano declared firmly. “Come, my wife makes kakaw for us.”

  Kakaw turned out to be chocolate, but a version of it that drew the jaws, burned the throat, and caused the eyes to water. The ground cocoa beans, mixed with chilies and water and poured back and forth from cup to cup until foamy, were a revelation.

  “Who knew,” Hedda said later, quite disillusioned, “that chocolate could be made to taste so horrible?”

  “My mouth is on fire,” Goodnight declared grimly.

  “Did you notice the way he looked at those stones by the cut in the hill?” Cordelia said as they returned to their camp. She looked to the professor. “We should take a closer look at what is over there, tonight, after everyone is asleep.”

  Later, guided by moonlight, they located the plaza and moved quickly to the stacks of stones that seemed to form a pocket against the sheered side of the hill. They had to climb the stones to see what was beyond and discovered a paved area around several derelict stone pillars that marked an entrance to a hole in the side of the hill.

  Cordelia grinned. “The stones are hiding something.”

  One by one, they dropped into that narrow well and began to inspect the pillars. Shielded from the village by the stacks of stone blocks, they lit their lanterns and illuminated the half-boarded-up entrance to—a cave? Passage? Underground temple?

  It wasn’t difficult to pull away the two aged boards that blocked the entrance. The rough stone of the opening looked as if it had once been faced with something more refined, something that had been chiseled away. The professor ran his hand over the gouges in the rock and cursed quietly.

  The farther they moved into the cave the more regular the walls became, and not far inside they became highly decorated with traditional Mayan motifs.

  “I knew it!” Cordelia gleefully hugged Hedda, then the professor, and came to a stop before Goodnight and quickly dropped her arms to her sides. “Can you tell what it is, Professor?”

  The professor moved along the passage, describing the usual decorative motifs, the stepped fret, the flowing serpent, the cocoa trees and beans, flowers. Then he came to very unusual images that he was at a loss to explain: worms that were clearly worms, not snakes, oval shapes that recalled the design of Egyptian scarabs, stylized butterflies—bright golden creatures that became more prevalent as they moved along. But they could all see there were no glyphs to explain the history or function of this carefully crafted complex.

  After encountering several chambers devoid of decoration—blank canvases on which nothing was ever written, or frames stripped of their precious canvases—they came to a chamber that made up for all the previous blankness.

  It was an explosion of color and shape and highly developed nature-consciousness, painted beasts and creatures and trees and flowers of every kind—a visual Noah’s Ark. At the center of the longest wall was a jaguar, regal and remarkably lifelike. From that figure radiated sun-like rays that connected the Jaguar Spirit to all the creatures represented around the room.

  Interestingly, there were the little human figures that formed a border at the feet of the jaguar, carrying items, bringing offerings.

  Just as Hedda was settling cross-legged on the floor to begin sketching, strange laughter burst into the chamber, causing the hair on their necks to prickle. The old woman, Yazkuz, was standing in the door opening, her face shadowed by her red shawl and her gnarled finger pointing at them.

  Cordelia nearly jumped out of her skin when the old woman spoke. Her voice sounded like something straight out of Hans Christian Andersen.

  “She says we waste no time in finding this,” the professor translated.

  “Tell her we mean no disrespect to this place or to the Jaguar Spirit.”

  “I know what you want. I saw you coming,” she said with a wicked lilt, hobbling into the room and pausing before Goodnight to feel her way up his arm. “I have what you need, too, Tall One.” He reddened, speechless.

  Cordelia fought the urge the smack the old girl’s hands while trying to decide whether to reveal their true goal to the old woman.

  “We have come to find stones,” she said, and the professor translated.

  The old woman cackled. There was no other word for it.

  “Stones? No, Fire-hair, you have come to learn my secrets.” Yazkuz swayed over to her. “For those you must pay. And pay well.”

  “What secrets do you have to sell, Madam Yazkuz?”

  The old woman laughed and held out her arms to indicate t
he paintings.

  “The secrets of the forest. The secrets of magic.” She looked pointedly at Goodnight. “And healing.” She chuckled at his surprise. “Oh, I know you, Tall One. You want my secrets, too.” She winked coquettishly. “And I may give them to you.” She moved on to the professor, stared into his eyes, then drew back and made a quick sign with her fingers that said she didn’t like what she saw. What she said to him, he did not bother to translate.

  “How much you give me for the first secret?” she demanded, propping her hands on her walking stick.

  “That depends on what kind of secret it is,” Cordelia said, thinking that if there were a female version of her grandfather, Yazkuz would be it. They were both obsessed with profit and making deals.

  “You seek the secret of this place. I can tell you.” She held out her hand.

  Cordelia thought for a minute, then looked to Goodnight. “I think a silver dime ought to establish a fair rate of exchange.” He reluctantly handed it over.

  The old woman looked at it and curled her nose. “Got anything bigger?”

  A quarter sealed the deal.

  “This place, this village, served the Jaguar Spirit.”

  “Well, that’s bloody obvious,” Goodnight said, crossing his arms. “Make her give you your money back.” When the professor translated, Yazkuz looked at Goodnight in annoyance.

  “And it still serves the Jaguar Spirit through me.” She looked from one face to another, then another, unsettled by what she saw. She clearly was not accustomed to skepticism from the people she dealt with. She motioned impatiently for Hedda to stop sketching and pack it up.

  “You come with me!”

  Twenty-five

  Warily, they followed her through a maze of similar, if less decorative, passages and emerged in a dark, cluttered house on the far side of the village.

  Their lanterns combined to reveal more of the place than was comfortable. Jars, crocks, bottles, vats, and oiled animal skins full of heaven-knew-what lined the shelves that covered every available inch of wall space. Hanging from the low rafters were bunches of herbs, weeds, plants, and the occasional dried reptile or amphibian body. There were baskets of various vegetable matter on the way to becoming something else. There were cages of live lizards, glass jars of beetles and insects, and even a couple of dainty but deadly coral snakes. Over the hearth hung that most indispensable witching apparatus—a big black cauldron.