The Book of True Desires

by Betina Krahn

  Sure got old Yazkuz’s attention. She said, “Jaguar looks into heart,” or some such. That jaguar as judge and jury nonsense. Apparently Yazkuz thinks the beast approves, because she agreed to look at the rubbings. Made all kinds of magical signs when the scrolls were rolled out and said she’d take O’Keefe and me to see the stones. Just the two of us. Valiente was furious. Had a fit. Old woman wouldn’t budge. Probably the first time his oily charm failed him.

  Interesting: Yazkuz under misapprehension that O’Keefe is my woman.

  Hell. The only place she’s mine is in my dreams.

  There was a strained silence in the sun-warmed tent as Hedda helped Cordelia roll and pack a spare shirt, camisole, clean socks and knickers, and a brush and some bandanas into a rucksack with canvas-cord straps.

  “You shouldn’t have to carry everything on your backs,” Hedda said, checking the other compartment in the canvas pack, which contained a variety of cooking and camping gear, including a portable tin kettle. Beside the rucksack lay a large canteen and strapped to its top were two blankets in a tight roll.

  “Yazkuz said the country is too rough for burros. And we will have to climb.” She looked up to find Hedda’s eyes filled with tears.

  “You’ve never gone off alone like this.”

  The irony of it stuck in Cordelia’s throat and she had to clear it to speak.

  “I won’t be alone. I’ll be with Goodnight. And Yazkuz. I wish I knew why she insists on taking only the two of us. The professor was beside himself.”

  “That crazy old woman. Who knows what’s in her head?” Hedda grabbed her hands as she reached for a bandana for her neck. “Promise me that if she tries anything funny you’ll come straight back to the village.”

  Cordelia smiled, feeling the pull of Hedda’s anxiety but telling herself she could handle anything old Yazkuz dished out. The old woman’s attitude toward her had changed since the jaguar’s visit.

  Goodnight, however, was another story. The thought of spending days out in the wilderness with him, depending on him, was more than a little unsettling. When she emerged from the tent with her things and saw him dressed in goatskin breeches and wearing a pack that was even bigger than hers, it was little comfort that he looked just as conflicted about the trip as she was.

  They collected a sizeable farewell party as they moved through the village with Hedda and the professor. As they started into the dense forest to the south and west, the well-wishers straggled back to their homes, all but Hedda and the professor. Cordelia turned back at the top of what would be the last visible rise, saw her aunt wave, and remembered the hostile look on the professor’s face. She waved back with a strange emptiness in her chest, then she turned and set her face toward the frosty peaks looming in the distance.

  They did indeed have to climb, but neither she nor Goodnight had counted on all of the vegetation-chopping and stream-fording and rock-face-scaling the first leg of the trip required. It was exhausting, especially since they had to help old Yazkuz every step along the way. The old girl had brought nothing but her shawl, guile, and walking stick—none of which was any help in scaling seven-foot cliffs, descending a vertical hillside, or crossing a churning mountain river.

  They did encounter a few visual wonders along the way: an isolated coffee grove tucked beneath soaring hardwoods and laden with bright red coffee “cherries,” a cache of brightly colored parrots collected beneath the canopy, and orchids of such rare and beautiful purple that they seemed almost unnatural.

  By the first night, Cordelia had been introduced to muscles she hadn’t known she had and felt a bit out of socket all over. She watched Goodnight collect wood and build a fire with almost effortless precision and found herself admiring his endurance. Looking at him now—with his tanned face, longish hair, visible muscles, and well-used boots—it was hard to believe that just a month ago he was pressing handkerchiefs and carrying nothing heavier than a breakfast tray. She made herself look away.

  Yazkuz pulled out the second half of the tortillas, beans, and rice that Itza had prepared for them, and she made coffee from water seeping from a nearby rock spring. They ate in exhausted silence and washed in the spring water, then curled up in their blankets for some sleep. Cordelia was nodding drowsily when she saw Goodnight pull out his journal and settle himself by the meager firelight to write. She sat up and glared at him until he sensed her stare and looked up.

  “What?” he said straightening, his pen poised over a line.

  “That journal of yours. You’re going to let me read it, of course, before you hand it over to Samuel P.”

  “Absolutely not.” He went back to the line he was writing.

  “Why not?” She crawled out of her blankets and leaned around the fire to see what he had written. He slammed the journal shut and glowered at her. “I have a right to see what you’re writing. It concerns me and it’s only fair that—”

  “Fair,” he said flatly, “doesn’t come into it. This is my account. And no, you won’t have the chance to see it before I present my report to the old man.”

  It felt like a poke in the eye. Unexpected and surprisingly painful.

  She went back to her blankets, wrapped up, and flopped down onto the branches she’d cut for her bed. She pulled her hat down over her eyes and lay like that for two hours before she managed to fall asleep.

  February 12, Day 23

  Hands swollen, shoulders throbbing, legs and back hurt worse than after a rowing match on the Thames. Yazkuz weighs a bloody ton.

  O’Keefe wants to see this journal after we return. Thinks she should get to edit it before her grandfather sees it. Fat chance.

  Watching her in this forest——taking in the sights, reacting to the marvels here——is difficult. Every time I look at her, there’s something new to want. Can only pray it’s the exotic locale. Maybe back in Boston, London, or Colchester she’d be just another nose in the air.

  Should concentrate on plants. Yazkuz pointed out several unique things along the way. Took seeds, noted growing conditions. There may be something in it. Hope there’s something in this “jaguar stone” business for O’Keefe. For her to have come so far, worked so hard…it should be something wonderful. Something awesome. Enlightening. Profound.

  Toward the end of the second day, Yazkuz began to pause periodically to stare at hillsides and squint at the rock faces they encountered. It was clear that she was looking for something, but when questioned, she rattled off something in her Mayan dialect and went back to fighting her way through the vegetation.

  “Maybe we’re close,” Cordelia said, pulling out her machete.

  “One can only hope,” Goodnight replied with a sigh, tugging on his gloves and reaching for his blade.

  It took an exhausting amount of additional chopping, climbing, and hiking before Yazkuz looked up through the immense tree canopy at the steep slopes of the craggy mountains and spotted something she recognized. Renewed by the sight, she slid down a moss-slippery hillside, then scrambled to her feet and charged toward an opening she had spied in the high mountain bluffs. After pausing to look up at the tall, sheer rock faces on either side of what seemed to be a cut in the mountain, she aimed between them and slogged into whatever lay beyond by splashing her way up a rocky stream that poured from the opening.

  Cordelia and Goodnight paused where she had, trying to make out what she had seen. Massive dark rock faces soared on either side, looking like they had been split by a butcher’s cleaver and pushed apart to make an opening of about fifty yards. No wonder the old girl had difficulty finding the place; it was mostly hidden from below by the thick tree canopy that had grown up in front of it. Exchanging questioning looks but saving their breath for their exertions, they braced their aching shoulders and headed after the old girl, up the stream that flowed between those great forbidding walls.

  The canyon broadened, beyond the entrance, to a small, flat valley filled with lush vegetation and the sweet rushing sound of water falling over roc
ks. Yazkuz stopped several times, surveying the strange columnar rock faces above their heads. Then as she approached what had to be near the end of the canyon, she suddenly rushed to an outcropping covered with dense vegetation and thrust out her arms with a cackle of triumph. She had found it!

  Cordelia looked at the tangle of vines and vegetation in dismay. What had she found?

  The old woman fell on the heavy vines, pulling, ripping, muttering at whatever was responsible for “vegetation” in her pantheon of spirits. Cordelia and Goodnight exchanged puzzled looks, then began to help her. Minutes later, Goodnight yelped “hey!” drawing both women to where he was working.

  “There’s something underneath these vines—a carved block. See that?”

  Did she ever! Cordelia scrambled to pull away more of the leaves and vines and discovered another block on top of it. Hours of studying the rubbings in her rucksack finally paid off—she recognized the carving.

  “That’s one of the blocks—two of them! This is it! We’ve found it!”

  Twenty-seven

  Aches and fatigue completely forgotten, they shed their packs and fell to work with machetes and raw muscle. After an hour of intense labor, they had the bulk of the blocks uncovered.

  Out of breath, her fingers swollen and aching, Cordelia stumbled back to get some perspective and fell to her knees, staring at it in wonder.

  It was an arch, just as she’d thought. It was squared slightly and the carved portion of the blocks was surrounded by smooth, plain stone that caused the carvings to stand out in relief. She struggled to her feet, staggered forward, and ripped off her gloves to join Yazkuz in exploring—adoring—the stones with her bare fingers.

  “Look!” she called to Goodnight, glancing over her shoulder. He stood with his hands propped on his waist, grinning, just as pleased and awed as she was. “Here is the jaguar—and the trees—the flames shooting everywhere. And here is the great snake! Here are the birds and the animals—look—the crocodiles and monkeys!” She laughed, going over each block with her hands, at least as many as she could reach. “And the mountains on fire!”

  Above that she had to just look in wonder, until she came to what should have been the keystone, the great, lifelike head of the jaguar. There, at the crown of the arch was an empty space where the cat guise of the Lord of Creation should have been. It was a terrible disappointment. She looked at the ground and all around, trying to see if it had fallen, but there was nothing around the entrance but a mound of small rubble and dirt that had become home to successive generations of plants and formed a hump at the entrance.

  “The jaguar head isn’t here,” she said, stepping back, to stand by Goodnight, “but the rest is, and it’s wonderful!” When she looked up, he was staring at her with a strange expression.

  “Damn straight it is wonderful,” he said, as he transferred his gaze to the arch. “You found it, O’Keefe. You found the bloody stones. Now you just have to figure out what they’re doing here.”

  Yazkuz came back to stand with them and look at the arch. Her usually piercing eyes were misted and her mood could only be called melancholy.

  “Yazkuz… girl…in old time.” She pointed at herself, then at the arch and pointed from her eyes. “See this place. Old bruja take here.” She struggled to find words. “To teach.” Her revelations dissolved into Spanish and Mayan, and they had the feeling it was best to give her a moment.

  Cordelia studied the stone arch, then turned and looked at him.

  “It’s an entrance.” She took a deep breath. “I think it’s time we found out where it leads.”

  They lighted a lantern, stepped over the dirt mounded in the entrance, and entered the darkness beyond. The walls on either side of the entrance broadened quickly into a rough, irregularly shaped chamber. Other than a maze of spiderwebs, a couple of abandoned nests, and a few scattered animal bones, the place was empty. The main chamber branched into what seemed to be passages, but on further examination, they turned out to be dead ends. At its farthest point, the cave was littered with rocks that had rolled from a ceiling-to-floor pile against the back wall. It looked like the roof of the place had partially collapsed. It would take a crew of men hours—days—to remove the debris. And even then, they might find only another dead end.

  “So what was this? A storehouse? Did they bring treasure here?” Cordelia looked to Goodnight, then Yazkuz. “Surely there was more here at one time.”

  “When you were here as a girl… when the old bruja brought you here,” Goodnight asked the old woman, “what was here?” He repeated it, gesturing around them, but it was clear to them that Yazkuz was as bewildered as they were.

  “Do you think she doesn’t remember? Or was she not allowed to see?”

  He studied old Yazkuz, then shrugged.

  “I have no idea.”

  The old woman looked around her, rubbed her chin, and made a magic sign, before barreling past them and climbing out into the canyon again. When they reached the outside, she was forging into the deepening gloom of the canyon floor, searching through the vegetation for something.

  “What is she doing?” Cordelia asked.

  “No bloody clue,” he muttered. Then he looked up at the darkening sky overhead. “But I think it’s time we decided on a place to camp.”

  That same evening, Hedda stood in the doorway of the village pavilion, watching Arturo gesturing as he delivered the final line of what seemed to be a joke. The men around him roared with laughter and refilled his glass. She clutched her notebooks tighter as he downed the native liquor with a flourish.

  Valiente spotted her and his ruddy face sobered. Grabbing his hat, he bowed flamboyantly to his newfound friends and strode out the door to join her.

  “I thought we were going to record stories this afternoon,” she said, shading her eyes against the lowering sun.

  “I was detained by those fine fellows.” He forced a grin of male bravado. “They also have great stories.”

  “And even better liquor,” she said, frowning at the smell. Since Cordie and Goodnight left without him, he had been moody and irritable, not at all the man who had charmed her into believing her heart could bloom again, at her age.

  “They go together—the drink and the stories,” he said, the genial threads of his persona fraying under the chafe of her disapproval.

  “I thought you would remember our appointment.” She collected herself, knowing what had to be said and knowing also that she took a risk in saying it. “Arturo, I know you are still angry that they would not take you.”

  “Angry?” He gave a bitter laugh. “To have come so far, to have given so much… and to be told you are not worthy to learn the secrets of this place…how would you feel? It is intolerable. An insult. An injustice.”

  Part of her heart agreed and, knowing him to be a proud and capable man, she felt outraged for him. She reached out, hesitated, and drew her hand back.

  “She should never have gone without me,” he ground out, starting to walk.

  “She had no choice, Arturo. It was the old woman who insisted on taking just the two of them. She had to go or risk having the entire expedition fail.”

  “He is not an archaeologist—not even a scholar. Madre Dios—he is a servant! He shines shoes and presses trousers for a living!”

  “What’s done is done, Arturo. But all isn’t lost. You may still have a chance to see and explore whatever ruins there are. The last chapter hasn’t been written yet. When they return—”

  An explosive crack split the air, startling them, and they both looked toward the center of the village.

  “Was that a gunshot?” she said.

  “I have seen no guns here.” The professor was yanked from his troubled thoughts. He took her hand and ran with her toward the center of the village.

  A crowd had gathered in the main square, but as they approached, the throng began to retreat in alarm, pulling back to reveal a party of eight or so men, equipped with pack burros and horses, in th
e middle of the square. Most wore khaki military-style clothing mixed with nonuniform hats, boots, and bandanas. But one man, the only one still astride a horse, was dressed in incongruous white and wore a pristine Panama hat.

  “They must be here!” Alejandro Castille’s dusky face reddened as he barked at the village elders, who had been dragged to the center of the square and were being held by men with military-style rifles. “I give you a chance to cooperate and to save yourselves much pain. I know they came this way—the yanqui woman O’Keefe and her party.”

  One of his men spotted the professor and Hedda and called, “There they are!” Castille turned in his saddle and his eyes narrowed as he spotted them.

  “Well, well,” he said with a laugh. “There you are.” He urged his horse toward them, stopping a few feet away. “It took longer than we expected to get here.” He took in the arm the professor had clasped around Hedda and smiled as he swung down from his horse.

  “I must thank you, compadre, for leaving us so visible a trail.” He tapped Valiente on the shoulder with his riding crop. “Without your help we might never have found you.”

  The professor reddened and glanced at Hedda, seeming at a loss.

  “Arturo?” Her gaze asked him to deny Castille’s implication that he had aided the Spaniard’s efforts to find them. When he didn’t, she was devastated.

  “Goodness me.” He produced a mocking pout as he read both Hedda’s unspoken question and the professor’s grim lack of reply. “She did not suspect our arrangement. Poor thing. Apparently your magic actually worked on one of the O’Keefes.” His voice and face hardened. “Now, where is the other one?”

  “I swear to you, Hedda, I did nothing to help him find us,” Arturo said.

  “No notes, no handkerchiefs tied on poles, true.” Castille gave an affected sniff. “Rather neglectful of you. I was starting to think you had forgotten us. Where is she?”