Deity

by Theresa Danley

  Confinement ten thousand feet in the air had been surprisingly welcome in the company of Anthony Peet. She felt like a teenager again with a sudden resurrection of hormones run amuck. KC had been floating on that feeling even after Peet left her and the Ladybug on the warm Mexican tarmac. She’d just settled in a greasy maintenance hangar, preparing to disassemble a hitchy gearbox from the left turbo when Peet called, needing a flight back out of Mexico City. KC knew she was in trouble when she realized just how much she anticipated a return flight with Peet.

  Maybe this time she would listen to her instincts and use those hours to get to know him better. After all, who could offer a more grounded relationship than a man who spent his days digging in the earth? But when Peet returned to her in the company of another man, a priest no less, KC couldn’t help but lash out against yet another disappointment.

  “Nobody’s asking you to convert to anything,” Peet argued as he chased her beneath the wings of The Ladybug. “All we need is a ride Chichen Itza.”

  “You make it sound so simple.” KC sighed irritably. “That’s all everybody wants when they ask for a ride to Chichen Itza. Then along the way they try to sell me on their New Age crap. Or worse yet, they try to scare me with all this talk about the end of the world. Now I suppose this priest wants to convince me that Jesus is returning.”

  “He’s not an evangelistic missionary,” Peet said, as if that was all the reason she should need to change her mind.

  KC marched under the tail of the plane and circled around for the second wing tie. “I don’t give a damn what he is. All I know is that anyone going to Chichen Itza right now has some convoluted idea about what’s going to happen on December 21st. I’m going to have a good hard laugh when everyone wakes up only to realize they still have to go to work in the morning.”

  “You had no problems flying me to Mexico City, KC. What’s the difference?”

  KC released the tie and spun around so sharply that Peet’s chest nearly crashed into her face. Unfortunately, the man caught himself and backed up a step, giving her space.

  “The difference is you said you were looking for your father-in-law in Mexico City, not Chichen Itza.”

  “Plans have changed. It could be that John has some sort of connection with Matt Webb’s archaeological work in Chichen Itza.”

  A gust of wind threatened to push her back into him. She suddenly hated him for the anticipation stirred by that very idea.

  “So remind me again why this priest needs to tag along,” she blurted.

  “It could be that Matt took something from the cathedral.”

  “Took? As in, stole? Are you saying your father-in-law is associated with a criminal?”

  Peet sighed in frustration as his hand chased the wind out of his hair. KC could tell she was further confusing the issue which gave her some sense of retribution. Why couldn’t he be a little less easy on the eyes?

  “I don’t know exactly what’s going on,” he admitted. “I just know we have to get to Chichen Itza as soon as possible.”

  * * * *

  Compliments of the Metropolitan Cathedral, it took the pre-payment of a doubled fare for both Peet and Father Ruiz to finally convince KC to take them to Chichen Itza. That expense alone implied the cardinal meant business. It also suggested the importance placed upon the reliquary cross, though Peet could not fathom what that was.

  The search for the reliquary cross was an interesting but secondary quest, but with Father Ruiz in tow, Peet worried it might distract from his search for John. With any luck, the two were together under some reasonable explanation, but even he knew the odds were against him. He felt like he was groping in the dark. Nothing about John’s disappearance was adding up, and the only thing he knew about the stolen reliquary cross was that by judging from the chapel reliquary it had been contained in, it couldn’t be much more than a foot tall.

  Peet exhaled deeply, finally lifting his head from between his knees. The questions in his head had temporarily distracted from the queasiness in his stomach, which now subsided with the leveling of The Ladybug. The takeoff had been particularly rough against a crosswind but now, ten thousand feet in the air, the ride was tolerably smooth again.

  “You dislike flying, senor?” Father Ruiz asked from the window seat—the only other seat outside the cockpit.

  Peet tugged on his constricting seat belt. “It’s not that I dislike flying,” Peet said. “I just prefer my feet on the ground.”

  Father Ruiz smiled and cast a quick glance out the window. “I enjoy flying,” he said. “It provides me the rare opportunity to see the world from God’s point of view.”

  Peet smiled at the childlike response from the small priest. “Don’t let KC hear you talk like that,” he warned. “She might throw you out and give you a fallen angel’s experience.”

  They shared a chuckle as Peet checked his phone. Still no message from Martha.

  “Once we are back on the ground, where do you expect to find this Dr. Webb?” Father Ruiz asked.

  “Last I heard, Matt was working in Chichen Itza. If he’s still experimenting with religious tolerance, he might be targeting all the activity there. The end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar has drawn a lot of attention so I expect there will be native rituals or ceremonies performed to commemorate the event. If Matt left the Effigy in the cathedral, he’s probably looking to deposit your reliquary cross with the Mayans.”

  “Unless we can stop him and get the cross back.”

  “Right. The only problem is, the cardinal didn’t describe this cross and you haven’t offered me any clues.”

  Father Ruiz folded his hands in his lap. “Please forgive our hesitancy. The church regards our relics very sacred.”

  Peet nodded. As an anthropologist he’d long learned to respect the sacred, even if he couldn’t relate to the significance himself. Artifacts often provided insight into a people’s behavior or illustrated how religion shaped their civilization. Nevertheless—

  “How can I help you find something if I don’t know what I’m looking for?” he pressed.

  Father Ruiz relented with a sigh. “All I can tell you is that the cross is old, but no less important. It is with urgency that we find it and return it to the cathedral.”

  Peet couldn’t possibly predict the value of a reliquary cross, not one that comes from a cathedral riddled with crucifixes of all shapes and sizes and in practically every form imaginable. There had to be something special about this cross in particular. Perhaps it was made of gold or some other precious metal. If not, then Peet guessed there was some spectacular history behind it, something that the oldest cathedral in the Americas would take stock in.

  Even as he considered the reliquary cross, he couldn’t help but ponder on the goal of all religions, perhaps even the goal of Matt Webb’s experiment—to gain more believers.

  “What harm would there be if the cross ultimately converted a Mayan New Ager or some doomsday seeker?” Peet quipped. “Just think. If whatever everyone expects to happen on December 21st, doesn’t happen, there are going to be a lot of disenchanted people looking for a new religion.”

  Father Ruiz shook his head adamantly. “Removing this cross from the cathedral is not going to produce converts. More likely the very opposite will result.”

  Peet frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  Father Ruiz suddenly darkened, his light features instantly falling into a somber tone. “It is not for you to understand.”

  Peet was taken aback by the sudden shift. “Can’t you at least explain how the cross will have a negative affect?”

  Father Ruiz turned back to the window. “All I can tell you is this—”

  He paused, as if debating over his words. His eyes held to the great expanse of blue sky just outside his window. When he spoke again, it was with a measured breath.

  “The cross is too dangerous if it falls into Mayan hands.”

  Chichen Itza

  Mike and Gabriella waved goodbye
as Lori avoided the line of tour busses snaking around the filling parking lot. A large wall overshadowed by the lanky palms behind it caught her attention. In large, eye-popping letters the wall read CHICHEN ITZA.

  Finally! She’d arrived.

  She fell in behind a tour group, contracting their eager energy as they followed a bricked walking path complete with shallow, concrete steps that landscaped the journey toward the hidden ruins beyond. Embraced by the welcoming span of the contemporary visitor center, it occurred to Lori that she was perhaps the only visitor who wasn’t coming for the ruins. Ironic, considering it was archaeology that brought her there in the first place.

  As the tour group continued through, passing up the bookstore and the tantalizing aromas of the restaurant for the ruins awaiting out back of the building, Lori took a detour toward the information counter. Just above the heads of the attendees hung a banner that read in both Spanish and English: CHICHEN ITZA: A NEW SEVENTH WONDER OF THE WORLD!

  Lori spotted a young woman who had just finished assisting another visitor. She smiled at Lori, the morning too fresh yet to allow the day’s influx of visitors to dull the sparkle in her large brown eyes. According to the name tag on her shirt, her name was Rosa.

  Lori stepped right up to the counter and cut to the chase. “I’m looking for an archaeologist that’s been working here,” she explained. “His name is Dr. Matt Webb.”

  Rosa smiled with a nod and jabbered something in Spanish.

  A blush warmed Lori’s cheeks as she shook her head. “I’m sorry. My Spanish is terrible.”

  Rosa glanced at her English-speaking co-worker, but he was too busy helping another visitor to notice. “Senor Webb,” Rosa said, thrusting a finger over Lori’s shoulder. “Webb. Senor Webb.”

  Lori turned to spy a handsomely dark-complected man standing near a stand of t-shirts. He was a tad short, but stocky like a military bulldog. Thick raven hair framed his flint-chiseled face. His posture had a bit of an archaeologist’s stoop - eyes down, studying something on the tile floor.

  It wasn’t until Lori stepped around a rack of postcards that she realized what he was looking at.

  The little blonde girl crying at his feet.

  * * * *

  Chac Bacab should have seen the trap coming. He should have known to avoid the visitor center all together, but he was running late after a long, restless night. He needed something to pick him up and the restaurant within the visitor’s center always had a pot of coffee brewing. The last thing he needed was an inquisitive child tagging at his heels, but the little girl who’d stalked him from the postcard rack to the t-shirt stand looked sweet enough in her blonde pig-tails to give him a moment’s pause.

  He supposed she didn’t speak Spanish so he asked, “May I help you, little girl?”

  He’d guessed right. Without pause, and in the sweetest voice he’d ever heard, the little girl asked, “Are you a Maya?”

  How observant, he thought, impressed. “I am,” he said.

  Without missing a beat the little girl spouted, “My brother says the Mayas are going to end the world.”

  “Well, that’s not entirely—”

  It was too late. The jaws of the trap had already proceeded to close around him for in that moment the little girl snapped. Without warning, tears stormed the rims of her eyes and Chac was suddenly bombarded with a chorus of “No! No! NO!”

  Embarrassingly, the little girl threw herself on the floor, bawling. “I don’t wanna die!”

  Chac felt the attention of the visitor’s center turn toward them. A slender woman with hair as blanched as her daughter’s pushed through the gathering crowd and swooped the little girl in her arms, all the while scolding him with her own biting words. “What are you doing to my child? Get away!”

  With a shove from the furious mother, Chac stepped back and watched her escape with the little girl howling in her arms.

  Chac’s stomach soured. This hadn’t been the first time he’d been the brunt of 2012 hysteria. It was a cursed inheritance having descended from a people who’d given his generation nothing but the shirt-tails of an epic calendar. No, it wasn’t the calendar’s fault. He preferred to view it as a testament to his ancestors’ brilliance. 2012 only marked the completion of something that should be cherished, admired and celebrated. Instead, the calendar was declared as a remarkable discovery, another secret revealed and a great achievement in archaeology. It didn’t seem to matter that there were shamans who’d kept the calendar tradition alive to this day.

  The truth, he knew, wasn’t nearly as tantalizing as a good mystery. Truth removed elements of the unknown, and so truth was easily drowned by debating scientific theories that fed into the dreams of doomsayers, New Age enlightenments and a whole host of miscellaneous suggestive interpretations that left the Maya people accountable to a world begging for reasons to speculate and worry.

  Whether feared or revered, the calendar behind the 2012 craze had been hopelessly blown out of proportion and Chac was disgusted with the entire show.

  Luckily for him, the awkward attention drawn by the little blonde girl proved to be short-lived. Perhaps disappointed by his lack of response to the little girl’s plea, the visitors moved on to the things they’d come for.

  They’d all turned away, except one.

  Another blonde, a young woman in a sleeveless shirt and cargo pants, had not stopped watching him. In fact, as he returned to his coffee pursuit, he noticed her following him. Having had enough of the ignorant public for one day, Chac quickly changed course for the ruins outside, hoping to lose her over an unpaid park fee at the check station.

  No such luck. The young lady made it through with her day pass in hand, and she began closing in on him fast.

  “Dr. Webb?” she called. “Are you Dr. Webb?”

  “I have no doctorate,” he snarled, listening to her feet frantically chase after him over the graveled path.

  “Are you Dr. Webb, the archaeologist?”

  Chac spotted a suspicious group of tourists huddled tightly together within the border of trees along the main path, their heads just visible over the brush and undergrowth in what might have appeared as a childish game of duck-duck-goose.

  “Look,” he barked to the young lady as he irritably stepped around a blanket vendor hawking bogus crystals. “I’m an independent researcher. An amateur archaeologist. I have no doctorate.”

  The girl was persistent. “How may I address you then?”

  Chac zeroed in on the huddled group ahead. The girl stayed with him like a fly he couldn’t swat away. “What is it that you want?”

  “I’m Lori Dewson. Dr. John Friedman referred me to you.”

  He stopped and finally turned back to the young woman who bounced off his chest in surprise. “Dewson?” he said. “The American that found the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl?”

  The girl smiled. “You know about that?”

  “Who in this hemisphere doesn’t?”

  “Of course, I’m sure Dr. Friedman told you all about it. Like I said on the phone, I’m excited to see the Quetzalcoatl fresco you found. I know I’m a week late but—”

  “You’ve got the wrong guy.” Chac turned back to the tourists. They were close enough to smell the pot passing between them. “You need to talk to Matt about that.”

  Lori Dewson stepped in beside him, matching him stride for stride over the vines and dead branches obstructing their course. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “I’m not Webb.”

  “Do you know where I might find him?”

  They were close enough now for Chac to reach into the ring of tourists and intercept the joint from the next recipient. He crushed it between his fingers. “Take your smoke out of the park,” he growled in disgust.

  With little more than a few low grumblings, the potheads rose to their feet and grudgingly disbursed. Chac flicked the joint to the ground and smeared it into the undergrowth with his heel.

  “Would you listen to that,” he said ir
ritably, his attention immediately drawn to the chanting and singing that echoed through the trees blocking his view of the sacred path just beyond. He knew the group. They called themselves The Itzas, borrowing the name from the ancient Maya priests who once ruled Chichen Itza. In reality, the chanters were nothing more than a collection of showmen who’d arrived six months ago, looking to wow the crowds out of a few pesos with their “authentic” Mayan sacrifices.

  “This place has become a free-for-all,” Chac lamented. “It’s a regular Mickey Mouse show. I can’t wait for 2013 to roll around.”

  “So you don’t believe the world is about to end then either,” Lori observed dryly.

  Chac looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time. He sensed intelligence behind those emerald eyes, a refreshing quality after a long year spent observing the disrespectful profit-makers leeching a living off of ignorant, ogling tourists.

  “The world is always on the verge of destruction according to somebody,” he said. “Once everyone realizes that the earth doesn’t revolve around the Mayan calendar, they’ll find another way to count down Armageddon.”

  “I’m not as interested in the end of the world as I am in finding Dr. Webb,” Lori admitted. “Do you know where he is?”

  It was certainly hard to knock this one off track.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Chac finally admitted. “He took off five days ago.”

  “He didn’t tell you where he was going?”

  “Not a word.”

  Lori looked disappointed. She’d come a long way for nothing, he guessed. Personally, Chac appreciated the break offered through Matt’s leaving. With Matt gone, he could finally concentrate on his own work without interruption.

  He started back through the forest, back for the main pathway they’d diverted from. “Why is it so important that you find him?”