by Layton Green
“Thanks,” he said. “I had a good teacher.”
“Had?” she said, her eyebrows rising as the teasing tone returned. “Are we equals now?”
He looked right at her. “Maybe not on the battlefield.”
She met his gaze, and her fingers caressed the length of his arm as she pulled away, giving him goose bumps.
When he returned to the others, he asked, “How dangerous is this part of the jungle?”
Coba was peeling a mango he had found. “Jungle always dangerous. First day, big trail, calm animals. After that . . .” He shrugged but didn’t elaborate, and Will wasn’t sure he wanted him to.
“This cenote we’re seeking,” Mateo said. “Why is it called the Basin of Blood?”
“Most cenotes in the Yucatan were used for ritualistic purposes,” Mala answered. “By that I mean human sacrifice.”
Coba nodded. “Chan Kawil very important to ancients.”
“You’ve been there?” Will asked.
“When I was a boy.”
“What about the second marker, the jaguar temple?” Mala asked. “Do you have any insight as to that?”
The guide wiped mango juice off his chin. “Many temples in jungle. Old gods. Better not to disturb.”
Mala scoffed, took a long drink from her canteen, and shouldered her pack. As the party set off again, Will couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement at the adventure of it all. Sylvamancers and wilders, rukhs and dragons, Battle Mages riding giant snakes, lost tombs full of treasure. This world was more wondrous and strange than Will could ever have imagined, its magic real and potent, its myths still true.
Yet the one thing that surpassed Urfe’s marvels were its terrors. Some nights, he couldn’t sleep without convincing himself it was all a dream, that he would wake up safe in his own bed in the apartment he shared with Caleb on Magazine Street in New Orleans. Fighting boredom and high rent instead of terrifying monsters and wizards that could raze whole villages.
Had it been any different for the old explorers of Earth, braving high seas and an unmapped horizon, plunging headlong into brand new continents? Campaigning was like free will, he mused. Without true danger—imminent, soul-shrinking, teeth-rattling danger—there was no true excitement.
The party traveled light. On Mala’s instructions, they had packed dried provisions and tiny silk hammocks in Freetown. They spent the first night in a moldy-smelling collection of huts used by trappers. To save supplies, Coba procured their dinner from the jungle: fruits, nuts, berries, and an enormous rodent he caught with a net and roasted over a fire.
The next two days passed largely the same. Hot and humid and exhausting. Coba provided for them well, no monsters threatened, and except for a few pythons that slithered away and a tarantula in Will’s shoe that almost induced his first panic attack in weeks, there were no surprises. They spent the third night tucked inside a grove of Yucatan rosewoods, safe in their hammocks, sheltered high above the scorpions, spiders, and squadrons of leafcutter ants that patrolled the forest floor.
At dusk the next day, they reached the Basin of Blood.
A mile before they reached the infamous cenote, the ruins of Chan Kawil salted the jungle in every direction. Clumps of moss and lichen draped hulking slabs of granite pitted from the ravages of time. Steps led to broken altars that seemed disembodied, random archways dripped with vines and tropical foliage. At some point, Will realized they were walking along an old stone highway smothered in vegetation, and he wondered how far the might of Chan Kawil had once extended.
The road led right to the edge of a jagged circular depression that stretched at least twenty yards across. Will stood at the lip and looked down.
Fifty feet below, bored out of the limestone like a well of the gods, was a pool of metallic blue water so clear he could track the schools of brightly colored fish. He could also see the knobby ends of human bones poking out of the sandy bottom.
Upright stone slabs surrounded the cenote: steles that stood taller than Will, carved with Mayan pictograms divided into blocks of intricate figures and symbols. Gigantic ficus trees loomed behind the steles, their aerial roots descending into the water like petrified ropes. Yasmina joined Will at the edge, awed by the last vestiges of sunlight dappling the beautiful cenote. Bats circled the shaft of the hole, gobbling up insects.
Will cast a nervous glance into the jungle, remembering Coba’s words that no one ventured past the cenote. “What now?”
Mala dropped her pack. “We set camp while Coba searches for a path on the other side.”
Exhausted from the journey, Will fell asleep before Coba returned from his mission, and woke to the smell of sizzling rodent. The party gathered around the morning fire, eager to hear what Coba had discovered.
Their guide bit into a papaya and said, “No path.”
“You’re sure?” Maya said. “How far out did you go?”
“Far. Climbed trees, too. No path.”
Frustrated, Maya unrolled the map again. A dotted line led from the cenote to the representation of the jaguar temple. There were no distinguishing features in between. The final marker, a small lake backed by hills, was positioned just before the pyramid at the end of the map.
“Maybe this is the wrong place,” Mala said.
Coba tossed a chunk of rind into the jungle. “No other cenote with statues.”
“That you know about,” Mala said, then flung a bangled wrist at the jungle. “There’s probably hundreds of lost cenotes out there.”
Coba finished his papaya and stood. “This is right one. Make sense on map.” He wagged a finger. “One place I still not look for path.” As everyone watched, he ran straight to the edge of the cenote and jumped off, arcing into a swan dive.
“He’s so melodramatic,” Mala muttered, as Will ran over in time to see Coba swimming along the bottom of the cenote. When he reached the edge of the sinkhole, he disappeared from view.
Mateo frowned. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know,” Mala murmured, “but underground streams have chewed through the limestone like termites.”
After two hours passed, the worry became palpable. They didn’t have a chance without their guide, and a return to Ixmal was just as risky. Just as Mala and Selina prepared to probe the water themselves, Coba darted out of some unseen passage and back into the cenote, swimming over to grab one of the vine-like roots that connected the ficus trees to their water source like arboreal straws.
“Map,” Coba said brusquely, after he shimmied up the long root. “Show me map.”
Mala unfurled the scroll while he stood and peered at it, dripping water. The guide pointed at a symbol in the upper left corner that Will had noticed but not really paid attention to: a curved dagger piercing a seven-pointed crown.
“What’s that?” Coba asked.
“A symbol germane to the cartographer, I assume,” Mala said warily, as if leaving something unsaid. “Why?”
Coba pointed at the cenote. “Because it down there.”
-13-
“How dangerous is this journey going to be?” Caleb asked, as he and Marguerite spurred their horses along the scenic coastal road.
“Not as dangerous as your drinking schedule in Freetown.”
He muttered to himself and took another swallow from his canteen.
“I know ye like ’elping others, don’t try and pretend otherwise. This is just another way.”
“Are there any monsters on the Barrier Coast?” he asked.
“Plenty. Gorgons, giants, genies, and shamblers, to name but a few.” She cast a worried glance at the sky. “Not to mention the dragons.”
Caleb’s shoulders sagged. She rode close enough to give his arm an affectionate squeeze, then laughed. “ ’Tis not without peril, but the Barrier Coast valleys are the safest in the Ninth. There are no dragons until ye reach the Făgras Mountains, and precious few even there.”
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”
&
nbsp; “Ye didn’t,” she said lightly. “I made the decision for ye.”
They rode over golden dunes laced with sea grass, through meadows of clover and wild strawberry, atop emerald ridges and promontories that jutted over the ocean like bread loaves. In the distance, the mountains seemed formed of mist, soft and ephemeral.
He couldn’t deny that it felt good to get out of Freetown. Taste the fresh air and take a break from the misery. Most of all, though, he was glad to be with someone familiar. Especially someone who looked fantastic in leather breeches.
Around midday, the road veered off the coast and into the foothills. Caleb kept up a steady pace of drinking during the ride, and was nice and relaxed by the time the sun began to descend. It was a week’s journey to the Blackwood Forest, and he had brought a fortnight’s supply of the stiffest grog in Freetown.
The road passed through a primordial forest of old growth redwoods whose bare lower branches stuck out like swords. Marguerite set up camp by the road, looking nervous as she eyed the full moon and the fog that seemed to drip off the trees.
Caleb eased off his horse, aching from the ride. “I thought it was safe around here?”
“We’ve gone inland a ways, and there’s a full moon tonight.”
“Which means what? Werewolves?”
She didn’t laugh at his joke. “I’m a superstitious lass. One never knows what kind of trouble a full moon brings. Just don’t wander off.”
“Um, I wasn’t planning on it.”
He set up camp while Marguerite prepared a basic dinner of cured fish, bread, and dried fruit. After dinner, when he offered to fill her canteen with liquor, she refused.
“Did you join a cult?” he asked.
She squeezed his cheek and settled into her bedroll.
After a moment, he eased down beside her. “You used to love a good time.”
She clasped her hands behind her head and gazed up at the canopy of stars, her smoky gray eyes mirroring the mystique of the moon.
“I like to drink,” she said softly, “but I like ye more.”
He grew quiet, touched by her words. For some reason, in that instant, he realized he had never been ready for love, didn’t even know what it meant.
Yet as much as he enjoyed life’s carnal pleasures, he reviled his own shallowness. Why hadn’t he been able to love Yasmina after all those years? Why didn’t he feel guiltier about the legions of women he had discarded? He teased Will all the time about his love life, but Caleb always had the feeling that it was he, and not his younger brother, who was really missing out.
“G’night, Caleb.”
He turned to face her, surprised. “You’re going to sleep?”
“Isn’t that what one does after a long day’s ride?” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the mouth, just long enough to give him chills.
Before he could respond, she faced away from him and curled into a ball, leaving no doubt as to her intentions.
Though Caleb was surprised, he had sensed something different about Marguerite the first time he had met her, a strength of character behind her laid-back façade. Secure in her own skin, she had never tried too hard, either in love or in life. That relaxed confidence had always attracted him.
Staring at her resting form and splayed auburn hair made him nervous. As if there was a hollow space forming in his stomach that he had barely known existed.
Annoyed by the feeling, he decided to stop thinking and start drinking. He worked himself into a stupor, fell asleep, and woke sometime during the night with a violent urge to pee. Not wanting to disturb Marguerite, he stumbled away from camp and urinated next to a tree. He must have fallen asleep in the process, because the next thing he knew he was lying on his back and the air smelled like cloves and girlish voices were singing in a language he didn’t recognize. He opened his eyes, blinked twice, and realized he was in the center of a grove of redwoods with trunks as wide as small houses. The moon shone like polished pewter through a hole in the canopy.
Those were the normal things.
The rest of it had to be a dream.
A circle of huge, glowing, brightly colored mushrooms lined the edges of the grove. Inside the mushroom ring, a dozen creatures no taller than his forearm flitted about on tiny diaphanous wings. They were naked to the waist, their lush female forms in perfect proportion to their diminutive stature. Caleb caught a good look at one, expecting to see a transcendent faerie’s face upon-which-he-dared-not-gaze, but instead found himself staring at an ugly mug that resembled a cross between a bull dog and an Oompa-Loompa.
Caleb pinched himself. It hurt.
He scrambled to his feet as the foul creatures darted to and fro, cackling and making lewd gestures in his direction. Still inebriated, he stumbled towards the edge of the ring, but the creatures flapped their wings and released a flurry of bolts of colored light. He blocked a number of them with his vambraces, but a few got through and pricked him in the back. At once he felt weakened and disoriented, his energy siphoned away. He tried to keep going but the nasty little sprites caught him by the arms and legs and dragged him to the ground. The last thing he remembered was the creatures dancing madly above his prone form, taking puffs from a smoking brazier and quaffing drink after drink from cups hollowed out of mushrooms.
Caleb woke in darkness. His hands were bound behind his back, feet tied at the ankles, mouth gagged. He gave muffled shouts for help anyway, to release tension. After the initial terror subsided, he tried to learn more about his environment, which smelled like a Christmas tree lot.
He grasped the ground and felt dirt. After managing to roll his body along the ground for eight awkward revolutions, he hit a wall. At least he thought it was a wall: the surface felt like a piece of polished wood with ridges, whorls, and knobs. He stood and felt his way around the edge of his prison and knew he was going in a circle, albeit a large one.
Was he inside a tree?
He slumped to his back and thought about how badly he wanted a drink. His head was beginning to pound. By the time a section of the wall hinged silently open and moonlight poured in, Caleb’s hangover had reached epic proportions. He barely resisted as a team of lump-faced fairies dragged him out of the hollowed-out trunk of a giant redwood and into a circle of glowing mushrooms. He thought the scenery looked different, but he wasn’t certain.
He looked to his left and saw the fairies dragging someone else out of a different tree. The other prisoner was a stocky man in his early fifties, almost as tall as Caleb, with bushy long hair and a dark, unkempt beard infused with gray.
The two men eyed each other as the fairies laid them on their backs in the middle of the mushroom ring and repeated their performance from the night before, singing and carousing like some kind of twisted sorority party.
Caleb’s throat felt like sandpaper. His stomach churned with hunger, and his limbs ached from his bonds. His head throbbed worse than it ever had, on the level of a migraine.
But he had to get out of there. When he thought no one was looking, he started rolling towards the edge of the circle, faster and faster, hoping the other captive would take his cue and start rolling in the other direction. Maybe one of them could escape and go for help.
Before he got halfway out, the fairies cackled, flapped their wings, and shot Caleb and the other prisoner with more bolts of colored light. Once the drug from the psychedelic darts took effect, the nasty creatures untied their captives and shoved cups of water and a small loaf of bread in front of each man. Caleb was parched and drank greedily, then stuffed the bread in his mouth. Not until the loaf was gone did he turn to the other man and woozily ask him what the hell was going on.
“You’ve been captured by a troop of wood sprites. Don’t you recognize the mushroom rings? Or did you just drop in from Earth?” The older man grinned dreamily as Caleb gaped at the familiar accent.
“Did you say Earth?” Caleb asked.
“They call me the Brewer around here, but my real name’s Bruce Levine.
I’m from the south shore of Long Island.”
“Now I know I’m dreaming,” Caleb said, resisting the urge to giggle. Whatever the fairies had shot them with, it was potent stuff, like a Novocain shot laced with magic mushrooms.
Which made perfect sense, Caleb thought, as he tried to focus his gaze on the colorful array of giant fungi ringing the clearing. A pimply, pug-faced faerie darted over to pinch his cheek, turned to thrust her buttocks in his face, then cackled as she flew off.
“I’m trying to figure out who the fairies sound like when they sing,” the other prisoner said dreamily. “Pantera fronting Enya? I was in a rock band back home, you know. Lead guitar. Kinda famous.”
“Oh yeah?” Caleb said. “Who?”
“Ant Patrol.”
“Never heard of them.”
“You’re not from Long Island. You’re also not fifty.”
“Cool, man.”
“Hey kid, how’d you get here?”
“My brother stuck a magic key in a door,” Caleb said. “You?”
“I was playing a gig in Istanbul—believe it or not, they loved me over there—and the day after my show, I popped into a curio shop. I was really into music history and found an old tablet with these stick-like marks carved into it. Cuneiform. The old geezer who owned the shop claimed it was a really old piece of sheet music, the oldest song in the world. I laughed and asked him how he got it. He said his son was a treasure hunter who found it on a dig near the Syrian border. It sounded like a sucker’s story to me, but I was curious and rich and bought it anyway, along with an ancient Sumerian lyre. I found a scholar to help me translate the tablet, then went home and sang it. When I finished, I started feeling really weird, like my body was dissolving. I blacked out and ended up here.”
“Righteous,” Caleb said.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Bruce—”
“Call me the Brewer. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Sure, man. So what’s up with these gnarly pixies?”