Deity (2 page)

Like
Scuba Blue.

“How about cerulean?”

Right
on cue, Gabriella’s re-labeled blue prompted a Crayola box response from Mike
who worked at the lug nuts on their third flat tire. He seemed unperturbed by
the disruption in their travel. In fact, he’d handled all of the delays in
stride as if rebuilding his car was all part of the journey toward his
anticipated world apocalypse.

“Oooh, cerulean!”
Gabriella blurted. “That’s
good, Mike. It’s the kind of blue that turns green eyes turquoise.”

Gabriella
chuckled, apparently impressed with a brief revisit of yesterday’s color
discussion—the greenness of Lori’s eyes. Thirsty Green, she called them, much
like that of the Yucatan
forest.

Lori
couldn’t argue with that last observation. Despite the thick tangle of trees
they drove through, the green was sparse. The trees and brush had a parched
appearance against outcroppings of brackish limestone and the more Lori thought
on this point, the more she realized that she couldn’t remember when they’d
last driven by a river or creek, or any body of freshwater for that matter. They
hadn’t seen so much as a trickle in a day and a half.

Lori
forced a grin back at Gabriella. She had grown tired of color-coded I-spy games
a good thousand miles ago, but she wasn’t going to be rude. After all, despite
the setbacks with the Mercury, Mike and Gabriella had been gracious enough to
let her tag along. With her own car totaled two weeks ago by a drunk who
thought he could cut through her apartment building’s parking lot at seventy
miles an hour, Lori was still waiting for the insurance company to settle. Of
course, she was allowed to rent a car at their expense, but not to drive it to Mexico.
That left her on her own for this last minute trip, and with her savings sorely
depleted,
renting a car was out of the question. Even
if she could have afforded a ticket, high interest in the whole 2012 phenomenon
oversold all flights to Mexico,
and that left Lori with Mike and Gabriella.

It
was by chance that she met Gabriella in line at the campus Starbucks where the
exuberant art major gloated about going to Yucatan for the “2012 event” with her
history buff of a boyfriend. Gabriella suspected he was going to propose there,
which seemed ironic to Lori considering Mike was expecting the world to end
three days from now.

“It’ll
be the end of the world as we know it,” he explained, to which Gabriella rolled
her eyes and mumbled something about his habit of overreacting to things.

“It’s
the end of the Mayan five thousand year calendar,” Mike retorted. “The Chinese
I Ching confirms it. Two ancient cultures half a world apart from each other
predicted the end of the world in 2012. Now that ought to stand for something.”

“Nobody modern or ancient can predict the end of the
world,” Gabriella argued, turning to Lori for support. “You’re the scientist,
Lori. Tell him how ridiculous he sounds.”

A
debate about the significance of 2012 wasn’t something Lori cared to take part
in, even if it was steeped in her field of archaeology. There was too much
science to debunk the doomsday predictions and yet, she decided to let her only
mode of transportation have his fun; like allowing children to hold onto Santa
Clause a little while longer. If she wanted to stick with Mike and Gabriella
until they reached Chichen Itza,
Lori decided it best to keep her responses as neutral as possible.

“I
guess time will tell if Mike’s interpretation is correct,” she said.

“It’s
not just my interpretation,” Mike argued. “The whole world is preparing for the
end!”

Lori
knew that to be another one of Mike’s overstatements, but she had to admit, with
all the crazy ideas out
there,
it was easy to believe
the whole world was in 2012 chaos.

“So
why are you going to Mexico
if you don’t believe in all this 2012 stuff, Lori?” Gabriella challenged.

“I’m
sure it has something to do with that Effigy,” Mike guessed.

In
a round-about way, he was right. Her discovery of the highly valuable Effigy of
Quetzalcoatl had made Lori an instant celebrity on the University of Utah
campus, not to mention across the country. The find immediately stirred the archaeological
community into a revival on Mesoamerica’s influence on Southwestern cultures
and everyone, it seemed, was left speculating on how such an effigy came to be
interred in an Anasazi grave. The most popular theory concluded that trade
relations between Mesoamerica and the Southwest accounted for the artifact’s
presence in Utah.

Lori
had a theory of her own.

The
precious jade and turquoise relic had been crafted as a bust of Mesoamerica’s flying serpent deity, Quetzalcoatl. The
effigy itself was believed to be the deity’s personified power entrusted to the
Toltec high priest who borrowed his god’s name and became known as Topiltzin
Quetzalcoatl.

In
AD 987 Topitzin Quetzalcoatl was overthrown from his own city and, according to
one legend, was sent adrift on a raft of snakes from the coast of Veracruz. Another legend
claimed Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl lit himself on fire and ascended the sky as the
morning star, Venus. As for the Effigy, until Lori discovered it, legend
thought it had been lost or destroyed after the priest’s banishment. One
interpretation of the latter version of the myth offered an explanation to the
Effigy’s fate—that it was the Effigy, the Power of Quetzalcoatl, and not
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl himself, that had combusted and sailed the skies as the
morning star.

Having found the Effigy herself and now knowing for a fact
that it had not been destroyed, Lori didn’t believe it was the morning star. She
didn’t believe Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl floated eastward on a raft of snakes
either. Instead, she believed the banished Toltec priest fled north, to the
furthest reaches of Anasaziland, taking the powerful emblem of his god with him
to the grave. That was how she came to believe the Effigy wound up in Utah, and she was prepared to go to Mexico to prove it.

Or
disprove opposing ideas, rather.

With
the bones of the man buried with the Effigy finally excavated, Lori could only
sit and wait for the biological team to complete the meticulous cleaning and
preservation before she could study them. It proved to be an excruciating wait,
especially when, not wanting any outside opinions influencing her own study,
she chose to ignore the preliminary reports until she’d had a good look at the
remains herself. However, it was during that time that she received an e-mail
from Dr. John Friedman:

Lori:

Thought
you might be interested in this fresco recently discovered by Dr. Matt Webb. He
found it in Yucatan, near the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza and believes it records the arrival of Jesus
in the New World. You’ve probably already noted
its striking similarity to The Trader. However, I conjecture that this frescoe
may provide further evidence of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl arrival in Yucatan?

John

Lori
opened the e-mail’s attachment and found herself looking at an extraordinary
anthropomorphic pictograph. Dr. Friedman was right. The broad-shouldered stance
of the figure on her computer screen looked very much like the petroglyph
pecked into the alcove just above the Anasazi grave. The petroglyph became
known as The Trader because of its resemblance to a man carrying a trade good
to market. The name was further extended to the remains buried beneath the petroglyph—the
man Lori speculated was Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl himself.

But
while she waited for The Trader’s bones to be processed for study, Lori decided
she could at least start proving her theory by disproving Topiltzin
Quetzalcoatl’s arrival in Yucatan.

Which brought her to Mike and Gabriella.

But
as she waited along the lone, Yucatan highway, her mind drifted to the man who
had been her companion since the day they’d pulled the Effigy from the earth—the
man who was strangely missing from her journey now.

Dr.
Peet.

University
Of Utah

Five Months Earlier

The
staccato beat of Lori’s heels echoed purposefully down the dark, empty halls of
the William Stewart Building of Anthropology. A single light penetrated the end
of the row of darkened offices just ahead. Within the glow spilling from that office
door stood the silhouette of Dr. Anthony Peet.

And
he was waiting for her.

“Lori,”
he greeted solemnly. His voice was smooth, as though lending itself to the
slumbering stillness of the building.

“Dr.
Peet,” she returned, keeping a respectful space between them, allowing him to
invite her into his office.

She
took a seat in a chair set before his desk—the only chair offering a place to
sit. The other chair, Lori noted, was occupied with a box of excavation tools
and screens, all waiting to be removed to the field. Dr. Peet looked just as prepared
to escape. He even wore his Gore-Tex boots—the ones he always wore on
excavations.

Lori
slid to the edge of her chair.

Dr.
Peet chose to perch above her from the corner of his desk. “We can’t keep
meeting like this,” he said.

“You
chose the time and place,” Lori shot back, holding steady to his handsomely
weathered eyes.

Dr.
Peet smiled nervously. “But for the last time.” Lori didn’t return the smile
and his quickly faded away. “I’m assuming by the urgency of your request that
you must have received my letter,” he continued.

Lori
withdrew an envelope from the notebook she’d had tucked beneath her arm. From
it she pulled out a folded piece of paper. “If you’re referring to this form
letter, then yes, I did.” She quickly peeled the page open and flipped it
around, giving Dr. Peet full view of the letter, complete with the anthropology
department’s letterhead.

Dr.
Peet bowed his head toward his hands folded loosely atop the muscular thigh
he’d thrown over the corner of his desk. Just as quickly he looked back up
again. His eyes sagged apologetically.

“What
is this all about?” Lori asked, failing to keep the demanding tone from her
voice.

“Just
what the letter says,” he said.

“You’re
rejecting my field study application?”

Dr.
Peet visibly sagged, as if her words were pressing him into the desktop. His
head bowed again, hanging heavily from the extending span of his shoulders.

“Even
after the dean gave us the okay to finish excavating The Trader?” Lori pressed.
“Why?”

Dr.
Peet sighed. “We had an unprecedented number of applicants this year,” he explained.
“Many of the students who applied have not yet received the field experience
they need to complete their degrees.”

“And
I suppose you have to give equal time to everyone,” Lori spat.

“You
have the most field experience of all our students,” he reasoned. “The physical
anthropologists need this experience. It isn’t every day they get to excavate
human remains.”

Lori
was furious. “But this is my dig. They wouldn’t even have The Trader’s remains
to excavate if I hadn’t found them.”

She
couldn’t help but feel cheated. She would have finished the excavation herself
had there been more time. It was her discovery. Not only had she recognized The
Trader’s petroglyph and there, recovered the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl from the
grave, but The Trader’s grave was located on her father’s land.

“I
could call my dad and have him stop the excavation,” she threatened.

Dr.
Peet saw right through her. “Lori. Do you really want to impede this research? I
know you want to learn more about The Trader as much as anyone else.”

“Not
so much as the dean, I’m sure,” she said sourly. “Just what does he think of
your decision to reject my application?”

Dr.
Peet cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, his fingers fidgeting with the
cuff of his shirtsleeve, “it was the dean who recommended it.”

* * * *

Dr.
Terrence Snead was pulling grass from the tender moat of irises that aligned
the brick facade of his house. In his oversized straw hat and bright yellow
garden gloves, he looked so unlike the pompous antiquarian Lori knew. He even
had a trace of dirt on one knee of his trousers—a crime against the immaculate
dean who oversaw the University
of Utah’s anthropology
department.

Such
a domestic display caught Lori off guard, temporarily dislodging her pursuit to
seek justice for the revenge he’d exacted upon her.

Snead
had been overly excited about the discovery of the Effigy. He’d been outwardly
spoken about its priceless value from the start, though anyone who’d taken one
look at the artifact could make the same assessment themselves. But to Dr.
Snead, the value wasn’t restricted to incalculable monetary measures. He’d been
quick to use the Effigy as a promotional tool to boast about the high quality
of his department, and it worked. The university saw an immediate twenty-seven
percent increase in enrollment—mostly through the anthropology department.