Mayan December (23 page)

CHAPTER 37

Nixie sat up in bed, leaning against a yellow pillow propped up against the wall, her book open on her lap. The flying horses were interesting, and she would love to live in the world they lived in, where girls rode the great-hearted beasts to save their kingdom. If she had been reading this at home, she would have devoured it in a day. But here the black ink fuzzed into clouds on the page. She wasn’t tired; she and Oriana had napped half the afternoon and then she’d swam in the pool while Oriana fussed with her costume for tomorrow—she was going to be a dancer at Chichén in the afternoon.

All in all, it had been an ordinary day. But now, with Oriana gone and her mom fast asleep (she had looked exhausted when she came home, and hugged Nixie and listened to her day and told her about seeing the president, but she had fallen asleep before Nixie, something she
never
did), Nixie was awake and nervous. Where was Ian? How was Hun Kan? She had learned nothing today.

She put the book down and picked up her feather, running it back and forth in her hand. Maybe she’d dream something tonight, but she needed to get to sleep first. She did like their new rooms. She and her mom both had big separate bedrooms so her mom didn’t take up the living room every night.

She got up and walked out, staring at the television. She didn’t really want to watch anything. She still held the feather in one hand. She set it down and went to the sliding glass door by the balcony, opening it a few inches. Ocean smells soaked into the room while soft waves whispered against the shore. There was no wind, and here, on the far end of the resort, she heard no voices beneath the balcony. Just the waves.

Nixie picked up the feather, and in her free hand she picked up Snake, wrapping the long green beast around her robe like a belt and clutching his head to her. She settled on the gold couch.

She closed her eyes and counted the breaks of the waves, an uneven metronome.

The waves flickered in and out, a soft, soothing sound in her ears that slowly saddened into sobs. The air cooled.

She opened her eyes.

Dream eyes.

She stood on a packed-dirt surface that felt cool under her feet. Stars filled the sky, and she recognized the ancient fullness that had arched over them all two nights ago by the sacbe.

Soft sobbing drew her attention. Like at Tulum. Hun Kan. It had to be Hun Kan. The sobs came from behind a wooden wall with a turtle painted on it. The image was almost as tall as Nixie, and crude.

There were other huts, a line close together. The bulky dark form of a stone temple blotted the stars just behind the huts.

There was a door in the wall with the turtle, at the far left. As she walked toward it, her feet made no sound. When she reached out for the door, it felt like putting her hand into a drift of sea-fog even though it looked like solid rough-hewn wood. It was closed. When she pushed on it, it didn’t move.

She stared at it.

She pushed again. Nothing.

She ran at it, throwing her shoulder into it, and actually felt a stab of pain. The door barely registered her assault.

There had to be a way. This was a dream. She’d known she would dream tonight. But it wasn’t like the dream from before, the time they could feel the thick roughness of the stones by the sacbe as solid things and when the jaguar’s throaty roar had made her bones shake. Now, she felt like a ghost.

Her mom’s hand had passed through the leather necklace the bead had been strung on.

She stepped through the door as if it weren’t even there.

The room was empty except for Hun Kan lying alone on a dirt floor. She wore a red dress lined with yellow, bunched around her knees. A thick rope bound her feet. The skin under the rope was red and angry.

Nixie’s eyes traveled up Hun Kan’s body, stopping at her side. She not only breathed, she cried. Softly, like the waves through the resort window. Nixie bent down, whispering, “Hun Kan.”

There was no answer, no change.

Hun Kan didn’t open her eyes, but simply lay still, sobbing quietly. Every once in a while, a fresh teardrop ran down a track on her cheek and fell onto a quarter-sized patch of mud on the dirt floor. She must have been crying a long time.

What had happened?

Dream Nixie ran her hands over her friend, feeling her body, both of their bodies, but barely. Hun Kan stirred, and rolled over onto her back. One of her hands held the other wrist, the knuckles bloody. The wrist that held Nixie’s watch.

Someone had tried to cut it from her! They’d cut Hun Kan cruelly, but only scratched the watch face. The band was made of woven Kevlar. Didn’t they know nothing short of high-carbon stainless steel would cut it?

Well, of course not.

The face of the watch was visible. Nixie crouched beside her friend, staring at the watch for so long that her cheeks were soaked with tears.

Hun Kan didn’t move.

When Nixie opened her eyes and found Snake’s head soaked in her tears, it was midnight.

She had given Hun Kan the watch.

What had she done?

DECEMBER 21, 2012

CHAPTER 38

The big white bus they rode in smelled like plastic and old coffee. Nixie groaned as a security guard gave them lists of rules. You’d think that after her mom got to tour all those important people, they’d have been picked up by a black limo, or at least been able to drive their own car. By the time they got to Chichén Itzá, they were already two hours late.

At least they were here.

She had to find Hun Kan and show her how to take off the watch. She should have listened to Ian about not giving the old Mayans anything. She had to make this right.

The parking lot was closed to all traffic except buses and more buses. Nixie stood by her mom in a long, colorful line of people snaking toward the main gates of Chichén Itzá. She stared at the parts of the ruins she could see over people’s heads. The bright primary colors she knew belonged to the real Chichén, the old one, streamed from this one on banners. It looked like a party.

Nixie fidgeted with the bead they had dug up from the past, which she’d stuck in her front pants pocket. The necklace draped over her white shirt, looped twice so it wouldn’t catch on anything. Most important, the quetzal feather, wrapped carefully in cardboard, stuck in the back band of her pants. The top of it tickled her ear. Her mom had argued so much about the necklace Nixie hadn’t said anything about the feather. Now, she stood a little sideways, hoping her mom wouldn’t notice.

Her mom clutched Nixie’s hand, but otherwise she seemed far away. She had woken tense and growly this morning, and every few minutes she glanced down at her phone, looking for messages.

For Ian. He hadn’t come back, and her mom was worried. Not that she said so, but they were all doing it, Nixie and Oriana and Alice, talking about him from time to time and checking their phones obsessively.

Oriana had said he was supposed to be here, that he had a pass in as a security guy. Maybe Oriana had already found him.

Nixie rubbed the bead in her pocket for luck.

They shuffled forward a few more steps and then stopped again. A man in white shorts walked by with popsicles. Nixie’s mom bought two juice sticks and handed one to Nixie, already dripping sugary-orange drops onto the dirty parking lot. Nixie’s hand was sticky from clutching the empty stick by the time they got to the gates, and showed their tickets and ID. The gate guard seemed impressed by the paper her mom showed and talked to her in Spanish, pointing away from where he was sending most other people.

Inside, it was emptier than Nixie had expected after the long line. There
were
a lot of people, but there was still room to walk and space to sit.

Her mom led her to a small staff bathroom in the back of a building to wash the sticky juice from their fingers. She pulled a comb through Nixie’s hair, fussing with it far more than usual. She cocked her head and used the comb to flip up the front side. “You might as well take that out, now.”

Nixie slid the cardboard and the feather out from her back, relieved and a little apprehensive. “I might need it. Why else did he give it to me, if not for today?”

Her mom gave her a dark look. “You’re to stay close to me. I don’t want you going back.”

Nixie stroked the feather softly, careful to brush it only down from the slightly crushed shaft to the delicate tip. “I might not be able to help it mom. I never choose to go back.”

“What about Tulum?”

“I chose to hear who was crying.”

“You chose on the sacbe.”

There wasn’t anything she could say to that so she turned and splashed water on her face.

Her mom gave an exaggerated I’m-not-happy-but-I-won’t-get-you-in-trouble-now sigh. “I wish you hadn’t brought it. You have to take care of it now.”

“I will.” She didn’t want to talk about it—she just wanted to go back and find Hun Kan as fast as possible. “Let’s go.”

They neared the entrance to the Ball Court just as announcers began loudly exhorting, “Clear the center,” in a rotation of Spanish, Mayan, and English.

They stood in another line of sweaty people and produced two more tickets to show they should be there. Her mom handed her one, smiling. “Don’t lose this.”

“I won’t.” At least her mom trusted her that far. They always did this at movies and plays, too.

Two sets of temporary bleachers had been erected along the sides of the Ball Court, away from the great stone wheels the players would eventually try to hip and elbow and head-bump the heavy balls through. It was crowded, all except for the tallest set of bleachers, closest to the middle, cordoned off with yellow and black VIP tape.

Security guards herded people to their seats until the main floor of the Ball Court was empty.

Drums sounded.

A man in a red costume stood at the top of the steps leading up to the Temple of the Jaguar. His headdress was as tall as he was, with bright macaw feathers that stuck out almost in a sunshine pattern. His face was masked like a bird and he wore a skirt with feathers and beads in it. His bare legs were long and brown. Below his knees, he wore leather circles that even more feathers dangled from. “He doesn’t look real, mom.”

“None of this looks real, anymore.”

“No kidding.”

The announcer was on an English round, and Nixie caught the words, “Last time a ball game was played here could have been five hundred years ago, or even seven hundred. And perhaps this is the last ball game that will be played here. You are . . . ”

Nixie let the voice fuzz out, already knowing from Oriana that there would be dancers first. Oriana would be one of them, even though she was Italian and not Mayan. But she spoke a little Mayan and lived here, and had dark hair and eyes. That had been enough for a bit part.

Drums wafted in through the entrance. The drummers came in first, wearing white leather pants and vests and black boots. Women in simple white shirts and flaring white skirts followed them. Nixie looked for the red skirt Oriana had been working on, but everyone, even the men, wore white. The performers faced away from the drums, which picked up speed until the dancers flung themselves out, the women circling and the men doing acrobatics. It was too modern. She glanced up at her mom. “This isn’t right. It’s not even close.”

Her mom whispered, “They’re going backwards. Remember how in the Xcaret show they started with the old times and moved forward? This is starting with now and moving backward, and supposed to take us slowly to the ball game.”

But Hun Kan needed her now. “Mom? In the old time, are they having ceremonies, too?”

“I suppose so. They had them every year here on the solstice. It’s always the same date.”

So if time was a stack of cards, there were hundreds of dances going on all at once, all on this day. Nothing was going to happen just sitting here. Clearly there’d been a ticket sold for every inch of hot silver seat on the bleachers. “Can I go walk around? I’m waiting for Oriana’s dance and it’s going to be
hours
.”

“No.”

She hated being eleven. Why couldn’t she be sixteen or even twenty?

CHAPTER 39

The morning sun stung Ah Bahlam’s eyes. Then his father’s face blotted it out, his eyes angry and his jaw tight as a drumhead. “The High Priest of K’uk’ulkan sent a runner to me this morning. You will not play in the game. You will have no role in the game.” He stared down, pain and anger both shaping his features. “You will watch it only.”

Ah Bahlam blinked, silent for a long time as disappointment twisted to anger, souring his blood. “Will I dance the doors of the world open?”

“All the lords do,” his father said. “Even the ones out of favor.”

That stung.

Then he leaned down and grabbed Ah Bahlam’s blood-streaked arm. He stared at the deep sacrificial cuts, still angry-red with dried blood. “Maybe the high priest is right.” He jerked Ah Bahlam up, wrenching his sore arm and sending shooting pains all the way to his head. “You think you learned enough in less than a year with the shamans to mix your own sacrifices into the power of
this
ceremony? What will the high priest think when he sees this, especially after you challenged him in the dance?”

Ah Bahlam was getting tired of restraint. He pushed himself up, trembling with fatigue, anger, and fear. Tasting the fear allowed some of the anger to leak away, but he refused to back down into being a child at the mercy of his father’s words. He made his own words come out slowly, demonstrating his control. “Father, I did what I needed to. Warriors are allowed to make personal sacrifices. It is done, and even if I wanted to, I can’t undo it.”

“I raised you to take my place.”

Ah Bahlam sat quietly, waiting.

“Mayan lords must be brave. Courage without thought kills a lot of us. Perhaps you will dead before the year is over.” Ah Bahlam’s father turned his face away. “All I can hope now is that you have an honorable death.”

He watched the back of his father’s head, willing him to turn around and smile, to look proud of him even if he was worried. It had all started with Ni-ixie. He had not called her, had not chosen her. She had chosen him. He had to trust. “Father?”

“Yes?” His father did turn, and he looked as sad as Ah Bahlam felt.

No words would heal this rift. He drew a breath, surrendered. “It’s time to go. We must eat and prepare to dance the world open before the game.”

“Wash the blood from your arm before your mother sees it.”

Ah Bahlam cut off a bitter laugh. He stood and headed toward a basin of water the kitchen slaves had just filled for the day.

At least the jaguar did not seem to live inside his skin this morning. He sensed that he could call it, but he wanted to be clearly and only himself for a while. He took a cup of water and walked away from the family compound to scrub his wounds. His arm stung, and he wished for Hun Kan’s soft hands to clean his cut as she had the now-healing gash across his thigh. Even more, he longed for the simplicity of Zama, the ease of being a student. Chichén was so much more confusing and terrible than it had seemed when he was still a young man.

He had dreamed so hard of being a grown-up Lord of Itzá.

And all summer he had dreamed of playing in the game. This game.

He had to return to the basin twice to get enough water to wash all the blood off.