by Lani Forbes
Mayana’s fingers were numb with cold as she fumbled to tie the fabric around his waist, securing the gaping hole against the elements.
“Hopefully that can staunch the bleeding for a while.”
Ahkin nodded but didn’t respond. Mayana’s stomach twisted. He looked so pale.
She sent out another pulse of water around them and froze. Terror gripped at her heart like the claws of a beast … which was exactly what was approaching.
Mayana had felt her current run up against something massive, something headed right for them.
She forced the water to push them faster, so fast that Ahkin cried out at the sudden rushing movement of the current. Mayana just focused on pushing them toward the shore, on keeping Ahkin’s head above the water. She couldn’t think about what lurked within these waters, or she’d freeze from panic and never be able to force herself to keep going.
An ear-splitting roar shook the waters as a massive head thrashed out of the sea behind them. Mayana had never seen anything like it. It was as if a scaled brown-and-green volcano had just erupted out of the seafloor and thrust toward the heavens. The head of the biggest crocodile in existence, large enough to swallow the stone temple back in Atl whole, turned toward them, yellow eyes the size of the sun.
Mayana screamed and Ahkin turned to see what she was seeing, his arms still gripping her for dear life in the endlessly deep water. Mayana didn’t think it was possible for him to grow any paler than he already was, but as he took in the form of Cipactli, it looked as though every drop of blood had drained from his face.
“Go,” he breathed.
“I can’t, the shore is still so far away. We’ll never make it.”
Ahkin squeezed her shoulders, fixing her with an intensity in his gaze she had never seen before. “If anyone can get to that shore, it’s you. I know you can. Leave me behind.”
“No,” Mayana groaned, fear and desperation choking her. She forced the water to push them as fast as she could, but it was like trying to make honey flow faster down the side of a tree. It would only move so fast.
An almighty roar shook the waters more effectively than an earthquake. Mayana hoped her ears weren’t bleeding from the intensity of the sound. They were definitely ringing. She kicked her legs even harder, moving with the water as though it flowed through her like her own blood. The shadow of the mountains in the distance grew larger. They were close enough now to see the frothing waves crashing against the jet-black volcanic beach.
Faster. Faster.
Mayana made the mistake of turning to look behind her and found herself fixed by the glowing orbed eyes of the beast not even twenty feet away.
The truth crashed over her as another salty wave slapped her in the face.
She wasn’t fast enough.
Chapter
51
“I can’t do it, Ahkin. We won’t make it.” Mayana panted with exhaustion, struggling to draw in salty breaths.
“Leave me and get to the beach.” His hand snaked up her arm and gripped her shoulder.
Mayana gritted her teeth.
“That’s not an option,” she hissed at him, spitting bloody water out of her mouth.
“Mayana …” His voice was so frail, as if every word was costing him enormous effort. His body shook against her own, shivering from the cold water and blood loss. “I need to die to save the sun. Besides, I’m not going to survive even if we make it to the beach.”
“Yes, you are.” He had to. She couldn’t do this without him. She wouldn’t.
“You’re so stubborn.”
“And I stubbornly refuse to let you die.”
He gave a weak chuckle and leaned his forehead against her cheek. Mayana turned and pressed her lips against his clammy skin. They were just going to die together.
Cipactli opened his massive maw, a gaping hole with darkness even blacker than the sinkhole they fell through. She immediately understood the legends of him swallowing the stars and every creation the gods tried to make before being banished to the Sea of the Dead. Gray water churned around the pointed teeth—teeth as long as her body—lining his elongated mouth like those of the caimans she had seen waiting for fish in the river back home.
The looming darkness settled into her heart as Mayana realized they were going to die. There was no escaping him. She had fought so hard, so very hard, against the darkness that had hovered over her since she found out about the selection ritual. Death had marked her from the beginning, her own personal apocalypse, and there was no one to sacrifice their life for her. A dry sob escaped her throat and Ahkin nestled his head into the crook of her neck. Why did it have to end like this?
As she faced the darkness of the monster’s mouth surging forward to devour her, a glimmer of light caught her eye, just above Cipactli’s head. It was the form of an elderly man, transparent and glittering like a crystal of quartz. A spirit—just beginning his journey through Xibalba. Mayana remembered the legends that allowed the spirits of the dead to avoid the great crocodile. They soared high above the waters of the Sea of the Dead, safely above the guardian appointed to protect the realm of the dead from living trespassers. Jealousy stabbed at her chest. Her soul and Ahkin’s would never get the chance to begin their journey through the underworld if Cipactli swallowed them. They would fester forever in the belly of the beast along with every other creation he devoured.
She wished they could float high above his head like the spirits. Because like any other crocodile, he was confined to the water …
“Ahkin, hold on tight to me,” she screamed, slicing her blade across the palm of her other hand. Blood. More blood. She wasn’t sure if her idea would work. It was crazy, bigger than anything she had ever tried before. How much of her blood would she need?
Mayana had been practicing floating orbs of water for the past two weeks, for fun, to give water to Xol and the other servants, blasting them apart to make mist and rainbows. Whenever she summoned the water toward her, it always floated through the air like a shining silver snake, like a shining silver spirit. She and Ahkin couldn’t fly like the spirits, but she could make the water around them fly.
The water swirled with dark crimson stains, a beacon to Cipactli but also the source of the power that just might save them. Mayana focused all of her strength, every ounce of her concentration, into forming the water around her and Ahkin into a sphere, a floating mass big enough to lift them. Slowly, they began to rise into the air like a seabird hovering above the surface of the water.
Ahkin dug his nails into her skin as he realized what she was doing.
“How are you—?”
But Mayana didn’t answer him, afraid that if she lost her focus they would plummet back into the sea.
Another earth-shattering roar echoed across the waters, vibrating inside her chest like a drum. Cipactli must have realized they were out of his reach. Mayana didn’t look down to see how far above him they hovered. After the length of several heartbeats, she felt them sinking, and her stomach jolted. No, they couldn’t sink back down, not when they were so close to escaping the monster. Maybe more blood was necessary to suspend so much water? Sometimes, when her father had to divert whole rivers, he would bleed to the point that he almost passed out. They were not full gods after all—they did not possess the same level of strength as their divine ancestors. They were still part human—demigods—and limited as to how much blood they could afford to lose before it killed their human bodies.
Mayana needed more, so she forced the blade across her lower arm, just as Yoli had done at her demonstration two weeks ago. Biting her lip at the pain of it, she let the blood pour out into the water, now almost completely red from her and Ahkin’s losses.
Stay up, she begged the mass of water. Stay up. Stay up. Stay up.
She made the mistake of looking down. Terror like she had never experienced in her life almos
t shattered her concentration. He was so big, so other compared to any creature she had ever seen before. His head was indeed that of a crocodile, massive and scaled, with the same deadly ridge of teeth and soulless predatory fierceness in his eyes. But giant clawed hands were swiping toward them, far more human than they should be. More razor teeth lined the mouths in the crooks of its elbows. Spikes as long as spears scattered along his back and thrashing tail.
“Can he jump?” Ahkin asked, his eyes skyward. He was smart to avoid looking too closely at the monster.
“I don’t know. I don’t think he can unless he swims back down first.” Mayana hoped so, anyway.
Her head was so heavy, but another roar of rage from Cipactli reminded her why she was fighting so hard, losing so much blood. The next roar of the beast sounded far enough below that she felt safe to move them toward the volcanic beach.
Forward, she willed the water to move, following behind the spirit of the old man that had passed over them.
“You’re doing it … Keep going … We are almost there,” Ahkin whispered encouragements to her, still gripping onto her tighter than a sloth on a tree branch. Every word hissed through his teeth like an exhaled breath, the life seeping out of him as fast as it was seeping out of her.
The beach came closer, a crescent of dark sand in the craggy black cliffs. Jagged rocks like curving fingers protruded through the frothing gray water of the cove, splashes of seafoam and mist contrasting against the volcanic backdrop.
From this height, Mayana caught a glimpse of expansive dead fields atop the cliff, gray and lifeless—stretching out to more black mountains far in the distance. There were no trees, no structures, only sporadic, gnarled remains of charred black trunks hunched like broken old men on the pockmarked landscape. The smell of sulfur and death, like rotting flesh, grew stronger and stronger the closer the shore came.
Mayana’s stomach lurched, her mouth full of salt from both the blood and the seawater. They started to drop toward the beach. She didn’t have the energy to keep them up any longer. The orb supporting them careened toward the sand like a massive drop of rain. She was so dizzy, as if her head and lungs were filling with the bloody seawater.
Now that they were no longer above the sea, she released her hold over the water like a breath. With a sound like a wave sliding over sand, the mass of water crashed against the beach in an explosion of black dust and blood. Mayana lay sprawled on her back, feeling as though she had run a thousand miles. The muscles in her legs burned like coals and her lungs heaved with the effort to pull in more air. She rolled on her side as she retched and heaved, but nothing came up. She longed for fresh water to wash the taste of salt from her mouth.
Mayana rolled onto her back and threw an arm over her eyes, only to pull it back as it covered her face in more warm stickiness. Only then did she finally look down. The fabric wrapped around her chest was no longer blue, but a deep purple from being stained with so much red. The tattered remains of her loincloth skirt were the same color, the feathered cuffs around her ankles limp and soaked like drowned birds. She wedged a toe beneath them one at a time and eased them off over her feet, the metal edges scraping against the sand.
Her eyes lifted to the water, where Cipactli seethed behind the fingers of rocks jutting up from the depths offshore. With a final rumble deep inside his massive body that sent the water over his back trembling, he slowly sank beneath the waves, obviously accepting that he would have to wait for another meal.
Even if they had outswum Cipactli, Mayana had no idea how they would have negotiated the turbulent water offshore. The pounding surf would have smashed them against the rocks.
It was a miracle they survived.
Mayana propped herself up on a shaky elbow, turning to face Ahkin. He also sprawled across the sand on his back, his chest rapidly rising and falling. The fabric tied across his stomach was even redder than her clothing.
She almost cried out with joy. But the look on his face made the cry die in her throat.
Her shoulders slumped. “We made it.”
“Do you … have any idea … what you’ve done?” Ahkin panted, eyes as filled with rage as the monster prowling out in the water.
Her own temper flared. “I’ve just saved both of our lives. Weren’t you just cheering me on as we escaped?”
“I didn’t want you to die! You were supposed to be safe. It was supposed … to be me. Only me,” he said. Mayana imagined he would be screaming at her if he had the energy to raise his voice above the faint whisper. “Those who venture here rarely return. I’ve only read of a few who survived. Now you’re going to die too, Mayana. I was the only one who needed to die.”
“You’re such an idiot.” Mayana flopped herself back down onto the sand, rolling her eyes.
“Excuse me?” Ahkin struggled to lift himself but gave up. “I am the emperor. You cannot …”
“Don’t ever hide yourself from me.” Mayana threw his own words back in his face. That night in the garden was a lifetime ago. Literally, now. “Well, here I am—and I think you’re a blind fool.”
“I swear to Ometeotl, if you insult me again …”
“You’ll do what? Bleed on me? Too late,” she said savagely as she fingered the ruined fabric of her skirt.
Ahkin gritted his teeth and turned away from her.
There were several minutes of fuming silence. Finally, Ahkin pounded a fist against the sand, sending the black fragments of rock flying into the air.
“My sacrifice was supposed to save everyone, and you were going to live a long healthy life without me.”
“Your sacrifice would have accomplished nothing.” Mayana forced herself up and inspected the gaping wound in her forearm. She gagged, and Ahkin laughed rather cruelly.
“Right. Because you don’t believe in the sacrifices.” He let out a condescending snort.
“No,” Mayana snapped back. “Because it’s your lovely twin sister that’s working with the Miquitz and lowering the sun each night to make it look like the sun is dying.”
Ahkin stared at her, opening and closing his mouth like a catfish on the deck of a boat.
“You’re lying.”
Mayana ripped another strip of fabric off her ruined skirt and wrapped it slowly around her arm, wincing as the salt water stung the wound.
“I heard her. In the garden last night. Coatl was with her and”—she hissed as a sharp stab of pain shot through her arm as she tightened the fabric—“he healed her hand after. They’re worshipping the goddess of lust together, by the way, in case you missed that too while you were busy pretending to be a god.”
“It’s not true.” He threw his head back on the sand.
“Just because you wish something wasn’t true, doesn’t mean it isn’t.”
She was furious at him. Furious that he was stubbornly sticking his head in the sand rather than admit he was wrong about his sister. He just didn’t want to admit he had almost killed himself for nothing.
“Well, it won’t matter, anyway.” Mayana wiped her running nose and started to shiver despite the warm, humid air. Sand clung to her skin and scratched against her as she moved.
They had made it to the beach, escaped an endless eternity in the belly of Cipactli, but they were still two living souls, clinging to life on the shores of the land of the dead.
Chapter
52
Ahkin glared at the dark clouds swirling overhead. The darkness around them lightened somehow, like a pale morning when the sun waited below the horizon for him. He had no idea where the pale gray light in this godforsaken place came from, considering somewhere far above the clouds should be a ceiling of rock, not the sky of a different layer of creation. But Xibalba was its own world. A world for the dead.
Day and night reversed themselves in Xibalba, and this was Xibalba’s night. While the sun lived in the world above during
the day, it died each night and made its own journey through the underworld. Its light would not reach them until the sun set above. Maybe the moon was traveling through the underworld somewhere far above them, casting that ghostly glow from behind the clouds.
“I’m going to look around,” Mayana announced.
“Do … whatever you want.” Ahkin continued to pant, feeling weaker and weaker as his blood dripped down his sides into the dark sand. He was furious at her for daring to suggest Metzi could do something so selfish. For ruining his plan and sentencing herself to die as well.
She stomped away several yards and then turned back to face him.
“Just know that letting yourself die isn’t going to save anyone. Now that you’re gone, Metzi will steal your throne and stop setting the sun early.” Mayana spat the words at him before she stalked away toward the cliff behind them.
Something roared up inside his chest and almost escaped through his mouth, but he bit it back. Whatever attack he longed to throw at her, he didn’t have the energy to do anything more than whisper, so it wouldn’t do his rage any justice. What he longed to say needed to be yelled, preferably with his arms thrown in the air in frustration.
So instead, Ahkin sighed and lolled his head to the side. He had never had an injury this severe, and he was secretly afraid to move. He was so cold, colder than he had ever been in his life. Part of him wished the fire princess had jumped in after him so she could make a fire to keep him warm. Or even the princess of Pahtia to heal the wounds in his abdomen.
His body shook violently, his extremities practically burning from the cold. Ahkin wiggled his fingers in an attempt to force feeling back into them, but the effort was exhausting.
Yes, Mayana had saved him from Cipactli, but he was still inches from death anyway. He refused to believe what Mayana claimed about his sister. What would happen when the last of his lifeblood leaked out onto the sand? Would his spirit simply leave his body? Would it still be enough of a sacrifice to save the sun?
