And two hours with Itzamna for writing classes, including how to read and write glyphs. Two hours!
“I bet the monsters class will be cool,” Hondo said.
“I’ve already seen them up close and personal, so, uh, no thanks.”
Hondo yawned and stretched. “Time to get some shut-eye. It’s been a long day. See you at the biblioteca tomorrow morning.” He went to the door, then turned back to me. “Brooks says it’s the big red temple with a million steps. You can’t miss it. And don’t be late. I’ve gotta get ready for my big godborn training day.”
After he left, I fell into bed and stared through the trees at the stars. My mom once told me that looking at the stars is looking into the past. If a star six hundred light-years away died a century ago, we still wouldn’t know it. We’d be gazing at its previous form, clueless about all that death swarming beyond. The thought was muy depressing.
I settled into my pillow, and just as I was about to drift off, I heard footsteps in the hallway outside. It was probs one of my housemates finally getting here from the ceremony.
“You’d think the son of war would get a better house.”
I groaned. I was stuck with bad-mood Marco?
“At least your dad isn’t some minor god of thunder,” a girl said sadly. “Like, couldn’t I have gotten a little lightning, too?”
“So what’s your talent?” Marco snorted. “Making a big boom sound?”
“You want to hear a boom?” the girl snapped. “Here you go.” And then the outer door slammed hard enough to shake the walls.
I thought about getting up to greet Marco, but I was too wiped. I fell right into a dream. The air was thick and dry. Gray light pressed in on me. I heard the sound of fingers tapping on stone. My throat was so parched, it felt like I had swallowed sandpaper.
The world came into focus slowly, its edges worn like a soft blanket. I was back at my old elementary school, in Mr. Hawkins’s classroom. Every single desk was occupied with a zombie-eyed student. They all just sat there frozen, staring straight ahead at the chalkboard where Mr. H stood like a mannequin, chalk in hand. Out the windows, orange leaves were suspended in mid-descent. I glanced at the wall clock: The hands were stopped at 2:32.
“Hello, Zane.”
I startled, turning my attention to the voice at the back of the classroom. The Red Queen sat on top of Mr. H’s desk, sipping a blue icy drink with a pink straw. She looked the same as the last time I’d seen her, which was right before I put on a death mask that was supposed to hide me from the gods. Okay, maybe she had a few more wrinkles. (Was that possible? Do the dead age?) She had the same black hair tied up in a tight bun and wore a band of jade stones around her head.
“You could have picked”—slurp—“a better”—slurp—“meeting place.”
“Me? I didn’t pick this place.”
“This is your dream,” she said. “If it were up to me, we’d be sailing across the Mediterranean, but here we are in a dreadful plastic world that smells like sawdust and child angst.”
“I have no control of—”
She interrupted me with a sigh. “I have an ominous message for you. So, let’s just get to it, shall we?”
No one in the history of the world has ever gotten excited by the words I have an ominous message for you.
Clenching my jaw, I thought, This is just a dream and I’m going to wake up any second. The Red Queen threw both hands into the air like she was shaking out a blanket. A wall of red smoke covered the windows, and with a satisfied exhale, she said, “That should give us some privacy.”
I looked around at the motionless students and Mr. H. “What about them?”
“They are a creation of your own mind.”
New SHIHOM class idea: How to Improve Your Dreams.
The Red Queen’s dark eyes shone bright even in the gray light. “You know the rules,” she said. “I cannot provide any information unless you ask the right question, and you cannot ask the same question twice or more than one question at a time. Now please be quick. We only have a few minutes before the smoke and I both disappear.”
With Fuego in tow, I walked toward her between the desks, careful not to trip over any of the glassy-eyed students, who were kind of freaking me out. “What’s the ominous message?”
“Did I say ominous? I meant calamitous, and it’s a two-part message.” She held up three fingers, confusing me further. “So make sure you’re paying close attention.”
“Who’s the message from?”
“The Fire Keeper,” she said.
“Antonio?” My eyes did a quick scan, like the guitar-strumming dude who protected the most magical fire in the universe might pop out from behind a desk. “Why didn’t he come himself?”
“He moved to a distant isolated place to protect the flame, but he went to great lengths to communicate with me in secret. It really is a burden to be a former fire keeper! I received an honorable discharge when I died, and yet I’m still called to duty.”
I ran my fingers over Fuego’s dragon head. “What’s the first part of the message?”
She took a long sip of her drink and gripped her forehead. “Ooh…brain freeze.” After a few swallows, she continued, “Well, I am not sure how reliable this is. He is on the edge of the world, and the distance may have weakened his signal, but I do think I got it right.”
Think?
She took a deep breath and licked her lips before she spoke. “‘All is not as it seems.’”
Great! Glad we got that cleared up. “Can you be more specific?”
“Zotz and Ixkik’ are five steps ahead of the gods. Or is it six?”
The walls felt like they were closing in on me. Any steps ahead spelled disaster. “How?”
The Red Queen adjusted her jade headband. “I think my head must be growing—this is so tight!” She stretched it over her thin eyebrows. “Your question was how? My answer is: How should I know?”
I held my motor mouth in check, knowing that one false move would set her off and I would get nada. “You’re the messenger.”
“I AM A QUEEN!” Her anger shook the room.
“Sorry…uh…You’re right. I just meant…” Man, I was the worst backpedaler ever. “I meant the message isn’t making sense to me.” I gave a fake chuckle. “Human brain and all. Maybe you can explain it again?”
“Hmph.” She gave me a stern look. “My job is not to explain. Now, do you want to hear the second part?”
Though I wasn’t sure I was ready for it, I nodded.
“ASK THE QUESTION!”
I sighed, barely keeping it together. “What is the second part of the message?”
“Follow chapat…” She stared up at the ceiling, tapping her chin. “Or was it look for chapat and follow…? Being dead really messes with your memory.”
I wished Antonio were here so I could tell him: Next time you have an important ominous, calamitous message, send someone else! I wanted to race to all the questions bubbling up inside me, but I remembered the rule: One at a time. “What’s chapat?”
“Mayan for centipede.” She extended her blue drink with a lipstick-stained straw. “Would you like a sip?”
“No thanks. Uh, this centipede…it’s not, like, some giant monstrous thing, right?” Hey, I had to know what I was getting into. Being from the desert, I was used to scorpions, snakes, and tarantulas. But of all the creepy crawlers, centipedes were my absolute least fave. Ever try squashing one of the plump suckers? Snap, crackle, pop!
“Sometimes big isn’t necessarily more dangerous,” the Red Queen said. “A small bite from the tiniest of spiders can kill you. Especially magic ones.”
That made me feel sooo much better. “Where do I find this chapat?”
“No idea.”
“But you’re a great queen fire keeper.” I put lots of emphasis on great. “Surely you can see that, right?”
“Well…yes, I am great,” she said. “And I am a queen.”
She set her drink o
n a stack of ungraded worksheets and hopped onto the scuffed linoleum floor. With a single swipe of her arm, a faint ball of fire appeared between us. I was instantly drawn to the flame, expecting to see an image in it that would explain everything. But there was nothing.
Sighing, the Red Queen closed her small fist and the fire disappeared. “Not as good as the old days when I was alive. But the answer is: in the jungle where the earth spirit hides.”
“Er…the jungle’s kind of a big place.” I needed more to go on than Search for a centipede in the forest!
“That isn’t a question!” the Red Queen announced, shaking me from my thoughts. Her jade headband glittered for half a second. “Bah! Time’s up.”
“Wait! I need just a little more—”
She vanished, leaving me alone with the zombie students staring vacantly at Mr. H’s hunched back. The wall clock began to tick, and I inched backward. A chair scraped across the floor. A student turned in his seat to face me.
“Adrik?”
He looked confused, his eyes wide and wandering. Then they zeroed in on me. “What am I doing here?” he said.
Scritch. Scratch.
I looked up.
The fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Mr. Hawkins’s arm was moving.
A voice floated toward me. “The day is coming, Zane.”
It was Ixkik’.
I wanted to scream, but nothing would come out.
Mr. Hawkins dragged the chalk across the board with a screech that set my teeth on edge, but what he wrote was even more disturbing.
Are your eyes wide open?
When I woke up, I felt like a cement truck had backed over my head. Twice.
I squinted, trying to shake those awful words: Are your eyes wide open? What did that mean?
Brooks slipped into my room just then and whisper-shouted, “Why are you still asleep?”
“I’m not,” I said, pointing to my face. “See?”
“It’s dawn! Are you coming or not?”
“Okay, okay. Just let me get ready….”
After brushing my teeth and changing into the SHIHOM uniform of a black tee and drawstring pants, I met Brooks outside at the nearest bridge. The whole world was misty and grayish blue—even the trees took on a gloomy cast. Brooks was wearing clothes identical to mine and leaning against a rope, her arms folded like she was deep in thought.
When she saw me, she reached into the small straw bag hanging from her shoulder. “Hungry? I grabbed you a couple of burritos—extra chile and bacon, like always.” She handed me a warm bundle wrapped in wax paper.
I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I got a whiff of the roasted peppers. “They make breakfast burritos here?” I took a bite of the spicy awesomeness.
“Come on,” Brooks said. “You can eat and walk.”
“You already know the way to the library?”
“I flew around, mapped it,” she said casually. “In case we need an emergency exit.”
We made our way across several bridges, passing a dozen or so darkened tree houses, until we reached a rope ladder that led us down into a thicket of silvery-green trees that were so ancient-looking it seemed like they had sprouted from some dead artist’s canvas.
“Pretty awesome, isn’t it?” Brooks said as we headed down a narrow path of shadows. “Did you know the temperature here is always a perfect seventy-three degrees? Oxygen levels are optimal, too. Oh, and it’s all-you-can-eat—of anything you want! Well, mostly. Which is how I got the burritos. We can go to the café later so you can check it out.”
I popped the last bite of breakfast into my mouth. So, the gods had made a paradise for us. That was super nice and all, but it did nothing to douse the fire that had been pulsing in my bones since the dream. Sometimes I wished the fire would just talk to me. You know, with direct messages like Turn here, Don’t go into that dark room, etc.
“Hey.” Brooks snapped her fingers in front of my face. “I know that look. What’s the deal?”
It was weird. We’d been apart for three months, and it felt like it had only been three hours. All that worry about Brooks ghosting me or things being weird between us vanished. We were still friends, even though she’d read all those things I’d written about her in my book and I had, you know, maybe almost kissed her that night on the beach—emphasis on almost. I thought about what Hondo had said: It’s complicated falling in love the first time. Is that what I felt for Brooks? Love? Or complicated? Or both?
I told Brooks every detail of the Red Queen’s dream visit. Brooks stopped and faced me. “Centipede? Jungle? Earth spirit?” She sighed. “Does she ever give you, like, solid details?”
“Nope.”
We walked a few more paces, and I thought Brooks was puzzling out the Red Queen’s message, but she switched topics. “And did Hondo tell you how he managed to survive the sludge?”
I scratched my cheek, wishing she wasn’t staring at me like that. “Just got lucky, I guess.” I knew the lie was worse than pathetic the second I spilled it.
“Lucky. Uh-huh.” Brooks stopped and stuck a hand on her hip. Uh-oh. She studied me hard, her eyes flashing copper. I was going to combust any second. Then she waved a whatever hand through the air and said, “Did you say that Ixkik’ was your teacher?”
“Not my teacher. She was using him to write that message, Are your eyes wide open?”
“That doesn’t sound good.” She looked up at the sky, then back to me. “Maybe it was just a really bad nightmare.”
“Nah,” I said. “She was there for sure.” Which made me never want to fall asleep again.
“And Adrik was there, too? Like there there, or like you just dreamed about him?”
I gave it half a thought and was shaking my head before the words came out. “He was there. Like, in the flesh.” Adrik had looked different than the glassy-eyed students and Mr. H—they were more like paper cutouts, two-dimensional. He was fully there, in all three dimensions.
“Huh” was all Brooks said.
“Huh? Huh what?”
“Maybe his gift”—her eyes drifted to mine—“has to do with dream walking.”
“Dream walking?” I remembered how my neighbor, Ms. Cab, had shown up in my dreams all those months ago, but I’d thought that was because I carried one of her magic eyeballs, making it possible for her to communicate with me.
“Dreams are sacred,” Brooks said, continuing down the path. “They were once a way of communicating with ancestors. And I’m no expert, but Quinn has told me how, a long time ago, spies used dreams to send secret messages.”
Brooks hooked a left down an even narrower, darker path littered with rocks and fallen leaves. Thick, knotted tree branches twisted in a creepy shadow web. I could feel the weight of the miniature monkey eyes on me even though I couldn’t see the rascals. I braced myself for a toilet paper pounding.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“The gods happened,” Brooks said with a hint of sadness. “They banned the whole practice, because they didn’t want anyone else to be able to communicate in secret. They’re so mean.”
“Well, if Adrik is a dream walker, then he should hang out in someone else’s head. It was creepy, like being watched when you don’t know you’re being watched.”
We came to a crossroads. Brooks looked left, then right, hesitating.
“Are you lost?”
She exhaled dramatically. “I mapped this when I was flying, and things always look so different when you’re in the air.”
I was about to ask if we should fly the rest of the way, when she glanced over her shoulder, then up to the canopy of trees. “This is right.” We continued walking the tight path that began a sharp incline, and I thought how easy it would be to get lost here.
Fuego sank into the soft earth as I walked. “How am I supposed to find a centipede in the jungle, and which jungle?”
“Maybe it’s not literal,” Brooks said.
Brooks seemed different since she’d
come back from her dad’s. Don’t get me wrong—she was still feisty and guarded, but she seemed more patient or more grown-up or more something I couldn’t put my finger on.
“What do you mean, ‘not literal’?” I asked.
“What if the centipede is a symbol, like an emblem on a ring, or a picture on a T-shirt or something?”
Brooks had a point. The Fire Keeper was a poet and songwriter, after all. His words could have a million meanings, which only added to my frustration. “Why do you think he sent me the message?” I was thinking out loud. “I mean, why not send it to Hurakan?”
“He likes you more?”
“I’m serious. Hurakan said this mess was for the gods to worry about.”
“But the Fire Keeper said that Zotz and Ixkik’ are way ahead of the gods,” Brooks said. “So maybe he thinks you should handle it.”
“Handle it?” I said, frustrated. “This isn’t some chore like taking out the trash.”
“It kinda is.” Brooks patted me on the shoulder. “Relax. Hurakan and Ah-Puch will be back tonight. I’m sure they discovered all sorts of stuff at their meeting, and by the time they get here, I bet they’re only two steps behind.”
Was that supposed to make me feel better? “How about zero steps behind?” My gut twisted into a triple-knotted rope. I wanted to share Brooks’s confidence, but the fire in my blood doesn’t lie, and at that moment, it was hissing right below my bones.
And in all of the craziness of the last day, I had nearly forgotten one important thing the bat god had said. “Zotz called you a water nawal.” I glanced at Brooks. She kept her gaze on her swiftly moving feet, acting as if I hadn’t asked the question. “He said he hadn’t seen one in over a century. What did he mean?”
We came to an enormous clearing.
Before us stood a bright red temple with multilevel platforms, massive steps that led to a pillared building on top, and corbeled roofing. The exterior walls were decorated with huge sculptures (probs of the gods) and glyph carvings. The temple had a single doorway on the bottom level and butted up against a lush hill blooming with red and yellow flowers.
Rosie sat at the foot of the stairs, licking her front paw like she had been waiting all day.
The Shadow Crosser Page 11
