Yeah, Marena said. Break a leg, babe.
Thanks.
Youre going to kill em.
Thanks. I realized she was holding my hand. Yikes. Tenderness. Watch out for that shit.
Okay, she said. Lets move on. What was your first nudibranch?
It was a pair of Hermissenda crassicornis. Dawn was coming up outside, and maybe because of the red lamp the sky looked greenish. Ixchel was still visible. It seemed almost orange, and larger. I coughed.
Who was your first real girlfriend?
That would be Jessica Gunnison.
Who was the voice of Mickey Mouse?
Hang on a second, I said. My tongue hurt. I kept looking at Ixchel. Now it was almost red, and for some reason Vega, which is above it and to the left, also looked red, and then a third red star became visible just below it, and then there were five and nine and then thirteen, and the dots grew and merged together, and I realized they were drops of blood, dripping out of my tongue onto our folded petition to One Ocelot, at the womb of the sky. The growls of giant mahogany-trunk rasps pulsed through the stone.
Jed? Marenas voice asked.
Im okay, I tried to say, but my mouth was all full of pain and blood. There was something Id forgotten. Dont worry, I tried to say, I actually feel pretty great. My body had that running-on-fumes quality of having been awake for a long time, but there was a compensating lightness to it. I inhaled a flood of resinous air. It was sticky with the full spectrum of the offering smoke, wild tobacco, geranium buds, burning skin, cilantro, rubber, bubbling crystals of copal amber, and something else underlying everything, something from before, something happy, oh, thats it, thats what it is, its chocolate
Wait.
There was something Id forgotten, not
TWO
The Opposite of Cinnamon
IX IN AD 664
[27]
We pulled the rope of thorns through our tongue, burned it, crawled out the door, took five steps, and stood at the lip of the great killing stairs. The Laughing People, the Ixians, strained up toward us and started the countdown, or rather count-up, pulsing to the numbers, spinning their featherwork parade shields from front to back so that the whole human field flashed from cold red to blue-green and back again and again.
Damn, I thought. We really had no clue.
Id had a pretty clear idea of what the place would have looked likeand then the actual thing was so different that for a second I actually thought I was somehow in the wrong place, that the wave had missed Ix and I was in ancient Khmer, say, or Atlantis, or in the future, or on some other planet. Come on, Jed, orient yourself. Thats the cleft peak, San Enero. Except its all built anddamn. Things wobbled in and out of visibility through the gold whorls of offertory feathers. A domehead captive screamed somewhere below and trailed off into a kind of cackling gasp.
Holy shit, I thought. It had actually worked.
I tilted my head back and swallowed a mouthful of my own blood. Es delicioso, I thought, so many layered tastes, sweet-corn oil, copper, umami, seawater … it really is the best thing in the world, the way it shoots out of a dark-purple vein and then flashes instantly into scarlet, and then the way it slowly mellows to sienna and then skins over into black amethysts and finally puckers into those chewy nuggets that are just packed with tangy goodness …
MAX ECHE? Who are you?
Are you one of the four four-hundreds?
What?
Huh.
What was that?
Are you one of the thirteen? Or one of the nine?
Was that me?
Get out of my skin.
Oh, hell. I wasnt in charge. The target had not been erased. I was trapped.
Uuk ahau kalomte yaxoc …
Overlord, greatfather,
Grandfather-grandmother
Zeroth sun, firstborn sun …
Oh, hell.
Bad break, Jedface. Wrong place, wrong time. No, right time, roughly right place, definitely wrong body. Cońo cońo cońocońo fuckedy fuckedy fuck fark fook.
Ahaus niche indeed. Sure, its called the ahaus niche, so naturally the ahau would be in it, right? Malo. Wrong.
This Chacal character is 9 Fanged Hummingbirds replacement. Royal autosacrifice by proxy. Theyre going to toss me to the human sharks, and then in a few days, 9 Fanged Hummingbirds going to come back from the grave, or rather the kitchen, and step right back into the saddle. Damn, we were dumb. Good going, guys. You too, Jed. Serves you right for trusting them. ĄCutre! Jerk, fool, moron
Hold it.
Bad luck. Do something. Assess the damage. Regroup.
Oh, shit, Dios te salve, María, ni modos, no way, no way.
Phalange, eyelid, sphincter, whatever. Move. Move. Move.
Oh, chíngalo, oh fuck, oh God, oh fuck God.
Trapped. Frozen. Helido. Cast in epoxy. Lucite souvenir paperweight.
Focus, I thought. Move. Concentrate. Move. Open mouth. Say it!
Nada.
Claustropanic. Holyshitholyshit.
Está chupado, no sweat, so, lets all just shout it out, shall we? Stand and deliver.
Everybody does it, everybodys doin it, birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, lets do it, lets cease to exist, oh God oh God.
And give these bastards a lethal dose of R-E-S-P-, et cetera. Theyll be lining up to kiss our culo. Right?
No answer.
Jesu-bloodyfucking-cristo.
Last chance. Come on. Chacal? Were pals, right? żCompadre? Dont do this. Listen. At least give it a hearing. Think about it. How often does this happen to someone? Its not an event to just shrug off. No matter what these hustlers tell you, if you just give this a try theyll all just fall into line. We can take over this whole place. Together. You and me. Chang and Eng. No sweat. Give me ten days and well have those Ocelot wankers wiping our calabazo. Nobodys going to think less of us. Come on. Say it. Say it.
Nothing.
Listen, I thought hard, if you can stop just enjoying the damn moment for a second I think I can get you out of this, but youve got to listen to me listen listen please listen a second listen listen please
Silence. He wasnt buying it. It was like his concentric certainties were hugging me to death.
HEY, I thought at him. Think. Try to understand what Im telling you. This is not the center of the universe, por el amor de Dios, its just plain Central America, and if you could just let me set you straight on a couple basic things you wont want to die anymore, I can get us out of this out we can get out get out, get, get …
Four suns, then five suns …
Chacals hearing was better than mine. It was like he could zero in on each individual voice and tell whether its owner was sick or healthy or young or old or had filed or unfiled teeth. And we could tell that each voice believed, that each one knew its presence was essential for the collective to conjure One Ocelot down from his sky cave.
Eight suns …
We were looking down. Deathward. Ropes of black rubber smoke scrolled up to us from twin-giant incensarios at the base of the stairs, at the eye of the vortex … God dog, those stairs. They were stairs that didnt go up. Just down. According to Michaels calculations, when someone the weight of an average Maya gent of the periodsay, Chacaltook the big leap, hed be at the bottom in about 2.9 seconds, that is, roughly the time it takes a bowling ball to roll down the alley and hit the pins, and in most cases hed be in at least two main pieces. Yep, about a minute from now well be tamale filling, our head will be a ball in the cosmic soccer game, and not only will I be fuqueteado but everybody in 2013, and I really mean everybody, they, too, will be fuqueteados
Come on, Joaquín, just grab the wheel. Just move his mouth, just find that synapse, push that button, LIF DAT BALE. Come on. Wait. Did my left leg just quiver? I think so, I think so. Again.
Again.
Nothing.
A flake of skin ash scuttled across our forehead and I thought I could see Chacals uay, that is, his animal self, fly out ahead of us, a gray owl. There was an instant of perfect balance. All 620 ą muscles of my body were at full tension. I thought I could see where I was heading, into a rush of egoless motion, a feeling like I was a chrome flying fish leaping over a green guilloché-enamel sea, and then that I wasnt just one fish but the whole school, and then a seawide army of them, all leaping in unison, swimming on the wind. We took a last breath.
Hell. Marenas going to wonder what happened. Shell think I screwed up.
Try. Again. MOVE!
Nothing.
Wuklahun tun …
Nineteen suns …
Last chance gone. Chances all used up.
Well, at least I got to see it, I thought. Thats still a lot.
Ready.
Please. One more second. Please.
My feet shifted for purchase on the stone launching pad. They found the exact spot. I lowered my bejeweled body into a feline crouch, eager to spring out over the stairs. Id make it, I thought. Id never be enslaved by the Night Chewers. I wouldnt have to fight my way through the underwaterworld. The smokers would treat me as well as if I really were 9 Fanged Hummingbird himself. Theyd convey me straight to the womb of the skys thirteenth shell, right into the fire. Finally Id be able to rest. I would achieve oblivion.
… Twenty-score twenty-score sheaves of suns,
This is the number we ask you to give to us,
One Ocelot, over us, come to us, grace us.
Silence. Somewhere, a rock dove cooed.
This is it, I thought. Really better think of something, something clev
A single voice spoke, somewhere behind and above me. It wasnt a human voice. Its a macaw, I thought. No, its a trained spider monkey. Or maybe its some kind of scraper instrument, a stone guira, a bone ratchet, anything but a personbut then somewhere in the sea of my new memories I knew it was human, that it was a dwarf s voice, magnified by a giant megaphone and distorted by splintering off the citys thousand angled planes. It was a male, but it was above a countertenor, like the voice of Alessandro Moreschi, the Last Castrato. There was an odd blankness to it. Or maybe I should say there was a lack of doubt. It was as though the voice had never, ever been questioned. It wasnt that it was used to commanding, but rather that it had never said anything that wasnt an order by definition and that there had never been even a possibility in the mind of the voices owner that it would ever be disobeyed. And in some fold of my new brain I could feel that Chacal knew whose voice it was, and then a moment later I also knew. It was the voice of the real 9 Fanged Hummingbird, the ahau and kalomte of Ix.
It said:
Pitzom baxbäl!
Which, roughly translated, meant:
Play ball!
That was it. Time to dive.
[28]
Choopkintikeen kin ox utak!
It was me. Id shouted it out. I DID IT! I thought, I CAN OVERRIDE C CHACAL! YyyaaaAAAAYYYJED!!
Silence. A green jay cackled somewhere.
Okay. Get out the rest. Verb difference. Remember the consonant shift. Chopchin, not choopkin. Sub in that thing they call themselves, ajcheej winik. Laughing People. Breathe from the diaphragm. Go.
Choopchintikeen kin ox utak! I said, trying to project without shrieking,
I am the blinder
of the third sun hence:
Fourteenth katun,
on 12 Wind,
on 1 Toad,
The Northern Belcheress
will burst with ulcers
shell rain her blackness
on the hills, the valleys,
And only I know how to lead you through it,
You laughing people, you need
WATAL WATAL WATALWATALWATALWATAL!!! STOP STOP STOP STOPSTOPSTOP!!! his mind shrieked around me. I choked up, sixty-one words before the end. Come on, damn it. Get it all out. Through the darkness, through the
Nothing. Mierda. I was just barking airlessly like a lung-shot dog. A feeling, a very terrible feeling, like shame but deeper than shame, rose up around me like a tide of acid vomit. It soaked into my mind and filled me up with a single word:
AJSAT!
Like all important words it didnt quite translate. But there is an English word thats very close, especially if you imagine it used in a setting of high social pressure, say in an important kickball match in, say, fourth grade:
LOSER!
Youve made me LOSE, you made me LOSE, LOSE, LOSE, I AM A LOSER BECAUSE OF YOU, LOSER, LLLLOOOOOOSSSZERRRR
Chíngate, I thought, fuck you, I fucked you up. I tried to step back from the edge but my body had seized up again. Something rose out of the city, a collective intake of breath. What were they thinking? Somehow we seemed to tip forward without quite falling and I saw the frozen crowd rotating up over me and the chopper-steps rising to meet me, and as my eyes focused on the flint teeth of the third stair from the top, the one that was going to cleave into my face, time really did stand still.
Im dead, I thought. That was the last thing I saw, and its etched on whats left of my brain. Going to fade out slowly. Na na. Mommy. Please. Hmm. Odd things were happening in the hinterlands of my vision. A sort of wicker beach ball floated past me on the left and bounced down the stairs. On its fourth bounce it shattered and iridescent green and magenta things exploded out of it. Feathers? No, too fast. One darted by us. Hummingbirds. Huh.
No, its not subjective, I thought. Were not falling. Were really suspended somehow, or rather, somebodys holding us from behind. Hmm. A huge unfired-clay potit was at least as big as one of those man-size olive-oil jars (pithoi?) in the palace at Knossosarced over my head, slowly settled on the seventh step, and smashed into a house-size puff of yellow and black. The puff grew and spread around us. They were bees. Other things fell around me, orchids, marigolds, bits of jade, stiff white tortillas Frisbeeing over the stairs, but now wed already turned around, or rather wed been turned around, our back was to the sun and we were facing the door of the sanctuary, a black lampreys mouth in a giant cat-toads face crowned with vegetable glory. Dont let me fall backward, that would be just too undignified. Did I think that? Or was it Chacal?
I also realized we werent breathing.
We die, we burst.
Well, that was Chacal. Hey, sorry I blew your big
Zero, zero. Gak. Claustrophopanicaphobiofear. Dont choke us, please, just breathe, just breathe in, breathin. Got. To. Suck. In. This. Sucks. Breathe. In.
Gkk.
Hands held me on either side and a giant live thing reared up in front of the doorway. At first, what theyd call the purely associational or prediagnostic or whatever part of my perception read it as a bird, and not just any bird, but a phororacoid, an eight-plus-foot flightless flesh-eating Miocene hell-butcher with nine-inch talons and an eyespotted cockscomb the size of yearling pigs. But the Chacal side of meand it was a side of me, by this timeknew who it was. It was a greathouse, that is, an aristocrat, in his full ceremonial headdress. Although headdress isnt a strong enough word. It was a swollen prosthesis, a vegeto-mechanico Synthetic-Cubistic construct avant la lettre. One of the long plumes of its crest brushed my forehead and I saw that it was artificial, a composite of hundreds of red macaw feathers sewn onto a bamboo stalk. It extended a claw and held me by the chin. Under its bone-inlaid papier-mâché beak, deep down in its gizzard, I saw it had just swallowed someone else, there was a tiny head down there, as bald as a turtles and wrinkled like brain coral, glistening red, glaring at me with burnt-orange vulturine eyes. I could feel that Chacal had known him personally, that in fact to Chacal he was both close and revered, and then I realized I knew he was the red bacab, the bacab of the east. It was 2 Jeweled Skull.
Kill me,
Chacal thought. Absolve me. I have ruined us, I have ruined myself, kill me, renounce me.
Shame. God damn it, I tried to think, this is not about me. But Chacal and I shared emotions the way conjoined twins share a blood supply, and I thrashed along with him in that quicksand of cosmic embarrassment. It was an emotion I knew but hadnt felt sincewell, I dont even know when. But I suppose anyone can bring back a whiff of it by remembering something from kidhood, like, maybe in the recess period following that kickball game the other kids ganged up on you and started pelting you with those big red shards of processed cedar bark, and if you could relive what it felt like to have everyone you knew laughing at you, how desperately you tried to will yourself to melt down into the ground, and how there was no contradiction between hating the teasers and still needing their acceptance … but then youd have to add that for Chacal there wasnt even the hope of eventual refuge that you might have seen dimly on the horizon of the playground. Thered never be any parents to run home to, no sympathetic school nurse, no eventual growing up, nothing. Thered only ever been one exit for him and Id just welded it shut. My vision tunneled in on 2 Jeweled Skulls arm, on the jade scutes around his wrist, on the exposed upper arm with a crust of cinnabar cracking into scales on his loosening skin, on a lone shoot of black hair sprouting out of the scales like an Aporocactus in the Mojave, I mean, epiphytic cacti, grow, usually … whoa. Dizzying out. By now we hadnt taken a breath in over a minute and I was getting that gray fuzz like the times when I was little, when Id cut myself and nearly bled out. A vulturine voice I thought was 2 Jeweled Skulls pierced the carbon-dioxide buzz in our skull and I thought I caught the word lukkintik, defilement. There was something in the tone, something maybe evenapologetic? Pleading? Hot fingers wriggled into my mouth and even though Id lost proprioception, there was still a sense of falling into the soft red dark. Am I finally rolling down? I wondered. Please let me fall, dont catch me, let me roll, its what I want, its what I want.
Brian D'Amato Page 36
