by M. G. Harris
That’s it – I’ve had enough of his boasting. “You DO NOT fly those Muwan.”
He gives me this lopsided grin. “Sure I do. Don’t believe me . . . you wanna see?”
I’m open-mouthed. “Do I wanna. . .?”
“. . .take a trip in a Muwan with me?”
Well, yeah. Now this is one for the blog.
BLOG ENTRY: THE WORLD DOESN'T JUST DISAPPEAR WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES, DOES IT?
The thing is – I could almost believe it does. Because sometimes things happen and you think, hey, what happened to the world I thought I understood? It was only when I went up in a Muwan with Benicio that I realized how much, lately, the world keeps transforming into someplace darker, a place in which I have no idea how to navigate.
Then that aircraft lifted us up over the treetops of the Campeche jungle and I felt the troubles of the past few weeks melting, dripping away like snow on a car. My spirits lifted. It was as if the sun had risen on a brand-new day in a brand-new world.
Benicio sneaked me back into the chair-lift station. This time it was a much shorter ride. After two or three minutes we arrived in a building of very obvious function – an aircraft hangar.
Even though I’d heard about the Muwan, actually seeing them just blew me away.
“Muwan means sparrow-hawk,” Benicio explained. I could see why.
I counted five aircraft in total. Shaped like a hawk with open wings, three of them had a bronze tinge to the paintwork, a cockpit shaped like a hawk’s head. They looked more like a large sculpture of a hawk than any credible version of an airplane. The other two craft were larger but sleeker, stripped-down versions of the bronze aircraft. The cockpit still looked hawkish, but in a more abstract, vaguely representative way. The wings were shorter, more squat and narrower. Instead of the bronze colour, the craft were a dark bluish-grey, completely matt.
An engineer wearing a grey jumpsuit shone his torch into an open panel on one of the craft, and I noticed that the light wasn’t reflected at all by the surface coating.
Benicio watched me watching the two Muwan engineers tend to their craft. There was a vaguely smug air to him, which didn’t surprise me, after what I’d said.
“This is soooo cool,” I whispered. “Which one’s yours?”
Benicio grinned. “The chief decides all that. It’s different each time. I’m going to take you out in this Mark I today. Some people really like the Mark Is. To us they have an old-fashioned style, which is totally cool. But the Mark II is a better machine.”
“So my father was in a Mark I? The bronze ones?”
“Yep, your grandfather too. We wouldn’t take the Mark II out for a simple mission. It’s still very secret.”
“My grandfather. . .?”
He flashed me a look then, like he’d spoken out of turn. “You’ll find out soon enough. . .”
The whole “bird” was almost nine metres long – hardly any bigger than a small airplane. Judging from where the engineers were concentrating most of their efforts, the propulsion system was under the cockpit. It must be tiny. As with a fighter plane, you climb in through the top of the cockpit, a dome of bronze-tinted, one-way glass that partly retracts. The pilot’s seat is planted right in the middle of the bird’s neck; it’s a deeply padded seat upholstered in a golden-brown suede-like fabric. Behind the pilot’s station, the craft widens slightly, with space for two narrower passenger seats. The wings sit just behind the cockpit and are angled down, giving the overall impression of a bird about to make a sudden landing. The belly of the bird is chequered with clear panels.
Watching my eyes trail over the airplane, Benicio seemed to read my thoughts. “Don’t bother looking for the jets. There aren’t any.”
“So how. . .?”
“. . .does it fly? Anti-gravity,” he said. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Anti-gravity? No way.”
With this self-conscious giggle, Benicio said, “Way!”
Benicio took one look into the control room and saw that it was empty. Apart from the two engineers, there was no one about. He turned to me. “OK, now. This is just between you and me, right? Just a really quick flight. A spin – and that’s it.”
I pointed to the engineers. “And them?”
Benicio gave them a quick glance. “They won’t talk . . . they’re my buddies.”
With that, he leapt over some crates of equipment and swung himself on the ladder of the nearest Muwan, and clambered into the cockpit. So I followed.
By the time I joined him in the Muwan, Benicio was fitting himself with a headset: earphones and an eyepiece that settled a couple of centimetres from his left eyeball. He tapped something on the dashboard, activating a control panel. I strapped myself in and the cockpit cover slid into position. We had 360 degrees of visibility from the top of the bird.
Benicio powered up, and I felt the craft start to vibrate. In the next minute, it lifted, trembling very slightly and almost completely silently. We were hovering. In almost total silence.
We flew towards a strip of light in the ceiling. A hangar door was open to the sky outside. We whizzed right through.
And then the velvety textures of the jungle canopy stretched before us, rippling across mountains as far the eye could see. The sky was coated with a thick layer of hazy cloud that turned an ominous grey colour at the edges.
Benicio was lost in his world of piloting, concentrating hard as he flew the Muwan above the treetops. We skimmed low, almost touching the trees. We were flying over the landscape at a dizzying speed. Now and then something distant, maybe a village, appeared on the edge of our vision. Next thing I knew, we were flying over it. Trees, mountains, houses, lakes, a river, a road; we left them all behind in a matter of seconds.
“How fast are we going?”
“Just under Mach 1. That’s our limit for travel close to the ground. Any faster and they hear us break the sound barrier. Next thing you know, people start reporting UFO sightings.”
“So you guys are responsible for all the UFOs?”
Benicio chuckled. “Some of them, sure. But not all. We can only account for about half of the sightings.”
“And the others?”
“Mostly, we guess that they’re secret military aircraft tests.” He seemed suddenly guarded.
“Mostly, but not all?” I was dying to know. Do the citizens of Ek Naab have some insight into one of the greatest mysteries?
Benicio wasn’t giving anything away. “We’re just like everyone else, Josh. We don’t have all the answers.”
Then the Muwan slowed down, banked hard to the right and circled. I recognized the outline of Becan’s moat-enclosed structures below.
“We were miles away from Becan!” I blurted. I’d imagined Ek Naab to be right underneath.
“The gateway is under Becan. Remember that first ride you took with Montoyo? It took you a long way into the Depths.”
“So where exactly is Ek Naab? On a map, I mean?”
He sniggered. “That’s top secret, buddy.”
It was the first time I’d had an aerial view of any Mayan city. Just breathtaking. There were a few tourists, so Benicio preferred not to take chances on someone getting a proper look at us. “If they just catch a glimpse, they’ll assume we’re a fighter plane,” he muttered, concentrating on his controls. Then he swung us up into the clouds.
I peered down at Becan, watching it disappear behind the mist. Looked just like another relic of Mexico’s Mayan past. Yet, who’d have thought. . .?
Benicio takes a call on his phone as we’re walking back from the chair-lift station. It’s late afternoon and people in the city look as if they’re going home from work or school.
“That was Carlos Montoyo,” he tells me when he’s finished. “The ceremony to install you as Bakab will be this evening, with robes and everything. You’re gonna eat with the Executive in the Hall of Bakabs.” With a touch of envy, he adds, “I’ve never even seen it.”
“Jeez. Sounds a bit
over the top.”
Benicio stares at me as though I’ve said something impossibly stupid.
“You’re thirteen, right? Well, when you are sixteen, you have the right to take your place on the Executive as the Bakab Ix.”
“When I’m sixteen?”
“That’s right. Montoyo is your proxy until then. But when you are sixteen, Montoyo will have to stand down. I hope you like government, Josh.”
“That’s just . . . ridiculous. Citizenship is, like, my worst school subject ever. And sixteen? Way too young!”
“If you’re not born and educated for it like the other Bakabs, I think it may be. Although the truth is, I don’t think they’ve ever actually had a Bakab from sixteen. Mostly they wait until the father dies.”
“It must have happened before.”
“Maybe so, but I never heard of it.”
“If being the Bakab Ix means I have to join your Executive, then you can forget this whole thing.”
Benicio frowns. “S’gonna be a pretty short term of office anyway. Unless you get the Ix Codex.”
“Because of the end of the world thing?”
“Exactly.”
Well, he may have a point. I’m finding it odd to be around people who assume the world is going to end in 2012. You’d think it would make it more scary. But no. Just the opposite – it makes it feel more like a crazy superstition.
Benicio escorts me back to the apartment I’d assumed was Montoyo’s but now realize is Benicio’s own. In the bedroom a clothes hanger is draped with a pair of crisply ironed, white linen trousers, a matching tunic and a poncho of pure white, finely knit wool, into which has been woven two black symbols, a glyph on the front and a jaguar’s head on the back.
As I change, he watches with what looks like pride. “Now you are Zac Cimi, the black Bakab, the Bakab Ix.”
I peer at myself in his tiny bathroom mirror. It’s only now, dressed as a Maya of Ek Naab, that I see the resemblance between myself and these people. I’m painfully aware that it’s just on the outside. Inside we’re so, so different.
Benicio hands me a helmet shaped like a jaguar’s head. It’s heavy, metal coated with an enamel of matt black paint.
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“No, dude, you look cool!” Benicio says, giggling.
I place the helmet carefully on my shoulders. It weighs heavily, even with the padded rims. I can’t see anywhere but directly ahead.
“Wouldn’t be much good in a fight,” I mutter.
Our evening walk through the paved alleyways is nerve-racking. Where before people had only glanced shyly or at least discreetly, now they stop in their tracks and gawp. No one says a word – they don’t need to. Benicio answers their questioning looks with a bashful little shrug, as if to say, I’m just the delivery boy. Into my ear he rasps, “Don’t worry. This is normal. In the past forty years only one man has been seen dressed as Zac Cimi.”
“Who?”
“My uncle – your father, of course.”
I try to stare directly ahead but it’s impossible not to catch the occasional eye. Is it hostility? Amazement? Relief? I imagine I’m seeing all reactions. They’re no more puzzling than my own. I’m wound tight as a cassette tape; snap me and I’ll spool into chaos.
At the sacrificial cenote, we’re met by two guys carrying flaming torches. Benicio whispers that it’s all normal, part of the ceremony. “It’s rare for all the Bakabs to dine together,” he says. “They honour you.”
And that’s where he leaves me. Looks like the torch guys and I are headed for the main pyramid. The pyramid has no platforms, just a single staircase leading to two towers. The masonry is stuccoed, painted a deep red, the staircase inscribed with turquoise and gold-coloured glyphs. As I climb the stairs, I feel myself examined, scrutinized by the dozens of eyes. The solemnity of the moment hits me. These people – they expect something from me.
But I’m just a kid. What the heck can I do?
We enter the left tower, where the bronze door to an elevator slides open. The fire-torch guys step back. From here, I’m on my own. The lift goes down just a few metres and opens on to a wide hall, which I’m guessing occupies the entire width of the pyramid. An attendant standing by the door takes my helmet and places it on a small table with three others – one white, one red and one yellow.
The stone walls are hung with tapestries of Mayan art – ancient kings in ceremonial dress receiving prisoners of war, and other images, less obvious to interpret. The ceiling is low, giving the hall an intimate, almost claustrophobic quality. The room is lit by multiple muted lights that mimic the flicker of candlelight.
In the centre is a long table made of varnished hardwood, laid with candles, wine glasses, platters of fruit and salad, ceramic bowls filled with rice, chafing dishes containing steaming heaps of spiced chicken, fried strips of plantain and round wooden boxes for tortillas.
Standing behind their chairs, watching my entrance, are three guys dressed pretty much like I am, except for the colour of their Bakab symbols; one is white, one red, one yellow. Carlos Montoyo is there too, also dressed in some traditional clothes, without the poncho or the symbol, along with a middle-aged woman wearing a white embroidered dress and a man I’d guess to be in his sixties, his long white hair neatly plaited, deep lines drawn in his face. He looks to be a pure-blood Mayan, every bit as proud and kingly as the figures in the tapestries.
The oldest member of the group, however, isn’t White Plait (who I’m guessing is the mayor) but the Bakab with the red symbol. He’s completely bald, with narrow, pale eyes that don’t follow me the way everyone else’s do. Instead, he simply stares, almost dreamily, into the candle to his right.
They beckon me, so I approach. There’s one empty place, next to the bald Bakab with the red symbol. When I’m standing close to his left, he turns to me, but his eyes won’t meet mine. It’s a little unnerving, and I offer Carlos Montoyo a small shrug. He replies with just the vaguest widening of his eyes in the red Bakab’s direction. A quick glance around at the others, and I see they’ve all got the same expression.
Into the silence, the red Bakab speaks.
“They’re trying to indicate to you, young Joshua, that I’m blind.”
His English pronunciation is flawless.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
The red Bakab chuckles, a deep baritone laugh.
“So, young Josh. It’s good to finally meet you. I knew your father, and grandfather too. Very well.”
The old man seems almost moved. I don’t really know what to say.
How could he have known my father well?
“In the Hall of Bakabs each of us speaks the truth of our inner self,” intones the mayor in a sudden, theatrical voice that breaks the hushed atmosphere. “A truth that can only be contested with blood.”
There’s a long pause while the others mutter something under their breaths. My guess is it’s something like “Amen”.
“I am Chief Sky Mountain,” he continues. “Mayor of Ek Naab.”
Montoyo declares, “I am Carlos Montoyo, proxy for the Bakab Ix.”
“I am Rodolfo Jaguar, the Bakab Muluc!” says a guy in his forties with white symbols.
“I am Lizard Paw, the Bakab Cauac!” says another, with yellow symbols.
The red Bakab says in a faint voice, “I am Blanco Vigores, the Bakab Kan.”
“And I am Lorena Martinez, the atanzahab.”
They all turn to me expectantly.
“I’m . . . er, Joshua Garcia,” I say. Their expressions show that they’re waiting for more. “The Bakab Ix.”
A feeling of relief fills the room.
“Congratulations, Josh. You just became our newest Bakab Ix,” says Blanco Vigores with a weak smile.
Huh! That was easy!
Chief Sky Mountain asks Blanco Vigores to say the blessing, which he does, speaking quietly, words I don’t understand. I’m guessing it’s a Mayan language, probably Yucatec.
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Sitting down, Blanco Vigores makes slow, careful and unsteady movements; more than I’d expect on account of his blindness. He moves like a very old man, but from his looks, I’d have put him no older than seventy.
How old is the guy, really?
As I take my place amongst these people, I’m suddenly aware of how young I am. They’re all trying to act as though this is an everyday matter. Well, I’m not finding it easy to play along with the act. I’m just Josh Garcia, from Oxford, I feel like saying. And I think you might have the wrong guy. Books of doomsday prophecies – that’s not really up my street.
Yet everything that’s happened in the past weeks and hours seems to have turned that view on its head.
Sitting in the Hall of Bakabs with the ruling Executive of Ek Naab, wearing the same ceremonial outfit that my father wore just months ago, and his father, and his father . . . it makes me feel more than a little special. Like everything fits into some cosmic plan.
Including me.
“It’s a magical age for us, Josh, our modern era. They have described this as the Golden Age of Ek Naab, the Era of Wonders.”
Chief Sky Mountain pours me a glass of crimson-coloured juice (pomegranate, so they tell me) and passes me a hollowed-out cactus head, chilled and filled with a cold soup of tomatoes, onions, and a cool green vegetable that I can’t quite place. I’m still guessing when Montoyo butts in. “Nopales,” he says. “Instead of cucumber, in the gazpacho. A traditional Spanish soup, yes? Adding nopales makes it Mexican,” he says. “The colonial with the indigenous.”
