by M. G. Harris
It’s another acrostic.
I call up Tyler again. This time he sounds really cross.
“Man, what? I’d just gone to sleep!”
“Tyler . . . this is really, really important. Can you read out the names of the ruins in the photos? In order of dates!”
I hear Tyler grumbling as he crawls out of bed and gropes around his desk. Papers rustle. “They’re here somewhere. . .”
“Tyler . . . just get them!”
“Chill, man. You’re so weird lately. Telling me to get out of Oxford! I dunno . . . what are you like, eh?”
I grit my teeth. Finally he seems to find the postcards.
“OK. Here we go. First one is – Tikal. Next is Labna. Next, Altun Ha, Calakmul, Ocosingo, Tikal again, Altun Ha again, Labna again, Palenque.”
I scribble the names down.
“You done?”
“Brilliant, thanks.”
“OK. Can I go to sleep now?”
“Uhhh . . . listen, think you could go round tomorrow and check if there are any more postcards?”
Tyler lets off a stream of swear words.
“So that’s a ‘no’. . .?”
“Yeah, Josh, it’s a ‘no’. I’m off to London tomorrow for the day. Where are you? You know your mum rang here yesterday? Emmy’s mum told her you were with me. I had to tell her you’d gone out to the cinema.”
“Thanks, Tyler, you’re a pal.”
I snap the phone closed and hand it back to Ixchel. My hands are actually trembling with excitement.
I can already see a pattern.
T-L-A-C-O-T-A-L-P.
“That’s a Mexican place name,” I say, breathless with the rush of discovery. “Has to be.”
“Close enough,” Ixchel says, frowning. “It could mean ‘Tlacotalpan’.”
“Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a small town, not too close,” she admits, “on the way back to Veracruz.”
“That’s it, then. We’re going. We’ll sneak aboard the bus with these Americans. How’s the driver to know we’re not with them? He’s bound to be going somewhere handy.”
Ixchel hesitates, looks doubtful. “I don’t know. Maybe. . .”
“What. . .?”
There’s real anxiety on Ixchel’s face. “We really should take the Adaptor straight to Ek Naab.”
I can hardly believe what she’s saying. “You mean . . . you and me go straight back to Ek Naab? Not to Tlacotalpan?”
Ixchel nods slowly, gazes directly into my eyes. Something about her expression irritates me. A feeling of frustration wells up inside, and I step away from her. “No way! Montoyo will flip his lid if he finds out I ran off again. And he’ll blame Benicio! I’m not doing that to Benicio, not again.”
“But, Josh. We’re close to Ek Naab here. We have to tell the Executive what we found about the Sect, about that Revival Chamber, what we saw them trying with the Key and the Adaptor . . . we need to do that right away. When they hear what we know, they won’t care that we sneaked away from Benicio.”
I glance away, avoiding her eye. I take a deep breath. “All right. I admit it – this isn’t just about going back with Benicio. This is about me. I need to know who’s sending these postcards. I need to go to that place.”
“Yes, but later! We should get back now,” she insists. “No more adventures.”
“No!”
Ixchel stops in her tracks.
“This is a message about my father,” I say. “I know it. Someone knows the truth! Maybe someone in the NRO who’s afraid to talk. Don’t you get it? I have to go.”
BLOG ENTRY: WAITING
Hey, Mum. I thought about calling you. It’s four a.m. here, ten in the morning in England, so you should be finished with breakfast. I didn’t want to have to lie to you, though. You still think I’m staying with Emmy’s family, and I’m feeling a bit bad about that. So I texted you again. Just to let you know I’m OK, and ask how you are. But of course, you won’t be able to reply – this number will just come up as “Anonymous”.
I’m waiting in yet another bus station, this time for a bus to Tlacotalpan. Not a fancy tourist-style bus this time – just a regular rickety one full of ordinary Mexican workers and farmers carrying chickens and goats.
Tlacotalpan is a small town in the state of Veracruz, in case you didn’t know. (I’ve never heard you mention it, so I don’t know if you do. . .) It’s on the banks of a big river, the Papaloapan. Someone there has been sending us the postcards. They have a message for me. Or maybe it’s for both of us – you and me?
I don’t really feel like blogging any more. I’m too nervous.
I wake up on the bus to Tlacotalpan to find Ixchel asleep and slumped against my chest, with my arm around her. I don’t want to move her away, because that might wake her up. On the other hand, it’s hard to get back to sleep now that I know we’re practically cuddling.
How weird is that?
So I stay exactly where I am, trying not to move my hand too much. I try to breathe like I’m asleep. And I try to ignore how nice and cosy this feels – which is the hardest job of all.
It doesn’t last long. Ixchel stirs against me. For about one second she squeezes me tightly. Then she sits bolt upright, staring at me like she’s seen a ghost.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing!”
“Are you trying to. . .?”
I gasp. “No way – are you kidding?”
“So what. . .?”
“You leaned on me! I just woke up a few seconds ago.”
“You didn’t think to get your hands off me?”
“Hey! I didn’t want to wake you up!”
Ixchel fumes. “Sure. Of course you didn’t.”
She shuffles into the corner of her seat. I sigh. Clearly, I can’t win.
I pull the plastic grocery-store bag from under my seat. It’s stuffed with cake bars and drinks that we bought in the bus station at Villahermosa. We each take two Gansitos. I open up a carton of pineapple juice. For the next few minutes we munch on squidgy cream-and-jam-filled chocolate-covered cakes.
“What’s the plan when we get to Tlacotalpan?” asks Ixchel, sucking juice through a straw.
I’ve tried not to think about this all night long. It hasn’t been too hard – there have been other things to distract me. The biggest one being: time travel? Did Montoyo actually say that? It was only a couple of days ago, but already the memory feels foggy, distant.
He couldn’t be serious. Could he?
I’ve been trying to think of any other explanation for why the codices are written in English. But I guess anything I come up with, the Mayans in Ek Naab will have thought of.
Itzamna was a time traveller. . .?
It sounds too ludicrous. But then I ask myself – what is the Revival Chamber? Is it the time-travel device?
Is Itzamna still floating around somewhere in time?
Ixchel’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “You know what I’m thinking about?” she says.
“Nope.”
“I’m wondering about Chan and Albita. Why do you think they appeared to us in our dream?”
“How should I know? I don’t even really know if that’s what happened.”
“What? You know it did.”
“If they did, then it must have been to show us the way out of there.”
“So we didn’t finish trapped down there, like Albita?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“And you don’t think there’s maybe another reason?”
I shrug, clueless. What’s she getting at?
Ixchel yawns, begins to speak in a dreamy, faraway voice. “I’ve never been in a haunted place before, you know. We bury the dead of Ek Naab far from the city, in a cemetery on a hill surrounded by an orange grove. They don’t come anywhere near us. We visit them on the Day of the Dead, and that’s it. It seems to keep them happy. They spend all their time in the sun, after all.”
&nb
sp; I don’t really know what to say to that. Somehow, telling her that I don’t believe in ghosts seems like a dumb thing to say.
“Are your parents still alive?”
“My father is.”
“But not your mum?”
Ixchel lowers her eyes for a second, and with a tiny movement, shakes her head.
“Oh,” I say, struggling for words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Is . . . is that why you ran away? You don’t get on with your dad?”
“It’s more complicated. My mother died years ago. My father has a new wife and we don’t get along so well.”
I think about my own mother. I haven’t ever really considered that she might marry again.
“I think I’d like it if my mum got married again,” I say. “She gets pretty sad sometimes. It would be good if there was someone else around for her.”
“Sure. That’s how it seems. Until it actually happens to you. Until they marry an evil witch.”
“You think your stepmother is an evil witch?”
“Yup.”
“Like in fairy stories?”
“What do you mean?”
“Snow White . . . stuff like that.”
“I haven’t read it.”
“Well, neither have I, not actually read it. But you’ve seen the Disney film, right?”
“What’s ‘Disney’?”
“Unreal.”
“What is?”
“That you’ve never heard of Disney. What did you do for fun, growing up?”
“Play, swim, learn to cook, and read and study . . . play piano and . . . I don’t know, the usual things. What’s ‘Disney’?”
I shake my head in wonder. “Man! We really don’t have much in common, do we?”
She gives me a sad smile. “That’s right. You see my problem with this whole arranged marriage thing?”
“Can I ask you . . . is there a boy you like in Ek Naab?”
“You think I’d leave Ek Naab if there was some boy I liked?”
“I dunno. If you weren’t allowed to go out with him, maybe.”
“I don’t like having my life controlled, OK? That’s it. This Disney film, for example. Maybe I’d have liked to see it, you know? Maybe it’s good, maybe not. But I’d like the choice. I’d like to live in the real world. Not locked away – like in a convent.”
“You know what a convent is, though?”
“Of course! They made me learn all about the history of Mexico. Didn’t they think that one day I’d want to see all these places for myself? It’s a crazy way to live.”
“You should definitely see a Disney film,” I tell her. “At least, you’ve got to see Toy Story 2.”
“Toy Story 2,” she repeats, thoughtfully. “I’ll add that to my list.”
I turn away and look through the bus window. The road is narrow, with sugar cane growing right to the edge of the tarmac. A faint morning mist floats above the surface of the road, barely a metre thick. The sky is grey, but the clouds look wispy, as if the sun could burn them away by lunch time. I watch as a falcon – or some other bird of prey – hovers high above the reeds for a moment and then plummets into the cane field.
Ixchel may be pretty different to me, but we have at least one thing in common.
We’ve both lost a parent.
Like me, Ixchel goes quiet. She finishes off the crumbs from her Gansito, licks melted chocolate from her fingers.
Not long afterwards, we arrive in Tlacotalpan. I’ve been trying to avoid Ixchel’s question, but she has a point.
We’ve followed the instructions in the postcard message.
So – what now?
Ixchel, me and the other dozen passengers empty out at the bus station. Everyone else seems to know where they’re going, with their chickens in cages, but Ixchel and I just mill around.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Give me a few minutes,” I say, staring hard at a street map on the wall of the bus station. The truth is that I’ve got no idea.
I squint as I gaze around, use my hand to shade my eyes against the sharp white light. I’ve never seen a Mexican town that looks quite like this. Wide, potholed avenues, no cars; neat grass verges and old buildings with colonnades. The walls are brightly coloured – ice-cream pink, butter yellow, peppermint green, redcurrant red.
But where are the shops, the traffic, the bustling tourists, the townsfolk? It’s only noon, yet it feels like everyone’s gone home for a siesta. It’s like a ghost town – if ghosts lived in ramshackle, quaint-old-town splendour.
We turn into the fanciest town plaza I’ve ever seen. Apart from us, there are a couple of backpackers taking photos of the oriental-looking gazebo in the middle of tall palms, hibiscus bushes and smaller trees. Behind the central garden is a church, painted in gleaming white and grey, with a picture-book bell tower. A Dominican priest wearing sunglasses and a white habit with a black cloak makes his way, head bowed, towards the church.
A middle-aged guy in an apron opens up a café on one corner of the square. He drags white plastic tables on to the marble tiles outside. He must turn on some music, because out of the blue, the square echoes with the tinny noise of an old-fashioned bolero, a romantic singer crooning over woodwind, scratchy brass and bongo drums. It’s like we’ve stepped back in time – I don’t even know how long – fifty years?
“So. . .” Ixchel says, turning to me.
I keep my eyes on the café, trying to ignore her. She’s dying to hear me admit that I haven’t a clue what to do. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction.
“Any smart ideas?”
“Let’s ask at the café.”
“Yes, but . . . ask what?”
“I dunno . . . let’s ask about the postcards. See if they know someone who’s interested in Mayan sites.”
Ixchel ponders. “I guess it’s a place to start.”
It’s obvious she’s not impressed.
“Look,” I say, “whoever sent those postcards wanted me to come here. They are watching – which means it may not be safe to come up to us out of the blue.”
“Who’s they?”
“The NRO,” I reply, a bit surprised.
“Really? Not the Sect?”
“Outside of Ek Naab, only the NRO have Muwans. My dad was captured by people flying Muwans – the NRO.”
“And you’re sure the Sect don’t have them?”
I’m exasperated. “Why would Madison bother chasing me in a car if he had a Muwan?”
Ixchel shrugs. “Hey, I’m just asking. You seem to make many assumptions. . .”
As we’re walking over to the tiny café, a fair-haired, elderly lady emerges from around the corner. She’s heading for the café too, and beats us to it. She takes a seat at one of the two outside tables under the arches, and calls out in Spanish, “Some manzanilla tea with my quesadilla, could you, Victor?”
We sit at the opposite table. I can’t help glancing at the lady. From her accent, I’d guess that she’s not Mexican – probably American. I think she’s in her sixties. She’s about the same height as my mum, with very short blonde hair that’s obviously been coloured. She’s dressed in a light floral dress with a knitted shawl. Her skin is very pale, arms slightly freckled, her face soft, with peachy cheeks. She wears just a hint of make-up, and lipstick. After staring out at the plaza for a minute, she takes a paperback book from her shoulder bag and starts to read.
Victor the waiter comes out with his notepad and pencil stub, asking for our order. We order sincronizados – ham and grilled cheese in tortillas – and bottles of fizzy apple. I count my money. I have enough for one more round of restaurant snacks, bus-ticket money and that’s it. When Victor’s gone, I look across at the woman.
And then she looks up from her book, straight into my eyes. I’ve never had a complete stranger stare at me that way before. Her gaze bores deep into me. She tilts her head to one side, as if considering.
“Excuse me,” I say in English, “are you American?�
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She pauses for a long time, pursing her lips. “That I am, young man. And I’m betting that you’re British – am I right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And Mexican too.”
