William awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and back to his normal self. Teshna arrived soon thereafter with a plate of assorted melons, tortillas, and mashed beans. She sat beside him on his bed, setting the plate on her lap.
“Thank you,” he said in English, munching on a crunchy piece of guayaba seasoned with spice.
Teshna looked confused. “Thank you,” she said, repeating his words. “Ah, Nibpixanil.”
“Yes,” William said, pleased that she learned an English expression. He thought he would teach her more English if he had to stick around there for very long.
Teshna giggled, placing a small piece of mango in her mouth, staring into his eyes. “Mmm, sen kii,” she said. She leaned over and placed a piece of mango in his mouth too. “Sen kii?”
“Sen kii,” he said, agreeing that the food tasted good. But her stare seemed to imply something deeper.
Teshna ran her fingers up his left arm, and she touched the whiskers on his face. “Sen kii,” she said again, in a more provocative manner. She leaned forward and kissed him softly on his lips. William reached out, wanting to embrace her to extend the kiss further, but he forgot about the plate of food on her lap and bumped it onto the floor. The ceramic plate cracked, and his food went everywhere. Teshna’s face tightened, holding back her urge to laugh. She picked up a piece of the broken plate and set it on his lap with a smirk. She stood and sighed. “Uts’ kin, Balam.”
William blushed from his klutzy blunder. “Uts’ kin, Teshna. Oh, and nibpixanil,” he said, gesturing to the food on the floor. He wanted to say more, but he felt tongue-tied.
She nodded in a charming manner and went on her way.
William picked up his mess of food on the floor, ate some of it, and then dressed in the clothes that had been spread out on his bed. He really didn’t feel like wearing the feathered headdress again; he never liked wearing hats to begin with. But he put it on nonetheless and meandered down the hallway to the courtyard. He found Betty sitting alone on a bench near the dying ceiba tree, and he sat beside her.
“Well don’t you look spiffy,” she said.
“Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.”
The royal guards moved in closer when they saw William arrive, and they surveyed the area with the added attention of the Secret Service at an event with the President.
William studied the branches of the ceiba tree. “During the Binding Ritual, I actually became this tree for a time.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, it was so… weird.”
“Nah, you’re pulling my leg,” she said, and punched his arm.
Mayan women busied themselves in clusters around the courtyard, grinding corn into maize powder. They glanced over and seemed to be gossiping about them.
“No, really. I saw you walking with Teshna. You told her about planting rose bushes at your grandmother’s house.”
Betty’s eyes opened wide. “You’re right, I was talking about that.” She stood and tapped her foot nervously. “This is sure a wild barrel of monkeys we got ourselves into here, William.”
He thought about what Priest Quisac had told him just before the ball game. “Do you think it’s our destiny to be here?” he asked.
Betty laughed. “Seems more like crazy-ass bad luck, if you ask me… in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
William scanned the courtyard; groups of servants arrived with baskets of crops and began distributing the food to different work areas. Teshna had told him how the crops were being processed under supervision to better control the distribution of rations.
He looked around for Yax, but the King wasn’t there. “Where has Yax been lately?”
“Now that’s an interesting story,” she said, her eyes darting from left to right as if she was about to tell him a big secret. “After the harvest, that crazy kid went back up that owl pyramid—you know the one he showed us the other day?” She spoke in a hushed tone even though no one could have understood her regardless. “He wouldn’t come down to eat, to go to the bathroom, or for anything.”
Betty motioned for William to follow her. They moved away from the center of the courtyard to the shadows of the northern hallway. “Sometimes that kid just sat there on the steps. Other times he hopped around and was dancing to a nifty jig. Then somewhere around dusk, I went out for a walk, minding my own business, and I saw him again—prancing around, bucknaked, covered in blood, no less!”
A collective laugh from the group of Mayan women echoed through the courtyard, and Betty paused to make sure nobody was coming. She turned back to William with a sigh. “Sure, I dropped some bad stuff during my heyday too… did some things I wasn’t too proud of neither. But I’ll save those stories for when we run out of other things to talk about. Anyhow, I don’t know what the boy was on, but he was trippin’ big time. Finally, he came tiptoeing down the steps, high as a kite, with cuts all over his body… even on his boinker.”
William smiled, amused by the pain on her face when she described where Yax was bleeding from. “It must have been a bloodletting ritual,” William said. “My grandfather told me about them. They do it to have visions… to talk to their ancestors.”
“If that’s what it takes to talk to my dead relatives, then to hell with them,” she said.
“Balam, Bati,” Priest Quisac spoke from the hallway behind them.
Betty jumped and spun around, startled to see the Serpent Priest lurking there, his silver eyes glowing like a cat in the dark.
“Forgive me for alarming you,” he said in Yucatec-Maya, after seeing her surprised reaction. “The King would like to speak with you both.”
“Well, he’d better be dressed,” Betty said, drawing a laugh from William.
Priest Quisac understood her thought, but the frown on his face indicated that he didn’t grasp the humor in it. He turned and proceeded down the northern hallway toward the King’s room, with Betty and William following close behind.
“Welcome,” Yax greeted them from across the room, sitting in his jaguar padded throne as they entered. “The Serpent Priest told me of your adventures with Yum Cimil. It is no wonder that you became ill. I understand that he is most hideous.”
“You’re right. I hope I never see that ugly demon ever again!” William said, drawing a laugh from Yax and Teshna. He glanced around the room, noticing wall paintings of bloody battles and large statues of Mayan gods.
“Come and sit here with us,” Teshna said, gesturing to the animal skin mats on the floor. She exchanged a long moment of eye contact with William as he sat.
“We have much to discuss,” Yax said. He paused for a time, thinking, and then blurted out, “Where are you from?”
Taken aback by the directness of his question, William struggled to think of the best way to put it. “We actually came from this very land, not too far from here… near Bacalar.”
“But there is no one like you anywhere in our land,” Teshna said. “There would have been stories of you throughout the kingdoms had you indeed been here, in these lands.”
“That’s because,” he said, glancing at Betty, “we’re not from this time. We’re from the future.”
The Serpent Priest let out a satisfied sigh; he had the look of someone who just solved a difficult riddle.
“Our future?” Yax asked. “That is not possible. How can you be from a place that does not yet exist?”
“Balam speaks the truth,” the Serpent Priest said, reassuring him.
Teshna leaned forward, looking worried. “Perhaps he thinks he is speaking the truth, Priest Quisac, but he is still confused by the demon.”
While Yax and Teshna leaned back to whisper with each other, William took a moment to tell Betty what they were discussing. Priest Quisac sat with his arms folded, watching a tiny lizard scurry up the wall. It stopped on the ledge of a window and looked back as though it was listening to their conversation as well.
“If this is true… how far into the future are you from?” Yax asked
.
William shrugged his shoulders, thinking. “I don’t know… maybe a thousand years.”
“Impossible!” Yax said, becoming angry, as though the fabric of his reality was falling apart.
William took off his watch and handed it to him. “This is also from the future.”
Priest Quisac stood and moved near Yax and Teshna, peering over their shoulders as they examined the watch. Yax studied it for a moment, and his eyes grew wide. “What are these symbols that continue to change before my eyes?”
William took some time to explain his watch to them—how it worked, and what the different symbols meant. They were all impressed by the technology, but could not understand why anyone would want to record such small increments of time.
As Yax stared at the watch, looking at it from all angles, a look of revelation crossed his face. “Is this what you use to travel through time?”
William laughed. “No, it just tells what time it is—that’s all. In fact, you can have it.” He moved closer and attached it to the King’s wrist.
Yax held his hand up before him with a smile as big as someone who had just been given a briefcase with a million dollars in it.
“That’s gonna give an archeologist something to think about when he finds it,” Betty said, chuckling.
“Then tell us,” Teshna demanded. “How did you come to be here in our time?”
William went on to tell them the entire story: how he tried to rescue Betty when he thought she had drowned in the cenote, how they were pulled into a giant underwater whirlpool, how they escaped from the underground cavern by going through the tunnel with giant serpent carvings, and the passage with lights flashing all around them. He told them about their adventures on the way to the temple, and how they got trapped up in the chamber when the warriors arrived. “That’s when we realized we had gone back in time.”
As William spoke, Yax and Teshna listened to his story like they were watching an Indiana Jones movie, glued to their seats and munching on dried fruit like it was popcorn. Priest Quisac stood behind Yax, staring at a spot at the ceiling with a glazed look on his face, seeming to absorb the images from William’s mind. Betty, on the other hand, appeared bored, unable to understand what William was saying. She hugged her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth.
The Serpent Priest perked up when he heard William mention the underground cavern. He walked over to the narrow window in the corner of the room, rubbing his chin as if trying to remember something. When William finished his story, Priest Quisac turned around, cleared his throat, and said, “Near Bacalar, there are tunnels beneath the Sacred Cavern of Jade that lead to a chamber with an underground cenote, such as the one Balam describes. There is also a legend that his story reminds me of—when the feathered serpents first arrived in our lands many baktuns ago.”
William told Betty what Priest Quisac had just said—although he wasn’t sure what feathery snakes had to do with anything—and then asked the Serpent Priest if he could take him to the jade cavern to see it. “If it’s the same place, maybe we can figure out how to use the passage to return to our own time.”
“I must point out, Balam,” Priest Quisac said in a warning tone, “that if you are from a time one thousand years from now, that is near the end of the Great Cycle, when a cataclysm will purge the world of its negative imbalances.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve heard about that,” William said. “It’s supposed to be next year… in 2012.”
“Then you shall never go back, Balam,” Teshna said, pointing at him as if it was an order. “You will stay here with us.”
Priest Quisac coaxed the little lizard by the window into his hand, and he held it up, looking into its tiny black eyes as he spoke. “I sense that their arrival here is also connected to these events in their time.” He returned the little orange gecko to the wall and it crawled out through the window.
“But keeping to the events in our time,” Yax said. “Tell the others what you have told me, Priest Quisac—what must we do to end the soil plague?”
“As Calakmul used your father’s blood to set the curse, we will use their king’s blood to reverse the curse. We must capture King Aztuk of Calakmul and remove his head on the night of the next lunar eclipse, one hundred and thirty three days from now,” the Serpent Priest said.
“Oh, is that all?” William asked, being sarcastic. “How do you plan to capture their king?”
Seashell trumpets sounded off in the distance and approaching footsteps could be heard down the hall. Yax held up his hand to pause the conversation, as the steps grew louder. A moment later, noble Lamat entered and explained that ambassadors from the kingdom of Kohunlich had arrived. Yax told Lamat that he would be with them shortly. The noble nodded and left to pass on the King’s message.
Yax turned to William, thinking back to his question. “King Aztuk desires to defeat us, Balam. He will come to us,” he said, standing. “In a bloodletting vision, I entered the body of the white owl and watched through its eyes. We landed on the shoulder of Honac-Fey as he spoke to King Aztuk. I heard their plans.”
William translated to Betty. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, obviously recalling the boy’s unusual behavior on the temple the day before.
“What are their plans?” William asked.
“He desires to control the sea trade, the sacred lands of Bacalar, and to regain dominance of the region using the powers from the Sacred Cavern of Jade,” Priest Quisac said. “We cannot allow this to happen.”
“I have called for a general assembly today in the plaza at dusk,” Yax said. “Every citizen of our great city has been ordered to attend. There, the topic will be discussed with all. But for now, I must meet with the ambassadors of Kohunlich to request their assistance.”
After the meeting concluded, William stopped Priest Quisac in the hallway. “I didn’t want to bring it up in there, because it would have upset Yax and Teshna, but I thought I should tell you that in our time, all the great Mayan kingdoms have long since collapsed and are ruins. They say that most the population seemed to vanish over a short period. Do you think that means we don’t stop the soil plague, or end Calakmul’s plans?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. When we worry of the future, or dwell on the past, we are not able to focus on the present.”
“Then let me ask you this, Priest Quisac… do you think there’s a chance that we can return to our own time when this is all over?”
The Serpent Priest thought for a moment. “Where there is darkness, there is light. Where there is good, there is evil. Where there is a doorway in, there must also be a doorway out.”
Standing atop the North Palace, William observed a massive assembly gather in the plaza below him. Torches were lit at points along the various temples and palaces at dusk, providing ample light when the sun made its graceful descent into the western horizon. A steady drum beat echoed between the temples while citizens crammed forward for a better view of the King’s coming appearance. Higher ranking nobles and warriors stood along the bottom steps of the palace, while the majority of the people mingled along the plaster floor of the plaza. A sea of bodies stretched all the way to the South Palace, spanning the distance of a football field, filling every inch of free space and overflowing up the steps of the other buildings.
At the top of the North Palace, Priest Quisac stood beside William on the eastern side of the platform, while Teshna and Betty were on the western side across from them.
It amazed William to see how he had risen to the top of their social ladder. Other nobles who had served Dzibanché for their entire life remained below him in status. Yet they respected their place, and his. William’s success, he considered, was simply the result of stepping out from the shadows that night on the temple to save Yax.
Yax made a grand entrance just as the sun set, seashell trumpets blasting. He wore a giant eagle headdress that looked in the same direction he did, with a colorful cape of quetzal feathers trailing behind him. He
lifted his hands in the air, quieting the crowd of thousands. “I have called you all here today to discuss a matter of great importance for the future of our kingdom.” The acoustics of the palace carried his voice throughout the plaza.
Recapping recent events, Yax explained how the soil plague was set by King Aztuk of Calakmul to end their food supply. He moved down the stairway onto another rising, scanning the faces in the crowd. “Let it be known… on the morning following Venus as the evening star, in one hundred and twenty three days, Calakmul plans to launch a massive attack against us with an army of more than five thousand. King Aztuk believes that we will be weakened from the loss of our crops, and that we will provide no defense.”
Grumbles resonated through the crowd. “If our kingdom falls, so too falls the sacred lands of Bacalar, opening powers to King Aztuk that would make him a threat to the entire region—even to the empire of Chichén Itzá!”
Yax moved back up to the top platform, gazing across the ceremonial center. “We will capture King Aztuk, and on the night of the coming eclipse, ten days beyond the evening star, Balam will drain the King’s blood and use it with the bloodstone to free our land of the soil plague.”
The crowd erupted in a frenzy of cheers.
William shot a look of extreme concern to the Serpent Priest. “No one said I had to be involved in the sacrifice.”
“You carry the bloodstone, do you not?” Priest Quisac whispered.
“I don’t care! No way. I’m not doing it!” William grumbled.
Priest Quisac gave William an amused smile in return, as if he wasn’t concerned with William’s refusal to participate… like he knew he would have to do it anyhow. William’s opinion on the matter seemed to hold no merit to the Serpent Priest.
Yax paced along the platform, scanning the crowd with a stern look. “It is clear that our army has been reduced over the years. To succeed in the coming battle every man in our kingdom must join our cause. We must stand together to defend our kingdom.”
Cheers could be heard, but they were sparse and scattered.
The Serpent Passage Page 10
