Curse of the Ancients

by Matt De La Peña

  “Fine,” Sera said. “We’ll go check it out, then we’re coming right back down here and finding Riq.”

  Dak pumped his fist a few times, then waved for Sera to follow him. He didn’t know what to expect from a secret Mayan meeting, but it was bound to be worth seeing.

  Dak and Sera climbed the boulders in front of the cave and took a few steps inside. The musty smell brought back a slew of memories for Dak. He remembered waking up on the makeshift cot with a man wearing feathers, burning herbs over his chest. He remembered watching Sera’s lips move as she spoke to him in words he couldn’t quite hear. But mostly he remembered the strange visions he’d had throughout his recovery. There was the one where he was trapped inside a well. Or the one where he was climbing through a cramped tunnel that never seemed to end. But the strangest vision of all was the one where Sera had come to him and revealed that Itchik was her father.

  Dak peeked at Sera now as she studied the several dozen Mayas gathered inside the cave. If Sera traced her family tree back far enough, he wondered if it would lead her all the way back to this very village.

  “All right, my good people,” a young Mayan man suddenly announced. “Bring it in a little tighter, please.” They moved deeper inside the cave, some of them holding candles or masks or food offerings.

  Sera led Dak behind a large limestone sculpture, where they were hidden. “We can listen for a few minutes,” she whispered, “but then we’re going back to find Riq.”

  “Fine,” Dak whispered back.

  “As you all know,” the man continued, “there are rumors that Diego de Landa will physically punish anyone caught paying respect to our spiritual ancestors. We have begun to meet in these caves because the monks believe they are haunted. That provides us some measure of safety. Any newcomers, tonight you will join us in honoring Ah Mun, Chan K’uh, Chaac, K’inich Ajaw, and many others. In our traditional ways. Because this is who we are, yes?”

  Dak watched everyone nod and echo, “This is who we are.” He’d never seen anything like it.

  “Good,” the man said. “Now pull out whatever you have brought, and let us begin.”

  Anyone who had a bag reached into it now and pulled out some type of artifact. Dak saw them produce codices, masks, figurines, elaborate costumes and headdresses, incense sticks, detailed tapestries.

  “They might be able to change the way we believe out there,” the man said, pointing outside the cave, “but they can never change the way we believe in here.” He tapped his thumb against his chest several times and repeated, “Never in here.”

  Without any further direction, the Mayas all began chanting together and dancing. A few held masks up to their faces and bowed to the people around them.

  Dak turned to Sera and whispered, “You heard what he said is going on, right? Diego de Landa is a Franciscan monk known for traveling to the most remote Mayan villages to try to convert all the indigenous people to Christianity. According to most historical accounts, he was the single most influential figure in the suppression of Mayan —”

  “Be quiet, Dak,” Sera interrupted. “Just watch and listen. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  Dak grinned. “Look who’s starting to admire the Maya,” he whispered.

  They both spun around quickly when they heard voices coming from the opening of the cave. Dak saw five large men, dressed much differently than the Mayas, peering in at the processions. They didn’t seem to notice Dak and Sera hiding behind the sculpture. One of the men pointed at the Mayas and nodded, and they all moved into the cave together.

  Dak pushed down Sera’s head and ducked himself so the men wouldn’t see them as they passed by.

  One of the Spaniards shouted at the Mayas, “Every one of you must come with us. There’s no use trying to get away.” Each of the five men produced either crossbows or muskets.

  The chanting and dancing immediately stopped.

  Many of the Mayas held up their hands and surrendered peacefully, but others sprinted toward the cave exit, pushing past the Spaniards on their way by, knocking two of the men over. The three men who remained standing opened fire on the fleeing Mayas. One young Mayan man fell onto his stomach when an arrow pierced his back. He hopped back up and staggered a few more steps, and then collapsed back onto the ground.

  The surrendered Mayas all gasped as the injured man went still.

  Sera made a move for the dying man, but Dak grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “They can’t know we’re here,” he whisper-shouted.

  Sera turned her glassy eyes toward Dak but said nothing.

  “Let’s make this easy, folks,” one of the Spaniards announced. “We don’t want any more casualties.”

  The Mayas were all led out of the cave in connected shackles, heads bowed. The injustice of it all bubbled inside Dak’s chest. All they had been doing was celebrating their history. Dak could relate; history was everything to him, too. What if someone shot at him for studying the second Roman Empire?

  He watched one of the Spaniards shove the last Mayas toward the exit of the cave and then they were gone. They had just left the dead Mayan man to rot.

  “They killed him!” Sera cried, stepping out from behind the limestone sculpture. “And we did nothing!”

  “What could we have done?” Dak said.

  Sera knelt down beside the fallen man and closed his eyelids. “And for what?” she said, choking up as she spoke. “What did he die for?”

  Dak knelt beside her. “It isn’t fair,” he said. “Maybe this is why we’re here, Sera. To make sure the Maya are no longer treated this way. Or maybe we’re here to change the way they’re perceived by future generations.”

  Sera didn’t say anything. She just kept staring down at the man, shaking her head.

  Dak moved deeper into the cave. He picked up one of the colorful masks and studied the details. Then he knelt down and flipped through several codices lying in the clay dirt. None of them had a painting of a ceiba tree. He moved over to a large wooden box filled with smaller masks and figurines and traditional-looking jewelry. He picked up a paintbrush, then a colorfully painted ceramic, an old locket similar to the one Kisa had tried to give Riq. Then he found several small ceramic instruments that resembled modern drums and flutes.

  “Leave me alone!” Sera suddenly shouted.

  Dak spun around to find a large Spanish man restraining Sera’s hands behind her back. The man looked up at Dak and said, “Let’s go, boy. Don’t make it any harder than it has to be.”

  Sera tried to wrestle away from the man, but he whacked her in the back of the head with an elbow and tightened her restraints.

  “Don’t touch her!” Dak shouted.

  “Then get over here!” the man shouted back.

  Dak reached back into the box and dug around for the locket. He pulled it out and hid it in his breechcloth as he stood up.

  The Spaniard was already shoving Sera toward Dak and readying a second restraint.

  “IN YOU go!” a Spanish guard shouted, shoving Sera and Dak into a large cell that already held dozens of Mayas — many of whom Sera had just seen inside the cave.

  “You killed my brother!” a Mayan girl shrieked, running toward the open door.

  “Not me personally,” the man said, grinning. “But maybe one of my colleagues.”

  Another guard held the girl back with a long club. “Brother de Landa warned you about practicing your witchcraft. But do any of you listen? No.” He slammed closed the door and locked it, shouting through the sliding peephole, “There’s a price to pay for choosing the devil’s path!”

  The guards left, and the young Mayan leader from the cave helped the sobbing girl up and led her to the one bench in the room. He cleared away the people sitting there and had the girl lie down. Then he knelt and took her hands into his and spoke to her in a hushed tone Sera couldn’t quite make out.


  Sera took in her surroundings. The cell was half underground. There were barred windows on three of the walls, a little above eye level, and through them Sera could only see a small portion of the sky, which was turning dark.

  An older Mayan man approached Dak and Sera, and stood there with his arms crossed. “What is the most important thing in the world?” he asked.

  “What?” Dak said. He turned to Sera and mouthed, “The riddle!”

  “I know,” Sera mouthed back.

  “Just as I suspected,” the Mayan man said. “You don’t have an answer.”

  “No, we do!” Dak shouted. “The most important thing in the world is . . . corn?”

  The man scoffed and moved away from Dak and Sera.

  “Asymmetrical tortillas?” Dak called out after him.

  The man didn’t even turn around.

  Sera led Dak to an empty corner of the cell.

  “That question was right out of the riddle,” Dak said. “We just have to figure out the answer and we’ll be a step closer to solving it.”

  Sera leaned her back against the dirty prison wall and let herself slide down to a sitting position, her face falling into her hands. She’d never felt so defeated in her life. Or depressed. She was only eleven years old. Wasn’t eleven too young to process the things she’d experienced over the past twenty-four hours? The realization that she’d found her parents facedown in her flooded barn. Watching a man get taken down by an arrow when he didn’t even do anything. Being thrown into a prison. She couldn’t stand the way the Mayas were treated by the monks. How could a foreign people come waltzing into someone else’s village and start telling them what to believe? To make things worse, the Mayas didn’t trust her and Dak just because they didn’t know some secret code word.

  Dak sat down next to her. “We’ll be okay, Sera.”

  She looked up at him. “Will we, Dak? Because I’m not so sure anymore.”

  He pointed at her satchel holding the Infinity Ring. “You still have the Ring, and I have the SQuare. We can use this time to regroup and figure out the riddle.”

  Sera shook her head. “What’s the point, Dak? Are we really making a difference?”

  “Of course we are,” Dak said. “What’s going on? You usually have such a good attitude.”

  Sera paused, fighting the lump in her throat. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Dak. We’re not actually fixing history at all. We’re not making anything better for anyone.” She motioned toward the Mayas. “They just want to live their lives and learn about the world and follow their traditions. And they can’t even sneak off to a cave to honor what they believe in? One of them has to pay with his life?”

  “We already talked about this,” Dak said. He looked away from Sera for a few seconds, like he was thinking. Sera saw over his shoulder that the Mayan leader was now pacing the cell. “The point of fixing the Breaks,” Dak said, “isn’t to make history more morally correct.”

  “Why not?” Sera said. “Why aren’t we trying to make the world a better place?”

  Dak shrugged. “I don’t know, Sera. Sometimes we are, I think. But we’re just two kids. Two and a half, if you count Lover Boy. The point is, we’re sent to each place to fix a Break, not humanity.”

  “So you don’t ever question it?”

  “No, I do,” Dak said. “But at the end of the day I trust the Hystorians. They’ve been working to avert the Cataclysm and defeat the SQ longer than we’ve been alive.”

  Sera stared at Dak. She wanted to come right out and tell him — how she’d been given a glimpse of the unspeakable Cataclysm. But she couldn’t. She had to keep this cancerous knowledge to herself.

  Sera grabbed at her own hair and pulled, saying, “I don’t know if I can go on, Dak. I really don’t.”

  “But you have to,” the Mayan leader said. “And you will.”

  Sera looked up, saw the young man now hovering over her and Dak, his fists clenched. “There will always be injustice,” he continued. “In all things. And many times we will not be able to alter these things. But what we can always do is lift our heads and continue on. That part is in our control.”

  Sera felt embarrassed that the man had overheard her whining. She must’ve sounded like a spoiled brat.

  “They can lock us behind these walls,” the man said, shaking the bars in the window to the left of Sera and Dak. “All of us. The entire village. But in our minds we will always remain free. Remember that.” He reached a hand out and helped Sera to her feet, saying, “I am Bacab.”

  “Sera,” she answered, trying to seem as respectful as possible. Because she already admired the man. She’d seen how all the people in the cave, many of them much older, were hanging on his every word.

  Dak elbowed Sera in the arm and cleared his throat.

  “Oh,” she said, “and this is my friend Dak.”

  “Hi,” Dak said.

  “A pleasure to meet you both,” Bacab said. “You’re not from around here, obviously. But where you come from does not concern me. It is where you are now that matters. And that is with us.”

  Sera glanced over at the rest of the Mayas. A few of them didn’t seem as eager to accept her and Dak — probably because they didn’t know the answer to the question from the riddle.

  “So, how do we get out of here?” Dak asked.

  “We have our ways,” Bacab said. “This is my fourth time inside this very cell. What they fail to understand is that I have a key in my room. Late this evening, my younger brother will realize I’m not home. The first place he will check is the prison cell. And he knows to bring the key.”

  “Wait . . . you have a key?” Dak said.

  Bacab grinned. “When I’m not organizing our gatherings, I work as a locksmith.”

  Seeing the young man’s grin made Sera feel better. She, too, wanted to be the kind of person who could grin in the face of adversity.

  “We can’t remain here long,” a second Mayan man said. “If the great storm comes as predicted, it will flood the cell. They will leave us to drown.”

  “No one here is going to drown,” Bacab said. He turned back to Dak and Sera, and said, “This is my younger cousin, K’inich. He is an excellent locksmith’s assistant, and he has traveled extensively, but he worries too much.”

  “Wait, there’s supposed to be another great storm?” Dak said. He banged on the stone wall with the heel of his hand. “Sure hope these bad boys are built stronger than they used to be.”

  Bacab lifted Sera’s chin so that their eyes met. “Young sister,” he said, “you have questions swimming in your eyes.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, embarrassed that she looked so uncertain. “Why are they even doing this? You weren’t hurting anyone tonight.”

  “The monks are frustrated. Their plan is to take over every village, from sea to sea, but in order to do this peacefully and efficiently, they must first convert my people to their religion. Then we will believe the land is theirs by divine right, you see?”

  “So that’s why you gathered in the cave,” Sera said.

  “That and the acoustics make my voice sound nice,” Bacab said with another grin.

  “They’ve been threatening us,” K’inich said. “Diego de Landa, one of the leaders of the Franciscan monks, says if we don’t obey he will get rid of everything we hold sacred.”

  “Oh, wow,” Dak said. “I’ve totally read about this. That de Landa dude gets so mad he orders an auto-da-fe, where he —”

  Sera stepped on Dak’s foot to cut him off.

  “Ow!” Dak shrieked.

  “You’re speculating, of course,” Sera said, shooting Dak a dirty look.

  “Oh. Right.” Dak turned to Bacab. “What I meant to say is, aren’t you guys afraid something bad might happen to your codices and stuff?”

  Sera noticed t
hat K’inich was staring at Dak. “How could you know something that has yet to happen?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t,” Dak said. “I was just . . . sometimes I get my verb tenses confused.”

  “My hope is that a highly spiritual man like de Landa,” Bacab said, “would never stoop so low as confiscating our history.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t hope too hard,” Dak said quietly, so only Sera could hear.

  K’inich was whispering something into Bacab’s ear now. Sera pulled Dak aside and said, “Maybe this is the Break we’re supposed to fix.” After talking with Bacab she felt suddenly reenergized, like she was ready to fight again. Maybe this was the mark of a great leader.

  “That’s it,” Dak nearly shouted. “We have to stop de Landa’s auto-da-fe.”

  Sera put a finger to her lips for Dak to lower his voice. “So, at some point are you planning to explain what the heck an auto-da-fe is?” she said. “Or do you just enjoy hearing yourself say it?”

  “Auto-da-fe. Auto-da-fe. Auto-da-fe.” Dak smiled. “Just kidding, dude. An auto-da-fe is —”

  Before Dak could finish, a few of the Mayas got up suddenly and started converging around the far window. Bacab and K’inich hurried over to join them.

  Sera and Dak stood on their tiptoes near the back of the crowd to try to see what was going on. All Sera could see was the bottom portion of a monk’s robe on the other side of the window. Someone was there. And that someone was now kneeling down to look inside the cell.

  Sera’s eyes widened.

  It was Riq.

  Dressed like a Franciscan monk.

  “What do you want?” one of the Mayas barked at him.

  “To speak with Dak and Sera,” Riq said. “I’m not an actual monk, I promise.”

  “Riq!” Sera shouted over the crowd.

  “Why should we believe you?” another Mayan man said.

  Sera started pushing through the pack. If she could just get to him, she could explain. Dak suddenly weaseled right past her, though, and lunged for the window, holding out a piece of jewelry. Riq reached his hand through the narrow bars and took it.