Curse of the Ancients

by Matt De La Peña

  María fell to her knees. “What are you saying, K’inich?” she cried.

  The realization hit Sera like a ton of bricks. “He’s a Time Warden,” she said.

  Dak started marching toward K’inich with his fists clenched, but K’inich only smiled as he pulled an arrow from the pouch on his shoulder. He loaded it into his crossbow and raised it at Dak, who stopped in his tracks. “I am a proud Maya,” K’inich said. “And in the short term, it will be painful to see the legacy of my people turned into ash. See, Diego de Landa will only allow one codex to survive for historical purposes. It shall be the only legacy of the Mayan people. He selected a codex from ancient Izamal, written by a legendary scribe named Pacal. But we have composed our own codex, which reveals the SQ as the rightful savior of the world. It is the perfect opportunity to spread our message far and wide. For the long term, this is what has to be done.”

  “You’re selling out your own people!” Sera shouted.

  “I’m advancing an ideology,” K’inich said. “Now, please, hand over what’s in your satchel. From the second I saw you two enter the holding cell I suspected you might be from the future.”

  “Is de Landa a Time Warden, too?” Dak asked.

  K’inich looked appalled. “That man could never be part of our movement. He’s too blinded by religious zealotry. But he’ll make a fine tool.” He turned back to Sera. “Now hand over your time-travel device.”

  “I’ll never give it to you,” Sera said through her gritted teeth.

  K’inich pointed the arrow right at her forehead. “You have three seconds,” he said, pulling back on the cocking stirrup.

  Riq ripped open Sera’s satchel, pulled out the Ring, and set it on the ground in front of her.

  “No!” Sera screamed as K’inich reached down to pick it up.

  He backed through the doorway, lowering his crossbow. “In case you were wondering,” he said, “the neighborhood boy in the story was me. Sometimes destiny finds the man, instead of the man finding his destiny. If the elder who saved my life had been a Hystorian, instead of a Time Warden, who knows? I may have been on your side. But that is not the way events unfolded.”

  K’inich slammed closed the stone door, and Sera heard the click of the lock.

  RIQ CURSED himself as he watched Sera pound the stone wall with the undersides of her fists. Why hadn’t he trusted his instincts? From the second K’inich had volunteered to accompany them to the observatory, Riq had been skeptical of his motivation. Before that even . . . when he’d asked Sera what she was looking for in the observatory basement. And that story about the two boys in the sea. Riq had sensed all along that something wasn’t right. But he had done nothing to stop it. Zero. And now look where they were.

  He watched María pacing all around the room with her candle, watched Dak sit against the wall, letting his face fall into his hands. Sera turned around with a panicked look on her face and said, “What now? We’ll never get out of here.” She looked right at Riq. “Why’d you let him have the Ring?”

  “I couldn’t let him hurt you,” Riq said.

  “I’d rather take an arrow in the chest than be stuck in here forever,” she said.

  “They’re probably torching Pacal’s codex as we speak,” Dak said. “You know, the one we were supposed to protect?”

  “I’ve always known there was an SQ presence here,” María said. “But I never once considered Bacab’s cousin.”

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” Sera said. “Sit here and wait for our air to run out? Because that’s what’ll probably happen.”

  Dak, Sera, and María continued on like this as Riq began walking around the room, studying every inch of the dark walls. María’s candle gave just enough light that he could see. After several minutes he spotted something that made the hairs on his arms stand up. A tiny snake had been carved into one of the stones.

  Then another snake, even smaller, on the stone below it.

  “And why are you so quiet?” Dak shouted at Riq’s back. “You don’t care that we’re all going to die in this tomb?”

  Riq ignored Dak and kept scanning farther down the wall. He found a third snake. Then a fourth.

  “I know you hear me, Lover Boy!”

  “Leave him alone, Dak,” Sera said. “Just, please, be quiet for once in your life.”

  “What did I do to you?” Dak snapped back at her.

  María moved in closer to Riq and held her candle to the wall so he could see better. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  “There’s a pattern of tiny engravings on the wall,” Riq told her. “They go all the way down to the floor.”

  Sera came to look at them, too. “They’re snakes,” she said. “Hold on a sec. Dak, get over here with the SQuare.”

  “Oh, I can’t even get a ‘please’ now?”

  Riq turned around, saw Sera take the SQuare from Dak, power it on, and quickly pull up the riddle. “ ‘Dig deep, deeper, deepest,’ ” she read. She looked up at Riq and Dak and said, “What if this isn’t the deepest room in the observatory?”

  “Kisa’s trying to tell us something,” Riq said, scanning stones again. The tiny snake engravings clearly descended all the way down the wall. But the stone closest to the floor had two snakes. Maybe that stone was the most significant. He dropped to his knees and began feeling all around the stone. But it felt no different than the others.

  “What is it?” Dak asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Riq told him. He stood up and studied every stone that had a snake on it, starting up near the ceiling. He had to figure this out. What was Kisa trying to tell him? All he saw was a solid stone wall.

  “Is there a hidden door or something?” Sera asked.

  “What am I not seeing?” Riq mumbled to himself. He felt all around the stones on either side of the ones with snakes. Then he studied the actual engravings. But nothing stood out to him. He grew so frustrated he stood up and punched the wall with a closed fist, which really hurt, so he kicked the stone with two snakes.

  A strange thing happened.

  The stone he kicked moved a few centimeters into the wall.

  Riq turned to look at Dak and Sera, their eyes wide with anticipation.

  Riq knelt down and pushed the stone farther and farther into the wall until it revealed a small latch. Riq undid the latch and moved a thick piece of leather to the side to grab the handle underneath. He pulled on it with all his strength. All of the sudden, a small part of the floor came up, revealing a narrow opening that led to a dark staircase.

  They all looked at each other, and Sera repeated, “ ‘Deep, deeper, deepest.’ ”

  “This is amazing!” Dak shouted. “I should have been an architect.”

  The four of them climbed down the narrow stairs, one at a time, Riq now holding María’s candle to light the way. When he got to the bottom, he held up the candle and scanned the small room. There was an old wooden desk and a chair. The walls were full of glyphs. The shelves around the desk were covered with rusted lockets and antiquated paintbrushes.

  “Oh, wow,” Sera said behind him.

  “What?” Dak said.

  Riq followed Sera’s eyes to the floor underneath the desk where there was a full skeleton. His eyes grew big, and he walked over to it and leaned down to get a better look with the candle. There was an open locket near the skeleton’s hand. Inside, the glyph for observatory was only half finished. He fell to his knees near the skeleton, fighting back tears. He knew in his heart it had to be Kisa.

  “Guys!” Dak shouted.

  Riq spun around, saw that Dak was holding a codex in his hands.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Sera asked.

  Riq pulled himself together, got up, and walked over to Dak. He looked at the first panel of the codex. And there it was: the symbol of the ceiba tree. The writing looked sl
ightly different from Pacal’s, which told Riq it was a reproduction. He looked up as Sera quoted from the riddle, “ ‘To save the reproduction of the treasure’s truth . . .’ ”

  “A copy of Pacal’s codex. We found it,” Dak said. He took the candle from Riq and circled it all around the room. “Do you know how incredible this is? There probably hasn’t been another living soul in this place for hundreds and hundreds of years. At least since she kicked the bucket, right?” He pointed at the skeleton. “I’d assume if anyone found her they’d give her a proper burial.”

  “I can’t believe it,” María said. “All along this has been under my feet.”

  Riq took the candle from Dak and put it in the candleholder on the wall. Now the entire room was dimly lit.

  “Um, you guys?” Sera said, pointing at the far wall. “I just found a glyph etched into a stone near this handle. Can you read it, Riq?”

  Riq moved closer to her and read the glyph. “It’s an exit,” he said.

  “Are you kidding me?” Dak started jumping up and down. “There’s another way out of here! This Snake Woman was a genius!”

  “Easy,” Sera warned him. “Let’s make sure we can get out before we start patting ourselves on the back. Even then, we still have a lot of work to do switching codices with the monks.”

  “Come on, Sera,” Dak said. “Where’s that positive attitude?”

  Dak, Sera, and María started trying to turn the handle built into the wall. They barely got it to budge. Sera called out, “Riq, get over here and help us. This thing’s rusted in place.”

  Riq ignored her because he’d just spotted a thin block of wood with a series of painted glyphs. It looked like a letter, placed on the desk for someone to find. Riq picked it up and began reading, his heart now thumping inside his chest.

  Dear Future Hystorian,

  If you are reading this note it means you have found your way into the birthplace of the Hystorians movement among our people. When I was just a girl, the king of Izamal promised me a secret room below the basement of his new observatory where I could organize a Hystorian presence. But the king didn’t stop there; he built a secret room underneath the secret room. A great many discussions have taken place between these walls. But now I am old, and I fear the end is near. I ask that you help get this message into the hands of the time travelers that may happen to pass through our village a second time.

  I initiated the Hystorian presence here because, when I was young, I encountered these three time travelers, and it changed the course of my life. They came during the great storm, and they helped the king maintain possession of our most sacred tool of learning, Pacal’s codex. Thousands of young students have been taught from this codex during my lifetime. I can’t imagine our village without it.

  Riq tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He looked up, saw Dak, Sera, and María all straining to turn the rusted handle. He then looked all around the room and glanced down at the skeleton again. All of it seemed so surreal. Kisa’s presence. Her bones beneath the desk. He remembered the young girl he’d sat with at the mouth of the cave. She was so smart and pretty. She made him want to be somebody. And then, in the time it took to snap his fingers, Riq had warped to a different time, and the girl from Izamal had lived an entire life and grown old and died. He turned back to the letter, overwhelmed with emotion.

  All my life I’d longed to do something special. When I was young I believed it was art and jewelry. But that changed when I met the time travelers. They arrived with one mission: to save the world. And I realized one day that I could help them by continuing their work. I have been a defender of scholars, and a scholar myself; I have traveled to faraway villages with a message of peace and cooperation; I have warned all Maya to stay vigilant, and to oppose the SQ whenever they might appear on our shores.

  The small group of local young people I have trained now refer to me as Akna, after the goddess of motherhood. Even though I never had a child of my own, the name stuck. Most of them went off to other villages to extend our presence. I have done this for over fifty years now. It is my legacy. And I owe my life as a Hystorian to one beautiful young time traveler who walked into my uncle’s hut during the great storm.

  “Riq, come on!” Sera shouted.

  “We got this bad boy open!” Dak shouted. “No thanks to you!”

  Riq looked up from the letter, saw Dak, Sera, and María slowly pulling open the door. Behind it he saw yet another set of narrow stone stairs. “One second,” he managed to call out to them. And then he turned to the last paragraph of the letter.

  Please, Future Hystorian, if you ever happen across these three time travelers, deliver this message to the one named Riq. Tell him my life would never have been what it is if I hadn’t spent those three days with him. Tell him he made me believe I could be anything. Tell him he gave me the strength to insist he leave Izamal and continue with his mission, even though I cried for six weeks after with a broken heart. It was the most important decision I ever made, because the world could not be saved without him. And last, Future Hystorian, if this time traveler named Riq ever comes back to Izamal, tell him that Kisa will always remember him, even after I am gone from this earth. Because if it wasn’t for our powerful friendship, I never would have fulfilled my destiny as a Hystorian.

  “Come on, Riq!” Sera shouted again.

  Riq looked up at her, his chest so full it felt like it might burst. The door was open, and Dak and María were already climbing the stairs.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Sera said. “We have to replace the SQ codex and get back the Ring!”

  Riq nodded, set the piece of wood back on the desk, and hurried toward Sera. Before he followed her up the stairs, he took one last look around Kisa’s secret room. He remembered seeing her for the first time inside Itchik’s hut. That strange feeling in his stomach when their eyes first met. Finally, he understood what it meant.

  Riq turned and hurried up the dark stairs, knowing that nothing could stop him now. He was a Hystorian. Just like Kisa was a Hystorian.

  And from this point on, he would be as committed to the mission as she had been.

  DAK HEAVED open the heavy metal hatch, popped his head above the tall grass, and sucked in a deep breath of fresh air. The first thing he saw was smoke billowing into the sky. The monks were already torching everything. Then he noticed the sky itself, which was dull and gray and filled with angry-looking storm clouds.

  The secret underground staircase had led to almost the exact spot where they’d warped in: just behind the observatory, in an overgrown patch of wild grass. Dak thought back to when they first arrived and how he’d hardly noticed the grass. Little did he know that it hid a secret passageway that would save their lives. He switched the codex to his left hand and reached down to help María up through the hatch. Then he helped Sera. He stared down into the darkness for a few long seconds, right hand extended, waiting for Riq. But the staircase remained empty.

  He turned to Sera. “Where’s Lover Boy?”

  At that exact moment, Riq came springing up out of the darkness.

  Dak noticed the newfound look of determination on the guy’s face. Probably because he got to snoop through all of Snake Girl’s stuff. He made another mental note about that love seminar he wanted to lead.

  “They’ve already started,” Sera said, pointing at the smoke.

  “Let’s go fix a Break,” Dak said, and he took off running toward the square with the codex tucked under his arm like a football. When he glanced back a few seconds into his run, he saw that Sera, Riq, and María were right on his heels.

  When they got to the village square, Dak ducked behind a tree to catch his breath and study what was going on. The others sidled up next to him.

  There was a massive contained fire burning, its flames shooting twenty feet into the air. Many Mayan people were standing all around the fire, watching their history go u
p in smoke. Some were holding one another and crying. Others were shouting at the monks. A few were being led away from the square in shackles.

  One monk stood at the center of the entire spectacle, waving around a codex as he shouted over the commotion about heaven and hell and the deceitfulness of the devil. Dak couldn’t believe the surreal quality of the proceedings. The raging fire and the billowing smoke. De Landa’s passionate preaching. The storm clouds hovering ominously over everything, occasionally lit up by a lightning flash.

  Back home, Dak had always been drawn to the darker moments of history. He’d climb his favorite tree and read for hours about executions and wars and coups. He could still remember the day he encountered an article about de Landa’s auto-da-fe, which wiped out at least forty Mayan codices and over twenty thousand cult images. It had amazed him that a monk could be responsible for the torching of an entire civilization’s history. But only now did he understand the depth of the man’s actions. You just had to look at the faces of the Mayan people watching. It made Dak feel sick to his stomach.

  “There they are,” Sera said, pointing to the right of the fire. “Bacab and his men. They’re coming.”

  Dak saw them marching toward the village square, a few antiquated weapons cocked and loaded. He understood they’d be no match for the Spanish. Then he spotted K’inich, walking right alongside the brave Mayas, everyone oblivious to the fact that he was using this cultural genocide as an opportunity to advance the SQ agenda.

  Dak turned to the others and shouted over the growing commotion, “The monk who’s preaching is obviously Diego de Landa.”

  “And now it will all be burned!” de Landa shouted at the crowd. “And your souls will be cleansed of evil, making it possible for you to see the truth. There is no other way. I will keep only this one document, so future leaders of the church can know what led an entire people to live in darkness!”