At the End of the World

by Mark Macpherson

  She looked back to the image of the Twins frozen in greeting. They were drawn in that place to represent the enlarged image from inside the mouth of the Vision Serpent. She had not realized that until that moment.

  ‘Still,’ she said without full attention. ‘They’re great stories. And they’re fun to tell.’

  ‘How many more chambers are there?’ Jim asked. He had become uncomfortable staring at the image of twins.

  ‘There are more,’ Pep’Em Ha said. ‘But some of them have been used for burials and we shouldn’t go into those. There’s just one more I want to show you. We can look at more drawings on the way back. If you want to, that is.’

  Pep’Em Ha led Jim and her brother further around the perimeter of the chamber then stopped and shone a light at her feet. There was a small opening, a dark patch no higher than her knees.

  ‘It’s through here,’ she said. ‘We can fit through but will you be all right?’

  ‘No problemo,’ Jim said. He was taller than his friends but he was not wider. The passage would not be any tighter for him.

  ‘You’ll have to wriggle through for a couple of meters,’ Pep’Em Ha said.

  She lay face down on the rock and slithered like a snake through the opening. Her legs and feet disappeared as if she was being eaten, whole, by the rock wall. The reflection from her flashlight inside the next chamber escaped from the opening.

  ‘OK,’ her voice sounded from below Jim’s knees.

  Jim lay down and shone his torch-light through the opening. He saw Pep’Em Ha’s legs and feet. He worked his knees, feet and forearms as he crawled. The way was tight but after a split second of claustrophobic worry half way through, he lost his fear when he knew he could move forwards and backwards. He relaxed and enjoyed the feeling of tonnes of rock pressing over his body. He smiled thinking of Hamish or Arthur trying to get through that entrance. His grandfather would not even try.

  Jim wriggled along the rock floor in the new chamber until his knees were free. As he stood, Pep’Em Ha scrutinized his face, searching for fear or panic. She had taken a risk bringing him into that chamber. It was sacred to the KulWinik, only her and Yax K’in were allowed inside. She had, once, brought her brother but could only imagine Yax K’in’s reaction if he knew Jim had been there.

  It was a small chamber, ten meters in diameter but it was tall, like a large chimney. There was only the single entrance. In the centre was an irregular circle of stones, each one about the size of a fist. There was blackened, burnt wood in the middle of the stone circle. There were no drawings or carvings on the cave walls.

  ‘It’s like hiding in a big cupboard,’ Jim said.

  Pep’Em Ha took Jim’s hand in hers. ‘This is a sacred place,’ she spoke softly as if she could be overheard. ‘Yax K’in would not like it that you’re here. Don’t tell the others that I brought you here,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Jim hoped she had more intense requests for him. He was disappointed when she removed her hand. He had not responded with any pressure of his own.

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother emerged from the tiny entrance. Before he could stand she said, ‘I asked Jim to not tell the others about this cave. OK?’

  ‘Do I look stupid?’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said in English.

  ‘How long has this place been used?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Forever,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said. ‘It makes me shiver. I can’t imagine being here on my own, with only a burning torch. Like in the really old days.’

  ‘Jim,’ Pep’Em Ha explained as she sat down and signaled to him to join her. ‘My father and his ancestors, our ancestors,’ she included her brother, ‘came here to make offerings and perform rituals that were never done outside. This cave is dedicated to Hachakyum, our first god, the god who created us. Yax K’in would come here on his own, after my grandfather died, and perform rituals and recite stories that have been passed from one t’o’ohil to the next.’

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother interrupted. ‘It is not only Yax K’in that comes here, to remember those stories, is it Pep’Em Ha?’ he said. ‘You come with him.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘At first I thought I was only here to help him. To carry things. But after being here a few times,’ Pep’Em Ha stopped. She grabbed Jim’s hand and pulled him down to sit next to her when he had remained standing.

  ‘It’s a special time I have with my father in here. At least there are no interruptions,’ she smiled at her own joke. ‘This is the place he has brought me to teach me the stories of the ancient times when Hachakyum lived among us. Yax K’in makes me recite the stories back to him, over and over again, until I have them word perfect. My father is patient, he expects perfection.’

  ‘After the first few times here,’ she said. ‘But before he began teaching me the stories, Yax K’in expected me to do all the rituals. It was fun although I was very nervous. I didn’t want to make a mistake. I don’t believe I’ll anger the gods but I wanted to impress my father.’

  ‘Did you?’ Jim asked. He was enthralled at Pep’Em Ha’s responsibility. He had never had such adult expectations placed on him.

  ‘Yes. Eventually,’ she said. ‘When I’d learned all the rituals and had done them perfectly and after he’d taught me many of the ancient stories, he made me sit down next to him. Right here,’ she patted her palm on the ground next to her. ‘We turned off our lights. He said I was ready and that I should listen for the voices.’

  ‘So? Did you hear any?’ Jim asked. He was intrigued and, also, a little scared as if Pep’Em Ha was telling a good ghost story. It was the right place for it, he thought.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I was disappointed that I didn’t but, how could I expect to hear voices? I thought I would be a little crazy if I did.’

  ‘I heard them,’ exclaimed Jim, glad to be part of the story, ‘at Yaxchilan. Or I thought I did.’

  ‘You heard voices? Where?’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother laughed. ‘You mean when you got lost in the Labyrinth? You are crazy, my friend. Did they sound like ghosts?’ He made ‘Woo’ sounds as he tried to imitate what he had heard in old ghost movies.

  ‘No,’ Jim said quickly. He was embarrassed. He had forgotten that he had not told Pep’Em Ha’s brother. ‘I didn’t hear voices talking. I heard a sound like lots of people whispering. Hamish says he hears that all the time, it’s something wrong with his ears. He said I’ll have to get my ears checked when I get home. That’s all it was.’

  Jim was certain what he heard had not been tinnitus but would not admit it in front of Pep’Em Ha’s brother. Pep’Em Ha knew he was lying. She often spoke to her brother like that herself, it made serious things he did not want to understand easier to explain.

  ‘I brought my brother in here,’ she said to continue her story before the boys hijacked it. ‘Without telling Yax Kin, and did the same with him.’

  Jim turned to Pep’Em Ha’s brother. ‘Did you hear voices? he asked but knew what the answer would be, even if he had heard voices.

  ‘No, I’m not crazy. And I didn’t like it. It’s too dark.’

  ‘So, Pep’Em Ha, you want to know if I hear your voices, in this place? Do you?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you had heard voices at Yaxchilan and because you’re my friend,’ she said.

  ‘I can try, as long as your brother doesn’t start whispering.’

  ‘He won’t,’ she gave her brother a hard look. ‘Even he knows this place is special.’

  Her brother ignored her but she knew that he understood.

  ‘Why is it so important?’ Jim asked.

  Pep’Em Ha hesitated. She had not anticipated that obvious question.

  ‘Yax K’in told me,’ she began to say then stopped. She was saying too much but she trusted Jim. Once she had led him into Hachakyum’s cave her path was set.

  ‘He told me I would be the next t’o’ohil. When I heard the voices, Hachakyum would have chosen me.’<
br />
  ‘That’s awesome,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said in English. ‘Did he? Really?’ he said in Maya again. He knelt down next to his sister and gave her a bear hug that squeezed the breath out of her as he pinned her arms to her sides.

  Jim smiled, wondering why her brother was so excited. ‘Is that a good thing?’ he asked her brother.

  ‘It means I’m off the hook.’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother finished hugging his sister and sat down next to her. ‘Not that I was ever really in danger of being the t’o’ohil. Yax K’in would refuse to die if I was the only option he had,’ he laughed at his own incompetence. ‘I’m really free now, there’s no way I’ll be stuck here. The slight possibility that Yax K’in would insist that I be trained as the t’o’ohil was the only thing stopping me. All of his older sons are not interested and none have remained in the village. Some have even gone to Mexico City. That’s where I’ll go. Maybe I’ll come and visit you in Boston, Jim.’

  ‘But not yet,’ he said to his sister. ‘I won’t leave you alone with all the old people. Not just yet.’

  ‘It’s not certain,’ Pep’Em Ha said. ‘It would take years and years. And the few elders still here would not want a woman being the t’o’ohil. But there is a precedent, Yax K’in says I can rely on that.’

  She placed her hand over her mouth. She had said too much. Yax K’in had made her memorize the ancient stories but had told her to never repeat them. Not even to the other elders. The subject of those old stories, when Hachakyum lived among the Mayans, was the first leader of her ancestors.

  The life of Hachakyum’s human wife was a dangerous secret. She was the template Hachakyum had used for human creation.

  There were some stories so strange she was embarrassed, almost ashamed that she knew them by heart. Outside the solemnity of the private story-telling sessions with her father she could not bring herself to think seriously of them. She would never discuss them, her father’s directive had been in no danger of being ignored. How could she tell anyone that her father believed, with no doubt whatsoever, that the t’o’ohil could not die. Not until the next t’o’ohil was chosen by Hachakyum. Hearing the voices was the key and she hoped to diffuse the preposterous notion by sharing it, without explanation, firstly and without success with her brother and subsequently with Jim.

  The two boys had not heard Pep’Em Ha and had not noticed her embarrassment. They celebrated Pep’Em Ha’s brother’s future freedom by slapping their hands over her head in high-five's and planning their time together in the USA.

  She was glad Jim had not heard but she was disheartened that he was being distracted. Pep’Em Ha withdrew her hand from over her mouth and waited for the boys to finish.

  ‘So, shall we listen for voices?’ Jim said once the celebrations were over.

  Pep’Em asked him to turn off his light. Her brother had already done so. She then waited for a few seconds before she turned off her flashlight.

  The darkness rushed at Jim, as if freed from a constraint. It filled the void left by the departed light. It pressed him on all sides and he felt it enter him and make him disappear. Jim had never known such smothering blackness and silence. The dark filled the chamber and its inhabitants as if it was the primary element. Jim was terrified. Death was like that. He thought, again, of the tonnes of rock that enclosed him and that he still had to wriggle his way out. He could not do it. The absolute void was like a set of chains restraining him, he would be stuck in that chamber forever.

  He didn’t care about the consequences, he grasped Pep’Em Ha’s arm and felt down it to her hand and held it with the pressure he had forced himself to withhold when she had held his hand. She squeezed back. He was immensely grateful. She was alive and he had proof that he was not the only living thing. For a second, in his terror, he had a vision of existing apart from all things. There was nothing, he did know how to create his own world and he would live for eternity with no contrast, no contact, alone, cold and in the dark.

  Jim wondered if that was what Harry felt when he died.

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother broke the silence and brushed away the dark when he turned on his flashlight.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said.

  Jim quickly removed his hand from Pep’Em Ha’s.

  ‘I don’t like that for too long,’ her brother said. ‘It’s like you could get lost just sitting here in the dark.’

  ‘Perhaps next time we’ll have longer,’ Pep’Em Ha said to Jim. ‘Then you could see if you hear the voices.’

  ‘Not with me around,’ said her brother.

  Pep’Em Ha was glad. Her brother made special things mundane and, she thought, Jim would have a better experience if her brother was absent. She might even tell Jim, in the same place Yax Kin had told her, the Story of the Finder of Caves, the first of the stories Yax K’in had forbidden her to tell others.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said her brother. ‘There are too many dead old people down here.’

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother wriggled out of the chamber first. Jim crouched in preparation to lie flat on the rock. Pep’Em Ha stood over him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. She understood and that he could not have said that in front of her brother.

  They retraced their steps out of the system of caves until they were again outside next to the wooden cabinet. Pep’Em Ha returned their flashlights. They drank from their water bottles.

  ‘I thought of my brother,’ Jim said.

  ‘When?’ asked Pep’Em Ha.

  ‘In the dark. I imagined what it was like being dead and I thought of him.’

  ‘I think in that cave it’s like being dead too,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said.

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother began the decent.

  ‘Do you miss him a lot?’ she asked Jim.

  ‘Yes,’ Jim said softly so that her brother could not hear.

  Pep’Em Ha quickly squeezed Jim’s hand then set off down the slope, away from the cave entrance and back towards the village.

  Jim watched her for a moment before he followed her.

  Chapter 28

  The teenagers separated when they returned to the village. Jim went to the hut he shared with his grandfather. It was empty. I might lie down for awhile, he thought. But he stood in the entrance. It was too hot in the hut so he went for a swim in the nearby, shallow stream.

  Jim swam breast-stroke against the swift flowing water. The stream was clear and cool and the activity refreshed him. Lying in a hammock would not have done so. He swam hard and kept his eyes open when he immersed his head under water at the bottom of each stroke. For fractions of a second he viewed a myopic world of sand, pebbles and rocks. When he felt the water’s pressure forcing him downstream he held onto rocks on the stream bed. Then he would stretch his body and feel the water flow over and around him. The swirling water, delineated by bubbles formed by upstream eddies, raced towards him like a blocked, impatient crowd of city people. He imagined the water was annoyed having to split, flow, eddy and merge again to continue its journey downstream and homeward. He didn’t care that he was an obstacle.

  When he’d had enough swimming he simply stood up and walked back to the bank. His legs left a trail of annoyed eddies as they were forced to mix and dissipate as he waded through the water. He sat in the shade on the bank at the edge of the stream. He drew his knees to his chest and held them there by encircling his shins with his arms.

  Pep’Em Ha sat down next to him. He had not heard her coming. She was again dressed as a Western teenager.

  ‘Thanks for today,’ Jim said. ‘I really enjoyed that.’

  Pep’Em Ha didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you think your father will be annoyed?’ he asked. ‘That you took me into the jungle, without asking him, I mean.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘He won’t be angry with you. Just with me. But, no, I don’t think so. Or, at least, not for long.’

  Pep’Em Ha laughed. She stretched her legs in front of her and placed both her hands on the ground behind he
r back. ‘He can’t stay angry with the next t’o’ohil can he?’ She sat up straight, crossed her legs and rested her forearms on her knees. ‘That’s a secret, remember?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jim said. He let go of his legs and sat cross-legged, like Pep’Em Ha. ‘When I went back to my hut, I was glad Hamish wasn’t there. I think I just won’t tell him. You really had to be there to understand. He can organize his own trip if he wants to.’ Jim laughed. ‘Anyway, he couldn’t make it up the hill.’

  Pep’Em Ha smiled as Jim laughed. His joy was infectious, even though his laughter was short-lived, like a sharp ring of a bell struck only once reverberates afterwards.