Jim hovered, standing, next to Pep’Em Ha. He removed his backpack, took out the wrapped piece of ancient paper and placed it on the ground next to her. He waited for a second before picking it up again. He removed the paper from the plastic bag, gingerly held it at a place that did not contain Pep’Em Ha’s blood, and re-placed the unwrapped paper beside her. He returned the plastic bag to the backpack and then put it down. He stared at Pep’Em Ha.
Harry and Hamish wandered around the tomb. Hamish talked quietly, explaining what he knew to his grandson.
Arthur worried about the conservation consequences for his raid, about Yax K’in lighting the god-pot and the incense smoke residue. He wondered if he should remind everyone to not touch anything. Or whether he should return to the entrance and be a lookout. But there was no point, there was no way out. Arthur left the ledge to check on Michelle and ask how long she wanted to stay. She was brusque.
‘I’ll be the last one out. When Yax K’in has finished, come and tell me,’ she said.
Arthur wandered over to observe Yax K’in, he then put his hands behind his back, affecting a nonchalance, and joined Harry and Hamish as they toured the tomb.
Hamish had explained to Harry all he remembered from the books he had read. Arthur joined them and gave an impromptu, not requested, lecture on Mayan funerary rites. Hamish left Arthur and Harry, who showed surprising interest in Arthur’s explanations. He offered to help Michelle. She politely, and firmly, refused. Hamish wandered off and sat down on the last of the steps that led down from the ledge.
Yax K’in lit the god-pot containing pungent copal incense. Hamish had seen Yax K’in doing the same thing in a similar place before. He was not at all surprised when Pep’Em Ha stood and then crouched before the god-pot. She firmly grasped the handle, lifted it and presented it as an offering to her father before replacing it on the ground but in Hamish’s direction.
The shock of recognition made Hamish dizzy. In a repeat of the motion in his dream, Pep’Em Ha brought the ancient paper around her body and placed a corner, that was soaked in her blood, into the god-pot. Hamish stared at the woman performing the action. His mind said Kate’s name but he saw that beautiful Mayan woman from his dream. The smell of incense was overpowering. He was going to faint. He put his head between his knees. He heard whispering voices inside his head. His other, separate voice was not screaming, it was asking, pleading. It was clearer, as if it was approaching and slowly gaining substance and focus. He lifted his head intending to move towards Pep’Em Ha and Yax K’in. He genuinely believed he could float across the cave floor.
Hamish got unsteadily to his feet and stumbled over to Yax K’in. He had intended to float but had staggered. He sat down, heavily, before the god-pot.
Yax K’in smiled and said, ‘Thank you.’ Hamish did not know why Yax K’in was thankful. Hamish searched for a bowl of balche, to make the repetition of his dream complete.
The smoke in the god-pot, that was thin and weak to begin with, thickened when Hamish sat down. The mixture of blood and paper turned directly into a stream of smoke that wafted across the floor and climbed and flowed over the sarcophagus. Michelle, Arthur and Harry stopped and watched. A kernel within the smoke appeared and grew into the shape of a serpent’s head. It grew larger by drawing the smoke into itself as it rhythmically swung from side to side. It solidified further into the shape of a wide open mouth. A solid, but small, object coalesced inside the mouth.
The seven people in the tomb were transfixed as the object in the mouth of the serpent split into two and began to jerk and bounce, growing larger, or coming closer. It was impossible to tell the difference. The Vision Serpent disgorged two butterflies into the tomb. They left a smoky trail like they were bursting from a cocoon in full flight. They jerked and bounced above Pep’Em Ha’s head.
She held out her hand to them, as she had done to butterflies her whole life, and they circled slowly then landed. They gently flapped their wings while they sat on her outstretched finger, waiting for a command prior to re-launching themselves into the air. Pep’Em Ha brought them close to her face and whispered. Their wings beat strongly as she raised her hand above her head. The butterflies lifted off.
They circled the sarcophagus, as if they had gained purpose after a moment of indecision. They landed near the top of the north wall and perched on the vertical face. All human eyes watched the butterflies.
Hamish felt faint again. Like a dispassionate observer, he scrutinized the approaching blackness of his unconsciousness. He struggled to his feet which made his dizziness worse. He stumbled like he was attempting a panicked escape then toppled sideways onto the floor.
It was always leading to that moment, when Hamish would lose himself, when his life would be stripped, when he would no longer care if the world existed or if he remained a part of it. He wanted to return to the void, to forget everything, to never have known the loss that had been his. He wanted to forget the love of the perfect woman, to forget his love for the perfect woman. Kate was gone and, again, that loss hit him hard. He was more distraught than when he received her text message at his Boston home. Time had passed and she had not returned. Before that moment as he lost consciousness he had had hope, hope that she would eventually return. His hope vanished, she would never be with him again. It was as if she had died, as if her death was the result of his own actions, or worse, inaction. His life, and therefore the world, the whole of existence, was irrelevant. He wanted his loss erased. He did not want to inflict pain or suffering on others, he was not an angry man, he wanted his life and everyone who had come into contact with him to have never existed. He wanted to wipe the world clean of all he had ever done or been, or known.
The smoke hovering over the sarcophagus lost it’s distinct shape, the head of the Vision Serpent dissolved and the grey mass that had disgorged the two butterflies became an amorphous cloud. The six conscious people in the cave held their breaths in expectation. Silence was everywhere.
But nothing happened.
Chapter 26
When Roberto had been frustrated by Pep’Em Ha’s brother’s ruse, he went, with a police presence, to the KulWinik village and had the village searched. He did not expect to find the Westerners there and wondered where Arthur and Michelle, and Hamish and Jim would have gone. His most likely guess was that they had gone to San Cristobal de las Casas the other, much longer, way. They had anticipated him, and he was disappointed that he had fallen for their trap. He had underestimated Arthur’s small minded nature in performing such an irrelevant evasion so as to embarrass him. It was unimportant. It did not matter. Arthur would be permanently embarrassed at the Museum and he chastised himself for his enthusiasm in arresting and deporting Hamish. Wanting to hurt Arthur had overcome his usual, good judgement.
He had won. The game with Arthur was over and he did not need to press victory further. He glared at the caged spider monkey in the centre of the KulWinik village. When the police reported the lack of foreigners he banged the side of the cage and set the spider monkey screaming. He laughed with pleasure and left the village.
Chapter 27
Yax K’in was distraught. He let out a wail of disappointment and anguish. He hung his head. He had failed, again. The plan entrusted to his ancestors, given to them by their creator god, kept in secret for generations had failed when it was required. His anguish turned to anger. He wished Hachakyum would destroy him utterly. He did not know how to proceed.
Pep’Em Ha wrapped her father in her arms. Jim did not know what to do and was embarrassed at the old man’s display of emotion.
Arthur shivered when he heard Yax K’in’s cry, he had never seen the old leader demonstrably display despair. It was a breakdown in the natural order of things, Yax K’in quietly absorbed the punishments of his world. Arthur, then, noticed Hamish lying on the ground. He called to Michelle as he raced and stumbled across the uneven floor to his unconscious friend.
Harry ran behind Arthur, and Jim left Pep’Em
Ha.
Hamish regained consciousness to the concerned stares of four sets of eyes. He groaned when he realized he was alive but then smiled at the obvious worry of his friends and family. Jim and Harry levered Hamish’s body until he, again, sat on the bottom step.
‘I’m all right,’ he said groggily. No-one believed him. ‘It was the smoke, the heat, I don’t know.’ He let out a single explosive sound that was intended to be a reassuring laugh. ‘I guess, it was everything.’
Michelle sat down and put her arm around him. That was what he wanted, Hamish knew. He wanted the care, the reassurances, the physical attention, the love of a woman. But not Michelle. He stretched his mouth into a wan, forced smile as a thank you. She smiled grimly back.
Silence stretched through the cave as the two groups tended to their wounded. The two butterflies watched on like guardians.
Yax K’in wobbled over the cave floor, under protestations from Pep’Em Ha, to join the group around Hamish as if the Westerner, more than forty years younger, had the greater claim to ministration.
The pockets of silence in the cave were interrupted by rustling sounds from shifting clothed bodies, the wash of Michelle’s hand as she rubbed Hamish’s back and the rush of breathing. Yax K’in broke the silence of words.
‘That is the third time I have failed in that ceremony. I have proved that I am unworthy,’ he sighed.
‘Please help me,’ Yax K’in asked Hamish.
Chapter 28
The new born baby girl was placed into Yax K’in’s hands. His lips were drawn together in a thin line and his creased face frowned.
‘I hope you are pleased enough, Yax K’in,’ the baby’s mother said. ‘I have given you a daughter.’
Yax K’in nodded his head, once, in acknowledgement. The mother, his youngest wife, was perplexed, thinking he was upset at the production of a daughter. I have already given him a son, she thought with aggravation.
Yax K’in heard the tone in his wife’s voice. He was not upset that he had a daughter and he smiled at the baby first and then at the mother.
‘She will need a name,’ the mother said brightly.
Yax K’in’s smile faded, his face again became dark.
‘She already has a name,’ he said sadly.
The mother’s bright mood faded, again. She was proud of her position in the village. Although a husband many generations older had initially worried her, she had produced two beautiful, healthy children and she was the favored wife of the leader of the KulWinik. She believed in her husband’s importance. She was glad Yax K’in’s older children had left the village, the aggravation they had caused their old father had hurt her as well. She would ensure that her children grew up knowing the proper respect for the ancient traditions and their father’s position in the hierarchy of ancestors. She was old fashioned, she knew that, her own family had teased her.
‘K’ul Kelem Pep’Em Ha,’ Yax K’in said wearily to the baby.
‘What?’ his wife asked.
‘That is her name,’ he said. ‘It has been waiting for her for thousands of years and she has arrived to claim it.’
Yax K’in placed more of the hard copal incense into the god-pot. The smell swelled and wafted through the temple hut. He chanted as he performed the ritual of appeasement to Hachakyum. The gurgling sound of his baby daughter, as she lay next to him, mingled with his rhythmic monotone. A cup of balche rested on a mahogany coaster on his other side. He dipped his finger in the liquid from time to time and sprinkled it over the smoldering resin.
Yax K’in lifted his baby daughter and cradled her. He felt for her hand, her fingers curled around one of his and held him tight. He smiled grimly then plunged a needle into one of her fingers. She screamed. A few drops of her blood fell into the pot. Yax K’in quickly placed her pricked finger in his mouth and tasted the salt of her blood. He was mortified at the pain he had caused. However, he was attempting to pre-empt the greater pain that was expected of her when she was grown. A smaller pain now, quickly forgotten, would be preferable to later agony.
It was not part of Hachakyum’s plan, but Yax K’in hoped it would suffice.
The smoke congealed and thickened. It rose to the ceiling of the temple hut and filtered through the thatch. A seed formed in the smoke that grew to be the head of a serpent that waved from side to side coalescing the resin residue into itself. A mouth formed and then collapsed. The smoke began to lose definition. Yax K’in was frantic. He added more resin and sprinkled more balche. He would not add more of his daughter’s blood. The smoke spluttered and re-thickened to form the open mouthed Vision Serpent.
The centre of the smoke splintered. Two images grew in size and took human shape. His youngest wife rushed through the periphery of the cloud and scooped up her screaming daughter. His wife’s eyes were dark, angry and lifeless.
She heard the plaintive cries of two babies. She fell to her knees, almost dropping her daughter. Yax K’in’s wife peered, in fear, at the two crying naked forms lying in the dirt of the temple hut as if any moment they may become a danger to her and her daughter.
Their skin was lighter than a KulWinik baby’s. They had large, regal noses but their short hair, which was abnormally developed, was a thick, angry mass of dark red.
The crying babies were identical twins.
Chapter 29
‘And you think Jim and Harry are those babies?’ Arthur asked Yax K’in, puzzled and unconvinced, when the old man had completed his tale.
‘Yes,’ Yax K’in replied quickly. ‘They are those children.’
‘It can’t be them,’ Michelle said. She laughed, incredulous. ‘Just look at Hamish and the boys.’
‘Yax K’in could be right,’ Hamish said. ‘I don’t know why the twins look like me, they were adopted by my son.’
Michelle stood quickly and backed away from Hamish as if he was diseased, as if he was responsible for the unlikely tale of the appearance of the twins. She shook her head.
‘No, no,’ she said. She could not believe. She was a scientist and there was no logical explanation for Yax K’in’s witchcraft, the resurrection of Harry, the appearance of the baby Twins. The logic of the physical world was unassailable. She did not doubt a world of vivid imagination but the existence of such things in the real world was impossible. She was delusional, she believed, but lucid. They were all suffering similar symptoms. She had suspended the real, physical world for some reason that her conscious mind could not fathom. She felt perfectly well but, she had to be going mad, it was the only logical explanation. What she touched and felt, and saw and heard had been drastically filtered for some unknown reason. She shook her head again.
‘But I feel so damn normal,’ she whispered, loud enough to be heard. Arthur hugged her. She did not resist, that part of the unreal world she could accept.
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Hamish is right. My oldest memory of him is holding onto his leg and being chased by my father, his son.’ He smiled at the sweetness of a simple, secure childhood memory.
However, five pairs of eyes stared at Harry as if he had, at that moment, appeared naked and crying from a coagulated cloud of incense smoke. The Westerner’s and Pep’Em Ha’s mouths were agape.
‘What?’ Harry asked. He was perplexed at their astonished attention.
Michelle tore her eyes away from Harry. She could not look at the apparition she did not believe, as if she had alone been the one to hear Harry talk in an ancient language he could not have known.
Chapter 30
Shuffling noises echoed down the passageway. It was the sound of many footfalls.
‘Oh! This is wonderful.’ Roberto said as he stepped out of the entrance then made way for a line of policemen. They lifted Hamish to his feet and roughly pushed the others out of the way.
Roberto’s smile beamed as he regally descended the steps, then became a stifled laugh when he saw the scowl on Arthur’s face. Roberto was enjoying himself again, after the anger of returning from the KulWi
nik village and finding all the workers at lunch. He checked himself, he did not want to gloat at Arthur’s extra misfortune, being caught trespassing and tampering with an archaeological site. He would be magnanimous and would only demand Arthur’s immediate departure from Mexico and not ask for criminal charges.
The KulWinik were another matter. They could be an ongoing problem.
Roberto said to Yax K’in, in Spanish, ‘The young man driving the Museum’s car, he is your son? Is he?’
Pep’Em Ha answered. ‘Yes, he is,’ she said angrily. She clenched her fists.
At the End of the World Page 22
