And so it grows, it is consolidated. It is a road I am destined to travel, I will travel along it for all eternity, and I am not allowed to deviate in any way. It is appalling.
I flicked on the right-turn signal, slowed down, and pulled into a rest stop just outside Hudiksvall. A couple of toilets, a few picnic tables. No people. This was where I had vaguely planned to drink the woman if the signs were favorable. I switched off the engine; it fell silent with a weary sigh from the hydraulics, then I simply sat there, my hands folded in my lap.
“What are you doing?” the woman asked. “Why have you stopped?” There was no fear in her voice, only neutral curiosity.
“I feel as if we have a great deal in common,” I said.
Perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to say. Some women might take it as the prelude to an approach, maybe even rape. But I didn’t think she would do that, because we understood each other on a different level. At least I hoped we did, and her next words confirmed it. “I feel the same way.”
“I’m going to ask you straight out,” I said. “This task you’ve been given. Does it have something to do with . . . blood?”
For the first time since she climbed into the cab, there was genuine emotion in the woman’s voice as she replied in a trembling exhalation: “Yes . . .”
I turned my head and looked her straight in the eye as I whispered: “Are you the same as me?”
For a long time we sat there with our eyes locked together, not even blinking as something indescribable flowed back and forth between us. Then she said: “Close your eyes . . .”
I leaned back and did as she said, trying to make sense of this unexpected development. What did it mean? What was going to happen next? What were we going to do? Was I at long last going to get some of the answers I had yearned for? Out of the darkness behind my eyelids, I heard the woman say:
“It was just after New Year’s in 2009. That’s when it happened. I was in the laundry, I was just putting some sheets into the washing machine when I had an . . . attack. My head was filled with images. A port somewhere, a truck. A woman with black hair and a bloodstained dressing on her neck. It was so powerful that my nose started to bleed. It dripped all over the sheets.”
As the woman was speaking, I heard the rustle of nylon fabric as she took something out of her rucksack. What she was saying was not at all what I had expected, and I wanted to open my eyes, but suddenly my eyelids felt so heavy, my body so uncooperative that I remained sitting exactly as I was while she went on:
“It took me a long time to realize that it was a calling. Several years. I thought I was going crazy. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe we’re both crazy. But a year ago, I set out. Out on the road. Because that was all I knew. That the person I was looking for was out on the road somewhere.”
When I felt the pressure over my heart, I finally opened my eyes. In her left hand, the woman was holding what looked like a billiard cue that had been broken off and sharpened to a point, which was pressing against my chest. In her right hand was a small hammer, ready to strike.
“Because it is you, isn’t it?” she asked.
I nodded and her face contorted in what might have been pain as she raised the hammer another inch or two.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “But I’m just doing what I have to do, exactly like you. Isn’t that right?”
I pushed my infected heart harder against the sharp point, closed my eyes, and said: “What kept you so long?”
BLUE HELL
DAVID WELLINGTON
They bathed her and perfumed her body, perfecting her for the god.
Then she could hear it, the sound of a drum.
They cut her toenails with copper shears and pierced her ears with gold.
And in the distance, the sound of a drum.
Slaves painted her skin, dark bands across eyes and mouth, blue everywhere else.
Coming closer, the sound of a drum.
Blue for water, blue for Chaac. Blue for sacrifice.
And before her, the sound of a drum.
They placed the peaked headdress atop her lacquered hair.
And now, beside her, the sound of a drum.
They walked her across the dry stone, the withered grass, holding her hands.
Behind her now, the sound of a drum.
To the edge of the cenote, its waters shrunken by the drought.
And faster now, the sound of a drum.
Prayers were uttered, prayers for rain. Prayers for mercy.
Thundering in her ears, the sound of a drum.
Her head swam with visions and the hopes of her people.
And now the drumming stopped—
And they cast her in.
Blue for sacrifice. The water below was blue. Her fall seemed to take forever, as if some god were playing a trick on her, stretching out the day like thread between a weaver’s hands. She put her arms out to her sides as the wind rose up around her.
The cenote was a natural well, round as the moon, fifty arms across and twenty deep. Ferns and long vines hung down over the abrupt lip of the well. Sheer walls fell away to perfect blue water at the bottom. The same blue they’d painted her skin. Over the years, so many sacrifices had made it that way.
She braced herself for the cool of the water, the way it would feel between her toes. She promised herself that when she sliced through the blue depth she would not struggle, would not try to swim. She would let herself sink. Down into Chaac’s domain, where she would be put upon a smooth, carved bench and be brought the food of the water realm. Where servants would plait her hair and sing her underwater songs.
She would not try to swim. This was paramount: if she resisted, if she fought the water and tried to keep it out of her mouth, Chaac would know the sacrifice was made with only half her heart, and he would not bring back the rain. She must open herself to the blue, let it fill her. Let it consume her.
One life, her little life, for the rain. The rain that would bring back the corn. One little life to save so many others. She was a hero, like the great twins. She would be remembered forever, and given a place of honor in the underwater hall.
She would not struggle. The wind around her face made tears fill up her eyes, and she could not see. She would not resist.
She would not.
Please, she begged, let me not resist.
Time had not slowed down, not truly. That was all the time for thinking she had. Before she could even get her knees up, she was at the bottom of the cenote.
But the gods did play cruel tricks. As her foot split the blue water, instead of the depths of the cenote, instead of the cool blue water of Chaac, her toes found hard stone. A ledge, hidden just below the surface.
Underneath her, the bones of one leg bent like a bow strung by a strong warrior. Bent, and then snapped. Shattered.
The pain was brighter than the sun.
She knew she screamed.
She remembered very little else.
There had been no sleep, no darkness inside her head. The sunlight that bounced off the sheer walls of the cenote burned behind her eyes, still, as it had without break, without interruption.
Yet she was sure that time had passed, time she had not reckoned.
The pain had been so large, so hard to compass, that it had stripped away thoughts and passions and even language from her brain. Slowly things came back to her. Her name. The faces of her family. Why she was here.
The knowledge, certain and deadly, that she had failed.
She had screamed when her leg snapped. And that was inexcusable. By crying out, she had likely ruined everything. Chaac would be offended because she did not offer herself willingly—her scream had prolonged the drought. She had ensured more of her people would die of hunger and want.
That hurt nearly as much as the pain in her leg.
For a long while, she could do nothing but weep. She was barely aware of where she was, only that she had wasted her death. She could do nothing but stare through
her tears, stare at unfocused sunlight, stare and take great jagged breaths that hurt her chest and made her shake on her watery ledge.
Eventually though, she wiped at her eyes, smearing the band of dark paint there. She looked up, thinking to see her people staring down at her in shame.
But up at the lip of the cenote, so far above her head, there was no one. Ferns and flowers swayed their heads in the breeze. Long lianas fell straight down toward her, spills of green against the gray stone walls of the cenote. Above, only blue sky. A paler blue than the water below. This was a sacred place. No one would come here until they were ready to perform another sacrifice. That could be many days from now. As far as her people knew, she was dead—they would not come to look for her.
Having wasted her death, she now began to think about life, and how it could be preserved.
The cenote was almost perfectly round, and the water was still, so it looked like a king’s mirror. Its walls were sheer and smooth. No one could climb down to bring her out, even if she dared to hope someone might try.
The liana vines hung down straight and sturdy like natural ropes. She was a strong girl and she knew how to climb. If she could have reached one of them, jumped up and grabbed its curling end, maybe she could have gotten out on her own. There was one on the far side of the cenote that maybe she could have reached, if she could jump for it. But her leg was never going to let her jump again.
The ledge she was on was a finger’s depth below the water, invisible from above, but under her hands she could feel its rough surface, find its limits. It was about twice as long as her body but very narrow. If she was not careful she might roll off, into the much deeper water. She would drown there—something she had wished for so recently but now seemed a terrible death.
She knew why the water was so blue. Every sacrifice ever made in the cenote had worn the same paint that covered her skin from her forehead to the soles of her feet. It was good paint, very durable—permanent, even, which was why it was saved for rituals of the gods. The water in the cenote had been clear once but now it was the color of all the people who had been thrown into its depths.
Blue.
If she fell into the water now and drowned, the water that filled her belly would be stained by human skin and rotting flesh. The pain in her leg had already made her nauseous. The idea of dying like that certainly didn’t help.
But what was her option? To die of hunger on the ledge? She could try to take her own life, but how? She had no knife with her, no weapon of any kind. Even her peaked headdress had fallen off when she struck the ledge and was presumably at the bottom of the cenote. She wore nothing but a thin shift. She could tear it into strips, make a rope with which to hang herself. But what would she attach it to?
She could, she supposed, spend the rest of the time she had left begging Chaac for forgiveness. Apologizing to him for how she had ruined his sacrifice. She knew the prayers—she had been raised to be a priestess, which was why she had been chosen for this job when the rains failed to come and the maize didn’t grow. Maybe if she begged him enough, if she made the prayers sound sincere, he would understand that she had not ruined the sacrifice by choice. That she was blameless.
For a while she tried. She mumbled her way through the words she’d memorized, repeating the same lines over and over.
But the pain in her leg was just too much. It clouded her mind, made it impossible to concentrate. The words got tangled in her mouth, like the quipu strings the tax collectors used. She felt herself growing weak, tired. She slept again.
Her dreams were not good.
When she woke, darkness had fallen. At first she did not understand why she had awoken. Then she realized she was not alone in the cenote.
She did not cry out this time, though even as she opened her eyes she was gripped by terrible fear. Some base instinct kept her quiet as she watched the water of the cenote ripple in spreading circles.
It was just a fish, she thought. At worst, an eel with snaggled teeth, twisting its way through the blue water. She forced herself to calm down.
It moved again and she heard it this time, the little splash as it cut through the water. If it had been a fish it would have darted about, she thought. If it were an eel, it would have twisted. But as she heard another splash, saw a pale shape crest the blue water a third time, she was gripped by the certainty this was no creature of the watery realm. That it was not swimming but walking through the water.
A delusion, surely. An imagining brought on by the pain that surrounded her every thought, crushed out all logic.
Above, the night sky was bound by the round rim of the cenote, like a colossal eye full of stars looking down at her.
She chided herself for being such a little girl. For letting fear and emotion get in the way of proper thinking. She had been trained to be better than this. As a priestess she would have had to watch the world, observe it dispassionately. Search the clouds and the streams in the forest for signs and tokens of what the gods wanted. She would have worked out careful formulae for how to appease them for the betterment of the city. Such work required a clear head and a strong heart for making hard decisions. If she had been a simple child, jumping at every story of the lords of Xibalba and their demons, she would never have been chosen to die for Chaac’s pleasure. The priests would not have trusted her to die without struggling.
Of course, that hadn’t worked out so well.
For a long time the water of the cenote was still. The ripples she’d seen reached the walls and reflected back but in time they died out and the stars appeared on the dark face of the water once more, unbroken.
She rolled her eyes and sighed deeply, putting a little cynicism into the gesture. It sounded affected to her ears but it helped a little. She settled herself down on her ledge, getting as comfortable as her broken leg would allow, and closed her eyes. She would sleep until the morning. Perhaps then someone would come and look down and see her, and get a good rope, and bring her out of this place. She knew how unlikely that was, but imagining the possibility soothed her. Took her mind off the fact that she was starting to get very hungry, and—
She heard another little splash. And more. A croaking, clicking sound, like something trying to talk.
Instantly her eyes opened and she pulled herself up to a sitting posture. Pulled her legs away from the end of the ledge, though every movement was agony.
She stared out into the darkened cenote, searching the water for the source of the noise. At first she could see nothing but then—there? Perhaps . . . a round shape, a little paler than the water around it. About the size of a little basket turned upside down. It did not move but it lay at the center of the ripples. She watched it with fascination, with horror. Feelings that only increased as the thing started to grow.
No, not grow. It was simply rising from the water, showing more of itself. It became rounder and fuller, pale in the starlight. A dome, a hemisphere that dripped with the dark water. She could make out only a few details of its surface, two dark pits on its front. And then, suddenly, she understood.
She was watching a skull emerge from the water. Those pits were eye sockets. And deep in those dark hollows burned two tiny fires, just sparks of light. Blue light.
She screamed for the second time, then.
But whatever the thing wanted, this skull-thing, it came no closer.
She shouted at it. Splashed water at it to try to make it go away. Prayed to Chaac for help she knew she did not deserve.
Nothing seemed to faze the creature. But eventually, after watching her for a long time, it sank back into the water and left her alone.
It became very hard to keep herself awake.
The fear worked, for a while. The terror she’d felt when she saw the monstrous shape in the water. But fear is like a little fire—if made without enough kindling, if you do not constantly blow on it, it gutters out. The pain in her leg made it difficult to think in chains of logic and she had to remind herself over and
over that she was in danger, that the skull thing was still out there.
She knew it had been no hallucination. She had seen those eyes burning clear as daylight, seen the blue sparks the same color as the water of the cenote. But whatever the thing was, it did not return. And she was so hungry . . .
The next time she woke, the sun had come back and was burning her face. She struggled to pull herself away from the heat and light and a new stab of pain made her pass out again for a while.
She felt so weak, so fragile. When she looked down at her leg, she saw it had swollen, the joint of her knee like a mamey fruit ready to burst. The skin of her calf, where the bone had shattered, was purple and shiny and she didn’t dare touch it.
Thirst tugged at her. She didn’t like to drink the blue water, knowing what it contained, but she could not help herself. She cupped her hand and brought a little of it to her lips. Despite her squeamishness, it tasted wonderful. She drank deep, then lay back and just tried to breathe normally for a while. Even that took effort.
What had she really seen? What had it been?
She had been taught what the gods looked like, of course, had even seen the secret carvings inside the pyramid at the center of the city. She knew there were gods who looked like human skeletons with rolling eyes and grabbing hands. Cizin, the lord of the underworld, was one like that, one of many. But the thing she’d seen out in the water had no human eyes to flash and stare. And what would any god be doing submerged in the water of a cenote? The gods were haughty, tricksome beings who spoke like thunder. They didn’t croak like frogs.
That sound—it haunted her more than anything. She had been sure the creature wanted to talk to her. That it was trying to make itself understood. But the sound had been nothing like human speech. It had been like—
Seize the Night Page 49
