I point down. “You think that’s what’s down there?”
Uncle Li sits cross-legged on the platform. “I recall this fellow’s paper describing how these twenty calendars that measure cycles of things, from insects to humans to the solar system and everything in between, work like a bunch of cogs together. While they are separate measuring devices, they all move together.”
“You know, of all the things I expected to find down here,” I say as I pull up my lantern, “a calendar was not one of them.” I was hoping for something a bit more exciting. Treasure. A time machine. Something radical.
“I think this is a profound discovery,” Uncle Li says emphatically. “Let me hold the lanterns and you sketch some of what’s down there.”
Uncle Li illuminates the floor while I try to sketch. It’s actually quite beautiful when you look at it as a machine.
It’s hard to sketch lying on my stomach, so I’m only able to get three of the gears drawn before we decide to break for lunch. To get back up, Uncle Li gives me a boost and I pull myself up with my arms. Once my weight is off, the platform moves up a bit. I watch Uncle Li rising up on this eye-shaped platform and realize it’s an image that wouldn’t be out of place in one of those cheesy sci-fi movies from the sixties that Dad is so in to. It stops a few feet below the floor, so Uncle Li pulls himself up like he’s getting out of a swimming pool. Once he’s off, the platform comes level with the floor.
We sit for a moment looking at it. “So what’s the deal with the vesica pisces?” I ask.
“Pythagoras thought it represented the beginning of creation—it’s symbolic of the intersection where the divine world meets the world of matter. Plus,” he adds with emphasis, “it’s the second step in making the Flower of Life, that intricate carving that covers the hole in the floor of your secret chamber.”
“So the first step in making the Flower of Life is one circle, right?” I ask. “That means the beginning of this story started when we entered through the hole in the floor of the chamber.”
“Excellent deduction!”
“And the second chapter started under the second step in making the Flower of Life—two overlapping circles—when we lowered ourselves into the cog room.”
“I think you’re right,” Uncle Li says. “Which means the next step would be to find three overlapping circles.”
I’m itching to do some research on these cogs, so after we finish our box lunches and Uncle Li goes to his room to rest, I do a search on Mayan stuff. It’s weird how much there is on the Internet about the Mayan calendar. They were way ahead of their time when it came to astronomy and could even predict when planetary things would happen in the future. Plus they tracked astronomical stuff like eclipses back millions of years that have proven to be totally accurate. Then I see something weird that stops me cold. The Mayan calendar for human cycles ends in 2012.
Why would a calendar end? That’s not really the point of a calendar. I remember that spiral about the secret of twenty-twelve: Into arcane old knowledge you must delve, to find the secret to twenty-twelve.
The intercom buzz makes me jump. Alex says, “Caity? You there? May we have a word?”
Running over to the intercom to hit the reply button, I say, “I’ll meet you at the stairs,” while trying not to sound out-of-breath or overexcited.
Alex is waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me, and when Mr. Papers catches sight of him he leaps from my shoulder, springs off the banister, and then lands on his shoulder. Alex looks worried. When I get to him, he looks around and whispers, “You were right about Tenzo.”
“What?” I grab his arm and lead him to the library, closing the door.
“Tell me everything,” I say, taking a seat.
“Well, first he wanted to walk around the perimeter of the castle, following the canal. And the whole bloody time he had this long stick that he was dragging along in the water, like he was trying to find something in that little burn.”
“Did he?”
He shakes his head. “Of course not. Just the odd clump of moss. And then he had me walk him around every building on the grounds.”
“Including the tower?” I ask as casually as I can.
“Aye,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You’d think the man was doing a building inspection the way he was walking around that tower, poking at it with his stick, looking over every rock.”
“What happened when you finished the tour and he didn’t find anything?” I ask.
Alex sits on the arm of the chair next to me. “To be honest he seemed quite perturbed.”
I give him the I-told-you-so shrug. “The guy is a freak.”
“What do you reckon he wants?” he asks. “Why’s he obsessed with the bloody tower?”
I shrug and shake my head, weighing whether or not I want to tell him all I know.
Alex reaches for my hand, places it on his open palm, and then puts his other hand over it like a sandwich. “I’m sorry I doubted you this morning.”
I feel myself blushing. “No big deal,” I stammer. “I must have seemed kind of psycho.” I don’t want to pull my hand away so I wait for him to drop it. He holds on for a moment. Then he lets go and gives me a big smile. If I look at him any longer, I swear I’ll blurt out I LOVE YOU! So I turn away, becoming very interested in the upholstery on the chair next to me.
“Caity, what’s up?” he asks.
But being this close to him, with his pale-blue wolf eyes and pineconey smell, it all makes me want to just come clean and tell him what I’d found out about his father.
“Alex, uh, can I ask you something kind of personal?”
“I suppose so …” he says reluctantly. I shouldn’t have used the word “personal.” I think he’s expecting me to ask him about body odor or something.
“I was wondering if you know any of the details of how your dad … well, what happened here the night your dad passed away?”
“Aye,” he says as he looks down and moves the edge of the Oriental carpet with his foot. “The castle was being burgled. Hamish managed to call over to our house and Dad came by to help. He was a hero, shot dead by cowardly thieves.”
“But you never found out who it was? What they wanted?”
“They vanished before help could get there. Why’re you asking?”
“I’ve just been discovering some weird stuff. I actually don’t think it was a burglary. I think whoever shot your father might have thought they were killing Hamish instead.”
He looks at me as if I’d been speaking Japanese. “What?” he says.
I start to repeat myself and he shakes his head. “Nae, I heard you. I mean, how could you say such a thing?”
“Well, it’s just that some of the information I’ve found here—”
“Listen, Caity, you don’t know anything ’bout my father,” he says, cutting me off. He points his finger at me like a dart and speaks slowly and quietly, which for some reason freaks me out more than if he were to scream. “Whatever you think you’re doing here, making up little detective stories to pass the day, leave my father out of it.” I see tears welling up in his eyes. He tightens his face to control them, then looks down.
Uncertain of what’s going on, Mr. Papers jumps to the floor and paces nervously. This is not at all how I thought Alex would react. My throat closes up like I’m going to vomit and my face feels white-hot. How could I have been so callous?
“Oh, my God, Alex, I didn’t mean to—”
He stops me by putting up his hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Just leave me and my family out of your silly made-up adventures.” He keeps his hand up as he walks out of the room.
I feel exactly like I did on a childhood field trip to a farm when I accidentally grabbed onto an electric fence: fried to the core.
I’m wallowing facedown in a pillow when Mom knocks on my door and pops her head in. “Hi honey, how was your day?” she asks.
I don’t want to answer that question, so I ask, “How was the walk?�
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She flops on my bed. “Everyone had a great time. We walked to town, had a couple of drams at a pub and walked back. I’m exhausted and I’m thirty years younger than all of them!”
“Guess you shouldn’t have tossed that Tae Bo tape …”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Anyway, dinner is not far off, so we need to get cleaned up.”
I look at my watch. “Wow, it’s later than I thought,” I say.
She groans as she lifts herself up and says, “This place makes me forget time altogether. I never seem to know what day it is. Without the bustle of the city, it’s easy to lose time.”
“I’ve noticed that too,” I say, getting up to try and do something about my puffy eyes.
Before dinner, the guests mingle in the parlor sipping drinks. I spot Alex with a tray of little quiches. He doesn’t look at me. How do I apologize for something like this? How could I have been so dumb to push away my only friend here, not to mention my potential husband?
I see Tenzo walking right toward me. I look around but don’t see my parents or Uncle Li, so I dash for the kitchen. “Can I help with anything?” I breathlessly ask Mrs. Findlay.
She waves me off. “Don’t be silly Caity; you shouldn’t even be in here right now.”
“Okay, I won’t do any work; I’ll just sit and watch.” I take a banana to Mr. Papers, who’s sitting cross-legged on the pillow in his cubby like he’s going to start a yoga class.
Alex comes in with an empty tray. “The savages have eaten them all,” he says to Mrs. Findlay. It’s as if I don’t exist; I am officially dead to him.
“Nothing quite like a long walk in the glen to get the appetite up,” replies Mrs. Findlay. “Will you ask the Laird to call them to dinner, son?”
I wait in the kitchen until I hear them taking their places. Uncle Li is saving a spot next to him and I’m happy to see Tenzo is at the far end of the table. I take a seat. While the guests are talking to one another, I whisper to Uncle Li, “Remember that line about twenty-twelve?”
“Vaguely,” he replies.
“Well, I was surfing for info on Mayan stuff and guess what. Their whole calendar thing ends in the year 2012!”
“That’s right! Now I remember. That was part of the thesis I was telling you about!”
“If they tracked eclipses and stuff back millions of years, why end it all in 2012?”
“I wish I could remember. This was so many years ago,” he says. “It was something about moving into another plane of consciousness or something.”
Talk is dying down and it’s getting quieter, so Uncle Li and I end our conversation.
Alex walks around the table ladling seafood bisque into everyone’s bowls. Mom picks up her spoon to eat and everyone follows.
“So Caity, what did you do with yourself today?” Dad asks.
“I kicked around with Uncle Li a bit, then I helped Justine with a summer school project.”
“What a good friend you are!” he says as he pats me on the back. “What’s the subject?”
“Well, she has to do this paper on Mayan Cosmology.” I feel super smart saying “cosmology” even though I just learned what it means today.
“Wow! Well, you’ve finally found a subject that stumps me.” He turns to Mom at the other end of the table. “Fiona, now Caity is studying the Maya!” he says loudly so that everyone at the table hears him. I just shake my head. It’s so obvious that my parents have only one child.
“Oh Caity, that’s wonderful!” Mom says. “Didn’t they have an advanced civilization back when the Europeans were still living in muddy little villages?”
“Quite true,” says Mr. Inada. “An amazing culture. My wife, Marcella, God rest her soul, taught Mesoamerican Studies at UT Austin.”
“Well, you must know a lot about the Maya then,” I say.
He wipes the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Yes, quite a lot actually,” he says. “We took many a sabbatical down in Guatemala, Belize, Mexico. Fascinating culture.”
“So what’s up with the 2012 thing?” I blurt out, wishing I’d said it more elegantly.
Dad asks, “What do you mean by ‘the 2012 thing’?”
Tenzo looks at me and raises his eyebrows. “She means the end of the Mayan calendar.”
I look away fast. What a creep.
“The end of a calendar? Enlighten us, Caity,” Mom says.
I shake my head. “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking. I just know that they were really good astronomers and they made these different calendars that end on December 21, 2012.”
Tenzo lifts a finger and says, “Only one calendar, the Long Count calendar, ends then.”
“Have you studied this much?” Uncle Li asks Tenzo, with a tinge of irritation.
In his snooty tone Tenzo replies, “I teach ancient languages, so of course I have studied the Maya. Though it’s not my primary area of expertise.”
The door from the kitchen opens and Alex rolls in the cart. There’s a salmon the size of a toddler surrounded by lemons, crispy roasted potatoes, steaming rolls, and peas with chopped mint. I’m trying to catch his eye but he avoids looking in my vicinity. It’s worse than I thought.
“Is the fact that the end date of this calendar—December 21—is winter solstice significant to the Maya?” asks Dr. Frasse.
“Absolutely,” replies Mr. Inada. “Not only is December 21, 2012, the winter solstice, it’s also when the sun rises in the middle of the dark bulge in the Milky Way.” I notice that his eyes are watery like old people’s eyes get, but something has lit them up.
Dr. Slaton nods and says, “Interesting. That part of the Milky Way is the center of the galaxy. Where everything originates.”
“What’s this now?” asks Dad, trying to keep up. It’s weird to see him uncomfortable because he doesn’t know something. “Is this alignment rare?”
Mr. Inada nods and says, “Well, I’d call once every 26,000 years or so pretty rare.”
“Actually it’s 25,920 years,” corrects Tenzo, the big know-it-all.
Mr. Dressel says, “Oh, then this must have to do with the Precession of the Equinoxes.”
“And we’re back to the Ages of Man, that we talked about last night!” Dr. Frasse says.
“Wait, what’s the 2012 thing have to do with dark and light ages?” I ask.
“All ancient cultures knew and mythologized what a profound affect Precession has on the human mind; the Maya just put dates to it all,” explains Mr. Inada.
“Precession is caused by the Earth wobbling, right?” Dad asks. “Like in addition to orbiting the sun we also make this other little wobbly orbit?”
“Wow, really technical terms, Dad,” I say.
Mr. Dressel adds, “That’s right, Angus. Our wobble moves us backwards through the zodiac, causing the sunrise to move one degree every seventy-two years.”
“But how exactly can this affect our brains?” I ask.
“One theory is that based on how close we are to the Galactic Center, we are pulled in and out of ‘dark ages’ when knowledge is lost, and ‘ages of enlightenment’ that cause evolutionary leaps,” explains Mr. Inada. “It’s just like our relationship to the sun, in summer there’s growth, in winter there’s death. Except the center of our galaxy has a bigger effect as it has the mass of more than three million suns.”
“Let me put it plainly,” says Tenzo, condescendingly. “Basically we’re moving into an alignment with the Galactic Center that will profoundly change the Earth’s electromagnetic field. The Maya predicted that this would cause some sort of … evolutionary event.”
Mom goes for the hard facts and asks Dr. Slaton, the only one here who really studies space, if this is true.
Dr. Slaton shrugs. “Well, here’s how it may be possible. We all know that the sun’s activity influences us right? But what influences the sun? What triggers solar activity?” She pauses for a moment and wipes a bit of lipstick off her glass with her thumb. “The sun’s cycles are trig
gered by energy that comes from the Galactic Center. So how the Earth and the sun are positioned to this center source greatly affects humans. And we’re definitely noticing changes in the sun.”
“What kind of changes?” asks Dr. Frasse.
“Well, there have been more sunspots in the last sixty years than for the past 1,150 combined. And the biggest solar flares in recent human history are predicted for—drum roll please—the year 2012.”
“Really?” Mom says desperately, as if she’s just been told there’s rat poison in her wine.
“They call this time The Quickening,” says Tenzo.
“But what’s going to happen?’ I ask. “I mean, why would the Maya track all these star and planet happenings back millions of years and then just end the whole thing in 2012 when we face the galaxy’s center? Is that like the end of the world?”
“Or is it the beginning?” Tenzo asks mysteriously.
“Both,” says Mr. Inada. “The Maya say it’s the end of the Fourth World and the beginning of the Fifth World.”
“The beginning of what?” Mom asks.
“Even before the fifteenth century, Mayan Elders knew—through the prophecy of their calendars—that they would be invaded in 1519. That started 468 years of what they called the Nine Periods of Darkness.” All eyes are on Mr. Inada as he continues. “Because the Maya predicted it, they were prepared. Daykeepers hid in remote mountain caves to save the prophetic calendar systems. The ancestors of these people are still hidden today, counting down the days.”
“And we are now in the final Baktun,” says Tenzo. “The final cycle. A tenuous time.”
Directing my question to Mr. Inada so that Tenzo will stop butting in, I ask, “Do you really believe that the world will change in 2012?”
“I’m just a chemist; I’m no scholar. But my wife spent her life studying the Maya, and she believed with every fiber of her being that 2012 would be one of the most important years in human history. Such a shame she won’t be around to see it.” We all see that Mr. Inada is getting emotional. People start scooting peas around on their plates and fidgeting with their wine glasses.
The Daykeeper's Grimoire Page 12
