Shield Skin

by F. E. Arliss

  When she turned back to the gaggle of crones behind her, she was surprised to see Bertha crying and Dorothea hugging her in an unusual gesture of support. Letty was scowling.

  “What’s wrong?” Emery asked, concern lacing her voice as she grabbed both of Bertha’s arms and peered into her face.

  “It’s a terrible place, Calakmul. I hated it and I don’t want you to go,” Bertha wailed. “We all hated it. Even Dorothea hated it and she never hated anything.”

  Emery stepped back, took a deep breath and said bracingly to all three of the clearly doubtful women. “I’m going. I’m going because I’ll learn a lot and it will be worth it. I’m also going to remind you that I am the one who is immune to a rattle snake and a poisonous dart frog. If there is anyone who can survive the jungle training of Calakmul, it’s me. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. If I’m not, I’ll call you,” she said, patting the side pocket of the backpack where the cellphone that had taken Letty weeks to secure with its international calling plan, nestled securely in a plastic ziplock bag. “Otherwise, Circling Wind will have me back to you in a couple of months. I’ll be all tan and clever and you’ll wonder why you were ever worried,” she added, grinning and hoping the show of bravado would calm the old ladies. Truly it was worrying. They weren’t the type to worry about nothing.

  Circling Wind nodded, grabbed Emery’s backpack and threw it into the plane. Before the crones knew it, the plane was taxiing and was gone into the blue of the sky. The three old ladies trudged back to the Chevy, got in and drove home without a peep being said. Letty broke out a bottle of rum when they got back to the mansion house and when Bertha had brought three steaming mugs of cocoa, the old woman glugged several huge portions into each mug and the three crones quietly got plowed. It was a lonely worrisome summer for the three of them.

  Emery flew several times during the long flight. They stopped briefly in Arizona and Eagle Rising met them at the landing strip in the old white pickup. Three huge cans of airplane fuel were strapped to the sides of the rickety bed and as Circling Wind siphoned them into the plane, Emery got a stream of last minute advice as she was forced to swallow some lamb stew with cornbread.

  “Don’t let Priestess see your fear. If you show fear, she’ll make it harder for you. Don’t worry about snakes on the ground, look up. They’re always in the trees, not on the ground. Plus, that’s where the jaguars hide as well. Up is the problem. Not down. Use your peripheral vision and take in everything. That’s how you’ll stay safe. Wide vision,” the old woman said, flipping her long grey braid aside and sweeping her forearms in an arc. “Take it all in. Then, you’ll be ready.” With that Eagle Rising hugged Emery, said, “Spider Mother will take care of you, Shield Skin,” and shoved her into the passenger seat of the small plane once more.

  They flew three hours south to a small grass strip in the middle of what was most likely the Yucatan Peninsula. Circling Wind clearly knew the elderly man that was meeting Emery as he shook hands and exchanged a few words. Then, with a brief pat on Emery’s back, he climbed into the small plane and was gone.

  Emery dragged her backpack over to the battered jeep where the old man stood, flopped it in the footwell of the passenger side and climbed in. If this man was like Circling Wind, he wouldn’t talk much. She had no idea where they were going from here, so the adventure had begun.

  To her shock they bumped through a dirt track that forked in a few hundred yards and emerged onto a narrow strip of white sand. The old man, who had never said a single word, parked the jeep up under a grove of palm trees and then motioned for her to approach a long narrow sail boat that was tied up to a dilapidated dock. Emery had never been on a boat, so a little stir of excitement ran through her at the prospect. As she approached, the excitement died down a bit as she looked at the filthy deck and the stench of fish assaulted her nostrils. Great, a fishing boat.

  The next few hours were a mix of wonder and weariness. Her nose quickly died to the smell of the fish and then it was a joy to be out on the water. The wind tore at her hair and clothes and she quickly donned the camo windbreaker, relieved to have its insulating properties. She also pulled on the wide earband she’d brought to contain her hair, though she also used it to seal off her ears from the wind. Over this she slapped the canvas sunhat and tightened the chin strap up to keep it on her head. The polarized sunglasses from 1940 that Dorothea had found in the attic went on next. Finally, the trip became more or less, comfortable.

  Finally, the old man who had said his name was Jose, uttered several sentences instructing her on how to move the sails and even let her manage the rudder for a while. It was fun. Dolphins jumped and flying fish erupted in small flurries alongside the boat. She saw the long, welted fin of a humpback whale and though she searched for more, she saw only the one. By the time they docked, the sun was starting to descend, hanging low in the sky, and she figured it was probably about 6:00 p.m. Jose had said she would have to travel several hours inland to get to Calakmul, so having been worn down a bit by the endless sun and wind of the sea, she was beginning to see how the journey could wear one down.

  Another battered jeep stood off to one side and a middle-aged woman with a long, black ponytail and dressed in a skirt and tee-shirt stood next to it. She waved one square, calloused hand at Jose, motioned for Emery to get in the other side and before she could say anything the woman had stomped one sandal-clad foot onto the accelerator and they were away.

  The entire trip was upwards. It was exhausting as Emery had to keep tilting her head back to see where they were going. Eventually the sun set and it was pitch black. Only the dim, yellow headlights of the jeep drilled into the darkness. The track was rough and pitted and the jeep had next to zero shock absorbers. By the time they pulled onto a flat, stone-terraced shelf of rock lit by a half a dozen flaming torches, Emery was dazed with exhaustion. A rock wall loomed to one side and a dark hole of a wooden door swung open. A young girl stood in the opening, gesturing for Emery to come to her.

  Grabbing her backpack, Emery thanked her driver in Spanish, gaining an astonished look from the skirted woman. Joining the girl, Emery was led through the thick outer walls of what she would later see in the light of day was a fortress of sorts. Several minutes later, they’d descended through a series of dark, damp tunnels lit occasionally by torches blazing on wood poles and emitting the stench of something that smelled like tar.

  She was shown into a small room that resembled a prison cell. It had a narrow bench at one end, topped again by several sheepskins and a wool blanket. Small exterior openings about the size of bricks had been left along the top of the wall to let in a bit of light during the day and vent in air for circulation. A small candle flickered in a cap of stone on the side wall and a narrow wooden door leaned drunkenly against the inside wall.

  The girl indicated a niche further along the hallway where a narrow trickle of water and two cups were shoved into niches. As far as Emery could tell, the girl was saying the dark hole to one side, where she could feel a cold waft of air coming in, was the toilet hole. The larger tin cup on the left was to wash your backside. The smaller tin cup, up high on the right and out of reach of anyone sitting on the toilet hole, was to be used for drinking water and dipped into the small reservoir that was at Emery’s shoulder-height. You sure wouldn’t want to get those two cups mixed up!

  When they returned to her small cell, a plate of something that looked like corn tortillas and some sort of mashed beans had been left at the foot of the ledge. A banana lay next to the pewter plate. Emery thanked the girl and as soon as the door was closed she wolfed down the food, then taking the banana peel and plate to the small alcove, she rinsed the plate over the toilet hole, threw the peel down there as well, then swigged down a cup of water and returned to her cell.

  The door was made of a heavy slab of wood and she closed it, having to lift and pull at the same time as the hinges were actually long pieces of thick vine that had been looped through holes chipped in the edge o
f the door. Another piece of vine could be looped through a wooden peg to hold the door shut. The room was in total darkness except for the small candle stub in a small niche. If she’d been claustrophobic, it would have been the end for her, as the cell was no more than eight feet wide and even less deep. Good thing she’d loved her little dirt cave hidey-hole when she was a kid.

  Emery divested herself of everything but her underwear and then climbed wearily onto the narrow shelf. Thank heaven for sheepskins was all she could think as she pulled yet another scratchy wool blanket up over her chilled frame, crammed the antler hat onto her head and fell almost immediately asleep in the complete dark, damp silence of the stone cell.

  Chapter Eleven

  Priestess

  When Emery woke the next morning she dressed quickly in shorts, athletic bra and a linen shirt Letty had found. Then quickly brushed and plaited her long, blond hair and strapped on the rugged sandals.

  She was able to use the toilet hole in privacy, thank heaven, and when she returned to her cell, once again found a plate of eggs and beans on the end of her narrow bed ledge. It was like the girl from the night before was a ghost who could flit through walls. It was unsettling. She wolfed down the eggs and beans, once again rinsing the plate over the toilet hole down the passage. Gulping down a good amount of water, she filled her strap-on canteen. After returning the plate to her bunk, she went to see if she could retrace her steps from the night before and find daylight.

  What met her eyes when she finally emerged from the caverns was awe-inspiring. The stone terrace did indeed front a fortress - a massive, ancient fortress. From the courtyard where the jeep had parked the night before, Emery could see an avenue of ruins marching off into the jungle in front of the fortress. Every so often, a matched pair of pillars sprouted from the verdant carpet that was the jungle surrounding them. She could also see the ruins of other pyramids and temples. She wasn’t sure what they were, but the entire complex was huge and swathed in a blanket of ever encroaching green. Most of it was hidden from sight by the depths of the tangled vegetation that covered it.

  While she was staring open-mouthed at the surrounding view, a row of white-robed young women appeared behind her. Suddenly becoming aware of movement behind her, Emery twirled and almost staggered into the super-scary, black-haired priestess from her vision. Trying to get a grip on her wits, Emery took a large step back, bowed her head slightly in a show of respect - which she also hoped covered her witless gasp of astonishment - and then raised her head to get a good look at the woman. She was just as tall and just as terrifying in real life as she had been in the vision. The black face-paint that covered her from the tip of her nose to her hairline only served to emphasize the glitter of her amber-brown eyes and the stern line of her mouth above a square jaw.

  “I’m Emery,” she managed to get out. “Thank you for having me,” she added, bowing her head again in respect.

  “I see you have manners. They will do you no good here,” the tall priestess said with a mirthless laugh. “Let’s hope you have more than charm to fall back on.” With that she turned, uttered the word, “Come!” and strode off. Emery followed. Several of the white-clad young-women ghosted along behind the priestess with Emery bringing up the rear.

  What followed was day one of hell. Ten hours later, they returned to the fortress. The day had seemed to be nothing more than a death march through the jungle. Though Emery had no cuts or scrapes, she was bruised, deeply bruised, in many places. She swore the priestess and the girls who were her acolytes purposely let fly vines and branches that they’d held back in their own passages and then loosed to whack her mightily in the face or torso.

  Her only saving grace that day had been that she wasn’t afraid of snakes or lizards, which they’d also tried to entangle her with. She had kept a wide berth of an absolutely enormous python. She could do nothing to save herself from being squeezed to death if she got entangled by that type of reptile. The group had not been amused when the priestess, hoping to scare her or humiliate her, had calmly picked up a milk snake, its red, black and white bands commonly confused with that of the extremely venomous coral snake, and flung it casually at Emery’s head. Having seen that its central banding was white, not black, she’d already known it wasn’t poisonous - not that it could hurt her anyway. Dorothea had urged her to keep the little secret of her shield skin to herself. Emery had gently caught the snake, calmed it against her chest, stroking it gently. She then allowed it to wind itself around her arm and slither down her wrist to the ground. When she’d looked up, it had been to see the other girls staring at her open-mouthed and a look of consternation on the priestess’s face.

  “Milk snake,” Emery said with a slight shrug. “Not poisonous, and so pretty, huh?” The black-faced leader had clamped her lips together in a thin line, then nodded approval Turning her back, she glided away into the foliage. After that the acolytes seemed even more intent on letting fly heavy vines or branches to thwack her viciously in the face and mid-section.

  After stumbling back into the fortress, Emery quickly used the small trickle of water in her passage area to clean herself, get a drink of water, then used the toilet. No food had appeared and she eased herself gently onto her sheepskins, pulled the wool blanket over her exhausted, battered form and slept. She woke sometime later when a knock at her door roused her. Creeping off the stone ledge, she cracked the door. It was the “ghost girl” as she called the young woman who brought her food. A plate of cornmeal mush and a strip of meat on a skewer made her mouth water. She was starving.

  Thanking the young woman she took the plate and setting it on the ledge went back to close the door. For the first time the young woman spoke, “Leave the plate at the wash area and I will get it after you’ve eaten,” the young girl smiled shyly at Emery. “You surprised the priestess today. Most have not done so well the first day.”

  Emery only raised an eyebrow at that. “Thank you for the food.” The girl nodded and disappeared into the inky blackness of the passage.

  After eating the food and then placing the washed plate back in the utility area by the trickling stream, Emery returned to her bunk and laid back down. Her body ached. She didn’t want to use any of the root shreds that Eagle Rising had given her for pain. Not yet. She might really need them later on. Just as she was drowsing off, it came to Emery that if she was Shield Skin, perhaps her turtle magic could be made to create a firmer barrier - one where slapping branches and beating vines wouldn’t cause her so much pain. She’d have to focus on that and see what happened.

  The next few days were a nightmare of marches through soggy jungle. Though the mosquitos didn’t really bother Emery, their constant buzz often filled the air. Snakes slithered in the boughs above and once the small group of acolytes had realized she had no fear of reptiles, they soon gave up trying to scare her with them - particularly since they had a healthy respect for the poisonous, writhing forms themselves.

  It was the constant damp and wet that wore on Emery. She’d enjoyed her training in the desert and this soggy, humid jungle did not feel like native territory. She supposed that was the point. Getting used to something that felt alien and abnormal was the whole point of this trip. She began to see that though they were learning things about medicinal plants, tracking, and other survival techniques, perhaps the whole point of this summer was simply to live through it.

  She was learning a good deal about plants and medicines and had learned several new ways to distill remedies from the leaves, roots and seed pods they’d harvested. Several times they’d tracked jaguar through underbrush and Emery had seen a lean, black shape streak away into the gloom several times. It had been exciting and breaktaking. It was the only time she’d seen the priestess smile.

  At the end of the first two weeks there was to be a big ceremony honoring the first gods of the city. A feast was being prepared and Emery was told that she would have a special initiation into the original spirit god of the temple. Having been in
formed by Dorothea that the original spirit god of the area was the bat, Emery kept that little nugget of information to herself. The people of Calakmul seemed to delight in startling and creating fear in their prodigies. Several of the young acolytes were terrified of the upcoming ceremony and Emery supposed it was because they were afraid of bats, though they were studiously avoiding saying anything about that to her.

  She’d actually saved several bats as a kid and knew that for the most part, bats didn’t have anything bad about them. They wouldn’t get tangled in your hair or all that stupid stuff people thought about them. Well, she supposed in the sixties with all those poofy hairdos, someone might have gotten a bat in the hair because it wasn’t solid enough for their sonar to bounce off of clearly. Her hair, securely braided into a tight tail down her back, wouldn’t cause a problem.

  She’d also been working on meditating quietly and when perfectly still, calling on her turtle skin to become harder and shield her from the whipping vines and branches of the jungle. Each night she envisioned her skin becoming ultra-lightweight, ultra-strong, titanium infused metal, capable of withstanding tremendous amounts of abuse. Whether that had actually happened, or if she was simply getting used to being battered day in and day out, was unclear. Though she was far less bruised these days.