by M. G. Harris
Just like Chan and Albita, we turn and sit on the ledge for a few minutes, to recover. I recognize suddenly that this is real. I’m visiting a place I only know from a dream—and it’s real.
Ixchel and I steal a glance at each other. I can’t help wondering—is she thinking what I’m thinking? Is she remembering the dream? It’s confusing. In that moment, dream and reality collide.
And Ixchel doesn’t kiss my cheek.
The flashlight is down to a feeble point, no better than a match.
“Why didn’t I pack batteries?” mutters Ixchel.
I’ve figured this one out. From my jeans pocket, I bring out my dad’s iPod. Ixchel watches, at first bemused and then impressed as I switch it on, choose a playlist, and change the setting so that the backlight on the LCD screen stays on.
“What d’you know?” I say. “Now it’s a flashlight.”
I take the Ziploc bag with the Adapter from my other pocket. I make Ixchel use her gas mask while I open the Ziploc bag for just a second and place the iPod and my cell phone inside the clear plastic.
“And now,” I say, smiling, “it’s a waterproof flashlight.”
Ixchel gazes at me. Behind her eyes, something is different. “Well. That’s actually pretty good.”
I want to reply with a flip comment, but my mouth is suddenly dry. I can’t say a word. Instead, I turn away, feeling my cheeks flush. I place Ixchel’s Ek Naab phone in the Ziploc bag too, after which nothing else fits.
The cave with the underground lake is close by. We arrive within a minute, guided by the steady beam of milky light from my dad’s iPod. The plastic bag crackles in my hand as we approach the water. We jump in, gasp at the shocking cold, and swim fast to the other end of the lake.
We reach the end, where the channel through the rocks begins.
“This is it,” I tell Ixchel. “It’s a long swim. But don’t be afraid—I know the spirits wouldn’t deceive us.”
I’m risking my life for a belief in spirits … ?
The dream of the leaf storm that led me to the lost Ix Codex was one thing—but at least that was some kind of a connection with a living Mexican shaman—a brujo. It’s a whole other level to imagine that I’ve been communicating with someone long dead.
“Take deep breaths,” I say. “Stretch your lungs.”
We breathe deeply. If I think about it even for a second, my mind screams with fear. Fear of the dark, of being trapped, or drowning. So I don’t let myself. Just going by instinct—that seems to work best for me.
And then we’re in. With the iPod light to guide us, I spot the mail-slot gap almost immediately. I have a very clear memory of the way that in the dream, I’d sent myself through it, like a letter. I swim through without hesitating, and then slow my pace until Ixchel catches up. Then I head for the left-hand tunnel, swimming as fast as I can. I sense Ixchel is close behind.
I keep having flashbacks to the dream. The moment where the light went out is a terrifying memory. I don’t let myself think what I’d do if that happened right now.
But it doesn’t. My chest hammers with the ache of holding my breath. The iPod lights up the narrow channel to the cenote. Up ahead I see the most incredible blue colors in the water. The water is frothing, disturbed. When we emerge into the cenote, I understand why.
It’s crowded. Filled with swimmers jumping, diving, playing around.
As I surface, one swimmer, a blond guy in his twenties, looks at me with a puzzled smile.
“Hey, man,” he says with a laugh. “You didn’t even bother to get out of your clothes?”
Ixchel breaks the surface behind me.
“That’s so cool,” says another, who looks almost identical—tanned and blond. “They just got off the bus and hurled themselves in. Awesome!”
31
Outside, an old Mexican woman in a multicolored shawl and her son sell tortas and cold drinks from a cooler. My eyes go straight to the tortas de jamon—ham, tomato, and avocado in rolls of chewy white bread. I buy four, and four cans of lemon soda. The old woman looks at the sopping wet fifty-peso note with which I pay her, then back at me. She blinks at my soaking clothes, saying nothing.
“I’m not a gringo, you know,” I tell her in Spanish.
“Whatever you say,” she replies in a thin, high voice, shrugging. “But you look just as silly.”
Ixchel and I sit on stony ground behind the bus, in the hottest part of the sun, and we gobble the tortas, biting off huge chunks. We’re famished—it seems like more than a day since we ate.
“I should borrow your backpack,” I say. “Can’t carry the Adapter around like this.”
I take her dripping backpack and open it up. Ixchel snatches it back.
“Who said you could open my bag?”
We stare at each other.
“I just need to borrow it!”
“Okay,” she says. “But at least ask first!”
I take it back from her reluctant hand, a bit astonished at her outburst.
“You really don’t know much about girls, do you?” she muses. “You don’t open a girl’s bag without asking. Ever!”
“It’s ‘cause I don’t think of you as a girl,” I say, through a mouthful of bread and ham. “You’re more like a friend,” I tell her hurriedly, furious that I can’t do anything to stop a blush. “Like saying wey.”
“You better not call me wey,” she warns. “I hate it! I can’t believe people in Mexico call each other ‘ox.’”
“Okay, wey,” I say, grinning. It’s a word that always makes me laugh. “Promise not to call you wey, wey.”
“Stop it,” she says. “I’m serious.”
“You are very serious,” I say. “Too serious.”
Ixchel’s eyes widen. “Listen to who’s talking!”
“I’m not so serious.”
“Yes, you are.”
“It’s just the situations we’ve been in,” I explain.
“So really you’re, what, a funny guy?”
“Maybe not funny, but fun. Yeah. I think I was pretty fun, once.”
“What happened?”
I put my torta down with a heavy sigh. “Just … everything.”
I get back to searching through the backpack. My fingers land on the napkin where Ixchel wrote my mysterious postcard messages. The napkin is soaked through, on the verge of turning to mush, but I notice the writing. It’s fuzzy, but I can still read what she wrote. As I look at it upside down, the positions of the periods suddenly grab my attention.
WHAT.KEY.HOLDS.BLOOD.
DEATH.UNDID.HARMONY.
ZOMBIE.DOWNED.WHEN.FLYING.
KINGDOM’S.LOSS.QUESTIONABLE.JUDGMENT.
“What if … ,” I whisper.
Ixchel puts her bottle down. “What?”
“What if the periods actually mean something?”
“You mean, like part of the code?”
I point to the letters at the start of each word.
“What if this message is an acrostic? Where you just use the first or last letters of each word? What key holds blood—W-K-H-B.”
Ixchel shrugs. “It’s meaningless.”
“Yeah, but now,” I tell her breathlessly, “now that does look like a Caesar cipher word.”
“Caesar cipher? Like Julius Caesar?”
I nod. “He used it to encrypt messages to his troops. It’s one of the simplest, earliest codes. You shift each letter along three places to get the cipher letter. So an A becomes a D, a B becomes E.”
Ixchel’s eyes widen, impressed. She looks down at the writing.
I continue, pointing. “W in the cipher message … go back three in the alphabet … that’s T. Then K … that’s an H. H is code for E … and B is code for …”
I stop, momentarily stumped.
“It would have to be Y,” Ixchel points out. “Going back to the end of the alphabet.”
“That spells … THEY.”
We stare at each other.
“What’s the s
econd word?”
We work it out together.
ARE.
We continue, until we’ve deciphered the message so far.
THEY ARE WATCHING.
I jump up, run over to the woman selling tortas, and beg her for a napkin. Ixchel digs around inside her backpack and finds her pencil. I scribble the decoded message. And we just stare at it in wonder.
“Josh,” Ixchel says, her voice hushed, “how long have you had this message?”
“Days …”
I think suddenly of Tyler. If we want to call him before he goes to bed, we have to hurry. I check my watch—almost six in the evening. That’s eleven o’clock in England. I walk to the other end of the field, far from anyone, and open the plastic bag containing the Adapter. I have no idea if it’s still giving off the poisonous gas, but better to be safe. I remove the iPod and both phones. I seal up the Adapter again, stuff it into my back pocket and return to Ixchel. Then I try my cell phone. It turns on okay—finally! But the battery is almost dead, so I use Ixchel’s phone.
We call Benicio, who almost has a fit when he hears my voice. He’s furious. I can’t say I blame him. But he’ll feel differently when he sees the prize we’ve captured—the Adapter.
We assure Benicio that we’ll be back by morning. Montoyo won’t know that we ever separated; Benicio won’t get into trouble.
I’m feeling my confidence return. This is working out. We’ve had everything thrown at us, but we’re still in the game.
We call Tyler. He sounds tired and grumpy. When I ask if he went to my neighbor Jackie’s and picked up today’s mail, he perks up.
“Yeah, there were two more.”
He reads aloud the latest two messages, in date order.
FINESSE.REQUIRES.PROPER.HEED.
Just before I hang up, Ixchel whispers, “Ask him what the photos are …”
I’m a bit puzzled but ask anyway. He tells me that they’re photos of Labna and Palenque, two more Mayan ruins.
“You think that’s important?” I ask Ixchel.
“Could be. Another way to give more information, maybe?”
“You mean there’s a clue in the photos?”
“Maybe.”
I’m suddenly angry with myself for not going back to my house for the postcards.
That’s the first place Ollie and Madison would have looked for me, but …
Without the actual postcards, it seems that I won’t be able to solve the coded message.
Ixchel and I concentrate on deciphering the next few words.
In cipher-text they spell F-R-P-H. In English, COME.
THEY ARE WATCHING. COME.
It’s definitely a message—with an instruction. But where?
“The clue to where could be in some more messages,” Ixchel comments. “Or it could be right here, in what you already have.”
“That would be the smart way to send a message,” I agree. “Give as much information as possible in each piece.”
“If ‘they are watching,’ then the message has to be as subtle as possible. Hidden in plain view. So anyone could see one or two postcards and not get the whole message.”
What do we have? Photos of Mayan ruins: Tikal, Labna, Calakmul, Altun Ha … I can’t remember them all.
And then I realize. I’ve been stupid. Blind as a bat.
It’s another acrostic.
I call Tyler again. This time he sounds really annoyed.
“Man, what? I’d just gone to sleep!”
“Tyler … this is really, really important. Can you read out the names of the ruins in the photos? In order of dates!”
I hear Tyler grumbling as he crawls out of bed and gropes around his desk. Papers rustle. “They’re here somewhere …”
“Tyler … just get them!”
“Chill, man. You’re so weird lately. Telling me to get out of Oxford! I don’t know … what’s the deal?”
I grit my teeth. Finally he finds the postcards.
“Okay. Here we go. First one is—Tikal. Next is Labna. Next, Altun Ha, Calakmul, Ocosingo, Tikal again, Altun Ha again, Labna again, Palenque.”
I scribble the names down.
“You done?”
“Awesome, thanks.”
“Okay. Can I go to sleep now?”
“Uhhh … listen, think you could go around tomorrow and check if there are any more postcards?”
Tyler lets off a stream of swear words.
“So that’s a ‘no’ … ?”
“Yeah, Josh, it’s a ‘no.’ I’m going to London tomorrow for the day. Where are you? You know your mom called here yesterday? Emmy’s mom told her you were with me. I had to tell her you’d gone out to the movies.”
“Thanks, Tyler, you’re a pal.”
I snap the phone closed and hand it back to Ixchel. My hands are actually trembling with excitement.
I can already see a pattern.
T-L-A-C-O-T-A-L-P.
“That’s a Mexican place name,” I say, breathless with the rush of discovery. “Has to be.”
“Close enough,” Ixchel says, frowning. “It could mean ‘Tlacotalpan.’”
“Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a small town, not too close,” she admits, “on the way back to Veracruz.”
“That’s it, then. We’re going. We’ll sneak aboard the bus with these Americans. How’s the driver going to know we’re not with them? He’s bound to be going somewhere useful.”
Ixchel hesitates, looks doubtful. “I don’t know. Maybe …”
“What?”
There’s real anxiety on Ixchel’s face. “We really should take the Adapter straight to Ek Naab.”
I can hardly believe what she’s saying. “You mean … you and I go straight back to Ek Naab? Not to Tlacotalpan?”
Ixchel nods slowly, gazes directly into my eyes. Something about her expression irritates me. A feeling of frustration wells up inside, and I step away from her. “No way! Montoyo will flip his lid if he finds out I ran off again. And he’ll blame Benicio! I’m not doing that to Benicio, not again.”
“But, Josh. We’re close to Ek Naab here. We have to tell the Executive what we found about the Sect, about that Revival Chamber, what we saw them trying with the Key and the Adapter. We need to do that right away. When they hear what we know, they won’t care that we sneaked away from Benicio.”
I glance away, avoiding her eyes. I take a deep breath. “All right. I admit it—this isn’t just about going back with Benicio. This is about me. I need to know who’s sending these postcards. I need to go to that place.”
“Yes, but later! We should get back now,” she insists. “No more adventures.”
“No!”
Ixchel stops in her tracks.
“This is a message about my father,” I say. “I know it. Someone knows the truth! Maybe someone in the NRO who’s afraid to talk. Don’t you get it? I have to go.”
BLOG ENTRY: WAITING
Hey, Mom. I thought about calling you. It’s four a.m. here, ten in the morning in England, so you should be finished with breakfast. I didn’t want to have to lie to you, though. You still think I’m staying with Emmy’s family, and I’m feeling a little bad about that. So I texted you again. Just to let you know I’m okay and ask how you are. But of course, you won’t be able to reply—this number will just come up as “Anonymous.”
I’m waiting in yet another bus station, this time for a bus to Tlacotalpan. Not a fancy tourist-style bus this time—just a regular rickety one full of ordinary Mexican workers and farmers carrying chickens and goats.
Tlacotalpan is a small town in the state of Veracruz, in case you didn’t know. (I’ve never heard you mention it, so I don’t know if you do … ) It’s on the banks of a big river, the Papaloapan. Someone there has been sending us the postcards. They have a message for me. Or maybe it’s for both of us—you and me?
I don’t really feel like blogging anymore. I’m too nervous.
32
>
I wake up on the bus to Tlacotalpan to find Ixchel asleep and slumped against my chest, with my arm around her. I don’t want to move her away, because that might wake her up. On the other hand, it’s hard to get back to sleep now that I know we’re practically cuddling.
How weird is that?
So I stay exactly where I am, trying not to move my hand too much. I try to breathe like I’m asleep. And I try to ignore how nice and cozy this feels—which is the hardest job of all.
It doesn’t last long. Ixchel stirs against me. For about one second she squeezes me tightly. Then she sits bolt upright, staring at me like she’s seen a ghost.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing!”
“Are you trying to … ?”
I gasp. “No way—are you kidding?”
“So what … ?”
“You leaned on me! I just woke up a few seconds ago.”
“You didn’t think to get your hands off me?”
“Hey! I didn’t want to wake you up!”
Ixchel fumes. “Sure. Of course you didn’t.”
She shuffles into the corner of her seat. I sigh. Clearly, I can’t win.
I pull the plastic grocery-store bag from under my seat. It’s stuffed with snacks and drinks that we bought in the bus station at Villahermosa. I open up a carton of pineapple juice. We each take two Gansitos. For the next few minutes we munch on the squishy cream-and-jam-filled chocolate-covered cakes.
“What’s the plan when we get to Tlacotalpan?” asks Ixchel, sucking juice through a straw.
I’ve tried not to think about this all night long. It hasn’t been too hard—there have been other things to distract me. The biggest one—time travel. Did Montoyo actually say that? It was only a couple of days ago, but already the memory feels foggy, distant.
He couldn’t be serious. Could he?
I’ve been trying to think of any other explanation for why the codices are written in English. But I guess anything I come up with, the Mayas in Ek Naab will have thought of.
