by Paul Watkins
He motioned that we should go with him, and immediately he set off along the beach.
We plodded after him on stiffened legs.
The pain still echoed deep inside my body.
The man walked ahead, turning every now and then to see if we were still there. ‘Kohosh!’ he shouted, then walked back, took Olaf by the arm and helped him along.
I was left to hobble on by myself. ‘He seems to like you,’ I said.
Olaf glanced back. ‘Maybe he thinks I will taste better.’
I wished we had remembered our weapons, but it would have made no difference. We were too weak to use them.
After a while we came to an opening in the jungle, which turned into a path.
I grew increasingly nervous about our distance from the boat.
A short way from the beach we reached a clearing in which tall green plants with thick and floppy leaves were growing. In one corner was a crude wooden carving of a man with a broad forehead and deep-set eyes. He crouched on his haunches with his hands resting on his knees. It looked exactly like the wooden statue I had seen on Godfred’s boat.
‘Chac,’ said the man, when he saw me looking at the statue. He pointed to the sky and wiggled his fingers.
I nodded, to show I understood that it was a statue of the god who brought the rain.
He smiled then, and in that moment I realised he was not going to kill us. If he had wanted to, he would have done it by now.
We continued down the path until we came to another clearing, in the centre of which stood a house. Its walls were made of narrow tree limbs bound together with vines. A dense mat of interwoven leaves formed the roof. The house had no door, only an opening, through which I saw a bed made from lengths of braided vines like a giant bird’s nest stretched between the walls. A small fire was burning behind the back of the house. In the still air, serpents of sweet-smelling smoke twisted lazily into the sky.
The man shouted, ‘Oh! Oh!’ When he received no reply, he went into the house and came back out a moment later looking confused. He called into the jungle. Then he called again, hands cupped to his mouth. He looked at us and shook his head, then vanished off down another path, bare feet padding on the ground.
I leaned against a tree, weak and dizzy in the heat.
With movements like an old man, Olaf lowered himself until he was sitting on the dusty ground.
When the man reappeared, he was herding a woman and two small children in front of him. They had obviously fled before we entered the clearing. The woman gasped when she saw us and clutched at the boy and girl, both of whom were naked.
The man was explaining something to her in a loud voice, using broad sweeps of his arm and the occasional stamp of his foot.
He went over to Olaf and gently pulled him to his feet, saying the word ‘Kukulkan’ several times.
Slowly, the woman put down her children, who came straight over to us.
I kneeled down so as not to frighten them.
The children pointed at our eyes and then pointed at the sky to show the colour was the same. Their own eyes were so dark I could not see the pupils. The children tugged at my beard and giggled.
But the man would not let them touch Olaf. He shooed the children away, then turned to Olaf with a serious face. He slapped the flats of his hands against his chest and then held out his arms, taking in everything around him. After this, he pointed back towards the beach.
‘What is he saying?’ asked Olaf.
‘Maybe he is giving us the choice of staying here or going back to the boat.’
‘What do you think?’
‘That woman does not like the look of us,’ I said.
She had retrieved her children and held them to her body while they squirmed and giggled. She peered at us suspiciously over their heads of fine black hair.
Olaf gestured that we would go back to the beach.
The man gave a short nod, then went into his hut and fetched a bag made from the rough grey skin of a fish. It was filled with small yellow beans. ‘Khana,’ he said, and shook the bag, rattling the beans. Then he handed the bag to me, pointed to Olaf and raised his hand to his mouth.
The man walked us to the edge of the clearing and signed that he would come by to see us later.
I tried to ask him if they were the only people here, in case they might have been stranded as Olaf and I were stranded now, but he did not understand. He gave a quick wave of his hand and headed back into the jungle.
Once we reached the beach again, Olaf and I had to lean on each other to move across the sand.
‘That man thinks my name is Kukulkan,’ said Olaf.
‘And he has got it in his head that this Kukulkan travels with a servant.’
‘Which happens to be you,’ said Olaf, managing a feeble smile.
I held up the bag of food. ‘He wants me to cook you a meal.’
Olaf wheezed out a laugh. ‘I would not want you for a servant.’
‘No more than I would want you for a master,’ I replied.
We joked to make ourselves brave, but the truth was that we were as frightened by what had happened to us the night before as we were of what might happen to us in the days to come.
Not trusting that the silver would be safe aboard our boat, we waited until after dark, brought the chest ashore and buried it in the jungle. It used up every bit of strength we had left, but the silver was too important to risk losing.
Then we returned to the boat and slept with our weapons beside us.
Several times, when the waves slid unevenly beneath the timbers of the Drakkar, I woke with a start and reached for my sword, watching the blackness of the jungle for any sign of movement. Then I lay down again and stared at the star-crowded sky, certain that the man who had helped us must also be awake, eyes fixed on the shadows, listening to every rustle of wind through the leaves and fearing us as much as we feared him.
My eyes snapped open. It was morning. A shadow slipped over my face. Only an arm’s length above me, one of the sombre long-beaked birds flashed by. I noticed the soft cream and brown feathers of its underbelly, and its long beak jutting like the upward-lifted chin of a proud man. When I sat up, I saw that there were several of these birds, some of which had already flown past me. They glided through the curls of breaking waves. One of them pitched into the water and emerged a moment later with a fish in its beak.
Looking over the side of the boat, I watched a thing drift past that looked like some small animal turned inside out. It was a bright, deep purple, and blown up like a bladder. Behind this creature trailed purple, black and red strands, the same kind which had wrapped themselves around my legs.
I heard a noise on shore and looked up to see the man appearing from the jungle. This time he had brought along a friend.
I guessed they were not stranded, after all. ‘We have company,’ I said, as I nudged Olaf awake.
The second man was more ornately dressed, with a cape that stretched almost to his ankles. Tassles hanging from the hem dragged in the sand when he walked. He wore a crude but brightly-coloured hat, made from feathers which stuck straight up around his head. The men had been talking in hushed voices, but now that we had seen them, they fell silent.
We waved and they waved back. They did not move their hands from side to side, only raised and lowered them again.
Now we saw other people gathered further down the beach, half-hidden by the jungle. When they knew we had spotted them, they stepped back into the shadows of the big green leaves.
‘We could haul up the anchor,’ I said quietly.
Olaf shook his head. ‘We would not get far in this boat. Our best chance is to hope that these people have the tools we need to make our repairs.’
Reluctantly leaving our weapons behind, we climbed into the rowboat and went ashore.
The feathered man did not smile at us, nor did he look like a person who ever did much smiling. He turned to Olaf and began speaking in a slow and expressionless voice. He
touched one finger against the black hammer, then gestured to the ship and towards the sea beyond the reef. Again we heard the word ‘Kukulkan’. When he had finished talking, he got down on one knee and bowed his head forward.
‘How do I tell them,’ said Olaf, ‘that I am not who they think I am?’
‘For now,’ I replied, ‘I think you should let them believe whatever they want. Whoever this Kukulkan is, he seems to be someone important.’
The feathered man remained on one knee for a long time, then cleared his throat and stood again.
I sensed a greater gulf between these people and ourselves than any common language could have fixed. I wondered who this Kukulkan could be. Perhaps he had been another blonde-haired traveller, blown by storms across the sea to this same place.
Over the next few days, we received many visitors who stayed only long enough to leave us gifts before vanishing back into the jungle. They brought fish and fruit and more yellow beans, as well as feathered headdresses, ornaments of jade and the skins of large and spotted cats. They even left us gold, fashioned into a half-moon crescent, with a gold-linked chain for fastening it across the chest. Everything we could not eat, we stored away in a food trunk under the rowing bench.
These people would appear only when we were out on the boat. When we came ashore to fetch more drinking water, we sometimes heard them moving in the jungle, but they would not come out to meet us.
The only one who did not seem afraid was the man who had first found us on the beach. We sat with him in the shade of the trees, sharing the food we had been given. We learned that his name was Choll and that this land was called Mayalum. His people were called the Maya, and there were many of them, scattered up and down this rocky coast.
Choll continued to treat Olaf with great respect. He would not even look Olaf in the eye or speak to him unless Olaf spoke first. Nor would he take anything directly from Olaf’s hand. Olaf first had to put it down on the ground before Choll would pick it up. With me, Choll was more familiar, bordering on disrespectful. He ordered me with short, impatient waves of his hand to fetch more water or to kindle a fire.
Olaf played along with this, as he and I had agreed. I even feigned gestures of respect, bowing slightly when he spoke to me, and replying in a low and reverential tone. But the things I said to him were far from respectful, and afterwards, when Choll had gone, we would laugh about it.
When Olaf tried to explain that our boat needed repairs, Choll told us that there was a village just down the coast called Yochac, where we might find help. He promised to take us there soon.
The next day, Choll brought his family to see us. The children were not allowed to come near Olaf, but Choll let the boy and girl wrestle with me and pull my beard. I would bring my face very close to theirs, until our eye lashes almost touched, then they would go squealing off down the beach. Choll’s wife was named Vamukshell, and at first she would come no closer to me than a nearby tree, where she sat in the shade and glowered. But, after a while, I caught her laughing at some of the games I played with the children.
We learned a few Mayan words. The human-sounding bird that woke me every morning was called Chachalaka. Another type of bird, like a big starling, which hopped around on the beach making sarcastic-sounding noises, was called Izyal-chamil.
The next morning, the feathered man returned to the beach. This time he brought others like himself who dressed in the same long cloaks and carried short, thick sticks decorated with bright feathers and the teeth of animals. He repeated the name of Kukulkan several times, rested his finger on the black stone hammer around Olaf’s neck, and motioned that Olaf should go with them.
Olaf and I glanced at each other.
There was a hostility in the manner of these men which unnerved us. We knew it might not be long before the real Kukulkan appeared, or before the Mayans asked something of us which we could not give them, all in the name of this blonde-haired, blue-eyed stranger, for whom Olaf had been mistaken.
‘I am not going anywhere with these bird-men,’ said Olaf, ‘especially not on my own.’
‘Then you had better tell them the truth,’ I said, ‘before we find ourselves in trouble.’
When Olaf tried to explain that Kukulkan was not his name, they indicated to him with solemn expressions and hands swept in front of their faces, that he was mistaken. It was as if, in our long voyage over the ocean, Olaf had somehow forgotten his true identity, just as I, as his servant, had forgotten mine. What the men seemed to be saying was that there had been many Kukulkans in the history of their world. He was a kind of spirit, wandering in and out of human hearts. The manner of our arrival, and of our appearance, told them all that they wanted to know. In their eyes, Olaf was some kind of messenger, although what message he brought was as much a mystery to us as it was to these strange men.
‘They do not think you are a man,’ I said to Olaf. ‘They think you are some kind of god.’
None of Olaf’s protests could convince them otherwise, and when I stepped forward to add my voice to his, one of them silenced me with an angry click of the tongue.
The Mayans gave up trying to persuade Olaf to accompany them, but they were not happy about it, and indicated that they would return before long.
Afterwards, Choll explained with drawings in the sand that these men were powerful priests called Nacom and that the sticks they carried were called Calvac, with which they had the power to send people to Chibolba. We could not understand from Choll whether this Chibolba was a real place or an imaginary one, but clearly it was not a place in which he wanted to end up.
Olaf tried again to explain to Choll that he was not Kukulkan, and that I was not his servant.
I could not tell if he believed Olaf, but it seemed that from then on he looked at us with pity in his eyes, and particularly at me, as if whatever role I played in this was worse than I had yet imagined. Perhaps he grasped now that we were just two men who had lost our way out on the ocean. Even if Choll did not know where we had come from, or who we were, he could tell from the condition of our ship that we had travelled a long way and that we would be lucky if we reached our home again.
Later that same day, Choll guided us to the village of Yochac. He explained that we had nothing to fear. There were no Nacom in the village, as they lived further inland. But then he rested his hand against Olaf’s chest and repeated the name of Kukulkan. Then he pointed down the coast towards Yochac, and gestured at the boat. From this, we understood that if we wanted help from the people in Yochac, it would be better if they believed that Olaf was indeed Kukulkan, and I his servant.
While Olaf handled the sail, I worked the steerboard. Choll sat beside me on the deck, laughing nervously at the speed of our boat over the waves. The walrus skull made him anxious. We had trouble persuading him that it was dead.
Yochac lay a short distance down the coast, set back in a shallow bay. All the buildings in the village were made of stick structures like Choll’s house, except for one large stone pyramid, painted rosy pink and turquoise blue. It stood at the far end of the little bay, which was filled with silty green-white water. The bay was protected from the ocean side by several small islands made up entirely of tangled trees and roots. Large black birds, the same kind as the one who had appeared over the boat when we were out to sea, nested in the branches. They clacked their beaks when we sailed past and showed their baggy red throats.
By the time Olaf had hauled down the sail and dropped anchor, the whole village had turned out on the beach to watch. There were about a dozen families, with more than twenty children among them.
The harbour at Yochac became our home for now. In the days that followed we grew used to the daily life of the Maya.
They slept whenever they wanted and often stayed awake all night talking. They drank a potion made from water with mashed, soaked beans, and for food they ate small pieces of flat bread cooked over driftwood fires and a kind of fish called Uzcay, which they speared in the lagoon. The jung
le was filled with lizards the length of my arm, fearsome to look at but easy to catch. Children knocked them on their heads with springy sticks, then cut their throats with the sharp edges of broken sea shells.
Olaf was given his own home, which was set up on a foundation of stone, unlike any of the others. I was provided with a lean-to shack, connected to the house by a door made of deer hide stretched across a wooden frame. Food was delivered to me, which I was expected to prepare for Olaf whenever he asked for it.
No sooner had we arrived than a wooden chair draped with the skins of some large spotted cat was placed in the shade of Olaf’s new house. Olaf was made to sit there while children were brought before him, to be touched on their bowed heads. Then the old and sick were ushered in, and offerings of food for Olaf piled up around my shed.
While Olaf was busy holding court, I ran the boat aground and, with the help of several of the men, used logs as rollers to get it up above the tide line. Then I set to work scraping barnacles and weeds off the hull. Choll showed me how to prepare a thick, tar-like substance from the bark of a tree, which he and I and several of his friends painted on the boards with palm-frond brushes to re-seal them. Some of the planks had wormholes in them and these we replaced, carefully saving the nails since the Maya had no iron. For blades, they used pieces of flint, which they carefully flaked until it was sharper, although more brittle, than any kind of steel.
That night, when I brought Olaf his food, I found him staring at the ceiling deep in thought, lying on a bed with his hands tucked behind his head.
In a hushed voice, I told him about my success at resealing the hull boards.
He listened for a while and then told me I had better go.
‘Go where?’ I asked.
He jerked his chin back at towards my lean-to. ‘We do not want to make them suspicious.’
I stared at him for a moment, fighting back my irritation, then went down to the water and walked along the beach until I found a secluded spot. Lying on the sand, I prayed, with that same hollow feeling inside me that the words I was speaking were just words in this place. My thoughts raced from one end of my brain to another, like a school of fish caught in a net.
