by J; P Voelkel
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” said Lola. “Stop complaining.”
“So how did we get here?” he asked.
Max followed Lola’s eyes to the jet of water that crashed into the pool from a large hole in the cave wall.
“We didn’t …?”
She laughed. “We did.”
“But how?”
As she explained, Lola drew a diagram in the sand. “The lake is like a bowl, with a hole way down in the side. All we had to do was swim low enough for the current to suck us through.”
“How did you know about it?”
“My friend Hermanjilio told me. He said that Maya warriors used to prove their bravery by swimming through it, as some sort of initiation rite.”
“Ha! So now I’m a full-fledged Maya warrior?”
“Never in a million years,” said Lola. “Maya warriors were brave and fearless. And handsome.”
Max made a face at her. “They had big noses.”
Lola made a face back at him. “How’s your hand?” she asked. “That’s a nasty gash.”
“How do you think it is? It hurts!”
Lola pursed her lips.
“Sorry,” said Max, “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that some crazy girl made me shoot the rapids in an underground river and then she got me trapped like a hair ball in an underground sink. Oh yes, and some cape-twirling psycho is trying to kill me.”
“Don’t take it personally,” said Lola. “He’s trying to kill me, too.”
“That’s true,” Max admitted grudgingly. He looked around the cavern. “So how do we get out of here?”
“You see that skylight up there?” Max looked where she was pointing. High, high above them, he could see a pinprick of blue sky. “I came here once with Hermanjilio,” she continued. “We rappelled down from the outside on a rope and pulled ourselves back up. We were planning to come back, so we left the rope in place for next time.”
“I don’t see any rope,” said Max.
“I do,” said Lola.
She waded through the water to some rocks on the far side and picked up a length of dirty rope. “It’s fallen in,” she said. She inspected the end. “Maybe an animal gnawed through it.”
“Or Landa cut it,” said Max.
They looked at each other. For the first time, Max saw something like fear on Lola’s face.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” he said.
“Of course not,” said Lola, coiling up the rope and bringing it back with her. “Hermanjilio will find us.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Studies show,” said Lola, “that the people who survive emergency situations are usually the ones who maintain a positive attitude.”
“We could sing,” suggested Max.
Lola shook her head vehemently.
“I could tell you about Italy. That’s where I’m supposed to be now, sitting down to dinner at my grandmother’s house. … maybe thin-crust pizza, chewy on the inside and burned at the edges … or spaghetti with meatballs … or lasagna … or pumpkin ravioli—”
“Stop!” yelled Lola. “We have to think about something else. How about I show you a bit of the temple to pass the time?”
“The sacred pool at the Temple of Chahk.”
“What temple?”
“This is the sacred pool at the Temple of Chahk, the god of storms and warfare.”
“A Maya temple? It must have doors to the outside. …”
Lola shook her head. “Sorry, Hoop. This place was swallowed up by the jungle hundreds of years ago. The whole pyramid is buried under earth and trees. It’s really spooky in there, but there’s an old map room at the entrance that’s worth a look.”
“I hate archaeology,” said Max.
“It will take your mind off food,” said Lola.
She led him to the back wall of the cavern and up some steps carved out of the rock to look like tree roots. The thick carved trunks of the limestone trees stood to attention on either side of a doorway.
“This is the Map Chamber,” said Lola.
As Max’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that he was in a circular room with a low ceiling. The walls were polished smooth and glowed faintly green with a natural phosphorescence. In the middle of the room was a long stone table with raised carvings on its surface.
“Isn’t it wild?” said Lola, indicating the table. “It’s a relief map of the Monkey River basin as it would have been a thousand years ago.”
It reminded Max of the table he’d played with his train set on when he was little. But instead of stations and railway tracks, the surface of this table had been carved into clusters of little pyramids, palaces, and thatched huts. Five of the pyramids were inlaid with colored stones and connected by a network of stone causeways.
As Max peered at it, Lola crept up behind him.
“Gotcha!” she said, clamping a hand on his shoulder.
Max jumped out of his skin. “What did you do that for?” he yelled.
“Only kings and high priests were allowed in this chamber. If they caught a peasant like you in here, they’d flay you alive and rip out your heart.”
Max looked around uneasily.
“So,” said Lola, studying the map, “want to see where we are?”
“Isn’t it a bit out of date?”
“The coastline and the river and the sites of the temples haven’t changed.” She pointed to the pyramid colored white. “Look, there’s Ixchel.” She traced the course of the Monkey River down to the sea. “There’s Puerto Muerto and the bay near your uncle’s house.” She pointed to the red pyramid. “Here’s Chahk, where we are now. And that little green pyramid is the old city of Itzamna, where Hermanjilio lives.”
“Is Hermanjilio your boyfriend?”
Lola laughed. “He’s the archaeologist in charge of excavating Itzamna. I told you, he’s a colleague of your parents.”
“Maybe Hermanjilio will take my parents to Itzamna,” said Max, assessing the distance from the white pyramid to the green. He noticed that Itzamna was in the middle, with the other four colored pyramids around it. “What’s the significance of the five colored pyramids?” he asked.
“Who knows?” said Lola, looking flustered. But she didn’t meet his eyes.
And suddenly, he understood.
“Uncle Ted said there are five sacred pyramids and five Jaguar Stones! My parents had the White Jaguar, and the pyramid at Ixchel is colored white. This place is colored red—and we have the red stone! Yes, I remember—Uncle Ted called it the Red Jaguar of Chahk! It must belong in this temple somewhere! If only we knew how to use it. …”
“No, Hoop, leave it to your parents—”
“Aha! So I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes … No … I don’t know. … It’s dangerous. …”
With Lola pulling at him to leave, Max circled the map table, studying it from different angles.
“Stand here,” he said. “If you screw your eyes up, it kind of looks like a headless cat standing on four clawed feet.”
“I don’t see it,” said Lola stubbornly.
“And look! At the end where the head should be, there’s a space about the size of the Jaguar Stone. We have to see if the Red Jaguar fits in there!”
“That would be a very bad idea.”
“But Oscar said the Jaguar Stones are my parents’ life’s work! I have to try this for them. …”
“No, you don’t.”
“Why did you steal the Red Jaguar, if you’re scared to use it?”
“It’s for Hermanjilio, not me.”
“Then test it out for Hermanjilio. Come on, Monkey Girl. We’re stuck here anyway. What have we got to lose?”
Lola sighed. “You win. Get the stone. But I don’t like it.”
Before she could change her mind, Max ran and got the backpacks. Eagerly, he unwrapped the Red Jaguar.
“It’s a bit chipped,” he said, looking at it closely for the first time.
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br /> “You’re bleeding on it,” she said crossly. She pulled a bandanna out of her back pocket. “Here, wrap your hand in this and give the stone to me. …”
She was holding the Red Jaguar over the niche, looking for a way to slot it in, when it seemed to jump out of her hand and click into the space on its own.
“Told you!” said Max.
They waited for something to happen.
“Nothing’s happening,” said Lola. “Take it out.”
“It’s glowing, I’m sure of it.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Wait—look at that!”
Lola gasped. “It’s repairing itself.”
Sure enough, where the stone had been chipped, it was growing back to its original shape. When the stone was restored, the map table began to glow and slowly come to life. The stone river flowed in shining blue plasma. Several temples disappeared under luminous green jungle. The map room lit up as a ball of yellow fire formed over the table and warmed their heads with its heat.
“That fireball,” whispered Max, “I think it’s the sun.”
“And the map’s updated itself,” said Lola. “There’s your uncle’s house and the banana warehouse and that statue of the guy on the horse in Puerto Muerto. And look at this temple—you can’t even see it anymore under all the foliage. The jungle’s taken over everything. Just like in real life.”
Dark clouds formed over parts of the map, the air flashed with sparks, and it began to rain. Max poked one of the clouds. It felt cold and moist and it moved.
“Lola, look! This is crazy! I can make it rain wherever I want!”
“Wow!” she gasped. “Let me try!”
They amused themselves by directing the rainstorms for a while, before the same thought occurred to them both at the same time. Their eyes met.
“You don’t suppose—” began Lola.
“—that what we do in here—” continued Max.
“—has any effect on what happens out there?” finished Lola.
She studied the map, found the small hole in the cave ceiling, and blocked it with her finger. Max ran back to the steps. The cavern was dark. “Move your finger,” he called. Right away, a beam of light lit up the cavern.
“It still works after all these years,” said Lola, her eyes shining. “Can you imagine the control my ancestors had over their world? They could make it rain. They could divert rivers. They could destroy their enemies’ crops. I’ve never understood how they could sustain so many people in such a small area. This is how they did it! They would never have had a bad harvest.”
In the excitement of the moment, Max had a brilliant idea. He began to scratch at the glowing green foliage that covered the little red pyramid. Lola saw what he was doing and instantly understood. “This might just work,” she said, as she helped him scrape away the centuries of vegetation until the pyramid was bare and the outline of a door could be seen on the top platform.
“A way out! We’re saved!” whooped Max.
Lola was more subdued. “Have you ever been inside a Maya pyramid, Hoop?”
Max thought for a moment. Strange as it seemed, given that his parents spent half their lives at Maya sites, he was pretty sure that he never had. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Well, brace yourself. It’s creepy up there.”
“It’s creepy down here. Let’s go!”
“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She pulled out the Jaguar Stone, wrapped it, and put it back into her backpack. Then she took out a candle, lit it, and handed it to Max.
“Where’s my flashlight?” he protested.
“You lost it in the river.”
“Can’t I use yours?”
With a sigh of irritation, Lola gave Max the flashlight and took the candle. She led him through a doorway into a passage that quickly became a narrow staircase, zigzagging steeply to and fro, up and up and up. Every so often an ice-cold drip from the ceiling would land on his neck in the darkness, making him jump every time.
“It’s just water, don’t make such a fuss,” said Lola.
The steps were wet and slippery, but when Max put a hand on the wall to steady himself, his fingers sank into a spongy, putrid-smelling fungus. He slipped over in surprise and, as he got back to his feet, something cold and squelchy landed on his head.
“Ew! Ew! Ew!” he cried.
“It’s just water, Hoop!”
Max ran a hand through his hair and heard something drop to the ground. A huge white centipede, maybe six inches long, like a slug on legs, glistened in the beam of his flashlight.
“Look at this!” he called to Lola. “It wasn’t just …”
But the centipede had scurried into the shadows.
Max pulled his T-shirt over his head like a hood until the staircase ended and they emerged into a large, roughly hewn room. The ceiling was so low they had to crouch, and the floor was cracked and uneven. On the far side of the room was a doorway, and carved above it was a ghoulish face contorted in agony.
“Is it this way?” asked Max, making for the doorway.
“Stop!” yelled Lola, pulling him back. “Don’t go in there.”
Now that Max looked more closely, he saw that the murky interior was scattered with skulls and bones. He sensed that something lurked in there, something dead yet alive, something that was trying to lure him in. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a movement and he leapt back in fear, but it was just a centipede wriggling out of an eye socket in the nearest skull.
“You’re very jumpy, Hoop. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Just show me the way out.”
“Up here.” Lola was standing under a dark square in one corner of the ceiling, pointing up at a narrow shaft that shot up into blackness. “It’s not difficult,” she said. “There are footholds, but it’s too tight to climb with the backpacks. I’ll go up first with the flashlight and let down the rope. You tie on the backpacks, then use the rope to help you get up. Okay?”
Bossy, bossy, bossy, he thought. “Just hurry,” he said.
Max pressed himself into the corner and watched the glow of the flashlight recede.
He shivered.
Was it fear making his blood run cold? Or was the temperature dropping?
He held the candle under his chin for heat.
It was so cold he could see his breath.
He exhaled slowly, watching how the crystals hung in the air and sparkled in the candlelight. He exhaled again, harder this time. To his horror, a cloud of white breath shot out like spray from a fire extinguisher and—No, no, no!—put out the flame.
He couldn’t believe it.
He’d blown out the candle.
How could he have been so stupid?
The icy darkness crowded in on him.
The blackness was suffocating, like a blanket of evil.
What was that scratching noise?
Fingernails? Centipedes? The presence in the bone room?
His heart beat faster and faster. He stamped his feet to keep warm and to frighten away anything that might be thinking of scurrying around his feet.
“Hurry, Lola!” he called. “The candle’s gone out!”
By the time the end of the rope dropped down, a light frost had formed on his head and shoulders. His damp clothes were freezing against his skin. Fumbling with cold, he tied on the backpacks.
He looked up at the distant circle of light that was Lola’s face. Focusing only on her, refusing to think about the darkness that clutched at his feet like invisible fingers, he began to climb. It was hard going and his wounded hand throbbed, but his fear was greater than his pain. He was aware of nothing but the need to maintain upward motion.
Eventually, he reached the room above. He threw himself on the stone floor, breathing heavily, while Lola pulled up the backpacks.
“I told you it was creepy in here,” she said.
She relit the candle, and Max looked around. This room was smaller t
han the one below and empty apart from something in one corner, something that reflected candlelight in its shiny, gelatinous skin, something gently pulsating with the pump of a million heartbeats. …
Max jumped to his feet. “It’s a monster! It’s alive!”
“Frog spawn,” said Lola. “I should have warned you.”
A dark chill was rising out of the shaft and spreading like dry ice. The room was starting to fill with a clammy, foul-smelling fog.
“Let’s keep moving.” Lola coughed.
“Me first,” said Max, grabbing the rope and tying it around him.
The shaft was shorter this time, and he soon arrived at the top.
A wave of heat engulfed him. It was like entering an oven.
His cold, wet clothes dried instantly in a haze of steam.
Nervously, he shone the flashlight around, wondering what could follow giant centipedes and throbbing frog spawn, but his light found no life-forms of any kind. Apart from the heat, this level was almost pleasant. It had the smallest floor area, but a high ceiling made it less claustrophobic, and all four walls were painted with colorful murals.
While he waited for Lola to tie on the backpacks, Max looked closer at the paintings. Mostly they were life-size figures of Maya warriors, monsters, and bizarre animal people with crocodile heads and lobster claws. They were so freaky, it took Max a moment to register the most disturbing thing of all.
This room had no door.
They were at the top and there was no way out.
Chapter Eleven
RAT ON A STICK
Phew,” said Lola, pulling herself up. “It’s hot in here.”
“Like a furnace,” agreed Max, hauling up the backpacks.
He took out Lola’s canteen of water and went to take a swig.
“Stop!” protested Lola, trying to take it back from him. “Give me that. We don’t know how long it has to last.”
Max fended her off and took a long, gulping drink. “I’m thirsty. What’s the big deal?”
“This is the temple of Chahk, the god of storms and warfare. The king came here to offer his blood in return for rainstorms to water the corn. Water is life. You should treat every drop with respect, especially in here.”
