The River of No Return

by Jon Voelkel

  Eusebio frowned. “Not good. I have nowhere to sell them. The market at Limón is all popcorn and hot dogs now. They say the tourists don’t like spicy food.” He nudged Max. “Hey, remember that pepper-soup trick we used to play on them?”

  Max nodded. “How could I forget?”

  Eusebio chuckled, then remembered himself and tried to look penitent. “It is not allowed anymore.”

  “Who says?” asked Lola.

  “The hotel. The hotel controls everything now.”

  “What’s the name of this hotel anyway?” asked Lola.

  “The Grand Hotel Xibalba.”

  “Did you hear that?” fumed Lola as they walked through the village to Chan Kan’s house. “The Grand Hotel Xibalba? The Death Lords are behind this, I know it!”

  “It could be a coincidence,” said Max.

  “Oh really? So Utsal has been the same close-knit little village for hundreds of years and then the minute this hotel opens up, it turns all mercenary and modern—and you think that’s a coincidence?”

  “But why shouldn’t the people who live here have fast food and laptops? Everyone else does.”

  “Let’s see what Chan Kan has to say about it.”

  The shaman lived in one of the last remaining thatched huts.

  “Ko’oten! Come in!” came his impatient voice, almost before they arrived.

  Max followed Lola into the hut. “Grandfather! I’ve come back to see you! And I’ve brought Max Murphy with me, so please talk in English.”

  Chan Kan was lying in a hammock. This time around, he looked a little less like Gandalf and a little more like a vagrant. His long hair was dull and matted. His impossibly old face was even more wrinkled than Max remembered it, especially when it contorted with rage at the sight of him.

  “Is this your husband?” he demanded of Lola. “I told you that I will not meet him. How dare you bring him here?”

  “I am not married,” said Lola gently. “It’s me, Ix Sak Lol.”

  The old man peered at her through dim eyes. Then he peered at Max. “Who is he then? He is not one of us.”

  “He’s my friend. His name is Max. You met him once.”

  “You told me to trust the howler monkeys,” Max reminded him.

  Chan Kan stared at him, then started laughing. The creases in his face were now so deep that his eyes vanished completely. “I remember you! You’re the one who ate the soup! Do you still bury your head in the sand like a burrowing snake? Or have you learned to soar with the hawks?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Max, “I flew here today.”

  “We came to see you, Grandfather,” added Lola.

  Chan Kan slapped his knee. “So, the Hero Twins have returned at last! Are you ready to play ball?”

  “How are you, Grandfather?” asked Lola.

  “I am preparing to enter the water.”

  Max had hung around with Lola long enough to know that entering the water was an archaic Maya way of referring to death. It was a lesson he’d learned the hard way, when he’d literally entered the water in Spain to follow a ship of dead souls on his journey to the Maya underworld. Now death and water were forever linked in his mind, like a flotilla of little coffins bobbing on a moonlit lagoon.

  He looked around Chan Kan’s hut and remembered how alien it had seemed the first time he’d come here: the sickly smell of incense and beeswax candles; the shelves stacked with sinister-looking objects in jars; every surface piled with leaves, twigs and berries waiting to be made into potions; all the skulls and bones, furs and feathers that decorated the walls. It didn’t look like any doctor’s office Max had ever been in, but now he understood that Chan Kan’s rainforest remedies were often as effective as medicine from the drugstore, sometimes even contained the same ingredients.

  It was Chan Kan’s soothsaying act that freaked him out. On his previous visit, the old man had compared Max and Lola to the Hero Twins of Maya myth, and announced that the fate of the world was in their hands. Max shuddered at the memory. He hoped the old man would keep his crazy ramblings to himself this time.

  Lola put her hand on Chan Kan’s shoulder. “Och said that you … that you wanted to talk to me, Grandfather.”

  He ran his wrinkled old fingers over her hand, as if he was reading Braille. “I have missed you. Where have you been?”

  “We went across the ocean to Spain. The south was hot and dry like a clay oven. But you’d like it in the north. It’s wild and green, and the people believe in magic.”

  Max noticed that she left out any mention of ghosts and weddings and fires and Jaguar Stones.

  “Do you believe in magic?” Chan Kan asked her. Then, without waiting for her answer, he went on: “If only I had a magic spell to undo what I have done. But I can no more change the past than I can stop fallen fruit from rotting.”

  “Grandfather, you are a great shaman. Your wisdom has helped many people in this village.”

  “And yet I cannot help myself. I cannot remember the old ways, the rituals, the prayers. The words have flown from my mind like startled parakeets. I am nothing but a corn husk, dried out in the sun. Utsal does not need me anymore.”

  “I need you,” said Lola.

  “You?” A look of pain crossed Chan Kan’s face. “How can you say that—you of all people—after everything that has happened?”

  “You mean the way Utsal has changed? That’s not your fault. In fact”—she lowered her voice—“I think Ah Pukuh is behind it.”

  “Ah Pukuh?” Chan Kan looked confused. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  “Think about it. It would be so much easier for him to take over Middleworld if all the people were distracted by money and TV and fast food!” Lola’s eyes widened. “That’s it! Maybe he’s putting chemicals in the food!”

  “Um, the food companies already do that,” Max pointed out.

  Chan Kan looked at Max as if he’d never seen him before. “Who is that?” he asked Lola.

  “He’s my friend,” said Lola patiently. “But we were talking about the new hotel. Have you heard about it, Grandfather?”

  Chan Kan nodded. “It is a source of great trouble. But I hear the pizza is good.”

  Max’s ears pricked up. “Deep-dish, or thin and crusty?”

  “Is he your husband?” Chan Kan asked Lola once again.

  Max rolled his eyes at her, amused by the old man’s goldfish memory.

  “Why don’t you wait for me outside?” she said, coldly.

  So Max went outside and sat on the ground and watched another boatload of weary workers wend their way home. He was hoping to see Och and his younger brother, Little Och, but no children played in the streets. Max could hear cartoons blaring from the houses and guessed they were all watching TV. He wondered if anyone would mind if he just entered a random house and sat down to watch it with them.

  But he didn’t dare give it a try.

  So instead he watched the ants marching, millions upon millions of ants, in platoons, brigades, regiments, a mass of black stripes converging on some shared mission, and he wondered, uneasily, if the Undead Army still slept in peace in the Black Pyramid.

  When Lola came out, she was carrying a little deerskin pouch.

  Loud snoring noises issued from inside the hut.

  “Boy, he’s really losing it,” said Max. “The way he kept forgetting things and repeating himself. I hope I don’t end up like that.”

  “You will. We all will.” Lola sighed. “He’s an old man. You should show some compassion.”

  Max had never liked Chan Kan and felt absolutely no pity toward him. He looked for a change of subject. “What’s in the bag?”

  “He gave me his crystals, his most treasured possession. He said they will connect me with my future.”

  “Like fortune-telling? Can you do that stuff?”

  “No, it gives me the creeps. I would never want to be a shaman.”

  “Well, at least you have something to remember him by.”r />
  “It was odd, though. I think he has me mixed up with someone else. He talked about how I played with the crystals when I was little. But I remember distinctly that I was never allowed to even touch them. Maybe I should give them back.”

  “Nah. He’s just confused. So did you manage to interrogate him?”

  “About the day I was found? No, it’s too late. His memory’s gone. I think that maybe”—her voice trembled—“maybe this really will be the last time I’ll ever see him.”

  “We can come back in the morning. His memory might be better after a good night’s sleep. You can ask him some more questions and give back the crystals, if you still think they’re meant for someone else.”

  Lola weighed the bag of crystals in her hand. “I think they’re meant for another time and another place. I feel like there’s a whole world in this little bag, a world that’s almost gone.”

  As they walked back through the village, Max couldn’t help but notice how different it was from the last time they’d been here. On that occasion, the women had fussed over Lola, and the children had crowded around Max, and there had even been a feast in their honor. Today, only one scrawny dog looked even remotely pleased to see them.

  The villagers looked down as they walked, lost in their own thoughts or isolated by headphones, all hurrying home from the ferry. Max noticed that most of them carried a bag of takeout food, and good smells of fried chicken wafted by.

  “Can we get dinner?” he asked. “I’m starving.”

  Lola thought for a moment. “Let’s visit Och. If we’re lucky, his mother will be making tortillas on the fire. She makes the best tortillas in town.”

  “Why are you Maya so obsessed with tortillas?” pondered Max as they set off for Och’s house. “You make fun of me and pizza, but I don’t eat it every day.”

  “You would if you could,” Lola pointed out.

  “But the Maya have tortillas with every single meal. Don’t you ever get sick of them?”

  “They’re more than just food; they’re who we are.”

  “That’s how I feel about thin-crust pepperoni.”

  “And were your ancestors were made out of pizza dough?”

  “What? No! I’m half Italian, but I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Well, that’s the difference. Our creation story tells us that after laying down the cosmic hearthstones, what you call the three stars in Orion’s belt, the creator gods formed the first humans from corn dough. So every morning, when I see women crouched over their hearthstones shaping dough for tortillas, it gives me goosebumps. It’s like we get born again every day.” She sneaked a glance at him. “Does that sound silly to you?”

  “No, I like it. I like most stories with food in them.”

  Lola laughed. “Let’s hope Och’s mother is making tortillas.”

  He recognized Och’s house straightaway, and the porch where he’d slept in a hammock for the first time in his life. He hadn’t exactly been the perfect guest on that occasion, and he was looking forward to making amends—so he was disappointed to find it all dark and quiet.

  “Looks like there’s no one home,” he said.

  “Hello?” called Lola. “Baax kaw aalik? How are you?”

  “Ko’oten,” came a woman’s voice. She sounded sad and tired.

  They went inside.

  The first thing Max noticed was no cooking fire. The three hearthstones sat cold and unused. So much for homemade tortillas.

  A single candle burned on the table, where Och’s mother sat in the gloom.

  Lola bowed to her politely and went to Och, who was standing in the corner of the room, swinging his little brother in a hammock.

  “Chan Och?” said Lola, delighted. “Little Och?”

  Max remembered with a start that Och’s younger brother was also nicknamed Och (meaning “possum”), as were most of the children in the village; a cunning ruse to fool the spirits of the rainforest, who liked to steal away human babies.

  Och put a finger to his lips to show that his brother was sleeping.

  Now that they were closer, Max and Lola saw that the boy in the hammock was wrapped in bandages.

  “What happened to him?” whispered Lola.

  “K’aak’—fire,” replied Och.

  Lola clapped a hand to her mouth. “Och, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Och shrugged. “Baaxten? Why? We are not blood. It’s not your problem.”

  Lola threw her arms around him. “How can you say that? We don’t need the same blood to be family! I would do anything to help you.”

  “Can you make my brother well again?” asked Och.

  “No, but—”

  Och turned his back on her and continued rocking the hammock, singing what Max assumed was a Maya lullaby.

  Visibly upset, Lola went to sit at the table, and Max followed. Och’s mother emptied a small bag of tortilla chips into a bowl and offered them to her guests. Lola declined, kicked Max under the table to do the same, and passed the bowl to Och. He took one and carried the bowl back to his mother, encouraging her to eat.

  Max guessed that there would be no more food in this house tonight. He sat at the table, smiling awkwardly and trying not to eat the last of the chips, while Lola chatted in Mayan with the boys’ mother.

  After a while, she got up. “Say good-bye, Hoop; it’s time we were going.”

  “So now we know why Och was so preoccupied,” said Max, back in the street. “What happened to his brother?”

  “His mother was doing a tortilla-making demonstration for the tourists. They all crowded round and Little Och got pushed, and he fell into the cooking fire.”

  “Will he be all right?”

  “They don’t know. Chan Kan has given his mother herbs to help the healing, but he needs an operation or he’ll be scarred for life.” Lola’s eyes filled with tears.

  Max leapt over a wide column of ants. “Why don’t they take him to the hospital?”

  “The nearest burn unit is in San Xavier City, but it might as well be on Mars. Even if Och’s parents could somehow afford the treatment, it would be impossible for them to get him there.”

  Max clicked his tongue. “I bet Uncle Ted could pull some strings.”

  “Hoop, you’re a genius!”

  A cheer went up behind them and they turned, smiles at the ready, expecting to see old friends. But it was only the shrieking of a game-show audience from somebody’s TV.

  “Come on,” said Lola, running down the street, “let’s find your uncle.”

  They found him sitting on the dock, waiting for them.

  “Just in time,” he said. “The pizza will arrive any minute!”

  Max’s stomach growled at the thought. “That’s not funny! Don’t torture me!”

  “I would never joke about such a serious matter, Max. Apparently a pizza shop has just opened upriver, so I took the liberty of ordering—pepperoni with extra cheese, isn’t it?”

  To Max’s astonishment, a delivery boy pulled up in a small motorboat and handed up several large, flat boxes.

  “I must say,” said Uncle Ted, as he paid, “Utsal is not what I expected. From everything you told me, Lola, I pictured one of those traditional Maya villages that keeps to the old ways. I thought we’d be eating homemade tortillas tonight, not pizza.”

  “Me too,” agreed Lola. “But that’s what I need to talk to you about. Those old cooking fires are dangerous. Och’s little brother fell in and got burned and—”

  “Poor kid! Is he okay?”

  “He needs to go to the hospital in San Xavier City but—”

  “I take it his family is not rich? How will they get him there?”

  “That’s the problem. You have so many connections, I was hoping you might know someone who could help.”

  Uncle Ted took out his cell phone and started jabbing in numbers. “If I can’t persuade the air ambulance service to take him, I’ll charter a plane and fly him there myself.”

  Lola did a happy
dance, right there on the dock.

  “Aren’t you going to have pizza?” Max asked her. “It’s good.”

  “Let me take one to Och’s family and tell them the good news!”

  “First,” said Uncle Ted, “let’s agree on a plan. I’m happy to stay behind and sort out matters for the little boy, but I’d like to get you two out of here. After seeing those critters on the plane, I’d feel happier knowing that you’re safely tucked up in the Villa Isabella. But we need to move quickly. There’s a hurricane blowing in and, from the way the ants are marching, it looks like it will be a big one. We need to get you on your way before everything grinds to a halt around here.”

  “Suits me,” said Max. “But how?”

  “I know!” answered Lola. “There’s a new tourist bus between Puerto Muerto and Limón. Och’s mother mentioned it.”

  “Splendid!” said Uncle Ted. “So you’ll take the first worker boat in the morning, catch your bus in Limón, and be back at Puerto Muerto before nightfall.” He waved his cell phone. “What’s your number, Max, so I can keep tabs on you?”

  “I left my phone with Dad. It doesn’t work since it got wet in the cave.”

  “Never mind. They’re more trouble than they’re worth in San Xavier. You’ve got my number if you need it.” He waved his phone above his head, trying to get satellite reception. “I’ll try and get a call through to Raul to tell him to expect you.”

  “Will you ask him to make a big dinner for us?” Max’s mouth was already watering at the thought of the feast that would await them the next evening.

  “Of course I will! I just wish I could call your parents and tell them of the change of plan, but there’s no signal at the Black Pyramid. I’ll ask Raul to keep trying.”

  “We’ll be fine,” said Max, who was keen to leave Utsal as soon as possible, especially on a comfortable tourist bus.

  “It’ll be fun!” added Lola.

  Uncle Ted looked at them thoughtfully. “I hope I won’t regret this.”

  “It’s one boat ride and one bus ride,” Lola assured him. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that? You two have a bit of a track record.”