The River of No Return

by Jon Voelkel

  “Bahlam threw himself into the ravine to cover for thy headstrong behavior.”

  “I know that,” said Lola. “And I said I was sorry.”

  “No creature could survive that fall.”

  Lola stared at him. “But Bahlam came back. He carried me up the pyramid.”

  “He is thine animal guide. Some instincts are stronger than death. He came back in spirit to help thee.”

  “You mean, he died at the ravine?” She sat down heavily and buried her head in her hands.

  With a roar that might have been pity or regret or fury, Lord 6-Dog leapt for the nearest overhanging branch, and disappeared into the trees.

  After a while, Max and Lola walked down the pyramid.

  “Cheer up,” said Max. “Don’t blame yourself. Bahlam was doing his job.”

  Lola said nothing.

  At the bottom, a smell of fast food wafted over.

  “Are you hungry?” Max asked. “The vendors have arrived. The site will be opening soon.”

  Lola shook her head. Her eyes were full of tears. “Chan Kan, Bahlam, Thunderclaw … I need to say good-bye to them.”

  Trying to ignore the tempting aromas and look mournful, Max walked with her over to the cenote, its green water now opaque black.

  Lola stared into its depths for a few moments, then ran into the forest and returned with an armful of white flowers.

  “It’s not mahogany,” she said. “But it will do.”

  She threw the white blooms one by one into the water, chanting Mayan words that sounded like a prayer.

  Soon, the surface of the cenote was flecked with white petals.

  Max nudged her. “Tourist alert!”

  A middle-aged couple strode toward them. They wore matching flowered shirts, khaki shorts, comfortable shoes, and nylon backpacks. The woman walked ahead, waving a map, while the man lagged behind with a large video camera.

  The woman ignored Lola and went straight to Max. “Is there a show today? Our tour guide said the natives sometimes burn candles and make offerings in these old places.” She looked warily at Lola. “Can you ask the Indian girl?”

  Max made up some gobbledygook. “Ish kish mishy mashy pock pock?” he asked Lola, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Ish kish pish,” she improvised in reply.

  “She says no,” said Max.

  The woman curled her lip. “This place needs to get its act together. At Disneyland the shows are twice a day on the dot.”

  “Have you been to the Grand Hotel Xibalba in Limón?” suggested Max. “I think you’d like it there.”

  “Does it have proper food?” asked the man.

  “The world’s biggest pizza buffet.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said the man.

  “But I can’t wait. I’m hungry now,” complained his wife.

  And so, with the ancient pyramid soaring behind them and the stones of a lost civilization under their feet, the couple went off in search of a hot dog cart.

  “I can see why Eusebio hates tourists,” said Lola.

  “Actually,” said Max, “I’m starving. Do you think there is a hot dog cart?”

  “Forget about food for a moment!”

  “But we missed dinner last night. And we haven’t had breakfast.”

  “We need to talk about how we’re getting back to your uncle’s house.”

  “What about Sylvanus Morley’s jalopy?”

  “One, it won’t be there. Two, if it is there, it won’t work. And three, I can’t drive—can you?”

  “I’ve driven a boat—”

  Max was interrupted by a hand tapping him on the shoulder. “Excuse me?” said a voice. “Have I missed the show?”

  Max rolled his eyes, irritated. “Look, there’s no—”

  “Eusebio!” cried Lola. “I am so happy to see you.”

  “I feel a little self-conscious,” said the boatman. “Tourists keep taking my picture.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Max. Eusebio was still sporting the jaguar-pelt loincloth and jaguar-painted skin that he’d been wearing when they escaped the hotel.

  “Where’s Lord 6-Dog?” asked Eusebio. “And what happened to the Undead Army? I expected to find a pitched battle in progress.”

  “Lola will tell you everything,” said Max. “And while you two catch up, I’m going to find some food.”

  When he came back, loaded up with tamales and corn on the cob, Max found Lola and Eusebio still sitting by the cenote, deep in conversation. From Lola’s red eyes, he guessed they were talking about Chan Kan.

  “He was a man with many secrets,” said Eusebio. “But in the end, he proved how much he loved you, Ix Sak Lol.”

  “Hey buddy,” said a voice, “will you take our picture?”

  A group of tourists was lined up expectantly.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Max, gathering up his food. “Did you bring your truck, Eusebio?”

  “No, I left it on the road, and got a ride on a tourist bus. The driver was a cousin of my brother-in-law’s sister. I am sorry that I cannot drive you home.”

  “Oh, but you can! We have a jalopy!”

  “What is a jalopy?” asked Eusebio.

  Lola stood up and rearranged her hair to cover as much of her tear-stained face as possible. “It is a word for an imaginary car in an imaginary cave.”

  “There is a word for that?” Eusebio looked impressed.

  In fact, Lola’s definition was wrong, because the jalopy was not imaginary. It was exactly where the dead archaeologist had said it would be. A vintage Bentley, covered in a tarp, hidden in a cave.

  Eusebio’s eyes lit up. “It is in better condition than any car I have ever driven. Help me push it out, and I am sure I can get it started.”

  Max and Lola sat in the shade and watched as Eusebio tinkered with the jalopy.

  Lola held Bahlam’s whisker. “I keep hoping he will come.” She drew in the dirt with a stick. “If I knew how to read Chan Kan’s crystals, I think they would tell me that today is a day for no happy endings.”

  “I’m sorry about Chan Kan,” said Max. “And Bahlam.”

  Lola wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Max took a deep breath. “Do you ever think about Toto?” he asked.

  Lola looked up. “Toto? You mean Antonio de Landa? Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering,” said Max, as casually as he could.

  She shuddered. “I hope I never see him again. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I hope he drowned in the ocean that last night in Spain. Except I know that he didn’t.”

  Had she seen him at the hotel? Max turned to her sharply. “How do you know that?”

  “He’s a survivor. He’s like a cockroach. He could probably survive for a week with his head cut off.” She lay back against a rock and closed her eyes.

  They didn’t speak again until Eusebio had coaxed the jalopy back to life.

  “All aboard!” he called.

  Max went back to the plaza to look for Lord 6-Dog.

  Now that the site was crawling with tourists, he was surprised to see how jolly it all looked. No one would guess that a mythic battle for the future of the Earth had taken place on these very stones just hours ago.

  Nor that the Earth had lost.

  “Ow!” A wild plum bounced off Max’s head.

  “Psst!” He looked up to see Lord 6-Dog peering at him out of a tree. “Thirteen apologies, young lord,” he whispered. “I did not mean to hurt thee. But I am in hiding from the tourists. Every time they see me, they start to howl at me and expect me to howl back. It has given me a powerful headache.”

  “Eusebio has fixed the car. We’re leaving.”

  “Thou dost know my thoughts on the infernal combustion engine. If I am not needed to ride with thee, I will swing by my tail to thine uncle’s house. Last one there is a dung-beetle!”

  Eusebio and Lola were waiting for Max in the jalopy. He jumped int
o the backseat, and they were off.

  “Which is the best way?” asked Eusebio as he drove out of the site entrance, past a surprised guard at the gate. “I have never been to Puerto Muerto.”

  Max rifled through the old papers in the seat pocket. “There are some maps back here. They’re kind of old, though.”

  “Go right,” commanded Lola. “I saw a logging camp from the pyramid. Wherever there are loggers, there are roads.”

  Her voice was flat, weighed down with sadness.

  The landscape they drove through matched her mood.

  “I hope Lord 6-Dog doesn’t come this way,” muttered Max. “His tail won’t find much to swing from.”

  Mile after a mile of bare black earth and dead tree stumps. A silent wasteland with no birds, no monkeys, no wildlife of any kind save for the swarms of yellow butterflies that flitted hungrily through the ruins of the forest.

  “Fools,” muttered Eusebio. “Have they learned nothing from history? Once the rainforest is felled, it is gone forever.”

  “Even the ancient Maya didn’t learn,” said Lola. “They cut down trees to build fires to make plaster. And when the drought came, instead of scaling down, they built more pyramids and made more plaster.”

  “But they did not have chain saws,” Eusebio pointed out.

  “Please!” Max begged them. “Can we lighten up?”

  But what was there to say?

  They were all thinking the same thing.

  The loggers’ handiwork would be nothing compared to the devastation that Ah Pukuh had in mind. Very soon, he would be putting into action his plans to lay waste the whole of Middleworld. And no one would care about saving trees or animals when they couldn’t save themselves. Now that Ah Pukuh and the Death Lords had all five Jaguar Stones, the whole world would soon be cut down as easily as the last rainforests.

  What made it worse was that—if you didn’t count talking monkeys—only Max, Lola, and Eusebio knew what was coming.

  And they did not look forward to spreading the news.

  When they arrived at the Villa Isabella late afternoon the next day, a brown howler monkey was sitting on the gates waiting for them. She was wearing a little white embroidered apron. “Welcome home! I’ve been watching for you all day! It’s so good to see you!”

  “Lady Coco! This is our friend Eusebio,” called Lola. “Eusebio, meet Lady Coco. In her human life, she was queen of Itzamna.”

  Eusebio bowed his head in greeting. He didn’t think twice about meeting a Maya queen in the body of a monkey. After what he’d seen at the Grand Hotel Xibalba, he knew that anything was possible.

  Lady Coco scanned the jalopy’s passengers anxiously. “Where’s 6-Dog?”

  “He’ll be here soon,” said Max. “He wanted to swing through the jungle, what’s left of it.”

  The monkey-queen smiled with relief. “I was worried about you. So was Lord Hermanjilio.”

  “Is he here?” asked Lola. She sounded nervous.

  “Yes, he is here,” boomed Hermanjilio from the front door. “And I think we need to talk, young lady.”

  “Time to face the music,” said Lola grimly.

  Without greeting any of the rest of them, Hermanjilio strode over to Lola. “Where is it? I entrusted it to you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Where is the White Jaguar?”

  “Xibalba,” she whispered.

  “What have you done? I cannot believe that I risked everything to smuggle the White Jaguar out from Xibalba and now it’s right back there again.”

  “It wasn’t Lola’s fault,” said Max. “It was Chan Kan.”

  “Then Chan Kan is an idiot!” yelled Hermanjilio.

  “He’s dead!” Lola yelled back. “Does that make you happy?”

  “What—?” began Hermanjilio, but Lola jumped out of the car and ran inside. A door slammed somewhere upstairs.

  “Chan Kan jumped into the cenote at Ixchel,” Max explained.

  Lady Coco put on her best hostess smile. “Won’t you come inside, Lord Eusebio, and partake of some refreshments?”

  Eusebio looked at Max and Hermanjilio. They were staring at each other, with faces like thunder. “Yes, I’d like that very much,” he said.

  When they were alone, Hermanjilio cross-questioned Max angrily. “Why were you at Ixchel? Ted said you were coming straight back here.”

  “It’s a long story. But the Undead Army was chasing us. And Lola got hit by a poisoned arrow. She would have died if we hadn’t taken her to Ixchel and asked the moon goddess for help.”

  “Presumably the Undead Army would not have been chasing you if Lola hadn’t stolen the White Jaguar from me.”

  Mile after mile of bare black earth and dead tree stumps.

  “She did it for me. The Death Lords were blackmailing her. Please go easy on her, Hermanjilio.”

  “Go easy on her! She has just imperiled the entire human race! She had no right to touch the White Jaguar!”

  “The Death Lords drove her to it. They messed with her head.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They taunted her about having no family. They made her feel worthless. It was like all the fight had gone out of her. Then I persuaded her to stand up to the Death Lords. And everything went horribly wrong.”

  Hermanjilio sighed. “I might have known they’d get to her that way. I should have seen this coming. I was the one who found her, you know. I was walking through the forest on my way to meet Chan Kan for the first time. He wanted to talk about starting a village school. And there she was, sleeping in a basket under the mahogany tree. It’s not the best start in life, is it? Left out in the jungle for wild animals to eat? Who would do such a thing?”

  “You must have some clue about Lola’s parents?”

  “None at all. I asked in villages for miles around, but no one was missing a baby. The Maya love children far too much to just abandon them. So, in the end, we had to assume that her parents were dead. To this day, no one has ever asked about her. But luckily for her, Chan Kan stepped forward right away to offer her a home with his family. Everyone says he couldn’t have loved her more if she was his real grandchild.”

  “Hermanjilio, I have to tell you something,” Max blurted out. “It’s something I overheard at the hotel in Limón. Antonio de Landa was there, and he was talking about how an old man, a shaman, paid him to steal a baby away from its mother. He said the baby grew up to be a beautiful girl and the love of his life, but she left him on their wedding day. He had to be talking about Lola!”

  “Did you tell Lola about this?” asked Hermanjilio.

  “No, I wanted to talk to Uncle Ted first. But you’ll do.”

  Hermanjilio was staring into the forest. “So you think the old man was Chan Kan? And he paid Antonio de Landa to kidnap Lola from her own mother? Why would he do that? And why did Lola’s mother never look for her baby?”

  “Chan Kan told Landa that the mother was a bad woman.”

  “But to steal a child? And to let the child think she’s an orphan? That’s brutal. And anything could have happened to her in that forest. What if I hadn’t come along?”

  “Maybe Chan Kan and Landa set it up?”

  Hermanjilio stared at him. “Now I think about it, Chan Kan was very precise about fixing that meeting. He told me which trail I should take to the village. I remember him telling me to look for the mahogany tree. And he said it was important to be on time—which is not something you hear much in San Xavier.”

  “So he made sure you’d find her and bring her to the village with you?”

  “Where he was waiting to step in and officially adopt her?” Hermanjilio ran his fingers through his hair. “But why would he do such a thing?”

  “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “Promise me this, Max. The first chance you get, you sit down with Lola and you tell her everything you know. You cannot keep this a secret from her.”

  “I’ll ask Uncle Ted to do it. I don’t want
to give her more bad news about Chan Kan. It’s not like it solves the mystery of who her mother is. Or was.”

  “It needs to come from you.”

  “You tell her then. You’re a professor. You know the right words to use. I’m no good at that stuff.”

  “You’re good at being her friend, Max. That’s what she needs right now.”

  All this time, Max and Hermanjilio had been sitting in the car.

  The first colors of sunset were streaking the sky.

  Max glanced toward the house. Three heads immediately ducked out of sight at the window. He guessed that Lady Coco, Eusebio, and Raul had been watching them, no doubt wondering what they were talking about.

  Lord 6-Dog landed, with a thump, on the hood of the car. “How now, my lords?”

  “You made it!” said Max. “Lady Coco will be happy to see you—she’s been worried about you.”

  “Tonight, all mothers have cause to worry. Word in the forest is that Ah Pukuh is crowing about his victory and preparing to march on Middleworld. The end, I fear, is nigh for us all.”

  Max had been imagining this moment ever since he’d first got conscripted into the Death Lords’ search for the Jaguar Stones. He always feared there would come a day when they’d have to admit defeat and let the bad guys have their way.

  Life, Max Murphy had learned, was not like a video game. Scenes did not reload; revenge was not sweet; no one played by the rules.

  But the fact that planet Earth was about to be overrun by a megalomaniac Maya god and his hellish hangers-on seemed less important at that moment than the fate of one stolen baby who would never know her mother.

  After that, all Max could do was wait. Wait for his parents to come back from the dig. Wait for Uncle Ted to come back from San Xavier City, where he’d been keeping an eye on Little Och. Wait for Ah Pukuh to declare war on the mortal world. Wait for Lola to come down to breakfast, so he could break it to her that pretty much everything Chan Kan had ever told her was a lie.

  It was a beautiful morning, and Raul had laid out an epic spread of eggs, bacon, pancakes and waffles on the terrace, but for once in his life Max wasn’t hungry. He just sat there throwing crumbs to the birds and rehearsing in his head how to tell Lola what he’d overheard in the salon.