by A. T. Grant
His son Yochi was, as usual, chattering obliviously beside him. “Soon my sister will marry a noble. I too will choose a princess as my bride. Then we can leave the custom-house island. We can move into Muyil and build our own lodge, with its own grand courtyard and shrine.”
“I am too old to move, Yochi. You can go, but wait until I am settled here for good. My next journey will be into the afterlife, not into Muyil.”
Yochi tried to protest, but Mulac waved an impatient, liver-spotted hand at him.
“I know you and your sister will visit me here, Yochi, but there is another important journey you both must take. I want you to promise me you will travel to Coba, to the temple of Ix-Chel. For, at its foot, facing the forest, lie the remains of your mother. Make that journey for me and your lives will continue to be blessed.”
Yochi put a strong, supporting arm around his father, whispered his promise compliantly, and led him slowly around the ridge to the temple tomb. Soon both were sitting side by side on the simple stone plinth in the middle of the viewing platform. The horizontal rays of the sun shone straight onto the carved stone frieze decorating the back-wall. Mulac peered at it suspiciously.
“I told you - that never happened!” He was pointing his stick at a warrior version of himself, who was cleaving a mounted devil with his sword. Yochi laughed. Since his earliest years, people had talked to him of his father’s modesty. Mulac spat at the floor, but then laughed as well in resignation. He rested his head wearily on his son’s shoulder.
“Yochi, I would like you to leave me here, for a while. I have to know this place. My spirit must recognise it, if I am ever to return here from the land of the dead. I must be able to come to you when you visit, and I think our jaguar king, K’inich, may have work for me still. Go back and get the others. I am tired. You will need to bring a litter to carry me back to the boat.”
Yochi slipped dutifully away, Mulac admiring his athletic form until he disappeared into the trees. Mulac remained still for a long time, whilst the gentlest of shadows grew around him and played across the carvings.
“Hello, dear friends,” he whispered, satisfied that here he would never have to be alone.
With a contented sigh, Mulac finally struggled to his feet. Turning to face the last embers of sunlight, he cautiously descended the grand limestone staircase to the lake. He would strip and bathe in its dark waters. There he would cast his necklace of jaguar claws. If K’inich did not take him now, he would maintain his state of grace by praying, every dawn and dusk, for the great cat to allow the spirits of his ancestors to receive him soon. On his way back he would also leave an offering - something important that might guide his parents and Ah Kin Lo to this place again - something that might one day assist another lost soul. He would give up Quetzalcoatl’s ring - the Ouroboros - the snake that marked the circular path the jaguar walked from day to night, life to death, world to world, and back again. Ah Kin Lo had sacrificed it for his benefit. How could he do less? He would bury it beneath the moss on the sacred stone which marked the downward path to the landing point. Somewhere, close by, the great cat snarled. Mulac swayed precariously on a loose step in fright, but concluded that K’inich was not displeased.
Chapter Forty-Six
The Marshes
Alfredo emerged, blinking, onto the ridge. He doubled up, heaving for breath and fighting the pains that had returned to his leg after his frantic getaway through the jungle. More than escape, more than returning to help his brother, he wanted to find Laura. It was a reckless, he recognised that, but nothing bad would happen to her as long as he continued to hurry, continued to keep his pursuers at a safe distance. Laura and he would embrace, he would declare his love and then he would be gone. Whatever happened after that would happen. It didn’t matter. Freed from hubris and Las Contadonas, his existence now felt surprisingly trivial.
David had spotted him already and was waving from the platform. Laura began to stride and then jog towards him. As they closed the gap, Alfredo could tell by the degree of concern on her face that the pair must have heard the gunshots. The two embraced, each allowing their tension to dissolve into the other. The smell of Laura slipped from a once hidden door in Alfredo’s past.
Laura stretched on tiptoe to peck Alfredo on the cheek then nuzzled in relief against his chest. “What happened?” She was even more breathless than he.
Alfredo shook his head slowly as he led her by the hand back to the monument, desperately trying to work out how he could explain himself. David made it easier.
“You’re not a park official, are you?”
Alfredo threw up his hands in affirmation and apology.
“Felicity was suspicious.” David continued. “She got me thinking. You don’t look like someone who knows where you’re going, at least not in an environment like this one.”
“You’ve got that right,” Alfredo exclaimed sardonically, stroking the back of Laura’s hair. She smiled up at him as he fixed his eyes determinedly upon hers and took a long deep breath. “My brother and I come from a powerful family, but our business is not legal. I suppose you could say we are gangsters, Mexican Mafioso. I killed someone recently who tried to kill me. It started a war. We lost, my father and my uncle were killed, and Luis and I had to run. Our old world is gone. There is nothing to go back for, but even before I met you, Laura, I didn’t want that life again. Now I’m another person: the person I see through your eyes, but our enemies have caught up. Luis has been shot, and may be dying. Very soon, for your own safety, you must leave me here.”
Alfredo’s stopped abruptly, his confession leaving him emotionally exhausted. He searched for fear in Laura’s eyes, but instead read deep disappointment. That was worse. The door slammed shut. Never had he regretted his past so profoundly. He struggled hard to stay positive.
“It’s funny, you know,” David interrupted, as breezily as if they were discussing the weather. This could, indeed, have been a topic of conversation, as the sky was looking increasingly dark and threatening. “I’m not afraid of you, or of what you say has happened. Back home, I’m afraid of my own shadow. My girlfriend, Phoebe, whom I love, but always let down, she wouldn’t recognise me. That’s a good thing. Something changed in me on this journey, just as it has in you.”
Alfredo stared at the towering clouds. He wanted these people to know everything about him, but there wouldn’t be time. “I was in your country recently,” he resumed, determined to make the conversation last at least a little longer. “That is where things changed. I walked madly around London, hating the place, but it was my past, not London, I was trying to escape. Then I ended up here, and thought all was lost until I met this girl.” He kissed the top of Laura’s head, once more savouring the aroma: a tiny memento of life led only in dreams. Then he turned back to David. “Here, take this.” He passed over his gun in an act of both surrender and renewal.
David gawped then grasped it awkwardly by the top of the barrel. He took in the strange, alien weight of it, knowing it was something he could never use.
Alfredo continued, speaking with an increasingly distant air: “It’s me who should be afraid of my shadow, David, not you. Your shadow frames your character, so you stand proud. My shadow is different. It’s the shadow of encroaching night. It blankets and obscures and creates unseen spaces for evil to flourish. It’s stalking me, David. It wants to drag me beneath these marshes. Laura lifts my heart, but I can’t escape the darkness.”
“But you can’t escape from me either, now.” Alfredo’s defeatism only fuelled in Laura a sense of passionate purpose. She embraced him as though it was she who was his shadow. His revelations had shocked - possibly even scared her - but only as if she had absorbed an unsavoury aspect of her own character. His guilt would be her guilt, his punishment her punishment. It didn’t matter what happened, only that it happened together. Her whole life meant less than this single mome
nt beyond time and space. Something could actually last. She was crying. She cried some more when she realised they were tears of joy.
Alfredo shook his head, forcing himself to remember that their situation was hopeless. “My brother - my best friend - is badly injured. The father of your guide, Cesar, arrived with some men. Somehow he seems to be working for our enemies, people who are far more ruthless than us. You should have nothing to fear from them, but it’s still wise to lie low until this situation is resolved. I must go back now and find a way to help Luis.”
David put a finger to his lips, almost hitting himself in the face with the gun. It was too late, somebody was coming. Laura dragged Alfredo towards the far edge of the platform, determined not to let go. All three jumped into a thick layer of grass and bushes, David stumbling down the slope towards the highest corner, overlooking the lake. Regrouping, they huddled together at the base of the monument. Alfredo looked about him for anything that might cover their escape, but it was only in the lee of the triangular stone wall that the vegetation grew tall.
There were low, male, cautious voices just above them. Out of habit, Alfredo gestured for the gun, but David had dropped it as he fell. All three pressed as close to the stonework as they could, Laura almost lost from view between the others. They could hear heavy footsteps beginning to negotiate the steep stairway down to the lake. Any moment they would be seen.
David shuffled further down the slope, tugging at Laura’s shirt sleeve for her to follow. As he stretched an arm along the wall it found a gap, half hidden by the brush. The gap grew larger as he gingerly parted the covering layers of creeper and fern. It was an entrance to a chamber beneath the monument. Pausing for one last breath of fresh evening air, David plunged head first into the darkness. His portly frame only just squeezed through. Laura found his hand, extended back out towards her from within, and followed. Alfredo hesitated, casting around for the gun, but realised that bolting or fighting back now would be suicide, anyway. He could see someone in uniform just yards away from him, standing on one of the nearest steps. The man had only to turn around. Alfredo cursed silently to himself and shuffled, feet first through the hole, carefully guiding the plants back over the entrance in his wake.
The tomb was not quite dark. Here and there pale patches of light stained a wooden beam or a block of masonry. The air was dank and musty, and vaguely mammalian. From ceiling to floor was no more than four feet, less in places where fusty mounds of peat had covered the rough stone tiles. The plinth that had dominated the platform above continued down into the tomb. Laura realised that it must contain a sarcophagus.
For a long time the three sat together, just beyond the portal, listening intently for any sound, but nothing seemed to penetrate this void. They were breathing as one, the noise growing stronger as the daylight continued to weaken. Weariness and true darkness overtook them.
Mulac started, suddenly conscious, and wondered if the breathing could be his. The darkness had changed. He knew he had broken the surface of the human world. He could sense the shared blood of his descendants in the far distance. The memory of a long lost life came flooding back to him. He smiled. The creature sat beside him, listless and pawing at the black; panting. Something had disturbed its vigil. Mulac concentrated. His thoughts came rushing in from every corner of the night, to where the dust of his body lay. There was another presence in the tomb. People - seekers - a timid soul, a diseased soul, a soul with little form. Now he understood. He must inhabit the shadows once again: work his magic before the great cat lost patience and struck.
Mulac felt the shock of years passing. He was aware again the chemical dance of life, the wonder of light in the darkness, a giddy mix of human sensations. Fate had not done with him yet. Perhaps soon he could close the circle, sink beneath the lake, lose all sense and form and exhale across the universe. Sleep.
Laura started from her slumber. Now in a cold sweat and scared, she could recall nothing of her dream, except that it involved the machete she had left back along the ridge. She thought of her letter of application, written less than three weeks previously. No map, but now no machete either, she noted to herself sarcastically. She began to shiver. On either side of her the others were sleeping fitfully. She could just make out Alfredo’s torso, slumped forward upon his knees. David’s head was back against the stonework and his mouth open. Strange gargles and whistles issued from his mouth and nose. Laura wrapped her arms across her chest, but there was little else she could do to keep warm. A slight luminosity in the chamber made her think there must be a full moon. She closed her eyes again and thought of Simon, her flatmates, and of her life in advertising: common things, part of normal lives lived by ordinary people, as she had so recently been. Now they felt alien and irrelevant. They also felt distant, in time as well as space.
Laura opened her eyes again. She was sure that she had heard movement this time. She could sense - almost hear - another presence in the chamber. She pulled up her legs and pressed her back into the stonework, trying not to breath. Still the others slept, David now lying prone on the floor. There was a definite sniff and then a low grumble. The sound was just loud enough to carry from the other side of the tomb. Laura was sure that it had not been one of the sleepers, that it was more than just an echo. Something large was stirring, something that owned the space they had invaded, something that was moving steadily towards them.
David began to stretch. Laura thumped him urgently on the thigh. He struggled into a sitting position, spluttering and choking. She grabbed his nearest hand and he turned in her direction, trying to work out her expression through the gloom. He smiled - she could briefly see the flash of his uneven teeth - but she did not smile back. David was about to speak when a long, deep, bass growl resonated through the chamber and consumed the pair in fear. They scrambled together. Laura thought David might squeeze the life from her as he flung his body across hers, but she didn’t want him to let go. There was the sound of an animal pawing angrily at the ground. It was scratching and sniffing, only feet away. Alfredo mumbled incoherently to himself in Spanish, but somehow did not wake.
Out of the gloom grew the face of a jaguar, prowling and low to the ground. Stocky, pug-nosed features hung menacingly beyond powerful, patterned shoulders. Its amber eyes shone with the first rays of morning, igniting two low flames which burned with a concentrated energy that might dissolve any shadow. David could feel the warmth of it breath. It was too late for terror. Now he was just numb. He tensed and waited for the bite to the back of his neck which would take him back to blankness. It did not come. There was just the warm, rancid panting, the anticipation of death. Something was holding it back.
Slowly, he forced himself to turn, to face the ancient, all-consuming eyes of the jaguar god. There he met an unexpected stillness; an evocation of eons past and ages yet to come. David was no longer paralysed. He was more than just unafraid, he was fascinated. The eyes spoke of every time and every place. They containing what could never be contained. Time was a landscape flowing out and back in all directions. Nothing worried him anymore. It was as if he knew this animal, knew it as a companion, and it knew him.
Alfredo coughed and suddenly sat bolt-upright. With an immense roar and a flash of fearsome teeth, the great cat pounced. Alfredo had no time to react; the animal was on top of him, thrusting Laura out of the way with the splayed claws on its powerful back legs. Both screamed from the bottom of a deep well of pain. Instinctively, David grabbed at the swinging tail and pulled with every ounce of strength he could muster. The cat spun and jumped at the same time, snarling and smashing into the low ceiling. Momentarily stunned, it scrambled to find its footing, then crouched low and wary in front of them. Shaking its head, it grumbled like the rolling waves of an imminent earthquake. It dug its claws into the earth again, rehearsing its next attack.
“No!” David bellowed, as if someone else had usurped his voice.
Th
e jaguar turned towards him. To his great relief it grew still. The rapid jerking of its ribcage began to subside. Then it sprang for the tiny gap in the wall and was gone.
Laura was crying quietly. She rolled over to Alfredo, groaning from the pain of the deep lines slashed across her legs, ignoring the other gash that had opened up her side. Desperately, she fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed at the long streaks of blood flowing from his lacerated scalp. Alfredo spluttered and a spray of blood from his savaged lips rained across the others.
David knew he must get help, but was stricken by the delayed shock of what he had just done. He stared towards the sarcophagus, his own chest heaving. Here and there the first faint flickers of light were beginning to spill through from outside. He could make out the uneven stone surface and then he could trace the swirls and curves of the carvings with his eyes. As he gasped for breath, a familiar pattern began to form in his mind. He started to relax. It was the same picture he had seen on a rock in Muyil. It was Mulac.
Despite the distress of those beside him, David laughed audibly. “Hello, my brother,” he whispered. For the first time in his life he understood his place in the universe, and the future was pregnant with possibility. “I’m going to get help,” he declared decisively. “Everything will work out for the best.”
Laura barely noticed David’s newfound fortitude. Blood was still coursing over Alfredo’s features, some of it hers, and she was frantically trying to stem the tide. Growing increasingly dizzy, she was finding it difficult to focus. David’s voice came to her from somewhere far distant and no longer relevant.
David crawled toward the cold grey light of the exit and emerged onto wet grass. He was alone. Almost immediately he could feel the sharp outline of the lost gun under one hand. He scooped it up and struggled through his aches and pains to stand. Walking unsteadily up the hill, clear of the platform, he crested the ridge. A new day was sweeping in from the distant coast. Turning, he stared back down at the lake. He took a cautious step forward to be sideways-on to the slope. Stretching back an arm, he launched the gun vigorously into the air. Briefly, at the top of its arc, it caught the first rays of the rising sun before spinning back into the shadows. It was clear from its trajectory that it should have met the waters somewhere near their middle, but there was no splash. No ripples picked out the indeterminate surface. It was just no longer there.
