by J
Chan Kan walked onto the field. He looked very different from the tired, broken, almost blind old man who had thrown himself into Xibalba to save Max and Lola. This Chan Kan walked tall in his flowing white robes, his long white hair streaming behind him, his sharp brown eyes taking in every detail of the stadium and the audience and the sacrifice setup. Few people looked back at him, as most were more interested in the creature he led in on a leather leash, a cross between a giant chicken and a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Fenway shook at the creature’s footfalls.
“Behold the Chee Ken of Death,” said Ah Pukuh, “the Fowl of Fear, the scourge of Xibalba. With its curved beak of doom, it will now peck out the hearts of these criminals.”
The crowd gasped to see the twenty-foot chicken.
“What’s happened to Thunderclaw?” asked Max. “I thought he was on our side. How did he get so big?”
Lola was staring at the chicken’s handler.
Chan Kan rolled his eyes at her to indicate that a guard was right behind him with a blade in his back. Then he stared at her meaningfully. He seemed to be pushing out his chest.
Eventually, she saw what he wanted her to see: he was wearing a pumpkin seed necklace. They exchanged a little nod.
A smile twitched on Lola’s lips.
“I saw that,” whispered Max. “Please don’t tell me you’ve had an idea.”
“I’ve had an idea,” Lola whispered back.
“Whatever it is, forget it,” Max begged her. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. Let’s just give up and be sacrificed. I want to get it over with. We’ve lost, Monkey Girl. Accept it. If they don’t kill us soon, I will literally die of terror.”
“Pull yourself together, Hoop. We will die as we lived, as Hero Twins.”
Max looked at her strangely. She was talking very loudly, as if she wanted the whole crowd to hear.
“Not me,” he said. “I’m done.”
Lola gave him a little wink. “It’s not the winning, it’s the believing, remember?”
She began to fight back against the guards who held her. “If I am to die,” she called up to Ah Pukuh, “I demand the right to make a speech.”
Ah Pukuh looked at the nearest producer for advice. The producer nodded furiously and encouraged the cameramen to get close-ups of this cute Maya girl. A makeup artist rushed over to dab her with powder and fix her hair. Someone put a mic in her hand.
She took a moment to look around the stadium, meeting the eyes of everyone who had believed in her. Then she began to speak: “Look at this creature,” she said, pointing at Thunderclaw, “and what do you see? A monster?” The crowd shouted their agreement. “Well, I’ll tell you what I see. I see my old friend, Thunderclaw. I knew him when he was just a little chicken. I saved him from the cooking pot more than once. I don’t know what they have done to him in Xibalba to change his appearance so much. But I do know that he is not the Fowl of Fear. He is the Fowl of Friendship.”
Thunderclaw regarded her lovingly. He seemed to be shrinking.
“So now, I want to ask the rest of you who’ve come here from Xibalba: Are you really on Ah Pukuh’s team? Or are you just misunderstood like Thunderclaw? Which team are you really on? Think carefully before you answer. Because it’s an absolute fact that good always wins. That’s just the law of the universe.
“No matter how hard you try to destroy Middleworld, there will always be a little seed of good that you can’t wipe out. And every day it will grow bigger and bigger, until one day it will find you and choke you like your own personal strangler fig.”
The TV camera zoomed in on a zombie shedding a tear of self-pity.
Ah Pukuh reached down to grab the mic, but Lola ducked out of his reach.
“And while we’re thinking about good and evil, let’s talk about the Jaguar Stones.” She pointed to the five stone jaguar heads that snarled in freeze-frame on the table. Every Maya head in the audience turned to look at them. “No matter what you’ve been told, they have no power over you. They’re not good or bad—they don’t control anything—they’re just symbols of kingship. And, apologies to you, Lord 6-Dog, but we all know what happened to the Maya kings. They got lazy, they got greedy, they got fat.” She pointed to Ah Pukuh, lolling in his throne. “Remind you of anyone?”
There were snickers in the crowd.
“When the Maya kings stopped pulling their weight, the Maya people walked away. And you can walk away right now. Yesterday, I saw the treasures of the Maya in the Peabody Museum, and I can tell you that they were not made by kings. They were made by people like you and me, people who honed their skills through training, and practice, and talent. Who do you think made the Jaguar Stones? It was a human sculptor, not a god. All Ah Pukuh knows how to do is steal, and cheat, and lie. He can’t build a pyramid, or weave a shawl, or paint a pot. He even needed human scribes and artists to set down his own story. Every single one of us is more powerful than he will ever be.
“So let’s tell Ah Pukuh that he has no power over us. That we don’t care how many Jaguar Stones he has, we will never pay tribute to him.” Lola was yelling now. “He can do nothing if we choose to ignore him. That’s why he tried to steal Great Sun’s media presence. Why he built a spaceship. Why he organized this game. He’s a spoiled child who wants to be the center of attention. So let’s show him and his bullying friends that we’re not interested anymore. They belong to our past, not to our future. It is time for the good guys to stand up together and turn their backs on the oppressors. It is time for us to say NO MORE!”
And they did.
First it was the Maya people in the crowd, led by Chan Kan, who got to their feet. Then Lady Coco stood up and aimed her posterior at the Death Lords. Then the Hero Twins fans and all the other spectators, the poncho family, eventually even the visiting team’s supporters from Xibalba. One by one, every single person in Fenway Park, living and dead, rose up and turned their backs and yelled “no more.” At home, they turned their backs to their televisions and computer screens and tablets. The message was relayed around the world and picked up by everyone, Maya and non-Maya, who’d ever felt bullied, and cheated, and oppressed.
And that, it turned out, was pretty much all the people, everywhere.
Ah Pukuh didn’t have a leg to stand on. Literally. He stood up to protest but his shaking legs gave way beneath him and he sank down, weeping with self-pity.
Max ran to join Lola.
“You were amazing,” he said.
She grinned. “I was, wasn’t I? Look at the mighty Ah Pukuh now.”
The god of violent and unnatural death looked like a shriveled balloon. His makeup was running, his jacket was shedding sequins, his power was draining out of him. “What’s happening to me?” he asked the Head of Marketing, who had lost her platter in the melee and was now being carried on an old pizza box.
“It’s called losing brand loyalty,” she said. “Our target audience is moving on without us.”
“What will we do?”
“I vote we go back to Xibalba and play cards for the rest of eternity.”
“But what about my glorious rule? Middleworld is mine! I won the ball game!”
“No,” said the Head. “It isn’t, and you didn’t. PR is tricky. Mortals have a sense of right and wrong that’s not about keeping score. As I tried to explain to you when we started this campaign, it’s not enough to win the game. You have to win their stupid hearts as well.”
“Mortals are complicated. I hate them. Let’s grab the Jaguar Stones and get out of here.”
“Not so fast,” said Lucky, rapping Ah Pukuh’s greedy fingers. “Those Jaguar Stones belong to the Maya people, not to you.”
Oscar Poot carried over a cooler and a wad of bubble wrap.
“What do you think you’re doing?” snapped Ah Pukuh.
“I claim the Jaguar Stones for the living Maya,” said Oscar.
“Don’t you dare touch them!” Ah Pukuh went to pick up the Black
Jaguar. “Come to daddy,” he said. The Jaguar Stone snarled and bit his hand.
Oscar Poot took the stone from him and stroked its head. It purred. “We will bring you home to San Xavier,” he said to it, “and put you on display where everyone can see you. You will inspire our people to new heights, you will embody their past, and you will remind them never to let anyone oppress them again.”
Gently, he picked up each stone in turn, wrapped it, and placed it in the cooler. If one of Ah Pukuh’s minions tried to stop him, the stones would snarl and bite. But, otherwise, they sat still and quiet, glowing slightly in the moonlight.
When all five stones were safely wrapped, Oscar locked the padlock on the cooler.
“This was not supposed to happen,” said Ah Pukuh as Fenway security slapped handcuffs on him. “I built my media platform. I tweeted. I blogged. I logged on. Middleworld was mine for the taking. Where did I go wrong?”
“You’re a bully,” said Lucky. “Bullies never have happy endings.”
“How dare you speak to me like that!” said Ah Pukuh, but no one was listening to him. Everyone was looking at his headdress, which was shivering pitifully.
“We must get those poor quetzals back to the cloud forest,” said Lord 6-Dog. “It is too cold for them here.”
“Shh, you said that out loud!” Lola warned him.
Lord 6-Dog smiled. “It has been such an extraordinary night that no one will blink at a talking howler monkey.”
He whistled, and his spider monkey helpers carried over a cage hastily made from a large wooden crate covered with batting fence. With a little help from the security guards, Lord 6-Dog and his spider monkeys were able to lift the shameful headdress into the crate and cut the shivering birds free from each other.
“Sorry, little brothers,” said the monkey king, “but this indignity will not last long.” He fastened the mesh tightly across the crate. “Now find somewhere warm and feed them insects and fruit,” he ordered the spider monkeys. “Animal rescue will come soon.”
“Why all the fuss?” snapped Ah Pukuh, who was still hanging around unsure of where to go, as he didn’t have any friends to tag along with. “Just strangle them and have done with it!”
The little birds squawked in fear.
Lord 6-Dog laid a protective hand on their crate. “They have been hunted almost to extinction; let us hope these gallant survivors find mates.”
The quetzals made little cooing noises that suggested they liked that idea.
For Ah Pukuh, it was the last straw. “You are all so smug, and I am sick to death of you! Prepare to die right now!” he screamed. “Death Lords, bring it on!”
The Death Lords lined up and concentrated very hard.
“Earthquakes!” commanded Ah Pukuh.
A small crack appeared in home plate.
“Floods!” commanded Ah Pukuh.
A small puddle formed at the base of the Green Monster.
“Diseases!” commanded Ah Pukuh.
A small spot appeared on Oscar Poot’s nose.
“That’s it?” screamed Ah Pukuh. “That’s all you’ve got?”
It was all they had.
As the moon shone down on Fenway Park, Ah Pukuh and his followers vanished back to Xibalba forever.
The audience turned to the front and cheered.
But one voice cheered louder than the rest.
“MAC! WOOHOO! MAC!” yelled a voice from the top of the Green Monster.
He looked up.
“Nasty!”
She waved. “I brought the band!”
The real Plague Rats took their places on top of the Green Monster and started a real concert.
“You’re late,” said Max when Nasty came down to talk to him.
“Yeah, my parents wouldn’t let me leave the house.”
“Why not?”
“They knew you were in town.”
“Oh.” Max had an unfortunate history with Nasty’s parents, right from when they’d first met in Spain. They were always walking in just as he was leaping out of a coffin or somebody’s stomach was exploding. Their dry cleaning bills had increased enormously since they’d met him.
“No,” said Nasty, “it’s great! They love you! You’ve won them over! They saw tonight’s game on TV and they’ve changed their minds about you completely! Look, they’re over there.”
Max looked. Nasty’s parents were chatting to his parents and waving to him enthusiastically. Lola and her parents stood nearby.
He nodded approvingly. “This is a good party,” he said in amazement.
“It’s the best party ever!” said Nasty.
It was dawn before Max and Lola finally escaped all the people who wanted to hug them, and congratulate them, and date them, and shake their hands, and nominate them for high office. Eventually, they snuck out, found a spot in the deserted concessions concourse, and choreographed a victory dance on the spot.
“Can you believe it?” said Max. “We’re alive!”
“It feels amazing,” said Lola.
Then she screamed as a massive bat jumped out in front of her. Wait, not a bat, a man in a cape. Antonio de Landa.
“Ugh! Go away! What do you want?”
“Señorita Lola, I want to talk to you.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I want to say I am sorry, lo siento. For everything. Everything I have done is wrong.”
“I know. The police are looking for you. Why aren’t you in prison?”
“I will surrender when I have talked to you.”
“Save time. Do it now.”
“Por favor, Señorita Lola, have pity. I am a broken man. Even before Tzelek, my wife was a monster. I want you to know that we are parting. She will have no claim on my estate.”
“Why would I care?”
“Because I need to give this to you.” He handed her an envelope.
“What is it?”
“It is the deeds to my property in Spain and everything I own.”
Lola recoiled in disgust.
“There is nothing from Cahokia. That money has been returned.”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“Then think of it as a legacy for your people. My ancestors stole the treasures of the Maya and I wish to make reparation.”
“You should take it,” Max urged her. “His place in Spain is worth a fortune. You could do a lot of good with that money. Maybe even start that Maya school you’ve always talked about.”
Lola thought for a moment. “Okay, then. On behalf of the Maya people, I accept your gift. But only on the condition that you and your descendants never ever come near me, or talk to me, or try to contact me ever again.”
“As you wish, señorita. And now I will say adiós.”
“Where are you going?”
“To prison, I expect. I am handing myself in. Do you know where is the nearest police station?”
As Max considered the question, a police car cruised slowly by.
“Wait!” yelled Landa. “Wait for me!”
With a final flick of his cape, he took off after the police car to flag it down and begin his punishment for a lifetime of villainy.
And that should have been the end of the story of the city boy and the jungle girl who joined forces to save the world from the Maya Lords of Death. But life is never that simple, is it? Everybody’s stories are as tangled as vines in the rainforest. And, as Max and Lola were about to find out, the end of one story is often the beginning of another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE WORLD TURNED INSIDE OUT
At first, they were too tired to even notice the outside world. When they got back to Max’s house, they went to their rooms and slept for twelve hours straight.
They missed an epic breakfast and lunch cooked by Raul, and would probably have slept through dinner, too, if Max’s mother hadn’t rapped on his bedroom door. “Bambino! Phone!”
He was going to ignore her, but suddenly thought it mig
ht be Nasty.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Dr. Delgado!”
“From the museum? What does she want?”
“She wants to interview you and Lola!”
“Why?”
“About the Jaguar Stones, silly!”
“When?”
She passed him the phone. “Here, you talk to her. I will go and wake Lola.”
“Dr. Delgado? This is Max Murphy.”
“Hello, Max. Everyone is so excited about what you and Lola accomplished last night. I’m calling because I’ve been asked to interview you both for a spot on national TV. It will make a wonderful start to the fund-raising campaign for the new Jaguar Stones Museum—so I do hope you’ll say yes!”
“Um … I guess—”
“Excellent! So shall we, say … meet in an hour?”
“What, now? Today?”
“Strike while the iron is hot, as they say.”
“Where are you?”
“The TV station is scouting locations, but don’t worry. They’ll send a car for you. Oh, and Max …?”
“Yes?”
“Bring those adorable monkeys with you!”
“I thought you hated monkeys?”
“No! Did I say that?”
“Yes, you did. On Halloween. At the museum.”
“It must have been my little joke! Anyway, the producer says the viewers love monkeys! So, be sure to bring them. Remember, it’s all in the name of charity!”
“Okay,” said Max, still half asleep.
He pulled on a Red Sox hoodie and glanced in the mirror. He looked tired, disheveled, hollow-eyed. He assumed the TV people would be able to transform him into someone more heroic looking. As a gesture, he rubbed gel into his bed-head and tried to coax his hair into spikes.
His mother was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “Let me see you, bambino.” She regarded his hoodie with horror. “You can’t wear that old thing on TV! Shall I iron a shirt for you?” She attempted to flatten the spikes in his hair.
Max ducked around her. “Where’s Lola?”
“Here I am,” she said, coming down the stairs. She looked well-rested, beautiful, shiny-haired, perfect. “I can’t believe we’re going to be on TV!”
