The Lost City

by J

  And somewhere deep in the rainforest, another tree was felled.

  And another …

  Down in the deepest depths of Xibalba, the Death Lords looked up from their card game and smiled. “There are many ways to end the world,” they said. “We just need to be a little more patient.…”

  GLOSSARY OF THE MAYA WORLD

  AH PUKUH (awe-poo-coo): God of violent and unnatural death, depicted in Maya art as a bloated, decomposing corpse or a cigar-smoking skeleton. Ah Pukuh rules over Mitnal, the ninth and most terrible layer of XIBALBA, the Maya underworld.

  BONE SCEPTER: Carved human femurs (thigh bones) have been found in royal Maya tombs and depicted in the hands of kings. Archaeologists believe that these carved relics were powerful symbols of office, showing the king’s noble descent from a revered ancestor. The femur is the longest and strongest bone in the human body.

  HERO TWINS: Brothers Xbalanke (sh-ball-on-kay) and Hunahpu (who-gnaw-poo), are the main characters in the Maya creation story. Challenged to a ball game by the LORDS OF DEATH, they outwit their opponents and make the world a safer place.

  IXCHEL (eesh-shell): Traditionally, “Lady Rainbow” has been viewed as one deity with multiple personalities. As the malevolent Goddess of the Old Moon she is shown with a snake headband and a skirt embroidered with crossbones; as the Goddess of the New Moon, she is a beautiful young woman who reclines inside the crescent moon, holding her pet rabbit. Recently, scholars have made the case that she is two separate deities: Chak Chel “Great Rainbow” and Ix Uh “Lady Moon.”

  JAGUAR STONES: These five fictional stones embody the five pillars of ancient Maya society: agriculture, astronomy, creativity, military prowess, and kingship.

  LORDS OF DEATH: In Maya mythology, there are twelve Lords of Death: One Death, Seven Death, Scab Stripper, Blood Gatherer, Wing, Demon of Pus, Demon of Jaundice, Bone Scepter, Skull Scepter, Demon of Filth, Demon of Woe, and Packstrap. It is their job to inflict sickness, pain, starvation, fear, and death on the citizens of MIDDLEWORLD. Luckily, they’re usually too busy gambling and playing tricks on each other to get much work done.

  MIDDLEWORLD: Like many ancient cultures, the Maya believed that humankind inhabited a middle world between heaven and hell. The Maya Middleworld was sandwiched between nine dark and watery layers of XIBALBA and thirteen leafy layers of the heavens.

  MORLEY, SYLVANUS GRISWOLD (1883–1948): Thought by some to have inspired the character of Indiana Jones, Morley was a dashing, Harvard-trained archaeologist most famous for his work at Chichen Itza. Secretly, he was also an American spy, hunting for German sub bases on the coasts of Central America.

  PADDLER GODS: So called because they are usually pictured ferrying gods around in a dugout canoe. They are both old men. The Jaguar Paddler has jaguar spots, while the Stingray Paddler has a stingray spine through his nose. It has been suggested that they represent night and day.

  PITZ: The Mesoamerican ball game was the first team sport in recorded history. The game was played along the lines of tennis, but without rackets or a net—and using only hips, knees, or elbows. The game had great religious significance, and it is believed that the losing team, or a team of captive “stunt doubles,” was sometimes sacrificed.

  SAN XAVIER: A fictional country in Central America based on modern-day Belize.

  XIBALBA (she-ball-buh): Maya name for the underworld, meaning “well of fear.” Like its Norse equivalent, the Maya underworld was a bone-chilling place of mists, damp, and cold.

  MYTHICAL MAYA MONSTERS

  EEK’ CHAPAAT: A man-size cave centipede (Scolopendra gigantea) with multiple heads and evil powers.

  MESA-HOL: A demon bird and omen of evil that flies upside down. It is said that if Mesa-hol ever flies right side up it will mean the end of life on Earth.

  OOKOL PIXAN: Phantoms who appear and steal the souls of people who are about to die.

  IX HUMPETZ’ K’IN: A lizard with a knotted tail he uses to to whack his victims. He can kill you by biting your shadow.

  WAAY POP: Giant bird with wings made of flint daggers. He spikes his victims and then disappears without a trace.

  ALUX: a sprite that protects the forest and plays tricks on humans. The Alux loves sweets.

  K’AAK’ASBAL: Malignant creature made up of body parts from different animals that hate each other. His eyes flash lightning and he breathes a toxic vapor.

  CHE’ WINIK: A muscular giant with no bones and backward feet. If you make him laugh (a silly dance with a branch works best) he falls to the ground and can’t get up.

  WAWA’ PACH: Giant with three tongues like knives and a necklace of human kidneys. Kills people by squeezing them between his legs.

  EEK’ UNEHIL: Snake with a forked tail. It tries to stick the venomous tips of its tail up people’s nostrils.

  WINIK TUUN HU’: This man of stone is the agent of death. Vultures sit on his head, his dreadlocks are the nests of scorpions, and lizards crawl around his toes.

  IXT’ABAY: A beautiful fallen goddess who calls to passing men in the forest. Her victims are found snared in thorn bushes with a look of horror on their faces.

  KAMASOOTZ’: Huge bat and queen of the deadly bat house in Xibalba. Her giant claw can decapitate a person in one swoop.

  CAHOKIA MOUNDS

  Just across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis stood one of the greatest cities of the ancient world. No one knows the name of the settlement that rose on what is now called Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, Illinois. All we know is that a sophisticated civilization flourished here, long before Europeans came to North America. At its peak in 1250 CE, Cahokia was bigger than London.

  Like the Maya, the architects of Cahokia built huge flat-topped temples. Where the Maya pyramids are made of stone, the mounds at Cahokia are made of earth. They include Monk’s Mound (named for Trappist monks who farmed its terraces in the nineteenth century), one of the largest pyramids in the world. It’s been estimated that Monks Mound comprises 15 million baskets of earth, carried by human labor.

  In front of Monk’s Mound was the grand plaza—a fifty-acre communal space for markets, ceremonies, and a game called chunkey, which involved throwing spears at rolling stone discs. To the east of Monk’s Mound was a huge solar calendar, now called Woodhenge. It used a circle of cedar posts, each twenty feet tall and painted red, to track solstices, equinoxes, and other important dates in the agricultural cycle.

  J & P Voelkel at Cahokia Mounds, June 2013

  Cahokia gained its power partly from its location on the fertile floodplain of the Mississippi near the confluence of the Missouri and Illinois rivers. It grew maize on an industrial scale and its trade links reached as far as the Gulf of Mexico. To protect their wealth, its rulers surrounded their city center with a twenty-foot-high stockade wall.

  Who were these rulers? We still don’t know. But in one of the smaller mounds, the remains of an important man were discovered. The archaeologists called him “The Birdman” because his skeleton lay on 20,000 shell beads arranged in the shape of a bird. Also in the mound were 250 human sacrificial victims. Although Cahokia had fallen by the time Europeans arrived (and they mistook its grass-covered mounds for hill formations), it can be surmised from their accounts of other Mississippian settlements that the ruler of Cahokia was called Great Sun.

  JOURNEY OF THE PHANTOM QUEEN

  ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, is home to the 630-feet-high Gateway Arch, also known as Gateway to the West, the tallest man-made monument in the US.

  THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER is the longest river in North America. From its headwaters in northern Minnesota it travels 2,340 miles before draining into the Gulf of Mexico.

  THE PHANTOM QUEEN is a fictional riverboat, based on the many legends of phantom riverboats on the Mississippi River. Witnesses claim to hear a steamship whistle at midnight as the boat glides out of the mist, moving silently over the water and giving off an eerie glow.

  NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, is a “li
minal” city, meaning that it’s in between two states of being: in this case, half land, half water. Much of it is below sea level and protected by levees, like the one Max and Lola climb to board the Phantom Queen. The ancient Maya were fascinated by liminality. (For example, they venerated the jaguar because it could hunt by night and by day, on land and in water.) Nowhere would have pleased the Death Lords more than the spooky bayous around the city where cypress trees rise out of swampy water, draped in Spanish moss, providing cover for lurking alligators and snakes. The high water table also gave rise to the many above-ground cemeteries known as “cities of the dead.”

  The place known today as CAHOKIA MOUNDS is the site of the largest ancient Native American city. It was built by the MISSISSIPPIANS, a sophisticated culture that emerged in the Mississippi river basin and flourished from 800 to 1300 CE.

  MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, also known as the Home of the Blues and the Birthplace of Rock ’N’ Roll, is the largest city on the Mississippi River.

  One of New Orleans’s most famous citizens is BARON SAMEDI (or Baron Saturday as his name translates from French to English). He’s the party-loving boss of the dead in the city’s voodoo lore. He’s usually pictured as a skeleton dressed in a dark suit, top hat, and sunglasses.

  THE LILY THEODORA, Uncle Ted’s submarine, was based on a real sub that was captured from smugglers in Ecuador in 2010.

  MAX MURPHY’S GUIDE TO BOSTON

  FENWAY PARK:

  “This is my favorite place in Boston. It’s the oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball and it’s been the home of the Red Sox since it opened in 1912. Things to notice are the wall called the Green Monster, and the single red seat in the bleachers that marks a 502-foot hit by Ted Williams—the longest home run hit at Fenway. And the Curse of the Bambino? That began when we traded Babe Ruth, nicknamed The Bambino, to the New York Yankees in 1919. After that, the Red Sox didn’t win another World Series for eighty-six years. The curse was officially lifted in 2004 when we finally won the World Series again.”

  MAPPARIUM: “This is where Lord 6-Dog and Tzelek had their showdown. It’s a massive stained-glass globe, and it’s in the Mary Baker Eddy Library on Massachusetts Avenue.”

  PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY:

  “I wouldn’t have come here if Lola and the others hadn’t made me, because I’ve been here fifty million times. It’s part of Harvard, where my parents work, and it has one of the biggest Maya collections outside of Mexico, if you like that stuff. Oh, and it’s not actually in Boston, but across the river in Cambridge.”

  EEK’ (ROASTED WASP LARVAE)

  With thanks to Sofi Pat Balam and Denis Larsen

  INGREDIENTS:

  • One volleyball-size paper-wasp nest

  • 6–12 small green chilies

  • Juice of six sour oranges

  • Corn tortillas

  (This recipe requires adult supervision!)

  PREPARATION:

  1. Try to avoid getting stung as you harvest the nest. (Do not attempt at all if allergic to wasp or bee stings.) You may need to smoke the hive to evict the wasps.

  2. Peel apart layers of nest until you reach the honeycomb-like structures at center.

  3. Roast the green chilies and, using pestle and mortar, grind into a paste. Add water if necessary. Transfer chili paste to a serving bowl.

  4. In a large frying pan, toast pieces of honeycomb, open side down, until you see a color change. Use a gentle heat and take care not to burn the comb.

  5. Gently tap pieces of toasted honeycomb on cutting board to loosen and remove the cooked larvae. (If they don’t readily pop out or are still moving, you haven’t toasted the comb enough yet.) Discard empty combs.

  6. Coarsely grind larvae with mortar and pestle, mixing in some ground chilies and the orange juice to make a coarse paste.

  7. Spread on warm tortillas, adding chili paste to taste.

  Enjoy!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As this is the last book in the Jaguar Stones series and our last chance to thank everyone who’s helped us, we’d like to start by thanking you.

  Yes, YOU.

  Whether you’ve read one Jaguar Stones book or all of them, thank you for coming with us on this wild ride. We’ve loved traveling with you and we hope you’ll stay in touch. (You can always find us through our Web site.)

  Huge thanks too to our agent, Daniel Lazar; to our editor, Alison Weiss, and everyone at Egmont USA, especially Bonnie Cutler, Margaret Coffee, Georgia Morrissey, and Michelle Bayuk; also to Elizabeth Baer, Sam Hadley, and Arlene Goldberg; and to Elizabeth Law, who made it all happen.

  In the world of Maya archaeology, we’re indebted to the mighty Marc Zender for his mind-boggling expertise; to marine archaeologist Heather McKillop for introducing us to the possibilities of 3-D printing; to the memory of George Stuart, Maya scholar, storyteller, gentleman, and real-life Indiana Jones; and to all the archaeologists, guides, and Maya people who’ve so generously shared their knowledge and experiences with us.

  Thank you to all the wonderful booksellers, librarians, and teachers we’ve worked with along the way, especially Jill Moore of Square Books Junior, and Liza Barnard and Penny McConnel from the Norwich Bookstore.

  Thank you so much to Judith Lafitte and Tom Lowenburg of Octavia Books and Elizabeth Kahn of Patrick Taylor Academy for masterminding our research in New Orleans (which included taking us on a creepy after-midnight tour of levees and old cemeteries, and scouring the streets of the French Quarter to find the perfect house for Baron Saturday). Thank you to Kenny Brechner of DDG Booksellers in Maine for inspiring the submarine storyline; thank you to Mary Magavern Sachsse, Christy Coverdale Voelkel, and Kate Messner for helping us compile our lesson plans and reading guides; and thank you to Donald Kreis for teaching us about baseball.

  A big shout-out to our Jaguar Stones club members and our crack team of middle-school reviewers: Kayla Begin, Ben Gwilt, Bill and Sally Hodgkinson, Brandon Rosa, Sammy Spector, and Bailey Steele—plus Beth Reynolds and all her rapacious readers at the Norwich Public Library; to Loulou Voelkel for her stubborn and very wise advice on the naming of this book; to Eddie Case, Stephanie Kilgore, Brandi Stewart, Faith Hochhalter, and the Club Read kids at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, for helping us choose the final title.

  Lastly, to our three amazing children, thank you for all the adventures. (And sorry about all the bug bites.)

  THE JAGUAR STONES SERIES

  CLASSIC ADVENTURES—WITH A MODERN TWIST!

  Jaguar Stones, Book One:

  MIDDLEWORLD

  When his parents go missing at an ancient Maya pyramid, a video-gaming, pizza-eating city boy must learn to survive in the perilous rainforest—with a little help from a local Maya girl.

  Jaguar Stones, Book Two:

  THE END OF THE WORLD CLUB

  When Max and Lola follow a trail of secrets to the end of the ancient world in northwest Spain, they stumble across an enchanted castle and the craziest rock concert ever!

  Jaguar Stones, Book Three:

  THE RIVER OF NO RETURN

  It’s a wild ride to disaster when Max and Lola head upriver to flee the Maya Death Lords—and find themselves in a luxury hotel that is spookily similar to the Maya underworld.

  Jaguar Stones, Book Four:

  THE LOST CITY

  When Max and Lola make one last desperate attempt to save the world from the evil Maya Death Lords, their secret weapons include a roller-skating monkey and the Boston Red Sox.

  You’ll find more fun for fans at www.jaguarstones.com, including free signed bookplates and a free Jaguar Stones Club for readers, plus free reading guides and lesson plans for teachers.

  The Lacandon Maya

  say that every time

  a tree is cut down

  in the rainforest

  a star falls from the

  sky.

  J&P Voelkel

  would like to thank

  their publishers,


  EGMONT USA,

  for only using paper

  from legal and

  sustainable sources.