The Serpent's Coil

by Christy Raedeke

  “We’re also very interested in old myths,” I say. “Like, really old ones.”

  Dr. Clath shakes her head. “You know, all really old mythology is based on astronomy, Precession of the Equinoxes and such, which might take this more into the realm of science than humanities.”

  “Oh, we know that,” Justine says.

  “That’s what we want.” I agree.

  “Glad to have some girls who aren’t afraid of science!” Dr. Clath says, leaning back and pulling up on the already impossibly high waistband of her jeans.

  “Is that your background?” I ask, wondering if it’s okay to get personal information from her. “Science?”

  “I’m a right-brain, left-brain hybrid,” she says, waiting an awkward beat for a laugh that we don’t deliver. “I taught Philosophy of Math.”

  “Really?” I say, “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “Well, that must change post-haste!” she replies, mustering a little fire for the first time. Then she goes into a long lecture about what philosophy of math entails, which honestly might be interesting if I understood a word she was saying.

  After a long-winded, one-way conversation, Dr. Clath asks where we would like to go first and both of us say, “The Dunhuang Caves” at the same time, as if we’d practiced it.

  I’m not sure she’s ever heard of the place and I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable about it, so I say, “The caves in China where they’ve traced the oldest known example of the Three Hares symbol. But I’m sure you already knew that.”

  Just saying the words “Dunhuang Caves” gives me a chill. I try not to think of how I’ll ever be able to find Uncle Li on the other side of the world. I just have to go for it—it’s my only chance to get answers.

  “Right, right. Yes. Dunhuang,” Dr. Clath says, jotting more words down in her crazy handwriting. When she’s finished writing she gathers her things together, looks at her watch, and says, “I have an appointment with Monsieur Didier and the travel coordinator to plan our first quarter. Be prepared to pack tomorrow and leave the day after.”

  “Already?” Based on how long it took us to get here, I assumed we’d have a week or two to settle in.

  “Already,” she replies, zipping up a backpack that looks older than I am. “I know there’s some kind of ball tonight, but remember, you are here for an education. An education for which your parents are paying dearly.”

  Clearly this is a woman who had no fun in high school.

  Justine and I walk out of the meeting room. Once we’re out of earshot, we discuss the problem of Dr. Clath. We both agree the only solution is a makeover.

  We vow that sometime, somewhere, we will turn that middle-aged duckling into a swan.

  ––––––

  With nothing left to do for the day, we walk around the grounds. There’s something wild and untamed about the lush greenery here. While everything is trimmed and tidy, you get the sense that if the gardener took a few weeks off, nature might start to reclaim this land.

  “So, what do you think, Justine?” I ask as we lazily weave our way back to our dorm. “Any regrets so far?”

  “Not yet,” she says. “You?”

  I shake my head. “I just have to keep reminding myself why we’re here, what it is we have to do. And what the Fraternitas might do if we don’t stop them.”

  I take out my phone and click on the app that gives me the daily Tzolk’in tone, along with a picture of the day’s number and glyph.

  “Isn’t it weird that no one over twenty can hear that?” I ask as we reach our dorm.

  “Yeah, like why would your high-tone hearing start going out at twenty? Is that so you can block out the screams of your obnoxious children?”

  “Seems the perfect evolutionary answer,” I reply.

  ––––––

  At the dorm kitchen we find the South American version of ramen and eat a quick lunch. Neither one of us wants to brave the cafeteria, and the throngs of beautiful people, quite yet.

  On the way back to our room we can hear other students in their rooms, talking all sorts of different languages, but no one is out and about. Just as we approach our room, a door opens. In the doorway, a very tall girl with cat-eye makeup like a French movie star stands looking at us and smoking. She actually does the judgmental full-body scan of both of us, totally without emotion, and then closes her door.

  “Friendly neighbors,” I say.

  “Oui,” Justine replies.

  Suddenly, something becomes very clear. “Wait a minute—do you think we’re like the poor white trash around here?”

  Justine laughs, “That’s it! We are so low-rent compared to these people!”

  “That would totally explain why we got Clath. I’ll bet the beautiful people all have Pedagogues that look like Didier.”

  We open the door to our room to find Mr. Papers sitting on the floor next to an envelope that must have been slid under the door. We open it to find a cream-colored stationary card with Siga la Chispa embossed in gold letters at the top. In loopy writing it reads:

  Gown fitting:

  Justine – 1:30

  Caitrina – 2:30

  Check in at the front desk of La Administración

  “I am going to pick the most amazing gown ever!” Justine says, then adds, “Unless it would be perfect for you. Then I’ll leave it alone.”

  “Do you think they have shoes?” I say, looking in the closet at my collection of Chuck Taylors and flip-flops. “Man, I hope they have shoes.”

  “They’ve gotta have shoes,” Justine says. “But if not, I brought a spare pair of Louboutins.”

  “And therein lies the difference,” I say.

  Justine’s mom pays attention to these things, makes lists, shops at the best stores. She may not be around most of the time, but the girl stuff gets done. My mom is around all the time but pays almost no attention to the girly stuff. While she and Dad made sure I had a laptop with the most power and speed available and any communication device I could ever need, I was on my own with clothing.

  TEN

  While we were gone, Mr. Papers decorated the room with more origami animals than I can count. Crickets, frogs, cranes, fish—it’s a menagerie. Everywhere your eye rests there is a colorful little animal. So when Justine leaves for her fitting, I grab some paper and try to follow along as Mr. Papers makes a dog. He’s actually a very good teacher.

  When someone knocks at the door, I contemplate pretending I’m not there. I wish we had one of those eyehole things so I can see who it is. Mr. Papers jumps on my shoulder and grabs my hair like reins, as if he wants to ride me to the door. I open it just a few inches and am both surprised and relieved that it’s Bolon. I haven’t seen him since the Vimāna ride, although I’ve heard his voice in my head a few times.

  I remember how mad I was after the lava tube chase, how much I never wanted to see him again, but after coming to terms with what I need to do, and the consequences of not doing it, I welcome him with a hug.

  There is just something about him.

  “How on earth did you find me?” I ask, looking down the hall to see if anyone else saw him.

  He laughs as if that’s a silly question. “I came to see how you are.”

  I let him in and close the door. These people might think it’s weird that a short Mayan guy in a colorful poncho is making a visit.

  “I’m okay, I guess,” I tell him. “I mean, this place is pretty amazing.”

  “Very good,” he replies. “And how goes your mission?”

  “It’s actually going pretty well. Alex figured out how to translate the Tzolk’in into hertz tones and then upped them to a frequency called Mosquito Tone that people over twentyish can’t hear. He embedded all that on a phone app for daily update, and then I put it on the website. Except when you get to the website it looks like it’s broken unless you’re a kid and can hear the Mosquito Tone directions to the secret site.”

  “And you’re still using the sa
me host server you set this up on?”

  “Yep. And I gotta say, they are good! Our hits are going up every hour and we now have more than a million email addresses and the server has never gone down. Let’s just hope the Fraternitas never tracks it down.”

  “They won’t. Or I should say, they can’t—The Council has purchased the server company.”

  “What? That’s amazing!”

  “You lead the charge,” Bolon says dipping his head. “We just make sure you can do your job. So what are your next steps?”

  “First things first. I have to find Uncle Li. Did you know he stole the Sanskrit books from me?”

  “I’d heard that,” he says.

  “I’ve known him my whole life and he does something like that,” I say, shaking my head. It’s still hard to believe. “Anyway, I’ve got to get those books back. Mr. Papers told me he went to the Dunhuang Caves.”

  “Ah, yes. That makes sense. Good choice.”

  “From there, I’m not sure. I guess I haven’t planned out that far. I can’t really see past why Uncle Li would do this to me. What do you think I should do next?”

  “I think you have been doing everything right so far. I can only give you guidance, not lead the way.”

  “No updates? No, like, situation analysis?”

  “I can certainly break down the essence of the situation if that will help. As you know, a culmination of things is happening: this rare galactic alignment that happens once every 26,000 years, the solar system is warming up, and the strongest solar flares in recent history are predicted for 2012. What’s more, huge holes are opening up in our magnetic shield, the very thing that protects us from solar flares. This is both dangerous and helpful—you will find that the sun becomes your guide and helper.”

  “You mean with taking down communications and stuff like that?”

  “Yes, and in other ways as well. If ever you come across a problem, try to think of a way the sun could be part of the solution.”

  “Why the riddles? Why can’t you just tell me what you need to tell me?”

  “This is what I need to tell you,” he replies.

  After we look at each other for a moment he says, “Tell me this. Why do you suppose there is so much intrigue about 2012, the end of the Mayan long-count calendar?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “Because it’s such a mystery?”

  “Precisely! It’s a mystery, a game. Humans love games; they love to figure out puzzles. If I told you exactly how things would work, where would the fun be? The fun is in the discovery, in the unraveling of mystery.”

  “So you know how things will turn out?”

  “How could I?” he says, smiling wide. “How could I?”

  “But the predictions, the prophecies—”

  “They mean nothing without human interaction. You must change the world.”

  “So we’re on the right track with this sound thing?” I ask.

  “Absolutely. Look at tribal cultures—most shamans work with sound because it allows them to transform some aspect of the genetic code. One of the main problems with today’s perception is that people assume the process of evolution has ended. As if evolution is a train that has reached the last station on the line. Nothing could be further from the truth! Just because we cannot see evolutionary changes that the galaxy triggers does not mean they aren’t happening, or won’t happen.”

  “So energy from out there triggers switches in here? ” I ask, hand to my chest.

  “Absolutely. Billions of years ago the most advanced system on Earth was a little unit of vibration called hydrogen. Just one electron orbiting one proton! How did that evolve into something that is aware of itself? How did simple particles become conscious? How did they evolve to this,” he says, gesturing to me, “without energetic help or ‘programming’ from out there?”

  “And that’s why the Fraternitas is jamming the system—so the electromagnetic energy coming from the galaxy gets scrambled.”

  “Better than almost anyone, the Fraternitas knows that evolutionary changes result from three things: the passing of time, things that happen here on Earth, and things that happen to the space in which we float. The Fraternitas has been working hard for millennia to control all these components.”

  “And because these evolutionary changes are related to consciousness rather than to our physical bodies, no one really pays attention?” I ask.

  “Correct. The Fraternitas has done an excellent job of making this kind of thinking seem like New Age pseudoscience. They support mass disdain for anything around this subject.”

  “That’s for sure. Even really educated people like my parents would think it’s a bunch of hooey.”

  “That’s why you must communicate this information to young people, before the system beats possibility and wonder out of them. And you must act quickly. The methods the Fraternitas uses to try to offset this change are having dangerous repercussions here on Earth.”

  “You mean with all the tsunamis and hurricanes and earthquakes and stuff?”

  “Yes. It’s just like when you sneeze from having a cold—except that when Mother Earth sneezes, millions of people feel it. But when this happens, you glimpse the possibilities.”

  “What possibilities?” I ask.

  Bolon pauses to cough, that wet phlegmy kind of cough that old people have, and then he goes on. “Do you notice what happens every time there is a massive natural disaster?” he asks.

  “People come together to help?”

  Bolon nods. “The whole world responds with love. All at once all people vibrate in a coherent wave of compassion.”

  “So you’re saying that something good comes out of all that suffering?”

  “Yes, but at great expense. What if we all just resonated with compassion without having to lose hundreds of thousands of people in the process? Without the suffering or the fear?”

  “But how?” I ask.

  “With love.”

  I laugh. It isn’t really the answer I expected. “Come on, that’s pretty … well … unscientific,” I say. I’d like to believe that love conquers all, but seriously?

  “Caity, at our most basic level, we are all just vibrations. And there is a measurement for love, which even your most scrupulous scientists will find proof of in your lifetime.”

  I flash back to the wall of carvings in the secret room at Breidablik castle. When I first deciphered the part of the poem that said, “Like gravity, love is a force of great might, true power comes when we connect and unite,” it made no real sense. Now it’s becoming clearer.

  “I get it,” I say to Bolon. “I finally get it.”

  We sit silently for a few minutes as I process this information. It makes sense. The Tzolk’in, the tones, meeting at sites around the great circle—these are all just tools to connect vibrations. To get us all tuned in to the same channel.

  “I’m glad you finally see the bigger picture,” Bolon says.

  “I just hope my days of being chased by thugs in San Francisco and by dogs through underground tunnels on Easter Island are over.”

  Bolon gets up. “I wish I could guarantee that, Caity,” he says. “One last thing. I know this will be difficult, but there can be no more communication with Alex or your parents—no email, text, or phone calls.”

  “What about Skype?” I ask, already beginning to feel desperate for contact.

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. You can keep the daily tones going on the website and through cell phones—this is an important part of setting the stage, and they’re all coming from one hidden server that we’ve protected. But other than that, nothing. No communication. They are watching. Keywords are being tagged. We must go dark.”

  “But how can I do any of the stuff you want me to do if I don’t have instructions and if I can’t communicate?” I say.

  “You can still use postal mail. And you may figure out other ways we have not imagined yet.”

  Postal mail? I don’t remembe
r the last time I sent a letter in the mail. And doesn’t international mail take weeks? Months? This is a huge roadblock.

  Bolon stands up. “I must go now.”

  I jump up after him, wanting to keep him longer.

  “Goodbye, my friend,” he says as he opens the door.

  “Will you come to Dunhuang?” I plead before he can leave.

  “Perhaps,” he says, closing the door gently behind him.

  I flop onto my bed and stare at the ceiling. Mr. Papers hops onto my chest with an origami salmon and sets it gently on my forehead.

  I get his reference to swimming upstream, but the fact that salmon die once they get to their destination gives me no comfort at all.

  ELEVEN

  Justine runs back into the room out of breath. “You will not believe what you’re about to do, Caity! It’s like I died and went to Chanel. You can check out anything—like it’s the library of couture!”

  “Show me, show me,” I say, thinking the gown she picked must be pretty slinky if it fits in her purse.

  “You can’t leave with it! We go there tonight and get dressed, then get escorted to the ball!”

  “Did we get famous without knowing it or something?” I ask.

  “I know, it’s like we’ll be going to the Oscars. I’m dying to see what you choose.”

  “What did you get? I don’t want to pick the same thing.”

  “I want it to be a surprise,” she says.

  “Shoes?” I ask.

  “Oh yeah. And then some.”

  “Who would donate their fabulous stuff to this place?” I wonder.

  “Socialites who can’t wear something more than once without being ridiculed.”

  “Can you imagine? I should be on Socialite Death Row for how many times I’ve worn jeans and a white T-shirt,” I say, glancing at the clock. “Crap, I gotta go!”

  “Be nice to Señora Crabcakes if you see her. We got off to a bad start, but I think she means well.”

  “Well, you’re not the one who owns the monkey,” I say. “Speaking of, Mr. P. is on the balcony. Would you mind getting him some mango and a glass of water?”