Blinding, one might even say.
Why, there’s humor in that, Steen thought, and his scream modulated into a long, hearty laugh. The sort of laugh he hadn’t enjoyed in years, really; he’d been so consumed with the whole chacmool business. He laughed until his stomach ached and he could feel tears pooling in the sockets recently vacated by his eyeballs. When he paused long enough to draw a long wheezing breath, another sound distracted him.
There was laughter all around him. Someone else must have gotten the joke. But wait, he hadn’t spoken, had he, and it would be just too riotously improbable for all of those other voices to be laughing simultaneously at different jokes.
What were they laughing at?
“Remove your hands and see,” the chacmool said.
Steen did the first and was astounded to discover that he could do the second. The light was odd—the sun seemed to be shining from somewhere in the wall behind the chacmool’s head. Or perhaps it was the chacmool’s head itself that shone—yes, light spilled from its mouth in curdled lumps as it said, “Go now, Wide Hat. Go now, and laugh at what you see.”
Jane heard the door click shut behind Steen, and she heard him chuckling to himself as he went down the stairs, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the splatters of gore on the Oriental rug. Would they crawl around, like her blood had that night under the stairs? She imagined Steen’s eyes itching as blood crawled back up his face into the empty sockets. What would his eyes be like after the healing? Not the same, she was sure. The same thing had happened to her, hadn’t it, and afterward she had begun to heal on the outside. But inside, something was different—she wasn’t the same as she had been before.
A short scream carried up the stairs, just before the front door slammed shut and someone, it must have been the old man Simon, began rushing around downstairs. Poor old man, Jane thought. Steen must have been scary, with stuff from his eyes dribbling into his laughing mouth. She stroked the lovely green feathers of the cloak the chacmool had given her.
She herself hadn’t been afraid in ages, it seemed. That had been one of the first things to leave her. A small twinge here and there, when she felt that the chacmool would kill her or when Royce made his nervous threats, but even then the feeling was more a realization that she was in a dangerous situation than an actual fear that something would happen to her.
I’m charmed, she thought. The chacmool touched me, and it charmed me.
It had said she would soon be ready to play her role, and she was anxious to find out what that role would be. She was important somehow, and knowing that made her less afraid, too. Riley Steen might have had his eyes thumbed out, but he’d deserved it for all the things he’d done. Jane didn’t deserve anything bad, and the chacmool would protect her. Hadn’t it already?
After sleeping under staircases and once stealing bits of soggy bread from surprised gulls at Battery Park, it was an odd feeling to be important. Perhaps Da would see something different about her when she arrived. The chacmool had told Steen that Da was alive, and coming.
He must be terribly worried, she thought distantly, wishing he was there in the room so she could soothe him, show him everything was all right. See, Da, she would say. See how I’m healing. See how I’m not afraid.
Only she was, just the tiniest bit. Steen was a cruel man, and he had been cruel to her, but it was still a horrible thing the chacmool had done to him. She wondered again how it could be so vicious to others and so kind to her. Perhaps it was only cruel to men who threatened her, or abused her in some way.
In that case, she would have to make sure and tell it not to hurt Da; it had tried once already, but that was only because it didn’t know she didn’t want it to. The green feathers under her chin returned her caresses, and she started to lose track of her thoughts, but not before she remembered Royce saying The blood and bones of little girls.
What had that meant? Surely he couldn’t have meant her, not the way the chacmool was protecting her—as a matter of fact, Royce probably should have been grateful that the chacmool hadn’t treated him as it had treated Riley Steen. He had, after all, kicked her and threatened to cut out her tongue. No, she wasn’t in any danger. She was safer here than she had been since … well, since she could remember. Still, she felt a tremor of unease hearing Royce’s words again in her head.
The splatters on the carpet didn’t move. The chacmool had been looking at them, too, Jane saw, studying them closely with its cat-eyed gaze. Now it turned and stepped to the window, silently looking out into the rainy night.
“It is now time,” the chacmool said, its back still to her. “You will make two journeys, Nanahuatzin, one with your body and the other in your spirit. Where one ends, the next begins.”
“What does that name mean, Nanahuatzin?”
“It means the Scabby One,” the chacmool replied. “But when your body has completed its journey, your skin will be whole again and your spirit will fly with the sun.”
Not more traveling, Jane thought. I’m already so tired. “I’ve already gone on a journey,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”
“The first journey is not yet over, little jade. We must prepare together if we are to finish it correctly.”
The chacmool came to her and ran its long fingers through the green feathers of her cloak. “For many years have I worn these quetzal feathers, little Nanahuatzin. Now you must never take them off. You must wear them until your journey ends.”
“When will that be?” Jane asked. And when will Da be here, she wanted to add, but the feel of the feathers distracted her. They moved like leaves in a breeze, making a quiet sound like nothing she’d ever heard before. What a wonderful thing this cloak was, and the chacmool had given it to her.
Da had never given her a gift, she thought. She was ashamed of thinking it, but there it was. It was true.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw the chacmool nodding, and the feathers nodded with it. Yes, what had Da given her? Scorn and pity, that’s what. She didn’t even know if he was coming for her, or just chasing after Steen and the chacmool. He probably wouldn’t even recognize her if he did see her, Jane thought bitterly. She wasn’t a mutilated waif any more. She was nearly healed, nearly Whole, and wrapped in this wonderful cloak she felt like a queen.
The sun’s heart
throbs in the cup
His flesh
is the darkness of flowers
Who would not cry for
such flowers, oh
giver of life? who
would not rest in your hands that hold death?
Opening buds & corollas an endless thirst in the sun
—”A Song of Chalco”
This is the city of dangers lost in the dust
The flowering war will not end We endure here, trapped
on the banks
of this river
The jaguars’ flowers
show their corollas
—”A Song for the Eagles & Jaguars”
Book V
First Nemontemi, 10-Rabbit— March 29, 1843
Predawn breezes were awakening in the trees as Stephen listened to the breath of the cave. He hadn’t slept at all. Charlotte had finally banished him to the front porch, where his tossing and turning wouldn’t keep her awake too. When he’d seen the sky begin to lighten over the treetops, he’d knocked out his pipe and walked down to the cave entrance, still tense and fidgety with the knowledge that something important would be happening today. The voice had been chattering constantly for nearly three days now, exhorting him to be ready when the time came, as soon it must. Sleep had been far away during that time, making Stephen irritable both from fatigue and from a frustrated desire to see Tlalocan once again. Even when he’d managed to drift off for an hour, he wasn’t able to dream, and he was beginning to think that he wouldn’t find that dream again unless it was in the cave. Why that should be true, he didn’t know, but he’d been afraid to go near the Mummy Room for more than a week, now, le
st …
Lest what? Stephen didn’t know, and the more he thought about the voice in the cave and the chacmool and his own role in whatever was supposed to happen, the less he understood. The voice had made promises, had threatened him, had played on his love for the cave while making him afraid to enter it. You will be a man, the voice promised—but what was a man? A man had a family, owned property, a man controlled his destiny. The voice promised him all of that. But at the same time, it played him like a puppet on a string, and where was his control over that?
Again Stephen wondered what it wasn’t telling him. I would give anything—anything—to be a free man, he thought, but where is the freedom in being ordered around like … well, like a slave?
All of those questions would be answered soon, he resolved, listening to the cave breathe and half expecting the voice to return at any moment. But when he did hear a voice, it was spoken aloud, from just behind his right shoulder.
“Stephen. There is little time.”
He turned and saw the chacmool standing beside him, looking nervously at the brightening sky. It held the hand of a young white girl, her face blotched with scabs like she was weathering a pox, wearing a long black coat with a fringe of green feathers peeking out between tightly buttoned lapels. She looked like she might fall asleep standing there, but Stephen saw no trace of fear on her weary face. This was almost stranger than anything else he’d seen up to this point: how had the chacmool, to all appearances a black man dressed in simple working clothes, managed to travel any distance with a white girl? Stephen had seen men burned alive for less.
His curiosity got the better of him, and he was about to ask that very question, but the chacmool spoke first. “She must sleep, and we have much to discuss. Quickly.”
A short path forked away from the main cave trail, skirting the edge of a shallow ravine and terminating at the entrance to Dixon Cave. Like Mammoth Cave, Dixon had been mined for saltpeter during the War of 1812, and several falling-down sheds still remained around the entrance. Dixon was a dead cave, just a few yards of unremarkable passage, and since mining operations had stopped, it had been largely ignored.
Stephen led the chacmool and the girl into an old equipment shed set back from the trail. “Sleep now, little Nanahuatzin,” the chacmool said, touching her tenderly on the forehead. The girl lay down on the bare dirt floor and fell instantly asleep.
“You must see to her there,” the chacmool said to Stephen, after they had shut the door behind them. “Bring her food, blankets. For the next five days, anything she wants.”
“Who is she?” Stephen asked. He knew he’d long since stepped outside formal rules of conduct, but it still made him edgy to be involved in the kidnapping of a white girl.
Although if she was being kidnapped, she was mighty calm about it.
“First, into the cave,” the chacmool said, again casting a wary glance at the sky. To the east, bands of yellow and pink were spreading higher. “This day, it is unlucky to speak in sight of the sun.”
They ducked through Houchins Narrows as the first rays of real sunlight began to sparkle on dewy leaves outside. Stephen moved by feel along the trail into the Rotunda but stopped when the chacmool moved to the right ahead of him, toward Audobon Avenue instead of the Main Cave. He found a stack of hollowed-out poplar trunks and located a lamp he’d set behind them some months before.
“I don’t travel without light,” he said, striking a match. “Not everybody can see in the dark, you know.”
“Darkness only frightens if you rely on your eyes,” the chacmool replied, slowing its pace but not stopping.
“Oh, I see,” Stephen said sarcastically. He was fast losing patience with cryptic comments. “Well, I don’t need eyes to know that if you’re going where I think you’re going, that’s the wrong way.”
The chacmool stopped and looked back at him, impatience clear on its face even in the weak lamplight. “I came to this place when your ancestors still hunted monkeys in Africa,” it said. “Follow.”
Stephen didn’t care much for its tone of voice, and he nearly said so. But again his curiosity got the better of him; he swallowed his pride and followed.
They turned off Audobon Avenue, winding their way down a short passage Stephen called Little Bat Avenue. Near the end of Little Bat was Crevice Pit, a deep crack in the floor that Stephen had never more than looked into. At the end of Little Bat, he knew, was a tremendous domed pit, but there was no way down. Unless the chacmool knew one that he hadn’t been able to find? Stephen’s pulse quickened a bit at the thought, although he was annoyed that he hadn’t found the cutaround himself.
Sure enough, the chacmool lowered itself into Crevice Pit. “Damn, damn, damn,” Stephen muttered under his breath. He should have looked into it when he’d had the chance.
“Put out your light.” The chacmool’s voice floated up from the pit, already sounding far away. “You will need both hands.”
Climb down a virgin pit with no light? Stephen wasn’t averse CO risk, if new cave was to be found, but this was crazy. He hesitated at the edge of the crescent-shaped pit.
“Is this your cave, Stephen?” Echoes muddied the chacmool’s words, but Stephen understood it well enough. It sounded as if it must already be near the bottom, pausing to taunt him.
Stephen bit his lip. So he had to prove himself again. It was always the same, people treating him like a trained dog until he I >assed some test. Well, he’d done it before—hadn’t he taught him-leli to read in Franklin Gorin’s library? hadn’t he crossed Bottomless Pit on a ladder?—but this was the last time. The chacmool had made him promises, and he was damn well going to collect.
He put out the lamp and took a deep breath, allowing the darkness to settle around him. Sitting on the lip of the narrow pit, he extended a foot and found a toehold on the opposite wall. The pit was a bit less than four feet wide, at least near the top. Narrow enough to chimney, but barely and not for very long. Stephen planted his other foot and lowered himself in, bracing his shoulders against one wall and walking himself slowly down. His eyes were wide open and he began to feel that he could see, that even in the absence of light he could pick out each new foothold before actually putting weight on it. The pit narrowed as he descended, until he could let himself down by working hand to hand, foot to foot— like climbing down two ladders at once. The muscles in his shoulders and thighs began to tremble with the effort of holding his body against both walls at once. Gonna be a long climb back up, he thought, unless I can return by way of Giant’s Coffin.
Below him, the pit narrowed into a glottal opening barely wide enough to squeeze through. He could see the opening, one kind of darkness gaping in the middle of another like the difference between the sun and a star. Rocking back and forth, he worked his hips through, then waved his legs, searching for places to put his feet.
Stephen had heard a story once about a caver who had chimneyed down a pit, only to find that it suddenly belled out below him after a hundred feet or so. The man hadn’t been strong enough after that distance to haul himself back up. The only thing to do in that situation was drop your light so you could see where you would land and hope the fall didn’t kill you. Or that you didn’t fall into water that siphoned into one of the underground rivers that had carved the cave. Or that if the fall only left you trapped with a broken leg, someone would come along before you died of your injuries or thirst or exposure.
As it happened, the bottom of that pit had been only another six feet or so down, and the caver had gotten out unbroken. But if the same thing happened here, Stephen had a feeling he would fall a long way.
He managed to stuff his toe in a crack, and with that leg taking his weight Stephen forced his shoulders down through the squeeze. After that it was easy—he felt like he was climbing down the inside of a tree, the damp stone walls of the pit like rough bark. When his feet touched level ground, Stephen was nearly disappointed.
That one’s named after me, he thought, the musc
les in his back and legs thrumming. Bishop’s Drop, and it’s a bitch. Guess I know why nobody ever tried it before.
That had been real caving. Everything else he’d ever done, even the daredevil crossing of Bottomless Pit, paled in comparison. The chacmool had been right: Stephen didn’t need his eyes, not in his cave. It would go on forever, and he would explore it to its very end without light—hell, without water. He could eat and drink this darkness, breathe it inside him and never need air. This was freedom.
“Your first taste, Stephen,” the chacmool said. Its voice floated on the darkness and the breath of the cave, coming from everywhere at once.
Stephen smelled the water and knew he was in River Hall. Behind and above him he sensed Crevice Pit, and he could feel the river flowing beneath his feet.
“This is how it feels to know something cannot be taken away from you,” the chacmool said. “The senses no longer matter when one is certain. But this feeling does not come without cost.”
Stephen blinked and reached out to touch the wall as the darkness closed in around him again. He stood squinting, vainly hoping for some shadow of that—vision wasn’t the right word—of that sensation to linger. But he was blind again, blind as the crickets that scampered among the rocks. And his lamp lay by the edge of the pit, far above in Little Bat Avenue.
“Now we must speak of costs, Stephen,” the chacmool said, its voice coming closer.
“Tell me,” Stephen breathed, pleading against his blindness.
“All deeds have costs, and great deeds exact their toll in lives.”
Stephen leaned against the cool stone of River Hall, knowing what would come next. “You’re going to kill that girl,” he said.
Alexander C. Irvine Page 29
