by Ian Gibson
Her grandmother shakes her head sadly. “No, I’m not leaving the hut tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Itzel says disappointedly.
“And you know the reason why,” her grandmother says.
“Yes, I know. Papa said you have a bad heart.”
Her grandmother laughs. “It’s not because of that!” She whispers to her, so her father can’t hear them, “Just because your papa’s a doctor doesn’t mean he knows my heart better than me. My heart is perfectly fine. It’s not because of that at all. It’s because tomorrow’s the last day of Wayeb. Do you remember what I told you about Wayeb?”
“The five unlucky days at the end of your year,” Itzel says. “My birthday’s the last day of your year?”
Her grandmother nods. “And the last of the nameless days is the unluckiest day of all, I’m afraid. It’s when all the spirits emerge from the Underworld and lurk in the shadows of this very forest. Your forest of good luck by day, but bad luck by night! That’s why I don’t come outside after sunset during Wayeb.” She points to her doorway, which she refuses to cross now that it’s dark. “And tomorrow I’m not going outside at all—except for visits to the outhouse, of course. I have to make exceptions.” She laughs, then her face turns serious. “You need to be very, very careful tomorrow when you go into the forest beyond the statue. Keep your eyes peeled for any bad spirits. Did you see any spirits with your mother earlier?”
Itzel thinks for a moment. “I saw a hummingbird.”
Her grandmother smiles widely like she’s very impressed. “Did you now? A hummingbird is a good spirit—one of the best! It brings good luck. And if you saw one in your forest of good luck then it must bring extra good luck!”
“What does a bad spirit look like?”
Her grandmother sits back and stares into the forest as she thinks. “One of them I know is a little man who wears a wide-brimmed hat. They call him Tata Duende. You’ll know him right away because his feet face backwards, and he walks backwards because of it. And if you ever see him, you have to hide your thumbs, like this.” And she holds out her hands, covering her thumbs in her fists. “He has no thumbs of his own and wants to eat them, especially little children’s thumbs like yours. They would be very tasty for him!” She grabs Itzel’s hands and pretends to gnaw on her thumbs, trying to be as scary as possible while she does it, but Itzel just laughs at her. She fixes the red hibiscus flower in Itzel’s hair. “Did you find that in the forest too?”
“The hummingbird was licking it,” Itzel says.
“Perfect! It kissed the flower to give it some good luck. Wearing it will ward off the bad spirits tomorrow, like that thumb-eating Tata Duende.”
Itzel points to her grandmother’s necklace, which is tucked behind her dress collar—her grandmother wears it all the time, although she almost always keeps it tucked into her dress, like she wears it just for herself and not for anyone else to see. “Is that why you always wear that?”
Her grandmother takes out her necklace, which has a round pendant made of green jade—it’s so vividly green that it stands out even in the pale light of dusk. “No, I just wear this because it’s pretty,” she whispers with a giggle. “So pretty I have to hide it from them.”
Itzel spends a moment to admire it. Though it’s getting too dark to see it well, she can make out the design etched on the stone—it looks like the Sun with its rays of light radiating around it, and the crescent Moon inside it. “It’s very pretty,” she whispers back.
Her grandmother tucks the necklace behind her dress collar and holds the side of the doorway to pull herself up from the stool. “I think it’s time for bed. We shouldn’t stay out here too long, certainly not past midnight. A spirit might come and snatch you away from this patio if you stay out long—they’ll be getting even bolder soon, and the protection of the jaguar statues might not be enough.”
Itzel thinks to ask her one more question. “Do some bad spirits look like snakes?”
Her grandmother looks at her curiously. “Snakes? You saw a snake too?”
Itzel nods sleepily, but then bounces up with a start. “Oh!” She’s remembered the frog! She tiptoes inside the hut so as to not wake the others and kneels beside her bed to look for the jar with the frog, but it’s very dark inside the hut and she can’t see well underneath the bed where she put it.
“What do you have there?” asks her grandmother, but as she rises to her feet, she starts to feel very faint, like everything is blackening around her, and she leans herself against the side of the doorway and grabs the curtain that hangs near her bed. She collapses to the floor, pulling down the curtain with her and knocking the stool over. The crash of her fall wakes everyone up.
Itzel runs over to help her. “Grandma!” she screams.
The mother and father jump out of bed and rush over, and the father tells Miguel to get the flashlight. They pick the grandmother up, carry her to her bed, and rest her head on the pillow. The baby starts crying.
“Itzel, can you tend to your sister?” her mother asks.
Itzel goes to her baby sister and holds her in her arms, rocking her gently.
“What happened?” Miguel asks, standing by them and groggily rubbing his eyes.
“Your grandma had a nasty fall,” his mother tells him while fanning the grandmother to try to cool her off, but the grandmother doesn’t wake up.
The father puts his head on her chest to listen to her heart, and then checks her breathing. “We need to take her to the city tomorrow morning. Straight to my clinic." He places his hand on the mother's back and says, "Tomorrow, first thing.”
The mother takes a deep breath and nods. Her eyes are teary. “Yes, tomorrow.”
They hear the rumble of thunder in the distance, which bewilders the father so much that he wonders for a moment if he was just imagining it. “A thunderstorm? This time of year? The forecast said it’d be nothing but clear skies all weekend.”
The grandmother is breathing weakly, her eyes still closed.
The father puts his hand on the mother’s shoulder. “She’ll be fine for now. We’ll need to try to get a lot of sleep tonight. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day. Especially on my favourite roads.” He couldn’t help but squeeze in another jab at the roads, although it was to try to lighten the mood.
Itzel stands outside holding her baby sister, who’s calmer now. She sees the Moon in the sky, shining brightly and almost full, but it shortly vanishes behind a dark cloud. She puts her baby sister back to sleep and goes to bed herself.
In the middle of the night, a loud thunderclap wakes them all up with a startle, and a heavy downpour of rain spills from the sky without any warning, pattering on the thatched roof above them.
The mother whispers to the father, “Remember that the roads flood easily here.”
He grumbles and turns over in bed. “It’s just an isolated shower. Don’t worry.”
The sound of the rain lulls them all to sleep.
The Tale of the Hero Twins
Early the next morning, Itzel wakes up and is astonished to discover that it’s still raining outside. Her mother has just woken up too and is sitting up in their bed across the room, looking out the window worriedly. Her father is still asleep and snoring loudly.
The mother stirs him awake. “Honey, wake up.”
He snorts and yawns groggily, but the sight of the rain outside the window snaps him out of his daze. “Still?” He springs out of bed, steps outside, and sees large puddles have already pooled on the ground around the hut and car, and from the look of the dark sky, the rain won’t be letting up anytime soon. “Where did this come from?”
The villagers are out and about already, and many of them are walking past their hut and shouting to each other over the rainfall while pointing to the northern path through the forest. The mother checks on the grandmother, who’s still asleep. The father puts on his trousers and boots and walks outside to see what they’re going into the forest for. Itzel gets out of bed, rousi
ng her brother who’s sleeping next to her, and he mumbles something incoherent and turns over to fall back to sleep. She reckons it must be very early still as it’s quite dark outside, but she doesn’t know for sure since it could just be dark from the thick cover of rain clouds. Her mother walks to the doorway, and Itzel joins her to see what’s going on outside.
Her mother hugs her and kisses her head. “Good morning, birthday girl.” She smiles, but Itzel can tell that she’s distracted and worried. “We have a gift for you, but I’ll give it to you later.”
They hear the croak of a frog, except it sounded like it was coming from underneath the bed.
“The frog!” Itzel walks back to her bed and crouches down to take out the glass jar with the frog inside.
“Itzel,” her mother says in her scolding tone, “why is that still in here? What have I told you about bringing animals in your grandmother’s hut? Take it outside.”
“I’ll take it out when we leave the village,” Itzel says. “If I let it out here those crazy snakes will eat it!”
She opens the cover of the jar, holds it outside so it collects a few raindrops for the frog to drink, then puts the cover back on and puts it underneath the bed again.
Her mother sighs. “Sometimes I think you love animals a little too much.”
The father runs through the mud back to the hut. He’s already soaking wet.
“What are they saying?” the mother asks him.
“Pass me the flashlight,” he says, still standing outside. “I’m going into the forest with them. They say a huge hole has opened in the ground just overnight. They’ve never seen anything like it before. Maybe the ground collapsed from all this rain that came out of nowhere!” He looks at the grandmother, who’s still fast asleep in spite of all the early morning hustle and bustle. “I won’t be long. When I come back, we’ll get ready to leave, okay? Storm or no storm, we need to get out of here soon.”
“Can I come?” Itzel asks him.
Her father shakes his head. “No, it’s too dangerous out there in the rain, and you’re not even dressed.”
The mother passes him the flashlight. “Oh, go on, let her go. We came all the way here and it’s her last chance to go into her lucky forest before we leave again. And it’s her birthday!”
“Oh, that’s right! Happy birthday!” the father tells Itzel, rubbing her head and playfully messing her hair. “All right, get ready quickly, birthday girl.”
Itzel runs to her bed and to put on her shorts and her boots—she’s thankful she remembered to bring them with her, just in case. Her brother wakes up again because she’s jostling the side of the bed as she puts her boots on.
“What’s going on?” he mumbles to her. “Where are you going?”
“Papa says there’s a big hole in the forest that opened overnight,” she tells him. “We’re going to check it out.”
The father takes a small tarp from the car boot to shield them from the heavy downpour, since he didn’t think to bring any umbrellas or raincoats this time of year.
“Wait for me! I want to see!” Miguel says loudly, springing up from bed.
“Shh!” the mother tells him. “Your grandmother’s sleeping. And happy birthday, my big boy.”
Miguel puts on his football shirt and shorts and picks up his shoes, but when he walks to the door, he sees how muddy it is outside from the rain. He doesn’t want to get his football shoes muddy, and he didn’t bring boots like his sister thought to. He’s very precious about his lucky football trainers that he’s had for a while, even though they’re getting too small and tight for him because he’s growing quickly.
“You’re going to have to come in those or you’re not coming at all,” the father tells him, already walking with Itzel toward the path in the forest. He turns and shouts, “Oh, and happy birthday!”
“Don’t worry about messing them up,” the mother whispers to him. “You’re getting new ones today.”
Miguel grins widely. “Thanks, mama!” He puts on his shoes and runs after his father and sister. A giant sinkhole in the ground sounds too exciting for him to want to pass up.
They walk through the forest with some of the other villagers, up the same narrow path that Itzel and her mother had taken the day before. It doesn’t take long before they veer off the path and walk through the trees and past some shrubs, before coming upon a huge sinkhole in the ground.
“Whoa!” exclaims Miguel. He’s not seen big sinkholes like this during their forest treks before.
As they peer down the hole, they see the heavy rain splashing and rippling the turquoise water at the bottom. Itzel and Miguel’s mouths hang open in awe, and a bit of fright—it looks very dark and scary down there.
“It’s so close to the village!” Itzel says. She reckons it must have taken them just a couple of minutes to walk to it, and she wonders what could have happened had it appeared in the village instead. If that had opened up beneath them, it would have swallowed up the whole hut, and their car, and the chickens too!
One of the villagers tells the father, “There are a few cenotes around here, but we’ve never seen one this big and deep just appear overnight like this.”
“It’s a good thing it didn’t appear any closer,” the father says. He peers down and shines his flashlight into the dark chasm, and on the pool of bright turquoise water at the bottom. “That would be quite a drop.”
Itzel remembers what her grandmother told her about the last day of Wayeb—the day when many spirits come out from wherever they’ve been hiding. Maybe they were hiding underground. It could be a clever way for them to get past the jaguar statues that were built to ward them off.
Miguel steps closer to the hole to get a better look. “This is so cool! Are there bats down there? And skeletons?”
“Or bad spirits,” Itzel says, cautiously keeping her distance from the edge.
Miguel scoffs at her. “Come on, sis, you don’t actually believe any of the stuff grandma says, do you?”
“Don’t get too close, Miguel,” the father warns, grabbing his son’s arm. “It’s too slippery. We don’t need you falling in there and becoming a skeleton yourself.”
As incredible a spectacle it is for them—as if the earth itself had opened its mouth to drink in the rain—the relentless downpour is beating hard on them, so they don’t take long to return to the path through the forest and retreat to the shelter of the grandmother’s hut. They come back to find the mother sitting beside the grandmother, who’s now awake, though she’s still lying in bed and not looking any better despite getting plenty of sleep.
“Happy birthday, Itzel and Miguel,” she tells them with a smile and open arms. “My special twins.”
Itzel takes off her boots and goes up to hug her. Miguel stands by the door and tries to kick all the mud off his shoes.
“What did I miss?” the grandmother asks.
“The skies have opened and there’s a huge hole in the ground,” the father says. “I think it’s time to get out of here before there’s any flooding.”
“You can’t go,” the grandmother says. “It’s Itzel’s birthday!”
“And mine!” Miguel is quick to add.
“You’re coming with us,” the father tells the grandmother. “I’m taking you straight to the hospital, so prepare for a bumpy ride.”
Itzel realises that she’s never even seen her grandmother ride in a car before, and judging from the expression on her face, her grandmother would prefer to keep it that way.
“But what about breakfast?” Miguel asks with a frown.
“I’ll pack up the leftovers from dinner and you can eat in the car,” the mother says, before running out to the kitchen hut.
The grandmother tries to push herself up defiantly, but she doesn’t have the energy for it. “I’m not leaving. Don’t you know what day it is?”
“My birthday!” Miguel reminds everyone.
“Yes, that too, Miguel,” the grandmother says, “but it’s also the
last day of Wayeb. And I never go outside on the last of the unlucky days!”
But the mother raises her voice as if she’s already losing her patience and wants to end the argument before it begins. “No, it’s the day we take you to the city and you don’t complain about it.”
They all pack their things and put them in the car. They help carry their grandmother—in spite of her protests—to the front passenger seat, as she’s unable to walk on her own in the state she’s in, and the mother crams herself in the back with Itzel and Miguel, holding the baby. They drive downhill through the village, splashing through many puddles on the way, and continue onward to the old wooden bridge, but stop right before crossing it.
The father gets out of the car and throws up his hands in the air, shouting, “I can’t believe this!”
Miguel rolls down the window to look out, and Itzel crawls over to his lap to take a look too. The river that was almost barren only yesterday is now swollen with rushing water and has engulfed the bridge so much that it hardly looks like there was even a bridge there at all, and the road is simply leading to a dead end. The father sits back in the car, closes the door, and rests his head on the steering wheel.
“What now?” the mother asks.
“That’s our only way out of here. How is it flooded like this already?” He backs the car up the hill slowly, and after a lot of backing-and-forthing, along with grunts and groans of frustration, he manages to turn it around on the narrow road to drive back up to the village.
“I told you,” the grandmother says, “it’s a very unlucky day.”
They return to the hut. Itzel’s boots are completely muddy, so she leaves them outside and puts on her sandals inside the hut. Miguel looks at his shoes miserably, and immediately starts wiping one of them down with a damp cloth. While he does so, Itzel picks up some mud and splatters it on his other shoe.
Miguel shouts at her, then tells his parents, “Itzel put mud on my shoes!”
