The Land of the Night Sun: Book One of The Jade Necklace

by Ian Gibson

  “You bring this despicable thing to my valley and threaten me with it?” growls the tapir.

  Its stomps are so powerful that each one causes the ground around it to quake, and Itzel has to catch herself against a rock so that she doesn’t fall over. It turns to her and again scrapes the ground with its hooves as if about to charge her now. Now that it’s closer, Itzel notices one of its eyes is missing, and in its place are large scars that look it’s been clawed at, possibly by a large bird—a much larger one than that woodpecker, for sure. She knows she doesn’t have time to cross the river, and the tapir is so large it would be able to chase her anyway. With no other option, she starts scrambling up the large rock next to her.

  “She sent you, didn’t she?” the tapir snorts. He charges the rock she’s climbing, shaking and crumbling it.

  Itzel yelps in terror, and before she loses her balance, she quickly jumps to another rock as the one she was standing on starts cracking apart underneath her feet. “I don’t know who you’re talking about!”

  The tapir grunts, “The eagle! I didn’t think she would stoop that low!” He runs back, turns around, and charges into the other rock, causing it to shake also.

  Itzel flounders and flops about, trying desperately to keep her balance and not slip off the boulder, as if she did, she’s almost certain that it would be the end of her. Some of the bees fly around her, quietly buzzing, but they don’t harm her at all, and simply seem to be spectating the whole encounter between her and the tapir. She stumbles and bangs her knee on the rock, and the red hibiscus flower falls out of her hair to the ground below. She tries to catch it, but almost slips off the rock as she does so. The tapir headbutts the rock, and it starts to crack and crumble also, so she has no choice but to scramble down before it splits apart.

  “Please don’t hurt me!” she shouts, backing away from the tapir and into a corner by the side of a mountain, wedged between two very large crags of rock.

  But the tapir ignores her and walks towards the flower to give it a thorough sniff with its snout, curling and twisting it around much like an elephant does with its trunk. “That smells quite nice.” It raises its head again with the flower stuck inside its nostril.

  “Eww,” Itzel says disgustedly. That flower was very special to her, but she’s doubting that she wants it back now.

  Her reaction seems to have angered the tapir. “What? You try to threaten me, and now I disgust you?” It again charges to the riverbank and swerves sharply back around—the tapir is so bulky that it careens like a car speeding around a tight corner and almost tumbles into the river.

  Itzel glances behind her—she’s now trapped in a corner by rocks too steep to climb. “I swear I didn’t mean to harm you, mister tapir! It’s just that the monkeys—”

  The tapir growls, snorting the flower out of his nose, “I’m Cabrakan the Great and Strong, god of the hills—I mean—mountains! God of the mountains is what I meant! Definitely not hills! Hills are puny, and I’m not puny, so I’m definitely not god of the hills!” He scrapes the ground again with his hooves, as if ready to charge her.

  With nowhere else to go, Itzel crouches to the ground, lowering her head, with her hands placed underneath her trembling knees, hoping very much that she doesn’t get trampled by a god, especially one who can’t seem to decide what kind of god it even is.

  Much to her surprise, Cabrakan abruptly halts and looks around in bewilderment. “Where did you go? How did you disappear like that?”

  She raises her head and observes the tapir as he seems to be completely unaware of where she is anymore, despite her being right in front of him. Why is he suddenly unable to see her?

  The woodpecker has flown to a branch just above her and whispers, “Hello there! You must be new here.”

  Itzel looks at the woodpecker. Its beak is quite noticeably crooked, like it’s been pecking at something much harder than wood.

  “If you haven’t noticed, Cabrakan has problems with his eyesight, which is why he keeps smashing into all our trees,” the woodpecker whispers, not hiding its frustration with the tapir. “Between his blind stumbling and the wildfires, soon there won’t be a tree left standing in all of Xibalba except for the Mother of Trees. At least that one’s too big even for that giant oaf to smash down.”

  Cabrakan looks directly at the woodpecker, and its opened eye tracks it as it flies to another branch. “You there, woodpecker! Who are you whispering to? Where is the girl?” he asks demandingly.

  “Why should I help you, tree-wrecker?” the woodpecker says, and flies to one of the rocks beside Itzel.

  “But how does he see you?” Itzel whispers back to it. “He’s looking right at you even when you fly around.”

  The woodpecker cocks its head to one side. “Oh, that’s a good question. Maybe he can only see a certain thing?”

  He was also able to see the machete, and her flower too, as Itzel recalls. She already has a theory, and an idea to test it. She very slowly takes her bracelet off her right wrist, holds it in her fist, and then throws it away from her.

  “Aha! I’ve found you, you sneaky little devil!” The tapir runs up to the bracelet, sniffing it. He pushes it away angrily with his nose and stomps on the ground furiously, splitting the rocks underneath his feet. “You little disappearing devils are always trying to play tricks on me! But I’m not a fool! I’m the god of the hills—I mean—mountains!”

  Itzel knows what the tapir can see now—the woodpecker has a bright red crest on its head, the machete has a red handle, the hibiscus flower has red petals, and her bracelet is red. “He can just see the colour red,” she concludes.

  The tapir’s long, rounded ears perk up. “But I can still hear you, so I know you’re there! Are you trying to make a fool of me, the great and strong Cabrakan?” He thrusts himself up onto his hind legs and then smashes down on the ground with great force that quakes beneath his hooves.

  Rocks on the hillsides start tumbling down, and she has no choice but to spring to her feet and run out from her corner, otherwise she’ll be avalanched. They scatter across the ground around her and shift under her feet as she runs, so she has to be very careful not to trip again.

  “Aha! I can’t see you, but I can hear you on my rocks!” The tapir runs after her, with each of his footfalls causing an earthquake.

  Itzel slips and falls over. It would have been impossible for her to outrun a giant tapir even if the rocky ground underneath her feet wasn’t trembling so much.

  Upon seeing this, the woodpecker swoops down between them, and shouts to the tapir, “Stop, Cabrakan!”

  “You dare defy me? I’m the strongest of the gods! Get out of my way or I’ll go right through you, woodpecker!” the tapir bellows back, and now he speaks with a powerful, godly voice—it’s not deafening like the yells of the howlers, but it carries throughout the whole valley in such a way that it sounds like every foothill, every boulder, and even every stone is speaking.

  But the woodpecker doesn’t seem in the least bit threatened by him, and instead lands on his snout and starts pecking between the tapir’s eyes at lightning speed, as if unleashing its pent-up rage.

  Cabrakan snorts a laugh. “Puny little woodpecker, you can’t harm me!” he gloats, yet at the same time he appears to be wincing from the pain. “I’m a god! My skin is as tough as—ow!—rock!”

  The little woodpecker continues drilling away between Cabrakan’s eyes, and the giant tapir is clearly hurting from it despite his boasts to the contrary.

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow! I command you to stop!” the tapir demands. “Stop in the name of Cabrakan, god of the—ow!—hills. No! I mean god of the—ow!—oh, just stop it, will you!”

  The woodpecker ignores the divine command and carries on pecking away at him anyway. “Leave the girl alone! And for the thousandth time, stop smashing down my trees!” the woodpecker warbles at him—the pitch of its voice dances up and down because its head is nothing but a black and red blur, jolting back and forth several
times a second.

  Cabrakan grunts even more loudly, and crouches down as if to relent. “Fine, have it your way! I give in, I give in!”

  The woodpecker abruptly stops its assault.

  Itzel approaches the tapir cautiously, now that he finally seems calmer. “Mister Cabrakan, I promise I didn’t come here to hurt you. The monkeys told me you could help me clear rocks from the cave.”

  “What cave?” he asks.

  “The one I came here from,” she says. She then remembers the name the howler monkey had for it. “The Cave of Echoes.”

  Cabrakan can’t see her anymore, but his long snout sniffs the air in front of her. “Why does that matter to you? You’re already here.”

  She steps closer still, and he gives her a thorough sniff, and her hair and dress billow in the air being drawn into its large nostrils.

  His anger turns to mild curiosity. “You don’t smell dead.”

  “Because I’m not dead,” Itzel says. “I just want to go home.”

  Cabrakan snorts. “I have better things to do, little girl.”

  She’s not entirely sure if running around blindly smashing into trees and rocks is a better use of a god’s time.

  “Moreover,” says the tapir, “the rainforest is up in flame—you might have noticed that, seeing as you smell like you’ve just come from there—and while it burns the gods of the forest will be powerless. But of course I’m not a weakling like the other gods. I’m the great Cabrakan, god of—”

  “Not hills?” Itzel asks.

  “Certainly not! I’m the god of the mountains!” He stomps on the ground repeatedly. “Big, hulking, not puny mountains! A pile of rocks is nothing to a mountain god—it might as well be a pile of feathers! Yes, maybe I’ll do it to prove to the other gods how strong the great Cabrakan is.” He abruptly stops his stomping and looks at her with his one good eye. “But only if you have something that you can offer me in return.”

  Itzel’s stomach is still jostling around from all the tapir’s stomping. She’s also beginning to realise that the coati thief was right about the gods after all—they won’t do any favours without an offering in return. “I don’t know what to offer a mountain god,” she says. “What you really need are a pair of glasses, but I don’t think they make those for tapirs, especially giant ones.”

  But Cabrakan is distracted, looking away from her and perking his ears up again. “Do you hear that?”

  She listens closely, but she can’t hear anything except the faintest rustle of leaves being blown by a gentle breeze.

  “She’s at it again!” Cabrakan snorts, and he charges downriver in a fury, smashing the ground beneath him, sideswiping any rocks and trees in his way, and the whole valley echoes from his rampage.

  “Watch where you’re going!” the woodpecker shouts aggravatedly, although the tapir clearly doesn’t listen to it.

  The side of the mountain rumbles under the quakes it makes with its stomps, so Itzel runs to the riverbank to avoid another rockslide. She looks up the steep mountain and sees a narrow path running up and around it, until it vanishes into the clouds. As the path leads her eyes up to the clouds overhead, she glimpses an enormously long shadow cast over them before it disappears over the mountain. It looked to her like the shadow was slithering like a giant snake.

  “What was that?” she asks the woodpecker.

  The woodpecker tilts its head as if confused by the question. “That was the Great Feathered Serpent himself. Who else would it be? Are there other giant snakes flying in the sky?”

  “Sorry, it’s just that I’m new here and never seen him before. I need to speak with him. Do you know how to do that?”

  “The best chance you’ll have of getting his attention is if you head up Mount Kukulkan.” The woodpecker points its wing at the path up the mountain. “It’s still a longshot though, just to warn you.”

  “Okay. Thanks, woodpecker!” She figured that was the way, but just wanted to make sure before she goes through the trouble of climbing a mountain so tall that it reaches into the clouds. “I’m Itzel, by the way.”

  “And I’m Crook-beak!” the woodpecker says.

  “What happened to your beak?” Itzel asks, wondering why the woodpecker’s beak is so crooked—although that might explain how the woodpecker earned such a name.

  “Oh, that’s just from pecking rocks,” Crook-beak says.

  “I thought woodpeckers peck wood. Why are you pecking rocks?” she asks, thinking it to be a reasonable question—it is why they’re called woodpeckers, after all, and not rockpeckers.

  “Most do!” chirps Crook-beak. “But Cabrakan’s rampaging has really been stressing me out, and when I’m very stressed, I have this habit of pecking at bare rocks on the mountainsides. It’s just a way of releasing all the frustration, I guess.”

  Itzel lowers her head sympathetically. “Oh, I’m sorry you’re so stressed, Miss Crook-beak.”

  “It’s all right,” Crook-beak says. “Dealing with the mountain god everyday would drive anyone up the wall—sometimes literally. Anyway, I have to go yell at that half-blind tapir before he smashes down more of our trees. Not that it’ll do much, as he never listens to me, or any of us birds for that matter. No wonder our Queen dumped him. Take care now, my dear!”

  “Wait,” Itzel says, catching the woodpecker’s attention before she flies away. “If he only sees the colour red, maybe he’ll avoid the trees if there’s something red on the trunks?”

  “What a terrific idea!” Crook-beak says with a smile. “I wish I had thought of that. Too much time spent using my head to peck and not to think! It’s certainly worth a try. I’ll let you know if it works. Thanks, Itzel!” It flies away.

  “Bye, Miss Crook-beak!” Itzel walks to her red bracelet and picks it up. It was her mother’s gift to her for her last birthday, so she’s thankful the tapir didn’t smash it to pieces like the machete. She then walks to the snotty hibiscus flower and turns up her nose as she picks it up. “Yuck! What a nasty, cranky tapir.” She washes it as thoroughly as she can in the river—the flower is dear to her, so she wants to hold on it, but is still a bit reluctant to put it back in her hair, so she finds a short pine needle and uses it to pin the flower onto her dress collar instead.

  She hears another smash in the distance, followed by the angry calls of a woodpecker, and then Cabrakan’s thunderous voice echoing throughout the valley.

  “I’m not listening to you, pesky woodpecker!” he yells. “You embarrassed me in front of the mortal!”

  “Poor wood-and-rock-pecker,” Itzel mutters, feeling sorry that a small bird like Crook-beak has to deal with such a big, clumsy grouch like Cabrakan. She drinks from the river and splashes her face with the cool water. The morning sun’s gentle warmth is quickly turning to an intense heat, so she’s not looking forward to hiking up a mountain, but she has little choice. At least the tall mountain casts a long shadow, but the path leads around it, so she won’t have the cover of shade all the time. She finds the bottom of the path at the base of the mountain, and follows it upward, looping counter-clockwise around it as she climbs the steep path, but the first moment she leaves its shadow and steps into the blazing sunlight, she already regrets coming up this way.

  The Serpent in the Clouds

  The ferocious Sun makes dazzles her eyes and bakes her skin, and it’s not long before she’s utterly drenched in sweat. “Why is it so hot already! I thought the Underworld was supposed to be cold and dark, but this is the opposite of these things!” Her grandmother was right—the Underworld has changed. In fact, her grandmother was right about there being an Underworld at all. She was even right about the thumb-eating dwarf, Tata Duende. She was right about a lot of things, as it turns out!

  “I can’t wait to tell all this to Miguel,” she thinks. “He better believe me this time, or else... or else I’ll dump mud all over his brand-new shoes!” That’s the best threat she can come up with at the moment, as the heat is addling her mind. She’s startin
g to wonder if she’d have preferred a cold and dark version of the place after all—at least she wouldn’t be sweating like a pig! That thought, however, reminds her of what the peccary said about body odour, so the moment she finds a nook in the mountainside to take shade, she opens the small bottle of perfume hanging around her neck and puts just a dab of it under her arms. She has to admit that it does feel quite refreshing, and the floral aroma makes her a little less cranky. She has to admit—that pig has some skill in the art of perfumery, at least when he isn’t overdoing it.

  Another swarm of bees fly by, and one stray bee almost bumps into her nose. “Pardon me, mizzz,” the bee says politely. “It’s an emergency! You smell very nice, by the way. For a moment there I thought you were a flower!”

  Each of the bees is carrying a droplet of water in their little, fuzzy legs, much like the leafcutter ants she had seen earlier. She looks to where they’re flying in such a hurry—fires are even spreading through the foothills and pine forests, too, although they at least appear to be smaller and more scattered than the horrific inferno devouring the rainforest.

  She thinks about all these little ants and bees doing their utmost to contain the wildfires and feels very sorry for them. “Where are the people to help them?” she asks herself.

  She continues up the steep footpath as it curves around the mountainside and hears the roar of a waterfall. Once she’s high enough to peer over the pointed tips of the pine trees, she sees a vast body of water, which she thinks at first sight to be a sea judging from the size of it, but its water looks much too calm, so she concludes it must be the great lake that Tata Duende had mentioned. Its motionless water reflects the sky like the surface of a perfectly smooth mirror. She relishes the thought of taking a dip in it, especially in this heat. She presses on, the great waterfall she’s been hearing at last comes into view. It’s falling into the lake and churning up so much mist that she can barely see around her, but just from the sheer sound of it, she can guess that it’s bigger than any waterfall she’s ever encountered before. Her eyes follow it upward beyond the mist to see how high it goes—it’s spilling out of an enormous stone statue jutting out from the side of the mountain. It looks to be the head of some kind of animal, but she isn’t able to see what exactly it’s supposed to be from this angle—it’s so high above her, almost reaching into the cloud cover, while the rest of its body stretches all the way down the mountainside to where the base of the mountain dips into the lake.