by Ian Gibson
The coati releases its tail’s grip on the snake-stick and falls headfirst on the ground with an “oomph!” and a shake of its sore head.
“I guess it’ll be hard for you to steal something that will just fly back to its owner,” Itzel tells it.
The coati grumbles, “I didn’t know it was a magical flying stick.”
Itzel grabs the snake-stick out of the air and starts walking down the path away from him, but the coati slithers close behind her.
“So, you’re on a quest, huh?” it asks her.
“Why do you think that?” She quickly checks inside her dress just to make sure her necklace is still there, in case the shifty coati had somehow managed to pinch it again—she never would have thought coatis would end up making her so paranoid about her personal belongings.
“It’s difficult not to eavesdrop on a conversation when one of the voices is so strong it shakes a whole mountain. Besides, Kukulkan wouldn’t give someone a magical item like that unless they’re going on a quest for him. Though it’s been a long, long time since anyone’s even been able to speak with him, much less gone on one of his quests. I wonder why he’d pay you any mind! Anyway, what’s your quest? Is it to find treasure?” Its eyes light up and its fur bristles with anticipation, as if the mere thought of treasure has given it a sudden burst of energy.
“I’m going to the East, and then to the City of the Dead to bring my grandmother back,” Itzel tells the coati.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, human girl, but you can’t bring the dead back.”
“We’ll see,” Itzel says, making sure her amulet is tucked inside her dress.
The coati seems to ponder this very carefully for a moment, and then says, “I’ll help you get there, then. I’ve been banned from the city, so I’d like you to steal something from their street market for me.”
“I’m not a thief,” she tells him, quite succinctly. She has no interest in stealing, especially for a thief who seems to steal just for the thrill of it, as presumably the coati doesn’t actually need any of the things it steals.
“You’re not much of a bargainer either, I take it,” says the coati disappointedly. “Have it your way. But seeing as you’re new here I thought you could use a guide.” With that said, it skulks off.
Itzel stops and sighs. She realises what the coati said is very true, and the idea of going on an adventure across this strange land all by herself wouldn’t be the smartest of ideas. She’d easily get lost, and moreover she’s already been attacked by savage bats, almost gotten her thumbs eaten, been charged at by a giant tapir, and was very close to falling down the side of a steep mountain—and by her reckoning she’s only been here for half a day! “It’s a deal then.”
The coati grins and slithers back to her.
“I’m Itzel,” she says, kneeling down to the little coati. “What’s your name?”
“A name?” the coati asks. “I don’t have a name. Never really needed one before.” He comes closer and whispers, as if worried anyone could be within earshot, “All they call me around here is the Banded Bandit. But don’t say that out loud. It’s my secret identity, and secret identities are best kept secret, obviously. Maybe you should have one too, since you’ll be a thief. Then we can call each other by our secret names. But secretly, obviously.”
“I don’t think I need a secret identity to steal just one thing,” Itzel says.
“Just one thing?” the coati says with a frown. “You lack ambition!”
She quietly shakes her head, then asks, “Have you really gone this long without a not-secret name?”
The coati takes some time to ponder this also. “Maybe, but if I did, it’s long been forgotten. What’s the use of a name anyway?” Then he thinks again for a moment. “Maybe I should steal one.”
She finds it odd that someone could forget their own name. “Then what do people call you if they’re not supposed to know your secret identity?”
“Just ‘coati’. Oh, sometimes people call me ‘quash’, but I don’t know what a quash is.”
Itzel smiles. She likes the sound of that. “I think I’ll call you Quashy.”
“Quashy?” The coati smirks slyly again. “I like it. It sounds innocent, which means it’ll make for a perfect cover.”
“Nice to meet you, Quashy,” she says, presenting her hand for Quashy to shake it, although she quickly realises that Quashy has no hands to shake hers.
But the coati simply uses his long tail to shake her hand instead. “The pleasure is all mine, Itzel. We might have started off on the wrong foot, but—”
“Twice,” Itzel interrupts him.
“Huh?”
“You’ve tried stealing from me twice,” she reminds him.
“Ah, right. We might have started off on the wrong foot… twice. But that won’t happen again. I promise.” He smiles innocently.
The snake-stick hisses at him.
“Shut up,” the coati whispers, darting a glance at the snake-stick she’s holding.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Quashy,” Itzel tells him. “And when I’m not, it looks like my snake-stick will be, too.” She starts walking down the path.
“It’s called a snake… stick?” Quashy asks.
“It’s a snake that’s a stick,” she says over her shoulder. “What else should I call it?”
“Fair enough,” he concedes, and slithers down the path to join her.
Itzel stops briefly on the edge of the path to take in the view of the landscape around her. Mount Kukulkan casts a long shadow over the valley below, where the stream leads through the pine forest and up more plateaus into a range of mountains looming within a thick morning mist. She also sees more tall waterfalls spilling from these distant highlands.
Quashy sidles up to her. “Those are the Crocodile Mountains.”
“Why do they call them that?” she asks.
The coati scratches his head with his tail. “That’s a good question, actually. The tapir claims he made them, so it’d make more sense if they were called the Tapir Mountains.”
Itzel wonders if that’s true, as from her experience with Cabrakan, he looked like he was much better at breaking than making things.
Quashy points his tail to the valley below, where the rocky river cuts through. “And that’s Tapir Valley.”
“Because a crocodile made it?”
The coati lets out a laugh, which could best be described as a squeaky snort. “Probably.”
They round the mountain while heading down the footpath, but as soon as they walk into the sunlight, Itzel finds that her skin is already starting to burn. She retreats under the shade of a tree and sees something quite incredible—jutting out of the eastern side of the mountain is an enormous stone statue of a snake’s head, with its mouth hanging wide open. It must be the top of the same monument she had seen from the foot of the mountain. “Wow!” She points to it, remarking, “So many giant snakes here!”
“It’s the snake statue of Mount Kukulkan,” Quashy explains. “Many dead humans sculpted it out of the side of the mountain in honour of the god-king Kukulkan. Xibalba’s tallest waterfall spills from its mouth into the lake.” He looks at her. “See? What would you have done without a guide?”
She can hear the roar of the waterfall again, which reminds her of how very thirsty she is, especially after having climbed a whole mountain in this heat. If there’s water streaming out of the snake monument’s head, she’d love a chance to be able to drink from it, and it certainly helps that they’d be sheltered from the torrid Sun inside there, too. “Can we go inside?”
“Sure, follow me,” Quashy says, and quickly slithers towards it.
Itzel is still amused that a coati can slither on the ground like a snake, but seeing as it has no arms nor legs, it must prove to be a very useful skill for him to get around. She runs behind him, her hand covering her face from the bright and sweltering sunlight. They descend a slope beside the snake statue’s head and climb th
e side of its bottom jaw into its large, opened mouth. Itzel’s relieved to find a channel of water inside, flowing in from the statue’s throat—it goes back quite a way into the mountain where it’s very dark, so she doesn’t know where the water is coming from—and spilling out of its mouth. She kneels by the channel and cups her hands in the cool water to drink from it. The water tastes slightly salty, but it isn’t nearly as salty as seawater, so she thinks it should still be fine to drink without it just making her even thirstier.
Quashy slithers to the channel and licks up the water. He seems to also be relieved for an opportunity to drink some cool water, as he’s lapping it up gleefully with his long tongue.
"Why is the Sun so hot here?" she asks him.
"It wasn't always like this. But since the Moon disappeared, we haven't had nights anymore, just days and ‘night-days’, as we’ve come to call them, so we don’t have much of a break from any sun.”
“So the Sun really is always shining here?” She can’t imagine a world without any nights—it must ruin everyone’s sleep patterns!
Quashy nods. “We either have a cool and red one, or this hot and white one.”
Itzel raises an eyebrow at that. “Are you telling me there’s not one, but two different suns here?”
“Yep, this Day Sun and the Night Sun. Why? Don’t you have two suns too?”
She shakes her head. “Just one.”
He tilts his head with casual curiosity. “How weird.” But he quickly appears to discard the thought. “Eh, that’s just the way things are here. You’ll get used to it, don’t worry.”
“Are there two Sun gods too?” she asks.
“As far as I’m aware there’s just the one—Kinich Ahau.”
“Kinich Ahau,” she whispers—she already knew that name. “But didn’t he give up his heart to become the Sun?”
The coati nods. “So they say.”
“Then what did he use for the other one?”
“I don’t know,” he says, only half-interestedly, like he’s seldom given the matter any thought. “Maybe his spleen or something like that.”
"And his sister gave hers to become the Moon,” Itzel says, vividly remembering her grandmother’s tale of the Hero Twins—the last story she ever told them. “But what happened to the Moon?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is it's gone, and our world hasn't really been the same since."
She splashes her face with the cool water again. Xibalba has a red and yellow-white sun, but no moon? But how can the Moon just disappear without anybody knowing how or why? She looks out of the snake statue’s opened mouth between its two large fangs and sees the bright sunlight peeking inside. They have to scale down the mountain quickly, but the Sun is simply too hot for them to make much headway. She turns to gaze deeper into the mouth, to where the water is flowing in from its dark throat. It looks like there’s a cave that plunges deeper into the mountain, but she’s uncomfortably reminded of her last experience inside a cave. “There could be bats in here, so we have to be quiet,” she whispers with concern.
“Yes, you’re right. With the nights gone, the bats seem to have lost their minds,” Quashy whispers back.
Itzel thinks that makes a lot of sense, as the bats must need the nights so they can be free to fly outside, and if the Sun is always shining, they must spend almost all the time hiding in their caves. “I can’t blame them,” she says, acknowledging that if she were a bat and there were no nights, she’d probably go a bit crazy, too—in fact, even as a human she probably would. She walks quietly along the channel of water towards the cave. “Where is this water coming from?” she whispers to Quashy as he slithers on the ground behind her.
They find that the path alongside the channel abruptly ends and falls into a deep, dark chasm. Itzel wonders if it falls all the way down the height of the snake statue to the lake at the bottom of the mountain. But if the chasm goes directly down to the bottom, then where is the water coming from? Shouldn’t it all just be falling into this chasm instead of flowing out the opening of the mouth? She looks at the water from the edge of the chasm and is baffled by what she sees—it looks a lot like a waterfall, except upside-down, because the water is actually rising instead of falling. It’s flowing up the near wall of the chasm, where it then wraps around the top and flows through the mouth, until it reaches the front and cascades back down into the lake as the great waterfall.
“There’s a waterfall that goes down and another one that goes up again?” she asks Quashy. She wonders if it’d be more appropriate to call it a “water-rise” instead of a waterfall.
“Welcome to Xibalba,” the coati says, and Itzel wonders if that’s going to be his go-to explanation for all the strange things she sees here.
“Well, we’re stuck here for now,” she whispers in a huff, starting to walk back to the mouth. She thought there might have been a way down, like a staircase, but dropping down a deep chasm doesn’t look like a very reasonable option to her.
Quashy remains near the chasm. “How much do you weigh?”
She turns to him. “It’s not polite to ask!”
The coati’s long tail whizzes past her, extending itself all the way to the mouth opening, where it tightly wraps itself around one of the large fangs, and then the tip of it continues its extension all the way back towards Itzel.
She looks at the striped tail perplexedly as the tip of it hovers next to her. “What are you doing?”
“Giving something a try,” Quashy says, and then he quickly wraps his tail completely around her, pulls her towards the edge with it, and, much to her terror, drops her down the chasm as if it were a furry bungee cord.
She’s about to scream, but the tip of the tail muffles her mouth—she has half a mind to bite on his tail, but he’d surely let out a screech if she did, and the last thing either of them wants to do is attract the attention of any bats that might be in here. She drops almost the whole way down—and it’s quite a long way down, as it does indeed seem to go all the way to the base of the mountain—but Quashy releases her just a bit too soon, and she starts to fall, but her snake-stick, which she still tightly clasps in one hand, flutters its little wings vigorously and slows her fall, so her landing is much gentler than she was dreading. She didn't know it could even glide her down like that—the snake-stick is proving to be a lot more helpful than she had anticipated.
At the bottom she sees another great hollow cut deep into the mountain, and there’s a channel of water running through it with stone pathways on either side, much like when they were in the mouth of the snake statue—although the water in this channel is flowing into the cave where it then abruptly rises into the air and travels up the very tall chute to the mouth. She glimpses sunlight ahead, peeking through narrow gaps between the ceiling and walls of the cave, and a very large mound of rocks piled on the water, which is blocking most of the light. She assumes the cave must open out at the base of the waterfall, on the lakeshore, and feels relieved that she’s found a way out of here—although it will probably be a tight squeeze around the pile of rocks, as they even jut out into the pathways flanking the water channel.
Quashy slowly drops himself down with the tail the same way he dropped Itzel, and once he’s at the bottom he retracts it to a normal length—it takes a while to do given just how long he managed to stretch it out, all the way from the head of the massive snake statue high above them.
Itzel is tapping her foot and wearing an agitated frown. “You could have asked me if I wanted to try this! I know you’re tricky with that tail of yours, but I had no idea you could do that!”
“I asked you how much you weighed!” he says, as if it that somehow defended his brash actions. “You could have answered!”
“How much do you weigh then?” she snaps at him.
“I don’t know! Why would I know? I’m a coati!” he counters loudly.
His voice echoes behind them, as if there were a large, hollow space behind the wall of rising wat
er. and they both fall into a nervous silence.
“Shh,” Itzel whispers to him. She steps around the “water-rise”, as she’s decided to call it, and sees a rocky cavern that Quashy’s echoes must have resounded through. It’s very dimly lit by the thin rays of sunlight escaping through the mound of rocks blocking the cave entrance behind them, but it’s just barely enough for her to inspect it. She slowly and carefully steps into it, holding onto rocks as she can’t see well with so little light, and when she steps forward once more, she notices that there’s no longer any ground beneath her foot, so she backs up and looks down. She realises she’s standing on the edge of an immense black pit that burrows deep into the earth.
Quashy’s too curious to stay put and follows her. He sees the daunting abyss before them and says, “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something just like this in my nightmares. Can we go back?”
They hear faint sounds in the pit, which are quite familiar to Itzel’s ears, as she’s heard them not long ago—the distant shrieks of bats. The echoes must have stirred them.
“We need to get out of here,” she whispers, hurrying past the coati.
They rush towards the cracks of sunlight peeking through the huge mound of rock piled as high as the ceiling of the cave, and they walk along the narrow path alongside the channel, but the rocks from the mound spill over into the path, and, as Itzel noticed before, there’s a very tight gap between it and the wall of the tunnel that they’ll need to squeeze through.
She notices that the mound is moving very slowly, expanding and contracting, almost like it’s breathing. “What is that?” she whispers.
“I don’t know, but whatever it is I’d prefer that it stays asleep,” whispers Quashy.
They come to the tight spot and have to push themselves against the wall to squeeze through it. The coati slips through easily enough, as he’s much smaller and slimmer—and it’s one of those rare situations where it might actually help to not have any arms or legs—but as Itzel tries to pass through, the mound of rock suddenly expands again and pins her against the wall of the cave. She gives off a yelp and drops her snake-stick, and they soon hear the bats shrieking in response, and the loudening flaps of their wings. The mound of rock draws inward again, releasing Itzel, who scrambles out as quickly as she can before the rock pins her again. A swarm of vampire bats pour through the narrow cracks right behind her, revealing large, pointed ears framing their squashed faces with piggish noses, sharp fangs, and beady eyes that exude a familiar red glow—the same crazed eyes that chased her the moment she arrived in Xibalba. Not an ideal welcoming party!
