by Ian Gibson
She turns to run towards the daylight but stops herself mid-step. “Wait! My snake-stick!” she shouts to Quashy, realising she dropped it when she was pinned to the cave wall.
She runs back and picks it up, but the bats are immediately upon her. They grab her hair with their claws and try to drag her back through the gap and deeper into the cave, but the snake-stick starts flying forward to pull her the other way. There are so many bats now that they whisk her off her feet, and as she’s floating upwards, she flails and kicks and screams in desperate attempts to free herself, shrieking just as loudly as the bats. The cave resounds with all these high-pitched shrieks and screams, even over the roar of the grand waterfall at its entrance.
A large, yellowish-green eye then opens in the large stony mound lying on the water channel. Rocks tumble from its eyelid, like it hasn’t been opened in quite a long time. and a black slitted pupil looks around and falls upon Itzel. The eye looks very reptilian, much like Kukulkan’s eyes, and it’s almost just as large. The entire mound begins to tremble angrily, with even more rocks collapsing and splashing into the water below. The bats screech and cram themselves through the cracks to flee the cave-in, and Itzel floats gently down to the path with the help of her snake-stick flapping its wooden wings again.
“What is all this ruckus about?” grumbles the mound of rock, opening a very long mouth lined with many jagged, rocky teeth.
Quashy is terrified by the talking mound bearing rows of teeth, and scoots towards the waterfall glistening in the daylight and covering the cave entrance like a curtain of water. Just as he reaches the waterfall, he notices that it gradually shrinks as if it’s drying up, until soon it becomes nothing more than a trickle, and its loud roar dies down, so that all can be heard in the cave are the crashes and splashes of rocks that continue to fall with every movement the giant rock monster makes.
Itzel backs away slowly, as she’s worried the monster might cause another rockfall if she were to make a hasty escape. As she retreats enough to get a better look, she realises that the eye actually belongs to a giant crocodile, with a hide of stone that made it look like it was simply a mound of rock. “We’re sorry to wake you, mister crocodile!” she calls out to it. “We didn’t know you were in here. We were just on our way out!”
“Out of what?” And the crocodilian eye darts along the wall and then upward to the ceiling. “What is this? What have they built above me? How long have I been asleep?”
Itzel is confused—it sounds like he’s been asleep for a very long time if he doesn’t even know where he is anymore. “You’re at the bottom of a statue of a giant snake, mister crocodile.”
She’s even more confused now, as she thought she had already met the god of the mountains. “But I thought the tapir was the god of the mountains?”
“What?” Zipacna growls in disbelief. “My brother Cabrakan is now claiming he’s the god of the mountains? I won’t stand for this!” He tries to stand up, and more rocks tumble from his sides as he slowly raises his legs, but he clearly hasn’t used them in a long time, because just as he manages to bring his belly above the water, his ponderous body drops into it again with a big splash. “All right, I won’t be standing for anything just yet. But I will! Or won’t? I’ve lost my train of thought.” He blinks and jostles his snout against the sides of the channel, as if his own words have confused him. “What was I talking about?”
“That you’re the true Mountain god,” Itzel reminds him.
“Oh!” growls the crocodile. “Yes! I am! I’ll have you know that it was I, the great and relentless Zipacna, who made all these magnificent mountains. That’s why they’re called the Crocodile Mountains, not the Tapir Mountains!”
As the realisation hits them both at the same time, Itzel and Quashy look at each other and say, “Ohhhh.”
“Now the name makes sense,” Quashy adds.
“And rest assured,” growls the crocodile. “I will make plenty more just like them! When my legs start working again. Then I’ll show everyone who’s the real Mountain god!” He roars triumphantly and smashes his tail against the walls of the cave, bringing down some of the ceiling in the process.
Itzel sprints to the cave entrance to join the coati, who had enough foresight to have already fled there. By the time she’s safe from any cave-in, Zipacna’s thrashing has already stopped, and his body is almost motionless again.
Then the long mouth of the stone crocodile opens wide, again displaying its menacing quantity of teeth, but instead of another terrifying roar, it lets out a drawn-out yawn. “But I’m so tired, and I don’t want to work anymore.” And with that said, he again falls asleep, except now the cave echoes with his loud, tumultuous snores.
Itzel and Quashy blink at each other.
“I’m not sure what that was about,” Quashy whispers, very softly, lest he reawaken the sleeping god.
A moment later, the trickle of water falling in front of the cave entrance once again broadens and strengthens into the grand waterfall it was before. Itzel begins to wonder if there’s some sort of connection between the waterfall and Zipacna’s sleep pattern.
Now that they’re standing right beside the waterfall, it should be loud enough to drown out their voices, so Quashy now feels comfortable to talk without the worry of waking the crocodile again. “I think he’s somehow making the water rise behind him when he’s sleeping,” he tells Itzel. “It’s like he makes mountains even in his dreams, except in this case it’s a mountain of water. I didn’t even know we had two mountain gods!”
Itzel stares at the snoring crocodile made of rock. If they had managed to build a massive statue of a snake over him and channelled his “mountain of water” to create a tall waterfall pouring from the statue’s mouth, all without him even knowing, then he’s probably been asleep for so long that most people aren’t aware of him either. “You only have one mountain god,” she tells Quashy. “Cabrakan is god of the hills.”
“What?” Quashy’s head almost jumps off his neck, as if very startled by this revelation. “Cabrakan’s never said that!”
“I think I believe the crocodile more than the tapir,” she says, especially as the tapir seemed to be more skilled at smashing things down than making anything—at least this one makes a “water mountain”, even in his sleep. She cups her hands under the waterfall to drink and cool off, then looks out towards the lake on the other side of it, the water glowing in the late morning sunlight. She thinks of her grandmother, who must be in that city she saw on the island in the middle of the lake, and then she thinks about the quest Kukulkan had sent her on, to go to the Wetlands of the East to speak with the Rain god there. “So how do we get to the East from here? Will we have to walk all around the lake?”
The coati shakes his head. “There are wildfires to the South, as you know. As for the North, let’s just say that’s the kind of place that the dead are trying to get away from, so probably best that we do not go there. It was the domain of the Death god, Yum Kimil the great and foul. Well, at least it was, before he was drained of all his power and tossed into a prison under the temple in the city. They say he disappeared during an eclipse a long time ago, so maybe he’s back in the North for all I know, though to my knowledge nobody’s seen nor heard from him since then. Anyway, I wouldn’t ever go there, and if you do, you’ll miss the times when crazy bats were your only problem.”
The thought of having more to deal with than the bats immediately puts Itzel off the idea. “Fair point, then. How do we cross the lake?”
“There’s a canoe on the shore near here. I’ve seen it many times. It’s very small—even I could use it, but you know, it’s difficult to paddle a boat on your own when you’ve got no arms. The aluxes must have made it, since it’s just the right size for them. They’re little people, hardly any taller than me—if I could stand, of course.”
“I know, I’ve met one.”
“Really?” Quashy seems quite surprised by this. “They’re normally an elusive bunc
h. They all have the power to turn invisible, so I’ve hardly seen any of them myself. Except for a very scruffy, ill-tempered one who walks backwards.”
“And was very mean to an ocelot.” Itzel remembers the poor, mistreated ocelot that she saved from Tata Duende’s cruelty.
Quashy props his head up with his tail. “Hmm, sounds like we’re talking about the same one. The one I’m talking about rode an ocelot, probably because he doesn’t fare so well on backwards feet. I’ve tried to steal from him, of course, but in my defence, he tried to hunt me.”
“I stole from him, but he tried to eat my thumbs,” she says.
The coati’s fur stands on end upon hearing this. “What?”
Itzel shows her thumbs and wiggles them. “But I still have them.”
“I’m not talking about that! I’m talking about how you stole from him!” Quashy stares at her in a way that seems like he’s both jealous and impressed. “How did you do that?”
“It was pretty easy. He fell down a hill and dropped his bag of stones. Those were the ones I used to trap you.”
“Then, in a way, I stole from him after all,” Quashy says proudly.
“No,” Itzel says, as if to pop his bubble. “I did, and I gave you the stones.”
He pouts. “I don’t think I want them anymore. Maybe I should give them back to him.” But then his mouth curls into yet another of his roguish grins. “That way I can steal them properly next time.”
Itzel’s mouth goes crooked upon hearing this. What kind of coati is this, who’s so obsessed with stealing that he’s willing to return something stolen by someone else merely so that he’ll have the opportunity to steal it himself? She decides to drop the subject of stealing things and looks across the lake. “Where’s this canoe?”
Quashy points with his snout farther down shore, towards the edge of the forest beside the pebbled beach of the lake. “Just that way, tucked behind some bushes. It’s a short slither from here—well, walk for you, as I guess you don’t slither.”
“There’s still a problem,” she says. “The Sun is too hot here! We’ll be burnt to a crisp if we’re out too long in it.”
The coati props his head up again with his tail—it seems he likes to do this whenever he has to mull over something. “You’re right. We’ll have to wait until the afternoon. The mountain will cast a shadow over the lake, and we can travel in the shade. We’ll just have to hope another storm doesn’t come before then. They come very often.”
“Until afternoon? What can we do about lunch?” All Itzel’s eaten were a couple of the bananas that the howlers gave her—she left the mountain summit in such a hurry that she forgot to bring the rest of the bunch with her—which will at least tide her over for a short while, but she was hoping she’d be taking a route where she could find more food.
The coati stares intently into the lake. “Food is a fantastic idea!” And he shoots out his tail into the water—as fast as a snake could strike its prey—and with minimal effort the tail slaps an unsuspecting bay snook straight out of it and onto the shore. He grabs hold of the bright orange fish with his tail while it dances and flops about on the pebbled beach, gives it a couple sound thwacks against one of the larger rocks, and starts biting into it, gnawing and gnashing and making beastly growls of satisfaction.
Itzel just looks at the coati with a mixture of awe and disgust.
“Pardon, where are my manners!” He offers her the fish that’s already been ripped into shreds with his teeth. “Would you like some?”
She sticks out her tongue. “Not raw, no.” She doesn’t bother to ask if the coati can fillet it for her—as talented with his tail he may be.
“Oh! Cooking is another good idea!” He spots a black rock on the beach, with waves of heat rippling through the air along its surface as it sears in the sunlight. He wraps his tail around the fish—or at least what’s left of it— and, while the rest of him still remains comfortably in the shade of the cave, he reaches his tail out to the beach and places the fish on the black rock as if to use it as a grill. It doesn’t take long before they smell it cooking, and the sight of it makes Itzel all the more grateful to be in the shade with the cool mist of the waterfall hanging in the air around them—she’s also slightly amused that a coati has taken to cooking its food.
“Wait.” She turns to Quashy. “If this is the Underworld, doesn’t that mean this fish was already dead?”
While he waits for his snook to cook, Quashy is busy inspecting his loot—mostly consisting of small precious stones—having displayed them along the length of his ringed tail like shiny, multicoloured ants on a log. Itzel is confused as to where the jewels even came from—it’s not like the coati has any pockets or pouches, nor is carrying a bag with him.
“Eh? Oh. Probably,” he says disinterestedly.
“But how can you kill something that’s already dead?”
“You can’t. Well, not completely. Only the Death god had the power to do that. In most cases, the soul will be split apart and eventually reborn. Or it’ll just pass on from here entirely.”
“But pass on to where?” Itzel asks. “Isn’t this where the dead go?”
“Yes, but as far as I’m aware, it’s just the first stop,” the coati replies. “Next stop is either the heavens or… well…”
“Hell?” she asks with a nervous gulp.
“No, no. Hell’s just that way.” Quashy points nonchalantly with his tail in a direction far across the lake, and Itzel can’t quite tell if he’s joking or not. “I was going to say oblivion, nothingness, the ‘no-more’. Around here they call it the White Haze, as we see it as the horizonless white sea that surrounds all of Xibalba. But for this fish’s sake, whenever it ends up leaving here, I assume its soul will go upward. But what do I know? I’m just a coati. And coatis need to eat!”
“I didn’t know fish had souls,” Itzel says, although she admittedly hadn’t given the matter all that much thought until now.
“Why wouldn’t they? Most things have souls. There’s a little piece of the divine in almost everything. It’s called ‘ku’. You know, like the beginning of ‘Kukulkan’, as that big snake up in the clouds is the most sacred thing of all, or so they say. But trees have ku too. Even the rocks have it—especially the pretty ones, like the jade around your neck.” He props up a little nugget of gold close to his eye before biting on it. “Seeing as it’s as green as Kukulkan’s feathers, jade like that must have an awful lot of ku!” His eyes light up as he says this.
Itzel pulls out her dress collar just to confirm that the necklace is still around her neck, as she doesn’t trust the coati to not take it if the opportunity were to present itself. “What about gold?”
The coati scoffs at that. “Gold? Compared to green jade, gold is nothing more than sun-poop.”
She laughs at that. “Sun-poop?”
“That’s literally what we call it here—sun-poop.” He sniffs the gold nugget. “At least it doesn’t smell like poop—otherwise I don’t think I’d have bitten it!” He twitches his black, hoggish nose at the tip of his long snout as it picks up the scent of the fish cooking in the sunlight. “Speaking of smells and ku, it smells like the ku in that is ready to eat.” And with that, he does yet another spectacular thing with his tail, rolling it from its tip all the way to its base into a furry coil with the small gems tucked into it—including the few nuggets of sun-poop—and then, once he unrolls and straightens it out again, the gems have vanished into thin air, like a magician’s trick.
Itzel asks, “How did you—?”
But before she can even finish her question, the magical tail swooshes just past her head, stretching out beyond the cave to the bushes beside the beach, where it picks up a stick, skewers the fish simmering on the rock with it, and brings it into the shade, then takes a bite out of it. “Wow! I had forgotten how good food tastes after you cook it. I don’t really bother with it anymore.”
Itzel is just flabbergasted by all of this. So many incredible t
hings can be done with this ringed tail! And on top of that, the coati is even cooking his food! “You used to cook?” she asks him while he gnashes his food with even more delight than he had before. “Since when do coatis cook their food?”
“I’m not an ordinary coati, I guess,” he says, before spitting out fishbones.
“You’re right about that. An ordinary coati has arms and legs and can’t make its tail do any of those things. What happened to you?”
Quashy stares through the waterfall pensively, curling his tail underneath himself in a way that reminds Itzel very much of how a snake curls its long body around itself, and he’s using it like a fluffy bed to lie on. “I don’t really remember. It’s been a long time. All I do remember is whenever I get anywhere near the City of the Dead, the humans shout at me, ‘It’s the coati thief!’ and run after me. My best guess is that’s how I lost my limbs.”
She’s saddened by this and thinks it might be better to not talk about it. “But what about the magical tail? You can stretch it so much, use it like a hand, and even make things disappear into it!”
“Just small things,” says the coati. “I tried it with that jade stone of yours too, but it didn’t work—I guess it’s too big, or there’s just too much magic in it to hide it with tricks.”
