by Ian Gibson
He says this with a pout, as if Itzel’s supposed to feel pity on him for it. But she doesn’t, of course—instead, she feels relief that he couldn’t hide her necklace like that, otherwise she doubts she’d have managed to get it back from him at all.
“Anyway, I call it my ‘tail of tricks’,” he says. “If you don’t have any arms or legs, you learn to use your tail.” He lengthens his tail again and does a display of curls and swirls and spirals with it in the air between them— he’s very plainly relishing an opportunity to show off what his tail of tricks can do.
Itzel giggles as the tail brushes against her face—it’s very ticklish. “I don’t have a tail.”
Quashy recoils the tail back to its regular length and lovingly strokes it with his long snout. “You’re missing out.”
She’s beginning to think that she probably is missing out on a lot without having a tail, and she suspects climbing trees would be a lot easier if she had one. The coati notices his beaded necklace has dropped down to his body, so he uses his tail to grab it and pull it back up to his neck again.
“Isn’t it difficult to wear a necklace without any shoulders?” she asks him upon seeing this.
“Yes, but I’ve always been wearing it. I think it’s something precious to me.”
“You ‘think’?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
Itzel scratches her head. “You don’t remember that either?”
“It’s probably the first thing I ever stole. My first step on a path to greatness.” He smirks widely again, the corners of his mouth curling up his furry cheeks.
“You’ve stolen a lot then,” she says. “The peccary said you have.”
“Let’s just say the Banded Bandit has quite a reputation throughout the land,” Quashy says, although he seems rather proud of it. “The spider monkeys and their captain have been trying to catch me for quite some time, but I’m always a step ahead. Which is a bit funny, since I have no feet.”
“Why are the spider monkeys after you?”
“They’re known as the Hands of Kukulkan, just as the howlers are the Voice of Kukulkan. They’re basically the police of the forest.”
Itzel tries to imagine how spider monkeys work as the police, as they tend to look rather like criminals themselves. “And where do you keep all the other things that you’ve stolen?”
Quashy pricks his ears up in alarm. “Why would I tell you that? Do you think I’m stupid? You’ll just try to steal it all for yourself!”
“Not everyone is interested in taking things that aren’t theirs.”
He lets out a huff like he doesn’t understand her at all. “Where’s the fun in that?” When he’s finished pecking away at the rest of the fish until it’s nothing more than a skeleton, he casually flings it away, then lengthens and curls his tail right underneath him, which props up his body like a sort of makeshift bed, and comfortably lies atop this soft spring of striped fur. Itzel smiles at the sight of it—she’s reminded of how snakes curl themselves up and rest their heads on their long bodies.
They rest for a while, waiting for the Sun to pass overhead. Quashy just lies quietly on his tail-bed, and although he’s not sleeping—it’s a bit difficult to sleep right next to a roaring waterfall, as it turns out—he looks like he’s not altogether awake either.
Itzel has been looking outside for a while and is growing impatient. “Are you sure we can’t just walk there?”
The question rouses Quashy from his daze. “Huh?”
“We could be walking now instead of just lying around waiting. Are you sure we can’t walk around the lake? At least we’d have shade from the trees instead of being out in the open lake with either the hot sun or thunderstorms to worry about! You said it’s across the lake, and one way there’s the forest fire, but what about the other way? You said it’s the North, but what’s so bad about there?”
Quashy looks around and snaps off a twig from a nearby bush using his long tail, and, with the tip of the tail curled around the twig, he starts drawing with it in the soil between them. He draws a large circle, then a square inside the circle, and then a smaller circle in the middle of that square. He draws some mountains within one side of the square above its inner circle—on the side closest to Itzel—and says, “We’re here. These are the Mountains of the West.” And then draws some little raindrops on the opposite end—the side closest to him—and says, “And this is the Wetlands of the East.” He draws trees on the side to Itzel’s right, and says, “This is the Rainforest of the South. Or, well, it used to be a rainforest until most of it burnt down.” And then on the side of the square, opposite from the rainforest, he draws a big skull. “And this is where you go only if you quite like the idea of being cooked and tortured. It’s the Desert of the North. That was the original seat of the Death god’s power, very long ago, but it remains it’s heavily fortified, and where souls are sent to suffer.” He points with his tail over the lake. “As I said, hell’s just that way.”
Itzel shudders—what an uneasy thought that such a terrible place could be just across the lake! She’s resolved she’ll stay as far away from there as possible. “Then it’s fire on one side, and fire on another?”
“Yes, but in the forest fire at least all that happens is you get burnt, and you’ll have passed out from the smoke fumes long before that. In the Desert of the North, you’ll get cooked while also being eaten alive by hundreds of scorpions or fire ants or mosquitoes, or maybe even all of them at once? I don’t know the specifics, as I haven’t tried it myself. Personally, I’d opt for the wildfire if I had to choose, but if you ask me, I don’t like the idea of being cooked at all, be it in a desert, a forest, a pot, or a pan. Our best bet is crossing the Lake of Tears.” He points with the twig to the smaller circle in the middle of the square, indicating it as the lake. He then draws yet another smaller circle within that circle, and says, “And this is the Isle of the Dead in the centre of Xibalba, where they built the city.” He draws a small square within that smallest circle, which Itzel assumes to be the walled city.
“That’s the City of the Dead?”
“Wow, I must be a good artist too! When we cross, we might be able to take cover in the trees on the leeward side if another storm comes. Assuming we can get there in time, of course. There’s just no chance of us making it all the way across the lake without hitting a storm head-on—they come too often for that—so we’ll have to find shelter on the island and wait for the storm to pass.”
Itzel nods. She understands now, remembering how this matches up with her view of her surroundings from the top of the mountain, and it’s useful to have a rough idea of the lay of the land—particularly a land she didn’t even know existed until just last night.
Quashy sits back and uses the twig to pick the teeth lining his long snout. “Pity I can’t get into the city. It’s protected by a high stone wall, and soldiers guard it on all sides. I bet they do that just to keep anyone from stealing the treasure!” His eyes suddenly light up—Itzel’s reminded of the way her parents lit up when their favourite song played on the car radio.
“What treasure?” she asks.
Quashy smiles eagerly, as if he were hoping she’d ask that precise question. “Legend has it that there’s a hoard of treasure in the crypts deep underneath the temple in the City of the Dead. It’s a very special treasure that was brought from your world all the way to the Underworld when an entire city sank into it. Usually when people die, they’re just able to bring the odd trinket with them that they’re buried with—their clothes and jewellery, for instance—so a whole ancient city’s worth of them would be quite a haul!”
Itzel remembers her grandmother’s tale about a very old city—the oldest, in fact, at least in her part of the world—whose foundations were bound to the Death god’s power through blood-magic, but it collapsed in on itself and sank into the Underworld when the Death god lost his power, thanks to the very jade stone she’s carrying on her necklace. Was that myth a
ctually true after all?
“A hoard of treasure of past kings and queens from the land of the living!” Quashy’s eyes are ablaze again, and a shiver runs all the way down the length of his ringed tail. “Can you imagine how much that could be worth? If only I could get into those crypts.”
Itzel is baffled by a couple of things. Firstly, why would there be crypts in the Underworld? “Aren’t crypts those underground places where they put the dead?”
Quashy is snapped out of his treasure-induced trance. “They put the dead in crypts in your world?”
“I think so.”
He blinks several times, like he doesn’t really understand the point of that. “But then where’s the room for all the treasure?”
“They might use it for that too. I’m not sure. I haven’t been to any crypts. They’re a bit creepy to me.”
“Yes, that would be creepy to me too,” he concurs. “I’m not interested in stealing dead people. I’m just interested in stealing from dead people. Well, a living one too, in your case.”
Itzel glares at him silently.
He smiles embarrassedly. “I mean I was interested! In the past! Obviously not anymore, seeing as we’re partners now. Anyway, they probably just use the crypts here to keep the things that I’m interested in stealing, since in the Underworld the places where they keep the dead are just called ‘homes’. Homes also have things worth stealing, especially the wealthy ones.”
That’s the second thing Itzel can’t really comprehend—do dead people really care as much about wealth as most of the living do? Especially as they can’t bring it with them to the afterlife, apart from maybe a few small objects—except, of course, for those rare instances where entire cities bound to gods by blood-magic happen to sink into it. “But why would treasure be worth anything in a place like this?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Isn’t everyone here dead? Well, except me of course.”
“They might all be dead,” he says, “but they bring their living habits with them. What was valuable to them in life is just as valuable in the afterlife.”
Itzel shrugs. “I’m not sure why the dead would still care so much about useless stuff like treasure.”
Quashy’s eyes narrow at her. He seems to be deeply irked by this comment, almost like he’s taken it as a personal affront. “The most useless things of all are the things that are worth the most!” He looks at the stick he’s holding with his tail. “Take this stick. It was very useful to draw with it. But who cares about a stick?” He tosses it away.
Itzel’s snake-stick, having been completely motionless throughout their whole conversation, suddenly lunges forward towards the stick that he threw away. It slithers along the ground like a real, living snake—except one made of wood that’s become magically limber—takes the stick in its mouth, and returns it to them, leaving it on the ground between Itzel and Quashy. It stares at both them, flicking its tongue and wagging the end of its tail expectantly.
Itzel stares back at it, amazed by what has just happened. “It plays… fetch?” She takes the stick and throws it, and the snake-stick slithers after it again and returns it to her. She laughs and throws it again. “Look! One more use for a stick!”
Quashy sighs and lies back down.
Night-Breakfast with the Dead
A long shadow creeps over the lakeshore, and Itzel checks outside to observe that the Sun has just passed over the mountain. Now it’s their chance to get the canoe, so she nudges Quashy to wake him from his nap.
“Time to go,” she tells him.
“I was having a nice dream,” he mumbles sleepily. “All that talk about the fabled treasure of the sunken city must have brought it on.” He looks like he just wants to return to his dream.
“You can go back to sleep if you want, but I’m leaving now,” she says, heading out the cave in the direction Quashy had indicated the canoe would be.
“Oh, all right, I’m coming.”
They travel along the pebbled lakeshore for a short while—first in the shade of the tall mountain, but then of the pine and cypress trees growing on the hills beside it—and Quashy finds a small blue canoe hidden among some of the bushes on the edge of the forest. It’s so small that Itzel thinks even she’ll have difficulty fitting inside it. She remembers how short Tata Duende was—shy of three feet tall—and guesses the other dwarfs must be just as small as him. There are a couple of small oars, a fishnet, and a bucket inside—clearly it was a boat they used for fishing in the lake, but it looks like it hasn’t been used in quite a long time.
“With the lake being so stormy all the time, they’ve mostly given up going out to fish in it,” Quashy says.
Itzel places her snake-stick in the canoe and starts dragging it back the way they came, so they’ll be protected in the shade of the mountain once they set off on the water. The canoe is made of a very light wood, which makes sense as the dwarfs can probably lift less than she can, so she manages to move it fairly easily. When they reach the shade of the mountain and she’s about to push the canoe into the water, Quashy taps her on the shoulder with his tail.
“Look,” he says, pointing with his snout to the shore behind her.
A giant tapir is brushing aside the trees as it trots down the beach towards the water. They would have definitely heard it coming were it not for the roar of the waterfall nearby. It’s ignoring them—though that’s not much of a surprise if it’s the same one Itzel met before, seeing as he’s half-blind.
“Isn’t that Cabrakan?” she asks.
“I don’t know of any other giant tapirs, so yes, it’s probably Cabrakan.”
She could detect the coati’s sarcasm and glares at him. “I’m new here. Give me a break.”
When Cabrakan reaches the water, he just stands there, looking out wistfully across the lake. There’s something about him that looks very lonely.
Itzel feels awkward now. “Should I tell him hello?” The tapir tried to stomp on her when they first met, so she’s not sure if they’re on friendly enough terms to greet each other just yet.
“Just ignore him,” Quashy advises her. “He’s very moody.”
Cabrakan wiggles one of his big ears. “I heard that,” he snorts.
Itzel waves to him nervously. She makes sure to wave with her right arm, with the red bracelet on her wrist, so the tapir might actually be able to see her wave—although she suspects it won’t make any difference, as he’s not even looking at her anyway. “Good afternoon, Mister Cabrakan!”
“I thought there was a storm coming,” the tapir says, not bothering with a greeting, “but I can’t see well. Tell me, little disappearing girl, what do you see in the distance?”
Itzel looks. “I just see a clear sky now.”
Cabrakan snorts disappointedly. “Strange, I thought I had heard a storm coming this morning, and she’s never stopped one of her storms before.”
“Whose storms?” she asks.
“My ex, Hurakan.”
He doesn’t explain who Hurakan is, so Itzel hopes her self-appointed guide might know the answer. “Who’s Hurakan?” she whispers to Quashy.
“She’s the goddess of the four winds,” he whispers back. “She brings in the storms from the East, where she’s strongest.”
“We were lovers once,” Cabrakan says, “but we broke up. It was a bit of a messy break-up, actually, which I should have expected, seeing as she’s the Mistress of Chaos. That’s how I lost one of my eyes.”
Itzel winces—any break-up in which someone can lose an eye must have been a very nasty break-up indeed.
“She never seemed to have much time for me,” the tapir laments, “but somehow had all the time in the world to have fun with her flocks of friends. Ever since we broke up, she sends storms towards me from across the lake, and honestly, I think it’s the most attention she’s ever paid me. But I guess she’s given even that up now.” He hangs his head forlornly and smashes his large, hoofed foot on the shoal of the lake, which
sends small waves rippling across it.
“That scary storm that I saw over the lake is actually just your ex fighting with you?” Itzel asks him incredulously.
Cabrakan nods. “She usually sends at least a couple a day—she keeps a pretty tight schedule—so she’s long overdue for one now.” He’s very bothered by this. “I wonder if she’s all right.” He shakes his head and then stomps again, this time more furiously. “I mean, I don’t care! Why would I care if she’s all right? Only puny gods care about things like that!”
The shockwave of the massive tapir’s stomp stirs the pebbles on the beach, and they dance and clatter like maracas, and waves wobble the small canoe that Itzel is holding in the water, so she drags it back ashore so that it doesn’t just drift away out across the lake.
Quashy whispers, “Hurakan sends him storms and he usually responds in kind with earthquakes.”
“I guessed as much!” Itzel says, her voice still quivering from the quake. Storms come one way, earthquakes the next! She feels very sorry for the City of the Dead in the middle of the lake, as they must all be caught in the middle of it.
Cabrakan turns around and starts plodding his way back to the pine forest, his head still hanging low like he’s been deeply hurt by the calmness of the lake—which might be why he kept trying to disturb the water.
“I met your brother,” Itzel tells him.
The tapir flaps an ear again. “My brother?”
“The crocodile, Zipacna. He said he was your big brother.”
Cabrakan turns to her. “You… woke him?”
“Well, not for long. He said he was the Mountain god.”
Cabrakan snorts angrily, “That pile of rock claims to be the Mountain god but just spends all his time sleeping! The closest thing to a mountain he makes now is a spring of water! He can be the puny god of springs if he likes! I’m the real Mountain god!” He smashes a pine tree down in a fit of rage, and Itzel hopes the woodpecker she met earlier isn’t around to see it. “He’s a loud snorer, too, but I guess you’ve noticed that.” He then disappears up the hill and into the forest—visible only by the sways of the trees that the massive beast brushes aside, even uprooting some of them in the process.
