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

by Ian Gibson

  He slumps down again. “Oh...”

  “Does the name 'A Thousand Eyes' mean anything to you?"

  Quashy stares down the creek as they wind their way through it. “Yes, but not anything good. There's a part of the rainforest that they call the Forest of a Thousand Eyes. But that place has probably suffered the most from the wildfires. It’s all burnt to the ground, leaving only that giant ceiba tree in the middle of it—you'd need more than a fire to bring that monster of a tree down.”

  Itzel remembers the enormous ceiba tree rising above the black clouds of smoke from the forest fire—it’s not easy to forget a tree that looked as tall as a skyscraper.

  “Even before the fires, no one would dare go in there,” Quashy says. “It’s a cursed forest so thick and black that you’d easily get lost, and even the trees move to trap you in. They say there’s a witch who lives in it. She looks at you with her thousand eyes, and if you lock eyes with her, she’ll cast a spell on you and lure you into her forest. That’s why you should never stare into the black forest, and you should keep your eyes closed or turned away if you have to walk anywhere near it, because once you fall for the trap and step into it, you’ll never find your way out again. Even the gods avoid it, so you know it must be a dangerous place—arguably even worse than the North, because the gods don’t avoid the North like they do that forest!"

  Itzel didn’t know whether to trust the ghostly voice in her dreams, but what Quashy says confirms her suspicions. That black forest doesn't sound like a place she’d want to go, if even the gods are scared of it! Although she’d love to be able to see that giant ceiba tree from up close—it would be an impressive sight, particularly for a tree-climbing enthusiast like her.

  The winding creek leads them to a pond where the air is still aflutter with the sounds of the insects and frogs, along with the patter of a light drizzle. Once they row into the pond, the noise becomes so loud that they can barely hear their own thoughts, much less talk. She hopes this trip won’t take long, because the noise alone will drive her crazy soon enough.

  She stops rowing because she sees several small creeks leading from the pond, and she doesn’t even know which one to choose. She nudges Quashy and shrugs her shoulders to gesture that she’s clueless as to where to go—talking would be too much of a hassle what with the noise. Quashy doesn’t look like he has any idea either. While they’re both looking for the next possible route, Itzel glimpses something orange hidden in the reeds. She stares at it carefully and realises, much to her amazement, that it’s the fur coat of a jaguar. It’s crouched low and drinking from the pond, and it’s hidden itself so well that she might not have seen it at all were it not for the golden shimmer of its eyes.

  She nudges Quashy again and points to it. "A jaguar!” she tells him excitedly, although she’s unsure he would even be able to hear her anymore in this racket. “It’s my favourite animal!”

  The jaguar raises its head from the water and locks eyes with Itzel for a while, and its gaze follows them as their canoe drifts across the pond. She and Quashy both freeze when they realise it’s watching them so closely—and Itzel immediately regrets saying anything at all, as she thought the chirps were loud that the jaguar wouldn’t hear her. The jaguar then rises to its paws, turns, and leaps away, vanishing in an instant within the reeds as if it were never there. Its movement seems to have scared a lot of the insects around the pond, because the noise of their chirps has died down enough for Itzel and Quashy to actually be able to talk.

  "Hopefully your favourite animal won't consider you their favourite food," says Quashy, and then he turns to her and huffs like he’s offended. "Also, why isn't it a coati?"

  Itzel chooses a creek at random and starts rowing into it. The noise of the insects shortly resumes, but they’re relieved that once they’ve left the pond it’s not so shrill. They’re both already quite drenched from the drizzle, which seems to be strengthening the deeper they go into the swamps.

  "The mosquitoes here must get pretty bad here as soon as it’s not raining,” Itzel says. “Or maybe it's always raining here." The rain makes her think of the frog, the village, and her grandmother. "Do you know how to find this Rain god?"

  Quashy shakes his head. "I'm not so familiar with this corner of Xibalba. I stick to the forests, because this place gets very wet, and it’s difficult to swim with no arms and legs. I guess we'll just need to find wherever a giant frog is most likely to be."

  Itzel takes a moment to stand up and get a lay of the land, though she can’t see much above the walls of reeds even when she tiptoes. The terrain is completely flat—quite a stark contrast to the mountain ridge she trekked through during the day. There are hardly any trees to be seen, and the ones she does see don’t grow tall and are almost entirely stripped of their leaves. They’re all lopsided and leaning in one direction, too—towards the lake—a tell-tale sign of the strong winds they must put up with. Some are even uprooted and have fallen over, like they’ve been carried away by the wind. She sits back down.

  “See anything?” Quashy asks.

  “Just that we need to get out of here before another storm.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  They continue down the creek until it forks into two. Itzel puts down the oar for a brief break to rest her arms, which are sore from all the rowing—she can’t imagine how sore they would have been if One Reed and Seven Deer hadn’t offered to help take her across the lake. She opens up the banana leaf carrying the tamales—there are two inside, and she could have sworn there were three when the farmer’s family had given them to her, but she can’t remember for sure. She breaks a piece off of one of them and offers it to Quashy.

  "Here, you must be hungry," she says.

  Quashy doesn’t even need to think before he snaps it up.

  “It’s all right to say ‘thanks’ sometimes,” she tells him.

  “Oh. Thanks? Usually I just take things, so I’m not really used to thanking people.” He lowers his ears sheepishly. "I guess I should also thank you for helping me back there on the island. You really saved my tail."

  Itzel smiles. "No problem, Mister Scales."

  Quashy perks up his ears again and grumbles, “Don’t get too attached to Mister Scales. I much prefer being a coati to a snake. What’s not to love about a coati?”

  Itzel laughs. “Maybe coatis are my second favourite animal.”

  Quashy looks away and huffs with dissatisfaction. “Second? Not good enough.”

  “Thanks for being my guide, Quashy. I really couldn’t have done this without you.”

  “It’s just part of our deal—I help you get to the Rain god, and you steal something from the city for me when you go find your grandmother. Simple as that.” He smirks. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I might want.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Itzel says.

  “I’m thinking of a pot to store my takings. But it has to be a pretty pot, with paintings on it—the fancier, the better. Oh, and you should fill it with as many jewels as you can find.”

  Itzel glares at him.

  “Oh, fine. That last part isn’t so necessary.” Quashy slumps against the side of the canoe. “Would have just been a pleasant surprise, is all.”

  They feel another light breeze, and hear whispers in it:

  "Who is she?” the voices say. “Is she a spirit from the lake?”—“She looks human to me, but what’s a human girl doing here?”—“Is she bringing something for the gods?”—“Oh, I hope she’s brought gossip for us! We don’t get much human gossip!”—“Where’d she get that flower?”

  Itzel looks down and sees her hibiscus flower still pinned to her dress with a piece of a pine needle. It’s looking quite soggy now, so she doesn’t know why it’s getting so much attention. She’s reminded of the very nosy whispers she heard when she walked through the Howling Forest before she came to the shrine of the howler monkeys, except there are many more voices here, talking over one another, so she ca
n’t understand what most of them are saying. She looks around, wondering if she could see where the voices are coming from.

  “This must be the so-called Chattering Ponds,” Quashy says, having heard the whispers too. “It's where all the birds and bugs gather from all four corners of Xibalba to… share gossip. I never come here myself since I'm neither a bird nor bug, and I don't have time for spreading rumours.” He snorts discontentedly. “Especially as so many have been spread about me in the City of the Dead, apparently.”

  Itzel isn’t all that surprised that the coati is infamous, given his favourite pastime is taking people’s things.

  The whispers continue:

  “Maybe she’s an alux?”—“Then why can we see her?”—“She better hope Hurakan doesn’t wake up!”—"And who is that ugly creature with her?”

  Quashy dips his head below the sides of the canoe, grumbling, "Are bugs seriously calling me ugly?"

  "I think we're lost," Itzel says, looking at the fork in the creek. She worries that they’ll take forever at this pace if they don’t know where they’re going—all the little creeks and ponds are like a labyrinth lined with walls of reeds, and for all she knows, they could be taking a circuitous route back to the lake they came from!

  Quashy inspects the fork in the creeks. "Look closely," he says, pointing with

  his tail. “They’re helping.”

  Itzel wonders what he’s talking about, because she doesn’t see anything at a glance. But when she looks more closely, she spots fireflies flashing down one of the creeks, each one flying around in small circles over the water, one after another, as if forming a lit pathway for them. The lights are faint—the Night Sun overhead drowns out their light when they’re not in the shadows—so they might have been there the whole time, but she doubts she’d have noticed them had Quashy not pointed them out to her. She smiles, picks up the oar again, and rows into the creek. Insects are so helpful in Xibalba!

  An arrow suddenly whizzes by, right in front of the canoe. They hear squawks and see birds scattering into the air from their hiding spots in the reeds. They turn to where the arrow was shot from and can see reeds moving like they’re being brushed aside, but they don’t see anyone.

  "The aluxes!" Quashy whispers, again ducking his head into the canoe.

  Itzel peers through the reeds, and while she notices they’re still moving, she doesn’t see any sign of the dwarfs.

  "You can’t see them because they can turn invisible whenever they want to,” Quashy whispers. “They live and hunt in the eastern part of the rainforest, but seeing as that's all up in flame now, I guess they've been forced to hunt here in the wetlands. That's risky of them—word carries around here as fast as the wind, as you’ve probably noticed. But they must be using all the noise as their cover."

  Itzel catches a glimpse of an orange tail with black spots following the movement in the reeds. Not long after, she hears a roar, and the dwarfs squeal and appear between the reeds in an instant—they must have turned visible again amidst their panic—and they’re scrambling towards a small grove of trees, tripping in the puddles, squeaking and whimpering in fear. The jaguar must have stalked them to scare them off. Or maybe the hunters have now become the prey?

  Itzel rows more quickly, as she doesn’t want to get on the jaguar’s bad side either—those voices she heard were debating whether she was an alux too, and she really hopes that jaguar won’t think that. She looks up to the sky—a thick cover of grey clouds creeps up to hide the red Night Sun. If that’s not a sign she’s getting closer to the Rain god, she doesn’t know what is. She finds it much easier to spot the fireflies under the overcast sky, and after following their trail through several creeks and larger ponds, they finally come to a vast lagoon where the drizzle has strengthened into a rain.

  The surface of the lagoon is thickly carpeted in water lilies, their white flowers spattering the greens of lily pads that have grown so large and so clustered together that Itzel is finding it increasingly difficult to paddle, as there’s hardly any open water for her to dip her oar in anymore. Countless frogs are hopping on the lily pads, bulging their throat sacs and croaking excitedly like a discordant orchestra. There must be hundreds of them out and about, if not thousands! She wants to cover her ears again from the noise, but she needs to keep rowing, especially as she knows she’s getting close—the fact that the sky is so gloomy and it’s pouring more heavily can only mean the Rain god is around here somewhere. She looks at the water in the lagoon—it’s absolutely brimming with fish, but especially baby sharks. She wonders if the big lagoon is a nursery for a lot of fish that live in the sea, as she vaguely remembers Quashy mentioning there was a sea here, too.

  She points to the baby sharks. “Aren’t they cute?”

  “I hope we don’t encounter any of their mothers,” Quashy says nervously. “I’ve heard tales that the biggest shark of all around here has a habit of going quite far inland.”

  Itzel raises an eyebrow at that. “A shark on... land?”

  “Welcome to Xibalba,” he says.

  She just shakes her head—she’s already come to terms with the fact that all the wildlife of Xibalba behave in ways she’ll never fully comprehend.

  Eventually they can't make it any farther into the lagoon by boat, as the cover of lily pads has become so thick that it would be much easier to simply get out and walk on them—assuming they can. Quashy springs out of the canoe and lands on one, as it’s easily large enough to bear his weight. Itzel steps out onto it more mindfully, and it looks like they can support her too. They walk hurriedly over the lily pads—Itzel’s beginning to shiver from the rain and would like to get this over with so they can leave—until they come to a particularly gigantic one floating in the very centre of the circular lagoon, dwarfing all the others around it. Itzel is astonished by the sheer size of it.

  "I don't know about you, but if I were a god in the form of a frog, I'd probably be around here," Quashy says.

  She nods in agreement. "So now what?"

  "Ribbit!—I mean—halt!” a voice utters. “Who comes before the Sacred Lily Pad? Whoever you are, you better have brought food, unless you want to be food!"

  The voice sounds like it was coming from below Itzel, so she looks down to discover a small frog standing at her feet and staring up at her—it’s a similar green to the giant lily pad, and very small, so she didn’t notice it until now. She’s immediately reminded of the frog she saw in the village, who stared up at her with a similarly expectant look. She kneels. "Oh, are you Chaac the Rain god?"

  The little frog croaks, "You flatter me, but I am just a humble servant of His Wetness. I serve as his spokesman—ribbit!—spokesfrog, I mean. If you want to make an offering to His Wartiness, place it in the middle of the Sacred—ribbit!—I mean, the Sacred Lily Pad.” The frog’s little body twitches and bounces each time it ribbits, like it’s some kind of nervous tick. “Sorry, I have a bad case of the hiccups. They've been going around."

  “I thought everything was sacred, so wouldn’t that mean all lily pads are sacred?” she asks.

  “The one on which you stand is the most sacred of all!” chirps the frog. “For it is the only one that can bear the Rain god’s weight. He’s tried gracing other lily pads with his divine presence, but they’re now resting at the bottom of the lagoon.”

  Itzel unrolls the banana leaf with the two tamales inside and places them in the middle of the giant lily pad. And then she waits. She hopes it won’t take long for Chaac to come, as she’s still standing out in the rain. She hugs herself to try to stay warm.

  Something very large rises underneath the blanket of lily pads, pushing them up out of the water, but they can’t see what it is. Then an enormous tongue lashes out, snatching away the two tamales in the blink of an eye, and the large mound underneath the lily pads sinks back into the water, disappearing in a large froth of bubbles.

  “Hey!” Itzel stamps on the giant lily pad with her feet and shouts indignantly into
the water, “You can’t just show up, eat my tamales, and leave!”

  But there’s not a stir in the water save for the big bubbles swelling up to the water surface, expelling a loud burp.

  She turns to the little frog who serves as the Rain god’s spokesfrog. “He was supposed to hop on the lily pad so I can talk to him! Call him back!”

  “Do you have anything else to offer the great and slimy Chaac?” the frog asks.

  “No! That was all I had! I didn’t come all this way just for him to take my tamales. I have important things to talk about!”

  The little frog shakes its head. “I’m afraid that there’s no further business that can be done without—ribbit!—food. No food, no frog.”

  Quashy sighs as he lengthens his magical tail, stretching it all the way across the lagoon back to the canoe, and when it returns to him, it’s holding another tamale. “That woman on the farm had given you three, but I took one while you were busy rowing the canoe and just hid it underneath the bench so I could have it while you were meeting with Chaac.”

  Itzel glares at him. She has no idea how he did that without her noticing, but she’s too angry to even want to know how he pulled the trick off. “I can’t believe you!” She throws up her arms in utter frustration. “I offered you some out of kindness, yet you had already taken one for yourself! Bad Quashy!”

  Quashy just turns up his snout, not appearing all that remorseful. “What can I say? Old habits die hard.”

  She takes it from his tail and turns to the frog. “I’ve got the food. But how will I know that he won’t just take it and leave again?”

  The little frog says, “You place the food in the middle of the Sacred Lily Pad. Then you step off the Sacred Lily Pad. Okay, ribbit?”

  “I’ve gotten that part already,” says Itzel impatiently.

  The frog continues, “Then you squat down, close your eyes, and you say—”

  Itzel interrupts, “‘Ribbit?’”

  The frog pauses and blinks at her quizzically. “‘Ribbit’? What’s that mean? Sounds like gibberish. No, you say, ‘I’ve come to speak’.”