by Ian Gibson
Itzel takes her hand and sees a long tattoo of a snake curling around the length of the woman’s outstretched arm. "Is that Kukulkan?” she asks as she’s helped back to her feet.
“The Great Feathered Serpent himself, who watches over us in life and death,” the woman says, still smiling.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Itzel mumbles quietly to herself. Considering how difficult it was to get Kukulkan’s attention even from the summit of his mountain, she’s not so sure that this great feathered serpent watches over anything anymore.
The woman tilts her head with curiosity. She looks at Itzel’s snake-stick for a moment, and her eyes narrow slightly. “Where are you from, child? I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new?”
Itzel smiles, but it’s a bit awkward and disingenuous. This is at least the third time she’s been asked that this morning, and it’s starting to frustrate her—especially after being nagged so much by the snake-dancers. “Yes, I’m new.”
“What’s your name?” the woman asks, just before Itzel is about to walk away.
“I’m Itzel. Nice to meet you,” she says timidly.
“You have wearied yourself in coming, and it is an honour to cross paths with you as well, Itzel. I am Lady Xux Ek.” She tips her head forward ever so slightly. “I’m the queen of the City of the Dead.”
Itzel freezes mid-step, and her eyes widen. She didn’t realise she had just bumped into a queen! This young woman looks more like a warrior than a royal. She starts to splutter sounds without any actual words coming out, as she wants to say something but can’t decide what’s appropriate, as she’s never been in the presence of royalty before—or human royalty, at least, since the only king or queen she’s encountered so far is a giant snake. And an eagle, she then realises—she had forgotten that Hurakan claimed to be the Queen of the Birds, among her many, many titles.
The woman laughs at Itzel’s loss for intelligible words. “I get that reaction a lot.” She kneels down on one leg to look at Itzel in the eyes. “And you, dear Itzel, must be my latest subject.”
Itzel recalls the Daykeeper saying that the Dead Queen was the oldest of the dead. But this woman looks so young! She was expecting the Dead Queen to look much older than her grandmother, not younger than her mother. She does a clumsy bow, now trying to bow down more than she has with anyone else, seeing as she’s before a queen, but she almost topples forward, so the Dead Queen quickly holds her upright again.
“You don’t have to bow so much to me,” the Dead Queen tells her. “At the end of the day, we’re all dead here.”
“Nice to meet you, your Highness," Itzel tells her. She then opens her mouth again, about to explain that she’s not actually dead and that she accidentally fell into this world, but quickly stops herself before a word comes out. It might be best to not have any questions asked about her, as Lady Chel advised.
The queen looks at her curiously. “Are you all right, Itzel?” She notices the strangler vine wrapped around her arm. “I see Lady Chel has fixed you up. She’s done that for me countless times—to the point that she’s sick of seeing me.”
“Could you help me, please? I’m looking for a god named… It—Itzam...na?”
“Lord Itzamna, yes.” The woman points to a hut a little farther up the busy street. “You have urgent business with him, I gather?”
“Yes,” Itzel says. “I just need to ask him something.”
The queen is still on one knee. She’s staring at Itzel very intensely now, and her smile again fades as her eyes narrow and sharpen. “There’s something strangely familiar about you, but I can’t tell what it is. How did you come here, Itzel?”
“I fell,” Itzel says succinctly. She doesn’t want to draw too much attention to herself, especially from someone as powerful as a queen, if it might cause any trouble, so she thinks it might be best to leave. “I’m sorry, but I really have to go, Your Highness. I’m in a hurry.”
The Dead Queen stands up. “I understand. As am I. Arrows won’t shoot themselves. Our paths will cross again, Itzel.” She smiles again, but this time there’s something conflicted about her expression, like her mouth is meaning one thing but her eyes mean another. “I can feel it.” She nods her head slightly to bid farewell. “May Kukulkan watch over you.”
“And you,” Itzel responds with another stiff, quick bow and hurriedly scuttles up the street. She glances back over her shoulder—the woman is still standing there, staring fixedly at her as she leaves, until they’re both engulfed in the busy crowd around them. She suddenly starts to feel very uncomfortable, and she looks down to assure herself that the jade talisman is still hidden in her dress.
She walks to the hut that the queen had indicated to her. The doorway is closed with a hanging curtain—it’s tattered and drab, especially compared to the ones Lady Chel has in her hut. She knocks against the side of the doorway but hears no answer.
She glances behind her into the busy street, but to her relief she doesn’t see any sign of the Dead Queen—she was worried she might have followed her. She knocks again, more loudly this time. When she doesn’t get a response, she looks for the rain cloud. It’s peeking through a gap in the canopies over the street, so she waves to it to gesture that she’ll be right back and brushes the curtain aside to step into the hut.
It’s very dark inside save for the light of a candle in the far corner of the room, where an old man with a humpback is sitting stooped over a desk of stone. Similar to Lady Chel’s hut, this hut is completely full of things, except instead of plants and textiles and bags of seeds, there are dusty stacks of books and papers crammed together and towering all the way to the ceiling. The air is dank and stuffy, and with the dim lighting it feels to her like a neglected cellar that’s always kept closed and has been left just to gather dust.
“Lord… Itzamna?” she asks.
The old man has most of his back to her and doesn’t answer. He has a long, crooked neck that reminds her of an egret, which juts his head out over the desk he’s crouched over, as if the desk were his nest. His robe is covered in dust, and spiders have even woven cobwebs between his thin legs, which leads her to believe that he hasn’t budged from his seat for a very long time. He appears to be feverishly writing with the quill of a turkey feather. He’s knocked over a pot of ink on his desk, which is dripping on the floor, but hasn’t bothered to clean it up. From the state of his hut, it doesn’t look like he bothers himself much to clean anything. Itzel can’t imagine a place more unlike Lady Chel’s pristine hut—her hut looked like it had been kissed by a rainbow, whereas this hut looks like it’s been retched up by a worm. She can’t fathom how the two of them could possibly be husband and wife.
The only hint of colour she sees is a bright green hummingbird flitting over the man’s shoulder. It’s nodding and chirping while the old man whispers to it.
“Yes. Understood. All right. Note taken. I’ll mention that. Is that all?” the hummingbird says, as if acknowledging what it’s being told.
Itzel knocks on the wall again, as she still doesn’t want to just walk inside a stranger’s hut without being invited in. “Mister Lord Itzamna?” she asks, much louder this time.
The old man stops whispering but doesn’t turn around to look at her. “You may enter,” he says over his shoulder. “And just 'Lord Itzamna' is sufficient.”
Itzel walks inside. She doesn’t take off her sandals this time, assuming his hut doesn’t have a strict “no shoes” policy—especially as shoes wouldn’t make any difference on a floor this dirty.
The hummingbird flies towards Itzel as she enters. It’s staring at the floor, looking weary and sad, and lets out a very high-pitched sigh, but when it sees Itzel, it tries to perk itself up. "Good morning!" it twitters.
“Good morning!” Itzel says, reminded of the hummingbird she and her mother had seen during their walk in the forest outside her grandmother’s village.
The hummingbird turns back to the old man in the corner, then
looks at Itzel and whispers, “And good luck.” With that said, it flies out a small hole in the wall beside the doorway, which looks like it’s been made specially for the small bird to enter and leave.
Itzel finds it remarkably apt that a hummingbird just wished her luck—her grandmother had told her that they’re spirits known to bring good luck to those that see them—although from this particular hummingbird’s tone, the words sounded more defeated than hopeful.
"Don't mind the hummingbird,” the old man says, still huddled over his desk and not bothering to turn to see whomever he’s talking to. “She works as my messenger and likes to grumble about it."
Itzel steps around the stacks of old paper. The still air is thick with dust and the scent of mould. She’s glad the rain cloud is waiting outside, as she thinks that if it had come in too, it would almost certainly have another sneezing fit. “I’m sorry to bother you. Your wife told me that you might be able to help me.”
Lord Itzamna stops writing and raises his head from his desk. “My wife?” He ponders for a moment with a long, droning “hmmmmm”, and follows it by saying, “I don’t recall having a wife.” He lowers his head and returns to writing.
Itzel is confused by this. Why did Lady Chel say he’s her husband, but this old man denies having a wife? She steps closer to him and is close enough to see what he’s writing—columns of highly detailed glyphs all squashed tightly together, which she doesn’t have a clue how to read. She guesses it’s some form of ancient script, although a few of the glyphs look slightly familiar to her. “My name is Itzel. I’m looking for my grandmother. I think she’s somewhere in this city.”
Lord Itzamna, still without looking at her, asks, “And your grandmother was a follower of the Great Feathered Serpent and the old gods? Or of Hunab Ku?”
“Hunab who?” Itzel asks. She’s never heard of such a god before.
“The One God of the Conquerors who Came from Across the Sea,” he says, with a hint of bitterness in his words. “Hunab Ku came to our shores clad in armour, much like a white turtle, but rode across our land on hoofed legs and wielded a sword of steel, demanding that my children bend the knee. He came from the desert originally, not unlike our own power-hungry god of death, and I’d even dare to say his people stank almost as badly. What is it with these desert gods and their obsession with conquering!” He huffs indignantly, dipping his quill pen in a bottle of ink. “A little too much sand got in between the ears, I suspect. Anyway, the other gods have chosen to forget Hunab Ku for the sake of their pride, but I still know of this god beyond our horizonless sea, because I know all that there is to know.”
Itzel takes a moment to absorb this, then says, “She must have followed the old gods, I guess.” She doesn’t remember her grandmother ever going to church on Sundays, anyway—unlike most of her village.
“Very good,” he says, in as pleasant a tone as he can possibly muster, though Itzel can hardly tell the difference. “Your grandmother has my respect for keeping the old ways even in the face of the sword of steel. If she has passed, as you say, then she will be in our city and accounted for. I keep records of everything and everyone. I’m very thorough, as you can see.” The old man gestures over his shoulder with his thin, wrinkled hand to the massive stacks of paper in his hut behind him. “I’ll need your blood, my child.”
Itzel steps back and takes a big gulp, as hearing this makes her feel very squeamish. “My... blood?”
“Of course, you stupid girl. Everything comes at a cost!” the old man says snappily. “Blood is what bounds you to your forebears, so if you wish for me to search for them, I’ll need yours.” He reaches his right hand to her, his index finger arched and bearing a long nail sharpened to a fine point, yet he does this while still keeping his face buried in his texts, as if he were too busy to afford her all of his attention even for a moment. “You needn’t worry—all you’ll feel is a little prick. Consider it a small price to pay for my service.”
Itzel hesitantly places her hand out, palm upward, with her index finger underneath his, and with a swift flick, the old man pricks her finger with his sharp nail. She winces—between the thorny vines and sharp nails, she’s been pricked an awful lot this morning!
He pulls her hand forward, quite forcefully, and stamps her index finger on the bark paper on his desk to leave a blood print, and as soon as he’s done with that, he pushes her back away from the desk, just as forcefully as he yanked her forward. Itzel’s taken aback by just how rude this old man is! Then, still without raising nor turning his head, he takes a scroll from a pile beside his desk, which he unfolds like an accordion across the table, and skims through it—his head bobbing up and down and tilting left and right with brisk jerks like that of a bird—appearing to check everything he sees against her blood print. He grabs another scroll, and another, and another.
“Very curious indeed,” he says after a long while.
Itzel is sucking on her throbbing index finger and is getting very worried now—not to mention she’s still irked by just how brusquely this old man treats her.
“I cannot find this woman of whom you speak.”
She feels her heart immediately sink to her feet. “She has to be here! Are you sure?”
“I am positive, my child. If she is here, there will be a record—of that there is no doubt. I’ve been doing this for a very long time, ever since this great city was first built.”
Itzel doesn’t question that, judging from all the cobwebs around him. “But I don’t understand where she could be! She must be here somewhere. I saw her fall through the cenote!”
Lord Itzamna continues looking through his pages upon pages of texts, examining every detail with meticulousness. “There’s no record of her in the City of the Dead. And every soul who comes to Xibalba is brought to this city.”
“Maybe there’s been a mistake?”
“I’m the god of knowledge. I don’t make mistakes,” he says with a raised, gruff voice, clearly offended by this accusation.
Itzel steps back, worried that the old man might pull or shove her around some more. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that you made it. Could someone else have made it?”
Lord Itzamna taps his desk with long fingers and ponders with another droning “hmmmmm”.
“Hmmm?” she asks.
The old man continues humming to himself and tapping his fingers on his desk as if lost in thought, then at last says, “The only possibility is that the boatmen who bring new arrivals might have done something wrong. We no longer have the Paddler Twins, so we have to rely on the dwarfs, the aluxes, and they can be rather clumsy and—well, stupid. Very stupid. Everything was far more efficient in the olden days, when the Death god ruled all Xibalba.”
“Could she be somewhere else?” She remembers the farmer’s family had mentioned another settlement of people up in the mountains. “Could she be in that village in the mountains?”
“You are referring to the village of Sleeping Lake, I presume?”
Itzel nods eagerly—she had forgotten the name, but that rings a bell. “That’s it! Could she be there?”
“If she somehow slipped through the aluxes’s fingers, there is a slight possibility. But I am not in communication with the chief of Sleeping Lake. She is a stubborn old woman who’s run afoul of the gods and refuses to speak with any of us. And even if she were willing to talk, she wouldn’t risk sending her messenger falcon across the lake into these storms.”
“I’ll have to go there, then. It’s the only other place she could be, right?”
“One of two places. Outside of this city, human souls can only be in the village of Sleeping Lake or in the fire pits in the North.”
Itzel begins to shake. “The North?” She remembers what Quashy and One Reed had told her about the North—that it was the domain where they tortured wicked souls in massive pits of fire in the desert, and that it was a foul place that no sane person would dare go to. “My grandma couldn’t have been sent there! She wouldn
’t deserve it! She was a good person. The best person I know!” She grabs hold of the old man’s arm. “Please tell me she isn’t there!”
He pulls his arm away from her. “You needn’t raise your voice, my child. If she had been sent there, there would be a record of it. And not many people are taken there these days, ever since the Death god Yum Kimil lost the throne and disappeared. Now the North is governed by the Nine Death Lords that rule in his absence, and I have an agreement with them that all souls must be brought to my city first for my record-keeping. Unless they had so special an interest in your grandmother that they would dare to violate the terms of an agreement they’ve honoured for thousands of years, there would be no reason for them to have taken her without informing me. Can you think of any reason why your grandmother would be of special interest to the Death Lords?”
Itzel wipes her tears, trying to keep herself together so she doesn’t break down in this cold-hearted stranger’s hut. “No.”
“Then I believe our meeting is finished,” he says coldly, “unless of course there is anyone else you’d like me to look up.”
Itzel finds it difficult to breathe, but she tries her best to think straight. An idea comes to her mind. “What about my grandpa? Could he be here too? Maybe he could help us!”
Lord Itzamna skims through the pages. “And he was a follower of the old gods also, I presume?”
“I don’t know,” she admits. “Grandma didn’t speak much about him. He died before grandma had my mama.”
After more browsing, he closes all of his books, and taps the desk with his long fingers. “I can’t find him here either,” he says. “Which I suspect means he never came here in the first place.”
Itzel lowers her head. “Grandpa…”
“You needn’t fret. He must simply lie beyond the horizonless sea, in which case he won’t be accounted for in my books. Your grandmother, however, is quite the mystery indeed, if what you say about her is true. Assuming she exists, and you’re not playing the god of knowledge for a fool.”
