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

by Ian Gibson

  Quashy cowers as she raises her snake-stick threateningly. “What are you doing?”

  And in an instant, before he can make so much as a squeak in protest, she bumps him on the head with the bottom of her snake-stick, and he’s transformed again into Mister Scales. She takes the hair sash from underneath the striped snake and places the cover back on the basket while the upset snake hisses at her, then slips off her sandals and returns inside the hut, looking very embarrassed while holding the sash out in her hand.

  Lady Chel is sitting and weaving on her backstrap loom. She recognises what Itzel’s holding. “When did you—?”

  “I’m really, really, really sorry,” Itzel says. “My friend has a stealing problem, but I’m giving it back to you.” She folds it as neatly as she can, then places it on the table on a pile of other textiles.

  Lady Chel stares at Itzel with her cold eyes, but a hint of warmth comes to her wooden face. “You are honest. I appreciate that.” She beckons Itzel closer.

  “You aren’t going to wrap more vines around me, are you?” Itzel asks, nervously stepping towards the old woman.

  “Not at all, my child. I have a proposition for you. You are free to take anything you like from my home—whatever shawl or manta or hair sash or even plant that catches your eye.” She points to the red hibiscus flower in Itzel’s hair—the one her mother had picked for her. “In exchange for that flower.”

  Itzel raises an eyebrow, confused as to what could possibly be so special about her flower for Lady Chel to consider it a fair exchange.

  “It has the most pleasant smell,” Lady Chel says dreamily. “It smells like it doesn’t come from this world. It’s a smell I haven’t encountered in a long time, and it brings back fond memories of when my husband and I lived in the Middleworld together and always took walks in its forests.” She lets out a tired sigh and the leaves in her hair droop sadly. “Those days are long gone, but I miss them so.”

  Itzel takes the flower out of her hair and looks at it. She’s reminded at first of walking in the forest with her mother and seeing the hummingbird together, and then of her mother sitting by her bed, stroking her hair, the night that her grandmother died. She had placed this flower in her hair, saying that they could really use some good luck. This is her lucky flower, that even found its way back to her in the storm. But when she looks at Lady Chel’s sad eyes staring fondly at the flower in her hand, she thinks about this old, frail woman who stays in her hut all day tending to the sick and wounded, caring for her plants, and weaving, with a husband whom she never sees and who is seemingly no longer even aware of their marriage, and she feels a great sense of pity. Maybe her lucky flower would be better in the care of the goddess of plants—at least then there’d be less of a chance of it ending up inside a tapir’s nose again.

  “You can have it,” Itzel says, offering the flower to her.

  Lady Chel’s face crinkles with a gentle smile. She touches the flower with one of her branch-like fingers, and the flower attaches itself to it, like it’s been returned to somewhere it belongs. “Thank you, my child.” She brings it to her nose and breathes in its subtle aroma. “Two hummingbirds kissed this recently,” she remarks. “Not only my Zunun, but even one from the land of the living! Do you know what that means?”

  “My grandma used to say that when a hummingbird licks from a flower, it gives it some of its good luck.”

  “She was right. And this one is especially lucky.” Lady Chel gently plucks off one of its petals and places it in Itzel’s hand. “If you need any good luck, hold this in your hand and wish for it.”

  “Thanks, miss plant lady!” she says, then looks around her hut to see what she could have in return. There’s no shortage of options to choose from, and under normal circumstances she could spend an age looking at all the beautiful textiles. But she’s pressed for time, and besides that, she already knows what she wants. She walks to the plants that bear fruit shaped a lot like body parts, such as hands and feet and heads, except they’re small and green, like they haven’t ripened into actual body parts yet. There’s a very small one of these bizarre plants in a pot—too young to be bearing any fruit yet—and she takes it.

  “A fine choice,” Lady Chel says. “In Xibalba there’s a plant that can treat every ill. Well, almost every ill. Still haven’t found one that cures the hiccup pandemic, but it’s a work in progress.”

  Itzel nods. “I know who could really use this. Goodbye, miss plant woman.”

  “Farewell, my child,” Lady Chel says, still wearing a subtle smile and admiring the hibiscus flower on her finger. “Go bring the rain.”

  Itzel smiles too. “I will!”

  The Flight to the Pier

  She slips on her sandals, steps outside, and opens the basket with Mister Scales, and puts the small potted seedling and the hibiscus petal inside. Mister Scales hisses at her with much annoyance, so she gently taps his head with the bottom of her snake-stick, and in a burst of green light, the small snake is once again transformed into a coati, though he doesn’t appear any less upset about the whole affair.

  “Why did you do that?” he asks accusingly.

  “I was mad at you,” Itzel says glibly. “Anyway, this plant is for you.”

  Quashy looks at it and wonders if it’s some kind of cruel joke she’s playing on him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Our deal was that I take something from the city for you. You even asked for a pot! Consider our deal done, all right?”

  Quashy frowns at the seedling and the very small, plain-looking pot it’s in. “I had something a lot more lavish in mind. I guess that’s my fault for not specifying.”

  Itzel places the cover on the basket, holds her snake-stick in her armpit so she can pick up the basket with both hands, and heads down the street towards the white limestone road running through the middle of the city.

  “And what am I supposed to do with this plant exactly?” Quashy mumbles bitterly from inside the basket. “I don’t even have a garden!”

  She walks briskly, her rain cloud trailing behind. The streets are noticeably emptier now, so she’s able to make headway quickly, but she walks on the shaded side of the street, as close to the ditch as possible, not only to keep cool, but also so she won’t be so easily spotted. “Do you know how to get off this island?” she whispers to the coati curled up in the basket.

  “Why are we in a rush? What about your grandma?” he asks.

  “Long story. But we need to get to the rainforest.”

  “You’re taking this new rain-bringer job of yours very seriously, eh? We’ll need to go to the pier on the southern shore. If we get there, I can steal a boat for us. Unless of course you’re planning to turn me into a snake again. Then you’re on your own.”

  “No more Mister Scales. I promise.”

  “Don’t believe you.”

  In short order she reaches the grand white road. The vendors there are packing hurriedly by wrapping up all their food and merchandise in the rugs they had been laid out on.

  The same vendor she spoke with earlier is now packing what she has left in pots, which she’s stacking on a small wooden wagon. She wipes the sweat from her forehead, sees Itzel, and waves to her. “Can you believe the people here didn’t use wheels for the longest time? They’d carry everything on their backs! That’s not for me. The last thing I want in the afterlife is another hernia.”

  “Why is everyone packing up?” Itzel asks.

  “They close the markets from mid-morning till the evening because of the heat. I’d happily stay anyway, but I have to pack up as I won’t get any business during the downtime. We’re all slaves to routine here.” The woman notices she’s carrying a basket and breathing heavily as if she were rushing somewhere. “And where are you off to?”

  “I’m leaving the city now.” Itzel waves to her as she walks away. “It was nice to meet you, and thanks again for the food.”

  But the man next to them, who’s busy packing up his di
splay of knives and tools, overhears their conversation and pipes in, “Not exactly a good idea to leave when another storm is afoot.”

  Itzel stops. She’s worried for a moment, until she remembers that the panic earlier was simply caused by an impatient rumble from her rain cloud. It’s probably a false alarm.

  The woman scoffs. “What storms? It’s just a bit of wind and rain!”

  “And hail. And lightning. And fire. And even a shark sometimes,” the man responds.

  “A… shark?” Itzel asks. She wonders if she heard correctly.

  “That’s Lady Xoc, goddess of the sea,” the man says. “The strongest hurricanes can bring her all the way to the lake.”

  Itzel is quite disturbed by the notion of a shark being carried in a hurricane and is glad she and Quashy didn’t encounter any during their dizzying storm-ride across the lake.

  “True, maybe those things too,” the woman concedes. “But mostly they’re just a lot of angry words from Hurakan, and mere words have never hurt me!”

  Itzel hears a very faint rumble of thunder—it sounded like it was coming from much farther away than her rain cloud, which is floating above the tents, so she looks to the eastern sky. Above the arched city entrance, she sees dark, ominous clouds approaching, and they don’t look at all like it’s a false alarm this time. At least they’re still far away, and she might have just enough time to get off this island before they arrive.

  Her gaze falls from the eastern sky to the city entrance below it. Many more guards are now standing there, side by side, blocking the entrance completely and interrogating anyone who wishes to pass in or out. She didn’t see them there earlier, and it occurs to her that the Dead Queen might very well have ordered the soldiers to search for her. She hops down to one of the steps beside the road and crouches to hide.

  “Quashy!” she whispers to her basket in a panic, holding it up just over the road. “Look!”

  The coati raises his head, pushing up the lid on the basket ever so slightly to peek out of it, and sees the line of soldiers carrying spears and wooden shields. “That doesn’t look good.”

  “Any other way out? We need to hurry!”

  “Are those angry-looking armed men looking for you?” Quashy asks.

  “Yes!”

  “Because you stole a... plant?” he asks incredulously.

  Itzel skulks through the crowd to the side of the white road, as she sees a few soldiers marching along it, coming from the entrance. “Not because of the plant!”

  “If you say so, my cute little thief-in-training.” He pauses to think this over. “They built lots of small tunnels into the city walls—I’m guessing to drain all the floodwater from the storms. I saw them when I was scouting the city trying to find ways to get in and out. They’re an easy fit for a coati, but probably a tight squeeze for a human, but it’s all I can think of. If you go through one on the southern wall you’ll get to the pier that way. Just cross the white road and continue straight down the street opposite. Then our only problem is the guards that patrol the wall, but they can’t do much once you’re outside the wall, except...”

  “Except?” Itzel asks worriedly.

  “Well, you know—fire arrows at you. At least that’s what they’ve done every time they’ve seen me trying to sneak in. But who knows, you’re not an infamous coati, and moreover we’re sneaking out, not in, so maybe you’ll be fine!”

  Itzel takes a deep breath. It doesn’t sound ideal, but it’s their only option. She climbs up the step to cross the white road, keeping an eye on the guards gathering near the entrance. Someone pushes against her from behind, and she turns around to see who it was—a feathered snake costume brushes against her face, and she knows right away that it belongs to one of the dancers she had encountered earlier on the plaza, wearing the snake as a costume trailing from his head. She then notices, much to her dismay, that the snake-stick she was holding under her arm is now missing—she first checks the ground to see if she had dropped it when she was shoved, but it’s not there. The snake-dancer has it, and he’s raising it in the air while running up the road. She runs after him, but as she’s carrying the basket with a coati in it, and street merchants keep bumping into her as they pack up their things, she can barely keep up, much less chase him down.

  “Listen to us, Oh Great Feathered Serpent, king of gods! Save us from Hurakan’s wrath!” chants the snake-dancer, twirling around and pumping the snake-stick up and down as he hurries towards the plaza. He shouts to the sky, “Listen to our voices! Do you hear us?”

  “Give that back!” Itzel shouts as she chases him. “That’s my snake-stick!”

  “How did he steal that?” Quasby whispers enviously from inside the basket. “That stick resisted me when I tried to take it. Why isn’t it resisting now? That’s not fair!”

  “I don’t know! Maybe snake-stick’s confused and thinks that’s Kukulkan?” She shouts to it, “That’s not your papa, snake-stick! Come back!”

  But they’ve come to the end of the white road, where it meets the city’s main plaza, and a group of drummers accompanying the snake-dancers beat their tortoise shell drums, and her snake-stick can’t hear Itzel over all the drumming and chanting and singing. The other snake-dancers are dancing in a wide circle around the monument of Kukulkan in the very centre of the plaza, raising their arms in the air and chanting loudly to the sky, as if they’re trying very hard to get a particular god-king’s attention.

  The dancer who took her snake-stick goes to join the others in the circle. While running across the plaza, he shakes the stick frustratedly at the sky. “Hello? Anyone there?” He taps the snake-stick. “Does this thing work?”

  Itzel quickly catches up to him—it doesn’t take her long now that there aren’t so many people bumping into her, as the snake-dancers never seem to run in a straight line, but instead twist and wind their way along, as if they’re mimicking the slither of a snake. She places her basket down and snatches her snake-stick out of his hand. “It’s not yours!” she snaps at him.

  “All right, all right! You’re very feisty for a new arrival,” the snake-dancer says, throwing up his arms in peace. “We’re just desperate to get the Great Feathered Serpent’s attention. That’s all. You can have it back. I figured it must be a fake anyway, since it’s so crudely made. Just look at its crooked neck!” he says with a teasing laugh, but when the snake-stick responds by baring its fangs and hissing at him very angrily— having taken great offence to being called fake, crude, and crooked—his laugh stops abruptly, and his mouth hangs agape. “Or maybe not?” He shouts to the dancers gathered around Kukulkan’s monument, “Hey, come take a look at this!”

  They interrupt their circle of dancing and chanting and start coming their way, but Itzel has already turned around, picked up the basket, and started strutting back to the white road.

  “Her stick bared its fangs and hissed at me!” the snake-dancer tells the others in his troupe.

  “Really?” asks one of them.

  Compelled by curiosity, the troupe of snake-dancers run to catch up with Itzel—even if it meant having to run in a straight line to do so.

  “Where did you get that?” one of them asks her. “Why would a little girl have it?”

  Another looks up at the small rain cloud high above the plaza and is beginning to wonder if it’s following the girl’s movements. “Is the cloud yours too?”

  Brimming with a curious excitement, they flood her with questions, all talking over one another:

  “Who are you, little girl?”—“Can you speak to snakes?”—“Have you met the gods?”—“Have you seen the Great Feathered Serpent?”—“What does he look like in person?”—“Did he ask you any riddles? They say he really loves riddles!”

  Itzel is far too distracted to answer their questions—moreover she wouldn’t be able to answer even if she wanted to, as she’s not given even a moment to think over one before they’ve already asked another, and another. She peeks through a gap between t
he dancers circling and nagging her to look across the plaza and down the street leading to Itzamna’s hut. The street is also much emptier now, like most of the others she’s seen, except for a large group of soldiers that have gathered there. A couple of them are looking towards the dancers in the plaza to check on what the commotion there is about. They then turn and shout farther down the street, and she sees their queen as she emerges from Itzamna’s hut, turns to face the plaza, and heads her way, her brisk walk quickly hastening into an outright sprint.

  The Dead Queen has seen her! Itzel immediately pushes through the dancers and starts running towards the white road, shouting at her rain cloud companion, “Get down!”

  The little rain cloud drops from its height above her, so it floats just over the road no higher than her head, as it loyally drifts beside her.

  “What’s going on now?” Quashy asks. He peeks out from the top of the basket and sees the soldiers chasing them—a tattooed woman is sprinting far ahead of them, shoving her way through the troupe of snake-dancers, who are very confused as to what’s happening. “Whoa! Who is she?”

  Itzel is quickly upon the white road again. She knows the southern wall is to the right, but she instead cuts to the left and crosses the wide avenue. She hops down the steps leading from the elevated road, then ducks and runs into one of the culverts underneath it to head to the street on the other side, in hopes that such a trick might lose her pursuers. There’s a narrow edge along the channel of water that she can run along, although she has to do so carefully so she doesn’t fall into the water.

  “Nice one!” Quashy whispers to commend her, impressed by her escape strategy. “You’re learning!”

  The rain cloud balks at the entrance to the culvert, but she turns to beckon it to come in and follow, and it does so reluctantly. She suspects that it might be afraid of tight spaces. She comes out of the culvert on the other side of the white road, and darts down the street to the southern wall. She looks back towards the white road and sees the soldiers are running the other way. Her plan worked!