by Ian Gibson
“He didn’t. Ever since she won at that contest, all the gods began to respect her, but she’s never been made one herself. I wouldn’t be surprised if they even feel threatened by her.” He starts groaning. “Enough storytelling. It’s getting too hot to even think. I’m thirsty.” He wraps his tail tightly around the seat, and then slithers up the side of the canoe and hangs overboard by his tail, so he can start lapping up water from the lake with his tongue.
She splashes herself with the lake water again to cool off, but she’s already finding that it’s helping less. She looks at the thundering storm over the island, and the clear sky overhead. “We’ve lost Mister Rumbles,” she says sadly. She doesn’t know what to do now, since Kukulkan told her she needs to bring rain to the rainforest if she wants to return home.
Quashy just stares at her for a moment. “You’ve even given the cloud a name?”
“It helped us!” she says in her defence. “Besides, everything’s sacred, just as you said. And if all things are sacred, then they deserve names, don’t they? Especially if they’re cute.”
“I guess,” he responds, after giving her line of reasoning some thought. “That must be why I have a name, because I’m fiendishly cute.”
“You’re very cute, Quashy,” she affirms, then mumbles softly, “when you’re not thieving things.”
“Good, I thought so!” says the coati, whose cuteness was called into question recently when the gossiping insects in the wetlands had called him ugly, so he needed some reassurance on that. “Anyway, your ‘Mister Rumbles’ should be back any time now. It found its way back from a storm before.” He peeks over the side of the canoe towards the storm behind them. “Although it looks like her storms are getting stronger. Hurakan must be getting even angrier. You really shouldn’t have mentioned her ex-boyfriend to her. What were you thinking?”
“I panicked. I didn’t know what else to say.”
“In cases like that, it might be better to just not say anything at all.”
Itzel frowns at him and continues rowing.
Quashy points with his tail to the horizon ahead of them, but slightly to the left of where the canoe is pointed. “We’re still too west. We need to go south.”
“I’m just going where I see the black smoke,” Itzel says. She points to the giant ceiba tree known as the Mother of Trees, whose distinct treetop rises high and hangs wide over the blanket of smoke, glowing in the sunlight like a lighthouse in a dark sea. “And that big tree.”
“No, you want to go farther south than that. If you continue straight towards the Mother of Trees, we’ll end up right in the middle of where the cursed forest is, and I don’t trust being anywhere near there, even when it’s up in flame.”
“I don’t know which way is south!” she says frustratedly.
“I’m pointing south!” Quashy snaps back. “Besides, we’ll soon see a small island that way, so just head towards it when you see it and keep it on your right. Once we pass it, we’ll be at the mouth of the Forked Tongue River. We’ll be safer there. I’m your guide, remember? If you won’t follow your guide, then what’s the point in having one?”
Itzel turns the boat slightly left and rows where Quashy is pointing his tail. Her hands are shaking as she’s still on edge from having an arrow aimed at her—until the Dead Queen relaxed her bow, she had felt her heart racing so much that it could have leapt out of her chest and flopped like a fish into the lake.
Quashy sees her trembling. “You’re a better rower than I expected,” he says, softening his voice. He didn’t realise it until now, since they’ve been too busy panicking while riding big waves caused either by an earthquake or a storm.
“I sometimes go canoeing in the river near my grandmother’s village,” she says. She remembers fondly how much she enjoyed that river—when it wasn’t swollen to many times its size by a freak rainstorm, at least. The memories help to relax her, and her hands shortly stop shaking.
Quashy tries paddling with his tail again, but realises it isn’t really doing anything. “You’re a better rower than me, that’s for sure.”
“It’s all right,” she assures him. “I wasn’t really expecting a coati with no arms to be able to paddle.”
“But I can do this.” The coati extends his tail again, raises it, then spirals and spins it rapidly in front of his face, much like a makeshift fan. It starts blowing a gentle breeze which he uses to cool himself off, and then he directs it to Itzel.
“How did you learn that?” she says, relishing even the softest breeze in this maddening heat.
“When it gets this hot here, you learn tricks to stay cool. As I said, it’s my tail of tricks.”
Itzel rows for a while longer, but the heat quickly becomes unbearable, and it doesn’t take very long for Quashy to tire himself out from all the fanning.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” he says, leaning overboard again to dip his head in the water. He almost falls over into the water this time in spite of having his tail anchored around the seat.
She rushes over to pick him up out of the water.
“I saw that girl again,” he mumbles when she puts him back safely in the canoe. He shakes the water off his head tiredly.
She returns to her seat. “Which girl?”
“The one in the lake. The one I took the necklace from. I also saw her when I fell into the lake while tied to that tree.”
“Do you think it might be a memory?” she asks. She tries to pick up the oar again, but she struggles—she feels too exhausted to continue.
“The funny thing is that it looked like she was giving me the necklace. But why would someone give me something like that?” Quashy slithers under the shade of the seat. “I’m a coati!”
She wonders if the heat is making him delirious, because this coati is definitely interested in things that normal coatis aren’t. She’s starting to feel dizzy, and she’s completely drenched, not only in the lake water, but also her own sweat. She drops the oar in the canoe right after picking it up, as she’s too weak to paddle anymore. She opens her small canteen and drinks from it, then offers some to coati, who takes it with his tail and quaffs the rest of it down.
She leans over to refill the canteen in the lake but is dismayed to see that the water is steaming in the heat. She dips her hand in it—it’s hot! She slumps down and rests her head against the side of the canoe, and closes her eyes, feeling like she’s on the cusp of fainting. Unlike Quashy she can’t fit underneath the seat, so there’s nowhere to shelter herself from the torrid sunlight. She feels like she’s melting like butter in a frying pan.
A sudden wave of cool air washes over her face, and when she opens her eyes, she notices a shadow has crept over the canoe. She looks up and is relieved to see a familiar little rain cloud above them. “Mister Rumbles!”
Quashy perks up his ears and pokes his snout from underneath the seat. “Took you long enough!”
“You saved us!” Itzel tells the rain cloud.
The cloud is shielding them from the baking sunlight and releases a gentle drizzle, while a fine, cool mist seeps into the air around them. Itzel and Quashy open up their mouths to catch the cool rainwater with their tongues. As they drink it, they find their energy slowly returning to them, and soon they’re able to move again. Itzel even feels a sugar rush.
“Why does it taste sugary?” she asks.
“It’s Chaac’s divine rain,” Quashy says. “He has a sweet tooth.”
She can’t believe it, but she’s actually happy to see rain again—she thought she never would be after the rainstorm in her grandmother’s village. She grabs the oar and starts rowing again with renewed vigour.
Quashy is lying on his back with his mouth hanging open, relishing every drop of rain he catches. “If this won’t put out the forest fire, then I don’t know what will. If there’ll be enough of it left.”
After a long while of rowing, Itzel has to take a break again. The heat of the Day Sun is less of a proble
m, but her arms are sore as she’s rowed far more in the past day than she ever has in her life. She didn’t realise the Underworld would involve so much rowing! She looks at her hands—they’re already red and blistered. She winces, dreading the thought that she has to hold the oar for any longer.
Quashy peeks over the bow of the canoe and spots a small island emerge in the smoky horizon—a spot of lush green against the black clouds of the raging forest fire. “Look!”
“What’s that?” she asks.
“That, my cute little thief-in-training, is the island of Maiden Rock,” he proclaims triumphantly. “It means we’re not far from the river mouth now.”
Itzel starts rowing towards it. “I’m not your thief-in-training.”
Quashy pretends to shed a tear. “You’ve made me so proud.” He looks disappointedly at the basket. “Even if I don’t agree with your choice in what’s worth stealing.” He props his snout up with his tail to ponder. “That said, it must be a very special plant if the Dead Queen is willing to hunt you down for it.”
She groans. “She doesn’t want the plant, Quashy! How many times do I have to tell you! She wants my jade necklace!”
“Ohhhhhh,” he says, as the realisation at last dawns on him. “That makes a lot more sense. Then it’s not that you stole something, but rather that she wanted to steal something from you! Well, for someone who’s worked so hard to perfect herself, she isn’t a very good thief, seeing as you still have it.” He lounges back with a smug grin. “Good. I’m still the best in the world at that.”
She looks down at her dress collar and thinks about the jade stone tucked inside it. She then throws down the oar, cups her face in her hands, and starts to cry.
Quashy is surprised by her sudden outburst of tears. “Hey! It’s all right! You’re the second best in the world at thievery! Or well, you will be once I’ve trained you more. You don’t need to cry about it! Second best isn’t so bad!”
“I’m not… crying about… that,” she says between her sobs.
Quashy slithers up to her. “What’s the matter then?”
“I couldn’t find my grandma. I was hoping to find her in the city, but the old man told me she’s not there. There are only two places she could be—either in some village way up in the mountains or...”
“Or…?”
“In... the... fi—fire pits,” she stammers, her voice wobbling, as she finds the words difficult to come out of her.
Quashy is speechless for a while. He pulls himself up to the seat so he can lie beside Itzel, but he doesn’t know what to say.
“Or maybe she’s just lost!” she cries. “She could be anywhere in this place!”
He shakes his head. “That wouldn’t happen. The Howling Forest lies right beside the Cave of Echoes—you must have walked through it yourself—and that place is full of very nosy, gossipy animals and spirits. Take it from me. It’s like the forest version of Chattering Ponds. Remember those loud ponds in the wetlands?”
She sniffles. “Where the insects called you ugly?”
“Yes,” Quashy says with a frown. “Why do you remember that part the most? Anyway, if a human soul were wandering around lost in a place like Howling Forest, news would have travelled fast, and something would have been done about it... eventually.”
She doubts that, considering how distracted the animals were by the forest fire, especially the howler monkeys who claimed to be its messengers. She starts to dread the thought that she could have been abducted due to all the chaos. “What if someone took her? What about the bats?”
Quashy opens his mouth as if about to outright deny the possibility, but he stops himself. “I was going to say the bats aren’t interested in dead people, but they’re so crazy these days I can’t put anything past them.”
“And it’s my fault!” Her sadness turns to bitterness. “It’s all my fault.”
“None of this is your fault, Itzel,” he says, trying to comfort her.
“Yes, it is,” she says. “All of it is. I wish I had never saved that stupid frog. I didn’t know it was a rain god frog! But I did save it, and it rained, and rained, and rained! It rained so much that it flooded the road out of my grandma’s village so my papa couldn’t take her to the hospital. And she died. She died, Quashy! All because I saved the stupid frog! I was just trying to be nice. I should have just left it there to be snake-food.”
Quashy takes a deep breath. “If the Underworld has taught me anything, it’s that being nice doesn’t get you far. Don’t do anyone any favours unless you’ll be getting something back. That’s the rule of Xibalba, because it’s the rule of the gods.”
“Seems like a very mean rule,” she says, wiping away her tears.
“It’s not nice nor mean. It’s just... fair.”
“You steal from people. How is that fair?”
He huffs. “I simply tacked on a second rule of my own—if you want something, take it. Besides, I’m such an excellent thief. I don’t believe in letting a talent go to waste.”
Itzel glances over her shoulder at the storm behind them, ravaging the Isle of the Dead in the middle of the lake. She can still hear the distant rumbles of thunder. She feels sorry for all the people in its path. “What about that farmer’s family? They took us in, fed us, and even rowed us across the lake! They were nice.”
“You’re right. They were.” Quashy looks at the storm also. “And maybe that’s why they’re stuck outside the city wall desperately trying to grow corn on an island in the middle of a haunted lake that’s either getting hit by fire-hurricanes or earthquakes.”
She looks at him. “Then what about you?”
“What about me?” he asks, almost defensively, as if he feels he’s being accused of something.
“You tried to help me in that storm in the wetlands.”
“Because we had a deal, remember? What use would you be as an accomplice thief if you’re blown away to the edge of the world?”
Itzel narrows her eyes at him. “Is that the only reason why?”
He turns away. “No favours without something in return. That’s the rule.”
She picks up the oar and starts rowing again. She’s silent, and Quashy can tell that she’s angry with him, but he doesn’t say anything more about it.
He perks up his ears and looks towards the small island of Maiden Rock. “Do you hear that?”
Itzel stops rowing for a moment so she can listen carefully. It’s very faint, but she can hear the sound of a woman singing. The voice sounds very familiar to her. She gasps and jumps up in the boat. “That sounds like my grandma!”
“But why would she be on Maiden Rock?” Quashy asks.
She doesn’t know either, but she doesn’t care. She remembers that Tata Duende had told her he had come across an old woman on an island in the lake who wore a white dress very similar to hers. She didn’t know if she could trust a mean-spirited dwarf who tried to eat her thumbs, but maybe he was telling the truth after all.
The island is so densely packed with trees that from afar it almost looked like a single giant bush growing out of the lake.
When they near the shore, Itzel hops out of the canoe into the shallows, and looks up at the rain cloud. “Just a brief stop, Mister Rumbles. I promise!”
The rain cloud seems a little less irritable now than it was when she was in the City of the Dead, and she imagines it’s because it’s released a fair bit of its rain already to help them, so maybe it doesn’t feel like it’s bursting with rainwater anymore—she really hopes it still has enough for the forest fire after all this. She drags the canoe onto a muddy beach, hiding it behind a cluster of reeds just to make sure it’s not so easily spotted from the lake. She hears the voice singing much more clearly now, wafting from deep within the trees. It’s unmistakable to her—it’s definitely the sound of her grandmother’s voice.
“Grandma!” she shouts into the woods. “Grandma! It’s me!” She picks up her snake-stick from the canoe and runs into the woods towa
rds the voice, almost slipping in the mud from the excitement.
Quashy lies in the canoe under the shade of the rain cloud. “I guess it’s just you and me for now, ‘Mister Rumbles’.”
The rain cloud follows Itzel, drifting over the treetops and leaving Quashy to bake in the hot sun.
“Or just me,” he says with a frown. He sniffs the air, as the scent of stew wafts through it, making him realise just how terribly hungry is. “On second thought, I’m coming too.” He slips out of the boat, slithers through the mud, and follows his nose into the jungle.
Itzel looks between the trees and spots the old woman under an outcrop of rock. She’s wearing a long white dress with blue hems of floral patterns—quite similar to her own dress, except that it goes all the way down to cover her feet. She’s sitting by a fire, with a pot of stew simmering overtop, and she’s singing to herself, just like her grandmother always did while she cooked something delicious.
Itzel smiles. Not much has changed about her after all. “Grandma!” she shouts as she rushes over to her.
The old woman turns and looks out into the shaded woods. “Who’s that?”
“It’s me! It’s Itzel!” Itzel runs up to hug her, crying tears of relief.
Her grandmother is startled at first, like she thought she was being ambushed, but at the sight of Itzel she relaxes and hugs her back. ”It...zel,” she whispers.
“I’m so happy to see you, grandma! I was looking all over for you. You won’t believe what happened. Oh! And look!” She takes a step back and giddily twirls around to show off the white dress she’s wearing. “You were right. The dress does suit me!”
Her grandmother smiles. “It is a very nice dress, my love.”
Itzel laughs, wipes away her tears, and grins widely. “Thanks, grandma.” She hugs her again. “I came all the way here to look for you. I saw you fall into the cenote!”
“I fell?” her grandmother asks, tilting her head. She’s wearing two long dangling earrings, made of jade cut almost as thin as feathers, and a matching necklace that tinkles whenever she moves.
