by Ian Gibson
“It took a great deal of my strength, which I don’t have much left of these days, but this tree is very special to me, so it was worth saving it.” The jaguar gazes at the flamboyant for a brief while until he’s snapped out of his nostalgic trance and his smile fades. “Of course, it was shortly after I did that, when I was especially weak, that Tata Duende captured me.” He looks downriver, as if to check for any sign that they’re being followed now that they’ve stopped moving. “The humans usually don’t venture farther than the Flame Tree. Much like the sacred Thunder Tree of the howler monkeys, it marks a border that they don’t cross—unless of course they’re looking for trouble. But if the Dead Queen wants the jade stone of light as you claim, it’s safe to say she’s looking for trouble. It’s best we make haste to the watchtower.” He crouches down. "I can take you to it.”
Itzel stares at him with eyes wide. “You want us to… hop on?” She’s ridden on his back before, but not when he was a giant like this!
“It’ll be much faster this way,” he says. “We have a lot of ground to cover. Besides, you’re cold and soaking wet, so why not hop into the sunshine?”
She can’t say no to that offer, but she has to do something first. She starts walking up the small hill to the flamboyant tree. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Quashy asks her.
“I’m looking for somewhere to plant this first.” She puts down the wicker basket, takes out the small potted seedling inside it, and points to the ground. “Here’s a good spot for it, but you need to be the one to plant it, so come and dig the hole.”
“Why do I need to plant it?” he asks, still confused by the point of all of this.
“Because it’s your plant!”
Quashy comes to the spot and digs a small hole with his snout—he manages it fairly easily as the soil is soft from the rain. Itzel hands him the seedling, and he wraps his tail around the stem, places it in the hole, and with his snout he pushes the unearthed soil back into it and pats it down.
“This is a special plant,” Itzel says, squatting next to him.
“Does it grow fingers too?” he asks, his words dripping with sarcasm.
She pets him on the head. “You should come back a bit later, just to check on it, okay?” She picks up the small pot it’s in and presents it to him. “And you get the pot too!”
He frowns at the very small, plain-looking plant pot. “It even has a hole in the bottom,” he grumbles. “What kind of pot has a hole in the bottom?”
“A plant pot.”
He lets out a relenting groan and takes it with his tail.
Itzel leaves the basket by the flamboyant tree. “You can come back for this later too.” She points to the striped bamboo it’s made with. “It even has stripes like your tail, so it’s made just for you.”
“Do they make spotted baskets?” the giant jaguar asks.
“Spots aren’t trendy,” says the coati.
“I like spots too,” Itzel tells Kinich Ahau with a smile as she walks back downhill.
Kinich Ahau smiles back. “Thank you, little Itzel.”
Quashy gives himself a good shake to dry off from the rain and follows her. “You can’t like both.”
“Yes, I can.” She scoops up the coati with one arm and spends a moment figuring out how to climb onto the giant jaguar’s back, which proves to be more challenging this time given that he’s ten times as large as the last time she rode him.
Kinich Ahau lets out a purring chuckle. “Do you need me to shrink?”
“No, no, I’ve got this,” she says, holding out her snake-stick above her head.
The snake-stick flaps its wings and tugs her up the jaguar’s side so she can sit astride his back. She plops Quashy down in front of her and brushes the jaguar’s fur with her hands—it’s dry, soft, and comfortably warm, miraculously untouched by the rain.
Kinich Ahau rises to his feet. “Hold on tight.”
He hastens his walk into a sprint so fast that even his own sunbeam has a lot of difficulty keeping up with him, and Itzel is sprayed in the face as the rain comes at her sideways from the jaguar’s speed, but she couldn’t care less about it as she’s having the time of her life. They soon come to a large fig tree blocking their path, with its branches sprawling over the river and its thick roots clutching the riverbank like the tentacles of an octopus. Much to their surprise, the giant jaguar doesn’t slow down and instead leaps across the river—easily covering the width of it in a single bound—and lands on the western bank before leaping back across the moment he’s clear of the fig tree.
Itzel squeals excitedly, bearing the biggest grin on her face.
Quashy, whose head is swirling nauseously, doesn’t quite share her enthusiasm. “If he does that again, I’ll throw up my finger soup on his spots.”
At such a brisk pace it doesn’t take them long to reach the fork in the river. Itzel wishes she could always travel this quickly—Xibalba would be a lot easier to traverse on the back of a giant jaguar. An old stone tower stands on the eastern shore, just opposite where Rocky Creek spills into the Forked Tongue River. It’s covered in vines and moss, as if the newly regrown forest has already decided to claim it for itself. Surprisingly, it doesn’t look like it was harmed much from the fire, apart from a few scorches along the bottom of its walls.
Kinich Ahau’s sprint slows to a walk. “They used this lookout to watch over new souls as they’re escorted downriver to the lake, and finally to the City of the Dead. Those were the olden days when the canoe was rowed by the Paddler Twins, and their canoe was large enough to carry as many as two hundred souls at a time. Everything about it was much grander and larger back then, because Xibalba itself was much grander and larger. But when the Death god lost his throne, the Paddler Twins sank into the river with their canoe. The aluxes assumed these duties in their place, but this tower was abandoned. They complained that the steps were too big for their little legs, and they couldn’t see over the parapet.”
Quashy stifles a laugh.
Itzel looks at him. “You’re short too, you know.”
He huffs. “Only because I have no legs. And I can stand on my tail, you know!”
Kinich Ahau crouches at the base of the tower so they can dismount him. “I’ll wait here until you receive your message, just to ensure you're safe from the Dead Queen and her army.”
“Thanks, Kinich Ahau!” she tells him, feeling considerably more reassured that she has a giant jaguar god to protect her.
He lies down, basking in his beam of sunlight and looking at the heavy rain nourishing the jungle around them. “It’s nice to see the rain here again.”
“Sure, except it came from a giant fat frog who tried to eat us,” Quashy says.
Kinich Ahau bellows a hearty laugh. “You are a very funny furry snake.”
The coati stiffens his tail angrily. “I’m a coati and you know that. You're saying it on purpose now.”
“Then how are you able to slither through the grass like a snake?” The jaguar asks him. “And why can you stand up on your tail like one? And where are your arms and legs?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t know!” Quashy says exasperatedly.
Kinich Ahau stares downriver. “Well then, until you know, you’re a furry snake.”
“Hello, miss!” howls a voice so loud that it rustles the branches and disturbs the peace of the rainforest, which aside from the patter of rain had been remarkably quiet until now.
They see a howler monkey swinging hurriedly along the tree branches on the edge of the forest across the river fork. It sounded like it was much closer than it was, reminding Itzel of just how well the howler monkeys can carry their voices.
“The Howler Network should be up and running again smoothly!” the howler shouts to them. “One moment, I just need to test the connection first!” It turns and howls into the forest and immediately receives a howl back. “Wow, that’s fast!” It turns back to them. “Would
you like me to pass on a message through the network?”
Itzel thinks for a moment of what to say. “Yes, please!” she shouts over the river. “Can you move those rocks blocking the cave?”
The howler shouts back, “Not a problem! Now that the gods have regained their strength, Kukulkan will be ordering Cabrakan to clear those rocks, and then you can go home!”
It howls into the forest, and she can hear a litany of other howls conveying her message into the distance. She realises that forest must be the same one she passed through when she first entered Xibalba—the Howling Forest, as she remembers, which she had thought was a fitting name for a forest so loud.
“Very good news,” Kinich Ahau says. “You'll get the message here and be able to return home without any trouble. And take the jade stone with you before the Dead Queen has any chance of finding it.”
But Itzel's not entirely convinced of that. “The bats could give me trouble in the cave again.”
“She's right!” Quashy says. “The vampire bats have been out for her. They've always been crazy, but they've been especially crazy around her.”
“That would be Camazotz,” the jaguar says. “He’s the Bat god, but he’s not himself anymore, and what’s left of him is driven only by his most primal instinct—his bloodthirst.” He bows his head pityingly. “I feel sorry for him, as he lost his mind when Xibalba lost the nights. And the last thing he needs is the Sun god walking into his cave—it'll drive him even madder. It's best that you be as quiet as you can once you're inside his cave.”
“I didn’t see a giant Bat god,” remarks Itzel. “Just lots and lots of bats.”
“Those are all Camazotz,” says Kinich Ahau. “The crazy ones that attacked you, at least.”
“All of them?” Itzel asks, finding that difficult to believe. “How can he be so many bats? I thought you gods could only be four at most?”
“Most of the gods are fourfold,” he says, “the only exceptions being my sister and me—we are the twofold twins, as we gave up our hearts to be the Sun and Moon. Camazotz, on the other hand, split himself apart even more, into hundreds if not thousands of pieces, to the point that he can’t put himself back together even if he wanted to.”
“But how did that happen to him?”
“With two suns, the constant sunlight blinded him so much that he couldn’t see where he was going, and he accidentally crossed from one domain of Xibalba to another when he was split in four. The fourfold gods shouldn’t do that unless they become whole again. Chaac of the East should never cross to the South, for instance—just as I had told you in the wetlands. He’d have to merge all four of his fourths in Xibalba’s centre first—that’s anywhere on the Lake of Tears. It’s the ‘fourfold rule’. My sister and I never needed to worry about that since our Sun and Moon aren’t confined to the domains, and we never learnt how to split ourselves any more than we already are. After what happened to Camazotz, I’m relieved we didn’t.”
“That’s sad,” she says, pitying Camazotz’s madness, although that would explain why there are so many bats that have tormented her ever since she first arrived in the Underworld. “Xibalba really needs its nights again. It’s too sunny here!”
Kinich Ahau smiles and purrs. “Says the girl to the Sun god.”
Iguana Lounge
A flight of steps leads up and around the tower to the top. Itzel climbs them carefully as they’re steep and wet from the rain. Quashy simply swings his tail up to wrap it around the parapet at the top and retracts it, carrying himself upward.
“Too slow!” he says tauntingly to Itzel as he passes her by on their way to the top, hanging upside down and hauling himself up by his tail.
Itzel notices that smoke is wafting through the narrow slits in the walls, but it’s too dark to see anything inside. “Is there a fire inside?” she asks Quashy.
“It’s not smoke—it’s steam,” he responds, having already hauled himself to the top.
She reaches the top a fair bit later, panting from climbing the steep flight of steps. It has a stone roof tangled with vines, and orchids hanging from its eaves, and there’s a wooden hatch in the middle of the stone floor with steam rising from the gaps in its sides. She sees Quashy chatting with a bright green iguana who’s lounging on the parapet, its long, striped tail hanging off the edge. She guesses this must be one of the stripe-tailed friends he was referring to.
“Ah, I was beginning to think you wouldn’t make it,” Quashy says teasingly. He turns to the iguana. “This is Itzel—the friend I was telling you about.”
The iguana stares at Itzel, but it’s almost completely motionless except for its eye. “She’s a human! How unexpected! Good day, Itzel.”
She waves to the iguana. “Good day, iguana! Do you have a name?”
The iguana blinks at her curiously, as if it had never been asked that question before. “No, I’ve never needed a name before.”
“Iguanas are beyond the need for names,” Quashy explains. “Actually, they’re beyond the need for a lot of things.”
“Nice to meet you then, nameless iguana,” she says.
A very slight smile curls up the iguana’s mouth. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Itzel walks to the parapet and stares out to the river and the forest around it, entranced by the rain as it continues to pour. She finds the view from the tower quite breath-taking—they’re peeking just slightly over the forest canopy, and she can see the fork of the river below. Looking left and right, she sees the Forked Tongue River with its green water winding and twisting through the forest—she’s reminded of a snake when she sees it from this height, and especially of Kukulkan considering the size of it. “The water is so green,” she remarks to the iguana. “As green as you.”
“The water of the Forked Tongue River is the freshest water in all of Xibalba,” the iguana says. “They call it the ‘River that Runs between Life and Death’, as its water comes from the land of the living.”
“Which means you can find all kinds of special things in there brought from the other world,” Quashy says. “Including shiny things.”
“In a way, you could say that this river in the only thing in Xibalba that's still alive,” says the iguana.
Itzel and Quashy exchange quiet glances, as they both know what the iguana has said isn't entirely true, seeing as there's a living girl standing right next to it, but they also think it's best to not advertise that.
Looking ahead, Itzel sees the river of Rocky Creek bringing its crystal-clear water from the distant highlands. Everything looks so different now that the forest has returned, and she breathes in the fresh air that’s no longer saturated with smoke and dust. She finds it very peaceful and relaxing up here, and well worth the effort of climbing all those steps.
“It’s quite the view, isn’t it?” the iguana says. “We always enjoy welcoming a new guest to Iguana Lounge.”
“‘Iguana Lounge’?” Itzel asks. “Isn’t this a lookout, not a lounge?”
The iguana turns its head towards the wooden hatch in the centre of the floor, so Itzel opens it, releasing a big plume of steam. When it clears, she sees several iguanas in a hot, dark steam room inside the tower. The room goes all the way down to the bottom of the tower without any floors in between, which makes her wonder if the lookout had also been used as a storehouse of some sort. Many of the iguanas are lying on very small hammocks fastened to stone hooks in the walls. There are so many hammocks, in fact, that the iguanas can simply step from one to the other to make their way up or down the room—although they’d need to step on each other to do so. At the very bottom, a pile of rocks is being heated over a fire in a stone pit beside one of the walls, and an iguana is holding a wooden scoop in its mouth, dutifully dipping it in a well of water and splashing the water on the rocks to generate the steam. A few of the iguanas are lying on benches of stone to be closer to the fire, but most have taken to the hammocks, which presumably are much more comfortable, and they’re pushing their tai
ls against the walls to gently swing in them.
After having taken in this very strange sight, Itzel looks at Quashy, expecting some kind of explanation.
“Iguanas are experts at lounging,” he says. “I’m just a lounger-in-training myself, but I’m slowly getting into the swing of things.” He gestures to the hammocks with his snout. “Get it? 'Swing' of things?”
“Very clever, Quashy,” she says.
He makes another one of his devious smirks. “I am clever.”
The iguanas inside the tower all raise their arms lazily to wave at them, before quickly plopping them back down.
“Nice to see you again, Banded Bandit,” one of them says.
“It’s a very exclusive club,” Quashy tells Itzel. “I was a regular here myself. Before the forest fire, at least.”
“They all know you’re the Banded Bandit?” she asks. “I thought you were keeping that a secret.”
“They’re the only ones who know. But they don’t care. They’re iguanas.” Quashy points with his tail to all the iguanas below, who appear to be relaxing so exceptionally well that it almost seems like they’ve made it into an art. “Do they look like they care?”
The iguanas have calm, carefree grins, and hardly move at all, save for the gentle swings of their hammocks.
“We don’t care,” one of them says.
“See?” Quashy tells her. “They don’t care about anything other than lounging and basking. Well, more steaming than basking these days.”
Itzel carefully closes the wooden hatch door to give the iguanas some peace and quiet.
“We protected this place from the forest fires as best we could, for it is our sacred lounge,” says the green iguana resting on the parapet. “We iguanas are sun-worshippers, as we have always loved to bask in the Sun, but the burning heart of Kinich Ahau has become so hot these days that it burns our skin after just a short while. We needed to think more creatively about how best to lounge and keep warm, so we learnt how to make steam baths, and this place was the perfect spot for it.”
