Chapter Three #3
She looked at the platform again, then at the surrounding terrain, and then back at the map.
Hmm. She’d drawn a few small squares where she thought there might be a structure of some kind based off the small map her mom had hand-drawn in her notebook, but if this platform was where she thought it was on this particular map, then there was no mention of it in her mom’s notes.
Which wasn’t exactly surprising, considering how little her mother had garnered about this site.
Quint joined her on what was left of the old limestone-covered road. “Is it just me or is the jungle thicker here than back by Calakmul?”
“I doubt it’s been disturbed by humans in a long time.”
He grimaced slightly. “That’s too bad for our shoulders and back muscles.”
“I’ll give you a rubdown later to make up for it.”
He harrumphed. “I fell for that last night, and look where it landed me—sweating like a pig under a layer of hot pepper grease.”
“Yeah, but you know how much I like snuggling with Rover.”
Rover was her pet javelina, which officially wasn’t a pig but rather a peccary, as she had to keep reminding her father whenever he complained about her tent being a messy sty with the pig to prove it.
“I miss that big boy,” Quint said, smiling. “His appetite for María’s handmade tortillas almost matches mine.”
“I think he’d win an eating contest.”
“Maybe.” He pointed up at the sky. “So, a vulture accompanies the Lord of Death.”
She nodded. “Yes, but how the vulture is shown on whatever vessel or glyph it adorns determines if it is a positive or negative reference.”
“Meaning you have to look at it in its current place along with its surrounding glyphs or drawings,” he said.
“In situ, right. But that isn’t always possible if looters have interfered.”
“That sort of reminds me of ground truthing. You know, looking at the contents of a dig site in situ to understand the context rather than simply staring at a LIDAR map.”
“Exactly.” She frowned at the rubble, imagining what the platform used to look like.
“I wish we could find a stela hinting at the purpose of this structure. There’s nothing about it in the few notes my mom had collected about this site.
Dad told me it was one of the places she kept wanting to explore further, but paying jobs kept her from it. ”
“What did your mom write about this place?”
“I told you most of it already.”
“Yeah, well, give me the highlights again. I think I was awake listening for passing snakes and hungry jaguars for half of last night, feeling a bit like a big hunk of freshly peppered meat inside mesh packaging, so my memory is sketchy.”
“You’re a big hunk, all right,” she said, winking at him.
“Don’t be trying to sway me with your feminine wiles, Dr. García. What’s the story on this site?”
“From what Mom gleaned via other archaeologists and the few mentions in texts and papers about this place, which she called Site 5, she hypothesized it was a highly religious sanctuary of sorts.”
“Site 5? That’s not the sexiest of names.”
“Most sites start out as letters or numbers.”
“What happened to Sites 1 through 4?”
“There are no others. Five was her lucky number.”
Quint stared at the platform for a few seconds before turning back to her. “Highly religious, huh? Rather than just a plain old Maya city full of working-class citizens?”
Angélica lowered her voice. “There’s a rough sketch of a Maya glyph supposedly found at the site that showed a Maya shaman being sacrificed. Shamans were usually the ones doing the sacrificing, not the other way around.”
“Did your mom draw a picture of this glyph?”
“No.” She reached over and brushed a leafcutter ant off Quint’s sleeve.
“There were also a few published papers she found that had local shaman anecdotes about a mystical place hidden deep in the jungle. A hallowed site where only kings and shamans were allowed. The stories end with a warning that anyone else who trespassed would be at the mercy of gods of the Underworld.”
“Meaning they’d be sacrificed?”
“More like terrorized by supernatural beings for the rest of their lives. One account told of a man from a village a couple of days’ walk south of Calakmul who went into the forest to hunt deer and didn’t come home that night or the next.
His wife and family went looking for him, but due to heavy downpours, they had to turn back.
When he finally stumbled into the village two weeks later, his hair was completely white and he spoke mostly gibberish mixed with cries and shrieks. ”
Quint cringed. “Was he able to tell what had happened?”
“A little. He talked of a beautiful woman who’d promised to lead him to a herd of well-fattened deer. But she’d been an Xtabay.”
“Ahhh. So, he fell for the hot female demon with the come-hither-big-boy curves and heart-stopping hugs, who shakes her money maker in the fields and forest at night while waiting for some lonely, sorry sucker to tease to death.”
She chortled at his take on the myth of the Maya femme fatale. “I do love the way you can paint a picture with words, Mr. Big-time Photojournalist.”
“Oh, yeah?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “You want me to throw together a few sonnets about your leaf-filled hair, sweaty skin, and big sexy brain? I could serenade you later from inside my bugless tent.”
“As much as I love a good, romantic crooning, the lack of a cold beer is a mood-killer.”
“Shucks. I’ll have to save my romancing for when we get back home.” He swatted at a fly circling them, trying to find a landing place. “So, did the Xtabay turn the hunter’s hair white with her killer embrace?”
“No, but she drugged him with magical flower pollen and dragged him deep into the jungle.”
“Damn. She must have been a strong demon.”
“Have you ever met a wimpy one?”
“Not yet, but this trip isn’t over.”
She continued the story from her mother’s notes. “The Xtabay left him lying inside a tall wall in what he described as an old, empty village.”
“A walled village? Sounds sort of European in the Middle Ages. Did the Maya believe in time traveling?”
“No. The hunter called it a hole to the Underworld.”
“A hole to Hell. Creepy.”
“He described altars made of human skulls and walls of human bones. He told of a dwarf trickster known as alux calling up Underworld demons to come take him, of gruesome creatures with long claws and spiked tails climbing their way out from a sunken temple, of growls and snarls that terrified him to tears. Somehow, he managed to scale one of the walls and flee back into the jungle. From there, he backtracked via the trail left by the Xtabay dragging his body and eventually found his way home. While he escaped the demons, he suffered for the rest of his life from grisly visions filled with nightmarish gods that haunted him every time he closed his eyes.”
“Shit. Do you think that story holds any truth?” At her shrug, he cringed. “I have some nightmare visions of my own after the last site you dragged me to, Dr. Xtabay.”
“Dragged?” She backhanded his shoulder. “You flew in on your own and refused to leave even after I strongly suggested you go back home.”
“As if you could get rid of me so easily, boss lady.” He caught her hand and squeezed it lightly before dropping it. “That tale about the lost hunter reminds me of a curse. You know, a ‘stay away from this treacherous place or die’ kind of dealio.”
“The hunter lives at the end of the story, and now you’re starting to sound like my father.”
“Great minds think alike.”
“Yeah yeah yeah.” She rolled up her map and stuffed it back in her pack. “Truth be told, though, Teodoro claimed to have heard that several Maya people and many outsiders have gone looking for this place and never returned.”
He scoffed. “And you’re telling me this now? Standing on the threshold of a mythical hole to Hell?”
She waved him off. “It’s hearsay, that’s all.”
“Teodoro heard this scuttlebutt from whom?”
“You’re not going to cite him in your article about this place, are you?”
“No, I’m just wondering about his source.”
“When I asked where he heard it, he said, ‘In the wind,’ and walked away.”
“Nice and cryptic. I’d expect nothing less of our favorite shaman.”
She turned back to the platform structure.
“Mom believed that anecdotes like these were merely tall tales meant to scare away looters. To keep others from looking for this place, since there would undoubtedly be some top-level jade sculptures if it were a religious sanctuary. Maybe even some of that elusive Maya gold the Conquistadors were determined to find no matter how much death followed in their wake.”
Quint shook his head. “Those greedy, no-good, small-pox spreading sons-a-bitches.”
“Now that’s my kind of sonnet. Sing me more, minstrel.”
He looked down at her with one raised eyebrow. “What do you believe, boss lady?”
“I honestly don’t know, but my mother’s curiosity about this place is contagious.” Enough so that Angélica had been willing to forgo a romantic vacation with Quint and risk derailing their developing relationship.
He blew out a breath, fanning his shirt. “Dig deeper,” he said under his breath.
“What?”
“That was something Dr. Hughes used to say when I was working with him decades ago at the other site.”
Dr. Hughes had been a mentor of sorts to Quint. “Dig deeper?”
“Yep. Whenever he didn’t have the answer to these sorts of ancient Maya mysteries, he’d tell me we’d just have to dig deeper.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
“Both.” He pulled his machete from the sheath on his belt. “Shall I get back to whacking a path for you around the temple, my queen?”
She started to nod, but a movement off to her left caught her attention.
Over where the sacbe continued into the overgrown mess of thorn scrub and vines and fronds stood KuTu, frowning at them—or rather at Quint in particular.
In his army green camouflage uniform, the jungle specialist almost blended into the forest. Where was the orange vest he’d been wearing when he left them to go scout ahead?
“Did you find anything?” Angélica asked the guard.
KuTu dragged his gaze away from Quint, frowning up at the sky for several silent seconds before locking onto her. Was he weighing his answer or debating on telling her the truth?
Or maybe, since Quint was standing beside her, KuTu was struggling to come up with the words in English, which she’d found out last night was his third language after Maya and Spanish.
She’d told KuTu he could use either of the other languages with her, but like her father, he’d dug in his heels and kept bungling his way through short English sentences.
Rather than answer, Kutu held out his hand toward her, palm up but fist closed.
Crud. She’d meant for him to look for structures, not trinkets. Small items needed to be left in place so she could note their exact location at the site and the surrounding context before collecting them to be taken back to INAH’s headquarters for further analysis.
She stepped closer to him. “What is it?”
KuTu opened his fingers.
“What the hell?” Quint joined them. “Is that a tooth?”