Chapter Nine #4
“I’ve seen plenty of walls, including high ones lining ballcourts,” he said. “But nothing like this. Not at Mesoamerican sites, anyway.”
“This wall reminds me of some of the fortifications over in Europe and Asia,” Quint said.
“They built high to keep their enemies out, standing on the top and shooting down.” He turned to her.
“Could this place be evidence of another civilization somehow making their way here long before the Europeans crossed the ocean?”
She shrugged. “That seems a little far-fetched, but who knows? Until we find something that shows us what was going on here, we can only guess.”
This place was not typical of other Maya religious centers, though.
She felt that deep in her gut. For one thing, from what she could see on Dr. Fernel’s map, there were no structures that looked like possible observatories of the heavens, which was important in the Maya traditions and beliefs.
No large temples, either, where the monarchy and the shaman would hold court above their people, maybe even perform bloodletting ceremonies or sacrifices.
Something felt very off here from the get-go, and it had nothing to do with KuTu’s warning about non-singing rocks.
This feeling of hers was all the more reason she needed to go back down that stairway and clear off the blocks lining the steps. There might be answers there, or at least some clues.
“Show us how?” Raul asked her.
“Glyphs, stelae, protected wall paintings that depict life here, burial vases or other carvings that give us clues to what people were here last and when. I think I found some—”
“Dr. García? Juan?” Daisy hurried over to where they all stood, her sketchbook in hand. She smiled at everyone before focusing on Angélica. “Dr. Fernel is looking for you.” She turned to Juan. “You, too.”
“Lead the way, Ms. Walker,” her father said, following Daisy toward where Fernel was waiting.
As soon as her father was out of earshot, she turned to Fernando. “Keep clearing this area, please, but be very careful. There may be more than one snake hanging around. It seems like I read that pit vipers are not territorial.”
“That is true,” Raul confirmed. “The males tend to fight only when there is a female around.”
Fernando tapped his machete on his snake gaiter and then nodded at her before returning to slashing down the vegetation.
“Raul, do you mind helping Fernando clear the area?”
“No problema. I saw a laemanctus serratus earlier.” He grinned wide. “Maybe I’ll see another one.”
“A what?” Quint asked.
“A serrated casquehead iguana.”
Quint looked down at the ground around his boots. “Is it venomous, too?”
“No, just sort of cute.”
“Cute? Does it wag its tail like a puppy or something?”
Now was not the time to talk lizards. Angélica needed to speak with Quint for a moment before heading over to Dr. Fernel.
“Gracias, Raul.” She grabbed Quint’s wrist and pulled him along with her. “I need to talk to you.”
He tugged back on her a little. “Hey, Fernel wants to see you, not me.”
“Just come on.”
They passed Daisy, who was back to sketching, and then paused by the rocks where they’d been sitting before, talking about the macuahuitl.
“I don’t like this,” she said for his ears only.
“Don’t like what? The jungle? It’s a little late in our itinerary for that.”
She shook her head. “Nothing here is typical of the Maya. The wall, the placement of the structures, the lack of any evidence of a ballcourt on the LIDAR, the strange shit Daisy said to you earlier.” She glanced over at where her father, Bronko, and Fernel were waiting for her.
She held up her index finger to give her a moment longer and turned her back to them.
“The fact that our first find was a cache of weapons—”
“Actually,” he interrupted. “The stack of skulls with holes in them was the ‘first’ find, wouldn’t you agree? Talk about strange shit.”
“True.” She’d been willing to move past that in her haste to see what was inside of the wall, but now …
“You said your mom thought this was a sacred type of place, right?” At her nod, he continued, “Would they have played ball games here then?”
“Maybe not, but just about everything was sacred to the Maya in some way or another.” She blew out a breath. “Something just feels off about the site. It’s quieter. Like everything is dead.”
Again, she heard KuTu’s words about the stones in the wall not singing. Where was KuTu, anyway? She hadn’t seen him since he went to try to find a gate or a break in the wall. She hoped he hadn’t run into trouble along the way.
Quint frowned down at her. “Everything is dead, Angélica. Well, except the jungle and the damned snakes.”
“I know, but there doesn’t even seem to be any monkeys in the trees on this side of the wall.”
“Yeah.” He glanced around at the trees. “I was thinking about that earlier, too.”
“There are still plenty of butterflies, though.”
Quint’s frown deepened. “And that.”
“Ancestors,” she said, shaking her head. “This is weird, I’m telling you. What in the hell was this place?”
He stared over her shoulder. “And then there’s that.”
“What?” Angélica turned, doing a double-take at the sight of Dr. Fernel with a small shovel in hand digging into the dirt at the base of a mound about the size of a small car.
“What in the hell is he doing?” she said quietly. “We agreed that nobody would start digging anywhere until we’d done more ground truthing of the potential interest points he’d picked out on his damned map.”
“Well, it appears our resident geoarchaeologist is too impatient to wait any longer.” Quint nudged her forward. “Go kick his ass, boss lady.”