Chapter 22 #3
No longer alone, I welcomed the darkness and found a place against the wall to sit down.
The stone was cold and hard, but the cavern smelled cleaner than most of the others I’d seen so far, probably because it was a completely closed system.
No bats could fly in and out of here, no insects or birds chirped high above us.
Our enemies had chosen it well, but they hadn’t counted on his secret weapon. Me.
I shifted, trying to find the least uncomfortable spot, but it wasn’t easy. Once I settled, I felt the top of my head for my horns. About three inches long and two inches wide, the ends were sharp and pointed diagonally up with a slight curve out of my hair.
“Unexpected,” said Camazotz, joining me in the dim light.
“I hope you didn’t tell them we’d wait ‘til morning to eat them,” I said, unwilling to address the appearance of the horns and what that could possibly mean.
“That would have been a fine idea. At least then you wouldn’t have to deal with rescuing them tomorrow.” He sat down next to me, scooting close until we sat side by side. “So, tell me, what happened?”
I let out a big sigh. Where to begin?
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah. I snuck into the house and saw them take you down. Your wife,” I cleared my throat and gave him a look which he ignored, “caught me in a net. She thought you had sent in an imposter and snuck in as a sparrow.”
“What happened when she figured out you were not me?”
“I turned her into a statue.”
I paused, waiting for him to say something.
Anything really. But he sat so still, his breathing heavy.
The light still shone a good forty feet away from us, casting a white disc against the cave wall.
We had just enough light to make out the shapes of the boulders around us, but no details.
The low murmuring of the men was all I could hear.
This place would be freaky once it went fully dark.
“So, yeah. You’re married. Let’s talk about that,” I said once it became clear Camazotz didn’t plan to volunteer anything.
“I’m not married in the sense you’re thinking. Ixtab was, what do you call it, my common-law wife for a while, but then she left me. We never signed any papers or swore to a god to be faithful. So, you know, not really my wife.”
“Everyone else seems to think so. Including her.”
“Corvus, she hasn’t shared my bed in two hundred years.”
“And yet you’re pretty torn up about the fact I turned her into stone.”
“Is that what you think I’m worried about? I thought you knew me so well.”
“So, why are you still calling her wife if she wasn’t really, and it was so long ago?.”
“Bad joke.” His reply came quickly but left me feeling empty. I had asked the question casually, but the longer I waited for a serious response, the more important it became to receive a real answer.
So, I waited. And waited. At the point I despaired he would ever answer, he sighed.
“It was a bad joke, in the beginning, back when she left me for Chaac. I am not saying I didn’t miss her or that it didn’t hurt my feelings or my ego that she left me for him, because it did.
He and I have been in competition for a long, long time.
We knew each other as boys. Some of our interactions, looking back, may have tended toward the juvenile.
” I held my breath. This was more than I could have hoped for.
He took a long breath and continued. “I have been calling her my wife in front of him for so long, it has lost all meaning.”
It was my turn to let out a deep sigh.
His hand reached over to mine and tugged.
“Come here, little crow. This ground is hard.” I let him pull me into his lap, but balancing on his hard thighs wasn’t comfortable, so I settled in between his legs, leaning back against his chest. The ground was still hard beneath my ass, but surrounded by his heat, I felt better.
Safer than I had since seeing him hit the ground the night before.
“Thank you for coming to save me. Tell me everything.”
I did, making sure he knew how I felt about leaving out the real reason they wanted to punish him.
When I told him about the pantomime and turning into a crocodile, he chuckled behind me, but his good mood drained away when I described my journey through the underwater rivers to find him.
Even my descriptions of the bat caves didn’t cheer him back up.
“We just have to swim to the next big cave with an opening to the sky, and then we can fly away. Fly all the way back home.”
“Tell me, Corvus, have you ever been afraid of something?”
I had to laugh. “So many things.”
“No, I’m talking about bone-deep terrified. Certain death if you attempt it type of fear.”
“Pretty sure you just described my entire day and the one before it. And yet, here I am.”
He let out a sigh, which triggered a big yawn in me. “You should sleep. You’ve definitely earned it.”
“Aren’t you tired?” Another yawn ripped out of me. He was so warm and comforting around me.
“I’ve only just woken up. But sleep now. I’ve got a lot to consider.”
Those were the last words I heard before I drifted off. Safe for the moment. Finally.