All he could be certain of was that placating rituals were demanded, prayers and sacrifices, lest the prediction in the ancient Chronicles of Chilam Balam again come true. One of the signs, the sickness that was killing the palm trees, had already come true.
On that day, dust claims the earth.
On that day, a blight covers the earth.
On that day, a cloud hangs low.
On that day, a mountain soars.
On that day, a strong man clutches the land.
On that day, things collapse into ruin.
Balam-Acab was fearful of the sentries, but he was also hopeful of succeeding in his mission. After all, if the gods did not want to be placated, if they were truly furious, they would have punished him before now. They would never have allowed him to get this far. Only someone favored by the gods could have walked through the darkness and not been bitten by any of the area’s numerous swarming serpents. In the daylight, he could see and avoid the snakes or else make noises and scare them away. But walking silently and blindly at night? No. Impossible. Without the protection of the gods, he should have stepped not on stones but on death.
At once the density of the darkness changed. The mist seemed less thick. Balam-Acab had reached the edge of the jungle. Hunkering, inhaling the fecund odors of the forest in contrast to the rancid sweat smell of the sentries, he focused on the night, and suddenly, as if an unfelt breeze had swept across the clearing, the fog dissipated. Unexpectedly able now to see the illumination from the moon and stars, he felt as if night had turned into day. At the same time, he had the eerie certainty that when he crept from the jungle into the clearing, the sentries would not be able to see him. From their point of view, the fog would still exist. It would envelop him. It would make him invisible.
But he wasn’t a fool. When he stepped from the jungle, he stayed low, close to the ground, trying not to reveal his silhouette as he hurried forward. In the now-evident light from the moon and stars, he could see and was disturbed by the extent of the work that the invaders had accomplished in the mere two days since he had last been here. A vast new section of forest had been leveled, exposing more brush-covered mounds and hillocks. Without the trees to obscure the skyline, the murky contours of considerably higher breaks in the terrain were also evident. Balam-Acab thought of them as mountains, but none of them was the mountain predicted as one of the signs of the end of the world in the ancient Chronicles of Chilam Balam.
No, these mountains were part of the spirit of the universe. Granted, they weren’t natural. After all, this part of the Yucatan was called the flatlands. Mounds, hillocks, and certainly mountains did not exist. They had all been built here by human beings, by Balam-Acab’s Mayan ancestors, more than a thousand years ago. Although the brush that covered them camouflaged their steps, portals, statuary, and engravings, Balam-Acab knew that the elevations were palaces, pyramids, and temples. The reason they were part of the spirit of the universe was that the ancients who had built them knew how the Underworld, the Middleworld, and the glorious arch of the heavens were linked. The ancients had used their knowledge of the secrets of the passing sun to determine the exact places where monuments in honor of the gods needed to be situated, and in so doing, they focused the energy of both the Underworld and heavenly gods toward the Middleworld and this sacred precinct.
Wary of the armed intruders, Balam-Acab came to the tallest mountain. The excavators had been quick to clear the vegetation from the level ground, but whenever they came to an elevated area, they had left it undisturbed, presumably intending to return and violate it later. He studied the shadowy bushes and saplings that had somehow found places to root between the huge square stone blocks that formed this consecrated edifice. If the bushes and saplings weren’t present, Balam-Acab knew that what looked like a mountain would actually reveal itself to be an enormous terraced pyramid, and that at the top there would be a temple dedicated to the god Kukulcan, the meaning of whose name was “plumed serpent.”
Indeed, the weathered stone image of a serpent’s gigantic head-mouth open, teeth about to strike-projected from the bushes at the bottom of the pyramid. Even in the dark, the serpent’s head was manifest. It was one of several that flanked the stairs that ascended through the terraces on each side of the pyramid. Heart swelling, reassured that he had managed to get this far unmolested, becoming more convinced that the gods favored his mission, Balam-Acab held the blanket-covered bowl protectively to his chest and began the slow, painstaking ascent to the top.
Each step was as high as his knee, and the stairway was angled steeply. During daylight, the arduous climb could be dizzying, not to mention precarious, because the bushes, saplings, and centuries of rain had broken the steps and shifted the stones. He needed all his strength and concentration not to lose his balance in the dark, step on a loose rock, and fall. He didn’t care about his own safety. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have risked being bitten by snakes or shot by sentries in order to come here. What he did care about were the precious objects in his knapsack and in particular the blanket-wrapped sacred bowl he clutched to his chest. He didn’t dare fall and break the bowl. That would be inexcusable. That for certain would prompt the fury of the gods.
As he climbed, his knees aching, his body drenched with sweat, Balam-Acab mentally counted. It was the only way he could measure his progress, for the bushes and saplings above him prevented him from distinguishing the outline of the square temple at the otherwise-pointed top of the pyramid. Ten, eleven, twelve. . One hundred and four, one hundred and. . He strained to breathe. Two hundred and eighty-nine. Two hundred and. . Soon, he thought. By now he could see the top against the stars. Three hundred and. . At last, his heart pounding, he reached the flat surface in front of the temple.
Three hundred and sixty-five. That sacred number represented the number of days in the solar year and had been calculated by Balam-Acab’s ancestors long before the Spanish conquerers first came to the Yucatan in the 1500s. Other sacred numbers had been incorporated into the pyramid-the twenty terraces, for example, which signified the units of twenty days into which the ancients had divided their shorter 260-day ceremonial year. Similarly, there originally had been fifty-two stone images of serpents along the top of the temple, for time revolved in a fifty-two-year circle.
Circles were very much in Balam-Acab’s thoughts as he gently set down the blanket, unwrapped it, and exposed the precious bowl. It didn’t look remarkable. As wide as the distance from his thumb to his elbow, as thick as his thumb, it was old, yes, obviously very old, but it had no brilliant colors, just a dull, dark interior coating, and an outsider might have called it ugly.
Circles, Balam-Acab kept thinking. No longer impeded by his need to protect the bowl, he moved swiftly, taking off his knapsack, removing an obsidian knife, a long cord stitched with thorns, and strips of paper made from the bark of a fig tree. Quickly he removed his sweat-soaked shirt, exposing his gaunt chest to the god of the night.
Circles, cycles, revolutions. Balam-Acab positioned himself so that he stood at the entrance to the temple, facing east, toward where the sun each day began its cycle, toward the direction of the symbol of rebirth. From this high vantage point, he could see far around the pyramid. Even in the dark, he detected the obvious large area that the invaders had denuded of trees. More, he could distinguish the gray area that marked the airstrip a quarter mile to his right. He could see the numerous large tents that the invaders had erected and the log buildings that they were constructing from the fallen trees. He saw several camp fires that he hadn’t been able to notice from the jungle, armed guards casting shadows. Soon more airplanes would arrive with more conquerers and more machinery. More gigantic helicopters would bring more heavy vehicles. The area would become more desecrated. Already a road was being bulldozed through the jungle. Something had to be done to stop them.