I stood over him and peered into the pit. The men grinned up at me. The floor of the unit was a jumble of large stones that could well have been part of a roof. On one, I could see the traces of worn decoration. Others had obviously been shaped.
‘Over there,’ Salvador said, pointing to the far corner of the pit, which was slightly higher than the others. The workman – I recognized him as Salvador’s nephew – stood aside to give me a clear view. Between two stone slabs, a great stone head lay wedged in the floor of the pit.
I told the men to take a break and climbed down into the pit carefully. It was pleasantly cool after the sunshine of the mound. I used a stiff brush to clear the loose dirt away from the face. The head was about three times life size. It was not actually stone; it had been sculpted in the durable stucco that the Maya had manufactured using local limestone. I recognized the spiraling tattoos that decorated one cheek. Zuhuy-kak, the ghost who haunted me, had been a woman of power in her time. Carved shells decorated her carved braids. Below the headdress, the forehead was flattened. Long ago, the tip of the nose had been chipped. A crack ran through the forehead, through the left eye and the left cheek.
I ran one finger along the crack, but could not tell if it was only on the surface or if it went all the way through. Offhand, I would have guessed that it had been at least a thousand years since those staring eyes had last seen the sky.
‘Looks like it could have been part of the roof comb or a decorative facade,’ I said to Tony, trying to suppress my excitement. ‘If that’s so, there should be others. Would you say ninth century or eighth?’
He shrugged and grinned at me and I found myself grinning back. ‘Doesn’t much matter, does it?’ he said.
‘It’s too late to do much now. Looks like it will take a few days to get it free. Tomorrow, let’s start by getting this out of the way,’ I said, tapping on the smaller of the two slabs beside the head. ‘And maybe we can get her out intact.’
I reached up for Tony’s hand, and he helped me climb back into the sun. Salvador was standing by. ‘Good find,’ I said. Salvador shrugged and smiled. ‘We’ll work on it tomorrow.’ We left the head where it lay, staring up at the sky from the rubble of an ancient roof.
8
Diane
‘A ruin is never going to speak, except if one’s mind gives it magnetic power, gives it force. For this reason, we should not confuse ourselves that the spirit, that the evil shadows, frighten us, kill us. One frightens oneself; it is not the shadow that frightens us.’
Even at six in the morning the air was warm. Lizards basked on the rocks, running a few feet as we approached, then stopping to watch us.
Barbara led the way and I walked beside her, wearing the hat my mother had given me. Carlos, Maggie, and Robin trailed behind.
‘We’re walking on history,’ Barbara told me, stamping one boot on the ground beneath our feet. ‘This is a limestone causeway, built by the Maya. They built miles of them all over the place. God knows why. Trade, religious ceremonies…’ She shrugged. Her mannerisms and speech reminded me of someone, but for a moment I could not place them. Then I remembered walking with my mother to the Temple of the Seven Dolls. Barbara had adopted the same staccato style: abbreviated and to the point. ‘They called the roads sacbeob. The singular form of the word is sacbe. Plural is sacbeob. We’re using this one as a reference line for the survey.’
Trees crowded close on either side. Grasses and scrub had grown underfoot, but the way was clear compared to the monte around us.
Like my mother, Barbara did not wait for questions. She assumed that I was interested. ‘Aerial surveys are just about useless here,’ she said. ‘They give you a great view of trees, but that’s it. The only way to map a site is to walk it and get personally acquainted with every tree, rock, stinging bug, and thorn. This causeway runs east. We’ll be mapping the quadrant between here and a line due south. That means we’ve got to walk over every square foot and note every ruin, mound, and monument. Maybe we sample some of the ones that look promising.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I figure out a theory based on what we find, get my Ph.D., and you call me Dr Barbara.’ She stopped beside a tree marked with a blaze and waited for the others to catch up. When they did, she turned into the monte, following what looked like a deer trail to another blazed tree.
The concept of the survey, as Barbara described it, was simple enough. The survey team spread out, leaving about twenty paces between people. Carlos was on one end of the line and Barbara was on the other. Carlos made a blaze on trees as he passed them; Barbara followed the line of blazes from the previous day. We were to follow a compass course due east. Barbara instructed me on the use of the compass and put me in the middle of the line.
It was hot work, sticky work, boring work – trudging through the monte, ducking branches, climbing over rocks, shouting out when I stumbled over something of interest, and then waiting while Barbara carefully noted its location on her map. The first three mounds we found had already been noted by the Tulane University crew several years before, but Barbara methodically checked location and noted minor corrections.
Flies hovered just in front of my eyes, dancing and buzzing, a constant irritation. I trudged through the heat, listening to the shrill cries of insects, the rustling of small animals and birds, the sound of footsteps, the occasional crash when someone blundered into a low-slung branch and the curses that followed. At regular intervals, the sounds of the monte were punctuated by the solid impact of Carlos’s machete against the innocent trees. I stabbed myself several times before I learned to watch for thorns. It took a great deal of effort to keep looking for the lines of rocks that Barbara said marked where walls had once been, the overgrown low mounds that had once been huts or temples.
Conversations grew shorter as the day grew hotter. Even when we were waiting for Barbara to complete corrections on her map, we maintained our positions in line, unwilling to move together just to move apart again. Early morning was hot; midmorning was hotter. At about eleven, beside the largest mound we had yet encountered, Barbara called a lunch break.
We sat in the thin shade of a ceiba tree, saying little, drinking water, and eating the tortillas and cheese that Maria had packed. Maggie was still pissed off at Carlos, I think. She and Robin sat a little way apart from us, sharing food and laughing at private jokes. Carlos tried to start up a conversation with me and Barbara, but Barbara ignored him and I was too tired to be drawn into talk.
I leaned back against the solid trunk of a tree and, drowsy from the heat, let my eyes droop closed. Such a peaceful place, I thought. I was still tired from my sleepless nights in Los Angeles, and I was at peace for the first time in weeks. I relaxed.
The bark of the tree at my back had a strong sweet aroma, like the smoke of incense carried on the breeze. In the distance, a bird called with a long low breathy note, like the sound of a child blowing across the top of a bottle. The call ended, then came again, a hollow tone that rose in pitch. The buzz of the insects seemed to grow louder and harsher, as if in response to the bird’s call. A warm breeze fanned my face, and the sweet smell was stronger.
I dreamed that I heard voices, unfamiliar voices. In the private darkness behind my closed eyes, I listened, but I could not understand the language that the voices spoke.
I opened my eyes, but I was still dreaming. Across from me, a temple built of carved limestone blocks glistened in the afternoon sun. I squinted against the reflected light.