As I walked, 1 fingered the lucky piece that I carried in my pocket, a silver coin that Tony had given me when we were both graduate students. The design was that of an ancient Roman coin. Tony cast the silver himself in a jewelry-making workshop, and gave the coin to me on the anniversary of the day my divorce was final. I always carried it with me, and I knew I was nervous when I caught myself running my finger along the milled edge.
I was nervous now, restless, bothered by my dreams and my memory of the old woman named Zuhuy-kak. I started when four small birds took flight from a nearby bush, jumped when a lizard ran across my path. My encounter with Zuhuy-kak had left me feeling more unsettled than I liked to admit, even to myself.
I followed the dirt track to the cenote. On the horizon, I could see the remains of the old Spanish church. In 1568, the Spanish had quarried stones from the old Mayan temples and used them in a new church, building for the new gods on the bones of the old. Their church had fared no better than the Mayan temples. All that remained of it now was a broad archway and the crumbling fragment of a wall.
Each time I left California and returned to the ruins, I found them more disconcerting. In Berkeley, buildings were set lightly on the land, a temporary addition – nothing more. Here, history built upon history.
Conquering Spaniards had taken the land from the Toltec invaders who had taken the land from the Maya. With each conquest, the faces of old gods were transformed to become the faces of gods more acceptable to the new regime. Words of the Spanish Mass blended with the words of ancient rituaclass="underline" in one and the same prayer, the peasants called upon the Virgin Mary and the Chaacob. Here, it was common to build structures upon structures, pyramids over pyramids. Layers upon layers, secrets hiding secrets.
I lingered for a time on the edge of camp. A stonecutter, working alone in the early hours, was tapping a series of glyphs into a limestone slab. The clacking of stone chisel on limestone beat a counterpoint to the monotonous call of the distant bird. 1 leaned close to see if I could identify the glyphs he carved, but a chicken chose that moment to wander through the space occupied by the limestone slab. The stoneworker and his tools faded into dust and sunlight, and I continued on my way.
I walked past the cenote, following the trail that the shadow called Zuhuy-kak had taken, winding through the brush to the southeast plaza, where we had begun excavating a mound designated as Structure 701, renamed Temple of the Moon by Tony. I strolled slowly along the side of the mound, studying the slope for any regularities that might betray what lay beneath the rubble.
About a thousand years ago – give or take a hundred years – the open area beside the mound had been a smooth plaza, coated with a layer of limestone plaster. Here and there, traces of the original plaster remained, but most had been washed away by the rains of the passing centuries.
Workmen had cleared the brush and trees from the open area, exposing the flat limestone slabs that had supported the plaster. Uprooted brush was heaped at the far end of the mound in the shade of a large tree. I reached the brush heap, began to turn away, then looked again.
A stone half covered by the piled brush seemed to be at an angle, a little different from the rest, as if it were collapsing into a hollow space beneath the plaza. I stepped closer. It looked very much like the other stones: a square of uncarved limestone unusual only for its reluctance to lie flat. But I have learned to follow my instincts in these matters.
The thirsty trees that set down roots in the sparse soil of the Yucatán are lean and wiry, accustomed to hardship and drought. Even after they have been felled and left to die, the trees fight back, reaching out with thorns and broken branches for the soft flesh of anyone who raises a machete against them. When I tried to pull a branch from the tilted stone so that I could take a better look, the tree clung willfully to the rest of the heap; when I yanked harder, it twisted in my hand and gave way so suddenly that I lost my balance. As I fell back, another branch raked the tender skin on my inner wrist with half-inch thorns, leaving bloody claw marks.
The monte fights back. My efforts had moved the branch slightly and the stone still looked promising. I wrapped my kerchief around my wrist to stanch the blood and decided to wait until the work crew could move the brush. I turned toward camp.
An old woman who did not belong to my time stood in the shade of the tree. The air around me was hot and still. A bird in the jungle called out on a rising note, as if asking a piercing question.
The woman’s dark hair was coiled in braids on her head; strips of bright blue cloth decorated with small white sea-shells were woven into the braids. Around her neck was a string of jade beads – each one polished and round, as if worn smooth by the sea. White discs carved of oyster shell dangled from her ears. Her robe, a deeper shade of blue than the cloth in her hair, hung down to the leather sandals on her feet. From her belt of woven leather strips hung a conch shell trumpet and a pouch encrusted with snail shells.
She was not an attractive woman. Her forehead slanted back at an unnatural angle, pressed flat by a cradle board in her infancy. Dark blue spots tattooed on one cheek formed a spiral pattern, marking her as a Mayan noblewoman. Her teeth were tumbled like the stone blocks in an old wall. The front teeth were inset with jade beads, another mark of nobility.
She squinted at me as if the sun were too bright. ‘The shadow again,’ she said softly in Maya. She watched me for a moment. ‘Speak to me, Ix Zacbeliz.’
‘You see me?’ I asked her in Maya. ‘What do you see?’
She smiled, showing her inlaid teeth. ‘I see a shadow who talks. It has been long since I have spoken with anyone, even a shadow. I did not know how lonely I would be when I sent the people away.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You will learn. We will be friends and I will teach you secrets.’ Her hands were clasped before her and I noticed that her arms, from the inner elbow to the wrist, were bandaged with strips of white cloth.
The sun was hot on my shoulders and back. My heart seemed to be beating too quickly.
‘You and I have much in common. You are searching for secrets. I looked for secrets once.’ She spoke quietly, as if talking to herself. ‘But in the end, the h’menob of the new religion said I was mad. Wisdom is often mistaken for madness. Is that not true?’
I did not speak.
‘Lift this stone and you will find secrets,’ she said. ‘I hid them there myself, after I sent the people away. You can find them. It is time for them to come to light. The cycle is turning.’
‘How did you send the people away?’ I asked.
The plaza shimmered in the sunlight and I stood alone. Zuhuy-kak had gone. The bird in the monte called again, asking a question that no living person could answer. I headed for camp, glancing over my shoulder only once.
Notes for City of Stones by Elizabeth Butler
A thousand years ago, centuries before the Spanish conquistadors came, the Maya abandoned their ceremonial centers. After about AD 900, they built no more temples, carved no more stelae, the stone monuments etched with glyphs commemorating important events. They fled from the ceremonial centers into the jungle.
Why? No one knows, but everyone is willing to speculate. Every archaeologist has a theory. Some talk of famine caused by overpopulation and years of intensive agriculture. Some claim there was a catastrophe: an earthquake, a drought, or a plague. Some blame the invasion of the Toltecs, a militaristic group from the Valley of Mexico, and still others suggest that the peasant class rebelled, rising up to overthrow the elite class.