Zuhuy-kak did not speak for a moment. ‘The ah-nunob were coming and the battle was not going well,’ she said. ‘We had captured their warriors. I killed them at the altar and we heaped their skulls in the courtyards, but that was not enough.’
Her hands were grasping each other tightly. She turned her gaze toward the darkness at the back of the cave and swayed forward and back almost as if she rocked a child in her arms. She spoke in a singsong tone. ‘There had been much killing, so much killing on the battlefield and in the temple. My husband, a man of power and nobility, a good man, had died that week on the field. The scent of blood hung thick and heavy in the air, overflowing the temple, filling the courtyard, spilling out of the sacred places and flowing down the sacbe, a river of rich red scent laced with the smoke of burning incense. The sound of the drum and the rattle followed me everywhere, beating like my own heart, steady and strong. Like my own heart.’
She had drawn her folded hands up to her breast, and she was rocking back and forth, back and forth to a drumbeat that I could not hear. Her words came quickly now. ‘The smoke, the smell of blood, the cries of the wounded tended by the healers – these seemed natural things.’ She had closed her eyes. ‘I gave my child to the gods to stop the coming of the ah-nunob. I meant it to be a willing sacrifice, a gift. I prepared her, dressed her, and perfumed her, gave her balche mixed with herbs to drink. I took her to the place of sacrifice, filled with the power of the goddess. She did not struggle. She smiled at me, because I had told her that Ixtab would come and take her to paradise. She was afraid, but she smiled up at me. And at the moment that I was bringing the blade down, when the power of the goddess should have been greatest, I doubted. My daughter looked up at me, and I doubted the power of the goddess.’ She opened her eyes and the strange light that filled them reminded me of the madwoman who claimed to be Jesus Christ. ‘I doubted and the ah-nunob took the city. The cycle turned and the goddess lost her power.’
My stomach ached, a solid steady pain that reminded me of the aching in my gut that plagued me throughout my pregnancy. A sad and heavy feeling, as if I carried a burden that was too great. The doctor who attended me during pregnancy said it was nothing, it was psychosomatic. Many pregnant women felt unhappy, he said; it wasn’t abnormal. He said that they felt unhappy – I remember that. It did not seem to cross his mind that maybe they had good reason to feel unhappy, maybe they were in pain, maybe they carried a weight that was too great to bear. I wondered what the doctor would say now.
‘Now it is time for the cycle to turn again. You can bring the goddess back to power. Your daughter—’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You can,’ she said. I noticed then that she was holding the obsidian blade. ‘It will be easy. And then, once it is done, you can rest.’
‘No.’
‘You are like me,’ she said. ‘I know you. I knew you when I saw you by the well. You too made a sacrifice that was not good. You began falling just as I began falling when my daughter died and the power of the goddess died with her. I began falling long before the priests threw me in the well,’ she said.
‘You can rest now,’ I said. ‘You can stop.’
‘I tried to stop. When the people were leaving and the city was in confusion. I asked two masons to wall me in, and they did it for me. They walled me in and I stopped here. I wanted to rest. But there is no rest. The cycle is turning again. The time is near for sacrifices to be made. Once they are made, we can rest, you and I.’
‘You can rest,’ I said. ‘There is no need for you to be here. There will be no sacrifices, no blood spilled.’
She looked at me with eyes as dark as the darkness beyond the tomb. ‘Why are you here?’ She did not wait for my answer. ‘You are here because you want to learn secrets. You want them, and at the same time, you are afraid to learn them. You want power, but you fear it. You fear that you will learn what you are capable of doing.’ She ran her finger along the obsidian blade. ‘There will be blood.’
She held it out, and I took it. Held it in my hand and drew it gently along the skin of my wrist, testing the blade, just testing it. Blood beaded in its wake and I felt a new warmth and strength travel up my arm and into my heart. The touch of the cold obsidian recalled my suicide attempt. I remembered the feeling of heated anticipation, the sense that the pain I felt was insignificant beside the power I would gain. I watched the blood trickle from the wound in my arm and I felt warm and strong.
22
Diane
I paid the cabby and ran out into the rain. Behind me, I heard him gun his engine and roar away.
My mother’s hut was deserted. Both doors were open and the rain had swept in, dampening the dirt floor. A plastic poncho hung on a nail, and after a moment’s hesitation I pulled it on over my dress and headed back into the rain. I didn’t know exactly why 1 wanted to see my mother right away. I think I had some idea that I would tell her about the old woman that I had seen, and then we would discuss the whole thing like adults, separating phantasms from reality carefully, bit by bit.
I followed the path to the tomb, splashing recklessly through the puddles in my sandals. I was already soaked; a little more water made no difference. Once, I slipped and banged my knee on the ground, and after that I limped.
The mouth of the tomb was a dark spot on the plaza floor. As I stepped down into the passageway, I felt a faint breeze that carried the scent of newly turned earth. The rain was splashing down the stairs into the tomb. Over the sound of the rain I could hear my mother’s voice. I could not make out the words.
On the last step, my leather sandals slipped on the wet stone. I lost my balance, stepped into the puddle that covered the floor of the passageway, and almost fell. A beam of white lantern light shone through the gap between the stones. The light beam shifted as my mother lifted the lantern up to the gap in the stones.
‘Hello,’ I called to her. ‘I thought you might be up here.’
I could see only her head, silhouetted in the gap.
‘I came back from Mérida early,’ I said. ‘There really isn’t much to do there. Barbara stayed, but I came back.’ My words trailed off. I could hear the rain trickling down the steps behind me, a river feeding the cold lake that lapped around my ankles. ‘It’s pouring out there.’ I stood awkwardly in the puddle, waiting for her to move aside, to invite me to look at what she was doing, to say something. Water dripped from my hair down my back. The poncho clung to my bare arms and legs. I lifted it over my head and draped it over the handle of a pickax that stood, head down, in the water. I kicked off my wet shoes and set them in the metal bucket beside the pickax. The bucket was not yet floating, though it was a near thing. Uninvited, I squeezed through the opening, and my mother stepped back to let me through.
The walls arched high over my head, and the light of the lantern did not reach the ceiling. Here and there, the light reflected from seashells, embedded in the rock long ago. A skeleton lay outstretched on a stone platform, staring up into the darkness with blank eyes. My mother’s notebook, trowel, and whisk broom lay on the floor near the skeleton’s head. She stood near the skeleton, staring at me fixedly. In one hand, she held the lantern, gripping the wire handle. In the other, she held an obsidian blade. Her right wrist was bleeding. ‘You cut yourself,’ I said.
‘Why did you come back?’ she asked. Her voice was rough, hoarse.
‘There didn’t seem to be any reason to stay in Mérida,’ I said.
She was shaking her head. ‘What brings you hiking through a downpour in sandals and a dress?’