I looked down at myself. My shins were marked with mud and a line of dark droplets oozed from a scratch where a thorny branch had raked across my skin. My dress was soaked despite the poncho. ‘I guess I should have stopped to change.’
‘You shouldn’t be here. You should have stayed in Mérida.’ She sounded on the verge of tears.
‘I’m sorry. I…’ I didn’t know what to say. I held out my hands in a gesture of resignation and tried to smile. ‘What can I do? Can you tell me what’s wrong?’
She took a step back as if I had threatened her and stopped beside the stone platform. She shivered like a wet dog. She looked thin and tired. ‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Please. Get out of here.’
‘It’s raining,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable. ‘I’ll stay out of the way. I just—’
‘Get out!’ Her words echoed from the stone walls, and I stepped back, the smile dying on my face. She straightened her shoulders and stepped forward. Her face was suddenly hard. ‘Go away from here! Now!’
I backed away. ‘I’m sorry. I just—’
‘Get out!’ Her face was a mask, washed from below with lantern light. Her eyes were wild, touched with red and too large for her face. She threw back her head and cried out again, not a word, but a groan, a wail of desperation. The muscles of her neck stood out in ridges and her breath came in great gasps. I took a step toward her and she glared at me, shaking her head like an animal tormented by flies. She lifted one hand in a fist, and as I stepped back, she struck herself in the leg, once, twice, three times, each blow hard enough to make me wince. ‘Go!’ she said. ‘Go! Go away.’ The last words were not shouted. The blow did not have the force of the ones preceding it.
I stood by the opening. I could hear the soft trickle of water flowing down the steps, but the pounding of the rain had ceased. ‘The rain has stopped,’ I said to her, as calmly as I could. ‘I can head back to camp. Why don’t you come back with me?’
Her hand was clenched in a fist, resting against her thigh. ‘You have to go.’
‘I’ll go if you come with me.’
The breath left her in a sigh and she seemed to shrink, her shoulders relaxing, her grip on the lantern easing. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You go out.’
I slipped through the opening and stayed right on the other side, where I could look through the wall. Newly washed light shone down the stone stairs and made a faint rectangle on the floor. The puddle was already lower. Water had drained away into the earth. ‘I’m right here,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you hand me the lantern and then come on through?’
‘Yes,’ she said and handed me the lantern. I stepped back and let her come through after me.
‘That’s good,’ I said.
She stopped in the center of the passage and turned to look at me, frowning though her face was still wet with tears. ‘No need to talk to me as if I were a fool. You may think I’m crazy, but don’t think I’m stupid.’ She took the lantern from my hands, extinguished the light, and led the way up the stone steps into the steaming afternoon. She did not look back.
23
Elizabeth
Sunday was Chicchan, the day of the celestial serpent. Carlos, Maggie, John, and Robin returned to the dig for dinner in the late afternoon, clean and well rested. With a tomb to excavate, a cave to explore, and only two weeks of field school to go, they were cheerful. Over dinner, they chattered about what they planned to do before returning to school. Carlos and Maggie were planning to spend a week on Isla Mujeres. John and Robin were heading south; they planned to travel through Belize and visit Mayan ruins at Altun Ha and Xunantunich. They all seemed so light-hearted, like sparrows that land for a moment on a garden path, squabble over crumbs, then fly away. Diane was subdued, taking no part in the conversation. I caught her watching me surreptitiously, then looking away when I turned to meet her gaze. She and Tony both watched me and I wondered if they had talked to each other since Diane met me at the tomb.
Barbara came in late, well after dinner. I was in my hut trying to rest and shake the fever that still sang in my ears. I heard the distant rumble of Barbara’s Volkswagen and wondered if Diane would talk to Barbara, tell her of our conversation in the tomb, where I had lost my temper. I did not leave my hut to greet her.
When I tried to sleep, the sounds in the night disturbed me: the crickets, the palm thatch in the breeze, the footsteps of someone – I think it was Carlos – heading to his hut. When I slept, I dreamed of the obsidian blade that lay beside the skeleton in the tomb.
In the dream, I stood in the kitchen of the apartment in Los Angeles, holding the obsidian blade in my hand. I ran a finger across the edge to test its sharpness. I liked the feel of it – cool and sharp, with just the right weight. It was thirsty for blood. Sitting across the kitchen table from me was a young woman who was drinking a beer and listening to the water heater rumble. She looked at me and said something that I could not make out. I offered her the obsidian blade and she stood up, backing away from me. Somewhere very far away, a child was crying.
The kitchen was gone, the young woman was gone, but I knew that the child was still crying. I was in a very dark place and I went to search for the child. I was very tired, bone-tired – all I wanted to do was lie down and rest – but I had to find the child. I wandered, disoriented and confused, carrying the obsidian blade in my hand.
I stood in the doorway to the hut, listening to a chorus of breathing and crickets. Barbara – I think it was Barbara – muttered something in her sleep and shifted position, making her hammock sway gently. She sighed deeply, then her breathing became regular again. I could see the dark copper glint of Diane’s hair in the darkness. Her breath came and went softly and easily – so gentle, so easily stopped.
When Diane was four – a cherubic child with soft green eyes – she would wake in the night with bad dreams, come to the bedroom I shared with Robert, and stand silently in the doorway. Somehow, I always woke, always knew to look toward the door where a diminutive apparition stood, waiting patiently for recognition. On those nights, I would take her back to her room and lie beside her in a bed that was over-populated with stuffed toys. In the darkness, she would tell me garbled tales of faces that came to her at night, of shadows that moved in the closet. I never told her that the faces and shadows were not real; I only told her that they would not hurt her. She was safe.
I stood in the doorway and listened to her breathing, wondering why she did not wake to find me standing there. Something had to be done with the blade that I carried. Something had to be done to complete the cycle of time. I started to take a step toward her, into the hut, but a hand on my shoulder stopped me.
Tony, still fully dressed, stood just behind me. ‘What’s going on?’ he said softly. ‘What are you doing?’
I shrugged my shoulder, still adrift in memories. ‘Watching over the child,’ I said, and my voice was as soft as the dust beneath my bare feet. I blinked and a few stray tears completed their journey down my face and fell.
Tony wrapped an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward my hut. His arm was warm and comforting; he smelled of tobacco. He dried my face with a dusty bandanna.
‘What’s wrong, Liz?’ he asked me. ‘What is it?’
I shook my head. Words were hard to find in the soft darkness that surrounded me. ‘The old woman in the tomb says that the cycle must be completed. The child must die, just as her child died.’ The words were soft. My own voice seemed distant. ‘I must be careful. You understand that, don’t you? I must keep the child safe.’
‘Who is the old woman in the tomb?’ he asked.