“The foot trail is off to the left.”
She reached for the backpack, only to have him snag it first.
“It’s less than a kilometer,” she said.
“What is?”
“A surprise.”
Hunter compared where they were to the map he had built in his mind of the Reyes Balam estate. Right now they were perhaps two kilometers as the crow—or macaw—flies from the compound itself, and about a quarter of that to the Jaguar Cenote.
Eagerly Lina got out and headed for the trail that experience rather than her eyes told her was waiting. Hunter shut the Bronco door quietly behind him and walked into another aspect of the jungle world.
Copal and ceiba trees dominated the jungle, tall and mighty, their branches lifting to an unseen sky and their roots gripping the earth like a thousand snakes. For a moment Hunter saw the world as the Maya had. A huge ceiba tree was the only thing stitching the world together, the World Tree rooted in hell and holding heaven in its arms.
If the tree released its grip, reality would fly away.
The hair on the back of his arms and neck stood up. The last time he’d sensed anything like this, he had been far out from civilization, alone in the desert, at the edge of lost, in the presence of something that was far bigger than he was, something utterly indifferent to all things human.
The raucous call of a macaw grounded him again. Up above his head, a toucan snapped its bill. The thick, heavy bill looked like a fighting claw without a crab. The green on green of the jungle seethed with hidden life. Even when the jungle looked quiet, it was alive, moving, breathing, as restless in its own way as the sea.
And as relentless.
“Hunter?” Lina called softly.
He turned and walked toward her. She watched him, enjoying the lithe efficiency of his movements. He was the only man she’d ever known who was as comfortable in the wilds of the inhuman jungle as he was in the human jungle of a big city. She could picture him on a dig with an ease that was frightening.
I’ve always wanted a man who could handle both city and jungle. Question is, can I handle him?
She didn’t know. Part of her—the part that thought of her parents’ marriage—was wary of finding out. The rest of her hummed with anticipation.
“Are we there?” he said.
Lina realized she’d been standing and staring at Hunter. She shook herself.
“Until we reach the path, try not to leave any sign that we were here,” she said.
He gave her a questioning look.
“I…” she began, then stopped, wondering how to explain. “Where we’re going is very special. Villagers know about it, of course, but rarely visit.”
“Taboo?” he asked.
“Not exactly. Their lives and ceremonies center around the Jaguar Cenote, the Cenote de Balam, so there’s no reason to hike deep into the jungle. Village life doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy for sightseeing.”
“No tours?” he asked dryly.
“None, thank you very much. We don’t want this place trampled or loved to death. Leave that for the better-known sites, with their groomed grounds and guards and partially excavated ruins.”
“I’ll be more careful with the jungle than it will be with me,” Hunter promised.
Lina smiled. “The jungle thanks you.”
She turned and pushed gently through a barrier of young trees, vines, and shrubs struggling against one another in the small opening left when a copal monarch had fallen.
Watching, listening, Hunter followed, feeling like a water bug in a marsh. Everything was much bigger than he was, older, tougher. The vegetation’s struggle for light—for life itself—was timeless, all the more primal for its silence.
“Why didn’t the Maya worship the strangler fig tree?” Hunter asked. “It can kill the biggest of trees.”
“Many of the ceiba trees have just four main branches, like the four cardinal points. The roots are thick and obvious, their shoulders visible at the base of the trunk.” Carefully she picked a way through the thicket of shrubs and vines. “The ceiba trunk goes up and up and up, like a pillar separating the overworld from the underworld. No other tree is quite like it.”
Only after Lina and Hunter had passed through the tangle of plants did she unclip her machete. She checked her wrist compass, adjusted course, and set off. He followed her over rocky ground, around godlike ceiba trees growing taller and taller despite the weak soil feeding them. Some of them had grown together until their trunks were intertwined in unnatural embrace. The ground around them was sterile, sucked dry by the needs of the mighty trees.
The trail Lina followed was more unreal than real, better suited to four feet or wings. Claw marks reached above Hunter’s head on one of the copal trunks. Resin bled out, hardening in the air, ready to be used for the sacred, scented fire of Maya ceremonies.
“Jaguar,” Lina said, gesturing to the claw marks. “Though I don’t think we’ve had anyone on the estate grounds killed by one since I was a little girl.”
“You better be kidding.”
She smiled and then spoke with the softness the jungle seemed to demand. “I am. Mostly. Our entire holdings are protected land for jaguars. No hunting allowed. No scientific study either. Abuelita firmly believes the cats should be left alone as long as they leave the villagers alone.”
“What happens if a cat starts snacking on the locals?” Hunter asked.
“Then the family or the villagers take care of it. That’s as it must be. If the cats didn’t respect and avoid people, there soon would be no jaguars at all.”
The path became more obvious, although far from a well-beaten trail. Their feet made little noise and less impression on the jungle debris covering the ground. Only the occasional stain showed where boots had left marks on limestone rubble. The strident bird and monkey calls became part of the background, like an erratic heartbeat, noticeable only in its absence.
A striped iguana watched them, clinging to the side of a rock as big as the Bronco. There was a rough face carved on the stone, barely visible through an overgrowth of lichen and moss. Hunter couldn’t tell whether the face was a finished work or started and then abandoned because of one crisis or another.
Lina never paused. Nor did she find any need for her machete. Finally she clipped it back in place, deciding that Philip must have been on the path recently.
He promised not to dig here without telling me. It was the price of me leaving him alone for the last four summers.
But she knew that sometimes Philip’s promises were forgotten before the echo of the words had died. He wasn’t treacherous, simply self-absorbed. Something else would claim his attention and mere words exchanged between people would fade to nothing at all.
The canopy above them rustled and a flock of macaws burst through, leaving in their wake a random rain of droppings and half-eaten fruit. Red and blue streaked by, like tropical fish fleeing danger through a green sea.
Gradually Hunter noticed a random scattering of modern debris mostly hidden among the vines and moss—cigarette butts, scraps of greasy paper, broken glass winking from beneath green leaves, petals where no flowers were blooming nearby. Some of the petals were fresh.
Lina paused, listening.
Faint voices came from ahead.
Hunter’s hand touched the small of her back. His lips brushed over her ear.
“More villagers?” he asked very softly.
“Sounds like.” Her voice wasn’t as soft as his. She was curious rather than wary. “Probably they’re including some of the old places in tonight’s celebration. It’s a very big moment for the Maya.”
Hunter was remembering Crutchfeldt’s words about grave robbers and a man whose name it was death to speak. All things considered, assuming El Maya was a legend wasn’t smart.