“Not good to anger the gods,” McCarter replied. “Not in any culture. The outcome is predictable.”
“The wooden people were destroyed,” she guessed.
McCarter nodded. “The gods sent vicious beasts to attack them and even turned their own animals against them. And as if that weren’t enough, the sky god, Hurricane, sent a massive rainstorm to drown them like the sinners in Noah’s day. ‘Rain through the day and rain through the night. A rain of black resin that poured from the sky,’” McCarter said, quoting the Mayan text. “‘And the Earth was blackened beneath it.’”
“Burning rain?” Danielle asked.
“I’ve heard it described as a rain of fire,” McCarter said, “like hot oil or ash or napalm. And because the earth was blackened some think it might represent a volcanic event, with hot ash and fire falling from the sky, but the Popul Vuh definitely describes it as rain.”
“And Seven Macaw died in this rain?”
“Actually, he disappeared prior to the Black Rain,” McCarter said. “But the mythology of the work seems to suggest it was necessary to get rid of him to allow the rain to fall, as if his power could challenge the gods and prevent it.”
“I see,” Danielle said. “So what happened to him?”
“Two demigods were sent for him. They shot Seven Macaw with a blow dart when he was up in a tree, and after he fell to the ground, they removed the metal from his eyes and his teeth and took all his jewelry — the things he used to light up the night. Without these items he lost the power to light up anything, even the immediate surroundings. He went into hiding and never bothered anyone again. And then, with Seven Macaw vanquished, the gods sent the rain.”
She understood. “So the heroes killed Seven Macaw and then the rain came to destroy the rest of the wooden people. Take out the leader and then finish off the troops.”
“That’s one way of putting it, yes.”
She was gleeful. “This is good news. The slab certainly proves the Mayan connection,” she said. “No computer inkblots required.”
McCarter chuckled. “It does more than that,” he insisted. “It proves that these people were intimate with the particular mythology of the Mayan creation, a fact that not only connects them with all the other Mayan tribes, but suggests they were very early in the Mayan cycle.” He raised his eyebrows. “You may just be right,” he added. “Tulan Zuyua may be down here after all.”
Danielle smiled confidently and then turned back to the slab embedded in the wall. She looked at the other symbols — the big sad face, the dashes and swirls of the glyphs around it and the angry crocodilelike head with its bloody meal. “What about that one?” she asked.
McCarter’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. It was an important discovery. “That one is Zipacna,” he said. “The Destroyer.”
Later that night, sitting beside a flickering Coleman lantern, Danielle was pressing McCarter and Susan for more details. Hawker had joined them.
McCarter began by explaining the obstacles. “One problem we face is the condition of the find.” The glyphs on the Wall are in terrible shape, for the most part unreadable. The ones found on the great stone in the pit are better off, perhaps because they’ve been buried and protected from the elements for much of their life. The exposed tree roots and steep incline of the vertical walls suggest the pit to be quite a recent excavation.”
This response concerned her. She wondered if their adversary had somehow gotten here before them. McCarter, unknowingly, assuaged that fear.
“For whatever reason, the natives seem to be using it as a trap.”
“With all the bones we had to fish out of there, you wonder if they ever came back to check it,” Hawker said.
“Apparently, we’re not the only ones that can be wasteful,” McCarter said. “But from the look of things, it seems to have been dug with fairly primitive tools. And almost without regard for the relics it uncovered. In many places we see chips and scratches from their digging that have damaged the wall. My guess is that they knew of the slab and chose to excavate there to make specific use of having one solid, steep wall.”
Hawker rubbed his sore shoulder. “The sheer face makes for a better trap,” he said, ruefully. “You don’t see the drop coming.”
“And the glyphs in the pit,” Danielle asked, bringing the conversation back on track. “You were going to tell me something good.”
McCarter got down to business, opening an aged, leather-bound folder stuffed with drawings and notes. He pointed to a group of sketches he’d made. “Remember what I told you about the wooden people and Seven Macaw — that they were a mythological race the Maya believe existed before man?”
“And how the gods destroyed them with a burning rain,” she said. “Yes, I remember all of it.”
“Remember the other glyph you pointed out?”
“Zipacna,” she said. “The Destroyer.”
“Well, much of the writing on this slab concerns the two of them. Seven Macaw, the father, and Zipacna, his son.”
Danielle was surprised. “Zipacna looked like some type of reptile to me.”
“I know,” McCarter said. “He was, sort of. But you have to remember, it’s mythology. Like the Minotaur and the Kraken in Greek mythology, much of it is mysterious and nonlinear. So even though Seven Macaw was a proto-human, so to speak, his son was this beast, this destroyer, who was usually described as resembling a hideous crocodile, though he walked and lived on the land.”
Danielle listened as McCarter spoke, unsure where this was heading.
McCarter looked over at Susan. “You recognized it before me,” he said. “Why don’t you tell the story.”
She spoke up. “The glyphs on the stone slab describe Zipacna doing the work of his father, terrorizing the peasants and anyone who might challenge Seven Macaw.”
“Everybody needs a henchman once in a while,” Hawker said.
Susan laughed. “In a lot of ways that’s what Zipacna was. In fact, the main story here depicts a group that wanted to topple Seven Macaw, deciding they must first get rid of Zipacna. Tricking him into digging a pit for them and then trying to kill him by dropping a huge log into the hole while he was down there.”
“A pit,” Hawker said. “Like ours?”
“Possibly,” McCarter said. “I believe that the stone in the pit was once on the surface. The land probably built up around it like sand blowing against the side of a house. Even now the top sticks out a bit. And in the story it is more of a narrow well.”
“So what happened to them?” Danielle asked, keeping things on track.
Susan finished the story. “After thinking they’d crushed Zipacna, the group began to celebrate by throwing a big party. While they were getting drunk in their victory celebration, Zipacna climbed out of the hole and destroyed them all by bringing their house down on them.”
McCarter smiled. “Some think it’s an ancient morality tale, a warning against the dangers of drink.”
“I can understand that,” Hawker said. “I’ve had a few houses come down on me because of the dangers of drink.”
Laughter made its way around the group, then Danielle asked another question. “So that pit may represent the one they dug for Zipacna and perhaps this wall is supposed to be the resting place of the people he killed?”
“I think you’re right about this being a monument to them,” McCarter added. “Some kind of a monument anyway. The place seems to have religious significance but was not a population center.”
Danielle considered his words. They confirmed what she’d feared. They’d found a monument, but no evidence anyone had lived there. And in their search of the surrounding area they’d found no sign of other structures.