"They'll be back." McCoy shook his cameras back into place. "This country's too damn small"
"Be happy. If it were any larger, we'd have no chance of walking across it, would we? Maybe they're just looking for that rebel encampment back a few kilometers." She pushed stray hair back off her face with both hands and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. She opened her eyes to return the dubious gaze of the journalist. "Just a thought ..."
Uman had propped himself against the trunk of a ceiba. He was gray and could barely hold himself up, even after their nerve-wracking rest. McCoy offered him a hand, which he shook away.
"We've got to stop for rest. We haven't eaten in hours or gotten any sleep. Nobody can keep up this pace. Even you have to get tired sometime, don't you?" McCoy never looked at Uman, but Suzanne saw and felt the problem. She was surprised that the front she was trying to keep up was still working, but she felt like Uman looked right now. She was not happy about it. This part of the Peten was about to turn into savannah. Crossing that grassland of little or no cover would be the most dangerous part of their trek. After that, it was only a few more kilometers of rain forest to the border. Just a little matter of ten or twenty.
"Okay, but let's move back from the road." She frowned as she examined their immediate options. Viewed through the animals' eyes, the terrain held no completely sheltered spots. It was a measure of her exhaustion that she almost forgot to call Balam back in.
"There is a place nearby. It should be safe." Uman pushed himself fully upright while trying to hide the pain he was suffering.
McCoy followed the shaman across the road and into the bush on the north side. Suzanne hesitated, switching her vision among the animals without seeing their possible destination. She shook her head, but after a pause to gather up the taltuza, she made her way into the wall of jungle after them.
After half an hour of climbing over and picking their way around the huge trees and the tangled underbrush, Uman led them into a partially cleared area that opened up one side of the ruins of a pair of Mayan temples. They were small, as befitted their location in an outlying town under Tikal's influence. Their platforms rose about fifteen feet above the floor of the forest. Other mounds could be discerned as dark shadows in the rain forest behind them. The temple on the right was a pile of tumbled stones, torn apart by the roots of the chicle trees growing on top of it. But the left temple was partially intact, its entry framed by a combination of hieroglyphs and plaster god-masks. From what little research she had done, Suzanne believed that she recognized the face of the mythological character known as God K by his forehead mirror. The ridiculous nature of the name given him by archaeologists had stuck with her. A trench a meter or more deep ran up to and under the temple. Thieves had been here, but the ditch was old and crumbling in on itself. She was amazed the masks had survived. Maybe they had forgotten their chainsaws.
Uman was transfixed by the inscriptions carved into the stones of the ancient building. Suzanne compared them with his own scarifications. The words carved into his flesh were different, although it was more a feeling of style rather than direct comparison that made her believe it. Another dialect or perhaps just the hand of the artist. She was still curious to know if he could read any of them, but was loathe to interrupt him.
McCoy was hauling himself up the side of the platform before she made the connection that her weariness had almost hidden.
"Stop! McCoy." Still mindful of their surrounding, she kept her voice imperative but low. He halted one hand poised to grab the next upturned step.
"Now what's the problem? I'm getting out of this heat." McCoy glared down at her.
"Don't move." Suzanne glared right back, but still refused to raise her voice.
The first contact was always the most difficult, especially with animals of higher intelligence. After frequent contact, such as hers with Balam, it seemed that neural pathways formed that led her into the areas she needed to access. Her mind penetrated that of the temple-dweller, twining around his fight or flight instinct that had begun to trigger when he heard them blunder into his home ground. Balam had scented their invasion of another's territory and stayed at a respectful distance, but Suzanne had missed it. Probing gently, she pushed gently at flight, not making his choice but influencing it.
When the puma burst out of the temple and onto the overgrown platform, McCoy did not have to be reminded to remain still. He froze, staring at what should have been the agent of his death. The puma's head swung toward him, but Suzanne again redirected his attention, this time to herself. She walked to the base of the platform as the puma delicately picked his way to the ground. Their eyes met and held, recognition of a kinship beyond that of fur and skin or claws and nails in both. Suzanne withdrew part of her influence and the cat, with a strange mixture of a whine and a growl, leapt across the clearing to disappear into the forest.
Suzanne looked up at McCoy, who had turned and was sitting on a displaced block from the staircase. He stared down at her as if he had never seen her before.
"You really do talk to them, don't you?" McCoy watched Balam enter the clearing and pace to Suzanne's side before turning her gaze after the puma. She dropped the body of a peccary on the ground.
"In my way." Suzanne turned to look for Uman. In the time it had taken her to ask the puma to leave, he had opened his cotton sack and begun removing what she took to be religious objects. He looked up when he felt her eyes on him.
"We should ask permission and blessings before we encroach on the place of gods." He was using the lowest intact step as his altar, carefully placing the copal incense on the ancient stones.
"It's clear." Suzanne smiled maliciously at McCoy, who was coming backward down the side of the platform. "Not so much as a fer-de-lance."
He hesitated for just an instant before taking his next handhold.
"We can use all the help we can get. Let him go for it." Once down on solid ground, McCoy bared his teeth back at her. She shrugged.
"Just make sure there's no smoke." She rocked her head back and looked up through the small break in the trees above them. Fighting back exhaustion, she skipped through the senses of the arboreal creatures in a search for another helicopter. She heard nothing through the ears of the howler monkeys, but she caught herself swaying when she came back. She knew her range was not nearly as wide as it should have been. Suzanne put her hand to her forehead as if that could stop the pounding and collapsed slowly to the ground. "No smoke."
Bracing her head on her hand, Suzanne sat in the dirt and watched Uman light the incense and begin a soft chant. Suzanne tried to concentrate on Uman's ritual. In her village - former village - the people practiced traditions that were obviously pre-Columbian, rituals for childbirth, planting, harvesting and the other major events of life. But they had not had an ajk'ij or any kind of religious leader. Whatever couple served as the village leaders took on that role as well. Despite the mix of traditions, they all thought of themselves as good Catholics.
Uman continued his prayer as he offered tobacco leaf and a splash of aquardiente to his gods or saints. How much difference was there between Uman's words and gifts and those presented here thirteen hundred years ago? Of course, this time there was no human blood. Uman bowed before the ruined temple, apparently asking permission for them to enter.
Despite herself, she found herself disarmed by McCoy's respect for the ceremony. The reporter crouched to Uman's left. His ever-present cameras sat on the ground out of reach. Looking intently into Uman's face, he occasionally held out objects from the priest's bag to the Daykeeper as the ceremony progressed. Finally, the Maya placed his seeds on the altar and waved some of the incense over them in what she took to be a last blessing. He bowed once more and began disassembling his altar, removing the traces of worship.