‘Not good fortune,’ I said irritably. My joints ached and I knew that the chill that I had caught was creeping into my bones. ‘We wanted that stela intact, not in two pieces.’
The old woman was staring at me in surprise. ‘Do you only care for things, Ix Zacbeliz? Did you want to find only old pots and bits of jewelry? I am giving you secrets greater than that. You and your daughter.’
‘Leave my daughter out of this,’ I said. ‘She has no part in this.’ I wanted to take hold of the embroidered garment and shake the old woman, make her listen. I was alternately hot and chilled, and I felt dizzy. I wondered, gazing into her shrewd dark eyes, whether I could catch hold of her. Would it be like trying to catch a wisp of fog? My hands – clenched in fists at my sides – were shaking.
‘Your daughter chooses her own way.’ The woman was frowning at me. ‘You and I do not determine it. The cycle is turning and she is here.’
‘If I send her away, she will be safe,’ I said. ‘She will be out of all this.’
‘Send her away? Where will you send her? The cycle is turning. When the world changes, everything will change. And why will you send her away? She belongs here, just as you belong here.’
‘The turning of the cycle doesn’t matter,’ I said, suddenly angry. ‘This is not…’ I stopped short of voicing my thoughts.
‘This is not real?’ Zuhuy-kak calmly finished the sentence. Her voice was very soft.
I did not look at her. I took my cigarettes from my pocket and lit one, cupping my hand to shield the match from the wind. When I looked at Zuhuy-kak, she was smiling at me. ‘I am real,’ she said.
‘No. This is a game that I play with myself. I have played it for years. I can stop playing it. I can return to a world where you do not exist, where there is no danger, where there are no jaguars in the shadows.’ I looked into the distance, drawing in the smoke and feeling my heart beat faster. The smoke was real; the cigarette in my hand was real; the rock beneath me was real. Zuhuy-kak was a dream in which I chose to believe. I could stop believing.
I blew out a stream of smoke and watched it swirl, catching the moonlight. Just a game. I looked at Zuhuy-kak and she was watching me, holding her conch shell in her hands and smiling.
‘It is not as easy as that,’ she said. ‘Not nearly so easy. You cannot stop the cycles of time by turning your back.’
‘I can send you away.’
She shrugged. ‘You can try.’
‘You shrug like a Californian,’ I said suddenly. ‘That gesture could not have been part of Mayan culture.’
‘I learn from you just as you learn from me,’ she said. She grinned, showing me her inlaid teeth. ‘You think that you can control the world. You are wrong.’
‘I made you up,’ I said. ‘You’re my invention. I can make you go away.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’ she asked easily. ‘We are friends, Ix Zacbeliz. I am helping you.’
I shook my head slowly, fighting the dizziness. ‘I am not so sure of that.’
‘You are my friend,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I consider your daughter as my own.’
I shook my head again. ‘I can make you go away,’ I repeated. I did not like the tremor in my voice, but I could not stop it.
‘It is not so easy,’ Zuhuy-kak said. ‘You choose your gods, but you do not invent them.’
I closed my eyes. In the distance, an owl hooted softly – once, twice, three times. I imagined myself alone by the tomb site. I listened to the wind rustle through the grasses and I knew that I was alone, I had always been alone.
When I opened my eyes, Zuhuy-kak was still there. ‘You want the power of the goddess,’ she said. ‘Then sacrifices must be made. You belong here – you understand that.’
I walked away from her, feeling old and fragile as I crossed the open plaza. At the far side of the open area, I looked back. Zuhuy-kak lifted a hand and waved.
16
Diane
The door to my mother’s hut was halfway open when we reached the plaza. I hesitated. ‘I think I’ll see how Liz is doing.’
‘Fine,’ Barbara said grumpily. ‘I still have to finish that report.’
‘I thought you were inspired.’
‘My inspiration expired when I got back. So far, I’ve written the date at the top of a page and read half that rotten romance novel you bought in Mérida. I’ll see you later.’ She left me by my mother’s door and I watched her flashlight bob toward our hut.
I knocked on the door, then peered inside. The only light was a candle burning in a small chimney. The card table that served as my mother’s desk was strewn with books and papers.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I mumbled. I felt awkward and embarrassed. Already, the thought of talking to her about the old woman I had seen in the monte was fading, like Barbara’s inspiration.
‘No problem,’ she said, closing the book on the table before her. The candlelight etched shadows on her face, making her look old and weary. She looked pale, though that could have been a trick of the light. ‘I’m glad you came. I understand you met the local curandera.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘The old woman,’ my mother said patiently.
For a moment, I was confused, then I realized she meant the old woman by Salvador’s hut. ‘Oh, yeah. I guess so.’ I couldn’t read her face in the candlelight. Her right hand was on her desk, fidgeting with a pencil, tapping it on one end so that it lay parallel with the edge of the desk, then tapping it out of line. She was watching the pencil very carefully.
‘The curandera remembered you better than you remembered her,’ she said lightly. She tapped the pencil again, a little too hard, and it rolled off the edge of the table, bounced on her knees, and fell into the shadows. Lost. She looked at my face then. ‘I haven’t asked you – what do you think of the dig so far?’
‘I like going on survey,’ I said cautiously.
‘You like hiking through the jungle and battling the bugs?’
I shrugged. ‘Barbara and I get along. I’m glad to be able to help her.’
‘Perhaps you should leave the dig for a while,’ she said softly, almost as if she were talking to herself. ‘Rent a car and go out to the Caribbean coast – out to Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen. Beautiful beaches, wonderful snorkeling. I’ll meet you there when we’re through here.’ She was gazing thoughtfully at the ground, where the pencil had disappeared. Her face was still, mask-like.
‘I like it here,’ I said.
‘You shouldn’t waste your entire vacation out here in the sticks,’ she said. She did not look at me.
‘I don’t understand.’
She took a cigarette from the pack on her desk and lifted the glass chimney to light it from the candle. The hand that held the cigarette was trembling. The light of the candle reflected in her eyes.
‘Have I done something wrong?’ My voice was shaking.
She turned from the desk to face me, leaning forward on the metal folding chair and resting her elbows on her knees. The hut was very quiet. The crying of the crickets was very far away, on the other side of the moon. My mother wanted to leave me again.
‘The curandera, the old woman you met, thinks that you are a witch,’ she said. ‘You’re in good company: she thinks that I’m a witch too. She has more reason to suspect me. I mutter to myself and talk to people who aren’t there. I wander around at dusk and dawn, when the spirits are out.’ She was watching me, her face fixed in a strange smile. ‘Surely you’ve noticed these things.’