Gulliver Quick by Maureen Earl

Author:Maureen Earl
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453293850
Publisher: The Permanent Press

Peace and Multiplicity

At the top of a Mayan temple, deep in the jungle of Peten in northern Guatemala, stood Gabriella. She was now nine years old, lanky, freckled and filled with questions that few could answer adequately. The day was fiercely humid, and from the shade of the trees far below, she could hear birds and monkeys shrieking. She looked down at her father, still clambering up the difficult ascent. Farther behind, grunting and slipping a great deal, was Marikette, now fourteen, not enjoying this expedition one bit. Gulliver called to his dog, “Go back, Marikette! Wait for us below!” But Marikette was proud, she didn’t want him to see the effort required of her. She ignored him and climbed on.

The temple was not fully excavated—only the uppermost summit, lofty and solitary for hundreds of years, rose from a two-hundred-foot mound that had accumulated against it, and over which the thick jungle had flowered.

“Hurry, Papa!” Gabriella called. “You can see the whole world from here!” But Gulliver called up to his daughter that he was taking the dog down, they would wait at the bottom.

Pleased to have this temple to herself, Gabriella walked around the narrow ledge to the other side. It was so silent there that she could hear the air moving. She trod warily, where two thousand years ago Tikal Mayans had trod lightly and with equal heed. Just before she rounded the corner she felt that she was not alone, that someone else was up here above the jungle. She flattened her back to the cool gray stone of the temple, and with the mindful wariness of a child, peered round.

In the sun, her eyes shut, sat a woman. She was still, the palms of her hands turned upward on her bare legs as she leaned back against the temple wall. Gabriella didn’t want to frighten her, so she stood, not knowing what to do; but a dark green insect landed on her leg and she made a slight noise when she slapped it away. The woman opened her eyes, and turned toward Gabriella.

“Hi,” the woman said. She was pretty, her soft brown hair curly, her skin creamy. Next to her lay a wide straw hat with dried flowers around the crown.

Gabriella said hello, and turned the corner onto the wider ledge where the woman sat.

“I must look very strange,” the woman said, smiling. “I’m communing with ancient Mayan spirits.” Her accent was American.

“They talk to you?” Gabriella asked.

“Yes. Somewhere inside me. In silent voices.”

“Let me try too.” Gabriella sat next to the woman, shut her eyes, put the backs of her hands on her legs, and leaned back against the temple. The woman smiled, then resumed the same pose. For a few minutes they were both seated in silence, a woman and a girl who had never before met, two hundred feet above the world, communing with the long dead.

But Gabriella grew restless, the sun was too hot. She shuffled about. The woman asked her where her parents were.

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