Jungle Crossing by Sydney Salter

Author:Sydney Salter [Salter, Sydney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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THE DAY 6 CIB

Vulture

Muluc fell asleep remembering the marriage feast of the king's son: chocolate, roast peccary, roasted birds, stewed deer, potatoes, tomatoes, tamales, coconut, chocolate ... Her wedding feast with Parrot Nose would be the same, except she'd request more chocolate. But then owls swarmed into her dream, their faces painted with blue streaks, like the warriors from Chichén, and her mother screamed as the owls flew off with the baby clutched in their furry talons. One of the owls had a snake for a head and hissed at Muluc.

She sat up, startled in the darkness, her heart beating fast. Listening to the eerie sounds of night creatures creeping near the house, she tried to go back to sleep. A jaguar growled. Muluc froze. Finally, focusing on the easy sounds of breathing coming from the wiry woman, Macaw, and her thin boy, Mol, she slept again, falling asleep just before daylight.

Macaw and Mol had gone when Muluc finally tore herself from sleep late in the morning. Spider monkeys prattled in the trees. The dog barked in the yard, and Muluc guessed the monkeys had swung in to steal avocados. Back and neck aching, she sat up from her thin, worn mat on the dirt floor. A small fire burned in the three hearthstones in the center of the hut, reminding Muluc of last night's tortillas made from starchy ramon instead of corn. She'd gagged on them. No one in Cobá ate so poorly! Did they?

Feeling a bit dizzy, Muluc walked into the yard to look for Macaw, but only the dog lay sleeping in his usual position, as if he were a clay figure. Muluc walked over to the dog and nudged him with her foot; he sneezed, but didn't move, so Muluc went around the back of the hut to look for Macaw.

"Who are you?" A man's voice called to her from the road. "What are you doing?" A short man with thick arms entered the yard.

As he approached, Muluc saw that he was only a few years older than she, but his body had grown thick and strong from hard labor, and he had short-cropped hair in the style of stonecutters. "Answer me, girl," he said. "Who are you?"

"I'm here to work," she said in a shaky voice. In Cobá she'd never respond to such a rude commoner!

"My mother cannot afford help," he said. "Where is my mother?"

"I don't know," Muluc said. "I just woke up."

"Some help." He tilted his head and looked at her, blushing the color of dried chilies before averting his eyes in a way that pleased Muluc's elite vanity. "You are not from Chichén." He glanced up at her shyly. "But you don't really look like a slave."

Slave. Tears blurred Muluc's vision before dropping onto her cheeks, and she felt lightheaded as images from her nightmare swirled in her mind, confusing past with present, dream from reality, life from death. Was she dead? Was he a guardian of the Otherworld, Xibalba?

He took one of Muluc's hands gently, tracing his calloused finger across her smooth palm.

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