Tikal: A Novel about the Maya by Daniel Peters

Author:Daniel Peters [Peters, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub

ON THE NIGHT before the Tun-End Ceremony, Zac Kuk crossed the bridge over the gully and began to climb the stairs to the upper plaza, carrying a torch to light her way. Upon reaching the middle landing, she was startled by rustling sounds off to her left, along the terrace, and she stopped and pointed the torch in that direction, holding it in front of herself defensively.

“Who is there?”

Ixchel suddenly appeared out of the avocado trees, causing Zac Kuk to take an involuntary step backward, though she raised the torch overhead when she realized who it was.

“My lady…”

“I cannot find Kanan Naab,” Ixchel announced, seeming unaware that she had startled Zac Kuk, or that there was anything unusual in being out here in the dark. “You have not seen her?”

“I was hoping to speak to her myself,” Zac Kuk confessed. “Why would she be here?”

“She has been acting strangely lately. I thought perhaps she had gone to her mother’s bench to be alone.” Ixchel gestured vaguely toward the darkness behind her. “It is there, among the trees on the terrace.”

“Yes,” Zac Kuk said, though it was the first she had heard of such a bench. She felt a renewed sense of the guilt and uncertainty that had brought her looking for Kanan Naab, the sense that there was much she still did not understand about her husband’s people and that she had put off learning it for too long.

“Where else might she be?” she prompted, and Ixchel forced herself to think, clasping and unclasping her hands nervously. Then her narrow face brightened with inspiration.

“The Serpent Stone!” she exclaimed, and turned for the stairs. “Let us go there.”

Zac Kuk hurried after her, extending the torch to illuminate the steep steps as they climbed to the plaza above. Only belatedly did she realize that Ixchel was referring to the stone that belonged to Akbal, the one his grandfather had given him to carve. She had never heard Akbal call it by that name, though he had told her about the serpent that had guarded it. Did he know that others called it that, she wondered, grateful that Ixchel had been in too much haste to notice her ignorance of the title. So much you do not understand, she told herself accusingly, struggling to match strides with the taller woman as they crossed the plaza toward Pacal’s house.

They had started down the path between the end of the house and the gully when Ixchel suddenly stopped and pointed to the curtained doorway to their right. “The curtain is down,” she said urgently, as if the fact had some special significance for her. Not pausing to explain, she pushed aside the cloth and stepped up into the room, with Zac Kuk not far behind. The flickering light sent shadows flying into the corners, revealing the stacks of drawings, and then the body lying crumpled on the floor. Ixchel gasped and clutched Zac Kuk’s free arm, so hard that the torch in her other hand wavered and dipped, casting its glare fully upon the bloodstained form of Kanan Naab.

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