“Estamos aquí,” he said, grinning.
Will looked around. “Where the hell is ‘here’?”
“Aquí. Aquí-aquí-aquí.”
The jungle pushed against the periphery of the clearing, its clustered trees jostling each other as they edged inward like a crowd around an accident.
“I don't think this is a ‘here’ where I want to be,” Will said.
Suddenly he wanted out of ‘here,’ to be back in the good old U.S. of A. He didn't care if he'd have to move into a homeless shelter, it was better than being left alone in this foreign and overwhelmingly green wasteland. Panic began to sink its claws into him, tearing at the inner walls of his chest. How had he ever let himself get into this mess? What had he been thinking? Or had he been thinking at all?
No way he was getting out of this plane. He was about to tell Diego to turn it around and buzz him out of here when an open, beat-up, mud-splattered two-seater Jeep bounded into the clearing. It slewed to a halt and a spindly-armed, barrel-chested little man jumped out. He was dressed in some sort of tunic made of coarse white cotton. Will's attention homed in on the machete thrust through the embroidered belt around his waist. He trotted barefooted to Will's door and pulled it open.
“Señor Burleigh?” he said with a smile.
He had a round head covered with lank black hair, and bright dark eyes set in a face the color and texture of a baked apple. His smile revealed big white teeth outlined with gold; the metal gleamed in the sunlight, framing his top incisors like Old Master paintings.
Will hesitated, tempted to say that Señor Burleigh wouldn't be coming, but Diego knew the truth.
“That's me.”
“Bueno! Maya, she send me.” He thrust out a thickly callused hand. “I am Ambrosio.”
Will shook hands. “Where's Maya?”
“We go to meet her now. She arrive two days ago. She wait for us in the hills.”
“What hills?”
“Not far. You will see.”
Another moment of indecision: Will felt he needed to see a familiar face in this alien place.
“Come,” Ambrosio said. “We must go. Where is your bag?”
Will didn't budge. “How do you know Maya?”
“She is Ambrosio's kinswoman,” the little man said.
Time to make a decision: stay or go. What would the Duke do in this situation?
Pushing aside his growing anxiety about all the uncertainties he was facing if he stepped out of this plane, Will sucked in a breath and decided to plunge ahead. He wrestled his large duffel bag from behind the seats and jumped to the ground.
Uncertainty was what an adventure was all about; remove the unpredictables and it became a guided tour.
And yet . . .
As he watched Diego wheel his Cessna about and gun it back down the clearing, Will could not escape the terrifying feeling that he was being marooned in the jungle. He waved, but Diego didn't wave back.
Ambrosio took the duffel bag and swung it onto his back. “We go now. Yes?”
“Yes.”
At least he had a man Friday of sorts with him.
As he started walking he looked around at the green wilderness and thought, I'm either a very brave man, or a very foolish one. But either way, I'm a man who hasn't much to lose.
Had that been Maya's purpose in “unburdening” him of his assets? To make him reckless?
It seemed to be working.
He realized he was bathed in sweat. Some of it nervous sweat, no doubt, but the rest because it was hot. And wet. He'd thought the heat had been stifling back in New York, but that had been nothing compared to this. He bet he could grab a handful of air and wring a shot glass of water out of it.
Maya had warned him to dress light and in white. Will was glad he'd listened. Glad too that he'd bought waterproof hiking boots for the trip as he sloshed behind Ambrosio toward the Jeep. Small samples of the vehicle's original dark green finish, and swatches of its canvas top were visible through the thick coat of red mud that encased it. The twin arcs of clean glass on the windshield looked like watchful eyes.
“We have many, many rains,” Ambrosio said. His English was good, and Will was glad for that.
“Does it ever stop?”
Ambrosio sniffed the air. “Chac sends us two more storms, Ambrosio thinks, and then he leave us alone.”
“Chac?”
“The god of rain and storms.”
Will winced as Ambrosio tossed the duffel into the Jeep's rear compartment. “I have a computer in there.”
“A computer?” he said, flashing his gold-lined teeth. “We have no electricity here, señor.”
“I have batteries,” Will said. He'd brought extra lithium ion packs. “And I can always plug into your cigarette lighter.”
Ambrosio shrugged and climbed in behind the wheel. “You will not need a computer where we are going.”
Will figured he'd be the judge of that, but didn't challenge the little man.
“Is Maya far?” he said.
“She is miles away, on the other side of the valley. This is the closest a plane can land.”
“And just where is this?”
“In the jungle.”
“I know that. But what country?”
“Maya country. This is where Ambrosio was born.”
Maya country . . . did that mean Maya the woman, or Maya the people? Will assumed he meant the people.
“But Maya country could mean Mexico, Belize, or Guatemala.”
“Si.” He started the engine. “You are thirsty?”
Will couldn't tell if Ambrosio was being evasive or merely obtuse. But he was thirsty. The bottle of Poland Spring he'd bought at JFK had run out long ago.
He nodded. “I could use a drink.”
“Bueno.”
Ambrosio worked the shift and the Jeep leaped backward— directly into the long ungainly trunk of a palm tree. Will cried out in alarm as something heavy landed on the canvas top and bounced off.
Next thing he knew, Ambrosio was hopping out of the Jeep and pulling his machete from his belt. He picked up a pale green coconut from the ground, hefted it in his hand, did whack-whack-whack! with the blade against its top, and then he was handing it through the doorway.
Will peered through the two-inch opening and found the cavity half filled with thin white liquid. Coconut milk. He sipped. It wasn't cold, but it was cool, mildly coconut-flavored, and definitely refreshing. Ambrosio had opened one for himself and was quaffing the contents, letting it dribble over his chin. He tossed his away and looked at Will.
“Another?”
Will hadn't finished his yet. “No mas, gracias.”
Ambrosio grinned. “Muy bueno! Habla Espanol?”
“Not as well as you speak English, I'm afraid.”
Ambrosio resumed his place behind the steering wheel, and this time they moved forward. He wheeled toward an opening in the greenery and headed along a rutted path. Will could make out only one set of tire tracks in the mud, the ones Ambrosio had made on his way here.
And then they were among the trees, so thick and huge, so intensely green and old, Will felt as if he'd somehow slipped back into the Cretaceous and that dinosaurs were lurking just ahead. The jungle quickly closed around them, over them, behind them, and the clearing slipped from view.
He fought a wave of claustrophobic angst, but it eased as Ambrosio began pointing out the local flora and fauna: squat palmettos, fluorescent parrots and macaws, the huge leaves of elephant taro, orange-beaked toucans, ocote pitch pines, a scurrying, brown, tailless paca, graceful acacias, chattering spider monkeys, and a spotted boa constrictor hanging from a eucalyptus branch.
Nothing here seemed to live alone. The trees were draped with lianas, with some of the vine trunks as thick around as a man's thigh. These in turn were layered with gray-green epiphytic growths and the occasional bright splotch of an orchid.
The sheer density of life here awed Will. He felt as if he were bumping
along a capillary in some huge living organism.
“See those trees there?” Ambrosio said, pointing to a cluster of trunks with dark fluted bark and high leaves. “That is mahogany. Many dzul come here to cut it down and take it way.”
“Dzul?”
“Foreigners. They come and cut-cut-cut, and never make peace with Yumtzil.” He glanced at Will as if anticipating the question. “Yumtzil is the forest lord. Bad thing to forget forest lord.”
“I'll remember that. Are Chac and Yumtzil Maya gods?”
“Si. We have many, many gods.”
“Does Maya—not the people, your kinswoman—worship those gods?”
Ambrosio shook his head. “Maya is half dzul. She has her own ways, and they are much older than ours.”
Older? Will was hardly an authority, but he didn't think American civilization got much older than the Mayas’.
And he thought he'd detected something new in Ambrosio's voice as he spoke of his kinswoman, but couldn't quite identify it.
“Does she offend your gods with her different ways?”
Ambrosio laughed. “No. Our gods are not jealous like yours.”
“Like mine?” Will hadn't had been much of a churchgoer since he was a teenager, but he was still nominally a Presbyterian.
“Dzul gods—very jealous.”
“Oh, I see. The Christian God.”
“And Jewish God and Moslem God. All want to be the only god. Maya gods not like that. All live together. Much better that way.”
“Can't argue with that. So what do your people think of Maya and her ‘old ways’?”
“She is sometimes called curandera, a healer, and some call her Ixchel—‘She-of-the-Rainbow.’”
“A lovely name,” Will said. Had her jade eyes earned her that one?
“And some even call her Xtabay.”
Will saw Ambrosio bite his lip as if he'd said something he shouldn't have.
“What does Xtabay mean?”
Ambrosio sighed. “Xtabay is a spirit who lures men deep into the woods and abandons them there.”
Will felt his insides constrict into a fearful knot. Is that what Maya's got planned for me?
“But do not believe that,” Ambrosio added quickly. “That is just an old tale used to frighten young men. The people who call her that do so because they do not understand her ways. Others, usually ones who follow the dzul god, call her bruja.”
Will knew that word: witch.
“What do you call her?”
“Ambrosio calls her sabia . . . the wise one.”
And now Will identified the mystery note in Ambrosio's tone: reverence.
“Mira!” Ambrosio said suddenly, pointing.
Something brightly colored and feathered darted across the path in front of them.
“A peacock!” Will said.
“No-no, señor. That is a turkey.”
A turkey in the jungle. Imagine that. “Too bad you don't have Thanksgiving down here,” Will said.
“Like in the U.S.?” Ambrosio shook his head. “No, señor. We do not give thanks that the dzul came to our land.”
The sides of the path rose gradually until they were traveling in a gully, with the jungle floor slipping by at eye level. They came to a huge puddle, but Ambrosio never slowed. He plowed straight ahead as muddy water the color of old blood flew in gouts to either side, bathed the windshield, and sprayed through the doorways.
And as the Jeep rolled onto the opposite shore, the engine sputtered and died.
Ambrosio cursed in a number of languages as he turned the ignition key. The starter whined but the motor didn't turn.
“Maybe the wires are wet,” Will said, shaking the mud off his right arm. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he'd heard it before and it sounded reasonable. “Give them a moment and they should dry.”
Ambrosio muttered something about “waterproof” and popped the hood release. Will joined him at the front of the Jeep and helped him lift the hood.
Ambrosio groaned at the sight of the engine splattered with mud.
Will knew next to nothing about cars. He could look inside someone's abdomen and identify every organ and blood vessel and describe their functions in minute detail; put him in front of a car engine, however, and he was a stuttering bumpkin.
But you didn't need to be a Popular Mechanics subscriber to know that mud and the internal combustion engine did not mix. This one looked as if it had hemorrhaged.
Ambrosio worked on it for half an hour, wiping it clean, drying the wires, checking the connections . . . but the engine refused to turn over.
Finally he leaned back and stared upward. What was he looking at? He couldn't see the sky through the green canopy overhead.
He turned to Will. “Ambrosio must go get help.”
“How far is that?”
“Miles.”
Will looked down the gully. It looked walkable. “All right. Let's go.”
“No. Not that way. Too many miles that way. Too far.” He pointed into the thick of the jungle. “Ambrosio will go that way.”
“And leave me here?”
No way, José.
“It is better.” He pulled out his machete and made chopping motions at the jungle. “Ambrosio can go fast this way, but not with you. Dark will come.” He pointed to the Jeep. “You stay. You can put up the sides and close the back. You will be safe until Ambrosio returns.”
He turned and struck off into the brush.
“Wait!” Will shouted, fighting panic.
“Do not be afraid,” the little man called back. “Ambrosio will come back soon!”
And then he was gone. Will could hear him crashing through the brush, but the vegetation had closed around him. Soon even his sounds were swallowed up by the green wall.
Will took two steps toward where he'd last seen him, then stopped. Ambrosio wasn't taking a shortcut, he was making one.
He's right, Will told himself. I'll only slow him up if I tag along.
And the idea of stumbling through this jungle in the dark, even with Ambrosio . . .
Yet Will couldn't help but remember Ambrosio's remark about Xtabay . . . the spirit who lures men deep into the woods and abandons them there.
Well, I'm plenty deep in the woods, he thought. And now I've been abandoned.
Don't get dramatic.
Ambrosio will come back soon. . . .
Will believed that. He didn't have unerring judgment about people, but Maya and Ambrosio seemed like good people.
I'll be all right, he told himself. This is just a bump in the road. Things will turn out fine. Don't let this get in the way of the adventure.
Movement on the ground caught his eye. Pieces of green leaf were walking across the gully. He bent for a closer look. No, the leaf bits weren't walking, they were being carried. By ants. A whole line of them . . .
Will squatted and saw another line of ants heading the other way, hundreds, thousands of little leafcutters traveling an invisible twolane highway that crossed the floor of the gully. The burdened ants headed west, the empty-handed ones traveled east for another load.
Rising, he closed his eyes and sniffed the air. He found it ripe with the effluvia of life and death, the perfume of flowers, the musk of decay.
He listened. Since his arrival his ears had been jammed with man-made noise—the roar of the Cessna's motor, the purr of the Jeep's engine, Ambrosio's chatter. Now they were silent and the sounds of the jungle filled the air around him. The splats of leftover rainwater dropping lazily from leaf to leaf on its way to the ground, the high sharp calls of birds, the staccato chitter of monkeys, the cheeps of tree frogs, all set against the high-tension buzz of flies and cicadas.
Rain forest Muzak.
The quotidian rhythm of jungle life continued uninterrupted, taking no notice of him.
Will slapped at a stinging spot on his neck, and his hand came away with a dead mosquito on his palm. Well, something was taking notice of him. Maybe it would be a good
idea to close up the Jeep now.
He stepped around to the rear and found the door flaps under his duffel. He also found an extra machete. He pulled it out and hefted it. The handle was cheap plastic, the long flat blade a dull black except for the steely glint along its honed edge, but somehow he felt better knowing he had it. He gave it a few practice swings, then slipped it through his belt.
The door flaps snapped into place easily, and he zipped the rear panel closed. There. That should keep out the bugs very nicely.
Just for the hell of it, he slipped behind the wheel and tried the ignition. No luck. The damn engine still refused to turn over.
The enclosed Jeep was hot and stuffy now, so he stepped out again. He considered pulling out his laptop and putting down the events of the day, but he was thirsty. He had a machete; all he had to do was find a coconut and chop it open as Ambrosio had.
He strolled up the gully, looking for a coconut palm. After a few dozen paces, the sound of running water caught his ear. It seemed to be coming from somewhere ahead and to the right.
A stream or a river maybe. Even better than a coconut.
As he moved on, looking for a break in the brush, he thought he saw a patch of sunlight beyond the roadside trees. That could only mean some sort of clearing. He found a narrow path into the undergrowth, probably an animal trail, climbed up the bank, and followed it in.
The going was slightly uphill and fairly easy for a couple of hundred feet. Along the way he noticed a dark brown, two-foot mound to his right. The ants moving in and out of the hole atop their hill were a good ten times larger than the leafcutters he'd seen before. He shuddered at a brief nightmare image of tripping and falling into that, and moved on.
Another twenty feet or so and he came to a thick tangle of bush and vine. Whatever had made the trail apparently squeezed under the tangle. Will wasn't about to try that, but he sensed that the clearing was just beyond.
He pulled out his machete and began hacking. It wasn't easy work, and his shirt was soaked with sweat by the time he broke through. He grinned. He'd made it to the clearing. But what he saw straight ahead brought him up short.
A pyramid.
It sat in the center of the clearing, basking in a pool of sunlight angling in over the treetops. Will had read up on the Maya in the past week, and had seen pictures of the temples and pyramids at Tulum and Chichen Itza. This one resembled those, but not as large; and in much worse condition. The jungle had gone a long way toward reclaiming it—vines, mosses, bromeliads, and even trees with long, snakelike roots crowded its crumbling steps and basked in the sun atop its templed crown. But the resurgent foliage hadn't yet been able to obliterate its man-made lines. No doubt about it: an undiscovered Mayan temple.