“She’s plenty south of sixty, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So she’s a child. Even better.”
“She’s thirty-five, and a successful theater director. And she wants to get married.”
Chel was astounded that he was thinking of marriage so soon after their breakup. “At least you’re not in the same field.”
Patrick looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Just that you’ll never have to worry about… work disagreements.”
“You think that was our problem?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“The problem wasn’t me competing with you, Chel,” he said slowly. “Until you realize you’ve long surpassed whatever expectations your father might have had for you, you’ll never be happy. Or be able to make anyone else happy.”
Chel turned back to the codex images. “We should focus.”
PATRICK FINALLY STOPPED the projector ten minutes later, breaking the silence of the enormous room. “This matches all of the constraints,” he said, pointing up. “All eighteen.”
“You’re sure?” Chel asked. “This is it?”
“This is it,” he said. “Between 15.3 and 15.8 degrees north and 900 to 970 A.D. We can’t know exactly where it falls, but we can apply the mean values. So we’re basically talking about fifteen and a half degrees north and 935 A.D. I told you I’d figure it out.”
This was the same sky above Paktul as he had written the codex. The exact same. Chel had plenty of occasion to feel genuine awe in her work, but this feeling of transcending time and space was unique, and she sensed them getting closer to what they needed.
“Near the southern part of the Peten, just like you thought,” Patrick said, rolling up his sleeves. He spread out a map of the Maya region on a desk beside the star projector. The map was positional, with latitude lines marking each half-degree change. “It’s not Tikal or Uaxactun or Piedras Negras; those are in the seventeen-degree range. So we’re looking at something farther south.”
He traced an invisible line between the degree markers. The location of each of the known major Maya cities in the southeast Peten was marked, but Patrick’s invisible line didn’t intersect with any of them, or with any of the minor ones either.
Now something was bothering Chel.
“Is there another computer I can use?” she asked.
Patrick pointed toward a small office in the back of the planetarium.
At the monitor, she found her way to Google Earth and a digital map showing contemporary villages in Guatemala. There were no latitude markings. So Chel pulled up another map online that had detailed latitude lines, then toggled between them until she found what she was searching for.
Fifteen and a half degrees north ran almost exactly through the place she was born.
CHEL’S ONLY MEMORY from her childhood in Kiaqix was of riding on her father’s shoulders. It was early evening in the dry season, and Alvar had finished working for the day, so he took her to settle a claim with a neighbor over a chicken missing from their coop. From her perch, Chel watched as young girls brought pails of cornmeal from the mill back to their mothers, to be used for dinner tortillas and breakfast drinks. Whistle music came from the houses, and a drum was played; Alvar danced to it as he walked, and Chel felt the sandpaper of his beard on her legs.
She’d been back to her homeland several times since her mother took her from Kiaqix, and each time she fell more in love with the communal bonfires where stories of the ancestors were still told, the labor-sharing on the milpas at harvest time, the gifts from the beekeepers, and the villagers’ spirited volleyball and soccer games.
Kiaqix was hundreds of miles from any of the big cities, the highways, or the ruins, and reaching it wasn’t easy. You could take a small plane to a landing strip five miles east. But there was only one car in the village of two thousand people, so you’d likely be going those last five miles on foot. Factor in the rainy season, which made the one road into town treacherous, and you were dealing with one complicated journey.
More, Chel’s mother refused to return to Guatemala and always begged Chel not to either. Ha’ana believed that as long as the
“What is it?” Patrick asked from the doorway. Behind him, the planetarium was pitch-dark, as if the world ended here, in this tiny office.
She showed him the map she’d pulled up online.
He leaned over her to better see the screen, and instinctively Chel put her hand on the cuff of his shirt, feeling the fabric at her fingertips. Whatever was lost between them, the feel of him was so familiar. “Are there any major ruins on that latitude?” he asked.
Chel shook her head.
“But Kiaqix is a small village,” Patrick said. “You said the scribe is talking about a city of tens of thousands.”
He was right: Kiaqix was a no-man’s-land for the ancients. No artifacts had been discovered there from the classic era, and the nearest ruins were two hundred miles away.
Then again, Chel thought, staring at the map, the circumstances described in the codex were eerily similar to the stories she knew: the oral history of a king destroying his own city. “The Original Trio,” she reminded Patrick. “Kiaqix was supposedly founded when three city-dwellers escaped to the jungle.”
“I thought you didn’t believe there was a lost city. That it was a legend.”
“There’s no evidence either way,” Chel whispered. “All we have are the oral history and the people who say they saw the ruins but couldn’t prove it.”
Remembering now, Patrick said, “Your uncle, right?”
“My father’s cousin.”
More than three decades ago, Chiam Manu left Kiaqix and went into the jungle for more than a week. When he returned, he claimed to have found Kiaqix’s lost city, from which the oral history claimed their ancestors came. But Chiam brought nothing back and would tell no one in which direction the lost city lay. Few believed him; most ridiculed Chiam and called him a liar. When he was murdered by the army weeks later, the truth died with him.
“What about Volcy?” Patrick continued. “You think it’s possible he’s from Kiaqix?”
Chel took a breath. “Everything he said about his village could be said of Kiaqix, I guess. And also about three hundred other villages across the Peten.”
Patrick put his hand on top of hers and leaned closer. Chel smelled traces of the sandalwood soap he always used. “How does this book land in your lap in the middle of all this? It’s one hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Chel turned back to the computer screen. There was no word in Qu’iche for
Fate.
12.19.19.17.14
DECEMBER 15, 2012
NINETEEN
