Later that night, sitting beside a flickering Coleman lantern, Danielle was pressing McCarter and Susan for more details. Hawker had joined them.
McCarter began by explaining the obstacles. “One problem we face is the condition of the find.” The glyphs on the Wall are in terrible shape, for the most part unreadable. The ones found on the great stone in the pit are better off, perhaps because they’ve been buried and protected from the elements for much of their life. The exposed tree roots and steep incline of the vertical walls suggest the pit to be quite a recent excavation.”
This response concerned her. She wondered if their adversary had somehow gotten here before them. McCarter, unknowingly, assuaged that fear.
“For whatever reason, the natives seem to be using it as a trap.”
“With all the bones we had to fish out of there, you wonder if they ever came back to check it,” Hawker said.
“Apparently, we’re not the only ones that can be wasteful,” McCarter said. “But from the look of things, it seems to have been dug with fairly primitive tools. And almost without regard for the relics it uncovered. In many places we see chips and scratches from their digging that have damaged the wall. My guess is that they knew of the slab and chose to excavate there to make specific use of having one solid, steep wall.”
Hawker rubbed his sore shoulder. “The sheer face makes for a better trap,” he said, ruefully. “You don’t see the drop coming.”
“And the glyphs in the pit,” Danielle asked, bringing the conversation back on track. “You were going to tell me something good.”
McCarter got down to business, opening an aged, leather-bound folder stuffed with drawings and notes. He pointed to a group of sketches he’d made. “Remember what I told you about the wooden people and Seven Macaw—that they were a mythological race the Maya believe existed before man?”
“And how the gods destroyed them with a burning rain,” she said. “Yes, I remember all of it.”
“Remember the other glyph you pointed out?”
“Zipacna,” she said. “The Destroyer.”
“Well, much of the writing on this slab concerns the two of them. Seven Macaw, the father, and Zipacna, his son.”
Danielle was surprised. “Zipacna looked like some type of reptile to me.”
“I know,” McCarter said. “He was, sort of. But you have to remember, it’s mythology. Like the Minotaur and the Kraken in Greek mythology, much of it is mysterious and nonlinear. So even though Seven Macaw was a proto- human, so to speak, his son was this beast, this destroyer, who was usually described as resembling a hideous crocodile, though he walked and lived on the land.”
Danielle listened as McCarter spoke, unsure where this was heading.
McCarter looked over at Susan. “You recognized it before me,” he said. “Why don’t you tell the story.”
She spoke up. “The glyphs on the stone slab describe Zipacna doing the work of his father, terrorizing the peasants and anyone who might challenge Seven Macaw.”
“Everybody needs a henchman once in a while,” Hawker said.
Susan laughed. “In a lot of ways that’s what Zipacna was. In fact, the main story here depicts a group that wanted to topple Seven Macaw, deciding they must first get rid of Zipacna. Tricking him into digging a pit for them and then trying to kill him by dropping a huge log into the hole while he was down there.”
“A pit,” Hawker said. “Like ours?”
“Possibly,” McCarter said. “I believe that the stone in the pit was once on the surface. The land probably built up around it like sand blowing against the side of a house. Even now the top sticks out a bit. And in the story it is more of a narrow well.”
“So what happened to them?” Danielle asked, keeping things on track.
Susan finished the story. “After thinking they’d crushed Zipacna, the group began to celebrate by throwing a big party. While they were getting drunk in their victory celebration, Zipacna climbed out of the hole and destroyed them all by bringing their house down on them.”
McCarter smiled. “Some think it’s an ancient morality tale, a warning against the dangers of drink.”
“I can understand that,” Hawker said. “I’ve had a few houses come down on me because of the dangers of drink.”
Laughter made its way around the group, then Danielle asked another question. “So that pit may represent the one they dug for Zipacna and perhaps this wall is supposed to be the resting place of the people he killed?”
“I think you’re right about this being a monument to them,” McCarter added. “Some kind of a monument anyway. The place seems to have religious significance but was not a population center.”
Danielle considered his words. They confirmed what she’d feared. They’d found a monument, but no evidence anyone had lived there. And in their search of the surrounding area they’d found no sign of other structures.
“Someone had to build it,” she said. “Can you tell me who, or where they came from? Or are we going to have to work on your definition of ‘good news’?”
McCarter smiled. “Do not despair,” he said. “All is not lost in our quest to make a legitimate hero out of old Blackjack Martin. There are glyphs on the base of the slab that refer to another place, perhaps even a city. A place with stone buildings and great fires.”
She perked up.
He raised a cautioning hand. “Don’t get too excited. It isn’t named, just described.”
“Where? Close to us?”
“If we’re reading the glyphs correctly, it should be two days’ travel from here.”
“Which way?”
“The glyphs define the direction as that of the setting sun on a date, a date the Maya called 8 Imix, 14 Mak, ruled by the Ninth Lord of the Night.”
Hawker shook his head. “I think I have a dentist appointment that day.”
Danielle smacked him on the arm, though she couldn’t contain a brief snicker at the comment. She turned back to McCarter. “Please tell me we know what day that is on our calendar.”
“Well …” he said, “not exactly.”
She exhaled in frustration. “You’re torturing me, Professor. Just give me an answer. Can we get there or not?”
Susan laughed. “This is what he does,” she said. “We call it McCarter Syndrome. It’s like the Socratic Method, only worse. He can take three lectures to answer one question, and by that time you’ve forgotten what you asked.”
McCarter smiled and obliged. “Sorry,” he said. “Old school tradition. The thing is, we’ve been looking for dates on the ruin to place it in the time line with the other Mayan sites. We could only do that if we found one of their Long Count dates.”
The Long Count was the Mayan supercalendar, a cycle of interlocking names and numbers that gave each day a multipart name and number in a sequence that would not be repeated for over five thousand years. A date in that format could be matched to an exact Gregorian calendar date: day, month and year. It would also allow them to place the ruin exactly where it belonged in the time line and to prove beyond all doubt if the sight predated other Mayan structures.
“Only, we haven’t found any of those,” McCarter said. “But there is another glyph connected with the date glyph on the slab, and this other marking indicates a special occurrence happening on the date. It calls this date the day of the yellow sun. But they’re not using yellow to describe the color; rather, it corresponds to a direction. In the Mayan scheme, each cardinal direction has a color: red for east, black for west, white for north and yellow for south. The day of the yellow sun means the day of the southernmost sun: the Solstice; down here, it’s the longest day of the year. So whatever year it actually was, 8 Imix, 14 Mak occurred on December 21 or December 22.”
Danielle was beaming; finally she had something to grasp. “So we just need a little astronomy work to tell us where the sun would settle on that date.”
“I suppose we’ll need it for accuracy,” he said. “But as luck would have it, it’s only January and we’re so close to the Solstice that I can point us in the rough direction.” He extended his arm toward the western horizon, his palm flat and vertical like a blade. The line of sight ran down his arm and over his thumb to indicate the course. “Right about there,” he said. “Just south of where the sun went down.”
