are only two of us, Priest Quisac. Are the sacred items
“Yes, they are items of power from another world. If we succeed in our mission, I shall show them to you.”
They marched north for a long while, following the trail that wound its way close to the shores of Bacalar lagoon.
“You said your people are the Itzae?” William asked, making conversation as they walked. “They moved to Chichen Itza?”
“That is correct.”
“Where did your people first come from?” he asked, still wondering why Priest Quisac’s features were somewhat different than the other Mayans.
The Serpent Priest gazed into the sky. “It is said that the Itzaes came from the stars more than ten thousand tuns before.”
“Wow!” William said, with a bit of a laugh in his response, not sure if he could believe that. “I thought you’d say that your people came from somewhere like Guatemala or Peru… but from the stars? Seriously?”
“Our ancestors copulated with the inhabitants of this land and became who we are today. Yet in our essence, the Itzaes carry the
“Okay, whatever,” William muttered. It wasn’t an important topic at the moment, so he brushed it off.
Priest Quisac moved off the trail, heading toward a cluster of thatched huts. “Thousands once lived in these lands. Their homes can be found throughout the region-long abandoned and crumbling.” They entered one of the dilapidated huts. “Let us wait here until dark, so that our arrival goes unnoticed.”
William sat on the floor and leaned against a support beam. While munching on a dried tortilla from his pack, he rested his eyes for a moment. It felt so nice to relax that he decided to take a short nap, and fell asleep with the food still in his lap.
“That smells delicious, Mom,” William said, waiting in a dining room in his dream. “What is it?”
“It’s something very special. Are you hungry?” his mother asked in her caring way.
“I’m starving! Is it chicken… or steak?”
“No.” She carried a covered platter from the kitchen and set it on the table. “How delicious… how delectable… how tasty… hee-hee-hee,” she said, laughing in the voice of the demon, Yum Cimil. She jerked the lid off the platter to reveal the cooked head of a man staring back at him. It was his dad!
William screamed, leaping out from his chair.
“William,” his dad’s head spoke from the platter, “you must let me go.”
William backed away from the table in terror.
His mom ripped an ear off his dad’s cooked head with a cracking sound, like pulling a wing off a roasted chicken. She popped it in her mouth, chewed up the crunchy ear, and licked her lips with her long black tongue.
William couldn’t move-he felt paralyzed.
His mom wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Please forgive me, Jupiter. Where are my manners? Dreadful… horrible… ghastly,” she said in the voice of the demon. She stuck a fork into his dad’s eyeball and plucked it out with a pop. The eyeball’s juices dripped off the end of her fork as she crept toward William, holding it out to him. “You
“No! I don’t want to!”
“Balam,” he heard Priest Quisac’s voice in his head, and he fought to break his paralysis. His mom approached closer, waving the eyeball before him, laughing with the demon’s laugh, and staring at him with black sunken eyes. “Wake up, Balam,” he heard the Serpent Priest again.
William opened his eyes and struggled away from Priest Quisac, thinking he was the demon at first. After gathering his senses and catching his breath, he sat up and told the Serpent Priest about his frightening dream. He paused, sniffing the air. “That’s the same smell from my dream.”
“They are roasting the wild boar in Bacalar,” Priest Quisac said. “Although Yum Cimil cannot harm you here, he may find his way into your dreams. This is his manner of communication. He pleads for you to break the curse of the soil plague that has him bound-to remove the head of King Aztuk.”
They gathered their things and continued down the trail, with the moon lighting their way. A short time later, Priest Quisac stopped and pointed at the glow from a campfire in the distance. “Their camp is in the clearing by the lagoon.”
William’s stomach growled from the delicious smell of the roasting boar. But he detected another foul odor drifting in the wind, as well. “What’s that…
Priest Quisac cringed. “It is the smell of death.”
Chapter Ten
William and Priest Quisac crept along the sandy shores of Bacalar lagoon, following the strong scent of decay. They stopped behind a hut on the outskirts of the enemy camp. The Serpent Priest peeked around the corner and gazed at the huge bonfire blazing into the sky, where a boar was roasting in the flames. He leaned toward William and said, “There are perhaps thirty warriors feasting near the fire.”
“How can they eat with this stench?” William asked.
“They are up wind of it,” Priest Quisac said. “In fact, I believe the odor is coming from this very hut. Come.” He crept along the side of the hut and went through the doorway.
William followed him in, covering his mouth to shield the pungent smell. He couldn’t see well at first and tripped over something, landing in a pile of rotting corpses. The clammy flesh stuck against his skin, and he recoiled from the smell of the decaying carcasses. A nasty fart blasted out from one of the bodies beneath him, and a putrid stink enveloped him-like an overused outhouse ripe for a good cleaning. When he scrambled to break free, he jostled the pile of bodies and a stiff carcass rolled down, landing on top of him-seeming to stare at him with a ghoulish face. The skin felt squishy, like it was melting off the bone. Priest Quisac snatched William’s wrist and hauled him out of the pile.
William stood there with a disgusted expression for a moment, gawking at the grisly scene of butchered men piled like stacks of meat. He stumbled back outside, went behind the hut, and threw up.
The Serpent Priest came to William’s side. “By the condition of the dead, this occurred several days ago,” he said. Priest Quisac returned his attention to the Calakmul warriors at the camp, studying their behavior as they passed a jug between them.
“But what can we do?” William asked. “There are too many of them.”
“Luck is with us, for they drink of the wild agave, clouding their minds.”
“You mean they’re drunk?”
Priest Quisac thought for a moment. “I believe you understand correctly. Soon they will sleep, and then we will free the remaining priests.”
Crouching low, they hustled over to another hut closer to the camp, and they waited for the warriors to become more intoxicated. They kept watch for a long time as the warriors danced around the fire-chanting, drinking, and gorging on chunks of the cooked boar. A stocky warrior stood and threw his bone into the fire, causing a puff of sparks to ascend, grabbing everyone’s attention. He swayed back and forth as he spoke.
“What is he saying?” William asked.
“He plans to bring out a captive for questioning.”
Two warriors left the group and staggered over to a hut near the lagoon, dragging out an elderly man wearing only a loincloth; his hands were tied behind his back.
“It’s Priest Hexel,” the Serpent Priest whispered in a worried voice.
The warriors shoved the captive to the ground, yanked him up by his hair, and then tied him to a tree near the bonfire. The drunken leader staggered up to the prisoner. He grabbed Priest Hexel’s face and shouted at him.
“He demands to know the location of the sacred items,” Priest Quisac whispered. “The priest will not reveal
