with a thud, landing on top of the container that had sputtered out after hitting him.
William lifted his hands from the water and cheered. “Ha! Take that!” He swam back to the shore and picked up another heavy rock to finish him off. But the feathered serpent already looked dead; he wasn’t breathing, and purplish blood oozed out the gash on his head. William tossed the rock aside, and it rolled beside his broken helmet. He studied the helmet with a sigh, realizing that his option to return home had just been smashed forever.
William skirted around the dead feathered serpent and went back to the cavern wall, grabbing a rope by the drizzling waterfall. He was about to start his climb out, when he remembered the sacred items. Priest Quisac would have been mad if he had lost them. William spotted a light shining beneath the creature’s tail, and he groaned, realizing that he would have to touch the dead feathered serpent to retrieve the sacred items.
He returned beside Gukumatz and lifted his heavy tail-letting out a grunt that a body builder would be proud of-and kicked the sacred items free. He pulled the flashlight loose, wedging it through his belt, and draped the rope-still tied to the anti-gravity device-over his shoulder.
“After awhile, crocodile,” William said to Gukumatz. He turned and climbed up the rope, resting halfway by bracing his feet on a thick knot. When he reached the top, William flopped on his back and rested there for a while, listening to the creek trickling beside him and splashing into the cenote below. He sat up and was about to leave, when a green webbed hand reached up from the edge of the cliff, grasping at his feet.
The feathered serpent’s blood-covered crocodile face sprang into view. “Not to leave!” Gukumatz said with a growl. He swiped at William’s feet while continuing to crawl up the edge of the cliff.
William scrambled back like a startled crab, kicking at the feathered serpent. Gukumatz lunged forward and bit William’s calf. Blood squirted down his leg as the beast tugged him back, digging his teeth deep into his flesh.
With no other weapon handy, he grabbed the sacred flashlight from his side. With all his strength, he smacked Gukumatz repeatedly on the head. Sparks shot out from the tube and a shrill whistle blasted. Gukumatz grabbed the end of the flashlight and jerked it from William’s grip. The creature’s hand shook as intense electricity flowed into him; the feathers on his head shot straight up and burst into flames. William groaned when the current passed through the creature’s teeth and jolted his leg, just before he pulled himself free. A stinky smoke drifted out the feathered serpent’s nostrils, and his eyes exploded inside his head. The creature’s jaw dropped with a bubbly froth oozing out his mouth. With a final kick to the face, Gukumatz slid over the side of the cliff and splashed into the cenote.
William crawled over to the edge and watched the creature sink. The sacred flashlight was still gripped in his hand; sparks lit up the cenote as he descended.
Becoming aware of the pain in his leg, he inspected the bite marks. The wound was deep, and he thought it might need stitches. He pressed his hands against the torn flesh for a moment, waiting for the bleeding to slow. Blood continued to ooze out beneath his fingers, so he ripped a strip of fabric from his loincloth and wrapped it around his injured leg.
A white flash drew his attention back to the chamber below, followed by another flash… and another. William staggered to his feet and gazed down with a perplexed look, watching the cenote light up every few seconds. “What the hell,” he muttered. More feathered serpents slithered up from the depths of the cenote. Three of them reached the shore, while more dark forms lurked beneath the water. One of the creatures caught sight of him and made an odd chirping sound.
William spun around and hustled up the passage, grimacing from the pain in his leg. By the time he made it through the first stretch of rough passages and entered a metallic tunnel, he heard a rush of footsteps behind him. The tube merged with another rough passage. William took a bad step, and he fell into the stream, scraping his hands and elbows on the rocks. Through the dim light of the fluorescent algae in the tunnel, he saw two of the feathered serpents rushing toward him.
A bolt of lightning whizzed over William’s head, straight down the passage with a deafening thunderclap. It hit the approaching feathered serpents, bursting them into a spray of green muck that splattered across the tunnel.
“Get up!” Priest Quisac said.
William shot a startled look over his shoulder, and he saw the Serpent Priest coming down the passage; he had a torch in one hand and the sacred weapon in the other. “Thank God you’re here!” William said. He stood and picked up the anti-gravity device that he had dropped during his fall. “There are more of them coming.”
“I can see that… stand back,” the Serpent Priest said, motioning for him to step aside. William pressed his body against the cavern wall, covering an ear with his free hand. Priest Quisac fired again-with a thunderous blast- vaporizing another batch of feathered serpents that had made their way into the tube. “We must get above. They won’t follow us into the light.”
They moved through the rocky passages until they reached another section of metallic tubes. A stampede of footsteps resonated from behind them. Priest Quisac stopped and gazed at the base of the cavern wall, at the point where the creek initiated its flow of water into the tunnels. William glanced back and saw lots of yellow eyes racing up the passage behind them, like a swarm of glowing bees. “We’ll never make it!” he said.
“Take this,” Priest Quisac said, handing William the sacred weapon and torch. He snatched the anti-gravity device from him. “Get to the top!”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just go!” the Serpent Priest said. He poked away at various buttons on the anti-gravity device, causing sparks to jump out and latch onto the rock wall above the stream. While William backed down the tunnel, he could tell that Priest Quisac was trying to block the passage, pulling his weight away from the rocky wall; the device made a terrible grinding noise. Just when the feathered serpents rounded the corner, the cavern collapsed. A flood of water gushed forth, blasting the creatures back down the passage. Falling rocks and dust filled the tube, followed by a torrent of water that swept William off his feet and extinguished the torch in his hand.
He got up and waded through the tunnel; it had flooded up to his waist. “Priest Quisac!” he called out. He could only hear the falling rocks. When his eyes adjusted to the dim glow of the fluorescent algae in the tube, he noticed that the passage beyond had completely collapsed. He feared that Priest Quisac was crushed, or that he had been flushed away with the feathered serpents.
William struggled up the flooded tunnel and bumped into something floating on the water; it was the Serpent Priest. Blood covered the back of his head; his ponytail had become red. William turned him over, and Priest Quisac coughed up a mouthful of water.
“What happened?” Priest Quisac asked with a dizzy look.
While kneeling beside the Serpent Priest to examine the cut on his head, William could hear the steady gurgle of rushing water just beyond the cave-in. It occurred to him that Priest Quisac had removed the barrier between the passage and the underground river, which went all the way to the Cenote Azul. That was the connection that had pulled William and Betty down there in the first place.
Priest Quisac had dropped the anti-gravity during the rock slide, and William couldn’t find it anywhere. After fishing around the tube further down the tunnel, he came across the sacred weapon. “At least we still have this one,” William said.
“It is good that we do,” Priest Quisac said. “We will need it.”
They climbed up the steep entrance to the Sacred Cavern of Jade and found Teshna, standing with her arms crossed, glowering at them. From the anxious look on her face, she had clearly been going crazy with worry. But when she noticed their injuries, her stance softened. “What happened down there?” she asked, leaning closer to inspect William’s bloody leg.
William shrugged with a crooked smile. “The feathered serpents found us.”
Teshna gasped. She snatched her pack and retrieved some rags. She handed one to the Serpent Priest before returning her attention to William’s injured leg.
Priest Quisac wiped the blood from his head. “Our mission to reach Chichen Itza is even more critical now. The feathered serpents will be coming for us.”
“We should have gone with our ancestors,” Teshna said. She pulled a jar from her pack and poured its gooey green contents onto his leg; he groaned from the pain.
“No,” Priest Quisac said, regarding William with a knowing look. “You were correct, Balam. They are not our ancestors.”
“That’s what Gukumatz told me too,” William said. “He called them the
