The Joisey Codex

by

Alex Paciorkowski

Copyright 2024

1. Prologue

Excerpts from

“Items Related to Sack’uktún and The Book of Souls”

by Ethan Culliver Crosby, Ph.D.

in Annual Review of Applied and Cross-Comparative Prophetics

Vol. 27(13): pp. 401-478.

The modern rediscovery of the ancient Maya city of Sack’uktún did not occur until late in the twentieth century when a Mexican government military operation to pacify the depths of the Lacandón forest accidentally uncovered the ruins. The site is located at about 16°35’N; 90°85’W, approximately 12.2 kilometers northwest of the confluence of the Usumacinta and Lacantún Rivers. Prior to its rediscovery, the existence of Sack’uktún was affirmed only by rumors and two pieces of archaeological evidence: Stella 85 at Uaxactún, dated to around 9.3.0.0.0 (c. 495 AD) depicting a procession departing on a pilgrimage to the site; and inscription M-242 at Tikal, dated 9.18.2.5.17 3 Caban 0 Pop (25 January 793 AD) recording the destruction of the Institute of True Love by King Xcanul. News of this event undoubtedly was carried widely in the Maya world, for it is alluded to in Stela 92-B at Palenque, although Sack’uktún itself is not specifically mentioned.

Founded in 100 AD, Sack’uktún reached its height within the traditional time frame of classical Mayan civilization. By 800 AD the city was densely populated, with some 9,000 inhabitants living in the center and an estimated 6,000 more residing in the surrounding four kilometers. In the tenth century, however, the city was abandoned, as were most of the great Mayan population centers of the lowlands – for reasons that are unknown and continue to puzzle archaeologists to this day. Plate 1 presents the layout of the city at the time of its rediscovery, following extensive clearance of the jungle vegetation and surveying by a team from Morristown University.

The city center was arranged around the Great Plaza, from which rises the fantastic Altar of Tunkul. Numerous ceremonial tree stones, carved in a three-dimensional style rivaling those found at other sites like

Copan, are arranged around the Plaza. Many of these bear legible inscriptions which have provided important details regarding the local history of the city. Immediately to the north is located the Central Acropolis, upon which were located many of the palaces of the aristocracy until the turbulent times of King Xcanul. The arched hallways, spacious courtyards, and elaborate decorated galleries honeycombing the Acropolis remain astonishing examples of classical Mayan architecture. To the west of the Central Acropolis stand the ruins of the palace of the enigmatic King Wukub Ok’ic, who figures prominently in the narrative of Sack’uktún at its height.

Sack’uktún it seems always had a reputation as a site of pilgrimage for artists, poets, sages, and scientists from all across the Mayan lowlands. The city boasted an astronomical observatory, a Hall of Seers (where priests specializing in prophecy were employed), and an amphitheater. Its Hall of Scribes served as a training academy for novices of that profession. Indeed, the large temple rising 38 meters above the forest floor at the end of the long causeway directly to the east of the Great Plaza is dedicated to none other than Itzamna, the central deity of the Mayan pantheon and inventor of writing. But by far the supreme intellectual achievement of Sack’uktún during its height was the Institute of True Love.

King Wukub Ok’ic (505 (?) - 540 AD) presents one of the more complicated personages among the many known Mayan monarchs. Born to parents of obscure origins, he was apparently orphaned at a young age, and according to the practices of the unusual Mayan holiday Ak’ab Ac’alab1 was adopted into the royal family. Children adopted in this way often became associated with powers of the supernatural, and for Wukub Ok’ic there seems to have been no exception. The surviving tree-stones which speak of his ascension to the throne at the tender age of thirteen already make mention of the miracles he is supposed to have performed: he could read palm leaves and tell the past from the clouds, and could make rain fall from the ground to the sky. He also reportedly had the ability to converse with jaguars (see Plate 2). But in regards to the everyday tasks of running a

city-state he was singularly uninterested. Not surprisingly, Sack’uktún did not emerge as a leading military or commercial power under his reign. Instead he contributed other gifts to Mayan culture. He was a most talented poet. Some examples of his work remain as marvelous glyph-murals painted in the most ceremonious style on the walls of the central hall of his ruined palace, and they stand as some of the greatest lyrical examples in the body of Mayan literature. But most of his poems, written in books of folio form, appear not to have survived the Spanish Conquest.2

It appears that several years into his reign King Wukub Ok’ic fell in love with a woman who, for whatever strictures imposed by the royal family and the aristocracy, he could not marry. It should be remembered that the power of many monarchs in Mayan society at that time was far from absolute, but rather existed at a complicated intersection of many social and celestial forces. Perhaps she was a slave, or a foreigner, or tied in some inconvenient way to a member of the aristocracy – on these points we can only speculate. Of her identity, even of her name, we know nothing. But she appears in many, if not most, of his poems, and the effect of the unhappy affair on Wukub Ok’ic was profound. The stories of the court narrate that most of the time the king could be found wandering absently in the nance garden which he had had built adjacent to his palace. A scribe recording several centuries later the history of this era of the classical period, when other city-states were busy expanding their power, wrote somewhat ruefully, “of Wukub Ok’ic, King of Sack’uktún, it can only be said he did not rule over his land, for the gods would not allow him rule over his heart.” We are ignorant as well of the ultimate fate of the object of Wukub Ok’ic’s forbidden love. Whether she died young or old, remained in Sack’uktún or was forced into exile, we simply do not know. But we are aware that his predicament led him to his greatest act as king: The founding of the Institute of True Love.

Commissioned in 530 AD, the Institute had originally as its charge the discovery of the presumed cosmic forces that prevented King Wukub Ok’ic from sleeping at nights and which kept him pacing in his garden during every phase of the moon. The king brought experts from across the Mayan realms, and funded their experiments and investigations handsomely from the royal treasury. The Institute itself consisted of two halls, which are now nothing but the roughest ruins ever since the time of King Xcanul. In one hall the scientists investigated love of the body. They worked at night with the lamps off. During the day there was no one. On the other side, in the Hall of Memory, the specialists there held hands and recited verses and fed each other ripe fruits with adoring eyes while the sun was in the sky. But once the evening star rose, they were paralyzed by fear.

A series of stone tablets unearthed near the ruins, overrun now by philodendrons and spiders, records something of the work carried out at the Institute. Some of the scenes are explicitly erotic, while others contain meditations on the different states of love known then to exist (the Maya called them Truth, Beauty, and Charm – although it must be remembered the Maya at this time had only the barest intimations of quantum mechanics). Still another series of stelae uncovered depict scenes of human dissection, focusing particularly on the heart, in an effort to discover where precisely love resides.

The Institute survived as a great intellectual establishment long after the death of Wukub Ok’ic from lethargic encephalitis in 540 AD. The position of the scientists of love vis à vis the subsequent rulers of Sack’uktún varied from an enjoyment of bare tolerance to outright persecution. Much of the resources granted to the Institute by the royal treasury were eliminated in 629 AD by King Xok’ol. But none of the kings until Xcanul dared to set foot inside the walls of the Institution, as Wukub Ok’ic before his death had placed it under the protection of the powerful God QQ, known especially for her bloodthirsty and vengeful habits.

Sometime during the end of the seventh century a great discovery was made at the Institute. This was the elucidation of the mechanism of panab yacunah, or “fated love.” The essentials of this mechanism, and the means by which it was proven – in what seems to have been a massive effort involving both halls of the Institute – were recorded in a large volume called the Huun Ch’ujlelob. Fray Monterroyo misapprehended the title as El Libro de los Almas, and thus it has passed into English as the legendary Book of Souls. The good father reported the book to be, in modern measurements, the equivalent of about twenty-five centimeters square, extremely thick, written in standard folio form, and covered with the skin of a black panther. Monterroyo never actually saw the book himself, but was just repeating the folk tales of villages in his parish. This is perhaps just as well, for had he gotten his hands on the text he undoubtedly would have burned it. The Huun Ch’ujlelob was said to be a history of the efforts of the Institute to understand love, followed by, most incredible of all, a lengthy appendix listing all of the souls known to exist and that would ever exist, together with the true name of the one other soul with whom each matched perfectly. It seems that thanks to the Institute of True Love at Sack’uktún, the Maya of the lowlands guided their marriages for a time by the matches prophesied in the Huun Ch’ujlelob.3 This continued until King Xcanul sacked the Institute in 758 AD and had its scientists publicly sacrificed. It is not know why this destruction was ordered, but one can deduce from the forbidding inscriptions erected at the sire afterwards that the censorial streak that periodically runs through human societies ran through the Maya as well. The Book of Souls vanished for over a milenium. Its rediscovery at the end of this century by a research team from Morristown University, and its subsequent near-loss under extremely unusual circumstances, certainly comprise one of the more bizarre stories…

Chapter 1

The story we’re about to tell takes place in north Joisey, in a small city called Morristown. The reader will have to forgive such an unglamorous locale – it just happened that all the elements came together there at that particular time. The University, the Music Conservatory, the Botanical Garden. And there are really worse off places, towns just down the Turnpike in fact, in the classic Joisey style, with open toxic chemical dumps, post-industrial wastelands, and whose neighborhoods have been bisected and trisected by eight-lane highways.

But Morristown in the late twentieth century was still relatively tolerable. There are a pair of hills ringing the city to the west, very ancient hills, now really nothing worthy of the term “mountain” but rather weather-rounded ridges of rock covered in second-growth maple and oak forest. Once the hills used to mark the farthest extent of the spring hunting grounds of the Delaware Peoples. Ever since the time of the British the two hills have been called Mount Musket and Six Mill Hill. There indeed were once six mills on the latter, but these have given way to condominiums and pricey neighborhoods with homeowners associations. About the other hill, Mount Musket, there are many stories, going back hundreds of years, but the one we are concerning ourselves with here involves a large white house at the farthest end of the ridge, sitting on a wooded point overlooking Morristown center below. It was a house built in the style of a Spanish villa, popularized in some of the new construction of the 1960s when architects attempted to recast north Joisey as southern California. The house had terra cotta tiles on the roof and a central courtyard inside of which grew a garden of fruit trees and grape vines in the summer. This house at the time of this story was the home of Professor Joachim Equuleus, chair of the Department of Theoretical Linguistics at Morristown University. Concerning the goings-on in this house there are also many stories, but the only one we are going to enter into now started one pleasant afternoon in early fall when the wind was blowing and the trees were just turning colors, and a young man with curly hair and suntanned skin came riding his mule up to the front door of the house. The mule was pensive and philosophical looking and old. He went by the name of Gregoriano Chance, and the young man and he were much attached to one another. The young man himself was named Ethan Culliver Crosby, and the presence of the mule would have attracted enough attention were it not for the outfit of its rider. Ethan wore, because for him the early autumn was already most cold, a heavy wool jacket of brilliant colors, oranges, reds, and greens, buttoned up tight over a bare chest. To go bare chested as much as possible was, we shall see, his habit. His legs dangled to the ground in a pair of red woolen pants that looked hand-sewn, and on his feet he wore flip-flops. On his head was a straw sombrero and from his belt, hanging from a leather thong, swung a machete in a scabbard of beaten pigskin. Around his neck hung a single serrated tooth of a shark. But someone once said it is not the clothes that make the man, but events. And these events which we will narrate all took place back when he was only twenty, and just entering the university as an undergraduate.

Ethan hitched Gregoriano Chance to the iron gate by the driveway and walked to the front door. He walked slowly, in long even strides, keeping his eyes on the ground as if scanning for vipers. He rang a doorbell just below a small metal tag on which was engraved “J. EQVVLEVS” followed by a series of funny astrological symbols. The doorbell rang deeply, like a Mongolian gong. Inside the house Ethan could hear the tinkling of a piano. It was a rather tortured sort of playing, and resembled someone executing some children’s song with an emphasis on execution. The notes followed one another slowly, then one would fall too flat or too sharp, a voice would curse, and then the notes would begin all over again. At Ethan’s ringing of the doorbell, a voice exclaimed, “Ah, the door!” with a tone suggesting considerable relief. The troubled piano halted, there were footsteps, and then the front door opened and there stood Professor Equuleus.

He was a tall man, and lean and big-boned, with large hands and a firm jaw. His head was bald. On his face were a pair of round-rimmed wire spectacles and his sharp hawk’s nose was rubbed raw from a lifetime of having his lenses slip up and down upon it. His clothes were the picture of academic dignity and style – a cardigan sweater over a white shirt buttoned to the neck.

“Ethan!” he called out, extending a huge, friendly hand. “Glad you could come!” His gaze roamed past Ethan and settled on the sad eyes of the mule tied to the gatepost. “Err...And your friend?”

“He can take your garage, if you don’t mind, Professor,” said Ethan. “He doesn’t eat much. Bananas. He very much likes bananas.”

After they had settled Gregoriano Chance nicely in the garage, next to the professor’s green 1969 Karman Ghia, where he proceeded to gum a large bunch of donated bananas, Equuleus led Ethan into the house. They passed through a portico into the kitchen, about which must be said a word or two, for it was a curious place where many unexpected things had happened in the past, though we won’t be spending any time on those events now. Professor Equuleus’ kitchen did not seem designed for the purposes of cooking. It seemed more suitable as a library. Cupboards which in “normal” households would have contained dishes, glasses, tins of flour and sugar, held instead yellow-paged grammars on classical Ugaritic, a series of monographs on glottal stops in Aramaic, dense volumes in Glagolitic script demonstrating, by way of a series of complicated mathematical inductions, the necessary existence of love poetry in proto-Indo-European – and that is just to name a few. Books were piled on the counters, on top of antique appliances, and even lay in the sink as if waiting for washing. Books overflowed out of the cabinets onto the floor, and marched in piles along the walls down the hallways into the other rooms. But through this kitchen Professor Equuleus passed quickly, pausing only to read two pages to Ethan from a monograph he had just acquired on anagrams written in an invented language popularized among certain members of the aristocracy in Prague during the nineteenth century. He chuckled over its word-plays and puzzles, rubbed his bald head, and then led Ethan into a large parlor with tall windows from wall to ceiling through which the afternoon sun flowed with a warm golden light.

“I have made this room my music room,” said the professor. And all around (where they could fit in between piles of books) were musical instruments of varied origins. At a glance, Ethan could see several Indian sitars, a Persian flute, two Kenyan drums, an Austrian harp, an Italian harpsichord, and one Mississippi banjo.

“Not that I can play all of them, or even any of them,” said the professor, adjusting his spectacles and rubbing his bald head again. “Yet, that is. I’m working on it. You’ve come just at the end of my piano lesson. Miss Cecelia Burgess is an excellent teacher from the Music Conservatory, and has been kind enough to agree to tutor me.”

And then Ethan saw her, sitting at a wooden upright piano in a corner of the room, partly hidden by a large Tibetan prayer horn. She turned and looked directly in Ethan’s eyes.

“Miss Burgess, this is Ethan Culliver Crosby, the latest addition to our department’s small – but dear! – group of majors. But don’t let his small size fool you. He has big things ahead of him.”

A slow smile came to her face as Ethan remembered to remove his straw sombrero and nod a hello. She looked to be about thirty, but was in fact only twenty-five and had just had a hard life. Hers was a straight face made bold by a broad forehead and dark eyes that glittered like mica. Black curls fell to her shoulders. She sat with her back straight before the piano, her body long like a heron’s, and Ethan saw that on her hands shimmered a pair of emerald green satin gloves. He decided then that Cecilia Burgess was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“Yes, it has become my opinion that if one is to understand the theory of language, one must necessarily, per force, if required, study music,” Professor Equuleus was saying, bending his lean frame into one of the several armchairs scattered around the parlor (he had to move a pile of books off it first). “When one considers it logically, are not music and spoken language two sides of the same coin? Sit down, Ethan, make yourself at home. Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Scotch? A milkshake?”

“No, no, I am fine, thank you,” Ethan said softly, in a voice that to Cecilia hinted of distant forests, dripping vines, and which she was convinced brought unusual humidity into the room. He had to remove his machete from his belt in order to squeeze himself onto the seat of another armchair, next to two thick books, one of the variable nature of palatization in various Bantu dialects, and the other entitled Vowels of Vojvodina. His eyes strayed for a moment over to the piano, and he saw Cecilia Burgess was still looking at him and smiling, and he blushed.

“You see, notes on the page, like printed letters, do not really tell the whole story, do they?” the professor went on. “It is as if certain organs carry out specific functions...for example, the larynx,” and he tapped on his bobbing Adam’s apple with one long finger, “and speaking. Or the fingers,” and he opened his eyes wide and wiggled his digits in the air in front of him, “and playing the piano. And all that is fine and good. But the soul of it, what we hear, what we feel, and understand, this comes from somewhere else!” His index finger stabbed the air, making the point.

And here Cecilia Burgess spoke for the first time, and her voice was even and measured and kind. “Yes, playing the piano is an interesting example, Professor,” she said with a smile and a wink on the side to Ethan. “You could stand to do it a bit more. I could tell today you’ve hardly practiced all week.”

“Err...yes…” mumbled Professor Equuleus, shifting a bit in his seat, knocking a stray book onto the floor. “It’s true. You have to understand, Miss Burgess, I’m a theoretician at heart. It is my nature to search for grand, unifying concepts. I don’t enjoy getting bogged down in practicalities…”

“Your grand unifying concepts are all excellent,” said Cecilia, her mica eyes dancing, “though if you could just manage to make it once through ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, I’d be happy!”

And there the professor laughed good-naturedly and sprang from his chair.

“Touché!” he cried. “Yes, yes, you are absolutely right...I resolve firmly from now on to practice every day, and every night too!” And here Cecilia looked again at Ethan and rolled her eyes. The professor went on: “You see, with me it has always been like that. I always have the feeling that time is running out, that I must jump ahead. But come, we weren’t going to discuss music theory all night. Ethan, I’m sure you are wondering why I asked you up here so urgently this evening. After all, classes have just barely started, and I’m sure you are wondering at what I had said before about you having ‘big things’ ahead of you. What could I have possibly have meant?”

Ethan glanced shyly down at his flip-flops. Cecilia continued looking at him as she began packing her music notes into a leather case.

“You do not know it yet, Ethan, because I have not told you until now, but you have been selected for a very important position. Ethan, does the name ‘Sack’uktún’ mean anything to you?”

Sack’uktún? Ethan could hardly believe his ears. It had been years since he had heard that name. Ever since his father… He at once felt all shyness flee from him entirely.

“Do you mean the fabled Mayan city, said to be a place of great learning and wisdom, but whose ruins have never been found?” asked Ethan. And as he spoke, Cecilia thought she noticed the windows in the parlor fog up from condensation.

“Never found, up until three weeks ago,” Professor Equuleus corrected, holding his big index finger up in the air and grinning excitedly. “The Mexicans, it seems, came upon it while flushing some rebels out of the jungle down there. They were going to blow the place up, I believe, but the Agency on Antiquities got wind of it. In any case, Morristown University has received a grant to send the first official exploratory expedition – under Mexican government supervision, of course. So I have selected two of our best archaeologists to head up the group, stars of their field, in excellent shape, well-prepared in the arts of modern ruin-diving. Very good with portable computers and satellite up-links, that sort of thing. But they will need an assistant. So I’m sending you.”

“Me?” Ethan squeaked. Sack’uktún! Could it really be? It had been found?

“Yes, you. You speak three Mayan languages fluently. You are already an expert decipherer. And you know those jungles better than anyone. You are, I believe, not one to let large snakes and the threat of dysentery scare you – which is precisely why I myself am not going. So you see, Miss Burgess,” the professor turned to Cecilia, “I told you not to let his small size mislead you.”

“Hmmm,” Cecilia nodded, wrinkling her lips. She zipped up her music case.

“Do you know that when this young man came to be interviewed for admission to the university, he insisted on speaking only Cholan?”

“Cholan?” asked Cecilia.

“Yes, Cholan. It’s a Mayan language. I don’t understand a word of it, all those glottals, forget it, but I was most impressed.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” asked Cecilia with a clever smile.

“Ethan, my boy,” said Professor Equuleus, “this fall semester instead of sitting in the lecture halls sleeping through those horrid introductory courses, you will be serving as Interpreter and Chief Glyphologist on the Morristown University Expedition to Sack’uktún. I myself have signed off on it. But it won’t be an easy journey. Civil war is always threatening to break out in the region, plus the drug traffickers add to the local color, and my sources tell me that because of the heavy rains this season travel by helicopter will be impossible. So, you’ll have to approach Sack’uktún on foot.”

Ethan’s head was spinning. He could hardly make his mouth move. But before he could even try to pull himself together, a loud explosion erupted from somewhere underneath the floor of the parlor. The whole house shook, the windowpanes rattled, books fell from shelves, and several pieces of plaster sprinkled down from the ceiling.

“The chemistry laboratory? Again?” asked Cecilia.

“Oh, what is he doing down there?” Professor Equuleus put a hand to his forehead and asked no one in particular.

Presently a skinny man bounded into the room. He was dressed in black pants and a black turtleneck, and had a shock of blond hair flying in all directions on his head. His hair at that moment looked decidedly singed, and his face was blackened by soot. A cloud of smoke followed after him.

“Maxim,” said the professor, looking quite concerned, “have you been digging into the sociology of small particles again?”

But all Maxim would say was, “I am positive now that Heisenberg was certainly correct!” And he took off into the kitchen where he began to fill a large bucket with water.

“I thought I told you never to do it again without a fire extinguisher!” And Professor Equuleus raced into the kitchen after him.

In the basement was a chemistry laboratory the likes of which Ethan had never seen before. Complicated looking glassware was arranged on tables against the walls, interconnected across the room by long tubes and clear pipes through which brightly colored liquids flowed. Solutions bubbled away in beakers, and beneath the charred smell of the fire, Ethan thought he also detected a slight odor of fruit. The fire in the laboratory was not large, and from the soot-stained concrete walls Ethan guessed they were fairly frequent occurrences. After the mishap had been extinguished, and they were all back up in the kitchen, with Maxim perched on a corner counter recording the experiment in large scrawling letters in his lab notebook, Professor Equuleus whispered to Cecilia and Ethan: “Really, once you get used to the explosions, smoke, and risk of fiery death, you have to admit he’s too cute for words.”

Cecilia and Ethan soon after bid good-night to the professor and Maxim, for what with the discussion on music, the news about Sack’uktún, and the fire thrown in, the hour had become late. Ethan collected his sombrero and machete and said that he accepted the position in the expedition, and would drop by at the professor’s office at the university the next day to talk further details. Cecilia told the professor she would see him for his lesson next week, and urged him again to try to practice at least once. The Cecilia and Ethan left the house together.

Outside it was a dark, cloudless autumn night. Ethan collected Gregoriano Chance, and the mule looked unimpressed at having been left for so long in the garage in the dark. Cecilia offered Ethan a ride back into town in her second-hand hatchback, and he accepted. With some difficulty, they tied the mule by his lead to the back bumper, and the animal was quite alarmed by the whole arrangement. But Cecilia drove slowly down the long hill, and the mule clip-clopped behind them all the way.

“You’ll excuse me for saying it,” Cecilia said once they were driving. “But I can tell by your voice that you haven’t been speaking for long.”

Ethan would have been startled at the observation, if it had not been for the strangely comforting way he recognized something familiar in her own voice.

“It is true, you’re right,” he answered after a moment. “I am, you could say, a novice at this sort of life.”

And then Cecilia grinned in joy and said, “I knew it. So am I.” She was quiet for just one second, and was it during that one second that she fell in love with him?

“If you tell me how it happened to you, I will tell you how it happened to me,” she offered, nearly in a whisper.

1. Chapter 2

“The first thing you’ve got to understand,” began Ethan, his vowels and consonants so peculiarly moist it was all Cecilia could do to keep her eyes on the road, “is that my mother died in a skydiving accident before I was two. After that, my father turned adventurer and pirate. He brought me to Central America, where it rans so hard sometimes I’ve seen the drops fall in both directions, from clouds to earth, and then back again. He wanted to lose himself in lands where the rhythms of the moon still have a say. For him it was much better than sitting behind a desk, selling insurance. We made our money for living by diving for sunken treasure off British Honduras. The rainy seasons of my childhood were spent underwater under places like Frenchman’s Cay, Wild Cane Cay, False Cay, Ambergris Cay, and what I remember is my father hiring an orange boat out of Monkey River Town and diving  into the turquoise water with only an oxygen tank strapped onto his back. It was my job to count and sort the contents of the waterlogged brasilwood chests that he raced to haul to the surface before they disintegrated completely. When the rains lessened we would head for the interior, deep into the insides of the forests, into the insides of the world. There, in the jungles, the Maya had once lived. They built great cities of stone, cities that were all abandoned by the start of 10 baktun, measuring time by their calendar. Cutting through tangles of vines down there, it is not unusual to stumble upon the empty ruins of some ancient metropolis, uninhabited for one thousand of our years. We wandered for miles and miles, must have carved our way over the years through half of that jungle, and dreamed at night about carving our way through the other half. In that part of the world there is living marshland, rivers of chocolate, and there is the risk in the mornings of deluges of snakes. In those days, Cecilia, imagine it, that land was forgotten and totally ignored – they said not even the villagers who lived there really knew where they were. Under that ocean of green mud hills it was possible to disappear for a very long while. Here my father could dig through layers of time and moss to his heart’s content. But I don’t think he did it out of any real interest in archaeology or anthropology. No, it was adventure and treasure he wanted, pure and simple. So, while he cleared vines from ancient inscriptions, laid bare temples whose names had been silent for a millennium, and wheedled out of wrinkled old Indians the locations of forgotten ruins, my first playmates were the children we met in the villages we came across. My father didn’t really believe in home-schooling, or any type of schooling, let’s put it that way. My first language was Lacandón, and I grew up knowing when and for how long it will rain by the way the frogs living on the forest floor hop on one foot. I know trees by their first names and can catch fish barehanded with my eyes closed. It is, I think, impossible for me to get truly lost in the jungle, because I learned at a young age how to read leaves. This skill I can’t emphasize enough for its practicality. My father, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, did not know how to do it, and several times I was able to keep us from becoming completely and utterly lost. I remember once, while we were making our way through some hopeless marsh near Chinkutic, we stumbled across a flock of chattering macaws. My father shot one for our supper, and instead of carrying it with us, for they are big birds and very heavy after they have gorged themselves on whole coconuts, I placed the carcass high in the crook of a tree so we could come back for it in the evening. For hours later, during which time we engaged in a fruitless roundabout search for the Temple of the Four Magi (one of many mythical Maya ruins in that vast jungle), my father was convinced we were totally lost at last. He had even sat down in a clearing to wait for the sun to set in a cloudless sky (an event for which you could wait for weeks) so he could determine our position by the stars. Even Gregoriano Chance had an expression on his face that said, ‘I told you so.’ But, I remember I must have been six or seven, I led them straight back to the same tree, no problem, where the same dead macaw was still waiting. It was a bit ant-eaten, but we made ourselves a very tasty dinner. My father said to me, completely dumbfounded, ‘How did you know it was here?’ What could I tell him? All I could think of to say was, ‘It was simple, Papa, it was in the same place.’

“While my father dreamed of finding tombs packed with gold buried under stone pyramids, I became fascinated at an early age with the symbols the Maya wrote with. They wrote on everything, on the walls of buildings, over the doors of their temples, on their pottery, on their sculpture, and not to mention on books. There has probably never been a system of writing like the one used by the Maya. For the longest time it was not even recognized as a system of writing, it is so complicated and intricate that few people believed it was actually meant to be read. I learned from an old gold prospector we came across how to read the parts of the inscriptions called the ‘initial series’, that is, the parts that record the dates in Mayan history. At the time that much only of the language had been deciphered. But even in this one area there was plenty of material for study, because in the art of calendrics the Maya were particularly advanced, and the subject has occupied scholars for decades. Let me give you a point of example, so that you may make a comparison. The Maya used a similar system for measuring days, months, and years as the Aztecs, who lived further west in central Mexico at roughly the same time. The Aztec calendar had a weakness, however, in that it had no way of measuring periods of time greater than fifty-two years. The result was an odd situation where the same date could conceivably occur twice in the space of one human lifetime. This led to confusion. But the Maya developed a way of measuring time which allowed them to record with accuracy dates several thousand years previous. There is one inscription, found on Stela 10 at their city of Tikal, that records a specific day 5 million years ago. But as for the rest of the inscriptions, the rest of the glyphs, who had any idea what they said? No one had yet been able to read them. This obsessed me, day and night. So you see, Cecilia, I have known from the beginning what it is I was meant to do.

“Mayan linguistics has long been confused. Even after the Great Knorosov Decipherment, which proved the mainly phonetic nature of the system of writing, there remained many who insisted otherwise. But to me it was obvious that Mayan writings should have phonetic elements, for there are indications of it everywhere. As an example, coming directly from the Mayan calendar, is their word used to measure periods of twenty years, or katun. This word is written as a glyph with two elements. It’s too bad we’re sitting here in the car, so I can’t draw it for you… Anyway, on the bottom is a character that represents tun, or ‘year’ roughly – a time period of 360 days – and on top of it is a character representing the phonetic value ka, which to the Maya meant ‘twenty’. It is interesting that the ka character looks to us today a bit like a highly schematized fish, with only its fins depicted in later inscriptions. But in the earliest inscriptions it actually was drawn as a fish, the word for which in ancient Maya was kay. Probably that simplified character of a fish came to stand for the phonetic value ka.

“As my father an I traveled, I became fluent not only in Lacandón, but also in Cholan and Yucatec. I tried to learn every dialect of every language in the Mayan family. There was no television where we were living, so I had lots of free time. I haven’t quite accomplished learning every language in the family tree, but I’ve made a good start. This has ended up being essential for decipherment, because nobody speaks the Mayan language of fifteen hundred years ago anymore, and the only way to approach the ancient inscriptions is by comparing their vocabulary to words still used by the modern Maya. Towards the end of our life down there, this began to yield some results. Knowing fourteen or fifteen different ways to say a certain word meant I could recognize in a glyph the phonetic elements and say, ‘Aha! That also means in some dialect of Cholan or Pokomam running quickly but silently over many small stones covered with yellow moss, so this glyph must have had something to do with that.’ It’s exhausting, trying to keep all the etymologies in your head, but it’s a start. There are simply a staggering number of glyphs waiting to be read. It is just a question of time and proper technique. And slowly I began to put things together, and to design a method of decipherment all my own, an expansion on what Knorosov began. It was not much, really, just a childhood kind of game I made up. Over the years, I’ve refined it…”

Cecilia by this time was driving more or less aimlessly through the streets of Morristown, keeping the speed below ten miles an hour for the sake of the mule ambling along behind them. Gregoriano Chance was deeply suspicious they had forgotten all about him tied to the bumper, in fact he as certain of it. Ethan, by the way, has been overly modest regarding his “childhood game” of decipherment. At the time of this conversation his methodology had already been published in an influential Mayanist journal and cited no less than thirteen times by other experts in the field. The technique would later come to be known as the Culliver-Crosby Matrix for Difficult Decipherment. But Cecilia had no idea, and asked him to describe the whole thing in more detail.

“It began simply enough,” Ethan explained. “As my father and I would ramble along, I got into the habit of collecting and cataloguing, mentally, the stranger and more bizarre inscriptions we would come across. I am able to memorize them at a glance and recall them in a second at any time. It began this way, without any paper at first, because I dislike taking notes, and if you ever go to the jungle you will see what I mean, you simply cannot do it. You need your hands free to pick off the armies of ticks and ants that find their way up your arms and legs without invitation. And anyway paper, if left out in the open in that humidity, decomposes within hours. So you learn to remember things, and often it would happen that I would associate a given glyph with a particular ant sting, and remember it that way. Eventually this can get confusing, as over the course of a day of research bites will begin to overlap. So my father at night would help me set up in our tent a large canvas and I would draw in broad strokes by the light of a lantern the inscriptions I had collected that day in my head.” Ethan stopped and laughed. “And here was the one problem. It was at night, like it is for most people who lose their baby teeth in the jungle, that my imagination works fastest. Often glyphs of my own creation would appear and insert themselves onto the canvas. So it took a lot some mornings for my father and I to go through the reconstructed inscriptions and take out these imagined glyphs, so they would not confuse us even more. But these glyphs that appeared to me only at night I have recorded in a separate notebook throughout my life. And I have begun carving them, one by one, in the order they appeared to me, into a series of limestone tablets that I have with me at my dorm room here at the university.” He paused and laughed again. “I’m convinced that by the end of my life they will spell out something very interesting.

“But I needed more. There is only so much one can accomplish growing up in the jungle, half-naked and sleeping next to the iguanas. For this kind of work I knew I would need more training. That is why I came here.”

Ethan was silent for a moment, fiddling with the shark tooth hanging around his neck. He felt ashamed that he had spoken for so long, that he had revealed so much about himself. But then he should not have worried, for Cecilia was the kind of woman who was made for talking with.

“I am telling you all of this so that you will understand me, and understand from where it is I have come,” he said firmly, protectively. “I am in this country for only two months, and it has been overall a completely shocking time.”

“How did you end up here?” Cecilia asked. Did she already feel that the arrival of this Ethan Culliver Crosby, with his flip-flops and jungle eyes, might be the start of something she had been waiting and waiting for? No, she did not think it. She already knew it.

“After all those years my father made many discoveries,” Ethan answered her. “He had painstakingly drawn detailed maps of how to get to scores of lost cities. Plus there are the inscriptions that we reported, not to mention the modest collection of unique artifacts the Mexican government let him establish. All of these have attracted the attention of curators from various museums. So he now has lots of money, and is settled in retirement outside Acapulco. He lives there with a twenty year-old surfing instructor from Australia, distilling his own mescal, and nursing the chronic effects of the two dozen some-odd tropical diseases he has acquired in his lifetime.

“For my part, I have come here to study. I can tell already it is the start of some incredible adventures. What Professor Equuleus said today about Sack’uktún being found – Cecilia, you have no idea! There are many, many stories I have heard about the place, that city is absolutely legendary. For some reason the Maya abandoned it in your tenth century, and no one knew exactly where it was located anymore. Most archaeologists have concluded it was just a myth. There are Spanish priests in the sixteenth century who wrote down the stories the Indians used to tell about Sack’uktún, but not even the Indians believed they were anything but just folktales. My father and I spent several months searching for it once. We heard rumors about it from an old Tzeltal woman outside Ocosingo, who had received a hint from a farmer who had heard it from a fisherman along the Tulija River. And from there we charted a path due east into a long valley full of dripping lianas and iridescent wild turkeys. But there were so many ruins scattered about those lands, and most of their names have slipped off into oblivion. We never found the site called Sack’uktún, but we found others. And so we moved on. But for the Maya, Sack’uktún was the birthplace of all wisdom, a great center of knowledge, arts, and science. Stories tell of a king who ruled once in that city who was a poet. Some elderly Indians in Chiapas, the five or six who still remember their people’s history, continue to insist he was the greatest poet who ever lived, though no one has probably read anything he wrote for five hundred years, maybe longer. None of these poems appear to have survived the Conquest. There is even a dispute regarding what this king-poet’s name was and when he was supposed to have lived. Sack’uktún is also said to be where the Maya trained their best and most articulate scribes. And the city reportedly contained an astronomical observatory and even a peculiar institutions that may have studied cardiology. No one knows for sure…” Ethan exhaled in a low whistle, filling the windshield in front of him with a gentle warm mist. “But now,” he whispered, “all these questions may be answered.”

Cecilia turned the car at last slowly onto Ben Franklin Street where she lived on the bottom floor of an old Victorian house. Gregoriano Chance rolled his mule eyes and huffed in irritation at this extended and thoroughly unreasonable tour of Morristown. Cecilia pulled to the curb in front of the house and turned off the engine.

“This is where I live,” Cecilia said.

Ethan looked out of the car window up at the house. It had three floors and a large porch on the front.

“It’s funny,” he said. “The houses here are so big. When it rains, can you even hear the drops on the roof?” He shook his head. “To suddenly come to this country where I am told I was born, is so strange. To have to wear mittens and pants! I find it very hard. And still when I close my eyes, I see trees reaching out to me, brushing up against a cloudy sky full of parrots.”

“When you talk, it fogs up the windshield,” Cecilia chuckled.

“Yes. It’s the forest in me. At first it was embarrassing. It is true what Professor Equuleus said about my admissions interview. This was the only university that found me amusing.” He sighed. “Yes, coming here has been strange. It is like a different sort of jungle to me, and one in which it seems very easy to get lost.”

1. Chapter 3

They tied Gregoriano Chance onto the porch bannister of the Victorian house and Cecilia led Ethan inside. It was long past any decent hour and it was her turn to tell him everything. Inside her apartment there was a table, chairs, a bookcase, a bed, a kitchen, towels hanging in the bathroom to dry, pictures hanging on the wall to be looked at in the dim light, all of it perfectly anonymous compared to the massive piano occupying the center of the living room. Around this instrument the entire apartment seemed to revolve, it was visible and certainly audible from all corners. Cecilia sat at it, set her gloved fingers on the keys, and began to play. It was Chopin’s Mazurka No. 2 in C Sharp Minor, although Ethan did not know it. She performed playfully, with a gentle dancing of her fingers above the keys, effortlessly and with a warm homey smile on her lips.

“That was the first piece I ever played on the piano,” she said when she had finished. “When I was four. I don’t think either of my parents expected it of me at that age. It was such a strange feeling, I still remember how odd it felt. I had only heard that piece once, and then I was able to play it, my father said, in such a way that when he heard it his heart broke. He was more astonished than my mother, because he’s an amateur musician, and knows a thing or two about piano. My mother said it was in the genes. Do you believe such a thing is in the genes? A four year old who can perform a Polonaise perfectly after only hearing it once? I was insufferable, probably. I don’t know why I was born like this, but I was. My mother said she always expected something like this from me, from the moment I arrived. And another thing I was born with, I will tell you now, Ethan Culliver Crosby,” and at this point she was looking him right in the eyes, “even though this is something I have never told anyone before except for doctors, and even then unwillingly. My God, I don’t know why it is that I already trust you so much. But I do. I’m sure you’ve noticed these gloves I wear, everyone does.” She held her hands out in front of her, clothed with the items under discussion. They twinkled under the bright light of the ceiling lamp. “Do you see how they shimmer? It’s a distracting effect, on purpose.” She smiled. “To keep you from counting. You see, I was born with six fingers on each hand. At some point before I entered this world an additional metacarpal decided to sprout off below each of my little fingers. See?” And Ethan saw, indeed, that Cecilia Burgess hid under her shimmering green gloves six fingers on each hand. To him though it did not look strange at all.

“My father wanted them surgically removed from the first, I’m told. Sometimes I’ve thought he might have been right, sometimes not. But it is me, it’s how I was born. I remained this way because my mother insisted. She said at the time that it could possibly be some sign from God, and that we needed more time to be sure. And so as I grew into a good little girl with white bows in my hair my mother made me do special strengthening exercises for my fingers, until I had a grip like a vice, I could crack nuts between my knuckles, and I could play piano for days on end. And of course the other children made fun of me, calling me ‘spider fingers’ and other things more ingenious but less kind. So my mother made me a pair of emerald-green gloves, sewed them herself, out of what she made them I have no idea. But they have lasted, they have grown as I have grown, amazing, isn’t it? Like a protective second skin. And the fabric shimmers like this on purpose, iridescent, so that only the most observant eye can detect anything is different, and even then only after looking three times to be sure. So I wore these gloves to school, and they did shield me from prying and teasing, especially during winter and cold weather, which I came to love unnaturally, for in such times no excuses are ever needed for wearing a nice warm pair of gloves. And at the age of six I began wearing the gloves at night as well, so that I might have them with me to protect me in my dreams. Can you imagine what it was like? For a six year old to need such a thing?

“Also, as a child I didn’t speak. I just refused to do it. I remember it. And why should I have anything to say? The whole outside world only teased me and treated me cruelly. Why should I talk to them? With my parents I had music, with them I let my fingers and the keyboard speak for me. And how I could play! Just five minutes in front of the piano was enough to silence even the most determined school psychologist.

“My father watched me grow up this way, pale and timid, with no friends, no language anyone else could ever truly understand, and it horrified him. When I was young, he has told me often, it was as if a blue electricity pulsed in my veins. I never laughed. I smiled then only while I was playing music. I would wander around all day, he says, humming perfectly some piece of a tune I had heard somewhere. This I suppose has always been my greatest gift. If I heard an instrument, any melody or rhythm that appealed to me at all, I would hum it far into the night with such accuracy that at three in the morning my mother would awaken in irritation, thinking someone had left the radio playing.

“We were living in Manhattan then. My formal education was disastrous, seeing of course as I refused to talk to my teachers. They held me back year after year. Among the pupils it was a favorite sport to tease me in the morning, and in the afternoon, as well as when I wasn’t around. Though I never uttered a word, I suppose I asked for it. How could it have been avoided when all I did was sit staring at my desk, my eyes focused in some other universe, humming to myself? Or when at the age of seven I would get up suddenly during quiet time and disappear to the elementary school music room, to be found at the out-of-tune old piano they had there, landing whole octaves from some especially tricky piece by Beethoven. And I remember once, at the age of eight and a half, completely humiliating my music teacher somehow in front of the entire class, having no idea how I had done it…”

Actually, here Cecilia leaves out some of the more revealing details of the story. The music teacher was one of those stern matrons of the type who believed first that children should be seen and never heard and second that it is a great accomplishment to play only once piece on the piano over and over, namely “The Saints Come Marching In.” According to the school records, Cecilia Burgess yawned often in that class and could never sit still. One day the teacher, Mrs. Bumsbuzby, reprimanded her severely. “Young lady, you will never amount to anything if you cannot sit still!” Whereupon Cecilia Burgess got up from her place silently, pushed past Mrs. Bumsbuzby, sat at the piano, and executed Liszt’s “Transcendental Études” flawlessly. Liszt! At the age of eight!

Cecilia played it then in front of Ethan, played it with extra flair, and even Ethan, who grew up on ranchero ballads, was impressed.

“As I grew older I was always getting into trouble at school. One teacher, oof, I’m ashamed of this, I almost bit off her earlobe after she insisted I not wear my gloves indoors in May. I was eleven then, I think. My father, who worked as a typesetter in a Manhattan publishing company, was always getting phone calls from the school principal telling him to come pick me up early for one infraction or another. Psychologists recommended electro-shock to bring me under control. Finally my father simply pulled me out of the special school I had been sent to, and managed to get me enrolled in Julliard at the age of twelve. I think by then he was resigned to the idea that I might never fit completely into this world. My mother, on the other hand, had never doubted that all along.

“At Julliard suddenly the fact that I would not talk ceased to be a detriment. I finally felt valued for who I really was. This at least was at first. I could play piano all day long if I wanted to. And that’s what I did.”

Rather, she could play Liszt all day long, if she wanted to. And she played Liszt with an originality that burned the other students to witness. Ethan sat down on the floor next to the piano and listed to her play the “Mephisto Waltz.”

“They have said I played the notes Liszt would have written had he written for six fingers,” she said when she was done. “But I don’t know. I have always played what I felt. Sometimes I would try to play two pieces at the same time, one with each hand. The crazy things I did! I wanted to try and make the people who were listening feel like they were living twice.”

Ethan’s gaze moved from the glittering eyes of this woman he had just discovered that day, and roamed around the room before settling on a violin hanging on the wall.

“At music school I picked up the violin, but I don’t play it much anymore. I found then that the violin matched a hidden part of me that was looking for a way out. You see, I was a very unhappy child. My parents thought that they could tell on any given day what sort of mood I was in by what instrument I was practicing. The piano for joy, the violin for sadness. But it was always more complicated than that for me. We had an apartment on Lexington Avenue then and it was always full of talent agents, visiting maestros, and representatives from different recording studios. They arrived with contracts and offers and waivers, while my mother fawned over me, forbidding me from lifting anything for fear of injuring my hands. She was shuttling me back and forth from Carnegie Hall to Lincoln Center to recitals in the Village and in Central Park. On the phone she was always arguing over percentages and fees. The irony is that my mother took such an interest in what became my career, but in truth she is the sort of unfortunate person for whom music means nothing. She doesn’t even sing in the shower, it would never occur to her, and the idea of just turning on the radio or putting a record on the phonograph is completely foreign. But with agents in negotiations she was ruthless, and we were taken everywhere in limousines, we dined after concerts on caviar, and she made me wear silk ballgowns and rented expensive jewelry. Whatever we asked for we received, and I was told on so many occasions that there were no living pianists and only one or two violinists in Europe who were my equal. Not a thing for a young girl to hear! Yes, I suppose I was insufferable back then. Together my mother and I flew in hired jets to Boston, Washington, Montreal, Los Angeles. I began to give up sleep for weeks on end at the encouragement of my mother, because she said this made me paler and more arresting to eye when I was on stage, and gave my performances an added tension that kept audiences on their feet in anticipation. Back then I recorded several albums a year. Then a tour with the New York Philharmonic. Great masters of piano from Europe and Japan regularly stopped by to meet me, to comment on my silence, my long black hair, my green gloves. Usually they overstayed their welcome asking me to play far into the night until I was beyond the furthest reaches of exhaustion, and finally my father would come home from the printing shop, grease between his fingers, and forcibly toss them out.

“When I was sixteen my mother and our retinue of agents and publicists decided it was an opportune time for a grand tour of Europe. Ethan, understand that by this time there was no classical music hall in the United States or Canada that I had not filled. And do you know how miserable I was? I think only my father knew it, and he felt powerless to do anything about it. He stayed behind while we went to Europe – it was me, my mother, a manicurist, two press agents, two personal assistants, a private nurse, and I don’t know how many others hanging about. It was a miserable trip…”

Miserable for Cecilia perhaps, but here she ignores the acclaim with which she was received. A French toy company came out with a doll in her likeness (complete with emerald green gloves) that could be sat at a plastic piano to play Brahms. The mayor of Florence declared the day she played in that city a tax holiday in her honor. In Vienna students at the music school rioted in the streets when tickets to her performance ran out. And here is a review printed in La Repubblica, typical of the reception extended to her:

What do you do when a musician carries you with a tender mastery, carries you away to some fantasy world...or when she hits you with a fiery exactness, an energy that sears to the bones? In Cecilia Burgess is it possible there is incarnated both of these? She can play, when she chooses, with a meditative sharpness, where every note finds its place in your heart...and at the same time with an urgency that tells you if the piece is not heard out to the end, death will surely come to us all...4

“I played before kings and queens and prime ministers and Nobel laureates on that tour. I was dressed in diamonds and pearls, yet if anyone had asked me, if I had bothered to speak, I would have screamed from this horrible empty place in my soul. Once, music had filled that empty place, but now it was too much. The interior of my true heart no one knew. I hid my emotions the way some people hid money under the mattress. Secretively, and with a potential for violence. I returned from Europe exhausted, having not slept for six weeks. An it was then I began playing only the violin, and took up the habit of sleeping during the day and playing only at night. My sleeps then were deep sleeps, unarousable, and colored by dreams that made my lips move and my hands limp. I believe it was my mother who became the most concerned. After all, she used to explain to me shrilly that there are only so many hours in a day, and only so many days in my life, how can I even think to waste any of them sleeping so? Additionally, there was the tour of the Far East to get underway. And my violin my mother could never stand, it filled her with a frustration she could not touch. I know I kept the whole apartment building awake at night. I only wanted to play completely without hope on that violin, whether the songs were originally intended as wedding dances or salutes to springtime. I wanted to play them so that they became memories, with arms like ivy that would wind around and around where they were least wanted. I dropped these songs like bombs out the windows, they echoed their way through the city alleys – I wanted to give everyone within a five block radius dreams rushing like a flood, salty and choking, I wanted to awaken widows in tears for long lost loves, I wanted to make lovers shriek without possibility of comfort or solace as if they had lost their hearts just yesterday, and I wanted everyone in the morning to awaken feeling the weight pressing down on them from every lie they had ever told and promise they had ever broken. And so my violin began every night at the hour of two, without fail. My father would go into the kitchen, make coffee, and sit alone smoking cigarettes. He said once he wanted to pinpoint the moment, exactly, when it all went wrong. I know he blamed himself entirely. My mother for her part paced the floors and slammed doors, cursing.

“After this time, I refused to give recitals during the day. And Ethan, I could do such a thing! There was nothing my publicists could do about it. If I would not play, I would not play. It became only after midnight, and best by a full moon. And when I did play in public, I wanted all the sorrows of the world, all the deceits and betrayals, to be remembered and honored and allowed to flow freely from my strings. During that year I know my midnight concerts at the amphitheater in Central Park acquired a certain notoriety, a certain risk for the audience.5

“But who wants to live like that? Yes, I could play the violin so that it tore open consciences and brought alive long buried pain, so that many people left my concerts in anguish. But I never wanted that. I was seventeen years old. I just did not want it anymore. But that time I was beyond even my mother’s control. I put down the violin, vowing never to pick it up again. I fled from that life. And this,” Cecilia smiled, still sitting at the grand piano in the center of the room, her arms extended, “is where I have ended up.

“It’s been some eight years now, and I must say I’m very happy to have left that life. Here I’ve made something new, all of my own. And I’ve found I’m able to speak, as you can see. I have learned how to laugh and to recite poems and how to tell jokes – not well, but with enough advance warning I can do it. Here I have my students, of whom your Professor Equuleus is one of the more colorful, if not the least dedicated. And I teach my classes. And it is so that I wonder how could I have lived that other life so long, when I came here I was still so young, but I felt I had already endured five hundred lives. This world can bury you before your time, if you let it.”

1. Chapter 4

They had talked the whole night. It seemed ridiculous then that they should part just because the sun had risen. But the details of the day insisted. Cecilia had students waiting at the Music Conservatory, and Ethan was to meet with Professor Equuleus and his team of archaeologists to plan the expedition to Sack’uktún. And so they said farewell in front of her place on Ben Franklin Street, and she made him promise to return that evening. All that day she tried to push time as fast as it would go. She tried walking and talking and teaching quickly, but this made the seconds pass no faster she discovered. Then in the afternoon she tried moving with the speed of fog, slowly, deliberately, using up the minutes fully, but this did not help matters either. The hours passed just as they always did. Ethan for his part found himself immersed with Professor Equuleus and the team in matters of canvas tents, mosquito netting, and jungle maps. And then, at last, the time had come. In the evening when he returned she was already there. She removed her gloves in front of him, but was afraid of drowning him so she spoke only in the conditional tense: “One day, if people would speak of us after we are gone, they would say we loved with a purpose.”

In this way, a couple of months went by. Cecilia and Ethan circled around each other gently, as if they had all the time on earth. Winter came, and with it the time for the expedition. So now the reader will get to travel a bit, to a place both in Mexico and in Guatemala, called the Lacandón forest. It’s a sweaty part of the world, and it’s like that all year round. There are a couple of brief weeks between February and March called the “dry season” when it only rains once a day, but that’s over in the blink of an eye. Main themes include mud and very large insects. But this should not overly concern the reader – after all an opportunity for travel is an opportunity of travel, and it is not often one gets to do it without leaving the comforts of home.

So here we are in the jungle, along the banks of the Usumacinta River, and it is raining. In the final years of the twentieth century, the trip to Sack’uktún involved a four day trek south from the village of Santa de la Selva (zinc-roofed shacks, a dock with a diesel pump, a lean-to with a sign reading optimistically CORREOS). Below us we see a party of four men and one mule, a dedicated looking company, cutting a trail for themselves with machetes. At the lead was a small man with a tidy mustache and beady eyes. He wore olive green fatigues and a broad brimmed field hat. A rifle hung from a shoulder. This was Capitán Licinius, of the Mexican Special Forces, Chiapas Brigade, the military escort for the expedition. For the Lacandón was dangerous country, there was a civil conflict on, and security was always a concern. But not such a concern, the Capitán would have commented, that the department commander could not have spared him a couple additional troops to help escort the gringos.

After the Capitán came Dr. Harold Stephenswood, mustachioed like a walrus and big-bellied and barrel-chested. While the Capitán cut a fine trail with his machete, Dr. Stephenswood fairly plowed his way through the vegetation all on his own. He was a professional archaeologist at Morristown University, the leader of the expedition, and had seen more than his share of jungle trails.

“We practice only modern archaeology around here,” he had said when first introduced to Ethan back at Professor Equuleus’ office. “No more picks and shovels,” he added, looking askance at the bare-chested, flip-flopped youth before him. To this end, Dr. Stephenswood carried a large rucksack laden with laptop computers, sonar devices, a fax machine, and spare batteries that dug into his back. On his head he wore an impressive expedition hat that included its own miniature air conditioner.

Behind him trudged Dr. Henry Cathers, Jr., also an archaeologist from Morristown University, although just an assistant professor and hoping to at least get a figure or two out of this trip for his next grant application. His sub-area of expertise was Data Informatics, and he did not like to get dirty. He detested working in the field, in fact looking around him he realized he had never seen so many trees in one place before in his life.

Bringing up the rear, of course, was Ethan Culliver Crosby, undergraduate, and designated Historical-Linguistic Specialist for the expedition. He wore his usual straw sombrero on his head, a colorful vest of the style preferred in the indigenous villages of the region, pant legs rolled up to his knees, and his old but reliable flip-flops. In his hand he held the reins of the ever-faithful Gregoriano Chance, whose broad back creaked with mule rheumatism under the heavy load of two canvas tents, lanterns, more super expensive computers with satellite uplinks, first aid equipment, a battery powered microwave, and frozen dinners enough to feed an army for four months.

Capitán Licinius paused, his boots deep in the mud, rain spattering all over his hat, and said with some satisfaction, “We’re almost to the place, and it will soon get dark. So far so good.” Then he added: “No narcos.”

Dr. Stephenswood let out a low groan and wiped his brow. They had been bushwacking for two days already, and it had been raining the entire time. His tailored field outfit, freshly pressed prior to the trip, was covered in mud and sweat. It was always the same, back at his desk at the university he looked forward to the next expedition, but in truth he found the hot swampy weather and discomfort tedious.

“Um, how near the place?” he asked their escort.

“We’ve been out two days,” Capitán Licinius looked up at the raindrops falling on them. “I think by tomorrow morning we should be there.”

“Tomorrow morning?” exclaimed Dr. Cathers, Jr., who looked ready to collapse. He had always had a sensitive stomach, and ever since that meal they had eaten back at Santa de la Selva, he had been negotiating an uncomfortable case of the trots.

“Or the day after,” Capitán Licinius shrugged. “That’s always possible.” He adjusted the rifle on his shoulder. “Unless there are narcos.”

The team proceeded on through the underbrush, beneath the forest canopy, surrounded by huge leaves and vines as thick as a man’s arm. Ethan reflected that there had been an easier way to go, that might have saved them at least half a day, if they had followed the river for a little longer. But being the undergraduate, he was reluctant to interfere with the decisions of the Mexican Special Forces. Besides, he was perfectly content with this sort of travel, he felt at home, and found it much preferable to walking on concrete and asphalt.

The forest was a cathedral of humming green all around them, and it was possible to feel vertigo just by looking up. The cloud-clogged sky was not really visible, it seemed the trees never ended, they just went up and up and up. The air was so wet the two archaeologists wished for snorkles, and an irrepressible smell penetrated everything in the forest, a stench of tons of fruit dropped to the ground, worms digesting acres of biomass, a smell of old papayas, young monkeys, timid tree snails, and huge extravagant flowers blooming shamelessly in the motionless air.

For several nights they slept under the dripping jungle canopy, dining on microwaved pizza and chloroquine. Capitán Licinius pitched the tents in the mud and established a perimeter while Ethan expertly placed a ring of small mirrors in a circle around the camp to distract the night vipers who although very poisonous were also very vain. Dr. Cathers, Jr., after he was done rushing to their hastily dug latrine, attempted to establish a remote connection via modem with the outside world, but was never able to obtain anything more than the score updates from some interminable cricket game in far-off Baluchistan. He became certain none of them would leave the jungle alive, and stayed up all night, holding a flashlight under his mosquito netting, shining the fragile beam out into the dripping darkness beyond. They were visited by insects that buzzed the camp like dive-bombers. Still it rained. Capitán Licinius lay on his field cot and wrote letters to his wife. Dr. Stephenswood ignored everyone else and penciled notes in the margins of a thick manuscript he was writing, entitled Methodologies in Postmodern Cyberarchaeology.

Only Ethan was thoroughly enjoying himself. He remembered fondly when he had camped in this same jungle before, his father sitting beside him explaining by the glow of his pipe how to predict the positions and faces of Venus, how to keep time like the Maya princes of old, and how to instruct the hairs on your arms to fight off mosquitos.

They traveled on for a third day, and still the fathomless green forest stretched all around them. They passed through kingdoms of different insects. Flying champions of every conceivable color and size descended upon the expedition to investigate. Dr. Cathers, Jr. swatted and slapped at the bugs frantically, and came perilously close on more than one occasion to cutting himself with his machete. The most troublesome were the overly inquisitive magenta gnats. Against these the Capitán tied a thin veils of mesh across his face and neck, and advised them all to do the same. But still their nostrils filled with the tiny creatures, and they had to stop and blow their noses every ten minutes. Giant dragonflies as large as a man’s hand toodled around the leaves, dodging the raindrops, thankfully engrossed in their own concerns. Turquoise-orange butterflies wafted past on unseen currents, shyly looking for flowers to whom they could propose. From above, the expedition’s slow progress was watched with interest by families of spider monkeys, who hopped from branch to branch, chattering to one another, blinking their round eyes, and taking time out to yawn and scratch on another thoroughly. They were also followed by great flocks of blue-and-yellow macaws who exchanged opinions with a clacking of their beaks, fed their partners fruit with their feet, and every once and a while let loose into flight in a riot of feathers. Ethan reflected it was a landscape completely outside of time, and he loved it.

On the morning of the fourth day they came to a village of naked tribal people, but even this remote district had been touched by the ongoing civil conflict and the women and children ran to hide in their huts while the men regarded Capitán Licinius’ military fatigues with angry eyes.

“Let’s go around this place,” he told the expedition. “Not friendly. I know something of their beliefs. For them, the moon is a woman, and the sun is a man. So night belongs to women, day to men, and if a man gets up at night to piss, he must squat, and during the daylight the woman pee while they are standing. Their religion dictates this. We’ve tried to sort them out, but they are stubborn. Let’s go the other way…” And he pointed off in the opposite direction with his machete.

Later that day they came across another tribe who had wild spirals painted on their backs and sad expressions on their faces. Ethan approached them, and found their language to be a strange dialect he had not heard before, and which seemed to him to be wholly without vowels or consonants. They found they could communicate by arranging and rearranging pebbles on the ground. The men told Ethan it was their occupation to sew nets out of thin fish bones for the purpose of catching bats. They used the full moon as bait. Every month they went out into the forest and spent hours stringing up their nets, but every month the moon would be covered over by clouds and no bats would come. The next morning they would find trapped instead only locusts, spiders, floundering lorikeets, and dewdrops. For hundreds of years it had gone on like this. The expedition left them to it, and the tribe disappeared behind them as if swallowed by the trees.

The Capitán led them next down a winding gully of twisting vines as thick as a man’s leg and inhabited by large hook-beaked birds who cried as if they had lost all their children. Water as ever dripped from above through the foliage, and the smell in the air took on a flavor not unlike rotting pears. As they progressed they became aware that the world was growing more and more silent as they descended lower and lower into the gully.

Just when they must have reached the deepest part of the valley, they all believed they felt an effect of what could only be increasing air pressure on their lungs, although Ethan thought it could also be a result of the subtle laughing gas given off by the large pink mushrooms that were sprouting up everywhere between the trunks of the ancient trees. Then up ahead they heard a strange noise. It was sort of a sputter, a mechanical sound of hot air colliding with metal. Then they heard it again. The members of the team paused and looked at one another. They circled the trunk of a towering coussapoa tree, jumping in wide steps over the arches of its roots. And there before them, they saw mired in the mud up to its engine block, the mass of a black motorcycle. The lettering on the side, just visible beneath the layers of muck, read HARLEY-DAVIDSON. Next to the bike, tinkering with the motor, was a man wearing a long black leather jacket, also covered in mud.

Capitán Licinius brought up the team short, and they all stood and stared at the scene before them.

“Um,” the Capitán asked after a minute. “Engine trouble?”

The man jumped back from the motorcycle in surprise. He wore a field outfit similar to Dr. Stephenswood under his leather jacket, and stood mud up to his knees. He dropped the wrench he had been banging around on the motorcycle with, and it dropped with a splut in the muck.

“Disgraceful!” he exclaimed. “And this is the off-road version. No traction whatsoever!” And he directed a kick at one of the Harley’s knobby tires. Ethan saw the bike was so firmly planted in the mud he doubted if it could be moved until the next dry season. Strapped to the back of the bike were bulging saddlebags containing what looked to be an impressive collection of expedition equipment similar to their own.

Capitán Licinius was for a moment at a loss for words. “Er...can you tell me what you are doing here? This is a restricted military area. Who are you?” He calmly removed his rifle from his shoulder.

“Now...wait a minute…” Dr. Stephenswood said, leaning forward and wiping the rain and mud from his eyes. “I know you… Buckley? Is that you?”

The motorcyclist’s eye went wide. He too, wiped at his face, smearing a copious amount of mud  around on his cheeks.

“Why, it is you. Chet Buckley… from Princeton!” Dr. Stephenswood exclaimed with certainty. “What are you doing here?”

“Shit.” Buckley-from-Princeton turned and slid his way around his motorcycle, and took off running into the trees.

“Stop!” Capitán Licinius hollered, raising his rifle. But before he could fire a shot the bulky mass of Stephenswood elbowed past him in pursuit.

“Get back here you fraud! This is our turf you Ivy League bastard!” Dr. Stephenswood went crashing off into the forest as well. Dr. Cathers, Jr. followed, although half-heartedly and holding his stomach, while Capitán Licinius brought up the rear, holding his rifle at the ready. But their quarry was quicker on his feet than he looked. They soon lost him amongst the foliage and tree trunks. Ethan and Gregoriano Chance remained next to the stranded motorcycle. While they listened to the crashing sound of the chase through the surrounding underbrush (the archaeologists seemed to be going in circles), Ethan fed the happy mule several bananas. When they ran out of bananas they wandered off from the massive coussapoa tree, toward a hillock at the top of which there seemed to be some yet higher ground. Up above in the sky another rainstorm was brewing. The hillock was in fact the edge of yet another sloping valley. Ethan opened his mouth in surprise. There, not one hundred meters away, rising like stone islands up from the sea of green, stood the ruins of Sack’uktún.

1. Chapter 5

Gazing at the ruins, Ethan felt even more strongly the sensation of having traveled back in time. At first, all that was visible was the top of a pyramid of white stones protruding from the jungle. A lone copal tree grew at its summit, its branches hanging down in a tangled green cascade. Then, bit by bit, other structures could be discerned beneath the surface of the forest. To the right, the top of a tower. To the left, wrapped in vines and overshadowed by powerful mahoganies, the shoulders of some grand building. Ethan led Gregoriano Chance slowly down the overgrown slope into the valley, closer to Sack’uktún. As they drew nearer, ruins of heavy stone formations in blotched whites and grays emerged more clearly. The young man and the mule stopped before a wall of solid stone that stretched upward like the beginning of some immense mountains. After a moment, Ethan realized they stood at the base of a steep pyramid of huge proportions. Steps with inhumanly high risers proceeded with mathematical exactness upwards, the still-perfect angles of the structure interrupted only by the occasional lazing iguana. The tops of the steps were so full of vegetation they resembled frothy garden terraces.

Leaving Gregoriano Chance to patiently ponder some of philosophy’s finer points, Ethan began to climb. He used the roots and branches of the trees growing on the pyramid as handholds. Up and up he went, his young muscular body easily finding its way among the stones and branches. He startled away spiders and scorpions. Up and up he went, until he was high above the surface of the forest, with the towering tops of mahoganies, cedars, and ceibas below him. The stones under his grasp were massive and covered in places with lichen the color of mottled azure.

At the summit, approached by a short flight of twelve stairs of more reasonable size, was a solitary room. The lone copal tree was growing straight out of it, its trunk squeezing toward the sky through a crack in the roof. The room itself was of modest dimensions, a mere two meters squared. But the interior walls were carved with bas-reliefs of the most amazing kind. Zoömorphic figures intertwined with curls of smoke and hysterical monkeys playing practical jokes danced a the feet of a company of priests prostrated, prepared to receive enemas of psychoactive mushrooms. Ethan realized that this chamber, at the top of what surely must have been one of the tallest Mayan pyramids yet discovered, had served some 1500 years ago as a temple to Itzamná.

The view from the summit was extraordinary. The rainclouds hung brooding just above Ethan’s shoulders, and below, beneath the heavy cloak of jungle, the basic outline of the city gradually revealed itself.

By the time Ethan had descended, swinging root from root, back down to the base of the pyramid of the Temple of Itzamná, the rest of the expedition members were clustered around Gregoriano Chance. Their pursuit of the mysterious motorcyclist had been unsuccessful. Capitán Licinius’ face shone a distinct shade of crimson, and he looked markedly unhappy.

“The scoundrel may have given us the slip,” said Dr. Stephenswood, gazing upwards at the stones of the pyramid, his voice gradually overcome by the awe that takes men when confronted with things far larger than they are. “But...never...mind…”

Dr. Cathers, Jr. looked similarly impressed, stepping back to try to take in the sheer scale of the structure before them. Ethan poked around in the ferns and found what had once been, some thousand years in the past, a paved causeway, an avenue, leading away from the pyramid temple toward what had been the center of the city. They followed this path, carpeted in thick jungle undergrowth, down further into the valley. The archaeologists were silent. As they walked, stone ruins multiplied on all sides. Soon the city of Sack’uktún was all around them. Vines and the red and purple blossoms of flowers parted to reveal archways, alleyways, and stairways. Moss clung to everything, making sharp edges of stone soft, obscuring dwellings, covering inscriptions so they were barely visible. Beneath this layer of vegetation, Sack’uktún appeared as an imaginary metropolis. Only the barely visible carvings on the buildings, of gods, soldiers, kings, priests, and animals – intricate and some vaguely horrific – suggested that people had once lived here at all.

After walking for about a kilometer down the overrun causeway, they came to what had been the Great Plaza. Nearly two square acres paved with stone, it was now an expanse of ferns, some as tall as a person. As the members of the expedition made their way with mouths open around the Plaza, they came upon a series of upright tablets of stone, each as tall as a man and carved on both sides with glyphs and extraordinary bas-reliefs, cut so deeply and with such mastery of perspective that they appeared almost three dimensional.

“The treestones of the city,” announced Dr. Stephenswood gravely, hands on his hips. “It was here that the lords and rulers inscribed their histories. Here lie the secrets of Sack’uktún.”

In the center of the Great Plaza the military patrol that had originally stumbled upon the ruins of the city had stuck a tall pole into the ground. At the top of the pole fluttered a limp and faded Mexican tricolor. The wooden flagpole itself seemed on the verge of giving way from rot – it was already in the grips of a vine winding its way busily upwards. Capitán Licinius brought down the old flag, and sent up a new, larger one. The banner unfurled dramatically against the backdrop of the grey, cloud-drenched sky. Then he found, tacked to the pole near its base, a piece of plank on which was scrawled a message in Spanish: “The Jungle eats everything. Chiapas Brigade 17. National Army of Mexico.” The Capitán tsked his tongue disapprovingly, brought a pen out from his tunic, and wrote underneath these words, which he underlined three times: “Such as it is when the Nation reclaims her heritage.”

They decided to establish basecamp around the flag. While the Capitán set up a perimeter, keeping a close eye out for motorcyclists and other trespassers, Dr. Stephenswood oversaw Ethan and Dr. Cathers, Jr. as they cleared enough foliage from the Great Plaza to unload and stack the gear from the back of the mule.

“We’re going to start by doing a systematic analysis, a complete survey,” declared Dr. Stephenswood. “We’ll start by doing a computerized tomograph, deploy the infrared video digitizers, and then use the SONAR. Cathers, you work on getting that satellite uplink going. The first order of business is sending a squawk back to Equuleus, announcing we’ve arrived.”

Dr. Cathers, Jr. kneeled and opened the rucksack carrying the bulky sat phone uplink apparatus, but found the piece of equipment, after just a few nights in the hot, wet forest, had become home for some curious species of pungent orange mold. It no longer looked good for anything but producing spores, much less a satellite connection.

“Well, this may require some repair…” Cathers, Jr.  muttered.

While the archaeologists scratched their heads over their communications issues, Ethan helped the Capitán set up their canvas tents. They set up the battery powered microwave and their remaining stocks of frozen dinners in a tent of its own. Gregoriano Chance installed himself nearby, chewing on a pile of recently uprooted foliage.

“Come here, Ethan, help me out with this,” Dr. Stephenswood called to him, having left Cathers to deal with the mycological catastrophe that had befallen their satellite communication system. The older archaeologist had in his hands a device that looked like a pair of yellow binoculars mounted on a tripod. Fortuitously, he had wrapped it in plastic for the journey.

“With this, we can grab the x,y,z coordinates of any building,” he explained, flipping some switches on the binoculars. A couple of lights glowed red and green and the apparatus began to hum. Ethan had never seen anything like it. Dr. Stephenswood moved systematically around the Great Plaza, but always careful not to stray too far, keeping the high-flying Mexican flag in sight. It became Ethan’s task, as the undergraduate, to poke around in the weeds, to peel around vines, disturbing snakes, centipedes, and lizards to reveal as much of each entryway, staircase, or lintel as possible. Dr. Stephenswood clicked and whirred away with the fancy yellow binoculars.

In this way they gradually uncovered again for the eyes of the world to see the Palace of King Xcanul, with its towering console archways and inscriptions honoring Ek Ahau, the god of war also known in the Mayan literature as the Black Captain. They measured and x,y,z coordinated as well another great pyramidal temple rising to 25 meters, and crowned with stone sculptures of deformed alligators with huge peg-like teeth. Next to it ascended a slope of seventy-three steps, covered with wild orchids and flanked by two statues of men with hugely enlarged phalluses who were wearing cloaks of jaguar skins. Ethan immediately recognized them as astronomers, and indeed at the top of the long flight of stairs they found a domed building that must have served once as an observatory. Through the slits cut into the stone dome, facing precisely east, west, north, and south, Dr. Stephenswood set his yellow binoculars humming.

“The Mayan calculations of the orbit of Venus, made from buildings such as these,” Ethan informed the archaeologist, “deviated only fourteen seconds from the modern measurement of 224.70 days.”

Dr. Stephenswood regarded Ethan with raised bushy eyebrows and gave Ethan a “harrumph”, before clicking some more buttons on the whirring binoculars.

“Just saying,” Ethan shrugged.

Back outside the domed observatory, leading off the western corner of the Great Plaza, ran the remnants of another causeway, leading past a pair of squat altars carved with images of laughing parrots and monkeys smoking pipes. The avenue arrived at last at the ruins of a large complex. Nosing around among the inscriptions by the entry staircase, displacing a rather large tarantula from a doorway, Ethan found they had come to the Palace of Wukub Ok’ic. Inside, still visible on the crumbling walls, were brilliant colored murals, running through seven rooms. Ethan translated the glyphs painted on the walls, and was surprised to find he was reading poetry. Indeed, these were examples of the long sought-for poems composed by that famous lord of the city. The verses were illustrated upon the walls in strong, bright colors, still unfaded after all these centuries. Yellow, the color of corn, red, the color of blood, and a striking purple, the “Maya blue”, made from the extract of the mollusk Purpura patula imported from the ancient coast of Belize.

Ethan could have sat in those rooms all day, all week, or considerably longer, reading those glyph poems, but Dr. Stephenswood had already taken his measurements (Arched Hall: x = 95; y = 232; z = 14), and was in a hurry to move on to the Central Acropolis.

“The priority, son, is to record the measurements of every corner of every room in every building, and everything will be digitalized and on-line in a matter of minutes,” Dr. Stephenswood explained, casting a look back over his shoulder at his colleague Cathers, who it appears was still up to his elbows in their satellite uplink device back at the basecampe. “That is, if everything goes well.”

They next charted the winding vaults of the Central Acropolis, with what turned out to be a nearly endless multitude of small cubicles and chambers, constructed one on top of another over the generations. Overall, charting the extensive site required the better part of a week, during which time they began running low on frozen pizzas. Dr. Cathers gave up fighting the good fight against the fungus that had taken over the satellite link, and the two archaeologists were forced to record their data onto CD-ROMS, the apparatus of which squeaked alarmingly as it spun. They worked their way through rooms that had once served as royal administration offices, judicial halls, throne rooms, storage cubbies, measuring and numbering each stone and brick, taking video of each inscription and weird carving of kings and priests accompanied by fanged badgers and spastic buzzards. Ethan followed eagerly, as much enthralled by the excitement of the ruins themselves as by the chance to participate in the workings of modern archaeology with modern equipment. But he kept getting his flip-flops tangled in all the coaxial cables leading to and from the equipment, and nearly stepped on a four hundred and fifty thousand dollar filter that attached to the yellow binoculars. He also had a habit of explaining to the archaeologists a little too much information about what the different inscriptions were saying. In the end, the they told him to just wait outside.

Standing once again beneath the cloudy sky, on the edge of the Great Plaza, Ethan breathed in the smell of the jungle. It had just rained. Gregoriano Chance moseyed on up to him. Capitán Licinius stood still in the basecamp at the center of the Plaza, one eye on the flag above for the slightest hints of mildew, one eye on the surrounding forest for the slightest sign of trespassing motorcyclists. Ethan and the mule wandered happily about the perimeter of the Plaza – and it was there they made their great discovery.

The causeway led off due north for a distance of 615 meters to an obscure, overgrown mound. After a millennium or so of abandonment, the site was nothing more than a jumble of stones and cracked walls, some fallen arches, fractured stelae, lots of vines, several ceiba trees at least six hundred years old, and a brigade of chattering spider monkeys. Ethan and Gregoriano Chance stood in the middle of what once must have been a considerable complex of buildings. Ethan cleared the foliage from one of the broken stelae and read this inscription:

...and on 9 baktun 13 katun 16 tun 4 uinal 6 kin 4 Climi 14 Uo, King Xcanul sealed these walls and put an end forever to those who would play with fire and hearts…

The inscription went on to forbid anyone from setting foot on these grounds again, and Ethan guessed they must be standing in the ruins of the Mayan Institute of True Love. With his fingers her traced over the inscription, its initial series, and the glyphs recording how the captains of the royal army had pulled down the doors of the Institute, emptied its rooms, bound the necks and hands of the scientists within, and paraded them through the streets of Sack’uktún, ridiculing them, shaming them, stripping them (those who were not, due to the nature of their work, already stripped), until one by one, piece by piece, they were publicly carved up on the Altar of the Tunkul. Then the Institute was set ablaze, and the last walls knocked down. The central hall was now roofless, with vines of lianas crisscrossing overhead. A wind blew by Ethan, ruffling his longish hair hanging below his sombrero. Gregoriano Chance snorted at his side, as was his custom whenever they paused to ponder something for a long period of time. To their left ran what had been a long hallway, the walls red-stained, the floor of stone cracked and crusted with moss and macaw droppings. To their right a row of square columns proceeded to another hall. The sides of these columns carried carved images that had been vandalized, probably by the stone axes and mallets of King Xcanul’s warriors.

In the inner courtyard, now a rubble of thick grasses and upended stone walls, Ethan found the cistern cut into the ground. It appeared at first as only a depression in the earth, a dip only in the rampant matted undergrowth. Drs. Stephenswood and Cathers located him then, in need of the undergraduate to come and clear away a thicket of foliage where they were convinced a family of tarantulas was living. They came up to him just as he was sticking his head inside the cistern to investigate.

“Find something, young man?” asked Dr. Stephenswood.

“Could be,” answered Ethan. “It’s dark in there.” A pebble jogged loose by his talking fell off the edge into the cistern and echoed far below with a distant plink! Ethan stuck his head in deeper out of curiosity.

“There, there, son, don’t fall in,” cautioned Dr. Stephenswood. As annoying as their undergraduate linguist was, it would be poor form to report back to Professor Equuleus that the young man had fallen to his death in what was basically a Mayan well.

“No, I won’t fall in,” replied Ethan, taking his head out of the hole now and climbing up onto the ledge. “I’m going in.”

The archaeologists were not about to argue with him, they both knew that cisterns were often where no end of rubbish was tossed over the centuries in Mayan sites, there were likely to be informative pot shards and other items found in the bottom to give them valuable clues about the city’s on-time inhabitants. But neither of them were about to climb in there. They stood watching with open mouths as Ethan tied a length of thick nylon rope about his middle and secured the other end firmly to the saddle horn on the back of Gregoriano Chance. The aged mule looked up in adoration at Ethan, and dug his hoofs firmly into the turf, understanding his job precisely. Ethan, gripping a flashlight in one hand and the rope in the other, lowered himself into the mouth of the cistern.

Inside the air was cool, and he heard the sound of rocks and dirt that he had kicked loose on his entrance hitting the water far below. He repelled downward rapidly, passing easily through the rocks of the opening and then swinging free in the wideness of the chamber below. Gregoriano Chance, wagging his head back and forth and without complaint, played out the line as needed. Ethan must have descended forty meters at least, until the opening was barely a dot of light above him, obscured by the heads of Drs. Stephenswood and Cathers, who gazed down and shouted distant words of recommendation and encouragement. Ethan shone the meager light of the flashlight about him, seeking the find the walls or some limit to the space he had entered. He caught glimpses of black rock, shiny and slick with runoff, and realized form the icicle stalactites hanging from above that this must have been not merely a cistern, but one of the huge underground caverns that pocked the subterra all along the edges of the Usumacinta River.

At last his flip-flops touched water. It was cold, and tingled against his skin, most likely due to very high mineral concentration. Ethan cast free with one of his arms and was surprised to discover the water was in fact quite shallow. He could stand, and the water barely reached his knees.

“Do you see anything?” came Dr. Stephenswood’s voice from above. “Hello? Can you hear us?”

Ethan let go of the rope and took a few steps. In the dripping darkness the cavern appeared endless. The flashlight was too weak to illuminate the opposite walls. And it was then that his foot touched something. He had stubbed his toe on some submerged object. He bent, groped, felt something, and grabbed it. In his hands was a shard of pottery. Shining the light on it he saw it to be a piece of he thought was an offering bowl of late Classic manufacture.

“Basket, please!” he called up to the archaeologists. There was a shuffling and a clatter of falling pebbles from far above as they set about preparing an artifact collection basket for lowering. Ethan got down on his hands and knees and felt under the water to see if he could find anything else. His fingers touched a sharp corner and he came up with more shards of pottery, their painted surfaces remarkably well-preserved after so many years of sitting in the cold, tingling water. The artifact collection basket was lowered by another nylon rope, and Ethan placed the pottery pieces he had found inside of it. He splashed around further and came up with several more fragments of broken cups and bowls and similar crockery. Some by the failing battery light of the flashlight he saw were decorated with glyphs that were still legible. Ethan filled the basket and was preparing the long climb out when he stumbled over something that caused him to slip and fall. The flashlight fell from his grasp and plunged under the water and its light went out. Ethan rolled to right himself and reached with his free hand at his feet to grasp at whatever it was that had tripped him. His fingers came to something. He thought at first it might be some particularly large figurine or even a piece of statue, or maybe just a big rock, but he felt the edges of the object were flat and regular. He brought it up from the water, but in the darkness could not see what it might be. He could not see the nylon rope to climb out either. Swinging his arms like a blind man without a cane, his fingers at last brushed the rope that he sought, and he began his ascent. Gregoriano Chance expertly held the rope taught as Ethan climbed. It was only after he had hauled himself back up out of the hole that he could actually tell what the object was.

1. Chapter 6

The bright turquoise blue convertible sports car turned off the exit from the Garden State Parkway. The top was down, although it was a chilly day in early winter. At the wheel was an incredibly handsome man, with a sharp nose and soul-stealing blue eyes. Well-groomed hair the color of gold fell to his shoulders and fluttered in the breeze. He wore on his head a black felt musketeering hat, complete with a sky blue feather, and tied around his neck, flapping behind him over the tiny proportioned backseats of the roadster, was a cape of burgundy with golden tassels.

“Welcome to Morristown,” the sign, written in red-white-and-blue lettering, announced. And then informed: “Headquarters of the American Revolution. Founded 1711.” So it had come to this. This corner of north Joisey, best forgotten by all the world, would have to be his home for a while. Why couldn’t it have been somewhere else? Somewhere with some class? Evik Sagittarius asked himself. Like Monaco...or...Venice...again… But no, this was to be the place. North Joisey. This is what had been fated, for whatever reason, there was no getting around it, yes, they are definitely here. He felt it. A crisp wind blowing off the hills to the west made him grit his teeth. He drove around a crowded street calling itself Washington Avenue and observed what Morristown had to offer him by way of glamorous architecture. The George Washington Hotel. Continental Army Bar & Grill. Patriot Video Rental. Stopping at a red light, he eyed the local folk critically. It was just mid-morning, and all the decent citizens were hurrying to work. Evik Sagittarius reflected on how badly they were dressed. America really just let itself go. The concept of color coordination had obviously never arrived to this side of the Atlantic. He reached the center of the town, with its square containing a large statue of some horse without a rider, storefronts with names like Woolworth’s, Bamberger’s, and The Soldier’s Hut Tavern. He then began his search of the neighborhoods of the town, narrowing the field, wandering the car down the streets, asking himself, Where is it strongest? Yes, this was definitely the place. He turned onto John Hancock Avenue, with its gourmet shops and movie theaters, and wound to the left up a small hill into what seemed to be passing for an artsy neighborhood, and then past what looked like a university with a tall Gothic clocktower. He turned onto Alexander Hamilton Avenue, was shocked by the crass ugliness of the concrete façade of the main bank, the tacky flag-bedecked entrance to the Martha Washington Museum, with its numerous bronze statues of natty farmers carrying muskets. He turned onto Martin Luther King Avenue, and was soon completely lost in what appeared to be the Black neighborhood. He raised the roof of the roadster and double-checked the doors were locked. It was only with great difficulty that he managed to navigate his way out, and he promised himself he would never do that again. He came across Pulaski Boulevard, crossed it, and went past sections of town which announced “Little Italy”, “Little Portugal”, and “Little Albania”, and finding them to be nothing like the countries they were named after, wrinkled his nose in distaste.

He came at last to Delaware Road, and passed the tall buildings of Morristown Memorial Hospital, and then turned into a street of quiet suburban homes, their lawns sprinkled with fallen oak and maple leaves. Yes, this is close. Extremely close. Evik Sagittarius applied the brakes in front of the Morristown University Botanical Garden. Here the feeling was strongest. He parked the car in the small parking lot, his hands fumbling in excitement to get the keys out of the ignition. He walked up the path to the entrance of a domed greenhouse, the heels of his purple boots ringing on the pavement. He gathered the burgundy cape close about him, the tassels dragging in the fallen leaves strewn on the path. He stooped and peered into the greenhouse window. Inside, drenched in the closed humid atmosphere was what appeared to be a modest collection. But Evik Sagittarius knew in this case looks were deceiving. He dared not enter the building. Not yet. So this is the game, he whispered to himself, and the words made a hiss as they hit the exterior of the greenhouse glass. Patience, patience. He got back into the car and roared out of the lot quickly, a grin stretched wildly and unnaturally across his cheekbones.

Now to find a residence, a lair from which to spin his web. A tall building on Lafayette Street, with stone lions at the entrance and wrought iron balconies, attracted him. Gargoyles, poorly executed fakes it was true, but gargoyles nevertheless (at least the thought was there, he consoled himself), hung from the cornices and there was a solid, granite feel to the building. Inside, the lobby was all crystal and golden mirrors. Evik Sagittarius found the rental agent, informed him that he wished to occupy immediately the penthouse on the top floor.

“Surely it is vacant?” he asked.

The rental agent raised an eyebrow and hesitated before this odd fellow with the beplumed musketeering hat, the cape, the boots...But when Evik Sagittarius gave his profession as “entrepreneur” a smile of understanding smoothed it all over. The agent named a price far in excess of the going rate for entire city blocks anywhere in all of north Joisey, and Evik Sagittarius paid it up front, withdrawing a velvet pound from his cloak that contained a large number of Franz Josef gulden. A couple documents were signed, and the agent promptly handed over the keys.

The penthouse would serve. It was not as old and creaky as Evik Sagittarius usually liked, but still it would serve. There was a view of sorts out of the balcony onto the Square, with its big equestrian statue, the steeple of the Methodist Church, the shops off John Hancock, and the clocktower of the University just beyond. There was a fireplace in the living room, the plumbing fixtures were of polished brass, and the bedrooms were as big as any small country. Yes, it would serve.

There was now only the matter of his belongings, contained in a heavy trunk in the boot of the roadster. He had it brought up by two fellows in wearing maintenance uniforms, who wondered how a trunk so small could be so heavy. They set the box down with a thud on the dark oak floors of the living room, and Evik Sagittarius tipped them haughtily, clinking two dirty copper coins each into their palms and sniffing his nose.

Alone with his trunk in the middle of the living room, he locked the door to the penthouse and drew the curtains on the windows. In the gloom he removed a bent iron key from a pocket under his cloak and inserted it into the heavy padlock on the side of the chest. The tumblers creaked with age and then the lock gave at last. He rummaged inside the chest, pulling out item after item and tossing them onto the floor, forming a constellation of curiosities around him. A Flamenco guitar, a set of Etruscan hunting knives, a cage containing five black doves, a box of 11th century Arab navigational equipment, a stainless-steel surgical kit, boxes containing his extensive collection of late Renaissance Venetian carnival masks, a 16th century suit of Spanish armor, complete with helm and sword, and then came at last to an ebony box of moderate size, its lid decorated in a Persian style, with intricate tracings of pythons swallowing their tails. He opened the box gently and set it upon the floor. Inside, couched in magenta velvet, were an assortment of thousands of tiny stones, which glittered and winked up at him. Evik Sagittarius pushed the pile of odds and ends he had scattered on the floor into a corner, and the room lay bare again. Removing his cloak, he rubbed his hands in glee and began working rapidly. With the stones he assembled on the floor of the penthouse a perfect scale model of the town around him, with all of its buildings, houses, streets, and parks. There was the University, the three high schools, the alleyway between the police station and the greasy-soon run by a Grenadine immigrant and his wife. There were all the museums, the shopping centers, and the banks. The hospital, the autobody shops, and the pizzerias. The steeples of the churches, the windings of the parking garages. A winter breeze blew through the room, simulating the breeze blowing outside, and Evik Sagittarius stood up with arms crossed in front of his chest, towering over his creation.

“Now,” he spoke aloud, his voice creaking with a surprising cough of dust. It was a voice that could only have navigated its way far through history to sound like that. “Now that I know your secret, my dear, we shall see what can be done with it.” And the wind in the room blew in response, picking up pieces of trash and leaves and pushing them through the phantom streets, causing miniature streetlights to swing close to snapping. The wind outside rattled against the windows of the penthouse.

“Who shall it be?” Evik Sagittarius asked the wind, easing his eyelids shut. Little dust devils curled and uncurled on the street corners of the real and the simulated Morristown. “Who is the most suitable for this enterprise? Who?” he demanded. And his eyes snapped open and fixed immediately upon the tiny model of the Music Conservatory, enveloped now in a tornado of minute particles of dust and newspaper.

Evik Sagittarius smiled, and the wind died down. He closed his eyes again, one brow half-raised in surprise. “So I shall know her by her gloves,” he mused. “So be it.”  And as the wind extinguished, he chuckled.

1. Chapter 7

Professor Equuleus bent over the telescope on the roof of his house that evening, and made an adjustment to the instrument. The sudden windstorm that had rocked Morristown that afternoon had died down, and above him an early winter sky sparkled bright and clear. Venus shone as a single point just above the horizon. Frosty breath rose out of the professor’s nose and mouth, and his bald head was covered with a floppy knit cap. He lowered his eye to the viewfinder, and then referred to an open notebook lying on a stool beside him. But he found he was distracted, and soon pulled away and glanced at his watch.

It had been an eventful day. The expedition led by Dr. Stephenswood had returned from Sack’uktún, landing in the morning at the Newark airport. But it was immediately clear that both Drs. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. were not in great shape, in fact both were now resting at Morristown Memorial Hospital, diagnosed with moderately severe cases of dysentery, yellow fever, and malaria. Cathers, Jr. looked the worse for wear, but Stephenswood was none too hot either. While they were both getting boluses of IV fluids in the emergency department, they gave Professor Equuleus the quick run down on the expedition.

“Found the city,” Dr. Stephenswood mumbled, his brow sweaty and his stomach racked by cramps. “Mapped the whole thing.”

Dr. Cathers, Jr. in the next gurney vomited loudly.

“There was an infiltrator from Princeton...The boy can explain more...” Stephenswood himself turned to his side and was sick all over the floor as well.

Professor Equuleus left his two archaeologists in the capable hands of the hospital’s infectious disease team, and went out to the waiting area. There stood Ethan Culliver Crosby, his sombrero in his hands, machete at his side, his flip-flops still caked with mud from the Lacandón.

“Well, they’re in rough shape,” muttered Equuleus. He regarded his undergraduate student. “Let’s go over to my house. You’ll tell me everything.”

They drove slowly back to the professor’s home, Gregoriano Chance clopping softly behind, tied to the bumper of Equuleus’ car. As the professor drove, Ethan was talking a mile a minute.

“We found the city, all right! It’s more than I had imagined. Such palaces, Professor! And temples! There are several interesting tombs as well, and more than a handful of unique stelae. And all of it is untouched, still completely covered by jungle. There is even one fabulously tall temple pyramid, rivaling Tikal, if you can imagine it.”

“Yes…” Professor Equuleus nodded his head, a look of satisfaction crossing his face.

“I expect it will be a major project to excavate the entire site…”

“I’m writing the grant already…” said Equuleus.

“We brought back a lot of film to be developed, plus all the readings Stephenswood took. And an inventory of artifacts that we brought back.” Ethan pulled from a bag he carried a sheaf of papers, upon which were typed things like:

Pottery shard, blue #1

Pottery shard, purple  #2

Pottery shard, brown        #3

And at the bottom of each page was a stamp from the Mexican Department of Antiquities, allowing the archaeologists to bring the items out of the country for further study at Morristown University.

“We shall go through it all,” the professor said excitedly, pulling into his driveway. They left the mule on the front porch with a bunch of bananas to eat, and went inside.

“There were poetry glyphs on the walls of the rooms of the acropolis,” Ethan continued. “We took photographs of them all.” Ethan pulled two boxes holding dozens of 35 mm film cannisters, and put them on the table.

Professor Equuleus wiggled his eyebrows excitedly.

“We should develop those first,” he said. New examples of Mayan poetry glyphs in legible shape were an amazing find in and of themselves. Entire careers could be made on less.

“And surrounding Sack’uktún we found dozens and dozens of smaller mounds, likely the remains of farmers dwellings. All covered with vegetation now, of course. But considering the lack of direct knowledge of the lives of everyday people in Classical Mayan society, they could be helpful if well preserved,” Ethan went on.

“Absolutely, absolutely,” Professor Equuleus felt his head was nearly spinning. Such a find was sounding monumental, especially given the current state of archaeology, where most great finds had been found already.

“And there is an observatory. Not unique perhaps, but might be interesting…”

“Yes, yes, it might be interesting…” agreed Equuleus.

“And also we found the Institute of True Love. The ruins of it, at least…”

Professor Equuleus pulled himself up straight. He regarded his student gravely.

“How do you know it?” he asked, wrinkling his mouth.

“I stood in the ruins themselves and had a good look around me. There was no mistaking it.” He pulled a piece of folded notepaper from his bag and opened it. Although it was stained by mud and rain, the page was covered in expertly drawn Mayan glyphs, reproduced by Ethan’s painstakingly accurate hand.

“I copied this from a piece of unbroken door lintel, once I had cleared away the moss.” He ran his finger from glyph to glyph, and read the text of the warning left by King Xcanul.

“Hmm!” Professor Equuleus rubbed his bald head.

“I have converted the date, 9.13.16.4.6 4 Cimi 14 Uo, to the Julian calendar,” Ethan continued. “It would place the date at the twenty-second of March of the year 708 AD. It corroborates the inscription found at Tikal that notes the destruction of such an institute at Sack’uktún.”

“Well, so it does…” Professor Equuleus examined the page of glyphs carefully. “Amazing,” he said after a time. “Everyone had always supposed its existence to be but a myth.”

“It’s no myth. The Institute of True Love actually stood.”

“Incredible...”

“And…” Ethan’s voice dropped a bit, as he drew a curious metal box a little bigger than his hand out of his bag. “I brought back this.”

Equuleus put aside the page of glyphs and regarded the box.

“What is it?”

“Inside the ruins of the Institute of True Love there is a cistern, which opens into a large underground cavern. I went down into it. I had to. The opening dropped at least one hundred feet, but at the bottom was a pool of water, not deep, just up to your knees. In the water I found several items of pottery, shards of vases, that sort of thing. But I also found this.”

“And?” Professor Equuleus opened his hands. “What is it?”

Ethan opened the box, and inside was a sealed plastic specimen container, full of water, with a red lid. He put on some latex gloves he also took from his bag, and opened the lid. With his gloved hands he delicately lifted a rectangular object out. It was rather thick, and dripping wet. It seemed to be a block of something. Professor Equuleus quickly put on a pair of latex gloves of his own, and took the object that Ethan handed to him.

“For conservation purposes, you understand, I kept it in original cistern water.”

Equuleus turned the fragile wet object about carefully in his hands.

“Why…” he murmured. “Why...it...it seems to be...a book…”

“It most definitely is,” agreed Ethan, positively beaming.

Professor Equuleus raised the book up to eye level and squinted at it with his mouth open. He could see it was constructed in broad folio form, of the type whose pages open as an accordion or fan. Its binding was stitched by hand. It was covered by a blackish stained material that smelled slightly of old cheese. Drips of cistern water fell to the floor.

“Why...if authentic...and coming from a classical Mayan site…” Equuleus started to say.

“Oh, it is authentic,” Ethan replied.

“Yes, yes, we’ll have to verify it...the tests are simple.” The professor turned the book from end to end and peered at it from all angles. “But if authentic...do you realize what this would mean?”

“Of course,” shrugged Ethan. “That would make it the only surviving classical Mayan book. All of the others date from much later. It’s probably about thirteen hundred years old.”

“Incredible,” the professor continued to regard the book. Then he paused, and closed his eyes. “Ethan...did you by any chance...get the correct approvals from the Mexicans to bring this here?”

“Oh,” Ethan shifted from one foot to the other. “I...I may not have…”

1. Chapter 8

The next morning, on the other side of town, a large round man with a thick curly gray beard and bifocals sat in his parlor making his best efforts to read the day’s Daily Record. It was a small parlor, but it was full of deep, comfortable chairs. The walls were covered with maps of every sort, some framed nicely in dark heavy wood, others stuck up carelessly with thumbtacks. In the center of the parlor was a table laid with remnants of an interesting breakfast – twelve empty tins of tuna, a bottle of cream one-third full, and half a cheesecake. The small house itself had a lovely view out of the open window, and really it would not have been such a strange view at all if the house were situated on some mountainside in a tropical cloud forest. A green, thickly vegetated slope stretched out to the horizon from the window, and dripping leaves and flowers tapped on the roof and eaves above. Insects buzzed about, and tropical birds launched themselves with ostentatious squawks past the window, while screeches and hoots came from other wild animals hidden in the foliage beyond.

The big man ignored all of this, and of course found nothing strange about it. He had just finished his coffee, was lighting a Cuban cigar, and made another attempt to read the front page of the local newspaper. In this he was continually impeded by a very small black kitten, with bright violet eyes, who marched about on his lap, tail straight up in the air, pricking him with tiny needle nails from her paws.

“For the love of God, what is bothering you lately?” he asked the animal in exasperation. The kitten’s violet eyes turned and looked at him, wide in alarm. The kitten seemed almost to frown, and resumed her pacing about on his lamp, trampling all over the newspaper.

“I wanted to read that, you know,” the man complained, chomping the cigar as he spoke. The kitten ignored him entirely. Ears erect, she turned suddenly to the door of the house, and then in one bound launched herself to its threshold, leaving behind on the man’s lap a pair of claw marks and a torn newspaper. Another tiny black kitten had appeared at the door, this one with fierce yellow eyes that, in the man’s opinion, were blazing a bit too much for so early in the morning.

“What’s gotten into you, then?” he asked. But the two kittens ignored him, held a hushed conference at the open door, and then disappeared into the dense foliage outside.

“You could have at least shut the door behind you!” the man called out in irritation, adjusting his bifocals. A family of toucans had recently gotten misplaced by flying into the house the last time the door had been left open, and he wanted to avoid that again. He was still cleaning up droppings and discarded fruit pits.

“I honestly don’t know what’s gotten into you all,” he said to a gray eyed kitten that had appeared out of nowhere on his lap and sat looking up at him. This kitten was rather rotund, but also small and also black. “All of you have been acting most unusual, there’s no other way to put it!”

It was then that the telephone rang. The big man hauled himself out of his chair, displacing the gray eyed kitten, and he tromped across the room to answer it.

“Yes….Yes...Speaking...Who is this?….Yes...Hello, how are you...Hmm, yes...Yes….Oh, well, I’d better sit down…”

Pulling the phone by its cord across the parlor, the man sat down again, displacing the kitten who had taken her place on the cushion and had started grooming herself.

“Please move!...No, not you...Yes, go on… What’s that you say?….Uh-huh. Ah-hah. Uh-huh…. Hmmm…. Yes, yes… Extraordinary!…. Oh… Ah, I see… Without the necessary documents, you say?…. Oh dear.”

He shifted in the chair and put his cigar down in an ashtray. He was now paying full attention to the conversation.

“Indeed….No, you are most right to call and inform me...Yes, yes, yes...And the student involved, he is currently matriculated?  Hmm. Right… Indeed, indeed… And you are chairman of what department?  I see… No, no… I’m the correct person to notify on this matter. Don’t do anything else for the moment, I will look into things. Right… Right… I shouldn’t mention it to any others, if you don’t mind. Quite so… Right… The item in question, please secure it somewhere for the time being, if you don’t mind… Yes… Yes, that sounds fine… Thank you… I will be in touch… Good-bye.”

The man hung up the phone and signed. He got up from the chair, pulled at a tuft of hair growing between his eyebrows, and paced the room. He did not even notice the gray eyed kitten had completely shredded the discarded newspaper that had fallen onto the floor.

1. Chapter 9

Ethan Culliver Crosby sat at Cecilia’s kitchen table, wearing a multi-colored poncho and too-tight jeans. “I’m afraid I’m really in trouble,” he told her.

“Oh, come on, is it really all so bad?” Cecilia nudged him with her foot under the table. “That book certainly sounds like an exciting find. And the archaeologists who were supervising you knew you brought it back, didn’t they?”

“It is an exciting find. Amazing. The find of the century, at least in Mayan studies, probably.” He put his head in his hands on the table. “And, no, they had no idea I brought it back.”

“Oh,” Cecilia paused. “None at all?”

“Nope,” Ethan confessed. “I just packed it up in the container to protect it, and stuck it in my bag. When we were itemizing all the artifacts with Capitán Licinius to get permission to remove things from the site to bring here for further study, I just didn’t mention it.”

“Oh,” Cecilia frowned. “Why not?”

“I just don’t know,” Ethan pulled at his hair. “It’s like it wouldn’t let me, it wanted to stay hidden.”

“It wouldn’t let you?” her voice was dubious. “The book wouldn’t let you?”

“Oh, it’s hard to explain…”

“I guess,” Cecilia frowned again. “Well, maybe it’s not such a big deal. They’ll just return it to Mexico, right? And lesson learned, you’ll never do something like that again.”

Ethan shook his head. “It’s not like we can even read it,” he complained. “We can’t even open it. The Maya made their books from the fibers of the capó tree, mixed with vegetable gum and covered with lime. I suppose sitting in the water like that for hundreds of years, the pages have glued themselves together.” He gave a sigh and slipped off his flip-flops, which he still insisted on wearing though the weather was growing decisively colder. “I’ll probably get kicked out of school,” he put his head in his hands again. “How could I have been so stupid?”

“Come on, it can’t be as bad as that, can it? I mean, you fessed up right away.”

“Yeah, but it still looks bad. Professor Equuleus will hardly talk to me. He’s got some big shot from the University Compliance Office looking into things. Oh, why did I do it?”

Cecilia smiled, ruffling his hair. “Yeah, you are a big dummy.” She reached over and gave him a push.

“That’s the thing,” Ethan suddenly sat up, anxiety written on his face. “I don’t know why I did it. It was...it was like that book wanted me to find it...and...and then it wanted me to hide it.”

“Well, there’s no sense worrying about it now,” Cecilia said matter-of-factly. “It’s late and time to get ready for bed.” She was happy to see these were the right words to say. Ethan sighed and pulled off his poncho. Then he stood up and pulled off his jeans, and was standing in front her wearing only a loincloth around his waist and a shark tooth on a string around his neck.

“You’ll catch a cold like that,” Cecilia said, biting her lower lip.

“Catch a what?”

When he had returned from the expedition, Cecilia had insisted that he not live in the dorms but instead move in with her. He was immediately comfortable enough to stroll around her house wearing only the loincloth, or, even better in her view, nothing at all. After all, that was how they lived in the jungle, he told her. And she agreed. She basically didn’t want to let him out of her sight. So he had loaded up his few belongings into the back of her hatchback, put another load onto Gregoriano Chance, and they moved him from the University dorms over to Ben Franklin Street.

The mule was not a problem. He cleaned up after himself and mostly stayed on the front porch of the Victorian house, content to watch the traffic go by on the street. No, the challenges Cecilia found came more from Ethan himself, and the habits he had picked up from a lifetime in the jungle.

First was his hammock. He insisted that it should be hung from the ceiling. He was about to set it up in the living room, in plain view of guests and neighbors, but Cecilia insisted that if he was to set it up at all, it should go in her bedroom. At first, Ethan was a bit suspicious. “But you’ll be sleeping there,” he said. She was amused, for she mistook his attitude for some elemental shyness on his part. But that was not it at all. She found out that first night exactly what he meant. Ethan’s idea of who to spend the night was the Lacandón idea of how to spend the night. And it did not involve sleeping straight through. It entailed rising periodically, conversing with the moon through the window, then getting up again to address Venus as she rose or descended, Cecilia could never get it straight which, and then singing to the various houseplants that she kept around the place without too much thought, but with whom Ethan was rapidly on intimate terms. But she soon learned a technique for settling him down. She would come up to him from behind, holding him like she imagined some big jungle cat would, purring in his ear, and once he was cooperating, and she was whispering “my jungle boy” in his ear, he would afterwards sleep through the entire night.

The next big shock to Cecilia were Ethan’s eating habits. In this he was far from idyllic. Maybe she expected him to subsist on raw fruits and vegetables, having of course grown up relying on the bounty of the rainforest. Cecilia herself was a thoughtful vegetarian, not vegan, but a devoted critic of the industrial-food complex nevertheless. But not Ethan. He would eat anything in sight. He would try anything once, not as a glutton, but rather with a cosmopolitan air. A trip to the supermarket for him was an exotic and exciting experience, full of new smells, new tastes, new discoveries. “Pop tarts?” Cecilia would peer into his grocery bag, completely disappointed, after his “expeditions” into this new culture. “Marshmallow puffs?” She pulled out a box of toxic sugary cereal and shook it questioningly. “Chocolate-Bomb Crispies?” And it truly exasperated her that he was capable of eating an entire package of gummy worms at one sitting, but he would not eat broccoli. He insisted on calling the vegetable “little trees,” and found it particularly offensive that someone had cut them down while still so young.

Other curious things Cecilia categorized in her mind as “points of religion.” These were the little altars he had set up around the place, and in front of which he burned strange-smelling piles of incense at regular intervals. At first she was alarmed that there existed such a concept as “sacrifice” in his belief system, but was relieved to find this entailed nothing more than unwrapping a chocolate bar and leaving it at the base of the small stone statue of Yum Kaax, Lord of the Harvest, at every new moon.

He also could not be made to understand the proper uses of furniture. But this was a minor point, she found. It was a small price to pay for coming home to find this muscular young man jumping around on her sofas wearing nothing but his loincloth, and who was always sweaty in a pleasantly fragrant way. And all of the other things that came along with him fit in easily enough. Lexicons dissecting Cholan and Yucatan syntax, old journals of old Spaniards dug up out of basements from Mexico to Honduras – most of which honestly should have been in museums. Ethan’s predilections for “borrowing” valuable tomes had gotten an early start. There was a dog eared 1896 edition of Manson’s Who’s Who in Parasitic Infections, handed down to him by his father, and huge thousand page books of canvas sheets full of the tens of thousands of Mayan inscriptions he had seen so far in his lifetime, and most of which he seemed to have memorized. All of these found a place easily in Cecilia’s house on Ben Franklin Street. But to her the most wonderful of all were the photographs, taken in runny Kodachrome under sagging palm trees with backdrops of brilliant seas or frowning gray statues. They were photographs of young Ethan and his father, and she saw Corsair Culliver Crosby as the man wanted to be seen: a rugged, ruffian-type, but with the kind eyes of some unfortunately fated poet. A pistol was invariably stuck in his belt, but Ethan said it was of antique manufacture and he doubted if it had been fired in four hundred years. And beside the man, grinning in the sunlight, golden skinned from the sun, expertly holding a machete or rope or some other item used by professional men running loose in the jungles, stood Ethan.

In the center of her living room was the grand piano. Ethan had never seen one before he met Cecilia. Most evenings, he watched Cecilia play with fascination, and she found him the most liberating audience. Here is someone so innocent, she told herself, he loves my music because to him it is beautiful, look how he rocks back and forth to it. And it is not because he has been told it is being played by Cecilia Burgess, that famous musician, so therefore it must be wonderful. My name meant nothing to him before. I am just a woman he has seen after walking out of the jungle. He sees in me only me, not what he has read in some review or in some magazine. He listened with wide eyes as she explained to him, naked fingers moving lightly on his arms, how each key was connected to a hammer, and how each hammer in turn hit a string. And another time, after he had been noticing that as she played she hummed to herself, he asked her in his voice of dewdrops, “What is that you’re humming? It’s not what you’re playing…”

She thought for a moment. “Oh, but it is!” she answered at last. “Only it is the parts, the notes, that were not chosen, were not written down, but might have been. I call them like the hidden harmonies. It’s silly of me, I know…”

How he loved to watch her play. In those days her favorite works were the piano pieces of William Byrd and J.P. Sweelinck. For week after week it was the “First Pavan” and the “Fantasia in D” after suppertime. And afterwards, at night when he would not sleep, at her encouragement he showed her how to do things the way monkeys did in the forest, though he admitted they themselves were disadvantaged for not having tails. And once they were through with that, they moved on to the parrots and the parakeets and it was then that Cecilia saw for the first time that wings are not primarily for flying.

This was the way their lives took shape. Where Cecilia had always felt completely alone, trapped by misunderstanding, she had now escaped. It showed in her dreams, where she stopped wishing she had been born as an animal or in some century far in the future where people had discovered how to make themselves invisible. For the first time she did not feel an absolute stranger to herself just by walking down the street. Something, someone, of this world, could be hers.

They had just started living like this, and both of them felt they had in fact just started really living. They could not have known that something was about to descend upon them both, unasked for, unnecessary, and horrible.

1. Chapter 10

A few weeks after the discovery of the Joisey Codex, as the unopenable Mayan book had come to be called, there was a disciplinary hearing at Morristown University. It was held in a small walnut paneled reading room in Burnham Hall. Presiding was the University’s Compliance Officer, the large round man with a thick curly beard and bifocals. A botanist by training, his name was Professor Lazaro.  Also present were Professor Equuleus, Ethan, as well as the much recovered-but-thinner Drs. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. The Compliance Officer Professor Lazaro sat facing them from behind a heavy oak table, the box containing the Codex in question before him.

“Now then, hrrmph,” Lazaro peered down at some papers and notes before him. “Is everybody here?”

“I should think so, Laz,” Equuleus shrugged. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Lazaro looked sharply up at Equuleus. “All in good time.” His gaze passed over to Ethan. “Young man, you are the one who found this artifact that has so consumed my life recently with paperwork, all of which I might add, needs to be apostilled in good order and presented in triplicate to the Mexican government before our proceedings here can be concluded?”

“Um, yes sir,” Ethan looked down at the floor.

“Very well,” Professor Lazaro leaned back in his chair, making it creak loudly. “Tell me about it.”

“Well...sir…” Ethan replied. “I believe it to be a most important find.”

“What this young man believes is without consequence, if I might speak,” Dr. Stephenswood interrupted. “I was supervising his work on this expedition. He found the manuscript, secreted it away, and told me nothing of it.”

“He didn’t mention it to you at all?” Lazaro asked.

“Not once. The first I heard about it was when I got a telephone call…”

“A telephone call…” Dr. Cathers, Jr. chipped in.

“Yes, a telephone call from Professor Equuleus, while we were in the hospital…”

“The hospital…” Dr. Cathers, Jr. confirmed.

“Recovering from dysentery.” Dr. Stephenswood crossed his arms in a huff.

“That’s very bloody diarrhea,” Cathers Jr. clarified.

Professor Lazaro looked down at his notes and shuffled a couple of pages, frowning.

“Laz, if I might add,” Equuleus ventured. “Ethan is one of our best students, but he is very young. He did not grow up in our educational system. He is still...learning its norms of behavior…”

“Nonsense,” Dr. Stephenswood snapped. “He is a thief and ought to be expelled.”

“Now, really, Harold,” Equuleus winced and shook his head. “I don’t agree with you, I think that is too harsh.”

“Harsh? He stole this thing on my watch – it’s my reputation too that’s at stake! I, too, have long-standing relationships with colleagues all over Latin America. If this is not made right, those relationships are in jeopardy. Think of our collaborations!”

“Everybody calm down,” Professor Lazaro raised his hands gently. He looked calmly at Ethan. “Young man, why don’t you tell me, what possessed you to just take this artifact the way you did?” His hand patted the top of the metal box on the table before him.

“Well...sir...I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve come to think that this Codex is a very important one.”

“Go on.”

“I found it submerged in a cistern near the ruins of the Mayan Institute of True Love, you see.”

Professor Lazaro followed some notes written before him, and made a checkmark with a pen.

“I see…”

“Well, I admit I just took it… I don’t really know why, but I just felt it was important…” He paused again. “You see, I read a passage once in a book of missionary chronicles, the Breve Relación de Cositas de Chiapas, written by the Franciscan priest Gonzalo Fernandez Monterroyo in 1577…”

Dr. Stephenswood put his hand to his forehead and groaned, “My God, boy, who cares?”

“Dr. Stephenswood, I ask you please no more interruptions to these proceedings,” Professor Lazaro said gruffly. Then turning to Ethan, more kindly, “Go on, young man.”

“Well, the passage, if my memory serves, goes something like this:

The natives say also they had a book of much magic that they called in their language Huun Ch’ujlelob, of which a translation would be approximately The Book of Souls… The pagans here insist it was a book unlike any others, and they all know about it through their folk-stories. It was said to be covered with the skin of a black panther, and has long been lost…

That was one of the first things I noticed about the book...its covering was very unusual, and appeared to be made of some sort of black skin.”

Professor Equuleus looked oddly at Ethan. It was true, the unopenable book looked to have an unusual covering of some sort of black skin. Could Ethan be right? Could it in fact be this long-lost book described by Fray Monterroyo?

“The passage goes on further…” Ethan continued.

“Of course it does…” murmured an exasperated Dr. Stephenswood under his breath. Lazaro directed another sharp look in the direction of the archaeologist.

“Monterroyo wrote:

The Book of Souls was said to treat as its subject love...And not the honest, upright love of God our Savior, but the base carnal love in which the Enemy delights...In the magical nature of the text the pagans of this region swear to firmly, they insist the book contained an exhaustive list of souls, if such a thing be imagined...each recorded by its true name...and matched perfectly with the true name of one other soul. This is how their story goes. All good Christians will recognize that such an offensive proposition surely constitutes nothing less than an attempt to gaze at the Will of God…”

Ethan stopped his recitation. Professor Lazaro, who had been taking notes, looked up at Ethan when the young student stopped talking.

“Incredible,” was all he said.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” Equuleus clapped his hands sharply. “The book can’t be opened. It must be returned to Mexico. Ethan is of course contrite and will never do such a thing again. Can we wrap this up?”

All eyes were upon Professor Lazaro as he looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to recall something from long ago. The silence dragged on, and Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

“Yes,” Lazaro said after he had taken his moment. “Yes, yes, I shall take possession of the Codex and see that it is returned to Mexico promptly. I believe there is a request from the Regional Antiquities Museum in Chiapas. Ethan,” he looked sternly over his glasses, “you understand the gravity of the situation and the hassle you’ve caused myself and these faculty here?”

“Yes,” Ethan nodded his head.

“Fine. I rule this matter closed, you shall remain fully matriculated, but I warn you any further infractions of the University Code of Conduct will be dealt with more severely.” And Professor Lazaro slapped his palm on the table, stood up, pushing his heavy chair backwards, and dramatically gathered up the Codex in its metal box.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he called, as he strode from the chamber.

Equuleus clapped Ethan on the back, and sighed, “Thank goodness that’s over.”

Dr. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. glared somewhat at the undergraduate, and then all agreed too return back to Equuleus’ house to plan their approach to the study of the Sack’uktún materials that had been properly collected. Equuleus appeared to be cheerful, but Ethan himself was miserable.

“The Regional Antiquities Museum in Chiapas?” he asked his professor as they were driving across town. “They have hardly any staff. The Joisey Codex will remain in a drawer somewhere, forgotten.”

“Now, now, Ethan, no worries. At least you’re not expelled, eh? Old Lazaro was sure lenient, I was anticipating at the minimum a one semester suspension.”

“But can he be trusted? I mean, how is he going to get the Codex down to Mexico? Fly it himself? Send it in the mail? It might get lost!”

“He’s the University Compliance Officer,” Stephenswood said from the backseat of the car. “What could go wrong?”

“Anyway, it’s not like you could open the book anyway,” Cathers, Jr. said smugly. “You wouldn’t be able to read it, to do anything with it anyway.”

Ethan continued stewing until they arrived at Equuleus’ house. The linguistics professor herded the team out of the car and into his living room, and pulled up a large whiteboard and a set of dry erase markers.

“Now,” he said, drawing the lines of a table on the whiteboard, “let’s rank in terms of priority the materials that have been collected and plan our approach. Who knows, Ethan, with this preliminary work we may fund a second expedition, and you can visit that Regional Antiquities Museum in Chiapas, and check on your precious Codex.”

Ethan had barely thrown himself despondently onto the sofa, when there was a crash at the living room door and Maxim the chemist came running into the room.

“Ah, so glad you’ve come! So glad!” He was like a large bouncy spider, a note of extreme hyperactivity in his voice. “I have something very interesting to show you! Everybody down into the basement! I promise you won’t be disappointed!” And he gave a jump and headed out of the room.

“Errr...Maxim…” Equuleus began to follow him.

The group headed down the basement stairs and into Maxim’s rather chaotic lab.

“This reaction orb you gave me last year is finally going to get some use,” Maxim said, holding up what appeared to be a glass basketball, hollow on the inside. He had attached to it two wires, that were in turn connected to a dubious-looking transformer sitting on the floor. “You are familiar maybe with Miller’s experiment?”

“Ah, no…” replied Professor Equuleus. Ethan and the two archaeologists gatherer closer and also shook their heads.

“No matter. I will explain it to you in intricate details. The system really is quite simple. But its concepts are essential, you must see, to the modern biochemistry. You see here the orb,” Maxim pointed to the glass sphere with the wires coming out of it. “In it are contained the gases hydrogen, ammonia, and methane.” He then lifted a rubber hose connecting the glass sphere to a flask holding some bubbling liquid.

“Maxim, please no explosions today,” Equuleus closed his eyes.

The chemist ignored the comment. “Now, through tube I bubble water vapor. Steam, yes? Now then, when Miller in his famous experiment, introduced electric current to system, he found he could cause reactions that produce simple organic molecules. Amino acids, nucleic acids...the building blocks of life. You are following?”

“Perfectly,” said Equuleus, winking at the chemist. “But please no explosions today.”

“Oh, nothing to fear, nothing to fear,” insisted Maxim quickly. “Experiment is perfectly safe.” He cackled a little bit. “But the point is Miller in his way simulated the conditions on the primordial earth, and showed how life could be assembled spontaneously from essential molecules. The hydrogen, the ammonia, the methane...all were present naturally in early earth atmosphere.”

Dr. Stephenswood stood next to Ethan, and suppressed a yawn behind his hand. “Good Lord, is there a point here?” he asked quietly.

Ethan looked with suspicion and concern at the electrical transformer on the floor. Maxim patted the apparatus confidently.

“Electricity simulates lightening!”

“Umm…” began Equuleus. But Maxim had already thrown the switch on the transformer. The electrodes penetrating through to the inside of the glass sphere began to buzz blue.

“But Miller did not go farther, though he easily could have! I have found that if you increase the voltage, like so,” and he bend and fiddled with a knob on the transformer.

“Errr...Maxim...increase?” Equuleus went pale.

“Plus add to system one molar solution tetrahydrocannabinol…” And the chemist dropped into the flask of bubbling water a handful of green plant material. He bent and fiddled with the knob again, the electrodes went from glowing blue to white and reflecting eerily off the walls of the basement laboratory. Suddenly a brilliant flash tore out of the glass sphere and condensed through a narrow piece of attached glass tubing. The assembled audience took a step backwards and covered their eyes.

“Maxim!” called out Professor Equuleus. “What the hell is this?”

“Not to worry! Not to worry!” shouted Maxim over the whine of the transformer and the crackling of the electrodes. “Just need now to condense…” He fussed with some valves and tubes on the workbench. Soon a blue electric cloud issued forth from the glass tubing, and seemed it might consume the entire basement, if not the entire house, when it then the blue light rapidly began coalescing, and taking on a form. Ethan gasped when he saw arms and legs emerge, in what appeared remarkably to be a human form.

“It’s working!” cried Maxim.

“What the…” stammered Equuleus, removing his hand from in front of his eyes. Before them, astride the workbench, blinking its eyes and clinging with a startled expression to the apparatus from which it had come, was a blue naked woman. The outline of what could be called her body sizzled and crackled with loose voltage.

“And so!” Maxim explained, holding wide his arms. “You are the first to witness! A Tetrahydrocannabinol Genie!”

Professor Equuleus clapped his hand to the top of his bald head and nearly fell over.

“Oh, Maxim! I mean...do we really need it?”

1. Chapter 11

On the other side of the University, Cecilia Burgess parked her car in the Music Conservatory lot with a presentiment that something was about to happen. It was a bright, beautiful early winter day, and the sky spoke of absolutely no evil. But such is the sky, an authority on nothing.

Her lessons went as usual that day, that is, as usual as they had been going ever since Ethan had moved in with her. At the start, she really had tried to be in better control, but it soon became clear that there was no point. Her students, bright-eyed undergraduates with runny noses most of them, had seen it first when instead of playing one or two bars by way of instruction, she would forget herself and keep going and play entire pieces, and playing them passionately, without even knowing it had happened until the end. Her students would sit, spellbound, and people from adjoining classrooms would come by and listen to this magic that they hardly believed could flow from any instrument. Several students when they heard Cecilia knew that this was true playing, there was no getting around it, and they felt a sudden humility and firm resolve to practice more, love more, and live more. And when she had finished, after having played straight through, for example, the entire “Rapsodie espagnole,” everyone who had gathered applauded and she woke from her dreamstate. At these times she became embarrassed and excused herself, the “bravos” following her down the soft carpeted hall. Her students, after all, knew she could play...but not like this. Sitting by herself in her office with its view out onto the lovely cloistered garden at the center of the Conservatory, she would reflect that it should not be so embarrassing, she was just in love, and made a firm resolution to be herself through it all. And the next day the lessons would go the same, session after session, until her students hardly had a moment to play themselves – though not one of them complained.

On this particular day everything was even stronger, more amplified, than usual. Perhaps the windstorms that were blowing hard lately at night had something to do with it. She hung her coat and orange scarf in her office and was just looking through her notes, selecting what exercises she would give her 9:30 pupil, a sophomore of some talent, when there came a gentle tap on the door. Expecting it to be her pupil arriving early, she called out that the door was open. In stepped instead a tall stranger. The first thing that struck Cecilia was that his bod in every way resembled a thin iron nail. And then she saw his face. It was breathtakingly handsome, although gray as if cut from granite. He had steel-blue eyes that looked at her so directly she had to shiver. He wore his blond hair long, reachign with a pampered golden curl to his collar. On his head he wore a hat with a large white-plumed feather, not unlike those worn by men who played at swords in nineteenth-century French novels. On his shoulders was a cloak of dark purple, with spiraling and complicated embroidery on the shoulders. Under the cloak he wore a frilly blouse of white silk. Great white cuffs billowed out around his wrists. Around his  neck hung a pendant of iron, with a dark red stone set in the center. In his right hand he held a violin case.

“Forgive the impertinence,” he said in a voice with an accent that evoked high cliffs and chill rivers. “I pray I am not interrupting anything. You are, unless I am very much mistaken, Miss Cecilia Burgess, the famed pianist, to speak nothing of your virtuosity at the violin?” He smiled through his thin, fleshless lips. “Yes, I can see you are. Please allow me to introduce myself. Evik Sagittarius, at your service,” and he removed his hat with a flourish and bowed low, holding his cape properly in his left hand. “I am a violinist.”

Cecilia for some reason she would not have been able to explain, found herself completely speechless. She sat with wide eyes at her desk piled hight with notes and student scores, regarding this stranger with wonder, her green-gloved hands folded in her lap.

“I saw you perform once, perhaps you won’t even remember the occasion, no, why should you indeed? It was in a small concert hall, just outside Perugia.”

Cecilia remembered Perugia, remembered it with the distaste with which she viewed that entire tour of Europe, the tedious train rides, the recitals that had given her no pleasure, the endless shopping trips with her mother in Roma, Paris, and Vienna.

“You only toured Europe once, I believe?” continued the stranger. He sat himself uninvited on the low sofa across from her, crossing his legs in their tight black pants. “Miss Burgess,” he said, gazing at her with eyes of magnets, “do you know you are still spoken of in voices of admiration in music halls from Prague to Berlin? Do you know you left whole cities sleepless?”

Cecilia felt herself blush helplessly, but still she found nothing to say.

“What renditions you gave!” Evik Sagittarius went on. “You must forgive this indulgence in the memories of a true aficionado. But we had never seen fingers fly in such a way across a keyboard. Even physicists said it wasn’t possible.” His eyes wandered down to her green-gloved hands. She moved to conceal them in the folds of her skirt.

“Such grace, such interpretation…” he whispered, looking now at the ceiling. “It was unearthly, to put it simply.” He extracted from his cloak a long black pipe, with a stem of intricate carvings, and proceeded to light it with a small metal contraption that shot a flame not less than six inches long. Cecilia jumped a little bit in surprise. But said nothing. A curl of acrid smoke rose to the ceiling.

“But...you have given up public recital?” Evik asked with a note of sorrow, one eye moving independently and staring back over to her.

“Yes…” said Cecilia at last. Her voice resonated oddly in her throat, as if she were speaking into a vacuum. “Yes, it only brought me hardship.”

“Ah, yes,” nodded Evik Sagittarius. “That is what I had heard. The talents of youth weigh heavily...especially on one with talents such as yours…” And his voice drifted off as he smoothed the feather on the hat he held on his lap. He drew on the pipe again.

“But tell me,” he said so suddenly that Cecilia again gave a little jump. “Is there no part of you...no feeling left inside you…” he raised an eyebrow suggestively, “to perform…?”

Cecilia smiled slightly, and found she could not remove her eyes from this man’s face. How sharp each line of his expressions were! She could not stop staring.

“There is a part of me, yes…” she found herself saying the words, “that misses it…” And where had that come from? She could not believe the words had come out of her mouth, she knew them not to be true. She looked around the room nervously. Who was this man? Why was he smoking in her office? She saw a smile of satisfaction on Evik Sagittarius’ face. He gave a low chuckle, and she was at once shocked. “But I have grown out of it,” she said quickly and with determination, hiding her hands even further in the folds of her skirt.

“Why, there is no growing out of it, Miss Burgess. It was a part of you, and it is a part of you still, a part of you that will only die...when you die. In fact you know that it is true – after you are gone, it is this part that the world will most remember.” His mouth lingered over the last sentence, drawing out the words slowly, until she felt a shudder of menace.

Cecilia closed her eyes and tore her face away from him. But his soft voice now drew her back.

“Do not be afraid of it, Miss Burgess, that is my advice. I know...for I feel it too…”

Her eyes looked to him questioningly now, and Evik Sagittarius drew his chest in, as if preparing himself for a painful confession.

“I am currently one of the best violinists in Europe...some would say the world. It is one of the gifts I...have been given, yes…”

Cecilia wanted to say Well, I’ve never heard of you. But the words died in her throat, unable to emerge. His eyes were of ice and she felt her lips part and a tiny puff of air escape from her instead.

“I came here to ask you one thing, a most natural thing, really. It is for you to come out of your seclusion, once, just once, and give a public recital. With me.” He was looking at Cecilia full in the face once more. “You see, I would consider it a great honor to play with you.” And at once he placed his pipe on a low table in front of the sofa, unfastened that clasps of the violin case, and removed from it an absolutely gorgeous Stradivarius of some considerable age. Cecilia had seen instruments so fine, had played them frequently back in the day, had even owned one once. But this Stradivarius was somehow different, she had never seen one of exactly this hue of deep-grained red that seemed to glow of itself. She found it hard to understand what she was seeing. Evik Sagittarius stood then before her, his golden hair framing the gaunt features of his face, and he placed the instrument under his chin. He began to play, slowly at first, a deep melodious piece Cecilia had never heard before. It seemed somehow familiar, yet should could not exactly recognize it. Which was odd, given her near photographic memory and perfect sense pitch, she rarely needed to hear something more than once before it was indelibly imprinted within her. But this...She could not place it at all. Maybe it was something of his own composition. As he played, her eyes could not move from his hands. They were boney but powerful hands, encircled on each finger by a ring. She sensed something, laying just underneath the web of the notes he played, a beckoning, and she found she was completely unprepared to resist it, how could she have been prepared, it was material from fantasy stories. She sank back deeper in her chair, feeling her will completely escaping her. Abruptly the tempo changed, and Evik Sagittarius flew into a wild performance, dragging Cecilia by the soul with him, his bow racing across the instrument furiously, with an expertise that was staggering. Still she could not identify the piece, but it no longer mattered, all she knew was that she must hear it until the end. She felt her heart accelerating uncontrollably in time with the rising tempo of the music. And then, just when it seemed he would incinerate the very strings, fracture the instrument all over the floor, Evik Sagittarius stopped playing.

It took Cecilia some time to realize there was a knocking at the door. Her 9:30 pupil had arrived, winter hat around her ears and knapsack on her shoulders. Evik Sagittarius bowed and then departed without a word and only a heavy, meaningful glance, with his violin back in its case and his beplumed hat on his head. Behind him he left his black pipe smoking on the table. As Cecilia greeted her pupil, she noticed that she was still trembling.

1. Chapter 12

She had to tell Ethan about it that night. She had already made her decision, and it was funny that she could not remember even thinking it over. And when she really did try to think about it all she got was a headache. She waited patiently for Ethan to come home, completely forgetting that it had been the day of his Code of Conduct hearing, and when she heard the soft clip-clop of Gregoriano Chance’s hoofs on the sidewalk at around 6 pm, she went out onto the porch to meet them.

“I’ve accepted an offer to give a public recital,” she said, while Ethan took the heavy blanket off the mule’s back and fed him a banana.

“It’s with one of the best violinists in Europe,” she continued. It was funny, though. She did try to keep up with the names of all the virtuosos on both sides of the Atlantic. But she had never heard of Evik Sagittarius. “He’s come to America just to ask me to accompany him. It will be one recital only.” She spoke hurriedly, something that was a bit unnatural for her.

“Wow…” Ethan was impressed.

“I really can’t refuse it,” she said.

“No, don’t! Don’t!” Ethan exclaimed. His eyes were excited and large under his sombrero. The very idea of Cecilia up there on stage, playing for all those people…

Cecilia smiled. How little idea he had of what her life used to be like. A part of her for a moment told her that if he really knew her he would argue against the whole idea. But that part was soon silenced. And really, such thoughts were unfair, another side of her said. After all, they had just met. What did Ethan really know about her?

“It will bring us some money…” offered Cecilia, as if still expecting an argument.

“Money?” asked Ethan, scrunching his eyes. “Ah, who cares? Imagine you, up there on stage, in front of all those people!”

“Yes…” Cecilia hesitated, but then the headache started coming back a bit, so she said quickly, “Yes, then, I will do it.” And the headache went away.

“What’s the violinist’s name?”

“Evik Sagittarius,” Cecilia pronounced the name, and at once wished she had not. One of those gusts of wind that had been visiting Morristown recently blew in, knocking off Ethan’s sombrero and sending several trash can lids flying across the street. The windowpanes on the houses around them rattled briefly.

All the next day Cecilia spent in rehearsal with the strange violinist. And what a rehearsal it was. To hear Evik Sagittarius play again filled her with anticipation the entire morning. They took for themselves the great chandelier-filled hall at the Conservatory. Sagittarius wore a flowing robe of pleated black velvet, held about his shoulders with links of silver. He played rigidly and without moving, as if untouched by his music, and with hardly any expression on his lips. But the effect on Cecilia was devastating. She sat at the piano, gazing at him, feeling the fingers under her gloves being drained white, almost forgetting where it was she was to begin playing. And then when they played together – she had never experienced an accompanist like him. He was an extraordinary musician, that was true. He was one of those in whom it is obvious immediately. For the first time she felt she was playing with someone her equal. His bow told her fingers when to move, and where, so that their notes intertwined perfectly, without any of the awkwardness that sometimes happens when musicians are not matched well.  He played around her in eddies and undercurrents, and with a nod of exaggerated humility his violin would at once magnify and echo her notes on the piano. That first day they did not stop playing until the late hours of the night, when Evik Sagittarius bowed before her, his hand over his heart, and said, “I stand in awe, Miss Burgess. That is more than enough, I think, for one day. I must go now, and try to recover myself.” And Cecilia saw with a shock that it was nearly midnight, and she had not spoke to Ethan all day.

When she returned to her house on Ben Franklin Street he was sitting in his loincloth on the floor under her piano, flipping through some tattered journals in archaic Spanish that he kept in a series of cardboard boxes. He had had a frustrating day, the archaeologists Dr. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. were determined to elbow him out of the Sack’uktún project altogether. He could not get the unopenable Joisey Codex out of his mind. Equuleus was less than helpful, as the professor was forced to spend most of the day chasing the THC Genie about the house, trying to avoid unnecessary damage from occurring. The chemist Maxim did not share Equuleus’ view of things, and overall it had been a rather chaotic, stressful day.

Now Ethan was reduced to reading through these old journals, just to pass the time, really. When she finally arrived home, he asked her how the practice had gone, and then tried to explain to her something of interest he had found in his readings, but Cecilia absolutely could not follow it. It was not an ache in her head that prevented her, but rather a disturbance of a different kind. It was music. It was as if the violin of Evik Sagittarius had followed her home, playing still inside of her brain, filling up all the spaces around her thoughts, and even trying to crowd her thoughts out entirely. And forget about trying to grasp the thoughts of others. There was suddenly no room for any of that. While it bothered her, she admitted it was so pleasant to fall asleep with that violin playing in her head that she could not see how there really could be anything wrong with it at all.

The next day their rehearsal was even more powerful. In the violinist’s presence she was caught in a vortex of awe that startled her. It was as if she were finding herself attracted to him, although the idea then repelled her and seemed ludicrous. For Evik Sagittarius in truth had one of those boney fashion magazine physiognomies, of the type that appears perfect and flawless from a distance, yet whose skin up close is revealed to be a disaster area of craters and bumps and do-it-yourself, patch-it-together makeup. His skin in fact was scaly, like old, crinkled parchment. And all about him, once one penetrated beneath the exterior of expensive cologne, there was the unmistakable odor of, how could she put her finger on it...dry rot?

Yet viewed in action, from a certain yardage, Evik Sagittarius was charming, hypnotic, sophisticated, even sexy. And Cecilia, as the rehearsal passed and his music became all the more bewitching, found herself completely helpless.

Ethan, who grew up capable of noticing the most minute traces that a butterfly made across the petals of a flower, of course immediately felt the change in Cecilia. When she was home, she now walked around the house with her ears tensed, as if awaiting always some message to arrive out of the air. He attributed it at first to the entirely understandable explanation that she was excited  by the rehearsals and the impending recital.

Alone one evening later that week, leaning next to the piano in Cecilia’s living room, trying to avoid thinking about her long absences (it’s not supposed to feel like this, he could not help telling himself), he pondered the passages he had come across in the Breve Relación de Cositas de Chiapas written by the Franciscan priest Monterroyo. Ethan had become convinced that the Joisey Codex was the lost Huun Ch’ujlelob or Book of Souls. What had Monterroyo meant though? That this Book of Souls recorded the names of all souls...together with the name of the one soul with whom each is perfectly matched? Isn’t that what he had read. Ethan leafed through the pages and found the passage again. Yes, that was exactly it.

He sat back and smiled. Such a book would surely be useful to him now. All he would need to do would be to simply open it and search and find his name, and see whether or not it was matched with Cecilia’s. Of course, he then reflected, that also would mean knowing which Mayan glyph represented his name...and which glyph represented Cecilia’s. Not a trivial matter. He scratched his head. As all-encompassing the Mayan cosmology was, would the book include the names of souls that were not Mayan? Of course he had no way of knowing, since he no longer had the book. And, anyway, even if he still had the book, it was not able openable.

He sat on the floor in the dark alone with these thoughts. The longer Cecilia stayed out at her rehearsals, and each night she came back later and later, the less sure he felt about anything. The violinist was everywhere, it seemed. When she was home, he was all Cecilia talked about. About his brilliance, his style, his poise with his instrument. It was as though the violinist had moved in with them there on Ben Franklin Street, and there he was, setting his bags down in the middle of the living room, asking, “And where do I sleep?” This violinist, whom Ethan had not met, who could very easily be short and ugly. With pendulous hairs growing down from his nose and robust acne in his ears. But Ethan thought not. He guessed somehow that this Evik Sagittarius (the wind blew) must be tall and handsome, with amazing posture. Everything that Ethan, with his homely even homeless appearance, was not. I shall end up as a monk, he told himself, glancing at the clock on the wall he had only recently learned how to read. He sat and listened for the arrival of Cecilia’s car in the driveway, but heard only the ponderous snores of Gregoriano Chance out on the front porch. Yes, a monk...like Monterroyo… Ethan had often wondered what could drive a man to do it. Now he felt he was starting to understand. Gonzalo Fernandez Monterroyo had had it all. Born in 1532 into a wealthy Seville family, educated in the fine arts of Spanish civilization, heir to a considerable fortune through a father who excelled at selling imported rugs at a considerable markup. Yet he was to give it all up, inheritance, family, name, and become an impoverished Franciscan in the sun-pounded wilds of Nueva España. While he could have died fat and respectable in Spain, could have been buried in the cathedral cemetery in his home city, he passed from this world entirely alone, in a shabby cloak, lying coughing on a bed of Chiapas straw. Monterroyo was buried in a dirt yard next to the parish at San Cristóbal de las Casas, in a ceremony attended only by two toothless town elders, a mule, and a malarious priest passing through on his way to Mérida. Why? Ethan found the answer the further he read through the 600-odd pages of Monterroyo’s Breve Relación, and eventually, between the lines, she appeared. The daughter of a lowly barber, but a beauty, with eyes as deep and dark as caves and hair within which men had drowned. Under the disapproving eyes of the Sevilla aristocracy he courted her, horrifying his mother, sisters, cousins, and then his own father’s business relations. Sharp words were exchanged in the family estate, and one way or another there were whispers around town: Marranos. Secret Jews. The barber and his daughter were forced to flee ahead of the arms and teeth of the Inquisition, and whether they were innocent or not Gonzalo Fernandez insisted loudly it made no difference. Both barber and daughter met a fiery death in Cadíz.

The merchant’s son awoke the next morning with the signs of the stigmata. He informed his father he was renouncing his inheritance and would live henceforth in poverty and humility. Old Don Monterroyo laughed heartily at that one and told his son then to get the hell out of his house. This Gonzalo Fernandez was only too happy to do, and he entered the Franciscan Order. It was 1551. In 1553 he set sail, “in a boat-load of friars each as insane as I,” as he describes it, for the New World.

Back then there were so many missionaries active in the Spanish colonies that the King of Castille had decreed that any new parishes should be constructed at least five leagues apart from one another. The young Fray Monterroyo ended up in Chiapas and strove to forget his old life. The native Maya, however, horrified him. He studied their customs and learned their language, but no amount of intercultural understanding could temper the zeal with which he defended Jesus Christ. The pagans could never be anything more than backwards, their culture nothing more than bad habits in need of eradication. Fray Monterroyo particularly enjoyed burning what ancient Maya texts came into his hands. It became his only true satisfaction in life. For this he had real energy. No, Ethan realized, this is what happens when you lose a love. I will not end like that.

He closed the book of chronicles, and he saw it was far after midnight. Cecilia had not yet returned.

Chapter 13

On that night the violinist had invited Cecilia to his penthouse after rehearsal. She found no strength, no ability, in herself to resist. The violin was playing too loudly in her head when he made the invitation, it was not an invitation really, but a simple statement of fact. “Tonight, Miss Burgess, you shall dine at my apartments. So that we may eat and drink in each other’s presence.” There was no question of a “yes” or “no”. Evik Sagittarius drove her, speeding, in his turquoise roadster with the top down. She did not feel cold, although it was already December and the sky both night and day lately as slate-gray and threatening snow. He drove so fast that Cecilia did not know how, but the next thing she knew she was standing in his living room. It was certainly the most astonishingly furnished apartment she had ever seen. He had transformed the empty rooms of the penthouse into a luxurious palace with tapestries on the walls and a thick carpet into which she sunk up to her ankles. A fire crackled between the iron grates of the fireplace, and the room was lit with a whispering orange glow. All of the furniture was low to the floor, there were dragon heads and goat horns adorning the arms of the chairs, serpent tails in dark wood looped from the backs of the couches, and on an oval table with what looked to be hawk talons for feet, was a bowl of what Cecilia took at first glance to be only tiny marbles, but which on closer examination revealed themselves to be small glass spheres inside of each one raged a violent snowstorm. An antique marionette puppet was suspended in one corner of the large room, hanging by its neck, a toothy grin fixed permanently upon its face. A suit of medieval armor stood in another corner, holding a great axe by its side. Cecilia saw its breastplate glitter with row upon row of precious gems.

“Oh, what are these?” On the mantle above the fireplace she noticed a collection of figurines. They were small creatures of blown colored glass. One was a camel, but with a huge horn of thin glass protruding from its forehead, another appeared to be a kind of bird, although it had the tail of a snake. The next figurine over had the body of a griffin but the head of a cow.

“Oh, momentos, that is all,” Evik Sagittarius sighed, removing his cloak of indigo velvet and standing next to her. He wore a scarlet tunic with an amulet studded with amethysts hanging around his neck. “From my youth. I do not touch them much anymore, for they have become most delicate, but why not? Just one demonstration will not hurt.”

He reached out his hand to the figures, and chose what looked to be a miniature eagle, but with the tail of a scorpion, head of a goat, and eyes of a child. Its claws were of gleaming sharp glass. He held the toy in his hands close to his mouth, turned his back to Cecilia, and then with a rustle of the long sleeves of his tunic he tossed the creature into the air. To Cecilia’s amazement, the bird-like object flapped its small glass wings, a bit stiffly at first for want of exercise, but then propelled itself upward toward the tall ceiling and flew around the room. It even gave a low billy-goat sound and wagged its glass beard from left to right as it flew. It made one full circuit around the room before Evik Sagittarius reached out and caught it and replaced it on the mantle.

“It’s not much, really,” he said. “They’re all mechanical, you see. A cog here, a spoke there. They remind me of my childhood, in the old country. A place of avalanches and deep chasms, where it snows even in the summer. I should very much like to take you there. But come, food is waiting.”

The adjacent dining room had been set for a feast. Metal tureens of soups, each a hot liquid of a different color, sat steaming on the table accompanied by platters of dark breads and smelly cheeses. A pair of heavy lead candlesticks held two fat octagonal candles, whose flames reflected in the large window that should have looked out over Morristown below, but which in fact showed nothing beyond. Evik Sagittarius lifted the iron lid off a large platter and revealed a carcass of broiled meat underneath.

“Roast?” he asked, as the odor of the meat wafted over Cecilia’s nose. “A speciality. I hope you shall try it. It is my own recipe, and the butcher, I should tell you, well, he is excellent.”

Cecilia then felt the cold chill run through her veins that she had felt when she had first met this strange violinist, and something in her head cleared. It was only then that she noticed that previously, her head had not been clear.

“Thank you, no,” she said, looking about her, startled. “Actually, I’m a vegetarian.”

“Ah, of course,” said Sagittarius, nodding his head profoundly. Cecilia sat down in one of the large chairs at the table. She was aware that every time the violinist looked at her, he licked his thin, scrawny lips. “Of course,” he repeated, clamping the lid back onto the platter. “A noble gesture, I’m sure. One that I admire greatly. I was one once as well. I think. Yes, precisely once. But no matter. Will you instead have something to drink?”

In his hands appeared two crystal glasses, Cecilia thought maybe he had pulled them out from under the table, she was not sure, but so deep were the shadows in the room that it was possible. He filled the glasses with a thin, colorless liquid.

“A toast,” he said. “To our partnership.”

Cecilia found herself raising her glass and then brought it to her lips. The liquid had no smell and no taste, but passed directly from her mouth into her blood so that her head was swimming after but one sip.

Then there was golden soup in her bowl, and black bread and red cheese on her plate. She found herself drinking another glass of the clear wine.

“Really, we should tour Europe together,” Evik Sagittarius began saying. “We will be spectacular. It would be best I think to begin in the east, where for the hungry people there, music still means something. They will riot in the streets over our names.” The violinist smiled at the thought, but it was not a smile really, rather a simulation of a smile, a conspiracy between his lips and teeth to imitate a smile. There was suddenly a sharpness in the air that caught Cecilia’s breath in her throat, and for a second she feared she might have trouble breathing. She decided the best remedy would be another sip of the wine. She finished her second glass, while Evik Sagittarius nodded approvingly, and then refilled it. She had the feeling of hot ice burning from her cheeks on down her entire body.

“It’s such a shame, really,” he said. He spoke now very softly. “A shame that you should have almost ended up here, were I not to come rescue you. You were one of the greats. You came like a storm, and then you were gone. If I had not found you again, I shudder to even think of it.”

“What kind of wine is this?” Cecilia asked, picking up her glass and looking at it. Inexplicably, she saw it was almost empty again.

“There was none other like you, there has been none like you since,” Sagittarius went on saying, draining his glass and then refilling both of them. “We were made to play together, Cecilia Burgess. We are timeless.”

She felt a shadow pass across her then. A sense of alarm rose and then fell within her, suffocated by the effect of the wine. Staring at her green-glove hand, she tried to move it to put down her glass, but it seemed the table was receding away from her, preventing it. But at last she released hold of the wineglass, and again she felt her head clear slightly. She looked up, startled to see Evik Sagittarius was now standing over her, and he reached and took one of her gloved hands in his own.

“Think of our responsibility to the world,” he was nearly hissing. His hand upon hers chilled her to the bone. “We were given such gifts, you and I. We shall not run from them, but shall embrace them!” And he brought her hand up close to, but not touching, his scaly face. Cecilia thought she might faint right there. She couldn’t have drank that much, but then even the soup had seemed intoxicating. The violinist’s fingertips danced now between Cecilia’s, and he whispered, “You may try to hide from me. But I can see through everything. You do not need to hide from me this way…” A most wicked smile lit his face, heightened by the candlelight. “Show me...Show me…” he murmured. “Remove your gloves…” And he gave a small, suggestive tug on the shimmering fabric.

But Cecilia felt the shadow again, and she shrank away, feeling a dark form as large as life behind her, screaming silently at her to pull away.

“No...no…” she stammered, her head fighting to sort itself. She slid out of her chair and struggled to rise to her feet. The floor seemed to pitch underneath her like a ship. But she righted herself, her feet only just holding her, and staggered backwards into the living room.

“You think he loves you, eh?” Evik Sagittarius followed after her, his chin thrust forward, his tunic blazing scarlet. He backed her against the fireplace, which roared now with bright flames. “Love came knocking at my door once,” he spat. “I have heard of it. So you think he loves you? I ask you, how long it will last, how long, do you suppose?” He hissed and picked up a handful of the glass snowstorm spheres from the bowl on the low table. “How long? A month? A year? A century?” He dropped the balls one by one and they burst with dull pops! at his feet. “Centuries? Will this love of yours last for centuries? Will it last anywhere near as long as your name will, written next to mine?”

Cecilia forced her legs to move, sidestepped around him and away from the fireplace. She made her way toward the door. The violinist followed her.

“You will be mine, Cecilia Burgess. So it was meant. You cannot run from me. If you do not come to me tonight, I will only come for you tomorrow.”

And on those words, Cecilia fled from there, yanking open the door to the hallway, then running down the stairs of the building, until she found herself at last out on the cold street. It was very late, and she was without her coat. The University clocktower had long ago chimed midnight. She ran, her heels clacking, her dress flapping around her ankles. She ran west, past the Square, freezing, running to reach home. At last she arrived on Ben Franklin Street. There were no lights on in her house. Gregoriano Chance was nowhere to be seen on the front porch. Inside there was no one. Only an emptiness, frightening echos of the evening swirling among the Cholan and Yucatec grammars, the books of painted canvas, the volumes of the journals of sixteenth century priests were still spread out on the floor under her piano. But Ethan was nowhere to be found.

1. Chapter 14

Her house rang empty, and for a while she paced the first floor, expecting Ethan to at any moment appear. But after a time, it became clear that he would not. She went upstairs to the bedroom, and lay down on the bed. The emptiness of the house resonated around her. Sleep would not come, and it felt like a very long time ago, in a place very far away, since the music of Evik’s violin had filled her head. She could not imagine how she had let it all happen. It was as if she had lost her mind, become possessed, and was unable to control herself. It disgusted her now. Who was this Evik Sagittarius? How had he done it? Why to her?

Eventually, a fitful sleep did find her, but not for long. She was awakened by a noise, somewhere, in the house. Sitting up in her bed, her breath caught in her throat, she waited to see if the noise repeated itself, whatever it was. What time was it? She could not find her watch. How long had she slept? Outside the bedroom window she only saw that it had started to snow, and by the light of the lone streetlamp far down her street, it looked to be snowing horizontally. She remembered then, for some reason, old stories that said, and very much purported to be true, that many kinds of fairies and sprites took advantage of similar storms, traveling protected under the cover of the snowflakes. Was that the kind that visited her then? She did not know. All she knew was that she had been awakened by a strange noise, and now she was pacing the room, her arms hugged around her body, fighting to hold off panic. But she could not. She started to cry.

And that was when the something flew into the room on little hummingbird wings. It was only five inches tall, dressed in a loose diaphanous gown, and glittered a bit like a firefly. Cecilia choked back her tears and watched it approach. She did not have her gloves on, and hid her hands under her armpits. As it drew closer, the sprite or whatever it was turned out to be bald, with two sharp pointed ears, and lips of beet red. Just as Cecilia decided that in fact it was rather ugly, it spoke to her.

“Tell me, dear, why are you crying?”

The question must have seemed neither strange nor the answer obvious, for Cecilia answered back matter-of-factly.

“Because I have betrayed the one I love and who loves me.”

“That is a heavy crime,” opined the sprite. “And one for which some say there can be no forgiveness.” As it spoke, it hovered on its little wings just in front of Cecilia’s face. It smelled somewhat of barnyards and dung, which might have surprised Cecilia or raised some alarm, had she not been so upset.

“But I didn’t mean to do it!”

“Famous last words,” sighed the sprite dismissively. “Didn’t mean it? Neither do wolves mean to slaughter baby kittens, but they still do it.” The sprite flew over and settled on the edge of the bedside table. The lamp there illuminated on its own. “The wolves seem to quite enjoy it, actually. Some say it is just in their nature.” It seemed to think for a moment on this philosophical point, and then bent to flick a flake of snow off of one of its little pointy shoes. “Cecilia, perhaps you are just a wolf.”

“No, I am not…” She felt the energy draining out of her, and she was suddenly very tired. Was this some sort of weird, bad dream? She was not crying anymore, but instead felt as if the will to live were leaking out of her. “Is there really no forgiveness?” she asked hopelessly.

The sprite wrinkled its face in distaste. “I said, ‘Some say there can be no forgiveness…” It looked around the bedroom peevishly, and then its little beady eyes focused again on Cecilia. “Come, perhaps I can help.”

“You can help me to die,” was all she could say.

“If you choose, it’s no problem, believe me. But perhaps it won’t be necessary. You see, I know he will forgive you.”

Cecilia stared at her visitor. “You do?”

“Yes,” said the sprite off-handedly, “perhaps all is not lost yet.” Its eyes passed over her and rested with interest on Cecilia’s bare hands, which she now held clasped in front of her. She remembered them, and dug into the pocket of her nightshirt where she put her gloves. She drew them over her fingers hurriedly.

“But how can he forgive me, after what I’ve done? How will he ever trust me again?”

“Good question. And in cases like this, it’s probably best not to ask too many hows.” The sprite held up a long, tiny fingernail of its own and examined it under the light of the bedside lamp.

“Well, I’ll do anything! Just make this go away!” Make it go away forever! Can you do that?” Cecilia considered getting down on her knees, then worried that it might appear undignified and only offend her visitor. But then she discarded this idea and got down on her knees anyway. And again a voice inside her asked, What kind of weird dream is this?

The sprite raised its eyes to the ceiling in exasperation.

“Can I do that?” it said with a huff. “What, do you think I’m an amateur?” Then it became thoughtful, and chewed on one of its long fingernails. “There will be a price.”

“I will pay it.” Cecilia answered without hesitation, getting up from her knees. “Just so he forgives me and all this can be forgotten.”

The sprite looked at her in feigned surprise. “You will pay it, you say? Really? Before you even know what it is?” And it set its little hummingbird wings buzzing again and flew up to within a hair’s breadth of Cecilia’s face. The barnyard smell enveloped her. “Is this love so important to you?” it hissed. “Does it leave you so weak inside, that you can face nothing without it? Why is that, I wonder?” And Cecilia watched as it flew up to the ceiling. “You really do believe that without him, you would rather wither up and die!” it exclaimed loudly. “I can see it in your eyes!”

“It’s true,” she answered.

The nighttime visitor flew back down from the ceiling and got up into Cecilia’s face again.

“Why is that?” it hissed. “You could have the world! Yet, you want him! Why is that?”

Cecilia backed away with terror rising in her eyes, and also to escape the stench. The sprite flew back over into the light of the lamp on the bedside table.

“Come over here,” it directed. Cecilia approached slowly. She held her hands, safe in their emerald gloves, tucked under her arms, wrapped again around her body. The sprite drew from under its gown a small empty vial of crystal. It was closed with a lead cap. “I shall help you, you shall help me,” it whispered in a sing-song voice. “Closer. Closer.”

Cecilia came into the circle of light around the table. Outside, the snowstorm blew against the window. The sprite held the vial in one pale, tiny hand.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“A trifling thing, really. You won’t even notice it… in the end.”

“And Ethan will forgive me?”

“Oh, certainly. All of this pain you have brought on will be washed away. As surely as everything is one way or another washed away.” The sprite moved close now, its wings buzzing noisily, and reached out and lifted Cecilia’s left hand. “A drop of blood,” it sang, “a drip-drop of blood is all. From…” and it flew dancing between Cecilia’s gloved fingers. It stopped at the tip of her small sixth finger of her left hand. “Why, this finger,” the sprite grinned horribly. “That’s all.”

Cecilia shuddered at the sight of the sprite’s twisted grin, but remained with her eyes open, but focused on the light of the lamp.

“Now do be a good girl and remove this silly glove.”

Still with her eyes staring straight ahead, she pulled the glove off. She held her fingers, long and thin, out in front of her.

“Ahhh…” the sprite let out what sounded like a growl. It perched itself on the sixth finger. It was over in an instant. With a quick chewing motion, Cecilia’s fingertip was perforated by its nasty teeth with a surgical delicacy, and a red bubble of blood welled up from the skin below. The sprite caught the drop inside the vial, capped it with a snap!, and then it vanished.

Cecilia stood blinking in the dim light from the bedside table. Her finger was numb, and instead of relief, she felt a staggering weight of dread and impending doom coming own upon her. She could not stay alone. She felt convinced that the violinist might arrive at any moment. Pulling on her glove again, she ran from the bedroom, down the stairs, and out into the street and the snow.

1. Chapter 15

The next morning, Professor Equuleus opened the front door of his house to find Cecilia asleep in a snowdrift covering the front steps. Snow continued to fall.

“What on earth?…” Equuleus bent and lifted the young woman to her feet. Her feet were blue and her teeth were chattering. “Maxim, put some tea on, and fetch my woolens! All of them!” he yelled, pulling Cecilia indoors. They sat her in a chair by a space heater, and wrapped her in every wool blanket and wool scarf available. Maxim managed to get a pot of tea brewing, but not before the THC genie, glowing blue like a lighted swimming pool, appeared in the kitchen. As naked as every, she giggled and with one narrow, sizzling blue finger reached out and pushed the teapot to the edge of the kitchen counter.

“Don’t touch that,” Maxim warned, and stuck out his hand to stop her. But before he could reach she gave one quick shriek and one quick push, and the teapot topped with a crash! onto the floor. Then in a shower of blue sparks she disappeared.

“What was that?” Equuleus called from the other room, where Cecilia, wrapped in blankets, sat on the couch, beginning to feel a bit warmer.

“Is Ethan here?” she asked, once her lips had a little bit of pink in them.

“Ethan? Haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon, but he’s due here sometime this morning so we all can begin working on the next Sack’uktún grant. Why?  Isn’t he at home with you?”

Cecilia shrugged. “He wasn’t home when I got home last night. Neither was Gregoriano Chance.”

“Well, that’s odd. Not like him to go roaming about on that mule when there’s a snowstorm,” the professor observed.

Just then the telephone began ringing.

“I wonder who that is so early,” Equuleus said, glancing at his wristwatch as he crossed to the kitchen to answer the phone. “Hello? What? Speak louder, please? What? For who? No! No, I absolutely will not accept it!” There was the sound of the receiver slamming back into its cradle loudly, and Professor Equuleus stomped around the lower floor of the house, looking for the chemist. “Maxim! Why the hell is the genie getting collect calls from Saudi Arabia? This is the third one so far!”

Maxim had been crouched on the kitchen floor, cleaning up the broken teapot.

“Umm...Genie is a popular girl,” he offered, emptying a dustpan full of teapot shards into the trash.

“And another thing, when I went up to the roof to cover up the telescope last night because it was snowing, I found it not there. Instead, it was here in the refrigerator. This as well demands an explanation!”

“Well…” Maxim was sweeping up the last of the broken teapot. “I believe I might have seen Genie with it this morning...Maybe she thought it needed some adjustment.”

“The genie? Adjusting my telescope? In the refrigerator?” Professor Equuleus was incredulous. “Can’t you control her?”

“You know as well as I do that Genie only understands Arabic. And I believe, someone here in this family is linguist, but…” the chemist shrugged sadly, “apparently knows no Arabic.”

“I’m a theoretical linguist!” Professor Equuleus threw up his hands. “How many times do I have to explain that? If there were civilizations on other planets, what sorts of languages might they speak? Is it really such a difficult concept to comprehend?”

“Well,” Maxim sulked, “you have to admit that in current situation it is not very helpful.”

“Excuse me,” Cecilia had appeared at the kitchen doorway, blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Could we focus on where Ethan might be? I’m actually very concerned.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure he will turn up,” Equuleus gave her an encouraging smile. “If that boy can’t get lost in the jungle, he certainly won’t get lost in Morristown during a snowstorm. Come, sit down, we’ve got another teapot around her somewhere, we’ll make you that pot of tea.” And the professor began rummaging around in one of the kitchen cabinets, pulling out a series of monographs on agglutinative grammars, looking for the other teapot.

At that moment there came a crash from somewhere in the upper floor of the house.

“What was that?” Equuleus turned his head toward the upstairs staircase. “Maxim, where is the genie now?”

“Oh, she’s...around, I’m sure…” answered the chemist.

“This has got to end…” the professor rolled up his sleeves and stormed up the staircase. His footsteps could be heard stomping around the floorboards above. “Where are you, you blue menace?”

Maxim had put more water to boil.

“So Ethan wasn’t home last night?” he asked Cecilia.

She shook her head. “I...I was out late myself,” she murmured guiltily. “When I got home, it was well after midnight, and he wasn’t there.”

“Well, I mean, where could he have gone?” the chemist asked. “He’s always either here, or he is with you. It is strange.”

The chemist wasn’t making her feel any better or less worried.

“Maxim Salimovich! Get up here!” Professor Equuleus was shouting loudly from the second floor.

“Did you hear something?” said the chemist, rubbing an index finger around in his ear. “I did not hear something.” But the next instant Equuleus was standing at the top of the stairs, and he was distinctly angry.

“Maxim, I found the genie,” his voice trembling. “She’s in the upstairs bathroom, and she’s brought a pack of blue camels with her. She’s got them drinking out of the toilet. Oh, Jesus H. Christ, here they come!” And at that moment, the THC Genie came streaking through the air, leading a brigade of largish, very blue camels behind her. The genie looped twice around the kitchen, the camels upset stacks of books, plates, and glassware with their hooves.

“Maxim, can’t you at least try to discipline her?”

The chemist jumped and made a grab at the naked glowing genie, who was shrieking and giggling and tossing showers of blue sparks at him. Then she zipped down between his legs, knocking him flat on his back, before dive-bombing on down the stairway to Maxim’s basement laboratory. The camels grunted and spat sparks of their own, and lumbered down the stairs after her. Equuleus shut the door after them, and locked it.

Everyone looked at one another and tried to catch their breath. The kitchen, always a bit of a mess, looked positively like a war zone.

“Maybe you don’t really want tea?” Maxim asked Cecilia.

It was then that Drs. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. let themselves into the house. The archaeologists had arrived on schedule, ready to put in the days work with Equuleus on the Sack’uktún project, and start shaping up the grant to fund the next expedition. The two men looked at the disheveled scene with mouths open.

“What’s happened here?” asked Stephenswood.

“Never you mind,” Equuleus glared at Maxim. He pointed at the locked basement door. “Deal with it. Now, please.”

“I think I will make some tea first,” and the chemist bent to pick the tea kettle up from where it had been knocked by the camels onto the floor.

“Well, anyway, we have something curious to report,” Stephenswood continued.

“Oh?” asked Equuleus.

“Cathers here reached out to the curator at the Regional Antiquities Museum in Chiapas.”

“I’ve known him since some of my early fieldwork,” Cathers, Jr. said. “And guess what?”

“What?” Equuleus snapped. He didn’t have the energy for any further complications this morning.

“It seems he’s not been contacted by our good Professor Lazaro, our dear University Compliance Officer. There are no plans in the works to transfer the Joisey Codex down there. He’d never heard of it.”

1. Chapter 16

The telephone rang six full times. The mathematician John Wayne Smelch finally rolled over and answered it halfway through the seventh ring.

“Herro…” His mouth tasted awful. “Who is this? Hey, no kidding? What’s up? What do I know about Edwin Lazaro? He’s the Chairman of the Botany Department, isn’t he? I’m sure I’ve been on a committee or two with him, when I couldn’t avoid it. Why? What’s happened? Sure...sure… I can come over. What? Snow? What snow?”

Smelch hadn’t heard anything about any snow. But then how would he know, all the windows in his apartment were taped over tight with black curtains. It was pitch dark in his bedroom. But it had to be morning. He hung up the phone and let out a sigh. Had he fallen asleep again in his clothes? Oh, Smelch. Probably it was no longer charming. And his breath. Better take care of that.

He managed the task of raising himself from the bed and finding his way in the complete darkness to the bathroom. Smelch liked the dark, he liked its unpredictabilities and improbabilities, the combination of things unseen and unannounced. He had even been entertaining himself lately by training his eyes to see in the dark. He had heard somewhere that it was possible, if you just kept your eyes open long enough. On the nights when he felt like it he stayed up in the dark reading. Smelch considered it a great accomplishment having just completed The Bhaghavad Gita without once turning on the bedside lamp. Should he ever go blind, he considered himself already highly qualified.

He entered the dark bathroom. Sitting down on the toilet seat, he grabbed around in his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He lit up, leaned back, and exhaled silently. Then he reached up onto the windowsill for the jar of instant coffee and the glass. Smelch had long ago dispensed with the time wasted in the morning making  hot coffee. Ten minutes locating the refrigerator in the dark, five minutes locating the coffee somewhere inside, ten more minutes finding a clean filter in the dark, two minutes dumping out the old grounds from the day before, one minute washing out whatever muddy dreck was left in the pot as well, and then five minutes to put it all together, fifteen minutes to brew...plus five more locating a mug. That made thirty-three minutes a day, times seven was two hundred thirty one minutes a week, times fifty-two weeks in a year…

Instead, Smelch poured three fingers of Scotch in the glass and then sprinkled in a portion of Maxwell House. The crystals went into solution more or less instantly, with a little help from a gritty spoon he kept in his toothbrush holder. He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another, and downed the contents of the glass in one go. That was better. Now he was ready for the world. He took a long drag on the smoke, and then got up to look at himself in the mirror in the dark. Yes, the lifestyle was beginning to show. They said a man cannot live by ethanol, caffeine, and nicotine alone, although Smelch was determined to put in a good effort. The hound-dog bags under his eyes were probably permanent by now. His complexion was the pallid color of institutional paper towels. He wanted to see if by living in the dark like this he would eventually become pale enough to be considered invisible. Could be interesting.

Smelch further complicated his life by trying to do everything in prime numbers. When he walked in the dark back from the bathroom to the bedroom, he knew it was exactly seven steps to the closet. His semi-clean shirts (only slept in once) hung in a long row. When they had been slept in three times, they went to the laundry. He only did laundry on the twenty-third of the month. He smoked his cigarettes one at a time, and bought them five packs at once.

John Wayne Smelch held a very high degree in mathematical analysis. He considered himself a professional problem solver. Professor Equuleus was an old friend, and Smelch had owed him more than a few over the years. So, if Equuleus had a problem, he was on it. And the problems of Professor Equuleus were usually very interesting.

The mathematician picked out a shirt and exchanged it with the one he had slept in, and then sprayed an aerosol deodorant all over himself. Smelch was indeed a soup of complicated smells. His breath was now a garden of tobacco and Scotch. He fell into his cowboy boots and pulled on his heavy black leather jacket. He was ready to go.

Outside it was indeed snowing. The professor wasn’t kidding, it was really coming down. The street was blinding white. Smelch stuck a pair of aviator sunglasses over his eyes, but he still had to squint. He flicked away the stub of his cigarette into a drift, took a snort of the chill air, and half-walked half-slid down the steps of his apartment building, landing in snow up past his knees.

Smelch saw that the Jamaican grocery that had been across the street last night was gone. Now there was just a vacant lot, next to it a store with a sign that announced through the driving snow “PAWN SHOP – CHECKS CASHED.” That had not been there the night before. But such things were not unusual in the neighborhood where he lived.

The mathematician located his immense boat of a late-model sedan with tinted windows, imitation tigerskin seat covers, and a golden crown on the dashboard, where he had parked it up on the sidewalk so that he would not lose it. It was a huge car, but even so was buried under the snow. The streets didn’t look to have been cleared yet by the city either. He wiped the snow as well as he could off of his car’s windshield, got in, turned over the engine, set the heat to “high”, and pointed the vehicle plowing off the sidewalk into the road. Already he could see that with the weather he would really need to use his imagination to find his way. As usual, the neighborhood had rearranged itself the night before. While his apartment building had conveniently been just two blocks between Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Boulevards, this morning those major arteries were nowhere to be seen. Smelch piloted his way around in the snow, the car dovetailing wildly through the drifts. Traffic lights swung, blinking uselessly, overhead. Fortunately, there was little other traffic.

For professional reasons, Smelch lived in the Hollow, the streets on the north side making up Morristown’s Black neighborhood. He liked multi-variable problems immensely, and the Hollow posed one multi-variable problem in particular. It was known in the field as the Hollow Recombinatory Paradox. It had been going on since the riots of 1968. The story was that the CIA had messed up some experiment on the Black community, and ever since then things were strange. While Smelch admitted no one had found any convincing evidence that the CIA was involved (although conspiracy theorists argued otherwise), it was true that every night since then the streets in the Hollow rearranged themselves in what appeared to be a random fashion. Whole buildings relocated themselves. You went to sleep next to Joe’s Bar & Grill and woke up next to a laundromat. You never knew where you and your address would end up at sunrise. If you were a kid, your school bus stop might have been down at the corner of Maple and Martin Luther King Boulevard yesterday, but today, who knew where you should go, those streets just didn’t intersect anymore. Never mind where the school had ended up. And if you were a city bus driver, forget it, you had to wait for the guys from the city D.O.T. to come and draw up new maps of the neighborhood, a new map every day, before you could go out on your route. And only after that could anyone go to work, because the whole place woke up wondering just where their job was. Except for those who worked outside of the Hollow. For them, the problem was different – finding on a given day exactly which streets led out of the neighborhood was always a challenge. Those who worked nights had it the worst. You would go in the evening knowing where your house was, and come off your shift the next morning and everything would be different.

The residents of the neighborhood persevered, what else could they do, and even felt a little pride in their situation. They knew it certainly was unique. And living in the Hollow was not without its benefits. Bill collection, for example, was practically an impossibility, and people took full advantage by running their heat up in the winter, talked on the phone as long as they wanted long distance, and left their lights on far into the night. Law enforcement also proved troublesome, which was not bad from the viewpoint of most of the residents as they had typically been on the beating end of law enforcement anyway. In the 1970s, the city government used to park heavy dumptrucks in the middle of the main avenues of the Hollow as night fell, to hold the streets down and keep them from moving. But they would always move anyway, and the dumptrucks would end up in unpredictable locations, so it ended up being more trouble than it was worth.

For those living on the outside, the Hollow remained confusing, if not alien. White politicians every now and then around election time called for the place to be bulldozed and “redeveloped”. They called the Hollow a haven for car thieves, rapists, drug dealers, and gangsters. But that was how White politicians talked about any Black neighborhood anywhere. It was nothing new. The few Black nationalists who remained tried to depict the Hollow as a liberated zone, free from oppression. But the truth was, life in the Hollow as not much better or worse than life in any other urban neighborhood. It was just a lot easier to get lost.

Besides the CIA experiment-gone-rogue theory, there was also rumored to be a secret society of Black men whose members knew “the key,” the formula that governed the nightly reassortment of the streets in the Hollow. If so, the members of this society never revealed themselves, except occasionally on one of the TV talk shows, and then these individuals were soon enough debunked as frauds. Over the decades, an entire subdiscipline of mathematics had grown up aimed at solving the Hollow Recombinatory Paradox. Two generations so far had attacked the problem from all angles, but without any success. Scholars and PhD students from Princeton, MIT, and CalTech descended regularly on Morristown, clogging the bars off John Hancock Avenue in the evenings, especially when a mathematics conference was in town. Some of the mathematicians specialized only in avenue matrices, others in small alleyway equations, others focused on the Euclidean geometry of vacant lots, all of them searching for the thread that they could follow to the equation that would explain it all. A minority of dissenters told the others it was all a waste of time, the key to the Paradox was so deeply imbedded in the space-time continuum it would take millennia for any pattern at all to reveal itself. In actuality, research into the Paradox was significantly hampered by the fact that most of the mathematicians were pure theoreticians, not to mention being White and terrified of the idea of actually setting foot in any Black neighborhood, especially the Hollow. The result was that an entire network of research facilities had arisen around the periphery of the Hollow, tall glass buildings behind whose walls systems of equations were developed, transformed, simulated, and ultimately discarded. Data was collected from “informants” – residents of the Hollow who were paid to queue in front of the mathematical institutes and report where it was their house was located that morning. Matters were complicated by the fact that much of the data was unverifiable, and many of the informants had no problem reporting bogus addresses, thus keeping the Hollow impenetrable.

John Wayne Smelch had at first belonged to the school of theorists calling themselves microcosmologists, who argued that permutations of the Hollow could be best comprehended by examining the minutiae of the neighborhood. So in his junior faculty years Smelch spent several months flying with a pair of binoculars in a helicopter over the neighborhood, counting potholes, sketching cracks in the sidewalks, photographing and charting manhole covers. If only they had access to satellite technology for mapping, but then only the CIA had that. Which furthered the belief among many in the group that it was the CIA that was behind it all. When he saw the futility in that approach, he switched to other methods, and began hanging out with a working group that advocated an understanding on the macrolevel, and who constructed a huge tower just south of the Hollow, stocked full of cesium clocks and the latest infrared cameras. Then for a while he fell in with a bunch of interdisciplinary geologists who advanced the theory that the Recombinatory Paradox was caused by a series of low level nightly earthquakes. But within a couple of weeks, Smelch was convinced this was utter nonsense.

Now he was on his own, as it were, and many of his colleagues said he had “gone native.” Although he still kept his academic appointment at Morristown University, several years ago he left his official research position at the Center for Urban Numerology, and moved into his current apartment within the Hollow itself.

He found his way onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, which by some chance did connect that morning with Pulaski, and made his way out of the Hollow. The effort had taken him nearly an hour. Snow was still coming down hard as he cut through the streets surrounding the Square. There was practically no one else mad enough to be out in that weather, and the city appeared deserted. That was when the motorbike hit him.

It had run right through a red light and plowed through a drift of snow at Smelch. The mathematician stamped on the brakes and slid to a halt up on the curb. Snow flew everywhere. For a minute it was impossible to see. Smelch swore and tried to see something, anything, out of the windshield. He flicked on the wipers and saw the bike rider had ended up on the sidewalk next to him, stuck in a drift. Smelch got out, his leather jacket flapping open in the cold driving snow. The wind had picked up again.

“Are you all right?” Smelch asked when he saw the rider emerge from the pile of snow. He seemed okay. “There was a red light back there, you know,” Smelch pointed out.

The rider was a tall man, dressed in an entirely inadequate sailor’s peacoat and khaki fatigues underneath that were entirely mud-stained.

“Sorry about that. Difficult driving conditions.”

Smelch looked at the side of this car. There didn’t appear to be any damage, aside of the dents and scratches that had already been there before.

“Well, there doesn’t seem to be any damage to me. Your bike doesn’t look too good though.” The front tire of the motorcycle was indeed bent considerably. The luggage panniers were all split open, dislodging an impressive array of books, magnifying glasses, scientific collecting boxes, and a microscope. A bumper sticker slapped on the side of one of the panniers read “American By Birth – Biker By Choice.”

“Look, why don’t we just exchange addresses and your insurance can call my insurance, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“Sure, not a problem, I got places to be,” said the other man, digging around in his pockets.

“What’s with all the science gear, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m a full professor, endowed, with tenure, at Princeton,” the man produced a driving license. “Here’s my ID, let’s see yours.”

“Fancy shmancy,” Smelch muttered, glancing at the fellow’s license. It was made out to a Chester Buckley, sure enough, address in Princeton, NJ.

They got the exchange of addresses over quickly, since snow was accumulating on top of them by the moment. Back in his car, Smelch watched as Buckley struggled a bit, but ultimately righted the motorcycle, climbed astride it, and then restarted it with a roar and vanished off into the blizzard, despite the bent front wheel. The mathematician rubbed his eyes, opened the glove compartment, and reached inside for the pint of whiskey he kept just for emergencies and things. After taking a long pull, he lit a cigarette.

The drive up Mount Musket in the snow was fun. Smelch’s car was rear wheel drive, and he nearly took the plunge past the guardrails several times. But he finally skidded to a stop just at the end of the road, at the last house, the home of Professor Joachim Equuleus.

The professor was clearly agitated when he answered the front door.

“Smelch, come on in, thank goodness you’re here.” Peering outside, Equuleus commented, “Huh, it’s still snowing.”

Equuleus looked harried and exhausted. Smelch followed him into the kitchen-turned-library that the mathematician knew so well. On this morning, however, the kitchen looked in a more complete shambles than before. Furniture was upended, books and broken crockery littered the floor.

“Did someone break into your house?” Smelch asked.

“Oh, no, don’t mind any of this. We’re having a bit of an issue with a genie. And we’ve only just been able to clear the camels out...”

Smelch was introduced to the two archaeologists, Drs. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr., who were perched uncomfortably on a couple of chairs covered with books.

“So I understand you’ve got a little problem,” said Smelch, tripping over a pile of hardcover texts littering the floor.

“Yes, to put it mildly.” Just then, from downstairs in the basement there came a loud crash and some hollering. “That would be Maxim,” Equuleus waved his hands distractedly. “He’s dealing with the genie. But that’s not the problem I wanted to talk to you about.”

It was then that Smelch noticed her. A very distinctive looking woman was sitting on a chair on the other side of the kitchen. She had dark black hair and had a heavy blanket wrapped around her like a shawl. She sat hugging her shoulders with her hands, on which were a pair of odd green gloves.

“This is Miss Cecilia Burgess,” the professor introduced her, following the mathematician’s gaze. Smelch nodded his hello. The scope of variables of whatever problem the professor was dealing with was increasing by leaps and bounds.

“The facts as we know them are simple, as I started telling you on the phone,” Equuleus began talking, while Smelch removed a stack of books on Punic syntax from a chair and had a seat. “A very valuable book, an ancient Mayan manuscript, was, er, confiscated earlier this week by Edwin Lazaro…”

“The Chair of the Botany Department, sure,” Smelch nodded his head.

“Long story short, the manuscript, this Joisey Codex it’s called, was confiscated because, well, an undergraduate of mine failed to follow the necessary protocols when he, er, collected it during a recent archaeological expedition in Mexico…”

“He told you about it right away, though,” Cecilia Burgess interrupted the professor at this point. “It wasn’t as if he meant to keep it for himself. And now, Ethan is missing.”

“Missing?” Smelch raised an eyebrow.

“Well, missing might be too strong a word,” Equuleus cautioned. “We just don’t know where he is.”

“Or his mule either,” Dr. Stephenswood said with a  bit of a smirk. Smelch noted that with interest.

“In any event,” Equuleus tried to get the conversation back to his point. “According to Lazaro, he was in communications with the curator at one of the main museums in Chiapas…”

“Chiapas…”

“It’s in Mexico, Smelch. Yes, in Chiapas. He said during the disciplinary hearing this week if I do recall, he did state it pretty clearly, didn’t he?”

“He did indeed,” confirmed Stephenswood.

“He said he was in contact with the curator of the museum down there, but it seems Stephenswood knows the fellow, and what did you say? You said he said he knew nothing about it?”

“Not a word,” the archaeologist again confirmed.

“Which is most unusual,” Equuleus leaned against the kitchen counter, folding his arms across his chest. “You see, there are so many documents to be filed, permissions to secure, that it’s unfathomable that Lazaro hadn’t gotten the wheels turning. At least reach out, start the process. Lazaro is lying. I want to know why.”

“So, this...book...is missing. And so is an undergraduate of yours.” Smelch summed it up.

“Yes,” Equuleus agreed, before qualifying it. “I mean, yes to the first part. Not really to the undergradute missing part.”

Cecilia let out a gasp of disbelief. “He’s not here, what do you call that?”

“Well, it’s only been overnight,” Equuleus tried to calm her down.

“He often would wander off while we were in the jungle,” Dr. Stephenswood pointed out. “It wasn’t unusual.”

“Not in the middle of a snowstorm!” Cecilia exclaimed. “No, I’m convinced something has happened to him, I know it.” Her voice fell suddenly. “Perhaps something horrible.”

Smelch looked at her curiously. “Why is it you say that?” he asked.

Cecilia’s mind filled with thoughts of the violinist, his words the night before, and whether he might be involved. But she dared not speak about it.

“It’s just a feeling,” she said, looking at the floor.

At that moment a minor explosion rocked the house, and everyone in the kitchen reached out for a handhold on something. More books and papers slid out of cupboards and came crashing to the floor. The lights overhead flickered.

When the shaking stopped, the door to the basement laboratory opened and Maxim emerged. He looked much the worse for wear. His hair was standing straight up on his head, and his cheeks were smudged with  cinders. A smell of campfire and burnt electric wires wafted up from the basement.

“Hello, Professor Smelch!” Maxim called out cheerfully.

“Hi, Maxim,” the mathematician greeted the chemist. “What you got going on down there?”

“Oh, not much!” the chemist forced a grin.

But Smelch wanted to see, and they all followed him down the stairs to the laboratory. Maxim’s impressive basement lab was now largely trashed. Flasks and bottles were strewn everywhere, glassware smashed and broken on the floor. Twisted tubing and puddles of unknown liquids and even more unknown powdered chemicals were distributed across nearly every surface. There was a lingering smell of gunsmoke in the air. And at the center of it all, Maxim was jumping up and down on top of the ravaged workbench, trying to grab at what appeared to Smelch to be a blue naked woman clutching onto a fluorescent lamp hanging from the ceiling.

Smelch observed these proceedings calmly, and then turned to the his friend Equuleus with a worried expression. “I’m going to be honest with you. One day he’s going to blow this whole house up.”

Equuleus shrugged his shoulders and waved his hand dismissively. “He assures me he’s got everything under control.”

“Professor Smelch, are you familiar with the experiments of Miller?” Maxim asked. The THC Genie cackled with glee and took off through the lab in a shower of lightning.

“Careful she doesn’t ignite that magnesium!” Equuleus called out.

The genie made a dive at Smelch, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck singe.

“Dammit!” he shouted, rubbing his neck and glaring at the genie. “That hurt! Maxim, why are you just letting her fly around free like this?”

“Well…” the chemist looked apologetic.

“Smelch, obviously we can’t catch her! That’s why!” Equuleus exclaimed.

“Maxim, why haven’t you tried building vacuum reflux apparatus?” Smelch asked in disbelief.

“A what?” asked Maxim, startled.

“A vacuum reflux apparatus,” repeated the mathematician, still rubbing the back of his neck. “But of course you wouldn’t look into such things before attempting this particular experiment…”

“Of course!” Maxim slapped the side of his head. “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s brilliant!” And he moved over to the wall and opened a tall metal cabinet, its doors blasted with smoke residue, and began rummaging inside. He tossed out pieces of rubber tubing and miniature pumps left and right. The THC Genie floated over and watched with interest.

“Now, why don’t you tell me more about this book. This...Joisey Codex,” Smelch asked Equuleus.

“Well, it’s positively rare. Even were it not a Classical manuscript, of which then it would be the only example known, it is still an extremely rare find. The Maya, you see, wrote thousands of books. Books of all sorts, on all kinds of subjects. History, astronomy, cosmology, philosophy, prophesy, poetry. The Spanish destroyed most of them. Only three others are known to survive, and they are scattered all over the globe. One, the Dresden Codex, turned up in Vienna in the last century and was bought by the director of the Library of Dresden. It is mostly an astronomical text, records of the movements of Venus, that sort of thing. Another, the Paris Codex, was found in a trash bin in the French capital in 1860. It now resides in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It is fragmentary, but appears to describe religious rituals. The third, the Troano-Cortesian Codex, presented itself in two parts between 1860 and 1870 in Spain. It is split between the Biblioteca de Juan de Toro y Ortolano and the Biblioteca del Palacio, both in Madrid. It is a type of a manual for priests to predict the future.”

Maxim was clanking and rattling about with something he was assembling on the floor, bending several pieces of metal tubing so that they would fit together. The THC Genie teased him while he worked, sending around him waves of blue electrons, and he slapped at her.

Smelch shook his head, observing the proceedings.

“So, there are very, very few books of its kind in the world,” the mathematician said. “Certainly someone might want to steal it. Stealing is a very popular thing to do. But do you really think Lazaro would try to do that? I mean, it’d be pretty obvious.”

“Oh, he could say he was sending it back to Mexico,” Equuleus replied, “and then slip it to any one of dozens of unscrupulous dealers in antiquities, bounty hunters for museums, other scholars from completing universities…”

“Like Princeton…” Dr. Stephenswood offered.

“Hmm…” Smelch was pondering something.

Just then Maxim gave a shout, holding up what he had built with a look of satisfaction. It was a most peculiar looking apparatus. It looked somewhat like a coffee percolator, with a long copper nozzle hanging off its side. The THC Genie floated at the ceiling, babbling anxiously.

“Now watch this!” exclaimed the chemist, holding the newly constructed contraption in his arms, and jumping up onto the workbench. Several broken flasks went flying. The genie zipped through the air and tried to hide on top of the swinging fluorescent lamp. But Maxim pointed the nozzle at her, and the apparatus began to whine. The there was a whooshing noise and a low sucking sound, and Smelch felt a breeze draw through the smoky laboratory. The THC Genie gave a shriek, let loose a flash of sparks, and disappeared down the nozzle and into the apparatus, leaving behind only a static humming in the air. She was imprisoned inside the apparatus. Maxim stood with a grin on his face.

“Well, bravo!” Professor Equuleus exclaimed.

“Amazing,” said Smelch. “I’ve never seen a vacuum reflux apparatus constructed so quickly.”

“An excellent idea, Professor Smelch,” Maxim said thankfully. The archaeologists looked especially relieved.

“Well, that problem’s solved,” Smelch said. “Let’s solve your other one. I think we ought to pay a visit to Edwin Lazaro, don’t you agree?”

1. Chapter 17

Ethan had been walking through the jungle for what seemed to be miles when the rain started. He was completely lost, and could not understand why. This jungle he could make so sense out of. There were trails everywhere, and they were quite well tended, but none of them let anywhere helpful, just around and around in circles, looping back and forth into one another without getting anywhere at all. Gregoriano Chance plodded along behind him, and the mule was also quite baffled. In all directions, no matter where they looked, there was only jungle and more jungle.

It had all been most bizarre. He had been sitting with Gregoriano Chance out on Cecilia’s front porch, waiting for her to come home, watching the snow fall. That was when a tiny black kitten, no larger than a mouse, jumped out from a shadow. For its small size, it was a bit chubby, and clambered about playing among the mule’s hooves. In the poor light of the porch lamp, Ethan saw that it had eyes of gentle gray. Moving lightly on the tips of its toes, its eyes on Ethan, the kitten padded across the porch until it was standing right in front of him.

“Well, hello there,” Ethan said. The kitten mewed. Ethan tried to pick the kitten up, but just as he reached out there was a flash and a sound and then darkness. He felt as if he had fallen a considerable distance, but felt no blow when and if he hit the ground. When he had woken up, he and Gregoriano Chance were there, in this peculiar jungle with well tended paths. And now it was raining.

He sat down next to the mule buy the side of the trail. For the first time in his life, he was lost in the jungle. He could not believe it. He thought about Cecilia. Probably she would be worried. No one had any idea where he was at the moment. Including himself. He looked around at the green leaves and trees stretching on in all directions. No idea where he was at all. Then he remembered, and wondered, had Cecilia even come home last night? His face clouded, and he frowned.

This jungle was unlike any he had ever seen. The leaves he found could not be read, they told him nothing. And what with all the gravel trails, no rapidly turning muddy in the rain, he concluded there was almost something artificial about the place. Then, as he was sitting there on the ground, he noticed a small paper sign tacked next to the plant beside him. He looked around and saw there were more signs like this, in fact, nearly every one of the plants seemed to have one. Now what was that supposed to be for? There appeared to have been something once written on them, but the lettering was barely legible now. Yes, the signs, if that was what they were, had faded, mosses grew on them, the letters discolored and running together. It was all so peculiar. Who would go through a jungle, and put signs on all of the plants?

In the trees above a troop of monkeys laughed and hurled rotten fruit down at them. A couple of papayas splattered at Gregoriano Chance’s feet. During all his life in the jungle, he had never had monkeys throw anything at him before. He sat and put his head between his knees and tried to rationally think about the situation. Either this was a dream, or Cecilia kept a jungle hidden through a trapdoor in her front porch – or else this was something entirely different. A snake, nonvenomous Ethan noted, slid its way through the gravel to his left, raised its head, flicked it tongue, and departed under the foliage. The rain was really pouring down now. Perhaps no one would find them there. Maybe that was for the best, maybe Cecilia was lost to him already. Why had he ever trusted her? Probably the rain would soon wash away the trails entirely, and he and the mule would just be left to wander aimlessly, forever. He slapped at a mosquito that tickled his neck. That was unusual as well. Insects usually never bothered him. He huddled underneath the mule, trying to get away from the rain puddles, rocked himself back and forth, and felt completely alone.

He did not notice the small black kitten at first. It came up quietly in the rain, slipping through the trees behind Ethan and the mule, winding its way under arcades of tree roots and tangled vines. It emerged onto the trail, stopped at a safe distance, and meowed. The monkeys in the trees above fell silent, as if on command. Ethan peered out into the rain, and at first he thought this was the same kitten that had come up to him on the porch he night before. But then he saw this one had eyes of the deepest royal blue, and not gray. The kitten also wore a look of eternal worry on its face.

“Well, hello,” mumbled Ethan, not exactly expecting help from such a small visitor. “Are you lost too?”

The blue-eyed creature mewed again, and paced quickly in front of Ethan, as if sizing him up. It was most agitated.

“Or maybe you know the way out?” Ethan asked, without much hope. The kitten continued its pacing and mewing, and then broke off in a business-like trot on down the path back in the direction from which Ethan and Gregoriano Chance had come.

They followed the kitten, there was nothing else to do. Shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he walked, Ethan realized he was shivering. It was amazing, in this jungle he felt cold chills, as if he had a fever. He had never felt that way in a jungle before.

The kitten now raced ahead, and then paused for its companions to catch up, mewing insistently, looking back with concern. He (this was a boy kitten) led them down a different trail that Ethan had missed before, branching to the left, and then to the right, and then to the left again. The rain was lessening somewhat. Ethan noticed that in this part of the forest the signs on the trees and next to the plants were more legible. Passiflora vitifolia, he read. Yushania aztecorum. The signs here had lost their discoloration, and soon stood clear and new, printed in a cramped Gothic script. They walked on still further, and the rain ceased. Ethan slipped and fell in the mud, something that was very unusual for him, and the kitten waited, pacing, for him to get to his feet again.

Then at last they came to a clearing, and in the clearing sat a house. It was a small house, with chipped plaster walls and a thatched roof. The house had a porch on one side of it, and the other side was supported by log stilts reaching over the edge of a cliff. From the cliff Ethan saw more forest stretching below, with a suggestion of a tall mountain rimmed in mist beyond. The sky was lightening, and the sun appeared between a crack in the clouds.

“No,” Ethan murmured to himself, looking up at the sun. “It should be coming from the other direction, I’m positive of it. Oh, I’m all turned about…”

But he had no opportunity to consider this problem further, for the blue-eyed kitten had jumped up onto the porch, mewing loudly, and went through one of the open windows into the house. Ethan and Gregoriano Chance followed cautiously onto the porch, and saw that the interior of the house was lit by a single lanterns resting on a wooden table. Inside, he could hear the kitten’s mewing continue, then the scrape of a chair across the floor, and a man’s deep voice.

“Azra, what is it? What’ve you gotten into now?” Then in the doorway, he appeared. Professor Edwin Lazaro, Chair of the Department of Botany, and the University’s Chief Compliance Officer. In his mouth burned a cigar.

“Well, Ethan Culliver Crosby, you made it here after all,” and stepped aside so Ethan could enter the house. “The mule can stay on the porch, please.”

“How...What…?” Ethan came inside and looked absolutely astonished.

“Welcome to my home. We have much to discuss, I fear.”

Ethan looked around the room. It was not a large room, and extremely cluttered with piles of old documents, books, and large bottles topped with corks full of what appeared to be colored sand. The walls were covered with maps and charts, some of them depicting unknown regions that Ethan could not identify. In the corner of the room was a sort of kitchen, with an icebox, sink, and stove, and in another corner sat a large chalkboard, scribbled with complicated equations. There were also several small black kittens perched about the room, like the little one with gray eyes who had visited him on Cecilia’s porch, and the little one with blue eyes who had led him here. He saw the blue-eyed one take up a seat on a windowsill and begin licking his paw. The others were sitting on tables and behind drapes, peering out at him with curiosity and caution. Ethan noticed that each one of the kittens had different color eyes.

Sitting on a small table next to a leather chair in the corner of the room, Ethan’s eyes fell on an object he recognized. On the table were piled a stack of old books of various sizes, and on top of them all lay a book with a familiar battered black cover.

“The Joisey Codex…” Ethan rushed over to it.

“I wouldn’t touch it,” Professor Lazaro warned, sitting down in another chair. “Asfar is there.” And as he spoke, just as Ethan was about to put his hands onto the Codex, a ring of fire burst up around it, and Ethan yelped, pulling his hands back. There was a piercing howl, and a black kitten with flashing yellow eyes appeared on top of the stack of books, enveloped in a cloud of smoke, baring its tiny fangs. Ethan stuck his fingers in his mouth.

“Told you so,” chuckled Lazaro, sucking on his cigar.

“But...it’s outside it’s protective container!” Ethan exclaimed.

“Oh, no matter. It’s quite humid here in our little rainforest. It’s in no danger.”

“But I thought you had sent it back to Mexico,” the undergraduate asked. “What’s it still doing here?”

“Yes, that…” Lazaro looked at the ceiling. “That is something we need to talk about. That’s why Sifr here went to get you last night.”

Ethan noticed then the chubby little gray-eyed kitten that had come up to him on Cecilia’s porch. It was now sitting at Lazaro’s feet, looking up with proud eyes.

“Let’s tell him the entire story,” a new, female voice, suddenly said from somewhere in the room. “It was I who sent Sifr to bring him last night.”

“Well, yes,” Lazaro shifted in his seat, his voice suddenly deferential. “That’s true.”

Ethan looked around him, startled. There was no one else in the room, aside from himself, Professor Lazaro, and the kittens. But he had heard a voice.

Then it spoke again: “Ethan you are in grave danger. You were brought here for your protection.”

“Well, we don’t know that for sure.” Lazaro replied, waving his cigar.

“Of course we do,” the voice contradicted. “And we have much to do. Now that he is in town.”

“Excuse me,” Ethan managed to say at last. “But who is speaking?” He was now very much convinced he had contracted some fever. There was a brief silence, during which Lazaro sat puffing his cigar. His eyes were dancing in his head behind his bifocals.

“I am. On the table.” And Ethan then saw a very pretty little kitten whom he had not noticed before. She saw quietly on the table next to the lantern. She was also completely black, but with eyes of violet.

“Yes, well, there you are,” Lazaro said with a smile, extending his arms in front of him in the direction of the kitten. “Allow me to introduce you to Talatashra, now that she’s chosen to reveal herself.” He puffed on the cigar. “Complicating things, I might add.”

Ethan looked in wonder at the small kitten, hoping she would speak again. He was not disappointed.

“Feed him something, I can see he’s hungry,” she said. And the voice really did come from the kitten. Even her lips moved.

“But…” Ethan began to say, his mouth hanging open.

“Oh, it’s no use asking but,” said Lazaro, laughing out loud now, and then wheezing on his cigar smoke. “I wondered about it all the time too at first, but you just have to get used to it. There is no rational explanation, really. Talatashra just is. Have a seat here at the table, we’ll eat something.”

“Is she the only one who...talks?” Ethan asked, sitting down at the table and looked around at the rest of the kittens.

“Of the twelve, yes, and thank God too!” Lazaro answered, waving his hand around the room. “Can you imagine if they all could, all twelve of them? Good God! Running about, putting in their own opinions, yap, yap, yap. Right now it’s enough, with meow, meow, meow! Ha-ha!”

“Hmm!” the one called Talatashra frowned and tucked her chin down into the black fluff of her throat.

“Twelve…?” Ethan tried to count the kittens arrayed in the room around him, but several decided to get up and move halfway through the counting, so he got confused and had to start all over again. Lazaro cleared up the matter with a sigh by introducing them one by one. There was Abyad, with white eyes and a sensitive expression. Akhdar, with green eyes full of mischief. Then came Azra, the blue-eyed kitten who had brought them in from the surrounding jungle. Next was yellow-eyed Asfar, who had chased Ethan away from the Joisey Codex. Next he was introduced to Fadda and Dahab, with eyes of silver and gold, followed by Shimel, Ganub, Sharq, and Gharb, who mewed in voices not unlike musical instruments. And last came Sifr, the little chubby one with gray eyes who stuck his coy face out from under the table to be counted in as well.

“Yes, that makes eleven wise, black kittens, plus the twelfth, Talatashra, the wisest of them all.” Lazaro put his hands across his considerable belly with a look of pride, and then added: “They are my assistants.”

“Assistants?” Talatashra asked sharply. But then she said no more, and bent to smooth the hair on her tail while Lazaro bent to the contents of the icebox.

“Why, did you think I could run this place on my own?” he asked, hauling a gigantic fish out onto the kitchen counter. At the sight of the feast, the gray-eyed Sifr tumbled out from his hiding place and mewed loudly. Lazaro cut off the fish’s head and handed it to him. The chubby little kitten took it none too delicately in his mouth and retreated under the table. Ethan soon heard the sounds of contented purring and the smacking of kitten lips.

“Now with him in town, Ethan and I have a lot to discuss,” said the violet-eyed kitten. “Which you would understand,” she said to the big bearded man, “if you paid more attention.”

“Oh, I’m always paying attention to you,” responded Lazaro, slicing up more of the fish. “Wasn’t it you who suggested we get some practice making rainstorms? And look, it has worked beautifully. This place is getting soaked every day.” He put several pieces of fish on a large plate, and set this down onto the floor in the center of the room. The sleek black kitten with yellow eyes leapt from where he had been sitting near the Codex and landed on the floor in a bright burst of flame. Ethan shielded his eyes while a puff of smoke and the smell of singed hair rose to the ceiling. The kitten extracted the largest piece of fish from the late, and carried it off to a corner. Ethan noticed that he he walked, little paw marks were charred into the floor.

The other kittens now came down from their posts one by one and took pieces of the fish gently between their sharp little teeth and hunched down around the room to devour it. All except the green-eyed Akhdar, who carried his morsel around proudly in his mouth with his tail standing up straight. He then hid his portion under a chair and went about trying to steal food from the others. When at last the plate was empty (Ethan was shocked at how quickly the big fish had disappeared), Sifr crawled out from under the table and proceeded to polish the platter clear with his tongue, purring loudly.

Lazaro looked at Talatashra, who remained on the table, her violet eyes gazing out of a window. “You’re not eating?”

“I’m thinking,” the wisest kitten replied curtly. “Besides, who can eat at a time like this?”

“Sifr can, apparently,” Lazaro pointed at the little gray-eyed kitten licking the plate.

“Sifr can always eat,” said Talatashra. “None of you seem to understand the gravity of the situation, and how...unclear...the path before us is.”

“All I can understand is the gravity of the rest of this fish, about the hit the frying pan,” Lazaro answered, flopping what remained of the fillet into a panful of butter. Once the sizzling sound filled the room, Ethan realized how hungry he was. Lazaro added a splash of white wine to the pan, and sprinkled on some salt.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Ethan said, sitting down at the table.

“Well, you for sure know of the arrival in town of a certain violinist…” Lazaro flipped the fish in the pan.

Ethan’s brow furrowed. “I do. Although I haven’t met him. But what does he have to do with the Joisey Codex?”

“We’re not entirely sure...” Lazaro began.

“He has everything to do with it,” Talatashra interrupted. “He has come to settle an old score. A very, very old score. To do this, he draws power to himself by murdering a new love. It would seem that you and your Cecilia have fallen into his web.”

“Cecilia…? You know Cecilia?” Ethan asked, his heart skipping a beat.

“Of course,” the violet-eyed kitten replied. “Unfortunately, she is already in his grips. And the same would have happened to you, had we not brought you here.”

“For my protection?” Ethan asked somewhat incredulously, looking at the roomful of kittens who were arrayed on the furniture and shelves, looking back at him.

“For your protection,” Lazaro stuck his finger into the sauce bubbling around the fish, and tasted it. “More pepper.”

“And how does the Joisey Codex fit into it?”

“When I heard you tell its story at the hearing, all that about soul-matching, the Book of Souls thing, I remembered something, that’s all. Just a hunch.”

“It is more than a hunch,” Talatashra filled in. “The Joisey Codex, in some way, will prevent Evik Sagittarius from fulfilling his plan.”

“But it can’t be opened,” Ethan said.

“True. But he doesn’t know that. And it may not have to be opened, to fulfill its part.”

1. Chapter 18

The theoretical linguist, the chemist, the mathematician, the two archaeologists, and the musician all gathered back in the kitchen of the Equuleus house. They were discussing how to confront the Chairman of the Botany Department, and Chief Compliance Officer Edwin Lazaro. Equuleus was especially wondering if they ought to just run the whole situation by the Dean first. He and Smelch were getting into the pros and cons, when the Mongolian gong of the doorbell rang.

“Who the hell can that be in this weather?” wondered Equuleus, heading toward the door. When he opened it he found, standing calmly in the howling blizzard outside, none other than the violinist Evik Sagittarius. He wore a windblown cloak of silver and gold, with the same foppish black hat on his head. He smiled, and the professor took an instant dislike to him.

“May I help you?”

“Yes, it is for sure that you can,” answered the violinist, stepping into the portico uninvited, and bringing a pile of snow with him. He glanced at the sculpture of St. George and the Dragon, and nodded. “I can see you have an interest in the work of Giambattista Ramusio.”

“You know of him?” Equuleus took a step back, surprised.

“Of course,” replied the violinist. “But forgive me, I have not introduced myself.” He removed a pair of black fur-lined gloves and extended a cold hand. “I am Evik Sagittarius, and I have not come to discuss Renaissance sculpture. I believe Miss Cecilia Burgess might be here?”

Professor Equuleus was about to tell this thin-lipped man to get lost, there was something about him he didn’t like, when Cecilia appeared in the portico as well.

“Evik…?”

“Ah, Miss Burgess,” the violinist removed his hat with a flurry of snow, and he bowed. “I have come to ask would you like to come and rehearse? Despite, the storm, we should continue our work together. Don’t you think?”

Cecilia stood as if struck dumb, gazing at this fascinatingly bewitching man. The sixth finger on her left hand started throbbing dully. The violins in her head had come back.

“Yes...yes, of course,” she said, once she had found her voice.

“Wonderful,” Evik Sagittarius smiled, replacing his hat on his head.

Professor Equuleus found himself staring hard at the visitor’s face. It appeared to be half the result of copious plastic surgery, and having been embalmed.

“Let me just get my things,” Cecilia was speaking with an unnatural animation.

“Umm, Cecilia, what about…?” began Professor Equuleus, rubbing the top of his bald head in puzzlement.

“No need to get anything,” the violinist said hurriedly. “You are fine just the way you are. Here, you can borrow my cloak.” He removed the sparkling garment from his shoulders and placed it around Cecilia. She then resembled some queen of winter, and she smiled as Evik Sagittarius fastened the silver links of the collar around her neck. “Now, come with me,” he whispered.

Professor Equuleus watched with his mouth open as the door blew in with a rush of wind and snow, and the two of them simply stepped out of the house into the storm beyond. He could not even get a “But what about Ethan?” out of his mouth before the door swung closed again.

“How bizarre!” he exclaimed when they had gone.

“Who was that?” Maxim came now into the portico.

“Haven’t the slightest idea,” Equuleus answered. “But Cecilia just went off with him quite willingly.”

“Really?” Maxim opened the front door and gazed out into the storm. He got a face full of snow for his efforts, and a huge icicle fell off the eaves above and nearly hit his head. Already there was no sign of Cecilia and the violinist, not even any footprints left in the deep snow.

“Yes...she left quite willingly indeed…” mulled the professor once Maxim had pulled his head inside and shut the door again. “Barefoot, though.” He walked back to the kitchen, shaking his head. “Very puzzling.”

“Are we going to see Lazaro, or not?” Smelch wanted to know. “To hell with the Dean, he’s never in town anyway, probably down in the Caymans on that yacht of his.”

Suddenly Maxim pointed his finger and said, “Who’s that?”

Professor Equuleus turned and saw, pressed up against the outside of the kitchen window, a face looking in, steaming up the glass with his breath.

“Can we help you?” called out Professor Equuleus. The face, realizing it had been seen, ducked and disappeared.

“That’s the guy that hit my car earlier!” Smelch exclaimed.

“Buckley! From Princeton! Goddammit!” Stephenswood also recognized the face. “What’s he doing here?”

Smelch was hurtling out the front door in a bound. But he returned in a matter of seconds, covered with snow from head to foot.

“Forget it. It’s an absolute blizzard out there. Nearly got brained by a damned icicle too.”

The snowstorm truly posed a problem. If they were to get across town to Lazaro’s office at the Botanical Garden, they first needed to get out of the driveway. The snow was up way past the doors of the garage, and Smelch’s car was completely covered. Even with the five of them shoveling for over an hour, they were barely half way to the street. Finally, when they had at last cleared a path for Professor Equuleus’s green 1969 Karman Ghia, Smelch stopped and leaned on his shovel, quite out of breath.

“Great. Now how do we get across town?” He fished a pack of smokes out of the pocket of his leather jacket.

Professor Equuleus was grateful for a pause in the back-breaking labor. He too was near collapse. Still, the snow came down in fast, driving flakes.

“I have an idea,” Maxim said timidly. He stood in the garage, the vacuum reflux apparatus containing the THC Genie at his feet. He was not wearing a coat, but his usual jeans and black sweater. “Equu, with your permission, I’d like to try something… I think I can get us across town.”

“By all means, Maxim, by all means,” Equuleus was still trying to catch his breath. “As long as no explosions or genies are involved. We have to get out of here somehow.”

Maxim clapped his hands, and busied himself in a far corner of the garage.

“What’s he up to?” Stephenswood asked skeptically.

“Oh, who knows. Probably there’s some obscure biochemical pathway that converts snow to feathers, and then puts the feathers on ducks, and they’ll all fly away.”

Maxim had already jacked up the Karman Ghia and was attaching to the axles to large pairs of skis he had dragged out from somewhere in the back of the garage.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he told the audience surrounding him. He ducked under the jacked-up car, and everyone heard the whine of an electric socket wrench, and then saw the glow of an acetylene welding torch.

Fifteen minutes later they all piled in and were backing the car fitted on skis down the driveway, where it slid easily up onto the snow-covered street.

“Wait here!” Maxim jumped out, and ran to the front yard where a tall flagpole stood. He cut it down with a hacksaw, and then ran over and started bolting it to the front hood of the car. Before Equuleus could complain about the side effects of this modification on the paint job, Maxim ran back into the house, yelling, “Just one more thing?”

He was gone for a good ten minutes, leaving Equuleus behind the wheel, Smelch next to him in the passenger seat, and Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. crammed uncomfortably in the back. Maxim finally returned carrying a large bedsheet on which he had hurriedly painted the First Law of Thermodynamics. This he attached to the flagpole, making a kind of sail.

“For good luck,” he explained, and stood on the hood of the car in front of the windshield, where he could maneuver the sail with a series of ropes. “Equu, step on the gas!”

“At times like these usually I just smile and let him go,” the professor said the others, as they skidded on down the street. “But still I would fasten your seatbelts.”

“Wait!” Maxim suddenly cried, and Equuleus slammed on the brakes, sending the Karman Ghia on skis careening toward a snowdrift. The chemist hopped off, ran back down the driveway to the garage, where he collected the vacuum reflux apparatus. This he tossed into the car onto Smelch’s lap. “Can’t forget Genie! She would be real offended!”

And then, after a bit of steering and pulling on ropes, they slid out of the snowdrift and headed on down the winding road off Mount Musket. There was some frenzied shouting back and forth between Professor Equuleus and Maxim through the open driver’s window, during which they narrowly missed flying off the road on several occasions. Finally, getting down off the hill, the sail filled in the wind, plastering the passengers to the backs of their seats, and they sped on into Morristown center.

The town was absolutely silent. In fact, all of Morris County had been completely snowed under. The meteorologists were commenting that it wasn’t even funny anymore. All of the snowplows were stuck, and the governor had declared a state of emergency. On the radio and television they were testing the Emergency Broadcasting System. The National Guard was to be called in, once they could dig out their tanks. There was not a soul to be found on the streets, there did not seem to even be any streets, the snow reached all the way up and over the statue of George Washington’s horse in the Square. The car-on-skis sailed at top speed across town, carrying its crew within an inch of their lives, and Smelch, Equuleus, and the archaeologists were convinced it was only through some kind of miracle they arrived safely at the Morristown University’s Botanical Garden off Delaware Road.

“I’ve actually never been here,” said Smelch, falling out of the car and struggling to stand in the large snowdrift they had parked in. Equuleus also unfolded himself with some difficulty from the driver’s seat.

“Me either,” he remarked. “But I heard Lazaro got a grant a while back to have the place remodeled.”

The Botanical Garden had a stone-faced entryway, with its doors blasted by snow. Behind it was what appeared to be an average sized greenhouse. The domed glass roof of the greenhouse was foggy with condensation, and no snow had accumulated on top of it. In fact, the entire building steamed under the inclement weather.

The entry door was open. They passed into a vestibule with informational posters on the walls about tropical rainforests. Ahead of them was a pair of thick glass doors that lead into the garden greenhouse itself. The glass here too was covered with dense condensation. Water ran down the glass in beads. Maxim, the vacuum reflux apparatus under his arm, opened these doors, and they entered the garden.

Outside had been a blizzard. But in here was a completely different world. The first thing they all noticed was the heat. The humidity was so high it was like taking breaths of warm water. The professor hurried to undo the buttons on his heavy coat.

“Ugh, it feels like Mexico,” Cathers, Jr. grumbled.

“They really keep it cranked up in here, don’t they?” Professor Equuleus pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his bald head. This was precisely the type of climate he made every effort to avoid.

“Constant temperature, no doubt, winter and summer, day and night,” Smelch said.

“It is tropical botanical garden,” Maxim was staring upward. A towering tree rose before them, its limbs draped with flowering orchids and fuzzy green mosses. Long vines hung from above in great loops. Somewhere in the distance they thought they heard the cry of a bird, and then closer, definitely, the opinionated squawk of a parrot. Some of the trees near them reached so high, and their foliage was so thick, that no ceiling to the greenhouse could be seen above. In fact, moving in just a few feet form the entrance it was impossible to see any sky at all. All around them rose a forest of deep and steamy green. It was as if they had stepped into the midst of a wild jungle.

1. Chapter 19

Ethan had finished eating his fish, and was sitting in a wicker chair, looking at the maps tacked to the walls of the room around him.

“Some friends of yours have arrived,” Talatashra said.

“Who? Is it Cecilia?”

“No. There are five of them. They are all men.”

“No doubt it’s your advisor, Equuleus, and his entourage,” Lazaro was cleaning up the kitchen. “They’ll be looking for the Codex. And for you, no doubt.”

Ethan got up and went to the door and gazed out at the rainforest beyond.

“We’ll let them wander around for a bit,” Lazaro chuckled. He had pulled a large chocolate cake topped with whipped cream from the refrigerator. Sifr emerged from somewhere, looking hopeful.

“Professor Equuleus will want to know why you still have the Codex,” Ethan said, returning to the table.

“I’m sure he will,” replied Lazaro, cutting a large piece of the cake and passing it on a plate to Ethan. More kittens emerged to gather around the table, watching the chocolate cake with eager eyes. “But that’s the least of our problems, I suspect.”

“What does this violinist have to do with you?” Ethan asked Talatashra. The idea of talking to a kitten was now second nature, and did not seem strange at all. “If he shows up here, I’ll give him a reception he’ll remember,” Ethan balled up his fists. He had learned a thing or two about wrestling pythons in the jungle, and he liked his chances.

“I don’t doubt you will try,” replied the violet-eyed kitten. “And it will be soon. Evik Sagittarius will come here tonight.”

“Tonight?” asked Ethan, his spine stiffening involuntarily at the idea. His fists remained clenched at his sides.

“Yes, tonight. Before, he would not have risked it. But he has done something that he believes makes him very powerful. He has, in a way, bewitched Cecilia.”

“Bewitched Cecilia?” asked Ethan skeptically. “You mean he is a shaman? Then he must have been born in my jungle.” His piece of chocolate cake sat untouched in front of him, and the other kittens sat around him in a semi-circle on the floor, staring at it.

“No, he was born far away from there, I assure you,” answered Talatashra.

“But why has he chosen Cecilia?” Ethan wanted to know.

“Because, I am afraid, your love is young, and you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cecilia and you suit his purposes. It’s not your fault. All loves have to begin somewhere. Evik sees in it something that he can use. Against me.” Talatashra held out a paw in front of her and examined claws. Ethan saw they looked surprisingly sharp. “He did not start out like this, the way we find him now. With time he has changed...and become something awful. His heart is full of vengeance, and I must say I do understand him. But I have never allowed myself to feel anything but pity for him.” And here the yellow-eyed Asfar gave a fiery hiss from where he sat on the floor. “Asfar, as you can tell, has different opinions no the subject, for reasons of his own,” Talatashra flicked her tail, and then continued. “You see, Ethan, today we wise kittens serve Professor Lazaro. But we have assisted others over the years. Evik Sagittarius was one of the first. It was long ago, and his heart then had much good in it. The kittens and I came to him, as we come to all those who need us. For we only seek out those who have nothing in this world, and we make dreams come true. This was the case for Professor Lazaro, who it would seem, dreams mostly of jungles and chocolate cake. You would never believe he was once a quiet botanist, struggling just to maintain a single terrarium.”

“Ahem!” Lazaro frowned, cake crumbs in his beard.

“You see, once we kittens served the dreams of Evik Sagittarius, or we tried to. I can tell you the story, if you have the stomach for it. Do not judge Evik too harshly. His origins were humble and events had already shaped him bitterly by the time we reached him.”

They then left the house, Ethan following the talking kitten off into the jungle beyond. Lazaro left the rest of his chocolate cake and the Joisey Codex under the capable paws of Asfar, and came along. The blue-eyed Azra accompanied them. Talatashra led the way into the rain-soaked jungle-garden and down a set of slippery stone steps that descended over the side of the cliff. As he followed carefully, his flip-flops slapping on the steps, a mist clung to Ethan and he grew chilly. Professor Lazaro also muttered and shivered beside him. The house disappeared far above. Below, Ethan heard a gently lapping of water, and they passed under an arch of stone.

“We will begin the story of Evik Sagittarius in Venice,” Talatashra said over her shoulder as she trotted ahead. “The year is 1296. It is one year since Marco Polo returned from his second journey to China. Boniface VII is Pope in Rome, and the last Crusader states have fallen. But Venice is on the rise as a powerful republic.”

Ethan’s mouth opened in surprise. They were standing on a stone pier reaching out into what appeared to be the dark waters of a canal. It was nighttime, and waiting for them was a long black gondola, its prow lit by a lantern.

“But how did we get here?” he asked, looking back above him, searching for some sign of the jungle where they had just been.

“Oh, I helped design the Botanical Garden, after all,” said Talatashra. “And with the help of Azra, who is the kitten of memories, I can make it into anything I want.” She hopped lightly onto the gondola, with Azra following silently, balancing himself on the stern of the boat.

The gondola left the pier and floated under its own power out into the middle of the canal. There were other boats around them, piloted by gondoliers in heavy beards dressed in rough sailor garb. Buildings rose on either side, their stone walls stained and glistening, with doors and windows opening directly onto the water. Bridges arched over the canal, crowded with people leaning against the ramparts. Ethan could hear their voices as they passed underneath. Torches and oil lamps glowed in dull orange and  yellow in the streets and alleyways and in the windows of the buildings. Strains of conversation and music echoed out onto the water from all around. There as a smell of fish and stables. They were floating in the midst of a large city. Ethan saw the people were dressed in a very archaic style, with blouses of billowing sleeves and tight belts. Gentlemen walked quickly, turning suddenly down alleyways, wearing long, flowing capes.

“On the right is Saint Mark’s Square, and the Cathedral and the Palazzo Ducale,” Talatashra said. Ethan glimpsed, rising into the moonlight, the bulbous Eastern-styled domes of the great church. “But we are not here for tourism,” sniffed the kitten, “and it’s just as well, the alleyways here are full of cutthroats and prostitutes.” The gondola floated off into a side canal and bumped up against a rotting wooden wharf on the verge of collapse. Azra leapt expertly off the craft.

“Follow, please,” said Talatashra, and they left the gondola behind.

Walking now on the cobblestones of the narrow Venetian alley, following the two kittens, Ethan grasped at the walls of buildings to keep from slipping. He and the botany professor passed by residents who were laughing or deep in conversation and paid no attention to the strangers.

“We are as ghosts,” explained Talatashra. “We can walk through walls, and no one shall see or hear us.” She stopped before a stone building, half hanging on pilings over a fetid canal. Moss and a slick scum covered the cracked bricks, and the footing was even more treacherous. Talatashra showed them a stairway down to a miserable-smelling cellar apartment, above which hung a rickety sign reading “GIROLAMO SAGITTARIVS ~ VETRAIO.”

“Here on the docks of Venice,” the violet-eyed kitten narrated, “one cold, wet night in 1296, a lopsided ship pulled into port, you can see here the tumult of strange faces on board, frightened eyes peering from under tattered hats and shawls at this new city before them. The shipmaster hurries to dislodge this unprofitable cargo – for these are refugees. They have come from high in the mountains, driven out by the latest wave of religious wars that sweep their region from time to time. The refugees are frightened beyond all belief, and many can no longer close their eyes ever anymore, for if they do they see images of villages burned, relative beheaded, behanded, disemboweled in the most horrible ways. Now they are dumped here on the docks of Venice, without any ceremony, without any comment other than the rough words handed to them in an Italian they do not understand. They are on the docks now, under the jaded eyes of Venetian passersby. These refugees clutch bags and bundles, rags, a few farming implements, one chicken, whatever could be saved. Some move off at once, searching for relatives who arrived here in Venice in previous waves. Others shove off to seek a life of begging and petty theft in the sewers. Still others die then and there of disease and exhaustion, and their bodies will clog the canals until they float finally out to sea. Soon, all that is left on the the docks are two boys only. On the left you see the young Evik, with his blue eyes and hair of dirty gold. Face unwashed, streaks of grime and Adriatic salt running from his nose. Born high in the mountains, in a village that no one will remember now, he had as his destiny the simple life of a sheepherder’s son, and now he cannot close his eleven-year old eyes for when he does he sees his mother and father cut to pieces by swords right in front of him. Only his baby brother Kavinn was saved, and even then only through some inexplicable miracle that only occurs during times of war. Kavinn is the huddling child of four, in rags at Evik’s side. Just last week he had begun to put baby words into real sentences, just before the armies came, but now he will never speak again. Kavinn is racked by a fever as hot as Hell.

“And these two boys left alone there on the wharf, not one among their countryfolk remaining to look after them – what sort of life will they face in Venice? Wandering the alleys and canals, stealing ends of cheese and begging in piles of garbage, fighting with the bubonic rats for a place to sleep in the sewers at night? But they are not completely alone. Do you see that small black shadow next to Evik’s hand? Look now how it moves. Do you see those eyes of violet? Already, on that ship, during that awful orphan’s journey, already we had found them. Don’t ask me what I was doing on that pathetic boat in the first place, I will only say I had some business to attend to there. But as I said before, Ethan, we come only to those who have nothing, and Evik and Kavinn then surely fit the brief, they had nothing but each other, and you will agree that is not enough for a boy of eleven and a boy of four when neither can suffer to close their eyes from fear. To them then I was just a little black kitten, who came coyly mewing out of the dampness. And now on this wharf I saw to it that this man approached, out of this run-down basement hovel, this Girolamo Sagittarius, a glass-blower, see him now come walking up these dripping stairs. He is doddering, it is true, from middle-age and a hard life. He has a head of curly, graying hair, but his eyes are full of kindness. He had heard the ship of refugees come into the port. All of Venice was whispering about it, not because the people intended to do anything constructive about it or because they were planning any hospitality, but because they feared what everyone else along this coast feared, that such wars of gods and prophets would roll down from the mountains onto them as well. But Girolamo Sagittarius, this man was different. He had said to his wife that he would go down to the wharf and see what was going on, see what was needed, food, warm blankets, and though his wife argued that they had barely enough for themselves, he went anyway. His wife was right, Girolamo Sagittarius was but a poor glass-blower, living ducat by ducat in the basement they rented under the specialty shop of Barcaroli e Figlio.

“Well, what do we have here?” he asked the boys sitting wet and hungry on the dock. The glass-blower did not see the kitten slipping back into the shadows. He felt pale Kavinn’s forehead and his hand was scalded, so high was the boy’s fever. Without thinking twice, without even thinking once, he collected them up and brought the boys back home.

“ʻHow can we feed two more mouths, when we can barely feed our own?’ asked his wife. And she was right. For twenty years they had lived on fish bones and cabbage. But Girolamo countered, how could he have left these two boys alone, with no one to look after them in all this world? He had not seen the small black kitten that slipped in quietly through a crack in the door. ʻThey will work in the shop,’ he told his wife. ʻI can teach them my trade, perhaps I can give them some humble skill that they can take forth into the world.’ This calmed his wife somewhat, she made some calculations in her head, and assented. For there were orders to be filled, many bills to be paid, their debts had been accumulating and accumulating because her husband in truth was absent minded. ʻYes, very well, they can be apprentices,’ she said, ʻif they prove to be any good. But they are young, especially the small one, and he looks sick. They should know that a glass-blower lives by fire and sand. If the life proves too rough for them they must be sent away.’

“ʻDon’t you think they’ve had a rough enough life already?’ said the glass-blower, looking at his two newly adopted sons. ʻWe shall not make it any rougher.’ And that night he went without his cabbage soup and end of bread, but gave it instead to the boys. I watched in concern from a spot up in the rafters of the basement, for Kavinn was too sick to eat, and Evik would touch no food if his brother did not. My heart was breaking because there is nothing I or any of the wise kittens could do to help the little boy, for we cannot combat Death when it comes. Kavinn succumbed to his fever that very night. The fires carried him off and left nothing breathing behind. The next morning Girolamo brought the little corpse wrapped in a blanket to the catacombs and pawned his only pair of shoes so that Kavinn might have a Christian burial.

“But the glass-blower’s wife insisted they set Evik to work at once, to account for the time he had already spent under their roof and the use of the straw pallet he had under his head, though he was unable to close his eyes from the fear of what he would dream. So Evik, no longer capable of crying tears for his brother or for anyone, was taught how to pump the bellows, stoke the furnace, and then how to turn the glass on its spit until it glowed a hot, shapeless white. Girolamo showed him all of this gently, explaining the manipulation of the tongs, instructing him in the finality of the cooling bucket of water into which the glasses and vases and jars were plunged once they had been blown to their proper proportions. As the weeks passed, Evik proved to be an able student, and remembered well enough everything he was shown. Every night the glass-blower’s wife recorded how much the boy had eaten, how much he had slept (not much, for it is not easy to fall asleep with one’s eyes open), and subtracted against it how many tumblers and jugs and bottles had been produced and sold. And always the boy ended the day in the debit column – but still Girolamo continued to feed him hunks of bread he smuggled in from the market.

“All of this I watched from the rafters, waiting, until at last one night Evik fell onto his pallet of straw in the corner, exhausted beyond the ends of his soul, and closed his eyes at last. The glass-blower’s wife complained that an order of seven dozen wine bottles for Signor Vecchio was left uncompleted. Girolamo told her to let him sleep, that the bottles would hold until tomorrow. That night, as the lanterns burned down, Abyad, who is the kitten of dreams, came to report ton what went through Evik’s mind. I was pleased and I purred at last when I heard they were not dreams of beheadings and disembowelings, but rather visions of a far-away land of castles and cliffs, birds flying with dragon wings, goats with the heads of lions, fantastic creatures that could only come from the mind of an eleven-year old boy. The next morning when the glass-blower lit the work fires for the day, and after his wife had left off complaining to the market, I sat on the rafter and sent Dahab and Fadda to work. Dahab has the power to create from sand, and Fadda from water. These two busied themselves around the furnace as Evik handled the tongs under the watchful gaze of Girolamo. And what did Evik pull out of the fire and plunge into the barrel of water on that morning but a delicate glass camel, with the head of a ram and wings of an eagle? The boy was astonished, for it was truly one of the creatures he had dreamed of the night before. Girolamo handled the creation after it had cooled in wonder, turning it on all sides, unable to see how the boy had done it – and with such realism! Evik at once produced a second creature from the fire and water, this one with the head of a king, the body of a hawk, and the tail of a dolphin. This continued until the glass-blower’s wife returned from the market, muttering bitterly that the salt-seller had overcharged her again, and what did she see filling the cellar? Not wine bottles for Signor Vecchio. Instead, tiny fairy-tale animals were wandering around on their own, walking or flying about, until the glass solidified. She was about to yell at her husband for his lack of thrift – look at how much sand he had wasted. But then she hit on an idea, and instead hugged her husband and praised him for bringing this boy into their home. Girolamo Sagittarius was at once suspicious as he watched his wife gather up all of the miniature creatures and stuff them into a basket. She hustled back to the market. In the late afternoon she returned, and when she did it was with an empty basket and the pockets of her tattered and stained apron were full of coins. It was quite a production that evening to count and sort all of those coins, they had never seen that many in one place before. The glass-blower’s wife was extremely happy, and Girolamo Sagittarius was extremely confused. The woman allowed Evik to eat a full bowl of soup that night, and in the morning she went off to pay their back rent to Signor Barcaroli upstairs.

“All the next day Evik again shoveled sand into the furnace until it turned to glass and glowed red, then yellow, then white, and then did as Dahab showed him when he retrieved it from the oven with the poker, twirled it once, twirled it twice, and then as Fadda had shown him he plunged the glowing liquid mass into the barrel of water and before Girolamo’s astonished eyes, the form took shape. An elephant. With butterfly wings of transparent glass, and the eyes of a mermaid. One by one Evik turned out again these glass creations, each one more wonderful, more colorful, than the one before it. These too, the glass-blower’s wife had no trouble selling for many more coins in the marketplace.

“At the end of the week she said with satisfaction, ʻWe have enough how to pay off that cheat Barcaroli the debt we owe him for this furniture.’ Girolamo replied: ʻThe Signor is an honest man.’ But his wife was ignoring him. ʻThe rich folks in the market love this boy’s little knick-knacks,’ she said. ʻIt’s really too bad that other one died, for I bet we could be earning even more.’

“Nevertheless, even with Evik alone, Girolamo Sagittarius and his wife soon grew rich. With the help of Shimel, Ganub, Sharq, and Gharb, the kittens of music, Evik was able to blow hollow glass spheres that when cracked like eggs released strains of beautiful melodies that to the aristocracy of Venice sounded haunting and exotic. Heavy golden coins came in exchange for these single-use musical balls. And because they were single-use, demand for replacements was high. Girolamo and his wife were able to pay off all of their debts, and in no time they even bought out old Signor Barcaroli upstairs. Soon they owned the entire lopsided building, and a sign went up in front of it, wrought in iron letters hanging over the alleyway that read ʻSAGITTARIUS E FIGLIOS’ – because Evik insisted that his brother be remembered as well.

“The glass-blower and his wife moved out of the cellar and into more comfortable quarters upstairs on the top floor of the building, where the air was fresher and from whose windows they had a view of the Grand Canal. To Evik they left the business of the glass-blowing, for he surely knew it better than they did. So the boy remained in the cellar, with the forge, the tongs, the barrel of water, and the piles of sand from which he made his glass designs. Each day the results were more intricate and animated than ever before. We kittens could roam freely down there, without fear of being discovered, and each of us helped in the ways we did best, the kittens of music playing on their tails tunes learned long ago, or Azra telling stories of how things were in the days of yesteryear, or Abyad reciting his favorite lines of poetry in his waving meows. And when the forge went out Asfar would relight it while Dahab and Fadda tended to the supplies of sand and water. Those were contented days for us kittens, each of us had a place, we were all safely together for once. Sifr and Akhdar, I believe, spent their time ridding the cellar of rats and raiding the neighbor’s pantries. The business of Sagittarius e Figlios prospered. But one night Evik said to me as we watched the gondolas bump into each other in the oily darkness of the canals, ʻYou have given me everything. A home, a new family, a trade with which to earn my living. I even think we are rich, for I hear the woman singing about it at night all the way upstairs.’ Evik looked at me with his eyes that were then a fragile blue, the gentle eyes of a little boy. ‘But despite all of these tricks I can pull out of the fire, to me they are nothing. Cannot you give me back my little brother, whom I was sworn to protect?’

“And so for the first time I had to explain to Evik that that was something we wise kittens could not do. We can fight against Death, but we cannot defeat it. And I could see his eyes cloud over, as if he did not believe me. But he said nothing more then. Until the next night, when again we sat watching the boats going by. He said to me, ‘If you cannot bring back to life my brother Kavinn, whom I loved with all my heart, will you give me the dream I had last night?’ And I knew already from Abyad that Evik had dreamed for himself the idea that he alone would choose where and when he should die. I told him that it was in the power of no one to decide such matters, that Death comes when and how it will. I could see he still did not believe me, that he would not be convinced, and already I could feel that if I could not grant him this dream his heart would begin to turn away from me. I explained to him the Death can never really be defeated, but there are two ways of fighting against it. One of which is good, and the other which is not so good. The good way you already know something about, Ethan. It is the way of artists and scholars, of musicians and poets, who seek to give something to the world that will continue to speak long after they are gone, and in that way achieve a kind of immortality. The not so good way is the way of generals and emperors, politicians and demagogues, who try and make the world into their image, and so cause pain and destruction, and in that way are not forgotten. But the young Evik argued with me, even back then, and he insisted, ‘No, there is a third way.’

“I mentioned before that the upstairs shop of old Barcaroli had been a specialty shop, it had sold curiosities and games, fashionable trinkets imported from China and India and elsewhere in the East. Tea boxes, fans, coats made of peacock feathers, things of that sort. But most impressive of all were marionette puppets. In order to distract Evik from his sadness, the kittens and I brought him up there and gave him the gift of making fantastic puppets whose hearts really beat, who coughed in the winter and sang in the summer, and who could dance and tell children endless stories, as well as, and this turned out to be the most ingenious of all, the idea that really sold, the puppets would do housework without complaining. They could mop floors, polish windows, and repair creaky furniture. The reputation of the shop of Sagittarius e Figlios spread far and wide, its wares began being carried by traders from Venice to the ends of the known world. The Sagittarius puppets, with their toothy grins and hard-working backs, went for a fortune in Genoa, Florence, Rome, even in Constantinople. Money was never again an issue in the Sagittarius household. Girolamo and his wife were able to retire into a life of pious obesity, although the woman still found plenty to complain about. Evik passed through adolescence and entered young adulthood famous as a master craftsman. But for him it still was not enough. He began ridiculing his own creations, despising the fame they brought him, which he ridiculed as transient. When he would speak to me, it was only to tell me of his dream for power over his own mortality. But this I insisted I could not grant. Evik again and again stated then that he would find some way on his own.

“Around this time Girolamo died of old age. Soon after, his wife passed away too. Evik inherited, as was proper, the entire family business, the building with its workshops that had sprung up around it, the wharf next door they had purchased, as well as the fleet of gondolas that carried his handiwork to merchants and distributors all across Venice. Everyone spoke of Evik with wonder, asking what he would come up with next. Especially during the holidays, and above all during the week of Carnival. What a time Carnival was, especially for little kittens! The whole city converted itself into one endless masquerade, a festival of wine and song and nighttime parades through the alleys and on the canals. I’m sure Sifr still remembers some of the scrapes he used to get into. During Carnival, Evik hung inventions in his shop windows that were unlike anything the people of Venice had ever seen. No one could figure out how he did it! Masks and costumes that for a week changed your personality. Wearers of the jester’s mask and bell-bedecked cap were suddenly able to tell jokes. Those who wore the costume of a king, with its regal mask and golden crown, knew no hunger. And those who chose to be acrobats when they put on that mask, and the flowing red cape that went with it, discovered they could not tell lies. But already I was disturbed. None of these made Evik happy, ever. None of these creations gave him any joy or contentment. And so I instructed the kittens in turn to offer him gifts that would only increase his renown, and in that way give him a version of the immortality he so desired. Maybe it was a mistake. Abyad made him a poet, should he choose to be, and it is thank to this that his words still today are so hypnotizing. Gharb gave him his talent for music, this same talent that he has now turned on Cecilia through his violin. Dahab made him a great sculptor, one who could have preceded Michaelangelo if he had chosen. But it was not this kind of immortality that Evik wanted. He wanted the real thing.

“And what an icy stare he now had! It was around this time, I am sure, that he began to explore the powers of darkness. He began concocting his own potion, and actually poisoned himself on several occasions. Witches and necromancers, both professionals and rank amateurs, began visiting the shop late at night. Although we were greatly alarmed, there was nothing I or the other kittens could do except watch, for we are powerless before free will. Evik’s personality began to change, and not for the better, as the evil deals he made began to bear fruit. When he began dressing himself like a vassal of evil and shut his dreams off to Abyad, I became most alarmed. He was already far beyond our help. I ordered the other kittens to no longer obey his commands, for he now attempted to use us improperly. It infuriated him when we would not head his requests. To help the other kittens avoid his wrath I then gave them the power of invisibility (something I have had cause to regret, for it has led as you can imagine, to much mischief over the centuries.) Evik’s life now became a series of rages and tantrums, as he strove to suck the life out of everything around him and keep it for himself. His eyes were now of solid ice and he swore to everyone he met that he would never die. And so, I made my decision. I held council with the stars that made me, and asked permission to do what I had never done before and what I have never done since. Permission to break covenant with a master. The cost was high for me. Very high. But I freed myself and the wise kittens from Evik Sagittarius, and we fled Venice by boat, much as we had come…”

“No easy story, that,” said Professor Lazaro quietly, after a moment had passed at the end of Talatashra’s tale.

“So he’s seeking revenge for your leaving him… way back then?” asked Ethan. They had reached a dead end in one of the damp Venetian alleys, and behind a rubbish heap rose a staircase like the one they had descended to reach the city. Talatashra and Azra led them back step by step upwards.

“Yes, he still very much holds it against me,” the violet-eyed kitten replied. “He has sought us out several times over the centuries, meaning to destroy us, but each time he has still been too weak. It had been several hundred years since we last heard from Evik, and I had wondered just recently what had finally become of him. I can see now that he has not let the time go to waste. He has learned much things that are not good, and you and Cecilia and fallen afoul of it, I’m sorry to say.”

They had reached the top of the steps and were again in the Botanical Garden, right next to the house where they had started. The rain had stopped, and a bright starry night was shining above them.

1. Chapter 20

In the growing gloom as the sun was setting, the theoretical linguist, the chemist carrying the vacuum reflux apparatus containing the THC-Genie, the mathematician, and the two archaeologists wandered down a gravel path under the forest canopy. They had already been wandering for hours down the forking paths through the botanical garden, or rainforest, whichever it was. Still, they had arrived precisely nowhere. The jungle-garden had long since closed behind them, and they had completely lost orientation, including having no idea where the entrance was.

“There must be thousands of different kinds of plants here,” Smelch commented. It was true. Plants of all sorts surrounded them, plants of all different types and shapes, big and small, fat and skinny, fruity and flowering, or just plain spiny. As far as the eye could see. But they saw too that near most of the plants someone had placed a small sign, printed in difficult to read Gothic letters.

“Psidium cattleianum,” read Maxim, pausing to examine a squat tree whose branches were heavy with golden fruits. “Heliconia mutisiana. Callindera haemotocephala.” This last was an impressive plant with pinkish-red puffy flowers.

“It’s amazing how we really can’t see the sky,” Professor Equuleus gazed upwards, looking for some sign of the white, snowy day they had left outside.

“Yes, I should say they’ve done a nice job,” answered Smelch, his eyes warily surveying the limbs towering overhead.

“Chamaedorea cataractarum. Fittonia vershaffelti argyroneura.” Maxime read the names slowly due to the difficult font, and many of the little signs were damp with mold, and the ink had run.

Then Dr. Stephenswood thought he saw something.

“What was that?” he pointed his finger upwards.

“Where?” Equuleus peered up into the foliage.

“There! It moved again!” And a brown lizard of moderate size skittered across a broad green leaf a few feet from the trail, and then disappeared.

“Why, the garden has lizards!” Maxim was visible excited. Equuleus mopped his forehead again and looked less than thrilled. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. looked puzzled.

“Real lizards in a botanical garden,” Smelch shrugged, deep in thought. “Well, why not…”

Just then a stand of dripping trees ahead of them burst into color as a swarm of small yellow lorikeets whirled up into the air, before vanishing off over the tops of distant trees.

“Birds too!” Maxim exclaimed.

“And mosquitos,” Stephenswood grumbled, slapping at his neck.

“It’s almost as if this were a real, living jungle,” Equuleus said.

“But who went about putting all these signs on the plants?” Smelch wanted to know. “It’s weird.”

A pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds buzzed by, passing across the trail. They resumed their exploration further down the trail, and soon a trickling sound arose ahead of them. As they walked on the sound grew into a torrent as they rounded a bend. Before them rose a tall, glistening rockface, down the side of which fell a column of water, as if straight from the sky.

“Why…” Professor Equuleus looked upwards in awe at the waterfall. “It must be over a hundred feet high…”

“But where is the roof of this place?” Smelch wanted to know. Through an opening in the tree canopy far above he thought he saw some wisps of clouds and a pair of macaws flap by.

“There are fish!” Maxim was bent over the poool at the base of the waterfall. Lillies floated on the ripples of water. Lurking just under the surface were two gigantic black-backed fish with orange-flecked scales. The fish were at least seven feet long each.

A sign, in the same water-logged font, was posted nearby: “Do not feed the arapaima.”

They continued along the trail until it branched again, and they chose the leftward path, and then that branched again, and for no particular reason they chose the rightward path. Around another bend they passed a stand of bushy shrubs with reddish-copper leaves. A sign next to it read “Euporbia cotinifolia” with another nearby warning “Do Not Eat!”

It was then that Maxim stopped abruptly and pointed up into a tree.

“Look, a kitten!” he cried out.

Everyone followed his pointing finger. And sure enough, on a branch about six feet above the trail indeed sat a tiny black kitten, watching them with calm interest.

“Kittens in the jungle?” Equuleus wrinkled his brow.

“I can’t see it…” Smelch was standing on his tip-toes.

“It’s gone…” said Maxim, craning his neck to look upwards along the branches. “Here, kitty, kitty…”

The jungle-garden had now grown very dark from the clouds that had appeared out of nowhere overhead. The air blew fat hot drops of rain onto them. Maxim tried to stuff the vacuum reflux apparatus under his shirt to keep it dry.

“How the hell can it be raining? We’re indoors!” called out Professor Equuleus, standing with his hands on his hips, his bald head dripping under the rain.

“Better not to ask at the moment,” Smelch replied. “Too many possibilities, too little data. Ah! There’s that kitten, I see it! Heading down this path…”

A trail branched off downhill to the left in the rainy gloom. Rainwater was flowing now in swift rivulets under their feet, and the way was treacherous with mud.

“To the left…?” asked Stephenswood from behind. It was hard to see, in the downpour. Suddenly there was a loud crack! and a tree trunk plummeted to the ground behind them all. It hit the muddy earth and set off a wave of mud and stones that carried down what was left of the trail toward them. They could not hold on. The mudslide upended their feet and they slid down a long slope until landing with a splut! at the very bottom. They were all entirely covered with mud. Rain continued to fall about them as they tried to get their bearings.

“Well,” said a voice somewhere nearby in the mud, “it would appear we are all stuck in this mud together.”

“Buckley from Princeton!” Stephenswood exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

1. Chapter 21

After Ethan, Professor Lazaro, and Talatashra had arrived back at the botanist’s house, the violet-eyed kitten said, “Now that you know the past of Evik Sagittarius, you know what is ahead for tonight.” Entering the house, she hopped up onto the table next to the lantern, the other kittens clustering around her.

“But you’ll be able to help her, won’t you? Help Cecilia? What will he do to her?” Ethan asked, anxiety rising in his voice.

“We shall see,” the wisest kitten replied.

“Can I ask one question?” Lazaro was scratching his beard. “I always knew you kittens had previous masters. But you’ve never told me precisely how many.”

“We have had eight,” answered Talatashra.

“And I am the ninth?”

“You are the ninth.”

Lazara sat down in a chair heavily. “Then tonight I fear for the worst.”

Talatashra looked with fondness at the botanist. “This may be our fate,” she said, “but it does not have to be the fate of Ethan and Cecilia as well. I am determined that it should not. Besides, I hear that Ethan’s friends have entered the botanical garden. And that is an unexpected event, that Evik will not have planned for.”

“My friends? Here? Professor Equuleus? And Maxim?” Ethan was very pleased to hear this.

“And others, it appears,” Talatashra nodded. “Many wild cards. So you see? Don’t give up hope. Evik may believe he is strong. But so are we.” Her gaze then became firm. “Remember, Ethan, no matter what happens here tonight, you must not hate Evik. You must remember Cecilia, and Cecilia only.”

Sifr appeared then from nowhere and sat looking up at them, his little round face meowing repeatedly. Talatashra perked up her ears and turned her head sharply. A strong wind blew up in the heights of the trees in the botanical garden surrounding them, and the other kittens that had gathered scattered to hiding places in nooks and crannies about the room.

“What was that?” Ethan asked.

“Evik Sagittarius has entered the botanical garden,” Talatashra stated. “And Cecilia is with him.”

1. Chapter 22

The tumble down the muddy slope had knocked something loose in the vacuum reflux apparatus, and the THC-Genie now floated in the air above the muddy group of academicians. She cast a bluish glow around her, illuminating the now darkened jungle. Holding on to one other, they managed to get to their feet, sliding all over the place, mud holding onto their shoes in great clods. They freed Chester Buckley from Princeton as well, who had been stuck in the mud up to his thighs. He was most grateful.

“Thanks, I thought I was done for.”

“Sure, sure,” Stephenswood stood with his arms crossed, smeared in mud from head to toe. “Now tell us what the hell you’re doing here? You’ve been following us?”

“Okay, okay, guilty as charged. I’ve been following you. Got turned around and lost you once you entered this crazy place. Slid down that slope there, same as you.”

“You’ve been following us ever since Sack’uktún?” Cathers, Jr. asked.

“Well, it was clear you guys found something down there. I wanted to know what it was.” He shook a clump of mud off his hands. “Maybe we can collaborate,” he shrugged.

“No way,” Stephenswood shook his head. “You Ivy Leaguers only hog all the fame and grant money. Besides, we found the Codex, not you.”

“A Codex? You found a Codex?” Chet Buckley’s muddy ears perked up.

“Gentlemen, enough,” Equuleus raised his own muddy hands. “There will be plenty of time to sort this out. Right now we have more pressing issues. Like finding our way out of this accursed jungle, whatever it is.”

It was Smelch the mathematician who found thew trail again. He led them now, with a growing determination, aided by the light of the THC-Genie floating above them. Rain continued to fall, and added to it now was a surprisingly strong wind.

He paused at a choice of trails, glanced up at the genie, and then muttered, “By the breath of Ariadne, of course!” He then led them off to the left with even greater confidence.

In no time they came to a large clearing, that in the darkness and bad weather seemed to open onto the end of the world. It really opened onto the high cliff. In the clearing was a small house with a number of lights glowing from inside. The rain continued, and the wind intensified..

“Strange,” commented Equuleus. “This botanical garden appears to have its own internal weather. I’d love to know how that crafty Lazaro does it.”

The THC-Genie suddenly flew down and touched Maxim on the shoulder, a handful of sparks – much fewer and more controlled than her usual display – were launched in the action.

“Genie says someone is coming!” Maxim then pointed. “Over there!”

“Get down, everybody down!” Equuleus dropped to his knees. The group crouched in the muddy foliage and watched as a pair of dim figures entered the clearing behind them, not ten feet away. Fortunately, covered in so much mud as they were, the academicians were nearly invisible in the rainy gloom. The THC-Genie vanished in a tinkle of tiny blue sparks.

Evik Sagittarius wore a flowing red cloak that glowed eerily even under the heavy rain. At his side, he dragged Cecilia Burgess. She still wore on her shoulders the sparkling cloak of silver and gold he had given her upon leaving the Equuleus house. They could all see that she was trying to move away from him, but Evik Sagittarius had an iron grip upon her arm. As the pair passed by just feet away and approached closer to the house, the wind above gusted sharply. They watched as Evik hesitated for an instant upon setting foot on the wooden porch of the house, glancing at Gregoriano Chance who stood still, observing him skeptically. But then he pulled Cecilia forward, opened the door of the house, and they went inside. As the door shut behind them the winds collided above with a terrible thunderclap, and fallen leaves from the surrounding forest fell upon the group hiding below.

“Who the hell was that?” asked Smelch once the wind had died down somewhat.

“That was the same fellow who came and claimed Cecilia from our house,” Equuleus explained, getting up and striding across the clearing toward the house. “I knew I should have punched his lights out then,” he declared. “I didn’t like the look of him then, and I like him even less now. No one manhandles Cecilia Burgess like that.”

The THC-Genie reappeared, and followed bravely after him.

1. Chapter 23

Evik Sagittarius stood in the doorway of Lazaro’s house, his scarlet red cloak thrown back across his shoulders, a great iron belt buckle glinting dully in the lantern light. He had his hand firmly around Cecilia’s forearm, and she twisted to try to escape his grip. Her skin was rubbed raw and frostbitten where he held her. But when she saw Ethan on the other side of the room, she managed to break free and ran to him.

“Greetings, Evik,” Talatashra spoke from where she sat on the table at the center of the room. “You should know that your powers over her will not work inside the botanical garden. Here she is shielded from you.”

Cecilia had removed the cloak Evik had given her, and held close to Ethan.

“Perhaps,” Evik said simply, and shrugged. He stepped further into the room, coming into the circle of light around the table. “Talatashra,” he appraised the wisest kitten, a thin smile spreading across his teeth. “You haven’t gotten any bigger over the years, I can see. I, on the other hand, have grown in many ways.”

Professor Lazaro, glaring at the violinist, stepped forward, saying, “Now, there will be no threats here!”

“Don’t worry yourself, fatso,” Evik Sagittarius raised his hand haughtily. He walked over and clapped the botanist on the shoulder. “It’s not you I’ve here to see. Quite a nice set-up, though, if I may say. I was admiring your pretty trees and flowers on my way in. Bit of a disappointing maze, though, if I can give some critical feedback. Similar to something I might have dreamed up on an afternoon as a small child.” He looked Lazaro directly in the eye, and the professor of botany shuddered, and broke his gaze.

“Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but you are not welcome here,” Ethan now stepped forward, moving Cecilia behind him. His hands were formed into fists.

Evik Sagittarius burst into a peal of laughter.

“Oh, and it’s nice to finally meet you, jungle boy,” he spat. Dusting off one of the wicker chairs, he sat down, swinging one hob-nailed boot up off the floor as he crossed his legs.  “I think instead I shall make myself at home. Come and move me, if you’d like to try.”

“All right, I will,” and Ethan made a move to stride across the room at the violinist.

“Hold!” Evik raised his hand quickly. “Don’t even think about it, I have other plans for you, jungle boy!” And the floor beneath Ethan’s feet turned immediately to quicksand. Ethan fell and floundered about, and with each move sank deeper.

“Ethan!” Cecilia knelt at the edge of the quicksand, and grabbed onto his arm.

“Yes,” Evik said brusquely, “I can see you have no idea who you are up against. Perhaps it is just as well.”

“You have consumed yourself, Evik,” Talatashra said quietly from the table. “You will not be victorious.” She turned her eyes on Ethan, up past his waist now in the quicksand. “Ethan, stop struggling, you will only sink deeper. Instead, remember what I advised you. That is the most important thing now.”

“So pretty with words, isn’t she, four-eyes?” the violinist turned tauntingly to Lazaro. “I had almost missed it.” He returned his gaze to the violet-eyed kitten on the table. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it? When was it last? Spain?”

“Yes,” replied Talatashra. “I seem to recall you had made a nice career for yourself there, torturing Jewish children.”

Evik Sagittarius raised a finger. “Ah, ah, do not misrepresent! There were little Muslim children as well. The point is, they were children.” His grin of cruel pleasure turned into a sneer. “Yes, a fine career that you yourself put an end to soon enough.”

“It was your choice,” Talatashra responded. “It was always your choice.”

“How nicely you put things,” mocked the violinist. “Yes, you always were lovely with words. But I know all of your tricks. I even know that Asfar is stalking near me just now, planning to set me on fire.” Evik leapt up and, sure enough, he caught Asfar beneath the chair. The yellow-eyed kitten spat flames and bared his sharp little fangs.

“Not this time!” shouted Evik Sagittarius, flinging the kitten off into a corner. Asfar hit the wall just behind Professor Lazaro, and then vanished in a puff of smoke. “See this cloak?” He raised up a corner of the scarlet garment around his shoulders. “I’ve had it specially made of asbestos, just for tonight.” He leveled a finger at Talatashra. “Let’s get down to it, enough chit-chat. You left me!” Evik hissed. From his pointing finger grew a long, sharp nail. “And you have done your best to try to destroy me. But now I know all of your secrets. Tonight it is you who will have the choice. Either come back with me as master, or I will destroy you, and I shall do it very nicely, so that you suffer.” At these words, the other kittens who had clustered on the table around Talatashra all arched their backs and spat at the violinist. Outside the house, another clap of thunder and gust of wind sounded. But then there sounded another noise, closer, from the porch.

“Who can that be?” wondered Professor Lazaro.

Evik Sagittarius turned his head and looked at the door behind him. A bunch of footsteps were clearly mounting onto the porch.

“Friends of yours?” the violinist asked, the sneer widening on his face. “Why yes, I think so! What a surprise! They seem to be lurking...about...to kick open the door!” In one bound, Evik reached the front door and yanked over the handle. In tumbled Professor Equuleus, Smelch, Maxim, Stephenswood, Cathers, Jr, leaving standing in the threshold, looking stunned, the Princeton archaeologist, Chester Buckley. Behind him floated the blue form of the THC-Genie.

“Come in, come in,” cried out Evik Sagittarius. “Don’t be strangers. The more the merrier.”

“Listen, punk, I saw they way you were pulling Cecilia around!” Equuleus had righted himself, and rolling up the sleeves of his cardigan, came at the violinist swinging haymakers.

“Equu, be careful!” cried out Cecilia, still kneeling next to Ethan in the pit of quicksand.

“You should listen to her,” Evik Sagittarius cackled. “But where’s the fun in that?” The violinist expertly dodged the theoretical linguist’s fists, snapped his fingers, and in an instant Professor Equuleus was stuck up on the ceiling above, his arms and legs tacked somehow to the thatch. “Have a trip to the stars!” exclaimed the violinist, and everyone gasped when they saw the professor begin to shine and shimmer, his body traced with orbs of yellow. Evik Sagittarius had turned him into some sort of human constellation, suspended from the ceiling.

Smelch looked up in disbelief at what had been done to his old friend. Then he rose to his feet and, crouching low, came at the violinist attempting a wrestler’s take-down.

“Ah, old-school!” said Evik Sagittarius with glee, easily stepping aside from Smelch’s attempt at a double leg.

“Old-school, indeed,” growled Smelch, following the violinist and making a grab at the scarlet cloak. “Wait until you meet my knuckle sandwich.”

But the violinist was too nimble for him, and side-stepping again, he snapped his fingers and suddenly Smelch’s clenched fist was forced open, and in his hand appeared a large bottle of Kentucky bourbon.

“This is the cheap stuff,” commented the mathematician, startled, and looking at the label.

“Better drink up! While you can,” said Evik Sagittarius, with a note of boredom in his voice. And the bottle as if on its own shot up into the mathematician’s mouth, banging hard against his front teeth. Smelch fell backwards against the wall, unable to resist, and began drinking deeply.

“Can’t you help us?” Ethan cried out to Talatashra, and tried again to pull himself out of the quicksand. But he only succeeded in getting sucked in further, up to his chest. Cecilia cried out, holding onto his arm desperately.

“Don’t worry,” the violet-eyed kitten replied calmly. “Just do as I advised you, please, and everything will be all right in the end.”

“Save it, my sweet-eyed menace,” spat Evik Sagittarius. “Nothing shall ever be all right, ever again.” Next the violinist turned to the next nearest one to him, who was Chester Buckley. Behind the Princeton archaeologist, having observed what had befallen the others, the Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. turned tail and ran off the porch into the trees beyond.

“Hey, don’t mind me,” Buckley held up his hands in surrender. His eyes had been surveying the room for the Joisey Codex. “I’ll just take what I came for, and will be on my way…” He clomped with his muddy boots past Evik Sagittarius, to a side table where he had spotted the ancient book.

“I wouldn’t touch it, if I were you,” warned Lazaro miserably from where he stood by the kitchen table. And everyone watched as Asfar materialized on top of the Joisey Codex in a burst of flame, just as the Princeton archaeologist’s hands were reaching out, and soon Buckley was hopping around the room, yowling in pain, waving his smoking hands around in the air and then sticking them under his armpits.

“Yow!” he yelled. “That is one hell of a cat!”

Evik Sagittarius looked curiously at the Joisey Codex on the table, under Asfar’s bottom.

“What is that?” he asked, suspicion and a little fear rising in his voice for the first time.

Maxim took advantage of the violinist’s distraction.

“Genie, see if you can free Equu up there, and if you can help any of the others…” he whispered. The THC-Genie became very, very small, and flew with a minimum of sparks up to where the Equuleus-constellation hung suspended.

“Enough, chemist!” Evik, still staring in concern at where Asfar sat on the Joisey Codex. The violinist extended a hand in Maxim’s direction, and the chemist found himself imprisoned in an enormous glass Erlenmeyer flask.

“Talatashra!” Ethan urged. “Can’t you do something?”

“Oh, these are all just cute little tricks,” replied the violet-eyed kitten with deliberate nonchalance. “Easily reversible, no one is in any danger.” Then her voice lowered in menace. “Except for you, Evik. Would you like to read that book? Would you be interested in it?”

All eyes were on Evik as he stood next to the table, pondering the manuscript that Asfar was sitting on. For his part, the yellow-eyed kitten continued to glower at the violinist.

Evik Sagittarius suddenly raised his chin in a harsh laugh. “I see your tricks. I will not open that book, no thank you. I have to tell you,” he regarded Talatashra, “in your old age you have become sloppy. Obvious. Yes, I did say old age, don’t look so shocked. It’s time to speak the truth, after all. You are old.”

He walked back to the center of the room, close again to the violet-eyed kitten. But from where she was positioned, up near the Equuleus-constellation, the THC-Genie noted with interest that the violinist cast a worried glance back over his shoulder, at the Joisey Codex.

“You are old as well,” replied Talatashra, her fur looking ruffled.

“Ah, but you are far older,” the violinist grinned. “And you have let become uncovered things that should have stayed hidden. And now...I know… Yes, I have been to Zanzibar. I know all about your origins. I have traed you to the buried libraries of Baghdad. I have charted your past, dug up old bones. Yes, I know it all.”

“Nothing in my past was ever a secret, Evik,” Talatashra replied, a discernible edge having crept into her voice.

“You were once such an independent kitten, so strong willed,” Evik sneered in the light of the lantern. “Oh, how I remember. Together we could have conquered the world. But what has happened to you, hmm? You have become tied to this world. You feel its pain. Admit it, old friend. You now need human companionship.”

“There is nothing shameful in it,” replied the violet-eyed kitten. “Only you could put it that way, Evik.”

“Ah, so you admit that it is true!” The violinist paused, and threw a glance upwards at the outline of Professor Equuleus, twinkling brightly in the ceiling. The THC-Genie dodged off into a corner, unseen. “How’s the view up there, hmm?” Evik called out. Outside the wind and rainstorm was whipping up into a gale, and the entire house rocked back and forth with each gust.

“Uh-oh,” murmured Professor Lazaro, sitting down now in one of the wicker chairs. He laid his hands flat on the tabletop, feeling the house sway.

“Now let me tell the world your great weakness,” Evik continued, turning back to Talatashra. “May I? Now that I’ve discovered it? It is that you cannot possibly bear to witness any pain. Ah! That is something interesting! And I don’t mean just the pain of burnt fingers,” the violinist cast a glance at Buckley, who sat up against the wall, still blowing on his singed fingers.

“How’s it feel?” Evik asked cruelly. “That Asfar can be on fire!” He threw his head back again and laughed. “No, I don’t mean that kind of pain,” he went on haughtily, after composing himself again. “I don’t mean what I’ve done to your friends here, although I think this one will have one throbbing hangover in the morning, tsk, tsk.” Smelch was passed out under the table, the empty bourbon bottle still clutched in his hand.

“No, I am talking about the pain of the soul. You can’t abide it. That pain that reaches deep...inside...Ha! Thankfully I am free of it!” The violinist walked over to Ethan, exhausted from his struggles in the quicksand. He had sunk into it up to his neck.

“Yes, you know what I mean,” Evik hissed at him, “don’t you, jungle boy?”

“Go...to...hell…” Ethan replied with a struggle. The quicksand was approaching his ears.

“Miss Burgess, I never would have guessed you would have something for so savage a type…” Evik’s cold eyes looked up and met Cecilia’s. “And does he know about us, Cecilia...About our plans...Hmmm?”

“We have no plans,” Cecilia answered back firmly, her hand holding onto Ethan’s arm was itself buried under the quicksand.

“Evik, you are wasting your time here,” Talatashra warned, standing up now on all four legs on the table.

“Then come back to me,” the violinist stood up and turned to her.

“You know we will not,” answered the violet-eyed kitten.

“Too bad,” Evik Sagittarius strolled over to the other side of the room, the heels of his boots ringing darkly across the floor. He looked with amusement at one of the maps on the wall. Then, flipping his scarlet cloak back over his shoulder, he called out, “Cecilia, whom do you love?”

“I love Ethan,” she answered him loudly, and with no hesitation.

“No,” said Evik Sagittarius, facing her and grinning slyly. “We’re not talking about cheap sweaty jungle lust here. Whom do you really love?”

“Ethan,” she again answered.

“Evik, I already told you, none of your powers will reach her in here,” stated Talatashra. “She is protected.”

“Do not interfere!” he scowled. Then from under his cloak he removed his Stradivarius violin, the mere sight of which made Cecilia feel suddenly dizzy. Evik Sagittarius put the violin to his chin and began to play. And it was the song he had first played for her, back that day in the Conservatory, when he had first come to her office. It wound its tendrils toward her, captivating as always, only even more enchanting now. Involuntarily, Cecilia felt her eyes closing and her lips growing cold. Her grasp on Ethan’s arm under the quicksand loosened.

“Ceclilia,” she heard the violinist hiss, “whom do you love now?”

But then there arose another melody, different, quiet at first, but soon commanding her attention. It grew louder and more forceful, until it was drowning out completely the solo strains of Evik’s violin. There was a flute, a harp, and some gentle reeded voice like a clarinet. The spell was broken. Cecilia opened her eyes and saw encircling her, at her feet, were the four kittens of music, Shimel, Ganub, Sharq, and Gharb, each one producing from somewhere in the vicinity of their whiskers a part of the tune, and the parts interwove with one another, surrounded her, and warmed her. Her grasp on Ethan’s arm became secure again.

Evik Sagittarius stopped playing, and laid his violin down on the floor. Talatashra sat triumphantly and looking a little pleased with herself, her tail moving in time to the other kittens’ melody.

“That is nothing,” Evik declared. “Nothing at all. Cecilia, how would you like me to make it so that you will never love anyone again?” And his tongue flicked across his sharp teeth.

Cecilia felt a chill pass over her again.

“Evik,” spoke Talatashra in a shocked voice from the table. “I never thought that even you would have studied such things.”

“Oh, but I have studied them, and I have studied them well.” Evik dug into a pocket inside his cloak. “It is a simple thing to do, really. Simple, but most effective.” He held up in his hand the small crystal vial with its lead cap. It was filled with a bright red liquid. Cecilia gasped when she recognized what it was.

“What is it?” Ethan squinted his eyes, the quicksand just below his mouth now.

Talatashra was silent, her violet eyes large.

“It is Cecilia’s blood,” smirked the violinist, rolling the vial about in his hands. “Yes, pumped straight from her heart. And I have made it so that in this blood is contained all of Cecilia’s love.”

“But you tricked me!” Cecilia cried out.

“Leave here now, Evik,” Talatashra spoke in a voice of deep warning. “You are playing with fire.”

“Oh, you are quite powerless now, my kitten,” Evik answered her. “And I think that you know it.” He absently tossed the vial up in the air and caught it again. He looked at Cecilia. “You said you wanted everything to be forgotten. And you shall forget, oh believe me, you shall forget. I will make it so that you shall never feel anything again. Not even the cold will bother you.” He turned to face Talatashra, who had grown perceptibly larger on the table. “And it will all be your doing,” Evik told her.

“Nine lives,” Professor Lazaro whispered to himself, and placed his head in his hands. “I can see it all now.”

The violinist moved his hands quickly, opening the lead cap on the vial. As he poured its contents out into his cupped left hand, Cecilia felt faint. The blood ran between his fingers. “It is all in my hands now,” Evik mused. “All of it.”

Talatashra stood at the center of the eleven kittens on the table, ears back and her eyes ablaze. She was now a bit larger than the average alleycat.

Holding Cecilia’s blood in his cupped left hand, Evik Sagittarius chuckled and snapped the fingers of his right. A mosquito that was flying about the room, having wandered in through the open door, alighted on Evik’s left hand. It dipped its proboscis and drank deeply, until the violinist’s hand was clean. Then the tiny insect got up and flew away.

“Where is Cecilia’s love now?” asked Evik Sagittarius. “Ha! Can anyone find it?” He looked around the room and then his eyes fixed on Talatashra. From her throat came a low growl as she tilted her head up and followed the mosquito’s flight alertly. “It can still be reversed,” the violinist warned. “Nothing has yet been sealed.”

But Talatashra did not make any response. She just grew a bit bigger, until now she was larger than a bobcat. The other kittens in the room watched the mosquito fly.

“Very well then!” Evik Sagittarius snapped his fingers again. A frog appeared sitting on the open windowsill. As the plump mosquito flew past, it flicked out its tongue and gobbled the insect up. Cecilia let go of Ethan’s arm, and fainted away on the floor. Now only Ethan’s face was holding itself above the surface of the quicksand.

“And where is her love now?” Evik asked in a falsely shocked voice. “Inside of a frog?” And he snapped his fingers yet again. With a shrill ribbit! the frog hopped off the windowsill and into the jungle beyond. “Lost!” Evik declared. “But...no!” He cupped his hand to his ear as if listening for something. He snapped his fingers again. “Wait! A snake has eaten the frog. It is a water snake…” And he snapped yet again. “It swims on the surface of the river. Now a fish has eaten the snake. Oh, you foolish botanist. I should not have made the botanical garden so big. The fish swims in your river, and your river leads to the ocean.” The violinist walked up and crouched low so that his face was up close to Ethan’s, nearly drowning in the quicksand.

“Where is your Cecilia’s love now, hmm? In a puddle of blood inside a mosquito, that is inside a frog, that is inside a snake, that is inside a fish, that is swimming in the ocean. Do you ever think you can find it?” He turned to the kittens on the table. “Talatashra, what do you say now? It has still not been sealed, everything can be returned, you just say the word, and come back to me.”

But the violet-eyed Talatashra only continued to grow larger on the table, and was now the size of a well-fed ocelot.

“Very well!” Evik Sagittarius snapped both of his fingers over his head. “Now the fish is devoured by a whale. The oceans are dangerous places. And Ethan, whales may be big, but there are still a lot of them. What will you do? It will take you a very long time, I should think, to find just the whale that contains the fish that contains the snake that contains the frog that contains the mosquito that contains the blood that contains your Cecilia’s love! And so I shall seal it, and wish you happy hunting!”

Nobody had noticed the THC-Genie, who had kept herself very small and had flown up to float next to Asfar on top of the Joisey Codex. The genie and kitten shared a look, Asfar stepped to the side, and the genie – now much larger – grabbed the Joisey Codex and flew furiously up in Evik’s face. With a burst of stunningly bright blue light she pulled the pages of the book open and shoved it right in Evik’s face.

“What the hell is this?” the violinist staggered back. “Keep that damn thing away from me!”

But a thunderclap echoed from around them, and part of the roof of the house caved in under the enormous weight of a very large baleen whale that thrashed about, destroying walls and breaking a great deal of furniture.

Talatashra, now bigger than a lion, leapt off the table, sending the tiny kittens around her flying. She roared as she landed on Evik’s chest, and with a heart-rending howl set loose a whirlwind of flame. Ethan felt a blast of heat and the quicksand suddenly released him, and he found himself laying covered in dry sand, against the wall. Cecilia lay just a foot away from him, a single spot of blood visible on her dress, just over her heart. Flames shot up to engulf the thatched ceiling, suddenly there were many people shouting. Smoke filled Ethan’s lungs, and as he passed out he heard lonesome strains of a flute filling the air.

1. Chapter 24

Professor Lazaro’s house had completely burned down. The botanical garden was once again of normal size, with a sizable hole in the greenhouse roof that would have to be repaired. There was no more cliff, no more view of a valley, no more distant mountains, no more waterfall, not even really that many trees. Just a patch or two of uninspired ferns and some sickly looking orchids. There were no more monkeys, and no more mosquitos. It was daylight, the sky was blue, and cold winter air blew in through the hole in the greenhouse above.

Professor Lazaro stood amidst the smoking ruins of his house. There was not a trace in the charcoal around him of either Evik Sagittarius, Talatashra, or even any of the kittens. The carcass of the whale lay nearby.

Ethan was still in some shock. He wiggled his toes in his flip-flops, trying to get all of the sand off of them. Cecilia sat rubbing her forehead next to him. The silver and gold cloak that she had been wearing was now as if made of cobwebs, and disintegrated entirely. On the front of her dress, over her heart, remained the single spot of blood. The THC-Genie floated in the air above Maxim, who was sitting on the ground, freed from the Erlenmeyer flask.

“Is everyone all right?” asked Professor Equuleus, who stood nearby, patting his arms and legs, verifying that they were no longer made of stars.

“Unnhhhh…” groaned Smelch, laying under a scraggly bush nearby. He made an attempt to raise himself up on an elbow, but soon gave that up. “Oooh. My head.”

Chester Buckley sat on the ground nearby, holding his hands up before him. Amazingly, they were unscarred.

Drs. Stephenswood and Cathers, Jr. were nowhere to be found.

“That was a close on, I will admit,” Equuleus nodded his head. “Maxim, thank God for that genie. I will never criticize your experiments again.”

“Really?” Maxim looked very pleased. So did the THC-Genie.

“Gone,” Lazaro said sadly. “They’re all gone. All of them.”

Cecilia opened her eyes and looked around. Her gaze met Ethan’s. “Ethan,” she asked quietly. “Ethan, will you still talk to me?” She was unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

“Did that whale bring the fish with the snake carrying the frog, with the mosquito with your blood holding your love back?” he asked.

Smiling, she nodded her head happily.

“Then of course I will,” and Ethan gave her the same smile that he had given her when he used to greet her jumping on the furniture in her house on Ben Franklin Street. They hugged then, and she felt enormous relief. Nothing had been sealed after all.

“Just can we please go back and start all over again, and forget this ever happened?” he asked.

“Yes, I would like that,” Cecilia answered. “As if this never happened.”

“Well, it looks like the Joisey Codex survived. Somehow.” Lazaro held up the ancient book. Its pages were sealed again, and could not be opened. Despite smelling a bit of woodsmoke, it did not look any worse for wear.

“Well, ah...perhaps we could discuss some sort of collaborative effort? With Princeton’s resources, we could really get a lot accomplished.”

“Buzz off,” Lazaro waved a hand. “This goes back to Mexico, just like it always should have.”

“But are the pages really stuck closed again?” Equuleus peered over his shoulder.

“It would seem so,” Lazaro turned the Joisey Codex this way and that.

“Extraordinary,” Equuleus whistled. “Yet the genie was able to open it.”

The THC-Genie sizzled and hid behind Maxim, in order to keep out of sight.

“Er, Equu, she says that was a one-time thing,” explained Maxim. “And she doesn’t want anything more to do with it.”

“Talatashra told me to be on the lookout for such a thing. And to hold onto it...for a little while…” Lazaro murmured. “Now I see why. This was the protection for Cecilia that she was talking about. She was indeed...most wise…”

Professor Equuleus sighed and said, “Well, the important thing is everyone is still in one piece. And that weirdo is gone. I really didn’t like him at all.”

He looked over at Maxim. The chemist was sitting quietly on the ground, his arm around the THC-Genie. Everyone could see that there were electric tears running down her cheeks.

“Maxim, why is the genie crying?” asked the professor. “We’re all safe.”

“I know,” answered the chemist very quietly. “She’s crying because she says there has been a net loss of magic in the world. And I have to admit, somehow it makes me feel sad too.”

1Upon coincidence of Venus and Aldebaran (Star α Tau A) in a winter sky, an orphan is selected by the high priest and admitted into the royal family in a ceremony involving ritualistic blood-letting. Ak’ab Ac’alab seems to have been practiced at one time or another in only a few of the lowland cities during the classical period, and evidently had died out entirely by the time of the great post-classical civilization of Chichén Itza.

2A large book burning held in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, in 1567, recorded by the Franciscan friar Monterroyo, undoubtedly contained many of these works of Wukub Ok’ic.

3It is not known, however, if in fact their marital unions were any happier than modern Western ones under this practice.

4While on the subject, the interviews Cecilia Burgess gave during this tour are worth noting as well. Music writers would come, generally skinny men with goatees and berets, dressed in black, eyes eager for some word of wisdom, some clue to her magic from the lips of this prodigy. And she would just sit there, displaying complete boredom, her mouth wrinkled into a frown, humming to herself. But the journalists did not leave disappointed. No, they wrote up witty, revealing columns about how they had sat for twenty minutes in the presence of this genius (while her mother did the talking) and ended up emphasizing that her music was beyond all words anyway.

5The Daily News commented: “The authorities must accept the fact that in Ms. Cecilia Burgess, the maestra of Central Park, we have a musician capable of singlehandedly controlling the city’s suicide rate.”

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24