Middleworld Read online

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  The Jaguar Stones are fictional, as are all the characters in this book except for Friar Diego de Landa, the true-life Spanish priest who made one big bonfire of ancient Maya books and artworks. San Xavier is a fictional country based on present-day Belize.

  To Harry, Charly, and Loulou

  k yahkume’ex

  CONTENTS

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  PREFACE: THE DREAM

  I. BAD NEWS

  II. THE CURSE OF THE MAYA

  III. PUERTO MUERTO

  IV. VILLA ISABELLA

  V. MAX GOES BANANAS

  VI. FAMILY SECRETS

  VII. THIEVES IN THE NIGHT

  VIII. THE MONKEY GIRL

  IX. SHOOTING THE RAPIDS

  X. STRANGE WEATHER

  XI. RAT ON A STICK

  XII. THE FEAST

  XIII. MONKEY RIVER

  XIV. ITZAMNA

  XV. THE OATH OF BLOOD

  XVI. THE COSMIC CROCODILE

  XVII. TRICK OR TREAT

  XVIII. THE CHICKEN OF DEATH

  XIX. MONKEY BUSINESS

  XX. COUNTING THE DAYS

  XXI. PREPARING FOR BATTLE

  XXII. THE BLACK PYRAMID

  XXIII. CAPTURED

  XXIV. THE SHOWDOWN

  XXV. HUMAN SACRIFICE

  XXVI. MORNING

  GLOSSARY

  MAYA COSMOS

  THE MAYA CALENDAR

  EASY CHICKEN TAMALES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In Boston

  MAX (Massimo Francis Sylvanus) MURPHY: fourteen years old, only child, videogamer, drummer, pizza connoisseur

  ZIA: the Murphys’ mysterious housekeeper

  FRANK AND CARLA MURPHY: Max’s parents, famous archaeologists

  In San Xavier

  OSCAR POOT: head of the Maya Foundation

  LUCKY JIM: Uncle Ted’s foreman and bodyguard

  TED MURPHY: Max’s uncle, a banana exporter

  VICTOR: waiter at hotel

  ANTONIO DE LANDA: Spanish aristocrat

  RAUL: Uncle Ted’s butler

  CHULO and SERI: Lola’s tame howler monkeys

  LOLA (Ix Sak Lol—each sock loll): Maya girl about Max’s age

  CHAN KAN: Maya wise man

  OCH and little OCH: village boys, brothers

  EUSEBIO: chili farmer and boatman

  HERMANJILIO (herman kee leo): Maya archaeologist, university professor

  LORD 6-DOG (Ahaw Wak Ok—uh how walk oak): ancient Maya king

  LADY COCO (Ix Kan Kakaw—each con caw cow): Lord 6-Dog’s mother

  In Xibalba

  LORDS of DEATH: twelve lords of the underworld, minions of Ah Pukuh

  TZELEK: evil priest and Lord 6-Dog’s twin brother

  Maya Gods

  IXCHEL (each shell): moon goddess

  CHAHK (chalk): god of storms and warfare

  ITZAMNA (eats um gnaw): ruler of heaven, lord of day and night

  K’AWIIL (caw wheel): god of kingship and lineage

  AH PUKUH (awe pooh coo): god of violent and unnatural death

  Preface

  THE DREAM

  Lord 6-Dog was awakened by the sound of his own screaming.

  For a few moments he lay still on his sleeping mat, trying to shake off the memory of the dream. He told himself to calm down, but still his body trembled and the sweat ran down his forehead (no small journey, as his mother had strapped his head between two boards after he was born to lengthen his skull like a corn cob).

  A howler monkey …?

  Suddenly the door curtain was ripped aside and the royal guards burst in to investigate the noise. They filled the tiny room. Lord 6-Dog quickly composed himself and signaled to them that all was well.

  Then it occurred to him that perhaps all was not well.

  As soon as the guards had gone, he examined himself all over, looking for monkey fur. Only when he was sure that his muscular body was still as smooth as a turtle shell did he start to relax.

  But a howler monkey …?

  It was unthinkable.

  He was the famous Lord 6-Dog—most powerful king, most fearless warrior, most handsome hero of the mighty Maya. Yet in his dream, he’d been an ugly, stinking, flea-infested monkey. How could it be?

  What did it mean?

  Like all his people, Lord 6-Dog took dreams very seriously. But this one was unthinkable. How could a king become a lowly monkey? If dreams were messages from the gods, surely this one had gone astray in the cosmic sorting office. …

  Then again, perhaps it was not the gods who’d sent this dream.

  Only yesterday, Lord 6-Dog’s advisers had warned him about the growing powers of his twin brother, Tzelek. It was no secret that Tzelek coveted the throne—and, as a high priest, he was an accomplished sorcerer. Could he have sent this dream?

  Lord 6-Dog sighed. It seemed that his advisers were always warning him about something. If it wasn’t the machinations of Tzelek, it was a challenge from another city-state or some impending natural disaster. One court astrologer had even foreseen the fall of the whole Maya civilization.

  No wonder everyone was jumpy.

  Vowing never to tell another soul about his dream, Lord 6-Dog rubbed his heavy-lidded eyes, blew his huge hooked nose, and went outside for some air.

  The royal sleeping quarters were at the top of the palace, and he could see for miles from the terrace outside his rooms. All around him, the silhouettes of other pyramids rose out of the jungle. Facing him, across the plaza, loomed the massive temple where his father, Lord Punak Ha, was buried. And below him, still and quiet, lay the beautiful city of Itzamna, jewel of the Monkey River. Its citizens slept peacefully tonight, trusting the young king they worshipped as a living god to protect them from all misfortune.

  Lord 6-Dog shivered, even though the night was warm.

  Stars were twinkling in the jungle sky, and a big round moon was shining down. It reminded him of another night, long ago, when he’d stood on this very spot with his mother, Lady Kan Kakaw. She’d been pointing out the image of a leaping rabbit on the surface of the moon, but little 6-Dog couldn’t see it. He’d said it looked like the face of a man to him. How his mother had laughed and kissed him.

  He smiled at the memory. It was a long time since he’d seen his mother happy. Since the death of his father, she’d turned into a bad-tempered old woman who never had a kind word for anyone.

  As if on cue, her angry voice interrupted his reverie. “Where’s that idiot son of mine?”

  Lady Kan Kakaw came running out onto the terrace, flaming torch in hand, four long gray braids flying behind her. She slapped her son hard on the head. “That’s for waking me with your screaming.”

  “I am sorry if I disturbed thee, Mother,” said Lord 6-Dog.

  “‘I am sorry if I disturbed thee, Mother,’” she mimicked in a singsong voice. “Why must you talk in that old-fashioned way?”

  “I believe it is fitting for a king to use the language of his ancestors.”

  “You sound ridiculous.”

  “So thou art always telling me.”

  “You young people don’t know how lucky you are. In my day, children were seen and not heard.”

  “I am not a child, Mother. I am nineteen years old.”

  She peered at him. “Nineteen already? Is it really five years since your father was taken from us?”

  He braced himself for her usual speech about how he wasn’t fit to lick his father’s jaguar-skin sandals. But tonight she seemed distracted. She was just staring out across the moonlit valley, as if mesmerized by the rustling of the treetops and the screeching of the monkeys in the jungle.

  “Is something out there, Mother?” he asked.

  “Of course not!” she said,
a little too quickly.

  He tried to follow her gaze, but her crossed eyes made it impossible. (Crossed eyes were a sign of beauty, and his mother’s eyes had been trained to focus inward by hanging a bead between them when she was a baby.) “Thou art lying, Mother. What dost thou look at? I command thee to tell me!”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Speak—or I will bid Tzelek to rip out thine old heart in one of his rituals.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she said.

  Lord 6-Dog suppressed a smile. He drew himself up to his full height and tried to look frightening. “Art thou sure, Mother? The day of 12-Blade approaches, and the people expect a human sacrifice. They would be most impressed if the chosen one were of royal blood. Thine image would be painted on souvenir plates, the poets would write odes in thy memory … unless, of course, thou hast something to tell me, old woman?”

  She gaped in disbelief. “How dare you speak to your mother that way?”

  “I am the mighty Lord 6-Dog. I will speak to thee any way I wish.”

  “Even you are not mightier than the gods, 6-Dog, and tonight I have found favor with them. Treat me with respect, or you may feel their wrath.”

  Lord 6-Dog inspected his mother more closely. There was something different about her tonight. She seemed younger, happier, almost girlish.

  “What nonsense has filled thy deluded old head?”

  “Oh, I am not deluded. For tonight, the gods blessed me with the most wonderful dream. In fact, before you so rudely awakened me, I was happy for the first time since your father died.”

  To her son’s amazement, the old woman began to whirl around like a temple dancer, her crossed little eyes as bright as two shiny cocoa beans.

  “I dreamed I was a howler monkey,” she intoned, as if in a trance. “I was swinging through the trees as free as a bird. … I was sucking on wild plums and spitting out the stones. … I was picking lice off my head and eating them.” She paused theatrically. “And I loved every moment of it!”

  She registered the horror on her son’s face, and her performance ended abruptly. “It’s not something a cold fish like you would understand,” she said.

  If she had not hung her head at that moment—whether in shame or to hide her happiness—she would have noticed her son’s expression change from disgust to fascination.

  Now he was the one who was mesmerized.

  He could hear his mother talking in the background. But whatever she was rambling on about could not distract him from the small insect that had landed on her head and was now crawling over her hair.

  Very slowly, almost tenderly, he leaned over and picked it off.

  Then, before he knew what he was doing, the mighty Lord 6-Dog opened his mouth and popped it in.

  Chapter One

  BAD NEWS

  All was quiet.

  Suddenly a flock of parrots exploded from the trees, shrieking and squawking, and three men burst out of the rainforest. One of them pushed a hostage, a young girl, in front of him. The other two shot at anything and everything as they ran across the clearing toward the steps of the pyramid.

  The noise was terrifying—guns shooting, men shouting, birds screeching—but Max tried to stay calm, waiting for the right moment. He knew he would only get one chance. And, armed with only a blowgun, he also knew the odds were against him.

  In the end, it happened so quickly that he hardly had time to think.

  Just as the men reached the bottom step, something caught their attention high above Max’s head, and they stopped to blitz the treetops with bullets. He crouched behind a log, not daring to breathe, as leaves and twigs exploded and rained down onto the forest floor. An animal shrieked and fell through the branches, landing with a thud somewhere behind him.

  It was now or never.

  Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he fired his three darts in quick succession.

  Yes! Yes! No!

  He’d hit the hostage—again.

  GAME OVER.

  Max threw down the controller in disgust.

  What was he doing wrong? He’d jumped over the massive tree roots, sidestepped the boa constrictor sleeping in the leaf pile, bypassed the battalion of army ants, and outswum the hungry crocodiles that lurked under the surface of the river. He’d got everything right, but he still couldn’t get past this level.

  And what was that cross-eyed monkey trying to tell him?

  He grabbed the case and scrutinized the small print. Nope, definitely nothing about cross-eyed monkeys. In fact, no rules at all.

  Stupid game.

  Where had it come from anyway? It was just lying on his bed when he came home. The case looked new, but it smelled musty, like the gym lockers at school.

  As Max’s hand reached for the controller again, a vacuum cleaner roared into life outside his door. No one could shoot a blowgun with that racket going on. He decided to go downstairs for a snack.

  On the landing, he stepped around Zia, the housekeeper and wielder of the vacuum. As usual, she didn’t look at him. Or maybe she did. It was hard to tell. Max had never seen her eyes because she wore heavy black sunglasses, even on the grayest of days. In her fist, she carried a crumpled handkerchief to wipe away the tears that often rolled down her cheeks. Max’s mother said it was dust allergies and not to mention it. (A housekeeper with dust allergies—just what you need, thought Max.)

  Zia had lived with Max’s family for as long as he could remember. She rarely spoke, except to discuss household matters with his mother or to whisper in some strange language on the phone. She was just someone who cooked and cleaned and slept in the room over the garage. She never sat with the family or ate with them, and Max was so used to her snuffling around the house that he hardly registered her existence.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he paused by the hallway mirror to check out his hair. (He was trying to grow it, and he’d got into the habit of reviewing its progress in every reflective surface he passed.) He combed his bangs with his fingers and struck a moody pose. His hair was over his ears now, he noted with satisfaction, straight and shiny, the color of roasted chestnuts.

  Max called it brown.

  The kids at school called it red.

  It came from his father and all the Irish Murphys before him, with their pale blue eyes and invisible eyelashes. Max had inherited his Italian mother’s dark eyes and, one of these days, he intended to dye his hair black and disown the Irish gene altogether.

  He slunk into the kitchen and opened the fridge in search of food.

  Nothing.

  Just a huge dish of Zia’s homemade tamales, and he’d rather starve than eat one of them. He’d tried one once, just once, and the memory still made him feel nauseous. They’d looked so tempting, wrapped in their corn husks and tied up with twine like a row of little surprise presents.

  Yeah, the worst surprise of your life, thought Max. He’d sunk his teeth into the greasy dough, and the sticky filling had expanded in his mouth like insulation foam. He’d only just reached the sink in time. The worst thing was that Zia had witnessed the whole thing.

  Come to think of it, that was possibly why she didn’t speak to him.

  Max’s mother said he was a picky eater. But she was from Venice, Italy, where the local specialty was boiled tripe. Tripe! The stomach lining of a cow! Why would anyone eat tripe in the country that invented pizza?

  Tripe aside, Max’s Italian grandmother—Nonna—was a fantastic cook. And as soon as school finished for the summer, Max and his parents were flying to Italy to see her for a long vacation. In a couple of weeks’ time, he’d be eating Nonna’s pizza, the dough thin and crisp and chewy all at the same time, homemade tomato sauce, bubbling mozzarella …

  Max was still daydreaming about pizza when the back door flew open and his parents, Frank and Carla Murphy, burst in.

  “Mom … Dad … what are you doing here?”

  It was only fiveish, and they never came home before seven. They were archaeolo
gy professors at Harvard—specialist subject, the ancient Maya. It seemed ironic to Max that his parents spent all their waking hours with people who’d been dead as dodos for a thousand years, and neglected him, their own living, breathing son.

  But this was a big year for Maya studies.

  Max usually zoned out when his parents talked about work, but even he knew that the Maya calendar, which had counted the days since the world began, was supposed to be coming to an end. The Internet was buzzing with theories about comets and volcanoes and spacemen and tidal waves and polar shifts caused by planetary alignments predicted by the Maya centuries ago.

  His father said it was all hogwash.

  But then, his father could talk for hours about how people should do their own research rather than believing everything they read on the Internet.

  Max thought this attitude was shortsighted.

  Archaeologists should be pleased to have so many people blogging and spreading crazy rumors about the Maya. At least they were the center of attention for once. The rest of the time, they bored everyone stiff.

  After all, what had the Maya ever given the world?

  No mummies, no gladiators, no Olympic Games.

  Just some tumbledown pyramids and a few old pots.

  Yet Max’s parents couldn’t get enough of them.

  His father seemed to prefer the ancient world, full stop.

  Even his clothes were ancient. He’d worn the same hideous beige safari jacket for as long as Max could remember. It was covered in pockets, more pockets than any normal person could ever need, and every pocket bulged with notebooks and leaking pens. Add to this a thinning ponytail and a frizzy red beard, and Max wondered if his father ever glanced in the mirror at all. He seemed to have no interest in how he looked. He was always lost in the past, too preoccupied—Max assumed—with the ancient Maya to spare a thought for his appearance.

  His mother went too far the other way. She wouldn’t leave the house without lipstick and she ironed creases down the front of her jeans. Max supposed it was an Italian thing.

  “Ciao, bambino,” she said now, attempting to plant a kiss on his cheek. “How was your day? Did you like your new video game?”