CHAPTER FIVE JAGUAR TEMPLE CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE

JAGUAR TEMPLE

CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE

January 8

Sweat stung Suki’s eyes. It ran down her ribs and trickled down her legs. She hated sweating. But what was even worse was the suspicion that if any of the balls dropped, she would die.

It was surreal actually. Weeks ago, she’d been stressing out about being the stage manager for the high school musical, a role that was almost entirely behind a curtain and out of sight of the audience. Now she was in the middle of a forsaken jungle with no internet, wild animals that would try to kill her if she managed to escape the huge temple complex, and a crazy lady who was forcing her to levitate heavy rubber balls and spin them around the arena all while yelling at her in ancient Mayan.

At least Yoda hadn’t yelled at Luke Skywalker. Or whipped him with a reed.

Suki hadn’t practiced the Maya magic in Bozeman—mostly because she had still been afraid of it—until that night at Brice’s house. She’d certainly never imagined pushing herself this hard. The balls used in the death game each weighed about four pounds. She wasn’t lifting them with her arms, of course, but lifting them with her mind was real work. The strain and stress of trying to keep five of them orbiting the game court in the ruins simultaneously was ... totally wrecking her.

The crazy old lady walked around her, speaking in K’iche’, one of the native tongues of the ancient Maya. Magic allowed Suki to understand what was said, but she struggled to speak the language herself. She’d thought learning Spanish was tough. Mayan was freakishly impossible. Yet every day she learned a few more words that she used to communicate with the servants who lived at the site of the ancient temple.

“You must focus! Up! Up! Keep them higher!”

Suki’s internal conflict had caused two of the five balls to lose momentum, and they’d started wobbling out of orbit. It took so much concentration! And maybe that was the point of the exercise. To train someone from Gen Z how to stick with a single thought for a long time.

“I’m trying,” Suki panted, willing the errant orbs back into the pattern.

The old crone didn’t speak English. She glared at Suki, circling around behind her. Sometimes she’d whack that reed stick of hers against Suki’s legs. It hurt. A lot. But there was no denying the threat of pain urged her to keep things going.

The sun was nearly down. It amazed Suki how every structure at the temple compound had been erected to follow the seasons and the rising and setting of the sun and other celestial bodies. The orientation of the ball court was aligned with the heavens. When she and her family had been tricked into the death game just over a year ago, they’d only spent a few days at the Jaguar Temple. Now that Suki had been there for almost two weeks, she knew the compound a lot better. She’d been able to explore a bit and marveled at the vastness of the hidden temple.

The place where Jacob Calakmul ruled supreme.

The thought of him made her shudder. He’d tasked the crone with testing what Suki could do with the kem ?m—the ancient Maya magic that made the city glow at night, provided a barrier like a force field against the jungle, enabled her to make rubber balls scoot without touching them, and so much more.

He’d urged the crone to try to break Suki. To see how deeply and quickly she could learn the magic. If Suki were no longer useful, she imagined she’d end up on the sacrificial altar getting open heart surgery for free.

“Do you see it? Do you see the evening star?”

Suki was facing west. And there, just over the tree line of the jungle, she glimpsed it. The Maya called it the morning and evening star, but it was really the planet Venus.

“Je’,”Suki answered. That was K’iche’ for yes. She’d picked that up on the first day.

“See it? Now pull it.”

Had she understood correctly? Pull it? As in ... pull on the planet?

“Jek’?”Suki asked.

“Jik’. Jik’ uxlab.”The crone insisted. Like tugging someone’s hand? But with the breath? That made even less sense.

“Jik’ uxlab?”Suki repeated.

“Jik’ uxlab. Jik’ uxlab,”the woman said again, breathing in deeply through her nose. She cupped her hands as if holding a sphere right around her navel, which was exposed, along with a lot of her body because of the tribal clothing worn by the people at the temple. Suki’s clothes from Bozeman had been taken away on the first day.

Breathe. Breathe and pull.When her family had been forced to compete in the death game with the Beasley family, Suki had gone into a sort of trance. She’d known she and her brothers and father would all die if she didn’t figure out how to use the kem ?m. The intense pressure of this moment reminded her of that one—only her family’s lives weren’t on the line. Now it was just her and the old woman in the arena.

Suki stared at the planet, at the speck of light beaming at her from over a hundred million miles away. Seeing the light made her stomach flutter with wonder. She knew it was from the sun reflecting off the planet’s surface, crossing all that space.

And then it happened. The right vibe struck her, just like it had that day a year ago. She felt a quiver in her stomach, like a little tugging behind her belly button. The balls began moving in sync with her body, as if they were attached to invisible hula hoops around her. Her mind opened like a flower. And suddenly it was easy. The strain of keeping all the balls going vanished. They glided along their various orbits, some with a shorter radius than the others, each in a different pattern.

“K’amo!”exclaimed the crone with delight. That meant good.

Suki was aware of her entire body in that moment, as if every cell within her had awoken. Hello, elbow bone. Hello, appendix. Hello, toenails. Even the sweat no longer bothered her. It was part of her, an essential part of her body needed to regulate her heat and heartbeat. It was a feeling of being alive unlike anything else. She knew some kids at Gallatin High School who liked to vape or smoke weed because of how it made them feel, but even though she’d never partaken in those dubious pleasures, she knew they couldn’t compare to this sensation.

The crone reached down and picked up another heavy rubber ball and tossed it to her. Effortlessly, Suki absorbed it into the orbiting balls.

This is so chill,Suki said to herself.

“K’amo. K’amo!”the crone said, pleased, walking in a circuit around her.

And then the stick whacked into Suki’s legs. Pain cut through the bliss. Suki yelped in surprise, and all the balls thumped down to the dirt, the momentum destroyed. Gravity brought each down instantly.

“Ow!” Suki complained, whirling around and looking at the old woman’s vindictive smile.

The crone jabbed the reed stick at her, and Suki backed away so it wouldn’t poke her.

“Listen! Learn! Must focus. Even if worried. Even in pain. Many kinds of pain. Burning pain. Illness. Biting pain. Throbbing pain. Fang pain. A pain like being homesick.”

All was spoken in Mayan, all understood because of magic. Suki’s mind snagged on that last word—q’atzq’ayil. She was homesick. She missed her brothers. She missed her dad. She missed her boyfriend, Brice. Those were pains that wouldn’t leave.

“Drinkxocolatl. Get rest. Enough for today. Go! The master returns to see progress. Do not fail. You fail ... you die!”

Suki’s legs were still flaming from the surprise blow. She nodded and limped to the end of the ball court. One wave of the hand dispelled the webbing of kem ?m. A servant approached with xocolatl, and she quickly took a sip. The chocolatey drink gave her a burst of energy and focus. It was better and worked faster than espresso.

By the time Suki reached the royal palace, one of the majestic structures in the temple grounds, she could ignore the pain in her legs. Quickly jogging up the steps, she passed by the scary-looking warriors who protected it night and day. One of the warriors leered at her. She wanted to send a floating rubber ball smashing into his face.

When she reached the main level, she went to her private room. Jane Louise was there, using a primitive broom to sweep dead bugs away. Two female servants stood by, holding fans made of palm fronds. That was the only air-conditioning inside the building.

“You’re back!” Jane Louise said with happiness and rushed to hug her.

Jane Louise was the youngest of the Beasley children, and the only member of her family who’d survived the death game. Suki had believed the entire family had been executed, but Jacob Calakmul had spared the youngest, using her as a slave in the compound. A drudge. Perhaps he’d have another purpose for her when she was older, but at present she was only nine. The emotional anguish of losing everything and being thrown into a life of service might have been too much for her if Suki’s mother hadn’t also been spared. Her mom had taken care of Jane Louise.

“I’m starving,” Suki said, hugging the little girl tight. “What’s there to eat? Any mango?”

“Lots of mangoes.” She took Suki over to a wooden table where platters of fruit and skewers of meat had been set out. Suki picked up a slice of mango with her fingers and devoured it. It was so sweet and delicious she wanted to faint. The meat skewers could be pretty sketchy. She never knew what kind of animal she was eating, and the thought of eating a coati was disturbing. They were too cute, Mexico’s version of raccoons.

Suki’s mom, Sarina, had disappeared just before Suki’s abduction. The warriors had been searching the jungles for her, but they’d never find her there. She was hidden among them as an old crone. It wasn’t a disguising magic. Suki’s mom had literally aged forty years overnight, so no one recognized her. Ix Chel had done it—she’d turned her into a crone, one of the goddess’s own iterations, so she could evade notice. Jacob Calakmul had been furious about the “escape,” of course, and Suki was guarded night and day to prevent her from leaving too. There were always people watching her. Sometimes it felt like even the mosquitoes were watching her.

Suki had only been able to talk to her mother twice since she’d arrived, and both times had been instigated by her mom in the middle of the night. They’d hugged and kissed each other, and even though her mom didn’t look the way she was used to, she was still her mother, and being reunited with her made Suki hopeful in a way she hadn’t thought possible when she was hustled onto that plane in Bozeman.

Sarina had stayed at the Jaguar Temple because she knew the prophesied end times were coming—although not the prophecy that Jacob Calakmul believed in. No, what was coming was the return of Kukulkán and his followers. Ix Chel had been preparing for it. The goddess would have helped Sarina leave if she’d so chosen, but she’d asked her to stay behind and help—and so she had.

“These are good too,” Jane Louise said, picking up a brown-colored fruit and eating it.

Suki took a bite of one. It had a brown-sugar flavor. Nice.

“We’re leaving tonight,” Jane Louise said in a pointedly offhand voice, going for a banana next.

“What?” Suki asked. As an incentive for Suki to train harder, she’d been allowed to spend time with Jane Louise—providing a break from the servitude the little girl was forced to endure.

“She’ll come get us when the moon is high. She said, ‘Don’t go to sleep.’” She nodded to emphasize each word.

“Where are we going?” Suki whispered.

Jane Louise smiled. “Back to her island.”

Ix Chel’s island, she meant. Cozumel.