Deity (24 page)

“Wait
a second.
Chac
 
was
working on the Calendar Deity?”

“We
both were. Chac did the cleaning while I did the documenting. You know,
photographing, measuring,
drawing
. Chac can’t draw a
stick figure, so I handled that end of the operation. That’s how we worked on
all of our fresco projects.”

Peet
felt betrayed. Chac had made it sound like he knew nothing about the
gear-shaped Kin artifact when he led him and Lori to the cavern. Chac had lied,
but why? What was he trying to hide?

There was something else that bothered Peet. He’d assumed
that whoever took the Kin piece had planted the bomb to keep anyone else from
knowing about it. But now that reasoning didn’t make sense. After all, if Chac
discovered the Kin piece, he wouldn’t have set the bomb on himself, unless...

The
bomb wasn’t meant to go off.

Chac
hadn’t been the one to set off the bomb. It was Lori who inadvertently
triggered it. In fact, if memory served him correctly, Chac had tried to stop
Lori at the last second. But why would he so willingly show the Calendar Deity
to Peet and Lori if he’d set a bomb to prevent anyone else from finding it? And
Chac wouldn’t set the trap for his own partner, would he?

Peet
studied Matt a moment, wondering if he should mention the bomb to him. There
was the temptation to know what Matt thought about the whole thing. Then again,
how would he react to the knowledge that his Jesus hieroglyph, the discovery of
Matt’s lifetime, was now destroyed in the bottom of a cenote?

Peet
chose to remain silent about the whole thing. There were too many confused and
unknown variables as it were. Besides, the very idea that Chac had set the bomb
that took Lori’s life was enough to set his blood boiling.

He
turned back to the Kin piece, that strange artifact central to it all which he
now held in the palm of his hand. “What got you so excited about this
artifact?” he asked.

“In
truth,” Matt began, “I didn’t get real excited until I took the Kin piece home
to finish my analysis of it. Up until that point I thought it a very interesting
piece. Nothing like it had ever been found in a Mayan site, or any Mesoamerican
site for that matter. But as I was measuring it I realized that I had come
across those exact measurements before. It took me a few hours, but I found my
notes on another artifact that was discovered during my stint in Izapa some
years back.”

“
Which is what brings you here.
”

“Exactly.
I thought it’d only take a day or two
to confirm my findings, so I didn’t worry about anyone missing me back in Chichen Itza. But as it
turned out, my trip has been extended.”

“Your
artifacts didn’t match?”

“They
matched all right.
Perfectly, in fact.”

“Then
what’s the hold up?”

“I
couldn’t piece together the significance. In fact, realizing they belong
together has only presented more questions than I could solve on my own, so I
called in some expert advice.”

“You’re
working with someone else now?”

“Only temporarily, and just to confirm that my
findings are correct.”

“So
who did you bring in?”

“John
Friedman.”

Peet
nearly choked. “John’s here too?”

“He’s
working on the second artifact as we speak.”

Popol Vuh

John
Friedman sat at the edge of the throne he’d uncovered from the jungle,
composing his final remarks near the data he’d scribbled across his sheet of
graph paper. The data were raw numbers, measurements actually, of the throne itself.
Its thickness, height, width, distance from the pillar, and anything else John
felt pertinent to its existence. He’d completed the work himself, and now his
sore body was paying the price.

John
was unconditioned for field work. His skills were rusty though his knowledge of
practice and technique were still there. But one of the things John was rudely
reminded of regarding working in the field was the issue of addressing nature’s
call. That’s when he realized just how unprepared he was.

With
the nearest restroom a little over a kilometer away in the Izapa Archaeological
Zone, and having neglected to equip
himself
for such
needs, John had to improvise. It had been too long since he’d had to improvise,
but he prevailed nonetheless. It was in that moment, squatting amid the thickest
growth of underbrush he could find and pondering how an educated man could be
reduced to the most uncivilized of conditions, that he noticed a slab of stone
lying where no natural stone would be. Upon closer inspection, or as close as
he could get considering the brush, he found his suspicions to be correct. Not
only had the flat slab of stone been hewn, but it was propped up on four short
pedestals—a throne.

That
presented a problem.

To
get a full appreciation of the throne, he needed to clear the growth that had
all but smothered it from sight. The first day John found a local who loaned
him a machete and an ax. That cleared the first layer of growth, and the
embarrassment he’d deposited in front of the throne. But John needed something
stronger to tackle the hardwood. It took him a full day to track down a
gas-powered chain saw, and a strapping, young farmer boy to run it for him.

With
the brush finally cleared, John could finally settle into the real work of
excavating the throne’s legs from layers of dirt and forest decay, which was no
easy task considering he had to reach beneath the broad, stone slab of the
seat. By the time he’d uncovered the throne in its entirety, John’s joints were
aching so badly that he was cursing himself for agreeing to come along on this
venture. And after all that work, he decided the least the throne could do was
offer
him
a seat while he completed his write up.

It
was about that time he thought he heard Matt’s Jeep returning along the
farmer’s road about fifty meters from the site. He wasn’t mistaken. Minutes
later he heard footsteps approaching from behind. But when he turned around, he
was surprised to discover that Matt wasn’t alone. He’d brought some friends
along with him, and one of them, donning his old outback hat, multi-pocketed
vest and field boots, was his own son-in-law.

“Anthony?”
he greeted as the group drew closer. “What the devil are you doing in Chiapas?”

* * * *

To
anyone else, a walk through the dense stand of jungle wouldn’t have brought
expectations of finding a man of retirement age sitting alone scribbling over a
notepad. To Peet, not only was it now expected, but the added element of the
stone slab John was using as a seat came as no surprise either. John just
seemed to have a knack for sniffing out archaeological structures, especially
in the dense jungles of Mexico.

To
Peet’s relief, John appeared to be in perfect health. His stout frame was as
robust as ever. His skin seemed a shade darker, his wrinkles a degree finer,
his smile as white as the jungle-filtered sun shimmering through tufts of
thick, silver hair peeking beneath the brim of his straw, panama hat. He looked
as content as Peet had ever seen him, perched there as though nothing could be
more ordinary than sitting on an ancient throne in the middle of a wilderness.

“What
do you think of her?” John asked, rising to his feet and stepping aside to
allow them full view of the stone slab.

Matt
dropped the laden pack he’d had thrown over his shoulder and immediately
surveyed the structure. “You mean this has been here the whole time?” he asked
incredulously.

“In
situ,” John said.

Matt
shook his head. “All this time it’s been right under our noses. How did you
find this?”

John
smiled sheepishly. “Nature took its course,” he said with a shrug.

Peet
noticed the hacked branches and brush piled against the undergrowth nearby.
“Don’t tell me you cleared all of this yourself,” he said.

A
glimmer in John’s eye flashed before his smile. “I had a few days to kill.”

Of
course he didn’t.

Matt
was kneeling at the throne now, examining something inscribed on the stone
surface. He shifted his position to get a better angle. “Is this…this isn’t. No
wait. It is. This is Seven Macaw.”

John
nodded. “That was my assessment.”

“That
doesn’t look like a bird to me,” KC criticized, peering over Matt’s shoulder. “Looks
like a hailed out chunk of rock.”

Peet
stepped in for a closer look himself. He could see KC’s point. The carving atop
the throne was quite weathered, but he could still make out some sort of
psychedelic picture.

“It’s
iconography,” Matt explained.
“Very much in the Izapan
style.”

He
traced one of the two main figures with his figure. Peet could make out a human
face and legs, but the rest of it appeared more birdlike. “This is Seven Macaw,
the vainglorious polar god,” Matt continued. “You see this figure frequently on
the stelae in Izapa’s monument group A.”

“I
believe the similarity lies more with the monuments in group F,” John
interceded. “If you look closely, you see that Seven Macaw is upside down. In
fact, he’s falling from his perch.”

“Oh
yes,” Matt agreed. His finger shifted to two small anthropomorphic figures
standing just below the toppled deity. “And there’s the Twin Boys, having just
defeated Seven Macaw.”

“But
that’s not all,” John prompted. “Look who sits within the ball court just
behind the Twins.”

“One
Hunahpu,” Matt said.

“Exactly.”

KC
sighed impatiently. “Okay, none of that makes any sense to me.”

John
was quick to respond. “According to Mayan mythology, the Twins were sons of the
solar deity, One Hunahpu, who was decapitated during a battle with the Lords of
the Underworld. Along the way to resurrecting their father, the Twin Boys had a
number of adventures, including the defeat of the polar deity, Seven Macaw,
which is illustrated here. But this throne also displays the resurrection, or rebirth,
of One Hunahpu.”

“These
are both episodes within the Popol Vuh,” Matt said.

KC
threw her arms into the air. “Well, that explains everything.”

Peet
sensed her frustration through the dripping sarcasm in her tone. Luckily, he
knew a little about the Popol Vuh through the curriculum he taught back at the
university. “The Popol Vuh is a sacred book of the Maya—”

“The
Quiché Maya,” John quickly inserted.

“Right.
The Quiché Maya.
The pre-Columbian priests created a complex writing system using pictures and
hieroglyphs which they recorded in stone, ceramics and even in bark codices. Unfortunately,
as the Spanish conquest sought to destroy the indigenous cultures, starting
with the leaders and priests, the knowledge of Mayan writing was lost.”

“However, their cultural stories were not,”
John interrupted.
“These Mayan stories had evolved from the Izapans before them, and even the
Olmecs before
them
. During the
sixteenth century, Maya all across Mexico were being instructed by the
Spanish friars on everything from Christianity to the Latin alphabet. Armed
with this new form of writing, the Maya began preserving their own history and
traditions in books. The sacred book for the Quiché Maya is the Popol Vuh.”

“These
books were virtually unknown to the rest of the world until the eighteenth and
nineteenth century,” Peet added. “Once they were discovered, they were quickly
translated and inserted into the archaeological record.”

“Thank
heavens for that,” Matt said, straightening from his hover over the throne. “Without
the translation of the Mayan creation stories, we may have never understood Izapan
iconography. The stories that we read from these sixteenth century texts have
helped us identify characters that have been on display on Izapa’s stelae for
some two thousand years.”

KC
appeared unimpressed.
“Stories?
Who cares about two
thousand year old stories?”

“Oh,
many people,” John said. “Take the Bible for example. It’s the world’s number
one bestseller.”

“The
Bible is the inspired word of God,” Father Ruiz interjected. He’d been leaning
against a pillar of stone so quietly and for so long that Peet had nearly
forgotten he was even there.

“Then
there’s Stela 5,” Matt said. “It’s perhaps the most well known stela discovered
in Izapa. It clearly shows one of the lost tribes of Israel
arriving in the Americas.”

“That’s
the Mormon interpretation,” John countered. “Stela 5 also conforms to the
creation story in the Popol Vuh. In fact, the central theme to Izapa’s
monuments and stelas appears to be creation mythology with a particular
emphasis on the Courageous Twin story.”