Panacea (27 page)

Laura studied it, comparing it to what she remembered of Chaim's. She'd brought a photo of his tattoo along, but it was back in the Jeep.

“The line in Chaim's is angled the other way. Is that significant?”

“It points to the Wound.”

“Wound? What wound?”

“The Wound—the injury the All-Mother suffered to bring us the cure.”

“And the shooting star—the comet or meteor or whatever—what does that mean?”

“The comet represents the birth of the cure.”

“When was that?”

“I do not know. But it was long, long ago.”

Laura knew that in ancient times comets were seen as signs of portent—either for good or bad, depending on the culture. Maybe a comet had appeared around the time someone first boiled these plants and believed it a cure-all.

“What about the snake? Are snakes a part of the cure?”

“No. Only the plants.”

“Then why is one front and center on the tattoo?”

“I do not know. I was never told.”

Laura shook her head, baffled. “I'm having an awfully hard time following this.”

“You say you want to understand.” Ix'chel wasn't asking a question.

“Yes, of course I do.”

She shook her head. “But you see, not everything can be understood. Some things are not made to be understood. This is what I was told and this is what I believe.”

Spoken like a true fundamentalist. But for Laura, everything could be understood—eventually—given sufficient facts. Sometimes, though, the facts were elusive.

“But how—I don't mean to grill you, but how can it point to this Wound if you're always moving around?”

She smiled. “Ah. I see. No, it points to the Wound when I say the prayer.” As if anticipating Laura's next question, she hurried on. “Every fall, on the night when the dark begins to overcome the light, I must journey to the place of my birth—which is here—and lie facedown with my head toward the North Star, and thank the All-Mother for suffering the Wound.”

 … on the night when the dark begins to overcome the light …
that had to be the autumnal equinox.

“What is the prayer?”

Ix'chel spread her shirt on the ground and lay prone upon it.

“I lie just like this and say it.” She began to chant in the Yucatec dialect.

“‘Twixt the house of the fallen godmen

And the tomb of the fallen star

That slew summer,

Auburon lies drowning.

He sleeps,

Martyred and imprisoned

Yet mocking his oppressors.

He sleeps in the Wound,

Midmoon from the godmen gate

Where five men stand above his door.

His guardian leg shall bear you to new life.'”

The chant neither scanned nor rhymed, which suggested that it had not been composed in Mayan. As Ix'chel lay there, Laura noticed that the transecting line ran east-northeast and west-southwest.

It points to the Wound …

“What does the prayer mean?”

Ix'chel rose and slipped back into her T-shirt.

“I do not know.”

“It mentions something about a ‘tomb of the fallen star.' That looks like a falling star behind the staff and the snake. Do you know—?”

“All I know is that I must say it on that night.”

An idea was taking shape …

“Do all of you … what do you call yourselves?”

“Sylyk.”

“Is that the name of your”—she didn't want to say
cult
—“your religion?”

“We are simply the Children … all people are Children of the All-Mother. But Children such as myself are known as
sylyk
 … an ancient word that means healer.”

“Okay. And do all of you
sylyk
go to your birthplace and face the North Star at the equinox every year?”

“Yes. It is our law.”

“Then Chaim would have gone to his home during the equinox and—”

Ix'chel blinked back sudden tears. “Chaim did not have time…”

Laura was picturing Chaim lying on his belly in Brooklyn. If you extended Ix'chel's tattoo line and his, where would they cross? The Wound?

 … the injury the All-Mother suffered to bring us the cure …

Perhaps the
source
of the supposed cure?

If she could find the source, maybe she could get a sample for Stahlman. Not that it was going to help him, but at least she would have completed her part of the bargain.

She pointed to the earth below their feet. “Could I bring my friend here, to this spot, to try an experiment?”

Ix'chel looked skeptical. “The big man? No.”

“He can be trusted.”

She shook her head. “I speak only to you.”

Damn.

“Okay. Then let me run back for a picture of Chaim's back. I want to show you something.”

“Do not take long.”

Laura started toward the Jeep at a run. “Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back.”

 

5

When she reached the Jeep, Rick was nowhere in sight. Their luggage lay unguarded and exposed through the shattered rear window.

“Rick? Rick!”

“Coming.”

She turned and spotted him emerging from the trees near the Jeep's hood. His green T-shirt was spotted with darker patches of sweat. The veins on his glistening arms were bulging. His safari jacket had hidden how muscular he was.

“Where've you been?”

“Working out a little. Calisthenics, mostly. Found a good horizontal branch for—”

“Great, great. Do you have a compass?”

“Can't imagine traveling into the outback without one. Why?”

“I need to measure a line from a point here at a certain angle from north.”

“You mean an azimuth?”

“Yes, if that's what it's called.”

“What for?”

She gave Rick a quick rundown of the mythology of the panaceans—the Wound, the prayer, the tattoo, the equinox ritual.

“So she's talking,” he said. “Great. You learned a lot in a little while.”

“Well, I've
heard
a lot, but I don't feel I
know
much more than when we left JFK. It's all folk tales and rituals and All-Mother mumbo-jumbo.”

They opened the rear of the Jeep. Rick pawed through his duffel while she searched through her bag for Chaim's belt. She found it under the photo of his tattoo. She hoped Ix'chel could decipher its symbols.

Rick held up the compass. “Which way do we go?”

Laura shook her head. “Not ‘we.' Just me. Whatever trust I've established is fragile. She'll clam up if you're there.”

His expression as he handed her the compass said he didn't like it. “You know what to do?”

Laura realized she had only a vague idea. “I'm going to get the angle—the azimuth—of the line of her tattoo from north.”

“This have something to do with why we're here?”

“I hope so.”

“We talking polar north or magnetic?”

“There's a difference?”

“Sure is. Magnetic moves around—varies from a hundred to a thousand miles or more.” He tapped the compass in her hand. “This will point you toward magnetic north.”

“Ix'chel mentioned the North Star.”

“That's different. That's Polaris and that's polar north because Polaris is located straight up from Earth's axis.”

She looked at the sunny sky. Polaris was somewhere up there right now, just not visible. She remembered hunting for the North Star as a kid: simply find the Big Dipper and follow a line up from the leading edge of its cup. The first bright star you saw was Polaris.

“I can't see stars in the day. What do I do?”

“Don't see much choice but to wait for sundown and hope it's clear.”

Damn. She did
not
want to spend another night here—not with a broken rear window.

He added, “Unless our friendly neighborhood panacean has a solution.”

Laura hurried off and was relieved to find Ix'chel waiting where she'd left her.

Resigning herself to another night here, she said, “Can we come back after dark so you can see the North Star and show us which way you lie?”

“I know the way,” she said, pointing. “The star is always between those two trees.”

Laura remembered Polaris being higher in the sky, but maybe things were different here.

“Can you lie down now as you did before?”

Ix'chel stepped back. “Why do you want this?”

Good question. Laura gave her an honest answer. She showed her the photo of Chaim's tattoo. “I'm curious as to why the lines are different. The Wound is not a secret place, is it?”

“No…”

“I seek to harm no one. I want only to understand.”

Ix'chel hesitated, then stretched herself out on the ground as before. But this time she kept her shirt on and simply lifted its back enough to reveal the tattoo.

If Ix'chel was right, her true north was a tad off the compass's magnetic north, which Rick said was usually the case. Making the adjustment, Laura calculated that the diagonal on her tattoo ran on an azimuth seventy-two degrees north-northeast and two fifty-two degrees south-southwest.

Laura pictured a map in her head. South-southwest took her through Campeche, Guatemala, and back into Mexico. North-northeast took her to … she could picture only the Caribbean course of the line. Beyond that was uncertain. Cuba and then … Europe.

Great. That narrowed it down.

As Ix'chel rose, she spotted the belt in Laura's hand. Her eyes widened when she saw the markings on the inner surface.

“Where did you get this?”

“Chaim was wearing it when he died. I—”

She was unbuckling and pulling off her own belt. “I have one too. All
sylyk
have one.” She held hers and Chaim's up side by side. “See.”

Laura did see: two identical sequences, exactly the same size, spaced exactly the same.

“What does it mean?”

She shrugged. “I do not know, but we are to wear it always.”

There's too damn much you don't know!
Laura wanted to scream, but bit her tongue.

She took back Chaim's belt and said, “When will you make more
ikhar
?”

“It will be a while. The seeds must arrive and they must grow before I have plants to boil.”

“No idea when the next seeds…?”

She shook her head. “The All-Mother tells the
urschell
and the
urschell
obeys.”

Rolling up Chaim's belt, Laura felt herself getting ticked off at the All-Mother. “What if—?”

“I can tell you no more,” Ix'chel said. “I fear I have told you too much already.”

Without another word or a look back, she ran off.

Laura's initial impulse was to follow her, but she saw no upside to that. Ix'chel was fleeing to the safety of her people.

Back at the Jeep, she found Rick waiting for her. She gave him a quick summary of what had gone down with Ix'chel.

She sighed. “But all in all I've got a feeling I was wasting my time. I don't think her position for Polaris was right. Too low…”

“Lower than when you were growing up in Utah?” Rick said. “Yeah, it would be. The farther north you go, the higher it gets, until you reach the North Pole where it's directly overhead. Move south and it gets lower and lower. Cross the equator and you can't see it at all unless you're on a mountain.”

“You're just a font of knowledge, aren't you. Would you happen to have a map of the world handy as well?”

“Sorry. Just Mexico. There's always Google Maps, but I can't access that without an Internet connection.”

She had the sat phone, but the screen was too small to be of much use. She noticed Rick pulling a gizmo from his pocket.

“What's that?”

“GPS. I want to pinpoint this location for future reference so we can run an azimuth through it and see where it takes us.”

“Right. Then we get an azimuth from Chaim's tattoo and see where they intersect. Hopefully at this Wound, whatever it is.”

I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about.

“I guess that means we head back to New York.”

Back to New York …
She couldn't wait.

“Uh-huh. Williamsburg, here we come.”

 

6

On the drive from the village, Laura had the wheel again. As they neared the exit for the Chetumal airport on Route 186, Rick pointed to a sign indicating
Av Insurgentes
off to the left.

“That looks like the main drag. See if we can find an office supply place.”

“What for?”

“Need a protractor, remember?”

Since neither of them had been able to figure out how to trace the azimuth on Google Maps, they'd decided on the retro route.

Not only was Avenida Insurgentes indeed the main drag, but they hadn't gone a mile before Laura spotted a familiar red-and-white sign.

She had to laugh. “Office Depot. I don't believe it.”

She stayed with the Jeep—the broken rear window meant it couldn't be left unattended—while Rick ran inside. He emerged ten minutes later with a flimsy plastic bag, grinning like a little kid.

“Got us a protractor—a three-hundred-sixty-degree model—a ruler, world map, pens, and pencils. We're all set.”

Half an hour later they were in the waiting area for the charter service that would fly them back to Canc
ú
n. Rick had filled out forms for the damage to the Jeep, blaming it on an attempted carjacking by a gang of teens. While their charter was being readied, Rick spread the map out on a chair.