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The ear ringing faded when I tried to talk. “A centipede”—cough—“tried”—double cough—“to kill me.” But when I looked down, there was no centipede blood on my hands, my shirt, or Fuego.
Rosie sniffed me ferociously, checking me out. Then she grunted once, like Yeah, right.
“Not possible,” Kip said. “The labyrinth is a place of safety and peace. Of visions and answers to your problems. Tell me, what exactly did you see? Before the chapat.”
I hesitated, standing upright. “Memories.” I turned my hands over, looking for any cuts or bites, but there were none. Had I dreamed the whole thing?
“Ah, the Hall of Memories,” he said. “That’s usually a nice walk.”
“You mean hell walk,” I said.
“‘Your mind is a gift, a miraculous warehouse of answers,’” he said. “That’s a direct quote from one of my old textbooks. I wasn’t much of a student, but I remember that one in particular—”
Rosie growled, revealing her fangs.
“Welp,” Kip squeaked, jumping back. “Ahem. Yes, okay. Whatever you saw had to be important. What else?”
No way was I going to tell him about Ah-Puch or the words that were still flickering inside me like a freshly lit flame. But maybe the spirit would know what the image of the calendars meant. I stood and said, “I saw three wheels with glyphs and numbers.”
“Ah,” he said. “So, you have a dance with time.”
“Dance with time?” I echoed.
“Well, you must be preoccupied with it if you saw the calendar. Are you worried about growing old? Or running out of time? Or—”
“I heard a voice, too,” I said. “The centipede said K’iin.” I knew that word. It meant sun or day.
His face went pale. He began to shoo me away. “Time for you to go. Ha! I meant to say you must go. I didn’t say time. Okay, buh-bye.”
“Wait! What’s wrong?”
Rosie paced nervously, grunting trails of smoke. Was this why she had brought me here? To see an
ancient calendar? To hear a voice whisper sun or day? Did she know Ah-Puch would come to tell me good-bye? There was no way she could have known that little peace walk would bring me face-to-face with a killer arthropod. Unless Ixtab’s dumb orb had messed with my dog’s brain somehow.
The spirit twisted his fingers. “Please. You really have to go now.”
“What are you so afraid of?” I asked as a sick dread filled me. “K’iin? The calendar?”
“Would you quit saying that word?” He glanced over his shoulder. “We are not to speak of this.”
“Why?”
“Because what you saw”—Kip looked around, then leaned closer—“it’s sacrilege. Do you hear me? I could lose an ear or an eye if caught talking about it.” He shuddered, grasping his lobes. “I like my ears and eyes.”
“Look,” I said angrily, “you’re going to lose a lot more than that if…”
The guy’s face was filled with terror. I took a breath. Getting mad at him wasn’t going to give me the answers I needed, and blaming him wasn’t going to make me feel better.
“Sorry,” I said, more calmly this time. “I have to know. Please. I think this is why I was supposed to come here. For this message.” A message someone didn’t want me to receive.
He stared at me with wild eyes. “You must go!”
“I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
Clenching his jaw, he turned away.
“I’ll put in a good word for you with the gods…” I said in a last-ditch effort.
