Ice Shock(19)

As in, the codex is not written in Classic Mayan.

And then I remember what they told me when I was in Ek Naab meeting the other Bakabs, descendents of Itzamna who guard the four Books.

The Books of Itzamna are written in code.

Of course. Mayan glyphs, but not Mayan language. Like writing that uses letters from the English alphabet but is in another language.

But how to crack the code?

From what I can tell, the “translation” page is nothing more than an incomplete syllabary—a translation of some of the syllables. As if someone, perhaps Eric Thompson himself, tried to decode the Mayan inscription.

My guess is that he got no further than I did. And I’m sitting here with a Mayan dictionary—which Thompson couldn’t have had, because in his day, no one alive could read Mayan hieroglyphs…

And yet. I keep staring at the “translated” words I’ve written. There’s something weirdly familiar about them. I just can’t tell what.

kan-ta-na. el-ek-to mak-ne-ti-ka pul-sa.

Mom knocks softly at my door. “Feeling better?”

I’m miles away, thinking about glyphs. “Hmm?”

Mom clears her throat, a little nervously. “Can we talk about Christmas again?”

I look up in silence.

“I’ve been thinking that I’d like us to go on a retreat.”

I gulp down a mouthful of my sandwich. “A retreat? Like, in a convent or something?”

“Yes.”

“No way. No way on earth.”

Mom presses her lips together tightly. In a very quiet voice, she says, “Well, let’s talk about it some other time, when you’re feeling better.”

“There’s no way I’m spending Christmas at a convent!”

“Hmm,” she says vaguely. “Oh, I almost forgot, there was a postcard for you today. From Mexico. There must be some kind of funny ad campaign going on, because I’ve had a couple too. You might have seen them lying around.”

I stare at her, baffled. “Postcard?”

“They’re in the kitchen. You didn’t see?”

I follow Mom downstairs as she carries back the tray. In the kitchen, she pulls a postcard from a pile of envelopes. Then she takes two postcards from the fridge door. One I recognize as a photo of Tikal, the famous Mayan city they used as the rebel base in the first Star Wars film.

How long have those postcards been on the fridge door? I’ve managed to miss them entirely.

She tosses all three onto the table. All are photographs of different Mayan cities. I turn them over, one by one.

The same capitalized writing. A few words on each card.

DEATH.UNDID.HARMONY.

WHAT.KEY.

Those are the messages on Mom’s two cards.

My latest message reads, ZOMBIE.DOWNED.

“It must be some kind of game,” she says. “We must be on some mailing list after your trip this summer.”

“I’ve got one of these postcards,” I tell Mom. “You didn’t say that there were others …”

I check the location stamps. All mailed from Veracruz. I get my own first postcard and check the dates, then arrange the cards in order of arrival. Put together, the messages read like this:

WHAT.KEY.HOLDS.BLOOD.

DEATH.UNDID.HARMONY.

ZOMBIE.DOWNED.

“It’s rather odd,” Mom admits. I glance at her. Not a trace of irony—she totally means it! It’s amazing what your brain will miss when you’re completely in denial.

But me—I know better. To the untrained eye, it might look like gibberish, but somewhere, somehow, there’s a message. It’s meant for me.

And it almost certainly spells danger.





10


If there’s going to be danger, then suddenly a retreat seems like a pretty safe place for my mom.

“So tell me more about this retreat …”

“We could stay with the Benedictines at Worth Abbey … they’re really interesting and lovely people, and it’s not all praying, you know …”

Warily I say, “Mom … you do know I don’t even believe in God anymore?”

She waves a hand, shrugs. “Oh, all teenagers go through that. The thing is to keep going to Mass, so that you’re always open to the Holy Spirit.”

“But … how can I believe in a God that let my dad be murdered?”

Mom sighs. “That’s the sort of thing you can talk about at the retreat. There’ll be people around who can answer those questions better than I.”

I shake my head. “I’m not going. But …”

“Go on …”

I take a deep breath. “I think you should go. It’d be good for you, over Christmas.”

“But, Josh … without you?”

“You need something like this. And me … I need to be with my friends.”