The Falling Woman - Pat Murphy
In the ruins of an ancient Mayan city, archaeologist Elizabeth Butler confronts the shade of a long-dead priestess. And enters the twilight world of Mayan magic and Mayan blood sacrifice.
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“Murphy’s sharp behavioral observation, her rich Mayan background and the revolving door of fantasy and reality honorably recall the novels of Margaret Atwood.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Pat Murphy has mixed fantasy, horror and contemporary realism in a literate and absorbing tale.”
— Chicago Sun Times
“Murphy splendidly captures the atmosphere and spirit of the dig, and adds a well-realized backdrop…Impressive archaeological fantasy in dramatic Yucatán setting.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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This is the true account, when all was vague, all was silence, without motion and the sky was still empty. This is the first account, the first narrative. There was neither man nor beast, no bird, fish nor crab, no trees, rocks, caves nor canyons, no plants and no shrubs. Only the sky was there.
— Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
Notes for City of Stones
by Elizabeth Butler
There are no rivers on Mexico's Yucatán peninsula. The land is flat and dry and dusty. The soil is only a few feet deep, a thin layer of arable land over a shelf of hard limestone. The jungle that covers the land is made up of thin-leafed trees and thorny bushes that turn yellow in the long summer.
There are no rivers, but there is water hidden deep beneath the limestone. Here and there, the stone has cracked and cool water from beneath the earth has reached the surface and formed a pool.
The Maya called such pools ts'not—an abrupt, angular sort of a word. The Spanish conquerors who came to the Yucatan softened the word. Cenotes, they called these ancient wells. Whatever the name, the water is cold; the pools are deep.
Hidden beneath the water are fragments of the old Mayan civilization: broken pieces of pottery, figurines, jade ornaments, and bits of bone—sometimes human bone. In the mythos of the Maya, the cenotes were places of power belonging to the Chaacob, the gods who come from the world's four corners to bring the rain.
Dzibilchaltún, the oldest city on the Yucatán peninsula, was built around a cenote known as Xlacah. By Mayan reckoning, people settled in this place in the ninth katun. By the Christian calendar, that is about one thousand years before the death of Christ. But Christian reckoning seems out of place here. Despite the efforts of Spanish friars, Christianity sits very lightly on the land.
The ruins of Dzibilchaltún cover over twenty square miles. Only the central area has been mapped. One structure, a box-shaped building on a high platform, has been rebuilt. Archaeologists call this building the Temple of the Seven Dolls because seven doll-sized ceramic figures were found buried in its floor.
Archaeologists do not know what the ancient Maya called the building, nor what the Maya did in this temple.
The Temple of the Seven Dolls offers the best view of the surrounding area—a monotonous expanse of thirsty trees and scrubby bushes. Near the Temple of the Seven Dolls, the jungle has been cleared away, and mounds of rock rise from the flat land. Fragments of walls and sections of white limestone causeways are barely visible through the grass and soil. The view would be bleak were it not for the enormous sky, an unbroken expanse of relentless blue.
Do not look for revelations in the ancient ruins. You will find here only what you bring: bits of memory, wisps of the past as thin as clouds in the summer, fragments of stone that are carved with symbols that sometimes almost make sense.
Chapter One: Elizabeth Butler
“I dig through ancient trash,” I told the elegantly groomed young woman who had been sent by a popular women's magazine to write a short article on