land.
I liked this place. By day, I could watch the shadows of women draw water from the pool, slaves and peasants stooping to fill rounded jars with clear water, hoisting the full vessels to their heads, and moving away with the stately grace required to balance the heavy jars. They talked and laughed and joked among themselves and I liked to listen.
The wind rippled the water, and the moonlight laid a pale silver ribbon on the shining surface. Bats swooped low to catch insects that hovered just above the pool. I saw a movement on the path that led to the cenote and waited. Perhaps a slave sent to fetch water. Perhaps a young woman meeting a lover.
I heard the soft slapping of sandals against rock as a shadow crossed between me and the pool. The figure walked with a slight limp. There was a bulkiness about the head that suggested braided hair, a hint of feminine grace when the figure stooped to touch the water. She turned, as if to continue along the path, then stopped, staring in my direction.
I waited. Crickets trilled all around me. A frog croaked, but no frog answered. For a moment, I thought I had mistaken a woman of my own time for a shadow of the past. I greeted her in Maya, a language I speak tolerably well after ten long years of stammering and mispronunciation. My accent is not good—I struggle with subtleties of tone and miss the point of puns and jokes—but I can usually understand and make myself understood.
The person standing motionless by the edge of the pool did not speak for a moment. Then she said, "I see a living shadow. Why are you here?" By the sound of her voice, I guessed her to be a woman about my age. She spoke Maya with an ancient accent.
Shadows do not speak to me. For a moment, I sat silent. Shadows come and go and I watch them, but they do not speak, they do not watch me.
"Speak to me, shadow," said the woman. "I have been alone so long. Why are you here?"
The crickets filled the silence with shrill cries. I did not know what to say. Shadows do not talk to me.
"I stopped to rest," I said carefully. "It's peaceful here."
She was a shape in the darkness, no more than that. I could make out no details. She laughed, a soft low sound like water pouring from a jug, "Peace is not so easy to find. You do not know this place if you find it peaceful."
"I know this place," I said sharply, resenting this shadow for claiming I did not know a place that I considered my own. "For me, it is peaceful."
She stood motionless for a moment, her head cocked a little to one side. "So you think you belong here, shadow? Who are you?"
"They call me Ix Zacbeliz." When I was overseeing a dig at Ikil; the workmen had called me that; it meant "woman who walks the white road." The nickname was as close as I came to a Mayan name.
"You speak Maya," the woman said softly, "but do you speak the language of the Zuyua?" Her voice held a challenge.
The language of the Zuyua was an ancient riddling game. I had read the questions and answers in the Books of Chilam Balam, Mayan holy books that had been transcribed into European script and preserved when the original hieroglyphic books were destroyed. The text surrounding the questions suggested that the riddles were used to separate the true Maya from invaders, the nobility from the peasants. If I spoke the language of the Zuyua, I belonged. If not, I was an outsider.
The woman at the well spoke again, not waiting for my answer. "What holes does the sugarcane sing through?"
That was easy. "The holes in the flute."
"Who is the girl with many teeth? Her hair is twisted in a tuft and she smells sweet."
I leaned back against the temple stone, remembering the text from the ancient book. As I recalled, many of the riddles dealt with food. "The girl is an ear of corn, baked in a pit."
"If I tell you to bring me the flower of the night, what will you do?"
That one, I did not remember. I stared over her head and saw the first dim stars of evening. "There is the flower of the night. A star in the sky."
"And what if I ask you for the firefly of the night? Bring