a dry sky. Dust will possess the earth, a blight will be on the face of the land, the tender leaf will be destroyed, and the people will scatter afar in the. forest.' "
She smiled when she turned to look at me. "I spoke loudly so that the crowd could hear. And the h'menob wrapped me in soft cloths and rushed me away to the palace where the holy women lived. I think I fainted from the pain in my leg, and I don't remember the journey to the women's quarters. I woke on a soft pallet, tended by a frightened young woman who was sweet and attentive but told me nothing. The h'menob came and spoke to me, and I told them the prophecy again."
She straightened her shoulders, still smiling. "It took some time for my words to be heard by all. The h'menob softened the prophecy, but they could not deny it or destroy me, for either of those would have meant bad luck. So the people began leaving the city, slipping away into the forest. Stoneworkers toppled the monuments that they had carved, workmen threw down their tools and left temples half finished. After the farmers left, the fields were poorly tended and there was famine. There was pestilence. It takes time for a city to crumble. But it happened, here and in the other cities. My enemies were destroyed because they had tried to destroy me. That was the order of the katun. That was what Ix Chebel Yax said would be."
She laughed and the sound was like branches rattling against one another in a high wind. "The h'menob said I was mad. I was mad because I said words they did not wish to hear, because they could not control me, they could not drag me along like a tethered dog. And so they said I was mad."
The Mayan empire was overthrown and the cities abandoned because of an angry prophecy from a vengeful goddess.
"You know that I am not mad," she said. "You and I understand each other. We have much in common."
Someone knocked on the lintel of the door to my hut.
"I had enemies," Zuhuy-kak said softly.
"Liz?" I recognized the questioning tone as my daughter's.
"Yes." Zuhuy-kak was gone, vanished back into the shadows. "Come in."
Diane stopped just inside the door, as if unsure of her welcome. Her hair was still down around her shoulders, and her eyes were large in the candlelight. She had the look of a lost child wandering in the night.
"What's wrong?" I asked her.
"Couldn't sleep," she said, "I saw your light." She shrugged, then sniffed the air. "What's that smell?"
I sniffed, smelling the lingering aroma of incense. "Candle wax," 1 said. "And a hint of insect repellent." I tapped a cigarette from my pack and lit it.
She kept standing in the doorway, looking uncomfortable.
"Sit down," I said.
She perched awkwardly on the corner of my footlocker. "I'm just feeling restless. It happens sometimes.
If I sleep when I'm feeling like this, I have nightmares." She shrugged. "So I stay up. Why are you still up?"
"I was planning to go to bed soon. After this cigarette."
"I didn't mean to interrupt. I mean, if you were working on something ..." She slurred the words ever so slightly. She had been drinking with Tony—that explained why she was brave enough to come visit me, yet still feeling awkward enough to require an invitation to sit down.
"It's all right. Has Barbara already gone to sleep?"
"A while ago. The whole camp seems to be asleep."
"You never liked being in new places when you were a baby," I said, surprising myself a little by remembering. "You cried whenever we traveled. And when you were little, you had bad dreams."
She would walk at night, a diminutive child dwarfed by her flannel nightgown. I would tuck her back in, rock her to sleep, curl up beside her, and listen to the whisper of her breath coming and going.
Diane shrugged a little, leaning forward. "I still have bad dreams. I always have trouble sleeping in a new bed. When I went to college, I was insomniac for a month. I told Dad about it and he prescribed sleeping pills. I don't use them much."
"Robert always did prefer external remedies," I said dryly.
"He always treated the symptom, not the cause." A pause. I took a puff on my cigarette and watched Diane's face.
"What's the cause?" she asked.
I shrugged. "If I knew that, I'd sleep better myself."