Words of Love - By Hazel Hunter Page 0,12
just poured out of her. It had taken him weeks to puzzle this out. He’d nearly built a library back at the camp to help decipher it. He was pretty sure some of these glyphs were completely unknown. He’d had to mix and match parts of other glyphs to create something that seemed reasonable.
But she was doing it all in her head.
Even knowing what it read, he could barely keep up with her.
Her pronunciation of the K’iche was mesmerizing. It was soft and nuanced, as though she was a native speaker–a strange mix of soft sounds like French and quiet clicks.
“Shee-bal-bah,” she muttered, giving the X its soft “sh” sound.
Suddenly, she was on to the next stela.
It was as though she were consuming it, going fast, like speed-reading. She was already on to the third.
Incredible.
He stayed right behind her, though she was oblivious to him. This was the important one. He didn’t want to miss it. He tensed as her hands ran over the glyphs, top to bottom. And then her breath caught.
Slowly, she uttered the words that he’d been waiting to hear. The words that he dared hope he’d gotten right.
“Tulan Zuyua,” she whispered.
He could have screamed, shouted it to the world, but he didn’t.
“Yes,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “I knew it.”
Legendary, mythic, and impossible. He’d found the birthplace of the Maya, the realm of Blood Gatherer, the Red King, and the first Maya lord.
Now she went to the back of the stela, as though drawn there by the Great Lord himself. As she stared at it, she went to her knees.
“Cuchumaquic,” she whispered. “Blood Gatherer.”
He knelt next to her.
She was breathing hard through parted lips, with one hand resting on the stela.
“Can you believe it?” he said, hardly able to contain himself.
Until this moment, he hadn’t realized how badly he’d wanted to share this with somebody.
“The Red King,” he said. “Here.”
She didn’t move.
“Jessica?”
Though her eyes were open, there was a glazed look to them. Her pupils were huge and she was still breathing hard.
“Jessica?” he tried again and touched her outstretched arm.
She slowly blinked and then swallowed.
“Jessica?”
Then she looked at his hand on her arm and finally to his face. She was smiling.
“The Red King,” she said quietly.
He knew he must be grinning like a kid.
“I know,” he gushed. “You see why I couldn’t tell anybody.”
As far as the rest of the world knew, the Red King was a myth. His city, Tulan Zuyua, was a part of a migration fable, a story the Maya told in order to legitimize their rule by divine right.
But some fables had a basis in fact and the Red King was one.
Jessica nodded and looked back up at the stela.
“The paint,” she said quietly.
“Perfectly preserved in the cavern,” he said, nodding. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I have,” she said, still looking at it.
“What?” he said.
Nearly every free moment that he wasn’t here, he was researching similar sites, similar glyphs, and the other sites in the area. There was nothing with this kind of preservation of color.
“Where?” he asked.
“In my head,” she said. She slowly turned to him. “Would you think I’m crazy if I told you I’ve always seen the glyphs like this?”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You see them colored? I thought you’d never been to the field?”
“I haven’t,” she said, finally taking her hand off the stela. “It’s just that…even in black and white photos, this is how I see them.”
He stared at her and then at the stela.
“Not like these colors,” she said. “But ever since I can remember, from the very first time I saw an image of a Maya panel, I saw colors.”
He looked back to her.
“That’s how I remember the glyphs or the texts that I read,” she said, quietly. “Everything has a color and some things...” She looked up at the stela. “Some images and words have a feeling.”
He looked up at the image of the Red King holding the severed head of an enemy, a standard Maya portrait of power. She had actually recoiled from that image.
“The Blood Gatherer deserves his name,” she said. “I don’t know why but…it’s not a good thing.”
He scowled at the image. It seemed like the usual.
“Where are the other six caves?” she said.
His head whipped around and he knew his mouth must be open.
“Popol Vuh,” she said, smiling. “It says there are seven in all.”
“You’re amazing,” he said. “You know that?”
A shy little smile appeared on her lips and she looked down at the lantern.
She