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    The Last Maya Shaman: Part I
    The Last Maya Shaman: Part I
    The Last Maya Shaman: Part I
    Ebook96 pages2 hours

    The Last Maya Shaman: Part I

    By Marjorie Bicknell Johnson

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    About this ebook

    Maya princess Chanla “Pesh” Pex, as a direct descendant of a Maya king, is destined to be a shaman, but she hopes to fool the gods by never spending the night in a sacred cave. She learns to read the glyphs written on the “stone trees” at a ruin in Yucatán, wins a college scholarship to study archaeology, and tries to join the modern world. She finds an ancient Mayan bark book with a riddle about hidden gold or jade. While searching for the treasure, she enters a cave and interrupts a knife-wielding looter. When he leaves her to die in the dark, she curses him to death by crocodile and discovers powers she didn’t know she had. Using her talents as a shaman, Pex traces the stolen Maya artifacts to a black market kingpin and becomes the Indiana Jones of the Yucatán.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMarjorie Bicknell Johnson
    Release dateJan 9, 2012
    ISBN9781465960306
    The Last Maya Shaman: Part I
    Author

    Marjorie Bicknell Johnson

    Marjorie Bicknell Johnson is fascinated by ancient civilizations and has accompanied archaeologists to Maya ruins in Yucatán and Central America. A pilot, she has flown small airplanes throughout the American Southwest and taken off under a bridge in a floatplane. A mathematician and teacher, her articles have appeared in The Fibonacci Quarterly and other academic journals. She has written two novels as well as short stories published in anthologies. Marjorie and her husband Frank, both pilots and both native Californians, live near San Francisco.

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      Book preview

      The Last Maya Shaman - Marjorie Bicknell Johnson

      The Last Maya Shaman: Part One

      By Marjorie Bicknell Johnson

      Copyright Marjorie Bicknell Johnson 2011

      Published by Marjorie Bicknell Johnson at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition, License notes

      This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form, with the exception of quotes used in reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locale or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, with the exception of Friar Diego de Landa, Bishop of Yucatán, 1573 – 1579, and his book, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán.

      Chapter 1. Yucatán

      Yucatán, New Spain, 1562

      The blazing fire in the square lit the north face of the temple and threw Nachi’s elongated shadow across the nearly vertical steps above him, steps so narrow that he climbed with his feet aligned with the length of the stones to keep his balance. He carried his book and a ceramic incense burner in the shape of an owl with a human face. He had been a fool to trust the Spanish missionary, Fray Diego de Landa, with the truth, beauty, and wisdom found in Maya literature.

      Nachi Aj Itz’aat had known Landa for more than ten years. Only last week they climbed these very steps for one of their many discussions, Landa in his long gray-brown robe and sandals, Nachi wearing white linen.

      Landa had said, Mayan books contain nothing but superstition and the devil’s falsehoods.

      Does the Bible have no legends? Nachi asked.

      Landa scowled. Mayan books reveal rituals for blood sacrifice.

      Wherein Nachi replied, You drink the blood of Christ during mass.

      Landa’s face turned red as if he had swallowed too much hot chili as he said, We must burn the blasphemous books. He had sentenced other Maya priests who disagreed with him to interrogation by torture, but not Nachi.

      The destruction of Mayan books is the murder of all that is Maya, Nachi said.

      Landa glared. You will not interfere, Nachi.

      Nachi had backed away without answering. Anger still smoldered in his gut.

      Nachi finished his climb, placed the incense burner on the highest temple platform, and turned his attention to the scene below in the city plaza. He heard the wails of women weeping. He smelled the stench of burning flesh, the flesh of Maya royalty, and saw Dzul and Xiu suspended over fires, their arms secured with stout sisal ropes.

      When the Spanish interrogator ordered the Maya priest Dzul to renounce false gods, Dzul made no answer. They whipped Dzul until his bloody flesh hung in ribbons and his head dangled to one side. Nachi vomited when Dzul’s arm gave way and his lifeless body swung from the other arm.

      Next to the priest Dzul, the Maya prince Xiu also hung by his wrists, arms extended, ankles wearing weights, over the fire that would soon consume him. Xiu did not cry out, even when flames surrounded his body. Nachi wanted to strike down the Spanish devils and rescue Xiu, but he was powerless. He tasted vomit. He should have died with the other Maya leaders.

      Nachi moved the incense burner to the western end of the platform. He sat cross-legged and opened his book, his life-work: a treatise on astronomy that chronicled 2920 days of precise cycles of the wandering star Landa called Venus. Landa, that devious fox whose mind ran on a twisted path, had betrayed Nachi. Landa had called his work profane and irreverent and ordered it burned with the other Mayan books.

      Nachi clung to his book and watched a conquistador throw another manuscript onto the fire. Its orange and yellow flames flashed across the metal armor of the Spanish soldier and licked the night sky like hungry tongues. Maya eyes flickered like sputtering candles, eyes hidden in shadow, doomed to a future without all that made them Maya. Nachi envisioned the Maya culture as a phantom trading boat in dark waters: her cargo lost in a sea of ignorance, her crew of scribes perished, none left to tell the cause of her destruction.

      By teaching Landa how to read Mayan hieroglyphs, Nachi had become an unwitting party to the murder of Maya knowledge. That viper Landa had used those very teachings as justification for burning the Mayan books by orders from the Spanish king. Nachi grieved for the Maya culture, being destroyed like a sunflower whose head was struck off by one blow of the conqueror’s sword. At that moment, he decided to end his life.

      Nachi removed the lid from the ceramic jar and blew across the smoldering copal incense inside. He passed his obsidian knife through the copal smoke and chanted ritual words for blood sacrifice. He held his book, withheld from Landa, one last sacrifice to the supreme god Kukulkan, and prayed. I sacrifice myself and my life work to you, supreme one.

      With one swift stroke, Nachi drew the knife across his throat. He dropped the blade and pulled the book no one would ever read close to his chest. Blood spurted from his carotid artery and sprayed over the pages of his astronomical calculations. He left his blood sacrifice, his precious book, behind the incense burner and threw himself down the steep stairs. His body collapsed, falling, rolling and bumping against stone temple steps. His blood left a thin trail of despair.

      Mayan writing died with Nachi, but the legend of the priest who defied the Spaniards while the books burned lived on. Maya royalty, who fled to rural areas, have never forgiven Landa nor have they forgotten their proud heritage.

      Yucatán, Mexico, 1990s

      Chanlajun Pesh Pex sat with the birds in her hideaway on a broad branch in the ficus tree, safe from the spirits in the dead house, a thatch and bamboo deserted dwelling. She twisted her long black braid to enjoy its silkiness and listened to three red squawking macaws. She lived nearby in a village too small to have a name, a place where no Spaniards hunted her grandmother.

      Her tree grew in the center of a crumbling stone building without a roof and filled the remains of the ancient room with tangled roots wrapped around the steps like long gray snakes. Mounds of mossy building stones and rows of grey limestone blocks enclosed an area clear of vegetation, but surrounded by patches of jungle. The k’ubul birds, accustomed to her visits, built hanging nests. When one came nearer, she drew its picture into her notebook.

      Tired of sketching birds, she pretended to be a scribe and drew her favorite symbols from the great stones below.

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