The 52nd (The 52nd Saga Book 1) (19 page)

“Why?” she asked, stretching her legs in front of her as she leaned
back.

“Because he destroyed everything, every ritual, every tradition.”

She stared back blankly, and I knew she needed more. I started playing with the zipper of one of her boots as a distraction. “Do you
mind?”

She shook her head, and I continued.

“In my culture, the Celestial gods use two Mayan calendars, a religious calendar of two hundred and sixty days and a solar calendar of three hundred and sixty-five days. If you combine these two, the least amount of time between repetitions of the same two days is fifty-two years. It’s called a calendar
round.”

I pinched and rolled the metal between my fingers as she watched
me.

“The year Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas, 1492, was the same year the calendar round ended. Remember, we were a superstitious people, and we believed calendar events were foretelling. Twenty-six years later, Cortez came. And when word spread fast throughout all the tribes that a white man had appeared on the shores of Vera Cruz, my people believed he was Quetzalcoatl, a god who was supposed to return to us at that time. This single event upset the balance of Cosmos between the gods of the Underworld—what we call Xibalba—the earth, and the Celestials.”

“Upset?”

“Don’t you see? Cortez’s arrival caused a collision between three worlds that were never meant to be together in the first place. Cortez set off one of the most unforgettable clashes of civilizations in history, and Xibalba and the Celestials were affected as well. Xibalba’s compulsion to make human sacrifices no longer mattered because the human believers were dying in large numbers, in battle against Cortez and from the diseases his people carried. There was no one left to perform the rituals.”

Her chest rose with distress under her peacoat. “Why do you blame
Cortez?”

“Because of his immature inability to accept another culture,” I grunted. “His wrongful pride led him so far astray that he never questioned why the Aztecs were sacrificing humans every day. He had no idea a dark force compelled them; he only saw barbarism. He destroyed anything to do with any religion other than his own. Anyone or anything that stood in his way was killed on the spot, and the rest of the believers were branded like cattle. A lot of blood covered the dirt roads in those
days.”

I looked toward Zara, waiting. She was silent. Her light hair rippled down in waves like the petals of a white rose in a dark abyss. She wasn’t running through the woods screaming, so I presumed I hadn’t scared her yet. I looked back to my hands, remembering how much blood had been shed on them—and by them. Feeling disgusted, I let go of her boots and tucked my fingers under my
arms.

“Cortez had many weapons and armor made of metals we had never seen before. It made his warriors strong, which is another reason our people at first believed him to be Quetzalcoatl. When tribes fought against him, he wiped out hundreds of our men, whereas we could only wipe out a handful of his. But Cortez had his eye set on my father’s city, Tenochtitlan, because of its wealth and size. It took just under two years, but it seemed that Tenochtitlan went from population twenty-five million to one million almost overnight.”

When I paused, I heard the quiet chattering of her teeth. I fetched the spare blanket from the backseat and wrapped it around
her.

“Thanks,” she said, snuggling inside the wool. “What happened
next?”

I settled next to her more comfortably.

“Every city that fell to the Spanish throne meant fewer people offering human sacrifices to Xibalba. So the Underworld gods decided to come to Earth themselves to take the sacrifices. The Aztecs suffered these abductions while at the same time being under attack by Cortez. In desperation, the humans begged the Celestial gods to salvage what was left of our lands and population. The Celestials negotiated an agreement to provide human sacrifices to the Underworld, and my family accepted responsibility for seeing that everyone abides by that agreement.”

I waited anxiously while she studied me. I could almost hear her mind working. “What was so special about you guys that you were
chosen?”

“The Celestials saw my family as a different breed. We represented Aztec and Mayan, god and human. My father was a member of the Aztec royal family and my mother a Mayan goddess. It was pretty much a done deal for us to become these ‘vanquishers of evil,’ especially when the Celestials learned that my mother had kept her identity secret from the humans for all her years on
Earth.”

Her gaze was perfectly still. I lowered my chin and raised my eyebrows.

“Which is hell, by the way—watching humans fall when we have the power to help them,” I
added.

I felt uncomfortable in my skin as she pushed hair out of her face with an arm still carefully tucked underneath the blanket. She was so beautiful. I never imagined that telling the truth about myself would have a beguiling effect. She looked at me differently
now.

“My parents met by accident. At the time, my father was the prince of Tenochtitlan and had been sent by the king to trade with the Tabascans, a neighboring Aztec tribe on the east coast. While he was crossing the mountain pass outside the city, he was captured by locals and taken for sacrifice. My mother found him locked up in one of their cages. He was weak but well enough to walk. She helped him escape, and they returned to Tenochtitlan. During that time, Mayans and Aztecs were not allowed to marry. Even though my mother had saved my father’s life, the king despised her because she was a Mayan. But it was only a matter of time until her nurturing love, a rare commodity in those times, made everyone adore her for who she was. She never admitted to being a goddess, and eventually they were allowed to
marry.

“After they married, my mother told Father that it wasn’t safe to be in Tenochtitlan anymore. They moved east toward the coast and settled in a lost city called Tajin. My earliest childhood memories are of playing Tlatchi and throwing spears in the marshes near the city. Mother ordered my sister and me to keep our demigod natures a secret, saying it wasn’t safe for others to know, that dark times were ahead. And then, shortly after that, we learned why Tajin had been abandoned. It was the place of Mictlan, who is one of the rulers of the Underworld.”

She looked confused.

“The name means ‘place of the dead,’” I explained. “Today, the Underworld can take people from anywhere in the world. But then, before the agreement, Tajin was where the Underworld took its sacrifices. We didn’t know this until people in the city started disappearing. The abductees’ family members complained to my mother and father that they were seeing their missing loved ones in the smoke of the incense in their home and in the shadows of
night.”

I could sense the chills rippling on her smooth skin as she buried her nose under the blanket. “Like
ghosts?”

I nodded. “My parents discovered that it was the executioners, those shadows that have come after you, snatching people. The Underworld gods were angry that humans were giving them fewer hearts than they were used to receiving. But at the time, my parents didn’t know that Cortez was destroying cities and disrupting the daily ritual. When they did hear what Cortez was doing, they became fearful. They knew our city did not have enough warriors to fight him, especially after they learned that our Tabascan neighbors had been massacred. They had twice the population we had. I was fifteen when my parents decided we had to leave Tajin. They warned our people what was happening, and that they were leaving the city. Every individual had the choice to stay or go. Those who chose to stay—which was most of them—were sacrificed by other nearby tribes who still had temples, or forced to fight against
Cortez.”

She poked her head out, turtle-like, and pulled the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. “But where did you
go?”

“A historical site now infested with tourists.” I hesitated as I remembered, sadly, how it once was. “Tulum.”

“You actually lived in Tulum?” She looked funny, wrapped tightly in the blanket and yet radiating energy, and my desire to touch her greatly increased.

Still, I laughed to think that my story was enlightening. “Actually, yes. I lived there until I turned—until I became immortal. It wasn’t until Tenochtitlan fell, with millions of casualties, and the crusades were moving south to the Maya territory that the Celestial gods finally realized the cosmic balance was getting out of control and decided to
act.”

“And brought you into it, right?”

“Instead of the entire platoon of Aztec and Maya Celestials getting involved, a council was formed to oversee the welfare of all. The Council knew that if they were going to make rules, they needed someone to make sure the Xibalban gods did nothing they weren’t supposed to. They knew my mother’s secret. She had lived in the Middleworld longer than any other Celestial god. So they chose her to be a Watcher—but then they had my father and us to think about. They decided that if we were worthy, they would transform us into immortals in exchange for our aid in monitoring the gods of the Underworld.”

“But what about Tita? She’s like you, isn’t
she?”

“Tita, yes. She helped us carry out our task so that we could become worthy, and in return for her cooperation, the Celestials decided to keep her with
us.”

I slid down from the hood, crossed my feet in the grainy mud, and leaned back against the car. I talked into the sky as I recounted the part of my history I hated
most.

“The first Council was the eve of August 13, 1527. I cannot forget the date: six years exactly since Cortez besieged Tenochtitlan and the beginning of the Mayan massacres in the south. The Celestials summoned us that night to Tulum and explained what we were to do, and then one of them touched each of us. The touch is what started the transformation. The Council didn’t stay. They left my family and I to deal with it on our own, knowing we’d see them again . . . in fifty-two years. I hated them for a long time after that. My mother and Dylan didn’t need any changing. They were already gods. It was my father, Gabriella, Tita, and I who withered in
pain.”

I found my voice shriveling before the anger combusting inside me. The mere memory of the torture I endured that night put me in the zone where nothing else existed except the memories of pain. The sort of pain that sweeps all happiness from under your feet, drowns you in hopeless misery, and leaves you parched with despair.

I wish I had known then that the torture of my transformation was only a step toward another prolonged session of torture, living my immortal existence in isolation from the world I guarded. Relationships were forbidden, love was unattainable, and I was alone. My eyes, dry for centuries, now watered in an unnatural
way.

I saw Zara shift subtly and awoke from my reminiscence. I turned to her, wiped my eyes swiftly, and fiddled with the frayed hem of my shorts. “In any case, this agreement restored the balance after the chaos Cortez brought, and it keeps the human race safe to this
day.”

“How?” she breathed.

If there was a part I hated more than my unnecessary immortality, it was this. I cringed inside at what she would think of me. I froze, looking down at her, and then said with plain precision, “The balance isn’t that we save every human . . . it’s that we let them
go.”

Silence. I wasn’t aware that humans could be so
still.

“In order for the balance to be kept,” I went on, wondering if she heard me correctly, “I have to watch them take fifty-two people every fifty-two
years.”

Her eyes moved first, showing disgust. “How do you know who is going to be
chosen?”

I sighed with relief when her feet remained planted on the ground next to mine instead of jetting
away.

“The sacrifices are revealed to us in a Council.”

Zara’s body shook next to me. “How many more are left after
me?”

“There aren’t any. You’re the fifty-second.”

The beat of her heart accelerated instantly. It made me sick to be the cause of such fear. I watched guiltily as her chest heaved. “Who else was
taken?”

I bit my lip, nauseated. “Other young girls like
you.”

Her hands flew to her mouth. The whites of her unblinking eyes were stark in the darkness. I wanted to cradle her in my arms and whisper to her that everything was going to be fine, but I knew the effect that would have. I wanted her to fall for me as humans fall for one another. I wanted it to be normal. I quashed my urge to touch her by crossing my
arms.

But when she looked away stiffly, and a tear glistened as it fell down her cheek, I hurried to clasp her hands between
mine.

“I’m not
going
to let them take you, Zara. I’m keeping
you.”

Her hands were ice as she angled her head to me. Her expression was soft and complicated and scared.
Oh,
muñeca
, don’t cry.
I wiped a tear with the back of my hand and then let go even as more tears
fell.

“Why me?” she wondered.

“Because you’re the girl foretold in a prophecy.” I stuck my hands in my pockets and began to pace as guilt ate me alive. “Early in the eighteenth century, just after the fourth round of sacrifices, Tita came to me one morning saying she had been kept up all night by images racing through her mind. I thought it was ridiculous at first because they showed a time and place so far in the future that many important details were lost. But when Tita showed me how it could better our lives—everyone’s lives—if it were true, I felt the goals of my eternity change. It made me seek out every fifty-second victim . . . seek out
you.

“I wasn’t convinced it was you when we met—and I regret so badly that I ever doubted. I hope that you can forgive me someday.”

Zara crossed weak arms over her belly and slumped over, staring at the dark lake. “The roses on the windowsill, the note,” she whispered with a voice stripped of any emotion. “What changed your mind about
me?”

When she turned to me, weary, her face had paled, and I knew her stomach couldn’t take much more
either.