The Daykeeper's Grimoire (20 page)

Since Justine was so into it, I decide to go ahead and send it to everyone at Cruelties. I’m afraid of getting in trouble if someone forwards this to a teacher, so I register a legitimate-looking fake email address to use.

From: [email protected]

To: Student Body

Subject: New policy-Mayan calendar

Dear Students, we hope you are having a restful summer. We are getting a jump on our upcoming study of the Maya by sending out a mystery they left behind, their calendar. Please use this calendar for the rest of the summer and throughout the school year. Part of the study will be how students adapt to the calendar without adult supervision, so there is no talking to teachers about how to use it. You may reply to this email if you have specific problems, otherwise follow your own intuition.

Click here to start.

Thank you from the San Francisco Academy of Humanities Staff

I hesitate only slightly before I click the send button. Well, Bolon wanted me to get it around, and here’s to the first 900!

I feel a hand on my shoulder and freeze.

Well done, Caity,” I hear Bolon say.

“Geez, Bolon you just took ten years off my life!”

“Sorry, you know I meant you no harm. I was just pleased to see that it had all started.”

“Since my friend Justine thought it was interesting, I figured I’d send it out to all students. If viruses and bad jokes can fly around the web millions of times a day, maybe this can too.”

“It’s a fantastic start,” he says.

“Even if a bunch of kids at school start using this, I can’t guarantee anything will happen. Especially with these rich snobs—they’re not what you’d call
deep
. They like to shop. A lot.”

“Then they are looking for something. They are like hungry ghosts, gorging on food and never feeling full,” says Bolon cryptically. “What’s important is that you have started the shift.”

I look at the corner of my laptop at the little box of headline news. Most of the articles are about violence and war and corrupt politicians and the failing economy. I point to it and say, “Bolon, look at the world. Look at this mess. You think we can really influence anything?”

“Chaos is necessary for order. Any scientist will tell you that chaos is at its worst right before a higher level of order is about to emerge. Crisis is often an evolutionary cattle prod, the force that moves us ahead.”

“Weird,” I say. “Now what’s the other part you were going to tell me about?”

“Come and have a seat,” he says as he walks over to the two leather chairs. This sounds serious. He sees the look on my face and says, “Don’t worry, Caity, you can take it.”

Once we’re seated I say, “Give me the bad news first, then the good news, please.”

“There is no bad news,” he says, looking baffled. “You’re going to have an adventure.” He gets up and grabs the old globe on my desk. “Close your eyes for a moment, please.”

I close my eyes and put my hands over them so I can’t peek, which I always try to do.

“Open them now,” he says.

I look at the globe. There’s this weird band of light circling it. He’s holding the base, but the globe is slowly rotating with what looks like a greenish-yellow glow stick around it. “How did you do that?” I ask.

“This band of light circling the Earth like a tilted halo is a line around the Earth where most of the world’s most important ancient sites are situated.”

“A physical line?”

“No, it’s kind of like a dot-to-dot puzzle. When you connect the dots between ancient monuments, you get a very precise circle around the Earth.”

“Which monuments?” I ask.

“The enormous rock faces at Easter Island, the massive Nazca Lines engraved in the Earth that can only be seen from the sky, the gigantic monoliths in Ollantaytambo, the Pyramids of Paratoari, Machu Picchu, the temples of Malta, the Angkor temples, the ruins of Perseopolis, and the most impressive of all monuments, the Great Pyramid of Giza—and many more I haven’t even mentioned—all of these are
exactly
6,291 miles from one central axis.”

“All of these are aligned on
one
circle around the Earth, like to the mile?”

He nods and sets the globe on the small table between us. The glowy line fades away.

“How did these people know exactly where to build all these monuments so many thousands of years ago?”

“They are all places with unusual magnetic energy. You see, humans have ferric iron in our sinuses that allows us to detect magnetic fields.”

How cool that we have magnets in our faces!

“Okay, so there’s a ring around the Earth with a lot of important places on it. What does that do … or mean?” I ask.

“We need you to get young people to resonate powerful, positive energy worldwide along this circle,” he says, as casually as telling me to go to the store to pick up a box of Special K.

I have a good laugh. “You know, sending out email and posting shareware is one thing. I mean, those actually match my skills, being kind of a computer person and all. But worldwide chanting or whatever? There’s no way.”

Bolon looks at me as if I just told him that his dog died.

“Look, it’s not that I’m not willing,” I say. “Seriously, haven’t I been open to everything you’ve thrown at me? It’s just that it’s not
possible
. How am I going to leave here all alone and travel to God-knows-where and get kids to ‘resonate’ along some invisible line at places that I had never even heard of before this week?”

“You will,” Bolon says calmly. “And you know that you know that you will.”

If anyone else had said that sentence to me I would have been pissed; I have huge issues with this kind of you’re-gonna-do-it-no-matter-what thing. But the way Bolon says it is different. He says it like he’s showing me a new possibility or something, and it actually gets me thinking that maybe I
could
do this—whatever “this” really is.

“But what if I don’t?” I ask. As soon as the words come out I feel cold, as if my body has turned to metal, and I feel like I’m being sucked down a whirlpool. As quickly as the feeling comes, it goes again but it leaves a residue of fear. “So what exactly do you want me to do?” I ask.

“In a few hours you will see that this calendar has spread like fire through a dry forest. Kids will set up study groups and build meeting places on the Internet to talk about it. All you need to do is put out the word that you are doing a kickoff for the
Tzolk’in
. List the places and times, which will be different everywhere, obviously, because of worldwide time zones.”

“Okay, so far it doesn’t sound too hard,” I say.

“Then you will be at one of these places, preferably a place you don’t think many others will be able to get to; perhaps Easter Island—”

When I start laughing really hard, Bolon looks confused. “Wait—you’re serious?” I say.

“Of course,” he answers. “Why is that funny?”

All of a sudden it’s not so funny. “You really want me to go to those big heads? I don’t even know what country they’re in …”

“Chile,” he replies.

I shake my head and laugh again. “Going to Chile, to Easter Island without my parents? I spell that C-R-A-Z-Y.”

“Your friend Alex will join you,” he says with a knowing smile.

I look down at my hands and pick at a hangnail. He found my weak spot. He pulls a thick manila envelope out of his poncho and hands it to me. I open it and see a wad of money.

“Wow, this is very
mafioso
,” I say. “Is this my hush money or something?”

“Clearly you have watched too much television,” Bolon says flatly. “This is what you’ll need for travel. If you come up short I’ll make sure you get more. I think you’ll find all the various currencies you’ll need so that you can pay in cash. And there’s a slip of paper in there with information on how to access money online through Banco de Maya.”

“Nice work Bolon. Thanks for thinking ahead,” I say.

“That is what we Elders do,” he says with a smile.

I leaf through all the weird-looking bills. “Okay, let me get this straight: I’m supposed to use the computer to stir up interest for kids to show up to this gathering, and tell them the various places around that great circle they can go. But then what?”

“Then you talk,” he replies. “You talk to the world, to your young brothers and sisters.”

“About what?” I ask.

“About change,” he says, as if that was supposed to be obvious. I feel stupid, like I haven’t been paying attention, so I change to subject.

“So you want me to do some kind of webcast?” I ask, surprised that he is asking me to get so technical.

“Exactly. You will announce the time and date and then at the appointed moment, you will talk through your technology. You don’t really need to use all these gadgets, but since you all
believe
you do, we’ll let you proceed that way.”

“Wow, Bolon. Shareware, online money accounts, webcasts—I didn’t know you were such a techie.”

He waves his hand and says, “Compared to the complex math and astronomy we Elders must learn, this is nothing.”

“What exactly do you want me to say?”

“You will know what to say when the time comes. The important thing is that you talk, and unite, with nothing else in your heart and mind than love.”

“How will I know what to say?”

“All information is accessible to those who are open. At the time you speak, we will make sure you are open.”

This idea sounds interesting, yet freaky in a demon-possession kind of way.

“We’re not taking over your body,” Bolon says, again answering a question I didn’t ask out loud. “It’s more like tuning your radio to the Information Channel.”

“Okay, so say I do it. Then what?” I ask.

“Then we measure the effectiveness. Talk to your friend Tenzo about PEAR.”

“What’s PEAR?”

“It’s a lab. Tenzo will know someone there who can measure the effects of your work.”

I laugh. “Tenzo just
happens
to know someone who can do that?”

“Coincidence is merely a fleeting glimpse at wholeness,” he replies.

I’m not even going to touch that one. “So when do you want me to go?”

“Summer solstice,” he replies.

“When is that? I know I should know but—”

“June twenty-first,” he says without blinking.

I laugh. “Um, isn’t it June sixteenth right now?”

He shrugs. “Is that a problem?”

I rub my face with my hands. “I’ll do what I can, honest. But if it doesn’t happen, I don’t want you to be mad at me, okay?” I say.

“We would never be mad at you. We only have love for you.”

I excuse myself to the bathroom, where I wipe my face with a cold washcloth and drink a full glass of water. This is all catching up with me. Bolon has a way of saying things that makes them sound like they’ll be a cinch, but with all that I have to do I am seriously scared that I’ll let these guys down. Suddenly I feel sick and throw up the whole glass of water that I just drank. I don’t want Bolon to see me this upset, so I pull myself together, brush my teeth and wash my face, and walk out trying to look normal. But Bolon is gone.

The fat envelope of cash sits on my desk with a note:
Dear Caity, You can do this. Above all else, have fun; love is expressed at its fullest in true joy. —In lak’ech, Bolon

I hide the envelope in my drawer under the printer paper. Then I sit down at my desk with my sketchbook and make a list of everything I have to do.

TO DO

Today, June 16

1. Email Justine about visiting scam

2. Register fake email addresses for our moms

3. Brief Li/Tenzo about all of this

4. Reserve plane tix online

5. Convince Alex to come across the world with me!

June 17

1. Announce times/places of group meeting via email

2. Get Dad’s satellite phone

3. Find out what PEAR is

June 18

1. Pack clothes, sat. phone, xtra batteries, laptop

2. Ferry from island, overnite train to Edinburgh

June 19

1. Fly to SF

2. Stay overnite w/Justine

June 20

1. Board flight to Easter Island—see big freaky heads!

2. Test equipment

3. Try not to freak out …

June 21

1. Summer solstice

2. Do it!

3. Don’t get caught or will be grounded for life and any afterlife there might be …

A to-do list always makes me feel better; I love being able to check things off. It’s my driftwood log when I’m lost at sea.

I start by emailing Justine, asking her to IM me ASAP. Then I register some fake email addresses that will allow me to pose as Justine’s mom and my mom so I can communicate back and forth with their real email address to set up a “visit.” I send the first piece of mail from Justine’s mom’s fake address to Mom’s real address with some stuff about Justine being lonely and needing me to visit. Within minutes she takes the bait and says it’s a great idea, that she thinks I’d love to take a trip back to San Francisco.