5

By the time Chava came back, dragging along his mother and a few of the other people from the nearby shantytown, the creature had changed again. The wet gray sacs on its back were larger now, each almost the size of a man when fully inflated. Its arms and legs had somehow joined, melding into one another. The flayed quality of the neck had changed, the flesh now looking as if it were swarming with ants.

The air around it had taken on an acrid yellow sheen. It hung in a heavy cloud, and when they got too close, they found it difficult to breathe. One man, a small but dignified-looking old drunk, wandered into the cloud and, after staggering about coughing, collapsed. Two other villagers dragged him out by the feet and then began to slap him.

Chava watched until the drunk was conscious again and groping for his bottle, then turned back to stare at the creature. “What is it?” Chava asked his mother.

His mother consulted in whispers with her neighbors, watching the thing. It was hard for Chava to hear everything they were saying, but he heard one word over and over again: Ixtab. Ixtab. Finally his mother turned to him. “Who is Ixtab?” Chava asked nervously.

“Go fetch the old bruja,” she told him. “She’ll know what to do.”

The bruja was already heading toward the beach when he came across her. She was moving slowly, leaning on a staff. She was old and frail, most of her hair gone and her face a mass of wrinkles. His mother claimed that she had been alive when the Spaniards killed the Mayans, a thousand years before. “She is like a lost book,” his mother had said another time. “She knows everything that everyone else has forgotten.”

She carried a pouch slung over one shoulder. He started to explain about the creature, but she silenced him with a gesture. “I already know,” she said. “I expected you sooner.”

He took her arm and helped her along. Others from the shantytown were coming down the beach as well, some walking as if hypnotized. Some wept; some ran.

“Who is Ixtab?” asked Chava suddenly.

“Ah, Ixtab,” said the bruja. She stopped walking and turned to face him. “She is a goddess. She is the rope woman. She hangs in the tree, a rope around her neck, and her eyes are closed in death, and her body has begun to rot. But she is still a goddess.”

“But is she dead?”

“The goddess of suicide,” mused the bruja. “She is the hanged goddess, the goddess of the end. And she gathers to her those who are dead by uncertain means.” She stared at the boy intently. “She is a very harsh mistress,” she said.

Chava nodded.

“Tell me,” the bruja said to him, “did you dream last night?”

Chava nodded.

“Tell me your dream,” said the bruja, and then listened carefully as he recounted it confusedly, in bits and pieces.

She gestured forward, at the people running in front of them, at the crowd of people around the strange creature up ahead. “These, too,” she said, “they have shared our dream.”

“What does it mean?” asked Chava.

“What does it mean?” she asked. She pointed a shaky finger at the creature ahead, its gray sacs now almost twice the size of the man, the cloud of noxious gas growing. “Here you see what it means.”

“We dreamed it and we made it real?” asked Chava, amazed.

She gave him a toothless smile and cackled. “You think you are so powerful?” she asked, and started shuffling forward again. “You think we are so powerful? No,” she said. “We could not make this. Our dream is a warning.”

“A warning?”

“The dream tells us there is something wrong,” she said. “We must set it right.”

For a time they walked through the sand without speaking, the old woman breathing heavily. Chava could already hear the hissing from the creature, louder than the crash of the surf.

“Have you begun to dream awake?” the bruja asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked, frightened.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “I can hear in your voice that you have. You must be careful. It found you first. It means to take you. Chicxulub: you know what this word means?”

The boy shook his head.

“And yet you have lived in this town all your life,” she scolded him. “You have lived within a word that you do not know.”

He was silent for a moment, then asked, “Is that bad?”

She made a noise with her lips but did not answer. Apparently it wasn’t a question worth answering.

“What does Chicxulub mean?” he asked after another moment.

She stopped briefly and with the tip of her stick drew a figure in the sand. It was two lines twisting around each other.

He crossed his fingers and imitated it by making the sign of protection he had learned as a child. She nodded. “What is this?” he asked.

She didn’t say anything. She spread her toothless mouth wide, which looked for a moment disconcertingly like the jawless maw of the creature on the beach.

“Tail of the devil,” she said. “The devil has started to wake and thrash its tail. If we cannot coax it back to sleep, then this will be the end of us.”