Thomas Hoover - Life blood

Marcelina had said she'd wanted to come for the ceremony. She was being helped to stand by the two Maya women who'd fed me the atole. Somehow, she'd gotten them to bring her.

"Morgy, are you there?" Sarah asked gazing up at the rainy skies, the downpour soaking her blond hair, her eyes unblinking. At that moment, I felt we'd joined become one person-me the dogged rational half who'd just gone over the line, her the spiritual part that needed to float, to fly free. "I wanted to be with-"

"Sar, get back," I yelled and started to go to her, but there wasn't time. Now Alex Goddard was moving toward me holding the knife, as though tracking a prey, oblivious to Sarah, to everything. He'd concentrated all his hatred on me and me alone, and I hated him back as much. Death hovered between us, waiting to see whom to take.

But then the woman who had borne Tz'ac Tzotz said something in Kekchi Maya, pointing back at me and her child, and lunged at him. They collided together in the rain and next she slid down, first seizing his leg, then losing her grip and slipping onto the stones, her long black hair askew in the hovering smoke.

She's trying to save me, I realized. Why-?

Then I saw Sarah pull away from the women supporting her and slowly move across the platform.

"Morgy…"

She was walking in the direction of Alex Goddard, but then she stumbled over the fallen woman's leg and her hand went down as she sprawled across her. She must have touched something, because she recoiled backward, and only then did I notice the flare of a torch glinting off the obsidian knife now protruding from the woman's chest.

Sarah rose up, her eyes full of anger, and awkwardly flung her arms, searching. I could feel the passion that had been pent up all those months she lay in the coma, feeding her madness. She managed to catch hold of Alex Goddard's arm, and they began an awkward minuet, neither realizing how close they were to the stone platform's edge. I stood mesmerized a moment, then dashed toward them, but only in time to watch them vanish into the rain and haze. It was as though there had been some sleight of hand. One second they were there and the next they weren't. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but then I realized it was real. They were gone.

"Sarah!"

I reached the side in time to see them land on the first tier of stones below. She'd fallen near the edge, but she was solid and safe. Alex Goddard, however, hit with one foot on and one foot off, and the result was he slid away, then vanished into the dark rain.

It's her final act of self-destruction. She's joined me in my rage, but we've both been spared. That's the miracle of Baalum.

"Sar, don't move." I finally found my voice. I was still holding Tz'ac Tzotz, who'd begun to shriek, his blue eyes flooded with fear.

Now several village men from the square were running, shouting, up the slippery steps. Their faces looked like they'd been painted at one time, but now the rain had washed most of it away.

While I yelled down to Sarah, again begging her not to move, Marcelina was asking them something, and their answers were tumbling out.

Finally I turned to look at her, the screaming Tz'ac Tzotz still in my arms.

"No one knows where he is," she was saying as she looked down over the side. "He's gone into the forest."

"Good." I pulled Tz'ac Tzotz to me and kissed him, trying to tell him to calm down. It wasn't working.

"Marcelina, here, please hold him. I've got to get down to Sarah."

She took him. Then I walked over to where his mother lay bleeding on the stones. The woman wasn't moving, the obsidian knife still protruding from her chest. She'd saved me, but now death had taken her. There was nothing anyone could do.

I was trembling, but I turned and began easing myself over the side of the stone platform and onto the first tier of the pyramid.

"Sar, don't move." I inched my way across to her. "Just stay still." The rain was pouring again, but the electric bloom of sparks and flames from the direction of the clinic was unabated. It would be completely gutted. Was Steve awake enough to get out? He'd seemed alert when I left him.

"Morgy, is that you?" She was holding out her fingers. "I can't see you. Where are-?"

"I'm here, Sar. Right here." I reached down and took her hand, which was deathly cold. "Come on. Let me help you get up."

Carefully, leaning against the wet stones of the side of the pyramid, I gradually pulled her to her feet and away from the treacherous edge. Then it hit me what she'd said.

"Sar, what do you mean, you can't see me?"

"I'm okay. It's just…" She was gripping my hand now, and then she brushed against the stone side of the pyramid and put out her other hand to cling to it. "Morgy, I took it again. To go to their sacred place. But sometimes you can only see visions and then after a while everything goes blank."

That bastard. Alex Goddard had given her the drug again. Now she was lost in a world of colored lights, a place I'd just traveled through myself. She probably had no idea she'd just pushed him off the pyramid and into the dark.

"Your hand feels so soft," she was saying. "You're like warm honey."

"Sar, try to walk. We're going to turn a corner and then we'll be at the back of the pyramid. Next we'll come to some steps, and then we're going down."

As I inched our way along, scarcely able to keep our footing because of the rain, I wondered again about Steve. Please, God, let him be all right.

When we finally got to the steps, Marcelina was there, standing expectantly, holding Tz'ac Tzotz. He was still crying, intermittent sobs.

"He belongs to you now," she said, holding him out for me. "It's what she wished.

"What-?" I took him before I realized what I was doing.

As I cradled him, gazing down at his tender little face, I realized he truly was Sarah all over again. And I was so glad she couldn't see him. Never, I thought, she must never, ever know.

I finally forced myself to place him back into Marcelina's arms.

"You've got no idea how much I want him, but I can't. Let one of these women give him her milk, have a twin for her own child."

For that wrenching moment I'd held the very baby my heart longed for. But he was the last one on earth I could have. Just go, take Sarah and find Steve and go as far from Baalum as you can, before you lose your compass and do something terribly selfish.

"Marcelina," I said, reaching to hug her, "tell them these 'sacred' children are all from his medico. Look up 'in vitro' in your dictionary. That's all it is."

She hugged me back, though I wasn't sure whether she understood. Then I asked her to take Sarah's hand for a moment while I went back up the steps to the platform. I felt a primal anger as I took one last look at the women Alex Goddard had wronged, now clustered around the body of Tz'ac Tzotz's mother. Then I bade them a silent farewell, turned, and walked, holding my tears, back through the stone room.

The rear of the pyramid was deserted, the steps slippery and dangerous, but it was our way out. I began leading Sarah down, step by treacherous step. Everything had happened so fast I'd barely had time to think about Steve. Those flames, my God. It was finally sinking in, truly hitting me. Had he gotten out in time?

Then the slimy Rio Tigre, now swelling from the rain, came into view. I stared at it a second before I noticed the three young Army recruits leaning against the trunk of a giant Cebia tree next to the trail, their rifles covered in plastic against the rain. When they saw us, they stiffened, shifted their weapons, and glanced up at the top of the pyramid, as though seeking orders. Neither group had any idea why the other was there. Sarah and I were an unforeseen contingency they hadn't been briefed on.