“I don’t think so, Dad.”
He held out his hand toward the jungle in front of them. “You’re far better with a machete than she was.”
She scoffed. “That is not something to be proud of. Any chicle farmer could put me to shame.”
“Speaking ofchicleros,” Quint said, chopping through another tangle of branches. “I noticed some sapodilla trees back there with zig-zag scars on the trunks. I thought harvesting chicle in any Mexican reserve was illegal.”
Angélica had seen the sapodilla trees, too. “Those scars looked pretty shallow.”
“Meaning what?”
“They’re old,” Juan answered, holding the map up in front of him as he turned in a slow circle.
The chicle farmers had long ago scored the trees to collect the milky latex sap that trickled down the trunk. They would then cook it until the sap coagulated into natural chewing gum. This forest-sustainable tradition could be traced back to the ancient Maya. Thanks to some regional consortiums that now worked together to distribute the chicle worldwide, thechicleroswere able to continue this work and make money for their families.
But Quint was right—this place was supposed to be off limits unless special permission was granted by official departments, such as INAH.
“Judging by how shallow the scars were,” Angélica said, “and the lack of any other signs of human activity between our camp back at Calakmul and here, I’m betting nobody has been around to harvest chicle since the government established this land as a biosphere reserve.”
“The lack of any signs of human activity …” Quint echoed, turning in her direction. “So, you’re admitting we’re lost, then.”
“No, I’m justconsideringthe notion that we’re not on a defined path at the moment.” She slashed at a thorn-covered branch Quint had missed. “You know, kind of like your life lately,” she joked.
“I’m on a defined path, woman.” He glanced at her with his brow lined, his eyes searching hers. “Or at least I was until your boss called at the last minute and ordered you to cancel our vacation plans and return to this damned jungle ASAP.”
Angélica winced slightly as soon as he returned to slashing through the thick underbrush.
Her boss over at INAH hadn’t actually ordered her back to work. He’d called to inform her that there was a geoarchaeologist from a well-known university in the United States who was offering some big money if the Mexican government would let him bring his LIDAR results to the site and do a little digging. Or a lot of digging, since LIDAR was a remote sensing method of ground data collected from high up in an aircraft.
Initially, the data recorded via the flyover was studied in an office, usually far away from the actual site—and the humidity, bugs, and snakes. From the other side of a computer screen, the viewercould examine the surface of the earth to detect anomalies, such as temples hidden from the naked eye by the jungle canopy. But true analysis required up close, eyes-on-the-prize examination.
According to the email sent by Dr. Clifford Fernel, he wanted to hike into this site to do some “ground truthing,” which involved scraping away the forest floor to uncover what hethoughthis LIDAR data was showing him—a small, hidden complex of potential buildings splayed out in an almost rectangular configuration with a possible temple near the center.
But Angélica didn’t like the idea of an outsider coming down here and finding a long-hidden truth that might make him shine brightly in the annals of archaeological history. Not when her mother had flagged this site as a potential gem in the crown of the ancient Maya’s glory years.
It had been Angélica’s idea to immediately cancel the romantic vacation Quint had planned for them so she could get the jump on Dr. Fernel, who wanted to bring in some fancy tech and drones. She knew that if she returned to INAH after a week or two of scouting the area with the recommendation that she and her mostly Mexican-based crew should work the site to potentially open it up for tourism, her boss would put off Dr. Fernel for the time being.
But she hadn’t conferred with Quint before putting a kibosh on their trip, something she probably should have done. She kicked aside a branch left in Quint’s wake. After years of being in charge of what jobs she took and when, it was hard to adjust to returning to a joint decision. Besides, he wouldn’t understand how important it was to beat Dr. Fernel to the punch here. Nobody would, not even her father, who worried she obsessed about shining a spotlight on her mother’s theories and ideas more than her own.
“Are you sure you deciphered your mom’s notes about this place correctly?” Quint took a break from hacking back the foliage. His shirt now clung to his broad shoulders and chest, soaked with sweat.
She offered him her canteen. “What do you mean?”
“You said she wrote it’s some kind of religious site?”
Angélica nodded, flicking a tick off his shoulder while he gulped several swallows of water. “She believed it was extremely sacred to the Maya.”
“Hmm. I’m having trouble believingthat a place so revered is this hard to get to.” Quint glanced around. “I mean, wouldn’t the Maya people want to make pilgrimages here if that were the case? You know, maybe clear a place to land a helicopter and set up tents for some kind of revival? Make a big altar or two where they could perform a little bloodletting for the Maya gods and then drink some of that sweet, fermented tree-bark wine we had at past ceremonies?”
Juan lowered the map. “You meanbalchewine.”
“Yeah, the stuff that transformed you into a lizard.”
“Actually, I was a frog.”
“It’s not that kind of sacred.” Angélica interrupted her father before he really got rolling on another tale of his past adventures after too muchbalche. She took the map from him.
“What other kind of sacred sites are there?” Quint asked.
