Her grandmother had traveled through the jungle and stood under that same dark canopy many years before. She had been younger than Ix Kan when she walked this path. Thus, Ix Kan should not fear: she was older, she was wiser, and her grandmother had prepared her for this moment. But even with the knife and the offerings of jade in her basket, she worried.
Ix Kan paused to listen to the cries of the birds, the rustling of the monkeys in the trees above her head. It was a hot day. She would have preferred to rush to the water pool with her brothers and scoop out tiny fish with her hands. Instead, she walked next to a sleeping iguana and sunk deeper into the jungle.
The path she had been following disappeared, swallowed by the vegetation. She could only guide herself by her grandmother’s stories, but this path of memory was clear to her. Step by step Ix Kan proceeded onward.
She spotted the great tree shaped like a man with the vines curling around it, and then she walked through that part of the jungle where the birds always go quiet and the monkeys cease to shriek, until she reached the clearing.
Ix Kan moved slowly, peeking through the vegetation.
A man wearing a wooden jaguar mask sat in the center of the clearing atop a white stone throne. His eyes were like two pieces of gold.
“Greetings. I’ve brought offerings for you,” Ix Kan said, repeating the same words her grandmother had said when she was a little girl.
“You come to ask for a gift.”
“I do. And I bring beautiful treasures.”
Ix Kan held up the seashells and the jade necklace.
“What do you want?”
“I want to be a warrior and wield the spear and run with the strength of the jaguar.”
“You’re nothing but a child.”
Ix Kan’s grandmother had been a child when she made this journey but Ix Kan was a young woman, with a woman’s strength.
“I’m ready. I’ve been tutored by my family.”
“Come here.”
Ix Kan approached the man. His crudely carved mask grinned, sharp fanged, at her.
“Give me your hand.”
Ix Kan obeyed him. His fingers tightened around her wrist and he pulled her forward, their eyes clashing gold upon brown.
“You’re not a warrior,” he muttered and pushed her back.
She lost her balance and fell before the throne, the contents of the basket scattering at her feet: beads, seashells, bracelets, a little jaguar figurine and the obsidian knife. Ix Kan remained on her knees for one moment, shocked by the man’s reaction. Her grandmother had not told the story this way. Her grandmother had not been refused.
Ix Kan rose and wiped her hands against her dress.
“I’ve followed the path. I’ve done what’s been asked of me,” she countered.
“Meager offerings. Meager girl. It’s an insult. Look at these silly trinkets,” he said, and jumping from his throne he picked up one of the seashells and crushed it with his left hand. “And here, poorly made necklaces.”
She’d gone to pray to the jaguar, her grandmother had said, and placed offerings at its feet. The jaguar had let her eat a bit of its heart in return. Ix Kan had followed the instructions; she remembered every detail.
“Everything is as it should be!”
The birds flew from the trees.
“You want the jaguar’s power, little girl? Then fight for it.”
The man threw away his mask, and as he did his human shape disappeared. A black jaguar looked at Ix Kan.
She stood still, her eyes steady on the large animal. She moved very slowly to the left and then took a step forward.
The jaguar roared.
She dashed towards her knife. Before she could reach it, the jaguar leaped forward, taking a swipe at her legs. Ix Kan swirled back quickly.
The jaguar’s tail twitched. It turned its massive neck, glancing at the obsidian knife that lay on the ground.
Ix Kan moved carefully, bending down to pick a rock.
The jaguar gobbled the knife before her surprised eyes.
Ix Kan stared at the jaguar in shock.
Then it turned towards her and roared again.
She ran and tried to scramble up a tree. She was halfway up when the jaguar jumped on her, a heavy shadow slamming the young woman into the ground and Ix Kan gasped. She held her hands up, trying to cover her face, and the jaguar growled.
It clawed her left cheek.
She clutched the rock with her right hand and bashed it against the jaguar’s head. It made him angry, and he bit her wrist with teeth capable of ripping through a turtle’s shell sinking into her flesh. So she hit him with her other hand hard, as hard as she could, but it would not let go. Her fingers opened and the rock rolled away from her grasp.
Ix Kan tried to hit and kick the creature. She writhed beneath the jaguar as it clamped its teeth around her neck.
She could not scream, but the jaguar’s yell echoed through the jungle and made the trees rumble.
It tore through her neck, her chest, and her face. Blood dribbled from is mouth and fell onto Ix Kan’s lips. And then the jaguar gobbled her in a few quick bites.
She was gone.
He had eaten her.
This was the dishonorable death of Ix Kan.
Inside the belly of the jaguar, in the pitch-black darkness that was blacker than obsidian, Ix Kan wept. Her grandmother had prepared her for this journey all these years past, but she must have instructed her incorrectly. Ix Kan had displeased the jaguar. She had failed.
Curled up, fists pressed against her face, Ix Kan lay in this deplorable darkness and thought of the shame, the awful shame burning through her mangled body.
Her bones would lay under the trees, turning yellow.
It was reprehensible.
It angered her.
Why should Ix Kan be a wild beast’s dinner? She was young. She was eager to live. She was not sacrificial meat. Why?
The question was a single drop of water falling into a pond. It rippled, and the ripples stirred Ix Kan from her misery.
She had not even been given a chance to fight properly. She was not able to wield proper weapons or wear proper armor or make proper battle. It was a coward’s death.
Her grandmother was not a coward. Her grandmother had been a jaguar warrior. She wore a jaguar’s pelt and once killed seven men in battle.
Ix Kan was not a coward, either.
She gnashed her teeth thinking of what her family would say when they heard the story of her death. She pounded against the jaguar’s belly, furious at its treachery, attacking an unarmed woman. She kicked and yelled until she was all fury—fury beyond Ix Kan. Ix Kan was no longer Ix Kan. She had become a glowing ember. She had become a liquid wrath. Claws sprang forth.
She clawed at the darkness and ripped it to shreds. She jumped out, breaking through bones, muscle, skin.
She roared.
Slowly she changed back. She became a naked woman standing in the middle of a jungle clearing.
Her face and body were dirty with blood. She wiped her mouth clean and leaned down next to the jaguar’s corpse. From now on she would wear a jaguar pelt around her shoulders and a jaguar’s tooth would dangle from her neck. She would be a warrior.
The smallest noise, a foot falling upon a leaf, made her look up. She would not have heard it before. She was different now. She could hear new sounds and see new shapes beneath the trees.
A man stood at the edge of the clearing. His eyes were golden, and his smile was as sharp as a spear.
He walked towards her, but she was not afraid as he closed the gap between them. The child Ix Kan had been afraid. She was no longer a girl. The girl had died.
The man raised a hand. The tips of his fingers had jaguar claws. He brushed her left cheek.
She felt a sharp pain and did not wince. He touched her three times, and she knew that if she leaned down to look into a calm pool of water she would see three little dots upon her skin: a warrior’s mark.
The man handed her a knife. She stared at it as it lay bone-white against her palm.
The man, now a jaguar, turned from her and slipped into the jungle.
And Ix Na B’alam, who had once been Ix Kan, headed to the limestone palace of the emperor, to fight and serve and live the life of the jaguar warrior as her grandmother had done before her.