The bread was chewy and warm, and the meat melted on the tongue. He ate quickly, not realizing how hungry he actually was. After a few bites, Jake’s face grew hot, and he waved a hand in front of his mouth. The burning only grew worse.
Marika smiled at his distress. “Firepeppers.”
The burn subsided enough for Jake to speak. “It’s…it’s good.”
Marika’s father patted him on the back while chewing around a mouthful himself. The old man’s eyes watered. “Could be hotter?” he gasped out.
Marika’s smile widened, encouraging Jake to try everything on the table. She also poured a dark slurry out of a tiny ceramic teapot into a cup. Jake frowned at the warm muddy liquid, but he picked up the cup and sniffed at it. His eyes widened in surprise at the distinctive and familiar smell, like a bit of home.
“Chocolate!” But he shouldn’t have been surprised. The Maya had invented chocolate drinks. He sipped his. It was more bitter and thicker than the hot chocolate he was used to. Maybe a few marshmallows to sweeten it…
“We call it cacao,” Marika said.
Jake nodded and sipped at the drink, but he felt Marika’s father studying him from the side. Jake did his best to look nonchalant. He did not want anyone to know how much he already knew about Mayan customs. They were already suspicious of him.
As the meal came to a close, Jake was so full that he had to lean back in his chair. To his right, Marika’s father did the same and let out a platter-rattling belch.
Marika looked horrified at his outburst.
Seemingly blind to the offense, her father winked at Jake and stood up. “I have some reading to do in my study before I retire. Mari, why don’t you show young Jacob to his room.”
“Papa, before I do that, can I show him the Astromicon? He might like to see the view from up there.”
When her father agreed, Marika sprang to her feet and practically dragged Jake out of his chair.
“But no touching anything, Mari.”
“No, Papa.”
“And don’t be up there too long!” her father called back as he crossed to one of the doors and pulled it open. Past the man’s shoulder, Jake caught a glimpse of a desk piled high with scrolls and sheaves of parchment, and shelves stacked with more books and papers.
Jake glanced longingly in the direction of the study. Perhaps somewhere in those piles of books was an answer to where he was, how he got here, and how he could get home.
Marika hauled him toward the door that led back out to the spiral staircase. Before he knew it, he was climbing up after her.
“Where are we going?” he asked, holding back a jaw-cracking yawn. With his belly full, his body felt twice as heavy.
“You’ll see.”
As they climbed, a question nagged Jake. Still tasting the hot chocolate on his lips, he asked, “Mari, how do you make cacao here in Calypsos? Don’t you need your cocoa trees from home?”
She nodded. “While we’ve learned to harvest what grows in this world, we have not totally abandoned our old ways. Some of our people came here with seeds that we planted. It is a custom, going back to the founding of Calypsos. While we work together in harmony, each tribe honors where they came from. In the hopes that one day we will be allowed to return home.”
Jake pictured the town, beginning to understand the place a bit better. The town wasn’t so much a melting pot as a stew made up of chunks of different cultures—each preserving their unique individual identities and flavors.
Until they were allowed to return home.
Jake understood that wish all too well.
“Here we are,” Marika said, and hurried up the last steps.
They’d reached the end of the spiral staircase. As Marika pushed open the door at the top, a fresh breeze washed over them. The stifling heat of the day had subsided to a balmy evening. The wind helped clear the cobwebs out of Jake’s head after the big meal.
Jake stepped onto the tower roof, his eyes wide. The sky overhead was a vault of stars—more stars than Jake had ever seen. He attempted to spot any familiar constellations, but nothing looked quite right. Then again, his knowledge of astronomy was limited. Back at home, Jake spent much of his time looking down: searching for fossils, studying books, always looking for clues in the dust or dirt.
Still, one item in the night sky was unmistakable. A swath of stars and shimmering light swept across the sky in a shining arc.
“The Milky Way,” he whispered to himself. He felt something warm swell through him, a welcome sense of familiarity, of home.
Marika stood at his shoulder and gazed up, too. She lifted an arm and traced the band of brightness. “Sak be,” she said in Mayan.
Jake’s heart pounded as understanding dawned. The same words were written as symbols on the two halves of his gold coin: sak be, which meant “white road.”
He stared up into the sky.
The Milky Way—that was the Maya’s White Road.
Marika continued, “It’s believed among our people that the White Road is the path to this world. It’s how we came here.”
Jake studied the splash of brightness. What had seemed warmly familiar a moment before now took on a cold and mysterious cast. His fingers still clutched at the cord around his neck. At least for Jake and Kady, the White Road had led them here.
But could it somehow lead them back?
“Every night, Papa searches the skies, seeking answers about the world and the passing of time.”
“And for a way home?”
Marika nodded. Her voice grew quieter. “He spends so much time up here. Especially the last few years.”
Marika guided Jake’s attention from the stars back down to the tower roof. Its edges were lined by a shoulder-high stone wall, but in the center of the open roof rested a giant bronze dome. Jake had spotted it from the ground. It was the size of a two-car garage.
The bronze had been beaten to a polished mirror. Starlight was reflected across its surface, only interrupted by small slits around its top, like the hour markings on a clock.
“The Astromicon,” Marika said. “It is here my father works, mapping the movement of the sun, moon, and stars. He predicted the great eclipse that occurred yesterday.”
Curiosity and desire drew Jake toward a hatchway in the dome. He had to see inside.
As he stepped closer, something dark swept over the reflection of the stars. Marika saw it, too, and gasped in fear.
Jake’s mind snapped back to the monstrous winged grakyl. Had it somehow found them?
He pulled Marika toward the stairwell door. Both stared up as a large shape circled the tower top and tilted on a wing. Illuminated by the moonlight, it was clearly not a grakyl. It was too big—and darkly feathered. Its wings folded and the creature dove downward and landed heavily with a braking rush of its wings. It perched on the raised parapet wall that lined the tower.