—
Faolan was my companion during a good portion of the time I was binding the New World to Tír na nóg. He was surly and easily angered and I loved to tease him. For some reason he stuck with me even though he claimed I drove him mad—well, I should amend that. He told me one night during a hurricane on the Gulf Coast why he didn’t just take off and return to the north, where it was cooler and populated by far fewer alligators: It would be boring.
<It’d be peaceful and lazy, no doubt, compared to running around with you,> he said, <but I’d be dying to argue about mushrooms or just about anything after a week. Because there’d be no one to talk to! First wolverine I saw would jump me for intruding on his territory without discussing it first. So as much as I hate the heat and the humidity and the sucking mud and the way you smell and this unbelievable storm trying to blow us away like some god’s spiteful fart, I have to stay.>
“That’s really sweet, Faolan,” I told him, because for him, it was. He didn’t invite belly rubs or pay me compliments—wolverines just aren’t like that—but I could feel through our bond that he was intensely loyal to me.
In the ninth century, we were down by the Yucatán Peninsula, which is in modern-day Mexico, and he had occasion to demonstrate that loyalty.
Back then the Mayans had built an impressive civilization throughout the region, with cities of up to fifty thousand people supported by advanced agriculture. They had the most astounding architecture, which persists to this day, a complex mathematics system, and a firmer grasp on astronomy than anyone in Europe at the time. I was awed by the Mayans and was one of the very few Europeans to see their civilization while it was still mighty. I had so much to learn from them that I stayed in the region a bit longer than strictly necessary and learned their language. And as I learned that, I started to absorb bits of their religion too: It was rich and complex, populated by many gods. And once I heard some details about their plane of the afterlife, Xibalba, I became curious to see at least part of it.
There were supposed to be three rivers the dead had to cross into Xibalba. Rivers in the underworld are common to many cultures. Tír na nóg has one, and the Norse have thirteen rivers under the spring of Hvergelmir, and the Greeks had the River Styx, and so on. All of these rivers typically symbolize the boundary between the living and the dead, and the dead must cross over them, never to return to the land of the living.
Xibalba had three: a river of scorpions, a river of blood, and a river of pus.
—
<Time-out, Atticus: a river of pus?>
“Heh! I thought you were going to question the scorpions.”
<I can imagine a lot of scorpions, because we lived in Arizona. But I can’t imagine a river of pus.>
“You see why I was intrigued.”
<Well, yeah. I mean, if you’re going to have a whole river full of pus, don’t you need a heck of a lot of infected wounds or boils or zits or something?>
“Or maybe just one giant, legendary wound like a spring, oozing pus into the darkness…”
<Maybe? You mean you don’t know where it all came from?>
“Some things are best left as mysteries, Oberon. In any case, I wanted to see these rivers if I could, because when you live for as long as I have, every new experience is something to be treasured. And this would be next-level amazing, a land created by human imagination rather than geologic forces.”
—
I sat down under the canopy of the rain forest and contacted the elemental Yucatán: //Query: Can Druid visit plane of Xibalba?//
It’s a good idea to ask such things. Realms of the dead often have rules about the living walking around.
//Yes// the elemental replied. //With protection//
I asked for such protection for a short trip, and Yucatán agreed, directing me to a cave in modern-day Belize that would serve as the portal to the plane. Once there, I bound a tree to Tír na nóg and told Faolan that he had two choices: I could shift him back to the north, where we first met more than a hundred years before, and say farewell, or he could wait for me outside the cave, for a possibly very long time. Under no circumstances could he follow me into Xibalba.
He challenged me immediately. <Why not?>
“Because it’s a land of the dead. The living don’t go there without protection, and Gaia will only protect me.”
<Is this because I smell bad?>
“No, it’s because this is the kind of favor Gaia does only for Druids. You simply can’t go. Stepping into a land of the dead means you’re dead. So what’s it going to be: Wait here, where there are jaguars and too many bugs to count, and I might not come back and you’d be stuck here—”
<You might not come back?>
“It could be very dangerous for me even with protection. I could run into something awful, and I’m just being honest. However, I hope it won’t take me long. But to finish my thought: You can wait, or you could just go back to the north, where you frequently say you’d rather be, and not have to put up with my annoying attacks of curiosity.”
<And do what? Fight with other wolverines? Get mauled by a bear? No thanks, I’ll stay here and you’ll come back fast,> he said.
—
<Aww! I’m kinda sorry I never met Faolan,> Oberon said. <I think we might have gotten along. He had a sensible attitude about bears anyway.>
“He didn’t like squirrels either.”
<Wow. I bet we would have been friends!>
—
The yawning mouth of the cave had moss hanging from the top like green fangs. I stepped past and through, bare feet on cold stone, and cast night vision to help me see in the dark.
To the living, Xibalba’s cave was normally just a cave, but to the dead it extended and changed. Yucatán opened that portal for me at the appropriate point, and the temperature, already chilly compared with that of the jungle, cooled further. The floor was strewn with skeletons, calcified and broadcasting a warning in their eternal repose.
For a hundred yards or so, I simply descended into the shivery damp and worried about my footing.
And then a clicking and dry, raspy susurrus warned me that something waited ahead; the passage turned and opened wider and I came to a river of black scorpions, strangely lit from below. No bridge, no ferry, just a wide expanse teeming with poisonous dudes—an apt metaphor, now that I think of it, for my few brief attempts to understand social media.
The river extended in either direction into darkness, and the scorpions seemed content to stay within the confines of their riverbank.