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the rumors of fighting that flooded Zama. The world was on the brink of change, maybe dangerous and ill change.
    Cauac slid the hard calloused ends of his fingers gently along the full length of the turtle’s shell, an honoring and a farewell.
    He swam slowly toward shore, washed in satisfied sadness.
    Cauac climbed, dripping and nearly naked, from the water. A figure sprinted toward him along the rocky path above the white sand beach. He smiled to see his apprentice, Ah Bahlam, rushing so. Cauac let the young man come to him.
    Ah Bahlam must have been watching, because the first words from his mouth were, “I wish I could call my totem so easily.”
    “You can,” Cauac replied, “but you do not know it yet. What brings you in such a hurry?”
    “I . . . I had a vision. A young girl, white as this sand, with hair like the sun and eyes like the sea.”
    Cauac waited for more, working not to show the tightness crawling along his shoulder muscles or the heaviness in his chest.
    Confusion showed in the young man’s eyes, and earnestness, as if he feared being disbelieved. “She came to the cenote, wearing strange clothing. Like the petals of bright flowers, but not. She sang to the water and then welcomed father sun, and then . . . then she fell in.” Cauac wanted to ask if she had drowned, but held his tongue. Best let the story come out in its own way.
    “She swam back, and I helped her to climb free. She spoke, but not in words. I gave her one of Julu’s feathers from last year, and she gave me strange leaves.” Ah Bahlam’s smile looked uncertain. “Come, sit by me in the rocks.”
    Cauac followed him up the beach under the watchful eyes of a family of iguanas. They climbed up a sharp, short bluff to sit on stones at the top and look out to the sea. Ah Bahlam shrugged his bow and arrows off his shoulder, setting them carefully on rocks the wind had blown clear of sand. He unrolled the leather pouch he kept his feathers in, so it lay open on a flat stone, and reached for a set of folded green and light orange paper like the tender books kept in the sacred temples, and like the books, filled with images. They were smaller, though, leaf-sized. Ah Bahlam held one up toward the sun. “Like her speech, I cannot read her pictures.”
    Cauac took the paper from Ah Bahlam, running it through his fingers and staring out to sea, as if Great Old remained to give him answers. “Is the girl still at the cenote?” he asked.
    Ah Bahlam shook his head. “She took the path, but when I followed, her footsteps simply stopped.”
    A spirit who left tracks. “Start at the beginning, and tell me everything.”
    While Ah Bahlam told his story, Cauac stared out to sea, listening to Ah Bahlam with one ear and to the gentle waves with the other, struggling to understand. The story made no more sense than his dreams had. He had feared the dreams concerned Ah Bahlam as well, and now he knew they must. Ah Bahlam had spent a year studying with Cauac. Other young men and women had also been sent to work with various priests, healers, and shamans like Cauac. But Ah Bahlam was special. Not because he was the eldest son of a powerful man who controlled the salt trade and sat on the high councils of Chichén Itzá. Because of—trust—a trust that Cauac had never seen in a student sent to him. A strong innocence.
    Ah Bahlam would return to Chichén Itzá, where he might, or might not, be chosen to play in the winter solstice ball game that would define the new year. Afterward, unless he died on the Ball Court, he would take a place by his father’s side as an advisor, and perhaps, some day, help run the city.
    The whole peninsula felt the tension between Chichén Itzá and Coba, and even more, between the thirsty farms and the great city. Protection agreements fell apart as bandits roamed the Mayan roads. This was a difficult time for leadership. All his life Chichén had stood as beacon and target, and now it was more of each than