Page 103 of Empire of Shadows

“You mean there’s a Mayan farm nearby,” Ellie filled in carefully.

Ellie recognized the word—milpa—as a term specific to the modern Mayan communities that peppered British Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

“They use the fire to clear the forest for planting, then let the field go fallow and come around a few years later for another burn,” Adam explained.

“So what’s the gamble?” she pressed.

“On the one hand? We get a damned good meal and a comfortable place to sleep for the night,” he said.

“That doesn’t sound terrible,” she returned tentatively. “What about the other hand?”

“Getting threatened with knives and chased across the district?” Adam offered back with an awkward smile.

Ellie stared at him.

“It’s a really small other hand,” he hurried to assure her.

“How small?” she pressed.

“The Mayans who choose to stay out here in the Cayo instead of moving closer to the coast usually aren’t looking for visitors,” Adam explained. “They tend to make their settlements deliberately hard to find. But if there’s a milpa here, then there’s a village nearby—and we might be able to talk them into letting us stay the night. It’d be a damned sight more comfortable than sleeping rough in the bush again, and the food’s usually amazing.”

“Do you expect talking them into that to be very difficult?” Ellie pressed cautiously.

“Well… last time I was at one of their villages, I was with a Mayan,” Adam admitted. “Can’t be entirely sure how it’ll go showing up on our own unannounced. Most of the Mayan folks who live out this way came here in order to get away from being hijacked into forced labor over in Guatemala. Somebody trying to enslave you or your family can make you a little skittish.”

He pushed his way through another stand of brush.

Ellie stopped walking.

“Should we really be bothering them, then?” she demanded.

Adam paused to consider it.

“Maybe not,” he allowed. “But it’s also possible they’ll know something about this city of yours. How about if we feel like we’re not welcome, we make a graceful exit?”

Ellie realized that he was waiting for her to answer. She gave him a careful nod.

He led them into the brush, and the scent of a recent fire grew stronger. A short while later, the trees parted to reveal a broad clearing of freshly charred ground. Some of the stumps were still smoldering.

As they reached the milpa, a figure slipped from the brush to Ellie’s right—a reedy stick of a boy. He dashed up a barely perceptible game trail that she could now see lined the edge of the field.

No, she corrected herself. It was not a game trail. It was a path to the village.

“Should we follow him?” Ellie asked cautiously.

“If he didn’t want to be followed, he would’ve made sure we didn’t see him,” Adam replied confidently.

He set off after the boy. The trail wound along the milpa, and then crawled up the side of a steep, forested hill. Ellie’s legs had just begun to ache from the climb when the foliage parted, and the village revealed itself.

A scatter of houses sat along a ridge that clung to the steep hillside. A creek ran beneath the settlement, fed by a low waterfall to the north. The buildings were palm-thatched and neatly whitewashed, set behind little fenced yards with colorful, abundant gardens.

The game trail Adam and Ellie followed widened into a road. Chickens wandered around in the middle of it, squawking and fluttering in alarm at their approach. There was no sign of the boy they had followed, but other children materialized from the houses and yards as they drew closer. The young people were dressed in light, undyed cotton shirts, with leather sandals on their feet. They formed little clusters at the verge of the road, staring and whispering. Their eyes were bright with curiosity.

A rooster crowed out a warning, and a trio of women—two middle-aged and one older—poked their heads out of one of the houses. Their gazes were slightly more tinged with suspicion than those of the children.

“Buenas días,” Adam said. “¿Dónde está el alcalde?”

The women’s eyes narrowed. Ellie tried to make out Adam’s Spanish. She was only peripherally familiar with the language.

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