Free Curse of the Ancients by Matt de la Pena Page A

like it was helping her manage the pain. And her eyes were still squeezed shut.
    The other guy shrugged. “Who cares? Let’s just take the machine and let the king worry about it from there.”
    “DNA,” Sera said, “is a nucleic acid that contains the specific genetic code of each unique organism. In other words, it’s a way to decipher that you are you and I am me. No two people have the same DNA. And the machine, as I’ve already explained, will only work if it is in direct contact with the DNA of all three of us.”
    “The girl is deranged,” the squat man said.
    “Oh, I disagree,” the man above Dak said. “In fact, she’s given me an idea. If this thing needs something from each of them in order to work, then we simply cut off a hand from all three of them. We will bring back to Calakmul the codex, this machine, and three hands.”
    “It’s genius,” the other man said.
    Dak’s captor brought his obsidian knife down to Dak’s wrist. He began a sawing motion. Dak screamed.
    “Dak!” Sera shouted.
    But the man kept sawing, and Dak was pinned in such an awkward position he couldn’t even move.
    And then suddenly the man began shouting, “No! Please!” And he let go of Dak and hopped off him. The other man was shouting, too.
    Dak twisted around to see what was going on. He spotted a few large snakes slithering out of the dense jungle foliage. Their tongues whipped around outside of their mouths and then sucked back in.
    Dak and Sera both started screaming, too.
    Kisa just lay there, cringing in pain.
    But an odd thing happened. The snakes slithered right over Kisa. They appeared to be converging on the two Mayan men, ignoring the kids entirely.
    “It’s witchcraft!” cried the man with the knife.
    “Run!” yelled the other.
    As soon as the men had disappeared into the trees, the snakes dispersed. It was hard to tell whether they were in pursuit or simply passing through.
    Dak staggered to his feet, holding his wrist. “What just happened?”
    Sera pointed to Kisa, who was now sitting up. “Did she just save our lives?”
    Dak looked at Kisa, who was fingering the locket around her neck. “Sometimes I come out here when I’m bored, and I hum to them. But nothing like this ever happened.”
    Dak turned to Sera. “Dude, she’s like one of those guys who plays the flute or whatever and gets a snake to dance around.”
    “Maybe, said Sera. “Maybe they were just . . . migrating. Do snakes migrate?”
    “You have to go find Riq now,” Kisa said.
    “What about you?” Dak said.
    “I need to be alone for a few minutes. I will be right behind you.”
    Dak turned to Sera and shrugged.
    “Come on,” said Sera. “I think I know which way Riq was headed.”

“Q UIET, MEN,” Itchik said, his chest heaving in and out. “It won’t be long now.”
    But Riq noted that the king of Izamal was breathing just as loudly as the rest of them. They’d run several miles through the hot and humid jungle — taking the “long road” out of town, as Itchik called it. Sweat streamed down Riq’s face, stinging his eyes, salting his lips. But he tried to follow orders and breathe more quietly.
    The plan was to take a different route than the men from Calakmul, circling around to cut them off from the front. Once they saw the men emerge on the path, Riq would spring into action. His particular role in Itchik’s plan was by far the most dangerous, but he wasn’t complaining. This was his purpose now. To help the people of Kisa’s village. And if helping them meant putting his life at risk, that’s exactly what he’d do.
    “Easy, men,” Itchik said, regaining his breath.
    As they waited, Riq thought about how different his new life would be. A few days ago he was a thousand percent committed to the Hystorian mission. It was the very blood that pumped through his veins . . . and always would. But today he was going to step away from the front lines of the Hystorians’ struggle. His loyalty now belonged