Free Mayan December by Brenda Cooper

afraid.”
    Alice let out a long breath. “I’ll do it.”
    “Thanks.”
    Alice was wondering what to say next when it came to her. Don Carlo. “May I bring someone who can help?”
    Marie sounded startled. “Who?”
    “Don Carlo Agapito. He’s American. Used to own a tech company he sold, uses that money to help Mayans down here. He’ll be good for PR.”
    She could almost hear laughter in Marie’s voice as she asked, “Is he your sweetie?”
    Alice did laugh. “No, I don’t have one of those. But he’s helped me get work down here, and I can use someone I trust to help me if the group gets too big. He can answer any question about the Mayans themselves. And they should be represented.”
    “Hold on.” The phone went silent, and Alice heart her heart beating too fast for a long time before Marie came back on the phone. “He’s already on the possible list. We’ll move him up a notch. My folk will contact him.”
    “Thanks,” Alice said again, a little surprised at her audacity, at how easy and hard it was to talk to Marie, all at once. Just like it used to be. “I’m looking forward to seeing you.”
    “Okay. I’ll have the security squad contact you. You can give them your friend’s particulars.”
    “All right.”
    “Look, I’ve got to go keep working to save the world. But I’ll see you in a few days. I’m glad we found you and you’re down there. Bye.”
    “Bye.” But Marie had cut the connection before she even said that. Alice sat up straight and looked out across the jungle. Wow.
    “Are you ready yet?” Michael called.
    She stood up quickly. “Yes, sorry.”
    “Was that Nixie?” he asked.
    “Just . . . ” What to say? “An old friend. Someone I wouldn’t have been able to call back if I hadn’t taken the call.”
    He frowned, but led her around the top of the pyramid toward the others as if he were the guide.
    She frowned, but followed him. He paid her, after all.
    They came upon the others looking down at a whitewashed four-step pyramid.
    Alice shook herself. Nixie . . . well, what could she do? Nixie had to be all right. She needed to focus, to do her job. Speaking of the job, she pointed. “That’s the Temple of the Warriors below you.” Tall stone columns holding up nothing but air and imagination surrounded a building as steep as the one they stood on, but squatter and shorter. “No one knows exactly what the columns held up. It’ll be decorated as a market for the equinox. Those are the tallest freestanding columns found so far in Mayan architecture, even though they look small from up here.”
    Julia spoke softly, “It’s like looking down on the bones of a world. With all we understand, we don’t know what it looked like when the culture was alive. Maybe we never will.” She turned to Alice, sounding morose. “What if we had to look at our own bones some day?”
    Don Carlos said, “Our bones keep being rebuilt and restored. Perhaps they’ll never be as bare and unclothed as these. Or as strong.” He looked down on the Temple, musing. “Imagine hundreds of my people, thousands, walking on the paths, going about their business. Artisans carrying pots and mosaics, warriors practicing, women with water and weaving.”
    Alice liked his word pictures. “Scientists and mathematicians—all priests, but they had people who did my job.” Like ancestors, in a way. A heritage she could almost feel when she came here. “They’re going to try to decorate some of this the way most archeologists think it would have been. You should have heard the arguments! We won’t get it right, but you’ll see your color.”
    Don Carlo smiled yet again. “And there will be real Mayans acting as the artisans and warriors.”
    She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that only a quarter of the actors would be Mayans. Many had been hired for their looks: tall, tanned people more like the American and European ideal of Native Americans than the small, wiry Mayans.
    They came