"And see where that idea has gotten you!" Xibalba said, snorting.

"So tell me what you would have done. If you were a mortal."

The god fell silent, the uncertain look in his eyes flitting between the corners of the room as he tapped his fingers on the head of his cane.

Manolo sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "That's what I thought."

"Look, how about you just get to the point and tell me how you did it? That's all I was sent to find out."

To his surprise, Manolo flashed him a smile. "Now that you've heard why I did it," he said, "I suppose so."

Between the four of them, only a few hours' sleep was to be had that night; none of it was Manolo's. He sat a few feet away from his friends, his back against a tree trunk as he flipped through the pages of the old journal again and again. The map sat near his feet, and every few minutes he would pick it up and run his fingers over the markings while murmuring to himself. Joaquin tried more than once to call him back to the campfire, but was sent shuffling away with a hard glance each time.

Eventually Maria approached him, ignoring the way he tensed up when he noticed her. "You'll think better if you sleep a little," she said, sitting down beside him. "You must be tired."

Manolo shook his head. "I'll be fine."

"As fine as any of us can be, right?"

He didn't answer, instead gesturing to the map. "We need to figure out where we are on this."

"How's that gonna work?"

"With the book." He flipped through the first several pages, showing her the tightly packed lines of writing. "He must have been their cartographer. Look, he wrote down everything important that they passed and where it was. Villages, landmarks, all that stuff. And I was thinking, if we could take a spot from the map and match it to a spot in here…"

"Then we'll know how far along we already are," Maria finished.

Manolo grinned and nodded. "Then all we have to do is catch up to them!"

"And…" Maria stopped herself.

"And what?"

"…We'll figure it out." She nestled closer to him. "You know, this all seems more like the kind of stuff I'd be doing."

Manolo paused. "It ought to be me this time," he said, his voice low and weak.

She nodded. "Would you like some company for a while?"

"Si, por favor."

Maria leaned back against the tree trunk, letting her head loll to one side. Her eyelids had drifted shut before she could realize they were moving: the last time she had slept now seemed like a distant memory. A warm arm wrapped around her body, followed by a soft kiss on her forehead. "Gracias…"

She was too tired to dream. Perhaps that was a blessing.

"Maria! Maria! Wake up!"

Maria opened a bloodshot eye and found herself curled up on the ground, roused from her sleep by a hand shaking her shoulder. "Manolo? What are you…?"

She yelped as he tried hoisting her to her feet. "We need to get going!" he said before hurrying off to tend to the half-asleep Mondragons in the same way. Joaquin shot up like a bullet when shoved over, and Ixa cursed in a smattering of tongues at all the sudden noise.

"Tell us what's happened first," Maria said, standing up.

"I figured out the map!"

Joaquin was still stumbling about trying to find his eyepatch and swords. "Great, you go do that…" He stopped as the words sank in. "You what?"

Manolo pulled the three of them around him and folded out the yellowed sheet of paper. "Look at this," he said, pointing to the lower left corner. Near the compass rose, the conquistador had drawn a picture of a dead, blackened tree, its trunk split nearly in half by a bolt of lightning. Just to the east of it passed a thick river that wound its way across the paper, up to the pyramid on the other side of the jungle.

"Okay," Maria said, realizing the significance of what she was seeing. "How do we find that, though?"

In response, Manolo grabbed her chin and turned her head to face the tree she had been sleeping under. Her jaw dropped as she took in the split trunk and charred bark.

Her husband smiled sheepishly. "I didn't notice until I kept looking at you last night…"

Joaquin had fished a compass out of his pocket and was now trying to get it aligned correctly. "This way!" he said after a moment, tearing off past the dead tree and into the jungle. The others grabbed their supplies and followed him.

It didn't take long for the swish of flowing water to reach their ears. Soon they had pushed aside the last of the foliage and found themselves standing on a grassy bank next to a wide, placid river that was winding its way northeast.

Joaquin looked up and down the length of the river, his brows furrowed in deep thought. "We'll travel faster if we're able to sail down this."

"But we don't have anything to make a boat with," Manolo said.

"We don't need to." Joaquin was now rummaging through one of the group's packs, pulling out a large, folded sheet of something thick and black. "I told the general this old thing would come in handy sometime!"

It took a while, but eventually he had the thing set up and inflated. It was a large, shallow boat made of black rubber, just long and wide enough for the four of them and their bags. They pushed it into the water, then leapt aboard as the current grabbed them and swept them along.

The boat hung low in the river, and the cold water lapped and splashed at its sides. Sharp rocks jutted out from beneath the surface, cutting through the small waves: the travelers pushed themselves away from them with the hefty branches serving as their oars. The river soon rounded a bend and grew more narrow: the trees seemed to grow closer together and further out from the shore, coiling over the boat to form a thick, dark canopy.

Manolo unfolded the map and ran a finger over the winding line. A small note was scribbled near it: two or three days along river, with good current. He looked up towards the canopy, trying to remember what the moon had looked like the night before. Would there be enough time?

A dark flash of movement along the branches above caught his eye. At the same moment, he felt Joaquin grab him by the arm. "Look," the other man whispered, pointing to the shore.

Lithe, shadowy shapes with glowing eyes prowled through the trees, keeping abreast of the boat. The pack had never left.

Maria pulled a sword and pistol out from the bag of weapons. "I'll take care of them," she said with a dark look as she readied the gun.

"Not too quickly," Ixa said, narrowing her eyes as she scanned the shore in search of Pax.

Joaquin raised an eyebrow. "You can't be serious."

"Of course I am. I want to learn what they know – it may help."

Manolo glanced up, and then gasped. "Look out!"

A jaguar had detached itself from the canopy and was hurtling down towards the boat, shrieking as it unsheathed its claws. Joaquin raised an oar and smacked it aside as it came close. It yowled in pain, disappeared beneath the churning waves, then resurfaced paddling after the boat.

That seemed to be the cue for the rest of the pack to surge forward and leap into the river. Soon a dozen spotted heads were cutting through the water, closing in on the sides and back of the boat. The current began to grow more fast and choppy as the boat rounded another bend.

Manolo and Maria shot at the ones who started to gain on them: their bullets whizzed across the river's surface, sending up a spray of foam and startling the cats enough to make floating a struggle. Those who came near enough to try clawing at the boat were greeted with the flat side of a sword against their heads. Joaquin stayed up front and kept rowing, every now and then taking another swing at the jaguars which dropped from above. Ixa kept her eyes glued to the shore, where Pax was keeping an eye on the scene before him as he prowled.

Still no sign of her, Ixa thought. Perhaps they were keeping her somewhere? No, that wouldn't be it: not with all the souls who hated Pax in this part of the jungle. He wouldn't risk letting her be found. And with the way he had hesitated the night before…

She stood up. "You," she shouted at the jaguar, "are without a doubt the most miserable warrior I've ever seen!"

"What are you doing?" Joaquin said, staring at her in horror.

"Watch."

Pax paused, then growled and kept up his chase with renewed rage. "What place has Tlaloc's weakest daughter to be speaking ill of someone like me?"

"I know weakness when I see it," Ixa continued. "No true warrior would allow himself to be bested in a fight by a girl such as ours!"

Pax reared up on his hind legs, clenching his fists as they morphed into being. "What?"

"You heard me! It's a disgrace – the so-called Jaguar King bested by a child! And not just any child, but a mortal!"

The jaguar's response slipped from his mouth before he could stop it: "There was no fight, the little coward slipped away under cover of dark!"

Manolo and Maria froze, while Ixa's face lit up as she smirked. "So you admit it."

The boat suddenly shifted beneath her feet, knocking her off-balance. They were dropping down a series of short, jagged falls as the river grew ever faster. Below them stretched white, frothing rapids, shadowed in mist and roaring with the sounds of water bashing against rock. The jaguars saw it as well and split apart, making for shore and leaving the little vessel to its fate. It careened over the last fall and was instantly swept out of sight, vanishing into the haze.

One by one, the members of the pack convened on the shore where they had left their leader. Pax was still staring at the spot of the river where the boat had last been, his whole body faintly quivering.

One of his warriors failed to see what was brewing within. "We can leave them, can't we, master? They won't survive the – "

Pax swung a paw and struck the jaguar across the face, drawing blood and knocking him into the river. "After them!" he snarled at the others, now cowering. "Now!"

Far off in the trees, something that was pretending to be a branch opened its large yellow eyes. "Is he gone…?"

"For now." Ribbit. "Come along, we haven't much time."

"Wait, where are we going?"

"To find that human girl."

"Human?! Oh no no no no, nobody said anything about humans!"

"What did you think those four ugly things were?"

"Those were humans? And now there's more of them? Here?" There was a pause, then a manic rustling of leaves and feathers. "Zuma? Zuma, don't leave me! Not with the humans!"