The Queen Jade Read online

  THE

  QUEEN

  JADE

  A NEW WORLD

  NOVEL OF

  ADVENTURE

  YXTA MAYA MURRAY

  TO SARAH PREISLER

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Acknowledgments

  The History Behind the Story

  A Conversation with Yxta Maya Murray

  A Few Words on Writing The Queen Jade

  The lighter side of History

  About the Author

  Praise for The Queen Jade

  Also by Yxta Maya Murray

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Where did the artisans of the Olmec empire obtain their fabulous trove of translucent blue jade? Scientific expeditions and treasure hunters, known informally among themselves as jadeistas or jade-raiders, have scoured Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Costa Rica searching for the source of the rare stone….[In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch] a U.S. team says that it has now found the fabled jade supply in a Rhode Island-sized area of central Guatemala centered on the Motagua River.

  —”Scientists Discover the Long-Lost Source of Mayan Jade Artifacts in Guatemala,”

  Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2002

  CHAPTER 1

  The serenity of the empty bookstore was rattled by my mother’s entrance. “Creature?” she called out, banging the front door, its brass chimes clattering. “Are you here? Awful Thing?”

  “Ye-es,” I called out from the shop’s back room.

  “Lola, where are you?”

  “Here in the office, Mom. Hold on.”

  “Well, don’t keep me waiting. Did you get my message about those copies I wanted? Are they ready? The cab’s waiting at the curb.”

  Juana Sanchez stood in the middle of the store, her long silver hair glinting in the brandy-colored shadows, a duffel bag slung on one arm, her tweed cape flicking behind her meaty shoulders. She began impatiently humming an off-key tune while I put a third edition of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island down onto my desk. Being slim-boned and curly-haired, I don’t favor my mother much, except in my taste for unusual clothing. I gathered up my western-style petticoat, and with my old red Patsy Cline boots came stamping out from behind a stack of books and onto the main floor of The Red Lion, the shop I owned in Long Beach.

  She stopped humming when she saw me. “There you are. What are you doing in the dark?”

  I walked over to her, and she began to push down my springing black bangs with quick bats of her hand.

  “Just wrapping a few things up,” I said.

  “Has the store been busy?” She brushed imaginary dust off my shoulders and began to smooth the wrinkles on my collar with hard jabs of her thumbs, and then she finally planted a beaky kiss on my cheek.

  I laughed. “What do you think?”

  “Don’t be negative. Things will pick up. Though the less time you have for work, the more time you have for me. Or did you forget that I’m leaving tonight? I’ll just bet you did. That’s what comes from sitting inside this shop all day and night reading these bloody books, instead of every once in a while coming out with me to the bush! I’ve told you this before. A couple of days in the jungle—that’ll put your feet on the ground, Creature. That’ll grow some hair on your chest. And maybe then you’ll remember when your own mother is going to leave the country.”

  “I did remember. I was just about to start up with your Xeroxing.”

  She thinned her eyes at me. “Likely story.”

  “And I didn’t think I was invited on this trip.”

  “Actually, you’re not this time.” She crush-hugged me around the waist. “Little vacation of my own that I’ve whipped up. Going to traipse around the haunts of old de la Cueva—that route she took, when she was looking for the Jade. Just for fun. I need some time away.” My mother cleared her throat. “But don’t confuse the issue. I was speaking generally.”

  “That’s what you were saying last night—you’re going to follow Beatriz de la Cueva’s trail. And de la Rosa’s, too, I guess. Right?”

  “I suppose. But let’s not talk about Tomas. It’s too sad—how he died.”

  “Pneumonia.”

  “So they say. Though no one seems to know where he’s buried, do they?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  She turned away from me and studied some of the books on the walls. “I think your father is grieving a little, strange as that sounds. And it’s got to be rough on Yolanda. She’ll be missing her dad.”

  “I feel bad about it. I haven’t talked with Yolanda in years—”

  “Yes. But we decided that it was better that way.”

  “I know.”

  “Though we all were friends, once.”

  I touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Let’s just stick to de la Cueva,” she said, in a firm voice.

  “Fine by me. So. Old Governor Beatriz—”

  “She was the first European to go looking for the Stone, you know.”

  “I do know,” I said. “I practically know the story better than you. I’m thinking about translating it into English.”

  “You are?” The corners of her mouth tugged up approvingly.

  “I could desktop publish it, then sell it here, in the store.”

  “It’s an amusing idea—but I still doubt you know the story as well as I do.”

  “Good Lord, there was the legend of the magic queen of all Jades, which could give you absolute power if you got your hands on it—”

  “But it also wound up destroying its possessors,” she interrupted. “Any person who saw or touched the Jade grew obsessed with it. At least two of its owners came to gruesome ends, and then it was hidden, and cursed by a witch. As the story goes, if anyone tried to steal it, the world would be destroyed by water and flame—”

  “No one was deterred by that threat, though,” I said. “Especially the Europeans. In the Renaissance, there was a trip to the jungle, and a search for the Stone. Except it didn’t go very well. There was the Maze of Deceit and the Maze of Virtue…a lying slave �
�some seriously naive Spaniards—”

  My mother raised her eyebrows. “All of which is why the work qualifies—if I’m not mistaken—as an Adventure. And so you should have it in stock, and be able to make me a copy of it.”

  “I do have it around here somewhere,” I said. “It’ll just take me a minute to Xerox it for you.”

  “And her Letters.”

  “I already copied the letters,” I said, running off to get the book.

  I found my clothbound edition of Beatriz de la Cueva’s 1541 Legende of the Queen Jade on the highest rung of my “Great Colonial Villains in History” shelf, which is filled with some of the most flaming thrillers in my store. I should know, since I’m a connoisseur of hair-raisers, and my Red Lion is devoted to Adventure and Fantasy books. Since its grand opening in 1993, I’d taken care to ensure that the store encouraged my customers to wallow in the genre’s glorious hyperbole by buying up all the best personal libraries I could. I’d also furnished it with graciously carved walnut shelves, and soft leather chairs that were often inhabited by readers dressed up like myopic versions of Luke Skywalker or Allan Quatermain, or I might find sleeping there a Dune enthusiast who looked as if he’d partaken of a bit too much Spice. I held world-class Dungeons and Dragons marathons there as well, and during our annual Lord of the Rings reenactment festival you might find me wielding a sword and answering to no other name than Galadriel. I didn’t care if these readerly indulgences were bankrupting me, as the source of my passion for Adventures was not very hard to discern: my mother was a living Odysseus, being a UCLA archaeologist and jade specialist who for the past thirty years had made regular escapades to the jaguar-and-relic-filled jungles of Guatemala. Almost as proof that she remained as reckless as the tiger tamers and globetrotters of Jules Verne’s or H. Rider Haggard’s ilk, she was heading back down to Guatemala tonight, October 22, 1998, which is why she had come into the Lion: she’d wanted me to make some reproductions of maps, letters, and an ancient legend for her, so that she could use them as references on her trip.

  Mom gripped my legs as I stood on a ladder propped up against the bookshelf. “Watch it,” she said. “Whenever you get on this thing, I think you’re going to break your neck.”

  “And you want me to go play with scorpions and snakes in the jungle?”

  “It’s safe in the jungle. But look at this place, books everywhere. It’s a death pit.”

  “Just don’t let me slip.” I reached my arm up to the top shelf. “I’ve almost got it.”

  I clung onto the lodged book with one hand like a ballast as the ladder swayed and my mother barked, but when the Legende popped out, I tumbled into Mom’s waiting arms. We took The Queen Jade to the back room, where I kept my Xerox.

  “A lot of people died because they read this book,” I said, spreading the first page of the Legende on the copier’s glass surface. The leaves that I copied were dry with age, and filled with notes that readers had left in the margins.

  “Well, de la Cueva is pretty convincing about the Jade,” my mother said.

  ” ‘The blue rock glowed as fair as a goddess, stood as tall as an Amazon, and ruled over men’s greed with its terrible glory,’ “ I read aloud. “She believed in the story herself. Why else would she go running through the jungle while everyone around her was dying of dysentery and exhaustion?”

  “Because of her slave, for one thing.”

  “You mean, her lover,” I corrected.

  “The one who took her up there.”

  I nodded. “He’s the one who betrayed her.”

  We began to remind each other of the details of the famous fraud that led to the publication of the Legende: in 1540-41, Guatemalan governor Beatriz de la Cueva fell prey to the seductions of her paramour, a Maya servant named Balaj K’waill, who helped her translate an ancient Indian fairy tale about a magical Jade stone hidden in two jungle mazes, which he claimed she might find on the other side of the river Sacluc in the country’s unmapped Peten forest. The risk would be worth it, he promised. This gem was no mere bauble, but a fantastic, glittering weapon that would allow any ruler to crush her enemies merely by wishing them dead. The power-starved de la Cueva could not resist such a temptation, even though the legend also told of the Jade’s grisly side effects. The weak-brained who laid eyes on it went mad, supposedly. The soft of heart were transfixed by the memory of its gleam, its shine. It was the pre-Christian idée fixe. Laughing off any peril to her own state of mind, the governor embarked with her slave on the quest, and after six months’ travel she claimed to have discovered the deadly Labyrinth of Deceit, a colossal, winding edifice composed of cobalt jade whose color matched the legendary stone’s. Some scholars posit that perhaps she did find some structure in the jungle, a palace of curious design, say, or some ancient tomb—though none has ever been found by modern men. De la Cueva eventually realized, however, that the Jade her lover promised was nothing more than a lie, upon which point she expressed her disappointment by executing Balaj K’waill as a traitor. Yet she wouldn’t be the Stone’s only fool. Despite all the tragedy the legend continued to intrigue adventurers through the centuries, and many others would take up the dangerous and futile quest.

  “The blue Jade stone,” my mother murmured, looking at the book with me. “No wonder so many lunatics went looking for it. Blue’s the rarest color of jadeite there is. Burmese green can’t top it, Chinese serpentine’s common in comparison. The Queen of all blue jades—that would be the rarest of the rare, my girl, if the thing ever really existed. We don’t even know where the blue stuff comes from. Big enigma, where the mine might have been located. As it is, only a few worked pieces of it have ever been uncovered.”

  “Well, you’ve found a few pieces—that jaguar mask, a few bowls and pots.”

  “And there was the Stelae, of course,” she said. “Found in ‘twenty-four by Tapia.”

  “And those blue ax heads Erik Gomara dug up.”

  “You mean the ones he beat me to.”

  “Where was that? The Peten?”

  “God, don’t ruin my mood by talking about Gomara.”

  “Yes, all right,” I said, sorry that I’d brought up the name of my mother’s academic rival. “Don’t get grumpy.”

  “Too late,” she said. “Forget Gomara. Though about Tomas—he came across a few pieces while he was looking for the Queen, the old crackpot. He thought it might really be out there.”

  My mother paused and tweaked my ear.

  “I didn’t want to talk about him either, did I?” she went on. “But Tomas took Beatriz’s same route through the jungle. Scampering after that fairy story. The same as that old German, Alexander Von Humboldt.” She sighed, and she looked so wistful all at once that I didn’t bother asking her about the arcane reference to a European explorer. “So. There’ll be a lot of ghosts on the path I’m taking. But at least I’m going. I’m not just sitting around studying it on my duff.”

  She trained her glinting eyes on me.

  “What?”

  “Am I ever going to get you out of this bookstore?” she growled.

  “Mom.”

  “Lola. You’re thirty-one. When I was your age, I was running away from tigers, I was getting buried in landslides. I was having fun. Your idea of having an adventure is reading an etymological dictionary.”

  “I know, isn’t it great?” I waved my arms, exasperated. “And you’re forgetting that you’ve been hitting the books for the last few months, yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been working hard, lately. I thought you were busy writing a paper, though now you’re just dashing off.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “What gave you the idea that I was doing an article?”

  “You’ve been buried in your office with maps and charts and papers. And…it’s been a little while since I’ve seen you like that, all secretive and crazy. Since either of us have—I talked to Dad about it last night on the phone. We can’t figure out why you’re g
oing.”

  “Now you sound like an old badgery mother. That’s my job. And I’ve explained this to you already. I’m only going on a vacation.”

  “But you’ve never taken a vacation before.”

  “Then I’m probably overdue for one, don’t you think? I’ve certainly done my fair share of work.”

  “More than your fair share!” I grabbed her by the shoulders. “You solved the Flores Stelae. First, that is—”

  “A thousand years ago I deciphered some meaningless stones, and blah, blah blah, blah.” She pursed her lips. “Look, don’t worry. I’m only going down there, visit your father for a while, which obviously Manuel will love. And then I’ll trudge around de la Cueva’s old routes for a few weeks. Let the younger generation take over the school while I meander about among the monkeys.”

  “But you can’t stand the younger generation, Mom.”

  “That’s very true,” she said, butting me lightly with her head, like a goat. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Though, now that I think of it, I suppose it bears mentioning that Gomara—”

  “Erik—”

  “Right. The disgusting womanizer—he’s done some work around this area.” She pointed back to the Legende. “He did some scribbling on Von Humboldt’s journals, which refer to de la Cueva’s mazes. You might want to pick up the old German’s diary, especially if you’re thinking of translating de la Cueva’s legend. The Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent is what it’s called.”

  “The Personal Narrative?” I asked, writing down the title on a scrap of paper.

  “Von Humboldt ran around Guatemala in the 1800s, looking for the Maya king’s Jade. Poor thing took de la Cueva’s same path. He said he found some labyrinths, a buried kingdom, then was nearly killed by Indians. Nothing was ever substantiated, but his writings are a decent contribution. He was one of the first to do any kind of analysis of de la Cueva’s work. The university has a nice edition of his book. You should look it up. I’d like to get your reading of it.”

  “It sounds fantastic.”

  “I thought you’d like it. If nothing else, at least I know my daughter.” She flicked her fingers at me, and I could feel her getting pricklier and pricklier. That’s how she usually became right before we were about to part, and when she showed her tenderest and stickiest feelings. “But don’t let me get sentimental. You still have copying to do.”