Beautiful Sacrifice

framed by trees far taller than she was. She clipped the machete in place at her hip and motioned Hunter forward. When she felt him behind her, she took a half step left, letting him see ahead.
    As Hunter squeezed next to her, he saw the breathtaking drop into the limestone cenote less than a yard beyond their feet. Trees crowded right up to the edge of the cliff and beyond, roots clinging to limestone ledges no bigger than his hand. Vines trailed from trees and rock alike, yet after the thousand shades of green that was the thickest jungle, the overall impression of the cenote was of muted pale cliffs and water that blazed blue under an empty sky. Where shadows fell, the water darkened to a murky shade of green.
    Across the cenote, where the cliff was lower and less steep, a pale thread zigzagged down to the water. He estimated that the far side was about two hundred feet away, with a cliff perhaps twenty-five feet high. Where he and Lina stood, the cliff was at least ten feet higher, probably more. Without a point of reference, it was hard to tell. The mouth of the cenote was a rough circle left when the roof of an ancient limestone cavern had collapsed. Freshwater lay at the bottom of the limestone cliffs.
    “Jase would be strapping on dive tanks,” Hunter said in a low voice. “You ever dive the cenote?”
    “Not with equipment. The water is deep, but even deeper at this side than the other. We used to jump in over there,” She pointed to a place where the jungle at the top of the cliff had been cleared and covered with crushed limestone, creating a flat area. The cliff below was steep, almost overhanging the water. “Hundreds of years ago there was at least one altar there, but it didn’t survive the Catholic mandate. Generations of Maya have gradually restored the limestone causeway from the village to the cenote, though after we put wells in the villages, people no longer had to risk their lives just to get a drink.”
    The red and yellow of heaped flowers announced the presence of a different, modern shrine near the edge of the limestone platform.
    “Is that usually there?” Hunter asked.
    She shrugged. “It varies, but it has become bigger, more permanent, than I remember as a child. It looks like it has doubled or tripled in size since the last time I really noticed it.”
    Hunter weighed the presence of the shrine and decided that it could wait to be investigated. It looked like just one more really big pile of flowers nearly engulfing a long-armed cross. From the thin veil of insects that seethed over the place, it was a good bet that there was food and/or blood among the bright petals.
    “What’s over there?” Hunter pointed to a gap in the cliff-side foliage that lay to the right of the shrine, just beyond the head of the ghostlike trail descending the cliff.
    “The path from the estate. We have technicians who check the wells and the level of the cisterns so we know if water has to be rationed or pumped up from the cenote.”
    “That happen often?”
    “Only a few times. Abuelita doesn’t like pumping from the cenote. Once she made everyone haul water in buckets. Said it was better that way. In fact”—Lina put her hand on Hunter’s shoulder and leaned out, trying to see better—“I’ll bet that the pump doesn’t even work anymore. The pipe down the rim into the water is gone.”
    Hunter absorbed the ancient cenote and modern shrine, the ghost path and cloudless sky. “Could be a long summer.”
    “My mother’s mother had more underground cisterns built after the last drought. If we had to, we could irrigate enough of the estate crops to keep the villagers and ourselves alive. I barely remember my grandmother, but she was very determined that the estate be self-reliant.”
    “Governments come and go. The need for food and water doesn’t.”
    “We have other cenotes on Reyes Balam lands, but noneof the size and accessibility of this one. Some are so steep that even a jaguar would get a workout on the way to water. Others are little more than ponds with muddy bottoms. A few archaeological divers mucked about in them, but didn’t find much.”
    “Any divers in this one?”
    “Philip dived it after he and Celia were married. He found the usual knives, faces, pots, figurines, jewelry—all of it broken during the act of sacrificing to the gods. What is given to the gods isn’t taken back.”
    “People, too?” Hunter asked.
    “Apparently. This cenote was an important