The Sentinel of El Petén

The elders had said I hadn’t inherited any of it. It was weird, considering that I out of both myself and my brother was the one who looked more like our father and his rich background. Calixto, El Canche, looked just like our Costa Rican mother yet had inherited all of the gifts that had made my father the famous healer that he was, the saviour of the state. We weren’t very well known outside of our little village in rural northern Guatemala, but my I know for a fact my father had assisted in delivering every single baby in our village, ourselves included, of course. But I, Catarino Quintana, El Prieto, hadn’t gotten a single drop.

When Calixto and I were little, we used to play the Hero Twins. We pretended we were Hunahpú and Xbalanqué on our way to challenge the Lords of Xibalba to a ball game. Since he was the lighter of the two of us, of course Calixto always insisted on being The Sun, Xbalanqué. That was fine by me. Like Hunahpú, I was content to take the diminished role of the Moon. Besides, I always liked the night better. I was able to blend into the background with ease, which is just how I liked it.

Keeping a low profile was what we needed to do in those days. I wasn’t yet born when it began in 1966, but growing up I of course heard the whispers. My mother constantly told my father to watch himself and watch his craft. Her guidance was unnecessary - the greatest warlock of Petén could look after himself and his family, after all. But it was a turbulent time when we were almost re-colonised, when the upper caste of Ladinos took their revenge on those who stood in the way of their business interests - us, the people of Petén, who wanted the United Fruit Company and their lackeys far, far from our agrarian province.

This story begins on the eve of my fifteenth birthday. We’d heard the whispers that they’d started conscripting people because the guerrillas were gaining more and more ground in the north. Our state was crucial, because we shared a border with Mexico. It was filled with dense, uncultivated jungle, perfect hiding places for the cause. And although my father was firmly on their side, the only way to keep us safe was to keep our heads down and mind our own business. As more and more villagers took sides one way or the other, we miraculously had survived without incident - up until now.

I can definitively say it started that night, because it was the night Don Mecho woke us all up by banging on our door until we thought it would burst in. Calixto, two years younger than me, hid in his bedsheets. “Stay there,” my father had hissed to us both as he’d gone for his rifle and pushed my mother behind him. I got out of bed anyway, but by then it was too late for him to scold me. Don Mecho had already forced his way in and slammed the door behind him, panting hysterically.

“They’re coming, Ariel!” he yelled at my father, gesturing wildly with his bottle. His hat was almost falling off of his head, and his face was flushed in a drunken panic. “Hide your boys! They’re coming!”

“Mecho, calm down,” my father tried to soothe as my mother’s eyes flickered from both men wildly, like she was watching a football match. Her already pale face was blanched in the light of the kerosene lantern as my father lit it and held it up to Mecho. “Why don’t you sit down and have something to drink? Toya, can you light the stove?”

Mecho’s eyes landed on me, and he gestured again. The beer in his bottle slopped all over the floor, and I knew my mother would complain about having to clean it tomorrow. “Listen, I may be a drunk, but I’m not a fool!” Mecho snapped. “Don’t you understand what’s happening? Rios Montt is running out of willing sacrifices and he’s kidnapping our boys now! You’ve got to send your two away before they get them!”

My father seemed to consider his words for a second. My mother, who had gone deathly silent, was the one who spoke next. “If that’s the case, then how much time do we have?” she asked quietly. Both Mecho and my father looked at her - Mecho seemed to be relieved someone was finally taking his warning seriously, but my father didn’t quite believe it. “Mecho is right. I don’t see any reason to not take precautions. Even if we send the boys over to the next town, it would be better if they were out of the way of the army. Just until they leave, and then they can come back, right?”

“Victoria, no,” Don Mecho lamented, holding his head in his hands. My father did the sensible thing and took the bottle away from his hands before he spilled even more on my mother’s very clean floor. “They’re going to look there too. You have to send them far, Toya. You have family in Costa Rica alive, don’t you? Why don’t you send them there?”

“Demetrio, listen to yourself,” my father finally interjected, having had enough of frantic yelling and outlandish ideas. “All of you, listen to yourselves. We’re out in the middle of the jungle. I sincerely doubt they even know where we are. And if they do, I’ll deal with them when they get here.”

Mecho got up again, agitated. “Fine,” he conceded. “I’ll go. But don’t say I didn’t warn you, Ariel. They’re after people like us. It doesn’t matter if you don’t ‘pick a side’. Your skin and your brujería is enough for them to kill you all.”

I’d heard enough. As quietly as I’d snuck into the kitchen to hear the conversation, I sidled out among the shadows. I could hear their voices carrying well into the small bedroom as I shook Calixto awake. He resisted, but I yanked the blankets off. “Get up, ceróte,” I hissed, gathering what meagre belongings I had into my schoolbag. I dumped the books and pencils out of Calixto’s as well and began jamming clothing into it, packing as much as I could into the small satchel. “Get your shoes on your feet. We’re leaving.”

“Catarino, it’s the middle of the night and we have school tomorrow,” my brother observed quietly, watching as I shoved an extra pair of pants into my own bag, changed out of my nightclothes and jammed my shoes on my feet. I took my prize machete I’d received from my father and strapped it to my back, pulling on the strings to make it tight. “What are you doing? Where would we be going at this hour in the night?” Calixto asked plaintively while rubbing sleep from his eyes.

I’d had enough of him too. For the magical prodigy that he was, Calixto was awfully slow on the uptake. I seized him by his collar and forced him upright, yanking at his shirt until he got the message. He carefully dressed in silence, side-eyeing me the entire time, seeming to finally understand that I was serious. “I’m going to say this once, and I suggest you listen,” I said slowly once he was fully awake. “The army is coming. We’re going to the jungle, because I’ll be damned if I kill my countrymen for Yankee bananas or get killed in the process. You can do whatever you want, but once they see who you are, they’re going to burn you alive because that’s what they do with witches. Now follow my lead, and do exactly as I say, and you might make it out of this.”

Oh, yeah. That was the way to get this boy to listen to you. He nodded at me as I shoved his bag into his hands, but insisted I take something he proffered. “Protection,” he explained as he handed me the pouch of herbs. “Put it around your neck. Papá made them for us both, you know. You never wear yours, so I’ve been keeping it with my stuff.”

“Because I’m not magical like you,” I sneered back, but nevertheless took the thing anyway. Checking to make sure the kitchen dwellers were still distracted in their argument, I very slowly pushed the mosquito net out of my bedroom window and dragged a chair over to give me a boost. Once I had clambered out the window, I gave Calixto a hand to help the prince out. Once he was firmly on the ground, I nodded to him and we both set off into the darkness, my natural habitat welcoming me back once more.

As I got older, I realised exactly how foolish this decision probably was in retrospect. Considering the events that immediately followed, Calixto was probably right as he always was. But that wasn’t even a thought in my brain that night. All I cared about was getting myself and my brother to safety, and it took a headstrong borderline suicidal plan to do that. Even as we were leaving the outskirts of the village, I could hear the rumbling of the armoured trucks and the jeeps riding around the dirt paths between the towns and I knew we’d made it out in just the nick of time. Calixto had turned around to watch, but I grabbed his arm again and pulled him forward. We couldn’t afford to look back now.

I had no doubt in my father’s ability to protect himself and my mother, but this went beyond that. If Mecho was right and the army was indeed knocking on our doorstep, there would be nowhere to hide and nothing my father could say or do would make them go away. Rather than seeing this as leaving him to his fate, I was making his life easier. The sacred ocote trees shielded us from the stars twinkling above, undimmed by light pollution in those times, and from the arc of the Milky Way stretching across. My friend the moon rose high above the trees, hanging like a silvery banana. I scoffed at the irony, but was grateful for the path it lit through the wilderness. When we’d gotten far enough away that the sounds of the trucks blended into the background noise of chicharras and the howler monkeys, I finally set down my bags. “Are we done?” Calixto asked meekly.

“For tonight,” I sighed. “Make a fire or something. You can go to sleep if you want. I’m too wired to sleep anyway.” And that was the truth. While Calixto patiently gathered fallen branches and brush for a fire, I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, exhaling in a puff of smoke. No, my father did not know I smoked and I had made it quite clear to Calixto that if he told him, there’d be hell to pay and not of the magical kind. Magic couldn’t save him from my wrath anyway, and he knew that very well.

I lit a match once we had a decent pile of shrubbery and watched as it caught ablaze, the light illuminating both our faces. Calixto looked scared, but I wasn’t really concerned about that at the moment. Thinking strategically, I knew that we had no food and no water, something I regret in retrospect. And while I was a good bird-shot, there was no way I could get close enough to any animal to kill it with a machete. Safety was our first priority, and afterwards we could probably find our way to a creek or venture into one of the towns not overrun by red-beret devils and find something to eat there, even if I had to trade my rosary or something for it.

A hooting caught our attention, a noise not made by a monkey or a bug. “La lechusa,” my brother murmured, looking up into the trees to find the source of the mournful cry. I followed his gaze for a brief moment, but the bird was not visible in the pitch-darkness of the forest canopy. There was no way you could see something that far up, except perhaps if you had a high-grade flashlight, which we did not.

“It seems your magical friends followed us here,” I agreed, kicking Calixto in the ankle. He made a displeased face and inched further away out of my range. I laid back against one of the tree trunks, folding my hands behind my head. Calixto began some long-winded explanation about how owls were the form the elders took while they were watching over us, but I paid no mind. We were safe for the night, and tomorrow brought new problems with it that I didn’t want to think about right then. I closed my eyes and listened to the jungle noises and my brother’s babbling, trying to get at least a little sleep before we had to continue onwards.

When I was a younger child out on my family’s ranch, I used to wake up earlier than the rest of my family if only to see the moon hand over its domain to the sun. Once again, Hunahpú relinquished his power over the sky to allow Xbalanqué to glow. I appreciated waking up on my own terms, not having to be dragged out of bed for farm chores like Calixto did. But what I did not appreciate, especially on that night, was to be woken up by the barrel of a gun pressing directly into my forehead and a voice snarling in my ear, “I found you, hijuepúta ceróte.”

That got me awake in an instant. It was still dark outside and the fire had long since faded to embers, but in the moonlight I could make out the leering face of one of those red-beret bastards, his entire face painted in camouflage. As I tried to get up, the barrel of the gun once again forced my head against the tree trunk. A faint whimper caught my eye and I saw that the solder held Calixto’s arm in an iron grip with the other hand. His shoulder was twisted in a horrible way, and I knew it was probably dislocated at the very least. But nevertheless, I had to remain calm. I was no use to anybody frazzled. “How can I help you, sir?” I asked politely as if I wasn’t literally staring death straight down its metal tube.

The devil before me barked out a laugh, pulling harder on Calixto’s arm. He let out a pained yelp. “You little fools thought you could escape, huh? Running off into the jungle? I won’t even tell you how easy it was to find you. Next time, build a smaller fire.”

“I’ll take your advice for when I actually do what you’re telling me I did,” I returned conversationally. “But I think you have the wrong kids. We’re just camping. We stayed out a little too late and didn’t want our mother yelling at us for missing curfew. Figured she could yell at us tomorrow instead, when we’re not so tired.”

I was met with an elbow to my right cheek, one that actually turned my head to the side. “Funny,” the soldier growled. “I might have believed you, if you weren’t the spitting image of that damned witch. Now get up,” he ordered.

I was the kid who always got into fights in school, that’s true. But even I wasn’t quite brave enough to disobey someone who had a gun pointed directly at my face. Slowly, like I was facing down an angry bárba amarílla who was coiled to strike at any moment, I got to my feet as he ordered. He let go of Calixto’s arm then, and my brother groaned again. His arm flopped to the side, clearly useless. “What now?” I asked.

“You’re going to walk all the way back to your little village. Both of you are going to come with us. And you’re going to tell your father that if he dares try and protest, we will lock every single man, woman and child in your village in the church, and we will burn it all to the ground.” Well, that was reassuring. “Now, start walking.”

Something hit me then, and to this day I can’t quite give you an explanation of what it was. All I know is that it was powerful. I felt as though a long lineage of Guatemalans was speaking through me in that instant, warning me not to cooperate. If I died out here in this jungle, it would be a more worthy death than meeting my end as a complicit pawn in some sort of neo-colonisation. “I don’t think I’m going to do that,” I said.

Calixto’s eyes widened, and even I could hardly believe the words that had come out of my mouth. Someone else was speaking through me then, someone powerful and ancient. I had ceased to exist as just Catarino Quintana, and I was merely a vessel for a voice that was crying out for revenge. My defiance enraged my captor, and the arm that he had lowered with the pistol was now coming up. I could dimly hear the click of the safety turn off, and knew I was about to be executed point-blank in the middle of nowhere.

A loud cry sounded from somewhere above our heads, momentarily drawing all of our gazes upwards. The force was still flowing through me, and I let it take over my body completely as I unstrapped the machete from my back in one swift motion and brought it forward, slashing directly through the red-beret's wrist. He let out a yell of agony and the hand holding the gun fell to the forest floor. Faintly I heard Calixto screaming as well, but I paid him no mind as I scooped up the weapon from the ground and pointed it at the red-beret's forehead in an exact mirror of the position he'd had me in not two minutes before.

He was still standing in front of me, snarling with hate, cradling the bloodied stump of his arm in one hand as he managed a grimace with the other. "You damned witch!" he bit out between his teeth. "I knew it the minute that bird cried! I knew I should have put a bullet in your father's head when I had the chance! You will die, mark my words. This jungle will eat you alive before you even have a chance to tell your guerrilla friends what you've done."

"I'll take my chances," was my only reply before I pulled the trigger. The gunshot rang out in the dead silence, the roar of the weapon puncturing the sacred darkness with its boom. The animals reacted to the noise immediately, a cacophony of voices rising up around us. Calixto wailed in horror, but we had bigger problems to deal with. Shouting erupted in the previously silent jungle, obviously having heard the gunshot.

As I came back to myself, I realised what I had done. If they weren't coming for us before, they were coming now. And I had to get my brother out of there before they found him, wounded and vulnerable. I shoved the pistol into his hand. "Take this," I ordered, short and terse. "Take this and get out of here. Take the long way home, and do not stop until you get there."

"But...you just..." He couldn't even get the sentence out. "What about you? They'll find you out here and kill you! Or what if you get bit by a snake, or mauled by a jaguar? What...and Catarino, you just killed someone!"

"A small price to pay. Now, do what I tell you, understand me? I'll be fine." I took my brother by the shoulders - avoiding his injured one - and looked him dead in the eyes. "You're worth more to Papá than I am. Go home and stay there. Whatever happens to me, we both know that."

He really tried to argue with me, bless him. But I left no room for that. The voices were drawing nearer now, and he eventually sighed and nodded once. "You know I love you. I..."

I cut him off. "I know. Go!" And mercifully, he did. Still looking terrified, he dashed away deep into the forest, disappearing from view until I could no longer hear the rustling associated with his getaway but instead the louder sounds of the search party. By now, they must have realised something was horribly wrong - for them, at least. And that left me with my own dilemma. How was I going to make it out of here alive?

Clutching the bag of herbs around my neck, I did something I hadn't done in a very long time - I prayed. "Okay. Anyone who is listening, how the hell am I getting out of here?" I asked the Divine, looking up into the sky as though it had some answers for me. A blur of brown and white caught my attention, and for the first time I saw the face of the creature that had inadvertently both saved my life and landed me in a whole lot more trouble than I was already in. A huge, majestic barn owl was swooping around me in circles, flying so close to my head I could reach out and touch it.

"Shoo!" I flailed around, trying to get the bird away from me. The last thing I needed right now was to be harassed by local wildlife while I was trying to evade a search party full of bloodthirsty Guatemalan special-op forces that wanted my head. The bird did not fly away as I demanded, but instead flew at me even harder, flying so close that its talons gripped my hair.

As I swatted at it, I heard thundering through the brush. "He's here! The kid!" someone called, and another gunshot rang out. It sent chills through my blood, and I broke into a blind run. Slashing wildly with the machete, I was barely able to clear the thick undergrowth out of my way. This entire time, the owl continued to harass me, flying close to my head and tugging at my hair whenever it managed to get a grip with its talons.

"You damned bird, what do you want? I'm kind of busy here!" I huffed out, the frustration and fear making my voice shake awfully. Adrenaline pumped through me as if someone had injected a syringe full of it directly into my heart. I thought I was going to drop dead of cardiac arrest right then and there, but I couldn't stop running. I couldn't let them catch me now.

The bird tugged at my hair again and then soared upward. Wait a minute. It wanted me to follow it. "Ah, screw it," I snapped, launching myself at the nearest tree and grabbing on to the lowest-hanging branch I could reach. I pulled myself up and up, climbing with a skill and agility I didn't even know I had, and I was a kid who'd spent my days climbing palm trees for fun just so I could see the panic on my mother's face. The bird flew higher and higher and I followed it, scrambling up the tree until I'd reached a branch that had a decent amount of brush that could hide me.

The interior panic reached a threshold, but the owl merely had fluttered down to sit next to me where I had chosen to crouch down and we both watched the scene unfold underneath. Shouts of "where did he go" and "find him, now" were heard from the crowd down below, and the owl looked down upon all of it with a gaze that was more human than animal. It spread its massive wings again and I could only watch as it took flight, swooping down on the soldiers with a vengeance.

They tried to shoot it, of course. They tried to shoot at anything in their path, human or animal. But the bird shrieked out another call in the night, and I watched as something else emerged from the shrubbery - something much more terrifying than a bird.

I'd only encountered the apex predator of Central America once before this night, at a watering hole, and it was not an experience I'd care to repeat. Nevertheless, the sight of a black jaguar was enough to send the soldiers running for the hills in a flash. The cat prowled towards them menacingly, a low rumbling coming from it that set even my nerves on edge. Could jaguars climb trees? I really hoped not. Nevertheless, I was nothing but grateful as that seemed to do the trick. The soldiers scattered like cockroaches, abandoning their search for me instantly as the threat of being ripped apart by a huge jungle cat.

The commotion died down around me, and the jungle sounds baselined back into the normal chirping and howling of the monkeys. The owl, never having left my presence the entire time, was now hopping around on the ground, hooting at me. "What?" I asked. "You want me to come down? No way. In case you haven't noticed, there's a jaguar down there?"

But even as I'd said that, the cat was nowhere to be seen. It had melted back into the darkness as quietly as it had arrived. The owl hooted insistently once more at me again, demanding my presence on the forest floor. Great, now I was talking to birds and thinking they were talking back. I'd really lost it out here, hadn't I? My father had always warned me that the jungle and its inhabitants - both corporeal and of the spiritual sort - could drive a person to madness. "Whatever," I grumbled. As agilely as I'd gotten up the tree, I shimmied my way back down, finally landing on the ground with a thump. And believe me, not even I had known I could climb trees that well.

The owl hooted at me softly again and spread its wings, taking off again with a whoosh. It circled the air and then hooted at me. "I'm following a bird. Well, I've got nothing else to lose," I sighed. And when I tell you, we played that game for a while. The bird would fly from tree to tree, hooting at me periodically as if to ask me if I was still following. And every time it did, I still felt compelled to answer it as if it were a person. I remembered then the ramblings of Calixto, about how owls were seen as evil by those who didn't understand them, but how they were some of the oldest and wisest guardians of the entirety of Guatemala. That had felt like a lifetime ago, even though it had only been the previous evening. And now, I sort of felt bad for not listening to him.

Hunahpú was releasing his control of the heavens again, as I could see Xbalanqué just over the horizon. I had no idea how long I'd been walking. I was in a completely unfamiliar area with just a machete and no supplies for survival, but I felt not one ounce of fear or uncertainty on the path of the ocote trees my guide was carving out for me. When the first rays of the sun hit the treeline, I suddenly and inexplicably found myself standing on the surroundings of a crudely made camp, with about ten or twelve men and women surrounding a small pot on a fire. They all tensed up when they saw me stumble towards them, but by this time my body was exhausted and I was in no way prepared for a fight. "It's okay," I heard someone call out, a man by the sound of it. "It's just a kid."

Yeah, just a kid. The dawn of my fifteenth birthday had arrived, and I suddenly felt years older than my age. I knew things had changed. I would have no idea just how much they had yet, but this was only the start. Instantly, the group came closer to me and let their guard down. "Hey, kid, what are you doing out here?" one of them asked. "How did you find us? The nearest village is over 30 kilometres away!"

30 kilometres? I'd walked 30 kilometres? My aching feet suddenly caught up with me and I collapsed forward, but someone grabbed me and stood me upright. "Hey, I know that kid," another voice piped up. "That's Ariel Quintana's boy. The older one, I think. But still, the same question - how in God's name did you get this far?"

I looked around for the owl, ready to explain this ridiculous story to the people who'd found me as they ushered me towards the fire. Someone shoved a metal canteen of water into my hands and I gulped it down instantly. My throat was burning, and while the water quenched my thirst a little bit, it did nothing for the hunger or the fatigue. "The bird," I managed to choke out. "There was a bird, and it..."

"Ah, you met the Sentinel," one of the people laughed. Faces and voices blurred together, but I was still coherent enough to make out the words when they were talking to me. Even though my brain was far away, I registered that some of them were wearing green jackets, but they mostly looked like farmers - albeit extremely well-armed farmers.

I was in a guerrilla camp. That bird had led me to the guerrilla camp. What in the...you know what? Whatever. I was too tired to ask any more questions. At least these people weren't shooting at me. Better yet, they were feeding me and giving me water, so I wasn't complaining - not much, at least. I still looked around for the owl, but my travelling companion was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished along with the night. "What did you say?" I asked the man who'd handed me a mug full of beans.

"The Sentinel," he explained. "She guards the paths of the ocote trees, helping those who need help. I should've known, when word from the town mentioned that the army had chased two boys into the woods. I'd heard one of them got back shaken, but okay. You must be the other one."

Calixto had made it back. I silently praised any listening deity that my brother was safe. But at the same time, I knew I couldn't go back. My clothes were torn and dirty, I had no money to my name and I was carrying only a bloody machete and what was left of the contents of my school bag. Even if the army didn't get me, my father would chew me out for the rest of eternity for pulling a stunt like this. My new friends - I was guessing they were friends, considering they had fed me - were busy preparing for their daily routine. I spoke then, and the words I asked next ushered in a new phase of my life along with the dawn of my fifteenth birthday - "Look, I know I'm just a kid and all, but...is there maybe a spot for me among your ranks?"