12.21 Read Free Page B

cigarette, flicking it into a trash can beneath the strange, androgynous statue of the Virgin guarding the entrance. Then she pushed open the heavy bronze doors. Inside, Chel took in the familiar sights and sensations: sweet incense in the air, chanting from the sanctuary, and the largest collection of alabaster windows in the world, casting earth-toned light across the faces of the community of Maya immigrants gathered in the pews. These men and women were directly descended from the ancient people who ruled Central America for nearly a thousand years,who built the most advanced pre-Columbian civilization in the New World. They were also Chel’s friends.
    At the pulpit, beneath five golden frames representing the phases of Jesus’s life, stood Maraka, the elderly bearded “daykeeper.” He waved a censer back and forth.
    “Tewichim,”
he chanted in Qu’iche, the branch of the Mayan language spoken by more than a million
indígenas
in Guatemala.
“Tewchuninaq ub’antajik q’ukumatz, ajyo’l k’aslemal.”
    Blessed is the plumed serpent, giver of life
.
    Maraka turned to face eastward, then took a long drink of
baalché
, the milky-white sacred combination of tree bark, cinnamon, and honey. When he finished, he motioned to the crowd, and the church filled with chants again, one of the many ancient traditions that the archbishop let them practice here once or twice a week, as long as some of the
indígenas
continued to attend regular Catholic Mass as well.
    Chel made her way down the side of the nave, trying not to draw attention, though at least one man saw her and waved enthusiastically. He’d asked her out half a dozen times since she’d helped him with an immigration form last month. She had lied and told him she was seeing someone. At five-foot-two, she might not look like most women in Los Angeles, but many here thought she was beautiful.
    Beside the incense altar, Chel waited for the service to end. She looked out at the mix of congregants, including more than two dozen white faces. Until recently, there were only sixty members of
Fraternidad
. The group met here on Tuesday mornings to honor the gods and traditions of their ancestors in a steady stream of immigrants from all over the Maya region, including Chel’s own Guatemala.
    But then the apocalypse groupies had started to show up. The press called them “2012ers,” and some seemed to believe that attending Maya ceremonies would exempt them from the end of the world, which they believed was less than two weeks away. Many other 2012ers didn’t bother to come here at all—they just preached ideas about the end of the “Long Count” calendar cycle from their own pulpits. Some argued that the oceans would flood, earthquakes would rip open fault lines, and themagnetic poles would switch. Some claimed it would bring a return to a more basic existence, banishing the excesses of technology. Still others believed that it would usher in a “fifth age” of man and wipe away the entire “fourth race,” all the humans who now walked the earth.
    Serious Maya experts, including Chel, found the idea of an apocalypse on December 21 ridiculous. It was true that one of her ancestors’ signal achievements was a complex calendar system, and 2012ers were right when they claimed that according to the more than five-thousand-year-old Long Count, human history has consisted of four ages. But there was no credible reason to believe that the end of the thirteenth cycle of the Long Count would be different from any other calendar turn. Just a few months before, archaeologists had uncovered a new tomb in Xultun, Guatemala, with wall paintings that again indicated the calendar was meant to continue long past December 21. Of course, that hadn’t stopped 2012ers from using ancient Maya wisdom to sell T-shirts and conference tickets or from making Chel’s people the butt of jokes on late-night TV.
    “Chel?”
    She turned to find Maraka behind her. She hadn’t even noticed