Psychic Detective 33 By: Jake Preston
This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described explicitly. My attention is equally divided between narrative, character development, and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there are many other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that while nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think about donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!
Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com
Chapter 33 The Maya Magician
On Tuesday, Pablo Rivera served as their guide for a day-trip to Uxmal, the first of three ruined Maya cities that they planned to visit. They got an early start in a rented car, as Pablo had to be back in Mérida by dusk for his acrobatic act. At the entrance to Uxmal, they saw a sign advertising a 'Maya guide for the day' who could speak Spanish, English, or German. Seven men and three women stood by the sign, dressed in native costume and hoping they'd get picked up by tourists. Jésus looked them over and said they really were Maya, or at least half-Maya. Jack waved at one of the younger men, who lept into action. "I can tell you all there is to know about the history of Uxmal and the archeology of each building," he promised, first in German (to impress them), then in English. "All Maya guides can do that," Jésus challenged him, in Spanish. "Oh yes, that's true, sir," the guide said, "but I'm Xiu Seven-Macaw, a Yucatec descendent of the man who built the Magician's Pyramid. I know all the tall tales about Uxmal."
"I want him," Jack said.
"Why?- He'll spend the day telling us lies," Göran teased.
"I want him because he's cute," Jack said. "You've got your Aztec acrobat. I want my Maya magician." Like most Maya men, Xiu Seven-Macaw was short (five-foot-four), stocky without looking fat, with a handsome face and a friendly manner.
With Jack at his side and with Göran, Jésus, and Pablo in tow, Xiu started out with the standard tour- the rectangular Governor's Palace; the Nunnery Quadrangle (another government building, it was misnomered by conquering Spaniards); the North Long Building; the South Temple; and three ancient apartment buildings named for their sculptural décor- the House of Birds, the House of Turtles, the House of Doves. Xiu first got creative at the ceremonial Ballcourt, a rectangular grassy field the size of a football stadium, where he described the ritual ballgame that doubled as mortal combat, and demonstrated some of the moves. He told a story about how the Lords of Xibalba- the gods of the Underworld- captured their prey by challenging them to a ballgame that always ended in human sacrifice:- the still- throbbing heart pulled out of the breast through the left underarm and grilled on a brazier; the head staked on a pole until it dried to a skull; the skin flayed and dyed and applied to a ceremonial robe.
"Popol Vuh," Göran said.
Jésus hadn't heard of the Maya Creation Epic, but Pablo had heard of it, and Jack had read it, after Göran had recommended it as an essential text about ritual sacrifice.
"The outside world knows about Maya culture from Popol Vuh," Xiu said. "But the outside world doesn't know there's an oral tradition about the Maya in twenty-four languages, from Yucatán south to Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. There are many legendary details not found in Popol Vuh. Of course, that book is five hundred years old."
Göran showed Xiu his photograph of Howard Coleman. "Was he alone when you saw him, or did he come with a companion?" Göran asked.
"He was here with a tour," Xiu replied. "How did you know? At first I thought he was by himself, but he struck up a friendship with another man, a tourist from Germany. That was... two days ago," Xiu answered Göran's next question before he could ask. "He liked Uxmal so much that he said he'd come back. He said he'd pay me to be his guide."
"This man is dangerous," Göran warned. "If you see him again, keep away from him."
Xiu looked to Jack for guidance. "I have an idea about that," Jack said. "We'll talk about it later."
When they got to the Great Pyramid, Xiu Seven-Macaw said they should climb the steps to the top. "If you're planning a visit to Chichen Itza, you should be warned that no one is allowed to climb the big pyramids there, because so many people go there for Holy Week."
They came to a group of stelae inscribed with hieroglyphs. Each stela was a memoir to a Yucatec Maya ruler, going back to 560 AD, Xiu said, but Uxmal was founded two centuries earlier. He translated the glyphs on each stela- his most impressive performance thus far. Jack asked why they were touring the ruins in a circuitous route. "Not that I'm complaining," he said. "We've seen some buildings twice, but they're all worth repeating."
"I'm saving the best for last," Xiu said, "the Adivino, otherwise called the Magician's Pyramid, or the Pyramid of el Enamo, the dwarf." It's the highest building, with rounded sides that can't be scaled. "It was built in one night, in 560 AD, by my ancestor Xiu el Enano, on the same day when Merlin, the magician in King Arthur's court, used his magic to transport stones from Ireland to Britain to build Stonehenge," Xiu explained. "Xiu el Enano founded the Enano Dynasty. His children weren't dwarves, but he had so many that eventually all the Maya people inherited his shortness-genes, except for our friend Pablo Rivera, of course, because he's half- Aztec and one-quarter Spaniard."
Pablo laughed at Xiu's impertinence, and said, "Why do I get the feeling that you're about to tell us a story?"
"I want to hear it," Jack said. He and Xiu were already sympatico. While he was a student at Emory University, Jack saw a traveling exhibit of Maya glyphs at the Michael Carlos Museum. Uxmal was his first chance to see glyphs in their native environment, presented by a real-life Maya.
The Magician's Pyramid was really five 'temples', each one nested in another and rising progressively higher. The party of five climbed the steps to the fifth 'temple'. "The Spanish Conquistadores called every Maya ruin a 'temple'," Xiu said. "That gave them a legal reason to loot them all. Originally this pyramid was a school for priests and scribes, an all-male preserve, so you can imagine how much fucking happened here from 560 to 1560, when the Conquistadores completed their conquest and the Yucatecans deserted Uxmal. The stones in the steps of the Great Pyramid can be counted, but the number of fuck-strokes that occurred in Adivino cannot be counted."
Another tall tale, maybe, but Xiu was right when he said that the fifth temple was used as an astronomical observatory. "From here the Yucatecan priests could plot the stars," he said.
"And they thought that the movement of stars determined the course of human events," Göran interjected."
"Just the opposite," Xiu countered. "They thought that the interactions of humans and gods determined the movement of stars. When humans make love, the stars move in harmony. During times of warfare, the stars collide, making meteors and falling stars. The Maya astronomers plotted the constellations to reconstruct history, not to foretell the future. That's why every event in Maya mythology is tied to the stars. Do you see the gong below us, at the far end of the ritual ballcourt?"
From the height of the fifth 'temple', they could barely make out the bronze gong. "It's a reconstruction, of course," Xiu said. "The original gong was overlaid with gold. The Conquistadores melted it down and carried it off. I think that the original was larger, maybe twice as large as the copy. The copy was built from an illustration on a stela that told the story of Xiu el Enano.
"The Yucatecan priests had a prophecy that Uxmal would one day be ruled by 'a boy not born to a woman'. Every night they followed the constellations, looking for a sign that the boy- ruler had been born. Every morning they announced to the King of Uxmal that his throne was safe, for they had seen no sign. One day in 548 AD, the gong resounded throughout Uxmal and could be heard as far away as the village of Kabah, on the opposite side of the stone causeway. That day an old sorceress, a 'bruja'- my ancestor- laid an iguana-egg, and from that egg 'el enano' was hatched. The King of Uxmal sent spies to all the villages to seek out the dwarf. They executed all the dwarves they could find, just like King Herod in Judaea when he massacred all the Innocents. But they never found the 'bruja' or her infant son. One day twelve years later, the 'bruja' sent her son to the Palace to challenge the King to contests of strength.
"The King challenged the dwarf to a stone-lifting contest. He lifted a stone weighing three arrabas, 75 pounds. That was too heavy for 'el Enano', but the 'bruja' used magic to make the stone one-tenth of its former weight. The dwarf lifted it, and tossed it across the ballcourt, in the sight of all the Yucatecans, who had gathered to seen the contest.
"Next the King challenged 'el Enano' to build a pyramid higher than all the buildings in Uxmal. He was given one night to perform this feat, on pain of execution. The next morning, the King looked out from his Palace and saw Adivino, the Magician's Pyramid, towering above all the buildings in Uxmal. The priests and astronomers had already made it their home, and established a school there for scribes and sculptors and painters.
"The power of art was so great in Yucatán that the King had no choice but to accept Adivino as part of his new reality. However, he challenged 'el Enano' to a third contest of strength, an 'exchange of blows' contest. He sent the dwarf into the forest to gather a bundle of cogoil-wood, the hardest of hardwoods. For the 'exchange of blows', he said, he would strike the dwarf with each stave in the bundle. If the dwarf survived, the King was to submit to the same blows in return.
"Hearing of this, the dwarf complained to his mother. She prepared a magical tortilla for him to wear on his head for protection. Needless to say, he sustained the King's blows without injury, for tortillas are made from maize, and maize is the stuff of human life. That's what the Maya mean when they say that they are 'children of the corn'.
"The King had no choice but to submit to blows on the head with cogoil-staves, since the 'exchange of blows' contest took place in the ballcourt, where all the Yucatecans had assembled as spectators. According to legend, the second stave split the King's skull, and he died, but the true story was passed down as an oral tradition in my family."
"What was that?" Jack asked. At some level, he believed the legend of Xiu, although his companions were skeptical.
"El Enano struck the King lightly with the first cogoil-stave," Xiu said. "Then he offered the King an offer he couldn't refuse. 'Let's finish the contest in the astronomical observatory, and there I'll save your life', he said.
"On the top floor of the Magician's Pyramid, the dwarf gave the King two choices. 'I can kill you with a blow of cogoil, or you can let me fuck you and we'll rule over Uxmal as co- regents'. So that's what they did. They fucked in a secret chamber on this floor. Then thy returned to the ballcourt, hand in hand, and the King announced that El Enano was his equal and co-ruler of Uxmal."
"What secret chamber?" Jésus asked. "I don't see any sign of a secret chamber here!"
"That's because it's a secret," Xiu said. "I'll show it to Jack, if the rest of you will descend and wait for us by the gong in the ballcourt. Then Jack can tell you whether or not there's a secret chamber."
The secret chamber was concealed by a sliding stone door. So elaborate was the glyphic ornamentation on the walls that the door-seams couldn't be seen. Xiu slid the door open, and he and Jack passed through. He slid the door shut. The hidden chamber was radiated by a window above their heads, near the ceiling.
"Take me, or I'll take you, whatever you want," Xiu said to Jack.
"How about if we let Nature take its course," Jack said, and kissed Xiu on the lips.
If this was a challenge, Xiu was ready for it. "I want to see you naked," he said. Jack stood in the light of the window and stripped. The Lakota skin of his warrior's body was brown, but seemed white in the afternoon light from the window.
Xiu took a blanket that was stashed in a dark corner, and spread it out in the sunlit quadrangle. He folded Jack's clothes, carefully, and laid them in a neat pile by the edge of the blanket. Jack stood in the center of the blanket while Xiu explored his anatomy with eyes and hands. "Your body is amazing," Xiu whispered. "Your cock's intact, too," he said, and fingered Jack's foreskin.
Jack let Xiu circle around him and explore freely. When Xiu stood behind him and fondled his butt, Jack parted his legs. Xiu accepted the unspoken invitation and ran his fingertips up and down Jack's cleft, sliding each time a bit closer to his portal. When, at last, Xiu's fingers touched the supple portal, Jack arched his butt to give greater access. His body was hard, but soft where his fingers touched the entrance to his mystery. It was brown, but white where the rectangle of light shone on him.
Jack and Xiu guided each other prone on the blanket. Since his backside seemed to be getting most of the points, Jack laid face-down. Xiu kissed every square inch of anatomy, from the nape of his neck to his ankles. Xiu flipped him and kissed his body frontally. He pinched Jack's nips and bit them, and drove his tongue into Jack's pits and his navel. Jack helped Xiu out of his shirt, and his trousers, and gradually got him naked. Xiu's basket had offered scant promise, but when he got naked, he was found to be horse-hung, an accordion-surprise for Jack! They took turns fellating, and ended up in a rolling 69.
By degrees, Xiu got aggressive with his tongue and his fingers in Jack's asshole. "Why Jack! You've got an anal gape. It's a cute pink hole, just the right size for my middle fingertip. It slides in so easily, can you feel it?"
"Yeah, I can feel it," Jack said.
Xiu wriggled his finger inside, enough to get Jack a-moaning. He knelt between Jack's legs. One more flick of the tongue over Xiu's bulbourous wee fountain and it was time for Jack to give it up. He propped his ankles on Xiu's shoulders.
"This is gonna hurt with no lube," Jack protested when Xiu prepared to mission him.
Xiu sensed that Jack's protestation was a mild one. "Don't worry, Jack," he said. "I'll use lots of spit, and I'll take it slow."
"Don't stop, whatever I say," Jack said.
Xiu pressed forward. Jack guided his prick with his fingers.
"Holy shit! This is like getting fucked for the first time!" Jack exclaimed. He groaned while Xiu forced his legs apart and drove his cock all the way into him. He begged Xiu to stop. Xiu kept still for a while, to give Jack a break, but he didn't withdraw an inch.
"I can feel your pulse beating against my dick," Xiu said. Jack's heartbeat was racing. When the pulse slowed, and Jack tightened his culo around Xiu's throbbing cock, Xiu gave him a look of stern resolution and started a long, slow fuck. It was not without friction, and cost Jack a groaning. When the friction got rough, Xiu withdrew to replenish his cock and Jack's portal with spittle, and then had the joy of re-penetration. Each new penetration felt like the first one. Xiu's pleasure increased with Jack's suffering, but for Jack the pain was erotic. Jack orgazzed first. At his nacreous fragrance, lust came to Xiu, more than he thought was possible. Then Xiu drove spunk into the body of his Lakota warrior.
Xiu flipped Jack, sprawled over his backside, and fucked a second time. Jack's culo was slick and receptive, having been bludgeoned into shape and lubed with seminal fluid and an army of homuncularos that had escaped from the orbs of Xiu. Jack gasped and tightened his butt to increase the friction for Xiu's erection. Both men gasped when Xiu orgazzed again.
Afterward, Xiu sighed in elated satisfaction at his double demonstration of manhood on Jack's body, but his Mexican machismo was tempered by admiration for Jack. Xiu said he'd never met anyone so amazing.
"We must leave this place and rejoin our friends," Jack replied. "But Xiu, come to Mérida with us. We'll have more time together, and you'll be safe from a serial killer who, as I believe, has you in his sights. Don't tell your friends where you're going, because when Albino returns, he'll ask them. It's safer for you to disappear."