I couldn't see anything but trees, but then I still had the feeling I'd stepped through the looking glass and found Sarah trapped there. The next thing I knew, we were on an uphill forest trail, headed due south.
"I think it's time you told me what's going on back there in the village," I said. What was it about this place that had seized such a claim on Sarah's mind?
"Baalum is difficult to explain to someone encountering it for the first time." He paused. "Much of it is so—"
"I think I can handle it."
"You have every right to know, but I don't really know where to start."
"How about the beginning?" Why was he being so ambiguous?
"Very well." He was taking out a pair of gray sunglasses,
as though to gain time. "It actually goes back about ten years ago, when I was prospecting for rainforest plants up here in the Peten and accidentally stumbled across this isolated village, which clearly had been here since classical times. I immediately noticed a huge mound of dirt everybody said was haunted by 'the Old Ones,' and I knew right away it had to be a buried pyramid. They're more common down here than you'd think. So I struck a bargain with the village elders and acquired the site. But after I unearthed it and began the restoration, I became inspired with a vision. One day I found myself offering to restore anything else they could find—which eventually included, by the way, a magnificent old steam bath—in exchange for which they would help me by undertaking a grand experiment, a return to their traditional way of life."
"So you deliberately closed them off to the modern world?" It told me Alex Goddard could control a Mayan village just as he controlled everything else he touched. It also confirmed he had a weakness for the grandiose gesture. Would a time come when I could exploit that?
"I told them that together we would try to recreate the time of their glory, and perhaps in so doing we could also rediscover its long-lost spirit, and wisdom. On the practical side, they would help me by bringing me the rare plants I needed to try and rediscover the lost Native American pharmacologies, and in return I would build them a clinic where families can come for modern pediatric and public-health services. So Baalum became a project we share together. I call it a miracle."