"It's . . . it's important." She was beckoning for me. "Please."

Well, I thought, this could give me the time I need, the personal moment, to get through to her. Even after I locate Sarah, spiriting her out isn't going to be simple. I've got to make Marcelina understand what's really going on, then get her to help us.

As we headed through the yard, the women smiled, then politely led us under the thatch overhang and into the hut. They both were short and Maya-sturdy, with white shifts and broad faces, and they exuded a confident intensity in their bearing, a powerful sense of self-knowledge. I tried a phrase in Spanish, but they just stared at me as though they'd never heard the language. Then I remembered my first attempt to ask about Sarah. The women hadn't understood me then either. Or had they?

The room they ushered us into had no windows, but there was cool, shadowy morning light filtering through the up­right wooden slats of the walls, laying dim stripes across the earthen floor. A cooking fire smoldered in a central hearth, and from the smoke-blackened roof beams dangled dried gourds, bundles of tobacco, netted bags of onions and squash, and several leaf-wrapped blocks of salt. The room smelled of ancient smoke, sweet and pungent.

They immediately produced a calabash bowl with a gray liquid inside, pronouncing the word atole as they urged it on me, smiling expectantly.

"It's our special drink," Marcelina explained. She seemed to be wary, watching me closely as they handed it over. "It's how we welcome an honored guest."

I wasn't sure how politic I ought to be. Third World food . . .

"Marcelina," I said, taking the bowl and trying to smile. "I'm not really—"

"You must have a little," she whispered back. "It would be very rude. . . ."

Well, I thought, just a taste. I tried it and realized it was a dense gruel of cornmeal and honey-water, like a lukewarm gluey porridge, though with a bitter after-jolt. But I choked it down and tried to look pleased. Marcelina urged me to have more—I took another small sip—and then they pro­duced corn dumplings wrapped in large leaves, together with a pile of fiery chiles and a bowl of squash, corn, and beans, all mixed together.