Now several village men from the square were running, shouting, up the slippery steps. Their faces looked like they'd been painted at one time, but now the rain had washed most of it away.
While I yelled down to Sarah, again begging her not to move, Marcelina was asking them something, and their answers were tumbling out.
Finally I turned to look at her, the screaming Tz'ac Tzotz still in my arms.
"No one knows where he is," she was saying as she looked down over the side. "He's gone into the forest."
"Good." I pulled Tz'ac Tzotz to me and kissed him, trying to tell him to calm down. It wasn't working.
"Marcelina, here, please hold him. I've got to get down to Sarah."
She took him. Then I walked over to where his mother lay bleeding on the stones. The woman wasn't moving, the obsidian knife still protruding from her chest. She'd saved me, but now death had taken her. There was nothing anyone could do.
I was trembling, but I turned and began easing myself over the side of the stone platform and onto the first tier of the pyramid.
"Sar, don't move." I inched my way across to her. "Just
stay still." The rain was pouring again, but the electric bloom of sparks and flames from the direction of the clinic was unabated. It would be completely gutted. Was Steve awake enough to get out? He'd seemed alert when I left him.