Cruuuuu.

The sound was a living presence surrounding the box. The space around the container shimmered like heat rising from hot sand. In the distorted air ancient women reached for me, their mouths open, wailing.

Cruuuu.

The plume of altered reality grew and coalesced into an ephemeral shape hovering four feet in front of me. I flinched back from a hag as old as a sequoia floating a foot off the ground. Tufts of white hair sprouted from her bald head. Her eyes protruded from thick round sockets on a frog face stretched tight with olive skin. Lips curved from ear to ear. I guessed she looked like some ancient relative of mine. I knew she was Curratta.

Kare had described her in detail. I was seeing the Supreme Shaman of the Xucha, the one who had made this box.

The Xucha were the guardians of the Jewels of Life, remnants of the comet that had first brought life to Earth and which gave the legendary Fountain of Life its power. Six hundred years ago Inika Lordess of Water had appeared to Curratta, and warned her the Spaniards were coming and would conquer the La'ku and steal the Jewels of Life. The Lordess of Water told Curratta to place the Jewels of Life in a likeness of the god Tatya-Masi.

Inika had promised Curratta: When Fire rules the planet, Tatya-Masi will open the box and the Sixth World of Water will begin.

Curratta had sealed the box with a spell. Only Tatya-Masi, the deity that is half-man, half-frog could open the chest, and when he did, rains would start and not stop until the Fifth World of Man was drowned, ushering in the final age--the Sixth World of Water.

Now everything Kare had told me had the immediacy of a warning. My feelings of joy were replaced by breath-stealing dread. This was no toy I was holding. The power in this box would decide the fate of the world.

Cruuuuu.

The dimensional boundaries between time, celestial and temporal, collapsed around me. The borders between the spiritual and physical planes wafted like curtains in a supernatural breeze. Veils of electrons shifted across the darkness of the unknown. Twelve witches, bent ancient women, skeletons covered with parched withered skin emerged from the aether and formed a coterie behind Curratta.

Cruuuu.

The witches chanted.

Craaaack. Sharp peals of thunder barreled across the mountains. Lightning flashed as light-soaking clouds roiled in the sky.

Cruuuuu.

A spirit glided through a wavering green tear in the physical fabric of land, atmosphere, and water.

I recognized her instantly. Mother.

Of all my dreams--to see my mother, to feel her touch--was my favorite fantasy. I had pestered Kare and Edgar for descriptions of her, constructed a thousand images from the collage of their memories. She was not frog-like, not like me. Beautiful raven hair surrounded pale skin, brown eyes. Red lips smiled at me. Was she really here?

Cruuuuu.

The witches parted around the vision coming toward me. Peace spread through my body. Unwavering trust enveloped me like a welcoming hug.

"Open the box."

Mother's voice inside a celestial wind sang in my ear, harmonizing with the cruuuuu rustling in the breeze.

"Your power is inside the box," the spirit intoned.

She extended her hand to my cheek. I could not feel her touch. She turned her palms up in supplication, raised her shoulders and faded into the gray horizon. The vision of Curratta and the witches dispersed, blown away in the metaphysical wind.

Thunder ricocheted off the sides of the mountains and rolled down the valleys. The warm rain incited the aroma of pine and sage. But there was another more sinister scent in the unusual humid air--sulfurous, as if something had been released that had lain buried beneath the mud. Lightning flickered and crackled. Static charges raised the villous down on the back of my neck.

To the north the last sliver of sunlight was overpowered by erupting clouds blending from gray to purple to impenetrable black all-absorbing light.

If I had found the box, then I was Tatya-Masi. I could heal Edgar! My joy was tempered by a deep sense of danger.

If Kare's tales were true then I had better beware.

Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire, a cross between a dragon and a snake with shark's teeth and fiery breath was duty-bound to destroy Tatya-Masi before he drowned Earth's cities and children.

I looked up to consider the unnatural rain--warmer than a summer thunderstorm, dense, from another climate--and felt my euphoria wane.

Craaaack!

A bolt of lightning struck the remains of the cedar beside me. Shockwaves threw me onto my back upon the stone beach. The bleached wood burst into flames.

Shhhhraaaaa!

If the cruuu sound came from the air, this disturbance arose from the earth--a hissing that vented from beneath the mountains, a threatening guttural growl that caused adrenalin to race through my veins as if a beast was ready to maul me.

In the wavering orange heat, the slanted eyes of a terrifying apparition burned. A snake, whose leathery wings were tipped with shimmering feathers, turned its head until the ember eyes of Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire locked on mine.

A flaming forked tongue flitted from his mouth scorching my hand. Searing pain shot up my arm. I dropped the box and cringed in agony and terror, overcome with weakness, burning yet unable to move from the fire.

With a slap as if a giant upturned hand had struck the surface of the lake a ball of water shot over the shore, and landed on the burning tree, leaving a smoldering wisp where the Lord of Fire had appeared.

Trembling, I cautiously rose to a crouch, ready to leap in any direction. My eyes moved in independent arcs scanning the air, lake, and woods. The fuming remains of the embers blew past me and I fled the smoke as if the flames might erupt into an inferno.

Abandoning the box and my spear, I bounded home, head extended so far forward only my momentum kept me from falling over.

I wanted to share Edgar's amused discrediting of Kare and his primitive beliefs, but what I had just seen was not the myths of a distant Latin American Indian tribe. This was real, here, now. Every concept I had of myself, heaven and Earth felt blasted apart, in shards, shattered like the breaking of a mirror, leaving distorted refractions of rationality, of science and religion, their physical and spiritual planes.

Kare's stories of magic and miracles, of battles between the Lordess of Water and Lord of Fire for control of the Earth were real. Kare had said that when I was an infant, Father had brought us up to the cabin in a boat. Inika had sent a waterspout to sink the boat and keep the box away from Quetzal the Plumed Serpent.

I was certain the water that had driven Kinchel back into the netherworld had been cast by Inika's hand.

In the La'ku pantheon, Inika Lordess of Water opposed Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire.

Inika could take on any shape. Kare had described her as having the features of a fish, hair like ocean waves, a tortoise shell on her back upon which she carried the world.

Inika had sent Tatya-Masi--me, if what I was beginning to believe was true--to drown the world in a flood because the children of Fire had refused to live in peace with the children of Water.

Kare had told me someday I would have to decide whether to extinguish the Fifth World or serve the Lord of Fire. What side should I be on? If I was a Water god, then my allegiance should be unequivocally for Inika. I should want the modern world to drown.

Inika promised a gentle planet where the forces of Fire--careless destruction and wanton consumption-- would be replaced by the give and take of plant and animal, a reverence for nature.

But I longed to be part of the Age of Man. I had spent my life dreaming about going to school, having friends, seeing the cities, the art, listening to the great symphonies and operas. If I opened the box, I--who yet had barely seen anything of civilization--would become the agent of its destruction.

The vision I had seen of my mother must have been a trick of Inika. If I had obeyed her and opened the box, I would have unleashed the Flood.

I hadn't opened the box, I repeated to myself. I'm not Tatya-Masi! I am not a god!

The threat of feeling Kinchel's burning touch dissolved my strength. How could the Lord of Fire think I was a god? My range of experience and viewpoint ended at the tops of these trees and mountains. All anyone--Lord, Lordess, spirit, or man--had to do was talk to me and they would know I was not the god.

This was a terrible misunderstanding. I rotated an eye to search the gloomy sky for a supernatural presence to whom I could plead my case, but saw only rolls of plum-colored thunderheads.

More than ever, I felt the victim of a cosmic mistake. I was no god.

But what if I had already made the choice through ignorance and inexperience? Then who was going to tell me how to be a god? All I had to go on were Kare's stories.

I raced out of the woods across the meadow to our lakeside cabin, leaped over our winter supply of stacked wood, hopped past a scratched table flaked with dry fish scales, jumped headfirst through the rear door of the cabin, and landed naked beside the kitchen table.

Kare, dressed in his brown poncho, black pants and pointed boots, was making bread. His strong campesino hands were white with flour. He jerked back his head. His hooded eyes expanded from the dark shadows of his heavy brows.

"¡Lo encontré! ¡La caja!" I cried.

Kare refused to communicate in the meager English he knew, which further distanced him from Edgar--who was just as likely to respond in German. As soon as I could talk, I had become their multilingual translator.

Kare leaned against the counter, his white hands held before him as if to stop an attack. "Did you open it?" he gasped.

"Kinchel came. I saw him."

"He's found you." Kare's voice trembled.

"Curratta and the witches too. And Inika. I saw my mother. She wanted me to open the box."

A deep disturbance of thunder rolled across the lake. Kare looked at the rain through the window over the sink. "You didn't, did you?"

I held onto the thin tabletop to keep from sinking to the floor. "I don't think so."

He grabbed a hand-shaped cowboy hat from a peg on the wall beside the rear door. "Take me to the box."

I shrank from him toward the doorway to the main room. "No. I can't. He'll see me."

"He already sees you. Your only hope is to bring the box to Quetzal. You must beg him to ask Kinchel to accept your surrender. Perhaps then Kinchel will spare you."

Surrender? I was no threat to him. Or was I? All I knew about the myth of Tatya-Masi I had learned from Kare.

Kare knew. He was the second son of a Xucha witch, descendants of the order that had once ruled Manoa and were guardians of the Fountain of Life.

As members of her sect had for the past six hundred years, Kare's mother had taken her first born son, Kare's older brother Norane, to the summit of the volcano Susuprina. She had left the infant there for the night to see if he was the Warrior-Brother, the Awkanakuy-Hauakuy, the Earthly father of Tatya-Masi. Twelve years later, Norane had led eight-year-old Kare into the Cave of the Xucha. While Norane had found the box that would some day come to bedevil me, Kare had become lost in the pitch-dark labyrinth. In the darkness he had stumbled into a stone chamber lit by a high narrow opening to the sky. There he found the skeleton of the conquistador Gabriel Ayala. On the skeleton was a cross wrapped with a serpent. Kare had touched the cross and instantly had been overwhelmed with the power of Quetzal the Plumed Serpent, becoming his servant.

Part snake, part bird, Quetzal was the son of Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire. Five hundred years before Kare had found Ayala's remains, the Plumed Serpent had come to Earth in the body of Gabriel Ayala to steal the Jewels of Life from the Xucha.

But the Supreme witch of the Xucha, Curratta, cast a spell that had trapped Quetzal in the cave. The only way Quetzal could return to heaven was if a Water deity released him.

If Kare was to be believed, Quetzal had protected me from Kinchel because he hoped that someday I would free him. But if I could free Quetzal that would mean I was a water deity. I was Tatya-Masi. If this were true then Kinchel would never spare me.

"I didn't do anything. I mean I didn't mean to do anything. All I did was find the box," I said near tears, my voice quavering.

"You must bring the box to Quetzal," Kare said curtly and headed toward the door.

But if I brought the box to Quetzal, wouldn't Kinchel still be mad and think I was trying to destroy the Age of Man? The ways and motives of the La'ku gods and spirits gods now meant everything to me. I wished I had asked more questions, taken Kare more seriously when he had described their complicated shifting alliances. Now, I had to hope Kare was right and there was some way to appease or escape these terrible demons.

"Go now." Kare pushed me by the upper arm.

I leaned against his impetus. I felt weak, as if I had a fever and had been bedridden. I did not want to go anywhere near the box, certain Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire was waiting there for me to return.

"Why can't you go get it?" I whined.

"Hurry!" Kare shoved me so hard I fell against the door and stumbled outside.

"Let me get dressed at least." I stalled finding and putting on my now wet pants by the dock where our sixteen-foot powerboat bobbed. Rain was falling harder. How could I or anybody or anything make it rain all over the world? I hadn't opened the box. Whatever was in there could still be hidden. I thought of asking Kare if he thought I should take the box back and drop it into the bottom of the lake where it had been hidden all these years, but that would mean my having to carry it. I still hoped to convince him that he should be the one to retrieve the box.

"You're not a god," I said. "If you touch the box, it won't hurt anybody. You can bring it to Quetzal." Kare ignored my hastily composed arguments, staying behind me, herding me with unwavering purpose back to the box.

I searched the horizon for any sign of a break in the clouds. The dark masses seemed to be absorbing every ray of sunlight.

Boulders I could easily have hopped over blocked the shortest route back to the box. I was in no hurry. Moisture pasted Kare's black bangs to his forehead. Beads of water rolled from his hooked nose and square chin. I had more sympathy for him now. He had lived with these terrible spirits since he had first held the Serpent's cross. No wonder Kare had always seemed distant, studying me with a hunter's stare as if not to miss the moment I would reveal myself to be Tatya-Masi.

I crept through the last stand of Jeffrey pines, and pointed.

"There it is."

"Get it."

"No, it makes me feel..."

Kare shot his sharp brown-eyed gaze from the box to me and back to the box, leaning away as if ready to run. "Quetzal will protect you, as he has always done."

The idea that a benevolent spirit was watching over me gave me little comfort. Fear caused my thoughts to rush too fast to sort or make decisions.

"I can't."

"You must." Kare shoved me from the back, managing to knock me a few inches away from the tree I was hiding behind.

"Why?"

Kare harshly whispered as if trying not to be overheard by unseen spirits. "Because if you don't bring the box to Quetzal, he can not protect you. Go now."

Heavy rain splashed on my head and shoulders. The air seemed to be growing warmer, more humid. Whatever I had done, the time was running out to stop it. The idea that I was the only one who could save humanity seemed preposterous. But what if I was, and waited too long? I glanced quickly at Kare. He was staring at the box. He would not help me. I had to do this myself.

Taking one final deep breath, and trembling so much I wobbled when I landed, I hopped to the container, watching it as if it was a coiled rattlesnake.

My vision spun and I swayed with the overload of senses. A sudden longing to feel the power I had when I held the box became a craving more demanding than the dread of my apprehension.

"Pick it up," Kare ordered from the relative safety of the edge of the forest.

I leaned over and tentatively reached for the box. At the touch of the cool metal my thoughts cleared. My strength increased. The shapes of pine cones on distant trees were visible again. The scurry of small forest animals came to me on the rush of the wind.

Cruuuuuu.

Curratta and her host of witches swirled around me.

I glanced at Kare. I was certain he couldn't see the Xucha. Otherwise I doubt he would have been able to maintain his focused concentration on the box.

The image of Curratta the high shaman of the Xucha wavered before me. Her voice cackled a hoarse high sing-song.

Tatya-Masi.

The chorus of female voices vibrated the air.

Cruuuuu.

Longing nearly overwhelmed me. I ran my tongue across the cartilaginous edges of my lips and stared into the emerald eyes of the relief of Tatya-Masi on the cover. To hold and possess the contents of the box would answer every question, give me the knowledge I needed to safely find my way through the conflict into which I had been cast. The rush of new awareness gave me confidence. I would learn to use this power. Inspiration would guide me. I was at the beginning of a great adventure. My life had filled with excitement; my former dull existence seemed a lamentable memory.

Kare waved me toward him. "Come. We must bring the box to Quetzal."

I could open it right now. My eyes shifted to Kare. What could he do to stop me? I was a god.

As if sensing my craving, Kare begged. "Be strong, Du. Find the courage. Save the world. So much depends on you."

Curratta hovered before me. The witches glimmered behind her. Their chanting seemed to incite my longing to open the box.

"Hold me."

The witches' spell entwined my will.

I had to become what I was meant to be.

"Du! No. No. Be strong. Think of all the humanity. The works of ten thousand years are in your hands."

All my powers were being magnified by the box, including what Edgar had called my einfuhlung, my empathy. The same ability I had used to hear the music he wanted me to play was now a sharper lense that could peer beneath the surface of Kare's words. Just as the box brought into focus the blurred ephemera of the spiritual world, the hazy impressions I had of Kare's thoughts came to me with convincing clarity.

I saw men, women and children drowning in swirling brown floods, walls of water destroying homes, collapsing churches, schools, art galleries and museums washed away.

"Come, Du. Hurry!" Kare implored.

I moved in slow careful jumps, carrying the box with both hands before my chest. Curratta and her covey of ghosts followed me, chanting, trying to reach from the celestial realm to influence me.

What would the Xucha do if I brought the box to the Plumed Serpent?

"Tell me about Curratta," I said to Kare.

"Is she here?" His wet face spun toward me. He slipped in the mud and pushed himself onto one knee grabbing the stripped limb of a fallen sugar pine and propelled himself down the trail.

"Yes."

Kare ran faster.

"Please tell me." I hopped by his side.

"She serves the Lordess of Water. That is all I know. Do not listen to her. Hurry. Quetzal will protect you."

From what? Inika? Quetzal's father, Kinchel the Avenger Lord of Fire? Or from myself? I knew I could not resist the lure of the box for long. The rain slapping my face, cratering the mud, and bending the grass convinced me this world was under attack.