Kingdom Keepers VII Read Online Free

the privilege of seeing the world from the top of the temple’s peak, of looking into the future, of viewing the past, of talking directly to the gods.
    Wooden drums take up the beat of the chant as the priests climb higher. The high priest arrives at the summit, stops, and turns dramatically to look down on his flock. His face is painted like a monster’s. Bare-chested men in the crushing crowd begin leaping and cheering; women faint. Children cry.
    Tia Dalma finds herself standing upon the flat-topped pyramid, her right arm extended as if holding a staff, looking down at the tangle of jungle that has consumed everything in its path but the most inhospitable rock.
    From behind her comes the rhythmic punch of metal on metal, the sound like the ticking of a giant clock. She spins to address the intruder, but is faced with the treetops of jungle as far as she can see. If there are roads, they do not reveal themselves; nor do structures or villages. Tiny specks—flying birds—interrupt the sky, some in groups, some solo. Only through focused concentration is Tia Dalma able to detect a smudge of gray at treetop level—a faint stain of discoloration in the verdant green, like a watermark on a kitchen window.
    The longer she stares, the more evident the tiny cloud becomes. There must be lights beneath it. This place is the source of the mechanical heartbeat. This surgical hole in the jungle’s perfection. Humans. Environmental cancer.
    She thinks to stop this sound, to inflict her powers of witchcraft upon anyone vulgar enough to imagine they can disturb a holy shrine such as the one upon which she stands. The hubris! How reprehensible are those who disturb and disrupt without awareness of those around them.
    But the longer she stands atop the temple, her foul mood festering like an open sore, the more she feels a slight vibration rising through her bare feet, into her ankle bones, and up her shins. She kneels and places her open palms on the warm rock. Yes, the ground is shaking.
    She zeroes in on the underbrush below and to the right, the earthen roof of the catacombs through which she has just wandered. The tunnels are part of the limestone cave systems that can be found in abundance throughout Central America. Here, the priests dictated a human fashioning, carving and connecting, blocking and redirecting, turning what nature offered into a labyrinthine puzzle that only they could navigate. If a commoner entered, he or she never came back. The priests’ abilities anointed them as superior and god-chosen. Untouchable.
    But if Tia Dalma’s knees feel the tremor, so too do the limestone walls and ceilings of the catacombs.
    Only now, as her unflinching eyes tear up, does she realize she has gone about this all wrong. Worse, she has condemned the people—the humans—responsible for the vexing sound. Instead of condemnation, she should have tried understanding. Instead of repulsion, she should have embraced, even praised their technology!
    She sees so clearly where she has gone wrong. If the Beast remains alive in the suffocating chambers beneath her, there may yet be a way to free him.

T HE WORKER’S SUN-BAKED SKIN is the color of tobacco, his unfocused eyes bloodshot. He stands, facing the jungle lit primarily by moonlight. Behind him, several electric lights reveal a tangled mass of machinery that connects to an assemblage of aluminum and steel rising like a church steeple. From here tolls the impertinent pounding of metal on metal that drew Tia Dalma. If the temple from which she has just walked represents a sacred place where humanity can connect to the gods, this place is quite the opposite.
    In her hand, Tia Dalma holds a doll crudely fashioned from leaves and twigs, bound together with tendrils of green vine. It follows a human form: legs, arms, the stub of a neck upon which is lanced a chicozapote fruit to symbolize the head. Reminiscent of a child’s plaything, it is anything but. It serves no little girl’s