Alana scooted away, shaking her head. “Something is so wrong.”
“What makes you say that?” Louie said. “Just because we’re inside a creepy chamber with our destinies hanging over our heads and there are statues holding spinning eggs with warning labels?”
I thought about something else he’d failed to mention: people had died seeking K’iin. But I kept that to myself.
“We just have to think smarter,” Ren said. “Hurakan’s word is wisely, and Kukuulkaan’s is fate. Do you think those are clues?”
“I just want to know why I didn’t get a statue,” Itzamna said. “I am the great moon god, after all.”
Louie rubbed his forehead, never taking his eyes off the figures. “What do you think would happen if we picked the wrong egg?”
“Buh-bye, destiny,” Alana muttered.
I stood right under the stone gods with their cold, menacing eyes. A chill ran through me. “Louie’s right,” I said, inching back. “Pacific wouldn’t entrust K’iin to any of the gods,” I added, thinking out loud. Yeah, I know she and Kukuulkaan have a thing going now, but she didn’t seem like the type to trust her boyfriend with her greatest treasure. “I don’t think K’iin is in any of those spheres. I think they’re a decoy.”
“Zane,” Itzamna said, “turn a few degrees to the left.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” he said.
The instant I did, the moon god gasped. “Oh. My. Stars. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Did he just say ‘Oh my stars’?” Alana asked.
“There!” Itzamna shouted. “Do you see it?”
“Where? I don’t see anything,” I said, frustrated that the god was stuck in my lenses. I mean, it would have been super helpful if the guy could point in 3-D.
“Take another step.” His voice trembled with excitement.
“Fine, but…” As I followed his instruction, the toe of my sneaker hit a bump under the sand and I nearly tripped. I squatted, and as I brushed away the thin layer of grit with my hand, my heart beat faster. “Guys? There’s something on the floor.” I stared down at the discovery. “Maybe a painting?”
“I told you I was helpful!” Itzamna said. “Oh, I feel so alive. I haven’t had an adventure of this magnitude in a millennium.”
Ren and Alana rushed over, and we went to work sweeping the sand to the corners of the room.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to touch anything,” Louie said. “You guys could get sucked into a void or dropped inside a trapdoor. Just saying…”
Once the floor was cleared, we stood back to get a better view. The image was of the night sky, including all the planets and a bunch of constellations, like Orion and Scorpius and others I couldn’t name.
“Whoa!” Louie joined us. “It looks like the genu-INE article. Check out how the stars sparkle. You think there’s lights under the floor?”
Ren’s eyes searched the length of the very real-looking galaxy. “Zane, you’re right. My mom wouldn’t trust the gods with K’iin,” she finally whispered. “But she would trust it to the universe.”
Alana studied the floor with a doubtful look. “I don’t see any calendar….”
“Do you know where it is?” I asked Itzamna.
“I can’t do everything for you godborns,” he complained.
“So you don’t know,” Alana guessed.
The god didn’t answer.
Ren had a look of pure astonishment on her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.