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RIQ CURSED himself as he watched Sera pound the stone wall with the undersides of her fists. Why hadn’t he trusted his instincts? From the second K’inich had volunteered to accompany them to the observatory, Riq had been skeptical of his motivation. Before that even . . . when he’d asked Sera what she was looking for in the observatory basement. And that story about the two boys in the sea. Riq had sensed all along that something wasn’t right. But he had done nothing to stop it. Zero. And now look where they were.

He watched María pacing all around the room with her candle, watched Dak sit against the wall, letting his face fall into his hands. Sera turned around with a panicked look on her face and said, “What now? We’ll never get out of here.” She looked right at Riq. “Why’d you let him have the Ring?”

“I’d rather take an arrow in the chest than be stuck in here forever,” she said.

“They’re probably torching Pacal’s codex as we speak,” Dak said. “You know, the one we were supposed to protect?”

“I’ve always known there was an SQ presence here,” María said. “But I never once considered Bacab’s cousin.”

“So, what are we supposed to do?” Sera said. “Sit here and wait for our air to run out? Because that’s what’ll probably happen.”

Dak, Sera, and María continued on like this as Riq began walking around the room, studying every inch of the dark walls. María’s candle gave just enough light that he could see. After several minutes he spotted something that made the hairs on his arms stand up. A tiny snake had been carved into one of the stones.

“And why are you so quiet?” Dak shouted at Riq’s back. “You don’t care that we’re all going to die in this tomb?”

Riq ignored Dak and kept scanning farther down the wall. He found a third snake. Then a fourth.

“Leave him alone, Dak,” Sera said. “Just, please, be quiet for once in your life.”

María moved in closer to Riq and held her candle to the wall so he could see better. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“There’s a pattern of tiny engravings on the wall,” Riq told her. “They go all the way down to the floor.”

Sera came to look at them, too. “They’re snakes,” she said. “Hold on a sec. Dak, get over here with the SQuare.”

Riq turned around, saw Sera take the SQuare from Dak, power it on, and quickly pull up the riddle. “ ‘Dig deep, deeper, deepest,’ ” she read. She looked up at Riq and Dak and said, “What if this isn’t the deepest room in the observatory?”

“Kisa’s trying to tell us something,” Riq said, scanning stones again. The tiny snake engravings clearly descended all the way down the wall. But the stone closest to the floor had two snakes. Maybe that stone was the most significant. He dropped to his knees and began feeling all around the stone. But it felt no different than the others.

“I don’t know yet,” Riq told him. He stood up and studied every stone that had a snake on it, starting up near the ceiling. He had to figure this out. What was Kisa trying to tell him? All he saw was a solid stone wall.

“What am I not seeing?” Riq mumbled to himself. He felt all around the stones on either side of the ones with snakes. Then he studied the actual engravings. But nothing stood out to him. He grew so frustrated he stood up and punched the wall with a closed fist, which really hurt, so he kicked the stone with two snakes.

Riq knelt down and pushed the stone farther and farther into the wall until it revealed a small latch. Riq undid the latch and moved a thick piece of leather to the side to grab the handle underneath. He pulled on it with all his strength. All of the sudden, a small part of the floor came up, revealing a narrow opening that led to a dark staircase.

They all looked at each other, and Sera repeated, “ ‘Deep, deeper, deepest.’ ”

The four of them climbed down the narrow stairs, one at a time, Riq now holding María’s candle to light the way. When he got to the bottom, he held up the candle and scanned the small room. There was an old wooden desk and a chair. The walls were full of glyphs. The shelves around the desk were covered with rusted lockets and antiquated paintbrushes.

Riq followed Sera’s eyes to the floor underneath the desk where there was a full skeleton. His eyes grew big, and he walked over to it and leaned down to get a better look with the candle. There was an open locket near the skeleton’s hand. Inside, the glyph for observatory was only half finished. He fell to his knees near the skeleton, fighting back tears. He knew in his heart it had to be Kisa.

Riq pulled himself together, got up, and walked over to Dak. He looked at the first panel of the codex. And there it was: the symbol of the ceiba tree. The writing looked slightly different from Pacal’s, which told Riq it was a reproduction. He looked up as Sera quoted from the riddle, “ ‘To save the reproduction of the treasure’s truth . . .’ ”

“A copy of Pacal’s codex. We found it,” Dak said. He took the candle from Riq and circled it all around the room. “Do you know how incredible this is? There probably hasn’t been another living soul in this place for hundreds and hundreds of years. At least since she kicked the bucket, right?” He pointed at the skeleton. “I’d assume if anyone found her they’d give her a proper burial.”

“I can’t believe it,” María said. “All along this has been under my feet.”

Riq took the candle from Dak and put it in the candleholder on the wall. Now the entire room was dimly lit.

“Um, you guys?” Sera said, pointing at the far wall. “I just found a glyph etched into a stone near this handle. Can you read it, Riq?”

“Are you kidding me?” Dak started jumping up and down. “There’s another way out of here! This Snake Woman was a genius!”

“Easy,” Sera warned him. “Let’s make sure we can get out before we start patting ourselves on the back. Even then, we still have a lot of work to do switching codices with the monks.”

Dak, Sera, and María started trying to turn the handle built into the wall. They barely got it to budge. Sera called out, “Riq, get over here and help us. This thing’s rusted in place.”

Riq ignored her because he’d just spotted a thin block of wood with a series of painted glyphs. It looked like a letter, placed on the desk for someone to find. Riq picked it up and began reading, his heart now thumping inside his chest.

Dear Future Hystorian,

If you are reading this note it means you have found your way into the birthplace of the Hystorians movement among our people. When I was just a girl, the king of Izamal promised me a secret room below the basement of his new observatory where I could organize a Hystorian presence. But the king didn’t stop there; he built a secret room underneath the secret room. A great many discussions have taken place between these walls. But now I am old, and I fear the end is near. I ask that you help get this message into the hands of the time travelers that may happen to pass through our village a second time.

I initiated the Hystorian presence here because, when I was young, I encountered these three time travelers, and it changed the course of my life. They came during the great storm, and they helped the king maintain possession of our most sacred tool of learning, Pacal’s codex. Thousands of young students have been taught from this codex during my lifetime. I can’t imagine our village without it.

Riq tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He looked up, saw Dak, Sera, and María all straining to turn the rusted handle. He then looked all around the room and glanced down at the skeleton again. All of it seemed so surreal. Kisa’s presence. Her bones beneath the desk. He remembered the young girl he’d sat with at the mouth of the cave. She was so smart and pretty. She made him want to be somebody. And then, in the time it took to snap his fingers, Riq had warped to a different time, and the girl from Izamal had lived an entire life and grown old and died. He turned back to the letter, overwhelmed with emotion.

All my life I’d longed to do something special. When I was young I believed it was art and jewelry. But that changed when I met the time travelers. They arrived with one mission: to save the world. And I realized one day that I could help them by continuing their work. I have been a defender of scholars, and a scholar myself; I have traveled to faraway villages with a message of peace and cooperation; I have warned all Maya to stay vigilant, and to oppose the SQ whenever they might appear on our shores.

The small group of local young people I have trained now refer to me as Akna, after the goddess of motherhood. Even though I never had a child of my own, the name stuck. Most of them went off to other villages to extend our presence. I have done this for over fifty years now. It is my legacy. And I owe my life as a Hystorian to one beautiful young time traveler who walked into my uncle’s hut during the great storm.

Riq looked up from the letter, saw Dak, Sera, and María slowly pulling open the door. Behind it he saw yet another set of narrow stone stairs. “One second,” he managed to call out to them. And then he turned to the last paragraph of the letter.

Please, Future Hystorian, if you ever happen across these three time travelers, deliver this message to the one named Riq. Tell him my life would never have been what it is if I hadn’t spent those three days with him. Tell him he made me believe I could be anything. Tell him he gave me the strength to insist he leave Izamal and continue with his mission, even though I cried for six weeks after with a broken heart. It was the most important decision I ever made, because the world could not be saved without him. And last, Future Hystorian, if this time traveler named Riq ever comes back to Izamal, tell him that Kisa will always remember him, even after I am gone from this earth. Because if it wasn’t for our powerful friendship, I never would have fulfilled my destiny as a Hystorian.

Riq looked up at her, his chest so full it felt like it might burst. The door was open, and Dak and María were already climbing the stairs.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sera said. “We have to replace the SQ codex and get back the Ring!”

Riq nodded, set the piece of wood back on the desk, and hurried toward Sera. Before he followed her up the stairs, he took one last look around Kisa’s secret room. He remembered seeing her for the first time inside Itchik’s hut. That strange feeling in his stomach when their eyes first met. Finally, he understood what it meant.

Riq turned and hurried up the dark stairs, knowing that nothing could stop him now. He was a Hystorian. Just like Kisa was a Hystorian.

And from this point on, he would be as committed to the mission as she had been.