Chapter 6. What lurks in the cacao grove

Where bees and serpents leave their marks on future men

Note: See Author commentary at the end of the chapter. This commentary is exclusive to the Cacao Muse; you won’t see it on Amazon, my author site, or printed inside the wrappers of my favorite chocolate bars.

Max didn’t need much convincing. Everywhere he turned, there was something new, something wild and exotic to discover. Scampering through the leaf litter and over roots hidden in the thick undergrowth, it was all he could do to keep up with Itzel, who skipped from tree to tree like a white-tailed deer. And then the unavoidable happened: Max tripped over a cacao tree root and fell face-first into the leaf litter. Itzel turned around and burst into laughter.

“Oh, I think I just ate some of those little flies,” groaned Max as he stood up, wiping the moist compost off his face. The entire front of his body was covered in it.

“Oh, they must like you! Maybe they will pollinate you!”

“Yeah, then I can grow my own cacao pods!” Max stood on one leg, holding a few fallen cacao pods against the other in his best imitation of a cacao tree.

“No estoy segura que darás el mejor chocolate,” teased Itzel. “¡Eres todavía un árbol muy joven!” (I am not sure you’d make the best chocolate. You are still too young a tree!)

“Hey—don’t knock it till you try it!”

And they laughed some more. As the sound of their rich, innocent laughter lifted through the cacao tree and into the canopy above, a sudden pulse of electricity rippled through Max. He never knew how to explain it, but he’d experienced it only two other times in his life: the very first time a honeybee alighted on his arm and the time his grandfather died. Max hadn’t been with him, but he could feel it. His mother always said that’s what happens sometimes when two people are deeply connected. Whatever it was, Max knew it extended to animals because he could always somehow understand them, and they seemed to understand him. He tried to keep it to himself, but some of his close friends at school teased him mercilessly about it.

Max looked at Itzel, suddenly quiet. Struck by the change in his demeanor, Itzel, too, fell silent.

“¿Algo pasó…?” (Something happen…?)

“I don’t know, nothing.” Then, “Well, sometimes when I’m out in the woods or with animals I feel like I can…”

“Talk to them?” asked Itzel, as if it were obvious.

“Yeah.”