As Hector clambered into the passenger seat of Yogwo’s (surprisingly clean) Honda Accord and admired the scenery of the Californian mountains through a smudged window, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Kyle had first surprised him by owning a car- though, to be fair, it looked almost completely unused- and secondly surprised him, much more so, with a simple revelation.

“Arch-Shaman Goonda is a Mayan. At least, that’s what he says. He’s very old. I don’t know how old, but very old, dude. Like, crazy old. Like, way older than anyone else I’ve ever seen.” Yogwo had hardly thought the information important, that much was clear- yet Hector had almost spit out the homemade oatmeal he had been stomaching when he heard it. A Mayan, eh? This was an unexpected discovery indeed, and he was still pondering its implications as the little car, covered by a tarp for years, enjoyed a long-awaited freedom on the backroads of the Sierra Nevadas. Eventually, Kyle pulled over to the side of a gravel road in the middle of a heavily wooded section of the mountains.

“We get out here. It’s a bit of a hike to the Arch-Shaman’s… uh… retreat. You see, he only lives here in the summer.”

The hike itself was uneventful, lasting about twenty minutes and covering a short span of mountainous terrain. Hector had seen nothing resembling a house when suddenly Kyle stopped ahead of him and raised one hand in a gesture of pause.

Hector examined his surroundings yet again. There was nothing out of place- just a whole lot of sticks, trees, rocks, and bushes. That was it.

“Why did we-” Hector began. He became silent when the Spirit-Healer pointed up.

There was a house. In a tree. It might have been a treehouse, but where Hector had grown up in the Mexican desert there hadn’t been many trees, so he wasn’t sure if it really qualified to be a proper treehouse. It certainly didn’t qualify as “safe.” The tree itself was large, round, gray, and about as tall as an average tree. Hector was no professional botanist, but he guessed it might have been an oak. It wasn’t special in itself- what amazed him more was the intricately handmade rope ladder that dangled against the trunk. It blended in with the bark like a stringy chameleon. If Yogwo hadn’t pointed the house out, I would never have found this place.

Running his eyes up into the canopy of the oak, he could make out a platform, consisiting of well-disguised, grayed boards that made up some kind of floor, and angular, rough walls that sloped outward with the tree’s branches. Whoever made that obviously knows the basics of camouflage.

Yogwo walked over to the tree and jiggled the ladder a few times. Something rattled above and Hector made out the sound of light footsteps overhead, as of attempted stealth. Whoever was up there- the Arch-Shaman– must have seen them, for although Hector hadn’t made out any movement, something slammed and a raspy voice called down to the two.

“Whaddya want? Yogwo, is that you?” The voice grated like a rusty knife on splintery wood. Hector started when he realized it had been speaking in Spanish, more or less. He is Mayan, after all, or so I’m told.

Yogwo shouted back up, louder than Hector thought necessary. “Yogwo, Grand Shaman of the Di-”

“Shut up and come up,” snapped the voice. “Don’t have all afternoon.”

Kyle looked reprimanded. He assented in a meek voice. “Yes, Arch-Shaman. We are coming, Arch-Shaman.” Turning to Hector as he began the climb up the precarious ladder, he whispered an apology. “Sorry, dude, he’s, like, grumpy sometimes.”

Hector didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he grabbed onto the gray rope ladder and started climbing.

The ascent was not too high, if not too safe either. 45 feet up, the ladder led to a trapdoor the color of the tree. Yogwo knocked three times. After a few seconds, he started to knock again. The trapdoor dropped open in his face and nearly threw him off the ladder. Hector gripped the rope a little tighter.

“Get in here, bozos.” The voice came from somewhere inside the room.

“But- but- we haven’t done the secret knock yet!” Yogwo shook his fist at this injustice, then remembered he was currently 40 feet above the ground on a precarious rope ladder and put his hand back where it belonged.

“Secret, shmecret. Get up here or I’ll close it again.”

The two men on the ladder hurriedly completed the climb. When Hector poked his head up through the gray wood of the outside, he had expected the place to be a dark, gloomy, cramped, one-room hovel. So when he emerged into the well-lit, air-conditioned entrance of the tree house, he went into a mild state of shock.

The place was not by any means “gray” or “rustic” inside. The spotless white walls wouldn’t have been out of place in a modern house. The lights were impressive too, as well as the mini-split AC on one wall. Hector stared in amazement at the luxuries, gaping openly. Is this thing solar powered or something? How is there electrici-

“The extension cord is camouflaged too.”

Hector turned.

And there before him sat Arch-Shaman Goonda of the Divine Celestial Monarchy.

Quite a character, was Hector’s first thought. Impressive voice for someone that small.

The man was indeed small- hunched, yes, but even with his back straightened he probably wouldn’t be over 5 feet tall. He was spindly, yet Hector suspected he was stronger than he appeared to be, much like a Hispanic Smeagol fresh out of the nursing home. The little hair the man possessed might have once been black, but had long since turned completely white. His face was tight, as if his skull was on a budget and could only afford the minimum skin requirements. His eyes are too close together. Hector and the man studied each other. Yogwo stood to the side in awkward silence.

“So, you’re Hector Domini?”

Hector gasped. How would this guy know my name?!! “Uh, yes… may I ask how you know? Did the… did the stars tell you or something?”

The old man snorted. “Who do you think I am, Robinson Crusoe with a telescope? Yogwo called me.”

Yogwo’s face reddened. Hector glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“You have a phone?!”

“I- I- I don’t use it that often,” he protested. “Only for unplanned visits, that’s all. Mostly. I don’t use it, I really don’t, not often. I promise.”

Hector had too many questions to bother asking any of them. There were more important things they needed to get to.

“The fern.” He turned back to the Arch-Shaman. “I was told… you could educate me about a certain kind of fern.”

Goonda sniffed in a demeaning sort of way. “A fern, you say? Just any fern? Well, I can tell you about a fern, all right, if you want, say, perhaps the common Californian fern, if that’s what you would like. It’s green and it has-”

“A blue fern.” Hector sighed. This could take a while. “A fern, blue, it looks like it’s glowing, if you touch it you… it…” He had never attempted to describe the effect of merely touching the fern. “It feels like you’re touching a live wire.” Surely that’s descriptive enough. It’s not like there are any other blue ferns in the world.

All of the time Hector had been describing the plant, the Arch-Shaman Goonda had been cycling through first suspicion, then deeper suspicion, then something that looked like fear, then open shock.

“You- you can’t mean the Meso-American Eternity Fern? Or whatever it’s called nowadays?” He blinked several times very deliberately.

“Uh… sounds right. Yes, I think so. I need you to tell me everything you know about it.”

The Arch-Shaman’s withered face contorted into an expression of anxiety mixed with distaste, as if recalling a very old and not-so-good memory. “We must talk for a long time. Yogwo… I suppose you won’t do any harm. You may stay.”

Kyle looked like a dog whose owner had decided to let it sleep on the couch. “Yes, Arch-Shaman, thank you, Arch-Shaman,” he said quietly.

“So, Mr. Domini, how did you come by such a fern? Why are you asking about it?”

For the third time since that fateful day, Hector told of his discovery of the fern and the events leading up to where they sat. Kyle sat meditating, legs crossed in front of him and eyes closed. The Arch-Shaman ignored him and peered intently at Hector, occasionally asking a question or two about his experience.

“A most singular tale, yes?” he asked when Hector had finished. The question appeared to be rhetorical, because he immediately moved on. “Very much of what you have said is familiar to me.” His gaze seemed to run Hector through like a filet knife through a small intestine. “I must tell you something, something I have never told anyone before.”

“In two weeks, I am going to turn two thousand and thirty-seven.”

Yogwo’s eyes snapped open and he gasped before regaining control of himself. Hector instinctively replied “Happy birthday” before he realized what he was doing. Goonda raised one eyebrow, frowning slightly.

All of this happened in about 1.6 seconds, and then the full force of what the Arch-Shaman had just said hit Hector like a battering ram.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you just say-”

Goonda nodded placidly. “Two thousand and thirty-seven,” he said again. His tone was mild, as if for him this was no big deal and quite mediocre in fact.

Hector’s mouth dropped open like the trapdoor from earlier. So it’s true.

“My full name is too long to speak here. I can’t remember it myself, half of the time. But as you may have guessed, I am indeed a priest of the Mayan empire. Rather, I was,” he corrected himself, looking as if he didn’t want to be reminded of the empire’s tragic fate.

“What you call the Mexican Infinity Fern is something that the Mayans had known of for thousands of years. Back when I still believed in the Mayan religion, I thought it was a gift from the gods.”

Hector was now listening fully. “Back when you believed? So you don’t anymore?”

“No. Not anymore. A prophecy we had back in the old days predicted the date of the world’s destruction by a couple of our major deities. Using your calendar, it would have fallen on…” His eyebrows lowered. “Sometime in January 1792, I think. As in, 226 years ago. That’s when I stopped believing, and now I’ve started this cult because I don’t have anything else to do.”

At the word “cult,” Yogwo’s pallid eyes widened momentarily, but he quickly subdued himself and pretended not to have heard.

“Anyways, the fern… it’s magical, somehow. No other explanation, in my view of things. Not sure how it’s magical, but it has to be. You would agree, being another half-death, after all.”

“Half-death?” Hector asked. “What is-”

“An old term. That’s what us Mayans called the ones who got the fern. We never died, just went unconscious for a while. Half-death, you see.” The old man scratched his head, clearly lost in fond memories. “The immortality rituals were always so fun,” he sighed. “We’d get ourselves some hapless fools and cut out their throats, then we’d dance around their burning bodies while sprinkling their blood on the head of whoever was going to be made immortal.” He sighed happily, much in the same way that a mummified horse might sigh happily. “Those were the good old days.”

Hector gaped, and this time not from amazement. He edged a little farther away from the bent husk of a man sitting across from him.

The Arch-Shaman’s head snapped up and his malcontent expression returned. “That was a joke, you idiot. We were more civilized than that.” He paused. “Most of the time.”

Hector grunted. He wasn’t sure what other noise would be appropriate.

“Back to the fern. There are seven others I know of who achieved immortality with the fern. Just eating it won’t work, you know. Whatever power works in the plant is too potent to be consumed directly.” This time, the memories flashing across his mind must have been less than pleasant. “We found that out the hard way. They all died, the ones who tried that. Most of them instantly, which is ironic, because it’s supposed to grant eternal life, ain’t it? But none of that matters now.”

Hector stared. Wow, am I lucky. Somehow, without knowing, he had prepared the drug in a small enough concentration to survive the fern’s power. What do you know? I could have killed myself. His mind immediately snapped to the only other person he knew who was trying to make the drug. Flores. Will he survive?

“Now, I say immortal, but when I say immortal in this context, you might argue that it isn’t exactly that. Of the seven others I know took the fern and survived… I’ve not seen them or heard from them for a long time. Makes me wonder why.” He scratched his head, seeming to have forgotten Hector’s presence. “But I suppose they’d all have to be alive.”

“A long time ago? As in, a decade or so? Or just a few years?”

“Sometime in the 1200s, I think.”

“Oh.” Hector decided that the most prudent move would be to say nothing else. It was easy to forget who he was talking to. This is completely crazy. Tell me a month ago that I’d be running from a drug lord and the police and be mixed up with some cult and two thousand year old Mayans and I would have called you a wacko. Sighing tiredly, he gestured for the Arch-Shaman to continue. Now even Kyle hardly deserves that title.

“Anyways, even after two thousand years I know less than I would like about this fern. For example, a question I’ve had from the beginning, as I was about to say, is this: Is it possible for a half-death to fully and really die? Suppose-”

“Immortality is immortality, isn’t it?” To Hector, the answer seemed simple enough. These so-called “half-deaths,” the ones who successfully ingested the infinity fern, became immortal. The whole point of immortality was to not die, at least in his view. Problem solved. “Just because you haven’t seen them for a little while- er, a long while- doesn’t mean your friends are dead, you know.”

The Arch-Shaman glared at him. “Who said they were my friends? Accomplices, more like. And I’m not a five-year-old. I have already thought of everything you have just said about three hundred thousand times before.” A thoughtful look crawled across his face. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, repetition becomes a real problem.”

“I’m sure it does, Arch-Shaman,” replied Hector in his most respectful tone. I don’t think this conversation will benefit me any more. His gaze alighted upon Kyle, who was still sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor, eyelids pressed tightly together. “Come on, Kyle- uh, Yogwo. I think I’ve learned all I can from your Arch-Shaman.”

Kyle very slowly opened his eyes and rose to his feet. “Time to go already? I was just beginning to commune with-”

Hector cut him off. “Arch-Shaman Goonda, sir, it was a pleasure to meet you.” Sort of. “I… I am very much obliged to you. Thank you for spending your valuable time to enlighten me.” He nodded his head and pretended it was a bow.

The Arch-Shaman appeared to take Hector’s last statement as a rude joke.

“Valuable time,” he muttered under his breath. “Sure, buddy. It’s not like I live forever and have all the time in the literal freaking world.” Even so, it was clear that he had been pleased by Hector’s ceremony.

As they sped down gravel backroads in the Sierra Nevada mountains ten minutes later, Kyle and Hector discussed their plans. Flores had to be stopped from taking the fern-drug, but how? They had, Hector guessed, two days remaining at most. Two days. What can we do? We don’t know where Flores is. We don’t have any weapons. We have no allies, and wherever he is it’s sure to be packed with henchmen. And then the fern… How can we find it? What if it’s been moved, or it was never with him in the first place? At the very least, it would be well-guarded.

Things, in short, seemed pretty hopeless.