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Manda Scott: Raising the rainbow dragon

10.12.07 Alison Flood

Manda Scott worked as a vet and wrote thrillers part-time before a shamanic dreaming ritual she tried told her she should tackle her long-put-off plans to write a series of novels about the life of Boudica. She didn't think she could do it, but decided to try, giving up her job as a vet and taking two months to research the topic.

One month later, she had so much material she couldn't understand why no one had done it before; four years on, with life sales for the four books at around 235,000 copies, the shamanic ritual clearly paid off.

The Boudica books were a long way from Scott's previous contemporary crime thrillers, and her latest novel, The Crystal Skull, is a long way from Boudica. It takes as its starting point a Mayan prophecy that man is destined to bring about the end of the world on 21st December 2012. To counteract this, the Mayans carved 13 crystal skulls and sent them around the world; only when they are reunited can the world be saved from oblivion.

As with the Boudica books, Scott dives into the story with unabashed abandon, taking her readers on a rollicking ride through Elizabethan England, from where Cedric Owen journeys to Central America to learn about the secrets of the blue crystal skull which has been in his family for generations, to the modern day, where caver Stella and her new husband Kit discover the skull Owen hid 400 years ago, and battle to fulfil the ancient Mayan prophecies.

"In the shamanic world there had been stories of the crystal skulls that I'd heard. I knew that 2012 was a big day—there are people who take it immensely seriously: some have abandoned their pensions and taken out huge mortgages as they genuinely don't think they will be around to have to sort out their finances come 2013.

"The basic concept of the myth I was taught in the shamanic circles is that when the skulls are brought together somehow, they will help us to find a way through. I thought, 'There has to be a book in it, and it has to be now as there's no point in writing it after 2012.'

"It became obvious fairly quickly that I had to tell the story of the skull not just in the present. I think I tried for half a day going right back to its Mayan origins, but it was too early—5,000 years ago—and a culture we don't know, so there was nothing to fix on. So, the next most obvious thing was to go back to when the first whites could have gone to the Mayan lands. I loved that thread of the book. I never thought I would want to write about the Elizabethan era, but it was fantastic.

"Everything says there are 13 skulls but I couldn't figure out why. What I came to in the end is that there are nine for the nine colours—the seven colours of the rainbow plus black and white—and four beast skulls: the eagle, the crocodile, the jaguar and the snake. When all 13 come together—the beasts to make a dragon, and the colours to make a rainbow—that's how you get the Mayan god, Quetzalcoatl, which is the rainbow serpent.

"I don't take you to 2012, just to the end of the year in which the skull was found. Stella has to raise the rainbow dragon in order that it might do what needs to be done. It might be that it destroys the planet. It's all left open at the end.

"What I say at the end of the book is that I don't think we can sit around waiting for somebody else to find some skulls and make things better so we can all carry on as if nothing has changed. What I hope is that the book itself is a crystal skull and will make people act. If we carry on as if nothing's happening we won't be carrying on much beyond 2012."

Manda Scott The Crystal Skull (Bantam Press, January 2008, hardback, £12.99, 9780593055700)

Authors Alison Flood Spring Highlights Manda Scott

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