Maya princess Chanla "Pesh" Pex, as a direct descendant of a Maya king, is destined to be a shaman, but she hopes to fool the gods by never spending the night in a sacred cave. She learns to read the glyphs written on the "stone trees" at a ruin in Yucatán, wins a college scholarship to study archaeology, and tries to join the modern world. She finds an ancient Mayan bark book with a riddle about hidden gold or jade. While searching for the treasure, she enters a cave and interrupts a knife-wielding looter. When he leaves her to die in the dark, she curses him to death by crocodile and discovers powers she didn't know she had. Using her talents as a shaman, Pex traces the stolen Maya artifacts to a black market kingpin and becomes the Indiana Jones of the Yucatán.