Shady Lady

Page 24

“One that looks like a lady?”
He nodded. “Undoubtedly. Just beyond there, the jungle thins. I think there’s a valley, just as you predicted.”
“How far? Should we risk it tonight?” The light was fading fast.
“I don’t think it’s more than an hour or two. Stay close.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. In the dark, the jungle was a hundred times as frightening. Each noise seemed magnified. Each time a branch rustled or the leaves stirred, my muscles clenched, bracing for an attack. Kel used the machete more in that last hour than he had all the days prior. There was no path; we might have been the first people to walk this way in hundreds of years.
I was stumbling, borderline falling on my face, when the trees gave way to rolling hillside. For the first time in days, I saw the sky and it was magnificent. Out here, no city lights dimmed the display, and the stars shimmered like heavenly crystal on dark silk. I had never in my life seen anything so lovely or so welcome.
“We’ll camp at the lady tonight,” Kel said. “She’s just over this rise.”
I didn’t argue with him, though I was none too sure my legs would hold me. In the past days, I had gone well beyond my imagined limits and I was still going. He led the way, and I trudged on, weakness quivering in my muscles.
When we crested the hill, I saw her, and she was aweinspiring in the moonlight, a work of art to make one wonder at the ingenuity of indigenous people. Four enormous stones had been stacked and shaped—how, I could only guess—but this was, unquestionably, the lady’s hollow. They had given her a feminine silhouette and a swollen belly, but she lacked a head. Maybe she’d had one in days past and it had yielded to the elements.
My pace increased until I was leading the way. The ground was relatively level near the monument, so I sat down. My skin bore countless insect bites; I was sore, chafed, and so grateful to be still I couldn’t articulate it. A burn in my shoulders punished me for carrying a backpack for days at a time when I was used to sitting at a counter, but at least out of the jungle, we might pass a dry night.
“So you think we need to dig?” I asked.
Unearth her bones, the translation said. I hoped to all gods and goddesses we were not actually being asked to rob a grave. I didn’t think I could do it, not even to save my own skin. With Montoya’s assassins, I could tell myself they were paid to kill me and feel better about their lost lives. I could even rationalize the alliance with Escobar for the sake of my own survival, even though accepting his patronage would taint me in ways I might not discover right away.
But to desecrate a grave to pass Escobar’s test? The coffin contained a peaceful soul who never did me any harm. I knew how I’d feel if someone dug up my mother’s remains to steal from her body. I couldn’t do that to an innocent, grieving family, even to save my own life—and surely Kel wouldn’t want me to. Yeah, I’d done some bad things along this road, but corpse defilers were universally loathed.
“Hard to say. We’ll find out in the morning.”
With some effort, I put the macabre possibility from my mind. While I was at my physical limit, I had a little brain juice left. “You need sleep. I’ll take first watch.”
To my surprise, he unrolled his ultralight sleeping bag and lay down without argument. Which meant he had to be dead on his feet. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. It was too warm a night to need a fire, even if I’d wanted to go wandering in the dark to find wood. I didn’t.
After a while, the faint breeze cut through my damp clothes. I shivered and wrapped my own bag around my shoulders, but I couldn’t close my eyes. With my back against the comforting stone of the lady, I felt reasonably sure I could get through the night—or at least a few hours. Thoughts of Chance filled my mind, unsurprisingly. I could go months pretending I didn’t miss him, but in the darkness and the silence, I remembered how it felt to touch him, how he smelled, and the way his hair felt slipping through my fingers. Seeing him in the dream world brought it all back. Go away, I told the dream Chance. You made it clear where we stood when you didn’t call or write.
Time passed slowly, and I struggled to stay awake. With no watch and my cell phone off, I had no way of knowing how long I had let Kel sleep. He roused with a jerk, somersaulting to his feet and reaching for a weapon that wasn’t strapped to his back. His muscles tensed and twitched; in those moments, I had no doubt he didn’t know where—or possibly when—he was. I didn’t dare move.
“The night’s been quiet.” I hoped my voice would be enough to orient him, and some of the strain eased from his stance. “Bad dream?”
He turned and braced his forearm on the stone, then dropped his head onto it. His breath came in fast, shallow shudders. Damn. I’d never seen him like this. I had no idea what to do about it. Tortured muscles groaned as I pulled myself up. Approaching as I would a wild animal, I hesitated. He didn’t move. I set my hands lightly, tentatively, on his shoulders. Kel trembled, not at my touch, but from whatever he’d been reliving.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, hoping it was.
What would I do if he went batshit on me? I had little sense of direction, couldn’t hunt, and wouldn’t be able to find clean water unless it came from a drinking fountain. Hell, maybe not even then.
He turned then. His head dropped toward mine and he rested his cheek against my hair, the lightest pressure, so brief I might’ve imagined it, and then he stepped back. Once, he would’ve withdrawn completely, hidden his pain, but we’d shared so much in a short time, bonded in blood. We were not the same as we’d been when he first walked through my door.
“Yes,” he said, ignoring my reassurance. “Bad.”
“Tell me?”
He closed his eyes, sinking down against the stone. It scraped the amputation scars I had identified when he shared his blood. Copper scented the air, but he would heal, though that did not stop the pain.
“I dreamt of lost days,” he said at length. “Of when the Romans took my wings. It was a time of martyrs, when it pleased the archangels to see holy blood spilled to unite the faithful. In the hidden chamber deep within the coliseum, I told Emperor Commodus I would not kneel to him, and thereafter, they made a spectacle of me.”
“You fought?” I knew little of those days. My mother hadn’t believed in religious education, and what I’d learned in school had been sketchy at best. I doubted it would have prepared me for him in any case; he seemed so weary in the moonlight . . . and utterly alone.
Kel nodded, his expression distant. “When they saw I could not die, they hunted me for sport, and the archangels saw fit I should be punished. But once my persecutors fell to dust, I stood in the broken stones of that coliseum, saw how the mosaics are ruined and faded. The timeless work of mankind means nothing.”
“ ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,’”I quoted, mostly because I couldn’t think what else to say. I had no context for comforting someone so old. I must seem like a veritable speck of dust.
As if voicing my thoughts, he went on. “To me, eternity means only time that does not end, but runs on and on like a dark river that feeds the sea. As they did then, witches and warlocks still crave my blood, so I hide my nature. Time has ground me down. . . . I am less than I was, and yet the work must be done.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Stupid question. If nothing else, I’d make him laugh at my presumption.
But he didn’t. Instead, he pushed out a slow breath, and when he spoke, he offered a faint, cryptic smile. “It helps that you asked. Rest a little before the sun comes up. I will not sleep again this night.”
I listened to him breathing for the longest time, and even though I should be sleeping now that he was awake, I couldn’t still my mind. Considering what he’d shared, I didn’t think I’d drift off, but I must have.
At first light he roused me. His face offered no evidence of the night before, quiet and composed as ever. He took off his shirt and wound it around his head like an Arab headdress. We ate in silence and shared the last of the water. If we didn’t find some soon, we’d be in trouble. Well, more than we were already.
The sky shone blue as the sun rose, and I followed him down into the valley. From this point, I didn’t know what we were looking for. Unearth her bones wasn’t as specific as one might prefer for relic hunting. My gait reflected the soreness in my muscles, but I kept moving over uneven ground.
Eventually I glimpsed a goat path and I hurried toward it. Surely that meant something. If nothing else, it was the first sign of civilization we’d seen in days. I could take learning we were offtrack, if it also meant a bath and clean clothes.
The trail led down into a village, smaller even than the one near where Escobar’s men had dropped us off. Squat adobe brick houses clustered together in the greensward. There were few vehicles and nothing like what I’d call a road. From the looks of those eyeing Kel, indigenous people lived here. I saw little Spanish blood reflected in the faces we passed on our way to the market in the center square, a glorified widening of the dirt.
We passed chickens and goats rummaging outside the houses. In every respect but one, this was a humble settlement. I paused outside the church. The crumbling stonework showed it to be ancient, older than anything else in this place; it dated to the time of the conquistadores and it carried Aymara symbols similar to those we’d found on the clay statue. Graven letters on the cornerstone told me its name: Nuestra Señora de la Peña. Our Lady of the Sorrows.
Right then, the way I felt, the name seemed ominous. Even Kel paused, gazing up at the relic of times dead and gone. I could hear people passing behind us, speculating, but I didn’t turn. I continued around the side of the churchyard littered with fallen stones and weeds. Behind it lay a cemetery.
Unearth her bones.
No, it couldn’t be literal. Could it? Dead man’s hands slid down my spine, icy cold and full of whispers of darkness to come.
Unearthing Her Bones
There were no hostels in the unnamed village, nor even a proper store. In the market, we bought fresh fruit. To my vast relief, one stall sold clothing. I doubted the vendor made much from the other villagers, so I didn’t haggle. By standards set elsewhere in the world, I still got a bargain, even if she’d refashioned old garments into new: fifty for the set, a yellow peasant blouse and a gaily patterned skirt.
I knew we looked disreputable and dirty. It wasn’t just Kel’s tats or the color of our skin that made people give us a wide berth. We also reeked of the jungle and hard living. It was time to do something about that, or nobody would talk to us.
“Disculpe, por favor . . .” More than one person ignored my polite overture.
At last, I offered a woman a couple of coins to answer a few questions and she pointed me to an old man willing to rent the use of his bathroom. Lines seamed his brown face, his snowy hair in contrast, and he didn’t say much, other than gracias when Kel paid him. But he stepped out of his four-room home to let us bathe in relative privacy. God’s Hand stood guard outside the bathroom.