“This is your… love?” Alek waved at the wall.
“Uh, I guess it is. My passion. Finding stuff. Solving mysteries. It’s what I always wanted to do and what I studied in school, but… sometimes what you love doing doesn’t quite match up with the jobs that are available.” I shrugged, doubting he would have a common frame of reference.
“Only one job for a man in Sparta,” he said dryly.
Oh, maybe he understood not being able to do what one dreamed about doing after all. Not just as a slave to the elves, but even earlier, as a man growing up in a rigid society where one’s destiny was predetermined.
“If you could have done anything, what would it have been?” I asked.
Grunts and scrapes came from outside. Temi and Simon climbing up, I assumed. Alek had finished with the rope, and it dangled out the entrance. Neither of them was an expert on pictographs, so there probably wasn’t a reason for them to come up, but maybe they would feel safer in here than down on the forest floor. Just because we hadn’t heard the drone of the jibtab yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t find us eventually.
“I wanted to be… like Odysseus. An explorer. I loved the tales of Cinaethon and Homer. Do you remember them? Your people? Our people?” He shrugged. He might understand that a great deal of time had passed, but understanding that and knowing how to explain it were different things.
“Homer, definitely. Cinaethon sounds familiar. Another poet?”
“Yes. He was long dead in my time but from Sparta.” His chin came up with a hint of pride.
I should have known better, but it was strange to realize that the Spartans, so known for their warrior culture, might have idolized poets and have wanted to go off and have adventures. At times, the history books made it easy to generalize. But people were people, no matter what century, so it shouldn’t have struck me as odd.
“I like exploring too,” I said, then immediately felt foolish. Next I would be asking him what his favorite color was, so I could pretend mine was the same.
“I gathered that,” he said, his tone dry again.
I was tempted to ask if he had been out exploring somewhere when the elves found him, but decided I didn’t want to kill his good humor. I had only known him for a few days. I would have to trust that maybe one day he would be comfortable telling me that story.
Not surprisingly, Temi reached the cave first. Simon had probably stopped halfway up to pop a can of soda and replenish his reserves.
“What do you think?” I pointed to the pictures. “Does that look like your sword?”
“The stick?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know, but I am getting something of a… sensation from it.” She touched the pommel, which was sticking up over her shoulder. I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t left it behind for the climb.
“Because it knows it was immortalized in a cave painting seven hundred years ago, or because the jibtab is on its way?”
“I’m not sure,” Temi said. “I’m still waiting for the app that teaches me how to speak its language.”
“You probably need the elves to create that. What did you and Jakatra work on out in the woods last night, anyway?”
“Dodging projectiles,” Temi murmured.
She was standing in front of the painting and gestured for my flashlight, but when I handed it to her, she didn’t take it. Her gaze had locked onto the wall. I shined the light on the pictographs for her.
“See something I don’t?” I asked.
“Just… getting the impression that maybe it’s a good thing that we didn’t get closer to those flashing lights last night.”
“Oh?” I frowned at the image in front of her. “Why?”
“Well, if it opens portals…” She touched the last scene, the one with the people leaving the area. “Don’t you get the impression something bad happened?”
“Yes, but…” I paused. I hadn’t considered the possibility that the “something bad” had been a result of opening the portals, but maybe I should have. Wasn’t the definition of a portal that it went to some place or came from some place? And couldn’t there be other… entities in those other places?
Temi turned toward me, her eyes troubled. Was she thinking of how close we had come to walking over to those flashing lights? And what might have happened if the sword did open portals? And if something had come through that we couldn’t handle?
I faced the pictographs again, trailing my fingers along the figure with the sword, the one I’d thought had been walking into an ambush. “Eleriss admitted that his people were here in the past.”
Temi nodded. “It’s apparently forbidden now, except with rare exceptions, but they told me it had once been like going on a vacation or adventure for them, coming here. The way European explorers went to dark, savage continents back in the day.” Her mouth twisted, and she made air quotes as she said dark, savage. Yeah, I wasn’t going to agree with that description.
“And some of them took slaves while they were here,” I said.
“They didn’t tell me about that.”
I looked at Alek, who had grown silent since Temi’s arrival. He was standing against the back wall, watching and listening. I might have to try and pry his story out of him, after all.
“So was it one of their people who wandered through the Southwest and found some portals to open for kicks?” I asked. “Or was an elf maybe the one ambushed here? And then it was someone else who wandered around and accidentally opened a portal?” I tapped on the figure with the sword. Alas, there weren’t any big triangular ears sticking out of the circle of a head that might have implied someone other than a human.
“I wouldn’t call their people infallible,” Temi said, “and some of them clearly wish humans would disappear from the universe—Jakatra admitted as much—but I’m skeptical that they would accidentally open a portal that let something evil into a world, especially if it harmed more than humans.”
“I don’t know if it did harm more than humans.” I drummed my fingers on the seam of my jeans. “The Sinagua disappeared from the area, yes, but there’s no evidence of a mass extinction or anything like that. Still… I see what you’re saying, and it does seem like the type of thing that could have been done accidentally. By someone curious.” The type of person who climbed dangerous cliffs to look into caves…
“Or someone drawn to the vortexes by the sword,” Temi pointed out. “If a previous owner felt the pull, as I did, and didn’t know to avoid it…”
“Maybe we better focus on the jibtab and do our best to avoid anything tugging at your sword.” I grimaced at the idea of walking away from the vortexes without ever seeing what happened when the sword was plugged into one, but I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for unleashing some horrible evil on mankind.
“I think we need to talk to Eleriss and Jakatra again,” Temi said.
“They’re your buddies. Can you make that happen?”
“They didn’t tell me where they went, just that they were hunting the other elf.”
“Delia?” came a distant call. Simon. It sounded like he was still on the ground.
I rushed to the cave entrance, worried he had heard the monster coming. At first, I didn’t spot him down there, but something moved in the trees, drawing my eye. He and Naomi had wandered away from the cliff wall with the metal detector.
“What is it?” I called.
Neither of them answered.
Chapter 13
“Let’s get back to the van,” I said.
Simon and Naomi had disappeared in the trees, and I wanted to make sure they were okay, but we ought to head out, anyway. The sun had dipped below the canyon wall on the opposite side of the highway. It wouldn’t be that long before night fell.
Despite my words, I took a moment to take a few more pictures of the wall and to check all of the edges and nooks in the cave. I found the remains of a hollowed stone with dark paint smudges and imagined someone in here, centuries earlier, mixing
paints to share his story. That was it as far as relics went.
Temi climbed down first, and Alek waited for me at the exit.
“I have been through the portals before,” he said when I joined him, about to crouch for the rope.
I froze. “These portals?” I waved toward the pictographs.
“No, the ones the Dhekarzha create. Those went to places they desired to go, some similar to their world and similar to ours. Some went to foul and dangerous places. I was made to travel to such a place once for a… test.” His jaw tightened and his brown eyes narrowed in anger at some memory. That couldn’t be the word he wanted. “Entertainment,” he amended. “Their entertainment.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, wishing it weren’t such a useless thing to say.
Alek looked out at the forest, the carpet of greens and yellows and browns stretching across the ground below us, the creek visible in spots, the water glinting in the afternoon sunlight. “It is in the past and does not matter now. I tell you this for a warning. For us, the portals may not be known until they are entered, and they don’t always have… doors on both sides.” He shook his head, clearly frustrated by the lack of words in Ancient Greek to explain all of this. I doubted English had the appropriate words, either. “Wild ones, natural ones, are even less predictable. You should not open the ones here. And you must not go through.”
“I’m getting that impression. Thank you for the warning.”
“Delia?” Simon called again. “You’re going to want to see this.”
“I’m coming.”
I patted Alek on the arm, then dropped to all fours, grabbed the rope, and slipped out of the cave. Normally, going down scared me more than going up, but the rope made the descent a lot easier. Less than a minute later, my feet dropped onto the dusty earth. I was surprised Alek wasn’t following me yet, but Simon’s excited voice came from the trees, drawing me in that direction.
I hopped over a log, then nearly tripped at the sight of Simon and Naomi, thigh deep in a crater of dirt. Dust caked their hands, faces, and even their hair. The Dirt Viper leaned innocently against a nearby tree, though I was certain it was responsible for however this scene had started.
“What are you doing?” I asked, then, realizing I already knew, added, “And how did you dig all that up so quickly?”
We hadn’t even brought shovels.
“Quickly?” Simon was using his Black Sabbath T-shirt to rub dirt off something. “You were up there forever.”
“We were not.” At least I didn’t think so. I dug out my phone to check the time. Maybe I had been a tad absorbed.
“Yes, you were,” Simon said.
Naomi nodded.
“We thought you and Mr. Sexypants were making Greek babies,” Simon added.
“I didn’t think that,” Naomi said.
“Good, because that would have been awkward with Temi watching. What great artifact did you find there?”
“Oh, just the mother lode.” Simon winked and nodded at Naomi, who had apparently gone from suspicious spy to helpful assistant.
She bent and lifted an old wooden box out of the dirt, the hinges rusted and broken, the lid already open. She pulled out a dusty old mason jar packed full of silver coins.
“Someone’s quarter collection?” I guessed. A cool find, especially if they were old, but I wasn’t sure I would classify someone’s old coin jar as the mother lode.
“We already looked inside,” Simon said. “The most recent one I plucked out is from 1923. Melt value, over three and a half dollars at current silver rates, but a 1923 Standing Liberty Quarter has a numismatic value of more than that. It’s worth at least twenty bucks in poor condition, and most of these coins would rate very good to extremely fine grade. I’m betting the value of the entire jar is more than enough to pay for Zelda’s repairs.”
“And Simon said I get a cut.” Naomi bounced. “I’m the one who brought the Dirt Viper.”
A cut. If she had found the coins, she probably had a claim to the whole stash. Either that, or the Florida relative did, though technically someone in the family had sold this portion of the property to the government at some point, and this was national forest land now. Simon had a definite finders-keepers mentality when it came to prospecting, and I was sure he would balk if I suggested we hand the coins over to the government.
“The coins are only part of the treasure. There are a couple of other doodads you might be interested in, but this is the real surprise.” Simon tossed the item he had been rubbing to me.
Surprised he was throwing around something old and valuable, I lunged to catch the object. As soon as my hands wrapped around the cool, smooth item, a weird shiver went through me. Before I opened my fingers, I had a hunch we were dealing with something strange. Something alien.
And something broken. I stared at three-quarters of a disk about an inch thick, with the side sliced through as if by a blade. The slice revealed insides that reminded me vaguely of silicone putty, but with silver strands—wiring?—knotting and flowing through the medium in a strangely mesmerizing pattern. Interesting, but the outside captivated me more.
“These are the same runes that were on Eleriss and Jakatra’s communication device,” I said, “or whatever that thing was we found in their hotel room.” The elves had never deigned to explain their doodads.
“I thought so,” Simon said.
“Who are Eleriss and Jakatra?” Naomi asked. “Are those the guys who came to your campsite last night?”
I barely heard her. I was staring back and forth from the broken gadget to the wood box. “This came out of that?”
“Yup,” Simon said.
I rubbed the outside of the device, the strange alloy like nothing I had seen before. Like nothing on Earth.
“In case you’re wondering, it was the coins that set off the detector,” Simon said. “I already checked and that doesn’t show up as a metal.”
Leaves crunched behind me, Temi coming over to join us. Alek had also descended and was heading in this direction, a bemused expression on his face as he regarded the new crater in the dry red dirt.
“So, was this left here by some traveling elf in the ’20s? Or is it something Haines maybe found up in that cave at the same time as the pictographs?” I showed Temi the device.
I wasn’t sure if she would recognize the runes, since she hadn’t been up there poking around in that hotel room with Simon and me, but her lips parted in surprise. “The impression Jakatra gave me was that it’s been hundreds of years since their people came here.”
“And did you think he was telling the truth?” I wasn’t sure how far to trust those guys.
“Yes. He’s… blunt. Eleriss, I think, would be evasive if there was a reason for it.”
“Yes, we’ve seen that,” I said dryly.
“But Jakatra, if you ask him what he thinks… be prepared for an answer you might not want to hear.”
I handed her the trinket. “I know you didn’t see much of their world, but is there any chance this reminds you of anything?”
“It’s one of their portal openers, isn’t it?”
I gaped at her. “Are you sure?” I hadn’t expected her to have a clue.
“No, not at all.”
I laughed. “That’s honest.”
“That was my first thought, but it’s possible they have a lot of tools that look similar. Like our remote controls, maybe? But it reminds me of the device I saw Eleriss use to open portals. Not exactly the same, but…”
“Models would presumably change with time,” I said. “And we have no way to tell how much time.”
“Can’t walk it into someone’s lab and have them carbon-date it, eh?” Simon asked.
“Who even knows if there’s carbon in it? If it’s not from Earth…”
“Not from Earth?” Naomi’s eyes gleamed with excitement.
Temi took me aside. “Should we be discussing all of this in front of her?”
“I assumed it w
ould all end up on Simon’s blog sooner or later anyway.”
“Hey now,” Simon said, “I only write about the monsters. I haven’t mentioned our pointy-eared friends.”
“Oh?” I asked, surprised. They were an even more interesting story than the creatures, at least in my opinion.
“People wouldn’t think I was a credible source if I started blogging about aliens.”
“A credible source for… monster information?” I arched my brows.
“Monsters that have been killing people. Nobody can deny that there are weird things going on around here. We—”
My phone rang. I winced and pulled it out, hoping the police hadn’t thought up another reason to chat with us; my cell number was listed as the company number on our business site, so it wasn’t as if they couldn’t find us, whether we had checked out of the campground or not.
But Autumn’s name flashed across the display. Surprised, since she usually favored text messages, I answered promptly. “What is it?”
“Are you in Sedona now?” Autumn blurted.
“A little ways outside of town. Why?” I waved to Simon and mouthed, “News,” already having an inkling from her tone that there was trouble.
“Something’s attacking the tourist area, Uptown Sedona. I’m watching the news right now. There are people down everywhere, and they’re talking about those stingers. Someone’s filming from a van. You better get out of there if you’re anywhere close.”
“We’ll be careful,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.”
“I said get out of there, not be careful,” Autumn growled.
“I know.” I was looking at Temi, who was standing beside me, listening, her face grave. Her hand twitched toward her sword hilt. Getting “out of there” probably wasn’t in the cards. I ended the call and summed it up for the others.
“Guess we know why it hasn’t been out here harassing us,” Simon said.