Part 28
Derrick recoiled as if I'd suddenly grown a third eye in the middle of my forehead.
"You mean to tell me you've been acting like you knew about as much as the rest of us about these gods we're supposed to be studying, and you've been wearing a piece of jewelry stamped with their symbols this whole time?"
Kayce squinted at the dangling pendant. "It's not a very common marking--not like the sort of generic religious iconography you'd get at a store. Where did you get that necklace?"
I squirmed and fidgeted. What do I tell them? "Well, my mom is..." A goddess, my thoughts finished. "She works at the museum of ancient history. She gave it to me as a present when I was really little. I guess I never thought about where she got it from, or what the markings meant." There! No one could say any of that was untrue! I wasn't lying to my friends. I was just... leaving out certain bits of information.
"That's incredible!" Jordyn breathed. "This whole time, we had a piece of actual history right in our very midst, and none of us realized it!"
Derrick ran a hand through his hair and snorted. "You could have told us earlier, that's all I'm saying," he grumbled.
His antagonism was making me uncomfortable. I slipped the necklace back under my shirt collar. I would rather keep it hidden if having it loose would mean everybody was staring at my chest.
"Hey-ho!" Tony's voice called out behind us. He came over the small hill beside us, panting heavily. His clothes had a lot more streaks of dirt on them, like he'd had to do some hardcore climbing to reach us. I was almost glad we hadn't gone the tree route.
Relief washed over me when I felt his touch at my side. I leaned my head on his shoulder. "Glad you found us."
Derrick coughed and held out his hand. Tony gave him a confused look, but then realization hit, and he handed over the GPS unit.
Derrick dialed in a few buttons. "Okay, let's hope this isn't--" He stopped as the device beeped softly.
"What happened?" Jordyn asked.
Derrick shrugged. "That's funny; on the other side of the ravine, it was cutting out and splitting up and acting all fritzy--but now it's working perfectly." He held it out to show us a long line tracing a path along the screen, a compass in the corner saying that we were now facing northeast, and a steady blinking marker showing our current position.
Tony rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I might have, um, bumped it a few times--glad it's working now, though."
Jordyn winced. "My feet are starting to hurt already, though. How much further do we have to go?"
Derrick punched in a command, and the device bleeped again. His face lit up. "Great news, everybody," he announced. "According to this, we've only got about a five mile hike between us and the epicenter."
Kayce stretched his long arms high into the air. "Oh good," he groaned. "Let's go deeper into the jungle, then, people."
We hiked for another hour, heading down a steep decline into a darker, cooler part of the forest. The mud here was far more soft and squishy, and the breezes that blew past my arms were cold enough to raise the goosebumps over my skin.
The trail led to a rocky, rubble-covered area, where Kayce opted to call out that we needed a break to eat some food and rest our feet. Jordyn responded by draping her body over a rock.
"My legs are officially canceled!" she moaned. "Just roll me to the base of the temple, will you? I don't care anymore."
"Hey Jordyn," Kayce teased. "Catch!" He lofted a water bottle gently in her direction, and it plopped on the ground next to the rock, rolling toward her a little bit.
She flailed feebly, not even brushing it with her fingertips from her position. "Ugh," she grunted. "Too sleepy. Can't do it."
"How about this?" Derrick pulled out a piece of fruit leather and held it in front of her face.
Jordyn turned her head slightly, barely able to touch it with her tongue. Like plying a pet with treats, Derrick coaxed her at least into a sitting position, before handing her the rest of the leather. She held it in two hands and munched happily.
Tony tossed a handful of trail mix into his mouth. "So Derrick," he said, "Where do we go next?" He looked around at the uneven, craggy terrain. "I'm not sure there's much of a path anymore."
Derrick waved the GPS unit. "That's why I have a map. I don't have to see a path to know which direction we should be going. We just keep moving forward until we have to adjust to go around something."
We packed up and headed through the rock field. By the looks of it, the place could have been an ancient quarry that maybe subsequent earthquakes had filled with broken rocks. We followed Derrick's lead until we came to a large hole in the midst of the rock.
"Is it a cave?" Kayce asked.
"It looks kind of flat around it to me," I said. "Maybe we can find a way by going around it?" I shuddered at the prospect of plunging into the cold and mysterious darkness.
Jordyn stood just at the mouth of the cave and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Coo-ee!" she whooped.
Her voice echoed three or four times--the space beyond what we could see must be huge indeed.
Derrick was messing with the GPS again. "Darn it," He muttered. "Looks like the epicenter is situated just on the other side of this cave system," he said, showing us the dark line leading to a blinking circle indicating our target destination. "I hate dark, enclosed spaces too--but it doesn't look like we have much choice."
"Boy, I'll say!" Tony said, scuffing at something with his shoe. "Does this look familiar to anyone?"
We all stared at the thing in front of us: a series of nine dots, arranged in triangles of three, forming a larger triangle, pointing directly toward the wide mouth of the cave. The meaning was clear: this was the way to the sacred temple.
Kayce sighed and let down his backpack. "Okay, everybody get out your flashlights."
I pulled out the tiny LED camping flashlight my dad bought for me when we started making annual trips out to the Shawnee National Forest area. It was barely big enough to hold in my hand, and the circle of light didn't illuminate very far around me, but it was bright in that narrow circle!
Tony pulled out a thick plastic device with a row of LED bulbs on the end. As I watched, he flipped a toggle and a small handle popped out. The device whirred with the fury of an angry beehive as he cranked that tiny handle for all of sixty seconds, but the light emitting from the end of his flashlight made me want to stay closest to him when we went down into the darkness of the long, indeterminable cave.
"Dude!" Derrick sighed in a voice filled with longing. "What is that?"
Tony held up his light. "It's a flashlight that charges with static electricity generated by cranking the handle. It does have batteries, but they last a lot longer because that's not the sole source of energy. As long as I keep cranking it, this puppy can shine for hours!"
Jordyn scurried forward and grabbed my arm. "Ok, I feel a little better about going into this cave as long as we're all in it together!"
The sound of our boots crunching on the gravel soon surrounded us, along with the deep, dark shadows beyond what five brilliant flashlights could penetrate.
"Okay, you guys," said Kayce--the wilderness survival expert in the group, it seemed--"We need to make sure to spread out our light so we can see changes in the terrain up ahead."
As if to illustrate his point, Jordyn let out a gasp and stumbled. Her flashlight beam pointed down at the small divot she'd stepped in. Out in front, Derrick sized up a large boulder blocking the path. I pointed my light off to either side of it, but there was only shadow--the ground fell away around it, leaving quite a large drop if one wanted to avoid climbing the boulder, which stood just above the height of my shoulder.
"Guess we have to go over it," mused the dark-haired mechanic. "Anybody got a rope?"
Kayce, a good five inches taller than Derrick, sauntered forward and tested the craggy surface. "You don't need a rope," He mused, and with the help of a few footholds that I couldn't quite distinguish, he scaled the vertical surface and reached the top. Promptly, Kayce turned around and held out his hand. "Here, Tony get up here with me, and we can help the others over."
Tony obliged, and Jordyn shrank back, giving me a little push. Her eyes were wide, and she chewed her lip. "You go first," she whimpered softly.
I shook my head and took up my position behind Derrick. I watched where he placed his feet as Kayce and Tony grabbed his hands and hauled him upward. My heart was already racing as I braced my hands against the wall and stepped up as high as I could go.
"That's it, Prisiclla," Tony encouraged. "Just step and reach as far as you can. We'll catch your hands and help you."
My shoe caught on some protruding corner, and I shifted all my weight against that foot, thrusting my hands upward as I did so. It held, but the boys caught my hands a fraction of a second too late, and I felt the jagged rock scrape against my wrists as we pulled against each other. I had never been able to successfully execute a pull-up--my athletic abilities extended to track, soccer, and other calisthenics that didn't involve trusting my entire body weight to just my arms--but sheer desperation aided my upward trajectory, and within moments I scrambled my way onto the top of that rock.
Jordyn followed soon after, and by that time, Derrick had already picked his way down the other side. He retraced the path with the beam of his flashlight. "Be careful for loose stones," he warned us.
Jordyn stayed on her butt and tried to scoot until she reached a point where her feet met rock. "Thanks a lot, dude!" she growled. Her own flashlight was a small lamp strapped to her head, and we hadn't walked very far before I noticed that it had faded from a bright white light to a soft golden glow that just barely gave her enough space to preview each step. I attempted to shine my flashlight between us, so that we both could take advantage of my bright light.
We passed the field of large boulders and precarious stones, to a solid flooring with smooth walls and a ceiling that extended far above us.
Jordyn relaxed as she no longer had to worry about every single step. She wandered close to the wall and ran her hand over it. "Guys!" She gushed. "You know, I think this is an extinct lava tube! That's why the rock is so smooth--it's been worn down by flowing magma over centuries."
"Cool!" I mused. "Do you think the mountain in the middle of the island was an active volcano back when there were still worshippers on Fourtouna?"
Kayce's voice came from further ahead, with Derrick. "Now that you mention it, Pris, I did read something--"
"Fear not the quake that rises nor the fire that falls, for the waves will engulf those whose heart is true," somebody said, and I flinched as my eyes registered a pair of glowing orbs in the darkness beside me--but when I reached out my hand, I felt Tony reach out and wrap his fingers around mine. He still held his cranking flashlight, with its blinding-white light. The refraction off the stone around us was so strong I could see his comforting smile.
"That's what the passage said," he mused. "We thought it might be like a wood fire or something, but maybe it was fire from the mountain itself."
I nodded. "And it talks about waves, too--so that must be referring to Trikymios."
"Hey guys?" Jordyn's voice sounded very small and far away. My eyes had been so quick to adjust to the profusion of light from Tony's flashlight that I had trouble picking out that fading golden light from Jordyn's headlamp. I could just barely see Derrick and Kayce's flashlights ahead of us--and then those winked out, but whether they rounded a corner or just climbed over a rock, I couldn't tell.
I stayed close enough to Tony's light, and shined my flashlight in the distance behind us.
"You okay, Jordyn?" I called out.
A tiny yellow light wavered just beyond where my beam could reach.
"I've got it," Jordyn's voice grunted. "I think--ow!"
I winced at the sound of a series of scraping noises, and a small yelp.
"Jordyn!" I hollered desperately. Between us and the next solid step in her direction, there was a deep drop-off that was too wide to just step over, and too far down to climb.
"Just missed a step is all." Now she sounded like she was having a hard time catching her breath.
The radio clipped to Tony's belt warbled. "SShhhhhhh--Where---ssssssshhhhhou guys?"
Derrick's voice sounded fuzzy and overlaid with too much static. The fact that we were underground was probably not helping the connection.
I picked up my own radio and switched it on. "This is Priscilla, I'm with Tony. We're waiting for Jordyn. I think her headlamp is losing battery."
"Kshshskskhsks What?SSSHSHHHSSH!"
I rolled my eyes and pressed the "talk" button again. "I said--"
Tony's hand landed on my shoulder. "It's no use," he said gently. "There's too much interference here underground. We just have to keep moving and get out of this tunnel."
I pursed my lips. "But what about Jordyn?" I reminded him. "Shouldn't we at least wait for her?"
Jordyn's voice grunted in the distance. "Just... a bit... more..." she panted. Then a few moments later, I heard, "Hey, Pris!"
I clicked on my flashlight, pointing it toward the space where I heard her voice. "Jordyn? How goes it?"
"I'm okay," she said. "I think I got through the worst of it. I found a flat, even path to walk on. I'm just going to keep moving forward, okay? We'll see each other on the other side, I'm sure of it!"
Tony nudged my shoulder, and I wrinkled my nose at him. There was just something so wrong about us getting so separated in the engulfing darkness!
"Hey!" Now Jordyn's voice came from a bit further ahead of us. "I think I see the guys--"
Tony started picking his way across the next pile of rocks, and I finally realized just how dim my light really was.
"Guess that's our cue to make our way out," my friend mused.
"Have I ever mentioned how much I hate being underground?" I grumbled. "I feel like a mole!"
Tony shined his flashlight down on me, flooding my path with the icy white light. "It's not that bad," he said. "Just keep moving, you'll be okay."
So we kept moving. The tunnel didn't have too many corners or twists in it--but when we came to portions where the ceiling had caved in and blocked the straightest route, I experienced a conflict of two emotions: relief that Tony was there with me to help me out, and anxiety over not knowing where the rest of our team was.
Tony helped me up onto a ledge, and the sudden urge to breathe deeply overwhelmed me.
He smiled, keeping his arm safely around my shoulders. "Do you feel that, Priscilla? It's airflow."
I inhaled and smiled. "We're almost through!"
A bit further, and I could actually see the mouth on the other side--though I still hadn't found Jordyn or the boys, but at least I knew there was an end to the tunnel! I fixated on it, and accidentally stepped onto nothing, just about impaling my face on a rock in the process, if Tony hadn't been there to catch me.
"Whoa now, easy!" He said. "Don't let the light trick your eyes out of seeing what your feet are doing!"
I gripped his hands, my knees wobbling a bit, but he helped me onto the next rock, and then the next. My shoes were slipping a little on the angular surfaces, but we were so close!
The locket pulsed against my skin, and I felt a surge of hope such as I had not known since leaving the camp. Rock by rock, we made our way, until in the slanting daylight, I could see a shelf on the side of the tunnel. I pointed it out to Tony, and we made our way over to it.
We emerged from that long, dark cave, and just ahead, I saw Derrick, Jordyn, and Kayce waiting for us.
Jordyn walked over and threw her arms around me. "You made it!"
"There you guys are!" Derrick whooped. "I was wondering how far behind us you were."
"Just in time, too," Kayce said. "My flashlight lost battery right before we saw the mouth of the cave."
Derrick held up the GPS unit, now with a blank screen. "This too--good thing we got out when we did. Any longer, and we might have gotten lost in there!"
I frowned. "But... how are we going to find the epicenter without GPS?"
Derrick shoved it back into his pack as Kayce grinned. "We'll do it the old-fashioned way," he said, pulling the folded map out of his bag.
Laying it out on a huge flat rock beside us, he pulled out a small marker to cross off some points. "Okay, so we passed this point, the Brothers, yesterday afternoon, and then we must have gone up through here," he traced a line in a generally northeastern direction.
"We cut through some trees next," Jordyn volunteered. "Those must be right here?" She pointed to the forestry markings nearby.
Kayce nodded. "Okay, and so the ravine with the cliff and the fallen trees must have been right about here," he marked the area with an X.
"And there's the cave!" Derrick cried, pointing to a hollow marking further on the map. "Which brings us to about... Here?" He pointed to a region a bit more on the western end of the island, more toward the middle. The epicenter wasn't that far from it.
A slight buzzing distracted me, and I cringed, looking for the huge bug that made the noise as I saw ghastly moving spots wavering in my field of vision. "Yikes! Where's the bug spray when you need it?" I murmured.
"Guys, look at this!" Tony called to us from a few yards away. He stood on a small ledge that looked like a definite man-made path, well-worn and in fairly good condition, for a place that probably hadn't seen any human contact for decades, at least. It curved along the edge of the ridge, heading in a gentle downward slope, certainly leading toward some destination.
Kayce compared its trajectory to the way it looked on the map. "That definitely seems to be the right direction." He looked around. "Everybody ready for a hike? If all goes well, we should reach it before dark."
"Hallelujah!" Jordyn sighed. "We're almost there!"
"We're almost to the epicenter," I reminded her as she shouldered her pack and traipsed after Tony. "There's no telling whether we're actually correct in assuming that the hidden temple is going to be there too."
Jordyn glanced over her shoulder to stick her tongue out at me. "Oh ye of little faith!" she quipped.
I shook my head as I followed my friends down the mysterious path. Faith certainly had nothing to do with it!
The shadows had lengthened considerably, and evening set in by the time we were starting to get tired of walking.
"Are we there yet?" Derrick whined, having slipped to the back of the group as the rest of us passed him by.
Kayce, in the lead, rounded the corner and we heard him shout, "Hey guys! You've gotta see this!"
The four of us came after him, and there before us was the creepiest, most Indiana-Jones sight I had ever experienced.
Right there, in the middle of a foreboding forest, on an abandoned island with ancient connections was a whole freaking door made out of stone. Literally, it looked like someone had carved it right there into the side of the mountain we traveled along. The path stretched onward, but something about this anomaly made me think that perhaps we had reached our destination.
Jordyn ran her fingers over the ornate carving. "This is incredible! Everything so far has been practical or had some religious significance, but this?" She traced over a swirling pattern like waves crashing over a beach. "This is just beautiful for its own sake."
The more I watched those waves, the more I pictured sitting by Lake Michigan, watching my dad zip back and forth on his windsurf board. I could smell the thick air, hear his overjoyed shout--
I blinked when I realized my friends had all looked up at the sky.
"Did you hear that?" Derrick muttered.
I frowned and wracked my recent memory for every sound I'd heard in the last ten seconds, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
"It sounded like somebody yelling or something," Jordyn remarked. "There's nobody else out here, is there?"
Tony seemed more focused on the door--or, more in particular, the area of the stone wall around the door. It was all grungy and covered with moss and lichen, but when he pushed on it just a little with his finger, a large chunk of it fell away.
Kayce leaned foward."What the--dude! That's Greek!" He joined in and began scraping away the layers of overgrowth from the doorposts and lintels. On either side of the door, a series of Greek phrases had been etched into the rock wall.
"What does it say?" Derrick tilted his head from side to side, once the guys had exposed them.
Tony ran his finger over the words and intoned with an ominous voice, "Ta mátia, den se xéroun. Metanoó! Psithyrízoun ti moíra sas."
We turned to Kayce just as he finished copying the words down in a notebook from his backpack. He read them. "Ta mátia--that's the eyes... den se xéroun--umm, they don't, uh--they don't see? They don't recognize something? Or maybe it's like the eyes don't know something, or something the eyes do not see. And then it's--I think metanoó is the word for repent or take it back or something. And then psithyrízoun ti moíra sas means, they whisper your destiny."
It was like a scene out of an adventure story: an inscription riddled with metaphors, a door in the middle of a mountain, and something about eyes, fate, and returning something.
What did it all mean? Was I supposed to return something that my parents had?
Or would I be the thing that was returning? Whose fate was at stake, here?
The locket began pulsing again. I could feel its heat throbbing against my skin. I stepped forward to join my friends.
"Okay, that was a little creepy, am I right?" I forced myself to use a lighter tone than I wanted to. "But it tells us nothing, really--I mean, which one of us has any idea how to even open--"
My fingers barely brushed the recessed filigree at the middle of the doorway--and then, like a soap bubble when it's touched, the whole freaking door disappeared right in front of us. Not in the sense that all of a sudden there was a blank wall with no door. On the contrary, there was now a giant, carved opening right into the mountain.
Kayce snorted. "Nice going, secret-keeper."
Golden eyes peered at me from the shadows within. What had I done now?
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