Burial Ground

II

9:49a.m.

They followed the river to its terminus, where it fed the placid lake upon the shore of which they had camped only the night before last. That felt like years ago now. Their trail had been easy enough to find from there. After several hours of shuffling through the oppressive jungle, the pangs of hunger had reached a level that surpassed even the sheer exhaustion, but both feared that once they stopped walking, they might never be able to start again. Already their reserves of adrenaline were running dangerously low.

The heat and humidity were insufferable, and the gashes all over their bodies attracted whining clouds of mosquitoes and black flies. Occasional cries from the birds of prey circling out of sight above the canopy were a constant reminder of what the eternal jungle thought about their odds of survival. They were nearly ready to collapse when they stumbled into a small clearing.

An alpaca stood twenty paces away, staring directly at them, contentedly chewing from side to side. Its long gray fur was tangled and knitted with briars. A rope hung from its neck, at the distant end of which a painted man walked through the knee-high ferns. He stopped, looked in their direction, and froze. Surprise registered on his face. He lowered his brow and scrutinized them as though unable to believe his eyes.

Merritt recognized him as the same man who had initially led them to the village, although this time he grazed a different animal.

The man took a hesitant step toward them, stopped, then cautiously took another. After several minutes, he finally reached them. The alpaca hovered at his side, indifferently gnawing on a tuft of grass, while the man inspected them more closely. He fingered the cuts on Merritt's arms, then looked deep into his eyes. A step to the side, and he repeated the process with Sam.

Merritt returned the favor and studied the man, whose skin was scarred under the paint in a similar manner to how Merritt imagined his soon would be. Galen had been right about how the natives had survived the creatures through the centuries. He and Sam owed the birdman their lives.

After a long pause, the native's face split into a wide grin brimming with sharpened teeth, and he squeezed each of them on the shoulder in turn. He inclined his head toward the path on the other side of the clearing, and, with a tug on the rope, led the alpaca back toward the village.

The man made a sound that Merritt could have sworn was laughter as they continued along the overgrown path behind him.

Sam still clung to his hand, though with nowhere near the same desperation she had earlier. Merritt sensed it, too. He no longer felt the aura of threat emanating from the man, as though they had passed some sort of trial in his eyes.

"Viracocha. Kakulcán. Quetzalcoatl," Sam said. "All of the ancient Mesoamerican tribes knew about these creatures and worshipped them. And the Maya and Aztec? They simply vanished from the face of the earth. Is it possible that they angered their gods, and were slaughtered? Is that how the remaining Chachapoya have managed to survive for so long in total isolation? By forging some sort of symbiotic relationship?"

A steep hill rose to their left, surrounded by a ring of stone pedestals, their torches now extinguished.

The voices of children called from ahead, shouting, giggling.

They rounded the side of the buried alpaca pen and stepped into the clearing beyond. The iron gate stood open, and dozens of tanned children ran and tumbled in the herd's midst. A young boy who'd been trying to hang from the wool under an alpaca's belly caught sight of them. He rose, pointed a finger at them, and shouted back over his shoulder to his friends. They all stopped playing to stare at Merritt and Sam before sprinting away in the opposite direction.

The man glanced back at them and smiled, obviously amused.

After ten more minutes, Merritt glimpsed the tall thatch roofs rising into the trees and saw the faint outline of the fortress walls. The low chatter of voices reached his ears, but he couldn't make out the words. Sam's hand tightened over his. The path wended around a copse of ceibas until it came within clear view of the towering fortifications.

A group of natives had gathered outside the open stone gate in anticipation of their arrival. Their voices dropped to whispers, and a nervous energy radiated from them.

The older man Merritt assumed to be the chief separated from the others and strode forward. A topless woman trailed at his hip, holding a bowl in her cupped hands. The chief spoke briefly with the alpaca herder. Both stared and gestured at the strangers, until finally their guide lowered his head and led the alpaca away from the trail.

Teeth bared, the chief stepped forward and glared at Merritt, who matched the intensity of his gaze for nearly a full minute. The chief looked him up and down, and then did the same to Sam. He probed Merritt's shredded clothing, and prodded the lacerations hard enough to draw fresh blood. His eyes again rose to meet Merritt's, and in their locked stare, an understanding passed between them. With a subtle nod, the older man turned and walked back into the crowd toward the fortress.

The woman with the bowl approached, scooped her first two fingers into its contents, and pulled out a glob of glistening black sludge. She raised her hand to Merritt's face and wiped it onto his cheek. The sting of the lacerations started to fade immediately.

The chief shouldered his way through the gathering of curious, excited, and frightened faces, toward the home they had managed to hide from the outside world for countless generations.

Sam positively beamed at the prospect of studying these people in the flesh, of living among them and learning everything she had once only been able to imagine. And that smile was more than enough to convince Merritt that there was nowhere on the planet he'd rather be than by her side.

Sam leaned closer and rested her head against his shoulder. She too recognized the gravity of what had passed between the two men, unvoiced pledges and silent promises.

The chief had entrusted them with the fate of his people. In sparing their lives, he risked possible discovery and exploitation by the outside world. In welcoming them into the fold, he had potentially damned his entire tribe.

Merritt watched the old man disappear through the gate as the woman smeared black paint all over his face. He understood all too well, and would never betray the secret of their existence.

After all, he knew how it felt to want to remain hidden.

He turned to face Sam, stared into her stunning blue eyes, and saw both those of the woman he had failed and the one he had saved. In that moment, he laid the ghost of his past to rest and welcomed a future as infinite as the most perfect blue sky.