by Unknown
He raised his head, looked around the table at everyone, and slowly untied the leather thong binding that held the medicine bundle closed.
“Should we say a prayer or something?” Avery asked.
“It’s creepy.” Catrina shuddered and Avery slipped an arm around her waist. She rested her dark head on his shoulder.
Zoey felt jealous. She wished Jericho could put his arm around her, but he was on the opposite side of the table, his gaze intent on what he was doing. The pulse at the hollow of his throat bounded. He was excited. So was she. But more from watching him get excited over the artifact than because of the artifact itself.
“Feels like a séance.” Piper pushed her glasses up on the end of her nose and leaned in for a closer look. “Do you think we could call up a spirit if we held hands and chanted?”
“There are no such things as spirits,” Braden said.
“Don’t be so small-minded,” Piper retorted. “There are more things in heaven and earth than science can explain.”
“Respect, people,” Jericho said. “Let’s keep the chatter to a minimum and focus on our job. Who’s got the camera?”
“I do.” Braden held up a pocket camera.
“Who’s recording?”
“Me.” Piper had her notebook open.
Gingerly, Jericho unfolded the bundle and revealed what one might expect inside a medicine bundle. Botanicals like seeds, pinecones, grass, and dried crushed flower petals. Animal remains, teeth, hair, feathers, and bones. Rocks, arrowheads, limestone, crystals. But it was what was beaded into the center of the hide itself that stopped Zoey’s breathing.
It was the same symbol of a yellow flame on a dark green background as the medallion Granny Helen had given Jericho.
The Keepers of the Flame.
She jerked her eyes upward, collided hard into Jericho’s gaze, and saw that he was just as stunned as she.
Chapter 13
Myths and legends: Stories passed down through generations, about heroic individuals, spectacular events, or powerful gods. Myths represent a culture’s beliefs and explain its customs; while some are fictional, others may be based on real persons or events.
JERICHO stared down at the symbol beaded into the leather hide of the medicine bundle as a strange sensation of déjà vu moved through him. The hairs on the nape of his neck lifted. What in the hell was this?
The other students hadn’t noticed the change in him. They were busy examining the contents of the medicine bundle, but Zoey knew. How had the same symbol on the beaded medallion Granny Helen had given him ended up on the animal hide Zoey had found buried below the surface of Triangle Mount? This was no link to ancient pyramid builders, but it was an unnerving find all the same.
At least for him.
Outside, the wind kicked up, sending eddies of dirt and debris spattering against the tent and whistling around the entrance flap.
Catrina let out a little squeal, and curled her face against Avery’s chest.
Some of the others looked nervous too, but not Zoey. Her eyes were bright, inquisitive. “Spooky,” she teased. “Do you think the gods want their medicine bundle back?”
Piper stepped closer to Braden, who put a tentative arm around her shoulder. She did not shrug him off.
“Kidding,” Zoey said.
“It is not funny.” Catrina lifted her chin. “What if we have disturbed a burial ground?”
“There’s no evidence that’s the case,” Jericho said. “Shake off the heebie-jeebies. It’s just the wind. We’re scientists here. Let’s act like it. There’re no ghosts, no spirits, no angry gods seeking revenge.”
“But isn’t that disrespecting the religion of whoever owned this bundle?” Zoey asked. “Obviously, they believed in the power of the medicine bundle and if we’re going to respect their culture, shouldn’t we approach it with the appropriate sense of reverence whether we share their beliefs or not?”
She made a strong point, and hell, truth be known, he admired her for calling him on it, and honestly, he was a little unnerved himself by the medallion that matched the one Granny Helen had given him.
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t mean to disrespect anyone’s beliefs and we are going to handle this artifact with the utmost care, as we do with any find. But what I don’t want is for students to start scaring themselves with flights of fantasy.”
Everyone shook off their worries at that, and laughed at their susceptibility. Meticulously, they went through the medicine bundle, cataloging, photographing, and making notes of their find. Jericho tried to focus on what they were doing but his mind was muddled by the beaded Golden Flame on a dark green background and the sight of Zoey across the table from him.
She moved with such simple, compact ease, so competent and smooth, like she’d been doing this all her life. She was a natural, and that surprised him. Never in his wildest imagination would he have believed she could slip so easily into the precision chores. He watched her small hands as she measured and calibrated, stored seeds and crushed dry petals into glass cylinders, stoppered them with a cork and wrote in Sharpie where, when, and how they were removed from the medicine bundle.
Long shadows slanted across the tent. The sun was almost gone. Where had the time vanished?
Some of the students had started drifting away—Braden to start a campfire, Avery and Catrina to cook dinner for the crew, Piper to input data into the computer, others to go to the bathroom or get something to drink. At one point, it was just he and Zoey at the table processing the artifact. Her hair was piled up on the top of her head with a clip, soft tendrils falling free and drifting down her shoulders. Her bottom lip was drawn up between her teeth as she worked. Her skin was creamy as high-fat ice cream, her cheeks rosy from a long day in the sun in spite of the sunblock he’d watched her slather on that morning. Her V-neck T-shirt clung to her breasts, and when she leaned forward, she unknowingly gave him a great view of her cleavage.
God, she was gorgeous.
“We should take this to Lace,” she said. Her eyes met his and a stone hot bolt of mental electricity shot from her to him.
“What?” He blinked, mesmerized by her beauty and dull-witted from it at the same time.
“The botanicals,” she explained. “We should take them to my cousin Lace. She’ll know what they are. In fact, we should take the entire bundle to her. She’s got a lab of her own.”
It was a sound proposition. Zoey’s cousin, Dr. Lace Bettingfield Hollister, was a botanist who oversaw the Cupid Botanical Gardens and had actually turned down a chance to work for the Smithsonian. She knew more about plants than anyone in the Trans-Pecos.
But he knew he couldn’t risk being alone with Zoey, not even for the drive into Cupid. If he got in close quarters with her again, with no one else around, this time he would not be satisfied with kisses.
“We could take the whole crew with us,” she said, reading his thoughts.
It unnerved him, how she knew him so well, and how she managed to stay one step ahead of him. “Or we could ask Lace to come here.”
“Cell reception up here is lousy, but sometimes I can get a text through when I can’t make a call. Let me see if I can send her a text message.” Zoey pulled out her phone and started texting.
A couple of minutes later, her cell phone dinged.
Zoey read the missive, grinned. “Her appetite has been whetted. She’s on her way with equipment in tow.”
“That’s good.”
They worked in silence for several minutes while various team members drifted in and out of the field lab. At one point, Zoey raised her head and looked around and Jericho couldn’t resist doing the same. For the moment, they were alone in the tent.
“So what do you make of this?” With a gloved hand she tapped the beaded medallion sewn into the center of the hide. “In the context of what your great-grandmother gave you?”
“Evidently, the design of the medallion is authentic to the Native Americans who once s
tayed on Triangle Mount. We can’t assume anything more than that,” he said levelly, ignoring the quickening of his pulse.
“You don’t think there is any possibility that you could indeed be descended from the people who made this medicine bundle?”
“That’s an unsubstantiated leap. We have no idea where Granny Helen got that medallion. She’s full of stories and her mind is quite mixed up. And besides, if I was descended from this tribe, don’t you think someone in my family would have mentioned it before now?”
Zoey shrugged. “Maybe Granny Helen was the only one in your family who knew.”
“And maybe she heard the story from someone else and appropriated it as her own. The mind plays tricks, Zoey. Every good scientist must take care not to fall prey to confirmation bias or wishful thinking. We have to resist the natural human instinct to seek confirmation for what we believe is the truth. Our perception colors everything, but we can’t allow it to pass for scientific proof.”
“Okay,” she said. “This is the hard part of being a scientist, questioning my own eyes and ears and thoughts.”
“Difficult maybe, but essential if you hope to get at the truth.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying.”
The tent flap opened. “The botanist is here,” Avery announced, and led Zoey’s cousin inside.
Dr. Lace Bettingfield, recently married to former pro-football star Pierce Hollister, ducked her head under the low opening as she entered, carrying a microscope case in one hand, another hard-sided plastic case in the other. She wore her chin-length raven hair swept back off her forehead, black-framed spectacles perched on the end of her elegant nose and a sapphire wedding ring that matched the color of her intelligent blue eyes. She possessed creamy skin in spite of the fact she spent much time outdoors, and a Rubenesque figure. She looked like a scholarly, voluptuous Snow White. While she was quite beautiful, she had nothing on her cousin, at least not to Jericho’s way of thinking.
Zoey moved to clear off the end of their worktable so Lace would have a place to set up her equipment.
With Lace’s arrival, the students came back inside the tent to watch the proceedings, bringing with them the smoky mesquite smell of the campfire, crowding the small space to its limit.
Lace stopped in mid-step, stared at the tanned hide stretched out over the table. All the contents had been removed, cataloged, labeled, and stored, leaving only the skin, with the beaded medallion sewn into it. She audibly sucked in her breath. “Omigosh.”
“What is it?” Zoey canted her head.
Lace clutched her cousin’s arm. “I scarcely dare to hope.”
“Is it a significant find?”
“If it’s what I think it is, unbelievably so. Gloves.” Lace stuck out a hand to Jericho.
He plucked two vinyl gloves from the box and passed them to her. She slipped on the gloves, bent over to examine the hide, her fingers strumming over the beads of the medallion like it was a rosary.
It touched something inside Jericho when he saw that Lace’s hand was trembling. She was seriously moved by their discovery. For some reason, her reaction made him nervous.
“Magnifying glass.” Lace stuck out her hand.
Jericho settled a magnifying glass in her upturned palm. A flick of her wrist and she turned it around, focused it on the intricate beadwork and leaned so close he thought she was going to bump her nose up against it.
A long moment passed where no one spoke. It was an eerie silence, and strangely still after the windstorm they’d experienced earlier that evening.
A visible shudder ran through Lace’s body. “It is!”
“What? What?” Zoey asked.
“The Golden Flame agave,” Lace whispered with the reverential tones of a priest conducting midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
“What’s that?” Jericho asked.
“Lace’s equivalent of Bigfoot,” Zoey supplied. “A mythological plant no one but her seems to believe still existed, if indeed it ever did.”
“It did,” Lace said firmly. “And this helps back up my theory.” She straightened, pinned Jericho with a serious stare. “Zoey said you found botanicals in the medicine bag.”
He nodded and motioned for Catrina to retrieve the botanicals they’d found inside the hide. Lace unsnapped the latches on her cases and set up her microscope. Zoey brought her a folding camp chair. Looking quite queenly, Lace sat down, used tweezers to extract a small bit of the dried crushed petals they’d found, put them on a slide, and clipped it into place underneath the microscope lens.
The scent of roasting meat wafted into the tent. Jericho’s stomach growled and he realized he hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, but he wasn’t about to leave now. Zoey inched over to stand by him while they waited for Lace’s assessment. He could feel the heat from her warm little body, and it was all he could do not to touch her.
After what felt like an eternity, Lace raised her head from the microscope. A beatific smile crossed her face and she looked as if her consciousness had reached a whole new level and she’d been transported to utopian Shangri-la. She made a small I’ve-discovered-a-cure-for-the-world’s-ills sound that was half chuff, half laugh. “It’s from the flower of an agave plant I’ve never seen before.”
“And you know all there is about agaves,” Zoey said.
“It’s my life work.” Her eyes shone like polished marble, bright and slick. “I’m completely convinced it’s from the Golden Flame, and here’s why.” She launched into a complicated botanical hypothesis that left them all blinking. Clearly, the woman was a brilliant scientist.
Zoey flattened her hand and soared it over her head. “Whoosh, zoom. You left me in the dust with that explanation.”
“You might have to bottom line it for us,” Jericho said. “We’re not botanical archaeologists.”
“Oops.” Lace pressed three fingers to her mouth. “Sorry. I tend to get carried away. Let’s start with the basic myth and legend of the Golden Flame agave.”
“A story.” Zoey sighed happily. “Oh goody. Much easier to process than those Latin names you sling around.”
“The prevailing myth of the Golden Flame agave centers on the assertion that the extraction made from steeping crushed petals has healing properties capable of curing orthomyxoviridae.”
“Zoom.” Zoey repeated the overher-head gesture. “Still too lofty, cuz.”
“Gotcha,” Lace said. “Rumor has it that a shot of tea made from the flower of the Golden Flame agave will kick the flu’s ass.”
“Why didn’t you just say so?” Zoey grinned in her irrepressible way. “See? How hard was that to speak regular-people-ese?”
“Hey,” Avery said. “Is this the same plant that they make tequila from?”
“No, you’re referring to Agave tequilana,” Lace said. “But this cactus would be in the same family. It is the process of procuring the desired liquid that is different.”
“So Agave golden flameiana,” Zoey said. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“Sounds like steak. Kinda makes you hungry, huh?” Piper rubbed her stomach.
“That’s not how botanical naming—” Lace stopped herself, waved both hands back and forth. “Never mind.”
“Let’s stop interrupting Dr. Bettingfield,” Jericho said. He was getting anxious to find out just what all this meant, especially since he had an identical Golden Flame medallion in his pocket.
“Like Bigfoot, as my cousin was so quick to compare this to, there’s been lots of speculation about the Golden Flame but no real proof. Many agaves are century plants, but the name is a misnomer. Most of them live only ten to thirty years.”
“Still,” Catrina mused. “That is a long time for a plant.”
“While this is a generalization—I don’t want to zoom over Zoey’s head again.” Lace paused to grin. “Century plants bloom only once just before they die.”
“So they go out in a flame of glory.” Braden nodded.
“Exactly. There are a lot o
f romantic myths around these plants, which is what makes most botanists so skeptical that the Golden Flame is real. Although there are some who believe it once existed but is now extinct. I think they’re all wrong.”
“What’s your hypothesis?” Jericho asked her.
Lace rummaged in her case, pulled out a copy of the American Journal of Botany, flipped it open to an article she’d authored, and passed it to Jericho. The title was: “Plant of the Century—A Case for the Existence of the Golden Flame Agave in the Davis Mountain Range.” “I believe the Golden Flame is a true century plant that blooms only once every hundred years and that the flowers from the plant, when brewed into a tea, are indeed a strong antiviral.”
Jericho skimmed the article. “Interesting premise.”
“I wonder if Cousin Walker came across this while researching August McCleary’s biography,” Zoey supplied.
“I can’t speak for your cousin, but this very well could be how your great-great-uncle August saved the Trans-Pecos from the Spanish flu. Fifty million people died of it worldwide, but only a rare few died of it here.”
“That’s what makes Walker’s book on August so compelling.” Zoey tapped her chin with an index finger. “The near-miraculous healings.”
“Yes. How did August manage to do what no other physician was able to do and stomp it out? It’s my contention, Zoey, that your great-great-uncle August got his hands on the Golden Flame when it was in bloom, dried the petals, compounded them, and then later used them to cure the Spanish flu.”
“How did he know about the Golden Flame?”
Lace shrugged. “I can’t speak to that.”
“Is there anything in his formulary about it?” Zoey asked.
Lace shook her head. “It’s not in his formula for the flu remedy, but if he was trying to keep the active ingredient proprietary, he simply might not have recorded it as part of the recipe. Or perhaps he kept a second, secret formulary no one else knew about.”