Secrets of the Silver Lion

by Emma Otheguy

  “What happened to the original?”

  Carmen shifted her weight. She wasn’t about to tell Milly about VILE. “Lost,” she said. She pulled out her phone and sent Milly the photo, which Milly loaded onto her computer. They all gathered around to have a good look. Zack and Ivy hadn’t seen it yet.

  Milly leaned forward. “Carmen!” she said, very suddenly. “He doesn’t say the silver lion vanished! Not at all!”

  Carmen frowned. Had her translation been completely wrong? Milly obviously had a lot more practice reading old documents; she was reading the note in the footer as if it had been neatly typed.

  “He said it vanished into thin air.” Milly held her hands out as if to say, Don’t you see?

  But Carmen didn’t see. “So it’s gone, right?”

  “No.” Milly shook her head, grinning wildly. “Think about it, you three. León didn’t like being in Spain. He was mad about the treatment his artwork received there. So he took the lion and said that it had vanished—into thin air. Where in the world is there thin air?”

  Slowly, it dawned on Carmen. “Thin air—when you’re high up in the mountains, the air is thin!” she said excitedly. “That’s why people get altitude sickness!”

  Milly jumped up and gave Carmen an impulsive hug. “We know where the silver lion is! It’s in Potosí!”

  Zack coughed. Carmen and Milly whirled around to face him.

  “Not to be a party pooper,” he said, “but didn’t you all say Potosí was a big city? How are we going to find it?”

  But Carmen was one step ahead of him. “He left a map. Look!” She pointed to the spidery lines at the bottom of the letter, and the tiny x at the end of one of the veins.

  “¡Dios mío!” Milly said in a hushed voice. “I can’t believe it—this is a map, Carmen! And look at that seal—this is a map of the Cerro Rico mines, I’m sure of it . . . I bet this will lead us right to the silver lion!”

  Chapter 24

  CARMEN, MILLY, ZACK, AND IVY climbed down from their plane and stepped onto the tarmac at El Alto International Airport.

  Carmen’s first thought was that Bolivia was loud—though they were on an isolated tarmac, she could hear traffic rushing by and smell exhaust fumes from cars and trucks. But when she glanced at Milly, the honking and clattering seemed suddenly far away. Milly breathed in deep. She was here, Carmen realized. The place her people had come from, and the place she had never been to before. Carmen wondered if this is what she would feel like when she visited Buenos Aires—whether her face, too, would reflect Milly’s serene appearance.

  But the moment was fleeting, and before long a different kind of noise greeted them: what looked like about a dozen people, rushing toward them and happily waving their arms.

  “Milagros!” cried a very old, short woman. “¡Aquí estamos!” She reached Milly ahead of the others and threw her arms around her neck. Milly started sobbing.

  “Titi Ana,” she repeated over and over again, and buried her face in the woman’s neck. After what seemed like a long time to Carmen, who stood guarding the throne and keeping an eye out for signs of VILE, Milly pulled back, wiped her eyes, and gazed at the woman.

  “No lo creo,”Milly said. “I don’t believe it.” She turned to Carmen, Zack, and Ivy, still holding the older woman around the shoulders. “This is my Titi Ana,” she explained. “My father’s favorite aunt. When I was a kid, she would call us up in New York every time she had the money for long distance—” And that was as far as Milly got before the two of them dissolved once more into tears and hugs.

  It must be something, Carmen thought, to have relatives. People who would meet you at the airport with smiles and tears even if you hadn’t ever seen each other in person. People who loved you even if you were thousands of miles away. Thinking about family made Carmen’s eyes sting; it wasn’t fair that the only family she had ever known was an international band of criminals, people who wouldn’t hesitate to push her off a cliff if it would help them steal a treasure and make a buck. Someday, maybe Carmen would find a real family, people like those that now crowded around Milly. Until then, she would keep fighting VILE. She would protect people like Milly from their horrible antics.

  Milly was now dabbing her eyes with the end of her sleeve and introducing the rest of her relatives, even as she met them herself. While they hugged and kissed her and patted her on the back, she told Carmen, Zack, and Ivy their names and a little bit about who they each were. “This is my cousin Luis, he works as a tour guide here in town; and this is Lila, my father’s sister; and this is my uncle Carlos, Ana’s son, but my dad always used to call him Chachi.”

  Chachi was tall and strong, the exact opposite of Milly’s tiny Titi Ana. He tipped his baseball cap to them, and Milly rapidly explained that Chachi was going to be helping them get to Potosí. He ran his own construction business and made frequent runs to Potosí, so it was no problem to pile Carmen and her friends into his truck. On the way to the mines, they would drop Milly off at the Casa de la Moneda, the old mint where coins had once been made in Potosí. It was now a museum, and it was there that Milly would be meeting her museum colleagues to set up the exhibit with the throne. They would set up the special exhibit there—but not until Carmen had her chance with León Mondragón’s map.

  All too soon, it seemed to everyone, Carmen, Zack, and Ivy were crammed in the back of Chachi’s truck. Milly hopped into the passenger seat next to Chachi, and they waved goodbye to her family, who would meet them later in Potosí.

  While Milly was busy catching up with Chachi and sending text messages to the museum people, updating them on the location of the throne, Carmen had time to enjoy the landscape around them. Even though the drive went on for hours, she wasn’t bored. They crossed a long plateau, passed a salt lake that looked almost as if it were made of glass, and climbed over a desolate mountain range. Carmen pulled her sweater around her more tightly. As the truck clambered higher, they passed canyons below them and tall industrial trucks that Carmen was sure were loaded with ore.

  “Chachi,” Carmen said, as they turned sharply on a mountain switchback and readied for another steep curve, “I feel fine this time—I haven’t gotten altitude sickness.”

  Chachi spoke to them in Spanish, with Carmen translating for Zack and Ivy. “Altitude sickness can be like that,” he said. “Sometimes you get it, and sometimes you don’t. It can go either way, even for the same person.” Grateful to be feeling well, Carmen tried to enjoy the sweeping views from the window of the truck. Chachi rolled down the window and the rumbling sound was louder than ever, but Carmen craned her neck out to see even further.

  “You’ll be reaching the city of Potosí any minute now,” Player said to Carmen through her earring.

  “Player,” Carmen said quietly, hoping not to be overheard by anyone else in the truck. “There’s something that’s bugging me—we haven’t seen any sign of VILE since the airport—it’s making me nervous.”

  “Hmm.” Player was thoughtfully silent. “Maybe our decoy really worked? They flew to Kalamazoo?”

  “Wouldn’t they have figured it out by now? They would have had time to get here from Michigan already, and the return of the throne and the special exhibit have been in the papers. I can’t imagine they would just give up like that.”

  “I’ll do some digging,” Player said. “In the meantime, keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

  “I always do,” Carmen replied, resignedly. She fell silent as the truck continued to rumble and clatter and drive up the mountain.

  After a while, Ivy leaned forward beside her. “Look! We’re almost there!”

  They were fast approaching the city of Potosí. The first glance gave Carmen a chaotic impression, she saw a jumble of old and new: apartment buildings in colorfully painted concrete with shiny glass windows, and farther away terra-cotta tiles and the bell towers of an old stone cathedral.

  “Check it out!” Zack pointed. “It really is red!”

 
Carmen looked and saw the famed Cerro Rico—the Red Hill, the hill of treasure—rising up behind the city. It was somehow flatter and more spread out than she had imagined it; of course they were already at a high altitude. The Cerro Rico was brownish, but with a distinctive red tint.

  “Red,” Player said conversationally, “did I tell you I found out what was on that coat of arms on León Mondragón’s letter? It was Latin, and the motto of Potosí: I am rich Potosí/treasury of the world/king of mountains/and envy of kings.”

  Carmen bit her lip and looked out through the front windshield. In the space between Milly and Chachi, she could see that they were going through an archway, straight into the old terra-cotta part of town. It all gave her a very strange feeling. On the one hand, she felt excited butterflies in her stomach, to be reaching this fabled place, whose treasures had changed the world in so many ways, and where people like León Mondragón had worked and followed their passions and loved their families. On the other hand, she felt nauseous thinking about all of the greed and selfishness that the mines had brought out in people throughout the ages, in the kings and colonists from Spain, in the merchant who ferreted treasures away in his secret vaults, in Countess Cleo and the other people at VILE, who would do anything for more riches. Carmen had almost become one of them. She had come so dangerously close to living a life of crime. She took a deep breath and looked around at Zack and Ivy, then tapped her earring. Carmen didn’t know how she felt about Potosí—about whether it was a rich place, a city to be envied like the coat of arms boasted, or a poor and sad place, a city she should revile—but she did know she was grateful to have escaped a life of international evil and to have found these friends to do some good with.

  They dropped Milly off at the Casa de la Moneda, where a group of museum curators greeted her and helped her lower the box with the throne out of the truck. The outside of the Casa de la Moneda reminded Carmen vaguely of the AGI in Sevilla, and one of the cathedral’s bell towers rising behind it completed the picture.

  Then Milly was kissing them all goodbye, and they were off again, headed full speed toward the Red Mountain.

  Chapter 25

  CARMEN SHARED MONDRAGÓN’S MAP with Chachi, and he turned it every which way before deciding that the mine opening Mondragón suggested was way up near the peak. He didn’t seem entirely confident, but Carmen had to trust him. She didn’t have any other leads.

  “You should wait down here,” Carmen told Zack and Ivy. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious, and if you see VILE—”

  “Don’t worry, Carm,” Zack said, “We’ll stop them.”

  Carmen nodded apprehensively. She would be on high alert until the silver lion was safely in her own possession. It just didn’t seem like VILE to turn around and go home unless it was really and truly the end of the line for them.

  Gratefully, Carmen accepted Chachi’s loan of a hard-hat, a headlamp, and a pickaxe. “Everything you need but the dynamite,” he said with a chuckle. Then his face grew serious. “Cuidado” he said. “Climbing into an abandoned mine is extremely dangerous. I wouldn’t let you, but Milagros says we need to trust you.” Then he helped Carmen hide her hair under her hardhat. “Y tú una senorita.” He shook his head. “Women aren’t supposed to go into the mines. It’s bad luck—mala suerte.”

  “I don’t think I really have a choice,” Carmen said apologetically. “It’s something to help Milly. And it’s important.”

  Chachi nodded solemnly, patted Carmen on the back, and wished her luck. Carmen thought again how fortunate she was that Milly and her family were willing to help—even if they thought she was doing something reckless.

  As she left her friends behind and made her way slowly up the mountain, Carmen must have made a strange sight. Chachi’s hardhat hid her hair, but she needed the tools in her red trench coat, so she hardly looked like a regular miner. Luckily, the dusty dirt roads were mostly empty, and she passed only a few miners, too focused on their heavy packs to notice her. Every once in a while, she went by a single-story cement structure with a tin roof, where miners were changing gear or stocking up on juice and other supplies. About halfway to the top, she saw an old man walking next to a llama on a lead. Carmen nearly said aww out loud—the llama was fluffy and wooly, with a long neck and comically oval-shaped ears. She loved it instantly, and wished she had time to stop and chat with the man leading the llama along.

  Near the top, she stopped to examine the map once more. It didn’t really show where on the mountain to enter; instead it showed the gallery itself and the different turns she would have to take to reach the right spot. So Carmen prowled the top of the mountain, looking at the dark holes that led down below, wondering which one to take.

  In the end, it was fairly easy. The newer entrances were crisscrossed with wires and pipes, and some of them were even decorated with colorful paper and ribbons. Carmen was looking for an entrance that hadn’t been used for hundreds of years, and she found it, plain and unmarked, a great black hole on the side of the mountain.

  It was like lowering oneself into the belly of a terrible monster, and for a wild second Carmen wanted to close her eyes, but she forced herself to switch on her headlamp and focus.

  It was much, much worse than any tunnel she had ever explored. She had to duck almost immediately, and thick dust clogged her nose and eyes. She dug a handkerchief out of her coat and covered her nose and mouth, but she wasn’t sure how much it helped. The headlamp only showed a little way ahead of her, and the height of the gallery varied widely from step to step—one minute she could walk along, stooped over, another minute she would be nearly squatting to avoid bumping her head on the rough rock above her. Where the gallery met another long tunnel, like two roads intersecting, Carmen noticed tracks running along the ground, likely to transport carts of ore in and out of the mine. There was also a statuette of a demon-like figure, covered in colorful strings and soda cans.

  “Player?” Carmen asked curiously. “Any idea what I’m looking at?”

  Player cleared his throat. “El Tío,” he said, “is the demon of the mines. It says here that miners leave him colorful offerings to ‘alejar el mal—’”

  “To keep away bad things,” Carmen finished for him. “Like VILE, I hope.” She fished in her jacket for something to leave him, but the best she found was a pack of multicolored sticky notes. Carefully, she arranged them around the strings and bottles.

  She could stand up straight in this intersection, and she took a minute to look around. On the sides of the crossing gallery, she could see holes where miners had blasted dynamite to widen the mine. She took another peek at Mondragón’s map and confirmed that she would follow the older shaft for quite a while. She plunged forward, and before long she came to a rickety ladder, leading down, deep into the lower levels of the mine. She had no choice but to lower herself. But luckily, Carmen could scramble with the best of them. She was nimble and balanced, and quickly reached the bottom of the ladder, where things evened out once more.

  She pulled the map out of her pocket and examined it. She should be looking for a narrow turn, by the looks of it about fifty paces from where she now stood. Determined, she walked forward.

  If she hadn’t been looking so carefully, the turn would have been easy to miss. It was more of a sliver than a hole, and Carmen grazed the walls of the mine as she slipped inside the narrow channel. It was somehow even darker here; any sunlight from above had long been blocked by the twists of the mine, and in these narrow quarters, Carmen’s headlamp didn’t reflect very far. She took things step by step.

  A few times, as she walked slowly down the pitchblack tunnel, Carmen thought she heard a sound above—something like humming, an almost angelic, vibrating song, coming from another part of the mine. Perhaps one of the miners, somewhere deep in another gallery, was singing to themselves. Perhaps some of the miners were women, whose beautiful voices kept everyone feeling safe. It was a comforting thought.

  The map instructed Carmen to
turn again, and she found herself facing a short ledge with an opening so tiny there was no way in but to army crawl. Carmen took a deep breath, climbed onto the ledge, and lowered herself onto her stomach. She wriggled along slowly, now wishing she had taken a better look at the map before entering this narrow opening—it would be very difficult to check the map in such a space. As it was, Carmen could barely move her arms. Her coat snagged on a rough patch of rock and tore at the elbow.

  The humming sound was closer now, and Carmen took a steadying breath. She was sweating in the hot, stuffy air. But she was nearly there. And she was lucky—she was in this mine because she wanted to be, because she was searching for treasure. She had a map, a guide from long ago. So many others, now and then, came to this mine because they had no choice. Lucky, Carmen told herself, even as the raw skin of her elbow scratched the wall again, leaving a streak of blood on her jacket. Almost there. Almost. She heaved herself forward another few feet, and mercifully found herself facing a gentle slope down to the sudden widening of the tunnel.

  Carmen wriggled down the slope on her stomach and straightened up. She dusted herself off and tugged at her coat sleeve, pulling the fabric over her cut. She was in a small cavern, not much taller than she was, but large compared to the other channels she had explored. It was maybe three feet across—really just big enough for one person. On one side was the entrance she had just taken, and on the other it was crossed by a wide gallery that led downhill, even deeper into the mountain. It was one of the galleries where tracks had been laid, and there were three or four empty carts in sight. She noted that the carts were held in place by a large rock; otherwise gravity would have sent them careening down into the shaft.

  Carmen put her hands on her hips. She was fairly certain this was the spot where the X was marked on her map, but the map was so vague it was hard to tell. She paced from one end of the cavern to the other, which took about three steps each direction.