“Can I kick the skulls?” I asked.
“No,” Mum said, her voice echoing up the crevasse. “These need to be recorded. Archaeo-anthropologists can study them for insights into—”
I kicked the skulls. It was the only way to climb and I think Mum knew it because she didn’t tell me off as I toe-punted one of the jaws. Bits of bone showered over Pan and my parents.
“Hey!” Pan snapped. “Stop spraying me with skull.”
“Jake, warn Pandora whenever you’re about to kick a skull.”
“Hey, Pan? I’m about to kick a skull.”
I kicked harder, covering her in bone.
“I got some in my mouth!” she wailed.
“Better keep it shut, then.”
“Stop squabbling!” Mum ordered.
I reached up and dug my fingers into a skull’s nose cavity. As I climbed higher I stared into its hollow eye sockets, and for the first time since we’d come to Honduras, I felt cold.
“Who were all these people?” I asked.
“Prisoners of war,” Dad replied. “The Aztecs attacked other tribes to capture victims to sacrifice.”
“How did they kill them?”
“Most had their hearts cut out with knives.”
“You mean … while they were still alive?”
“They weren’t alive for long after, but yes. Others were killed with arrows. And there was one particularly unpleasant ceremony in which victims had their skin—”
“John,” Mum interrupted. “That’s enough.”
A jawbone came away in my hand. I was about to fall, but Pan pressed me back into the wall, instinctively coming to my rescue.
“Thanks,” I gasped.
“What’s going on up there?” Mum asked, struggling to see us higher up the wall. “You’re not fooling around, are you?”
Pan looked at me, rolling her eyes. “No, Mum.”
“You two wait there,” Mum said. “I’ll climb past to lead.”
“We’re fine, Mum,” I said.
She was already moving to get above us. Something in me snapped. It was stupid, but I refused to let her lead. We were leading, and we were doing fine. She just couldn’t let herself trust us. Or trust me.
I climbed faster, kicking footholds into brittle bone. Mum’s shouts grew louder, rattling the skulls. She was gaining on me.
“Jake! Stop this instant!”
I reached and grabbed another skull by the jawbone. It slipped a fraction from the wall, and something happened. I didn’t know what until it had happened. I heard a creak, and felt a rush of air. Something stung my cheek and the skull exploded, spraying shards at my face.
Mum pinned me to the wall to stop me falling. “Are you OK?” she demanded. “Jake?”
Blood slid down my cheek and into my mouth. I wiped bone from my eyes and saw an arrow stuck into what remained of the skull. It had fired from a hole in the opposite wall, missing my head by inches.
“What happened?” Dad called.
“The skull,” I breathed. “It shifted from the wall when I grabbed it.”
Mum leaned to inspect the skull, and then turned to see the hole in the rock face behind us. “There are bows behind that wall,” she said. “They’re rigged to fire when we touch certain skulls. We need to get down straightaway.”
“Down? It’s just as dangerous that way as it is going up.”
“This isn’t a discussion, Jake.”
“But we’re closer to the top now,” Pan said.
Mum closed her eyes and breathed in, containing her frustration. I knew what she was thinking: Never again.
Dad noticed too. He tried to sound calm, as if everything was under control. “We’ll carry on, but carefully. We look for the holes in the opposite wall, and avoid the skulls that they face.”
“I’ll go first,” I said.
“You certainly will not,” Mum replied.
I didn’t have time to argue; she was already climbing – slowly, now, inspecting each skull before she touched it, and then turning to make sure there was no hole in the opposite wall. She reminded me of a sloth inching its way up a tree.
“Follow my path exactly,” she insisted.
It was painfully slow, but suddenly I didn’t mind – none of us wanted an arrow in our neck. I thought of all the bows hidden in the cliff behind me, arrows loaded, drawstrings twitching…
“Watch out!” Mum warned.
One of the skulls fell past us down the wall. It hit another about ten metres below, and an arrow fired, shattering that skull.
“It was just a loose one,” Mum said. “Be careful.”
I looked down, watching the falling skull hit several more on its descent. Below, another arrow fired, and then another. Only … the falling skull hadn’t hit that many others. Arrows were firing where they shouldn’t have been.
Dad saw it too. “It set those others off too. But we’re safe up here.”
An arrow shot into the wall a metre from Dad’s arm.
Another smashed into a skull right beside Pan.
“They’re all going off!” she screamed.
“Everybody climb!” I cried.
“No,” Mum called. “Stay still. Don’t move!”
I was already climbing, kicking footholds, racing to reach the ledge at the top. Pan was right behind me, and Mum and Dad must have followed because I heard them roaring at me to stop.
Another arrow slammed into the wall above Pan’s head.
“Keep moving!” I yelled. “We’re almost there.”
Bone fragments showered over us, cutting my cheeks and getting in my mouth. I spat them out, grabbed an arrow shaft and used it to pull myself onto the ledge. I reached to help Pan up, and then Mum and Dad.
We lay at the top of the skull wall, coughing and wheezing. We were covered in bits of skull, sweat and dust from the rocks, and cuts from bone shrapnel.
Mum touched her amulet, took a deep breath and held it. It was the same calming technique that she’d taught me, only it didn’t work. She whirled at me, glaring. “What were you thinking, Jake? I told you to stay still.”
“We might have been killed,” I gasped.
“We almost were killed. We should have stayed where we were.”
“We’d have been sitting ducks,” Pan said.
“I said stay,” Mum snapped. “That was the right plan, to wait for them all to fire.”
“And you’re certain that none of us would have been hit?” Pan asked.
“Of course not, but it was less risky than—”
“Well, I am certain that none of us were hit,” Pan interrupted. “So Jake’s plan worked.”
“It wasn’t a plan! It was dumb luck. I gave you an order.”
“An order?” Pan laughed. “We’re not in the army.”
“Enough,” Dad barked. “We made it. Maybe it was the wrong decision, maybe not, but we’re alive.”
“Then it was the right decision,” Pan muttered.
“I said, enough,” Dad repeated.
Pan and Mum both sighed, as if they each felt they would have won the argument. But Dad was right: if we hoped to reach the tomb, we had to focus on whatever dangers lay ahead, not those we’d already survived. We were all alive – but for how long?
30
It wasn’t enough for Mum that we had climbed a wall of skulls, dodged dozens of arrows, and survived. She was upset about how we’d survived. She kept rubbing the goddess’s wings on her amulet. It was amazing she’d not worn the thing away.
She was convinced that I’d panicked, but that wasn’t true. I had taken a chance by continuing to climb the skull wall, but it would have been just as risky to stay still. I’d made a plan, and we’d all lived.
Pan was properly fuming about it. Lurking at the back, she’d gone into one of her mega-sulks. Her long fringe rustled with her constant sighs and muttering.
We walked in silence through another carved tunnel, following the shaky ribbon of light from Dad’s torch. Sweat g
ushed down my forehead and stung my eyes. The air grew drier, parching my mouth. I pressed a hand against the rock. It wasn’t just warm, it was hot, and it trembled against my palm. It was almost as if we were heading deeper into a living thing, an artery to the heart of the mountain.
“Remember your training,” Dad said. “Be alert for anything.”
But this wasn’t the same as the tombs Sami had created in the simulator. Those were labyrinths, with passages leading from passages, wrong turns and dead ends. This was different. Dad kept looking for secret doors, but there was only one path, and it was the one the Aztecs wanted us to follow. To them we were here for a single purpose: to die.
“There’s an opening ahead,” Dad called.
The passage led to another cave. It was wide, with a high domed ceiling. A stone pier stuck out about thirty metres into a chasm, like a giant diving board. On the other side of the chasm, another small ledge jutted from the cave wall. A stone pillar rose from it with a reed basket fixed near its top. A stone ring – like a sideways basketball hoop – jutted out of the pillar above the basket.
Dad pulled the flare gun from my belt, and fired it up into the arched darkness. As the firework rose, its livid red light shimmered off the stalactites. Bats wriggled, irritated to have their sleep disturbed. We watched as the flare fell past our ledge into the space below, and then slid down the sloped side of a pit that looked like a giant stone funnel. Still sizzling, it disappeared through a hole at the bottom.
“What is this place?” I asked.
Dad looked at Mum, who nodded.
“It’s a sports field,” Dad said.
“Sport?”
“An Aztec sport called ollamalitzli,” Mum explained. “See that stone hoop on the pillar? Two teams fought for a ball and tried to get it through the hoop.”
“Like basketball?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Pan agreed. “Except it was played before sacrificial ceremonies. The losing team had their hearts ripped out.”
“Of course they did,” I muttered. “Those Aztecs loved ripping out hearts.”
“Remember, Jake, we are not here to judge them.”
I did remember Mum’s lesson, but it was hard not to judge. The Aztecs wanted us dead – although I couldn’t see how this was a deadly trap.
A small wooden table sat at the side of our ledge, with a ball about the size of a tennis ball on it. I picked it up. It felt like hard rubber.
“They want us to play the game,” Mum said, talking about the Aztecs as if they were alive now. “We have to throw the ball through the hoop.”
“See the basket under it?” Dad added. “My guess is that if the ball goes through and lands in the basket, that will trigger a door to open … somewhere.”
“And if we miss?” Pan asked.
“The ball falls into the pit, and we’re stuck here.”
“But… That’s it?” I said.
It wouldn’t be easy – in fact, the shot seemed almost impossible from so far away – but I’d expected something far more unpleasant, like deadly snakes, or spiked walls. I noticed Mum’s shoulders relax too, relieved that she wasn’t putting her children’s lives at risk again.
“I’ll take the shot,” she said.
“What?” I held the ball away. “Pan’s the best shot by far.”
“Jake, give me the ball.”
She reached for it, but I turned away, refusing to hand it over. “It’s Pan’s shot, Mum.”
“Jake, I am not asking. I am telling you to—”
“And I’m telling you. Pan’s got this.”
This whole time Pan was glaring at me. I think she meant for me to leave her out of this, but I couldn’t. I honestly did think Pan was the best person to take the shot, and she knew she was too. But also, it was another chance to show Mum and Dad that we were good enough to be here.
I handed Pan the ball and, still glaring at me, she clenched it so tightly her knuckles were white. Mum tried to grab it from her, but Dad put a hand on her arm.
“Jake’s right, Jane.”
For the next ten minutes, Pan and Dad stood at the end of the stone pier, discussing the best angle for the throw. The more I considered it, the harder the shot seemed. Imagine standing at the bottom of a house and trying to chuck an apple into a tiny attic window. Then imagine having to do that when your friend’s life was on the line, and maybe your family’s lives too.
Mum stayed with me on the ledge, rubbing her amulet as she watched. I suspected she was fighting an urge to march up the pier and snatch the ball. But she knew Pan had to concentrate. Instead, she turned and snapped at me.
“Jake, focus!”
“Eh?”
Mum looked a bit flustered at her outburst. “I… If Pandora manages the shot,” she said, stressing the word if, “some sort of door should open, but perhaps only for a short time. So we have to spot it fast. It must be somewhere here.”
I nodded and looked along the ledge. It didn’t seem like there was any door in the rock. In fact, this whole thing was weird. A ball game? Was that really all there was to this? Or were we missing something?
“OK,” Dad called. “We’re ready.”
The only thing Pan looked ready to do was throw up. Her grip hadn’t relaxed on the ball since she’d taken it from me, and the uncertainty in her eyes had given way to something more like terror. Was she thinking the same thing as me? This one throw could decide whether we found the tomb or not, whether Sami lived or died. No wonder she was clutching the ball so tight.
She was overthinking it, I realized. The times we’d seen her sharpshooting before had all been under pressure, when she’d barely been thinking, just acting on instinct. That’s what she needed now, a little bit of panic.
Suddenly I charged towards her along the pier, waving my arms and yelling, like I was fleeing some sort of monster. “Pan!” I wailed. “Throw the ball! There’s something coming!”
Pan and Dad both turned and looked back, more confused than scared.
“Eh?” Pan said.
“What’s coming, Jake?” Dad asked.
“I don’t see anything,” Mum muttered from further back. “Are you seeing things? Maybe you should lie down?”
I sighed and shrugged. “No… It was just… It doesn’t matter.”
Pan grinned. “I don’t need the help, brother,” she said. “I got this.”
And then she turned and took the throw.
I held my breath, as if breathing might send the shot off course. The ball flew up and across the arc of Dad’s torchlight. It sailed straight through the hoop, and landed in the basket!
Pan squealed with delight and high-fived Dad. She rushed back along the pier and gave me a playful shove. “Sharp shooting, eh, Jake?”
I smiled, but Pan was actually looking at Mum.
Mum said something that sounded like “well done”, but it was tricky to tell. She was already moving along the ledge, inspecting the rock wall.
“Did anyone see a door open?” she asked. “Look for splits in the rock.”
Pan and Dad rushed to search, but I stayed where I was on the ledge. That tingle in my belly was growing stronger, a sense that something wasn’t right. I walked to the end of the pier and stared across the gap to the pillar and hoop. The basket had tilted from the weight of the ball, just as Mum had predicted. But the Aztecs wanted us dead, that was the whole point of luring us into this mountain. Why would they have given us a way to survive?
Unless they wanted us to think we could survive. They wanted us to make that shot.
What if that was the trap?
A grinding sound echoed around the cavern, like scraping rocks. The stone pillar began to tremble, and then tilt forward. I stepped back, realizing what was happening. The pillar had been perfectly balanced, so that even the small weight of the ball was enough to tip it over…
The pillar fell.
I staggered back and slipped over as the top of the stone column crashed against the end of the
pier. Stone shards skittered towards me and dropped into the funnel pit below.
I sat up, shaken but relieved, and flashed my family a grin to show them I was OK. Mum and Pan had begun to rush along the pier, but stopped suddenly, staring.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I said.
“Jake!” Pan screamed. “Behind you!”
Dark cracks spread along the pier. It was breaking up!
I scrambled up and ran. Behind me, chunks of rock fell into the pit as more and more of the pier collapsed. The darkness was chasing me, catching up…
“Jake!”
I grabbed Mum’s hand just as the ground gave way under my boots. She fell with me. Pan grasped her wrist and she fell too. Only Dad was left on the ledge, clinging on to Pan with one hand and the cave wall with the other as we swung below him in a human chain.
“Hang on!” Dad grunted.
“That’s a stupid thing to say!” Pan yelled.
“Just do it!”
“Obviously we’re doing it! That’s why it’s a stupid thing to say!”
“Just hang on!”
“Stop saying it!”
And how long could he hang on for? Pan screamed as Mum slipped from her grasp. At the same time, Dad let go of the wall and we all fell.
We hit the sloped side of the pit and slid among rubble from the pier. I scrabbled at the surface, trying to slow my descent, but I was sliding too fast.
I shot through the opening at the bottom of the funnel, and into a stone chute. I fell again and slid again, along another tunnel and into another cave, where the ground finally levelled out and I stopped sliding. The rest of my family tumbled in after me, and we lay in the darkness, coughing and swearing.
“Is anyone hurt?” Dad gasped.
“Me,” Pan said.
“Me too,” I said.
“Is anyone seriously hurt?” Mum asked.
“Still me.”
“Still me too.”
“Has anyone got anything other than bumps and bruises?”
Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God Page 17