The Book of True Desires

by Betina Krahn

  They moved as fast as the old woman could go, but it still took a few minutes to tramp through the heavy vegetation in that part of the gardens. Concern started to build in her the minute she saw Hart wasn’t there to meet them. Thinking, hoping he had climbed a tree for more specimens, she scanned the branches of several trees. He wasn’t immediately visible… then she noticed. The butterflies were gone. All but a few had flown and were now visible only in the distance, like a golden kite hanging in the blue morning sky.

  “They’re gone.” A bolt of anxiety shot through her. She ran ahead, calling, and found him lying on the ground, motionless, pale. “Hart!” She ran to him, shook him gently, listened for breath and heart sounds—both erratic—and called to him again and again.

  Yazkuz knelt to feel his clammy skin and listen to his heart. She pried open his mouth and sure enough there was a piece of wrinkled white root there. She pulled it out and her leathery face went taut with worry.

  “What…flower?” she demanded, holding up the root.

  Cordelia pointed to the orchids in the tree behind them. Yazkuz shoved to her feet and shuffled to the tree, looking worried and making magic signs.

  She had Cordelia harvest several, tied them up in her apron, then helped her carry and drag Hart back to the pyramid. Carrying him up the steps to the temple itself proved impossible, despite Yazkuz’s insistence. They compromised and made a pallet for him in front of the statue of the great jaguar. Yazkuz insisted on building a fire by the statue to let the spirit know where they were.

  As the day wore on, Yazkuz pulled herbs from her pockets and put some of them on his tongue. She sent Cordelia for water and more firewood.

  They bathed his now feverish skin and prayed for help, each in her own way. Afterward Yazkuz demanded to know what happened and Cordelia told her the story of the images in the murals…of the chamber below with the altar and butterflies… and how the cloud of butterflies had led them to the orchids. The old woman seemed to follow most of it, indicating that she had seen just such things in her visions during the night.

  “Old story … flower that heals.” She wagged her head. “Strong medicine.”

  “Is there an antidote?” Cordelia asked, tears in her eyes. She mimed making a potion for Hart to drink. “Isn’t there anything we can give him?”

  The old woman looked sad and patted his cheek.

  “Spirits test heart. If he live, he carry jaguar healing.”

  Cordelia sat by Goodnight, watching his troubled breathing, feeling her own slow instinctively to match it. Old Yazkuz sighed and reached out to her, giving her arm a squeeze.

  “Time. Time say he live or he die. We wait.”

  Thirty-two

  For two days Castille and his men had forced Itza and Ruz Platano to track Cordelia, Goodnight, and Yazkuz. At first the brothers refused and not even a beating from Castille’s riding crop and his burliest thugs could make them agree. But Castille, whose refinement extended even to his cruelty, finally persuaded them by appealing to their higher natures. He dragged Hedda O’Keefe before them trembling, and it took only one slash of his crop across her upraised arms for them to scramble to do his will.

  Keeping such a motivation fresh, however, meant that he had to drag Hedda O’Keefe with him on his trek through the jungle. And her presence created another set of problems: as a prisoner she had to be watched and imperiled, which took some of his men from carrying equipment and meant opposition from Arturo Valiente. The scholar, like so many of Castille’s countrymen, clearly had a weakness for women—this one in particular.

  For the second evening, Hedda sat with her back against a tree, hands bound, feeling footsore and weary to the bone. The terrain they had to cover was brutal—cliffs, hills, dense woods, and steep ravines—and she was forever being threatened and harangued to keep up. The trail had gotten so bad that morning that Castille, the only one of the group still mounted, had had to abandon his horse and take to foot himself. It put him in such a foul mood that even Yago and Blanc had had to keep their heads down after that.

  Arturo was permitted to bring her food and water, but never lingered for fear of drawing Castille’s ire. Truth be told, that was a mercy; she couldn’t bear to hear his protestations of innocence and vows to protect her one more time. Yet, here he came again with a tin of half-edible food and a cup of awful water.

  “Please, Hedda,” he said, watching her turn her face, “you must eat to keep up strength. This is all over soon.”

  “You can’t really believe that.” She caught his gaze in hers. “You cannot believe that he will find the stones and whatever ‘treasure’ there may be and leave us alive to tell how he acquired it.”

  “I do not let anything happen to you,” he declared, touching her hand.

  “I believe you already have,” she said tersely, averting her eyes.

  “I swear to you—I do nothing to help him find us. I do not even know he is following behind us. You must believe me.”

  “Even if I were to believe that, Arturo, there is still the fact that you did not tell us that he asked you to do so. You did not warn us of his intentions.”

  “I think when the Spanish ship loses us, that is the end of it.”

  Truths and half-truths. She had seen how adeptly he played one side against the other: friend of the Spanish government of Cuba and friend of the revolution in equal measures. Where did his sympathies truly lie? And how would she ever know if the man she cared for was the true Arturo Valiente?

  “And then there is the little business of the treasure you forgot to mention to Cordie, but remembered so clearly for your friend Castille.”

  Arturo’s face fell. There was no defense for that and he knew it. He straightened and withdrew to return to the campfire.

  It was well into the night that she felt something brush her shoulder and started awake to feel something being draped over her and a dark form moving silently away.

  She looked down and her heart all but broke.

  Around her shoulders lay Arturo’s jacket.

  They hadn’t gone far the next morning when a tremor of excitement shot through the men and Castille went rushing to the front of the column to see what the guides had found. There was a disturbance in the surface of a steep hillside that fell to the bottom of a ravine. As they followed that trace, they found western heel prints and several broken branches, leading to a large split in the dark cliffs of the mountain.

  Sensing their objective at hand, they followed the stream that flowed from that split and discovered a canyon beyond. It was cool and shaded and full of lush vegetation—and tracks that led them to the very end of the canyon.

  And there it was: the arch of ancient stones that Castille had come halfway around the world to claim.

  The Spaniard broke into a rare smile and ran to inspect the blocks and study the way they were attached to the opening. When he saw the carvings were part of much larger blocks, his excitement faded. They would take more manpower to move than he had available. Gradually his attention transferred to the opening the blocks adorned. He called for lanterns and led the others inside.

  “Clearly they were here,” he declared, staring at the blankets and equipment clustered in the main part of the chamber. He picked up the larger of the two packs and a leather-bound journal fell out. He flipped it open, paging through it, and saw nothing but sketches of flowers and plants. He tossed it back onto the floor and handed the professor their lantern.

  “Light it,” he snarled, “and help me search the cavern.”

  No one noticed Hedda snatch up the journal and tuck it back into the outer pocket of the rucksack. Looking around, she tucked the empty bag out of the way between some rocks in the side wall of the chamber.

  Minutes later, they had probed all of the walls, the false passages, and the pile of rubble at the rear of the cavern. Frustrated at finding no indication of where the woman O’Keefe had gone, Castille grabbed Arturo and shook him.

  “Where are they?�
�� he snarled. “Where did they go?”

  “I–I do not know. I know nothing more than you about this place.”

  “Is that so?” Castille’s basilisk eyes narrowed. He dragged the professor outside again and shoved him against the stones of the arch. “Show me where it speaks of treasure.”

  “I cannot—the arch is not complete.” The professor pointed to the missing keystone. “There was a magnificent block there…a carving of the jaguar.”

  “What difference does that make?” Castille said, eyeing him.

  “On either side of the jaguar’s head were stacks of figures that indicate wealth, riches, offerings,” Arturo said. “Without it I cannot read of a treasure.”

  “As it happens,” Castille said with a smirk, “we aren’t without it.” He ordered Yago to bring up one of the rectangular wooden crates his men had been lugging through the jungle. The bodyguard used a machete to pry off the lid and inside lay a stone carving. When they lifted it out, Arturo’s gasp was echoed by Hedda’s. It was the head of the jaguar that was missing from the top of the arch.

  “Where do you—how do you come by this?” Arturo rushed to examine it.

  “It has been in my family vault for generations.” Castille sauntered over to give the cat’s head a stroke. “Our family fortunes began to rise when one of our ancestors, a penniless young officer, returned from Cortez’s conquest with it. It has been our family talisman for 350 years. Everything we have started with the acquisition of this stone.”

  “But how did you learn of the scrolls?” Hedda asked.

  “A cousin—a monk in a monastery outside Madrid— came to me with word of a discovery in the monastery library, scrolls that bore the imprint of the head of a jaguar. He knew of our family legend, it seems.

  “I applied to the abbot to see the scrolls, but the idiot declared them ‘pagan’ and said he would see them destroyed instead.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I arranged for my cousin to steal the scrolls before they could be burned.” His gaze narrowed. “But my greedy cousin decided they might be worth more than he was being paid. The fool tried to ransom them to me. Failing at that, he fled with them. It took two years, but I finally tracked him to Havana.”

  “Where you learn O’Keefe has the scrolls.” Arturo glanced at Hedda.

  “Where you so helpfully told me about them and about the part of Mexico where they were most likely to be found. The rest I owe to a patriotic cartographer from Campeche—whom you also visited, I believe.” Then he gave the jaguar head one final pat. “Enough. If the jaguar brought my family fortune apart from the rest of the stones, imagine what treasures lie in store when they are reunited.”

  He ordered his men to find a way to lift the keystone back into place. It took some doing, but they were able to string ropes and hoist it. As the ropes were removed and the stone settled into place, there were loud grinding sounds. A low, heavy rumble came from inside the cavern and dust boiled from the opening into the sunlight.

  All present stared anxiously—superstitiously—at the stone arch that was complete again after more than 350 years. The jaguar’s head dominated the opening, looking as if the great cat were somehow emerging from its mountain lair into the affairs of the world once more.

  As the dust settled, Castille took his lanterns and men inside to see what had caused the noise. At the rear of the cavern, where the piles of rock from the cave-in had been piled, they found a huge block of stone like a door dislodged and swung partway open. It had cleared back some of the debris and created an opening that was roughly two inches wide.

  “A door!” Castille crowed. “My jaguar was a keystone in more ways than one!” He ordered his men to clear more of the rubble and open the door further. Excitement was running high as they moved enough of the rock to make room for the door to slide. But when they tried to pull the stone slab out further, it would not budge. They worked for an hour before conceding that it was hopeless without proper tools and the brute force required to move it.

  “Damn it! Six more inches and I could squeeze through!” He thought of the tools they did have and of what might generate the power they needed.

  “We have the dynamite, yes?” he said to Yago, who held up his hands to indicate ten sticks. “More than enough, I think, to unstick a stubborn door.”

  But when they opened the crate containing the ammunition and dynamite, the mercenary hired for his skill with munitions turned a bit pale and backed away from the crate.

  “Senor, in this heat—the dynamite, she sweats. Grows unstable.” The man licked his lip. “I cannot promise to direct the blast as you wish.”

  “All we need you to do is put it in the crack and light the fuse. All it has to do is explode.” Castille shoved him toward the crate and stepped back, staring up at the jaguar’s head.

  “Predator to predator,” he said with a smirk. “You understand how it is.” Hedda watched in alarm as the fuse was strung and lighted, and Castille’s men took cover outside the cavern.

  Yazkuz retreated to the temple to seek guidance, leaving Cordelia to sit with Hart through the night. Hour after hour she bathed his face and body, and dribbled water between his parched lips. Toward dawn his labored breathing eased, but he was still far from stable. The veins in his arms, throat, and temples were distended, and only cool water seemed to help. In desperation, she suggested to Yazkuz that they put him in the lake to cool him.

  It was something of an ordeal carrying and dragging him down the beach. Cordelia paused to remove her boots and shirt before climbing into the water to hold him. No sooner were they settled in the water than they felt a strange tremor and saw a huge ripple spread across the lake as if something had been dropped into the far side. They looked around uneasily and for the first time Yazkuz caught sight of the items lying on the edge of the dock. She rushed to investigate, made a number of magic signs, and charged down the beach to confront Cordelia.

  “What you do?” She demanded furiously. “Take from Jaguar Spirit?”

  “Those things on the dock? They were in the lake.” She pointed to the water, her throat tightening as she thought of the tender moments surrounding their retrieval. “I brought them up.”

  “Bad—bad! Belong Jaguar Spirit.” She flung a finger toward the great statue, then brought it back to shake at Cordelia. “No steal!”

  “But we weren’t stealing.” She suddenly saw it in a different light. “I mean, we didn’t realize we were stealing. We didn’t mean any harm.”

  The old lady rushed back to the dock, crept out on it, and began to throw the items back into the lake, offering a loud chant with each one she returned.

  Just as the last one sank to the bottom, there was a huge boom that shook the earth and made it seem the entire mountain had responded to the old woman’s action. Old Yazkuz froze, then backed slowly from the stone quay and threw herself on her knees before the big stone jaguar.

  Thirty-three

  The force of the dynamite blast sent dust and rubble shooting halfway across the canyon. Castille sent his munitions expert in first and the man came back to say that they had succeeded. Castille and the professor rushed inside to see for themselves and discovered the door had been blown back four feet. There was plenty of room for them to enter. They explored and found a passage that was clear for only fifteen feet. After that, more rubble blocked the way.

  “Damn it! I’m sick of this!” Castille raged. He grabbed Blanc by the shirt and shoved him toward the wall of debris. “Clear it—I don’t care if you have to use your hands! I want to be in that treasure chamber by this time tomorrow!”

  Every man in the company was drafted to haul rocks. Castille even shoved Arturo and Hedda into the cavern to help. He stalked back and forth between the cavern and the outside where he looked up at the jaguar head, feeling now that the cat’s smile had a mocking air.

  “I’ll have that treasure yet, you slippery bastard. You wait and see.”

  One of the men nearest the front noticed the water seepi
ng through the rocks and mentioned it to Blanc, who was in no mood to deal with obstacles that would only earn him a slash with the crop his master was again carrying. He called the man a fool and told him to quit looking for excuses to stop work. By the time the professor noticed the water it was past ankle deep in the passage and seeping quickly through the wall of rock they were struggling to remove. He knew enough about rocks and caves to know this was more than just an underground spring. He looked at the wall of debris that blocked the tunnel and realized there was water—possibly a large amount of it—on the other side of that blockage. They were removing the only thing that stood between themselves and a flood.

  The sight of Castille standing in the cavern entrance banging his crop against his palm sent a quiver of anxiety through the professor. He made his way to Hedda, who was wearing down under the hard physical labor.

  “You must have a rest, Hedda,” he said, pulling her from the line of men who grumbled that she was only slowing them down. He escorted her toward the cave entrance but Castille blocked their exit.

  “Get back to work,” he snarled, giving Arturo a shove.

  “She is exhausted—she must rest,” Arturo protested, raising an arm to ward off Castille’s attack. But seconds later, Yago and another of Castille’s henchmen grabbed the pair from behind and flung them back through the cavern toward the tunnel.

  Just then, the wall of debris broke, pushed by a force of water they couldn’t yet imagine. Shouts and confusion broke out as the men digging at the front tried to run for the opening. A moment later, the roar of water drowned the screams of the men caught in the torrent rumbling down the tunnel.

  They had only a second or two to react. Arturo spotted a crevice to the side of the tunnel and shoved Hedda into it, throwing his body over hers just as a wall of rock and water burst from the tunnel with the force of naval artillery. Hedda’s scream was lost in the roar. The force of the water sucked at him, and when she realized he was being dragged away she tried desperately to save him, calling to him to hold on to her as she braced against the rock. But the force of the water pulling at him overcame what strength she had left. He was wrenched away and disappeared in a maelstrom of foam and churning water.