by Ruth Eastham
Ben looked at him, frowning. “So how will we understand each other?”
Erskine sipped again on his pipe. “You will,” he said quietly. “You will.”
Still confused, Ben made his way towards the tree. Inside, he saw shadows rise and shrink, and felt his breathing speed up. He hesitated at the entrance, looking back at the professor, who nodded at him with a tight smile of encouragement. Rafael looked terrified. Ben vaguely saw Luis smoking on the edge of the clearing; the local men clustered on the fringe, watching him.
Then he stepped through the doorway.
Ben felt as if he’d gone into another world.
There was the smell of earth, smoke. A murky darkness. Thin tendrils of moonlight seeped from fissures above, and Ben peered through the gloom, trying to make things out. Some kind of candles threw out ghostly light. Masks grimaced along the curving walls. Clay objects stood in small hollows cut into the trunk: figures; people dressed like animals; animals standing like people. A small statue of a jaguar was raised on a plinth.
There was a movement in the space above him, and a small bat flitted past.
A man loomed up in front of Ben from the shadows, making him draw back with a gasp. Deep lines ran across the man’s face like scars. Red and black paint covered the skin. The man had fangs painted from his lips down over his chin, and a kind of skullcap over his head – a leathery membrane of stitched wings.
Taking on the spirit of a bat. Ben’s throat went tight as he remembered what Rafael had said. Making a journey to the underworld. How was that even possible? He forced himself to speak. “I need to find my dad.”
The man came close and before Ben could react, he had gripped Ben’s face between his palms, staring hard into his eyes. Amber jade eyes, a voice whispered.
Ben winced. The man had spoken to him – he’d heard the words clearly. But his mouth hadn’t moved at all.
You are chosen, came the voice again.
It was inside his head! The shaman was speaking to him inside his head!
“That can’t be true,” Ben protested falteringly, trying not to sound as freaked out as he felt. “What have I got to do with this place?”
The shaman grabbed Ben’s right arm, exactly on his jaguar wounds.
Ben cried out in pain. The shaman produced some kind of claw – and before Ben could react, he used it to rip the bloody sleeve, peeling the fabric aside to expose the mess of skin.
Ben stood there shuddering as the man spoke rapidly to himself, peering at the infected marks. “Please tell them it’s OK to search for Dad,” Ben mumbled.
The shaman produced a jug and poured water on the wound in rhythmic movements, all the time talking in low tones, chanting, and smoothing away the blood with the tips of his fingers.
Ben cried out again, then clamped his mouth shut, fingers squeezed into a fist. “My dad,” he gasped. “Can you help us?”
The shaman came close with a small clay pot. He dipped his thumb inside, then smeared thick yellow ointment over Ben’s cuts.
Ben felt himself about to pass out with the pain. He tried to pull away, but the shaman’s grip was like a vice. The room moved in and out of focus.
The shaman’s voice was muffled, as if Ben was trying to hear under water, and now it didn’t sound like only one person talking – more like several voices, a weird, high-pitched mesh of speech. Distorted echoes…
Free us.
Redemption.
The unquiet spirits are gathering! the shaman hissed suddenly. Ben saw the white gleam of his teeth.
Those who suffered, came the voices.
Those who made suffer.
Dead because of greed for gold.
The shaman lifted something to the light and Ben peered at it.
It was a ring. Pale gold.
Dad’s wedding ring.
“Where did you get that from?” Shaking, he pulled it from the shaman’s outstretched hand. Dad never took that ring off! Never!
The shaman’s face was close to his. Your father wanted to throw it into the water. But you stopped him.
Ben twisted away as if he had been stung, a sharp memory unlocked in him. Mum’s funeral. The boat. Scattering her ashes into the water. He fell back against the bark wall. How could the shaman know that – how he’d begged Dad to keep the ring? Nobody else in the world knew about that; only he and Dad.
Another kind of pain rose inside Ben then, stronger, more raw than any cuts on his arm. The question bubbled up before he could stop it. “Is Dad alive?” If the Shaman knew so much about everything, why couldn’t he just answer that? He pushed the ring tight on to his right thumb.
It came then, like a punch to the chest. His crushing panic; his fear. He felt the shaman’s hand on his shoulder and saw the look of compassion in the old man’s lined face. To be chosen is never easy.
“I just need to know,” Ben whispered.
The shaman drew away. He lit some leaves on a flame, then cast them on to the ground. Smoke rose in unfolding coils, filling the space, making Ben’s eyes water.
Ben swayed a little on his feet. The room seemed to ripple, as if it were made of liquid. A shape was forming in the haze. A figure… “Dad!” Ben whispered. He reached out longingly, and the edges disintegrated under his fingertips.
That is merely a vision, the shaman said in Ben’s head. A sign of what could be.
Ben took a sharp intake of breath, watching the image fade. “I don’t understand,” he stuttered. Does this mean Dad is alive? A warmth surged through him. Dad was alive! “Where is he?” he begged, his heart thudding.
In the realm of the spirits, the shaman answered.
The space inside the tree suddenly went very cold. “What?” whispered Ben. “Dad is dead?”
Your father passed into the spirit world, the shaman replied. To reclaim him, you must first find the lost city. He took a long, pitted bone and used it to draw in the ground. The way to the living is through the city of the dead.
The man crouched to run his fingers over the lines. Free the unquiet spirits, and then they may give your father leave to pass through the portal once more and return to you.
Find El Dorado and find your father.
“El Dorado?”
The journey is full of dangers, the shaman warned. The way to El Dorado is in the hands of the ancestors. They created trials – death trials that can be overcome only by one pure in heart.
The pain in Ben’s arm had become an intense dull ache. An incredible fatigue pressed down on him. “I could never do any trials.”
The shaman looked up at Ben. But you have already. The streaks of red and black across his face glowed with an otherworldly light. The Trial of the Drowned Ghosts.
Ben opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
The shaman nodded at him. He pressed something firmly into the chest pocket of Ben’s shirt – then started to retreat into the shadows.
Follow the flying gold by moonlight, he whispered. Then by next nightfall must you complete your quest.
Ben could hardly see the shaman now. Only the whites of his eyes shone in the flickering candlelight as his voice faded away. Go to my village. Find Yara. She knows where to find the bat’s wing. The bat’s wing will be your door to the trials.
“Wait!” Ben wanted to ask more questions, but he was blacking out, his jaguar marks burning.
He fell. Felt compacted earth under him; sounds coming to fill the dark silence.
There are voices.
Echoes from somewhere far away. Far back.
They took our precious things, comes a voice that is many voices.
A face melts away. Drops of gold fall.
Somewhere close a boy with long, dark hair tries to stop his gold arm bracelet being wrenched from him. The band is intricately decorated with shoals of leaping fish, but now the surface of his gold is melting as well; the boy looking on in horror. A strange whisper lingers in the air. A whisper that is many whispers.
Free us.
Free us.
Free us.
Another face melts away.
The shaman waits for them to take the boy away, then again places the necklace of jaguar claws round his throat. He scratches the fangs down his cheeks and blood drips off his chin…
My four feet pad the forest. My eyes adjust to the dark, and I look through the leaves. There is the smell of wood smoke. The sound of human voices.
I see a tall man all dressed in white. I see him for what he is, and I have a sharp instinct to warn the boy.
But fate must take its course. It must not be tampered with, and yet…
Do not show him the spheres.
I breathe the words to him, then move back to where I came from.
But I know I must not interfere again.
PART 2
THE DEATH TRIALS
Ben bolted upright and clutched at his face. He saw the boy with the long, dark hair mouthing something to him as he clutched the melting arm bracelet. But then the images faded away.
“Ben?” Rafael peered at him through a mosquito net. “Are you OK?” he slipped under the net to stand by Ben’s hammock. “You passed out! The professor’s men carried you. We put a fresh shirt on you – see? They made a camp near the shaman’s tree.”
Ben slowly took in his surroundings: faint dawn light illuminating the tall green wall of the tent; the low hiss of a paraffin lamp, insects sizzling themselves against it. Outside, voices, the smell of wood smoke, the clatter of cooking pots, the rattling clamour of the forest. His wounded arm felt strangely cool, and when he looked at the jaguar marks all he saw were four neat red lines.
What the shaman had told him came flooding back. Ben lay back in the hammock and tried to steady his breathing as he told Rafael everything that had happened.
“So your dad is somehow caught between our world and the spirit world?” Rafael gazed at him in amazement. “And El Dorado really does exist?”
“The shaman knew things,” said Ben. He touched Dad’s ring on his thumb. “Things he couldn’t have known in a thousand years, Raffie!”
“El Dorado really exists!” breathed Rafael, his eyes bright. “But what are the death trials?” There was a tremor in his voice. “What will you have to do?”
“No idea,” said Ben. He pivoted round and sat up. “But I’m going to find out! I’m going to get to El Dorado and I’m going to bring Dad back.” He flexed his bad arm. Whatever the shaman had done, it was some kind of miracle.
“Wait!” said Rafael. “Before that: you said the shaman gave you something.” He shifted from one foot to the other with curiosity. “What was it?”
What had the shaman given him? Ben patted the bulging pocket of his shirt, then took out something like a bark pouch, sealed with drawstrings. The hammock wobbled wildly as Rafael clambered forward to see, then settled into a slight sway as they sat side by side.
Ben eased open the strings, then halted so suddenly that Rafael looked at him, an eyebrow raised. Ben thought he’d heard whispers, faint voices. He shook away the thought.
He felt around in the pouch and took out two stones, each one a smooth perfect sphere the size of a large marble. He held them up to the white glare of the paraffin lamp. One was a milky turquoise green with a translucence to it; the other was a golden colour with darker, honey-coloured streaks.
Ben stared at them, mesmerized. They sat in his palms like two tiny planets. In that moment they were the most beautiful objects he had ever seen in his life.
“That green one’s jade!” Rafael exclaimed. “I recognize the stone. The other one’s amber. But why did the shaman give you those?”
“No idea.” Ben slipped the stones back into the pouch, curling his fingers round them protectively. He was filled with a strange sense of purpose; apprehension. Whatever the spheres were for, they were precious, he knew that much. He took a sharp breath. He had a strange, sudden instinct not to show them to anyone else – to keep them hidden. Where had that thought come from? All he knew was that it had come suddenly into his head; sharp, like a pain; somewhere between a shout and a growl.
“Good morning, boys!”
Professor Erskine’s head appeared round the flap of the tent, followed by his hands, holding two tin mugs. “Tea?”
He inspected Ben’s arm. “Healed up nicely. Our shaman certainly knows what he’s doing. You see the power that man has now, Ben?” Erskine drew up a chair. “I’ve got to admit I’m curious. What did he tell you?”
He listened without interrupting as Ben told him everything, only missing out the bit about the spheres. “I’ve waited my whole life…” Erskine said at last. There was a wild excitement about him. “I always believed in that legend. The black jaguar.” He quickly regained his composure. “Imagine, Ben! You will find your father! Free him from this limbo state he’s in.”
A smile spread across Ben’s face. I’m going to find Dad!
“This Yara he told you to find – she is the shaman’s granddaughter,” the professor explained. “We’ll trek to her village, as soon as we’re ready. There’s a reasonable – if rather long – track between the shaman’s tree and there. We’ll just have to wait while my men strike camp. “Breakfast!” he shouted through the tent flap.
Soon Luis appeared, carrying two steaming bowls. Ben noticed a rifle strapped over the man’s back.
“For hunting,” the professor told him, as if reading Ben’s thoughts. “Luis never misses, do you? Got something for our breakfast.”
Luis didn’t answer, but handed them each a spoon and then went out with a small smile, whistling some classical tune quietly to himself.
The smell of food brought a flood of saliva into Ben’s mouth as he looked at what was in his bowl – a kind of green-leaf soup with chunks of meat floating in it. He realized how long it was since he’d eaten, and got stuck in.
While they ate, he watched the professor open a thick book with a red cover and write in it.
“Is that research?” asked Rafael, mid-spoonful. He lowered his voice. “What kind of research do you do here, Professor?”
The professor slipped the red book into an inside pocket of his jacket. “Archeology.” He knocked some old tobacco from his pipe, then pressed a fresh wad into its bowl and leaned back in his chair.
Rafael looked about him, frowning. “We should keep our voices down,” he said. “We don’t know who might be listening – we’ve already nearly been murdered once! You are looking for El Dorado too?”
The man’s bronzed face broke into a small smile. “Isn’t everybody looking for that elusive city?” He struck a match and lit his pipe.
“Do you know that my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was a Portuguese conquistador?” asked Rafael proudly. “I had lots of research about him.” His face fell. “But I lost my notebook in the boat accident.”
“Can’t have that!” The professor felt around in a pocket of his jacket. “Here.” He produced a little hardbacked green book with a pen attached on a string.
Rafael clutched it as though it were the holy grail. “My pa had a map to El Dorado,” he said. “But it was a fake.”
“There’s plenty of counterfeit material flying around,” consoled the professor. “It can be very easy to be tricked. Many believed, for example, that a so-called Manuscript 512 written by a Portuguese soldier of fortune was certain proof that a secret city existed.”
“Historical account of a large, hidden, and very ancient city without inhabitants,” recited Rafael excitedly. “I’ve heard of it!”
The professor puffed on his pipe. “Many spent years in the Amazon searching for El Dorado. One famous gentleman called Percy Fawcett coined the rather secretive name ‘the City of Z’.”
“Difficulties be damned!” cried Rafael proudly; he seemed to have forgotten that there could be murderers watching their every move. “That was Fawcett’s motto!”
“That’s right!” The professor laughed a deep, warm laugh which even Ben joi
ned in with. “Few believed that many people could live in the Amazon basin,” he went on, “the soil being so poor in nutrients – don’t be fooled by all this lush vegetation!” Smoke from his pipe circled round his head. “Now we’ve evidence that there were tens of thousands, indeed perhaps even hundreds of thousands! A complex and sophisticated civilization. So what happened to them all?”
The professor snatched an insect from the air and crushed it between his fingers. “The sorry fact of the matter is that their numbers were decimated by European contact.” He gave a sigh. “Their precious gold artefacts stolen and systematically melted down. Their populations devastated by diseases they had no resistance to. Their homes destroyed and whole families murdered. Those were brutal times.”
Ben felt his jaguar marks throb. He had that uncomfortable feeling again, of something close by: something alive, though not living. He remembered the vision he’d seen when he was with the shaman – the melting gold face. The boy trying to stop his precious arm bracelet from being stolen and destroyed.
The canvas of the tent gave a wobble and sagged a little as the men outside began to untie the guy ropes.
“Looks like it’s time to go.” The professor got smartly to his feet. “Care to join me, my soldiers of fortune?”
Ben came out into the clearing after the long trek, and saw the professor’s men put down their loads. They had reached their destination, Yara’s village. He rolled up his sleeves to cool down as he looked round at the cluster of wood-and-thatch huts on the riverbank; the fallen tree jutting out of the water. Hang on, he thought. He recognized this place.
“Espírito,” confirmed Rafael, panting. “The village we passed on the boat!”
Ben nodded. It kind of made sense. They must have done some sort of loop back. He swallowed hard. It all seemed so long ago, when their boat got stuck on that sandbar – like centuries ago, not just yesterday.
People came forward to greet them: women with bead necklaces, in loose cotton dresses. Men in short woven skirts. Many had their faces painted in red and black swirling patterns. The professor’s men were welcomed home by their families.