She came to the jungle and stepped right in. Once inside the shade of the trees she stopped and glanced back at the Castle looming in the midday heat. She saw two lepers, women, coming slowly down the outdoor stairway from the third story. A good thing, she thought. She felt like a character in the Old Testament fleeing some cursed place, surrounded by enemies and observed by a jealous and hot-tempered God. A pillar of salt, she thought. Demoniacs. Bloody altars. Dear Lord, get me out of here. Dear duplicitous Bradley, please be waiting.
She turned and ran. She’d forgotten what a pleasure it could be, heat or not, pregnant or not. But what a wild, dislocated feeling it was to be embarking on the most important journey of her life with nothing but the clothes on her back, a leper’s shawl, five-hundred dollars and a gun. Save some energy, she thought. She slowed to a trot, then a fast stride.
The trail was narrow but clear. Tree roots grew the thickness of human arms and they were raised across the path and worn smooth by walkers. The trunks of the ficus trees grew up close to the passageway and the Carrizo cane grew in high walls and choked out the sunlight and the breeze. Erin could hear her shoes crunching on the sand and the roots but she heard no birds or monkeys or even insects, just the gradually fading sound of the Castle’s generators running the siesta air conditioners. She walked fast with long steps, then ran again a short distance, then slowed once more to a walk. For a few strides she held her belly in both hands and talked to her charge: hang in there, hang in there, little baby. You are one tough little guy.
She followed the trail she had taken with Armenta. She recognized a very narrow fork that led right and one that led left and she congratulated herself for keeping to the true path. The passageway got narrower and the roots were raised and knotted higher but she labored over them, holding to the cane stalks for balance and careful not to turn an ankle. Something black and low scurried ahead of her, no more than a blur.
A moment later she stopped and turned and listened. She took a few more steps and stopped again. That feeling of being watched, she thought. She’d had it a million times as a girl, watched or not. She heard a bird twitter and a faint breeze stir the foliage.
She continued. Suddenly she came to a fork that she did not remember. She stopped again. These paths were not minor offshoots but an almost perfect wishbone-two trails just as wide and well worn as the one she was on, each leading away at equally obtuse angles.
She stared, disbelieving. As she scrolled through the memory of her walk to the cenote with Armenta, she had that sinking, breath-robbing realization that she couldn’t remember this place at all. She could remember the silver plate she had carried, and the hard lump of the Cowboy Defender in the pocket of her dress, and the patches of his hair that Armenta had tried to tame with gel, and the silver jewel-studded candlestick he had carried, but she could not remember this junction, this grand and dramatic fork that they had most assuredly negotiated.
She placed both hands over her womb. She was breathing quickly but not deeply and she was light-headed in the breezeless heat. Panic kills. Dad.
She stared at the two paths. The roots of the left path were worn as smoothly as the roots of the right. The right path had a thin layer of white sand, as did the left. Both were of equal width. Both led through thickets of almost indistinguishable trees and plants. They looked like twins staring back at her. Then she thought she saw something. She knelt down slowly to one knee, balancing herself on her fingertips. This made her dizzier, so she took deeper breaths, and faster. She blinked to clear the sweat from her eyes. In the filtered light she saw the footprint on the right path. It was just a small crescent shape, a partial heel, maybe, with the faint zigzag of a sole pattern within it. In front of it was a larger mark, once an oval, perhaps, marked with the same pattern. Going in her direction, she thought.
She stood and fought off the dizziness with deep fast breaths. She felt a fresh eruption of sweat on her face. Who are you? When were you here? Minutes ago? Days? Were you going to the cenote or somewhere else?
She had heard that there were villages in this direction, east, and a hotel, and a marina. She didn’t know the names of them or even what country they might be in. She looked straight up as if the sun could give her some clue but it wasn’t visible through the thick copse overhead.
Traveled or less traveled. Frost. All the difference. Some help that is, in the middle of a jungle.
So now what? She had to decide and she knew this, but how? On the basis of what? On the basis of who she was and what she was. What else was there to reckon by? Erin had always believed that human nature and human beings were fundamentally good. Not always but usually. Thus she now told herself that another human being might be some kind of help to her, or at least not a hindrance or a threat. In her life she had seen generosity and selflessness, and sacrifice and goodwill. She had seen their opposites too, but if she had to choose right now, she would choose to believe that people, given a chance, would do the right thing. Mostly.
She stepped over the footprint and followed it down the fork leading to her right. What a strange feeling to have lost the known and then to follow what she only believed. Soon she was halfway there, she thought, based on memory. But how good was it? She looked for more shoe prints and she saw a few but these were yards apart, as if the walker were a giant striding through high grass.
Finally she saw something she recognized, a lightning-blasted fig tree, blown to splinters by the bolt, the splinters black and upraised in the green density around them. She had seen this with Armenta and now it seemed a sign that she was going to find the cenote and Bradley, and in a few short hours they would be in the airport in Chetumal, boarding a plane to home and freedom.
Closer to the cenote the trail widened and she remembered this place, too, where Armenta had said that the trees grew taller and more fully because they were drawing on the same ground water as the cenote. She broke into a trot and allowed hope to spark inside her like the beginning of a fire. Then she had to slow again, short of breath and her legs getting heavy.
Through the trees ahead she saw the first glimmers of the pool. The water was fired with sunshine this time of day and the surface looked flat as a golden mirror. When she came to the last heavy stand of trees she stopped and stepped inside them and waited for her heart to settle. She could only see a small part of the cenote from here and she knew that Bradley would be hidden, but she was disappointed that he was not the first thing she saw, that he didn’t just step from the foliage into a column of sunlight and smile at her. Was this another lie of his? Another betrayal?
When her breath finally slowed she approached the pool, staying along the rim of the trees. Closer the cenote looked perfectly round, as if it had been drilled from solid gray rock. From here, with the sun at her back, she could see the last lip of rock before the water, and it was worn smooth by hundreds of years of people swimming and drinking and filling their vessels with the cold, clean water that was always here. There were crude stone benches set back from the pool, ancient gray-black slabs balanced upon others, and even these were polished smooth by centuries of human touch.
She saw the place where she had stood when she threw the plate into the pool. She imagined the treasures piled up somewhere down in the black water-the Mayan gold and silver, their statues and calendars, the gems and jewelry and valuables plucked from ancient history right up to the Corvette and the musical instruments-and the bones of the sacrificed spiking it all. Nothing ever moves down there, she thought. No flow. No current. No tides. Just stillness forever, amen.