Indiana Jones and the Unicorn's Legacy

by Rob MacGregor

  Indy realized he wasn't alone, but all the dots made it hard to focus. Then they seemed to take on shape and dimension, swirling about in a cocoonlike form. "Aguila, is that you?"

  Indy squinted, trying to bring the image into focus. Then he realized it wasn't a man at all. What was it? He leaped back. It was some sort of creature with four wings and the body of a snake, with green luminescent scales and the head of lizard.

  He opened his mouth to yell, but no sound came out. He blinked and looked again and realized he was mistaken. It was a huge bird with a prominent beak. An eagle. All right, that's better. It was perched on a three-foot-high stack of rock slabs. Probably a pet, he thought. Its left eye stared intently at him; its gaze was penetrating, assessing. "Are your wings clipped?" Indy whispered.

  As if in response, it flapped its wings in a graceful slow-motion movement, creating a spectacular series of ghostlike images. Then the bird rose from the stone pedestal and soared skyward.

  Indy followed its flight and felt a yearning to go with it. He knew this bird; it was his bird, his guardian. Years ago, he'd been led on a vision quest with an old Indian. He'd spent three days on the top of a mesa waiting for his guardian creature to appear. When he was on the verge of giving up, and had conceded that no animal would approach him, that it was ridiculous that he'd even thought that one might, an eagle had soared overhead and landed on the stone shelter where he'd spent the three days.

  Since then, the eagle had appeared to him several times. He'd seen it in Greece at Delphi, again in England at Stonehenge, and another time in the Amazon. In each instance, it had appeared at a time of great need. He wasn't even sure eagles lived in those places, but the circumstances under which he'd encountered them were not exactly normal.

  But nothing had ever happened to him like what he was now experiencing. He felt a soaring sensation. He could see the stars above him, but the ground was no longer below him. His arms were moving and he realized they were wings. Indy was inside the body of an eagle; he was an eagle. He was possessed by its abilities, its nature, its essence.

  Below him, he saw mountains and ridges. His night vision was spectacular. In spite of the darkness, everything seemed to glow and pulsate, the mountains and boulders and stones seemed as alive as the luminescent trees and shrubs. He felt no fear of falling, no fear at all. What he was doing was natural, expected. He was with the bird and of the bird, but yet the bird was its own being as well.

  Then Indy realized he wasn't alone. Another eagle glided above him. The moment he was aware of the other bird, it descended until it was a few feet away from him. "Now you fly with Aguila."

  The eagle was talking to him, talking inside his head. "Where are we going?"

  "You will see."

  "Do I know you?"

  "Of course. Your vision is improving in more ways than you realize."

  At that moment, Indy realized that Aguila was the Indian who took him to the mesa on a vision quest when he was eighteen. It wasn't the name he'd used, but somehow he sensed the eagle and the Indian were one and the same.

  It was hard to say how long they glided through the night or the direction they took, but then the other eagle hurtled downward and he followed. The desert here was barren and forbidding. Yet, he was aware of the small animals, his prey, which were hiding or scurrying for cover. He could feel the presence of rabbits, snakes, mice, and prairie dogs. He'd never been aware of an animal in such a way. He sensed their fear, smelled their blood, and tasted their flesh.

  Suddenly, the hungry animal that he was dived for the desert floor and its talons seized a rattler. The snake twisted back and forth. Indy felt sinewy flesh beneath its skin, and a lump that he knew was a small rodent the snake had recently swallowed. The eagle shrieked and his beak caught the rattler behind its head. He bit hard and the snake's spine snapped. It shuddered and stopped moving as the eagle clipped off the rest of the head... and feasted.

  When he rose from the desert, he carried part of the snake with him. "Now you know your eagle nature, and that you can outwit even snakes in human skin."

  It was the other eagle, Aguila, speaking. Again it was more of an impression of a thought than spoken words. As soon as he looked for the eagle, he saw it plunge again and he followed. This time, human things lay below him. Stone towers in ruins rose from the desert. They passed one cluster, then another. They circled a third set of towers, then landed on a precariously narrow ledge on the surface of a huge rock. The remains of the rattler skidded down the rock to the ground.

  "Look!" Aguila ordered.

  Indy didn't know what he was talking about, but then he realized that he or the eagle or both were peering down into an opening in the rock and he could clearly see three circular petroglyphs. The center one was a series of concentric circles, and on either side of it were identical spirals.

  Two thoughts simultaneously mixed in his mind. To the bird, the symbols were meaningless, unworthy of attention. To the man, they were important, but he didn't why or how. And then they were flying again, soaring through the night. On and on, and all thoughts of symbols were left behind as the simple joy of flight overcame all else.

  After a timeless journey, the two eagles dropped down again into a canyon and swooped under an overhang above a network of stone shapes that made no sense to his bird self. His human awareness had to struggle to subdue the control of his bird nature that saw walls as nonsensical forms. They lighted upon the edge of a round depression, and Aguila hopped to the floor several feet below him. He clawed at the ground, then pecked viciously at his own tail. A single feather fluttered to the ground, and the bird then leaped back up to the rim.

  "There is your last revelation of the night." With that, Aguila soared away. The bird that was Indy let out a sharp squawk and beat its wings in pursuit.

  11

  Grand Gulch

  "Wake up, Jones. Now what are you doing up there?"

  The voice tugged Indy from a deep sleep. He didn't want to hear it, didn't want to be bothered. But it was insistent. Wake up... wake up.

  "All right," he mumbled without opening his eyes. He recognized the voice as Smitty's and remembered... What did he remember?

  Slowly, he roused himself from sleep. He was chilled and damp. His mouth was dry and his eyelids felt as if they were glued together. He blinked, and rubbed his eyes; the gray glow of the dawn spread out from the horizon. He must have slept outside, he thought, then realized he was several feet off the ground, lying on something hard and shiny.

  The car roof.

  "What am I doing up here?"

  "That's what I asked you," Smitty said. "I woke up and looked out the window. Couldn't tell what was on the car. Thought it was some big animal. Hardly believed it when I came out and saw it was you."

  Indy sat up and looked around. Two saddled horses and a pack horse were hitched to a pile of sandstone slabs in front of the hogan. He stared at the slabs, thinking there was something significant about them. "I don't understand it. Don't know how I got here."

  "Musta been something in that tea you drank."

  At the mention of the tea, a shudder ran through Indy; he felt sick to his stomach. A memory lapped at the back of his mind like a tide edging higher and higher. He recalled bits and pieces at first, and tried to fit them together in a way that made sense.

  "Aguila is an eagle," he muttered.

  "What's that?" Smitty gave him an odd look.

  Indy studied the stone slabs again, and this time he remembered the eagle had been perched on them.

  "Aguila is an eagle," he repeated.

  "You mean in Mex'can?"

  Indy realized the obvious. Aguila was Spanish for eagle. It hadn't even occurred to him. But that wasn't the point. He dropped down from the roof of the Ford. "He is an eagle and he turned me into one."

  "Oh, boy." Smitty laughed. "He must have really given you a good dose of something in that tea."

  Indy was about to argue, but he realized what he was saying wa
s preposterous. It was one thing to have an eagle as a guardian, a creature who supposedly watched over you. It was something else to turn into one and fly over the desert.

  "Did you see him turn into an eagle?" Smitty asked.

  "Well, no. But I just knew it was him."

  "C'mon, let's go ask him about this eagle stuff."

  As they headed toward the hogan, Indy's stomach knotted. "Maybe we shouldn't bother him."

  "Why not? You want to see him in his own skin, don't you?" Smitty laughed again, and tugged on his arm.

  Indy didn't have an answer, but he fought a growing sense of foreboding all the way to the hogan. The door was partially open, and the aroma of warm tortillas wafted through the air. Smitty stuck his head inside. "Aguila? Mind if Indy and I join you?"

  He stepped away from the door and shrugged. "He must be out back."

  They moved around the side of the house and the dog Indy had seen last night trotted after them. He was surprised to see a pasture and a solid row of ponderosa trees amid the semiarid landscape. How different the place seemed during the day. Then he saw the stream and realized that Aguila had an abundant source of water, no doubt the reason he'd settled here.

  Smitty called out to the old Indian, but again there was no answer. "That's strange. He was here a few minutes ago. Let's go inside and get some chow."

  "Did he say he was leaving?" Indy asked.

  "He mentioned something about going up in the hills to pick his herbs, but I didn't think he'd leave so fast." He shrugged. "Then again you never know what to expect with that old man."

  "I'll agree with that."

  Indy decided he wasn't going to take a single bite of Aguila's food. He'd been drugged and the old Indian wasn't going to do it again.

  "Sit down and eat," Smitty said as he bit into a cornmeal tortilla made with a spicy meat sauce.

  "I'm not really hungry. I'll just have some of the beef jerky from our supplies."

  "Suit yourself, but you're missing a good meal." Smitty took another bite. "Maybe eagles don't eat this kind of grub."

  "Okay, I guess I must have dreamed the whole thing," Indy said, interrupting Smitty's laughter. "You know how dreams can seem real sometimes?"

  "That's what I thought, but I wasn't going to say it. I think we'd all like to fly like eagles."

  "The thing that bothers me is that I don't know how I got on the roof of the Ford."

  Smitty polished off his second tortilla. "I remember you saying that you didn't want to stay here in the hogan. I bet you fell asleep on the cot, and then got up during the night."

  "I don't think I've ever sleepwalked in my life. And even if I did, I think I would've slept on the car seat, not the roof."

  "Then maybe you were flying in your sleep," Smitty said with a chuckle.

  "Right."

  "By the way, how's the headache? You haven't said a word about it."

  Indy hadn't given it a thought. "It's gone. I guess the tea did its job." And then some.

  Smitty got up from the table. "Maybe we'll run into Aguila when we get back."

  Shannon had just poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down when the kitchen door opened and Rosie greeted him. "Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

  "Like a block of sandstone, Rosie. Ten hours. Must be because Indy's gone."

  Rosie's long black hair was tied in a braid and decorated with green ribbons. Her dark Navajo eyes gazed down her aquiline nose. "Why do you say that?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Sometimes when I'm around him, I get the feeling the roof is about to fall in."

  "Does he have lots of accidents?"

  "He has a way of attracting trouble. But don't tell him that or he'll tell you that I'm the one who draws the troublemakers."

  "Maybe it's both of you, when you are together."

  "No, I don't think that's it. We each manage to do it on our own, too. Cup of coffee?"

  She shook her head, then noticed the Bible on the kitchen table. "Do you read it?"

  "All the time. Well, not really, but I was looking up some passages last night on unicorns."

  She pushed up the sleeves of her colorful, patterned sweater and started cleaning up around the sink. "In the Bible?"

  "Sure. You want to hear what I found?"

  Rosie picked up the broom and started to sweep the floor. "Okay."

  Shannon sipped his coffee, and flipped to one of the pages he'd marked. "Let's see. This is Isaiah thirty-four, verse seven. 'And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with their bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.'"

  "What's that mean?" she asked. "It doesn't sound good."

  "Well, it's about something that happened a long time ago." He turned to another page, and cleared his throat. "Here's another one. 'Save me from the lion's mouth; for thou hast heard me from the horns of unicorns.' That was Psalm twenty-two, verse twenty-one."

  "Why are you studying these words about unicorns?"

  "It's a long story. Here's another one. Psalm ninety-two, verse ten. 'But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of the unicorn; I shall be anointed with fresh oil.'"

  Rosie turned to face him. "I don't like this. Please stop it."

  "Sorry." Shannon closed the Bible. "If you don't want to believe in unicorns, that's all right with me."

  Rosie nervously wiped the counter. "That staff has caused much evil. It'd be best if Mara just left it alone."

  "You know about the staff?"

  Rosie set the broom down and leaned against the counter. "Of course. It was here in this house, you know."

  "Do you know what happened to it?"

  She nodded.

  Shannon could hardly believe it. "Where is it?"

  "Hidden away. The man who bought it from the pawnshop is a healer, a medicine man. Some people call him a witch, but I've seen him heal. He saved Smitty's life. He said that staff was killing Smitty and that I had to get it away from him."

  "Sounds like he wanted it for himself."

  "No, Aguila wanted to take the evil from it."

  Shannon had no idea why a unicorn's horn would be considered evil, but that didn't matter. "Did you tell Smitty who bought it?"

  She shook her head. "Aguila said it was best not to say anything to him. I've kept my word."

  "What about Mara?"

  "She knows."

  "You told her?"

  "Aguila did. But I don't think he told her where it is."

  "Where does this, witch, or healer, live?"

  "Near Kane Gulch. I'm sure that's where Smitty and Professor Jones stayed last night."

  Rosie had listened to many of the conversations about the events at Mesa Verde, but had said very little. Now it seemed she knew more than she was letting on. "Any chance that Aguila might know where to find Mara?"

  "It could be that he knows, but he doesn't know."

  Shannon shook his head. "You lost me."

  "Sometimes people know things, but they don't realize it until the right question is asked."

  They rode horseback for most of the morning before the land opened up like a scar and they descended into Kane Gulch. Indy was sandwiched between Smitty and the pack horse, and the trail quickly turned perilously narrow, twisting and turning along ridges that plunged hundreds of feet, just inches from the hoof marks they were leaving behind.

  "Good job, Chico, good job," Indy said, patting the horse as they made it around another bend.

  Indy kept thinking of Richard Wetherill's notes about the fate of their horses. When he'd read it, he wondered if the party had been drinking. How else could they have fared so poorly with their animals? Now, he realized that no one in his right mind would drink on this route. The miracle of Wetherill's expedition had been that not one of the explorers had died. He thought of Shannon, who didn't like riding horses, and knew that his friend had made a wise decision not to join them.

  "How're you doing back there, Indy?" Smitty called.

 
"Fine. I'm glad I didn't have any of Aguila's tea this morning, though."

  "I told you it wasn't gonna be easy. But at least we've got an extra horse with us."

  "What reason did you give Aguila for our trip to Junction Ruin?" Indy asked.

  "The truth. I told him my daughter was missing and she might be out there. That's all."

  "Does he know Mara?"

  "Yeah, I think she's used him as a guide. I was hoping he'd seen her, but no such luck. Makes me think that she might not be at Junction Ruin."

  "We've got to take a look, though," Indy said.

  If Smitty answered, Indy never heard him. Indy's horse hit a spot of loose gravel and its front hoof skidded over the side. It panicked, reared up on its hind legs, and tossed Indy out of the saddle. He hit the side of the packhorse, then struck the shoulder of the trail. His momentum took him over the edge and his fedora sailed out ahead of him. He rolled over a couple of times, then slid downward. He dug his heels into the dirt and stones, but he couldn't stop. He sent a shower of rocks and dust in front of him.

  Finally, he slid into an anchored rock and came to a stop. That was close. Too close.

  "Indy! Watch out!" Smitty called.

  A boulder bounded down the steep slope, heading direcdy at Indy. He rolled over to one side, and started sliding again; he clawed at the ground, desperately trying to stop his fall. He hooked an arm over another rock, but he was still in the path of the careening boulder.

  Indy was about to dive to one side when the boulder broke into two pieces. One chunk veered toward the spot where he was about to dive; the other rocketed right at him. He flattened himself on the ground, squeezing his eyes shut. He felt the rock graze his buttock and his heels, and then it was by him. He raised his head, then ducked again as pebbles and dirt showered down on him.