The Copper Egg

by Catherine Friend

  Higuchi pulled a long, wicked-looking knife from the bag at his feet.

  Nopa hesitated. “No, I no longer want that one. We must use the Tumi knife from the treasure chamber.”

  While the two of them returned to the other chamber, Sochi raised her hips high enough to shift her shorts until her right pocket rotated nearly over her butt. She managed to slide a few fingers inside, wincing at the burning around her wrists. It took her three tries, but she scooped up all three eggs. She put two in one hand, then lifted the third for Claire to see.

  “Copper?” she whispered over her shoulder.

  Claire’s mouth was covered, but she could still make a negative sound in her throat.

  Sochi held up a second egg.

  Claire made the negative sound again.

  Sochi held up the third, worried she might have gotten them mixed up as she passed them from hand to hand.

  Claire hummed a “yes.”

  Sochi let herself fall back onto her shoulder. Her arms were going numb. She was never going to be able to do this with her hands tied.

  She’d had a split second to scan the altar surface before Nopa thrust her onto it. Lying there, she tried to put herself in Atl’s place. He had wanted to protect his daughter. The copper egg played a role. He had to find some easy way for this to happen since he couldn’t explain it to her.

  The carved warrior’s reed skirt spun out around him. From the perspective of where she lay, many of the reed spikes reached the left side of the altar, ending in multiple oval, egg-shaped depressions. But only one reed spike touched the right side of the altar, ending in one egg-shaped depression. Assuming Ixchel was right-handed, this was the only logical place for the egg. But had she been right-handed? And would that hole line up with Sochi’s hand when she could lie flat on her back?

  The men returned. Nopa moved toward the altar. “We will use this knife,” he announced, waving the sharp Tumi knife. “Gold, silver, and copper. Perfectly symbolic.”

  “Nopa, you’re going to have to untie me. It’s not a true sacrifice if the person is restrained.” She was spouting bullshit, but he was high enough he might fall for it.

  He cut the ties and she moaned, hugging herself with aching arms. The copper egg was tucked into her right palm. She was able to see Claire between the two men. Instead of looking horrified or sad or frightened, the look Claire gave her was calm and confident. Sochi drew courage from Claire’s clear gaze. It was classic Claire—don’t wallow in your fear. Just do what needed to be done. Sochi nodded her thanks.

  Nopa moved to the right side of the altar, Higuchi to the left. Higuchi held her down by her shoulders. Sochi couldn’t stop trembling. All three of them breathed rapidly, as if the tomb’s oxygen was nearly gone.

  Maria had begun to moan, protesting through the tape across her mouth. Claire’s gaze was steady.

  Sochi forced herself to breathe slowly through her nose. She rested her hand over the altar surface, feeling for the depression. She found it and gently placed the copper egg inside. It fit perfectly.

  Nopa began chanting in Quechua, calling forth the spirit of Chacochutl. The chamber echoed with the melodic sounds of the two silver rattles Nopa shook. Then he dropped the rattles. With one hand, he grabbed her hair in his fist. With the other, he picked up the knife.

  Higuchi’s face was drenched in sweat. Sochi’s scalp pinched where Nopa held her. She waited. Gods, the egg hadn’t done anything.

  But as Nopa moved the knife toward Sochi’s throat, she thought of Claire and Mima and her parents and her friends and all the things left to do in her life. She pushed down hard on the egg. The egg dropped. Something underneath her clicked. There was an odd whirring sound. Nopa and Higuchi heard it and exchanged a confused look.

  The altar rattled beneath her. Whoosh! Something spun out horizontally from the edges of the altar. Nopa and Higuchi dropped from her sight. Maria let out a muffled but terrified scream. Claire was yelling beneath her tape.

  Sochi was afraid to move. The smell of blood and flesh rose up around her, sickly and suffocating. She turned her head. Claire’s eyes were filled with tears, but she nodded once. You did it, the proud nod said.

  Sochi took a few deep breaths until her heart stopped racing. Slowly, her muscles protesting, she sat up. That’s when she saw Nopa and Higuchi, both nearly cut in two, splayed out on the ground in pools of blood. Two long blades, dripping with blood, jutted out from the left and right sides of the altar.

  Suddenly wobbly, Sochi lay back down. She held up one finger and Maria quieted. They needed to be freed, but her knees wouldn’t work just yet.

  A few minutes later, she slid off the end of the altar and stood. She managed to take one step on her liquefied knees, then another, careful to avoid the carnage at her feet. She used the knife Nopa had dropped to cut Claire and Maria free.

  Claire and Sochi collapsed into each other, pulling Maria into their quick hug. Then they crawled over to Nancho and Rigo.

  The men were still alive.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Claire

  Claire shook Nancho until he moaned and opened his eyes. She used another few inches of one of her tank tops to staunch the blood. He was weak, but insisted on talking through lips caked with dirt. “I am so sorry, Mrs. Claire. We have known that Nopa is crazy. We just didn’t know what to do about it.”

  Rigo’s condition was more serious. While Sochi tried to stop the bleeding, Maria sprang into action, calling the police emergency number. Then she retrieved Nopa’s handgun and marched back through the chambers. Now that she wasn’t tied up, Maria had lost her fear. She yelled horrible threats to the men stealing the treasure, and then she was back.

  “The looters are gone. All of the treasure is still either in the chamber or stacked outside by the ladder.” She lightly touched Claire’s arm. “I am sorry I was so ungrateful the day you rescued me. I thought you were a terrorist.”

  Claire gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Within minutes, sirens blared outside. Between Claire and Maria, Nancho was able to walk to the ladder, where the emergency personnel took over.

  After stopping the bleeding, the emergency crew then strapped Rigo to a stretcher and managed to get him up the ladder as well. One of the men wanted to look at the bandaged wound on Claire’s arm, but she waved him off.

  Claire and Sochi were both anxious to follow the ambulances, but the police insisted on interviewing them. After about thirty minutes of questions, Claire remembered her promise to the reporter, so she used Sochi’s cell to call her. Luisa soon arrived, bleary-eyed but armed with her notebook. Claire wanted to make sure the tomb hit the news so Aurelio and the CNTP couldn’t keep it to themselves.

  Claire knew the cops kept asking questions because her story sounded pretty freaky. And to ensure that none of them were charged with murder, Claire showed them the blades in the altar. She tried explaining about Ixchel and her father Atl, and how he designed the egg and the altar so that his daughter could escape sacrifice, but the cops, older guys with gray hair and skeptical eyes, kept shaking their heads. Another set of police had been dispatched to Denis’s house, and both Mima and Denis had been released. Denis had a concussion, but Mima refused to go to the hospital. Sochi called cousins to make sure Mima was surrounded by family.

  Finally, finally, Claire was able to climb the ladder, Sochi right behind her. The sky had begun to lighten above the Andes to the east, and Claire was suddenly more tired than she’d ever been in her life. Sochi slipped her hand into Claire’s. “I need to sit for a while,” Sochi said. “I need to let all of this sink in before the day starts.”

  She led them to the far western edge of the hill, where Claire welcomed the sound of the surf—loud and boisterous—after the muted voices in the chamber. The slight breeze refreshed her sore and tired body.

  They both lay down in the sand, looking up at the sky. The Carina Nebula had almost totally faded as day approached. “Treasure hun
ts are exhausting,” Claire said.

  “So is being nearly sacrificed.”

  They held hands. “You did it,” Claire said. “You figured out how to use the egg.”

  “It helped that you didn’t panic. You seemed certain I could do it.”

  “It’s weird, but I found myself trusting Atl, of all people. I never saw him in the visions, and have no idea what he was like as a man, but if Atl’s message to Ixchel was that the copper egg would save her life, I trusted that Atl had figured out a way to make that happen.” Claire squeezed Sochi’s hand. “Thank you for not dying.”

  Her answering smile was bright in the dim light. “So was the treasure worth all that’s happened?”

  Claire rose up on her elbows and leaned close. “I could give a rip about the treasure in the tomb below us.”

  Her face must have softened because Sochi groaned. “You’re not going to get all mushy and say that the only treasure you care about is me, are you?”

  Claire lowered her lips and showed her exactly how mushy she was feeling.

  “Mmmm,” was Sochi’s reply.

  “Seriously, you are the treasure worth hunting for, and now that I have you again—I do have you, right?”

  Sochi laughed and nodded.

  “Now that I have you again, I’m not going to lose you.”

  Sochi nestled against her shoulder. “I just wish we knew how Ixchel’s story ended.”

  Claire sat up. “Could I see the egg for a minute?”

  Sochi reached for her pocket, then stopped. “I don’t know. This thing has become really important to me.”

  “I’ll trade you.” Claire reached into her cargo pocket and withdrew the moon shell she’d taken from the cache in the mountains, the one Sochi had left there to show how unimportant their relationship had been to her. “I thought you might want it back.”

  With a happy sigh and a few more kisses, Sochi traded the copper egg for the shell.

  Claire held the egg in her palm. Nothing. “Crap. And I’ll bet Aurelio is going to want the eggs today, isn’t he?”

  At that moment, Sochi’s boss, Aurelio, emerged from the tomb, snapping instructions to someone below. He approached Claire, his hand outstretched. “I just wanted to thank you, Ms. Adams, for your fine work. This is an incredible day for Peru, and for all lovers of Peruvian culture.”

  She stood and shook his hand.

  “We have already done a quick survey and have discovered the skeletons belong to nineteen women and one man, since one of the skeletons has the narrower sciatic notch and pelvic inlet.”

  “A man?” She raised an eyebrow at Sochi. With a wave, Aurelio and his staff headed down the hill, sliding in the sand.

  They looked at the copper egg in Claire’s hand. Clearly, it was not going to give her what she wanted.

  “Oh, what the hell.” Claire dug out the vial containing the half-piece of San Pedro. “Will you watch over me and make sure I get home? Make sure no one takes advantage of me?”

  Sochi pulled her into an embrace, their hips nestling happily together. “I want you to be fully awake when I take advantage of you.” After another kiss that left her weak-kneed, Claire swallowed the San Pedro.

  Ixchel sat on the dune with Tochi. He gave her the gold egg. “Cualli had this made for me. You should have it.”

  Then he pulled out the silver egg. “She gave this to me just before she ran after you and the administrator. You should have it as well.”

  Ixchel’s vision blurred. She rubbed her eyes. She must stop crying. “What will you do now?”

  Tochi hugged her. “There is someone for me. Cualli always knew I married her for my family. Now I act for myself. But first, I will provide a distraction for you,” Tochi said. He quietly slipped away down the dune.

  Ixchel’s heart was heavier than rock. She must see Cualli. She must say good-bye.

  She watched the guards and heard shouts from the shore. Tochi was yelling something threatening. Guards ran to check on the disturbance, leaving the entrance to the tomb unguarded.

  Ixchel slid down the dune and through the open tomb door. She ran down a narrow tunnel that twisted and turned. She ended up in a chamber full of gold. She cared nothing for this. The smell of death called to her so she hurried to the next chamber. Dead bodies of women and llamas ran down the center of the chamber. Ixchel covered her nose.

  There, in the middle, was Cualli, her neck bloodied, her face pale. With an anguished cry, Ixchel fell to her knees and rested her head on Cualli’s chest. The chest rose and fell.

  “What?” Ixchel looked up.

  Cualli’s eyes were open and she was smiling. “I knew you would come for me. I’ve been afraid to move until then.”

  Ixchel’s heart expanded until it no longer fit inside her. “How? How?”

  Cualli sat up. “Your egg. It saved me. But it killed Nopaltzin. I was frightened people would blame me, so I drew a line of blood across my neck and lay down with the other sacrifices and played dead. Someone will come soon, however, so we must go.”

  They rose. Ixchel saw that without Cualli, there were not enough bodies in the row. The administrators would find another girl or woman to kill. Ixchel asked, “Where is Nopaltzin?”

  Cualli led her deeper into the tomb, into a chamber with another exit. Ixchel’s stomach turned at the sight of Nopaltzin’s body nearly cut in half.

  “First, we must hide the blades,” Ixchel said. They lifted off the top of the altar and peered into its workings. She swelled with pride. When the egg depressed a lever, the lever released the pins and the blades flew. She carefully moved the blades back into the altar and reset the pins, then sent a thank you to her father for his gift.

  “Next, take off your clothes,” Ixchel told Cualli.

  While Cualli did this, Ixchel undressed Nopaltzin. She was soon sticky and hot with the administrator’s blood.

  They moved his body to the sacrifice chamber, dressed it in Cualli’s clothes, and rearranged the hair of the women on either side so it looked like women’s hair around Nopaltzin’s head.

  Cualli was worried. “People will wonder where Nopatlzin has gone.”

  Ixchel smiled. She left a pile of clothing near King Chaco’s head—Nopaltzin’s sandals, pouch, and any clothing not soaked in blood. “They will see the pile of Nopaltzin’s clothing next to Chaco’s body and believe that he accompanied Chaco on his journey. It will be considered a great miracle.”

  Cualli opened her hand. “What do I do with the copper egg?”

  Ixchel had the other two eggs as well. “We will leave them behind. Start a new life. Someone else may need the eggs some day.” They slipped the eggs into Ixchel’s pouch and she tied the pouch around what was left of Nopaltzin’s waist.

  Ixchel removed a fine woven blanket from the pile of treasures and wrapped it around Cualli. They left the tomb by the rear tunnel.

  “Where are we going?”

  Ixchel held her hand. “We will stop to see how Uncle fares. We will get you clothes. Then we will leave Chan Chan and shed the past like a snake sheds its skin. We will build a new future together.”

  Claire snapped out of the vision to find herself still in Sochi’s arms, their bodies still pressed together, which was good because Claire’s world tipped crazily. The activity near the tomb looked like splotches of color instead of like people. Traffic had begun to move up and down the Pan American. Her mouth felt like it was lined with cotton balls. God, she was hungry. Who knew San Pedro could make you so hungry?

  She sighed and gave Sochi back the egg. “You may give this to Aurelio now.” She threw her arms around Sochi. “I love you so much.”

  “You’re high.”

  “I still love you.”

  “This is good, since I love you. Now what about Ixchel?”

  Claire nuzzled into Sochi’s neck, breathing in the scent of her future, a scent she would never tire of for centuries to come. “I’m so famished. Maybe some orejitas, and a really good burger. Do you k
now that I really, really love you?”

  Sochi laughed, pulling her down the hill. “And Ixchel?”

  Claire sighed again, feeling as if she floated over the sand. She hoped she came down soon, but was warmed by the knowledge that Sochi would be there to catch her.

  “Ixchel and Cualli did the same thing we’re going to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Leave Chan Chan. Shed the past like a snake sheds its skin. Build a new future together.”

  “Where will we live?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Claire, I don’t care either. I’m letting go. I can’t save every artifact still buried in Peru, and it was crazy to try. We can live anywhere you want.”

  Claire stumbled then leaned on Sochi’s arm for support, whispering, “Did you know I like how dog feet smell?”

  “Oh, baby, you are so high.”

  “I think they smell like toast. Will Suyana’s feet smell like toast?” Claire had never felt so happy, even though the sugarcane plants ahead looked like skinny elves dancing to the breeze off the ocean.

  “We won’t adopt her unless they do.”

  Hand in hand, they slid down the last of the hill and headed for Chan Chan.

  Claire sighed happily. Searching for a dog with great-smelling feet would be another treasure hunt, but this hunt would be the very best kind—one she didn’t have to do alone.

  About the Author

  Catherine Friend has won four Golden Crown Literary awards, as well as an Alice B. award for her body of work. Several of her books have been finalists for a Lambda Literary Award, including her memoir, Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet. She and her wife, Melissa, raise sheep on their southeastern Minnesota farm. She writes fiction, memoir, nonfiction, and children’s books. She’s won a Minnesota Book Award and the Loft/McKnight Fellowship in Children’s Literature. She loves to snowshoe around her farm in the winter, and hang out with the sheep in the summer. She knits, swims, and is perfectly happy leaving the wild adventures to her characters.