The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man's Canyon

by S. S. Taylor

  I looked at Zander. This was weird. “And you feel okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, fine. Anyway, they wouldn’t tell me what they were going to do with me or anything and they just kept asking me if I was alone. I figured I’d better get out of there, so I used my knife to wedge open a sort of vent in the ceiling and pulled myself up. It came out right over there in the hallway. I was about to see if I could find another one of those tunnels when I saw you and that girl come up the stairs. Then I saw the guards.”

  Sukey looked worried. “How did you keep your knife?” She asked M.K.

  “I hid it in my shoe after I got the cat.” M.K. grinned. “They never even looked. Who is that girl, anyway? Did she capture you? And where’s Pucci?”

  Before we could answer, we heard two low taps on the door and Halla’s voice saying, “It’s me. She’s escaped. They’re all looking for her. I told them that I saw her escaping the city and running into the canyon, so that should buy us some time to find her. All the guards are heading out after her.”

  She opened the door and smiled when she saw M.K.

  “And this must be her,” Halla said. We introduced them and Halla said, “We don’t have much time. Follow me and don’t let anyone see you.” We went out into the hall again and she opened another door in the wall, waited for us to follow her in, and shut it quickly.

  “Okay, let’s go.” We followed the long hallway for a few minutes before she pressed on an intricate carving on the wall. It was a relief sculpture depicting a large group of people climbing a staircase to the cliff city. There were more of the hieroglyphs that Dad had used for the code.

  “I’m trying to remember where it is,” she said. “I discovered it kind of by accident.” She must have pushed the right spot because all of a sudden we heard a click and a door swung open and we were looking into a small room. Halla used her torch to light another, larger torch mounted on the wall, and as the room was suddenly bathed in light, we could see what was inside.

  “Look,” Zander whispered. “Look, Kit, look.”

  The walls were covered with maps—maps of the world, of the United States, of Latin America, of Europe and Asia. There were old maps of Arizona and maps of the New Lands, and maps of Ha’aftep Canyon and of Drowned Man’s Canyon. They had been created with some kind of natural ink in various shades of blue and red and brown. They were beautiful.

  “Where did these come from?” I asked.

  “They used to be hanging out in the great hall,” she said, “for everyone to see and study. But the new Keedow decided that it was too dangerous to have them out there, that it might make people want to go to all these places. So he hid them here, with… well, you can see for yourselves.”

  We had been so focused on the maps that we hadn’t noticed the large table in the middle of the room. It was carved out of some kind of brown stone that I hadn’t seen in the canyon, and the surface, when I touched it, was warm and smooth. There was a large golden frame in a stand on the table. Around the frame were little objects, stones and gold coins and little statues.

  And in the frame was a portrait of Dad.

  Forty-eight

  He was a young man in the portrait, perhaps in his early twenties, and he was looking out across the canyon with the unmistakable silhouette of the cliff city behind him. It was beautifully painted with vivid, natural inks, and it gave me the eerie feeling of standing in front of a dead man. If I’d been alone, I think I would have touched the painting to make sure it was real.

  “He was a hero to a lot of the people,” Halla told us. “My father knew him, and he told me that it was because he came here and he showed us that we didn’t have to be afraid of everyone. He told us about the world outside the canyon. He taught us English, so we would be prepared in case we were discovered. He drew some of the maps. He said he would help to protect us. But the new Keedow says that we can’t trust anyone outside of the canyon. So he put this back here.” She looked at the picture and then glanced shyly at Zander.

  “You looked familiar when I first saw you. It took me a little while to figure out who you looked like. For a minute I thought you were him, but when you started talking about your father, I figured it out.”

  I had so many questions for her and I was trying to think of what to ask first when Zander said, “But I don’t understand. What did Dad want us to do once we got here?”

  “I think he wanted you to see the city. And I think he wanted you to have this,” Halla said, opening a drawer in the table underneath Dad’s portrait. She took out a leather pouch and handed it to me.

  “What—?”

  “Open it,” she said.

  I opened the pouch and took out a large envelope.

  My heart sped up.

  “It’s Dad’s writing,” I said. And it was, his beautiful, scrolling letters running back and forth across the paper.

  I ran a finger over the letters for a long moment.

  “What does it say?” M.K. was almost jumping up and down, her little face turned up in anticipation. Even Sukey was looking at me with excitement.

  “‘The Expeditioners’,” I read. I flipped it over and found a red wax seal over the flap, embossed with the same symbol that I’d seen tattooed on the arm of the man with the clockwork hand. Then I looked up at Halla. “You knew this was here and you never opened it?”

  “It’s not addressed to me,” she said.

  My hands shaking, everyone’s eyes focused on me, I slid a finger under the thick seal and opened it up, taking out a piece of thick paper. I unfolded it.

  “‘To my dearest Expeditioners,’” I read. “‘Well done. This is the next piece of the puzzle. With all my love, Dad.’”

  There was a long silence.

  “That’s it?” Zander asked finally. “He doesn’t explain anything?”

  “What’s the next piece of the puzzle?” M.K. asked. “What does he mean?”

  “It’s another map.” I turned the paper around so that they could see it. It was a very simple map drawn in green and red ink, with a few words at the bottom. “That’s all he writes and… it’s just another… map.” My disappointment was so sharp I could taste it, hard and bitter and acrid, like poisonous leaves, and I realized that a part of me had been expecting to find Dad himself in the canyon, grinning and laughing, ready to gather us up in a hug and tell us everything was going to be okay. Staring at the map, at his words, I felt the loss of him all over again. It was all I could do not to start crying.

  Halla looked confused. “Is it a map of the canyon?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. It says ‘Girafalco’s Trench’ at the bottom.” It looked strange and somehow familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out why. “I would need to spend some time with an atlas, calculating the contours and the elevations, to figure out where it is. Even then I might not be able to.” I turned the envelope over and ran a finger over the surface of the wax seal. “At least we know one thing now. He was a member of the Mapmakers’ Guild. He must have been.”

  Sukey looked scared then. “You can’t let BNDL find out.”

  “Maybe there’s another message hidden in the map,” Zander said.

  I took out the spyglass and was studying the map through it when I heard the door click. “Someone’s coming,” Halla whispered. As quickly as I could, I shoved the map and the spyglass into the map pocket of my vest.

  We heard the heavy sweep of the door across the stone floor and we all wheeled around and found ourselves face to face with a tall man a few years older than Zander. He was dressed in a black suit and top hat decorated with the bright feathers that also decorated the guards’ helmets, and there was something about the way he stood that made me think he was an important man.

  “Hanno! What are you doing here?” Halla asked him. She looked scared.

  “I had a hunch,” he said. “When I heard that a child with blond hair had been found in the canyon, I had a little idea about who it might be. I thought th
is might be a good place to look.”

  Forty-nine

  He turned to us and put out a hand. Not knowing what else to do, we each shook it in turn. “Welcome to Ha’aftep Canyon. You must be the children of the great Explorer Alexander West. My name is Hanno. And I am the Keedow of the city. I see you’ve already met my sister here.”

  “Your sister?” Sukey asked him. “You mean…” She looked at Halla. “You’re some kind of princess or something?”

  Halla looked embarrassed. “Well, I wouldn’t put it like that. My brother is the Keedow and—”

  “And our father was the Keedow before him,” Hanno said. Now that I knew they were brother and sister, I could see the family resemblance. They had the same cheekbones, the same dark eyes. There was something regal about the two of them, about the way they stood and talked and gestured.

  “How long have your people lived here?” I asked him. Now that we’d seen what Halla wanted us to see and I knew M.K. was safe, I had so many questions about the city that I couldn’t ask them fast enough. “How did my dad find you?”

  “We’ve been living here for four hundred years,” Hanno said. “Our ancestors came north from central Mexico to escape religious persecution. They believed they had been visited by people from another world, people who had taught them… well, advanced engineering principles, secrets of healing the human body, supernatural knowledge, I guess you could say. But they were ridiculed for their beliefs and they decided to find a place to live farther north. Turns out that the Spanish who were waiting for them were much worse. They tried to enslave them, so they retreated to what is now called Drowned Man’s Canyon and lived in the canyon walls. But they knew it was only a matter of time before they were found, so they began to work on the tunnel, creating an underground system of caverns where all of the people could hide if needed. One day, a young man working on the tunnels broke through and found Ha’aftep Canyon and the vein of aurobel. Gold. And here we are.”

  “Did you know our father?” Zander asked him.

  “No, I was only a small child when he came.” Hanno turned to Halla. “You’ve done well,” he said. “The girl wouldn’t talk when they had her imprisoned. I assume you’ve learned how they got here?”

  Halla nodded. “He”—she nodded toward Dad’s portrait—“gave them a map.”

  He looked at us. “I knew our father shouldn’t have trusted him. Why isn’t he here himself?”

  “Because he’s dead,” I told him.

  “Ah.” He waited a long moment and then said, “Our father would be sorry. He liked him very much. Our father was too trusting.” He turned to Halla. “I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to dispatch your friends as soon as possible. The girl seems to be a bit of an escape artist and we can’t risk them making it back to the other side and telling everyone about us.”

  “‘Dispatch’?” Sukey asked in a quiet voice. “As in… kill?”

  “We have very humane methods. You can understand, can’t you? I just can’t risk the destruction of our city, of our way of life.”

  “But you let our father live? Why can’t you let us live, too?” I asked.

  “My father had different ideas than I do,” Hanno said with a frown. “And your presence here proves that your father never should have been allowed to return to the other side.”

  “But we wouldn’t tell anyone. We wouldn’t say a word.” Even as I said the words, though, I knew that he was right to be afraid. We might not say anything, but the Nackleys were just outside the canyon and if they captured us, they might make their way to the canyon just as we had. As long as they thought the treasure was still out there, the city and its people weren’t safe.

  “No,” he said. “Halla, take them and lock them up in the prison room until we can arrange the procedure.”

  “Halla?” Zander said, turning to her. “You don’t agree with him, do you? You trust us not to say anything?”

  “Sorry,” she said, bringing her bow up and aiming it at him. “I knew all along that I’d have to turn you in. I wanted to see what was in the envelope.” She looked at her brother. “Nothing. Nothing of interest to us, anyway.”

  I caught her eye. “Why didn’t you just open it?” I asked her again.

  She looked horrified. “I told you, it wasn’t addressed to me, was it? Now come on, keep walking and do exactly as I say.”

  We followed her out of the room and down the hallway.

  “You’re not really going to let him kill us?” Zander asked her once we were in the hallway. A couple of guards had fallen into step at a respectful distance behind us.

  “Sorry,” she said with an embarrassed shrug, “but you can’t really have thought I was going to let you go.” We walked in silence for a while and finally came out into the main hallway. A bunch of the guards were standing there and seemed to be waiting for us.

  One of them said something to Halla in the language I didn’t understand and followed us along the hallway to a door where a couple of other guards were posted. One of them opened the door and Halla pushed us inside.

  “Again, I’m really sorry,” she said. And then she was gone, the door shutting with a loud thud, followed by the clicking of what must have been three or four strong locks.

  Fifty

  “Of course we can trust her. Why would she kill us? But she’s so nice…,” Sukey said in a deep voice that I suppose was meant to mimic Zander’s. “I can’t believe I went along with your stupid plan. Now we’re going to be dead and it will probably be Halla who will put an arrow through your heart.”

  “Actually,” I pointed out, “he said they had humane methods so I don’t think it’s going to be an arrow—”

  “I don’t care how they do it!” Sukey said. “They’re still going to do it.”

  “This is just like the room they had me locked in,” M.K. said, after inspecting the perimeter, “except it has bars and there’s no vent. I don’t see any way out of this.”

  “Great,” Sukey said in a broken voice. “What are we going to do now?”

  No one had an answer for her.

  For a long time, we all just sat there. I don’t know how many hours went by, but eventually M.K. lay down with her head in my lap and Zander and Sukey stretched out on the floor, too, and somehow, in spite of the direness of our situation, we all fell asleep.

  I woke up first and reached over to lift Sukey’s wrist so I could see her watch. Her skin was cool, and underneath my fingers I could feel the steady, insistent pulsing of her blood. I wanted to hold her hand again, to hold her, and to tell her how sorry I was that we’d gotten her into this, but her eyes fluttered and she looked up at me in alarm.

  “It’s just me,” I whispered. “I was just checking the time.”

  “I thought it was them,” she whispered back. “I thought this was it.”

  We stared at each other for a couple of long moments before she looked away, and then Zander and M.K. woke up, too, and the four of us sat there in silence, no one knowing what to say. It was M.K. who finally spoke. “I think I kind of thought that Dad was going to be here,” she said in a quiet voice. “When I saw that envelope, I felt like he was playing a trick on us.”

  I nodded. “I know what you mean. It was like they were telling us he was dead all over again.”

  “Why would he do that?” Zander asked. “Why would he leave us a map with that note, and no explanation of any of it? How are we supposed to know what to do with it?”

  “Maybe,” Sukey said, “it’s like with the other map. Maybe this is only part of it and maybe there’s another part somewhere that you have to find.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said, sitting up suddenly. “When you think about it, we were the only ones who could have figured it out. No one else knew about the double map, no one else knew about the Expeditioners. He didn’t tell us anything more, because he didn’t want anyone else to be able to figure it out. It’s useless as it is, but there’s something else to this map, a clu
e that only we can solve.

  “Dad never told us that he’d been kicked out of the Expedition Society. Why? He never told us about the secret map. Why? He never said anything about being part of the Mapmakers’ Guild. Why? There’s some sort of big secret here. I think there must be other places, other secret places that Dad knew about, that maybe other people from the Mapmakers’ Guild knew about, too. And for some reason, he wanted us to know about them. It was a secret map that led us here. Maybe the new one will lead us somewhere else important.”

  “Where do you think it is, Kit?” M.K. asked.

  I studied the map closely. “‘Girafalco’s Trench’,” I read out loud. There was something about the map that seemed off, even without knowing the location. The whole thing looked strangely smooth and the contour lines were odd. It was almost like…

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not positive, but I think this is a bathymetric map.”

  “A bathy what?” Zander asked.

  Sukey sat up. “I studied this in my cartography class. He means it’s an underwater map. Of the ocean floor.”

  “It could be a lake or river, too.” The more I looked at it, the more convinced I was that Dad had given us an underwater map. “But the fact that it says ‘Girafalco’s Trench’ makes me think it’s the ocean. Trenches are in oceans. See how smooth it looks? I’ve seen one of these before. Zander and M.K., do you remember that map that Dad had hanging in the study? Of the Hemelman Trench? That’s what made me think of it.”