by Gigi Pandian
Wesley emailed me the results, including the high-resolution photo of the letter he’d found planted in Becca’s library book. I’d taken a photo with my own phone, but the x-ray version he sent me was different. It contained a sketch with hand-drawn lines, just like Gabriela had described. I wouldn’t have thought it was a map if it hadn’t been for the hint in Rick’s manuscript. It was just a few overlapping lines. They were straight, like a grid, but with squiggly swirls where they met.
Wesley had dismissed them as well, which is why he hadn’t mentioned them when I’d initially emailed about the letter.
“But we still have no frame of reference for what the lines and squiggles mean,” Lane said.
“Which makes sense, because he wouldn’t have given away everything in the contents of a letter he sent to his son. There’s no starting point for a frame of reference.”
“Assuming it’s a map leading to one of the temples that was covered by jungle when the French came as colonizers,” Lane said, “even with a starting point, things have changed. There are probably a hundred times more roads than there were more than a century ago when this was drawn.”
“What if it’s not a map of roads. What if it’s rivers. That could be why the lines have this added squiggly element.”
Lane shook his head. “Rick would have found enough evidence with all his research.”
“He needed my help with something. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone along with Becca’s plan. And just like roads, rivers change too. The Angkorian Empire flourished because of the river tributaries from the Mekong as well as their own irrigation systems.”
“I don’t know.” He scrunched his face as he looked at the image. “It doesn’t look like either roads or rivers.”
“It’s a stretch, I know.” I sighed. “But there’s something not fitting together quite right for this to be the map to a temple.”
“What are you thinking, Jones?”
“You’re not going to like it. This is a snake treasure. What if it’s protected by a snake as well? Have you heard of a Cobra Lock?”
“A lock that needs to be unlocked with a mantra, not a key.”
I’d been thinking about naga bandham Cobra Locks, like the one Wesley had mentioned, and come to the realization that a lock isn’t always something you unlock with a regular key. In the hypothetical example of the naga bandham tonal lock, it’s the right frequency that unlocks something.
“What if it’s the faded lines that tell us something about a tonal mantra?” Jaya asked.
“Even if you’re right, we need some kind of map to get us there before we can know where to look for the lock.”
I glared at him. “I’m trying to save your neck. You could at least appreciate that I’m thinking creatively.”
I downloaded more Cambodian history to read on the plane, as well as a copy of Empire of Glass, the Rick Coronado novel set in Cambodia.
I didn’t get far. I fell asleep an hour into the flight, hoping my own subconscious would tell me where I was going and what I was doing.
Instead, I dreamt of Gabriela Glass riding on the back of a motorcycle under the stone gates of Angkor Thom, clinging to the back of an unknown man, which morphed into me riding on the back of a motorcycle in India with my arms wrapped around Lane as we sped south from Kochi to Trivandrum. When we’d been on that trip in search of the Heart of India, we’d had a plan. I didn’t usually run blind into a dangerous situation, but now, the need to protect Lane made me act in spite of my better judgment.
The dream shifted again. I was still with Lane, but had fallen into Gabriela Glass’s Cambodian setting of Empire of Glass when Gabriela finds not the valuable, shiny treasure that she usually rescued from impenetrable lairs or evil masterminds, but a lost city. This wasn’t a city filled with riches, but the remains of what had once been a thriving metropolis before the waterways of Cambodia shifted over time.
Critics had been divided about the book, as were fans. I was in the camp that loved it. Which probably explained why I’d fallen into it so vividly in my dream. I splashed into a vast lake at the base of a cliff. I lost sight of Lane, but caught sight of a serpent rising out of the water.
The story of the lost city in Empire of Glass mirrored the origin story of Indian prince Kaundinya, Khmer princess Soma, and Soma’s snake king father. Using symbolism, as Rick Coronado loved to do, the lost city was literally a mirror of the cliff-top temple. In Empire of Glass, instead of sitting high on a mountain, Gabriela’s lost city was found at the bottom of the cliff in a spot that had once been the naga king’s watery kingdom. The spot where the cobra king drank up the water to present a gift to his precious daughter and her worthy husband.
Rick’s fictional lost Angkorian era city was based on the real life Preah Vihear Temple that sits high on a cliff on the border between Cambodia and Thailand. It’s still a disputed site. The French drew new maps of Cambodia when it was a French protectorate, and one such map included Preah Vihear as part of Cambodia. Yet the only entrance to the temple perched on that steep cliff is through Thailand, even though courts have ruled it belongs to Cambodia. As with many historical sites that existed before modern boundaries were drawn, there’s no easy answer.
The treasure in Empire of Glass was knowledge, not physical objects like in The Glass Thief. But I’d forgotten something. Rick’s editor had told me about a plot line that was cut.
My eyes popped open.
I pulled Lane’s headphones off. “Preah Vihear.”
“You think that’s where Marc is going?”
“Rick’s fictional city in Empire of Glass is based on it. It was the city itself that was the treasure in the book, but what if there’s more there?”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
“I know. Because if I’m right, this just got a lot more complicated.”
I grumpily accepted a glass of wine from the flight attendant as Lane put his headphones back on.
I eyed the wine before taking a sip. In Rick’s novel, Gabriela was drugged by her nemesis. While delirious, she had a vision that princess Soma had sapphire blue eyes made of the gemstones, and her father, the naga king, had vibrant red eyes made of ruby gems, showing their true selves as semi-divine nagas.
Empire of Glass left it ambiguous as to whether Gabriela had really had a vision, or if it was a drug-induced dream. I thought it was pretty clear it had been the poison. It was her own subconscious that had put together the facts she needed to find the location of the lost city. I finished the wine and got back to sleep, but this time I didn’t dream.
I woke up in the airplane seat with my head on Lane’s shoulder, as an announcement told us we were getting ready to land in Hong Kong, where we had our layover.
I stretched my shoulders and ankles. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed sleep. I saved you food.”
He knew I would have murdered him if he hadn’t. I accepted the foil-wrapped sandwich. “I needed to read—”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I read for a few hours before getting a couple of hours rest myself. I have a feeling we’re going to need our energy for what we’ll find there.”
“Why?” My grogginess dissipated as I looked at his worried face. “What did you find?”
“It’s what I didn’t find. We still don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into. I made that mistake seven years ago.”
“Before you had me, remember?” My lips cracked from the dry plane air as I smiled.
“I won’t blame you if you want to turn back. Are you sure you want to get on the next flight?”
Chapter 38
We arrived in Siem Reap shortly after eight o’clock in the morning.
The heat here was similar to Goa, but less oppressive. At least at this time of year. December was high season for tourism in Cambodia, with no monsoon rains and the most temperate c
limate of the year. It was barely seventy-five degrees as we walked from the plane to the airport terminal.
I checked my email while we were waiting to go through customs, and found an email from Dr. Sophea Kim, the Angkor National Museum curator I’d contacted. She was sorry to say she wasn’t available after all that day, but her colleague Tina Chap could meet me. The message said Tina’s cousin Leap was a tuk-tuk driver who gave tours, and she’d given him our flight information so he could meet us at the airport. I wasn’t sure how we’d find him, but it turned out to be easier than I thought—and also far worse.
Lane swore. I followed his gaze as he pointed toward a skinny teenager holding a sign that read JAYA JONES.
“So much for anonymity,” I murmured.
“Mr. Leap?” I said as we reached the young man holding the sign that broadcast our arrival.
Mr. Leap’s face came to life as he smiled, and I realized he was older than I’d first assumed. He wasn’t a teenager, but was closer to my age. “Please, Oum Leap.”
“Uncle,” I said, smiling as I remembered the term of respect.
He led us to his tuk-tuk. The tuk-tuk is an open-air form of transportation that’s a cross between a car and motorcycle. The Cambodian style tuk-tuk is a motorcycle with a built-in seating area behind it, with wide cushioned seats and a roof, but no outer doors or seatbelts. As we piled into the seats with our limited luggage, our guide noticed me looking at his dual shirt collars. He grinned and explained he didn’t own a jacket, so since it hadn’t yet reached eighty degrees that morning—chilly, from his point of view—he’d dressed in a second white dress shirt over the first for warmth.
We rode to the hotel passing through the main drag of hotels. Christmas decorations lined the street, from lights strung to form the shape of Christmas trees to reindeer made of wire. I’d never been there around Christmas, and even though Buddhism coexisted peacefully with all religions, I was surprised. When we came to a stop in traffic, I asked about it. Mr. Leap told us he was hoping to buy a Christmas gift for his fiancé. He hadn’t figured out what to get her yet.
We talked with Mr. Leap while idling in traffic, and I was reminded how the best of humanity could be seen here. In spite of civil war, foreign invasion, mass murder, and family separation, the people of Cambodia I’d met were some of the kindest and most generous I’d encountered. It would be a simplification to say they were resilient and didn’t bear the scars of the past that was still fresh in their minds. But smiles greeted me everywhere, even when I opened my mouth and was obviously American. Plus, I loved how spicy Cambodian food was, even though everyone I’d mentioned this to in Cambodia had always pointed out it was their neighbors who liked really spicy food.
Dr. Chap was available to meet us that afternoon, so we had time to go to our hotel first. Mr. Leap dropped us off at the hotel we’d booked, and it took me some time to convince him to accept our money. It wasn’t that it wasn’t the right currency—American dollars were used here, and we’d taken out extra ten-dollar and one-dollar bills in Paris—but that he was doing a favor for his cousin Tina. He said we could pay him if we used his services later during our stay. When Lane spoke a few words of Khmer, he finally accepted.
“If I’ve just stepped into a Gabriela Glass novel,” I said to Lane as he lifted our bags from the tuk-tuk, “I’m going to scream. Don’t tell me you speak yet another language. Really?”
His arms were full, but he tilted his head toward a wrinkled guidebook sticking out of the side of his travel bag. “While you were sleeping on the flight, I learned some helpful phrases.”
Presumably using those phrases, Lane attempted to ask Mr. Leap to pick us up after lunch to meet Tina at the museum. Watching the baffled expression on our poor guide’s face, I stifled a laugh as I realized Lane had completely failed at getting across his question. Lane got the hint. He switched to English. At least the man was human.
I grinned to myself as I walked up the stairs leading to an indoor registration lobby. My gaze fell to a sweeping inner courtyard that reminded me of a French chateau. The French had left their mark in Cambodia. Flanking two Christmas trees decorated in gold ornaments were Buddhist statues.
When I’d almost reached the top of the stairs, I ran back down again. Mr. Leap’s helmet was back on his head, and he was sitting on the seat of the motorbike in front of the tuk-tuk, waiting for an opening in traffic.
“Can you wait a few minutes for us to check in? We have time to see a temple before lunch.”
Lane accepted the change of plans without protest as well. The resigned smile on his tired face, as he stood at the top of the stairs holding my luggage, told me he knew and accepted me for who I was.
Ten minutes later, we were sitting in the back of Mr. Leap’s tuk-tuk on the road to the Angkor archaeological park. The road quickly turned bumpy, and the temperature was heating up as it approached midday, but I hardly noticed either as we sped out of the city on the narrow roads cut through forest to bring travelers to the ancient temples.
The most popular temple in the Angkor complex is Angkor Wat, the temple that’s come to symbolize the whole area, followed by Ta Prohm, made famous by the film Tomb Raider because of the iconic trees growing through its ancient carvings. Angkor Wat, which translates to “city temple,” is often thought of as the single temple photographed with its majestic sandstone towers reflected in the lake in front of it. But in reality, it’s an area of seventy-seven square miles—a massive complex, especially in comparison to areas like San Francisco, which is only seven square miles. Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat early in the twelfth century, shortly before Jayavarman VII built the Bayon and many other temples. The suffix “varman” means protector, so it was added to the names of the Khmer kings.
We drove past a low wall with tree roots poking through the stone. Modern preservationists didn’t remove the spung trees that had grown up pushing their way through the seams of the temple’s stones, because the roots now held together the temple foundations. It was the strangler fig trees that posed a danger to the temples. The invasive strangler fig trees were deceptive in their beauty, wrapping their branches and roots around the spung trees, but strangling the host trees and eventually killing them.
I closed my eyes as I thought of the strangling seven years ago that had brought us here.
“I’ll be okay,” Lane whispered in my ear as Mr. Leap pulled off the road.
We had to buy passes before we could enter the archaeological park, so that was our first stop.
“Sorry you miss the best time for Angkor Wat,” Mr. Leap said.
Angkor Wat was most popular at sunrise, when the rising sun cast dramatic shadows over the temple’s three largest spires, and light and shadow worked an alchemical magic in the water’s reflection. But tourists who went for the view would miss the most meaningful parts of the temple—not the shadows, but the splendor of the temple itself.
“That’s okay. I want to see the Bayon today.” It was my favorite temple, and it had the added advantage that it didn’t have anything to do with the Serpent King. Before we could meet Tina Chap and get more information, this was a place that could inspire us before we faced whatever was waiting for us in Cambodia.
The Bayon was perhaps the most peaceful temple I’d ever visited. Not for the lack of tourists, since it got crowded as soon as tour buses began to arrive, but because of the dozens of towering stone faces looking serenely down at visitors. From a distance, the faces blend into the stone architecture and look like stone flowers or filigrees, but as you step closer to the temple, the mysterious half-smiles on the humongous stone faces catch you off guard. Long before I’d read Rick Coronado’s description of Gabriela Glass’s visit to the temple, I’d been drawn to Jayavarman VII’s enigmatic creation.
Mr. Leap parked his tuk-tuk across from the temple. As I remembered, at first glance the temple façade looked like ornamental towers. But
look more closely, and the stone reveals itself to be gigantic smiling faces perched high above the tiny people walking through the sacred city. The Bayon’s original name, before the French changed it, was Jayagiri—Victory Mountain.
“You want see the temple on your own,” he asked, “or with guide?”
Most of the younger generation I’d met in Cambodia would tell me their English wasn’t good, but as soon as I spoke with them for a few minutes I’d learn they were nearly as fluent as I was. Sure, there were a few stylistic or grammatical mistakes, but there was no problem communicating. Which was a good thing, since I’d only spoken a few dozen words of Khmer a decade ago, and realized that I’d forgotten nearly all of them.
“If you’ll be our guide, then yes,” I said, walking toward the temple entrance. “Come with us.”
Mr. Leap laughed. “If I’m your guide, we start here, not inside.” He pointed at a wooden lever and hunk of stone next to the parking lot. “This shows how those temple stones were made. The levers lifted the stones onto sand and rubbed the stones together to make smooth and fit together.”
“The stones were brought from far-off quarries on river boats, right?” I said. “Then sanded to fit together.” The intricate carvings were made on site, once the blocks of stone had been assembled. It was one of the great feats of the Angkorian Empire, how seamlessly the sandstone rocks fit together to form complex temple structures made only of stone.
Mr. Leap grinned. “You know almost as much about history as me. I call you Indiana Jones, not Jaya Jones. OK?”
“Actually, I—”
“She’d love that,” Lane said.
“Don’t feel left out, Mr. Peters,” he said to Lane. “Peter Pan, OK? You have young soul, I can tell.”
“That’s perfect,” I said, and ascended the steps leading to the temple. “Are you coming, Peter Pan?”
Miles of bas-relief carvings on high walls outside the temple depicted all aspects of Khmer life. The panels told the stories of kings and wars, but also the daily lives of regular people, such as the women shopping for fish in the market and the men who labored building the temples.
