The Keepers of the Rose

by DJ Dalasta

  “Are you peeing,” Sayla asked him.

  “No hon, I’m shaving,” he replied sarcastically, fastening his buckle. Someone had beaten them to the site and she was visibly upset, pursed lips, drawn brows and hands placed firmly on her hips tilted slightly to one side, a perfectly displayed and classic female pose. He decided not to tell her that the looters probably helped themselves to the valuables long before she was even born. He wasn’t surprised as most of the ancient Mayan sites he came across bore some semblance to this one, ruined and empty.

  “There’s no need to be an ass, Rock, we only spent the last two weeks in this area and the previous month planning, to find nothing,” she said. Her last word echoed in the cavern.

  “Nothing?” He repeated back to her. “Nothing,” he said to himself silently. Rock looked around, contemplating. He feared she was right, the only thing they’d found in these caves were shards of broken pottery. He kicked the dusty floor, moving a few of the pieces to the surface. The walls were covered in fading art but that didn’t interest him, however Wallace Bimby, their resident anthro would go giddy with delight when he made it in this far to view the pictures.

  Rock shined his headlamp in each direction but as he already discovered, the cave ended here. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said aloud, pushing his finger down a large crack in the wall, causing loose rock to cascade to the ground. “The outside glyphs are good indicators of what lies within and I would think the cave should have moved further than this. At least another room or two.” He shook his head, more confused than frustrated.

  “I thought you were supposed to be the best,” she taunted him.

  “Even at the top doesn’t mean you’re above the clouds,” he said with a smile.

  “Then it must be luck, is that all the great Rock Tilton can be accredited too? All those finds, all that treasure. You’re perhaps the luckiest man alive.” She knew how to poke just the right spot. He attributed none of his success to luck and never in his life had one of his own talked to him as such. But here was this young girl, fresh out of school, along for her first expedition as part of their team, giving him shit.

  “You’ll get used to the disappointment young one,” he said. She sneered at the comment. “For every one find that holds anything of value we’ll come across at least a hundred, if not more, of places like this. Old and ruined, long since looted with nothing but wall paintings to make Wallace piss himself in delight.”

  “These picture and writings are worth more than all the gold you’ve found and all the gold you still seek,” Wallace Bimbi’s voice struck from behind him and Rock turned to find the squat man staring at him.

  “I’m glad you think so Wallace, and I am happy that someone appreciates these dead cave dwellers’ artistic thoughts,” he said to the highly acclaimed and decorated Central American archaeologist, anthropologist and historian. But more importantly, Wallace was the man who funded the expeditions.

  The old man snorted at him, which was the usual end to their brief banters, then looked to Sayla. “Don’t let him fool you, he would leave and never tell a soul about these places once he knew the find held nothing of material value. That’s the reason I have to come in and look for myself.” Wallace ran his fingers through the few wisps of gray hair still clinging to his head.

  “Then why even put up with him,” she asked.

  “Don’t be stupid now doll, Rock can find places nobody else can, he has a keen ability even I can’t seem to explain. He’s the best. Now get him out of here before he ruins things.” He waved his hands in a shooing motion and Sayla grabbed Rock by the arm to lead him out. As they stepped cautiously on the uneven floor, members of their team passed by, arms laden with lights and gear that Wallace would use to document the site. They were almost to the entrance when the old man’s voice echoed down the walls. “Do I smell urine,” they heard him ask. Rock smiled.

  They emerged from the cave, passing through two elaborate figures carved on either side of the entrance. Rock let his fingers slide over the Mayan God of rain and lighting, Chac, they called him. His reptilian body was now smooth as the elements wore away the small details over time, but his axe, resembling a serpent was quite clear in its distinction. There were two good-sized waterfalls near to this area and Chac was said to dwell in such places when not in the clouds. Rock looked up to a clear blue sky. The rain god was certainly nowhere to be seen.

  They stepped down onto the soft ground to begin threading their way through the jungle and back to camp. Mosquitoes in thick bunches swarmed their path, plucking at the exposed skin, though having made that mistake before, Rock was fully prepared. He pulled a net over his face and neck and made sure his sleeves and pants ran their full length.

  “You could have stayed,” he said, as they walked, “Wallace didn’t wave you out, just me.”

  “Why only you?”

  “He says I distract him. I used to stay and try and learn. He’s a good teacher, you know. But I quip too much for him, and he’s right, with me in there it usually takes him much longer.”

  “How do you know it wouldn’t be the same with me,” she asked.

  Rock ducked under a branch and almost stepped on a little black snake as it hurried away. “Cause you’re young, and you care. You’d shut up and let him teach you. I’ve absorbed about as much of that as I can, now I’m interested in finding something I can put my hands on and take with me.”

  “Me too,” she chimed in excitedly, “I’d like to find some treasure nobody else has ever seen.”

  “You just have,” he replied, “though it isn’t what you were probably hoping for. Those scribbles will give many people with boring jobs something to do and that information will be given to countless others and so on. Uncovering what a culture was all about and what happened to them, that’s quite a treasure. I’d never tell Wallace that of course.”

  “I think he already knows.”

  “Probably. My point is I know this culture, in and out, just from spending time with the old fart. That knowledge has helped me to understand them, and find more places and more artifacts. You have to understand someone before you can find what they’ve left behind. Just a legend or a general location isn’t enough, you might find something, but it won’t be great and probably already looted.” He casually gestured back towards the cave.

  “What about all those old maps you have plastered in your office, haven’t they led you anywhere?”

  Rock’s map collection was enormous, spanning two full rooms with the more delicate ones encased on the walls. “A map helps,” he said. “But most of those have been drawn and redrawn and lost their authenticity. They’ll give you a general location at best. As I said before, you need to know the man who made the first map. Know him, and you can decipher where his drawn hand really leads.”

  Rock paused his walk and turned to look at her. Sayla met his eyes. Her big green orbs reflected what little sun made it down to the jungle floor, and they gave in. “I think I’m going to go back and help Wallace,” she said softly.

  “I think that’s a good idea.” He watched her start trudging back the way they had come. “Be careful where you step,” he called after her.

  He walked another hundred yards and the broad panels of their bright yellow tents told him he had arrived at camp. He trotted into the clearing and found it all but vacant. Most of the members of the small team hovered around Wallace back at the cave, attending to his multiple needs. The only ones still here were one of their local hires from the nearest village and Brett Silver, Rock’s diving partner. Brett was spraying insect repellant on himself with one hand and swatting at the air in front of him with the other. To Rock, he looked mad and off-balance, akin to an older man trying to roller skate.

  Rock always dragged Brett along on his expeditions, even the ones inland as this one turned out to be. Central America was littered with underground caves and wa
terways and he always wanted to be prepared. They’d been on hundreds of dives together over the past decade, mostly in the Caribbean searching for lost ships and the occasional unexplored cave. Brett shared his greatest find, the remains of a 16th century Spanish Galleon that sunk a few miles off the coast of Haiti. The find netted over two million dollars in old golden coins. What they were able to keep after taking care of their investors and the Spanish government was just under seven hundred thousand, which they split down the middle. Now, Brett just came along for the thrills, though it appeared he wasn’t enjoying himself much at the moment.

  Brett spotted his entrance, “when can we get back to the beach, the jungle sucks.”

  “Not everything can be found in the ocean,” Rock said coming over next to him.

  “Anything I want to find can be. I can’t take these bugs much longer.” He ran his hand over his short-cropped blond hair.

  “And I can’t take your bitching either,” Rock slapped him on the back and moved towards his tent.

  Rock climbed inside and flopped down on his air mat. He grabbed his notepad to start jotting down his thoughts. It helped him to organize his thinking and essentially was a key ingredient to finding the next location. Every expedition started and ended with his notes and every year his knowledge base grew with the stacks of paper. He eventually wanted to catch up electronically and commit his learning to a computer document but he realized they would probably stay etched in pencil until he was too old to go exploring the world. When he couldn’t walk, he’d transfer them over. That’s what he told himself.

  After he had written a page he felt his eyes start to droop and with nothing pressing to command his attention, he let himself drift away. His last thought lingered on the future and if he would ever again find anything to make his heart race as it had during his dive off Haiti. It had been years since he had come across anything significant. He was either due or washed up.

  Hours later, Rock awoke to the sounds of laughing. His tent was dark but the dancing light of a fire bled through the nylon walls. He sat up and turned on his lamp, blinking his eyes to break from sleep. He caught a glimpse of his hands in the dim light. They appeared old and worn. The abounding creases and rough calloused patches made them look much older than his 39 years. But that was one of the small prices to be paid for his lifestyle.

  He quickly stretched his muscles and moved out of the tent. The whole crew had returned and they muddled around a central fire. He smiled and received a few nods in return but passed by the main core of the group and found Wallace sitting alone, pouring over his own notes. He sat in a small gazebo with a chair and small table, surrounded by a thin net. Rock brought his own fold up seat and joined Wallace, who looked up but said nothing as he sat down.

  “Anything interesting old man,” he said breaking the silence.

  Wallace grunted and held up his finger. Rock was used to the gesture. He never received an immediate response. After a minute of silence, the old man looked up, and curled his nose.

  “Well,” Rock said staring at Wallace, counting the crow lines branching off the corners of his eyes.

  “There are twenty,” he said unexpectedly.

  “How did you know what I was doing,” Rock laughed.

  “I don’t know what you are doing in that cracked head of yours. I’m saying there are twenty symbols here that are separated from the rest and don’t go along with the story told on the wall. They say something else entirely.” Wallace grimaced.

  “Try me,” Rock said candidly.

  “If I translated this correctly,” he started as always. Rock rolled his eyes knowing the old man translated the glyphs perfectly or as close as anyone could up to this point in the understanding of Mayan writing. “It says something about a place of transition and offerings, most likely sacrificial, as was their style. It says that the hill above the entrance is the sacred place to move between the worlds.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “Mickey!” He unexpectedly yelled towards the fire. “Bring me some tea!” He coughed again.

  “Did you send anyone to the hill,” Rock asked.

  “Of course I did, but we didn’t find anything. We wouldn’t, it’s too open to the elements. The years would have removed any evidence. Though I find it odd since I’ve never come across any site that led me to believe the Mayans used open hillsides to conduct their sacrifices to the Gods.”

  “They didn’t,” Rock replied quietly. “I’ll have a look tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Wallace said. “You know you have a smart cookie on your hands.”

  “Sayla?”

  “Is that her name?”

  “You know her name.”

  “Well, she certainly knows more than you did when we first started.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me, most kids know more than me these days,” he grinned. “What exactly though, you seemed impressed.”

  Wallace ignored him for a moment and looked back at his notepad. He grunted. “Well for one thing, she can translate decently, something that took me years to teach you. Do you know what she said when I asked her where she learned?”

  “I can guess. Online.” Rock even knew which site she used. He had a link to it on his own site, a domain about lost treasure and legends. It was quite popular. He couldn’t believe the amount of traffic it yielded and many of his links branched off to Mayan sites, translations, research and recent finds. One could learn a lot if they took the time to get around and move past the crap. However, most sites that wanted to link in were concerned with the quickly approaching doomsday foretold this year by the ending of the Mayan calendar. He denied those particular requests. Superstitions and end of the world fanatics bugged him.

  “How do you find anything on that interweb,” Wallace growled, “I type a word in and irrelevance and nonsense comes up, and if it’s not misinformation, it’s some big girl’s ass waving at me like a Japanese flag.”

  Rock almost burst out laughing. “I agree,” he said through a smile, “but there are some good places if you know how to find them.”

  “And I’m too old to learn,” Wallace replied.

  “I’ll check out your hill tomorrow,” Rock brought the conversation back into a sphere of relevance. “I have a feeling we’re missing something.” Rock stood up to leave just as Mickey was bringing Wallace his cup of tea. “I’ll see you in the morning,” Rock said and Wallace snorted, the usual end to their conversations.

  Most of the group still lingered around the fire, some had gone to bed and others were packing gear tightly away for the night. The jungle awoke at this hour. The darkened ground looked alive, moving with a swift motion dominated by millions of insects and the creatures that hunted them.

  He found a place next to the fire, sandwiched between Mickey, who just returned, and Sayla. Mickey was a graduate student at Vanderbilt and only a year younger than Sayla. He was the nerdy type. Short in height, wavy sandy colored hair, wide eyes and a beak of a nose. He wasn’t pretty, but he seemed intelligent enough. Rock slapped him on the knee as he sat down.

  “See anything interesting today?” Rock asked as he felt the heat of the fire fall over him.

  “Plenty,” Mickey replied, “the site was amazing, but Professor Bimbi finds it a little odd.”

  “I know, but let’s get one thing straight. Wallace doesn’t teach classes anymore, he just helps the department, so call him Wallace or Mr. Bimbi. None of this professor crap.” Mickey laughed.

  “Do you think there’s another site around here, another cave?” Sayla asked, again too excited to know any better.

  “Perhaps.” Rock slid his chair backwards. The heat was a little much. “But who’s to say. If there is another one, we probably won’t be able to find it by the time our supplies run low.”

  “It has to be around here, maybe near one of the waterfalls,” she said.

  “We’ve searched many of those areas, I doubt ther
e’s anything we missed. If there is a second cave we’ll find it by answering one question.” He glanced at both of them. They hung on every word, nodding like a couple of pigeons. “It’s simple, why use two sites, why need two caves?” They both remained silent. “Think on that tonight,” he said and rose from his seat, “have an answer for me in the morning.”

  Rock walked off towards his tent. He had to finish his notes for the day. Then he’d make sure everything was put away for the night and tuck in. Tomorrow would be interesting, he knew, for he had already formulated his own answer to the question.

  Rock awoke early in the morning. He quickly made his way atop the hill that Wallace spoke of the day before. It rested a good hike above the cave site, sloping so steeply at times he had to stop and find a different way around. But eventually he found a broad flat patch near the peak, spotted with giant boulders and, unlike the rest of the jungle, covered mostly in grass and moss. Above him, clouds bunched in dark formations blocking the morning sun. Chac must have returned to the sky, he mused, hoping the rain would hold off until the afternoon.

  He started poking around, the ground was soft and his boots made brief imprints before the grass sponged back to its original form. A slight breeze blew from the north. During the night, he had realized the cave site they found was just the beginning of something more elaborate. The real discovery rested nearby, created by some event, moving further into the ground, deeper and now secret. The entrance wasn’t necessarily hidden, he knew, but that didn’t mean it would be easy to locate.

  He came across this type of puzzle often, the process of searching felt natural and he fell right into his old routines. The first step was to determine what was valuable or important and at what level of secrecy was to be maintained, if any. From there he would find the source of information and plot a general location. The next step, and most pivotal, was to develop a why. He then used the information from his answer to decide upon a specific location. The rest was persistence. It was a basic process of deconstruction. Take what you know, answer deductively and rationally to the questions unanswered, combine the results and then stick it out. Sometimes he wasted weeks having everything wrong, but that’s the way things fell. Many in his profession based finds on luck, to him that was the bullshit way of passing off a defeat. He didn’t believe in luck, reason and common sense far bested luck in results.

  Rock perked up at the sound of footsteps. Sayla and Mickey trudged up the hill together and both slumped in exhausted postures from the climb.

  “Good morning,” Rock said cheerfully, leaning against one of the many boulders.

  They responded in kind, then stopped to rest. Sayla leaned against the same boulder and Mickey bent over with one hand on each knee, wheezing.

  “Quite a climb, I would think at your age, you both would be in better shape,” Rock grinned.

  “Have you found anything,” Sayla asked.

  “Nothing yet.”

  “What do you hope to find? The professor said that time would have worn away most anything left in the open,” Mickey said, standing up straight but still breathing heavily.

  “Who’s this professor you speak of,” Rock asked, seemingly confused.

  “Sorry…Wallace,” Mickey rolled his eyes.

  “Oh Wallace. Well that old man knows nothing about finding things. He just knows what to do with them when someone else finds them. Why do you think he has me along? You really think he’d pay for my overpriced and outlandish service if he could find things on his own?”

  “I never thought of it like that,” Mickey said.

  “Shut up,” Sayla hit Rock on the shoulder, “now what are you really looking for up here, a clue or something?”

  Rock laughed. “Yes, I’m looking for a piece of stone chipped off from one of the cave carvings that when analyzed will point me in the right direction to find a petrified footprint that leads me ultimately to a burial ground. This isn’t a treasure hunt darling, this is trying to locate something that was never meant to be hidden but has simply been lost in time. There won’t be any purposeful clues left behind to point you in a direction, the Mayans weren’t like that. The reason I’m up here has to do with my question I posed to you last night.”

  “Why use two sites?” Mickey repeated the question.

  “Yes,” Rock said, “but even more basic than that, answer the question of, why.”

  “One to live in, one to sacrifice in,” Sayla guessed.

  “Not their style,” Rock replied. “Caves were places of the underworld, sacrificial places and such, not usually for living.”

  “Then what was the cave we found used for,” she asked.

  “Well, that’s a question we need to answer, and a step in the right direction.” Rock started walking across the hill. Mickey and Sayla followed behind him, thinking out loud. He listened to their banter and though they were moving down the wrong path, the way they were moving was good.

  Rock decided to interrupt them. “Let’s get off the idea that the cave was for some other purpose, I like where you’re headed, but try to imagine that sacrifices were actually done in that cave.”

  “But there’s no evidence for that at all,” Mickey protested immediately.

  “How do you know, perhaps there is, you just haven’t seen it.” Rock stomped hard on the ground and continued on. The action seemed to have clued Sayla.

  “You’re saying that the cave is larger than what we saw. Maybe somehow it closed up. An earthquake or something.” Sayla’s voice rose up at the end with excitement.

  “Mayan caves aren’t known for being easily navigated,” he answered. “Sometimes you have to squeeze through tiny openings, in others you have to completely submerse yourself in water and swim to another part. It isn’t inconceivable for this cave to have had a slight portal that was sealed by some event. Then perhaps the cave opened itself somewhere else, perhaps an opening less desirable than the first.” He knew from study that this particular region was seismically active, especially hundreds of years ago.

  “You think the second cave opens from above,” she said back to him.

  “It’s just a theory, but with what I saw inside the cave, and what Wallace read on the walls, it’s a possibility.”

  “That’s cool,” Mickey said as he and Sayla began to smash their feet into the ground, imitating Rock. Two paces later, Mickey crushed through the surface. His leg was sucked into the ground and his arms flung out reaching for help. Rock and Sayla ran to him and grabbed his arms, pulling him back to safety.

  “You ok,” Rock asked when they were clear of the hole.

  Mickey nodded. “Is that what you were looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Rock flattened out on his stomach and inched forward. He shined a light into the blackness. Below him, a multitude of unbroken pots and artifacts rested untouched. A dull knife lay clearly on a stone shelf and three tunnels branched off, heading deeper into the ground.

  Rock was amazed at what he saw. He wriggled backwards and sat next to Mickey. “How?

  “I don’t know,” the boy replied, “luck?”

 

  Chapter 2

  Miami, March 2012