The Cotten Stone Omnibus: It started with The Grail Conspiracy... (The Cotten Stone Mysteries)

by Lynn Sholes

  She smiled at him as she untied the ribbon and opened the box. “Oh my goodness,” she gushed, seeing the contents. “Amouage!”

  “They say it is the most expensive perfume in the world,” Eli said.

  Mariah held the lead crystal and gold bottle to her throat. “You spoil me so,” she said. “Thank you, Eli.” She held the perfume out toward Richard. “Can you believe what Eli has done?”

  Richard said nothing.

  When Mariah opened the bottle, the aroma of its ingredients filled the air. Rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, sandalwood, silver frankincense . . .

  “You deserve to be spoiled,” Eli said before returning his attention to Mariah’s husband. “So now, Richard, what are we doing about the Stone woman?”

  Richard Hapsburg felt sweat bead up on the top of his head. “We can’t seem to rid ourselves of her. You’ve said that repeatedly.” His voice came in jittery spurts, and he instantly regretted his nervousness. He twisted his Rolex to the inside of his wrist and glimpsed at it. He had no interest in the time, and it didn’t register in his brain. He needed to appear nonchalant, unshaken, and noting the time might give that impression.

  As calmly and with as much control as he could, Richard said, “She is out of the picture, at least for now. We’ve already discredited her, and now we’ve got her traumatized. She witnessed an unspeakable horror and saw something that was not of this world. She won’t tell anyone—who would believe her? It would sound like another sensational attempt to make headlines and recover from her last debacle. Right now, she can’t be sure of anything, even if deep in her mind she senses it was all done by our hand.” Richard tugged at his cuffs, satisfied with his response.

  “You know where she is now?” Luddington asked.

  “She fled into the jungle, as predicted.” He chose the word “predicted” purposefully. “As far as we can tell, she hasn’t emerged.”

  Luddington paced across the late-nineteenth-century Ushak Turkish carpet, finally stopping and stroking the head of a stuffed Bengal tiger that stood forever poised to attack. “She will always be a concern, Richard. That is why she was created.”

  Richard was perfectly aware not only of who the woman was but also of the fact that she wasn’t going away anytime soon. Because of his well-executed plan, though, there might at least be a reprieve. Couldn’t Luddington show some gratitude for that?

  Richard buried the anger threatening to surface. “I only meant that we may have frightened her enough that a part of her is so terrorized she will choose to stay hidden. She won’t want to pursue the tablet or us.”

  Luddington returned to the mantle for his cognac. He took a sip. “For a while, maybe,” he said, seeming to savor the velvet liquid. “Richard, you must stay focused. Be the jeweler with your loupe to your eye, and she the stone beneath. You will document every facet of every move, every step, and every breath she takes. She is our Achilles’ heel, Richard. Cotten Stone is our nemesis.”

  The Shaman

  First, Cotten felt the bumping along, the dangling of her arms, the pressure in her head. Then she fought to open her eyes.

  She struggled to focus.

  Heels. She looked down on old and weathered bare heels traipsing along a jungle path. Someone carried her, a bony shoulder digging into her abdomen. She hung head-down, her chin knocking against sweaty skin.

  Jumbled, disconnected thoughts formed in her brain, but nothing coherent. She moaned.

  A buzzing sounded in her ears, then turned to ringing, and she felt herself fading out.

  * * *

  Smoke.

  It stung in her nose. Cotten turned away.

  Then chanting.

  Low, rhythmic. What language?

  Same words, over and over, and the harsh smoke coming back to her nostrils.

  Cotten turned her head and groaned.

  Something moist, a cloth maybe, dampened her lips. She wanted more. A drink. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her throat was so dry it burned.

  A little more from the cloth drizzled through her lips.

  Water. Sweet, sweet water.

  The chanting stopped, and the smell of smoke diminished.

  Her mind seemed to be coming together. Finally, she forced her eyes open.

  A man, black eyes surrounded by a dark olive face netted with lines, stared down at her. He arched a brow.

  “Good medicine,” he said.

  Cotten blinked.

  Another face came into focus, peering over the man’s shoulder. A woman’s face, leathery, with glittering black eyes and long black hair pulled tight at the nape of her neck.

  Who were they? Where had they brought her? Cotten tried to think of the answers. Had these people raided the campsite? She flinched as the man leaned toward her.

  “Good medicine,” he repeated. Then he said something to the woman.

  The woman nodded and smiled as she spoke in a language Cotten thought was Quechua. The tone was not threatening. Maybe they did not intend to hurt her.

  The man also smiled. Perfectly shaped white teeth.

  “Ah,” the woman said, her face backing away and out of sight.

  Cotten’s head hurt, especially the right side of her forehead just above her eye. She touched it lightly with her fingertips. There was some kind of bandage, thick and sticky.

  “Good medicine,” the man said again.

  The woman reappeared and held a small pot to Cotten’s lips.

  “Drink,” the old Indian said.

  She sipped, and the woman grinned, muttering words that were obviously meant to encourage and approve Cotten’s effort.

  The taste told Cotten the liquid wasn’t just water. There was a tart, fruity aftertaste, but not unpleasant. Cotten swallowed, and the elixir soothed her throat. Some of it spilled out the corners of her mouth and rolled down the sides of her neck.

  The woman chattered on as she repositioned herself to tilt Cotten’s head up and give her another chance at drinking her concoction.

  Cotten took a good gulp, and the woman lowered her head back to the mat.

  “Thank you,” Cotten said, her mouth finally moist. She looked around and realized that she was in a hut made from stone, thatch, and timber. Suspended from the beams above her hung hundreds of—what could she call them—ornaments? Collections of brilliantly colored feathers, red, yellow, green, teal; plants, dried and fresh; and cordage.

  The man noticed her curiosity, stood, and plucked one down to show her. It seemed to be made of a fresh plant material, somewhat like corn tassels, and bound at the base with rough twine. Dragging his thumb across it, he fanned it open so she could see in the center.

  It took a moment to register what she was looking at. Threaded in the middle of the tassels was a long, thin white bone, hollow in the center.

  “Condor,” he said, moving away.

  She tracked him with her eyes as he moved to a small pit dug in the dirt floor. A thin trail of smoke coiled from it, rising up and seeping out through the thatch.

  The man crouched and held the tassels in the pit until they caught fire. He blew on them, killing the flames, leaving them smoldering and smoking.

  He waved it beneath his nose and breathed in and out. He moved back to her and waved it for her to breathe in. Reluctantly, she did so. This was the same smell, the same smoke that was in the air when she’d awakened.

  “The smoke calls out the bad spirits. The condor carries them away.” Then he took her hand and pressed it to the bandage on her head. “They go with the condor.”

  Fetishes and talismans, she thought. That’s what all those things were hanging above her. It was a medicine man, a shaman, who treated her wounds.

  Suddenly, she recalled her flight from the camp to Rimancu, and her fall. She had struck her head and must have lost consciousness.<
br />
  “How long have I been here?” she asked.

  He fumbled for a stick propped against a basket, then brought it close for her to see. Three notches had been etched in the bark-stripped stick.

  “Three days?” she asked.

  The shaman touched each notch with a long, gnarled, and brown index finger. He flashed his white-toothed smile at her, seemingly proud of his record keeping.

  “Rimancu,” he said. “It is not a good place for you. They do not let anyone stay.”

  “Who?”

  The man drew back, his face solemn. “Mahorela—descendants of the dark heaven.”

  From the expression on his face, she surmised that she had touched on native myth or theology. Not a subject to be discussed with an outsider.

  “I tripped and fell. You found me there—in Rimancu?”

  He nodded.

  “I guess I’m lucky you were around.”

  “I was told to go there and find you.” He stood, ending the conversation.

  “Wait,” she said. “Who told you? How would—” Cotten rose up on her elbows and tried to sit erect, but dizziness swamped her.

  The man turned and left the hut.

  She wanted to ask him more—especially about her friends. Cotten fell back on the woven mat. Like shrapnel, questions embedded themselves in her brain.

  Uneasiness swept over her. She had to leave. Get back to civilization. As soon as she was able, she would start the trek out of the jungle, contact the authorities, get help up to the camp.

  As she closed her eyes, her mind filled with the vision of the warm, sticky blood flowing from Edelman’s head wound, the singeing heat from the flames engulfing José, and Paul’s lifeless body on the ground.

  But the one vision that dominated them all was of the blinding light from the column of fireflies.

  And the levitating tablet.

  The Healer

  The following morning, Cotten awoke feeling her strength growing and her alertness sharpening. With the brilliant morning sunlight streaming into the hut, she had a fresh clear-headedness that provoked her inquisitiveness.

  She looked under the blanket at what she wore. Her clothes had been replaced with a wide drape of soft cloth wound around her. It was bound at the waist with a cloth belt and was fastened at the shoulder with a pin, about five inches long, that had a square head decorated with geometric designs. It appeared to be made from hammered copper. Cotten readjusted the dress and watched the doorway.

  As expected, her daily visitors soon arrived, and she sat up.

  “Ah, you feel well this morning,” the shaman said, entering the hut. His clothing was different from Cotten’s—he wore a poncho with bands of fringe hanging below his knees and on his ankles.

  The woman followed him, grinning as she always seemed to do. She was dressed like Cotten.

  “I feel like I have finally awakened from a bad dream,” Cotten said. She touched her head wound—there was no bandage, only a rough patch of skin.

  “The medicine is good,” the man said, “and the condor is good.”

  Cotten didn’t think they had told her their names, and she was certain she hadn’t asked, nor had she told them hers. “I don’t know where to start, what to ask first.” She decided to begin with her name and in return learn theirs. The man’s name was Yachaq, meaning “wise man and healer.” The woman was called Pilpintu, which meant “hummingbird.”

  “She was named that when she became a woman,” Yachaq explained, “because she flutters from place to place.”

  Yachaq liked Cotten’s name. “Your name comes from Pacha­mama—Mother Earth,” he said.

  Though she explained that her name was not spelled the same as the cotton plant, he still seemed to approve and connect it to nature.

  Yachaq instructed Pilpintu to help him get Cotten to her feet.

  She felt as if she had just climbed out of a pool, her body extraordinarily heavy and her legs weak. She experienced a fleeting moment of lightheadedness that made her grip the forearms of Yachaq and Pilpintu for balance. “Wow, being off your feet for a few days . . .” Her head spun, and her legs started to give way.

  They took several steps, guiding her outside. In the bright morning light, Cotten had her first real glimpse of the village—stone huts with thatched roofs, cobbled lanes, llamas and alpacas grazing, bronze-skinned men and women moving about doing daily chores, children playing. There were agricultural terraces carved out of the mountain above her, and the river flowed below the village. She was closer to the valley than she had been at Edelman’s campsite. Cotten felt like a time traveler, knocked on her head and transported to a time before Pizarro and his conquistadors. There were no T-shirts, no Nike Airs, no cars or bikes, no sign of modern civilization at all.

  Yachaq and Pilpintu guided her to a nearby stone bench. Once Cotten was seated and comfortable, she asked, “Where is Rimancu?”

  As she spoke the word, Pilpintu gasped and covered her mouth, her brows pinching.

  “There,” the man said, pointing up the mountain. “A half day’s walk.”

  She remembered him saying that he had been told to go look for her. How could that be? “Who told you to find me?”

  Yachaq stared with his black eyes into hers. “You are not ready yet,” he said. “Perhaps tomorrow or the next day.”

  “I don’t understand. And how is it that you speak English? Does anyone else here speak English?”

  “You rush . . . like your life, I suspect. Let it unfold, Cotten Stone. If you rush, you will pass thresholds and byways without ever seeing them. All things—all answers—are given to us when we are ready to receive them.”

  “You’ve never lived in New York,” she said, laughing.

  He stared at her with a head slightly cocked to the side. Then he closed his eyes and breathed deeply three times before looking at her again.

  She thought he stared because he didn’t understand her comment about New York. But when he spoke next, she knew that wasn’t what he had been thinking.

  “Cotten Stone, I have received your name. To me, to us, to Viracocha, the creator god, you are Mayta. Mayta—the only one.”

  Cotten choked, craving air as if she were being held under the water.

  Liquid Light

  During her days of recovery, Cotten got to know much of the daily routine of the people in the village. She watched them plant and work the fields. The women chewed corn kernels, along with seeds or fruit, and spit the pulp into jars with warm water to ferment, yielding chicha—the Incan version of beer. They domesticated ducks and guinea pigs for food, sheared alpacas and an occasional wild vicuna for wool, and spun the wool into thread with simple spindles and whorls. There were rituals and traditions Cotten discovered dated back centuries.

  No day started without prayer.

  Yachaq spent considerable time with her, but he had not revealed much about himself. Instead, he prodded, led her, guided her, until finally she confessed what had happened in Edelman’s camp that terrible night. Yachaq listened intently, but to her surprise, showed no shock at what she described. He questioned nothing she told him, not even showing a subtle arch of the brow.

  One afternoon she watched two young boys participate in a coming-of-age ritual. As she looked upon their blood-smeared faces, Cotten thought of Passover. Her sparse religious upbringing, those early days of summer Bible school, brought back the story of the night when God unleashed the tenth plague upon Egypt—the night all firstborn children were slain, except for those of the Israelites. God instructed them to mark their doors with the blood of a lamb, and they would be passed over. How would she ever understand or explain how she was passed over that terrible night in Edelman’s camp?

  Cotten looked around the village. She could learn to live here—to blend in, become invisible. Staying here, hidden in this remote village, wou
ld keep her safe. She was a lost cause, and she wanted to remain so.

  Sitting at the base of a red-trunked coloradito tree, Cotten watched the ceremony as she fought the onset of tears. She covered her face with her hands, seeming incapable of making a decision on what to do next. Suddenly, she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder.

  “Come,” said Yachaq. “Let us go for a walk. I think there are things you are now prepared to see.”

  As they wandered to the perimeter of the village, Cotten asked, “Why don’t you ever talk about yourself? I don’t know anything about you, yet I’ve told you almost everything about me.” Almost.

  “There is not much to tell.”

  “Will you answer if I ask questions?”

  “Perhaps,” Yachaq said. He smiled at her. “What is it you want to know?”

  “Who are you? And how did you come to speak such excellent English?”

  Yachaq looked straight ahead as they walked. “When I was a boy, my mother took me into the city to the Monasterio del Cusco, an old Jesuit monastery. Our lives had been hard, and she did not want me to grow up in poverty. So she left me with the monks, making me promise to stay and not follow her home.”

  “How sad,” Cotten said.

  “Eventually, I was put up for adoption, and an American family took me in as their son. They moved me to Oregon, where I grew up. I loved them, but still in my heart I ached for my homeland and the way of my people. I never grew accustomed to the American way of life—the lack of spirituality, the lack of respect for Pachamama, I could not understand. And so, after my adoptive parents’ deaths, I came home to Peru.”

  “They call you a wise man and a healer,” Cotten said.

  “Mostly because I am of the two worlds—the ancient and the modern,” he said.

  Yachaq led her to a trail that angled down toward the Urubamba River. “This path is old,” he said. “Generations of my people have left their footprints here.”

  “I have another question.”

  Yachaq nodded his willingness to hear it.