The Enchantment (34 page)

The grinding sound intensified; the earth rattled and shook beneath their feet. Grass shuddered in fear.

Dirt rained down from the mesa's top.

Then it was over.

They stared in awe at the huge, gaping gash in the sandstone wall.

Larence let go of her hand and moved toward the crack, his hand outstretched.

"Cibola." The word floated back to Emma's ears, terrifying her more than the hallucination had. He wasn't going to go in there? Oh, God . . .

"Don't move!" she shrieked.

He didn't listen to her; he just kept moving forward like a sleepwalker.

She raced after him and grabbed his sleeve, spinning him around. "You can't go in there. It might close up on you."

He looked down at her, and there was a certainty in

312

Kristin Hannah

his eyes that made her dizzy with fear all over again. "It'sCibola."

She shook her head. "No." The word squeaked past her lips in a frightened whimper. ' 'You don't know that. Please ..."

"Come with me, Em, and be my love ..."

She tried to pull away. He held her tight. The thought of him walking into that darkness filled her with unreasoning fear. The rock could close as quickly as it had opened, and then he'd be gone. Gone.

She protested. "The animals—"

"Will be fine. They can't get out of the canyon, and there's plenty of food and water in here. Come with me."

Emma blinked up at him, clinging to his sleeve like a frightened, fretful child. Afraid. Uncertain.

He gave her hand a squeeze. All the love in the world filled his eyes. "Come on, Em. It may never open again. Come with me. Please. I love you. ..."

There was only one thing she could do. With a deep, shuddering breath, she shoved her fear aside and did what she'd never done in her life. She trusted.

Together, hand in hand, they walked into the jet black opening.

It was a darkness unlike anything she'd ever known. Like being buried alive.

"Emma?"

Larence's voice came to her from the blackness, disembodied yet comforting. She squeezed his hand tighter, trying to quell the infinitesimal shaking in her fingers. But whether she was afraid or excited, she couldn't honestly say.

He let go of her hand. She heard him rustling around beside her, picking up something from the ground.

Then came the hissing rip of cotton being wrenched apart, and the scratchy sound of a match being lit.

The match flared brightly, and Emma immediately noticed that Larence's left sleeve was missing. The next thing she noticed was the makeshift torch in his hand. He grinned at her look of surprise. "Another gem from Diamond Dick."

He touched the match to the cotton wrapped around the stick's top. It took hold and flared brightly, sending golden fingers zipping through the blackness. The cave funneled into a thin strip of black. A passageway.

"Cibola."

Larence said the word at the exact moment she 313

314

Kristin Hannah

thought it. Her heart sped up; sweat dampened her palms, turned them cold and clammy. Cibola.

Excitement wedded with fear and made her breath quicken. The harsh tenor of it echoed loudly in the confined space.

Together, holding hands, they felt their way along the cool, gritty sandstone walls. The torch created a kaleidoscope of twisting, dancing light. Golden-hued spirits writhed on the floor in front of them and leapt on the curved walls.

After about fifty feet the tunnel wedged into a corridor no wider than Larence's shoulders. The fecund scent of ancient dirt seeped out of the opening.

He let go of her hand. "I'll go first. Stay right behind me."

She grabbed hold of the warm cotton of his shirttail and followed. Darkness pressed in on her. She couldn't see anything beyond the light-wreathed silhouette of Larence's head. The temperature dropped.

She wrapped her free hand around her waist in an attempt to keep warm. Her fingers curled tightly around the shirttail. The cotton became her lifeline.

The constant shuffling whisper of their footsteps mingled with the quickened march of their breathing and echoed in the tunnel.

Shuffle, pant, shuffle, pant. Then, unexpectedly, Larence's heel hit something and clicked.

He stopped. Emma rammed into his back.

"We're standing on something," he said, and she could hear the excitement in his voice. "Move back."

When she had backed up, he shoved the torch at her, and dropped to his knees. She gripped it in fingers that couldn't seem to stop shaking. Light slipped in bumping streaks down the sandstone wall and puddled on the

THE ENCHANTMENT

315

shadowy floor. Beneath the layer of long-dry dirt, an almost invisible network of lines appeared.

She went weak with hope and excitement, and kneeled. Cold dampness seeped into her bones and plastered her skirt to her knees, but she didn't notice the discomfort. All she could think about was maybe. Sweet God, maybe there really was a Cibola. A treasure.

"What is it?" she breathed.

Larence bent supplicantlike to the floor and blew. A tiny stream of dirt fluttered onto Emma's skirts.

"Tiles. Move the light closer."

She did, and saw what he saw. Two large, perfectly cut stone tiles made a two-foot square on the floor.

One tile was raised slightly, as if it had been lifted long ago and never set right again.

Larence began carefully to lift the tiles. They scratched against one another, sounded like nail-sharp fingernails clawing on brick.

Beneath the tiles lay another tunnel.

Emma moved the torch. Light splashed through the opening and landed on a human skeleton a few feet below. She screamed and scuttled backward. The torch wobbled in her hands, and light vibrated haphazardly across the arched walls.

"Don't be afraid, Em. They're just bones."

Just bones. Calming herself, she inched back up to the hole and peered into the pit.

Pale, gray-white bones lay atop the brown soil. A jawless skull sat cheekbone-deep in the soft, dry dirt.

Empty, eyeless sockets stared up at her, as if daring her to come forward. To come into his realm.

"It's just a grave," she told herself, trying to remain calm. "Just a damn grave."

316

Kristin Hannah

"I don't think so." Larence leaned over the hole to better study the skeleton. "See the way his arms are crossed across his chest? And see that marking above his head? That's the ancient symbol for danger.

The same one Ka-Neek left us." He sat back on his knees, rubbing his fingers along the coarse day's growth of beard that darkened his cheeks and chin. "No, I think he's—he was—a guard." Her heart missed a beat. "Really?" "I think so." He grinned at her. "Let's find out what he's guarding."

Emma felt an unexpected hesitation. She glanced down at the bones. A strong sense of premonition made her skin tingle. Perhaps they weren't meant to be here. Pa-lo-wah-ti's words came back to her with blinding force. Leave. Now. While you still can . . . "Em?"

She tried to smile. He reached out and took her hand in his. Squeezing gently, he whispered. "Believe, Em. Believe."

Before she had time to answer, he took the torch from her and was gone. Down the hole. His boots hit the dirt with a muffled thump, and a second later the thick aroma of disturbed earth wafted up to her nostrils.

Emma leaned over, watching him. A strange sound, like the muted rattle of a baby's toy, reached her ears. Shucka-shucka-shucka.

Straddling the skeleton, he examined the blood-brown marking on the wall. "Emma, I—"

They saw the snake at the same time. Its small head shot out from the tangle of grayed ribs. Beady, lidless eyes dominated the scaly head. The rattling intensified, filled the hole with terrifying, throbbing sound.

"Shit!" Larence lurched up and back at the same

THE ENCHANTMENT

317

time. His skull cracked into the wall, and dirt rained down on his head. Scrambling backward amid the terrible snap of breaking bones, he flung the torch at the snake. It hit the reptile hard between the eyes.

The rattler jerked back and retreated into the relative safety of the skeleton's rib cage. Larence waited a moment, then bent down and plucked up the torch.

"Give me your skirt," he rasped.

Emma peeled out of her muslin skirt and dropped it into the hole. Larence threw the billowing garment over the rib cage and tucked the fabric under each and every bone. "That should give us time. Come on down."

She didn't move. She couldn't. All she could do was stare into the black, bone-ridden hole and wait for the sandpaper-soft shaking of the snake's rattle.

Larence's hand appeared before her. She stared at it in horror, knowing the second she saw it what she would do. What she had to do. "Oh, God," she groaned, "not snakes ..."

Words drifted up to her: "Believe, Em. Believe."

Lord, how she was beginning to hate that word. No doubt it would appear on her tombstone. Emmaline Amanda Hatter. She believed—and it killed her.

"Emma, the snake won't be covered forever."

She grabbed hold of his hand, squeezed her eyes shut, and dropped into his waiting arms.

"See, now," he said, "that wasn't so—"

"Get me out of here!" Her words bounced off the walls and rang back at her.

He carried her toward the grave's narrow opening and set her down. They stood side by side, their eyes glued to the pale pile of bones. Larence leaned down and wrenched the skirt away from the skeleton.

Emma's breath jammed in her throat.

318

Kristin Hannah

Nothing. No sound, no movement.

Her breath whooshed from her lungs in a hot, painful sigh of relief. She quickly donned her skirt, then offered Larence her hand.

Together, slowly, they began their journey down the dark, dank, winding passageway. Into the bowels of the earth itself.

Sometime later—and Emma had long since given up the idea of calculating time—she began to hear something besides the shuffling whisper of their shoes on the sandy floor.

It began as a soft sound, like the fall of a single drop of rain into an overfull barrel, and had gradually intensified into the echoing roar of falling water.

At first she hadn't believed her ears. It wasn't possible, these sounds of a waterfall in the dry, arid intestines of the New Mexican desert, two hundred or more feet below the earth's surface. And yet, against all odds, the sound had continued. With each step it grew louder, closer.

Then came something even more unexpected. More impossible.

Light. It began as a pinprick at the end of the corridor, but with each step the unbelievable light strengthened. The circle of its whiteness grew larger, and then larger still, until there was no longer a circle at all. There was simply light. Everywhere, filling every nook and cranny and giving the harsh, cold sandstone a gold-like brilliance.

Larence picked up his pace, limping ahead as fast as his bad ankle allowed. Emma clung to his hand and kept up.

As they neared the corridor's end, things changed

THE ENCHANTMENT

319

subtly. Gone was the musty smell of earth too long in the shade; now she smelled fresh water, sunshine, pi-non needles, and late spring grass. Beside them was a light-gilded lip of sandstone. Beyond it, who knew?

And suddenly, Emma knew that it—whatever it was— lay just around the corner. She knew just as completely that it only existed if she believed it did.

She stopped, yanking Larence to a halt beside her.

"What are you doing? It's right around the—"

"I know." She half turned, closed the infinitesimal gap between them. "I want you to know I believe it's there. I want it to be there. For you."

"I love you."

An emotion so pure, so big it made her knees weaken, swelled in her heart. Her toes and fingers tingled in its wake, her throat closed up. It was an emotion the likes of which she hadn't seen in years, had long since stopped expecting. Perhaps even stopped believing in.

It was—

Before the word solidified in her mind, he led her around the corner.

Larence turned the corner and gasped. It was grander, bigger, richer, than anything he'd ever expected.

Ever imagined.

"Oh, my God," Emma breathed beside him.

The passageway emptied out onto a huge, circular plain. Velvety soft, dun-colored sand stretched from one mesa wall to the next like an expensive blanket of the finest chamois. The warm, dry perfume of it scented the air. Nutmeg red canyon walls arched high into the sky, their time-smoothed blocks curled upward like the fingers of a carefully cupped hand. Slabs of rock formed a towering circle around them, without entrance or exit,

320

Kristin Hannah

beginning or end. Overhead a fist-shaped blotch of cobalt blue sky stood in stark contrast to the reddish gold walls.

In the center of the plain was an oval-shaped pool the pale green of fine Oriental jade. Cattails limned the water's edge, swaying softly as water lapped their stems. From somewhere high in the mesa's cracks and crevasses, white, foamy water tumbled gaily downward, splashing noisily on the pool's glassy surface and sending ripples of silver-green from shore to shore.

Larence stared in awe at the beauty of it. Everything was quiet, and muted, and old. So very, very old . .

.

In his mind's eye he could see the Ancient Ones milling quietly about the square, or squatting in the doorways to grind corn into meal. The high-pitched giggle of playing children echoed in his mind, and though he knew the children of this place had not laughed in a very long time, he heard them still. Saw them still.

He was so caught up in the exquisite loveliness of the place that it took him a moment to notice the gold.

When he did, his mouth dropped open.

They were standing on a street paved in bricks of gold. Thirty feet wide, it spilled down the sand-hued plain, skirted the cattail-edged pool, and then rose gently again to the row of stone-carved doorways beyond. Sunlight turned the street into a twisting, blinding river of molten gold. Excitement pounded in his chest. It was exactly the way he'd always seen it in his dreams. Exactly.