There seemed to be a path of sorts leading away from the pyramid and the cenote. It snaked past other heaps of stones and other ceiba trees that appeared to mark the cornerstones of a giant plaza.
I followed the narrow footpath, which became a wider path of stone, then finally a road. I just kept walking.
The day was going to be a very warm one, I could tell. Already ahead of me I could see shimmering in the pavement, and from time to time I thought I could see people in front of me. But I was too tired to catch them and they got smaller as they moved on ahead of me.
Two little figures, however, seemed to be coming my way, and I watched them get bigger and closer with a rather strange detachment.
I recognized one of them. It was Esperanza, and with her a man dressed in the traditional guayabera of Maya men. As I approached them I could see the shock and concern on their faces, and I realized that I must look dreadful.
Trying to reassure them, I opened my mouth to speak, but my tongue felt swollen, and my voice came out a croak. “I’ve had a bit of an accident,” I said. “But fortunately I’m all right now.”
And with that my new and shiny world became much too bright, then faded to darkness once again.
I came to in the back of a pickup truck, looking up at several grizzled faces. One of the men was holding a rifle. Guerrillas, I thought. But my head was reassuringly on Esperanza’s lap, her cool hands stroking my face and head.
It was very hot now. My mouth felt very dry, and I couldn’t move or open my eyes. I felt strong arms lifting me from the truck and carrying me to a bed. Darkness came again.
Later I knew the Lords of Darkness were angry with me. I had found something they did not want me to find. Their voices were all around me, their hot breath on my face, their hands, rotting from disease, reached up from the underworld to pull me back to their realm beneath the heap of stones in the forest. I tried to call out, but could not; I tried to run away, but my legs would not carry me.
I felt arms around me, and a voice I knew I would recognize if I were able to pull together threads of consciousness told me I was safe. Finally I slept.
I awoke late in the afternoon, judging from the light filtering through the cracks in the walls of the room. I was in a room I did not recognize, on a simple cot. A jug of cool water and a plate of fruit, cheese, and tortillas was on a small nightstand, and I ate and drank gratefully.
I could hear no sounds outside the room, but I got up quietly and tried the door. It was locked. I seemed to have gone from one prison to another.
I was still feeling very weak, but I knew I must get away from here. These people had seemed nice enough, but I was developing a real aversion to being trapped in small places. Furthermore, I was convinced I had to retrieve the box that I felt must contain the codex. Only then would I have some bargaining power with those who pursued me.
I opened the shutters on the window, only to find another set of shutters, these latched on the outside.
There was a crack between the two outside shutters, however, and I was reasonably sure I could lift the latch clear if I could find something that I could maneuver through the crack. I looked around the room until I found a metal coat hanger, which I pulled apart and made into a long stick.
I eased it through the crack, and slowly and as quietly as possible started inching the bolt up. The shutters opened, and I climbed out.
I found myself in back of a small thatched-roof cottage on the edge of a clearing. There were chickens in the yard, and in the distance I could see smoke rising from cornfields as the farmers went back to clearing them for next year’s planting. After all the rain, there was definitely more smoke than fire, but perhaps it would afford me some cover.
The pickup truck I must have arrived in was in a shed at the back of the house. There was a flashlight in the back of the truck that I thought might come in handy, so I grabbed it.
A road, or rather a muddy track after the rains, seemed to end at the house, so I moved into the brush at the side of the road and moved parallel to the track away from the cottage.
Eventually I came to a paved road. I looked toward the sun, now low in the sky, and thought very hard about the direction of its rays when I came out of the forest in the morning. I turned in what I hoped was that direction.
A couple of times I heard vehicles approaching, but with the brush at the side of the road so close to the pavement, it was relatively easy to step quickly out of sight.
After about a half hour of walking, I saw a path that veered off to the left, the direction I thought I should be going, so I followed it. The light was growing dimmer, but I was afraid to turn on the flashlight lest my captors see it.
By the time I reached the pyramid, it was almost dusk. I was certain that the shaft above my position in the cave would lead to the pyramid, perhaps a stone in the plaza in front of it. But it would take me a while to find it and I was reasonably sure that I could find the underwater passageway back into the cave. I was unsure how to protect the flashlight until I recalled the slit in the rock. If I could locate that, I could push the flashlight through, then swim in myself.
I lined up the pyramid the way I remembered it, and carefully climbed down to the water’s edge. Holding the flashlight above my head as I swam, I found the slit, and pushed the light as far as I could through it, then dove down and found, albeit with some difficulty in the fading light, the underwater route.
I surfaced once again in the cave and listened carefully. I could hear nothing except the ripple of water. The bats were not yet awake for the night.
I retrieved the flashlight and switched it on.
The box was where I had left it, next to the niche in which I had found it. I rested the flashlight where it would be most useful and, using two small stones, one as a little hammer, the other for leverage, worked away at the rim of the box, which, as Ernesto had predicted, had been sealed in some waxy substance, the remains of which were still visible in places.
The lid finally loosened, and holding my breath, I lifted it up.
I guess because of my intense concentration on getting the box open, and the tapping sounds I was making with my two little stones on the edge of the stone box, I did not hear them coming until it was too late.
Suddenly there was a very loud scraping sound almost directly over my head, and the large rock at the top of the shaft above me was moved aside. A dark figure slid down the shaft, followed closely by another. Both wore black hoods over their heads. The first one carried a gun and it was pointed at me.
“Thank you so much for leading us to the codex, my dear,” the English voice said.
I could not believe my ears. My immediate reaction was that I had been found by a friend, but the tone of voice, and the presence of the gun, were at odds with that thought.
Jonathan pulled the hood off with one hand, the other holding the gun very steadily in my direction. The figure behind him remained hidden.
“You have certainly caused us a great deal of aggravation, Lara, but I believe you may also have saved us some time. I’m not sure how long it would have taken us to find this passageway, if we had not been in hot pursuit of you.”
“Who’s we?”
“I’m not sure you need to know that. We’ll be taking the box, if you please.”
“But this is your dig, Jonathan. Of course you will be given credit for the find. I’m not one of those grave robbers you get so upset about,” I said, my mind not yet grasping the significance of the gun.