An Amazing Discovery

“Give me your hand!”

“I can’t! I’ll fall down!”

“No you won’t! At the count of three, grab my hand! I won’t let you fall! One, two, three!”

William extended his left hand. Roger grabbed it with both his. A cloud of turf, loose stones and branches fell below William, down the ravine until it got out of sight. Roger pulled, hard, letting himself fall backwards as William slowly appeared over the rim.

Exhausted, both lay silent for a while, listening to each other’s breath and the sounds of the jungle.

“That. Was. Too. Close,” William finally said. Adrenaline gone, he chuckled faintly, as he noticed he was clutching his satchel with such a strong grip it hurt.

A soft laugh came from his left.

“A master of the understatement,” Roger said. Then he sat, shaking.

They still stayed like that for a while, until finally they stood. Roger approached the abyss and peered over the edge.

“I lost my canteen there,” he said.

“No problem, we can share. And this is not a desert. Got your purifier pills?”

“Yup. They’re in my satchel. With the map,” Roger said, and tapped his bag.

The map. The map that had brought them here, to the Peruvian jungle, on an impossible quest to find the last remains of a pre-Columbian civilization. A civilization older than the Maya, Aztec or Inca. Or any of the others. A civilization previously almost unheard of. Until William and Roger had found the Codex, and the map with it.

Finding the Codex was the last thing they had expected when they had been given permission to work in the Vatican Library. But William, as usual, had been as fascinated by the furniture as by the books themselves. And really, finding the hidden drawer had been a coincidence, when they had noticed that the desk looked exactly like that other one in Vienna. They had looked at each other, both thinking of the hideout at the same time. The spring was in the same place, and the Codex was there.

Of course, they couldn’t simply slip away with it, but whisking the map away was completely different. In the end, they had left the Codex in its place, and finished their academic job there, trying to rein down their excitement for the week it took them to end. But they couldn’t simply walk away without finishing it.

After that, they had mounted their own expedition.

“Over there,” Roger said. He had the map out, protected in its sealed bag, and was checking it out. “Look, the rock outcrop to the right. It’s the same. The cave must be down… there, by the stream.”

“Right,” William said. He passed his canteen over. “Let’s go.”

They descended for some minutes, carving a path by the small stream, the water singing to their left. They reached a spot where the terrains levelled out, surrounded by the rocky outcrop to the east and south.

“I don’t see the entry,” Roger said.

“It has to be here,” William said.

“Here,” Roger said. A mass of vines curtained heavily down on what was undoubtedly the mouth of a large cavern. They cut through it and stopped.

“What’s that?” Roger said.

“Down!”

A huge cloud drifted out of the cave, and divided itself into thousands of individual, tiny animals that flew away in the dusk.

“Bats!” William said.

“Never seen so many,” Roger said.

And they entered the cave.

Their torches illuminated set of descending stairs carved in the stone floor. They descended in silence for what felt like hours, until they reached a large chamber. Their cones of light didn’t reach the far side, so they walked slowly, waving their lamps this way and that.

When they reached the far end, they found themselves before a large altar, covered in carvings of men and animals they couldn’t recognize, but which had obvious pre-Columbian roots. There were hints and traces of the art of the civilizations that would come later: a warrior in profile here, a stylized bird there.

“Oh my God,” William mumbled.

“Yes, William, this is it!” Roger said.

“No, Roger,” William said. “Look.”

Roger stared at the wavering beam of William’s torch. There, under the light, Roger saw it.

A plaque covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

~~~~

This is my entry for the Weekly Writing Exercise: January 11–17, 2016 on the Writer’s Discussion Group in Google+.

Wow. This week was difficult for me, because as soon as I saw that picture, all I could think of was “Batman”. Believe me, it took me a lot to shake it off.

When I managed to do it, I turned to the explorer side of the image. The first option I came up with was that the explorers found a treasure and then killed each other… I’m happy I wrote it differently.

The version here, as often happens, is quite longer than the one in the challenge, and I think it’s much better. The 150 words I had to edit out really hurt.