Jaaci shook her head, clearly not understanding my question.
I tried again, scooping up some of the meat. “What?”
She nodded,
“Kafferw,”
and pointed to the other side of the hut where an elderly woman sat with a rather ugly-looking monkey on her shoulder.
I paused, then I froze as I realized, “
Monkey?
This is monkey stew?”
Jaaci smiled.
Suddenly, my stomach didn’t feel so well. Swallowing back rising bile, I slowly put the bowl down and pushed it out of my way. I covered my face with my hands and told myself to not get sick.
My whole body warmed, and each voice in the room seem to amplify as I willed my stomach to settle.
People talked.
Metal spoons scraped against pottery bowls.
Someone laughed.
With my hands still covering my face, I concentrated on breathing in and out through my mouth so I wouldn’t smell the oniony stew.
Jaaci put her hand on my back.
“Cei enoc?”
Still breathing through my mouth, I shook my head. I had no idea what she’d asked me. Without looking at her, I spoke. “I need some fresh air.”
I got up and didn’t look at a single soul as I left the ceremonial hut. It was probably rude to leave in the middle of a meal, but frankly, I didn’t care. It was either that, or the whole tribe would have seen my breakfast coming back up. And after spilling food on Jaaci, I didn’t need any more humiliation.
Standing outside, I closed my eyes and drew in a long breath of air. “You will not get sick,” I told myself on exhale. I inhaled again. “You will not get sick,” on exhale. I repeated that over and over, and, when I felt steady enough, I opened my eyes.
“Better?”
I jerked around. “Professor Quirk? How long have you been there?”
“Long enough. I take it you found out we were eating mo—”
“Don’t.” I held my hand up. “Don’t say it.”
He smiled and paused. “I’m glad someone else is as klutzy as me,” he said, changing the subject.
I rolled my eyes. “You have no idea.”
He laughed at that.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the old chief who had stomped out of breakfast. I nodded toward him politely. He returned my nod, and when he was out of sight, I turned to Quirk. “Any idea what that yelling and stew flinging was all about?”
Quirk nodded. “Yeah. Their tribe considers the monkey a sacred animal.”
“Yikes. No wonder he was so mad.”
“It was a pretty big insult to serve monkey. This faux pas can affect the relationship between these two tribes for years. But that’s not our problem. We have glyphs to decode. You ready to see the cave and the drawings?”
Eagerly, I nodded. “Definitely.”
I jogged over to the hut I’d slept in and retrieved my laptop.
Quirk met me outside. “Here,” he said, handing me a cloth pouch hanging from the end of a thin rope. “It’s for the bugs.” He held up the one he wore around his neck. “One of the Huworo people gave it to me the first day I got here. I don’t know what’s in it—some herbs, I think—but whatever it is, it works great.”
“Thanks.” I put it around my neck. “Too bad I didn’t have this last night. Termite guts are about as disgusting as I want to get.”
He laughed at that and motioned me into the jungle.
“So you’ve been here a week,” I struck up a conversation.
He stepped over a downed tree. “Yes. I’ve been holed up in the cave sketching the glyphs. It will make your job a lot easier since I already have half the cave sketched. You can scan my drawings into your computer and plug them into your translation program. Which”—he glanced over at me—“I’ve been extremely eager to see. There’s no other program like it, I hear.”
I nodded a little, feeling a swell of pride at my creation. Too bad it had to remain top secret.
“Too bad it has to remain top secret.” Professor Quirk ducked under a low branch. “That would be an amazing thing to introduce into the world of historians.”
I blinked. “I was just thinking that.” How weird.
He smiled a little. “What made you create the program? Are you interested in cave drawings?”
“A couple of our agents are on a mission where cave drawings are involved. I thought the program would make things go smoother for them.” Unsure of how much I could say, I stopped there.
Quirk nodded, but didn’t ask any more questions.
We continued on, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed he was staring at me. Suddenly, he ran straight into a bush and caught himself as he stumbled over it.
I smiled and reached for him. “You okay?”
Quirk sighed. “Yes.”
I smiled again at his exasperated tone. He
did
say he was as klutzy as me.
Trying to regain his composure, he cleared his throat. “It’s amazing that the whereabouts of this cave has never been documented. If Jaaci’s dying father hadn’t told her about it and the Mother Nature vase, it’d still be a historical mystery. I studied all about it in my course work. Most of my professors felt it was a legend.” Quirk looked back at me. “Have you seen the vase yet?”
I shook my head.
“The Huworo chief gave it to your leader to guard, the guy with the eye patch. What’s his name again?”
“Shane,” I answered, using Jonathan’s alias.
The professor nodded. “I’ve analyzed the inscriptions and have estimated that the glyphs date back to AD 1100.”
“Wow.”
“You can say that again.”
“Wow.”
Professor Quirk laughed.
I followed him around a huge tree trunk. “The drawings are supposed to reveal a key piece of information about the vase. Any ideas yet?”
He shook his head. “This is my specialty. But to be honest, I’ve never seen anything like it—the pattern, that is. I’ve seen the symbols before, but they don’t seem to follow a pattern, or at least one that I know of.”
“Hopefully, that’s where my program will come in.”
“Hopefully,” he agreed.
We emerged from the jungle and came to an abrupt stop. In front of us stretched a very
long
swinging rope bridge, connecting the ledge we stood on to a ledge
way
across a
huge
gap in land.
Swallowing, I took in the void between the two ledges and estimated it to be about a mile. “Wh-where’s the cave?”
Professor Quirk pointed across the gap. “Over there.”
I closed my eyes.
Figures.
Nothing’s ever easy in this business. “H-how far down?”
“C—”
“Wait.” I held up my hand. “I don’t want to know.”
He stepped onto the swinging bridge. “Come on.”
Holding on to the ropes that encased the bridge, Quirk began making his way across. As he did, I studied the engineering of the clearly unstable structure. Wood planks served as stepping pieces, positioned about an inch apart. Rope wound the ends of the wood and knotted into the thick twine of the netted walls and handrails. The bridge appeared wide enough for only one person at a time.
I’d feel a lot better if something on the swinging structure resembled steel. Or concrete. Or something else equally stable. No wonder we’d had balancing lessons in PT.
Roughly halfway across, Quirk glanced back at me. “Come on,” he yelled.
“I’m going to wait until you get across.” One person’s weight was enough for this spindly thing.
I heard him mumble, “Chicken,” and narrowed my eyes. I’d show him chicken.
Feeling a surge of courage, I grabbed on to the handholds and stepped onto the first wood plank. My confidence quickly dwindled as the bridge swung slightly. I swallowed again, closed my eyes, and told myself not to look down.
That was like trying to tell me not to peek at Chapling’s new subelesup code.
I knew I
would
look down, so I opened my eyes to go ahead and get it over with, and my heart stopped.
This canyon, or whatever it was called, disappeared into nothingness, just like before when I’d been on Diablo crossing the ledge. Tightening my grip on the ropes, I felt my body make the bridge shake again and tried to loosen my muscles, but couldn’t.
I stared as daylight filtered down into the canyon, becoming darker and darker with the depth, until only blackness colored the area.
“Stop holding your breath,” the professor yelled.
I realized then I wasn’t breathing and gulped in some air. With stiff, unbending muscles, I commanded my legs to move and dragged first my right boot and then my left back off the wood and onto the ground. I glanced up to see that Quirk had made it all the way across. I thought he was supposed to be klutzy.
“Are you kidding me?” the professor yelled.
I lifted my right fist, and for the first time in my life, I flipped somebody off.
He barked a laugh in response.
It made me want to flip him off again, double time.
Taking a breath, I stared hard at the bridge and a ghost of a memory floated through my mind. I saw four-year-old me holding my mom’s hand. We stood on a rope-and-wood bridge that stretched about twenty feet between two pieces of land. A river bubbled ten feet below us.
My mother and I wore coats, gloves, and scarves, and my dad stood on the bridge, too, facing us. Laughing, he shifted his body weight and made the bridge swing. My mom laughed, too, and tried to tell him to stop but couldn’t get the words out between her giggles. I squealed and squeezed my mom’s hand and squealed some more.
“You coming or what?” Professor Quirk yelled, snapping me from the memory.
I felt a smile curving my lips and breathed a content sigh. Holding on to that memory, I stepped back onto the swinging bridge and walked all the way across. I didn’t look down once and instead recalled the rest of that afternoon with my parents. My family had hiked through the woods, picnicked on a big flat rock, drove the winding mountainous road to the top, and stood looking out over a valley with colorful autumn trees.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it?” Quirk asked, as I stepped off the other side of the bridge. “I saw you smiling.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Optical illusion.”