The cave opening was a smooth rock surface, different than from the rock wall. It was a little more than three meters across.The edges were smoothed and could have been worn from frequent use at one time.
I was hesitant to go into the cave, as well as Cassarina. We were anxious about what daylight we had remaining, reminding Hornsby that we’d have to return before nightfall to make camp.
That was furthest from his mind. He sat there for a moment wondering what purpose this cave could have served.
“It could be a shrine, similar to those along Lago Itsanok’uk.”
“What about snakes?” Cassarina said.
“It could be catacombs,” I professed.
“The dead are dead, they’ll be no help to us now,” Hornsby quipped.
“It might be best to return tomorrow with more gear,” I countered.
“Yes, and provisions,” Cassarina added.
“And have sufficient time.”
Hornsby shot an acerbated glare at the two of us.
“The sooner we inspect this cave, the sooner we can return to make camp. At best we’d make it back to Jorge in two hours,” he reasoned. “That leaves us about two hours to inspect the cave.”
Seeing that we had lost the argument, Cassarina and I agreed to follow Hornsby and Baltazar.
With Hornsby taking the lead, one by one, the four of us slid through the opening into the pitch-black pit, dropping down about 2 meters before landing on a stone floor in a darken abyss. We were instantly engulfed in stifling humid air. It was sweltering hot. What we immediately discovered was that this wasn’t a cave.
With our flashlight’s beams, we could see that this was a narrow corridor that had a slight sloop downwards. The narrow walls were made of stone, quarried from somewhere else. The hallway was encrusted with centuries old detritus. The abundance of thick cobwebs strung across the hallway proved it had not been used in a long time.
For ten minutes Baltazar led our through the winding corridor cutting away huge thick cobwebs and mashing giant spiders with his bare feet. Hornsby and Cassarina followed close behind Baltazar. I brought up the rear.
“Maybe this was a looters entrance,” Hornsby said flashing his light against the wall, “searching for artifacts to sell.”
My sense was this ruin was early Mayan.
“We could be in the earliest period of a many layered construction phase putting the Mesoamerican time around the Pre-Classical period,” I said while shining my flashlight around me.
I became aware that the ceiling seemed to be breathing. I aimed my flashlight above me. There were thousands of nocturnal bats suspended upside down above us. I froze. Cassarina was next to notice, to her own horror. Then Hornsby turned about to see what we were looking at. His flashlight beam crossed ours illuminating a horde of bats. It was Baltazar that didn’t notice. With his back to us, he took a whack at a thick cobweb, hitting the machete blade against the corridor stonewall.
The noise of the blade striking the stone woke up the hordes of bats at once. In a second we were engulfed by bats whooshing passed us, a few centimeters of our face and body. They flew at us with blinding velocity.
Letting go of her flashlight, Cassarina dropped to the floor huddling in a fetal position. Hornsby dove over her. I crouched down, tucking my head under my arms. The noise of the bats was deafening. The echo of their furious flight reverberated through the narrow passageway. Baltazar just stood there undaunted.
The sheer panic of the experience held us in shock for several minutes after the bats left. Baltazar approached us concerned but bewildered as to why we were afraid. As we stared in dismay at each other, he informed us that these bats only ate insects. Then, he took Hornsby’s flashlight and aimed the beam onto the limestone wall where he had cleared away some cobwebs and crumbling stones.
A small doorway led into an adjacent vault-like room. Next to the entrance was an emblem glyph. Hornsby jumped to his feet. He quickly moved to brush away the remaining cobwebs and encrusted dirt, standing back to look at the doorway frame, and the distinct outline of some carved shape. At that moment, I noticed something slithering near his feet in the beam of Cassarina’s flashlight still lying on the ground.
Baltazar was swift to strike it with his machete, making a dull thud sound as the blade hit the soiled floor of the passageway. I aimed my flashlight at the object he had just struck. There lay the severed triangular head of a deadly viper snake; a barbara maria. Hornsby took little notice. Cassarina cringed.
“Muchas gracias,” Hornsby said as he uncovered an emblem glyph with his hand. “This has to be Mayan,” Hornsby said with vivid certainty.
Baltazar, curious, inspected the glyph and called it, stoz. Hornsby translated this to mean “bat” in Mayan.
There were two of these glyphs on either side of the entrance to the vault.
Having cleared the entrance the best he could, Hornsby carefully took a small step inside.
“See, it?” Hornsby was shining his flashlight on the far wall.
“Yes,” Cassarina said, following him through the stone portal. “It appears to be a fresco.”
The four of us stood staring at a cavern shaped room. On the far wall, across a sloped-dirt fill floor was the faded colors of a fresco. As we aimed our flashlights beam about the wall, the outline of a sophisticated combination of a fresco mural and stucco codice could be identified. Hornsby immediately went about carefully brushing away the centuries build up of dust sediment. The more that was revealed in the beams of our flashlights, the more pronounced this work appeared as a mythological artistic achievement. In about an hour we had cleaned the entire surface.
“This isn’t like the Bonampak mural,” Hornsby exclaimed, as he closely examined the faded fresco. He continued to brush away the remaining layers of fine dust with his fingers.
We shared in his excitement. The outcome of our exploration was mind-boggling. The fresco and stucco panel together was about three meters across and four meters from floor to ceiling. Each of us studied the graphics depicted, trying to get a sense of what it was communicating.
Cassarina took the camera out of her rucksack, but Hornsby told her not to take any photographs.
“We can’t have our eyes blinded by the flash,” he warned her.
Starting at the top was a downward progression of symbols. In the center appeared a circular disk with emblem glyphs on the edges. Superimposed within the circle, were spaced rows of Mayan numerals resembling a matrix code.
“Itzamna,” Baltazar said, pointing to the top of the fresco.
He was referring to the Mayan Hunab Ku creator of the universe depicted by a celestial two-headed serpent known also as Oxlahuntiku. We aimed our flashlights to where Baltazar was pointing to get a better look. Hunab Ku was gazing over the entire scene below him. This made us think that most likely the painting represented the multidimensional world of the Maya going from an extraterrestrial to terrestrial reality. Just below Hunab Ku was another glyph that Baltazar called, “kin” or Sun in Mayan.
In the center of the fresco was something that resembled a gigantic gyroscope, emanating radiant light waves. Embedded in this image was a long tube-like shape glyph, in a vertical position.
"It is written in the Quiche Maya’s Popol Vul that time is the bridge between this world and the world of the spirits,” Cassarina said admiring the fresco’s artistic charm.
After digging away the loose dirt about the base of the wall with our hands, we revealed two humanoid figures, similar in design to the Dezantes at Monte Alban, at each far corner of the mural. Just below the figures were specific Mayan numerical lines and dots. Baltazar squatted next to Hornsby inspecting the images. In between these figures was a painted coiled plumed serpent. Its open viper mouth extruded what looked like flames.
“Itzaes,” he said pointing to two figures.
“Que es?” I said.
“Primera ninos de aqua,” Baltazar replied, standing up. He was intrigued at our discovery. Absorbed, he inspected each of the fresco’s delicately painted glyphs, though they were severely faded.
“First child of water?” Cassarina said perplexed.
“Quiet,” Hornsby commanded in a stern whisper. “He’s telling us the story.”
Hornsby aimed his flashlight to where Baltazar was looking next.
“Aqui.” Baltazar spoke softly. His long bony index finger pointed at the emblem glyph next to the long vertical tube in our light beams.
“Kuxan Suum.” Baltazar spoke the Maya words for “road to the sky” as if he was giving us a lesson. Hornsby knelt down to inspect the lower left emblem glyph. He deciphered the three-sectioned image. The glyph on the left was the “divine” name. The graphics on top signified the deity and the large round corner square was the site.
Baltazar was quick to translate, “k’u ahaw” meaning the “place name” of a particular temple site.
“Palenque,” Hornsby said.
Baltazar nodded with agreement. Cassarina was busy sketching the glyph into her journal while I tried to steady two flashlights at the scene, shaking with electrifying excitement. Hornsby moved over to the other emblem glyph on the right side of the mural. Baltazar aimed his flashlight for Hornsby to see as he carefully deciphered the glyph to read, “Yaxchilan.”
As if nature wanted to accentuate our discovery, there was a brief deep rumbling of thunder coming from outside the tomb.
“Metzabok,” Baltazar remarked. He was referring to the Mayan rain god.
However, our attention was too concentrated to have been concerned. Hornsby started to calculate the numerical notations next to the glyphs. He worked out the sequence in a paneled arrangement of numbers from top to bottom next to the Yaxchilan glyph.
“Nine is the Baktun. Eighteen is the Katun. Seventeen is the Tun. Thirteen is the Uinals. And sixteen is the Kin.”
He paused for a moment to do the Gregorian calendar conversion in his head.
“The conversion co-efficient would make it 808 A.D,” he said.
“How did you get that co-efficient?” I said.
“It’s the Julian count of days that astronomers use,” Hornsby replied. He was setting the corrections from the Gregorian calendar and previous Julian calendar to make the exact date correlations to the Mayan count.
“From January 1, 4712 BC in the Julian calendar, you get August 13, 3113 BC in the Gregorian calendar or exactly five hundred eighty-four thousand two hundred eighty-three days. This was the zero date of the Fourth and final World Epoch in Mayan predictions. Hornsby returned to the Palenque glyph to decode the arranged date. He wasn’t long in finding something extremely unsettling.
“The date written here is 1.18.5.4.0. Palenque was erected some 2,000 years later,” he said, perplexed.
“The whole thing makes me time sick,” Cassarina interjected.
How could this ruin date back to 2700 B.C.? The codice panel to the right of the fresco caught our attention. There was a group of glyphs that Hornsby asked Baltazar to see if he could translate. For a moment the Lacandon stood staring at the vast mythological mosaic. From the collection of glyphs he pointed out a sequence, speaking the Mayan name of each symbol. Cassarina sketched them. Hornsby wrote down each name.
I’ve reprinted these in their sequence as Baltazar translated them to us.
The glyphs read from left to right.
Top row: winik; tun; iwal; hal; nal; tz’am.
Bottom row: ahaw; kun; chan; bih; k’u, k’ul; way.
In a few moments, Hornsby read back in English what Baltazar had translated. “Man – stone -- and then – manifest – place -- throne, lord – center – sky – road –sacred – god -- companion spirit.”
Another rumble of thunder could be heard from outside the tomb.
“Repeat it,” I asked as Cassarina continued to sketch the glyphs. Hornsby deliberately repeated each word clearly and methodologically.
“If the Lacandon’s ancestors were builders of temples,” I ventured, “then this might be telling us where they built a specific temple.”
“A very special temple,” Hornsby said perspicaciously. He thought for a moment editing the translation. “Man and stone combined could be mason. The verb, and then plus manifest could be ‘to build.’ What was built was a specific throne at a place known as the center for a lord who could . . .”
“Travel into the sky with assistance with a companion spirit,” I said.
“And that companion spirit assists one through the “soul tube,” Cassarina said, having stopped her sketching.
“Or the Soul Chamber,” Hornsby added, in awe of his realization.
“It’s clear the coiled plumed serpent represents Quetzalcoatl in his anthropomorphic form,” she pointed out.
“Why of course,” I said. “That’s it.” I aimed my flashlight to the center of the mural.
“Palenque is over here and Yaxchilan is there and both are along the Rio Ucumacinta. If you draw a line between these two locations then take that distance out at equal angles to form another triangular apex, out here . . .”
“It over shots the center glyph in the soul tube, ” Cassarina said, disappointed.
“It’s too faded to make out exactly the whole scheme,” I said.
What happened next, we hadn’t expected. Above us was a small open shaft that we hadn’t discovered because of the darkness. We had noticed that the cavern was cooler than the corridor, but hadn’t given it much thought as to why. Now we knew.
A brilliant light beamed down into the room, blinding us for a moment. It was sunlight coming through a carved out hexagonal shaft. Hornsby, the tallest of us, put his hand into the shaft of light. Strangely, the shadow of his hand was inside the shaft as well as outside.
“This is absolutely fantastic,” Hornsby said. “The sun path crosses the Tropic of Cancer only two times a year.”
“It illuminates this temple vault on a specific date,” he said with joyful amazement.
The shaft was the means of observing the zenial passages of the sun. Having come to this exact point in time, as Hornsby mentioned earlier about our current calendar date was in the Tzolk’in mystic column, it was evident we had entered a secret ruin built for a specific purpose.
As my eyes adjusted, the faded fresco came to life. The colors were much clearer along with the outlines. With the sunlight beaming down, having broken through the afternoon storm clouds, we had adequate light to work by. Taking in the grandeur of our find, Cassarina recited the Nahuatl idiom.
“The good painter is wise, god is in his heart. He converses with his own heart. He puts divinity into things.”
“There’s a glyph midway between the two temples,” Hornsby cried out.
“Kah,” Baltazar said immediately seeing it. He meant “area.” Which was where we were currently standing, an extension of a complex labyrinth of tunnels.
The Olmec built tunnels about the Mesoamerican landscape, creating an underground network. These tunnels, later to be identified as catacombs because of the dead end maze of tunnels, were exactly what Hornsby claimed we had stumbled into. Most likely the fresco was of ancient origin with combined Olmec and Toltec and Maya influences. The other correlation was that we were north of the Lacanja unexcavated temple ruins.
But the answer lies in the soul tube glyph and the inference that a temple was possibly built there. The departure of the all-encompassing lord, Quetzalcoatl, brought about the downfall of the Toltec civilization known for its spiritual artistry. The origin of the Tolteca nation was suspected of being Naqualtacas. Their name is translated to mean, “excellent artist.”
“The nature of humanity turned to their darker side after Quetzalcoatl departed, claiming that someday he would return again,” Hornsby related.
Quetzalcoatl, the gentle feather serpent god, had installed a spiritual code that humankind’s harmonic relationship with the cosmos kept the sun deity, Huitzilopochtli alive, metaphorically speaking. By keeping one’s heart open and offering one’s lifeblood to the sun through artistic spiritual discipline the sun would be re-energized, thus providing daily life to sustain their livelihood. Such was the context for the Teotihuacan civilization’s way of life; a peaceful paradise that maintained freedom, and individual creativity.
But Quetzalcoatl’s nemesis, Tezcatlipoca, the dark lunar god, abrogated this spiritual doctrine to mean that human hearts must be carved from the chest to appease the sun deity. Seeking to overthrow Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca disguised himself as a merchant and appeared in the marketplace of Tollan, exposing himself stark naked before the Princess. She couldn’t help noticing how well endowed he was and became sick with craving sexual pleasure. She begged her father, the King, to approve her wedding. The night they consummated their marriage, she conceived Tezcatlipoca a child, “Day of the Nine Winds,” heir prince to the throne of Toltec.
After marrying the Princess, Tezcatlipoca, convinced the warrior faction of the Toltecs that human sacrifice brought superior power over their enemies. It was in keeping with his sacred animal spirit, the jaguar -- fierce, cunning and powerful to manifest his beliefs that gained him a majority persuasion over Mesoamerica.
The spiritual doctrine of Quetzalcoatl was outlawed, and the hearts and blood of the first prisoner’s of war were consecrated and sacrificed. Thus began a bloodthirsty warfare economy to supply the necessary demand for sacrifices, which by some accounts totaled twenty thousand a day at the height of the Mayan dynasty. By cutting out the hearts of warring captives to appease the sun deity a tyranny for servility was established in the collective consciousness of humanity. Anyone who defied Tezcatlipoca would meet the same fate as the prisoner’s of war.
“Refugees fleeing from Tezcatlipoca and the destroyed Teotihuacan dynasty who held onto the spiritual beliefs handed down by Quetzalcoatl fled to Xochicalco, the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl, Reed One,” Hornsby said. “This was a transitional site between Teotihuacan and Tula Tollan.”
“What we’re looking at is the record of nine Baktun or thirty-six thousand years,” I said. “More so, it’s possible that if this is of early Toltec design, it would validate the existence of a populated area that was supposedly near Palenque.”
“Huehuetlapallan,” Hornsby said. “It would stand to reason this ruin was in the Pre-Classic period.”
Cassarina fumbled about in her rucksack for a moment.
“It might be that this ruin we’re standing in was inhabited as a hide out for Quetzalcoatl refugees.” Hornsby nodded in agreement with me.
“I also think our friend here,” he pointed at Baltazar, “ knew about this place well before we came along.”
“Here it is,” Cassarina said as she flipped through the pages of a small paperback book with tattered edges. “I’ve brought a copy of The Annals of Cakchiquels.”
Finding a dogged ear page, she read aloud.
“And setting out we arrived at the gates of Tulan. Only a bat guarded the gates of Tulan . . . then we were commanded by our mothers and fathers to come, we the thirteen clans of the seven tribes, the thirteen clans of warriors . . .”
“A bat?” Hornsby was astonished. He quickly returned to the entrance to inspect the emblem glyphs. “If it’s true, we’ve found a resemblance of Tulan, perhaps purposely constructed as a record, an archive of the first people, the Nican Tlaca of Anahuac.”
The fresco revealed to us the geometric alignment of a mysterious location. There
was a distinct outside circle that contained the twenty solar emblem glyphs. Within this circle was a smaller one that contained thirteen numerical symbols of lines and dots. The apex of the triangular alignment, as I had suggested, fell dead center of these two circles. The “soul tube” glyph was superimposed in the column.
“The numerical system within the outer circle is the “count of days” or Tzolk’in,” Hornsby said, returning from the entrance. “These are the two aspects of the Mayan calendar count.”
Pulling out his topographical map from his pack, Hornsby spread it out on the dirt floor.
“We need some form of translating the distances on this fresco to the maps legend to find the distance from where we are to Kuxan Suum.”
“There has to be some clues here.” I searched the fresco for reference symbols to decipher.
Cassarina also looked about the fresco for more clues. Baltazar was intently watching us.
“Look here,” I said standing back. There were four distinct glyphs laid out in a pattern.
“Baltazar, que es? “ I asked pointing to the top glyph just off center to the left of the center of the fresco’s mandala.
“Xaman,” Baltazar said coming closer. Cassarina wrote down the names.
“Que es aqui?” I said, pointing to the next glyph.
“Chikin,” Baltazar answered, catching on to what I was doing. He pointed to the glyph at the bottom of the largest circle.
“Nohol. Likin,” Baltazar said, pointing to the glyph opposite Chikin on the right side of the large circle.
Hornsby asked Cassarina to confirm what Baltazar had said. When she finished his eyes lit up.
“These are the directions of the compass. North, west, south, and east.”
Hornsby looked at the arrangement of the four glyphs. He noticed that they were actually two glyphs stacked on each other. The top glyphs were as follows:
ahau /south chicchan /east oc /north men/west
“Brilliant. These are the four Tollans.” Hornsby was beside himself.
He got up to examine the four positions confirming that they were equal in distance to each other.
“Each glyph has the appropriate dominate color relating to their directions. And at the center, where the apex of our imaginary triangle is what glyph?” He turned to Cassarina hoping she would know, but she stood there silent.
“Yaxkin,” Baltazar said. His eyes glistening behind a sheepish smile, customary of the Lacandon.
“Of course,” Cassarina said. “The center.”
“Or as I mentioned when we inspected the rock art, Yaxkin means green day, the zero count day that happens once a year in the Mayan calendar,” Hornsby said.
“But it is still a mystery,” I added.
“For now we’ll call this mystery temple, Yaxkin.” Hornsby spoke with the sovereignty of a conquering explorer discovering a new land.
“Bulls eye,” I thought to myself. “Again, The same temple Moise pointed out to me in my dreamtime vision.”
The correlation was devastatingly accurate. Three times Hornsby had mentioned the Yaxkin, and now the final confirmation proved to me that we had made a remarkable discovery that proves Hornsby hypothesis about the Soul Chamber existence.
Next to the Yaxkin glyph was a set of numbers. In the Long Count date measurement it was 7.17.17.17.0. Hornsby translated this to mean One Ahau in Tzolk’in and Thirteen Keh haab. It was March 24 of the exact year between B.C. and A.D.
“The first evidence we have of the use of the Long Count was found at the Chiapa de Corzo on Stele Two dated 36 B.C.” Hornsby said. His calculations validated the commensuration of the Olmec, Toltec, Nahuatl, and Mayan cultures.
The sunlight was beginning to dim through the observatory shaft. We continued in haste to collect as much data as we could.
“I need to make a geometrical quadrant compass,” Hornsby said. He rummaged through this rucksack looking for something to improvise with.
“You mean what Galileo invented?” I said.
“Exactly,” Hornsby answered.
Cassarina produced two plastic rulers thirty centimeters long that she used in measuring her foliage collections from her rucksack. Hornsby took out his pocketknife blade and drilled a small hole one at each end. Pulling a loose thread from his soiled shirt, he tied the two rulers together, making a tight knot on either side. He held up his new creation to the shaft of light.
“Not bad, but I don’t have an extender.” Moving over to the fresco, Hornsby set about taking his measurements.
“Did you know that Galileo divided the arithmetic lines into two hundred and sixty equal parts?” he said to me.
“Two hundred sixty is the product of thirteen times twenty,” I said.
“Quite right. Twenty emblem glyphs for what is called the civil calendar, vague year or haab and two hundred sixty permutations of the number thirteen that makes up the Tzolk’in.”
Hornsby worked the alignments in reference to the circle’s circumference in comparison to the sum total of the three sided triangle based upon the distance between Yaxchilan and Palenque. With the quadrant, he measured the triangle’s angle to the angle produced by the two triangle lines crossing into the circle. Then he took his own compass and laid it on the topographical map to determine true north from magnetic north.
“The word calendar is a misnomer, however,” Hornsby said while working out his calculations. “Calendar comes from the Roman word, calends, which is the word use for an accountant’s book.”
“It was the book used to record monthly debts,” Cassarina said.
“So, I guess that’s where we get the saying, ‘Time is Money,’” I said.
“We’ve been living out-of-sync with the universe,” Hornsby said, “because the Mayan have no word for time. They lived in a dimension of kinetic viewpoints.”
After a few minutes, he announced that the distances in length were all equal, and the angles corresponded exactly to substantiate the location of a temple.
“This fresco is more of a terrestrial surveyor’s map.”
Coming over to Cassarina and I, Hornsby brought the map to show us his deduction.
“If my calculations are right, this center on the mural is exactly at this point.”
His finger pointed to an area right at the right angle corner of the border between Guatemala and Tabasco in the Mexican Yucatan peninsula and the northwestern corner of the great Maya Forest.
“There’s more,” I said as I had been closely inspecting the soul tube glyph.
A faint detail within the “soul tube” had caught my attention. Looking closer I could see the numerical lines and dots of the Mayan mathematics. From top to bottom I read the following numbers: thirteen, four, seven, nine, twenty, fifty-two.
“Each of the numbers add up to twenty, the base number for their vigesimal ratio,” Hornsby said.
This was sufficient in that the matrix of thirteen and twenty encodes a language just as the English alphabet does.
“But more importantly,” Hornsby went on to say, “the long count date we found below the Palenque shield glyph was deciphered at Palenque by Sylvanus Griswold Morley. Why was this date recorded here?”
“Archetypal evidence?” Cassarina said. I was stunned by her comment since she had quarreled so much with me about the validity of archetypal consciousness.
“Evidently, numbers could very well be the language of consciousness,” Hornsby pondered.
Just as our attention went back to the map the cavern dimmed, then went black. We rummaged around for a moment to turn on our flashlights. The batteries in them were nearly exhausted so it was futile to try and continue. Reluctantly, we had to leave what Hornsby called the “cryptic vault”.
“Clearly whoever inhabited this place purposely laid out this orientation mapping for someone to find the well kept secret from warring tribes that ravaged the Yucatan Peninsula during the Classical period,” Hornsby summed up while gathering his things.
The discovery made us eager to make it back to camp, as we now wanted to confirm the information we had gathered. But there was one more discovery to present itself on our return.
As we left the entrance of the cave, Baltazar pointed out a stone axe head that been half buried in the ground in the clearing outside of the cave entrance. It hadn’t been there when we entered the cave. He informed us it was from the thunder deity, Metzabok, an omen of sorts that we were in favor of the gods.
Dense clouds blocked the sunlight as we hiked back up the steep trailhead. It was hard to bear the intensity that rolls across you with such discoveries. Our endeavor was proving irresistibly appealing with the recent ruin find. It was a missing link that Hornsby’s hunches had guided him toward for the past several years.
The validation would reinstate him among his peers. But along with it came the unbelief that one encounters on the edge of metaphysical dimensions. The materialization of the stone axe head made us embrace even more the mystical reality we had entered that was filled with the rush of apprehension.
“There is no room for error,” Hornsby announced as we climbed weary from the day’s fantastic discovery.
It is impossible to convey the emotional effects of our find, stirring and mixed with a futile sense of the burden of one’s destiny to know its great truth. But in the vividness of my memory, what still glows about the impression I was left with, contains the courage brought about from Hornsby’s council.
“I mean we must scrutinize our findings tomorrow. We cannot afford the anguish of deception. As hopeful as it may appear…” Hornsby paused as he hiked up a rigorous portion of the bushwhacked trail we had made earlier on our descent to the gully floor.
Cassarina and I stood together, waiting to take turns to make it up the sharp rocky incline.
Hornsby turned back toward us, peering down and said, “…you must promise me to keep this a secret for now.”
Cassarina, I sensed, was vicariously sharing in Hornsby’s victory of the day. Several times, she drew near him, up ahead of me, conversing in whispers, holding him by the arm. They seem to consult each other, or was she consoling him?
Dusk had come by the time we reached the perilous rock ledge trail. A full moon had risen on the horizon, lighting up the tangled rain forest in a bluish luminosity. My thigh was completely free from the painful extraction of the bot-fly maggots, so I wasn’t concerned about making it safely across. I had cheated death earlier in the day, making my dream less powerful in its prophetic wisdom. Naively, I started to believe that maybe the whole dreamtime experience was my imagination, a delusion caused by living months in the jungle, a residual withdrawal symptom from having left Western society.
It was nightfall when we reached Jorge and the pack mules. Jorge had set up camp, and made a meal of rice, beans and tortilla for us. He seemed unconcerned about our late arrival but eager to share some news with Baltazar.
They whispered among themselves in their native tongue. The three of us were too weary to pay any attention and quickly retired after finishing our meal in cordial silence.
