At his side, Marika let out a long rattling sigh. Her eyes tracked the creature, making sure it had truly departed. Finally she turned away. “A grakyl,” she mumbled again. The fear in her voice was still there, but now it was threaded with elation and a trace of amazement. “I never saw one before…only drawings…from stories.”
“But what the heck was it?” Kady asked, pushing forward.
Marika finally seemed to notice that she still held Jake’s wrist. She pulled her fingers away.
Pindor answered Kady’s question. His voice dropped to a whisper, his eyes on the sky. “A grakyl. They’re the cursed beasts of Kalverum Rex. The Skull King. His slaves. They—”
Marika cut him off. “We should be going. The sun’s already dropping low.”
Jake rubbed his wrist where Marika had gripped him. He remembered the pricking burn as he neared the far side of the Broken Gate. Jake sensed that if Marika hadn’t grabbed him, he might have ended the same as the creature. Unable to pass.
Had it been some form of invisible wall? A defense to keep anything from passing over the ridge? Jake studied the towers. While the stones did seem to be volcanic, no mortar glued them together. Instead they were fitted together in a complex pattern, a jigsaw puzzle made of stone. Jake also noted faint writing in bands along the tower on the left.
It wasn’t like any writing he’d ever seen.
Before he could study it further, Marika headed down the trail away from the gate.
Jake had no choice but to follow.
Past the towers, a huge valley opened. Steep cliffs surrounded the valley in a continuous circular ridge. The valley looked like a meteor crater, but Jake noted vents dotting the edges, steaming with sulfurous gases.
No, it wasn’t a meteor crater.
The valley was the cone of a massive volcano.
And it wasn’t empty.
“What is that place down there?” Kady finally asked.
Jake had the same question as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Far below, a good section of the valley floor had been cleared of trees and spread outward in a patchwork of tilled fields and orchards. The open lands all surrounded a sprawling city of stone buildings and timbered lodges.
From the distance, there seemed no rhyme or reason to the place’s layout. To one side rose what appeared to be a medieval castle. But beyond that, carved into the far ridge, were tiers of cliff-dwelling homes, similar to ones Jake had visited in the deserts of New Mexico. And was that an Egyptian obelisk rising out of a town square? It looked like a miniature Washington Monument but was topped by a scarab beetle, the ancient Egyptian symbol for the rising sun.
It made no sense.
“Calypsos,” Marika said proudly. “Our home.”
She began to head down the gentler slope on a narrow road of crushed gravel.
“Hold on,” Jake said, struggling to find words to voice the sheer volume of his confusion. “How…Where…?”
Pindor headed after Marika. “You’ll get your answers in Calypsos.” His words almost sounded like a threat.
“Wait,” Jake continued, needing something, anything. “You’re Roman, aren’t you?”
The boy straightened his toga. “Of course. Are you calling my heritage into doubt?”
“No, no…” In a hurry, Jake turned to the girl. “And Marika, you’re Maya, yes?”
A nod. “Going back fifteen generations to the first of my tribe to arrive here. Pindor traces his family to sixteen. But other Lost Tribes have been here longer. Much longer.”
She headed down again.
Jake stared after her.
Lost Tribes?
He studied Calypsos again. Could that grass-roofed structure be a Viking longhouse? And what about that pile of homes raised on stilts? It looked African. But he wasn’t sure. Either way, it seemed all of history had been gathered down below, ancient peoples from every age and land.
But how…and why?
Jake itched for a closer look.
Unlike his sister.
Kady still hung back. Her eyes were narrow with worry and suspicion. “Maybe we shouldn’t go too far.” She glanced back to the stone towers. “If there’s a way out of this Jurassic Park wannabe, maybe we should stay close to where we landed.”
Jake barely heard her. One last structure drew his gaze. It lay beyond the strange town and rose on the right from the wild region of the valley, surrounded by forest. In fact, most of it remained hidden within the jungle. That was why Jake hadn’t spotted the structure right away.
“We need to find some way back home,” Kady continued.
Jake lifted his arm and pointed to the half-hidden structure. “How’s that for a place to start looking?”
Kady studied where he pointed.
Only the top two tiers of the pyramid rose above the jungle, enough for Jake to see the massive sculpture on top. It was a stone dragon, lit with fire by the glancing rays of the sun. The dragon crouched there, its neck stretched high, its wings unfurled wide, as if readying to take flight. Its shape was a match to the one atop the gold pyramid at the museum, the same one sketched in his mother’s book and described in his father’s log.
Jake’s hand drifted to his khaki vest. His palm rested over the books in the inner pocket. There was no mistaking the structure out there.
It was the same pyramid.
Only full size!
Amazement kept Jake rooted in place.
“Are you coming or not?” Marika called back anxiously.
Jake glanced to Kady. He needed her to understand. His fingers tightened over the hidden books. If the small pyramid back at the museum had somehow transported them here, surely the larger one out in the valley could hold the key to a way back home. But more than that, Jake pictured his mother and father working inside the tomb in Mexico, discovering the smaller gold pyramid in the first place.
Had they suspected the truth? Had they died to keep its secret?
More than a way home, the pyramid might offer an answer to that bigger mystery in Jake’s life—in both their lives.
What had truly happened to their parents?
A new noise intruded: a creak of wheels and a rattling jangle, along with the clip-clop of something large. Pindor scooted ahead to scout the bend in the road.
The noises grew louder. Jake could make out a few mumbled voices. Below, Pindor lifted his spear in a sign of greeting, then backed to the side to allow room.
Two creatures clopped into view, tethered and drawing a two-wheeled chariot. Jake swallowed in disbelief. The gray-green creatures that pulled the chariot were the size of draft horses—but they weren’t horses. Each looked to weigh a half ton, trundling on four legs.