Balam spoke to Kady as they walked, but Jake barely heard them. His mind was already on the chamber with the Mayan calendar. He had missed something down there, he was sure of it…but what?
Once they reached the heart of the pyramid, Kady took in the immense crystal sphere. It spun and churned, forming combination after combination of strange letters.
“I can feel it beating!” Kady said with wonder.
Jake felt it, too. That throbbing pulse of power emanated from the massive sphere. Below it, the other three crystals spun happily. The emerald sphere looked as bright as the ruby and sapphire ones.
Balam noted Jake’s attention. “The taint of shadows caused no permanent damage. It was pure brilliance on your part to think to reflect sunlight upon it. Pure brilliance!”
Jake dismissed the praise. “I got the idea from Mari. And from what you taught me.”
Balam raised an eyebrow.
Jake explained, quoting the Magister’s earliest lesson. “‘All alchemy starts with the sun.’”
Balam laughed. “So someone does listen to me once in a while. Still, it was brilliant on your part to concoct such a plan.” The old man tousled Jake’s hair. It was a fatherly gesture that sent a wave of warmth through Jake’s body.
“And I suppose,” Balam continued, “you’re anxious to continue on to the chamber below.”
“Yes, sir. And would it be possible for Kady and me to go by ourselves?”
Jake wanted privacy when he explored the room. If he had any questions, he could always come back up and ask.
Balam had no problem with this plan and shooed them away. “I have plenty to do here. When you’re ready, come back up.”
Jake forced himself not to run. He led Kady to the far opening and down a spiraling stair. The round chamber with the Mayan calendar looked exactly as he’d left it. On the floor, the two gear wheels shone in lamplight.
Kady gasped again—but for the wrong reason. “So much gold! It must be worth a fortune.”
“That’s not why we came here,” Jake said.
Kady rolled her eyes at him. “I know, but that doesn’t mean I can’t look.”
“Just don’t touch anything.”
Jake crossed into the chamber. He wanted to take everything in again, slowly, meticulously. His father had warned him. Attention is in the details. It was the responsibility of all scientists to work painstakingly when faced with life’s mysteries.
Jake pulled out the pocket watch.
Here was one mystery he didn’t want to get wrong.
“Where did you find Dad’s watch?” Kady asked.
Jake pointed to the inner wheel. “It was lying on the floor there.”
“Just lying there?”
“Yes, what did I just say?”
Kady held out her hand. “Let me see it.”
Jake hesitated. He’d kept the watch with him, on his person. He didn’t like it out of his sight. So Kady hadn’t really had a chance to examine it herself.
With some reluctance, Jake placed the watch in her hand. “Be careful with it.”
She rolled her eyes again and turned away. She left Jake’s side and went to explore on her own.
Jake focused his attention back on the room. The walls were covered with writing. Surely there were some answers locked in that unknown language. He had asked Balam, but no one in Calypsos could translate any of it.
Jake’s gaze swept over the lettering and settled on the three maps carved in bas-relief into one section of the wall. His legs carried him closer of their own accord. Something about the maps…
He again stared across the three of them, studying how the modern-day continents merged together like a jigsaw puzzle into one huge landmass named Pangaea. What was it about these maps that kept nagging him?
Only then did Jake notice the lettering below the map. Earlier, he had been so shocked by his discovery that he was in Pangaea that he’d failed to note what was written below it. Then again, it was just more of that strange lettering.
It meant nothing to him. He returned his attention to the round maps. His gaze swept back and forth. Seven continents formed one supercontinent. But he couldn’t quite let go of the letters below. They hovered at the corner of his eye. Eight letters in all. Eight pieces to the puzzle. Jake watched Pangaea pull together one more time, merging into one. Then the letters again.
What if…?
Jake pushed the letters together in his mind’s eye.
Something tried to form. Something that looked familiar. His brain tickled with the mystery.
Jake reached into his pocket and removed his mother’s sketchbook. He tore out a page near the back that was still blank and slipped his mother’s charcoal pencil from the book’s binding. With the page pressed to the wall, Jake scribbled the pencil across its surface to make a rubbing of the letters.
Once done, he had a copy of the letters etched on the paper. He knelt down and creased the paper between each letter, so that he could accordion them all together into one piece. Just like the continents had formed Pangaea.
With great care, he merged all the letters together until they formed a single word. Jake stared down at what he’d created.
Shock drew Jake back to his feet. The paper began to tremble in his hands. He now understood what had nagged at him to return here. In his head, he broke the letters into shapes that were more familiar.
He read it aloud. “Atlantis.”
Jake backed away from the wall. Could it be true? Could the pyramid and the knowledge displayed here trace back to Atlantis, the mythological island, where an advanced race once ruled? He struggled to recall all he knew about Atlantis. The earliest stories were written by Plato, one of the most famous Greek philosophers. He claimed to have visited Atlantis, seen its wonders. And according to his stories, the island was violently destroyed, broken apart, and sunk into the sea.
Jake stepped back to the map. He touched the surface of Pangaea. The supercontinent did look like an island. Was this what Plato had seen? Had the Greek philosopher been brought here…the same as Jake and Kady? And was Plato being poetic when he said Atlantis vanished into the vastness of the seas? Maybe he had meant the civilization had vanished into the seas of time.
It was too much to absorb. Jake fell back. He turned, dazed, staring at the walls, picturing the crystal heart above. Was all this built by the lost civilization of Atlantis? Was it their technology that drew the other Lost Tribes back in time to Pangaea? Or were the Atlantean people the first of the Lost Tribes? Did they start all this? If so, where did they go?