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“Right,” she agreed neatly, summoning up her fortitude.

Ellie let him help her up. Once she was standing again, he released his grasp.

It left her feeling oddly like she had just lost something.

?

They made their way back out of the tunnel and waded once more into the crystalline waters of the lake. The cavern was still and silent around her, its stones glistening with a timeless aura—a false one. The cave wasn’t timeless. The world outside had found its way in, and it had left a terrible mark.

Bates was quiet ahead of her as he led them unerringly back in the direction they had come.

As they passed the carved stalagmite they had seen earlier, a change in the angle of the light caught Ellie’s eye.

“Hold on,” she called out, raising a staying hand as she waded in for a closer look.

There was another carving on the stela. It had been carefully chipped into the opposite side of the stone from the roughly marked, skull-faced god of death.

The single mark took the form of a circle of swirling lines.

The light grew as Bates joined her by the stone, carrying the lantern.

“Hey,” he noted a bit uneasily. “Isn’t that your lollipop?”

Ellie gazed at the symbol, momentarily quieted by surprise. Slowly, she drew the medallion out from where it hung inside her blouse and brought it into the glow of the lantern. She turned it over, revealing the single glyph that marked the back.

“Smoke,” she said a little numbly as her eyes rose from the disk to the roughly carved sigil on the stone. “It looks like smoke.”

Bates scratched his head as he eyed the glyph.

“I still say lollipop,” he concluded.

“But why is it here?” Ellie pressed.

“I told you I’d seen it around before,” Bates pointed out.

“But whyhere?” she repeated stubbornly. “Why in a manufactured Xibalba on the back of the god of death?”

“Maybe he’s got a sweet tooth,” Bates offered.

“Smoke,” she asserted firmly.

“Lollipop,” Bates countered, mustering a flash of his usual cheerfulness. “Now how about we go find your magic pillar?”

?

Seventeen

Adam tossed a compassat Ellie as theMary Leeputtered from the gloom of the cave.

“Here,” he said.

The instrument was housed in a scratched and battered case of gold. Ellie found an engraving inside when she popped open the lid.

To A—May you always know your path. GB

George Bates. Ellie remembered Adam mentioning his father’s name.

The case was dented with a bit of rust starting to show on the hinges.