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Sam withdrew a twenty-dollar bill, deciding the matter as the youth’s eyes lit up at the windfall. He had another brief exchange with the old man and then snatched the money from Sam’s hand like he was afraid it would disappear into thin air.
“Now?” he asked.
Sam nodded. “Yes.”
They returned to the SUV, unloaded the backpacks and sacks containing the camping gear and spelunking equipment, and divided it among themselves. When everyone had a pack and a sack, they set off into the brush, following the barefoot youth as he marched into the rain forest with the ease of an antelope. Lazlo exchanged a troubled glance with Leonid, who looked even more glum than usual, and they followed, struggling under the weight of their burdens, as Sam and Remi strode effortlessly up the faint game trail.
The trek took a solid hour. The last vestige of the squall intermittently drizzled on them, making the slippery ground more treacherous. The sun was just breaking through the clouds as they entered a clearing at the base of another hill, the area soundless except for the cries of birds in the surrounding jungle. The boy gestured toward a brook running along the far side of the clearing, near several crude, man-made stone formations, almost completely overgrown but still distinct from the landscape.
They took a break in the shade of the trees and the youth nodded at the structures.
“Tables.”
Remi nodded. The only things left of the hapless village were the worktables used for cleaning fish and laundry and built using indigenous limestone carved from the nearby hill.
“Looks like the same rock the king used for his islets and temples,” Leonid said.
“Makes sense. Relatively easy to cut and plenty of it,” Sam agreed.
Lazlo gazed around the clearing. “Nothing else here. Bloody amazing it can all disappear—if this fine lad hadn’t shown us the way, we’d have never known what we were looking at.”
Remi nodded. “According to Nauru’s account, everyone was slaughtered. So there was nobody left to keep the elements at bay.”
Sam moved to the brook. He eyed the sun overhead and pulled a compass from his shirt pocket. After glancing at it, he returned to the group and regarded the youth.
“Thank you. We stay here now,” he said. The young man seemed puzzled and Sam repeated his statement, augmented with some simple sign language. Understanding played across the youth’s face and he shrugged. If the crazy foreigners wanted to camp in the middle of the Guadalcanal jungle, it was none of his business—he already had his prize. “You go back,” Sam said, pointing at the trail.
Their escort nodded and with a wave disappeared into the rain forest, leaving them alone in the clearing. Sam pulled a portable GPS unit from his pack and turned it on, then entered a waypoint for the village site so they’d have coordinates to return to if they had to retrace their steps. After ten minutes in the shade, he glanced at his watch and shouldered his gear. “Might as well get going. East is over there. ‘Toward the rising sun from the last hut.’ That says east to me.”
“What about the goat head?” Lazlo asked.
“That’s a little more problematic. I’m hoping we’ll know it when we see it.”
“What if it was referring to something that’s long since been blown or washed away?” Lazlo pressed.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Leonid gave them a dark look and waved away a mosquito. “Goats’ heads. Villages that are no longer there.”
Sam took the lead and led the group across the brook to where he’d spotted a faint game trail leading in the desired direction. Once they were back in the brush, the heat quickly rose to a stifling level, the faint ocean breeze stopped dead by the vegetation. Sam slowed every few minutes and cocked his head, listening for any hint of followers—he didn’t think they had anything to fear from the youth or the villagers, but he wasn’t taking any chanc
es.
The slope steepened as they worked their way east, and the trail eventually veered off in a northern direction, rendering it useless. Sam and Remi unsheathed their machetes and hacked a way through the thick underbrush, their progress slowed to a crawl as they fought the jungle and the terrain.
The afternoon wore on, the swelter almost unbearable, and when they reached another opening near a larger stream, they took a break beneath the spread of a banyan tree, all four panting from exertion.
“How far do you think we’ve come?” Remi asked, blotting her brow with a bandanna soaked in lukewarm river water.
“Maybe half a mile. No more.” Sam retrieved the GPS, waited until it acquired a signal, and peered at the screen. “Actually, a little more than a half mile, but not much.”
“And we have no idea how much farther until we’re in goat head neighborhood,” Leonid muttered.
“All part of the challenge,” Sam said.
“Don’t forget that we have no idea what the goat head refers to,” Lazlo chimed in. “Lest anyone think we’re doing this the easy way.”
Remi cleared her throat. “The reason I ask is because it seems like this stream, assuming it’s been here for a while—which, judging by the erosion, it looks like it has—would be a natural place to rest, just as we have. And while taking a break, it might also be a good spot to memorialize somehow as a marker.”