Page 19
Mia
We’ve got a two-hour ride ahead of us, and that’s if we make good time. Midas is efficient, but even he isn’t immune to lines or going over the insurance details at a rental facility.
To his credit, he kept his cool as the monotone woman repeatedly warned him that the car is not to cross the border to the North side of the island. “And if you do,” she droned on, “you will be responsible for all incidentals that may occur to the vehicle…not that we can really stop you, though, people do it all the time.”
Midas simply smiled at her, but I knew the way his dimple shallowly appeared on his cheek, he was biting the inside of his lip.
With that hurdle down, I pray there won’t be a terrible line at the border crossing. It’s mid-afternoon by now and hopefully we won’t run out of daylight once we reach the ruins.
Limassol’s seafront drive is awash in saturated colors, thanks to the verdancy of the trees, the multicolored hues from banners hanging on light posts, and the terra cotta roofs of the beach huts. I watch as the breeze off the ocean blows the palm trees about, their fronds dancing in the wind.
It’s not long before the sleek green pillars of the CDB Banks or the familiar red and yellow of Shell stations grow fewer and farther between. Downtown is an odd mix of urban expansion and old-world charm. And though the windows in the car are up and the AC is blasting, it smells wonderful.
“How can the entire city smell like food?” I ask no one in particular. My stomach growls, protesting how long I’ve gone since eating anything. Then, the delicious scent grows stronger and I turn around when I hear the crinkling of a bag.
“It doesn’t,” Legion says. “But this bag does. Here.” Over the backseat, he hands me a foil wrapped gyro. It’s still warm.
He passes the rest around until we all have one, diving in like the ravenous animals we are at the moment. The tzatziki sauce is fresh and tangy, and the cucumbers are perfectly crunchy. I’m in heaven.
“We burned a lot of calories swimming, so figured we’d refuel on the way,” Legion says conversationally around a mouthful of food.
I swallow before saying, “And Blaze is allowing you to diagnose us with hunger?” At my jest, Blaze stops, mid chew, then shrugs. Apparently, his appetite overrules any rebuttal.
Dillon laughs, catching my eye. I can see the striations in his irises. The deeper almost brownish hues in the otherwise hazel color. His pupils dilate when his gaze lands on my mouth. With a gentle touch, his thumb rubs at the edge of my lips.
“Sauce,” he says quietly. Before I can grab my paper napkin, he’s licked it off his finger, never breaking eye contact. There’s a flutter low in my stomach, and it has nothing to do with eating.
We’re all quiet as we finish our meals. I breathe a contented sigh and look out the window, resting my elbow on the door’s armrest.
The city is behind us. The four-lane road is now reduced to two, and the high-rise buildings have given way to uneven hills, streaked with a combination of green grasses and brittle scrub brush. Occasionally, yellow wildflowers dot the terrain like freckles upon the land.
Like Colombia and the Sierra Nevadas in Andalucia, Cyprus is stunning. And despite the motive for being here, I’m glad that I am.
I’m glad that I’ve been able to experience different parts of the world first hand. Even if it has been trial by fire.
“ That’s a castle?” Phantom scratches the side of his jaw.
A few miles out of the village of Gastria, the paved road turned to dirt, running parallel to the coast. The road simply ended, despite signs with directions to the ruins. And that term might be considered generous.
There’s a small beach to the left where a group of guys is tossing a football back and forth. A small spit of land is directly in front of us. It swells into a ridge that can’t be much more than thirty feet high. From satellite images, I know the tip of land is circular and there are definitive remnants of walls, but from here, it looks like a hillside that is littered with small boulders.
I can’t really blame Phantom’s sentiment.
“It was ,” I say, shielding my eyes from the sun that hangs low in the sky. The calm waters of the bay seem to absorb the sun’s rays, painting a blinding streak across its surface. “Come on.” I don’t need to state the obvious that daylight is on the waning end.
Rocks and pebbles crunch under foot, sending puffs of dust from under my boots from time to time.
I’m eager to see the ruins. I’m also curious as to how—or if —we’ll find anything. What, in such a dilapidated and barren area would yield a clue? We don’t have a treasure map where a giant red X marks the spot, nor do we have any high-tech gadgets like ground penetrating radar or LiDAR. We’re leading with ingenuity only, and not for the first time. Hopefully it will be enough.
Would I feel better if I had an answer that is absolute, a concrete fact that this is where we need to be looking? Of course. And with our literal race against time, that lack of certainty is a pill that grows harder and harder to swallow. I only hope that this is it; my dad’s life still hangs in the balance.
Seabirds call in the distance and the gentle lap of the waves kiss the shore. It’s a strategic location to build a fortress, with endless sightlines of the surrounding ocean and the small isthmus that once boasted fertile farming land beyond.
We reach the base of the hill. I’m the first to climb, grabbing shrubs and large stones to aid in my ascent. I’m too concentrated on what lies ahead, that I don’t pay attention to my footing. I step in a small sunken hole, and I’m lucky I don’t roll my ankle.
“Looks like a lot of snake holes, guys. Watch where you step,” I say over my shoulder.
Dillon is behind me, and I hear him pass the bit of information on. “Blaze, you might want to cover your junk. Snake holes. All over.”
With the grating of the terrain filling my ears, I’m only able to catch certain phrases like “fucking serious” and “why snakes”?
With any luck, they’ve all been run off from the boisterous shouts and bellows from the guys down on the beach.
There’s a buzz lingering under my skin like my blood has a low current running through it. My heart is pumping with each step I take to climb, and by the time I reach the top, I suck in a lungful of air.
And I gather my bearings.
This chunk of land has a much smaller footprint than any of the previous places we’ve searched, but its area is still large enough to have once boasted a castle. We’ve got our work cut out for us.
A piece of a wall sits next to an eroding boulder with three very weathered steps leading to it. I climb it. I’m able to see a rough perimeter of what once was the bailey. Surrounding it, earth fills in what appears to be a dry moat.
Besides what little remains, there’s nothing else. No indication of a drawbridge, a cistern, or even a small harbor is evident—all things that once were, according to my hasty research. Just earth and a general outline that’s being slowly consumed by the harsh saltwater environment.
I blow a raspberry, clutching the back of my neck.
Dillon stands next to me, surveying the area. “Well, we’ve worked with less, right?”
“I guess,” I laugh, humorlessly. The others have dispersed, looking around, so I don’t filter my next words. “I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it.” I should be happy, should be ecstatic that we’ve made it to the end of the rainbow so to speak. But even with the prospect that I’ll be able to save my dad, the pot of gold is still nowhere to be found.
“If it was sitting in a shiny box at the top of this hill, where would be the fun in that?” he asks, chucking me on the shoulder. I appreciate his attempt at cheering me up. It helps. But barely.
“But that’s just it, isn’t it?” I ask rhetorically. “What are we even looking for? A box? The cuff in the dirt? It’s not like it’s going to be sitting in a Tiffany’s felt drawstring bag. Is it buried? There’s nowhere else to hide it otherwise.” My hand drifts to my collarbone where I begin flaking off dried patches of salt.
Dillon inhales deeply. “I was wondering the same things,” he admits. “But it has to be here.” He’s adamant. “You’ve not led us astray once, and no pressure or anything, but you can’t let us down now. You’re too close.”
“You’re right,” I say, garnering a little more confidence. It seems to be my MO. Arrive at a place, feel overwhelmed, pull myself together after a pep talk from Dillon. “Help me down,” I say, nodding to the moat in front of us. It’s rather shallow, but still far enough down to need assistance. Dillon goes first, then I crouch as he gathers me under the armpits and lowers me to him. Except, in the process, my foot gets tangled in a robust vine. I yank my foot, trying to dislodge the hold it’s got on me. Dillon extracts his knife and makes quick work of detaching it from me. But somehow it gets tangled around his hand and he gives it a solid jerk and it breaks free from its roots. A section of the moat wall becomes exposed.
“Damn thing…” he says under his breath.
I grab his forearm. “Dillon. Look.” He stills when he sees what I’m pointing at.
“Is the theme for this entire mission ‘carvings’?” he asks sarcastically when his eyes land on what I’ve spotted.
“It might very well be…” On the top stone of the moat’s wall is a small engraving. It’s beyond weathered and the only reason it caught my eye is the dirt that is lodged in it. The contrast against the whitewashed surface simplifies any interpretation.
I reach my hand out to it. Instinctually, I want to brush it off, but I stop myself.
“Is that…a little sun?” Dillon asks.
The half circle is easy to make out. The shallow rays protruding from it are harder to discern. I crouch down. “There’s even a decorative design inside it,” I say. Then, I do reach out. And I touch it. Because this, this symbol sends a tingle down my spine that morphs into an undeniable surge of credibility. The cuff is here. “It’s Colombian,” I breathe.
“I gathered as much. I’ve had an accelerated course on pre-Columbian artifacts, Moorish architecture, and Knights Templar activity,” he says with nothing but pride in his voice.
“Have you now?” I begin freeing the area from other constricting vines and pulling out chunks of dead grass like a mad gardener. But the small sun is the only one here.
“Hey, Mia?” I hear Phantom call from the opposite side of the compound. “I think we might have found something.”
I stand and face their direction. “Is it a small carving of a sun, perchance?”
I see Blaze throw his arms in the air, exasperated. “How the hell did you know that?” he asks, if not a little perturbed.
“Because we’ve found one here too. Search the entire wall,” I say. Dillon and I take off, covering the ground across from where Blaze and Phantom are. If it weren’t for him swearing as he loses his footing, I wouldn’t notice Midas staking his claim on one of the shorter walls by himself.
I follow the natural guide of the uneven ditch, being mindful of where I step. My eyes scan like lasers. My fingers trail across the ancient stones. I detect the sunbaked notes of the arid grasses. I lick my lips and taste brine. And I can hear the thunderous beats of my heart in my ears.
“Here!” Legion says. “Found another.”
Within minutes, Dillon and I spot an additional one. We’re all lost in our own silent concentration until one of us calls out when a carving has been found. Eventually, we end up at the same point.
“So, what’s that make?” I ask. “Four or five total?”
“I think so,” Midas says.
I can feel five sets of eyes on me, waiting for further instruction. I’m trying to picture the site as a whole and roughly where each symbol lies. “If only I could plot the points…” I mutter. “Then I could get a better sense of what to do next.”
Legion reaches in his back pocket and pulls out his phone, scrolling. “I have this app that allows you to take a picture where something of interest is, and it converts it into a geospatial tag on the map. Would that help?”
I could literally jump in his arms and hug him. “Yes! That’s exactly what I need.” He gives me a quick rundown on how to do it. Once the first image has been added on the map, I run to the others.
Then I zoom out. The aerial view shows the shoddy outline of the rectangular castle’s bailey. And in the center of each wall is a plot point. There are four in total.
The team has gathered around, curiosity etched in their features.
“A diamond?” Blaze asks.
I shake my head. “No. But if we connect the lines like this,” I say, hovering my finger above the screen and tracing over it from top to bottom, “it creates a cross…”
“Oh. That was my next guess.” Blaze’s cheeks redden under his tan.
“Are you thinking it might be buried where the lines intersect in the middle?” Dillon asks.
It could be, but when I look at the map, I recall reading that the cistern was in the center of the castle. “It’s worth looking,” I say, doubt niggling the back of my thoughts.
We climb out of the moat to what used to be the keep and then the courtyard of the castle. Once again, the landscape is deceitful under its current state of ruin. I have to rely on Legion’s app to show the moving dot (which is me) until I’m standing directly where the invisible lines cross.
“Look. Another sun,” Midas says, kneeling and pointing at it. If a cistern had been present, all that’s left are a few scattered stones that perhaps were part of the bottom.
I add it to the app. “Okay, now the intersecting lines would seem to make more sense,” I say.
“Except,” Dillon says, stating the obvious, “how would you bury something under a tank that holds thousands of gallons of water?”
“I know, it’s not making sense to me, either,” I say. “The cuff was supposedly made in the sixteenth century, and this castle is medieval. It predates the cuff by at least three hundred years. So it can’t be in this spot,” I say, looking around, hoping the answer will reveal itself suddenly.
There must be something that I’ve missed. Something that I could easily have overlooked or disregarded. I slip Legion’s phone in my back pocket and leap back into the moat. I have to see the carvings again.
The first is identical to the cistern: half moon shaped sun. So are the second, third and fourth ones. But when I get to the last one, I see the difference. It’s so subtle that I have to run my fingers over it, blindly accepting that this sun isn’t a part. It’s a whole. A closed circle. A symbol of eternal love. It’s infinite .
And I know without a doubt, that the cuff is here. Everything that’s led us to this point…history, hidden clues, the fact that this symbol is even pointing in a southwesterly direction towards Colombia…
“It’s here,” I say, my voice solemn in reverence. I don’t know if anyone hears me. I don’t know if I want them to at this moment. Because for me, it is a moment. It’s a microsecond in the fabric of time. And I’m here, about to unearth an artifact that has been lost to the ages. A piece that many don’t believe exists. There’s still a chance it doesn’t. But every fiber of my being is telling me otherwise.
I’m unsure if the cuff could be under the moat, in a hollowed-out stone of the wall, or buried in the rock-hard dirt beside it, but I start scratching at the ground feverishly.
My hands grow pale amongst the arid dust. I haven’t even made a dent in the hardened earth. I try to budge the top stone that has the carving. I’d have more luck trying to move a mountain. I grapple with a bush, needing to feel productive even if it’s a futile attempt. A vine is next. When I wrench it from the ground, I yelp. A long, black snake slithers from the protection of the greenery I just stole from it.
“Sorry little guy,” I say, reaching for the next shrub.
“That thing is over six feet long—it’s not little.” Dillon has joined me. Instead of using his hands, he magically produces a folded spade. “We come prepared for any situation,” he says when I raise an eyebrow in question at him. “Mia, stop. You’ll destroy your hands.” He stills my endeavors by taking my hands in his. Carefully, he brushes away the worst of the dust. Blackened, blunt fingernails are revealed. My fingertips are raw and I know without looking, I’ve cut myself in several spots.
Midas, Phantom and the brothers join us.
Blaze pushes his way until he’s right next to me. “If Dillon’s too much of a ‘little guy’ for you, I know—”
I cut him off. “I was talking to the snake I disturbed.”
He jumps back, knocking into Legion. “For fuck’s sake, bro ,” he says on a lofty sigh. “I know you’re a lethal product of the American government, but Jesus…sometimes I look at you and wonder if you’re the Temu version of us.”
“A fear of snakes does not make me a shitty version of anything,” Blaze says matter-of-factly.
“So you do admit you’re scared…” Legion’s taunting skills far exceed his older brother status.
Midas intervenes their quarrel. “There are two more shovels, children . Start digging.”
Helplessness settles over me while I watch Dillon and the brothers dig. There’s not a lot I can do, but appreciate the way the veins in Dillon’s forearms pop each time the shovel collides with the dirt. I’m mesmerized by the repetitive flexing of his biceps. It looks painful when the metal of the spade reverberates with a clang. He’s hit something.
We all still. Hopeful glances pass between us. Dillon brings the shovel down once more. The validity that he once more strikes something solid rings loud and clear. A pent-up breath escapes me and I fall to my knees.
“Careful,” I warn. Nothing is visible yet. The hole is deeper than I imagined, and I’m forced to lie on my stomach. With gentle strokes, I brush away dirt. Then, I see it: the edge of what could be a box. From here, I can’t make out what medium it is. Its texture is rather soft. I motion to Dillon to keep digging. To his credit, he does so with the utmost caution.
Within ten minutes I’m able to dislodge the item. It is indeed a box—made of leather from the looks and feel of it—and I scramble into a sitting position. The weight of it is promising. The guys form a circle around me, taking a knee.
We’re equally invested in what sits in my lap. The world around me turns silent. I turn the small square box over, running what’s left of my thumbnail along the crease of the lid. Granules of sands fall to my pants. My heart threatens to burst from the confines of my chest. My breaths come shallow. And then, I lift the lid.
Inside, shifted to the back, is something I’ve only dreamed of. A gleaming gold bracelet winks back at me in the evening light. It’s thick, close to an eighth of an inch. It makes the flat headpiece I packed away a week ago seem like a sheet of tissue. The curvature of it is sublime in its craftsmanship. Its width is probably two inches, allowing plenty of space for the repetitive etchings of a fierce warrior face. A depiction of the chief who gifted it to his wife. A reminder of his protection and everlasting love.
I have a fleeting thought of trying it on, but think better of it. I’d rather appreciate it for what it is: a relic, not an insignificant piece of costume jewelry.
I’m stunned into speechlessness. The gravity of the situation. Of what I hold in my hands. How we were able to pull off the impossible.
My heart is a steady drumbeat in my ears. There’s a stirring in my stomach as if I’ve consumed a gallon of carbonation. My hands shake. I lean into these sensations because what I hold in my hands is something I have personally been obsessed with since my mom first told me about it when I was a child. The memory of her tucking me in and reciting the tale conjures an image that warms me to my very core. But then a pang of sadness hits me like a wave. I wish Mom was here to see this, to hold it. To know that something that meant as much to her as it does me, actually exists. It’s real. A more objective person wouldn’t allow themselves the regret over that. But if it hadn’t been for my mom, my interest in the cuff never would’ve happened. It’s a gift, finding it. In more ways than one.
“I-I can’t believe it’s real,” I stammer. “Do you know what this means?”
“It means you lot have done all the hard work for us,” sneers a deep voice from behind the guys. My heart skips a beat at his words.
Dillon and the team pop up from their kneeled position. As one, they pivot. I’m shielded completely. I shove the cuff back in the box, wishing I could hide it.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you.” I’m blocked by a wall of men, but slowly, they each lower their dominant hands. “Now,” the man says confidently, “I’m only going to say it once. Hand me the cuff.”