Chapter 25
The First Gift
Ben
I WOULD HAVE killed any number of those bastards if they had come after me, but thankfully I didn’t have to.
I’d nearly made it to the cave when Bruno appeared from the brush and told me to follow him. He’d lead me up to a cliff similar to the one Lillian and I had slid down from, but this one was more hidden. Better yet, it had a great view of camp.
Brilliant lads found a safe place to observe, and when they spied me running through a surviving pair of binoculars, they sent Bruno down to meet me. I’m quite thankful for the intercept, because from what they described of the caves in the aftermath of the explosions, it was horrific.
Oliver had been fixing a broken strap on his boot with shaking hands when he told me what they experienced. “We saw them burn to a crisp,” he’d said. “They nearly burned all the oxygen away, so we were forced out.”
There was no explanation for the spontaneous combustion, though I suppose the same forces that caused the landslide are to blame.
Despite those horrors, nothing prepared the men for my story about Ademir and Margaret.
Even after repeating it for the third time, James still shakes his head in disbelief.
“I still don’t believe you,” he says through utter denial. “She must have had a good reason for doing what she did.”
“Well, she did it, mate,” I answer through gritted teeth.
My whole face has remained swollen in pain, but with nothing to aid in the healing, it's the least of my worries. My mind is trained somewhere else, as are my eyes. I seriously doubt my attention has left Lillian’s tent since they pointed it out to me.
Ivo left some time ago, and Archibald has followed.
James still can’t let it go. “She had the decency to allow you time to say goodbye to Ademir, there must be some conscience in there.”
“You think a Nazi could have a conscience?” Diederick asks in dismay. “One does not simply break rank after falling prey to their ideology.”
This shuts James and the others up on the matter, and I’m finally allowed a moment of quiet.
There is no peace in it. Though the leaves rustle in the breeze and a semblance of normalcy has returned to nature since Lillian touched the earth, I can still feel the land holding its breath in the absence of her.
“None of that matters,” Mr. Bennett boasts. He’s been silent since my arrival until now. I’m sure he’s grappling with the loss of control and the thought that he might not complete the mission he’s been assigned. I know the feeling well. “We need to figure out how to move forward from here.”
“Move forward?” Bruno asks. “There’s only one way forward, and it’s getting Lillian back.” Though I agree wholeheartedly with him, I hold my tongue. I need to see where the others stand before I can form a plan.
“Are you mad?” Oliver this time. “We should turn around, go for help.”
“If we go for help, the dagger is as good as theirs.” James’ fears get the group mumbling in agreement.
I don’t entirely believe that sentiment. If Lillian has any say about it, the dagger will never fall into their hands. It’s just what she’d have to do in order to see that through that terrifies me.
Pulling back from the looking glass, I intend on sharing my thoughts when something that I cannot explain takes over. The others around me feel it too, for they all grow silent.
What I can only feel as an illusion takes over every sense of my body. There’s a sharp, violent flash and then the world drops out from under me.
Thunder ripples across the sky as lightning springs from the clouds.
What was once a lush canopy of the rainforest has been turned to ash.
Wind whips skeletons of trees from side to side.
I know without being told that this is the fate that lies before us if the dagger were to be used by the wrong hand.
The land seems to cry out in anguish as the darkness stretches suffocating fingers further and further until I can no longer see where life ends and the horror begins.
When I feel like I can’t take the horror of it any longer, a reprieve knocks the wind out of me. Before me stands a beautiful woman. At first, I reach out, believing her to be Lillian. Then I blink and the woman transforms into another. Isadora.
Retracting my hand, I blink again and she becomes another woman entirely.
She is Lillian and Isadora and all the women who came before them.
The necklace hangs around her neck, burning brighter than I have ever seen it.
The light does not echo with its blueish glow.
No, this light is pure and able to banish any evil that challenges it.
“Tell me how to help,” I call out to her.
“You already have the answer. I only needed to prove to you what will happen if you do not succeed.”
The words are shared, their translation clear in my head despite the ancient language being spoken.
Shadow of a mountain.
Light of the Amazon.
A sacrifice must be made before a new dawn.
With a crack of light, the woman disappears and the rest of the vision with it.
“What the hell was that?” Mr. Bennett asks, shaken to the core. I’ve never seen the man in such a nervous state, but I can’t blame him.
Of course, I know what it was that we saw. Tilting my chin up toward the peak of the Pico da Neblina, I can feel the certainty in my answer strengthen its hold. It was Lillian, or Isadora, or perhaps both of them.
“The forest shows you what you need to see,” I whisper too softly for anyone to hear. Ademir had known; he had told me, knowing it would come to this.
“Lillian,” Oliver says in between hyperventilating breaths. “She really was seeing all of those things. She was telling the truth?”
How ill of me to not believe in everything she said, even if subconsciously.
No, I remind myself. I did believe her; I just couldn’t fathom the incredible things she was experiencing.
Now that I’ve seen it all with my own eyes and the other men have as well.
The entire barrier of misunderstanding has been shattered.
“We’re going to get her back,” Bruno says from the haze of the aftermath. “We’re going to get her back and put an end to all of this.”
I half expect the others to protest or continue to reject what was shown to them.
Not a single one of them chooses to turn their back.
I don’t know how we’ll do any part of it.
I don’t know how we’ll get Lillian out of the clutches of evil, or how we’ll break through to the mountain, or how we’ll dispose of the dagger safely.
But what I do know is that the forest has opened itself up to me for the first time, and I do not intend to let it down.
Lillian
Like a lamb to the slaughter, I’m marched from my tent out into the blistering sun.
After my brief stint of being unbound to study the key, I was rebound with my hands in front of me and then the key was taken.
I’m not surprised in the slightest when I’m guided to the gate and find Ivo with the key in his possession.
I’ve learned that all the amazonite boxes—what’s left of them—and their trinkets have been put in Ivo’s control.
He knows the mistakes he made the first time around, and he’s learned from them.
He no longer confides in my father. In the day that I have been with them, I haven’t seen Ivo confide in anyone at all.
Margaret may be the closest to a confidant he has.
A chill runs down my spine when I am forced to a stop in front of the mountain of a man. No less a force in his aged state, he is every bit a monster who would answer directly to Führer Hitler. I don’t mention my thoughts out loud because he would undoubtedly take the insult as a compliment.
As I stand before him, he smiles in a way that leaves a scar on my soul: a vile smirk full of venom and ambition. He gives the look of a man that knows how truly wicked he is and enjoys every unholy act that comes with it.
He, the predator, and I, the bound prey; he places two fingers at the base of my neck where braided leather rests against skin.
I command my heart to remain unhurried as those two fingers caress alongside the chain lower and lower.
Even as he needlessly presses the amulet against my chest before pulling it free from my shirt, I do not give an inch.
Not getting the reaction from me that he hoped, his touch recedes and my wrists are freed. I don’t hear him or the others as the key is placed in my hand.
Standing up against the gates for the first time, I feel the strength of them. The pattern of swirls and waves in the iron reminds me of the flow of the river, which immediately puts me at ease. Nothing here will hurt me. I’ve been entrusted to free this place of its past, and I will do so.
I don’t know how I know what to do; I suppose it's some primal instinct that’s been planted in me. Something dormant for generations and finally, upon returning home, it has awakened.
I place the key, made from the same iron of the gate, in its place and let my hand rest on it.
“Won’t you try and turn it?” Margaret asks from somewhere behind. As if it were that simple.
I ignore her. Ignore everyone.
Kneeling down, I summon the same emotions I felt before.
I think of every kindness Ademir showed me, every time M?e called me her flower, and every single smile Ben ever gifted me.
I think of life, of healing. Then the strongest emotion of all: Ben Reed is still alive, and we will find each other again.
Wrapping one hand around my amazonite charm and the other flat on the ground in front of me, I face the darkness with the knowledge of what needs to be done.
The darkness does come for me in the vision of a man wearing an amazonite crown atop his head. The intricacies of its jagged peaks eat up the sun, and then the whole world goes black.
He grabs my forearm and yanks me upright. Twisting painfully, I find my captor with his black dagger raised, ready to strike. I find myself surrendering to it. As the tip of the dagger locks onto my heart, I let myself fall into the power of my necklace.
That terrible and sweet ancient power bubbles up within me, and it becomes one with the necklace. In a brilliant shower of light, the world stops moving. The man, the demon, whatever he is on this earth, stops with the black dagger shaking in his fist.
Freeing my arm as if it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done, I step right against my opponent and look him in the eye. He is nothing but darkness. Who is he compared to my light?
At that delicious thought, the entire illusion shatters before me. The world comes back into focus. The black turns to green, and the empty echo is replaced with the sounds of a nearby flock of Amazon parrots.
I hardly register returning before I’m retching into the mossy ground beneath me. As I fall to my side and continue to empty my insides, those that had watched step past.
Sweat dripping, stomach cramping, I manage to tilt my head toward the gates.
The key has turned, and the gates have opened to a world I only knew in my mother’s stories about the col?nia perdida. Gold-capped buildings glint in the sunlight despite centuries of destruction. Overgrown streets map the grand scale of the place so many called a sanctuary.
Despite the circumstances, I can’t undermine the gravity of what I’ve discovered. My shaky arms manage to hold me up for two seconds before collapsing, one second longer than necessary to take in the grandeur of my discovery.
The Lost Colony.