The Jaguar (37 page)

Mulac felt the shock of years passing. He was aware again the chemical dance of life, the wonder of light in the darkness, a giddy mix of human sensations. Fate had not done with him yet. Perhaps soon he could close the circle, sink beneath the lake, lose all sense and form and exhale across the universe. Sleep.

Laura started from her slumber. Now in a cold sweat and scared, she could recall nothing of her dream, except that it involved the machete she had left back along the ridge. She thought of her letter of application, written less than three weeks previously. No map, but now no machete either, she noted to herself sarcastically. She began to shiver. On either side of her the others were sleeping fitfully. She could just make out Alfredo's torso, slumped forward upon his knees. David's head was back against the stonework and his mouth open. Strange gargles and whistles issued from his mouth and nose. Laura wrapped her arms across her chest, but there was little else she could do to keep warm. A slight luminosity in the chamber made her think there must be a full moon. She closed her eyes again and thought of Simon, her flatmates, and of her life in advertising: common things, part of normal lives lived by ordinary people, as she had so recently been. Now they felt alien and irrelevant. They also felt distant, in time as well as space.

Laura opened her eyes again. She was sure that she had heard movement this time. She could sense - almost hear - another presence in the chamber. She pulled up her legs and pressed her back into the stonework, trying not to breath. Still the others slept, David now lying prone on the floor. There was a definite sniff and then a low grumble. The sound was just loud enough to carry from the other side of the tomb. Laura was sure that it had not been one of the sleepers, that it was more than just an echo. Something large was stirring, something that owned the space they had invaded, something that was moving steadily towards them.

David began to stretch. Laura thumped him urgently on the thigh. He struggled into a sitting position, spluttering and choking. She grabbed his nearest hand and he turned in her direction, trying to work out her expression through the gloom. He smiled - she could briefly see the flash of his uneven teeth - but she did not smile back. David was about to speak when a long, deep, bass growl resonated through the chamber and consumed the pair in fear. They scrambled together. Laura thought David might squeeze the life from her as he flung his body across hers, but she didn't want him to let go. There was the sound of an animal pawing angrily at the ground. It was scratching and sniffing, only feet away. Alfredo mumbled incoherently to himself in Spanish, but somehow did not wake.

Out of the gloom grew the face of a jaguar, prowling and low to the ground. Stocky, pug-nosed features hung menacingly beyond powerful, patterned shoulders. Its amber eyes shone with the first rays of morning, igniting two low flames which burned with a concentrated energy that might dissolve any shadow. David could feel the warmth of it breath. It was too late for terror. Now he was just numb. He tensed and waited for the bite to the back of his neck which would take him back to blankness. It did not come. There was just the warm, rancid panting, the anticipation of death. Something was holding it back.

Slowly, he forced himself to turn, to face the ancient, all-consuming eyes of the jaguar god. There he met an unexpected stillness; an evocation of eons past and ages yet to come. David was no longer paralysed. He was more than just unafraid, he was fascinated. The eyes spoke of every time and every place. They containing what could never be contained. Time was a landscape flowing out and back in all directions. Nothing worried him anymore. It was as if he knew this animal, knew it as a companion, and it knew him.

Alfredo coughed and suddenly sat bolt-upright. With an immense roar and a flash of fearsome teeth, the great cat pounced. Alfredo had no time to react; the animal was on top of him, thrusting Laura out of the way with the splayed claws on its powerful back legs. Both screamed from the bottom of a deep well of pain. Instinctively, David grabbed at the swinging tail and pulled with every ounce of strength he could muster. The cat spun and jumped at the same time, snarling and smashing into the low ceiling. Momentarily stunned, it scrambled to find its footing, then crouched low and wary in front of them. Shaking its head, it grumbled like the rolling waves of an imminent earthquake. It dug its claws into the earth again, rehearsing its next attack.

“No!” David bellowed, as if someone else had usurped his voice.

The jaguar turned towards him. To his great relief it grew still. The rapid jerking of its ribcage began to subside. Then it sprang for the tiny gap in the wall and was gone.

Laura was crying quietly. She rolled over to Alfredo, groaning from the pain of the deep lines slashed across her legs, ignoring the other gash that had opened up her side. Desperately, she fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed at the long streaks of blood flowing from his lacerated scalp. Alfredo spluttered and a spray of blood from his savaged lips rained across the others.

David knew he must get help, but was stricken by the delayed shock of what he had just done. He stared towards the sarcophagus, his own chest heaving. Here and there the first faint flickers of light were beginning to spill through from outside. He could make out the uneven stone surface and then he could trace the swirls and curves of the carvings with his eyes. As he gasped for breath, a familiar pattern began to form in his mind. He started to relax. It was the same picture he had seen on a rock in Muyil. It was Mulac.

Despite the distress of those beside him, David laughed audibly. “Hello, my brother,” he whispered. For the first time in his life he understood his place in the universe, and the future was pregnant with possibility. “I'm going to get help,” he declared decisively. “Everything will work out for the best.”

Laura barely noticed David's newfound fortitude. Blood was still coursing over Alfredo's features, some of it hers, and she was frantically trying to stem the tide. Growing increasingly dizzy, she was finding it difficult to focus. David's voice came to her from somewhere far distant and no longer relevant.

David crawled toward the cold grey light of the exit and emerged onto wet grass. He was alone. Almost immediately he could feel the sharp outline of the lost gun under one hand. He scooped it up and struggled through his aches and pains to stand. Walking unsteadily up the hill, clear of the platform, he crested the ridge. A new day was sweeping in from the distant coast. Turning, he stared back down at the lake. He took a cautious step forward to be sideways-on to the slope. Stretching back an arm, he launched the gun vigorously into the air. Briefly, at the top of its arc, it caught the first rays of the rising sun before spinning back into the shadows. It was clear from its trajectory that it should have met the waters somewhere near their middle, but there was no splash. No ripples picked out the indeterminate surface. It was just no longer there.

For an instant David was drawn to the pool. His insides felt strange, as though he was being wrenched in two or a part of himself replaced. He grew dizzy and he wanted to be sick. He realised he could barely see. Head in both hands, he gave it a vigorous shake and forced himself to focus. He started to walk. Not the way Laura and he had come, but further on, around the rim of the volcano. It was the wrong way, he knew, but something was guiding him on, something stronger than his concern for all he was leaving behind.

The section of the ridge David now traversed was much clearer and he made rapid progress. As he stopped to get his bearings and stared out beyond the hollow, green island he could make out a group of far off canoes. They looked old-fashioned to the point of antiquity. The paddlers were bare-chested and seemed to sport feathered head-dresses. Someone, perhaps, was waving. But at that distance, David couldn't be sure.

Alfredo looked up at Laura. Adrenaline and her all-consuming physical presence made him so happy he could barely feel his injuries. It was as if he'd woken from the nightmare world of his birth. He reached out and stroked the tears from her cheeks. His broad grin revealed another mouthful of blood.

Laura's head had cleared in a way it hadn't since her mother had died. A thick fog of anger and confusion had parted. Her wounds were forgotten. Everything would be alright now. The two of them could be together. She felt the force of his erect penis brushing against her thigh: a death throw suddenly granted new life. Her hand moved instinctively upon it. She cast the gore-sodden rag in her other hand aside. Alfredo was not going away. Each grasped instinctively for the other, and at the fresh start offered to them both.

David had reached the tallest and steepest part of the crater wall. He had to climb hard up loose and dangerous pumice ridges to gain the summit. Nobody had walked here for a long time - it felt like never. Rocks tumbled as he dislodged them, but nothing seemed to disturb the chalice waters below. The new sun touched the highest peak. David was upon it and absorbing the radiant glow. He could feel the strength of this different day coursing through his veins. He started to run the downward slope, leaping over obstacles like an athlete, totally sure of his footing.

Alfredo grasped the open collar of Laura's deeply stained shirt, ripped it open and plunged his hands down her cleavage and onto the soft cool wall of her belly. Laura sighed and moved closer upon him, trapping his arms just where she wanted them. Pleasure and pain were one and the same. Slowly she began to move her body up and down over his. Little by little she made her way upward, pecking at his neck, nibbling at his ear then spreading kisses across his forehead. His fingers had found the fragile rim of her knickers and moved within. She could feel their gentle probing motion from her womb, from the core of her being, but she needed him to move still lower.

David's progress had slowed. At the bottom of the slope he had plunged below the reach of the sun, and into thick jungle. The view beyond the island disappeared in a layer of mist. Phantoms of fog loitered around the trees. He clambered over wet roots and dead branches covered in fungi, parting the thick tresses of moss which hung, like intricate green cobwebs, from every horizontal branch. He came to a halt, aware that he was in danger of getting lost. The ridge had flattened out, there was no horizon, and it was less clear which way to go. He caught a glimpse of rapid movement from left to right. It could have been a bird - perhaps just its shadow - or a soul that maybe he was meant to follow.

Alfredo's fingers were inside her. They seemed to dissolve into the profoundest parts of her being. Laura closed her eyes. She bit her lower lip. Reaching blindly for the wall, she pushed herself upright then thrust deeply down. She screamed, but no sound issued from her mouth. Alfredo finally withdrew and his hands reached up and felt for the small of her back. Her bra slipped along her arms and tumbled to the mud and blood-stained floor. Her hands were cradling his neck, pulling him forward. He could not help but grimace as his wounds tried to consume him, but he kept coming, burying his battered face between her breasts, feeling with his lips and tongue for the taught peaks of her nipples.

It was raining heavily. There were dense rumbles of thunder and crashes of lightning. David kept falling over. He was cold and he wanted to stop. Paths headed off the ridge in all directions: a confusion of animal trails trying to lead him astray. In his mind he saw carvings in the trees, totems and dream-catchers hanging from the branches. He felt a bolt of fire course though him. Instantly, all were new - freshly carved, decorated and painted - probably recently blessed. People whispered: or was it just the ringing in his ears. Their voices hung behind tree trunks and bushes, critical voices trying to destroy his resolve. A confusion of ritual and incense weaved between the leaves. David put his head down and staggered determinedly on.

Laura pushed Alfredo to the floor again, sensing his growing weakness, supporting his head so it didn't smash against the tiles. She pinned him there with her thighs and unfastened his belt. She savoured the steady pull of his zip, parted the material and released the fullness of his manhood. She rubbed her crotch along his leg, sighed as she crossed his knee, licked at the instrument of pleasure and kissed gently around the tip. As it slipped between her lips she felt Alfredo's instinctive upward motion. She wanted to bite, just a little, but listened instead to his soothing voice as he garbled to himself in an ecstasy of Spanish.

There was the rock. David recognised it straight away. And there was the downward path that led to the ruined harbour. He had completed the circuit. The pathway looked cleaner than he remembered it, the vegetation freshly cut. He reached down for the machete which Laura had rested there, but it was gone. Perhaps he was wrong. He looked around, but there were no other stones in view. He checked behind the nearest trees - still nothing. David sat, exhausted, on the boulder. A pool of dampness spread across his buttocks. Standing, he examined the mossy surface then ripped away a thick, sodden layer. Something small and cylindrical found his fingers. He held it up and began to pick it clean. Short sections of gold shone between cloying lumps of soil. Blinking, he rubbed it again then held the ring to the light to be sure. As his fingers closed around it he could feel its weight and purpose. Wrapping it carefully in a handkerchief, he secured the tiny bundle in a trouser pocket then walked instinctively on.

Laura could wait no longer. She was upon him, surrounding him, burying him deep within her. Alfredo was calling her name, over and over, but the appeals were becoming weaker, fading to nothing, leading her away. She wanted so much to follow, to leave behind the pain, but she must hurry. David might find help, might lead Marcus to the chamber and return her to a world she had already relinquished. They mustn't hear her, mustn't reach her before she was gone. She drifted back to Alfredo, gave in to the moment and floated away on the outgoing tide.