Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (22 page)

Marika snapped at Pindor, “Sense? How does any of this make sense?”

Pindor waved an arm around the chamber. “The Skull King needed a Magister. Only a Magister could pass through the barrier that locked the temple and bring down the shield that protected our valley. It was no wonder the Skull King accepted his banishment so easily. He knew he could return to the valley whenever he was ready.”

Jake stood back up. “But that doesn’t mean we have to let him.” He nodded to Bach’uuk. “We came here with a plan—your plan, Pin—to find a place to regroup and seek more allies.”

Marika joined them. “We can’t let him win.”

“We won’t,” Jake promised—though he hoped it was an oath he could keep.

As they set off, a screech blasted outside the temple. It was so loud that it hurt Jake’s ears even inside the temple. He swore it shook the floor under them.

Jake remembered the cries of triumph that had excited the grakyl horde a few moments ago. He suspected that the cause of that excitement had just arrived.

“Has he come?” Marika asked, voicing what Jake feared. She didn’t need a name. They all knew to whom she was referring.

“Let’s go,” Jake said.

Bach’uuk led them to the tunnel beyond the crystal heart. It opened into a twisted set of narrow stairs that headed down into the lower levels of the pyramid. They went single file. Jake realized they had to be
beneath
the pyramid by now, or maybe the pyramid was actually larger than it appeared from above. Maybe what was on the surface was just the tip of a much larger structure.

Around and around they went.

Finally the stairs ended at another room, flat roofed but circular in shape. Giant stalactites of crystals hung from the high roof like the fangs of some colossal fossilized beast. They glowed and illuminated the space ahead.

Jake followed Bach’uuk into the chamber as he headed toward yet another tunnel on the far side of the room. It looked like more stairs—heading down again.

How far down does this place go? Jake wondered, but his full attention remained on the room. His feet slowed.
Marika and Pindor kept close to him.

On the floor rested a giant device. It was a circular wheel, made out of pure gold. It lay flat on the floor and stretched ten yards across. Its inner edge was notched like a gear. A second wheel was fitted inside the first one.

As Jake watched, the larger gear revolved a few degrees with a loud snap, turning the smaller gear inside. Then it stopped, as if marking time. And maybe it was. Jake walked around its outer edge. Though there were no marks on it, Jake recognized the shape.

Marika realized the same as she followed behind Jake. “It’s like our tribe’s calendar wheel.”

Jake nodded. The Maya had developed a detailed calendar using wheels fitted together like gears. Again he wondered which came first. Had the Maya built this? Or had some ancient Maya stood where they were now and returned home with the knowledge? Jake continued around the edge. According to Marika, the pyramid had been here long before any of the tribes had arrived, even before the Neanderthals had made their home here in the valley. Jake began to suspect he was looking at the possible source of all ancient science, knowledge found here and taken back home.

Bach’uuk, who’d seen all this before, waited at the entrance to the far tunnel.

Jake began to head over when he finally noted the curved walls of the room. Row after row of ancient script
covered the walls from floor to ceiling, so crisply inscribed, it could’ve been cut with a laser. Jake scanned the ancient writing.

What language was it? Who wrote it? Jake ran his fingers along the letters. It had to be the builders of the pyramid. Possibly the same ones who drew the Lost Tribes of Earth to this wild land.

He continued along the wall and crossed toward Bach’uuk, whose brows grew heavier with impatience. They had to keep going. But as Jake continued around the room, a drawing appeared ahead. It had been carved in a blank space on the wall. It showed three circles with shapes sticking out, creating a shadowed bas-relief.

Jake moved away to view it full on—then stopped in midstep. He gawked at the first circle, unable to speak. He edged closer. Though the detail wasn’t great, the shapes looked like a crude map of Earth. He drew a finger along the forms carved within the first circle, whispering the names of the continents.

“Africa, South America, Australia…”

The next circle showed those same continents moving closer together, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle. The bulge in South America fit into the curve of Africa. And so on.

The last circle showed all the continents fused into one whole.

Jake gasped and moved away again to take in the whole view. He began to understand what he was seeing. Back during the time of the dinosaurs, the world was just a single large supercontinent. But a great cataclysm and the forces of flowing magma eventually broke apart the single large landmass and formed today’s seven smaller continents.

Jake swallowed and mumbled the scientific name for that supercontinent drawn in the last circle. “Pangaea.”

Pindor stood at his shoulder. He looked oddly at Jake. “I didn’t know you spoke Greek.”

Jake frowned at him. “What?”

“
Pangaea
. It’s Greek. I studied it in school.”

Jake felt a creeping sense of realization. Pindor was
right. The word
Pangaea
was actually formed by two words in Greek. He pictured it in his head.

Pan
= all

Gaea (Gaia)
= world

So
Pangaea
translated as “All-World.”

Jake frowned. All-World was also the name for the universal language used by everyone here. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? He glanced at Pindor and the map. Then he turned in a slow circle as an icy realization struck him. His friends weren’t speaking All-World, they were speaking Pangaean.

A shudder passed through Jake as he faced the map again. Pangaea was a prehistoric world full of dinosaurs and primitive plant life. Like here. He raised his arm and placed his palm on the supercontinent.

Could this be where I am?

If he was right, he was staring at the shape of this world. All along, he’d been asking the wrong question since he and Kady had landed here. The question wasn’t
where
they were, but
when
. Jake was still on Earth—but two hundred million years into the past.

“This is Pangaea,” he said aloud.

Marika seemed mystified by his stunned response to the drawing. “Jake, what’s wrong?”

He shook his head. He didn’t have the time to explain, and he wasn’t sure they would believe him anyway. At least not yet.

Pindor pointed his sword toward Bach’uuk. “We should be going.”

Jake allowed himself to be guided away. He moved on legs numb with shock. A loud snapping
click
drew his gaze over to the clockwork mechanism on the floor. It turned another notch. The smaller inner wheel rotated. Jake glanced back to the wall, to the map of Pangaea.

It’s all about
time
.

Jake knew that was central to the mystery here. As he began to turn away, a rolling bit of gold on the floor caught his eye. The turning of the inner ring had bumped something that lay within it. It looked like a fat gold coin. It rolled to a stop inside the ring and bobbled a bit.

Jake stepped toward the pair of gears.
Is that…?

“We have to go,” Pindor insisted. He shifted his sword between his hands, clearly worried about his people, his town.

But Jake leaned out over the outer ring and squinted at what lay within the smaller ring. It wasn’t a coin. Jake recognized the shape. He crossed over the outer ring, careful of the toothed gears, and gently stepped into the inner ring. He bent and picked it up.

He was right. It was an old dented pocket watch. Jake examined it, flipping it between his fingers. His father had one just like—

Jake discovered an inscription on the back. His vision darkened at the corners as he read what was written there.

To my beloved Richard,
A bit of gold to mark our tenth revolution
around the sun together.

With all the love under the stars,
Penelope

Jake felt the room suddenly tilt as a life he’d thought long dead momentarily came back. He stumbled to the side, tripped over the ring’s edge, and landed hard, but he didn’t even feel it. His world had become the watch—and the words written on it.

“Jake?” Marika hurried to his side. She held out a hand to help him up.

He ignored her and stared at the watch resting in his palm. His fingers closed over the gold case. It was cold and hard—and very real. He whispered the miracle, fearful of raising his voice and making it all go away.

“This is my father’s watch.”

Jake had no real recollection of how he ended up in a long narrow tunnel cut crudely out of volcanic rock. He remembered being dragged to his feet and guided by gentle prods and cautious words. He recalled more stairs, and a slab of stone that Bach’uuk and Pindor had to shoulder open. The passage lay beyond that stone, a secret tunnel. Bach’uuk led the way with a chunk of glowing white crystal raised in his hand.

They continued in silence. His friends sensed Jake had become a pond covered with a fragile sheet of ice. They trod carefully. Marika kept to his side, waiting for him to be the first to speak.

Jake carried the pocket watch with both hands. It was a weight he couldn’t bear with only one arm. It took his whole body to carry it.

“What does this mean?” he finally mumbled, more to himself than to Marika.

The question was a tumbling grain of sand that, once let loose, became an avalanche.
Why is the watch here? How did it end up here? And when?
Had his father and mother been to this land? Or did the watch get sucked here, like Jake and Kady, purely by accident and chance? If his parents had been here, why hadn’t anyone told him, mentioned them?

Questions swirled amid mysteries and the unknown.

Jake shuddered and finally let one last question rise. He fought against it because there was too much pain and fear around it.

Could my parents still be alive?

It was a dangerous subject. If Jake allowed himself to believe it and was proven wrong later, it would be like losing his mother and father all over again. Jake did not know if he could survive that.

Still…

He stared down at the pocket watch. He felt the heft
of it, rubbed a thumb over one of the dents. This wasn’t a child’s fantasy, some hope without substance. This was his father’s watch…in his hand.

Jake gripped it and came to a realization. For now, that would be enough. He could know no more. His father had warned him against letting his imagination run wild. He said that a real scientist balanced hypothesis against tested reality.

Jake took a deep breath. He would do that here.

He’d found his father’s watch.

It was real.

What it meant remained unknown.

For now.

With his heart more settled, he allowed the words on the back of the watchcase to warm through him like a soft smile from his mother.
A bit of gold to mark our tenth revolution around the sun together.

Jake’s focus broadened. He began to note the drip of water along the walls. He smelled a slight rotten-egg smell to the air. Sulfur from the volcanic vents. The passage grew warmer, even steamy.

He heard Pindor tell Bach’uuk, “We must be a league under the jungle by now.”

Bach’uuk shook his head. “Not much farther to go.”

“You keep saying that!” Pindor griped.

Jake swallowed and stared down at the pocket watch. He used a fingernail to crack it open. He felt strong enough
to do that now. The watchcase was crooked, the hinges tweaked. But Jake cranked it wide. The crystal face of the watch was in no better condition than its gold case. A skittering crack split the surface. The damage flamed the fear in his heart. How had it become so beat-up?

But this fear quickly dimmed as he watched the slender second hand sweep around the dial of the watch. It shouldn’t have been moving. The watch was one of the old-fashioned ones that had to be wound with the tiny stem that stuck out at the top. But that wasn’t what truly mystified Jake and forced him fully back to reality.

The second hand spun slowly and surely.

But in the wrong direction.

Counterclockwise.

The watch was running backward!

Before he could ponder the significance, Pindor called, “The way out!”

Jake became aware of a roaring sound. Bach’uuk lifted the crystal higher to reveal a heavy cascade of water flowing over the mouth of the tunnel. No wonder the path had remained a secret. Its end was hidden behind a waterfall.

They hurried forward together.

Marika glanced over at Jake.

He closed the watch, slipped it into his pocket, and buttoned the pocket tightly shut. He kept his palm over it, not wanting to be far from it. But he met Marika’s gaze and nodded. He understood what was at stake. As war raged
above, the mystery of the watch would have to wait.

Still, he remembered the second hand sweeping around and around, running backward. In his head he heard the click of the golden clockwork calendar as it turned. He pictured the bas-relief showing the breakup of Pangaea.