Chapter 221: The Marae

Wednesday, July 21, 1971

Teramisili is one of the many small islands that make up the archipelago that is Tapato. Located almost twenty-two nautical miles southeast of the main island, it is a mostly barren outcropping that still serves as a burial ground for many of the natives of Tapato.

The northern third of the small island is a single mountain, rising to almost two hundred feet above sea level. There, on its gently sloping north side, are small patches of earth where the family that inhabited the island, eked out their meager existence.

The southern two-thirds is a plateau of flat, barren rock, with no sign of vegetation anywhere. Only fifty feet above sea level, it is constantly battered by the winds and the waves.

It is a desolate place. It is also a holy place.

They call it the Marae (Ma-ray).

A name that goes back to ancient times when the Tapatoans worshiped at shrines hewn out of the solid rock face at the northern end of the rock plateau. Ancient Tapatoans would burn the remains of their dead on carved stone alters, then scatter their ashes to the sea, or interred them in urns placed in hollowed-out crypts and small openings in the rock face.

On the east coast, the island’s lone port with its hand-hewn rock quay was constructed long ago to serve the native pearl divers during the pearl gathering season. The rest of the year the island is desolate, its only tenants being the priestess and her family that farmed the small patches of tillable soil on the north end, while maintaining a supply store/warehouse on the pier for the pearl divers, and occasionally augmenting their meager existence by maintaining the burial grounds and assisting the families that came here, in burying their dead.

It was the priestess’s cart and mules that now held the four kidnappers. And it was an interesting few moments when the priestess happened to stumble across me sitting on her cart with four bodies in it. At first she thought I was trying to cut in on their burial business, until I showed her the four bodies were still alive.

Without knowing the language, I had to resort to sign language to convince her that I would pay her for using her cart, just as soon as my family arrived. To fill the time, I tried explaining who I was and what had happened, but I think she was mostly happy that we had not hurt her two mules. I just hoped someone had some Tapatoan currency with them when they got here.

When they finally arrived, it was a well-armed Kip who reached me first. He was quickly followed by Karla, Anna, Luisa, and David, all of them wearing their guns. Even Robert was wearing his gun. And following them was well over half my family, including the Queen. They found me sitting on the back of the wagon, the four kidnappers bound, and lying in the wagon bed behind me. The kidnappers were all still asleep. The priestess was leaning against the cart’s wheel, her wide brimmed hat covering her eyes as she slept. I didn’t have anything to do with her sleeping.

“If you don’t mind me asking, who did you leave guarding the fort?” I quipped, quoting from an old episode of ‘F Troop’.

“Why, the Heir is perfectly capable of maintaining order back there, especially since all of the trouble-makers seem to be out here,” Kalani replied with a grin.

While they caught their breath after their walk from the quay, I filled them in on the whole story, starting with my first meeting with Zeus and his nine daughters in the farmhouse in Vermont, to my subsequent meeting on the mountain with the three sisters and with Narvenia’s family.

Then it was the kidnapping, which was a much shorter story. Finally I told them of the song that I heard coming from the hole in the ground, and the voice asking me to share my gift with her.

“But what does it mean?” Rachael asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. However, after setting on the back of that wagon and staring at that small hole for a couple of hours, I had reached several conclusions. I decided to share them now with my family.

“First, it would be stretching coincidence a little too far to think that it wasn’t the same voice that called to me earlier. Second, that Zeus ‘gifted’ me with Aida is established also, although Aida was not aware of it until now. And third, Zeus’s claim that his gift would help me in locating the fourth piece of the Te’trad, well, I had not taken him seriously ... until now.”

“But wasn’t the voice calling you about the codex? And Zeus’s claim is about the armor. And besides that, didn’t the muses say that the codex would not tell you where the armor is?” Rachael asked.

“Confusing, isn’t it,” I sighed.

“But you’re sure that the voice was calling for Aida, right?” Rachael asked.

“It was calling for my gift. And Aida is my gift. So it must have been calling for her,” I replied.

“Well why don’t I get a flashlight and go in and see?” Rachael asked. “I’m small enough to fit through the opening.”

“Absolutely not!” I told her.

“But why? It’s the only way we’re going to know.”

“Because it’s too dangerous,” I told her.

Rachael and I were arguing about whether she, being smaller than me, should try climbing down through the opening when Aida called to me.

“Let me get this straight, Michael,” Aida said. “I was given to you by some old Greek guy who doesn’t exist, but you never bothered to tell me this. Then I was supposed to help you find some old stinky armor, but now this siren’s voice from a spooky hole in the ground, on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, wants you to give me to them instead?”

“That about sums it up,” I told her. It was the shortest speech I had ever heard her give and I couldn’t argue with a word she said. “I should add that there is no way I would give you to that siren’s voice,” I told her.

“Really?” she asked suddenly.

“Really,” I said as I took her in my arms and held her tight. “Despite whatever you may think, I have grown very attached to you, and would never give you up to anyone!”

“Michael, it’s getting late and we need to start back,” Kalani said, pointing out we still had to walk the mile or so back to the dock. She, along with Grace and Kip had already started everyone walking that way.

I jogged a little to catch up to the wagon to check on the prisoners, and then fell into step with Catherine and began telling her what Aida had just said.

“Where is she?” Catherine asked me when she looked around and didn’t see her right away.

Immediately I scanned for her, but she wasn’t with the group.

“OH SHIT!” I cried. “She’s gone down the hole!”

All sorts of thoughts raced through my mind as we raced back to the small hole in the barren rock of the Marae. That I could still sense Aida, meant that she was still alive. But because she did not respond to my thoughts, I was guessing that she was not conscious.

Drawing my sword, I was about to strike the ground around the opening, hoping to enlarge it enough to squeeze myself through, when I heard Kip’s “Wait!”

Reluctantly, I lowered my sword as I looked at him.

“You don’t know what might happen if you do that. You could cause a cave in or something that could bury her,” he said quickly. “Can you feel her?”

It was a testament to the retired Special Forces operative that, without understanding them, he respected my abilities enough to rely on them in a crisis.

“She’s alive, but unresponsive. And she’s close, but I can’t be sure just how far away she is. My intuition tells me it’s like maybe fifty feet ... maybe.”

“I’ve sent Jimmy and Eve with the priestess to get some rope,” Kalani said. “They should be back soon.”

“But, Aida...” I started.

“Evaluate the situation first, Michael. Just like that night at the reservation, let’s determine what we’re facing before we rush into something,” Kip said reassuringly.

“ ... and if someone has a flashlight, then when they get back with the rope, you all can lower me down into the hole,” Rachael was saying to Kip and Kalani.

Meanwhile, sitting down a few feet from the opening and crossing my legs Indian style, I leaned on the sword, point down against the hard rock and focused. I had done this once before, back at the ranch. I was hoping that this barren plateau would give up its story to me.

Around me, everyone began to fall silent as they circled behind me.

“Michael,” Rachael said. “I think that when they get back with the...”

“Shhhh!” Anna told her. “He’s doing it. He’s doing something important so don’t bother him now!”

Finally, I stood and looked south towards the sea. It was maybe two hundred yards to the edge of the Marae, and then fifty feet straight down. Turning to my left, I started walking towards the eastern side of the plateau.

“Wait here,” I commanded my family firmly. Then nodding at Kip, I said, “Come with me.”

It took a few moments of studying the eastern wall of the Marae before I found them, but once you figured it out, they became obvious. There were notches, carved in the face of the rocky side of the plateau like stairs, angling down, all the way to the base of the stone wall.

Kip saw them too, and without a word began the short climb down the face of the cliff. Sheathing my sword, I followed him and within moments we had disappeared from my family’s sight.

“Michael?” Anna thought nervously.

“It’s okay. Just hang tight for a few more minutes,” I told her.

As we neared the bottom of the cliff, the spray from the surf began to cover us lightly, making our hand holds slippery. Finally, we reached a small rock ledge, only a few feet above the sea.

“I’ll be damned!” Kip laughed. “Will you look at that!”

“The ‘that’ Kip was referring to was an opening, shaped like an arch, and hidden from view by a large angled outcropping of rock.

“If you weren’t standing right here, you would never be able to see it!” Kip exclaimed. Then stepping aside, he waved his arm like an overzealous maître-d as he said, “After you.”

Withdrawing my sword from its sheath, I stepped into the darkness. Just like she had done in the cave in Colorado, Flaminia began to glow a bright, almost neon blue. However, we had only traveled a dozen paces when we came to the end of the cave where a pair of human-looking skeletons lay leaning against the wall. Between them was an old wooden chest that was rotting and had begun to fall apart.