The Copper Egg Read online

  Caches can be placed by anyone, but they must follow the guidelines set out at geocaching.com. The container must be marked with the geocaching logo and be stashed not too far off the trail. She reached the coordinates, which could only bring her within five to ten meters of the cache, and began scanning the forest. The fake rock was easy to see. Inside was an easy coded message, which quickly yielded the next set of coordinates. She remembered searching for this cache with Sochi. Geocaching on the weekends had given them a break from their crazy jobs.

  At the next set of coordinates, Claire found what she sought immediately, bringing the treasure hunt to a close. The larger fake rock blended in so poorly she laughed. The first time she and Sochi had tracked this cache, they’d walked around and around this stupid rock, growing increasingly frustrated that they couldn’t find the cache.

  She lifted the fake rock, light as cardboard, to find the small metal box. Inside each box, or cache, would be a logbook and a trinket. Tradition was if you took the trinket, you left one in its place for the next person to find, but you never left anything of value.

  When she removed the logbook, intending to record today’s date, she gasped. In the bottom of the box was a shell. It wasn’t just any shell; it was their shell.

  Claire had found the shell when she and Sochi had traveled up the coast to Ecuador one long weekend. The moon snail shell was a perfect Fibonacci spiral. Its two colors, warm peach and soft white, curled tighter around each other as the spiral deepened. Sochi said they were like the peach and the white, growing closer together every day.

  When Claire had given Sochi the shell, she’d stroked the smooth surface. “I’m going to keep this in my pocket forever.” Sochi had recently lost the pottery sherd she’d carried with her since she was a kid, and was delighted to have a new talisman.

  Now Claire stared at the shell, surprised at the pain. What had she thought? That Sochi would carry the shell for the rest of her life? That was messed up. Claire picked up the shell and ran her thumb over the smooth surface. She traced the small, cool swirl with her finger. Sochi could have just thrown the shell back into the ocean, but leaving it here was a message. Trinkets left in caches had little or no value.

  Claire fought back her emotions as she recorded her name in the logbook. Then she pocketed the shell and dropped into the cache box a little pig keychain that worked as a flashlight when you squeezed it. No message intended, just a cheap trinket, as the sport called for.

  Claire shouldn’t have been tired, but she was. She hiked back down the trail to a clearing, then sank down onto the ground and leaned back against a warm and fairly comfortable rock.

  She was pretty good at controlling her actions; too bad she wasn’t as successful controlling her thoughts. No matter how hard she fought it, she kept circling back to Sochi. What was she up to? Did she still work at the CNTP? Did she have a girlfriend? Still surf? Regret pierced Claire’s armor—if Sochi hadn’t betrayed her, they’d still be together and Claire wouldn’t be feeling like a freaking ship with a broken rudder. And why had Sochi responded so brutally to Claire’s letter of apology?

  Claire pulled out the three eggs from her pocket, letting all three nestle in her palm. Gold, silver, copper. She dropped the gold egg into her lap and watched it roll to a stop between her thighs. Highly polished, the egg was stunning. The silver egg dropped next, rolling until it nestled against the gold. Together they were royalty and his mate.

  The copper egg was polished, but had a roughness about it, a sense that it’d been created not to be beautiful, but to be useful. What use could Ixchel, or anyone, for that matter, have had for a copper egg?

  Claire had held the copper egg a dozen times since taking the San Pedro, but nothing had happened. Now, however, by the time she realized the egg was once again burning in her hand, it was too late to drop it. Her fingers curled around it as before. Damn it. She didn’t want to have a vision so far from people. What if something happened? The meadow around her faded into a heavy, dark fog.

  “Who are you?” Ixchel asked the girl who hovered near the llama pens. The girl was dressed in old clothes but was clean. She didn’t belong here. Ixchel was so, so curious.

  “My name is Cualli,” the girl answered. She had long black hair, delicate features, skin the color of hot sand.

  Claire struggled to stay present in the vision, but it swirled around her like an elusive scent, teasing and promising then slipping away, then circling back to envelop her. It wasn’t finished with her because she couldn’t drop the egg.

  Cualli was on an adventure…seeing where the copper eggs lived. She confessed she was the daughter of a wealthy city administrator. “But life inside the city walls is boring. I want to meet people outside the city.”

  “How old are you?” Ixchel asked.

  “Thirteen summers.” This was the same as Ixchel.

  When Cualli smiled, Ixchel felt a pull deep within her body. Cualli’s smile was brighter than the sun. Ixchel had never had a friend before. Only llamas.

  “Show me your life,” Cualli said, hand outstretched.

  Ixchel took her hand. “If I show you, you will run back inside the city walls and never return.”

  Cualli squeezed her hand. “No one ever knows what I will do. Even me. Best to remember that.”

  Ixchel showed her how llama necks smelled. She showed her Uncle’s forge, where sheets of copper and silver utensils hung from the rafters. She showed her lambs in their pen, bleating in alarm. Ixchel watched Cualli learn, watched her laugh at what she didn’t know. Her fingers itched to show Cualli the copper egg. It was her best secret.

  Cualli had so many questions. Questions about Uncle and Auntie. Ixchel said nothing about Papa. Ixchel instead asked questions about Cualli’s family.

  “My family is proud,” Cualli said. “I am learning to spin and weave and cook and make chicha. I will be a good wife one day.”

  Ixchel felt sick. Why did the thought of Cualli belonging to someone else make her feel this way?

  Cualli glowed like moonlight on the water. She sparkled like a wet seal. She smelled like the crops and the flowers and the earth. Ixchel felt that tug again from somewhere inside her.

  Ixchel began to pray every day that Cualli would like her as much as she liked Cualli.

  Claire opened her eyes. The meadow once again spread out before her, the tall wildflowers bending gracefully in the fresh mountain breeze. She rubbed her forehead, grateful there weren’t headaches like with the voices. She replayed the vision, looking for clues about where Ixchel might have been, but the entire vision had taken place inside a compound of adobe walls. It wasn’t Chan Chan, because Chaco had never ruled there, but since most of the Chimú cities were built using the same materials, they probably all looked similar. Ixchel could have lived in any number of Chimú cities that had hugged the coast but no longer existed.

  Even though Claire couldn’t narrow things down, she jumped to her feet, actually excited for the first time in days. If she could keep having these Ixchel visions, and hopefully see things when Ixchel was outside the city walls, she might be able to figure out the location of Chaco’s city. If she found the city, she could find the tomb.

  Nancho drove back down the mountain, and as they left the dirt road behind and pulled onto a paved road, a gray SUV with tinted windows, just like the one Claire had seen earlier, reappeared behind them. She took note of the license plate and ignored it the rest of the way home. But when Nancho pulled over to let her out at La Casa del Sol, the same SUV drove past.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Claire

  Thursday, March 23

  The overcast sky actually let loose with a desert storm as Claire stood under the archway near La Casa del Sol’s massive open doors. She loved the summer rains in Trujillo. They were so rare that people always looked a little startled, as if the sky were actually falling.

  Claire had finally convinced Hudson to take her to the elderly woman who’d spoken of the three eggs.
He insisted it was a waste of time, but caved when she bribed him with the promise of beer.

  Nancho picked her up, then she directed him to Hudson’s apartment on the north edge of Trujillo, noticing that the same gray SUV from the other day once again fell in behind them. An old orange Volvo was behind the SUV. Claire forced herself to stop focusing on the cars behind them. Paranoia was irritating in other people, but absolutely infuriating in herself.

  Hudson strolled out, unconcerned by the rain, and hopped in beside her in the backseat. They talked nonstop for half of the 110-kilometer drive, Hudson amusing her with stories of people she’d known at Chan Chan, or classmates he’d kept in touch with whom she’d let slip away like water through her fingers. But then they fell silent and stared out the windows.

  When her phone chimed, Claire read the text. It was from Mac.

  “That tracking device you asked me about?” Claire said. “My boss pulled in a few favors from some higher-ups at the Smithsonian, and here’s your answer.” She handed the phone to Hudson. Sorry. Turns out the tracking device, called NanoTrax, was a bust. Didn’t work. US government pulled funding.

  Hudson handed back the phone with a shrug. “Okay, thanks for checking.” He pulled out his own phone and sent a text.

  After a short pause, he suddenly added, “You know I followed you to Peru, right? I never told you, but I’d been offered a job in England digging in those fucking bogs, but you were in Peru. So I followed you here and hung around until you hired me. But then you left and I found myself in a foreign country without you. I finally found some…like-minded people, but I was lost for so long.”

  “I’m sorry. I became really wrapped up in my own pain.”

  He turned away, ending the topic just as abruptly as he’d begun it.

  As they thrummed along the highway from Trujillo to Chepen, Claire remembered how, five minutes after Sochi had first met Hudson and he’d drifted away to refill his beer glass, Sochi’d said, “You’ll outgrow him one day.”

  Claire had been a little insulted. It made her relationship with Hudson sound childish, as if he were a bad habit, like wetting the bed. Sochi had predicted that she and Claire, on the other hand, would last because they were always surprising each other. Yet their ending had been much more painful than the drifting apart that Hudson and Claire had done. Claire had wondered a few times, over the years, if she might have been wrong about Sochi revealing her secret, but what the hell did she do with that thought? If Claire were wrong, it’d meant she’d thrown away the only relationship that had ever mattered. Ever. No, she wasn’t going there. Besides, she’d apologized in the letter. She’d agreed to stay in Peru, but vindictive Sochi had rejected that olive branch.

  Hudson shifted in his seat. “Nancho, can’t this steed gallop any faster?”

  Claire snorted. “You sound like some snooty British lord.”

  “Two generations back on my father’s side. Call me Sir Hudson.”

  “Sir Asshole is more like it.”

  “My family has some of those too.” They bantered for a while, which felt good and familiar, until Hudson grew serious. “Are you going to see Sochi while you’re here?”

  She jerked at the question. “I don’t know. It’s over.” They reached the outskirts of Chepen, a small city of 40,000.

  “Yeah, but she was the love of your life. At least that’s what you said ten times a day.”

  Claire swallowed. “I might speak to her, for closure.”

  “Closure? I hate psychobabble.”

  “Mrs. Claire, we are here to the old people’s asylum.” The rain had stopped, but the blanket of clouds hung overhead. The city of Chepen was curled around three small foothills that disappeared into the fog. The city smelled clean.

  Hudson led the way into the surprisingly cheerful nursing home, its walls painted cerulean blue, orange, and a warm yellow. With a charming smile and his wit, Hudson learned that Señora Facala was still a resident.

  An attendant led them into a large room filled with active seniors playing checkers and chess, knitting, or watching TV. A few simply stared into space. The woman they’d come to see sat in a molded plastic chair, her body a collapsed S, her gaze locked onto a spot on the floor ahead of her.

  “Señora Facala, you have visitors.”

  The woman’s lined face brightened as she straightened a bit and reached out both hands, gnarled into swollen knots by arthritis. “How lovely you are. Please sit with me.”

  Claire nodded and they pulled up chairs to sit close. The woman wore a heavy lavender perfume. She glared at Hudson.

  As they talked, it seemed that the woman’s memory was intact, but shuffled badly, like library books shelved by someone who didn’t know the alphabet. It took Claire ten minutes of gentle questions to bring Señora Facala around to the topic they’d come to discuss. Every time Hudson tried to participate in the conversation, however, the woman shut down and looked away.

  “Who told you about the tomb?” Claire asked.

  “My boyfriend.” Her watery gray eyes actually twinkled.

  “What was your boyfriend’s name?”

  “I called him Mr. Handsome. So devoted. So kind.”

  “What was his real name?” she asked.

  Señora Facala cocked her head, then shot another look at Hudson. He was clearly making her nervous.

  “How old were you?”

  She refused to answer, folding her arms and scowling at Hudson.

  Claire turned to him. “Could you ask someone at the front desk if they know her age, and where she lived before coming here? That information might be in her medical records.”

  “Good idea.”

  As soon as Hudson left the room, the woman grabbed her hand. “I can’t talk in front of him. He’s an evil man.”

  “Hudson?”

  “He came to visit me one day. I told him about the eggs. Then he left. Then the next time I looked for the eggs, they were gone.”

  Claire’s eyes widened. “You actually had the eggs in your possession?”

  She nodded. “My boyfriend would be upset to know I lost them. He said they were more precious than I could imagine. But they’re gone. A man took them.”

  “Did he look like my friend Hudson?”

  She took time to sift through her memories. “No, but I forget that sometimes. I am afraid every man is here to steal the eggs. This man came into my room. He said, ‘Excuse me, Auntie,’ then searched through my drawer and took the eggs.”

  “What did the man look like?

  “He was broad, like a bear. He was indio. Square, native face. Cheekbones like anvils.”

  Finally! A clue to the person who might have sent her the eggs. Claire pumped her for more information, but she couldn’t remember much, so Claire switched back to the boyfriend. “Did he ever take you to the tomb?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted to see it, but he said only family could visit the tomb. He was very proud of his family. Said they’d cared for this tomb for over seven hundred years, and that he was the only one in the world who knew where it was.”

  “Did he tell you where it was?”

  “No, but NP did say it was soon time to tell his son the location, even though he believed his son was incompetent. He said the tomb was located in a place where no one would think to look for it.”

  “What does NP stand for? Were those his initials?”

  Señora Facala’s attention shifted to the television in the corner, but she nodded. “He said that one day—through his son or his grandson should he have one—King Chaco would rise from the dead and see through new eyes, breathe through a new mouth.” She spoke slowly, as if hypnotized by her thoughts.

  “King Chaco rise from the dead? That’s unlikely.”

  Señora Facala squeezed Claire’s hand. Her pale, cloudy eyes looked into hers. “It could certainly happen with enough sacrifice. Life demands it of all of us. You must not be afraid.”

  Hudson returned. “They don’t have a previous
address, and they wouldn’t tell me her age.”

  Señora Facala had begun to ramble on about needing to see her favorite show, so Claire thanked her, gently returned her hug, then followed Hudson.

  “Nancho,” Hudson said as they approached the car. “Back to civilization please!”

  Nancho blinked but stayed silent.

  “Nice,” Claire said under her breath as they slid into the car. “Nancho is from Chepen.”

  “Sorry, man,” Hudson called. “It’s a rocking town.”

  A tiny thrill ran up her spine at what she’d learned. NP knew the location of the tomb, had removed the eggs, and given them to Señora Facala. Since she spoke of him in the past tense, he must have died. He was the only one who knew the location. That would explain why the person who sent the eggs needed Claire. And the man who’d stolen the eggs from the señora hadn’t been Hudson, but an indigenous man. Claire was gathering information but still couldn’t see how any of it linked together.

  As Hudson rambled on about not liking nursing homes because they smelled like old people, Claire clutched the copper egg in her pocket again. Once again, nothing happened. No vision.

  “Hudson?”

  He stopped, surprised at the interruption.

  “Do you know any shamans?”

  He frowned. “Yeah. I know one.”

  “I need to talk with him.”

  “Why?”

  Claire pursed her lips, still hesitant to share the eggs. “It’s complicated.”

  He barked a harsh laugh. “It always is with you.” He thumbed through his phone contacts. “Julio Rojas.”

  She keyed in his name and number. A shaman wasn’t scientific, but then neither was holding a little copper egg and seeing through the eyes of a Chimú girl who died centuries ago.

  Halfway home, despite her best attempts to ignore the traffic, Claire began paying attention to the cars behind them. That damned SUV was right on their bumper. When the road curved, Claire saw the orange Volvo, and behind that a small blue pickup truck. The caravan followed them all the way back to Hudson’s, then to La Casa del Sol.