Restless Soul

Despite her confidence, Annja’s stomach clenched several minutes later when the passage led down into a small chamber flooded with river water.

She couldn’t say why, but she instantly thought of Roux as she glanced at the surface of the water. It looked as black as oil, still and mysterious. Annja hadn’t seen Roux in quite some time, and she knew that he would admonish her when she met up with him again and told him about her Thailand excursion. And she would tell him all about it.

He’d say that she shouldn’t have ventured into active caves after there’d been so much rain and that she certainly shouldn’t have taken Zakkarat and Luartaro with her, risking their lives. That if she was going to investigate whatever it was that niggled at her brain, she should have done it on her own.

No doubt he’d also grill her about Luartaro, and perhaps scold her for being so impetuous and flying halfway around the world with a man she’d only known for a few days.

The “old man” as she thought of him sometimes took a great interest in her personal life, like a father might. But they were bound together by history and the sword, not by blood. Maybe Roux wouldn’t care about her relationship with Luartaro.

She shook her head to chase away the thoughts and tentatively waded forward into the water. It was cool, but not uncomfortably so. She was thankful it was summer, as at any other time of the year she would be shivering from being so wet and so far under the mountain.

The ground continued to slope down and soon the water was around her knees, and then her thighs.

She reached into her back pocket for her digital camera. Even though it was in plastic, she didn’t want to take a chance it would get ruined. She put it in her shirt pocket and moved ahead.

Behind her, Zakkarat chattered anxiously and softly in Thai—it had the phrasings and rhythms of a prayer.

“We’ll get out of here,” Luartaro reassured them. His voice didn’t carry quite the confidence it had held before. “We’ll find a way out of this. It won’t be too long.”

Annja moved the lantern in a steady arc as she went, and when the water swirled around her waist she spotted another dark slash in the rocks directly ahead. She took a couple of steps toward it, and the current tugged her gently in that direction.

“Follow me,” Annja said as she headed toward the only apparent exit. She went slowly, feeling forward with each step and encountering jagged rocks here and there.

Faint squeaks came from overhead. “Bats.” She gestured upward with the lantern. “A lot of them from the sound of it. They got in here somehow, and if they can get in and out, hopefully we can find a way out.”

The guano hadn’t been fresh enough in the passage behind them, so the bats had to have flown in another way.

Roux would definitely chastise her about this, she decided, and it would be justified. But maybe he would also smile when she told him they’d been saved by bat droppings.

She ventured into the next tunnel that she came across, this one wider at the base and roughly egg-shaped. She thought for a moment the route was taking her deeper still, but it was only a depression she had stepped in. After a few more yards, the floor rose again and the water dropped back down to her thighs.

Bats rustled above her. A good sign, she thought. Several of them flew away, in the direction Annja was traveling. A better sign.

Moments later, the water was only to her knees and she emerged in a chamber. The wider end of it rose above the waterline, and a half dozen of the teak coffins were evenly spaced on a limestone shelf.

Annja headed straight toward them, shrugging off Zakkarat’s hand on her arm.

“Annjacreed,” Zakkarat said, “the passage continues over there. See? And we—”

“And we will follow it,” she said. “In a minute.” She paused. “Give me just a minute, please.”

“These coffins are magnificent!” Luartaro took the lantern from Annja so she could more easily take pictures of the coffins. He held the lantern high and turned it up to improve the lighting.

“No bones in these, either. Wait—” He stepped forward, climbing onto the shelf and standing between two of the coffins. “Here’s one, a body! It’s small and like a mummy. A body!”

Annja climbed up next to him and took several pictures. “Mummified,” she observed. “Look how tight the skin is…what’s left of it. This is amazing. They must have done something to preserve the flesh because otherwise in this damp climate it would have rotted away.”

A silence settled, save for the squeaking of bats hanging in crevices in the ceiling and the soft shushing sound Zakkarat made by pacing in a shallow strip of water.

“I don’t think anyone has been here for a very long time,” Annja said. She pointed to another coffin that held an even smaller body. It was a skeleton with pots arranged around its legs. “Local archaeologists would have moved these things to a museum. The bodies would have been studied and medically scanned.”

“Or looters would have stolen them.” Zakkarat slipped forward and peered into the far coffin. “Old jewelry here. Ugly, old jewelry. But someone would think it is worth something because it is old and ugly. Historical significance. Maybe we are the first here since…since these people died.”

Annja doubted it, but certainly no looters or serious archaeologists had been there. “Thank you for getting us lost, Zakkarat,” she said.

She took several more pictures. “Truly, thank you. We’ll have to make our own map to this place so people can come back here and get these things to a museum. Maybe get a film crew in here. And so we can come back when it’s a little drier. I think my vacation has just been extended.” Her mind whirled with the possibilities of bringing in a film crew and taping a special for the network.

Free me.

She froze and stared at the small body. Free it? No, she still got the sense that the voice was coming through the stone, not from one of the coffins.

Free me.

The words were no louder than they’d been before, so she had no way of knowing if she was closer to her mysterious goal.

“We could take the artifacts, some of them at least,” Zakkarat suggested. “Maybe we should take the child’s body, Annjacreed.”

Annja shook her head. “We don’t have the means to do it properly. Everything needs to be recorded and—”

Free me.

Free who? she wanted to shout. Free who? And free you from what? Free the Hoabinhiam spirits? The spirits in the lime?

“Annja, we need to get out of here!” Luartaro gestured behind them. “We need to get out of here right now.” The water had risen to cover the edge of the shelf. “This isn’t good. The water’s moving fast. Not good at all. Come on.”

He stepped off the shelf into water up to his thighs. He held the lantern high. “Annja! Zakkarat, we have to move!”

She took a dozen more pictures in rapid succession and reluctantly placed the camera in the plastic. She clutched it tight and jumped into the water.

Zakkarat slogged toward the opposite passage. “Do not thank me for getting us lost, Annjacreed. We could well drown here, and no one will find our bodies. We will be like those ancient corpses.”

The water was up to her hips by the time she followed Luartaro and Zakkarat into the next corridor.

She paused in the entry to look back at the coffins, picturing the precious mummies floating away, being sucked under the dark, swirling water. Then she shook herself. She was more worried about the ancient remains than herself and her companions!

As she forced herself to turn away, she whispered, “The loss of history.” Her throat went dry. “The terrible, terrible loss.”

5

Annja was growing more anxious. She held her camera high over her head as she shoved herself forward in the swirling water. The water was at her armpits now, and the current had picked up speed and strength.

Luartaro sloshed along ahead of her, also straining to move faster in the rising water.

Light from the lantern he carried was both bright and eerie in the enclosed space. The walls were close and the ceiling had dropped from where they had first entered. It was only a few feet above her head.

As the lantern light rippled over them, some of the bats hanging from the ceiling squeaked an agitated protest and some of them flew away.

“We will drown,” Zakkarat said. “I was wrong to bring you out here with all this rain. The baht, I wanted the baht. My wife, she will not know. They will find the Jeep, but not our bodies and—”