“I don’t think we have any other choice, do we? It sucks that an asshole like Vautour is going to get away with it, that he’s going to be the one to discover the Moon City.”
“Only because he has the lidar images.”
“Yeah. I just wish I would have been able to figure out how the medallion worked with the landmarks,” she said, her shoulders slumping and her gaze turning away.
Rafa furrowed his brow. “When are you going to tell me whatlandmarksyou’re referring to?”
Seeing as they were leaving in the morning, keeping the list a secret probably didn’t matter anymore anyway.
Miri sighed. “Corrie gave me instructions and a list of landmarks to the Moon City. It came with the necklace that first night at the hotel. It’s why I changed our course so suddenly.”
“Do you have it with you?”
“Yeah, I keep it with me at all times.”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure, give me a second,” she said, hopping out of bed and retrieving her pants from the bathroom. She rummaged through the pockets and then handed a folded piece of paper to Rafa. “Here. This thing has been pretty useless overall.”
Rafa studied the list for a few minutes, then handed it back to her. “Well,” he said, “I’m not sure this is much help. Where did Corrie get this?”
“From the investor,” she said, taking the list and setting it on the nightstand beside the bed without looking. “He apparently gathered this intel on an expedition last year when he’d been working with your dad.”
Rafa’s mouth twisted. She hated speaking about him at all. She wished they could forget him, but that was unlikely to ever happen.
Rafa glanced at the list sitting on the side table again, then focused his gaze, his eye catching on something.
“What is it?” she asked.
“This right here?” he said pointing at the wordsrocha carade macacoon the paper. “What does that mean? Macaco means ‘monkey,’ right?”
“It means ‘monkey-face rock.’ Why?”
“We saw that. The wall that you were trying to scramble around. When I was cleaning up your leg, I said, ‘That rock looks like a face.’ Don’t you remember?”
“I was a little distracted, if you don’t recall,” she said, wrinkling her nose and not particularly caring to relive that memory.
“Right. But what if that was it? What if that was the monkey-face rock we are looking for?”
Miri sat straight. “Oh my God, yes! The medallion. Look,” she said, grabbing the medallion and showing it to him. “Remember when we were at the stone table and I started running right before we ran into your dad?”
“Pringles,” he said, tipping his head at her, his voice half-joking. “You say that like I couldeverforget.”
She smiled. Good point. “Well, I went that way because look at the medallion,” she said, running her finger along the etchings on the gold piece. “The moon and the temple almost look like an arrow. And these notches in the back fit perfectly when they were placed in that indentation in this orientation,” she said, holding up the medallion cockeyed, “like they were pointing in the direction we were supposed to go. If my directional sense is inanyway correct, then I think we were heading back toward that rock. My gut is telling me there might be another carving like this at each of the landmarks pointing out which way we need to travel.”
“Based on where we came upon my dad, I wonder if they even found it yet.”
“You don’t think…” She let the question trail off.
“I’m saying if that’s as far as they got, it’s possible they haven’tmade it to the Moon City yet. They were at the very least planning to go back to their camp first.”
“Rafa, you aren’t proposing that we go back out there, are you?” she asked, cocking her head. “Because he still has lidar images, and all we have is a piece of scrap that’s worth less than toilet paper in the Amazon. Besides, we’re leaving in a few hours. The boat will be here to pick us up at seven a.m.”
“But is that what you really want?” he said, scooting closer to her and taking her hands in his lap. “Because if it is…if you want to leave, then I’ll go with you and will one hundred percent be there by your side. We can leave and never speak about this place again. Move to Berkeley. Move to DC. Hell, move to Timbuktu. Like you said, the world is our snack bar. But if you’re right and that medallion points us to the Moon City, then this would beyourdiscovery, Pringles.Youfigured that out, no one else. Youearnedit.”
Miri blinked several times and then got out of bed. Her clothes were still wet in the bathroom, so she grabbed one of Rafa’s shirts that was sitting on a chair and put it on before pacing around the small cabin.
If she was right, then her wit and intuition had solved the mystery that had been stumping explorers for centuries. Her keen eye had spotted the space for the medallion, something even the others on their team had missed for days.
