Before Cass could either cry or kill him, Bastian and Toussaint came back.
‘We’re fairly sure we’re going in the right direction,’ said Bastian. ‘According to the map the petroglyph should be down the hill a bit, and across a river. Unfortunately we can’t find a river.’
‘Rivers move,’ said Toussaint. ‘The map was drawn a long time ago.’
Suddenly both men became aware that something had happened.
‘Everything all right?’ said Bastian.
‘I dropped Cass’s camera,’ said Austin. ‘I feel terrible.’
‘The camera your father gave you to use?’ said Bastian.
Cass nodded.
Bastian turned to Austin, not speaking but managing to seem threatening anyway. Austin stepped back. ‘I looked for it and I’ll claim on my insurance—’
Toussaint shrugged. ‘It’s gone, it’s gone. Let’s go.’
Cass followed them down the path, trying to adopt Toussaint’s matter-of-fact attitude. Losing the camera might have been a disaster for her, and for Howard, but the petroglyph could still be found. And she wascertain that either Bastian or Toussaint would have their own cameras. One of them could take the picture of the petroglyph if they found it. Usually, of course, she’d have her phone but as there was no signal after the hurricane, she’d left it behind.
She stopped suddenly. ‘Actually,’ she said, loud enough to make Bastian and Austin turn round. ‘I am quite tired. I may just wait here and let you go on to the petroglyph.’ She wanted to sound certain that they’d find it. ‘I won’t be able to photograph it now, anyway,’ she added, looking at Austin.
‘Are you sure? We’ll be at least a couple of hours,’ said Bastian. ‘Possibly longer. You’d be on your own for a long time.’
‘I’ll be fine. I have water and a snack. I can doze if I want to.’ She yawned widely. ‘A siesta might be just the thing.’
Austin too expressed concern but it was only cursory. Cass could see that actually he was delighted she was no longer with the party.
The moment they were out of earshot (they were out of sight quite a bit sooner), Cass made her way further down the path until she arrived at some large stones. She could make herself comfortable here if nothing else. But there was another reason she chose this spot. Here, she was convinced, was the actual site of the petroglyph.
The trouble with the map was, although it had large rocks, rivers and valleys marked on it, it was very old. Now they were deep in the forest, geography changed. There was no river here for instance, although Cassknew there should be one and that, at one time at least, it had been quite wide.
Of course, she didn’t have the map with her and she was relying on her memory of it. But she had traced the lines of the map several times by the time the image was reproduced on to a fresh bit of paper, so she knew it fairly well.
She looked around and studied the stones where she was but there were more, further down. The map would have led the others off to the right – she knew this because that was what she had drawn – but the original stopped nearer to where she was now. She had deliberately led Austin away from the petroglyph.
She looked around her, but could see no sign of anything resembling a petroglyph. Frustrated, Cass sat and leant her back against a rock and closed her eyes. She was genuinely tired after their trek though the valley and she could have remembered the map wrong. She tried to visualise it in her mind. And then she heard it: the trickle of running water. It was barely audible but there.
She opened her eyes and straightened up. What had been a river years ago could now be the tiniest stream. Petroglyphs were always near water, but Bastian, Toussaint and Austin couldn’t have heard it; they had walked right past the spot.
She followed the sound of the water as best she could, hanging off branches to give her support as she plunged down into the valley. She could now see the rocks more closely; they were quite clear and recognisable. Whether they were the ones with faces carvedinto them she had no way of knowing: she couldn’t get any nearer to them without a rope or some other help.
Cheered by finding the necessary water and genuinely tired now, she settled with her back against a tree. Then she burrowed in her bag and brought out her drawing things. She had slipped her pad and a couple of soft pencils into the secret compartment that Eleanor had made for the map. When she put them there that morning and not in the main bag she had wondered if she was being paranoid, but after Austin seemed to have deliberately lost her camera, she felt she had been justified.
Soon she was immersed in drawing the rocks and the surrounding trees and greenery, putting in as much detail as she could. It was a beautiful spot and, if nothing else, she’d have something to remember it by. Once she was sure she’d recorded every detail as accurately as she could, she closed her eyes.
She might have actually been asleep for a few moments when a breeze caressed her cheek. She opened her eyes as the sun came out from behind a cloud, sending a shaft of light on to the stones in front of her. At first she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but there – if not as clear as day, at least discernible – was a face.
Cass’s pencil flew. Now she had seen it, she realised that without the light at the right angle it was hidden in plain sight. Centuries of rain had worn away at the shallow engraving making it almost invisible. She had believed it was here and, now she had seen it, shecouldn’t quite believe that she’d missed it. As she drew it now, she thought of the old man who had told Bastian’s father about it, who had seen it daily and had helped with the map. Did he know he was looking at pre-history too, she wondered?
Once she was happy with the drawings and had several of them, from different angles, she knew she had to mark the place more definitely. This spot was deep in the forest and coming back to it would not be easy.
Eventually, Cass relaced one of her trainers that she was wearing, so she had a spare piece of shoelace. She cut this off with the tiny Swiss Army Knife she carried and tied it to the foot of a plant.
Then she walked back up to the spot where the others had left her, put her back against a tree and closed her eyes. But she couldn’t help smiling with happiness and satisfaction. There was indeed a petroglyph and she had recorded where it was. Bastian’s father had been right, and Bastian’s faith in him was fully justified.
She called out when she heard Bastian and party approaching, although she knew the answer. ‘Did you find it?’
