His brow lined. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “And I’m not even sure about that one.”
“Why not?”
“Remember how I told you there are currently over 800 known glyphs in the Mayan language that can represent either syllables or whole words?”
“Yeah, and they’re usually written in paired columns from left to right.”
“Correct-a-mundo.” She tapped on her laptop’s spacebar to bring it back to life, and then shifted the computer so Quint could see the screen, careful to keep it plugged in and charging.
“What a great photo,” he said, staring at the picture of the shell he’d taken in what her father had decided to call “Structure III” on Fernel’s LIDAR map after letting it be known that he wasn’t happy with the risks they’d taken to get to the shells. “Whoever was behind the camera knew what he was doing.”
She chuckled. “I’m quite partial to his handiwork.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me more.”
“I’d rather show you, Romeo.”
He fanned himself with both hands. “If you keep looking at me with those flirty peepers, pretty lady, I just might melt.” He nodded toward the screen. “Why can’t you decipher those glyphs? They look like the others I’ve seen around dig sites and on ancient vessels in museums.”
“You’re right, they do look like them, but after searching through my notes, my mom’s notes, and a few of INAH’s private sites online, I can’t find any matching glyphs.”
“So, it’s the equivalent of me looking at long Russian words with the weird symbols mixed in them.”
“Yep.” She enlarged the image and pointed at a glyph near the mouth part of the conch shell. “You see that?”
He leaned closer to the screen. “The one that looks like a big-nosed guy with a snake for an ear and feathers sticking out of his eye?”
“Yeah, that one. It looks sort of like a head glyph for a vulture, but with the round eye, it also reminds me of several owl glyphs I’ve seen.” She sat back, shaking her head. “But that’s the only one I can make out. All of these others …” She pointed at the rest in the column going down the length of the shell. “They don’t look familiar.” She crossed her arms and rested them on the table. “My mom was so much better at reading glyphs than me. Maybe if we got Daisy in here and had her down some of Teodoro’s ceremonial wine, she could channel my mother’s ghost and ask her to read these for us?”
Quint raised one eyebrow. “Wow, that’s out there for you.”
She scoffed. “I’m kidding.”
His other eyebrow joined the first. “Are you, though?”
She stared into his hazel eyes for a couple of blinks and then shrugged. “I’m running out of options … and time. I need some checkmarks under the ‘win’ column soon. Something to give INAH so they don’t pull the plug on us.”
“I thought allowing Fernel to come here gave you some financial cushioning.”
“It did, but INAH likes results—as in artifacts to put under glass in a museum.”
“What about the weapons from the caches?” he asked.
“Those are all good and fun on the surface level, but without a story behind them explaining why they might be at Site 5, we’ll lose interest in this place quickly. A loss of funding will follow.” She wiped away a trickle of sweat running down her cheek. “That in turn becomes a strike against me. Too many strikes and INAH will find another archaeologist to scout for future tourism sites.”
She’d put in a lot of sweating and bruising and digging to land this job. The idea of going back to teaching archaeology at colleges in between basically begging for grant money to cover dig site costs made her stomach turn.
“If only it wasn’t so damned hot,” she muttered.
“Hey, that’s usually my line.” Quint pointed at the image on the screen. “Why would none of these glyphs be recognizable to you?”
She huffed. “Because I’m shit at reading them.”
He caught her hand and pulled her around to face him. “Sweetheart, stop beating yourself up and use that big brain of yours.”
“Quint,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t just …”
