Daniel hopped the fence. And Paul swore under his breath, holding his camera over his head. Then the four of us stood together, the only inhabitants of the vast space. Our sole company were the birds, already well into their morning call-and-response. Grace finished her water, dabbing her temples with a few last drops.
“Do you have him with you?” she asked.
I nodded to Daniel and he pulled the container of Jonah’s ashes from his pocket. The light caught the thin plastic lid and lit it up.
“Morning, Jonah,” I said to the Tupperware.
I allowed for a small moment of silence. Then I walked to the path where the cement switched to dirt. Grace and Daniel followed. Paul carried his camera on a strap over his shoulder. It took us a few minutes to get within sight of the gorge, but when we came around that first corner and the valley unfolded before us, the four of us stopped without exchanging a word.
Beneath a scenic overlook was a landscape of sheer stone cliffs, carpeted by brush, and dotted with purple wildflowers and cacti. Carved into the sides of the canyonwere thousands of identical square openings, black doorways and windows to the tombs. It was a high-rise of tomb-apartments inhabited by the souls of the ancient. And barely visible at the bottom was a glittering thread of ultramarine water.
“How far down do you want to go?” asked Daniel.
I didn’t turn around.
“All the way,” I said.
We began our descent, walking down the meandering path, past orchids and oleanders, and alongside the hollow cave tombs, which looked more like little Hobbit hovels than graves. Halfway down, I motioned to Paul and he began to film my downward climb. My internal chat started up, and I didn’t resist it. I knew I had to speak to Jonah sometime.
Me:Wild herbs and giant fennel along the path. A single falcon circling in the air. The sparkling river down to my left, growing closer with each step. The police officer on horseback fifteen feet below us.
I blinked. When I looked down again, he was still there in his stylish baby blue uniform, on the back of a slow-moving horse.
“Oh shit,” I whispered.
“What?” Daniel said, a little too loud.
I turned around and slapped a hand over his mouth. Then I pointed toward the edge of the cliff. Paul and Grace got the message and cocked their heads to listen. The sound of horse hooves clopping echoed up the trail.
I looked at Grace. She was dressed in one of her beige hippie funeral shrouds. Daniel held the container of ashes to his chest. Paul’s camera equipment was much too large to hide. We did not look like we had accidentally shown up to the park in its off hours. We looked like we were up to some kind of illegal shit.
“Wait here,” I whispered.
I left the manicured trail and tromped through the brush to the right, pushing low-hanging limbs from my path. There were thousands of tombs total, so I hoped it wouldn’t take long to find one. I saw some soon enough, both high and low, but most were rectangular slots in the stone just big enough to shelve a single body. I went a few steps farther and came to an uneven stone ramp.
At the top was an entrance to a larger opening in the rock. I rushed back and found the others still waiting where I left them. The sound of the horse was getting closer. I waved them forward, and they began to jog, their legs whisking through wild grasses and over crunching sticks and jagged stones.
We reached the cave in a flurry, our shoes slipping on gravel, and ducked inside the dark interior, spooking the hell out of a family of roosting birds and a small lizard in the process. For the first five minutes, we waited in silence, too afraid to make a sound, listening for a cop on a pony to discover us and put us in an Italian jail.
From within the pitch black of the cavern, I could just see the horse trot past, the young policeman with sunglasses perched on his sunburned bald spot. He didn’t look in our direction.
Still, the illusion of our isolation had been shattered. It was no longer early enough in the day to avoid the park’s authorities. And there were bound to be more than one. There was no way around it: We were trapped in a cave for the time being.
At first, no one said anything. Paul was the first to move. He unsheathed a small flashlight from his pocket and switched it on. He shined it on us, making sure no one was injured. Grace’s dress had certainly looked better an hour ago, but it was still in one piece. Daniel was exhausted but unharmed. And when the light shone on me, I found only a few scratches on my arms. So I stood up and began to feel along the walls of the chamber to see how far it went.
“Give me some light,” I said, and Paul aimed his beamtoward me. I stepped deeper into the cave, hoping there were no bears in Sicily, or if there were, that they were very small, cute bears, and not the face-devouring variety.
Eventually, I began to feel some large bumps bulging out from the wall, and when the light caught up, it revealed them to be columns. They weren’t structural, but purely ornamental. When I reached the very back of the cavern, it had been carved into a semicircle, and, at eye level, there were the faintest remains of frescoes.
“I don’t think this is a tomb,” Grace said.
I looked back toward the entrance, where she and Daniel were silhouetted against the light.
“What is it?” asked Daniel in a weary voice.
“I think it might be a church.”
38
