The Ruins

I want to thank my wife, Elizabeth Hill, my editor, Victoria Wilson, and my agents, Gail Hochman and Lynn Pleshette, for their very generous assistance in the completion of this book. The following people also read the manuscript in a still-unfinished state and offered criticism and comments that were invariably helpful: Michael Cendejas, Stuart Cornfeld, Carlyn Coviello, Carol Edwards, Marianne Merola, John Pleshette, Doug and Linda Smith, and Ben Stiller. I thank them all.

They met Mathias on a day trip to Cozumel. They'd hired a guide to take them snorkeling over a local wreck, but the buoy marking its location had broken off in a storm, and the guide was having difficulty finding it. So they were just swimming about, looking at nothing in particular. Then Mathias rose toward them from the depths, like a merman, a scuba tank on his back. He smiled when they told him their situation, and led them to the wreck. He was German, dark from the sun, and very tall, with a blond crew cut and pale blue eyes. He had a tattoo of an eagle on his right forearm, black with red wings. He let them take turns borrowing his tank so they could drop down thirty feet and see the wreck up close. He was friendly in a quiet way, and his English was only slightly accented, and when they pulled themselves into their guide's boat to head back to shore, he climbed in, too.

They met the Greeks two nights later, back in Cancún, on the beach near their hotel. Stacy got drunk and made out with one of them. Nothing happened beyond that, but the Greeks always seemed to be turning up afterward, no matter where they went or what they were doing. None of them spoke Greek, of course, and the Greeks didn't speak English, so it was mostly smiling and nodding and the occasional sharing of food or drinks. There were three Greeks-in their early twenties, like Mathias and the rest of them-and they seemed friendly enough, even if they did appear to be following them about.

The Greeks not only didn't know English; they couldn't speak Spanish, either. They'd adopted Spanish names, though, which they seemed to find very amusing. Pablo and Juan and Don Quixote was how they introduced themselves, saying the names in their odd accents and gesturing at their chests. Don Quixote was the one Stacy made out with. All three looked enough alike, however-wide-shouldered and slightly padded, with their dark hair grown long and tied back in ponytails-that even Stacy had a hard time keeping track of who was who. It also seemed possible that they were trading the names around, that this was part of the joke, so the one who answered to Pablo on Tuesday would smilingly insist on Wednesday that he was Juan.

They were visiting Mexico for three weeks. It was August, a foolish time to travel to the Yucatán. The weather was too hot, too humid. There were sudden rainstorms nearly every afternoon, downpours that could flood a street in a matter of seconds. And with darkness, the mosquitoes arrived, vast humming clouds of them. In the beginning, Amy complained about all these things, wishing they'd gone to San Francisco, which had been her idea. But then Jeff lost his temper, telling her she was ruining it for everyone else, and she stopped talking about California -the bright, brisk days, the trolley cars, the fog rolling in at dusk. It wasn't really that bad anyway. It was cheap and uncrowded, and she decided to make the best of it.

There were four of them in all: Amy and Stacy and Jeff and Eric. Amy and Stacy were best friends. They'd cut their hair boyishly short for the trip, and they wore matching Panama hats, posing for photos arm in arm. They looked like sisters-Amy the fair one, Stacy the dark-both of them tiny, barely five feet tall, birdlike in their thinness. They were sisterly in their behavior, too, full of whispered secrets, wordless intimacies, knowing looks.

Jeff was Amy's boyfriend; Eric was Stacy's. The boys were friendly with each other, but not exactly friends. It had been Jeff's idea to travel to Mexico, a last fling before he and Amy started medical school in the fall. He'd found a good deal on the Internet: cheap, impossible to pass up. It would be three lazy weeks on the beach, lying in the sun, doing nothing. He'd convinced Amy to come with him, then Amy had convinced Stacy, and Stacy had convinced Eric.

Mathias told them that he'd come to Mexico with his younger brother, Henrich, but Henrich had gone missing. It was a confusing story, and none of them understood all the details. Whenever they asked him about it, Mathias became vague and upset. He slipped into German and waved his hands, and his eyes grew cloudy with the threat of tears. After awhile, they didn't ask anymore; it felt impolite to press. Eric believed that drugs were somehow involved, that Mathias's brother was on the run from the authorities, but whether these authorities were German, American, or Mexican, he couldn't say for certain. There'd been a fight, though; they all agreed upon this. Mathias had argued with his brother, perhaps even struck him, and then Henrich had disappeared. Mathias was worried, of course. He was waiting for him to return so that they could fly back to Germany. Sometimes he seemed confident that Henrich would eventually reappear and that all would be fine in the end, but other times he didn't. Mathias was reserved by nature, a listener rather than a talker, and prone in his present situation to sudden bouts of gloom. The four of them worked hard to cheer him up. Eric told funny stories. Stacy did her imitations. Jeff pointed out interesting sights. And Amy took countless photographs, ordering everyone to smile.

In the day, they sunned on the beach, sweating beside one another on their brightly colored towels. They swam and snorkeled; they got burned and began to peel. They rode horses, paddled around in kayaks, played miniature golf. One afternoon, Eric convinced them all to rent a sailboat, but it turned out he wasn't as adept at sailing as he'd claimed, and they had to be towed back to the dock. It was embarrassing, and expensive. At night, they ate seafood and drank too much beer.

Eric didn't know about Stacy and the Greek. He'd gone to sleep after dinner, leaving the other three to wander the beach with Mathias. There'd been a bonfire burning behind one of the neighboring hotels, a band playing in a gazebo. That was where they met the Greeks. The Greeks were drinking tequila and clapping in rhythm with the music. They offered to share the bottle. Stacy sat next to Don Quixote, and there was much talking, in their mutually exclusive languages, and much laughter, and the bottle passed back and forth, everyone wincing at the burning taste of the liquor, and then Amy turned and found Stacy embracing the Greek. It didn't last very long. Five minutes of kissing, a shy touch of her left breast, and the band was finished for the night. Don Quixote wanted her to go back to his room, but she smiled and shook her head, and it was over as easily as that.

In the morning, the Greeks laid out their towels alongside Mathias and the four of them on the beach, and in the afternoon they all went jet skiing together. You wouldn't have known about the kissing if you hadn't seen it; the Greeks were very gentlemanly, very respectful. Eric seemed to like them, too. He was trying to get them to teach him dirty words in Greek. He was frustrated, though, because it was hard to tell if the words they were teaching him were the ones he wanted to learn.

It turned out that Henrich had left a note. Mathias showed it to Amy and Jeff early one morning, during the second week of their vacation. It was handwritten, in German, with a shakily drawn map at the bottom. They couldn't read the note, of course; Mathias had to translate it for them. There wasn't anything about drugs or the police-that was just Eric being Eric, jumping to conclusions, the more dramatic the better. Henrich had met a girl on the beach. She'd flown in that morning, was on her way to the interior, where she'd been hired to work on an archaeological dig. It was at an old mining camp, maybe a silver mine, maybe emeralds-Mathias wasn't certain. Henrich and the girl had spent the day together. He'd bought her lunch and they'd gone swimming. Then he took her back to his room, where they showered and had sex. Afterward, she left on a bus. In the restaurant, over lunch, she'd drawn a map for him on a napkin, showing him where the dig was. She told him he should come, too, that they'd be glad for his help. Once she left, Henrich couldn't stop talking about her. He didn't eat dinner and he couldn't fall asleep. In the middle of the night, he sat up in bed and announced to Mathias that he was going to join the dig.

Mathias called him a fool. He'd only just met this girl, they were in the midst of their vacation, and he didn't know the first thing about archaeology. Henrich assured him that it was really none of his business. He wasn't asking for Mathias's permission; he was merely informing him of his decision. He climbed out of bed and started to pack. They called each other names, and Henrich threw an electric razor at Mathias, hitting him on the shoulder. Mathias rushed him, knocking him over. They rolled around on the hotel room floor, grappling, grunting obscenities, until Mathias accidentally head-butted Henrich in the mouth, cutting his lip. Henrich made much of this, rushing to the bathroom so that he could spit blood into the sink. Mathias pulled on some clothes and went out to get him ice, but then ended up going downstairs to the all-night bar by the pool. It was three in the morning. Mathias felt he needed to calm down. He drank two beers, one quickly, the other slowly. When he got back to their room, the note was sitting on his pillow. And Henrich was gone.

The note was three-quarters of a page long, though it seemed shorter when Mathias read it out loud in English. It occurred to Amy that Mathias might be skipping some of the passages, preferring to keep them private, but it didn't matter-she and Jeff got the gist of it. Henrich said that Mathias often seemed to mistake being a brother with being a parent. He forgave him for this, yet he still couldn't accept it. Mathias might call him a fool, but he believed it was possible he'd met the love of his life that morning, and he'd never be able to forgive himself-or Mathias, for that matter-if he let this opportunity slip past without pursuing it. He'd try to be back by their departure date, though he couldn't guarantee this. He hoped Mathias would manage to have fun on his own while he was gone. If Mathias grew lonely, he could always come and join them at the dig; it was only a half day's drive to the west. The map at the bottom of the note-a hand-drawn copy of the one the girl had sketched on the napkin for Henrich-showed him how to get there.

As Amy listened to Mathias tell his story and then struggle to translate his brother's note, she gradually began to realize that he was asking for their advice. They were sitting on the veranda of their hotel. A breakfast buffet was offered here every morning: eggs and pancakes and French toast, juice and coffee and tea, an immense pile of fresh fruit. A short flight of stairs led to the beach. Seagulls hovered overhead, begging for scraps of food, shitting on the umbrellas above the tables. Amy could hear the steady sighing of the surf, could see the occasional jogger shuffling past, an elderly couple searching for shells, a trio of hotel employees raking the sand. It was very early, just after seven. Mathias had awakened them, calling from the house phone downstairs. Stacy and Eric were still asleep.

Jeff leaned forward to study the map. It was clear to Amy, without anything explicit having been said, that it was his advice Mathias was soliciting. Amy didn't take offense; she was used to this sort of thing. Jeff had something about him that made people trust him, an air of competence and self-confidence. Amy sat back in her seat and watched him smooth the wrinkles from the map with the palm of his hand. Jeff had curly, dark hair, and eyes that changed color with the light. They could be hazel or green or the palest of brown. He wasn't as tall as Mathias, or as broad in the shoulders, but despite this, he somehow seemed to be the larger of the two. He had a gravity to him: he was calm, always calm. Someday, if all went according to plan, Amy imagined that this would be what would make him a good doctor. Or, at the very least, what would make people think of him as a good doctor.

Mathias's leg was jiggling, his knee jumping up and down. It was Wednesday morning. He and his brother were scheduled to fly home on Friday afternoon. "I go," he said. "I get him. I take him home. Right?"

Jeff glanced up from the map. "You'd be back this evening?" he asked.

Mathias shrugged, waved at the note. He only knew what his brother had written.

Amy recognized some of the towns on the map-Tizimín, Valladolid, Cobá-names she'd seen in their guidebook. She hadn't really read the book; she'd only looked at the pictures. She remembered a ruined hacienda on the Tizimín page, a street lined with whitewashed buildings for Valladolid, a gigantic stone face buried in vines for Cobá. Mathias's map had anX drawn somewhere vaguely west of Cobá. This was where the dig was. You rode a bus from Cancún to Cobá, where you hired a taxi, which took you eleven miles farther west. Then there was a path leading away from the road, two miles long, that you had to hike. If you came to the Mayan village, you'd gone too far.

Watching Jeff examine the map, she could guess what he was thinking. It had nothing to do with Mathias or his brother. He was thinking of the jungle, of the ruins there, and what it might be like to explore them. They'd talked vaguely of doing this when they'd first arrived: how they could hire a car, a local guide, and see whatever there was to be seen. But it was so hot; the idea of trudging through the jungle to take pictures of giant flowers or lizards or crumbling stone walls seemed less and less attractive the more they discussed it. So they stayed on the beach. But now? The morning was deceptively cool, with a breeze coming in off the water; she knew that it must be hard for Jeff to remember how humid the day would ultimately become. Yes, it was easy enough for her to guess what he was thinking: why shouldn't it be fun? They were slipping into a torpor, with all the sun and the food and the drinking. A little adventure like this might be just the thing to wake them up.

Jeff slid the map back across the table to Mathias. "We'll go with you," he said.

Amy didn't speak. She sat there, reclining in her chair. Inside, she was thinking, No, I don't want to go, but she knew she couldn't say this. She complained too much; everyone said so. She was a gloomy person. She didn't have the gift of happiness; somewhere along the way, someone had neglected to give it to her, and now she made everyone else suffer for her lack of it. The jungle would be hot and dirty, its shadowed spaces aswarm with mosquitoes, but she tried not to think of this; she tried to rise above it. Mathias was their friend, wasn't he? He'd loaned them his scuba tank, showed them where to dive. And now he was in need. Amy let this thought gather strength in her mind, a hand pulling shut doors, slamming them in rapid succession, until only one was left open. When Mathias turned toward her, grinning, pleased with Jeff's words, looking for her to echo them, she couldn't help herself: she smiled back at him, nodded.

"Of course," she said.

Eric was dreaming that he couldn't fall asleep. It was a dream he often had, a dream of frustration and weariness. In it, he was trying to meditate, to count sheep, to think calming thoughts. There was the taste of vomit in his mouth, and he wanted to get up and brush his teeth. He needed to empty his bladder, too, but he sensed that if he moved, even slightly, whatever little chance he had of falling back asleep would be forever lost to him. So he didn't move; he lay there, wishing he could sleep, willing sleep to come, but not sleeping. The taste of vomit and the sensation of a full bladder were not regular details of this dream. They were only present now because they were real. He'd drunk too much the night before, had roused himself to throw up into the toilet sometime just before dawn, and now he needed to pee. Even his dreaming self sensed this, that there was an unusual heft to these two sensations, as if his psyche were trying to warn him of something, the threat of choking on another wave of puke, or of soaking the bed in urine.

It was the Greeks who'd pushed and prodded him to the point of vomiting. They'd tried to teach him a drinking game. This involved dice, shaken in a cup. The rules were explained to him in Greek, which certainly must've contributed to how complicated they seemed. Eric bravely rolled the dice and passed the cup, but he never managed to understand why he won on some tosses and lost on others. At first, it seemed as if high numbers were best, but then, erratically, low numbers began also to triumph. He rolled the dice and sometimes the Greeks gestured for him to drink, but other times they didn't. After awhile, it began not to matter so much. They taught him some new words and laughed at how quickly he forgot them. Everyone became very drunk, and then Eric somehow managed to stumble back to his room and go to sleep.

Unlike the others, who were heading off to graduate schools of one sort or another in the fall, Eric was preparing to start a job. He'd been hired to teach English at a prep school outside of Boston. He'd live in a dorm with the boys, help run the student paper, coach soccer in the fall, baseball in the spring. He was going to be good at it, he believed. He had an easy, confident way with people. He was funny; he could get kids laughing, make them want him to like them. He was tall and lean, with dark hair, dark eyes; he believed himself to be handsome. And smart: a winner. Stacy was going to be in Boston, studying to become a social worker. They'd see each other every weekend; in another year or two, he'd ask her to marry him. They'd live somewhere in New England and she'd get some sort of job helping people and maybe he'd keep teaching, or maybe he wouldn't. It didn't matter. He was happy; he was going to keep being happy; they'd be happy together.

Eric was an optimist by nature, still innocent of the blows even the most blessed lives can suffer. His psyche was too sanguinary to allow him an outright nightmare, and it offered him a safety net now, a voice in his head that said, It's okay, you're just dreaming. A moment later, someone started to knock at the door. Then Stacy was rolling off the bed, and Eric was opening his eyes, staring blearily about the room. The curtains were drawn; his and Stacy's clothes were strewn across the floor. Stacy had dragged the bedspread with her. She was standing at the door with it wrapped around her shoulders, naked underneath, talking to someone. Eric gradually realized it was Jeff. He wanted to go pee and brush his teeth and find out what was happening, but he couldn't quite rouse himself into motion. He fell back asleep and the next thing he knew Stacy was standing over him, dressed in khakis and a T-shirt, rubbing dry her hair, telling him to hurry.

"Hurry?" he asked.

She glanced at the clock. "It leaves in forty minutes," she said.

"What leaves?"

"The bus."

"What bus?"

"To Cobá."

"Cobá…" He struggled to sit up, and for an instant thought he might vomit again. The bedspread was lying on the floor near the door, and he had to strain to grasp how it had gotten there. "What did Jeff want?"

"For us to get ready."

"Why are you wearing pants?"

"He said we ought to. Because of the bugs."

"Bugs?" Eric asked. He was having trouble understanding her. He was still a little drunk. "What bugs?"

"We're going to Cobá," she said. "To an old mine. To see the ruins." She started back toward the bathroom. He could hear her running water, and it reminded him of his bladder. He climbed out of bed, shuffled across the room to the open doorway. She had the light on over the sink, and it hurt his eyes. He stood on the threshold for a moment, blinking at her. She yanked on the shower, then nudged him into it. He wasn't wearing any clothes; all he had to do was step over the rim of the tub. Then he was soaping himself, reflexively, and urinating into the space between his feet, but still not quite awake. Stacy herded him along, and with her assistance he managed to finish his shower, to brush his teeth and comb his hair and pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, but it wasn't until they'd made it downstairs and were hurriedly eating breakfast that he finally began to grasp where they were going.

They all met in the lobby to wait for the van that would take them to the bus station. Mathias passed Henrich's note around, and everyone took turns staring at the German words with their odd capitalizations, the crookedly drawn map at the bottom. Stacy and Eric had shown up empty-handed, and Jeff sent them back to their room, telling them to fill a pack with water, bug spray, sunscreen, food. Sometimes he felt he was the only one of them who knew how to move through the world. He could tell that Eric was still half-drunk. Stacy's nickname in college had been "Spacy," and it was well earned. She was a daydreamer; she liked to hum to herself, to sit staring at nothing. And then there was Amy, who had a tendency to pout when she was displeased. Jeff could tell that she didn't want to go find Mathias's brother. Everything seemed to be taking her a little longer than necessary. She'd vanished into the bathroom after breakfast, leaving him to fill their backpack on his own. Then she'd come out to change into pants, and ended up lying facedown on the bed in her underwear until he prodded her into action. She wasn't talking to him, was only answering his questions with shrugs or monosyllables. He told her she didn't have to go, that she could spend the day alone on the beach if she liked, and she just stared at him. They both knew who she was, how she'd rather be with the group, doing something she didn't like, than alone, doing something she enjoyed.

While they were waiting for Eric and Stacy to return with their backpack, one of the Greeks came walking into the lobby. It was the one who'd been calling himself Pablo lately. He hugged everyone in turn. All the Greeks liked to hug; they did it at every opportunity. After the hugs, he and Jeff had a brief discussion in their separate languages, both of them resorting to pantomime to fill in the gaps.

"Juan?" Jeff asked. "Don Quixote?" He lifted his hands, raised his eyebrows.

Pablo said something in Greek and made a casting motion with his arm. Then he pretended to reel in a large fish, straining against its weight. He pointed to his watch, at the six, then the twelve.

Jeff nodded, smiled, showing he understood: the other two had gone fishing. They'd left at six and would be back at noon. He took Henrich's note, showed it to the Greek. He gestured at Amy and Mathias, waved upward to indicate Stacy and Eric, then pointed at Cancún on the map. He slowly moved his finger to Cobá, then to theX, which marked the dig. He couldn't think how to explain the purpose of their trip, how to signalbrother ormissing , so he just kept tracing his finger across the map.

Pablo got very excited. He smiled and nodded and pointed at his own chest, then at the map, talking rapidly in Greek all the while. It appeared he wanted to go with them. Jeff nodded; the others nodded, too. The Greeks were staying in the neighboring hotel. Jeff pointed toward it, then down at Pablo's bare legs, then at his own jeans. Pablo just stared at him. Jeff pointed at the others, at their pants, and the Greek began nodding again. He started to leave, but then came back suddenly, reaching for Henrich's note. He took it to the concierge's desk; they saw him borrow a pen, a piece of paper, then bend to write. It took him a long time. In the middle of it, Eric and Stacy reappeared, with their backpack, and Pablo tossed down his pen, rushed over to hug them. He and Eric made shaking motions with their hands, casting imaginary dice. They pretended to drink, then laughed and shook their heads, and Pablo told a long story in Greek that no one could make any sense of. It seemed to have something to do with an airplane, or a bird, something with wings, and it took him several minutes to relate. It was obviously funny, or at least he found it to be so, because he kept having to stop and laugh. His laughter was infectious, and the others joined in, though they couldn't say why. Finally, he went back and resumed whatever he was doing with Henrich's note.

When he returned, they saw that he'd made his own copy of the hand-drawn map. He'd written a paragraph in Greek above it; Jeff assumed it was a note for Juan and Don Quixote, telling them to come join them at the dig. He tried to explain to Pablo that they were only intending to go for the day, that they'd be back late that evening, but he couldn't find a way to make this clear. He kept pointing at his watch, and so did Pablo, who seemed to think Jeff was asking when the other two Greeks would return from fishing. They were both pointing at the twelve, but Jeff meant midnight, and Pablo meant noon. Finally, Jeff gave up; they were going to miss their bus if this continued. He waved Pablo toward his hotel, gesturing at his bare legs again. Pablo smiled and nodded and hugged them all once more, then jogged out of the lobby, clutching the copy of Henrich's map in his hand.

Jeff waited by the front door, watching for their van. Mathias paced about behind him, folding and unfolding Henrich's note, sliding it into his pocket, only to pull it out again. Stacy, Eric, and Amy sat together on a couch in the center of the lobby, and when Jeff glanced toward them, he felt a sudden wavering. They shouldn't go, he realized; it was a terrible idea. Eric's head kept dipping; he was drunk and overtired and having great difficulty staying awake. Amy was pouting, arms folded across her chest, eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. Stacy was wearing sandals and no socks; in a few more hours, her feet were going to be covered in bug bites. Jeff couldn't imagine accompanying these three on a two-mile hike through the Yucatán heat. He knew he should just explain this to Mathias, apologize, ask for his forgiveness. All he had to do was think of a way to say it, to make Mathias understand, and they could spend another aimless day on the beach. It ought to have been easy enough, finding the right words, and Jeff was just starting to form them in his head when Pablo returned, dressed in jeans, carrying a pack. There were hugs again, all around, everyone talking at once. Then the van arrived, and they were piling into it, one after another, and suddenly it was too late to speak with Mathias, too late not to go. They were pulling out into traffic, away from the hotel, the beach, everything that had grown so familiar in the past two weeks. Yes, they were on their way, they were leaving, they were going, they were gone.

As Stacy was hurrying after the others into the bus station, a boy grabbed her breast. He reached in from behind and gave it a hard, painful squeeze. Stacy spun, scrambling to thrust his hand from her body. That was the whole point-the spin, the scrambling, the distraction inherent in these motions-it gave a second boy the opportunity to snatch her hat and sunglasses from her head. Then they were off, both of them, racing down the sidewalk, two dark-haired little boys-twelve years old, she would've guessed-vanishing now into the crowd.

The day was abruptly bright without her glasses. Stacy stood blinking, a little dazed, still feeling the boy's hand on her breast. The others were already pushing their way into the station. She'd yelped-she thought she'd yelped-but apparently no one had heard. She had to run to catch up with them, her hand reflexively rising to hold her hat to her head, the hat that was no longer there, that was beyond the plaza already, moving farther and farther into the distance with each passing second, traveling toward some new owner's hands, a stranger who'd have no idea of her, of course, no sense of this moment, of her running into the Cancún bus station, struggling suddenly against the urge to cry.

Inside, it felt more like an airport than a bus station, clean and heavily air-conditioned and very bright. Jeff had already found the right ticket counter; he was talking to the attendant, asking questions in his careful, precisely enunciated Spanish. The others were huddled behind him, pulling out their wallets, gathering the money for their fares. When Stacy reached them, she said, "A boy stole my hat."

Only Pablo turned; the others were all leaning toward Jeff, trying to hear what the attendant was telling him. Pablo smiled at her. He gestured around them at the bus station, in the way someone might indicate a particularly pleasing view from a balcony.

Stacy was beginning to calm down now. Her heart had been racing, adrenaline-fueled, her body trembling with it, and now that it was starting to ease, she felt more embarrassed than anything else, as if the whole incident were somehow her own fault. This was the sort of thing that always seemed to be happening to her. She dropped cameras off ferries; she left purses on airplanes. The others didn't lose things or break things or have them stolen, so why should she? She should've been paying attention. She should've seen the boys coming. She was calmer, but she still felt like crying.

"And my sunglasses," she said.

Pablo nodded, his smile deepening. He seemed very happy to be here. It was unsettling, having him respond with such oblivious contentment to what she believed must be her obvious distress; for a moment, Stacy wondered if he might be mocking her. She glanced past him to the others.

"Eric," she called.

Eric waved her away without looking at her. "I got it," he said. He was handing Jeff money for their tickets.

Mathias was the only one who turned. He stared for a moment, examining her face, then stepped toward her. He was so tall and she was so small; he ended up crouching in front of her, as if she were a child, looking at her with what appeared to be genuine concern. "What's wrong?" he asked.

On the night of the bonfire, when Stacy had kissed the Greek, it hadn't been only Amy she'd felt staring at her, but Mathias, too. Amy's expression had been one of pure surprise; Mathias's had been perfectly blank. In the days to follow, she'd caught him watching her in the exact same manner: not judgmental, exactly, but with a hidden, held-back quality that nonetheless made her feel as if she were being weighed in some balance, appraised and assessed, and found wanting. Stacy was a coward at heart-she had no illusions about this, knew that she'd sacrifice much to escape difficulty or conflict-and she'd avoided Mathias as best she could. Avoided not only his presence but his eyes, too, that watchful gaze. And now here he was, crouched in front of her, looking at her so sympathetically, while the others, all unknowing, busied themselves purchasing their tickets. It was too confusing; she lost her voice.

Mathias reached out, touched her forearm, just with his fingertips, resting them there, as if she were some small animal he was trying to calm. "What is it?" he asked.

"A boy stole my hat," Stacy managed to say. She gestured toward her head, her eyes. "And my sunglasses."

"Just now?"

Stacy nodded, pointed toward the doors. "Outside."

Mathias stood up; his fingertips left her arm. He seemed ready to stride off and find the boys. Stacy lifted her hand to stop him.

"They're gone," she said. "They ran away."

"Who ran away?" Amy asked. She was standing, suddenly, beside Mathias.

"The boys who stole my hat."

Eric was there, too, now, handing her a piece of paper. She took it, held it at her side, with no sense of what it was, or why Eric wanted her to have it. "Look at it," he said. "Look at your name."

Stacy peered down at the piece of paper. It was her ticket; her name was printed on it. "Spacy Hutchins," it said.

Eric was smiling, pleased with himself. "They asked for our names."

"Her hat was stolen," Mathias said.

Stacy nodded, feeling that embarrassment again. Everyone was staring at her. "And my sunglasses."

Now Jeff was there, too, not stopping, moving past them. "Hurry," he said. "We're gonna miss it." He was heading off toward their gate, and the others started after him: Pablo and Mathias and Amy, all in a line. Eric lingered beside her.

"How?" he asked.

"It wasn't my fault."

"I'm not saying that. I'm just-"

"They grabbed them. They grabbed them and ran." She could still feel the boy's grip on her breast. That, and the oddly cool touch of Mathias's fingertips on her arm. If Eric asked her another question, she was afraid it would be too much for her; she'd surrender, begin to cry.

Eric glanced toward the others. They were almost out of sight. "We better go," he said. He waited until she nodded, and then they started off together, his hand clasping hers, pulling her along through the crowd.

The bus wasn't at all what Amy had expected. She'd pictured something dirty and broken-down, with rattling windows and blown shocks and a smell coming from the bathroom. But it was nice. There was air conditioning; there were little TVs hanging from the ceiling. Amy's seat number was on her ticket. She and Stacy were together, toward the middle of the bus. Pablo and Eric were directly in front of them, with Jeff and Mathias across the aisle.

As soon as the bus pulled out of the station, the TVs turned on. They were playing a Mexican soap opera. Amy didn't know any Spanish, but she watched anyway, imagining a story line to fit the actors' startled expressions, their gestures of disgust. It wasn't that difficult-all soap operas are more or less the same-and it made her feel better, losing herself a little in her imagined narrative. It was immediately clear that the dark-haired man who was maybe some sort of lawyer was cheating on his wife with the bleached-blond woman, but that he didn't realize the blonde was taping their conversations. There was an elderly woman with lots of jewelry who was obviously manipulating everyone else with her money. There was a woman with long black hair whom the elderly woman trusted but who appeared to be plotting something against her. She was in league with the elderly woman's doctor, who seemed also to be the bleached blonde's husband.

After awhile, by the time they'd left the city behind and were heading south along the coast, Amy felt easy enough with herself that she reached out and took Stacy's hand. "It's all right," she said. "You can borrow my hat, if you want."

And Stacy's smile at this-so open, so immediate, so loving-changed everything, made the whole day seem possible, even exciting. They were best friends, and they were going on an adventure, a hike through the jungle to see the ruins. They held hands and watched the soap opera. Stacy couldn't speak Spanish, either, so they argued about what was happening, each of them struggling to propose the most outlandish scenario possible. Stacy imitated the elderly woman's expressions, which were like a silent movie actress's, expansive and exaggerated, full of greed and malice, and they hunched low in their seats, giggling together, each making the other feel better-safer, happier-as the bus pushed its way down the coast through the day's burgeoning heat.

Pablo had a bottle of tequila in his pack. No: Eric could hear a clinking sound, so there must've been two bottles, or more. Eric only saw one, though. Pablo pulled it out to show him, smiling, raising his eyebrows. Apparently, he wanted them to share it on their ride to Cobá. There was something with a coin, too-some sort of Greek coin. Pablo took it out, mimed flipping it, then drinking. Another game. As far as Eric could understand, it seemed like a pretty simple one. They'd flip the coin. If it came up heads, Eric had to drink; if it came up tails, the Greek did. Eric, displaying a wisdom unnatural to him, waved the idea aside. He tilted his seat back, shut his eyes, and fell asleep with the speed of a man on an anesthesia drip. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…and he was gone.

He woke briefly, blearily, sometime later, to find that they were parked in front of a long line of souvenir stalls. It wasn't their stop, but some of the other passengers were gathering their things and climbing off, while still others lined up outside the door, waiting to get on. Pablo was asleep beside him, openmouthed, snoring softly. Amy and Stacy were hunched low in their seats, whispering together. Jeff was reading their communal guidebook, bent close over it, intent, as if memorizing it. Mathias's eyes were shut, but he wasn't sleeping. Eric couldn't say how he knew this; he just did, and as he stared at him, wondering why this was so, Mathias rolled his head toward him, opened his eyes. It was an odd moment: they sat there, with only the aisle separating them, holding each other's gaze. Finally, one of the new passengers came shuffling toward the rear of the bus, momentarily blocking their view of each other. When she'd passed, Mathias had turned his head forward again and shut his eyes.

Beyond the window, the freshly disembarked passengers stood uncertainly beside the bus, staring about, as if questioning their wisdom in choosing this as their destination. The vendors in their stalls called to them, gesturing for them to approach. The passengers smiled, nodded, waved, or struggled to pretend that they couldn't hear the shouts of greeting. They stood, not moving. The stalls sold soft drinks, food, clothing, straw hats, jewelry, Mayan statues, leather belts and sandals. Most of the stalls had signs in both Spanish and English. There was a goat tied to a stake beside one of them, and some dogs loitered about, warily eyeing the bus and its former passengers. Beyond the stalls, the town began. Eric could glimpse the gray stone tower of a church, the whitewashed walls of houses. He imagined fountains hidden in courtyards, gently swaying hammocks, caged birds, and for an instant he thought of rousing himself, urging the others off the bus, shepherding them into this place that felt so much more "real" than Cancún. They could be travelers, for once, rather than tourists; they could explore and discover and…But he was hungover, and so tired, and it was hot out there; Eric could sense it even through the smoked glass of the window, see it in the way the dogs held themselves, heads low, their tongues hanging from their mouths. And then there was Mathias's brother, too-the reason they'd ventured forth on this expedition. Eric turned his head, half-expecting to find the German staring at him again, but Mathias was facing straight ahead, his eyes still shut.

Eric did the same: he turned back toward the front of the bus, closed his eyes. He was still conscious when they rolled into motion. They jolted and bumped in a wide circle, pulled out onto the road. Pablo shifted in his sleep, fell against him, and Eric had to push him away. The Greek muttered something in his own language but didn't wake. The words had an edge to them, though, as if they were an accusation, or a curse, and Eric thought of the smiles the Greeks sometimes exchanged, the sense of shared secrets they gave off. Who are they? he wondered. He was half-asleep already, his mind moving on its own; he wasn't even certain whom he meant. The Mexicans, maybe, the Mayans calling from their stalls. Or Pablo and the other Greeks with their constant chattering, their nods and hugs and winks. Or Mathias with his mysteriously missing brother, that ominous tattoo, that blank stare. Or-well, why not?-Jeff and Amy and Stacy. Who are they?

He slept and didn't dream, and when he opened his eyes again, they were pulling into Cobá. Everyone was standing up and stretching, and the question was no longer in his head, nor the memory of it. It was just before noon, and as he woke more fully to himself, Eric realized that he felt as good as he had all day. He was thirsty and hungry and he needed to urinate, but his head was clearer and his body stronger, and he felt he was ready now, finally, for whatever the day might bring.

Jeff found them a taxi. It was a bright yellow pickup truck. Jeff showed Mathias's map to the driver, a short, heavyset man with thick glasses, who studied it with great deliberation. The driver spoke a mix of English and Spanish. He was wearing a T-shirt that clung tightly to his padded frame. There were immense salt stains under his arms, and his face was shiny with perspiration. He kept wiping it with a bandanna as he examined the map; he seemed displeased by what he found there. He frowned at the six of them, one by one, then at his truck, then at the sun hanging in the sky above them.

"Twenty dollars," he said.

Jeff shook his head, waving this aside. He had no idea what a fair price would be, but he sensed that it was important to bargain. "Six," he said, picking a sum at random.

The driver looked appalled, as if Jeff had just leaned forward and spit onto his sandaled feet. He handed the map back to him, started to walk away.

"Eight!" Jeff called after him.

The driver turned to face him but didn't come back. "Fifteen."

"Twelve."

"Fifteen," the driver insisted.

The bus was leaving now, and the other passengers were drifting off into the town. The yellow pickup was the only cab in sight big enough to accommodate them all.

"Fifteen," Jeff agreed. He sensed that he was overpaying, and felt foolish for it. He could see that the driver was having difficulty hiding his pleasure, but no one else seemed to notice this. They were already moving toward the truck. It didn't matter; none of it mattered. This was only a stage in their journey, quickly finished. And Mathias was beside him suddenly, opening his wallet, paying the man. Jeff didn't object, didn't offer to contribute. Mathias was the reason they were here, after all. They'd be half-asleep on the beach right now if it weren't for him.

There was a small dog in the rear of the pickup, chained to a cinder block. When they approached the truck, the dog began to throw his body against the length of chain, growling and barking and drooling great strings of saliva. He was the size of a large cat-black, with white paws and a shaggy, greasy-looking coat-but he had the voice of a much larger dog. His anger, his desire to do them harm, seemed almost human. They stopped walking, stood staring.

The driver waved them on, laughing. "No problem," he said in his heavily accented English. "No problem." He lowered the tailgate, waved toward the dog, showed them how its chain only reached halfway down the truck bed. Two of them could sit up front. The other four could arrange themselves in such a way as to remain out of reach of the fierce little dog. Most of this was communicated in hand signals, punctuated with a steady recitation of those two words: "No problem, no problem, no problem…"

Stacy and Amy volunteered to sit in front. They hurried forward, yanked open the passenger-side door, and climbed inside before anyone could protest. The others warily pulled themselves up into the back. The dog's barking rose in volume. He threw himself with such force against his chain that it seemed possible he might break his neck. The driver tried to soothe the dog, murmuring to him in Mayan, but this had no apparent effect. Finally, the man just smiled, shrugging at them, and swung the tailgate closed.

The truck needed three attempts before it managed to start; then they were in motion. They swung out onto a paved road, heading away from town. After a mile or so, they turned left onto a gravel road. There were fields of some sort-Jeff couldn't tell what was growing in them, but one had a broken-down tractor in it, another a pair of horses. Then, abruptly, they were in the jungle: thick, damp-looking foliage growing right up against the road. The sun was in the center of the sky, directly above them, so it was hard to tell which direction they were heading, but he assumed it was west. The driver had kept the map. They just had to trust that he knew how to follow it.

The four of them sat with their backs flat against the tailgate, their feet drawn into their bodies, watching the dog, who continued to lunge toward them, growling and barking and slobbering without pause. It was hot, with the thick, slightly fetid humidity of a greenhouse. There was the false breeze of the truck's motion, but it wasn't enough, and soon they were sweating through their shirts. Now and then, Pablo would shout something in Greek at the dog, and they'd all laugh nervously, though they had no idea, of course, what he was saying. Even Mathias, who otherwise rarely seemed to laugh, joined them in this.

After awhile, the gravel road turned to dirt and became heavily rutted. The truck slowed, bouncing across the ruts, jostling them against one another. The larger bumps lifted the cinder block briefly into the air before slamming it back down against the truck bed. Each time this happened, the dog managed to drag it an inch or two closer to them. It seemed like they'd gone farther than the eleven miles the map had demanded. They drove more and more slowly as the road became worse and worse, the trees crowding in upon them, hanging over them, brushing against the side of the truck. A cloud of bugs gathered overhead, following their slow passage, biting their arms and necks, making them slap at themselves. Eric dug a can of mosquito repellent out of his backpack but then fumbled it, dropping it to the truck bed. It rolled toward the dog, clanged against the cinder block, coming to rest there. The dog sniffed at it briefly, then resumed his barking. Pablo was no longer shouting, and they'd stopped laughing. Time was stretching itself out-they'd gone too far-and Jeff was beginning to suspect that they'd made an immense mistake, that the man was taking them into the jungle to rob and kill them. He'd rape the girls; he'd shoot them or stab them or smash their skulls with a shovel. He'd feed them to his little dog; he'd bury their bones in the damp earth, and no one would ever hear of them again.

Then a turnaround appeared on the right-hand side of the road, and the truck pulled into it, stopped, idled. A path led off into the trees. They'd arrived. The four of them scrambled quickly over the tailgate, laughing again, abandoning the can of repellent, the dog still lunging at his length of chain, growling and barking his farewell.

Stacy was sitting by the window, which was shut tight against the day's growing heat. The truck's air conditioner was on high; she'd begun to shiver as the ride progressed, her sweat drying, goose bumps rising on her forearms. It hadn't seemed like an exceptionally long drive to her. She'd hardly noticed it, in fact, her mind floating elsewhere, fifteen years back and two thousand miles away. The color of the pickup truck: that was what triggered it. A legal-pad yellow. Her uncle had died in a car this color. Uncle Roger, her father's elder brother, caught in a Massachusetts spring downpour, trying to ease his way through a flooded patch of road. A creek had overflown its banks; it snatched the car, spun it downstream, flipped it over, then cast it aside on the edge of an apple orchard. That was where they'd found Uncle Roger, still with his seat belt on, hanging upside down, batlike, in his yellow car. Drowned.

Stacy and her parents and her two brothers were in Florida when they received the news. It was spring break, and her father had flown them to Disney World. They were staying in one room, all five of them together, her parents in one bed, the two boys in another, Stacy on a foldout cot between them. She was seven years old; her brothers were four and nine. She could remember her father on the phone, hushing them with his free hand, while he said, "What…What…What…" It was a bad connection, and he'd had to shout, repeating, in a questioning tone, everything that was said to him. "Roger…A rainstorm…Drowned…" Afterward, he'd started to cry, bent into himself, eyes clenched shut, fumbling to replace the receiver on its hook, thumping it against the night table, missing again and again, until finally Stacy's mother took it from him and hung it up herself. Stacy and her brothers were sitting on the other bed, staring in astonishment. They'd never seen their father weep, never would again. Their mother gathered them up, took them for an ice cream in the hotel restaurant, and by the time they returned, it was over. Their father was himself again, busily packing their bags. He'd already booked them seats on a plane home later that evening.

Uncle Roger had been a portly man, graying early, who'd always seemed uncomfortable around his brother's children, resorting to shadow animals and knock-knock jokes as a means of diverting their attention. He'd come to stay with them the Christmas before his death. The guest room was across from Stacy's bedroom, and she'd awakened one night to a tremendous thump. Curious, a little frightened, she'd crept to her door, peeked outside into the hall. Uncle Roger was lying there, very drunk, struggling to pull himself back to his feet. After a few attempts, he gave up. He rolled, shifted with a groan, and managed to arrange his body in something resembling a sitting position, his back against the guest room's door.

That was when he noticed Stacy. He winked at her, smiling, and she opened her door a little farther. Then she crouched there, watching him. What he said next would remain so vivid to her, so unblurred by the limitations of her seven-year-old consciousness, that she was no longer certain if it had actually happened. Its lucidity seemed more dream than memory. "I'm going to tell you something important," he said. "Are you listening?" When she nodded, he wagged an admonishing finger at her. "If you're not careful, you can reach a point where you've made choices without thinking. Without planning. You can end up not living the life you'd meant to. Maybe one you deserve, but not one you intended." Here he wagged his finger again. "Make sure you think," he said. "Make sure you plan."

Then he fell silent. It wasn't the way one was supposed to talk to a seven-year-old, and he seemed, belatedly, to realize this. He forced a smile at her. He lifted his hands and attempted some shadow animals in the weak light coming from the stairway. He did his rabbit, his barking dog, his flying eagle. They weren't very impressive, and he seemed to realize this, too. He yawned, closed his eyes, fell almost immediately asleep. Stacy shut her door and crept back to bed.

She never told her parents about this conversation, yet she'd thought of it, off and on, throughout her childhood. She still thought of it now, as an adult, perhaps all the more so. It haunted her, because she sensed the truth in what he'd said, or what she'd dreamed he'd said, and she knew she wasn't a thinker, wasn't a planner, would never be one. It was easy enough to imagine herself trapped in some unanticipated way, through negligence or lassitude. Aging, say, and all alone, in a bathrobe spotted with stains, watching late-night TV with the sound on low while half a dozen cats slept beside her. Or in the suburbs, maybe, marooned in a big house full of echoing rooms, with sore nipples and an infant upstairs, screaming to be fed. This latter image was the one she had in her mind as she sat in the yellow pickup truck, bumping her way down the rutted dirt road, and it made her feel hollow, balloonlike, popable. She pushed it aside, an act of will. It wasn't her life, after all, not now, not yet. She was leaving for graduate school in a few weeks; anything could happen. She'd meet new people, friends she'd probably keep for the rest of her life. She spent a few moments picturing herself in Boston-at a coffee shop, maybe, with a stack of books on the table in front of her, late at night, the place almost empty, and a boy coming in, one of her classmates, his shy smile, how he'd ask if he could sit with her-when suddenly, inexplicably, she found herself thinking of Uncle Roger again, alone on that flooded road, of that magical instant when the creek first took hold of his car, lifting it, giving him that weightless feeling, not panic yet, just pure surprise, and maybe even a touch of giddy pleasure, the start of a little adventure, a funny story to tell his neighbors when he got home.

Never attempt to drive across moving water. There were so many rules to remember. No wonder people ended up in places they'd never chosen to be.

It was with this thought-in hindsight, such an appropriately ominous foreshadowing-that she glanced up through the windshield, to discover they'd arrived.

When the truck stopped, the man held the map toward Amy. She reached to take it, but he didn't let her. She pulled, and he held on: a brief tug-of-war. Stacy was fumbling with the door handle; she didn't notice what was happening. The truck rocked slightly as Jeff and the others jumped to the ground. The windows were up, the air conditioner on high, but Amy could hear them laughing. The dog was still barking. Stacy got the door open, finally, and rolled out into the heat, leaving it ajar, for Amy to follow. But the man wouldn't let go of the map.

"This place," he said, nodding toward the path. "Why you go?"

Amy could tell that the man's English was limited. She tried to think how she could describe the purpose of their mission in the simplest words possible. She leaned forward; the others were gathering beside the truck, slinging their packs, waiting for her. She pointed to Mathias. "His brother?" she said. "We have to find him."

The driver turned, stared at Mathias for a moment, then back at her. He frowned but didn't say anything. They were both still holding the map.

"Hermano ?" Amy tried. She didn't know where the word arrived from, or if it was correct. Her Spanish was limited to movie titles, the names of restaurants. "Perdido ?" she said, pointing at Mathias again. "Hermano perdido." She wasn't certain what she was saying. The dog was still barking, and it was beginning to give her a headache, making it hard to think clearly. She wanted to get out of the truck, but when she tugged at the map again, the driver still wouldn't let her have it.

He shook his head. "This place," he said. "No good."

"No good?" she asked. She had no idea how he meant this.

He nodded. "No good you go this place."

Outside, the others had turned to stare at the truck. They were waiting for her. Beyond them, the path started. The trees grew over it, forming a shady tunnel, almost to the point of darkness. She couldn't see very far along it. "I don't understand," Amy said.

"Fifteen dollars, I take you back."

"We're looking for his brother."

The driver shook his head, vehement. "I take you new place. Fifteen dollars. Everyone happy." He smiled to demonstrate what he meant: wide, showing his teeth. They were large, very thick-looking, and black along the gums.

"This is the right place," Amy said. "It's on the map, isn't it?" She pulled at the map, and he let her have it. She pointed down at theX, then toward the path. "This is it, right?"

The driver's smile faded; he shook his head, as if in disgust, and waved her toward the open door. "Go, then," he said. "I tell you no good, but still you go."

Amy held out the map, pointing at theX again. "We're looking for-"

"Go," the man said, cutting her off, his voice rising, as if he'd suddenly lost patience with this whole conversation, as if he were growing angry. He kept waving toward the door, his face turned away from her, from the proffered map. "Go, go, go."

So she did. She climbed out, pushed shut the door, and watched the truck pull slowly away, back onto the road.

The heat was like a hand that reached forward and wrapped itself around her. At first, it felt nice after the chill of the air conditioning, but then, very quickly, the hand began to squeeze. She was sweating, and there were mosquitoes-hovering, humming, biting. Jeff had taken a can of insect repellent from his pack and was spraying everyone with it. The dog kept lunging at them even as the pickup drove off, lurching and swaying along the deep ruts in the road. They could still hear its barking long after the truck was out of sight.

"What did he want?" Stacy asked. She'd already been sprayed. Her skin was shiny with it, and she smelled like air freshener. The mosquitoes were still biting her, though; she kept slapping at her arms.

"He said we shouldn't go."

"Go where?"

Amy pointed down the path.

"Why not?" Stacy asked.

"He said it's no good."

"What's no good?"

"Where we're going."

"The ruins are no good?"

Amy shrugged; she didn't know. "He wanted fifteen dollars to drive us somewhere else."

Jeff came over with the can of repellent. He took the map from her and began to spray. Amy held out her arms, then lifted them above her head so he could get her torso. She turned in a slow circle, all the way around. When she was facing him again, he stopped spraying, crouched to put the repellent back in his pack. They all stood there, watching him.

A disquieting thought occurred to Amy. "How're we getting back?" she asked.

Jeff squinted up at her. "Back?"

She pointed down the road after the vanished pickup truck. "To Cobá."

He turned to stare at the road, thinking on this. "The guidebook said you can always flag down a passing bus." He shrugged; he seemed to realize how foolish this was. "So I assumed…"

"There aren't going to be any buses on that road," Amy said.

Jeff nodded. This was obvious enough.

"A bus couldn't even fit on that road."

"It also said you can hitch-"

"You see any cars pass, Jeff?"

Jeff sighed, cinching his pack shut. He stood up, slung it over his shoulder. "Amy-" he began.

"The whole time we were driving, did you see any-"

"They must have a way to get supplies in."

"Who?"

"The archaeologists. They must have a truck. Or access to a truck. When we find Mathias's brother, we can just ask them to, you know, take us all back to Cobá."

"Christ, Jeff. We're stranded out here, aren't we? That's, like, a twenty-mile walk we're gonna have to do. Through the fucking jungle."

"Eleven."

"What?"

"It's eleven miles."

"There's no way that was eleven miles." Amy turned to the others for support, but only Pablo met her eyes. He was smiling; he had no idea what they were talking about. Mathias was digging through his pack. Stacy and Eric were staring at the ground. She could tell they thought this was just her complaining again, and it made her angry. "Nobody else is bothered by this?"

"Why is it my responsibility?" Jeff asked. "Why am I the one who was supposed to figure this whole thing out?"

Amy threw up her hands, as if the answer were obvious. "Because…," she said, but then she fell silent. Why was it Jeff's responsibility? She felt certain it was, yet she couldn't think why.

Jeff turned to the others, gestured toward the path. "Ready?" he asked. Everyone but Amy nodded. He started forward, followed by Mathias, then Pablo, then Eric.

Stacy gave Amy a sympathetic look. "Just go with it, sweetie," she said. "Okay? You'll see. It'll all work out."

She hooked arms with her, pulled her into motion. Amy didn't resist; they started toward the path together, arm in arm, Jeff and Mathias already vanishing into the shadows ahead of them, birds crying out overhead to mark their passage into the jungle's depths.

The map said they had to go two miles along the path. Then they'd see another trail, branching off to their left. This one would lead them gradually uphill. At the top of the hill, they'd find the ruins.

They'd been walking for almost twenty minutes when Pablo stopped to pee. Eric stopped, too. He dropped his pack to the trail, sat on it, resting. The trees alongside the path blocked the sun, but it was still too hot to be walking this far. His shirt was soaked through with sweat; his hair clung damply to his forehead. There were mosquitoes and some other type of very small fly, which didn't sting but seemed to be drawn to Eric's perspiration. They swirled around him in a cloud, giving off a high-pitched hum. Either he'd sweated all the bug spray off or it was worthless.

Stacy and Amy caught up with them while Pablo was still peeing. Eric heard them talking as they approached, but they fell silent when they got close. Stacy gave Eric a smile, patted him on the head as she went by. They didn't stop, didn't even slow, and after they got a little ways down the trail, he heard them begin to speak again. He felt a little flicker of disquiet, the sense that they might be gossiping about him. Or maybe not. Maybe it was Jeff. They were secret keepers, though, whisperers; it was something Eric still hadn't grown accustomed to, their closeness. Sometimes he caught himself scowling at Amy for no good reason, not liking her: he was jealous. He wanted to be the one Stacy whispered to, not the one she whispered about, and it bothered him that this wasn't the case.

The Greek had an immense bladder. He was still peeing, a puddle forming at his feet. The tiny black flies appeared to find urine even more alluring than sweat; they hovered over the puddle, dropping into it and taking flight again, dimpling its surface. The Greek pissed and pissed and pissed.

When he finished, he pulled one of the tequila bottles from his pack, broke its seal. A quick swallow, then he passed it to Eric. Eric stood up to drink, the liquor bringing tears to his eyes. He coughed, handed the bottle back. Pablo took another swallow before returning it to his pack. He said something in Greek, shaking his head, wiping his face with his shirt. Eric assumed it was a comment on the heat; it had the proper air of complaint to it.

He nodded. "Hot as hell," he said. "You guys have a phrase like that? Everybody must, don't you think? Hades? Inferno?"

The Greek just smiled at him.

Eric shouldered his pack, and they started walking again. On the map, the path had been drawn as a straight line, but in reality it meandered. Stacy and Amy were a hundred feet ahead, and sometimes Eric could glimpse them, other times not. Jeff and Mathias had started up the trail like two Boy Scouts, all business. Eric couldn't see them anymore, not even on the longer straightaways. The path was about four feet wide, packed dirt, with thick jungle growth on either side. Big-leafed plants, vines and creepers, trees straight out of a Tarzan comic book. It was dark under the trees, and difficult to see very far into their midst, but now and then Eric could hear things crashing about in the foliage. Birds, maybe, startled by their approach. There was a lot of cawing, and a steady locust-like throbbing underneath it all that could suddenly, for no apparent reason, fall silent, sending a shiver up his spine.

The path seemed to be fairly well traveled. They passed an empty beer bottle, a flattened pack of cigarettes. There were tracks at one point, too, some sort of hoofed animal, smaller than a horse. A donkey, maybe, or even a goat-Eric couldn't decide. Jeff probably knew what it was; he was good at things like that-picking out constellations, naming flowers. He was a reader, a fact hoarder, maybe a bit of a show-off at times: ordering in Spanish even when it was clear that the waiter spoke English, correcting people's pronunciation. Eric couldn't decide how well he liked him. Or, for that matter-and maybe this was more to the point-how well he was liked by Jeff.

They rounded a curve and descended a long, gradual slope with a stream running alongside the trail, and then suddenly there was sunlight in front of them, blinding after all that time in the shade. The jungle fell away, beaten back by what appeared to be some sort of aborted attempt at agriculture. There were fields on either side of the trail, extending for a hundred yards or so, vast tracts of churned-up earth, baking in the sun. It was the end stages of the slash-and-burn cycle: the slashing and burning and sowing and reaping had already happened here, and now this was what followed, the wasteland that preceded the jungle's return. Already, the foliage along the margins had begun to send out exploratory parties, vines and the occasional waist-high bush, looking squat and somehow pugnacious amid all those upturned clods of dirt.

Pablo and Eric fumbled for their sunglasses. In the distance, the jungle resumed, extending like a wall across the path. Jeff and Mathias had already vanished into its shadows, but Stacy and Amy were still visible. Amy had put on her hat; Stacy had tied a bandanna over her hair. Eric called to them, yelling their names, and waved, but they didn't hear him. Or, hearing him, didn't glance back. The little black flies remained behind beneath the trees, but the mosquitoes continued to accompany them, unabated.

They were midway across the open space when a snake crossed the path, right in front of them. It was just a small snake-black, with tan markings, two feet long at the most-but Pablo gave a shout of terror. He jumped backward, knocking Eric down, then lost his own footing and fell on top of him. He was up in an instant, pointing at the spot where the snake had disappeared, chattering in Greek, dancing from foot to foot, a look of horror on his face. Apparently, he had a fear of snakes. Eric rose slowly to his feet, dusting himself off. He'd scraped his elbow when he fell, and there was dirt in the cut; he tried to brush it clean. Pablo kept spewing his Greek, exclaiming and gesturing. All three Greeks were like this; sometimes they tried to mime their meaning or draw something to explain themselves, but mostly they just held forth, making no attempt to clarify what they were saying. It was as if the uttering of it was all that mattered; being understood was beside the point.

Eric waited for Pablo to finish. Toward the end, it seemed as if he were apologizing for knocking him down, and Eric smiled and nodded to express his forgiveness. Then they continued on, though Pablo proceeded at a much slower pace now, nervously scanning the edges of the trail. Eric spent some time trying to picture their arrival at the ruins. The archaeologists with their careful grids, their little shovels and whisk booms, their plastic bags full of artifacts: tin cups the miners had drunk from, the iron nails that had once held their shacks together. Mathias would find his brother; there'd be some sort of confrontation, an argument in German, raised voices, ultimatums. Eric was looking forward to it. He liked drama, conflict, the rush and tumble of other people's emotions. It wasn't all going to be like this, the drudgery of walking through the heat, his elbow throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Once they found the ruins, the day would shift, take on a new dimension.

They reached the far end of the open space, and the jungle resumed. The little black bugs were waiting for them here in the shade. They hovered around them in a humming cloud, as if joyful in the reunion. There was no sign of the stream anymore. The trail curved to the right, then to the left, then became straight again, a long corridor of shade, at the end of which appeared to be another clearing, a circle of sunlight awaiting their approach, so bright, it felt audible to Eric, like a horn, blowing. It hurt to look at it-hurt his eyes, his head. He put his sunglasses back on. Only then did he notice the others clustered together there-Jeff and Mathias and Stacy and Amy-crouching in a loose circle just short of the clearing, passing a water bottle back and forth among themselves, and turning now to watch as he and Pablo went slowly toward them.

The map said that if they reached the Mayan village, they'd gone too far, and there it was, down the slope from where they crouched. Jeff and Mathias had been watching for their turnoff as they walked, but somehow they must've missed it. They'd have to double back along the trail now, moving more slowly this time, looking more closely. The question they were debating was whether or not they should investigate the village first, perhaps even see if there might be someone there who'd be willing to guide them to the ruins. Not that the village appeared very promising. It consisted of perhaps thirty flimsy-looking buildings, nearly identical in size and appearance. One- and two-room shacks, most with thatch roofs, though there were several of tin, too. Dirt-floored, Jeff guessed. There were no overhead wires visible, so he assumed there was no electricity. Nor running water, for that matter: there was a well in the center of the village, with a bucket attached to a rope. As they crouched there, waiting for Eric and Pablo to reach them, he saw an old woman fill a pitcher at the well, turning a wheel to lower the bucket into its depths. The wheel needed oiling; he could hear it squeaking even from this distance as the bucket dropped and dropped, then paused, filling, before its equally clamorous ascent. Jeff watched the woman balance the pitcher on her shoulder and move slowly back down the dusty street to her shack.

The Mayans had cleared a circular swath of jungle around their village, planting what appeared to be corn and beans in the open space. Men and women and even children were scattered across the fields, bent over, weeding. There were goats about, chickens and some donkeys and a trio of horses in a fenced corral, but no sign of any mechanical equipment: no tractors or tillers, no cars or trucks. When Jeff and Mathias first appeared at the mouth of the trail, a tall, narrow-chested mutt had come trotting quickly toward them, tail aggressively raised. It stopped just short of stone-throwing range and paced back and forth for a few minutes, barking and growling. The sun was too hot for this sort of behavior, though, and eventually it fell quiet, then lost interest altogether and drifted back toward the village, collapsing into the shade beside one of the shacks.

Jeff assumed that the dog must've alerted the villagers to their presence, but there was no overt acknowledgment of this. No one paused in his work to stare; no one nudged his neighbor and pointed. The men and women and children remained bent low over their weeding, moving slowly down the rows of plants. Most of the men were dressed in white, with straw hats on their heads. The women wore dark dresses, shawls covering their hair. The children were barefoot, feral-looking; many of the boys were shirtless, dark from the sun, so that they seemed to blend into the earth they were working, to vanish and reappear from one moment to the next.

Stacy wanted to push forward into the village, to see if they might find someplace cool to sit and rest-perhaps they could even buy a cold soda somewhere-but Jeff hesitated. The lack of greeting, the sense that the village was collectively willing away their appearance, filled him with a feeling of caution. He pointed out the absence of overhead wires, and how this would lead to a lack of refrigerators and air conditioners, which, in turn, would make cold sodas and cool places to sit and rest seem somewhat unlikely.

"But at least we might find a guide," Amy said. She'd removed her camera from his pack and had started to take pictures. She took some of them crouched there, then one of Pablo and Eric walking toward them, then one of the Mayans working in their fields. Her spirits had lifted, Jeff could tell; Stacy had brought her out of it. Her moods came and went; he assumed there was a logic to them, but he'd long ago stopped trying to fathom it. He called her his "jellyfish," rising and falling through the depths. Sometimes she seemed to find this endearing; other times she didn't. She took a picture of him, spending a long moment peering through the viewfinder, making him self-conscious. Then the click. "We could just end up walking back and forth along this trail all day," she said. "And then what? Are we supposed to camp out here?"

"And maybe they'll be able to drive us back to Cobá afterward," Stacy said.

"See any cars or trucks?" Jeff asked.

They all spent a moment staring down into the village. Before anyone could say anything further, Pablo and Eric were upon them. Pablo hugged everyone, then immediately began chattering in Greek, very excitedly, extending his arms full length, as if describing a fish he'd caught. He jumped up and down; he pretended to knock into Eric. Then he held out his arms again.

"We saw a snake," Eric said. "But it wasn't that big. Maybe half that."

The others laughed at this, which seemed to encourage Pablo. He started all over again, the chattering, the jumping, the bumping into Eric.

"He's scared of them," Eric said.

They passed the water bottle around, waited for Pablo to finish. Eric took a long swallow of water, then poured some on his elbow. He had a cut there; everyone clustered around him to examine it. The wound was bloody but not especially deep, three inches long, sickle-shaped, following the curve of his elbow. Amy took a picture of it.

"We're going to find a guide in the village," she said.

"And a cool place to sit," Stacy offered. "With cold sodas."

"Maybe they'll have a lime, too," Amy said. "We can squeeze it on your cut. It'll kill off all the nasty things inside."

She and Stacy both turned from Eric to smile at Jeff, as if taunting him. He didn't respond-what was the point? Clearly, it had already been decided: they were going to the village. Pablo finally stopped talking; Mathias was putting the cap back on the water bottle. Jeff shouldered his pack. "Shall we?" he said.

Then they started down the path toward the village.

There was a moment, just as they emerged from the trees, when the entire village seemed to freeze, the men and women and children in the fields, everyone pausing for the barest fraction of a second to note the six of them approaching down the trail. Then it was over, and it was as if it hadn't happened, though Stacy was certain it had, or maybe not so certain, maybe less certain with each additional step she took toward the village. The work continued in the fields, the bent backs, the steady pulling of the weeds, and no one was looking at them; no one was bothering to observe their advance along the path, not even the children. So perhaps it hadn't happened after all. Stacy was a fantasist-she knew this about herself-a daydreamer, a castle builder. There would be no cool rooms here, no cold sodas. And it was equally probable that there'd been no moment of furtive appraisal, either, no veiled and quickly terminated collective glance.

The dog reappeared, the one who'd been barking at them earlier. He emerged again from the village, but with an entirely different demeanor. Tail wagging, tongue hanging: a friend. Stacy liked dogs. She crouched to pet this one, let him lick her face. The tail wagging intensified, the entire rear half of the mutt's body swinging back and forth. The others didn't stop; they kept walking down the path. The dog was covered in ticks, Stacy noticed. Dozens of them, like so many raisins hanging off his belly: fat, blood-engorged. She could see others moving through his pelt, and she stood up quickly, pushing the dog away from her, but to no avail. That brief demonstration of affection had won the mutt over; he'd adopted her. He pressed close to her body as she walked, winding himself through her legs, whimpering and wagging, nearly tripping her. Hurrying to catch up with the others, she had to resist the urge to kick at the animal, smack him across the snout, send him scurrying. She felt as if the ticks were crawling over her own body now, had to tell herself this wasn't true, actually form the words in her mind: It's not true. She wished, suddenly, that she was back in Cancún, back in her room, about to climb into the shower. The warm water, the smell of shampoo, the little bar of soap in its paper wrapper, the clean towel waiting on its rack.

The path widened as it entered the village, became something that could almost be called a road. The shacks lined it on either side. Brightly colored blankets hung over some of the doorways; others were open but equally unrevealing, their interiors lost in shadow. The chickens scampered, clucking. Another dog appeared, joining the first in his adoration of Stacy, the two of them nipping at each other, fighting over her. The second dog was gray, wolflike. He had one blue eye and one brown, which gave his gaze an ominous intensity. In her head, Stacy already had names for them: Pigpen and Creepy.

At first, it appeared that there was no one in the village, that everyone was out working in the fields. Their footsteps sounded loud on the packed dirt, intrusive. No one spoke, not even Pablo, for whom silence had always seemed so unattainable. Then there was a woman, sitting in one of the doorways, with an infant in her arms. The woman had a withered quality about her, gray streaks in her long black hair. They were moving down the center of the dirt road, ten or so feet from her, but she didn't glance up.

"¡Hola!" Jeff called.

Nothing. Silence, averted eyes.

The baby had no hair to speak of, and a raw, painful-looking rash on its scalp. It was hard not to stare at the rash; it looked as if someone had spread a layer of jam across the infant's skull. Stacy couldn't understand why the baby wasn't crying, and it upset her, inordinately, though she couldn't say why. Like a doll, she thought-not moving, not crying-and then she realized why its stillness bothered her: there was the sense that the infant might be dead. She glanced away, calling up those words again, forcing them into her head: It's not true. Then they were past, and she didn't look back.

They stopped at the well, in the center of the village, peering about, waiting for someone to approach them, not certain what to do if this didn't happen. The well was deep. When Stacy leaned over its edge, she couldn't see its bottom. She had to resist the urge to spit, or pick up a pebble and drop it in, listening for the distant plop. There was a wooden bucket on a slimy coil of rope; Stacy wouldn't have wanted to touch it. Mosquitoes hovered in a cloud around them, as if they, too, were waiting to see what might happen next.

Amy took some pictures: the surrounding shacks, the well, the two dogs. She handed the camera to Eric and had him take one of her and Stacy standing arm in arm. There'd be a whole series of these by the time they got home, the two of them gripping each other, smiling into the camera, pale at first, then sunburned, then peeling. This was the first one without matching hats, and it made Stacy sad for a moment, thinking of it-the boys running off along the plaza, the shock of that tiny hand squeezing her breast.

The dog she'd named Creepy, with his brown and blue eyes, went into a crouch, and a long string of shit spooled out of him onto the ground beside the well. The shit was moving; it was more worms than feces. Pigpen sniffed at it with great interest, and this sight finally jarred Pablo into speech. He began to exclaim in Greek, gesturing wildly. He stepped over to peer at the squirming pile of shit, his lip curled in disgust. He lifted his head to the sky and kept talking, as if speaking to the gods, all the while gesturing at the two dogs.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Eric said.

Jeff nodded. "We should go. We'll just have to-"

"Someone's coming," Mathias said.

A man was approaching down the dirt track. Coming from the fields, it seemed, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving two brown smudges on the white fabric. He was short, broad-shouldered, and when he removed his straw hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead, Stacy saw that he was almost completely bald. He stopped twenty feet away, appraising them, taking his time. He put his hat back on, returned his handkerchief to his pocket.

"¡Hola!" Jeff called.

The man answered in Mayan, with a question, it appeared, eyebrows raised.

It seemed logical to assume that he was asking them what they wanted, and Jeff struggled to answer him, first in Spanish, then in English, then in pantomime. The man showed no sign of understanding any of this. Stacy had the odd sense, in fact, that he didn't want to understand, that he was willing himself not to comprehend what had brought them here. He listened to Jeff's words, even smiled at his foray into mime, yet there was something distinctly unwelcoming in his bearing. He was polite but not friendly; she could tell that he was waiting for them to leave, that he'd rather they'd never come.

Finally, Jeff seemed to realize this, too. He gave up, turned to them with a shrug. "This isn't working," he said.

No one argued. They shouldered their packs, started back toward the jungle. The Mayan man remained by the well, watching them go.

They passed the woman who'd refused to acknowledge them earlier, and, once again, she kept her gaze averted, the baby, with its mottled cap of red jam, motionless in her arms. Dead, Stacy thought, and then, as she forced herself to look away: It's not true.

The dogs followed them. So did two children, which was a surprise. There was a squeaking sound, and when Stacy glanced back, she found a pair of boys coming up the trail after them on a bike. The bigger of the two was pedaling, the smaller rode perched on the handlebars. Relative terms, these-bigger, smaller-as neither of the boys was very large. They were hollow-chested, slope-shouldered, with knobby knees and elbows, and their bike was far too big for them. It looked heavy; its tires were fat and bulging; it had no seat. The boy in back had to pedal standing up, and he was panting with the effort, sweating. The chain needed oil-that was the squeaking.

The six of them stopped, turned, thinking to ask the boys where the ruins were, but the children stopped, too, forty feet back, scrawny, dark-eyed, watchful as two owls. Jeff called out, waved for them to approach; he even held up a dollar bill to tempt them forward, but the boys just waited there, staring, the smaller of the two still perched on the handlebars. Finally, they gave up, started walking again. A moment later, that steady squeaking resumed, but they paid it no mind. In the fields, the weeding continued. Only the man by the well and the two boys on the bike showed any interest in their departure. Creepy dropped away as soon as they entered the jungle, but Pigpen persisted. He kept rubbing against Stacy, and she kept pushing him away. He seemed to think this was a game, and threw himself into it with greater and greater enthusiasm.

Stacy couldn't help herself; she lost patience. "No," she said, and gave the mutt a slap across his snout. The dog yelped, jumped back, astonished. He stood in the center of the trail, peering at her with what looked like a painfully human expression. Betrayal-this was what his eyes communicated. "Oh, honey," Stacy said, and stepped toward him, holding out her hand, but it was too late; the dog backed away, wary now, his tail tucked between his legs. The others were continuing forward along the shadowed path, striding into the first of the curves; they'd vanish from sight in another moment. Stacy felt a tremor of fear, a childish, lost-alone-in-the-forest sensation, and she turned, broke into a jog, hurrying to catch up. When she glanced back, the dog was still standing in the center of the trail, watching her go. The boys pedaled past him on their squeaking bike, almost brushing against him, but he didn't move, and his mournful gaze seemed to cling to her as she vanished around the curve.

Walking back along the trail, Amy tried to think of a happy ending for their day, but it wasn't easy to come by. They'd either find the ruins or they wouldn't. If they didn't, they'd end up back on the dirt road, with eleven miles or more between them and Cobá, and night falling fast. Maybe they'd received the wrong impression of the road; maybe there was more traffic on it than they thought. That was a happy ending, she supposed, them hitching a ride into Cobá. They could arrive just as the sun was setting and either find a place to spend the night or catch a late bus back to Cancún. Amy wasn't able to muster much faith in this vision, though. She pictured them walking along the road in total darkness, or camping in the open, without tents or sleeping bags or mosquito nets, and decided that perhaps it would be better after all if they could somehow find their way to the ruins.

There'd be Henrich and his new girlfriend and the archaeologists at the ruins. They'd speak English, probably; they'd be welcoming and helpful. They'd find a way to transport them back to Cobá, or, if it was already too late in the day, would happily offer to share their tents. Yes-why not?-the archaeologists would cook dinner for them. There'd be a campfire and drinking and laughter, and she'd take lots of pictures to show people when she got back home. It would be an adventure, the highlight of their trip. This was the happy ending Amy kept in her mind as she made her way back down the trail, with the clearing opening up ahead of them, a circle of sunlight, blinkingly intense, into which they'd soon have to walk.

They paused in the last shadows before the clearing. Mathias took out his water bottle, and they passed it around again. They were all sweating; Pablo had begun to smell. Behind them, the squeaking came to a stop. Amy turned and there were the two boys, fifty feet back, watching them. The mangy dog was there, too, the one who'd taken such a liking to Stacy. He was even farther down the trail, though, almost lost in shade. He, too, had stopped, and was hesitating now, gazing toward them.

Amy was the one who thought of the fields. She felt a flush of pride as the idea surfaced in her head, a childhood feeling, leaning forward in her tiny desk, hand raised, waving for the teacher's attention. "Maybe the path opens off the fields," she said, pointing out into the sunlight.

The others turned, stared toward the clearing, thinking it through. Then Jeff nodded. "Could be," he said, and he was smiling, pleased with the idea, which made Amy even more proud of herself.

She unlooped her camera from her neck, ordered them all into a loose group. Then, with her back to the sun, she framed them in the viewfinder, goading them into grins-even frownful Mathias. At the last instant, just before Amy pressed the button, Stacy glanced over her shoulder, back down the trail, toward the boys, the dog, the silent village, turning away from the camera. But it didn't matter. It was still a nice picture, and Amy knew it now: she'd thought of their solution, the path to their happy ending. They were going to find the ruins after all.

After the packed-down firmness of the trail, the field proved to be a difficult hike. The dirt seemed to have been worked with a harrow in the recent past. It was uneven-turned and furrowed-with sudden, inexplicable patches of mud. The mud stuck to their shoes, gradually accumulating, and they kept having to stop to scrape it off. Eric wasn't in any shape for this sort of adventure. He was hungover, weary from lack of sleep, and beginning to feel the day's heat in an unpleasant way. His heart was racing; his head ached. Waves of nausea came and went. He was just beginning to realize that he wasn't going to make it much farther, and was deciding how he ought to announce this revelation, when Pablo saved him from the indignity by stopping suddenly. The mud had sucked his right shoe straight off his foot. He stood there in the field, balanced, cranelike, on one foot, and started swearing. Eric recognized many of the obscenities from the lessons the Greeks had given him.

Jeff and Mathias and Amy had already pulled ahead-they were walking with what appeared to be a baffling effortlessness along the jungle's margin-but Stacy had tarried alongside Pablo and Eric. She stopped with Eric now to aid the Greek, holding him by the elbow, helping him keep his balance, while Eric crouched to free his shoe from the field's grasp. It emerged, finally, after several strenuous pulls, with a suctioned popping sound, making them all laugh. Pablo put the shoe back on. Then, without a word, he began walking back toward the trail. Stacy and Eric glanced toward the others, who were a good fifty feet ahead now, moving methodically along the tree line. A silent debate followed, very brief, and then Eric held his hand out to Stacy. She took it, smiling, and the two of them started back across the field, following in Pablo's footsteps.

Jeff shouted something to them, but Eric and Stacy just waved and kept walking. Pablo was waiting for them on the trail. He'd opened his pack, taken out the tequila. The cap was off; he offered the bottle to Eric, who-despite himself, knowing better-took a long, wincing swallow and then passed it on to Stacy. Stacy could be an impressive drinker when she put her mind to it, as she did now. She threw her head back, the bottle tilted at a perfect vertical, the tequila goingblub-blub, blub-blub as it poured straight down her throat. She surfaced for air with a cough that became a laugh, her face flushed. Pablo applauded, slapped her on the shoulder, took back the bottle.

The two Mayan boys were still with them. They'd approached a little closer but hadn't yet left the jungle's shade. They'd climbed off their bike and were standing side by side, the larger of the two holding it by its handlebars. Pablo raised the bottle toward them, calling in Greek, but they didn't move; they just stood, staring. The dog was right beside them, also watching.

Jeff and Mathias and Amy had reached the far wall of the jungle, directly across the field from them. They were just beginning to move along it now, parallel to the trail, searching for the mysterious path. Pablo returned the bottle to his pack, and the three of them stood for a while, watching the others make their way along the muddy field. Eric didn't believe they were going to find the ruins. He didn't, in fact, believe that the ruins even existed. Someone was lying to them, or playing a prank, but whether it was Mathias or Mathias's brother or Mathias's brother's perhaps imaginary girlfriend, he couldn't decide. It didn't matter. He'd been having fun for a while, but now he wanted it to be over, wanted to be safely back on an air-conditioned bus to Cancún, drifting into sleep. He wasn't certain how he was going to accomplish this; all he knew was that he wanted to get there, and that the first thing he had to do was finish walking back to the road on the shortest route possible. This didn't involve tramping through a muddy field.

Eric started forward along the path. They could wait for the others in the shade on the far side of the clearing; perhaps he'd even be able to nap a little. He and Stacy held hands as they walked.

"So…" Stacy said. "There was this girl who bought a piano."

"But she didn't know how to play it," Eric responded.

"So she signed up for lessons."

"But couldn't afford them."

"So she got a job in a factory."

"But was fired for being late."

"So she became a prostitute."

"But fell in love with her first client."

This was an old game of theirs, the so-but stories. It was nonsense, the purest form of idleness; they could keep at it for hours at a time, ping-ponging back and forth. It was their own invention; no one else understood it. Even Amy found it annoying. But it was the sort of thing Eric and Stacy were best at: silliness, play. In some deep, not entirely accessible part of his mind, Eric realized that they were two children together, and that someday Stacy was going to grow up, that it was already, in fact, beginning to happen. He didn't think he himself would ever accomplish this; he didn't understand how people did it. He was going to teach children and remain a child forever, while Stacy advanced implacably into adulthood, leaving him behind. He could dream of them getting married someday, but it was just a story he told himself, yet another example of his inherent immaturity. There was a good-bye lurking in their future, a breakup note, a last painful encounter. This was something he tried not to see, something he knew, or suspected he knew, but before which he reflexively closed his eyes.

"So she asked him to marry her."

"But he was already married."

"So she begged him to get a divorce."

"But he was in love with his wife."

"So she decided to kill her."

The dog began to bark, startling Eric. He turned, peered back down the trail. The two boys and the mutt had emerged from the jungle; all three were standing there in the sunlight now. They weren't looking in Eric's direction, though; they were staring off across the open ground at Jeff and Mathias and Amy. Mathias was lifting a large palm frond away from the tree line, tossing it out into the field. As he bent to pick up another one, Jeff turned, shouted something indecipherable, waved for them to approach.

Eric and Stacy and Pablo didn't move. None of them wanted to walk out into the mud again. Mathias kept picking up palm fronds and tossing them aside. Gradually, an opening was revealed in the tree line: a path.

Before Eric could quite absorb this, he noted a flurry of movement back along the trail. It drew his gaze. The larger of the two boys had climbed onto his bike and was pedaling away now, very rapidly, disappearing into the jungle, leaving the smaller boy alone on the trail, watching Jeff and the others with an unmistakable air of anxiety, rocking side to side, his hands clasped together, tucked under his chin. Eric noted all this but couldn't make any sense of it. Jeff was waving for them to come, shouting again. There seemed to be no choice. Sighing, Eric stepped back into the muddy field. Stacy and Pablo did, too, and together they began slogging their way toward the tree line.

Behind them, the dog continued his steady barking.

It had been Mathias who noticed the palm fronds; Jeff had walked right past them. It was only when he'd sensed Mathias hesitating behind him that he turned, following the German's stare, and saw them. The fronds were still green. They'd been artfully arranged, with the ends of their stalks pushed into the dirt, so that they looked like a bush growing there along the tree line, hiding the entrance to the path. One of the fronds had tipped over, though, pulling itself free from the soil. This was what Mathias had noticed. He stepped forward, yanked another one free, and, in an instant, everything was revealed. That was when Jeff turned and called to the others, waving for them to come.

Once they'd cleared away the fronds, they could see the path easily enough. It was narrow and it wound off through the jungle, moving gradually uphill. Mathias and Amy and he crouched at its entrance, in the shade. Mathias took out his water bottle again, and they all drank from it. Then they sat for a stretch, watching Eric and Pablo and Stacy move slowly toward them across the field. Amy was the first to mention what was surely on all their minds.

"Why was it covered?" she asked.

Mathias was sliding his water bottle back into his pack. You had to ask him a question directly to get him to answer; whenever someone addressed the group, he seemed to pretend not to hear. This was fair enough, Jeff supposed. After all, he wasn't really one of them.

Jeff shrugged, feigning indifference. He tried to think of a way to distract her from this topic, but he couldn't, so he kept silent. He was afraid she'd refuse to venture down the path.

He could tell she wasn't going to let it go, though. And he was right. "The boy rode off," she said. "Did you see that?"

Jeff nodded. He wasn't looking at her-he was watching Eric and the others plodding toward them-but he could feel her gaze resting on him. He didn't want her to be thinking about this: the boy riding off, the camouflaged path. It would only frighten her, and she became obstinate and skittish when she was frightened, which wasn't a particularly helpful combination. Something strange was going on here, but Jeff was hoping that if they could just ignore it, it might not amount to anything. He knew this probably wasn't the wisest course, yet it was the best he could come up with at the moment. So it would have to do.

"Someone tried to hide the path," Amy said.

"Seems that way."

"They cut palm fronds and stuck them in the dirt so that it looked like a plant was growing there."

Jeff was silent, and wishing she was, too.

"That's a lot of work," Amy said.

"I guess so."

"Doesn't it seem strange to you?"

"A little."

"Maybe it's not the right path."

"We'll see."

"Maybe it's got something to do with drugs. Maybe it leads to a marijuana field. The village is growing pot, and that boy went back to get them, and they're gonna come with guns, and-"

Jeff finally gave in, turned to look at her. "Amy," he said, and she stopped. "It's the right path, okay?"

It wasn't going to be that easy, of course. She gave him an incredulous look. "How can you say that?"

Jeff waved toward Mathias. "It's on the map."

"It's a hand-drawn map, Jeff."

"Well, it's…" He floundered, wordless, waved his hand. "You know-"

"Tell me why the path was covered. Give me one possible scenario where it's the right one, and there's a logical reason for someone to have camouflaged its opening."

Jeff thought for a minute. Eric and the others were nearly upon them. Across the field, the little Mayan boy still stood, staring at them. The dog had finally stopped barking. "Okay," he said. "How's this? The archaeologists have started to find things of value. The mine isn't played out. They're finding silver. Or emeralds, maybe. Whatever they were mining in the first place. And they're worried that someone might come and try to rob them. So they've camouflaged the path."

Amy spent a moment considering this scenario. "And the boy on the bike?"

"They've recruited the Mayans to help them keep people away. They pay them to do it." Jeff smiled at her, pleased with himself. He didn't really believe any of it; he didn't know what to believe, in fact. Yet he was pleased nonetheless.

Amy was thinking it through. He could tell she didn't believe it, either, but it didn't matter. The others had finally reached them. Everyone was sweating, Eric especially, who was looking a little too pale, a little too drawn. The Greek needed to hug them, one by one, of course, wrapping his damp arms around their shoulders. And, just like that, the discussion was over. After all, what other option did they have?

A few more minutes of rest, then they started down the path into the jungle.

The path was narrow enough so that they were forced to walk single file. Jeff led the way, followed by Mathias, then Amy, then Pablo, then Eric. Stacy was the last in line.

"But her lover told the police," Eric said.

Stacy stared at the rear of his head. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox hat; he had it on backward. She tried to imagine that this was his face she was staring at, covered in brown hair, his eyes and mouth and nose hiding behind it. She smiled at this hairy face. It was their game, she knew, and she thought the words, So she fled to another city, but she didn't say them. Amy had made fun of her enough times, mimicking her and Eric saying "So" and "But," that Stacy didn't like playing the game in her presence anymore. She didn't say anything, and Eric kept walking. Sometimes this was just how it worked: you threw out a "So" or a "But" and the other person didn't respond, and that was okay. That was part of the game, too, part of their understanding.

She shouldn't have gone at the tequila so aggressively. That had been a stupid idea. She'd been trying to show off, she supposed, trying to impress Pablo with her drinking. Now she felt light-headed, a little sick to her stomach. There was all this green around her-too much, she felt-and that didn't help things: thick leaves on either side, the trees growing so close to the trail that it was hard not to touch them as she walked. An occasional breeze pushed past her down the path, shifting the leaves, making them whisper. Stacy tried to hear what they were saying, tried to attach words to the sound, but her mind wasn't working that way; she couldn't concentrate. She was a little drunk, and there was far, far too much green. She could feel the beginning of a headache-flexing itself, eager for a chance to grow. And the green was underfoot, too, moss growing on the trail, making it slippery in places. When the path dipped into a tiny hollow, she almost fell on the slickness. She gave a squawk as she caught her balance, and was dismayed to see that no one glanced back to make sure she was safe. What if she'd fallen, hit her head, been knocked unconscious? How long would it have taken them to realize she was no longer following in their footsteps? They'd have doubled back eventually, she supposed; they'd have found her, revived her. But what if something had slipped out of the jungle and taken her in its jaws before this happened? Because certainly there were creatures in the jungle; Stacy could sense them as she walked, watchful presences, noting her passage along the trail.

She didn't really believe any of this, of course. She liked scaring herself, but in the way a child does, knowing the whole time that it was only pretend. She hadn't noticed the boy riding off on his bike, nor the fact that the path had been camouflaged. No one was talking about any of this. It was too hot to talk; all they could do was put one foot in front of the other. So the only threats Stacy had with which to entertain herself were the ones she could think up on her own.

Why had she worn sandals? That was stupid. Her feet were a mess now; there was mud between her toes. It had felt nice, walking across the field-warm and squishy and oddly reassuring, but it wasn't like that anymore. Now it was just dirt, with a vaguely fecal smell to it, as if she'd dipped her feet in shit.

Green was the color of envy, of nausea. Stacy had been a Girl Scout; she'd had to hike through her share of green woods, clad in her green uniform. She still knew some songs from that time. She tried to think of one, but her headache wouldn't let her.

They crossed a stream, jumping from rock to rock. The stream was green, too, thick with algae. The rocks were even slipperier than the trail, but she didn't fall in. She hopped, hopped, hopped, and then she was on the other side.

The mosquitoes and the little black flies were so persistent, so numerous, that she'd long ago stopped bothering to swat them. But then, abruptly, just after she crossed the stream, they weren't there anymore. It seemed to happen in an instant: they were all around her, humming and hovering, and then, magically, they were gone. Without them, even the heat felt easier to bear, even the implacable greenness, the smell of shit coming from her feet, and for a short stretch it was almost pleasant, walking one after another through the whispering trees. Her head cleared a bit, and she found words for the rustling leaves.

Take me with you , one of the trees seemed to say.

And then: Do you know who I am?

The trail rounded a curve, and suddenly there was another clearing ahead of them, a circle of sunlight a hundred feet down the path, the heat giving a throbbing, watery quality to the view.

A tree on her left seemed to call her name. Stacy, it whispered, so clearly that she actually turned her head, a goose-bump feeling running up and down her back. Behind her came another rustling voice: Are you lost? And then she was stepping with the others into sunlight.

This clearing wasn't a field. It looked like a road, but it wasn't that, either. It was as if a gang of men had planned to build a road, had chopped away the jungle and flattened the earth, but then abruptly changed their minds. It was twenty yards wide and stretched in either direction, left and right, for as far as Stacy could see, finally curving out of sight. On the far side of it rose a small hill. The hill was rocky, oddly treeless, and covered with some sort of vinelike growth-a vivid green, with hand-shaped leaves and tiny flowers. The plant spread across the entire hill, clinging so tightly to the earth that it almost seemed to be squeezing it in its grasp. The flowers looked like poppies, the same size and color: a brilliant stained-glass red.

They all stood there, staring, shading their eyes against the sunlight. It was a beautiful sight: a hill shaped like a giant breast, covered in red flowers. Amy took out her camera, started snapping pictures.

The cleared ground was a different color than the fields they'd crossed earlier. The fields had been a reddish brown, almost orange in spots, while this was a deep black, flecked with white, like frost rime. Beyond it, the path resumed, winding its way up the hillside. It had grown strangely quiet, Stacy suddenly realized; the birds had fallen silent. Even the locusts had stopped their steady thrumming. A peaceful spot. She took a deep breath, feeling sleepy, and sat down. Eric did, too, then Pablo, the three of them in a row. Mathias was passing his water bottle around again. Amy kept taking pictures-of the hill, the pretty flowers, then of each of them, one after another. She told Mathias to smile, but he was peering up the hillside.

"Is that a tent?" he asked.

They turned to look. There was an orange square of fabric just visible, at the very top of the hill. It was billowing, sail-like, in the breeze. From this distance, with the rise of the hill partly blocking their view, it was hard to tell what it was. Stacy thought it looked like a kite, trapped in the flowering vines, but of course a tent made more sense. Before anyone could speak, while they were still peering up the hill, squinting against the sun, there came an odd noise from the jungle. They all heard it at the same time, while it was still relatively faint, and they turned, almost in unison, heads cocked, listening. It was a familiar sound, but for a few seconds none of them could identify it.

Jeff was the one who finally put a name to it. "A horse," he said.

And then Stacy could hear it, too: hoofbeats, approaching at a gallop down the narrow trail at their back.

Amy still had her camera out. Through her viewfinder, she watched the horse arrive; she took its picture as it burst into the clearing: a big brown horse, rearing to a stop before them. On its back was the Mayan man who'd approached them beside the well in the little village. It was the same man, but he seemed different now. In the village, he'd been calm and distant, even aloof, with something that felt almost condescending in his approach to them, a weary parent dealing with un-mannered children. Now all this had vanished, replaced by an air of urgency, even panic. His white shirt and pants were splashed with green stains from riding so rapidly through the trees. He'd lost his hat, and sweat was shining on his bald head.

The horse, too, was agitated: lathered, snorting, rolling its eyes. It reared twice, frightening them, and they backed away, retreating farther into the clearing. The man began to shout, waving his arm. The horse had reins but no saddle; the man was riding bareback, his legs clinging to the big animal's flanks like a pair of pincers. The horse reared once more, and this time the man half-fell, half-jumped to the ground. He was still holding the reins, but the horse was backing away from him, jerking its head, trying to break free.

Amy took a picture of the ensuing tug-of-war, the man struggling to calm the horse as the animal pulled him, step by step, back toward the trail. It was only when she stopped peering through the viewfinder that she noticed the gun on the man's belt: a black pistol in a brown holster. He hadn't been wearing it in the village; she was certain of this. He'd put it on to come chase them. The horse was too frantic; the man couldn't calm it, and finally he just relinquished the reins. Instantly, the animal turned, galloped off into the jungle. They listened to it crashing through the trees, the sound of its hoofbeats gradually diminishing. Then the man was shouting at them again, waving his arms over his head, pointing back down the trail. It was hard to tell what he was trying to say. Amy wondered if it had something to do with the horse, if he somehow blamed them for the animal's frenzy.

"What does he want?" Stacy asked. Her voice sounded frightened-like a little girl's-and Amy turned to look at her. Stacy was holding Eric's arm, standing a little behind him. Eric was smiling at the Mayan, as if he thought the whole encounter must be some sort of joke and was waiting for the man to confess to this.

"He wants us to go back," Jeff said.

"Why?" Stacy asked.

"Maybe he wants money. Like a toll or something. Or for us to hire him as a guide." Jeff reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his wallet.

The man kept shouting, pointing vehemently back down the path.

Jeff removed a ten-dollar bill, held it out to him. "¿Dinero?" he said.

The man ignored this. He made a shooing motion with his hand, waving them out of the clearing. They all stood there, uncertain, no one moving. Jeff carefully folded the bill back into his wallet, returned the wallet to his pocket. After a few more seconds, the man stopped shouting; he was out of breath.

Mathias turned toward the flower-covered hill, cupped his hands around his mouth. "Henrich!" he yelled.

There was no answer, no movement on the hillside except the gentle billowing of that orange fabric. In the distance, there was the sound of hoofbeats again, coming closer. Either the man's horse was returning or another villager was about to join them.

"Why don't you hike up the hill, see if you can find him?" Jeff said to Mathias. "We'll wait here, try to sort this out."

Mathias nodded. He turned, started across the clearing. The Mayan began to shout again, and then, when Mathias didn't stop, the man pulled his pistol from its holster, raised the gun over his head, fired into the sky.

Stacy screamed, covering her mouth, backing away. Everyone else flinched, instinctively, half-ducking. Mathias turned to look, saw the man aiming the pistol at his chest now, and went perfectly still. The man waved at him, yelling something, and Mathias came back, his hands in the air, to join the others. Pablo, too, raised his hands, but then, when nobody else did, he slowly lowered them again.

The hoofbeats came closer and closer, and suddenly two more horsemen burst into the clearing. Their mounts were just as agitated as the first man's had been: white-eyed and snorting, sweat shining on their flanks. One of the horses was pale gray, the other black. Their riders dropped to the ground, neither of them making any attempt to hold on to their reins, and the horses immediately turned to gallop back into the jungle. These new arrivals were much younger than the bald man; they were dark-haired, leanly muscular. They had bows slung across their chests, and quivers of thin, fragile-looking arrows. One of them had a mustache. They began speaking with the first man, very rapidly, asking him questions. He still had his pistol pointed in Mathias's general direction, and as they talked, the other two men unslung their bows, each of them nocking an arrow.

"What the fuck?" Eric said. He sounded outraged.

"Quiet," Jeff ordered.

"They're-"

"Wait," Jeff said. "Wait and see."

Amy pointed her camera at the men, took another picture. She could tell it wasn't capturing the drama of the moment, that she'd have to back up to do this, so she could get not only the Mayan men with their weapons but also Jeff and the others, standing there, facing them, everyone looking so frightened now. She retreated a handful of steps, peering through her viewfinder. It felt safer like this, more distant, as if she were no longer part of this strange situation. Four more steps, and Jeff was in the frame, and Pablo, and Mathias, too, with his hands still raised. All she had to do was go a little farther and Stacy and Eric would appear; then she could take the picture and it would be exactly what she wanted. She took another step backward, then another, and suddenly the Mayans were shouting again, all three of them, at her now, the first man pointing his pistol, the other two drawing their bows. Jeff and the others were turning to stare at her in surprise-yes, there was Stacy now, on the right-hand side of the frame-and Amy took another step.

"Amy," Jeff said, and she almost stopped. She hesitated; she started to lower her camera. But she could tell she was nearly there, so she took one last step, and it was perfect: Eric was in the frame now, too. Amy pressed the button, heard it click. She was pleased with herself, still feeling weirdly outside the encounter, and liking the sensation. It was as she was lifting her eye from the viewfinder that she felt the odd pressure around her ankle, as if a hand were gripping it. She glanced down, and realized she'd backed completely across the clearing. What she felt was the flowering vine. A long green tendril was coiled around her ankle. She'd stepped right into a loop of it, and now somehow had pulled it taut.

There was a strange pause; the Mayan men stopped shouting. The two bows remained drawn, but the man with the pistol slowly lowered it. She could feel the others watching her, following her gaze toward her right foot, which had sunk ankle-deep into the vines, as if swallowed. She crouched to free it, and was just rising back up when she heard the Mayan men begin to shout again. They were yelling at her, and then they weren't-they were yelling at one another. An argument, it seemed, the two men with the bows turning against the bald man.

"Jeff," she called.

He raised his hand without looking at her, silencing her. "Don't move," he said.

So she didn't. The bald man was clutching his right ear with one hand, tugging at it, frowning and shaking his head, his left hand still gripping the pistol, pressing it against his thigh. He didn't seem to want to hear what the other two had to say. He pointed to Amy, then the others; he waved down the trail. But there was already something halfhearted in his gestures, the prescience of defeat. Amy could tell that he knew he wasn't going to get his way. She could see him being worn down, see him giving in. He fell silent; the men with the bows did, too. They stood staring at Jeff and Mathias, at Eric and Stacy and the Greek. And at her, too. Then the bald man raised his pistol, aimed it at Jeff, at his chest. He made a shooing motion with his other hand, but now it was in the opposite direction, toward Amy, toward the hill behind her.

No one moved.

The bald man began to shout, waving toward the hill. He lowered his pistol slightly, fired a bullet into the dirt at Jeff's feet. Everyone jumped, started to back away. Pablo had his hands in the air again. The other men were shouting, too, swinging their bows back and forth, aiming first at one of them, then another, herding them, step by step, toward Amy. Jeff and the others were walking backward; they weren't watching where they were going. When they reached the edge of the clearing, they hesitated, each of them, feeling the vines against their feet and legs. They glanced down, stopped. Eric was beside Amy, on her left. Pablo was to her right. Then the others: Stacy, Mathias, Jeff. And beyond Jeff, the path. This was where the bald man was pointing now, gesturing for them to start up it, to climb the hill. His expression looked oddly stricken, close to tears-no, he'd actually begun to cry. He wiped at his face with his sleeve as he waved them onward. It was all so peculiar, so impossible to comprehend, and no one said a word. They moved to the path, Jeff leading the way, the others following.

And then, still silent, all in a line, they began the slow climb up the hill.

Eric was in the rear. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he walked. The Mayan men were watching them climb, the bald one using his hand to shield his eyes against the sun. There were no trees on the hill, just the vine growing over everything, thick coils of it, with its dark green leaves, its bright red flowers. The sun was pouring its heat upon them-there was no shade anywhere-and behind them, down the slope, stood three armed men. None of this made any sense. At first, the bald man had tried to tell them to go back; then he'd ordered them forward. The men with the bows had had something to do with this, clearly; they'd argued with the other man, changed his mind. But it still didn't make any sense. The six of them climbed the trail, sweating with the exertion, walking in total silence, because they were scared and there was nothing for any of them to say.

At some point, they'd have to come back down the hill and cross the clearing, take the narrow path to the fields and then the wider path to the road, but how they'd manage to do this, Eric couldn't guess. It was possible, he supposed, that the archaeologists might be able to explain what had happened. Maybe it was even something simple, something easily solved, something they'd all be laughing about a few minutes from now. A misunderstanding. A miscommunication. A mistake. Eric tried to think of other words that began withmis, tried to remember what the prefix meant. He was going to be teaching English in a few weeks, and this was the sort of thing he ought to know. Wrong, he guessed, or bad-something like that-but he wasn't certain. And he'd need to be certain, too, because there'd probably be students who would know; there were always two or three like that, ready to catch their teachers in an error, eager for the chance. There were books Eric had meant to read this summer, books he'd assured the head of his department he'd already read, but the summer was essentially over now, and he hadn't even glanced at them, not one.

Misstep. Misplace. Misconstrue.

That last one was a good one. Eric wished he knew more words like that, wished he could be the sort of teacher who effortlessly used them, his students straining to understand him, learning just through listening, but he knew this wasn't who he'd ever be. He'd be the boy-man, the baseball coach, the one who winked and smiled at his students' pranks, a favorite among them, probably, but not really much of a teacher at all. Not someone from whom they'd ever learn anything important, that is.

Mischief. Misanthrope. Misconception.

Eric was growing a little less frightened with each step he took, and he was glad for this, because for a moment or two there, he'd been very frightened indeed. When the bald man fired into the dirt at Jeff's feet, Eric had been glancing toward Stacy, making sure she was all right. He hadn't seen the man lower his aim; he'd heard the pistol go off, and for an instant he'd thought the man had shot Jeff, shot him in the chest, killed him. Then everything had happened so fast-they were herded backward, prodded up the trail-and only now was his heart beginning to slow a bit. Someone would figure something out. Or the archaeologists would help them. And all this would come to nothing.

Misrepresent. Mislead. Misguide.

"Henrich!" Mathias called, and they stopped, staring up the hill, waiting for a response.

None came. They hesitated a few more seconds, then started to walk again.

It was a tent. Eric could see it clearly now as they climbed higher, a bright traffic-cone orange, looking a little worse for wear. It must've been there for quite some time, because the vines had already managed to grow up its aluminum poles, using them like a trellis. A four-person tent, Eric guessed. Its doorway was facing away from them.

"Hello?" Jeff called, and they stopped again to listen.

They were close enough now that they could hear the breeze tugging at the tent, a flapping noise, like a sail might make. But there was nothing else, no sound at all, nor any sign of people. In this quiet, Eric noticed for the first time what Stacy had realized earlier: the mosquitoes had vanished. The tiny black flies, too. This ought to have offered him at least a small sense of relief, but for some reason it didn't. It had the exact opposite effect, in fact: it made him anxious, bringing back an odd echo of that fear he'd felt in the clearing as he'd turned, expecting to see Jeff's body lying there, the gunshot echoing back at him from the tree line. It seemed strange to be standing here, sweating, halfway up a hill in the midst of the jungle, and not be harassed by those little insects. And Eric didn't want to feel strange just now; he wanted everything to make sense, to be predictable. He wanted someone to tell him why the bugs had vanished, why the men had forced them up the hill, and why they still stood down there at the base of the trail, staring after them, their weapons in their hands.

Miserydidn't count. Normiser. Eric wondered briefly if they had the same root. Latin, he guessed. Which was yet another thing he ought to know but didn't.

The cut on his elbow had begun to ache. He could feel his heart beating inside it again, a little slower now, but still too fast. He tried to picture the archaeologists, all of them laughing over this strange situation, which would turn out to be not so strange after all, once everything had been properly explained. There'd be a first-aid kit in the orange tent, Eric assumed. Someone would clean his wound for him, cover it with a white bandage. And then, when they got back to Cancún-he smiled at the thought of this-he'd buy a rubber snake, hide it under Pablo's towel.

The vines covered everything but the path and the tent's orange fabric. In some places, they grew thinly enough that Eric could glimpse the soil underneath-rockier than he would've expected, dry, almost desertlike-but in others, they seemed to fold back upon themselves, piling layer upon layer, forming waist-high mounds, tangled knoll-like profusions of green. And everywhere, hanging like bells from the vines, were those brilliant bloodred flowers.

Eric glanced back down the hill again, just in time to see a fourth man arrive. He was on a bicycle, dressed in white, like the others, a straw hat on his head. "There's another one," Eric said.

Everyone stopped, turned to stare. As they watched, a fifth man appeared, then a sixth, also on bicycles. The new arrivals all had bows slung over their shoulders. There was a brief consultation; the bald man seemed to be in charge. He talked for a while, gesturing with his hands, and everyone listened. Then he pointed up the hill and the other men turned to peer at them. Eric felt the impulse to look away, but this was silly, of course, a "Don't stare; it's rude" reflex that had nothing to do with what was happening here. He watched the bald man wave in either direction, the clipped gestures of a military officer, and then the men with bows started off along the clearing, moving quickly, two one way, three the other, leaving the bald man alone at the base of the trail.

"What are they doing?" Amy asked, but nobody answered. Nobody knew.

A child emerged from the jungle. It was the smaller of the two boys who'd followed them, the one they'd left behind in the field. He stood next to the bald man, and they both stared up at them. The bald man rested his hand on the boy's shoulder. It made them look as if they were posing for a photograph.

"Maybe we should run back down," Eric said. "Quick. While there's just him and the kid. We could rush them."

"He's got a gun, Eric," Stacy said.

Amy nodded. "And he could call the others."

They were silent again, all of them staring down the hill, struggling to think, but if there was a solution to their present situation, no one could find it.

Mathias cupped his hands, shouted once more toward the tent: "Henrich!"

The tent continued to billow softly in the breeze. It wasn't that far from the base of the hill to the top, a hundred and fifty yards, no farther, and they were more than halfway up it now. Close enough, certainly, for anyone who might be present there to hear them shouting. But no one appeared; no one responded. And, as the seconds slipped past and the silence prolonged itself, Eric had to admit to himself what everyone else was probably thinking, too, though none of them had yet found the courage to say it out loud: there wasn't anyone there.

"Come on," Jeff said, waving them forward.

And they resumed their upward march.

The hill grew flat at its top, forming a wide plateau, as if a giant hand had come down out of the sky and given it a gentle pat in those still-malleable moments following its creation. It was larger than Jeff had expected. The trail ran past the orange tent, and then, fifty feet farther along, it opened out into a small clearing of rocky ground. There was a second tent here, a blue one. It looked just as weathered as the orange one. There was no one about, of course, and Jeff had the sense, even in that first glimpse, that this had been true for some time.

"Hello?" he called again. And then the six of them stood there, just a few yards short of the orange tent, going through the motions of waiting for an answer without really expecting one to come.

It hadn't been that arduous a climb, but they were all a little out of breath. Nobody spoke for a while, or moved; they were too hot, too sweaty, too frightened. Mathias got out his water bottle and they passed it around, finishing it off. Eric and Stacy and Amy sat down in the dirt, leaning against one another. Mathias stepped over to the tent. Its flap was zipped shut, and it took him a few moments to figure out how to open it. Jeff went over to help him. Zzzzzzzzzzip. Then they both stuck their heads inside. There were three sleeping bags unrolled on the floor. An oil lamp. Two backpacks. What looked like a plastic toolbox. A gallon jug of water, half-full. A pair of hiking boots. Despite this evidence of occupation, it was clear that no one had been here for quite some time. The musty air would've been evidence enough, but even more striking was the flowering vine. Somehow it had gotten inside the sealed tent and had taken root, growing on some things, leaving others untouched. The hiking boots were nearly covered in it. One of the backpacks was hanging open and the vine was spilling out of it.

Jeff and Mathias pulled their heads from the tent, looked at each other, didn't speak.

"What's inside?" Eric called.

"Nothing," Jeff said. "Some sleeping bags."

Mathias was starting off across the hilltop, heading for the blue tent, and Jeff followed him, struggling to make sense of their situation. Something, obviously, had happened to the archaeologists. Perhaps there'd been some sort of conflict with the Mayans, and the Mayans had attacked them. But then why would they have ordered them up the hill? Wouldn't they have wanted to send them away? It was possible, of course, that the Mayans were worried they'd already seen too much, even from the base of the hill. But then why not kill them outright? It would've been relatively easy to cover this up, Jeff assumed. No one knew where they were. Just the Greeks, maybe, if Pablo had, in fact, written them a note before he left. But even so, it seemed simple enough. Kill them, bury them in the jungle. Feign ignorance if someone ever came searching. Jeff forced himself to remember his fears about their taxi driver, the same fears, unfounded, as it turned out. So why shouldn't this present situation prove to be equally benign?

Mathias unzipped the flap to the blue tent, stuck his head inside. Jeff leaned forward to look, too. It was the same thing: sleeping bags, backpacks, camping equipment. Again, there was that musty smell, and the vines growing on some things but not on others. They pulled their heads out, zipped the flap shut.

Ten yards beyond the tent, there was a hole cut into the dirt. It had a makeshift windlass constructed beside it, a horizontal barrel with a hand crank welded to its base. Rope was coiled thickly around the barrel. From the barrel, it passed over a small wheel, which hung from a sort of sawhorse that straddled the hole's mouth. Then it dropped straight down into the earth. Jeff and Mathias stepped warily to the hole, looked into it. The hole was rectangular-ten feet by six feet-and very deep; Jeff couldn't see its bottom. The mine shaft, he supposed. There was a slight draft rising from it, an eerily chilly exhalation from the darkness.

The others had gotten to their feet now, followed them across the hilltop. Everyone took turns peering into the hole.

"There's no one here," Stacy said.

Jeff nodded. He was still thinking. Perhaps it was something with the ruins? Something religious? A tribal violation? But it wasn't that sort of ruins, was it? It was an old mining camp, a shaft cut into the earth.

"I don't think they've been here for a while," Amy said.

"So what do we do?" Eric asked.

They all looked to Jeff, even Mathias. Jeff shrugged. "The trail keeps going." He waved past the hole, and everyone turned to follow his gesture. The clearing ended just a few yards from them; then the vines resumed, and in the midst of the vines was the path. It wound its way to the edge of the hilltop, vanished over it.

"Should we take it?" Stacy asked.

"I'm not going back the way we came," Amy said.

So they started along the path, single file again, with Jeff taking the lead. For a while, he couldn't glimpse the base of the hill, but then the trail tilted downward, more precipitously here than on their route up, and Jeff saw exactly what he'd been fearing he would see. The others were startled; they stopped all at once, staring, and he stopped, too. But he wasn't surprised. As soon as he'd heard the bald Mayan sending the bowmen running along the clearing, he'd known. One of them was standing at the bottom of the trail, staring up at them, awaiting their approach.

"Fuck," Eric said.

"What do we do?" Stacy asked.

No one responded. It looked from here as if the jungle had been chopped down all the way around the base of the hill, isolating it in a ring of barren soil. The Mayans had spread themselves out along this ring, surrounding them. Jeff knew that there was no point continuing down the hill-the man obviously wasn't going to let them pass-but he couldn't think of any other course to pursue. So he shrugged and waved them forward. "We'll see," he said.

The trail was much steeper here; there were short stretches where they had to drop onto their rear ends and slide down, one after the other. It was going to be a hard climb back up, but Jeff tried not to think of this. As they got closer, the Mayan man slid the bow off his shoulder, nocked an arrow. He shouted toward them, shaking his head, waving them away. Then he called out to his left, yelling what sounded like someone's name. A few seconds later, another one of the bowmen came jogging into view along the clearing.

The two men waited for them at the bottom of the hill, bows taut.

They all stopped on the edge of the clearing, wiping the sweat from their faces, and Pablo said something in Greek. It had the upward lilt of a question, but of course no one could understand him. He repeated it, the same phrase, then gave up.

"So," Amy said.

Jeff didn't know what to do. He believed there was a difference between aiming an arrow at someone and letting that arrow fly-a significant difference, he assumed-and he toyed briefly with the idea of exploring this distinction. He could take a step out into the clearing, and then another, and then another, and at some point the two men would either have to shoot him or let him pass. Perhaps it was merely a question of courage, and he tried to gird himself for the venturing of it, was nearly there, he felt, but then another bowman came jogging toward them from their left, and the moment passed. Jeff took out his wallet, knowing it was pointless; he was simply going through the motions. He emptied it of bills and held the money toward the Mayans.

There was no reaction.

"Let's rush them," Eric suggested again. "All at once."

"Shut up, Eric," Stacy said.

But he didn't listen. "Or go make shields. If we had some shields, we could-"

Another man came running toward them along the clearing, heavier than the others, bearded, someone they hadn't seen before. He was carrying a rifle.

"Oh my God," Amy said.

Jeff put the money back in his wallet, returned the wallet to his pocket. The vine had invaded the clearing here, formed an outpost in its midst. Ten feet in front of the path, there was one of those odd knob-like growths, this one a little smaller than the others, knee-high, thick with flowers. The Mayans had arranged themselves on the far side of it, with their drawn bows. And now the man with the rifle joined them.

"Let's go back up the hill," Stacy said.

But Jeff was staring at the vines, the isolated island, knowing already what it was, knowing it deep, without quite being conscious of this knowledge.

"I wanna go back," Stacy said.

Jeff stepped forward. It was ten feet, and it took him four strides. He walked with his hands held up in front of him, calming the men, trying to show them that he meant no harm. They didn't shoot; he'd known they wouldn't, that they'd allow him to see what was beneath the vines, what he already knew but wasn't letting himself know. Yes, they wanted him to see it.

"Jeff," Amy called.

He ignored her, crouching beside the mound. He reached out, sinking his hand into the flowers, parting them. He grasped a stalk, tugged, pulled it free, glimpsed a tennis shoe, a sock, the lower part of a man's shin.

"What is it?" Amy asked.

Jeff turned, stared at Mathias. Mathias knew, too; Jeff could see it in his eyes. The German stepped forward, crouched beside him, started to pull at the vines, gently at first, then more aggressively, tearing at them, a low moan beginning to rise from his chest. Twenty feet away, the Mayans watched. Another shoe was revealed, another leg. A pair of jeans, a belt buckle, a black T-shirt. And then, finally, a young man's face. It was Mathias's face, only different: it had the same features, the family resemblance vivid even now, with some of Henrich's flesh oddly eaten away, so that his cheekbone was visible, the white socket of his left eye.

"Oh Jesus," Amy said. "No."

Jeff held up his hand, silencing her. Mathias crouched over his brother's body, rocking slightly, that moaning coming and going. The T-shirt was only black, Jeff realized, because it had been stained that color: it was stiff with dried blood. And sticking out of Henrich's chest, pointing up through the thick vines, were three slender arrows. Jeff rested his hand on Mathias's shoulder. "Easy," he whispered. "All right? Easy and slow. We'll stand up and we'll walk away. We'll walk back up the hill."

"It's my brother," Mathias said.

"I know."

"They killed him."

Jeff nodded. His hand was still on Mathias's shoulder, and he could feel the German's muscles clenching through his shirt. "Easy," he said again.

"Why…"

"I don't know."

"He was-"

"Shh," Jeff said. "Not here. Up the hill, okay?"

Mathias seemed to be having trouble breathing. He kept struggling to inhale, but nothing went very deep. Jeff didn't let go of his shoulder. Finally, the German nodded, and then they both stood up. Stacy and Amy were holding hands, looking stricken, staring down at Henrich's corpse. Stacy had started to cry, very softly. Eric had his arm around her.

The Mayans kept their weapons raised-arrows nocked, bows taut, rifle shouldered-and watched in silence as Jeff and the others turned to start back up the hill.

The climb helped some-the physical demands of it, the need to concentrate on the steeper stretches, where they almost had to crawl at times, pulling themselves forward with their hands-and as Stacy moved slowly up the hill, she gradually managed to stop crying. She kept glancing back down toward the clearing as she went; she tried not to, but she couldn't help it. She was worried the men were going to come chasing after them. They'd killed Mathias's brother, so it only seemed logical that they'd kill her, too. Kill all six of them, let the vines grow over their bodies. But the men just stood there in the center of the clearing, staring after them.

At the top, things got hard again. Amy started crying, and then Stacy had to, too. They sat on the ground and held hands and wept. Eric crouched beside Stacy. He said things like "It's gonna be okay." Or "We'll be all right." Or "Shh, now, shh." Just words, nonsense really, little phrases to stroke and soothe her, and the fear in his face made her sob all the harder. But the sun burned down upon them and there was no shade to be found and she was worn-out from the climb, and after awhile she began to feel so stunned from it all that she couldn't even cry anymore. When she stopped, Amy did, too.

Jeff and Mathias had wandered off across the hilltop. They were standing on the far side of it, staring down toward the clearing, talking together. Pablo had disappeared into the blue tent.

"Is there any water?" Amy asked.

Eric dug through his pack, pulled out a bottle. They took turns drinking from it.

"It's gonna be okay," he said again.

"How?" Stacy asked, hating herself for speaking. She knew she shouldn't be asking questions like that. She needed to be quiet and let Eric build this dream for them.

Eric thought for a moment, struggling. "Maybe when the sun sets, we can go back down, sneak past them in the darkness."

They drank some more water, considering this. It was too hot to think, and there was a persistent buzzing in Stacy's ears, like static, but higher-pitched. She realized she should get out of the sun, crawl into one of the tents and lie down, but she was frightened of the tents. She knew that whoever had set them up so carefully here upon the hilltop was almost certainly dead now. If Henrich was dead, then the archaeologists must be, too. Stacy couldn't see any way around this.

Eric tried again. "Or we can always just wait them out," he said. "The Greeks will come sooner or later."

"How do you know?" Amy asked.

"Pablo left them a note."

"But how can you be sure?"

"He copied the map, didn't he?"

Amy didn't say anything. Stacy sat there, wishing she'd speak again, that she'd somehow manage to clarify this question, either refute Eric's logic or accept it, but Amy remained silent, peering off across the hilltop at Jeff and Mathias. There was no way to tell, of course. Pablo might've left a note or he might not have. The only way they'd know for certain was if the Greeks were eventually to show up.

"I've never seen a dead body before," Eric said.

Amy and Stacy were silent. How could they possibly respond to a statement like that?

"You'd think something would've eaten him, wouldn't you? Come out of the jungle and-"

"Stop it," Stacy said.

"But it seems odd, doesn't it? He's been there long enough for those vines to-"

"Please, Eric."

"And where are the others? Where are the archaeologists?"

Stacy reached out and touched his knee. "Just stop, okay? Stop talking."

Jeff and Mathias were coming back toward them. Mathias was holding his hands out in front of himself, as if they were covered in paint and he was trying not to get it on his clothes. As they came closer, Stacy saw that his hands and wrists had turned a deep raw-meat red; they look scarred.

"What happened?" Eric asked.

Jeff and Mathias crouched beside them. Jeff reached for the water bottle, poured a tiny bit on Mathias's hands; then Mathias rubbed at them with his shirt, grimacing.

"There's something in the plants," Jeff said. "When he tore them off his brother, he got their sap on his hands. It's acidic. It's burned his skin."

They all peered down at Mathias's hands. Jeff handed the water back to Stacy. She took off her bandanna, started to tilt the bottle over it, thinking the wet cloth might cool her head some, but Jeff stopped her.

"Don't," he said. "We need to save it."

"Save it?" she asked. She felt stupid with the heat: she didn't know what he meant.

He nodded. "We don't have that much. We'll each need a half gallon a day, at least. That's three gallons total, every day. We'll have to figure out a way to catch the rain." He glanced up at the sky, as if searching for clouds, but there weren't any. It had rained every afternoon since they'd arrived in Mexico, and now, when they needed it, the sky was perfectly clear. "We have to get organized," Jeff said. "Now, while we're still fresh."

The others just stared at him.

"We can last without food. It's water that matters. We'll have to keep out of the sun, spend as much time as we can under the tents."

Stacy felt sick, listening to him. He was acting as if they were going to be here for some time, as if they were trapped here, and the idea filled her with panic. She had the urge to cover her ears with her hands; she wanted him to stop talking. "Can't we sneak away when it gets dark?" she asked. "Eric said we could sneak away."

Jeff shook his head. He waved across the hilltop, toward where he and Mathias had been standing. "They keep coming," he said. "More and more of them. They're all armed, and the bald one sends them out along the clearing. They're surrounding us."

"Why don't they just kill us?" Eric asked.

"I don't know. It seems like it's something to do with the hill. Once you step onto the hill, you're not allowed to step off it. Something like that. They won't step on it themselves, but now that we're on it, they won't let us leave. They'll shoot us if we try. So we have to figure out a way to survive until someone comes and finds us."

"Who?" Amy asked.

Jeff shrugged. "The Greeks, maybe-that would be quickest. Or else, when we don't come home, our parents will-"

"We're not supposed to leave for another week," Amy said.

Jeff nodded.

"And then they'd have to come searching for us."

Again, he nodded.

"So you're talking-what, a month?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

Amy looked appalled by this. Her voice jumped a notch. "We can't live here for a month, Jeff."

"If we try to leave, they'll shoot us. That's the one thing we know for certain."

"But what will we eat? How will we-"

"Maybe the Greeks will come," Jeff said. "They could come tomorrow, for all we know."

"And then what? They'll just end up trapped here with us."

Jeff shook his head. "We'll keep someone posted at the base of the hill. To warn them away."

"But those men won't let us. They'll force them-"

Again, Jeff shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "It wasn't until you stepped beyond the clearing that they made us climb the hill. In the beginning, they were trying to keep us away. I think they'll try to stop the Greeks from coming up, too. All we have to do is figure out a way to communicate to them, to let them know what's happened, so that they can go get help."

"Pablo," Eric said.

Jeff nodded. "If we can get him to understand, then he can warn them off."

They all turned and stared at Pablo. He'd emerged from the blue tent and was wandering around the hilltop. He seemed to be talking to himself, very softly, muttering. He had his hands in his pants pockets, his shoulders hunched. He didn't sense them watching him.

"Planes might fly over, too," Jeff said. "We can signal to them with something reflective. Or maybe pull up some of the vines, dry them out, start a fire. Three fires in a triangle-that's supposed to be a signal for help."

He stopped talking then; he didn't have any more ideas. And neither Stacy nor the others had any ideas at all, so they just sat without speaking for a stretch. In the silence, Stacy gradually became aware of a strange chirping sound-steady, insistent, barely audible. A bird, she thought, then knew immediately she was wrong. No one else seemed to notice the noise, and she was turning to track its source when Pablo started yelling. He was jumping up and down beside the mine shaft, pointing into it.

"What's he doing?" Amy asked.

Stacy watched him pressing his hand to his head, to his ear, as if he were miming talking on a phone, and she sprang to her feet, started quickly toward him. "Hurry," she said to the others, waving for them to follow. She'd realized suddenly what that steady chirping was: somehow-miraculously, inexplicably-there was a cell phone ringing at the bottom of the hole.

Amy didn't believe it. She could hear the noise coming from the hole, and-along with the others-she had to admit it sounded like a cell phone, yet even so, she had no faith in it. Jeff had told her not to pack her own phone before they left; it would be too expensive to use in Mexico. But that didn't mean there weren't local networks, of course, and why shouldn't it be possible that what they were hearing was a phone linked to one of these? It should be possible-there was no reason for it not to be possible-and Amy struggled to convince herself of this. It wasn't working, though. Inside, in her heart, she'd already dropped into a place of doom, and the plaintive beeping coming from the darkness wasn't enough to pull her free. When she peered into the hole, what she imagined was not a phone calling out to them, but a baby bird, open-beaked, begging to be fed-chirrrp…chirrrp…chirrrp-a thing of need rather than assistance.

The others were enthusiastic, however, and who was Amy to question this? She stayed silent; she feigned hope along with the rest of them.

Pablo had already uncoiled a short length of rope from the windlass. He was wrapping it around his chest, tying it into a knot. It seemed he wanted them to lower him into the hole.

"He won't be able to answer it," Eric said. "We have to send someone who speaks Spanish." He reached for the rope, but Pablo wouldn't relinquish it. He was tying one knot after another across his chest: big, sloppy tangles of hemp. It didn't look like he knew what he was doing.

"It doesn't matter," Jeff said. "He can bring it back up, and we'll try calling from here."

The chirping stopped, and they stood over the hole, waiting, listening. After a long moment, it started up again. They all smiled at one another, and Pablo moved to the edge of the shaft, eager to begin his descent. The flowering vine had twined itself around the windlass, growing on the rope, the axle, the crank, the sawhorse and its little wheel; Jeff pulled much of it off, careful not to get the sap on his skin. Mathias had vanished into the blue tent. When he reappeared, he was carrying an oil lamp and a box of matches. He set the lamp on the ground beside the hole, scratched one of the matches into flame, and carefully lighted the wick. Then he handed the lamp to Pablo.

The windlass was a primitive piece of equipment: jerry-built, flimsy-looking. It sat beside the shaft on a small steel platform, which appeared to have been bolted somehow into the rock-hard dirt. Its barrel was mounted on an axle that was rusting in places and in definite need of greasing. The crank didn't have a brake to it; if it became necessary to hold it in place midway down or up, this would have to be accomplished by brute strength. Amy didn't believe the apparatus could support Pablo's weight; she thought he'd step into the open space above the hole and the entire contraption would give way. He'd drop into the darkness-fall and fall and fall-and they'd never see him again. But, after the exchange of many hand signals and gestures and pats of encouragement, when he finally began his descent, the windlass groaned, settling into its mount, and then started to turn, creaking loudly as Jeff and Eric strained against its hand crank, slowly lowering the Greek into the shaft.

It was working. And, despite herself, Amy felt her heart lift. Maybe it was a cell phone after all. Pablo would find it down there in the darkness; they'd hoist him back up and then call for help: the police, the American embassy, their parents. The beeping had stopped once more, and this time it didn't resume, but it didn't matter. It was down there. Amy was beginning to believe now-she wanted to believe, had given herself permission to believe-they were going to be saved. She stood beside the hole, peering over its edge, with Stacy on her right and Mathias across from her, watching Pablo drop foot by foot into the earth. His oil lamp illuminated the walls of the shaft: the dirt was black and pitted with rocks toward the top, but it became brown and then tan and then a deep orange-yellow as he descended. Ten feet, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and they still couldn't see the bottom. Pablo smiled up at them, dangling, one hand reaching out to steady himself against the shaft's wall. Amy and Stacy waved to him. But not Mathias. Mathias was staring at the slowly uncoiling rope.

"Stop!" he shouted suddenly, and everyone jumped.

Jeff and Eric were straining against the crank, both of them sweating already, their hair sticking to their foreheads. Amy could see the muscles standing out on Jeff's neck-taut, tendoned-and it gave her a sense of the immense tension on the rope, gravity grasping at the Greek, dragging him downward.

Mathias was growing frantic now, yelling, "Pull him up! Pull him up!"

Jeff and Eric hesitated, uncertain. "What?" Eric said, blinking at him stupidly.

"The vine," Mathias shouted, his voice urgent, waving for them to start reeling Pablo back up. "The rope."

And then they saw it. Jeff had stripped most of the vine off the windlass, but not all of it. The tendrils he'd left behind had burrowed their way into the spool of rope and now, as the windlass turned, they were being crushed, their milky sap oozing out, darkening the rope's hemp, eating away at it.

Pablo shouted up to them, a short string of Greek words, a question, and Amy had a brief glimpse of him, swinging gently back and forth there, twenty-five feet down the shaft, the oil lamp in his hand; then she was rushing with Stacy and Mathias toward the crank, all of them struggling to help, getting in one another's way, putting their weight into it, the sap visibly burning into the rope now-implacably, too fast, faster than they could work. Pablo was just beginning to bump his way upward when there was an abrupt, gut-dropping jerk, and they fell forward onto one another, the windlass spinning wildly behind them, free of its weight. There was a long silence-too long, far too long-and then a thump they seemed to feel more than hear, a jump in the earth beneath them, which was followed an instant later by the shattering pop of the lamp. They scrambled to the hole, peered into it, but there was nothing for them to see.

Darkness. Silence.

"Pablo?" Eric called, his voice echoing down the shaft.

And then, sounding impossibly far away, but somehow close, too-suffocatingly close-as if it were coming from inside Amy's own body, the Greek began to scream.

The screaming filled Eric with a sense of panic. Pablo was down in the hole, in the darkness, in terrible pain, and Eric couldn't think what to do, where to turn, how to make it better. They needed to help him, and it was taking too long. It ought to be happening now, instantly, but it wasn't; it couldn't. They had to come up with a plan first, and none of them seemed to know how to do this. Stacy just stood beside the windlass, wide-eyed, biting her hand. Amy was peering down into the hole. "Pablo?" she kept calling. "Pablo?" She was shouting, but even so, it was hard to hear her over his screams, which refused to stop, which went on and on and on, without diminishment or pause.

Mathias ran off toward the orange tent, disappeared inside. Jeff was pulling the rope back up from the shaft. He uncoiled it from the windlass, spreading it out in big looping circles across the little clearing. Then he began to work down its length, carefully removing all traces of the vine from it, examining the rope foot by foot, searching for sections where the sap might've weakened the hemp. It was a slow process, and he was going about it in an excruciatingly methodical manner, as if there were no rush at all, as if he couldn't even hear the Greek's screams. Eric stood beside him, too stunned to be of any assistance, motionless, yet feeling as if he were running inside-in full, headlong flight-his heart beating itself into a blur behind his ribs. And the screaming wouldn't stop.

"See if you can find a knife," Jeff said.

Eric stared down at him. A knife? The word hung in his head, inert, as if it belonged to a foreign language. How was he supposed to find a knife?

"Check the tents," Jeff said. He didn't look up at him; he kept his gaze focused on the rope, crouched low over it, searching out the burned spots.

Eric went to the blue tent, unzipped its flap, stepped inside. It smelled musty, like an attic, the air still and hot. The blue nylon filtered the sunlight, muting it, giving everything a dreamlike, watery tint. There were four sleeping bags, three of them unrolled, looking as if they'd only recently disgorged their owners' bodies. Dead now, Eric thought, and pushed the words aside. There was a transistor radio, and he had to resist the impulse to turn it on, to see if it worked, if he could find a station, music maybe, something to drown out Pablo's screams. There were two backpacks, one dark green, one black, and he crouched beside the first of them, began to rifle through it, feeling like a thief, an old instinct, from another world entirely, that sense of transgression inherent in handling a stranger's belongings. Dead now, he thought again, summoning the words this time, searching for courage in them, but they didn't make it any better, only turned it into a different sort of violation. The green backpack seemed to belong to a man, the black one to a woman. Other people's clothes: he could smell cigarette smoke on the man's T-shirts, perfume on the woman's. He wondered if they belonged to the woman whom Mathias's brother had met on the beach, the one whose promised presence had drawn them all here-doomed them, perhaps.

The vine was growing on some of the objects: thin green tendrils of it, with tiny pale red flowers, almost pink. It was more prominent in the woman's pack than the man's, twining itself among her cotton blouses, her socks, her dirt-stained jeans. He found a windbreaker in the man's backpack, gray, with blue stripes on the sleeves, a double of one he himself owned, hanging safely back in his closet at his parents' house, so out of reach now, awaiting his return. A knife, he had to remind himself, and he turned away from the tangle of clothes, searching through other pockets, unzipping them, emptying their contents onto the tent's floor. A camera, still loaded with film. Half a dozen spiral notebooks-journals, it looked like-filled nearly to capacity with the man's jagged handwriting, blue ink, black ink, even red in places, but all in a language Eric not only couldn't decipher but couldn't even recognize: Dutch perhaps, or something Scandinavian. A deck of playing cards. A first-aid kit. A Frisbee. A tube of sunblock. A folded pair of eyeglasses with wire rims. A bottle of vitamins. An empty canteen. A flashlight. But no knife.

Eric emerged from the tent, carrying the flashlight, squinting at the sun's sudden brightness, that sense of space abruptly opening around him after the airless confines of the tent. He turned on the flashlight, realized it didn't work. He shook it, tried again: nothing. Pablo stopped screaming-for the space of two deep breaths-then he started up again. The stopping was almost as bad as the screaming, Eric decided, then immediately changed his mind: the stopping was worse. He dropped the flashlight to the ground, saw that Mathias had reappeared, bringing a second oil lamp from the orange tent, a large knife, another first-aid kit. He and Jeff were busily cutting the burned sections from the rope, working as a team, silently, efficiently. Mathias would cut away the weak spots; then Jeff would tie the rope back together again, grimacing as he tugged the knots tight. Eric stood above them, watching. He felt stupid: he should've taken the first-aid kit from the blue tent, too, should've at least checked to see what was inside. He wasn't thinking. He wanted to help, wanted to stop Pablo's screams, but he was stupid and useless and there was no way to change this. He felt the urge to pace, yet he just kept standing there, staring, instead. Stacy and Amy looked exactly like he felt: frantic, anxious, immobile. They all watched Jeff and Mathias work at the rope, cutting, tying, tugging. It was taking so long, so impossibly long.

"I'll go," Eric said. It wasn't something he'd thought out before speaking; it emerged from his panic, from his need to hurry things along. "I'll go down and get him."

Jeff glanced up at him; he seemed surprised. "That's okay," he said. "I can do it."

Jeff's voice sounded so calm, so bizarrely unruffled, that for an instant Eric had difficulty understanding his words. It was as if he first had to translate them into his own state of terror. Eric shook his head. "I'm lighter," he said. "And I know him better."

Jeff considered these two points, seemed to see their wisdom. He shrugged. "We'll make a sling for him," he said. "You may have to help him into it. Then we'll pull it up. After we get him out, we'll drop the rope back down and pull you up, too."

Eric nodded. It sounded so simple, so straightforward, and he was trying to believe that it would be like that, wanting to believe it, but not quite accomplishing it. He felt the urge to pace again, and only managed to hold himself still through a jaw-tightening act of will.

Pablo stopped screaming. One breath, two breaths, three breaths, then he started up again.

"Talk to him, Amy," Jeff said.

Amy looked frightened by this prospect. "Talk to him?" she asked.

Jeff motioned her toward the hole. "Just stick your head over the side. Let him see you. Let him know we haven't abandoned him."

"What should I say?" Amy asked, still looking scared.

"Anything-soothing things. He can't understand you anyway. It's just the sound of your voice."

Amy moved to the hole. She dropped to her hands and knees, leaned forward over the shaft. "Pablo?" she called. "We're coming to get you. We're fixing the rope, and then Eric's coming to get you."

She kept going on like this, describing how it would happen, step by step, how they'd help him into the sling and pull him back up to the surface, and after awhile Pablo stopped screaming. Jeff and Mathias were almost done; they'd reached the last section of rope. Jeff tied the final knot, then pulled on one end while Mathias held on to the other, the two of them using all their weight, a momentary tug-of-war, tightening the knot, testing its strength. There were five splices on the rope now. The knots didn't look very strong, but Eric tried not to notice this. It felt good to be the one going, the one doing, and if he thought too long about the knots, about their apparent tenuousness, he knew he might end up changing his mind.

Mathias was winding the rope back onto the windlass, double-checking it for burned spots as he went. He threaded the end of it back over the sawhorse's little metal wheel. Then Jeff fashioned a sling for Eric, helped him slide it over his head, tucking it snugly under his armpits.

"It's going to be all right, Pablo," Amy was yelling. "He's coming. He's almost there."

Stacy crouched to light the second oil lamp, then handed it to Eric, its flame flickering weakly in the tiny glass globe.

Eric was standing beside the hole now, staring into the darkness. Mathias and Jeff positioned themselves behind the crank, leaning against its handle. The rope went taut; they were ready. The hardest part was the step into open air, wondering if the rope would hold, and for an instant Eric wasn't certain he had the courage for it. But then he realized it wasn't possible not to: the moment he'd pulled the sling over his head, he'd set something into motion, and now there was no way he could stop it. He stepped off the edge of the shaft, dangling beneath the sawhorse, the rope biting into his armpits, and then-the windlass creaking and trembling with every turn-they began to lower him.

Before he was ten feet down, the temperature started to drop, chilling the sweat on his skin-chilling his spirits, too. He didn't want to go any farther, and yet was dropping foot by foot even as he admitted this to himself, that he was scared, that he wished he'd let Jeff be the one to go. There were wooden supports hammered into the walls of the shaft, haphazardly, at odd angles, buttressing the dirt. They looked like old railroad ties, soaked in creosote, and Eric could detect no apparent plan in their positioning. Twenty feet from the surface, he was astonished to glimpse a passage opening up into the wall before him, a shaft running perpendicular to the one he was descending. He lifted the oil lamp to get a better view. There were two iron rails running down its center, dull with rust. A dented bucket lay against one of the rails, at the far limit of his lamp's illumination. The shaft curved leftward, out of sight, into the earth. A steady stream of cold air spilled out of it, thick-feeling, moist, and it made the flame in the lamp rise suddenly, then flicker, almost going out.

"There's another shaft," he called up to the others, but there was no response, just the steady creak of the windlass unwinding him into the darkness. There were skull-size stones embedded in the walls of the shaft: smooth, dull gray, almost glassy in appearance. The vine had even gained a foothold here, clinging to some of the wooden supports, its leaves and flowers much paler than on the hillside above, almost translucent. When he looked up, he could see Stacy and Amy peering down at him, framed by the rectangle of sky, everything growing a little smaller with each shuddering foot he descended. The rope had begun to swing slightly, pendulumlike, and the lamp swayed, too, its shifting light making the walls of the shaft seem to rock vertiginously. Eric felt a lurch of nausea, had to stare down at his feet to calm it. He could hear Pablo moaning somewhere beneath him, but for a long time the Greek remained lost in darkness. Eric was having difficulty guessing how far he'd dropped-fifty feet, he guessed-and then, just as the bottom came into view, still shadowed, a deeper darkness, upon which Pablo's crumpled form-his white tennis shoes, his pale blue T-shirt-was coming into focus, the rope jerked to a halt.

Eric hung there, swaying back and forth. He lifted his eyes, peered up toward that small rectangle of sky above him. He could see Stacy's and Amy's faces, and then Jeff's, too.

"Eric?" Jeff called.

"What?"

"It's the end of the rope."

"I'm not at the bottom."

"Can you see him?"

"Pretty much."

"Is he okay?"

"I can't tell."

"How far are you above him?"

Eric looked down, tried to estimate the distance between himself and the bottom. He wasn't very good at this sort of thing; all he could do was pull a number out of the air. It was pointless, like guessing how many pennies someone had in his pocket. If he were right, it would simply be a matter of chance. "Twenty feet?" he said.

"Is he moving?"

Eric stared down again toward the Greek's dim figure. The longer he looked, the more he could make out, not just the shoes and T-shirt but Pablo's arms, too, his face and neck, looking oddly pale in the darkness. Eric's lamp picked up bits of broken glass around the Greek's body, pieces of its shattered cousin. "No," Eric called. "He's just lying there."

There was no response. Eric looked up, and the faces had disappeared from the hole. He could hear them talking, not the words, just the murmur of their voices, which had a back-and-forth feel to them, discursive, strangely unhurried. They sounded even farther away than they actually were, and Eric felt a brief wobble of panic. Maybe they were walking off; maybe they were going to leave him here…

He glanced down just in time to see Pablo lift his hand, hold it out toward him, a slow, underwater gesture, as if even this slight movement were difficult to accomplish.

"He lifted his hand," he called.

"What?" It was Jeff's voice; his head reappeared over the hole. Stacy's did, too, and Amy's, and Mathias's. No one was holding the windlass. No one had to, Eric realized. I'm at the end of my rope, he thought. He couldn't help it: The words were just there inside his head. A joke, but mirthless.

"He lifted his hand," he shouted again.

"We're pulling you up," Jeff called. And all four heads vanished from the hole.

"Wait!" Eric shouted.

Jeff's face reappeared, then Stacy's, then Amy's. They were so tiny, silhouetted against the sky. He couldn't make out their features, but somehow he knew who was who. "We have to figure out a way to make the rope longer," Jeff called.

Eric shook his head. "I want to stay with him. I'm gonna jump."

There was that murmur of voices once more, a consultation far above him. Then Jeff's voice echoed down the shaft. "No-we'll pull you up."

"Why?"

"We might not be able to make it longer. You'd be trapped down there."

Eric couldn't think of anything to say to that. Pablo was already down there. If they couldn't make the rope longer…well, that meant…He glimpsed what followed, shied away from it.

"Eric?" Jeff called.

"What?"

"We're pulling you up."

The heads disappeared once more, and then, a second later, the rope gave a jerk as they began to turn the windlass. Eric looked down. His lamp was swaying again, so it was hard to tell, but it seemed as if Pablo was staring up at him. His hand was no longer raised. Eric started to yank at the sling, kicking his legs. He wasn't thinking; he was being stupid, and he knew it. But he couldn't leave Pablo there. Not alone, not hurt, not in that darkness. He lifted his left arm toward the sky, the sling scraping his skin as it slid upward, over his head. He was still hooked under his other arm, rising slowly, the bottom of the shaft slipping into darkness, and he had to switch the oil lamp from one hand to the other. Then he let go of the rope and dropped into the open air, the flame fluttering out as he fell.

It was farther to the bottom than he'd imagined, yet the bottom seemed to come too soon, materializing out of the darkness, slamming up into him before he had a chance to prepare himself, his legs collapsing, jarring the air from his lungs. He landed to Pablo's left-he'd had the presence of mind to aim for this spot before the lamp blew out-but he wasn't able to hold his balance once he'd hit the bottom. He fell, bounced back off the wall of the shaft, landed on the Greek's chest. Pablo bucked beneath him, began to scream again. Eric struggled to push himself up and away, but it was difficult in the darkness to find his bearings. Nothing was where it seemed it ought to be; he kept reaching out with his hands, expecting to find the ground or one of the walls but hitting open air instead. "I'm sorry," he said. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry." Pablo was screaming beneath him, flailing with one arm, while the lower half of his body remained perfectly still. It frightened Eric, this stillness; he could guess what it meant.

He managed to rise to his knees, then pull back into a crouch. There was a wall behind him, and one to his left and another to his right, but across from him, on the far side of Pablo, he could sense open space: another shaft, cutting its way into the earth beneath the hill. Once again, there was a current of cold air pouring forth from it, but something more, too, some sense of pressure, of a presence: watching. Eric spent a moment straining to peer into the darkness, to make out whatever shape or form might be lurking within it, but there was nothing there, of course, just his terror fashioning phantoms, and finally he managed to convince himself of this.

Eric heard Jeff yell something, and he tilted his head back, looking up toward the mouth of the hole. It was far above him now, a tiny window of sky. The rope was swinging gently back and forth in the intervening space, and Jeff was shouting again, but Eric couldn't hear his words, not over Pablo's screaming, which echoed off the shaft's dirt walls, doubling and tripling, until it began to seem as if there were more than one of him lying there, as if Eric were trapped in a cave full of shrieking men.

"I'm okay!" he yelled upward, doubting if they could hear him.

And was he okay? He spent a moment assessing this, tallying up the various pains his body was beginning to announce. He must've banged his chin, because it felt as if he'd been punched there, and his lower back had definitely registered the fall. But it was his right leg that called out most aggressively for attention, a tight, tearing sensation just beneath his kneecap, accompanied by an odd feeling of dampness. Eric groped with his hand, found a large piece of glass embedded there. It was about the size of a playing card-petal-shaped, gently concave-and had sliced neatly through his jeans, burying itself half an inch into his flesh. Eric assumed it was from Pablo's shattered lamp; he must've landed on it when he fell. He girded himself now, clenching his teeth, then pulled the glass free. He could feel blood seeping down his shin, strangely cool-a lot of blood, too-his sock growing spongy with it.

"I cut my leg," he shouted, then waited, listening, but he couldn't tell if there was a response.

It doesn't matter, he thought. I'll be all right. It was the sort of empty reassurance only a child would find comforting, and Eric knew this, yet he kept repeating it to himself nonetheless. It was so dark, and there was that cold air pouring across him from the shaft, that watchful presence, and his right shoe was slowly filling with blood, and Pablo's screaming wouldn't stop. I'm at the end of my rope, Eric thought. And then, again: It doesn't matter. I'll be all right. Just words, his head was full of words.

He was still holding the lamp in his left hand; somehow, he'd managed to keep it from breaking. He set it on the ground beside him, reached out, found the Greek's wrist, grasped it. Then he crouched there in the darkness, saying, "Shh, now, shh. I'm here, I'm right here" as he waited for Pablo to stop screaming.

They could hear Eric shouting, but they couldn't make out his words over Pablo's screaming. Jeff knew that the Greek would stop eventually, though-that he'd tire and fall silent-and then they'd be able to find out what had happened down there, whether Eric had jumped or fallen, and if he, too, was hurt now. For the time being, it didn't really matter. What mattered was the rope. Until they figured out how to lengthen it, there was nothing they could do for either of them.

Jeff thought of the clothes first, of emptying the backpacks the archaeologists had left behind and knotting things together-pants and shirts and jackets-into a makeshift rope. It wasn't a good idea, he knew, but for the first few minutes it was all he could come up with. He needed twenty feet, probably more to be safe, maybe even thirty, and that would be a lot of clothes, wouldn't it? He doubted if they'd be strong enough to support a person's weight, or if the knots would even hold.

Thirty feet.

Jeff and Mathias stood beside the windlass, both of them straining to think, neither of them speaking, because there was nothing to say yet, no solution to share. Amy and Stacy were on their knees beside the hole, peering into it. Every now and then, Stacy would call Eric's name, and sometimes he'd shout something back, but it was impossible to understand him: Pablo was still screaming.

"One of the tents," Jeff said finally. "We can take it down, cut the nylon into strips."

Mathias turned, examined the blue tent, considering the idea. "Will it be strong enough?" he asked.

"We can braid the strips-three strips for each section-then knot the sections together." Jeff felt a flush of pleasure, saying this, a sense of success amid so much failure. They were trapped here on this hill, with little water or food, two of them out of reach down a mine shaft, at least one of them injured, but for a moment, none of it seemed to matter. They had a plan, and the plan made sense, and this gave Jeff a brief burst of energy and optimism, setting them all into motion. Mathias and he started emptying the blue tent, dragging the sleeping bags out into the little clearing, then the backpacks, the notebooks and radio, the camera and first-aid kit, the Frisbee and the empty canteen, tossing everything into a pile. Then they began to take down the tent, yanking up its stakes, dismantling its thin aluminum poles. Mathias did the cutting. There was a brief debate about the desired width and they settled on four inches, the knife slicing easily through the nylon, Mathias working with strong, quick gestures, cutting ten-foot strips for Jeff to braid. Jeff was halfway through the first section, taking his time with it, keeping a tight weave, when Pablo finally stopped screaming.

"Eric?" Stacy called.

Eric's voice came echoing back up to them. "I'm here," he shouted.

"Did you fall?"

"I jumped."

"Are you okay?"

"I cut my knee."

"Bad?"

"My shoe's full of blood."

Jeff laid down the nylon strips, stepped to the mouth of the shaft. "Put pressure on it," he yelled into the hole.

"What?"

"Take off your shirt. Wad it up, press it against the cut. Hard."

"It's too cold."

"Cold?" Jeff asked. He thought he'd misheard. His entire body was slick with sweat.

"There's another shaft," Eric called. "Off to the side. There's cold air coming from it."

"Wait," Jeff shouted. He went over to the pile from the blue tent, dug through it, found the first-aid kit, opened it. There wasn't much of use inside. Jeff couldn't say what he'd been hoping to find, but whatever it might've been, it certainly wasn't here. There was a box of Band-Aids, which were probably too small for Eric's wound. There was a tube of Neosporin that they could put on when they hauled him back up. There were bottles of aspirin and Pepto-Bismol, and some salt tablets, a thermometer, and a tiny pair of scissors.

Jeff carried the bottle of aspirin back to the shaft, stripped off his shirt. "What happened to the lamp?" he shouted.

"It went out."

"I'm going to drop my shirt down. I'm knotting a bottle of aspirin inside it. And the box of matches, too. All right?"

"Okay."

"Use the shirt to put pressure on your cut. Give three of the aspirin to Pablo and take three yourself."

"Okay," Eric said again.

Jeff knotted the aspirin and the matches into the shirt, then leaned out over the hole. "Ready?" he called.

"Ready."

He dropped the shirt, watched it vanish into the darkness. It took a long time to land. Then there was a soft, echoing thump.

"Got it," Eric called.

Mathias was done cutting strips, and he'd taken up the braiding Jeff had abandoned. Jeff turned to Amy and Stacy, who were both still peering into the shaft. "Help him," he said, nodding toward Mathias, and they walked over to the dismantled tent, crouched beside the German. Mathias showed them how to braid, and they started on their own sections.

Down in the shaft, a faint glow appeared, gaining strength: Eric had managed to light the lamp. Jeff could see him now, crouched over Pablo, the two of them looking very tiny.

"Is he okay?" Jeff called.

There was a pause before Eric answered, and Jeff could see him examining the Greek, holding out the oil lamp, bent low over his body. Then he lifted his head, shouted up toward him. "I think he broke his back."

Jeff turned from the shaft, glanced at the others. They'd stopped working and were staring back at him. Stacy had her hand over her mouth; she seemed as if she were about to start crying again. Amy got to her feet and came toward him. They both peered down into the hole.

"He's moving his arms," Eric called to them, "but not his legs."

Jeff and Amy looked at each other. "Check his feet," Amy whispered.

"I think he might've, you know…" Eric paused, seemed to search for the right words. Finally: "It smells like he shit himself."

"His feet," Amy whispered again, nudging Jeff. For some reason, she wouldn't shout it herself.

"Eric?" Jeff yelled.

"What?"

"Take off one of his shoes."

"His shoes?"

"Take it off-his sock, too. Then scrape the bottom of his foot with your thumbnail. Do it hard. See if there's a reaction."

Amy and Jeff leaned over the shaft, watching Eric crouch beside Pablo's feet, pull off his tennis shoe, his sock. Stacy came over to watch, too. Mathias had resumed his braiding.

Eric lifted his head toward them. "Nothing," he called.

"Oh God," Amy whispered. "Oh Jesus."

"We need to make a backboard," Jeff said to her. "How can we make a backboard?"

Amy shook her head. "No, Jeff. No way. We can't move him."

"We have to-we can't just leave him down there."

"We'll only make it worse. We'll jostle him and he'll-"

"We'll use the tent poles," Jeff said. "We'll strap him to them, and then-"

"Jeff."

He stopped, stared at her. He was thinking about the tent poles, trying to imagine them as a backboard. He didn't know if it would work, but he couldn't think of anything else for them to use. Then he remembered the backpacks, their metal frames.

"We have to get him to a hospital," Amy said.

Jeff didn't respond to this, just kept watching her, taking the backpacks apart in his mind, using the tent poles for added support. How did she imagine them getting him to a hospital?

"This is bad," Amy said. "This is so, so bad." She'd started to cry but was struggling not to, wiping the tears away with the heel of her hand, shaking her head. "If we move him…" she began, but didn't finish.

"We can't leave him down there, Amy," he said. "You know that, don't you? It's not possible."

She considered this for a long moment, then nodded.

Jeff leaned over the hole, shouted, "Eric?"

"What?"

"We have to make a backboard before we can bring him up."

"Okay."

"We'll do it as fast as we can, but it might take a little while. Just keep talking to him."

"There's not much oil left in the lamp. Only a little."

"Then blow it out."

"Blow it out?" Eric sounded frightened by this idea.

"We'll need it later. When we come down. We'll need it to get him on the backboard."

Eric didn't respond.

"All right?" Jeff called.

Perhaps Eric nodded; it was hard to tell. They watched him bend over the lamp, and then-abruptly-they couldn't see him anymore. Once again, the bottom of the shaft was hidden in darkness.

Stacy and Amy resumed the braiding of the nylon strips while Jeff and Mathias struggled to make a backboard. The boys were muttering together, arguing over the possibilities. They had the tent poles, a backpack frame, and a roll of duct tape Mathias had found among the archaeologists' supplies, and they kept putting things together, then taking them apart again. Stacy and Amy worked in silence. There ought to have been something soothing in the task-so simple, so mindless, their hands moving right to left to right to left-but the longer Stacy kept at it, the worse she began to feel. Her stomach was sour from the tequila she'd chugged; she was cotton-mouthed, her skin prickly from the heat, her head aching. She wanted to ask for some water but was afraid that Jeff would say no. And she was growing hungry, too, light-headed with it. She wished she could have a snack, drink something cool, find a shady place to lie down, and the fact that none of this was possible gave her a tight, breathless feeling of near panic. She tried to remember what she and Eric had in their pack: a small bottle of water, a bag of pretzels, a can of mixed nuts, a pair of too-ripe bananas. They'd have to share, of course; everyone would. They'd put all their food together and then ration it out as slowly as they could.

Left to right to left to right to left to right…

"Shit," she heard Jeff say quite distinctly from across the clearing; then they began to tear apart their latest attempt at a backboard, the aluminum poles clinking dully as they knocked one against another. Stacy couldn't even look at the two of them. Pablo had broken his back, and she just couldn't face it. They needed help. They needed a team of paramedics to come in a helicopter and fly him to a hospital. Instead, they were going to pull him up on their own, bumping and jostling him all the way to the surface. And when they got him out-then what? He'd lie in the orange tent, she supposed, moaning or screaming, and there wasn't a thing they'd be able to do for him.

Aspirin. Pablo's back was broken, and Jeff had dropped him a bottle of aspirin.

Jeff took a break, walked across the clearing, stared down the hill. Everyone stopped to watch him. They're gone, Stacy thought with a brief jump of hope, but then Jeff turned and came back toward them, not saying a thing. He crouched again beside Mathias. She heard the clinking poles, a ripping sound as they tore off another piece of tape. The Mayans were still there, of course; Stacy knew this. She could picture them ringing the base of the hill, staring up the slope with those frighteningly blank expressions. They'd killed Mathias's brother. Shot him with their arrows. And now Mathias was kneeling there, holding the aluminum poles for Jeff to tape, absorbed in the difficulty of it, the solving of the problem. She couldn't begin to understand how he was managing this, couldn't understand how any of them were managing what they were doing. Eric was down at the bottom of the shaft, in the darkness, his shoe full of blood, and she was braiding strips of nylon, one hand moving over the other, tightening the weave as she went.

Left to right to left to right to left to right…

The sun was beginning its implacable slippage toward the west. How long had this been happening? Stacy didn't know what time it was; she'd left her watch back in her hotel room, forgotten it on the table beside the bed. Realizing this, she felt a momentary tug of anxiety, thinking that the maid might steal it, a graduation present from her parents. She was always expecting hotel maids to steal her things, and yet in all the traveling she'd done it hadn't happened, not once. Perhaps it wasn't as easy to get away with as it seemed, or maybe people were simply more honest than she assumed. In her head, she could hear the watch ticking, could picture it lying on the glass tabletop, patiently counting off the seconds, the minutes, the hours, waiting for her return. The maids turned down their beds for them in the early evening, placed tiny chocolates on their pillows, leaving the radio playing so softly that sometimes Stacy didn't notice it until after they'd turned out the lights.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Amy paused in her work, checked her watch. "Five-thirty-five," she said.

When they finished with the braiding, they'd need to haul up the rope and knot the sections of nylon onto its end. Then someone would have to descend into the hole with the improvised backboard and help Eric lift Pablo onto it, somehow securing him to the metal frame so that they could pull him safely back to the surface. After that, they'd drop the rope down yet again and ferry the other two, one after the other, to the top.

Stacy tried to imagine how long all this might take, and she knew it was too long, that they were running out of time. Because if it was 5:35 now, creeping toward 5:40, then they had only another hour and a half before dark.

In the end, they had to braid a total of five strips. They knotted the first three onto the rope, then dropped it back down the shaft to see if it was long enough, but Eric shouted up to them, saying it was still out of reach. So they braided a fourth section, only to realize when it came time to attach their improvised backboard that they'd need two separate strips hanging from the bottom of the rope, one to connect to the head of the aluminum frame, the other to its foot.

While Mathias was quickly braiding this final addition, Jeff took Amy aside. "Are you okay with this?" he asked.

They were standing together on the square of dirt where the blue tent had formerly sat. The sun was almost at the horizon, but it was still bright out, still hot. That was how it was here, Amy knew: there was no transition between day and night, no gentle easing into evening. The sun rose almost immediately into a noontime intensity, which it didn't relinquish until the moment it touched the sky's western edge. And then you could count the day into darkness-that was how fast night came on. The only lamp they had was the one with Eric, and it was low on oil. Fifteen minutes, she guessed, and they'd be working blind.

"Okay with what?" she asked.

"You'll be the one to go down," Jeff said.

"Down?"

"Into the shaft."

Amy just stared at him; she was too startled to speak. He'd taken one of the archaeologists' shirts to replace the T-shirt he'd thrown down to Eric, and it looked odd on him, making him seem almost like another person. The shirt had a sheen to it-it was meant to pass for khaki, but it didn't; it was some sort of polyester, with buttons down the front and large pockets on each side of the chest. It looked like something a hunter might wear on safari, Amy thought. Or a photographer, maybe, with rolls of film jammed into those peculiar pockets. Or a soldier, perhaps. Somehow it made Jeff seem older-larger, even. His nose was pink and peeling, and though he looked tired and sun-worn, there was a jittery quality to him, an aura of heightened alertness.

"Mathias and I have to turn the crank," he said. "So it's either you or Stacy. And Stacy, you know…" He trailed off, shrugged. "It just seems like you should be the one."

Still Amy was silent. She didn't want to go, of course, was terrified of the idea, of dropping into the earth, into the darkness. She hadn't even wanted to come here-that was what she wanted to say to Jeff. If it had been up to her, they never would've left the beach in the first place. And then, when they'd discovered the hidden path, she'd tried to warn him, hadn't she? She'd tried to tell him that they shouldn't take it, and he'd refused to listen. This was all his fault, then, wasn't it? So shouldn't he be the one to descend into that hole? But even as she was asking herself these questions, Amy was remembering what had happened at the base of the hill, how she'd retreated across the clearing, peering through her camera's viewfinder, her foot slipping into the tangle of vines. If she hadn't done that, maybe the Mayans wouldn't have forced them up the hill. They wouldn't be here now-Pablo wouldn't be lying at the bottom of the shaft with a broken back; Eric's shoe wouldn't be full of blood. They'd be walking somewhere miles from this place, every step carrying them farther away, all six of them imagining that the mosquitoes and the tiny black flies and the blisters forming on their feet were things perfectly worthy of complaint.

"You were a lifeguard, weren't you?" Jeff asked. "You ought to know how to handle this sort of thing."

A lifeguard. It was true, too, in a way. Amy had spent a summer working at a pool in an apartment complex in her hometown. A tiny oval pool, with a seven-foot deep end, no diving allowed. She'd sat in a lawn chair, sunning herself from ten until six, five days a week, warning children not to run, not to splash or dunk one another, and telling the adults that they weren't supposed to bring alcohol into the pool area. Both groups largely ignored her. It was a small complex, teetering on the edge of solvency, full of her town's downwardly mobile-drinkers and divorcées-a depressing place. There weren't that many children, and on some days no one came to the pool at all. Amy would sit in her chair, reading. If it was especially quiet, she'd often slip into the shallow end and float there on her back, her mind going empty. She'd had to take a lifesaving class, of course, before she was hired. And there must've been a lesson about spinal injuries, how to secure someone on a backboard. But, if so, she retained no memory of it.

"You'll use our belts," Jeff said.

What Amy wanted to do was run down the hill. She had an image of herself attempting this, bursting into the clearing, confronting the men waiting there. She'd tell them what had happened, find a way to communicate everything that had gone so wrong here, miming it out for them. It would be difficult, of course, but somehow she'd get them to see her fear, to make them feel it, too. And they'd relent. They'd get help. They'd let them all depart. Mathias's brother was lying on the opposite side of the hill, his corpse pierced with arrows, but still Amy managed, for a brief instant, to believe in this fantasy. She didn't want to be the one who was lowered into the shaft.

Jeff took her hand. He was opening his mouth to say something-to convince her, she knew, or tell her that she didn't have a choice-when the chirping resumed from the bottom of the hole.

Everyone but Mathias ran to the shaft, peered into it. Mathias was nearly finished braiding, and he kept at it, not even pausing.

"Eric?" Jeff yelled. "Can you find it?"

Eric didn't answer for a moment. They could sense him stirring down there, searching for the source of the sound. "It keeps moving," he called. "Sometimes it seems like it's to my left. And then it's to my right."

"Shouldn't it light up as it rings?" Amy asked Jeff, her voice low, almost a whisper.

Jeff shouted, "Is there a light? Look for a light."

Again, they could sense Eric moving about. "I don't see it," he called. And then, a second later, just as they were realizing this for themselves: "It's stopped."

They all waited to see if the sound would start again, but it didn't. The sun touched the western horizon and everything took on a reddish hue. In a few minutes, it would be dark. Mathias was done with his braiding. They watched him join this final section to the others, then attach their makeshift backboard to the two dangling strands. He finished just as the day began its sudden descent into night. Then Jeff held the crank while Mathias and Stacy lifted the backboard out over the shaft's mouth. They spent a moment staring at it as it dangled there: Mathias had covered the aluminum frame with one of the archaeologists' sleeping bags, cushioning it. They piled all four of their belts on top of the sleeping bag. Amy knew that though she hadn't yet agreed to Jeff's proposition, the question had somehow been decided. Everything was ready, and they thought she was, too. Mathias joined Jeff beside the windlass, taking hold of its crank. Stacy stood there, hugging herself, watching.

"Just climb on it," Jeff said.

So that was what Amy did. Girding herself, thinking brave thoughts, she stepped out into the shaft's opening, crouching on the aluminum frame, clutching at the braided strands of nylon. The backboard creaked beneath her weight, rocking back and forth, but it held. And then-before Amy even had a chance to collect herself, or begin to second-guess her decision-the windlass started to turn, dropping her from the day's gathering darkness into the deeper darkness of the hole.

It had taken them a long time, but now, finally, they were coming. Eric didn't know how long, exactly, it had been, perhaps not quite as long as it had seemed, but a long time nonetheless. Even under the best of circumstances, he wasn't very good at reckoning the passage of time-he lacked an internal clock-but here in the hole, in the darkness, under the stress of everything that had happened thus far today, it was far more difficult than usual. All he knew was that it was becoming night up there, that the blue rectangle of sky had taken on a brief blush of red before fading into a blue-gray, a slate gray, a gray-black. They'd made a backboard and Amy was crouched on it now, dropping toward him.

Hours, Eric supposed. It must've been hours. Pablo had been screaming and then he'd stopped, and Stacy had shouted down to him, and they'd talked back and forth, and Jeff had told him to blow out the lamp. Then they'd all vanished to make the backboard and lengthen the rope-it had taken them a long time, too long-and he'd first crouched, then sat beside Pablo, gripping his wrist all the while. Talking, too, off and on, to keep the Greek company, to raise his spirits and try to trick him-trick both of them, maybe-into believing that everything was going to be all right.

But everything wasn't going to be all right, of course, and no matter how hard Eric worked to throw a tone of optimism into his voice-and he did work; he consciously struggled for it, an echo of the Greeks' playful bantering among themselves-he couldn't elude this difficult fact. There was the smell, for one thing. The smell of shit-of urine, too. Pablo had broken his back, lost control of his bowels, his bladder. He'd need to have a catheter put in, a bag hanging from the side of his bed, nurses to empty it and keep him clean. He'd need surgery, and quickly-right now, earlier than now-he'd need doctors and physical therapists hovering about him, charting his progress. And Eric couldn't see how any of this was going to happen. They'd worked all afternoon to build a backboard and with it they were finally going to get him out of this hole, but what would that accomplish? Out of the hole, up there among the tents and the flowering vines, his back would still be broken, his bladder and bowels leaking urine and shit into his already-sodden pants. And there was nothing they could do about it.

Eric's knee had stopped bleeding finally. There was a steady, throbbing ache, which jumped in volume whenever he shifted his weight. Jeff's T-shirt was stiff with dried blood; Eric set it on the ground beside him. His shoe still felt damp.