Curtain Call (The Jewel Project #7)

6. Curses and Shrines

The sun beat down over Sam as he brushed the walls of the shrine clean. Having been stripped down not too long ago, the trees hadn't yet regrown to their full size. Their thin leaves shaded the scene a light green film. It gave the illusion of a tainted fishbowl.

Where am I even getting this imagery?  He ran the brush over the corner of a stone to remove the dust, trying to focus on what mattered at the moment.

He was still tired. He'd only managed a few hours of sleep before the need to investigate what they had found woke him up and pushed him out of the tent even before it was his turn to take watch. But this way, Jimmy could get a few extra hours in, and Sam had the silence he needed to do a bit of deep thinking.

Because what he was seeing was not supposed to be there. Ever since he'd discovered the results of the failed archeological expedition, he'd known something was wrong. The native tribes that used to live in Brazil before the colonization by the Portuguese did not have temples and shrines in the jungle. Hell, there were barely any evidence regarding their cultures, and they'd never even had a writing system, at least not one which was discovered and cracked.

And yet, this stone structure was there, in the Amazonian jungle, with no explanation. He'd been aware of this crack in his theory, of the fact that Brazil had no empire to bring down with the promise of benevolence from the gods. The closest empire had been the Incas, but they'd been conquered by the Spanish.

What made it even more confusing was that the Incas didn't have an acknowledged writing system either, apart from knots on strings, so the likelihood of getting any information was slim. The lack of logic killed him. Could he be wrong? Could the jewel not have been brought over by the Portuguese? But then, why was it in Brazil in the first place?

The inscription on the stone block he was cleaning became clear and Sam found himself staring at the very rendition of the light of the gods. He pulled his rucksack closer and dug his hand inside it, searching for his stack of research papers. It was useless, though. He had nothing in there except maybe clues that his initial theory had been wrong.

Maybe Portugal never had one of the stones, or it was taken by the Spanish and brought here. But it still made no sense. Why was there an actual stone structure somewhere it had no place being?

"Hey, what's up?"

Sam jumped and turned to his twin who crouched next to him. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

Tom waved him away. "I'm way too used to less sleep. This is turning out to be quite the vacation for me."

Sam glanced around, but all stood silent. "Could you go check for intruders?"

His twin nodded and headed for the nearest tall tree. Sam returned to the stone wall in front of him and brushed a few more vines aside. Of course, those who had been there before him had done most of the job, but as he'd learned last time, the jungle took everything back with the speed of light. As he continued cleanup, something caught his eye. Some of the inscriptions looked slightly familiar.

He stepped closer, squinting at the drawings. A few brush strokes later, he realized that it really was writing. Except it was all wrong.

"Sam, I could see smoke." Tom stopped by his side, his voice urgent. "It's pretty close, maybe a day away, and it's obvious they're moving in this direction."

"This is wrong," Sam muttered.

"I'll say it's wrong. Should I wake up the others?"

Sam just hummed, his mind trying to make sense of the writing. Brazilian tribes didn't have any of that. Neither did the Incas, which were the closest geographically.