CHRYSANTHEMUM
Dale reached over and practically snatched the coin from Logan’s hands. Frowning, Dale examined the prize, turning it over with his gloved fingers and squinting for a closer look. Isabelle had already shouldered the camera to film. Behind them, Charlie shifted from foot to foot whenever the lens wasn’t aimed in his direction.
“I don’t see where it says 1938,” Dale said, irritated. “And this script could be from any Asian alphabet. But it’s definitely aluminum—I suppose I could agree with our esteemed geologist on that point.”
Bridget, Joanne, and Milo all glanced at each other, not sure what to make of Logan’s assertion.
“Look at the chrysanthemum flower on the front,” said Logan patiently. “That’s the Japanese imperial symbol.”
“What the fuck were the Japanese doing down here?” asked Charlie in complete disbelief. “Did I totally miss something?”
“And the year 1938?” asked Dale, still unconvinced and visibly ignoring Charlie.
“Written in kanji on the reverse,” answered Logan. “Below the bird image—it’s a crow, by the way.”
“Huh,” said Dale, dropping his intense scrutiny of the coin and passing it to Bridget.
“You read kanji?” asked Bridget, giving the coin to Joanne after only a cursory examination.
“Not much more than numbers and a few words,” admitted Logan. “Never formally studied it, picked up a little between anime and a few MMORPGs.”
“Ugh, anime?” said Joanne, handing the coin to Charlie. “Those Japanese cartoons with all the weird sex? Tentacles and the like?”
“You’re thinking of hentai,” said Logan, defensively crossing his arms. “It’s actually very different.”
Charlie tried to stifle a snicker, but it came out as a snort. “Heads or tails?” he asked, flipping the coin in the air and catching it again.
“Languages are one of my many hobbies,” said Logan, increasingly annoyed. “I’m fluent in French and Italian, and I read a bit of Russian and Arabic, and I’m currently learning the foundations of Thai.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Bridget, her soothing tone a transparent effort to de-escalate. “You’re a man of many talents.”
“I started with Italian,” said Logan, “so I could collaborate on papers about the Castelcivita cavern system in Salerno, Italy. From there, French was a natural progression. My grandmother is from Toulouse. Russian and Arabic came later.”
“And Thai?” asked Joanne, still a bit unconvinced.
“That’s for a website,” admitted Logan with a mumble. “A, um, dating website.”
Joanne shook her head and whispered something like so dodgy as the coin passed to Isabelle and finally to Milo. Small and smooth-edged, it couldn’t have weighed more than a gram, even with the clinging dirt and corrosion. One side displayed a chrysanthemum-topped cloudburst surrounding a single Japanese character, the other a crow ringed by kanji script.
Milo gave the historical context of the find serious thought. Aluminum was once so precious as to comprise Napoleon Bonaparte’s personal dining set, but by 1938 it was little more than a cheap base metal. Such coinage wouldn’t represent the wealth of a nation, but rather its wartime desperation. But even aluminum would eventually fail as currency—in the waning days of World War II, the Japanese central banks had resorted to minting clay.
“Japs didn’t hit Pearl Harbor until ’41,” said Charlie, scratching his head. “I thought you said this was a wartime coin.”
“The Japanese had been fighting since 1931, starting in mainland China,” said Milo, a little surprised that he needed to explain the well-known fact. “They’d been at it for a decade before Pearl Harbor.”
Dale nodded, again frowning. “Well,” he finally said. “We’ve found what we found.”
“One man, alone,” said Joanne. “I presume there were others with him?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Bridget. “Their presence would also explain the wall anchor Milo found.”
“The wall anchor he lost,” added Logan. “But I suppose we can now have a working theory for the collapsed entrance . . . Japanese cavers of that time period would have had access to suitable explosives. Again, I’ll need to run some samples up top to be certain.”
“Whatever happened, they didn’t retrieve or even bury his body,” said Joanne. “I wonder why not? Maybe he was lost down here? Ran out of light, fell like Milo?”
“More likely someone bashed his skull in,” added Charlie. “Went cave-crazy.”
“Excuse me, but ‘cave-crazy’ is not a thing,” interjected Joanne.
“Perhaps he was the last one left,” said Bridget. “The rest were already gone—or dead.”
Dale sighed and dropped to a cross-legged position, back against the wall, almost mirroring the posture of the mummified body.
“Milo,” said Dale, “do you know anything about a lost Japanese caving expedition? Or any caving expedition to this region?”
“No,” said Milo, shaking his head. “I mean, Japan conducted a number of field projects over the prewar decades . . . mountaineering, jungle treks, Antarctic exploration . . . I don’t know of any Japanese caving expeditions in this area, certainly no missing or dead cavers.”
The group’s discussion almost immediately devolved into three separate debates, each entertaining their own theories. Eventually, Dale cut the entire group off.
“Here’s the bottom line,” said Dale. “We don’t know a goddamn thing.”
Interrupting the following silence, Logan cleared his throat. “We do know one thing,” he said. “One lost expedition is eminently explainable. Two . . . is not.”
The cavers made their way back to camp in silence. Fatigue hit Milo like a hammer, the hours of darkness and exertion, lack of appetite, and bruising fall joining forces in brutal harmony. The base camp chamber felt warm and inviting. Not for the unvarying temperature, but for the homey overhead lighting and the prospect of a meal and a sleeping bag.
Milo shed his pack by the entrance to the tent. Logan did the same. Everyone took a moment to draw clean water from the long, deep drainage crack. Pausing, Milo wiped off the worst of the mud and crystal fragments from his coveralls. He didn’t make much progress with the muck before giving up—trying to stay clean was a losing proposition.
Walking back past the supply depot, Milo glanced at the weather report taped to the largest plastic case. As Dale had announced, it called for unseasonably heavy rains over three consecutive days, along with accompanying travel advisories. Milo looked up at the massive waterfalls, wondering if they’d grow. It was difficult to imagine them pouring with any greater ferocity.
As he made his way across camp, Milo’s thoughts drifted to Bridget.
It’s hard to see you, she’d said.
Milo tried to think of something to say. Maybe I’m sorry things got so bad between us.
Or Let’s start over, learn to be friends again.
Or I still think of you every time I close my fucking eyes.
The last one hurt to admit. Worse, it still might have the power to hurt Bridget as well.
Milo almost stumbled over a glint on the ground a dozen feet away from the muddy latrines. Bending down, he picked up a glinting bolt anchor. He turned it over in his hands, brushing clinging dirt free of the corroded metal, seeing the faint imprint of an imperial chrysanthemum flower on the neck.
He shook his head incredulously. He’d personally searched every inch of the floor; so had Bridget and the others. But now the missing anchor bolt was lying in plain sight.
Milo struggled to come up with an explanation but could only think of one—now that it was confirmed that a modern expedition reached the cave, whomever first found and concealed the bolt had placed it back out again.