I was afraid my legs would buckle when I stood, but I steeled myself and they held. I concentrated on breathing, on filtering the cool mist through my nostrils. I couldn’t seem to inhale enough of the thin air to expand my lungs.
“Here. These will help.” I must have closed my eyes, because when I opened them, his brown hand was cupped near my face. It contained a quantity of leaves from the woven bag.
“What?”
“Coca leaves.”
I shook my head. “I can make it.”
He grunted, half amused, half exasperated. “It's an honor I do you, to offer you leaves, gringa. Here, they are only for men.”
“No, thanks.”
“Very well, then. Your feet will hurt less when you walk on sacred ground.”
Sure.
“Come.”
Not my sacred ground, I thought. I’m not a religious Jew, just half and half, uneducated in my mother's faith, but as we climbed, as we kept climbing, as the terrain grew wilder and rougher, I kept imagining Abraham and Isaac, walking up the mountain. Surely it couldn’t have been this steep. Little Isaac would have died from the climb.
“You’ll see,” Roldan said. “You’ll see what they have done.”
This time his voice held no reverence for “they,” only revulsion. Two different groups, I thought, a holy they, a profane they.
The rocks were craggy boulders now. Roldan had to show me where to place my hands and feet. He moved confidently, upright in places I had to crawl. It felt like I’d been climbing forever, like I’d be climbing forever. I made myself into a machine, right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg. I didn’t look down. Roldan scanned the terrain with hooded eyes like an eagle watching for prey.
We came to the edge of a deep ravine. I closed my eyes and wondered whether this was it, whether this was what they’d done, whether this end-of-the-world cleft was what I’d crawled so far to admire. Retreat seemed the only option, but Roldan knelt at the side of the narrow path, his hands busy in the underbrush, tugging and shoving at a stand of seemingly rooted trees until they moved aside, all of a piece, as though they’d been mounted on a swing gate. Then we were on a primitive suspension bridge, a narrow span of knotted ropes over jagged rocks and empty air. A single length of rope served as a guardrail, and the structure shook with every step. It seemed impossible that it could handle my weight, let alone our combined weight, but Roldan showed no hesitation. I tried not to look down. I counted steps, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, and then we were on solid ground. He led me across a jagged ridge, past tangles of shrubbery, and the vista opened like a page in a storybook.
Las Ciudades de Piedra. The Cities of Stone. Las Ciudades Perdidas. The Lost Cities.
If the hut in which I’d woken was part of a village, this was its capital, a ceremonial city of stunning grandeur. No birds called out, no insects buzzed, sound itself seemed hushed by the majesty of the site. I understood why Roldan had used the word “sacred.” There was nothing savage about the place, none of the aura of human sacrifice that permeates even photographs of ancient Aztec sites. The holy shrines of the Navajo are natural formations, mountain peaks and high mesas, but this was shaped by humans with care and love and artistry. It was a ruin, yes, a shadow of what it had once been. The vines had taken command, and the moss and the shrubs, but the structure remained, the architecture, the steps, the circles, the areas for crowds to congregate. There were retaining walls, to stop erosion. The circles of ground were covered with emerald moss as perfect as putting greens. The river split before diving into a series of swift waterfalls on either side of the stone steps. The towering mountain peak was iced with immaculate snow.
I turned to Roldan with questions on my lips. How did they do this, make this without machinery? The questions died. He was holding Paolina's gold birdman in both hands like an offering. His eyes were closed and he spoke in a language that was neither Spanish nor English. It wasn’t the Latin I’d heard when my father dragged me to mass over my mother's protests, but it had the gravity of words spoken in church.
Behind him and to his right, What the hell was that? I closed my eyes and squeezed them shut, opened them again, thinking this must be what Roldan wants me to see, this is what he meant when he told me to “see what they have done.” Not a hundred yards away, a blackened hunk of twisted metal scarred the mountainside. It was more than an eyesore; it was a violation, an open wound.
I didn’t feel my feet as I made my way toward the intrusive mound. At first it was simply metal, misplaced modern sculpture, but slowly, it took shape: the shattered cabin, the twisted rotor blades, the partially melted windscreen. At first I thought drug dealers, crashing in the fog, then I remembered the wounded man in the prison hut. I covered my nose and mouth with my hands, and hoped I wouldn’t vomit on Roldan's holy soil. The closer I got, the worse it smelled, a mixture of gasoline and roasted meat and rotting flesh.
How long had it been here? Not a day, not a week. The underlying smell of putrefaction reminded me of corpses discovered in rented rooms by lax building managers, by neighbors returning after lengthy vacations.
A bird called, and I looked up.
Out of the corner of my eye, out of the mist, as though they had taken shape within the clouds, figures materialized, four or five indistinct shrouded shapes. I blinked, and then the shapes were moving steadily toward the wreckage, growing more distinct, larger, becoming figures of little men. Less than five feet tall, each wore a white tunic and long baggy pants. Like Roldan. Pointed white caps covered their heads, and woven sacks hung from their shoulders.
“You see?” Roldan's voice made me start like a deer. “You see. They have come”