The stone was about the size of the ball of Annja’s thumb. It was striated, with differing layers of sedimentary formation that showed brown and gold with threads of red.
“A tiger’s eye?” Hallinger asked.
Annja asked for her camera and it was quickly handed over. “Maybe.” She took pictures from different angles, catching the stone from the best views possible before it was moved. Covered by dust as it was, the stone was difficult to see. But once seen, the spider carved into it was unmistakable.
“Anybody know what tiger’s eye is?” Hallinger asked. “Any geology minors in the room?”
“Me,” a student replied. “Tiger’s eye is a chatoyant gemstone.”
“Oh, that really helps,” someone said.
Despite her excitement at the find, Annja smiled and paused. Even though one of their number was still in the hospital, the students had remained enthusiastic.
“Chatoyancy refers to the reflective ability of the stone,” the student went on. “If the stone has a fibrous structure or fibrous imperfections, it’s called chatoyant. It’s a lot like single-crystal quartz.”
“Is it from Africa?”
“It could be. But tiger’s eye is found in a lot of places, including the United States and Canada. This rock could have been mined or found right around here.”
Handing off the camera, Anna reached through the skeleton’s bony pelvis and plucked the stone from the ground. She turned it over, holding a mini-Maglite on it.
A scarlet spider showed up instantly.
Utter quiet fell over the group. Only the buzz of the electric lanterns was audible.
“That’s the Spider Stone,” someone whispered.
“Yeah,” Annja whispered. “It is.” She rolled the stone over her palm, taking in the smooth chill it held.
“I guess this is Yohance,” another student said.
Annja flicked the light over the necklace the skeleton wore. She checked the image of the river splitting the mountains against the image she’d copied into her notebook. “This is Yohance,” she said.
“I thought he was a boy.”
“The first Yohance supposedly came over to America as a boy,” Annja corrected. “The Yohance in Franklin Dickerson’s narrative was in his late teens or early twenties. The same age as most of you.”
“We could have checked out at the same age he was last night,” someone said.
“We didn’t,” someone else said.
“Did he just drop the stone there?” a student asked. “I don’t see a purse or pocket he was carrying it in.”
“He wasn’t carrying it in a purse or pocket,” Annja said. “He carried it internally.”
“What do you mean?”
“He swallowed it, then defecated it and swallowed it again.”
“Eww,” Amber said. “That’s just gross.” She wrinkled her nose in displeasure.
“I’m sure he washed it in between,” one of the students said.
“That’s how all the Yohances carried the Spider Stone,” Annja said.
“And that doesn’t gross you out?” Amber asked.
“No,” Annja said. “It’s just the way it was.” She shone the mini-Maglite on the tiger’s eye. “After the flesh rotted away, the stone was left behind.”
“It sank through the body?”
“Unless it was released when he voided himself after dying. That could have happened, too.”
Despite the situation, Annja couldn’t help taking a little perverse enjoyment in the discomfiture of the students. You people have a lot to learn about the field of archaeology, she thought.
“What’s wrong with the skeleton’s ribs?” someone asked.
Handing the stone to Hallinger, Annja studied the skeleton. Something was wrong with the ribs. They looked as if they’d been cracked, but she knew that wasn’t the case because the fractures weren’t spaced as they would have been from a blow, or even several blows.
She reached out and felt the cracks, realizing at her touch that they were notches. Upon closer inspection, she saw that they were of different depths. “Those were caused by a knife.” Annja shone the light around and found a rusting knife near the hand of a skeleton sitting up against the wall. The knife had a heavy blade, one that had been made by a skilled craftsman. “There,” she said.
“That looks like a bowie knife,” someone said.
“It’s a fighting knife,” one of the male retirees said. “It looks like whoever that is spent some time gutting Yohance.”
Annja silently agreed. “Maybe the explosion didn’t kill them all at once. Whoever that was may have tried to cut the Spider Stone out of Yohance. But either he couldn’t find it in the darkness or the stone had already entered the intestines.”
“He tried to do that in the darkness?”
“We didn’t find a lantern that seemed to survive the explosion.” Annja directed her beam at one of the nearby lanterns they’d found in the room. The glass was shattered and the frame was bent. “I think he tried to do it in the dark. By feel.”
Someone made gagging noises.
“Committed,” Hallinger commented.
“Very,” Annja agreed. She glanced at the Spider Stone again. What secrets do you hold? She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. “Okay, we’ve got a few more hours before it gets dark. We found one of the things we came down here for, but there’s still more we need to do. Let’s get it done.”
More quietly than before, and maybe a little enthusiastic about their find, the group started sifting through the rubble.
“What about the treasure?” one of the students asked.
“That story is hundreds of years old. I doubt it’s still there,” Annja said. But she realized that didn’t mean everyone else who knew the legend of the Spider Stone felt the same way.