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Beyond the craggy fold of ground they'd been following, another gully opened up, carving into the heart of a plateau. From the tumbled rocks and sandy bottom, desert palm trees rose in shaggy splendor, their green fronds luffing in a high breeze against the sharp blue sky. While vultures launched from the gully's wall, smaller birds flitted among the palm fronds and in the accumulated dead growth that sheathed the trunks of the trees. Birdsong greeted them, for the first time since they'd come to Baja.
Arryo stood below, watching Nigel's face, and no doubt gratified by the naked delight revealed there. Nigel had no poker face, and never had, a trait that often let him down in the real world, but served him well on film, where his telegraphed emotions translated beautifully through a small screen to viewers who'd never experience these places for themselves.
"It's glorious!" Nigel spread his arms to encompass the scene.
Devi walked more slowly up, her camera taking in the rise, the host himself, and finally the scene revealed down below. She propped the monopod, and Nigel launched enthusiastically. "What you see below is a palm oasis, a hidden treasure of deserts the world over. These palms not only provide vital shade and habitat for the creatures of the desert, including the people who live and travel here, they also point the way to something more important." He aimed his gesture downward to the base of the trees where discarded fronds piled up in dull-brown rustling heaps. "Fresh water. A grove of palms like this indicated a dependable water supply down below. Let's go find a drink more welcome than any pub to a man in the desert."
He descended the narrow track toward where Arryo waited. In the narrow gully thronged with palms and the other growth they sheltered, the temperature plummeted, a welcome chill, doubled by the shade. Palm warblers flitted, and larger birds worked among the brush on the slopes.
A few larger stones formed a perfect seating area in dappled shade with the rustle of the fronds overhead. Arryo settled there, putting down his rucksack. He opened it up and pulled out a small brown paper bag, then started tossing old lettuce leaves and vegetable scraps on the sandy ground before him.
Nigel stepped into the semi-circle, and Arryo patted the stone next to him, indicated for Nigel to sit. He eased his throbbing ankle out in front of him, shedding his own pack and sipping on his water. "So, Arryo—"
The guide tapped a finger to his lips, and Nigel nodded his understanding. Devi approached as well, taking a seat with an angled view of the two of them, towering palm trees behind. Surely a fine place to enjoy a few moments' peace, especially after the last few days. The last few weeks, really.
The breezy shade cooled the sweat on his brow and made even the water in his pack all the sweeter.
From a hollow in the sand, another stone emerged. It lumbered on thick, rough legs, extending a broad head in front. Wrinkled skin framed black, glossy eyes and a beak the shade of old ivory. Very old. Not a turtle at all, but a tortoise, a stocky, land-based creature half the size of Nigel's rucksack. It appeared to sniff around, then stretched its wrinkly neck out further to grab a scrap of old lettuce and munch it slowly down while Devi captured the whole thing. Excellent.
Nigel placed his small camera on the ground in front of it as it approached and devoured another scrap. As it drew closer, he made out the approximate grid of gray/brown scales across its domed shell. A few of those scales—no, scutes was their proper name—showed deeper grooves that interrupted the shapes.
Nigel gestured a question toward the ground, indicating his intent, and Arryo nodded. Sinking down from his stone seat, wincing at the fresh pain in his ankle, Nigel settled onto the ground an arm's length from the animal. Lifting the camera, Nigel panned it up over the carapace of the tortoise stopping over the strange markings. Could the creature truly be so old that native visitors to the Spanish wreck had inscribed their journey on its ancient back?
Finishing up its lettuce, the tortoise shifted away, crawling a little toward Devi's position and affording Nigel a better view of its back. An area of scratches resolved into a handprint, roughly outlined. Between the ring and little fingers lay a small circle inscribed with a cross. The markings looked crude, probably made with an arrowhead or flint knife. Could be a metal blade acquired from the foreign visitors who'd begun to appear in the harbors with their wooden sailing ships.
"This is the mother turtle, Mama Tortuga," Arryo said, his voice low and reverent. "For a very long time she lives near here. We bring her food since generations, and she, too brings us food." He gave a little shrug, perhaps an apology. "We never eat all of the eggs, but a few if we need them, or when they are bigger." He formed an oval with his fingers, indicating the size of the tortoises they might eat. "But her...she is the mother of all, marked by my grandfathers' grandfathers, so this one—"he wagged a finger sternly. "We never eat."
He'd been expecting a map, or something that might read as one. Instead, it more resembled some of the pictographs, the handprint serving as a signature, perhaps, of the creator. "You don't think this is merely artwork or commemoration."
Arryo shook his head fiercely. "Not on a living thing, not if they have her alive. They don't eat her and take the shell for other things, no. They want her alive, they want her to wait for us." He tapped his ear with a sly smile. "When I listen close to the grandfathers, I hear a different word. She is not only Mama Tortuga, the grandfathers call her Mappa Tortuga, the turtle of maps."
"And the markings? What do they say to you?"
"This circle, I think it is the coin, the one my mother wears." He tapped his own chest. "When these men have their fire on the ship, they don't care for the gold, but it shines. They have nothing to buy, and they don't trade yet with others who want this."
"Imagine living in a world where gold is of no consequence."
Arryo nodded. "Now, if we have money, we have better food, fuel for the cars and the boats. We have a school for our children because we can't teach them any more all they need to know. Out here, I know many things, but for the other world, the world beyond? I know nothing."
He propped his elbows on his knees, gazing down at the placid reptile. "People come here to take things away. Gold and pearls, salt and whales, people for slaves and for religion."
"What if they came here to see and respect what they saw?" Nigel murmured, and Arryo's head nodded. "If they came to feel the breeze under the desert palms and to meet the whales in their own world."
"And for this, too, we need money. There is always the fight. No, no, no! We make more money from the factory, from the salt or the mine—but those things, they are gone some day. Mañana and mañana. Some day, there is no silver or gold. Some day, the factory to take the salt has killed the land around it. Mama Tortuga, like the mother ocean, if we take a few things, we leave more. We bring her what she needs, and her children grow. The wreck is just another mine, another hole that is empty too soon, but the whales? Every year, they come, and more."
Whales, as a renewable resource. Nigel thought of Luna's large, dark eye gazing at him, out of his element, entering hers. How small were men in truth, compared with the world they lived in. "Do you want to find it? Your grandfathers' wreck?"
Arryo stroked his beard. "If we find the wreck, there is the money for the whales. For the jobs, the boats, the studies. For the work to be careful and strong, not quick, not for today, but for manana and manana."
Tomorrow and tomorrow, to build a sustainable future for his people and his town.
"Why haven't you already gone?" Devi said suddenly. "If you think it's really a map, if the treasure could do all that for you. Why wait?"
"Reasons and reasons." Looking away, Arryo rocked back a little, and his demeanor shifted. "If we look and don't find it. If we find it, and it is nothing. It is wood. Not a mine, but an empty hole."
"It would be the end of your dream," Nigel supplied, and the guide gave a nod, then glanced back at him, a sidelong look, suddenly intense.
"Si, and there is no money, no gold for the whales at all, and then, not even the hope of it." His shoulders slumped a little. "Pero, then I hear of you and your cameras. Soledad tells me, from the Rancho, si? I don't see these things. I don't know what is YouTube, but she tells me even from a hole, even a burnt pile of wood or nothing at all, you can still make money. For me to find this empty, I lose the dream, as you say. But for you. The hole is never empty." Arryo grinned, his eyes sparkling.
Nigel appreciated the man's understanding. "Because I can always spin the story. It's lovely to find things, but people come to me for the story, they come for the adventure, even if the wreck is never found." Nigel sat back, moving his long legs out of the tortoise's path as she trundled across the sand.
"So he's using you." Devi regarded both men. "For the publicity, the tip jar, the hope of more donations. Even if you don't find the wreck."
Nigel scowled. "He's giving me the story, selling it, if you'd have it that way. If all goes well, we both profit by that exchange, even without Spanish gold. People are made of our stories. Stories are what we live by, what we trade on, and what we pass along to our children." He gestured toward Mama Tortuga. "It's like she's waited for us, for the cameras and the world-wide web. For the moment that the story she's been carrying on her shell for more than a century to be told to a world at last able to listen. Because of us."
Her expression said she still hadn't worked out what he got from any of his adventures, but she kept her skepticism to herself this time. "Reasons, you said, Arryo. More than one."
"Reasons," he sighed. "Two." He met Nigel's eye. "I don't know where is the start. Mama Tortuga isn't enough."