FSE

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Cold is the wind that chills me down to my bones,

and Cold is the knowledge that, for this, I've abandoned my home.

Cold is my sorrow, like a knife in my chest,

and Cold is the path that I chose,

for what worth can be found in glory in the lands that I roam?

~ Æther Realm - The Sun, The Moon, The Star

May 21, 1548

Campeche, Yucatán Peninsula, New Spain

Francisco Rodrigo inhaled.

His canine nostrils were filled with the scent of Flor de Mayo blooming in the warm New World spring. With a contented grin the jackal gazed out at the great gulf on the western edge of the peninsula.

The galleon_Nuestra Se ñ ora de la Asunci_ón sat placidly on a smooth sea a mile off shore. Francisco was many miles inland, but the wooden colossus he'd sailed on during the perilous voyage across the great ocean from the Andalusian coast to the New World was unmistakable from the hilltop he and his party of fellow conquistadors stood atop. It was an alien imposition on a strange land.

Francisco looked down to the tropical forest far below. Traveling the short distance from the beach to the hill had taken hours, a slog through damp green that was warm despite the relatively small amount of sunlight that perforated the forest canopy in dagger-like sunbeams. And once they'd cleared the mire and made it to the hill, the impossible steepness of it seemed insurmountable. The conquistadors slipped in the mud, heavy steel cuirasses clinking against white Yucatán limestone time and again as each failed to scramble up the slope and slid down the muddy embankment. It seemed an impossible task.

Then they found the stairs.

The hill, they knew, was not a hill at all. Brutal - sometimes fatal - interrogations of natives along the coast had led them here, to this symmetrical hill with four steep sides and stone stairs just underneath the thin layer of mud and overgrowth. To this pyramid.

The natives weren't tortured to tell the Spanish who built the pyramids, how old they were, what they meant. The men with boats made of whole forests and shirts made of iron didn't even ask. They only asked of one thing. They only ever asked of one thing.

"Do you really think they hid gold way up here?"

Francisco turned to see his friend Miguel laboriously cresting the steep edge of the pyramid.

"Dios mio, what a climb..." Miguel panted as Francisco lent him a hand and helped to pull him up from the edge.

"Let us hope so, for your sake _amigo._Otherwise you've made it up here for nothing," Francisco answered with a grin.

Miguel Torres stood up next to Francisco, turning back to gaze out over the jungle and back at the Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. They were both canines, but the pair cut a figure of stark opposition to one another. The jackal Francisco was tall, lean and wiry but strong, his coat gray and speckled with white, black and tan, like a handful of gravel and sand cast upon a slab of granite. He and his family stood out among the other canines back home in Spain, in Málaga - surely some Moorish ancestors, perhaps even Eastern Mediterranean.

Miguel, by contrast, was a Catalan sheepdog, much more common and much more obviously Spanish. Shorter than Francisco and with a stout build, his fur was coarser but his face softer, more cheerful and warm. His fur grew longer, often covering his eyes if he went too long without a trim.

"Find anything yet?" A voice called up from far below.

"We've only just made it up here _capitán!_Give us a moment," Miguel, still catching his breath, yelled back down to the mastiff slowly but doggedly trudging up the side of the pyramid. Several other conquistadors were behind him, following with the same plodding pace.

"Pandejo capitán..." Miguel muttered quietly, turning to Francisco, but Francisco had already started towards the center of the raised platform that was the summit of the pyramid. "Hey, wait up!"

Miguel jogged over to where Francisco was standing. At the top of the pyramid was some kind of structure, he could see that now. The dimensions were hard to gauge - even up here the jungle had covered everything with vines, a few gnarled trees coursing upwards, moss hanging from limbs, and stone covered with centuries of accumulated mud and soil. But very clearly there was a structure underneath it all.

"Are you seeing this?" Francisco asked the Catalan.

"Yes..." Miguel replied, at a loss for words. His eyes scanned the edges, looking for a clue as to the structure's nature or purpose. Near the center he saw what looked like a protrusion of stone, the mud and overgrowth sloping upward to it about six feet higher than the base of the platform. Right below it was a small gap in the mud, a dark hole that seems to tunnel underneath.

"Dios mio..." he gasped, realizing that the protrusion must be the plinth of a doorway leading inside and that the gap _was_a hole to the interior of the structure.

"Help me dig!" Miguel called to Francisco, his claws scraping into the soft mud and scooping handfuls of it away.

Francisco didn't answer, instead leaping up next to him to help dig a way inside.

In only seconds the two canines, natural diggers, had dug away enough to widen the hole to the size of their heads. The dirt flew behind them, the hole widening more and more. Sunlight from over their shoulders poured through, and they could see the stone floor of the room within.

"I think I can slide in," Miguel said, unfastening his steel cuirass and letting it drop to the ground.

Unencumbered by the armor, The Catalan got a foothold on a vine running below the widened hole and hoisted himself up. He stuck his head into the hole, then his shoulder, and with a final wiggle and push he slid inside.

"Miguel! What do you see!" Francisco called in.

"Nothing! Move your fat head, you're blocking the light!" Miguel called back.

Francisco moved his head and once more began digging. He could slip in now if he took off his armor and removed his rapier, but as a conquistador that was almost unthinkable to him. He couldn't believe Miguel had done it in his haste.

"Q_ué tal?_ Anything?" Francisco called again as he continued to dig, widening the hole to the interior of the pyramid.

"Maybe..." Miguel said in a hushed tone. "There is something here. I think it's... oh, my Lord..."

The hole was big enough now for Francisco to climb through even with his heavy steel armor. He jumped up and slid in, blocking the sunlight momentarily.

The shaft of light entered the ancient stone structure again once he was inside and out of the entryway they'd created. The air was wholly unlike the warm, vibrant jungle outside - it was stale and stagnant, cold and dead.

Francisco's eyes adjusted to the dimness. Miguel was holding something. What was it? He was starting to make it out when Miguel stepped forward into the shaft of light.

Francisco's eyes widened as the light fell on the object in Miguel's arms. He stopped breathing.

"It must weigh fifty pounds..." Miguel whispered, like he was revealing a secret.

Francisco could not speak.

"I think it's solid... solid gold..."

Franciso's mind could not believe what his eyes were seeing. In his arms Miguel held a gold statuette. It was as large as a baby and depicted two distinct figures, not one. It reflected the sunlight, casting a warm golden glow on the cold limestone walls. In lines and in strange geometric shapes the statuette was encrusted with precious gems - diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires. They cast a thousand pin-pricks of light, accentuating the golden reflection on the stone walls and punctuating them like stars in the night sky. The slightest movement set the points of white and green and blue and red light spinning and dancing on the walls.

The jackal felt an intense sense of deja vu as he stared at the relic. The relic, it insisted on being called in his mind, though he knew not why.

He could make out what was depicted in gold now: two vulpine forms, nude, face to face and clinging to one another. He squinted - a male form and a female form, clearly, and they weren't just clinging to each other. The female's legs were wrapped around the male's body, his arms around her back.

There was an intense feeling of familiarity with the relic that he could not understand or explain. Though he'd never laid his eyes on it or anything remotely like it before, he could not shake the feeling that he had once known this object. The feeling that this object had once_belonged_to him, and he was reclaiming it. That it was calling to him.

Miguel adjusted the heavy statuette - the relic - in his arms. The multicolored pinpoints of reflected sunlight from the gems danced on every surface of the ancient stone structure.

Francisco licked his lips hungrily. Fifty pounds of gold, innumerable gemstones; beyond the strange feeling of familiarity, the relic was surely worth more than he would ever earn his his lifetime. A fortune.

A fortune...

"Give it to me..." Francisco said in a low, growling voice Miguel hardly recognized as his friend's.

"What?" Miguel asked, brows furrowing.

"Give the relic to me," Francisco commanded.

"What are you saying?" Miguel said, unnerved by Francisco's tone and the strange hunger he saw in the jackal's eyes.

"It belongs to me."

"It belongs to King Charles! Have you gone mad? Have you lost your mind? Have you lost..."

Francisco's duties to the king of Spain and his fellow conquistadors had no place any more. He must possess the relic. Nothing else mattered. No one would stand in his way.

"F-Francisco?" Miguel said, almost a plea for him to stop this cruel joke or return to his senses, unable to believe that he was really seeing his friend unsheath his rapier.

But The Jackal did not reply.

"Francisco!" he cried as he saw The Jackal lunge through the sunbeam, an instant before the rapier plunged into his chest, through his body and out his back.

Miguel's horrific, gurgling, dying scream went unheard. The spray of bright blood that coated his cuirass went unnoticed by Francisco. The Jackal let go of the rapier's hilt and caught the relic with blood-soaked hands before it hit the ground. Miguel's life blood poured from his chest and back and nostrils and pooled outwards and ran in rivulets in grooves between cold stone blocks.

Francisco struggled out of the muddy hole, the entryway he'd helped his friend dig to the ancient chamber that had become a tomb. He wriggled out like a worm, unable to use his arms because of the heavy golden statuette he was holding. With a final kick he finally emerged, sliding down the muddy embankment like a grotesque, blood and mud and filth-covered creature birthed by the ancient structure. Francisco Rodrigo had entered that room, but the creature that came out was almost unrecognizable.

The sunlight blinded him momentarily, his eyes still keyed to the darkness of the chamber he'd just squirmed out of.

"Francisco?"

The jackal's eyes adjusted to the brightness. A tall and bulky figure appeared in front of him. The mastiff conquistador captain had made it up the stairs to the top of the pyramid.

"God in heaven, what is... what have you done..." the captain said in shock, almost in a whisper.

Francisco realized now that he was covered in Miguel's blood. The statuette - the relic - was also covered in crimson, and both were smeared with wet brown mud.

"Francisco? What have you done?" The captain demanded now, louder and more intense. "Where is Miguel? What have you done? In God's name what have you done?!"

The jackal turned and ran for the other side of the pyramid.

"Stop!" the captain yelled, chasing after him. Behind him more conquistadors were reaching the top of the stairs.

Francisco turned the corner, running to the far side of the platform, the side facing away from the ocean and home, towards the endless expanse of jungle in the interior of the wild, unexplored continent.

"Stop him!" Francisco heard the mastiff call out. He looked over his shoulder as he ran - now half a dozen of his former compatriots were chasing after him on the small flat edge at the top of the pyramid.

"Murder!"

There was nowhere left to go. One on side of him was the wall of the central structure where Miguel Torres lay dead. On the other there was a precipitous set of stone stairs descending to the jungle. They were absurdly steep, almost like they'd been intentionally built to be untraversable, to frustrate anyone who sought to climb or descend them quickly, designed to force careful, measured movements.

"Stop him!"

Slow and careful wasn't an option now. Francisco clutched the relic and bounded down the steps as fast as he could, balancing with his free hand.

"He's getting away!" Francisco heard one of the conquistadors shout from behind him. They'd reached the ledge, where the steep staircase dropped abruptly, but none dared to chase the jackal at the reckless speed he was descending. One slip, one misstep would send them tumbling down the stone steps.

"Shoot him!" The captain yelled from the top of the stairs.

A crossbow bolt whizzed past Francisco's head as he continued frantically down the steps. He'd almost lost his balance several times, but now he was halfway down. If he could make it to the line of vegetation he would be free.

Francisco clutched the bloody relic tight against his metal chestplate with his right arm. His left arm was stretched outwards, raising higher and lower to help him keep his balance. He slipped, almost losing his balance once more, his balancing arm shooting almost vertical above his head.

"Shoot him!!"

The crossbow bolt pierced through Francisco's forearm, the iron bodkin tip striking and shattering his ulna. The force of the impact and the shock of the broken bone pushed him off balance. Before he could even register the pain from the injury he was falling forward. His mangled left arm was useless and he refused to loosen his grip on the relic - Francisco's body and face took the full force of the fall, unbraced.

The mastiff captain and the other conquistadors watched on from the top of the pyramid as Francisco's body bounced and rolled and smashed violently down the steep stone steps far below. The clank of metal on stone rang out like a cannon with each impact. They saw him flip and tumble down and down the stone stairs, careening uncontrolled a hundred feet to the bottom. With a final savage crunch the jackal's body hit the muddy embankment at the base of the pyramid.

The conquistadors did not speak immediately. The sudden silence was a stark contrast to the violence they had just witnessed.

"Is he dead?" one of them finally said, irreverently.

"Has to be," the captain answered. Looking down at the battered body far below, none doubted his assessment. The fall down the stone face of the pyramid seemed unsurvivable.

"Should we check?"

The captain waited longer than his soldiers expected before answering.

"Yes. But it will take some time to get down there if we don't want to end up..."

He didn't finish the sentence. Francisco, far below, was moving.

"Dios en el cielo, he's alive..." the captain said, almost under his breath.

"Should we..." one of his soldiers started, but before he could finish his thought the group watched in equal parts disbelief and awe as Francisco rose to his feet. They all knew it would take them several minutes to safely descend down to where the injured jackal was. This was not an option, they all also knew, as they watched Francisco turn up to look at them, then dash into the dense New World jungle. He disappeared into the overgrowth in seconds.

"No," the captain said, answering the soldier's unfinished question. "The jungle will take him. He has nowhere to go. He's as good as dead."

• -

Francisco Rodrigo wept.

The pain in Francisco's shattered arm was beyond description. The shock of his injury had long worn off, and in its place was a constant fiery burning. It was as if his bones had been replaced by jagged shards of glowing-red campfire embers.

Through tear-filled eyes he looked up at the night sky. The moon and the constellations were the only familiar things now. They were vestiges, it seemed to him, of a former life; they looked the same here as they had when he was a child in Spain. But the animals and plants, the sounds and the smells, and the heat - dear god, the oppressive, humid, overbearing heat of the New World, even at night - these were all alien.

Somehow it must have infected him. Poisoned him. To take leave of his senses so suddenly when he saw the relic, what other explanation could he come up with? For him to...

"Murder..." Francisco whispered in the dark as another tear dripped down the fur on his face.

Just as the New World was alien and unfamiliar, so too was his heart. The moment played over and over in his head. Why? Why had he done it? Was it the relic that drove him to kill Miguel? A sickness in this strange New World? Or more terrifyingly, did this impulse come from within his own heart?

He told himself that wasn't the case, that it must be some curse on him that drove him to that moment of madness. But even as he tried to convince himself of this, even as he cried in the moonlight on the jungle floor trying to distract himself from the scalding pain, he still clutched the golden relic tightly to his chest.

• -

On the morning of the second day Francisco could no longer move his left hand or fingers. The blood had matted and congealed in his fur, and the exposed skin on his palm's pad and around his claws had turned a sickening bluish purple.

When he first arose he thought the pain had subsided, but the moment he tried to get up he realized that the slightest movement or touch to his dying left arm would trigger a searing bolt of blistering pain. The arm hung limp and useless at his side as he started again through the jungle with no destination or plan.

Nothing Francisco had seen in his life compared to the denseness of the foliage here. He was lucky if he could see more than thirty feet in any direction at any time. He tripped and stumbled over vines and roots, his feet sank into mud. Every time his left arm so much as brushed against leaves there was a fresh wave of pain.

He didn't even realize he was still carrying it. Francisco still held the golden jeweled statuette to his chest with his right arm, covetously held tight against his cuirass, fifty pounds of metal that was as worthless here in the jungle as the anchor on the Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. Yet the thought of discarding it never entered his mind.

Francisco ran out of energy to continue forward not long after noon, when the jungle was quiet and still and the air was thick, when the creatures who lived there knew to sleep and hide from the oppressive heat. He sat on a fallen log to rest but did not have the strength to stand again. His mind did not wander. It danced and vaulted to different disjointed moments in his life.

He thought of the wooden boat his grandfather fashioned for him when he was a child in Málaga. He'd brought it with him to the Andalusian coast nearly every day that summer. The boy Francisco would sit in the water and hold the toy boat at arms length, close one eye and line it up the with the three-masted galleons heading west for the pillars of Hercules and on to the New World. He promised himself that one day he would be on one of those galleons.

Francisco's arm was dead now. The dead blood poisoned the rest of his body and polluted his mind with hallucinations. He sat still, as still as the jungle while his dying brain fired neurons and synapses at random. It sent a flood of memories and emotions, some real, some imagined. At moments he smiled. At moments tears rolled down his face.

It was dark when Francisco tipped over backwards, a dead tree falling in the forest. Through a hole in the jungle canopy he saw the stars in the clear sky. They were moving and dancing, the constellations telling a familiar story he could not understand. They were speaking to him, through the frogs and crickets in the darkness around him, speaking a language at once familiar and foreign.

The stars formed new constellations. He saw himself. He wore strange clothes and spoke in a language he recognized but did not understand. He was holding the golden statuette.

Now the moon crossed through the Jackal constellation and shattered it, the stars dashed and scattering like fireflies. The Jackal in the stars dropped the golden statuette and the moon stole it from him.

Francisco crawled now on the jungle floor, chasing the moon. For ages immeasurable he clawed and crawled and slithered, the moon high in the sky above him but just out of reach.

The jungle canopy parted ahead of him. The thieving moon was resting just out of arm's reach. Francisco reached out for it, his hand obscuring it like galleons sailing west for the New World.

Francisco came to the edge of the forest, to the huge hole in the Earth that was the reason for the break in tree cover. It was a cenote, one of the sinkholes filled with clean, cool water that dotted the entire Yucatán. It was a hole in the jungle just as the moon was a hole in the night sky.

The Jackal peered over the edge into the still waters. He saw his reflection in the water and just behind him he saw the thief, the moon. He reached out to strangle it but could not reach.

The Jackal leapt with the last remnant of strength he had left in his body. He soared up into the sky, his constellation reflection coming down to meet him.

With a huge splash Francisco fell into the water.

The Jackal had caught the moon and killed it, retrieving the golden statuette from the thief, reclaiming his fortune. The remnants of the dead moon rippled far below him as he soared higher into the sky.

Francisco sank down into the black water, pulled inexorably deeper by the weight of his steel cuirass and the gold statuette.

The Jackal inhaled to taste the scent of the thief's demise, opened his mouth to drink in his victory over the shattered moon, and the cold, clear, sacred water filled his lungs.

---

Swallow, and take what you thought you were meant to be

and reconcile it with who you are.

Another lesson learned in time, but oh, you'll find

you don't know what you want 'til it's __gone.

~ Æther Realm - The Sun, The Moon, The Star

May 21, 1892

Southern Pacific Rail Line, Sonora, Mexico

Frank Roderick exhaled.

Twin pillars of tobacco smoke flowed from the jackal's nostrils into the stale air of the dining car. The smoke rose slowly, a tobacco nebula, its shape billowing gently and spreading slowly like a drop of blood in water before joining the haze inside the jostling train car.

Frank's eyes didn't leave the older gentleman sitting across the table from him.

"I had the roast mutton for lunch. Roast mutton and potatoes. Not typical noon-day fare, no, and, mind you, I was not expecting a gourmet regalement on a locomotive in Mexico, but it served well enough after six weeks of flat breads and beans. I suppose I was looking for a taste of home," the Catalan sheepdog said as he eyed the menu and Frank eyed him.

"And where is that?" Frank asked.

The Catalan looked up. His eyes were partially covered with the long fur that is characteristic of Catalans. He wore a pair of spectacles loosely, but even behind those layers the warmth and friendliness in his eyes shone through.

"Pardon? Where's what now?" he asked.

"Home, Dr. Hightower! From whereabouts do you hail?" Frank answered with a fake smile.

"Oh! Massachusetts. Cambridge, more properly. Well, not properly. That is to say, not originally. I'm from Virginia originally, but I've lived in Massachusetts for most of my life now so I'm more comfortable saying that's home, yes. And please, no need for honorifics or formality. Call me Michael."

"Of course, Michael," Frank the jackal, the con artist, said.

Frank had sized up this Catalan Michael Hightower the moment he'd stepped onto the train. Yesterday when they'd boarded in Mazatlán he carried much luggage but had no porter. He looked out of place and lost, expensive and colorful clothing standing out against the brown and grays of the desert and those who lived and died there.

Frank had intercepted him that morning under the guise of friendly conversation. He charmed his mark easily over breakfast in the same train car they were in now. When they shook hands Frank felt how soft the Catalan's palms were. His manner of speech gave away that he was well-educated, much more so than Frank, whose formal education had ended in primary school.

So Frank did what he was exceptional at. He adapted. He changed his manner of speech to better suit his target. He crafted a back-story for himself whole-cloth. He wasn't a cheat who fled to Mexico because he was a wanted man in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and Colorado, a criminal who was desperate now that he'd almost run through the last of the cash from his last big score. No, definitely not. He told this Catalan academic that was a surveyor with the rail line out of California, that he had a crew and they'd spent the past month plotting a potential course for a connector line from Mazatlán to Mexico City. All lies. And Dr. Michael Hightower believed every word of it.

They'd arranged to eat dinner together that night. If Frank was going to rob this out-of-place traveler he needed more information. He needed to know exactly what the professor was doing here, and he needed to know exactly what was in those bags. He needed to know if it was worth his while and, more importantly, worth the risk.

"Massachusetts? You're a long way from home then. And you say you've been in-country for six weeks?" Frank said with a smirk, leaving the implied question unasked. This traveler Dr. Hightower gives away information too easily, trusts too readily someone who he's just met. Frank figured that out almost immediately. An easy mark. An easy mark with much luggage and no porter. All that Frank needed to know now was exactly what the doctor was carrying in those bags.

"Yes. Well, to be quite transparent, Mr. Roderick..."

"Frank, if you please," the jackal said.

"Certainly. To be quite transparent Frank, it's not nearly so interesting as surveying a new rail line. No, no. Simply research. Academic research."

"Come now, Michael, it can't be that dull," Frank said, using verbiage and intonation he never would if his aim wasn't to mimic and placate his target. "What manner of research? What's your area of study? It must surely be important to send a man from Massachusetts to Mexico."

"Well. Yes, well..." the Catalan started.

The train car swayed with the steady _click-ick clack-ack, click-ick clack-ack_of steel wheels on rail. Teaspoons clinked on porcelain, silverware on ceramic, indistinct chatter from other passengers and tobacco smoke filling the train-car. Frank remained silent.

"...my area of study. Well you see, I study history. Ancient history, to be specific. And, to be quite very specific, my area of academic focus is pre-Hellenic civilization in the Near East."

"That's outside my wheelhouse, I won't pretend to understand what that means," Frank said, truthfully.

"No worries there sir, it's a niche field to be sure!" the professor answered. "In essence, the area east of the Mediterranean prior to 1000 B.C. Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. Babylonia, Assyria, Akkadia, Sumeria. Sumeria predominantly, actually. The oldest of the lot."

"Those are some new words for me," Frank said, his persona slipping. "But I know the Mediterranean is a long way from Boston, and an even longer way from Mexico. What brought you here?"

The professor's eyes darted downwards. Frank noticed. The question had been answered without a word - it was the satchel bag. The Catalan had it with him that morning, he had it with him now. Whatever was in that bag prompted him to spend weeks traveling. It could be worth a fortune.

"It's interesting. There was a civilization here in Mexico when the Spanish first arrived four-hundred years ago. The Aztecs. They were contemporaneous with the Spaniard Conquistadors chronologically, but technologically and socially, they were more akin to much more ancient civilizations. The ones I study."

"So you thought you could learn something about these 'Soomerans' by studying the Indians?" Frank asked, trying to piece the puzzle together.

"Sumerians, yes. Well, in part. In the abstract, but not directly. Of course not. Thousands of miles and thousands of years between. There have always been curious similarities like pyramid construction, but it was always thought that there was no direct influence from the Old World onto New World civilizations."

_Click-ick clack-ack, click-ick clack-ack._The sounds of the train filled in for Frank's silence as he tugged the sleeve of the plain but well-crafted_Harrison & Riley_woolen tweed overcoat he wore andtook a drag from the cheroot he was smoking. Frank may not have been sophisticated like this professor, but he wasn't dumb. It was always thought there was no contact, the Catalan said. _Was_always thought. Until now. They found something. They found something and the professor came here to get it. He's carrying it now, right now.

He's carrying it in the satchel.

"But there was, wasn't there?" Frank said with a grin.

"It... it would appear so."

No need to play it cool, Frank thought. He's telling you everything.

"What did you find, Michael?"

"Something impossible," the Catalan whispered.

Frank hesitated, thinking the professor might be exaggerating, but he could see in the Catalan's eyes that he was serious.

"They thought it was a hoax, initially. My colleagues at the University of Mexico, I mean, they found it. They deal with that frequently, you know, locals looking to sell forgeries to wealthy antiquarians. But this was different. It's not Aztec in style. Not a hair. I've seen two others like it, and both were unearthed in Ottoman Iraq. Neither was a fraction as ornate as this, almost like the ones we found were copies."

"What did they find? What was it?" Frank interjected, growing impatient and excited.

"A figure. A statuette, more properly. But as I say, not in an Aztec style. And not of an Aztec god. It's a statuette of a god that is more properly in the pantheon I typically study, that of ancient Sumeria, which is why I came to investigate and retrieve it."

There it is, Frank thought. _Retrieve_it, he said. He has it with him, right here in that satchel. But was some old statue worth it? Maybe, but how could he move it? Who could he fence it to, who would buy it? It's worthless if it can't be sold. This doctor spews a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but he sprinkles it with useful information. I need to know more.

"Fascinating," Frank said, feigning interest. "So, it's of some ancient god from the time of the Bible?"

"Even older than that. It's a fertility god - well, rather, we _believe_it is a fertility god. And more properly it's _two_gods acting as one. The figure is - and you'll pardon me, but ancient cultures didn't have modern sensibilities - the figure is of two foxes embracing one another and locked in coitus, but it represents a single entity. Later cultures in the region had similar gods that followed that pattern, two lovers worshipped as a single being, with names that were similar across cultures - Azrel, Ashrael, Zer'a-El. We think those represent a continuity that stemmed from Sumeria."

Frank waited for the professor to continue, but he did not. He could tell this was all very important to the academic, but all he cared about now was getting more information about the object itself. Still, he couldn't be too forward. Show it to me, Frank wanted to ask. Show me this relic. But it wasn't time yet.

"How did it get here?" Frank asked.

"That's the mystery of it. It confounds and vexes me. Even if the Spanish brought it - well, they wouldn't of course. The Spanish were interested only in sending gold back to Spain from the Americas, not sending it over - but even if the Spanish brought it, how would it end up where we found it?"

Frank's mind was screaming. He licked his lips and tried to remain calm. Gold, the professor said. Gold. In the same breath as he'd mentioned the relic, he'd mentioned_gold_.

The jackal took a final drag from the cheroot, exhaling smoke from his nostrils as he snuffed out the stub in a white porcelain train-car ashtray.

"Where did you find it," Frank asked in the kind of cold, forced calmness that might have tipped off someone less trusting than Michael Hightower.

"At the bottom of a cenote."

"Cenote?"

"A freshwater spring, they're rather abundant in the Yucatán. Actually, they're more like spring-fed ponds than a spring you might be used to. Limestone sinkholes with steep sides filled with clear water."

"And you found the relic there?" Frank asked, verbalizing the word the object insisted on being called in his mind.

"Yes. We think the ancient Indians who lived in the region viewed cenotes as a kind of spiritual portal between worlds - a gateway from life to death. They would throw their treasures into the water as an offering to their gods. Recently my colleagues have begun diving expeditions to locate artifacts."

"What kind of treasures?" Frank asked. He couldn't help himself.

"Artwork, like the statuette they found, though different in style. Weapons of obsidian and flint. Jewelry made of conch shells and jade and gold. Bones, too, from ritual sacrifices we believe. The statuette we found was actually laying next to a skeleton - a jackal we believe, as it happens. Not unlike yourself. That supported the Spanish theory, especially given that the bones and statuette itself were covered with a layer of iron oxide residue. Rust. The native Indians did not work iron, so it must have been deposited later."

Frank licked his lips unconsciously, ignoring the parts about the Spanish theory and the conch jewelry and the jackal skeleton. Gold - that was the word he focused on.

"That, incidentally - the layer of iron oxide residue, I mean - made it difficult to at first identify the statuette as anything unusual, something extraordinary. It looked like a ruddy brick when they found it, I am told. It was only they inordinate _weight_of the thing that even made them take note, and when they began to clean it they discovered..."

It was only now that the professor saw the way the jackal was looking at him. There was no curiosity in the jackal's eyes, Michael Hightower could see that now. A sense of deja vu washed over him. He'd seen these eyes before, these very eyes. They were predatory, they burned with ravenous hunger, but he could not place what they hungered for nor where he had seen them prior. He knew only that he had seen them, and the deepest part of him recognized that he was in great danger.

"... I... perhaps I have said too much."

"Show it to me," the jackal growled at Dr. Hightower.

"I... it is getting rather late. If you'll excuse me, Mr. Roderick, I think I'll be heading to my cabin. I should..."

"Show the relic to me," the jackal demanded, baring his teeth.

Dr. Hightower sprung up from his seat. Half the diners in the train-car turned to him as he dashed towards the end of the railcar, his body leaning and gait staggered from the shear weight of the golden statuette inside the satchel he was clutching tightly.

• -

For four hours Frank didn't move at his booth in the jostling dining car, smoking half-again as many cheroots one after another. Other passengers trickled out two at a time. At some point the train crossed the border from Sonora into the American Arizona Territory, but all Frank could see out the window was darkness.

Eventually only the train crew were in the dining car with him cleaning tables, and after midnight there was no one else in the train car at all.

He wasn't thinking about how strange he'd acted at the end of his conversation with the professor. He wasn't examining the things the professor had said, or questioning his own logic about this score. There was a treasure beyond reckoning in that satchel bag. It must be worth a fortune.

He couldn't tell you exactly how he knew, but he knew. It called to him in a way he couldn't explain or justify. The relic itself wanted him to take it.

Frank pulled an unadorned silver pocket watch from the inner breast pocket of his tweed overcoat. Quarter past one o'clock in the morning. It was time.

He put out the stub of his last cheroot in the half-full porcelain ashtray. He looked left and right as he made his way from the dining car to the sleeper car, but he saw not a soul along the way.

Frank knew which cabin the professor was in, having tailed him before making contact that morning. Now he was standing in front of the door.

He considered kicking the door down. It would not have been difficult - the doors to these cabins were more for privacy than security. The noise would have certainly awoken other passengers, though, and the crew would have been alerted, some of whom Frank knew to be armed as a precaution against robbers. Better to play it cool. This mark trusts too readily and is too naive for this country. All you have to do is knock. He'll let you right in.

• -

Dr. Michael Hightower awoke in total darkness, confused. He blinked, his hand searching for his spectacles by touch.

_Knock-knock-knock_came the gentle tapping on his door.

"Yes? Yes I'm awake, who's there?" he said to whoever was on the other side of the door as he put on his spectacles.

Knock-knock-knock was the reply.

"Yes, yes, one moment," he said, throwing off his blanket and buttoning his silk pajamas. By force of habit he reached for his matches to light a lantern before remembering that this was one of the new Pullman cars with electric lights. What a technological marvel - he flipped the switch and the lights turned on. He unlocked the door. He opened it.

The jackal was taller than he'd realized when he was sitting across from him in the dining car. He had the same focused look in his eyes, staring down carnivorously. Michael could feel his throat tightening and his heart pounding with primordial fear he did not understand.

"Oh, M-Mr. Roderick... how can I, I help you?"

"Give it to me," the jackal snarled.

"What?" Michael squeaked.

"Give the relic to me," the jackal repeated, lips curled and teeth bared.

"Mr. Roderick, I..."

"It belongs to me."

"It belongs to Harvard University! Have you lost your -"

The jackal lunged for Michael's throat, gripping tightly and pushing the Catalan back into the cabin. Reflexively Michael reached up to try to pull the jackal's hand away so he could breathe, but even with two hands he could not pry the jackal's life-choking grip. The middle-aged academic was no match for a hardened criminal 20-years his junior.

Michael was too panicked to focus on anything but the hand choking him, trying desperately to pry apart the fingers. He didn't see the jackal reaching down to his boot with his other hand, and he didn't see the short boot knife the jackal pulled out.

The jackal thrust the knife into Michael Hightower, driving it deep into his stomach.

"Euugh-ahh!" the professor winced, crumpling into a heap. Blood poured from the stab wound, staining the silk pajamas a bright red.

The jackal had no use for him anymore. He was focused now only on the satchel bag. The top portion of the bag was open. In the fancy electric light he could see the gleam of gold.

The jackal knelt next to it, like worshiping at a shrine. He reached out for it with single-minded focus, and with effort lifted it out of the bag.

Just by the weight he could tell it was solid gold. More than that, diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires traced every line and feature of the figure of the two conjoined foxes. They sparkled with the promise of wealth Frank had never imagined. He drank it in with his eyes, the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld.

The deafening crack of a gunshot. A section of tweed exploded out from the front of Frank's overcoat as the bullet passed through his body. He felt the warmth of blood spreading beneath the coat and soaking into his shirt.

The jackal turned from the relic to see the professor, laying in a pool of his own blood, still pointing the single-shot derringer pistol he's just fired. He is the one, the jackal thought, he is the one who would stand between me and the relic. He is the one who would steal what belongs to me.

The absolute seething rage that coursed through the jackal overrode the pain he should be feeling from the gunshot wound. Any sense of self-preservation or restraint he might have felt was gone. The eyes staring back at him, those of Dr. Michael Hightower, were full of fear and confusion, but all the jackal saw was an obstacle. All he saw was hate.

With both hands the jackal lifted the 50-pound statuette up over his own head.

"Oh god, no! No!" Dr. Hightower cried out an instant before the jackal slammed the golden statuette down onto him and crushed his skull.

The jackal lifted the relic and bashed it down onto the professor's head again. And again. And again. By the fifth strike there was nothing recognizable left of the Catalan's face. By the tenth Frank was slamming the statuette down only into a spongy crimson mass, thick congealing blood and chunks of brain and pulp and shredded sinew and scattered fragments of bone and whole teeth. It less resembled the a head than it did vomit.

The fog of rage and adrenaline began to clear and Frank realized someone in the hallway outside was screaming. The door was wide open - he'd never shut it.

As his senses returned and he rose to his feet he felt the pain from the gunshot for the first time. Now he could hear a train crewman's whistle in the corridor outside. They would be here in moments, either to arrest him or kill him. Only one way out.

Frank grabbed the derringer from Michael Hightower's dead hand and threw it at the cabin window. The glass shattered and the cool desert air from outside swirled in. Frank could hear the crewmen running down the hall.

Only one way out.

He tucked the golden statuette under his arm and jumped through the window out of the moving train. A jagged edge from the shattered pane of glass sliced his leg on the way out. He landed hard on the same leg, shattering his shin bone just above the ankle.

Frank cried out in pain as the train continued north without him, eventually disappearing from sight. He was still holding the blood-soaked relic.

• -

Frank Roderick wept.

It wasn't just the pain - that was searing and constant, but bearable. The sun was rising now and he could finally see the grisly state he was in.

His leg wasn't merely broken. The bone had punctured his skin and fur, the nub jutting out horrifically. It was covered in sand now, edge and marrow. The part of Frank that processed the situation rationally knew the leg would have to be amputated.

The same part of him knew he might not make it long enough for that to matter. His leg was mostly numb, dead weight in his current condition. The real pain was coming from his gut. The professor's bullet had passed through his abdomen, causing untold damage. Frank didn't know much about medicine, but from hunting he did in his youth he know there wasn't much in that area that wasn't vital.

That was the real reason Frank Roderick wept. That deep-down honest part of him knew he wasn't going to make it out of this alive.

He'd been crawling in the dark before the sun rose. Trying to, anyway. Frank made it less than a hundred yards from the train tracks before collapsing in pain. Unable to stand, he'd turned over on his back and pushed himself head first along the ground with his one leg. He could only use one arm to assist, the other one useful only for holding onto the relic.

The relic._In the rapidly brightening daylight he could see it now in all its splendor. His situation might be nearly hopeless, but if he could get past this - just will himself to drag his dying body to a town, find a doctor, avoid the law, survive - if he could do all that, he would have untold riches. He would have _this.

For hours Frank willed himself on as the sun rose higher in the desert sky. The sand became uncomfortably hot as Frank pushed himself through it along the ground. His leg and abdomen became so painful that each time he pushed, moving just a few feet, he had to stop for a minute or more to recover. Occasionally he would prop the golden relic on his chest and just stare at it with a strange sense of familiarity. It comforted him in a way that went beyond the promise of fortune. He did not understand, but it motivated him to continue pushing on.

Around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when the desert heat was boiling at its zenith, Frank was becoming delirious and weak from thirst. He hadn't had a drop of water since the night before. From the gash in his leg and his bullet wound he'd lost a significant amount of blood.

He stopped again to gaze at the relic. Its base was stained with the murdered professor's blood. Frank licked his dry, cracked lips, heavy taste of iron. Off to his right side he heard water flowing, like a waterfall, and he no longer had the presence of mind to question whether it made sense to hear cascading water in the middle of the desert.

Frank turned his body with considerable effort, like navigating an unwieldy ship, so that his head was in the direction of the waterfall. With his one uncrippled leg he pushed again, through the sand and through the pain.

It was close to nightfall when he reached the source of the sound. He propped the relic again on his chest and laid his cheek on the ground to see it. He was on the lip of a small sandstone crevice at the base of a short cliff, a split in the stratified layers in the rock. The cliff reminded Frank of a curtain, the crevice was like the bottom edge being lifted and held open.

As he inched closer he could feel cool air flowing out from the yawning hole in the sandstone cliff. Deep within water flowed, he could hear it clearly. He pushed himself further, his head was in the darkness now. It felt so good to be out of the heat and the sun. He dug his heel into the dirt and pushed again. Over the ledge.

Frank fell in the darkness. He landed on hard stone half a dozen feet below. His left arm shattered on impact along with two of his ribs.

There was no water. It was a trick of the air, like holding a seashell to one's ear, wind blowing into the crevice and echoing along the walls.

Frank was trapped now. There might be a way out of this cave, but not in the state he was in. Shattered leg, newly broken arm and ribs, bullet through his stomach - he would never leave this place. Frank knew that.

He tried not to focus on the pain. It was so overwhelming that his whole body was numb now. It hurt to move almost every part of him, so after he lifted the relic onto his chest and clutched it tightly he didn't move again. Cool air flowed from deeper in the earth, from cracks in the rock from which were far too small for any living thing to pass through, from the depths of Mictlan. Maybe there was water somewhere down there, somewhere deep. He would never drink it.

Frank's eyes grew heavy. He dreamed the same recurring dream he had for most of his life. He was a child, back in Ohio. He had just finished his chores in the field. The sun had set but the air was still warm and amber. There were fireflies in the field; they flew into the sky when he brushed the stalks of wheat. Smoke was rising from the chimney. His parents were waiting for him on the porch. They would eat dinner and his sister would play the piano and they would sing, all together, and he would sleep in a warm bed knowing he was loved.

He opened his eyes, but there was only darkness. Fifty-pounds of gold and jewels pressed down on his chest. Pain shot through his leg, stomach, chest, arm. The events of the past day flooded back.

Frank cried like he hadn't since he was a child. He could have stayed in Ohio. He could have had a life there. He didn't need to leave home, he didn't have to choose the life he did. How many were dead now because of it? For what? For his greed, dissatisfaction with a normal life? Frank cried and cried, until his eyes grew heavy he fell asleep once more.

He awoke briefly during the day. His eyes barely opened. It must have been daytime because the cave was no longer dark. Beams of sunlight shone in through the sandstone seam. He could see a sliver of blue sky through the hole. He didn't even try to move. He closed his eyes again.

Frank awoke for the last time on the second night. He couldn't feel any part of his body any more. The sky was clear and through the sliver of the cave entrance high above his head he saw stars.

His eyes grew wider. Now the moon was traversing the tiny shard of sky that belonged to him, a visitor in his dying moments. It shone pale and gray and cool. He tried to reach out to it, but he could no longer command his arms to move. He opened his parched mouth to try to drink it in.

But the moon did not stop for him. It continued on, gliding past the split in the rock through which the jackal could see the sky.

Frank Roderick was on his porch in Ohio again as a child, watching the same moon across the field. He didn't have to leave that life. He didn't have to leave his family. He never did. He realized that now, but it was too late. Too late. It was all too late.

Frank closed his eyes. His dreams were of home. His dreams were of the life he could have lived, the one he chose to abandon. The sun rose, and The Jackal exhaled his last breath.

---

"Why won't You let me remember?" The Jackal cried, tears streaming down the fur on his face as he knelt on the glittering, ephemeral bridge between the realm of the physical and the divine, connecting points beyond where eyes could see in both directions. "Why won't You let me remember who I am?!"

'The decision must be made with your true heart, Hati Hr** óðvitnisson**,death-chaser, moon-swallower.'

The Voice that answered the Jackal's plea came both from the starry void surrounding the rainbow bridge and from inside his own being, from everywhere and nowhere, from within and without. The Voice was not distinctly masculine or feminine, yet it was both and neither at the same time. The Voice was everything and nothing all at once.

'Knowledge of your true nature would come with the promise of reward. It would sway your true heart. You must make the decision as a mortal, oblivious and pure.'

"Why..." The Jackal answered with quivering voice, "Why did You make me this way?"

'We did not.'

"You did!!" The Jackal screamed into the nothing. "You created me broken! Broken and diseased!! Why?! Why did You curse me?! Why did You fill my true heart with hate and greed and avarice?! Fated to make the same mistake again and again and again and again?!!"

'We did not. We create the vessel time and again, but We do not fill it. Your true heart is yours to forge. Your fate is your own, Xolotl ,he who cries from regret and shame until his eyes fall from their sockets but who refuses any fortune but misery when given the mortal choice.'

The Jackal clenched his fists and slammed them down against the rainbow bridge. Shimmering waves of color radiated outward on indestructible gossamer.

"And what would You know of mortality?! You, who makes the rules, who has never feared death or felt pain or pondered unanswerable questions, never known anything but absolute power and limitless knowledge... how would You know what it's like?! To make choices with fleeting time?! With corruptible flesh and doubt and confusion and worldly desires?! Of hunger and need, of lust and envy?! You don't, Ashera-"

'You presume much, Our __son. You know not of what you speak. We have lived more lives and died more deaths than you can fathom.'

"And You've always made the right choices?!"

'No. No. But how many chances have We given you, Tiangou, moon-eater? __How many choices? With a hundred names you've chosen evil. An outlaw drifter in the American West, a Spanish conquistador in the New World, a crusading French knight in the Holy Land... a Roman farmer, a Minoan merchant, an Egyptian warrior_ , a tribal_ hunter __in the land between rivers in the time before the land had a name... with a hundred names and through two-hundred eyes you've made the same choice: to murder your brother for a golden trinket. You have made that choice, M** á ***nagarmr, Xolotl* ,again, and again, and again, and again - no one else. That has been your true heart speaking. Yes, We make the rules. But you are master of your own true heart. We craft the vessel, but you are captain of your own Ark.'

"Please," The Jackal said, defeated and humbled, his tone changing now from anger to mournful pleading, "Please, just let me remember. Like I can, here and now... I remember them all when I'm here. Every life. Every choice. Every agony. Every death. But not down there. I can't. I can't. I can't!! If I knew... if I just knew what it meant - what it really all meant - I would make the right choice. Please... please! Please let me remember this time. I'm begging You, let me remember who I am, just this once. Just once. I don't want to disappoint You again. I don't want to do it again. I don't. I don't..."

'Then simply do not do it again, Wepwawet , opener-of-ways, bridger-of-worlds. Make the choice to give instead of to take, to love instead of to hate. The Cycle will not end until you do.

Perhaps that is your true heart, the heart you have when you cannot remember what you truly are and what you stand to inherit. Perhaps yours is a true heart of greed and hate and avarice, of violence and selfishness. Maybe that is your Fortune, Jackal, and thus the fate of this, your world. But that is your choice to make for your world, not Ours.'

The Voice of The One paused. The Jackal wept.

'If your true heart is in the endless Cycle, so be it. The Cycle will, then, be endless. But We will likewise give __you opportunities, endless, to change your true heart. We will provide chances unending, if you decide so - an infinite wealth_ of_ chancesto change your Fortune, until the seas shall boil and the stars shall fall from the sky.'

The rainbow bridge turned dull and gray, filaments dissolving into scattering ash, and The Jackal with a hundred names was breathed into life once more.

---

The sun, the moon, the stars

shine less brightly with you so far.

I never knew sorrow

'til you asked me to follow my heart.

For all the tales I told,

and these whispers of silver and gold,

I'd throw them all away

to gaze on your face once more.

One

More

Time...

~ Æther Realm - The Sun, The Moon, The Star

May 21, 2019

Arizona, United States of America

Franco Rodriguez inhaled.

He'd been doing this job in this land long enough that he was sure he could_smell_water, but there was none in the dry desert air that filled the jackal's nostrils.

He pulled the iPhone X out of the left pocket of his decade-old blue jeans. Even on top of the small hill he'd climbed to survey the surrounding area there was still no signal. They were too deep into the desert, too far from any town. He slid the phone back into his pocket, then adjusted his belt, tightening it on the Taurus Millennium 9mm pistol tucked into his waistband.

Franco had made this trip a dozen times before, but this was the first time he'd gone this route. U.S. Border Patrol was cracking down on his old route and he was trying to chart a new route to avoid them. But now he was lost.

Franco was a_coyote_, paid to smuggle immigrants across the Mexican border and into the United States. The humor and irony of a jackal working as a coyote was not lost on him, but he disliked the term. Too many negative connotations. There were many who engaged in this work who were unscrupulous, taking a paycheck from desperate migrants and then abandoning them. They gave coyotes a bad reputation. Franco had always made it to safety with his group, every trip, staying with them to the end no matter what. In this way he preferred to think of himself not as a coyote but a guide- a guide for those souls seeking a new life in a new world.

But if he was going to call himself a guide he would have to prove it now. The group he was leading - nearly 20, including three families and half a dozen individuals - was running dangerously low on water. So Franco closed his eyes again as he sat atop a boulder, sniffing the air, feeling his surroundings with eyes closed, listening intently for any sign of water.

"Did you make that yourself?"

Franco opened his eyes and smiled. It was the young boy traveling with his group, a Catalan sheepdog. His father, still in Mexico, had entrusted him to Franco the coyote to get him across the border to his mother in America. His name was Miguel. Miguel Torres.

"I did. When I was about your age, I think. How old are you?" Franco asked.

"Ten. I'll be eleven in a couple months," Miguel answered.

"Si, then, about your age when I made it," Franco said, now looking down at the seashell necklace they were speaking about, which he'd worn since he was a child.

"How long ago was that?" Miguel asked.

"Well, I'm 27 now so... what, 17 years ago? Más o menos. Long time," Franco answered.

"That's even before I was born! What's that thing on the end of it?"

Franco thumbed the charm at the apex of the necklace. It was a sea snail's shell, cut in half across the middle to make a spiraling cross-section.

"It's from a conch shell, the top part. Half the shell was gone when I found it on the beach and I thought it looked cool, the way it spiraled, see? So I cut the other half and scraped it on concrete to smooth it out."

"How'd you think to do that?" Miguel asked.

"I didn't, turns out. Or if I did, I wasn't the first. Our ancestors made them like this a thousand years ago. It's called a wind jewel."

They both watched as Franco turned it over in his hand, letting it rest now on his palm.

"I must have seen it in some old book or something. I used to read a lot about that kind of stuff when I was in school when I was little."

"What does it do?"

Franco looked up at the boy in puzzled amusement.

"What do you mean 'what does it do?' It's a necklace," he said to the boy.

"No I mean, it is like, magic or something?"

Franco stifled a laugh. His initial thought was to tell the boy not to be silly, but he decided to have some fun with him instead.

"Ahsi, very magical. When you wear the wind jewel, the wind talks to you. You ask the wind questions, and as it blows over the land and through leaves and in your ears it will give you answers. Here," Franco said, pointing at the boy's heart. "You tell it in your heart what you want to find, and it will guide you there. But it's a special kind of magic, see? It's too bad, I am too old for it to work. The wind only talks to children."

Franco could see Miguel's eyes light up. He was trying not to smile himself.

"Say now, wait a second. Wait just a second. That's an idea, yes? Maybe if you wear it... ask to find us some water..."

"The wind will show me the way!" Miguel exclaimed.

"Certainly!"

Franco, the jackal turned coyote, took off the necklace and handed it to the boy.

"I'll ask the wind!" Miguel shouted as he took the necklace and quickly put it around his neck. Before Franco could say anything else the boy was bounding down off the small hill.

"Don't run off too far!" Franco called down to him, since he was not heading back towards the rest of the migrants.

"I'll find the water!" Miguel called back.

Franco couldn't help but smile. It was impossible to rationalize, but he felt an odd kind of kinship with the boy Miguel, like a little brother he'd known all his life despite having met him only days ago.

It was like the dreams he'd had since he could remember. He didn't tell Miguel, but he hadn't seen the wind jewel in some old book. He'd_dreamed_of it before he found it on that beach.

Other things he'd dreamed too, since he was a child, recurring dreams that seemed more like shredded scraps of memories than imagination. He'd dreamed of strange lands and strange clothes. Being hunted. Blood and death, violence to himself and from himself. The moon, always out of reach. The one that Miguel reminded him of, the brother he never had who looked different in every dream. And the golden statuette. Always the golden statuette.

Franco pulled the iPhone out of his pocket again. Still nothing. In the mapping app's offline mode he could see where he was when he lost signal, but that was a long time ago, and there was no telling where he was now. For half an hour he scrolled across the map looking for something that might give him an indication, but he didn't really even know what he was looking for. It was all featureless desert in every direction now, dry shrubs and cacti as the only landmarks, mountains in the distance on the horizon.

He squinted at those mountains, far to the east. The full moon was rising as the sun was setting. Another night in the Arizona desert, no closer to their destination. What would he tell them all when the sun rose again? All those people depending on him that he'd gotten over the border and into America only to lead astray and into wilderness? What would he do?

"Franco! Franco, come quick!"

The jackal's ears perked and his head followed. It was Miguel, running back up the hill.

"Franco! I found something! Come quick!"

"Water? You found water?" Franco called back, standing and starting down the hill towards the boy.

"No! Hurry, come and see!"

Now Miguel was running away in the other direction. Franco found himself running after him, dead east towards the mountains and the rising moon.

"What is it? What did you find Miguel?!" Franco called out, but the boy didn't answer. He just kept running, and Franco continued to chase after him.

Now he could see a small rise in the terrain ahead, an outcropping of sandstone almost hidden in the terrain.

"I heard it! I asked the wind and the wind answered and I heard it down here!" Miguel yelled. Franco saw the boy get down on his hand and knees, then slide underneath the sandstone cliff. There was a gap there, he saw now as he came to it, a gap in the rock between layers, and now he was close enough that he could hear it too - running water coming from deep underground.

"Miguel?" Franco called, sticking his head into the gap. His eyes rapidly adjusted to the relative darkness, and he could see the boy not far below him in the cavern.

"Miguel? What did you find?" He asked quietly. The sound of water was gone, but he could feel a slight breeze coming from below, cool and damp.

"I found... come and see," Miguel whispered back.

Now Franco could see the floor of the cave, about six feet below. It trailed further down, and turned to the right where Miguel was kneeling and looking at whatever it was he'd found, but it would not be difficult to climb back out. So he adjusted himself, turning around to slide into the cavern feet-first. He thought he heard the water again before dropping down into the cave.

It was quiet and still and cool. Horizontal beams of dying sun before twilight shone in through the gap. He could no longer see Miguel - the boy had ventured further into the cave, just around a slight turn where Franco could not yet see.

"Miguel?" he whispered again, taking slow steps forward.

Now the boy came into view again. Miguel was kneeling over... something.

"What is it?" Franco asked again.

Miguel stood then, revealing the sight to Franco. Gleaming white bones, the grotesque smile of a canine skull. A jackal's skull.

Franco took a few more slow, tenuous steps forward towards the skeleton. It was still wearing scraps of tattered clothing, pants half rotted through over a broken leg bone, an old tweed overcoat. Creeping closer he could see through his exposed ribcage. Broken ribs. A bullet hole in the woolen fabric of the overcoat, right next to a tag that said 'Harrison & Riley - Denver, Co. 1887.'

The most bizarre feeling washed over him, a deja vu and a dissociation. He looked down at the outlaw Frank Roderick's grinning skull, into the empty eye sockets, and he remembered -remembered - looking out of them.

"He was holding this. It's gold, Franco. Solid gold," a boy's voice whispered to him.

Now the jackal turned to Miguel and saw, for the first time, what he was holding in his arms, struggling with the weight.

It was the golden statuette from his dreams. The two entwined foxes, gold with jewels beyond number tracing every contour - the exact one. No matter what strange clothes he was wearing or unfamiliar the surroundings, the statuette never changed.

Franco felt his mind and soul dissociating even more from his body. Now the dreams flooded into his mind's eye. Not dreams but memories. Memories of lives lived and deaths died, a hundred names and two-hundred eyes. And at the end of every one, the golden statuette. The relic.

"It must weigh fifty pounds..." Miguel said.

Franco's eyes focused on the relic directly, nothing else. The desperate families counting on him to lead them out of the desert and into a new life were of no importance now. The memories of past lives and deaths were forgotten. The relic called to him. It was all that mattered. Solid gold, shimmering with diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires. It had to be worth millions. A fortune.

A fortune...

"Give it to me..." The Jackal growled at the Catalan boy who still wore the magical wind jewel, ehecailacacozcatl, around his neck.

"What?" Miguel said, voice shaky.

The look in Franco's eyes terrified him. Miguel felt primal fear that he did not understand, an ancient danger, a foreboding and monstrous deja vu, fragments of his own memories of violence and dread and betrayal, of his own murder seen through his own two-hundred eyes and repeated across thousands of years.

"Give the relic to me," The Jackal demanded as he reached back into his waistband.

"But I found it. I found it first..." the child whimpered.

"It belongs to me," The Jackal with a hundred names snarled, pulling the Taurus Millennium out of his waistband, finger curling around the trigger.

"It belongs to me. _ It is my fortune _..."