Twice A Hero Part 38

"Oh, my G.o.d." She sat down hard on the ground, not even bothering to find a rock. "Then you worked things out with Perrya""

"We came to an understanding," he said. "He was quite a schemer, but he does love Caroline. I'lla miss him."

"So will I. And Caroline?"

"Caroline," he said slowly, "will be happy with Perry. He loves her, and she'll come to love him."

"Yes," Mac said. "And she's found a cause for herself. I never told you she was destined to be a reformer and suffragette, did I?"

He rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised?" He offered his hands and pulled her to her feet. "If all that's settled, let's be on our way. I don't want you saving the life of any other rogues who happen by."

"Believe me," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist, "I have all the rogue I can handle."

"Aha"I did forget to tell you that there's someone else coming with us."

Her smile faltered. "Someone else?"

He whistled. A great gray shape hurled out of the foliage, swift and strong. With a joyful bark Norton flung himself on Mac.

"Norton!" she cried. "You brought Norton to the jungle?"

"He wouldn't be parted from me, the galoot, and I think he was pining for you. b.u.mmer is staying with Mei Ling and Chen. He's got a new home in the Napa Valley and plenty of mischief to get into, I'm sure."

Mac's face was wet with Norton's enthusiastic kisses. "I guess bringing a dog isn't too likely to mess up history. Buta"" She frowned. "Isn't there anything else you want to bring?"

"I have all I need here." He looped his arm around her and rubbed Norton's ears with his other hand.

"There's still a possibility the time tunnel won't work."

He gave her the pendants and folded her fingers around them. "The sooner we go in, the sooner we'll find out."

She looked at the stones in her hand. "They're warm," she murmured.

"So they are."

They gazed at each other, kissed tenderly, and plunged into the darkness of the tunnel, Norton at their heels. When they reached the wall Mac picked up her electric torch, switched it off, and stuffed it into her backpack. "Don't want to leave this behind," she said. "You never know who might find it."

"G.o.d forbid," Liam muttered.

Mac whispered a similar invocation. "Well, here goes nothing." She took one pendant in each hand and held them before the wall. "Grab onto me and keep a good hold on Norton. And pray." She breathed another prayer of her own, waited for Liam to take a firm grip on her waist, and touched her folded hands to the wall.

Mac knew it had worked when the nausea subsided, the numbing disorientation faded, and her first footstep forward hit something light but definitely solid.

The stones were already losing the fierce heat that had come uncomfortably close to burning her palms. She transferred them to one hand and reached down with the other. Her fingers closed on stiff fabric. The distinctive shape told her what it was: Homer's baseball cap. She lifted it to her lips and gave the dirty bill a resounding kiss.

One thing, however, was definitely missing. Liam's bones. Because Liam had never died and left them for her to find in 1997.

She sagged back, and Liam caught her. Norton licked her hand.

"It worked," she said dazedly. "It worked."

Liam was shaking a bit himself. "And did we come to the righta time?"

"I think so." She smiled weakly, though she doubted he could see her expression in the dark. "When I went through the first time, I lost my grandfather's cap. But I guess we can't be sure until we get out of the tunnel completely." She unfolded her clenched fingers from the pendants. "Here. You take one of these until we're out, just in case."

He took the pendant with unsteady fingers. "I confess I'll be glad to see daylight again."

"So will I." She shrugged out of her pack and felt for the flashlight. "Let's get out of here."

Norton, who apparently liked the darkness no better than they did, had bounded ahead, and his barks echoed from an increasing distance as he ran down the tunnel. He kept up his canine communication until Mac and Liam could see the faint illumination of the entrance, and then Norton's lanky silhouette against the brightness of day.

The jungle was not the one they had left behind. The clearing was no longer completely overgrown, there were subtle changes in the buildings, anda There was a welcoming committee waiting for them. A small group of Maya men and women in the simple clothing of farmers and woodsmen, whose features were the same as those on the ancient steles and temples. Norton's hackles lifted, and he growled a warning.

Liam's hand was at the knife on his belt. "Who are they?"

Mac covered his hand with her own. "We're home," she said. "The young man in the fronta I know him. He was the guide who brought me here."

The guide who had led her to the ruins and then left her. His features were the same, but now they were grave and still. He turned to his companions and spoke in a language Mac didn't recognize.

"What do they want?" Liam said. He took a step forward, s.h.i.+elding Mac, and called out a greeting in Spanish.

The young man's gaze dropped to Liam's fista"the one that still held half of the pendanta"and he began to speak in Spanish too swift for Mac to follow.

Liam listened, head c.o.c.ked, and translated. "He says: 'You have the keys. We have waited. Now you return them.'"

It took a moment to penetrate, and then Mac remembered. Fernando's final words to her, in halting English: "You give the keys to the people."

She opened her own fist. The Maya murmured among themselves as she held her pendant on her upturned palm.

"The keys," she said. "The keys to the time tunnel."

Liam gave her a quizzical glance and let his own piece dangle from its leather thong. "This is what they want?"

"I think so." She took Liam's pendant and laid it beside her owna"two unremarkable chips of carved stone against the pale skin of her hand. "I don't understand, buta" She looked at Liam with swift excitement. "I'd thought once that the Maya were probably the best people in the world to come up with time travel. They were obsessed with time. And their great civilization all but vanished over a thousand years ago. Do you think that maybea"

Crazy idea. But no crazier than what she herself had done. And now the modern Maya guide and his people waited for her to restore something that belonged to them. The keys to an ancient tunnel through time.

"Ask them what they'll do with the stones," she said.

Liam did so. The guide answered with measured solemnity.

"He says they'll put them back in the temple," Liam said, scratching his chin. "Bury them and return to theira watching."

"Watching? For what?"

Liam hesitated. In the stillness a parrot called. A warm wind dried the perspiration on Mac's forehead.

"He says that the keys are held in sacred trust from the time of their ancient grandfathers," Liam said. "Until the day comes when they are called to thea other place."

They looked at each other, wordless. Mac was almost tempted to hold the pendants a little longer, to explore all the possibilities revealed at this final hour of her great adventure. The things she could learn, the wonders she could reveal, like the greatest of the Sinclairsa She closed her fist around the stone chips, and nearly dropped them when they flared with a renewed heat that burned into her palm. The charred remains of two leather thongs fell to the ground. She gasped and opened her hand.

The pendants were gone. In their place was a single square of carved stone, whole and complete.

"By all the saints," Liam said.

"You said it," Mac said fervently. "I think I get the picture."

The guide and his companions still waiteda"waited for her to do the right thing. She lifted her chin and walked across the small, infinite s.p.a.ce between them.

"I think this belongs to you," she said, and placed the stone in the guide's extended hand.

The jungle hushed with a preternatural stillness. The guide turned to the others, cradling the stone like the most precious of gems. An older Maya took the stone carefully, wrapping it in a length of cloth.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," Liam said, tilting his hat back.

"It was never ours to begin with. But it gave us something wonderful."

Before he could answer, the guide moved on Mac with startling swiftness and grabbed her hand, turning it palm-up. Liam lunged and stopped in the same instant.

"Look at your hand," he said.

She looked. In the curve of her palm was branded a pattern, Maya glyphs and symbols that exactly matched those on the fused stone key. Burned there by an unearthly heat and an ancient unknown magic.

The guide spoke. Liam's translation was halting. "He says you are marked. He saysa the Old Ones will always be with you."

"That's nice to know," Mac said, her knees a little wobbly. "I think."

Without ceremony the guide dropped her hand and stepped back. "Now you go," he said in heavily accented English. "It is time."

The other Maya began to drift in a semicircle, herding Mac, Liam, and Norton away from the tunnel and toward the wall of jungle at the edge of the clearing. Liam planted himself as if he would resist.

"No one pushes Liam O'Shea," he growled.

Mac almost laughed. This was something completely familiar. "What's wrong, Iggy?" she challenged. "Scared to face the great unknown? Maybe the jungle seems safer than what's waiting for you in my world."

He rounded on her. "Scared?" He grabbed her hand and charged in the direction the Maya wanted them to go.

There was an opening in the foliagea"a machete-cut path Mac recognized. It was the one the guide had made for her, unaltered from the day he'd led her to the temple. She hadn't lost any time at all.

But she'd gained more than she'd ever dreamed.

"This is it," she said, squeezing his hand. "On the other side of this path is Tikal. The Tikal of my time. And thena" She turned for one last glance at the ruins that had changed her life, and the people who, in some strange way, had made it possible.

They were gonea"vanished into the jungle or the temple without so much as a rustle of leaves or any sign that they had been there.

"Well, that takes care of that," she said ruefully. "It's a good thing we won't need a guide to get back."

"You'd better let me go first," Liam said.

"You'd better get used to me doing some of the leading, Liam O'Shea," she retorted. "But maybe we can start by going together."

He gave her a long look, and grinned. "I like the sound of that, darlin'."

She let out a long breath and flexed her hand, testing the burn marks patterned into her palm. They didn't hurt, almost as if she'd had them for years. "I may not have the pendant anymore, but I'm not likely to forget this adventure soon."

"You have a better souvenir than that." He took her in his arms, lifting her off her feet and matching action to words. The kiss was long, heated, and designed to prove that Liam wasn't about to change in fundamentals, no matter how far he'd come in time.

"We're not done adventuring yet, darlin'. But when we settle down, we're going to make up for all the O'Sheas that weren't born in the last century."

Her ears burned as she caught his meaning. "Hey, I'm only one woman, you know."

"Ah, but what a woman." Suddenly he grew serious, setting her down with his hands firm on her shoulders. "You're going to marry me, Mac, and I won't take no for an answer."

"Me say no to Liam O'Shea?"

"I won't let you forget you said that, darlin'."

Norton added his two cents with a ringing bark. Mac leaned back in Liam's arms to pat the wolfhound's s.h.a.ggy head. "Then I guess the sooner we're back in civilization, the better. And anyway"a"she slapped at her arma""the mosquitoes are getting a little too friendly."

"They recognize one of their owna"a troublesome, annoying, persistent littlea""

She covered his mouth. "Watch it, Liam. Remember, I know your middle name."

"And I know yours." He cupped her cheeks in his big hands, devastating tenderness in his eyes. "My th.o.r.n.y Rose."

They gazed at each other like lovestruck teenagers until Norton nudged his muzzle under Mac's hand. She laughed. "We may have left Victorian times behind, but we still have a chaperon."

"And we still have the greatest adventure before us," he said. "Shall we go find it?"

"Just a minute." She shrugged out of her backpack and pulled out the photograph she had carried so long and so far. She walked back to the temple and propped it against the ancient wall, close to the dark entrance.

Liam came up behind her. "You're leaving it here?"

"Yes. It feelsa right, somehow. I don't need it anymore. Not when I have the real thing." She took his outstretched hand.

Thank you, Homer, for sending me out to break the family curse. Even if it never existed.

You forced me to find my own life, and I'm grateful. I'll try to live up to the Sinclair tradition.