Dateline: Atlantis

Dateline: Atlantis Read Free Page B

Book: Dateline: Atlantis Read Free
Author: Lynn Voedisch
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Caribbean. It swirls warm as bathwater, even now, in January, two weeks after the solstice.
    As she pulls herself away from the shore, she allows her muscles to loosen and she floats on the waves. She begins to imagine a series of networked cities, all ancient, joined by Maya ceremonial roads. She envisions the pyramids as new and fresh, covered with red paint and golden ornamentation. Inside a priest sits on a jade jaguar throne, holding an orb, clear and immaculate, searing with radiant power. The priest hums and chants syllables of majesty that cause the air to vibrate. He holds the sphere to the sky. Power surges from the orb, through the pyramid to its base, charging the atmosphere of the city with a purple glow. The priest raises his eyes, and she recognizes Gabriel’s stare.
    Pain jags through her big toe and she stops, gasping and splashing in the water, realizing that in her daydream she’s gone too far. The water has dropped off to a great depth, yet Amaryllis’ foot touched rock. Where is she? On a sandbank? She peers through the spring-like clear water to find a wall. Well, not really a wall, but something long, solid and manmade.
    She dives underneath the waves. Next to her is the tip of a giant stone structure. It widens as it plunges down to the ocean floor, filling her line of sight. She surfaces and swims toward the top of the rock. Amaryllis fights for breath as the waves roll up toward her chin and away. She dives again. The structure is a pyramid, without a doubt. It can’t be a natural formation. Its lines are too regular. The stones used to fit the pyramid together are huge—twenty-ton boulders at least—yet they are meshed with knife-edge precision. She can’t get her fingernail between them. Another thing occurs to her: this pyramid is not built in steps, but is smooth-sided like the monuments of Egypt.
    She bobs up and down, diving and surfacing for a quarter of an hour, finding more impossible things. These walls, unlike those of the Maya structures they found on land, are still smooth. They are weathered and pitted, but not covered over with barnacles and seaweed. She sees the remnants of writing carved into the rock near the top, but can’t tell what language it is. It has neither the pictorial intricacy of Maya glyphs nor the simplicity of Roman characters. It has a modern aspect, clean and stylized, proportionally balanced, as if it were a font designed by an advertising agency. Yet, some of the figures recall the ancient themes of the American Indians: swirling vortices, men with large heads, hunting dogs. The most prominent of all symbols is a cross inscribed with concentric circles.
    Amaryllis’ strength is nearly gone, but she dives once more if only to give the fullest of reports to her cohorts sleeping back onshore. She slips below the surface and feels along the eastern wall, pulling herself down. She is looking for a dark square she glimpsed before, gaping and black. It yawns at once before her, its edges wavy in the ocean swells. A sea turtle darts in front of her, and she constricts her lungs. She streaks to the surface, gulps a huge lungful of air and immediately she’s at the opening again. Seconds disappear as she measures the portal. It’s just big enough to slip through, but will she be able to get back out? A shining gem illuminated by a sun ray catches her eye. She swishes inside.
    With lungs screaming, she scans a tiny chamber, carved from top to bottom with ancient writing. Gold glints from porticos on the sides. A painting is still visible on the ceiling. A carved hand, claw-like and strong, rests on a pedestal in the center of the space. The red hand holds a stone so beautiful, she can’t bear to leave it. In the filtered sunlight that passes through the doorway, the gem dazzles like Venus in the night sky. The morning star—the guide that Amaryllis can rely on. She grabs the jewel.
    Through the door, up to the surface,

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