creature mounting their world, claiming it. Its miniature lungs pulsed.
“What are they doing?” she said.
“They must be drawn by the headlights,” said Duncan. “Or it could be some territorial imperative.”
“They’re trying to drive us away?”
“I wouldn’t make it too personal,” Duncan said. But his voice was sober.
They began to patter, like small hail, on the hood and roof and windshield. Now that she knew what they were, Molly could see them in the lighted mist with their tiny legs and arms stretched wide.
“Or it could be the typhoon affecting them,” Duncan went on. “Animals are sensitive to change. With the low-pressure cell building, their rhythms go haywire. Lemming behavior. One dives, they all dive.”
“This is awful,” she said.
The pat of bodies became a rattling, a squall of miniature carnage.
“But at least it’s not the rain.”
“It’s unnatural.”
“It’s just a few frogs.”
“A few?”
The windshield was layered with bits of tissue. They were casting themselves down by the scores, catapulting from the trees. She saw a mother, her back swarming with tiny young. The wiper blades went to work and mangled them. The hood looked like a butcher block. Molly hated it. The death and mutilation were senseless.
Plainly, Vin had never witnessed such a thing. He gripped the wheel, and the tattoos on his skinny forearms —crude lines and circles and suns, his magic symbols—rippled. He believed in other worlds. And here was this, this curse, a hailstorm of frogs.
Vin drifted to a halt. He craned his head up to see inside the strange torrent. The banging grew louder. He was staring at her. She saw his fear. It made her more afraid.
She put her hands against the roof, as if it might collapse. The metal throbbed. “We can’t stay here.” She had to shout over the noise.
Like vomit against the windshield, the forest puked its creatures at them. It sickened her. She glanced around.
Luke’s eyes were closed. How could he sleep through this? And he was smiling.
Duncan said something in Khmer, his tone calm. He said it again. Vin nodded. They lurched into motion.
Duncan spoke into her ear. “It’s okay, we’re going inside now. They’ll stop, Molly.” His hand was on her shoulder.
She could barely see through the plastered glass. Up ahead, like the mouth of a cave, the forest parted its lips. “Faster,” she whispered.
The forest yawned open.
13.
Roots and stones rose up from underneath the fog. Vin picked up speed. The Land Cruiser hopped and bounded, tools rattling in the back.
They entered.
Instantly the darkness changed. The moonlight vanished. It was like mercy. The hailstone beating quit. The frogs stopped.
The wiper blades were squealing on dry glass.
Their battle was over, but Vin didn’t slow a bit.
Molly hunched over and peered through her side window like it was a porthole. Dark shapes reeled past, trees as thick as bridge pillars. The Land Cruiser lunged over roots like big swells, throwing her against the door.
Duncan barked something at Vin. The boy ignored him, still racing from the animal assault, driving blind. In a way, Molly was relieved by his dread. It validated her own. His fear gave her a fear to settle. She placed one hand on his arm and found he was quivering.
The wiper blades scratched at the crust of frogs. Forward vision returned in streaks. The mist flared in sudden white eruptions. Blackness and light.
Abruptly a huge face jumped up in front of them. Vin braked and swerved. Even so, they banged against it, not ruinously, but with a jolt.
“My God,” Duncan whispered.
Molly unclenched her hands from her camera.
The stone head was as large as the car.
The wipers clawed at the rusty glass. Duncan patted Vin’s shoulder. The wipers stopped. They stared at the head’s tilted eyes.
Molly lifted her camera. Fog edged through the dark trees, sliding in slow, soundless white bunches between the strings of vines brewing up around the stone head.
Time had partially melted its demonic rage. The head had rolled onto one rounded jaw, part human, part animal. Its angry, bulging eyes had eroded over the ages. All around lay more pieces of toppled giant statuary.
“What on earth?” said Molly.
“A warrior icon,” said Duncan. “A holy warrior.”
“With fangs?”
“A wrathful deity,” Duncan said. “A guardian.”
“Guarding what, though?”
“That’s the question. I don’t know. They usually don’t appear singly. There must be more like him around here, sentinels to warn the enemy away. But away from what? And look at the style, crude by Angkor standards. Primitive. Old. Molly, this goes back.” His mind was churning.
She wasted a shot through the crappy windshield.
“Something’s out there, Molly. This is big.” His voice grew larger. “Why didn’t you tell us?” he said to Luke.
But their guide was deep in REM sleep. Molly could see Luke’s eyes darting beneath the closed lids, stormed by dreams.
Duncan rolled down his window for a better look, and Molly braced for the amphibious stink. But the air carried a rich, potent scent full of flowers and fertile soil and, for all she knew, tigers and old rain.
“How can this be?” he murmured to himself. His excitement infected her.
“I need pictures,” she said suddenly, and fumbled in the camera bag between her feet, feeling for her wide- angle lens and the strobe flash.
She opened her door. The story quickened in her, morphing, branching off into a completely different narrative. They had set out to find one thing, a few bones from a war, only to discover something monumental. Punt the war, this was Indiana Jones territory.
The story would begin here, she determined, fog swirling, with the blood-encrusted Land Cruiser held at bay by this ferocious head. She backed off to shoot the vehicle, its fender bent around the head. Pieces of hundreds of frogs smeared the grille and hood and rooftop.
She angled right to get Duncan’s stunned expression as he approached the beast. Her flash made small explosions. He touched the carved face. He ran his palms over its blind eyes. He peeled off rug sheets of lime- and rose-colored moss.
Vin stayed inside his getaway car, engine idling, as spooked as a thoroughbred.
Light from the headlight beam played up the great flat nose, a ridiculous shot. They’d discovered a nose? She compensated with her own light, prowling for more shots.
“I know him,” Duncan said. “
“A fetish,” she said, prompting him, capturing his moment of discovery.
