Katie bent down and picked up a long, thick bone, probably a femur. She examined it in the torchlight with interest. “These could be thousands of years old. This place is an archeologist’s dream.”
“So let’s not touch them,” Rocky said, his voice high-pitched. His back was pressed against the cavern wall as if he was trying to get as far away from the bones as possible. Katie raised her eyebrows and dropped the femur.
“This place creeps me out,” Rocky said. “Maybe we should go back...”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Katie said. “It’s just some old bones. Come on.”
She began to pick her way through the field of bones.
James agreed with Rocky: this place gave him the creeps. He didn’t know if the bones were from people who had died in this room or if they’d been placed here. But either way, it seemed to be a clear warning. Turn back or death awaits.
But they’d come too far to turn back now. Too much was at stake.
Besides, Katie was already halfway across the room, and she seemed fine.
So he stepped onto the bones. It was treacherous footing, and he heard several more cracks as bones broke beneath his feet. He glanced over his shoulder at Rocky, who was still pressed against the wall, his eyes wide.
“If this is where you quit, I’ll never stop making fun of you.”
“I know,” Rocky said, not taking his eyes off the bones.
“I mean, we’ve been shot at. We almost died several times.”
“I know.”
“And you still didn’t quit on me. So?”
Rocky met James’s eyes and nodded. He swallowed and slowly stepped onto the bones.
Together, they crossed the room.
Katie was waiting on the other side, but she didn’t make any remarks about Rocky’s fear. For that, James was thankful.
They stepped off the bones and crossed the doorway, into the next room.
James squinted against a bright blue light that emanated from the middle of a large cavern, as bright as the sun after nothing but torchlight. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that it came from a large, blue orb the size of a boulder. It was slightly translucent, like a gemstone, and it had a strange pattern, like swirling clouds. Oddly, it rested on top of a small, spindly tower of rock. There was no way it should have balanced on such a small pedestal, but it sat there anyway, ancient and immovable.
“Is that... Is that it?” Rocky said, his voice hushed.
James approached it, mesmerized by the blue light emanating from within the orb’s cloudy depths. “It’s huge. The stone’s always been depicted as fitting in the palm of the person’s hand.”
“Maybe all those people were actually fifty feet tall,” Rocky suggested.
James stepped right up to the orb. He expected to feel something—heat, a sense of power—but there was nothing. This didn’t feel right.
He reached his hand toward the orb’s glossy surface.
“Wait!” Katie said, her eyes wide.
“Do it!” Rocky said, an excited smile on his face.
James touched the orb.
Nothing happened.
“Can you fly now?” Rocky said.
The glassy surface was cool to the touch. James squinted into the light within, but he couldn’t see anything.
“This isn’t it,” he said, disappointed. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not the Chintamani Stone.”
“Did you know that before you touched it?” Katie demanded.
James was silent. Did he?
Rocky rapped his knuckles on the glass. It made a deep gong-like sound. He put his face close to the orb and peered within. “I think I see something in the middle.”
James blinked through the blinding light. Rocky was right; James could just make out something poking up through the clouds near the bottom, a sort of platform. Could it be...
“Maybe it’s some sort of container.” Katie ran her hand along the smooth glass. “But how do we open it?”
They walked around the orb, searching for cracks, a latch, something to grab onto. There was nothing. The orb was perfectly smooth. James scanned the cavern for a clue. But there was no writing on the walls here, no braziers. It was just empty, rough-hewn stone walls.
James turned, stumped, as Rocky leaned over and grabbed a large, loose stone from the ground. He hefted it in his hand and turned toward the orb.
James realized his plan too late. “Don’t!”
Rocky heaved the stone at the orb. James watched in horror as it flew through the air and hit the smooth surface.
With a resounding crash, the orb shattered. A million shards fell to the ground, and the blue light disappeared. It felt like the sun had gone out, and they were left with only meager torchlight.
“What did you do that for?” Katie demanded.
Rocky shrugged. “Sometimes you’ve just got to brute-force it. I’m sick of all of these puzzles.”
James shook his head but stepped forward, eager to see what lay within the broken orb. He treaded carefully over massive, glassy shards.
The torchlight revealed a small platform resting on the still-intact bottom of the orb. Made from a strange, blue material the same color as the orb, two arms reached up from it. They crossed elegantly, meeting at the top in a sort of claw, with several fingers reaching out and forming a rounded cup about the size of a softball. The exact size James imagined the Chintamani Stone to be.
A sheet of paper, rolled up into a scroll, stuck out of the cup.
“That doesn’t look like a stone,” Rocky said.
James stared at it in disbelief. “I don’t understand. It should be here. This is it.” He could imagine the stone sitting there, held up elegantly, shining blue like the container around it. But it wasn’t there. He scanned the broken shards around his feet. Perhaps the stone had rolled off and was lying among them. But of course, it wasn’t.
“This is it!” he said again loudly. Anger and frustration bubbled in his stomach. Why wasn’t it
