Passenger (Passenger #1) - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,118

a way of quickly finding it. I imagine we’re close enough for it to catch the resonance.” Nicholas reached into the bag and blew into the harmonica. The call of the passage echoed back twofold, volleying through the empty stones around them. Etta strained her ears, picking through the layers of its call, until she could orient herself in the direction it was coming from. There was something about it, though, a hum she didn’t recognize.

Her whole body tensed. “Does it sound different to you?”

“It sounds as atrocious as it always does.” Nicholas shifted the bag back onto his shoulder. “Shall we?”

She shook off her concern and followed him through the abandoned city. A part of her wondered how long it had taken the jungle to erase most of the evidence of human life—Etta wished she could remember the exact reason why both Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat had been abandoned, but she thought it had something to do with war, and the ever-shifting tide of power that eventually brought down even the greatest of civilizations. Without the resonance the passage had bounced back to them, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to find it at all. While her mom had shown her maps of the city, pointing out where she’d done her dig—if there had even been a dig in her past at all, Etta thought—the pathways were nearly so overgrown, the stone and remnants of wooden structures in such disrepair, she just barely recognized the Bayon when they passed it.

“That’s the Bayon,” Etta explained, catching Nicholas’s appreciative look at the massive structure. “My mom said that there are over two hundred faces on it, if you look—some people believe many of them are of the king who built the city. Jayavarman the Seventh.”

“I suppose that’s one way to ensure you’ll be remembered,” he said. “He’s a rather handsome devil. How do you think I’d look on one of these temples?”

Etta laughed. “How would I look?”

“I couldn’t bear the thought of even your face here, left alone, for only the jungle to admire.” He shook his head. “Never. I’d never allow it. The only thing is to hire an artist to turn you into a figurehead for a ship, so some part of you will always be venturing out to sea where you belong.”

Etta was so stunned by this earnest speech, she lost all capacity for speech herself. He seemed to notice, and ducked his head in scowling embarrassment.

“All right,” she said. “But only on the condition that you give me some kind of a sword. Maybe even an eye patch? Use your best discretion on what will be more terrifying for your future prey.”

“Aye,” Nicholas agreed, exaggerating and deepening his accent, “the very sight of you will strike fear in the hearts of all men.”

She grinned.

The bas-reliefs along the sides of the temple were darkened by rain and clinging green plants, but Etta could still make out the carved panel of what looked to her like a market—people bartering and selling, with fish swimming above them. They walked quickly past images of warriors marching alongside elephants to war, a scene of an enormous fish swallowing a deer, and what had to be a royal procession, following the barest hint of a footpath through the mud. The rain had washed away any evidence that the monks had ever been there, but Nicholas didn’t relax, didn’t lower his guard, until they spotted the passage’s glimmering wall of light floating above what Etta knew was the Elephant Terrace.

The same one her mother had painted and hung above the couch in the living room.

The Elephant Terrace stood a short distance away from the—her mind reached for the name—the Phimeanakas, the city’s first temple. The one that housed a sacred tree buried within it, where her mother had actually done her dig. She eyed the steep stairway that hugged the stacked layers of the temple; the stone seemed almost red compared to the elaborate gray structure that sat on top of it.

What was her family’s connection to this place?

She turned back toward the raised platform in front of them, accepting a hand up from Nicholas as he climbed it. The king had used this terrace to survey the march of his victorious army, and carved around it, chipped away from the supports, were elephants. The platform looked as if it was resting upon their backs.

“Stand on the shoulders of memory,” Nicholas breathed out. The clue made sense to Etta now—elephants were