Elisha's Bones - Don Hoesel [90]
I’m not sure how long I stare at it before the thing comes into focus, but it’s like a shot to my nerves when I realize the meaning. My throat tightens until all I can utter are strangled noises.
It’s there, right in front of me. A symbol I’ve carried with me for years, rubbed and photographed from the Quetzl-Quezo wall half a world away—the last in a line of strange glyphs that have defied translation. It’s the Manheim family crest.
My eyes hurt. I blink several times in an attempt to lubricate them but can’t seem to produce any moisture. I think this is nature’s way of forcing sleep on someone too self-absorbed to understand what the body requires. Ever obstinate, I use both hands to massage my eyeballs, probably harder than I need to, and I convince myself they feel fresher, more alert as a result.
Esperanza is still in charge of the mouse, clicking on images, pausing for only a second or two, then flashing through several more without so much as a blink. After the shock of discovering the first symbol, an idea formed, and Espy and I have spent much of the evening following up on that idea. I feel guilty for involving myself in something like this when I’ve only just arrived, but our hosts seem to understand our need to see things through. Meredith has been in once with coffee.
“Can you slow down a bit?” I say.
“Even at this speed, it will take us two days to get through all these hits. Suck it up and deal with it.”
Search engines are remarkable tools, but they have one main flaw: there’s no way a user can know the exact combination and sequence of words that will produce the desired result. Usually the search terms are too narrow, so one is forced to generalize the criteria in successive attempts until, suddenly, there are a million hits through which to sift. There’s no happy middle ground, no matter how smart they make the application.
We’re at the million-possibilities stage, which means that even if my fledgling theory proves correct, it’s like looking for digital needles in an information haystack. I’m about to tell Esperanza to keep at it while I go stretch my legs when an image flashes on the screen, then disappears, and although I didn’t see it clearly . . .
“Wait, go back.”
She stops, shifts the mouse, and clicks.
It’s a color photo of a wall-mounted shield. On it is a picture of a thin-faced brown bear sitting on its haunches, holding a scale in one paw. Beneath it are three short lines, almost like a stunted paw swipe. The first thing to strike me is the fact that I’m seeing it in color. I don’t have to guess what was in the mind of the artist who carved it into a limestone wall in the jungles of Venezuela. It’s the most beautiful, oddly shaped bear I’ve ever seen.
Below the photo is a short description: DiPastina Coat of Arms, Verona, circa a.d. 1876.
Espy takes her eyes off the screen, turns, and looks at me. She doesn’t have to ask; she can see it on my face.
“All of them are crests, aren’t they?”
“I’d bet everything I own on it.”
Before Espy and I call a halt to our online search, and after we research the DiPastina clan back to the third century, we have another visit with good fortune when we’re able to match a third Quetzl-Quezo carving to a line of Frank nobility from the seventh century. It’s with the discovery of this third one that the appearance of an identical icon in each of the crests—the oblong disc with the S squiggle—earns avid interest. On the walls of Quetzl-Quezo, the symbol was an oddity. Incorporated into more than a dozen family crests stretching back more than a thousand years, the symbol is worth a great deal more study.
Espy studies the screen. She sees it, too.
“How big is this thing?” she finally asks.
“Much bigger than us.”
CHAPTER 19
My eyelids fly open, and the first thing I realize is that apprehension fills my stomach like a solid ball of undigested cheese. It’s always a bit unnerving to wake in a strange