Reel Two

Daniel went to get some fresh air after breakfast.

His first move was to see if the plane had survived the landing. He’d actually seen the plane itself when he looked out from the bedroom. It was floating over near what looked like a fishing pier; someone had tied it to one of the furthest parts.

He opened the plane’s engine compartment and got to work. Thankfully it didn’t take long to identify the problem.

Daniel held out a charred, bubbling block out and showed it to Mike and Shaunda. “Lightning fried this sucker.”

Shaunda held a hand to her mouth. “Oh no! I was hoping you’d be our ticket out of here!”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “You have a spare in there?”

“Thankfully I do,” said Daniel. “Hooking it up is a cinch. Ten minutes and we’ll be out of here. Say, Mike? You’ve been here a while. You ever meet an older gentleman? Balding, great bushy beard, tweed bowtie?”

Mike’s eyes went wide. “Yeah. I knew him. Wozniak, right?”

“Any idea where he went?”

“He was lurking around the king’s palace last I saw him,” said Mike. “I’d be careful asking after him if I were you. The locals aren’t too friendly to outsiders who haven’t gone native.”

Daniel shut the engine compartment door. “Listen, I was sent to find Wozniak. Someone sent him on a wild goose chase and I’ve got a nice payday depending on bringing him home. Help me out and I can get you in on it.”

Mike nodded quickly. “I’ll get the battery in. You focus on Wozniak and the locals.”

Didn’t seem like a fair division of labor. Especially with a half dozen locals marching towards them with wooden clubs. Daniel’s hand inched towards his holster. His revolver only had six shots and he only had a few more in his pack. He’d rather not waste them.

“Another outsider,” said their leader. “As we told your friends, the rules are simple. You stay in the guest chambers until you swear fealty to the king and learn our ways.”

Daniel smiled. “I see.”

“You, on the other hand.” The leader leaned towards Shaunda. “I’m certain we can find something for you to… swear fealty to.”

Shaunda flinched in disgust.

Daniel’s smile grew a bit harsher. “Alright then.” He started turning back towards Shaunda before sending a right hook into the leader’s jaw.

His punch took the leader off guard enough that he fell into the lake below. The other five would not be so easy.

The saving grace for Daniel was that the guards were just as likely to take themselves out with their clubs as they were him. The narrow dock meant there was little room to surround him, less leeway for them to weave around his strikes. And that made it easier to start whittling down their numbers.

That didn’t stop Daniel from taking a shot or two when they figured own to swing their club overhead. One of them cracked his head open, blood dripping down his cheek.

Daniel grabbed Shaunda’s hand. “Come on!” He then shoulder-charged through the last few soldiers, forcing them to tip over into the lake. Daniel slowed down only enough to make sure he didn’t fling Shaunda into the drink as well and made a break for the shore.

----

Daniel and Shaunda eventually stopped to catch their breath in a back alley.

“You could’ve warned me I was going to be running,” she groaned. Shaunda peeled off a pair of heels from her feet. Make that heel – the other one had snapped off.

Daniel wasn’t in a mood to take any guff. “Listen, I just saved your rear end from some grab-happy locals. A ‘thank you’ would be nice.”

She smacked him with the broken heel. “If you were that worried about my safety, then why wouldn’t you have left me with Mike in the plane?!”

“…Point.” It had been a reflex. He wobbled a bit and leaned against one of the alley walls. Was he concussed?

Shaunda unzipped a pink fanny pack from around her waist. “Here. One of the locals gave me this.” She was holding a small glass bottle closed with a cork with a strange green liquid sloshing about inside.

Daniel pulled the bottle open and downed its contents immediately. “Ugh. This stuff’s an acquired taste.” He smacked his lips, his disgust fading as he noticed his balance coming back. With a glance at the empty bottle, Daniel raised an eyebrow. “The heck is in this stuff?”

“Some local plants. One of the people who came here and stayed dropped by the guest house from time to time. Gave us that bottle in case we ever hurt ourselves. She said it was local medicine.” Shaunda chuckled. “I didn’t believe her at the time; woman said she’d been here for fifty years but didn’t look a day over thirty!”

Not a damn thing about this place made sense. Least of all claims of people claiming to have extended youthful health. But when he explained his frustrations to Shaunda, she asked him a simple question – why was it so hard to believe that they were in El Dorado?

“Because El Dorado isn’t a real place.”

Shaunda looked around. “But we’re in it!”

“The legend of El Dorado wasn’t originally about a city of gold,” he explained. “It was about a king who was so rich, he covered himself in gold dust and dove into a sacred lake, and his subjects would make an offering to the gods by throwing gold and precious stones into the lake when he dove.”

“That’s a lot of gold.” Shaunda fixated on just how much that would be. “They must be rich.”

Daniel waved his hand. “They don’t associate that kind of material wealth with gold. Besides, even that legend’s been misinterpreted. It’s based on a rite of passage they undergo when a new leader is chosen. That’s why I’m so confused. We know where the sacred lake was. It’s an hour’s drive out from Bogotá in Colombia. There was never a city.”

“But we’re here.” Shaunda held up her arms, gesturing to the city around her. “El Dorado is here. People have apparently been showing up here for centuries.”

A place of myth given form. Impossible and yet it lived.

For the first time, Daniel had to consider whether there was a kernel of truth to those stories about the Atlas of Anomalies.

----

The two moved around from place to place until well in the afternoon.

They arrived at a large palace overlooking the northern shores of the lake. The temple itself was guarded at every entrance. By now, Daniel was sure word would have gotten out about him.

“Shouldn’t we be hiding?” asked Shaunda.

“No.” Daniel kept looking around, flipping his goggles on and off. “Mike said he saw Wozniak around the king’s palace from time to time. If there’s any clues on what happened to him, they’ll be around here.”

But it wasn’t like he’d be able to get into the palace proper. Too many guards. Besides, he didn’t like his chances trying to scale the walls like a spider. Best not to risk going in if he didn’t have to.

Something caught his eye. There was a narrow space between the back for the palace and the surrounding hills; it looked like there was something else there.

Daniel made his way around the building and saw a large hole carved into the side of the mountains behind the palace. A stone tablet had been firmly pressed into the rock next to it with inscriptions in the tribe’s native tongue. He was tempted to reach into his backpack to see if he had a means to translate it but found there was no need. Much like with how he somehow understood the tribe’s language, somehow he could read it too.

“Within this cave lies the treasure of the gods,” Daniel read to Shaunda. “Only those of the tribe may enter. Take not more than your fair share, less you incur their wrath.”

Shaunda looked over Daniel’s shoulder at the inscription. “They must have a lot of gold if they’re letting people take it.”

“I guess.” Daniel kneeled down to the ground and reached into the brush to find a leather wallet. Not something the locals would have made. Especially since inside the wallet were a number of expired credit cards and a driver’s license.

The photo on that license was a dead ringer for Wozniak. He must have gone in there.

A blast of cold wind blew into Daniel’s face once he stepped inside. A small part of him wondered if the cave knew they weren’t supposed to be there. Stranger things had happened already today.

The tunnel quickly opened up a little into a wider hallway. The wall on each side was adorned with torches that lit as Daniel and Shaunda came in sight of them. What caught Daniel’s attention at first was the patterns on the floor, a sort of diamond formation with a smaller blue diamond inset between each.

Daniel stared at the floor and tried to puzzle it out. “Shaunda, is there a big stick or anything nearby?”

“Yeah.” Shaunda dragged over a thick tree branch from a corner of the room. It looked like someone had snapped off other branches off it earlier. “Why?”

He took the branch from Shaunda and started tapping hard on the floor in front of him.

When the stick pressed down on the blue diamond, it sank into the floor. A loud pop echoed from the left wall and moments later Daniel heard several small objects hit the floor close to the right.

Daniel went to look at those small somethings. They looked to be primitive darts. Their points were coated with some viscous blue fluid.

He didn’t need to be a genius to assume they were poisoned. The one he’d picked up he placed in a small box inside his backpack. Then Daniel gestured for Shaunda to step exactly where he stepped.