“Nope.” He shook his head. “Took too long to say it.”
Tenzin sighed. “Humor is very complicated.”
26
Tenzin watched Daniel melt into the rock wall of the cave. There was no other word for it from her perspective. He didn’t tunnel, as she was used to seeing from his kind, and she forced herself to admit his amnis was far more subtle than his personality would seem to imply.
“How does he do that?” Ben’s voice was incredulous.
“How do you make the air bend to your will?”
“Honestly, some days I don’t know.”
“It’s instinct,” she said. “That is something no one can measure before they embrace immortality.” She thought about what the earth vampire had expressed at the previous site. “He loves the earth. That’s part of it.”
Tenzin could say she loved the air, but that didn’t truly express what she felt for it any more than saying she loved Benjamin expressed what he was to her. The words were like a child babbling in the face of their first sunrise. Incoherent and inadequate at best.
He might think that her reluctance to accept him as a mate put a lie to that, but it was that acceptance of who he was to her that made her pause. He did not understand epochs. How the world changed and people with it. He did not understand the layered strata of feelings that shifted subtly over time like the inevitable rising and falling of the earth or the endless wind in the upper atmosphere. There were currents of feelings he could not imagine yet.
But he would. And with luck, she would be there to witness it.
“How long do you think he’s going to be in there?” Ben asked.
“I imagine as long as it will take him to explore the mountain.”
“So it could be a while.”
“Yes.” She settled into a crouch against the rock wall and picked up two stones, tossing them in the air in a rhythmic pattern that amused her.
Ben slumped against the opposite wall. “I should have brought a book.”
She smiled. “You are so like him.”
“Who?
“Giovanni.” She met his eyes. “He was always impatient.”
She never knew how her comparisons would strike him. Sometimes his erratic feelings were tiring, but mostly they amused her.
This time he smiled. “You know, I used to complain sometimes when I was a kid that I was bored, and he’d always tell me, ‘Ben, you should have brought a book.’”
“He’s not wrong. When I want to be amused, I usually bring something to read. But sometimes I simply want to be.” You’re too young to understand that.
“I don’t understand that.” He shifted. “What do you do for fun in Tibet?”
She smiled. That was an unexpected question. “I have a garden that I love very much. It’s nothing like the garden in New York. Everything will grow in a greenhouse, but not much grows that high in the mountains.”
“But a few things.”
“Yes, a few things. And I enjoy tending them. Sometimes I’ll fly down into the valley and work in the fields there. The humans always seem to like that.”
“What?” He smiled. “You just go down and like… weed their gardens or something?”
“Yes. I enjoy that. Or sometimes there will be a shepherd out with animals at night and I’ll talk with him. It’s usually the boys. They like telling me about their school or their friends. In the past few years, they have had mobile phones too, and I don’t like that as much. The boys on their mobile phones just play computer games.”
“You like computer games.”
“But I can’t play on their phones.”
A loud scraping sound came from the back wall, as if a gate had been opened. Tenzin turned her head to the darkness, but Daniel did not appear.
Ben continued as if they hadn’t heard it. “So the boys in the valley, they don’t ask where you come from?”
“No. Sometimes I wonder if I’m like a ghost to them or something like that, but none of them seem scared of me. So maybe I’m considered a kind of friendly spirit.”
“A friendly spirit who weeds their gardens.”
She shrugged. “If you’re going to become something of a divinity to a village, you should at least be helpful.”
He shook his head. “I’ll have to remember that.”
This time the scraping sound was louder and closer somehow. Tenzin turned and saw Daniel emerging from the darkness, and his face was a cross between grim and shocked.
“You two have to see this. I know what I want to do about it, but you’re the ones who have to decide.”
Ben looked at Tenzin; he looked as wary as Daniel. “What is it?”
Daniel waved them toward the dark tunnel he’d formed. “Just come and see.”
Wonderful. Just what Tenzin always craved, a dark earthen tunnel with a mystery at the end.
“Lovely.”
He held her hand through the length of the narrow tunnel, which luckily smelled more like sand than dirt. Though he was in no danger from her anymore, Tenzin hated losing control, and there was nothing more likely to make her snap and lose herself than being buried in the ground.
Ben had seen it once with nearly deadly consequences.
“The tunnel slopes up,” Daniel called from the front. “Watch your step.”
The passage Daniel had formed was narrow and tall enough for his frame, which meant it was more than large enough for Tenzin and allowed her to keep focused on their mysterious errand.
The tunnel sloped up and then abruptly widened. As she stepped into the wider chamber, the glow from Daniel’s penlight cast enough light with Tenzin’s night vision that she was able to discern a structure that had been buried in the ground.
“Are those bricks?”
“Yes, but they’re not structural.” Daniel stepped toward a gaping hole in the wall where crumbled bricks lay in a messy pile at his feet. “The chamber was dug into the ground and reinforced with bricks. I dug around, trying to see what the construction was, but I’m certain it was originally dug into bedrock. The bricks are simply to keep the chamber from collapsing.”
Ben was nearly salivating. “And inside?”
Daniel gestured toward the broken wall. “Take a look.” He tossed Ben the penlight. “The ceiling feels stable to me. I don’t think there’s any chance of collapse.”
Tenzin still decided to wait and let Ben into the chamber first. It was a giant hole in the ground, not exactly Tenzin’s favorite environment.
“Tenzin.” He nearly breathed out her name. “You have to see this.”
Tenzin glanced at Daniel, who only nodded. She cautiously left the larger tunnel and stepped through the hole where Ben had disappeared.
And entered a completely intact ancient treasury.
The sheer amount of gold stole her thoughts for an extended moment.
Tenzin had always known the gold mines of ancient Ethiopia had been the source of the country’s wealth, power, and dominance, but what was visible in museums and churches today was a drop in the sea of gold she was staring at.
The chamber wasn’t huge, probably the size of an average human sitting room, and four pillars held up a ceiling that appeared to be sheer rock. The chamber was oblong, with one end slightly wider than the other, and all along the walls, bricks lined them and created niches where treasures were stacked.