Naya woke with a knife against her throat.
She did not scream.
Mostly because Eli's hand was already covering her mouth.
"Quiet," he whispered.
Moonlight entered through a crack in the ranger hut. Outside, footsteps moved slowly through wet grass.
One person.
Then another.
Naya felt Eli remove his hand. He pointed toward the rear wall, where two planks had been loosened from their nails.
She mouthed, Who?
He shook his head.
The front door creaked.
Eli pushed her through the opening.
They crawled into brush behind the hut just as a torch beam sliced through the room.
A man's voice muttered, "Still warm."
Naya's skin tightened.
Eli guided her down a slope without speaking. They moved for nearly an hour before stopping beneath an overhang of stone.
"Those were not villagers," Naya whispered.
"No."
"Were they looking for me?"
"Probably."
"Why?"
"Because you walked into a forbidden forest carrying a map people have killed for."
"People?"
Eli looked at her.
"You thought the snake was your biggest problem?"
By sunrise they were moving deeper into the forest.
Eli had agreed to guide her only after extracting three promises.
She would follow his instructions immediately.
She would not wander.
And if he told her to abandon the map, she would do it.
Naya had agreed to the first two and remained strategically silent about the third.
"There is one more rule," Eli said as they crossed a shallow stream.
"Of course there is."
"If you hear someone calling your name and you cannot see them, do not answer."
Naya stopped. "Why?"
"Because this forest has a way of returning sounds."
"That's not what you mean."
"No."
He kept walking.
Naya followed because the alternative was admitting she did not want to know.
By midday the forest changed.
They passed a rusting military truck half swallowed by vines. Fifty metres later came concrete foundations where buildings had once stood. Beyond them, an entire row of abandoned houses leaned into the earth.
"A village?" Naya asked.
"Was."
"What happened?"
"People left."
"Because of the snake?"
Eli glanced at her. "People leave because of many kinds of snakes."
Inside one house, Naya found old government forms scattered beneath a collapsed roof. Most had rotted beyond reading, but one carried a faded seal from the Daramola administration.
Her excitement overcame caution.
"Eli. Look at this."
He turned sharply. "Don't move."
A click sounded under Naya's boot.
She froze.
Eli's eyes dropped to the floor.
"You've stepped on a trigger plate."
"For what?"
"I would prefer not to find out."
He lowered himself slowly, examined the cracked tiles and followed a thin wire disappearing through the wall.
"When I say now," he said, "jump left."
"How far?"
"As far as your fear can carry you."
"That's not comforting."
"It wasn't designed to be."
He wedged a piece of timber under the plate.
"Now."
Naya jumped.
The wall erupted.
Wooden stakes fired across the room with such force one punched through the opposite door.
Eli shoved Naya flat.
A second stake struck his shoulder.
He grunted and fell.
"Eli!"
"I'm fine."
"You have wood inside you."
"I've had worse."
"That is a stupid sentence."
They reached a cave before the rain began.
Naya cut away his shirt around the wound. The stake had gone through the muscle without striking bone.
"This is going to hurt," she said.
"Everything you do hurts."
"You met me yesterday."
"Long twenty-four hours."
She pulled the wood free.
Eli swore loudly.
Naya smiled despite herself. "You said you'd had worse."
"Worse doesn't mean pleasant."
She cleaned and bandaged the wound using supplies from her bag.
Rain hammered the cave entrance.
For a while neither spoke.
The silence between them felt different from the forest's silence. Smaller. Human.
"You really knew him?" Naya asked.
Eli looked toward the rain. "Your grandfather? Yes."
"How well?"
"Well enough to know he never stopped looking."
"For gold?"
Eli's face changed.
Naya caught it.
"You keep doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Answering a different question than the one I asked."
He leaned back against the stone. "Your grandfather wasn't a treasure hunter."
"Then what was he?"
"A man who knew something dangerous."
"What?"
"Ask the dead president."
"Very funny."
"I wasn't joking."
Thunder rolled outside.
Naya wrapped her arms around her knees. "He raised me after my parents died. He told me everything. Or I thought he did. Now I find this box and suddenly there's another version of him I never knew existed."
Eli's voice softened. "People hide things from those they love because they think silence is protection."
"Is that what you're doing?"
His eyes met hers.
For one suspended second the cave, the rain and the danger seemed to move away from them.
"Maybe," he said.
A scraping sound came from the entrance.
Eli was on his feet instantly despite the wound.
Naya reached for the machete.
The rain curtain shifted.
A black-green head emerged.
The serpent had found them.
It struck before either moved.
Eli threw himself sideways. The snake's jaws crashed against stone where he had been standing.
"Back tunnel!" he shouted.
Naya ran deeper into the cave.
"There is no back tunnel!"
"There is if you keep going!"
Behind them, rock cracked.
The serpent forced its head farther inside.
Naya's torch beam bounced over wet walls until it found a gap barely wide enough for a person.
She squeezed through.
Eli followed.
The passage dropped steeply.
They crawled on hands and knees as the snake rammed itself into the opening behind them.
"It's following us!"
"I noticed!"
The tunnel narrowed.
Naya's backpack caught between two rocks.
She pulled.
Nothing.
"Eli!"
He turned.
The serpent's tongue flickered less than ten metres behind them.
"Leave the bag."
"The journal is inside!"
"Leave it!"
Naya fought the straps.
Eli crawled back toward her.
"What are you doing?"
"Regretting every decision that brought me here."
He cut the strap with his knife and dragged her forward as the snake's head slammed into the tunnel.
The rock ceiling shuddered.
They reached a shaft filled with black water.
"Jump," Eli said.
"Into that?"
"Yes."
"What's in it?"
"Currently? Less dangerous things than what's behind us."
They jumped.
Cold swallowed Naya.
She surfaced beneath a cavern roof. Eli came up beside her.
Then the water moved behind them.
A long ridge broke the surface.
The snake had entered the pool.
Naya screamed despite herself.
"Swim!" Eli shouted.
They struck toward a pale opening on the far side.
The serpent moved faster.
Naya felt water surge around her legs. Something brushed her boot.
She kicked wildly.
Eli reached the bank first and turned, extending his good arm.
"Naya!"
She grabbed his wrist.
He hauled her from the water at the exact moment the snake's jaws snapped shut behind her.
They scrambled up a rock slope.
The serpent rose from the pool, half its body still submerged.
It did not pursue.
It simply watched.
Naya's chest heaved.
"Why did it stop?"
Eli stared at the creature.
"Because we crossed something."
"What?"
He looked at the metal disc hanging from Naya's neck.
"I think it's not following us."
"Then what is it doing?"
"Guarding where we're going."
• • •
Victor Bako found the dead hunter at sunset.
The old man had refused to talk for twenty minutes.
Victor had given him nineteen more than necessary.
"Again," Victor said.
The hunter spat blood into the dirt.
"I told you. I don't know any girl."
Victor crouched. "You do not understand the problem. I believe you."
The hunter looked confused.
Victor continued, "I am asking about the man who lives near the forest. Eli."
Recognition flashed across the hunter's face.
That was enough.
Victor stood.
"Thank you."
The gunshot frightened birds from three trees.
Victor's men searched the hut and found an old map fragment hidden beneath a floorboard.
A circle. A line. Three cuts.
Victor smiled.
"We're close."
• • •
Naya and Eli emerged from the cavern shortly before nightfall.
They were exhausted, soaked and bruised.
They did not see Victor's first man until the rifle clicked.
"Hands up."
Eli froze.
A second man appeared behind Naya.
Then Victor stepped from the trees.
He looked cleaner than anyone had a right to look inside that forest.
"Miss Okafor," he said. "You have caused an unreasonable amount of inconvenience."
Naya's mouth went dry.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who would like your map."
"I don't have it."
Victor nodded toward her bag. "Then you won't mind if we look."
Eli moved.
He kicked mud into the nearest gunman's face and drove his shoulder into Victor.
Naya dropped.
Gunfire ripped through leaves.
"Run!" Eli shouted.
They ran.
Bullets struck trees around them.
Victor pursued with two men while the third stayed behind clutching a broken nose.
Naya reached a river bank.
No bridge.
Fast current.
Eli did not hesitate.
"Jump."
"Again?"
"You can complain in the water."
They leaped.
The current seized them.
Victor reached the bank seconds later and fired twice.
The river carried Naya around a bend.
Her bag struck a rock.
The journal slipped free.
She grabbed for it and missed.
Victor watched the leather book float into reeds downstream.
He smiled.
An hour later he sat beside a fire, turning wet pages carefully.
Most were useless.
Then he found one sentence circled in red.
THE GUARDIAN DOES NOT PROTECT THE FOREST. IT PROTECTS THE DOOR.
Victor looked toward the black ridge visible above the trees.
One of his men asked, "What now?"
Victor closed the journal.
"Now we stop looking for treasure."
He pointed toward the ridge.
"We look for a door."