Michael Cordy - The Source

She walked away from them to a raised area with a neat mound of small stones. Ross watched her kneel beside it to pray. He wanted to ask her more questions, but he knew better than to intrude now. Like the others, he knelt and drank from the lake. The water had a distinctive sodium taste that reminded him of a French mineral water he had never liked: Badoit. He ate strange fruit from the trees, which tasted better. Their flavours were familiar but hard to place – like packaged mixed-fruit juices. In one fruit, the size of an apple, he thought he could taste pomegranate, passion fruit and cherry.

As dusk closed the eye of the garden, he realized he was exhausted. He didn't bother with the hammock or the mosquito net, just rolled out his sleeping-bag on the soft grass and lay down. The others did the same, as if they understood that they were safe.

Before he closed his eyes he looked once more into the dark, still lake and saw countless stars reflected in it. Then he noticed that the night sky at the top of the funnel was cloudy. The bright spots in the water were shards of crystal lying at the bottom, their luminosity revealed by the darkness of the night. Their beauty filled his mind with more questions. Then, mercifully, he slept. Sister Chantal slept better than she could remember. Curled up beside the mound of stones, away from the others, she dreamt that she was free.

Released from her vow.

Recompensed for her sacrifice.

Reunited with the one she had lost.

She woke once during the night, when everyone was asleep, and wandered to the lake. As she drank she indulged her vanity for the first time since she had made her vow and inspected her reflection in the water. What she saw saddened her. Where once the face had been young, beautiful and full of hope, it was now old and spent.

Would he still care how she looked? The thought made her smile, and joy surfaced through the sadness. Her wait had been so long, but the hardest part was over. Soon she could surrender her burden and rejoin him.

She sighed. 'Soon,' she whispered, as she returned to her sleeping-bag. 'Soon.'

The next morning Osvaldo Mendoza woke first. He staggered to his feet and went to a corner of the garden, concealed by bushes. Before he had opened his fly, he realized that the constant pain in his head had gone. When he stopped peeing he noticed something even more remarkable. Something that made him stand rock-still for more than a minute, stunned. He fell to his knees and prayed. Ross woke during a dream he couldn't remember, except that it had involved Lauren and made him happy for the first time in weeks. He didn't want to wake, but Hackett was shaking him.

'Wake up, Ross.'

He blinked. 'Why? What's going on?'

'You've got to see this place. It's amazing.'

Ross rolled over. Why, when he was having the best sleep in ages, had Hackett chosen this moment to get overexcited? 'I know it's amazing. I'm here. I can see it.'

'But, Ross, I can see it, too.'

'Nigel, what the hell are you talking about?'

'Give me your hand.' Hackett grabbed at his broken wrist but instinctively Ross snatched it away. 'Give me your hand,' Hackett insisted. 'Trust me.' He began unwrapping the expertly applied bandage. 'How does it feel?'

'Okay.'

Hackett squeezed his wrist. 'How does that feel?'

'Like I said, okay. Now leave me alone.'

'It shouldn't feel okay. What I just did should have made you scream.' He paused a beat. 'If your wrist was still broken.'

Ross sat up and looked at his hand. The swelling and bruising had gone. So had the stiffness and pain. 'Perhaps it wasn't broken.'

'It was a classic break and it's healed months before it should have done. It's not just you. I've had dodgy eyesight since childhood. Now it's perfect. Cured overnight. Twenty-twenty vision. And I haven't used these since I got here.' He took his ventilator and antihistamine pills out of his pocket. Then he took two deep breaths. 'Listen to that. Clear as a bell. With all these flowers my allergies should be having a field day, but my chest and sinuses have never been so clear.'

Hackett pointed to Mendoza, who was sitting by the lake, legs crossed, eyes closed, hands clasped as if in prayer. 'Osvaldo's having some kind of spiritual experience. Keeps crossing himself and muttering thanks. Since Iquitos the guy's been holding his head in pain and chewing painkillers like they're sweets. Not your bog-standard aspirin either, but prescription-strength codeine, which is an opiate, the same family as morphine. Kept telling me he was okay whenever I quizzed him, but he's obviously been in a lot of pain. This morning I woke up and found him crying. Imagine that – a man like him crying! When I asked him what was wrong he said there was nothing wrong with him. He was fine. Really fine. Keeps calling it a miracle.'

Hackett swept his hand round the garden. 'It must be something in the water we drank or the fruit we ate. God, I wish Juarez had made it here. This place is incredible.' He reached for his backpack. 'This is pretty amazing too.' He took out the pewter goblet he had picked up yesterday and handed it to Ross. 'Look inside.'

'I can see a watch.'

'It's mine. I left it in there last night. Look at it.' Ross peered at the face. The second hand was moving – slowly and erratically, but it was moving. 'Now take it out,' said Hackett. Ross did so and the second hand stopped. He dropped the watch back in and it started again. 'Isn't that weird?'

Ross took off his Tag Heuer and placed it in the goblet. Its second hand also came back to life sluggishly. He studied the goblet. 'Old pewter like this has a high tin and lead content. My guess is the tin's high magnetic permeability and the lead's radioactivity-shielding properties give some protection against whatever forces stopped it.'

Ross replaced his watch and flexed his bad wrist. No trace of the excruciating pain he had felt yesterday after he'd pulled Mendoza from the mound of bat droppings. He remembered the passage in the Voynich: the conquistadors had arrived with broken bones and been cured. A shiver ran through him.

Zeb walked over to them. She was barefoot, in jeans and a red T-shirt with Gaia has feelings too emblazoned across her small breasts. Her red hair was dishevelled and her face creased with sleep, but otherwise she looked fresh and rested. 'There's something wrong with my eyes,' she said, squinting behind her thick lenses.

'No, there isn't,' said Hackett, smiling. He took off her glasses. 'You just don't need these now.'

She blinked and her eyes opened wide. 'That's incredible!'

'Isn't it?' agreed Hackett, laughing. 'Bloody incredible.'

Ross left them to marvel and washed his face in the lake. He studied the particles in the water but they were too small to tell him anything. Then he peered down, trying to detect the crystals he had spotted last night. In the daylight, however, they were invisible. He got to his feet and walked round the garden. He saw a small lizard scamper on its hind legs towards a copse. It was vaguely familiar and then he remembered a drawing in the Voynich of what he had supposed was a dragon. How deceptive scale could be.

In the early morning the garden seemed even more magical than it had bathed in yesterday's late-afternoon light. There was a cool dampness in the air and a thin mist hung over the lake, partially shrouding the far cave and the stream flowing from it. He guessed that the sun's rays would burn off the mist when they eventually reached into the garden. He watched Zeb and Hackett go to Mendoza and sit down beside him, sharing their wonder and amazement.

Ross didn't join them. He needed answers. He walked round the garden, studying the cliff walls. The rock wasn't soft like the limestone prevalent in these parts. It was harder and impermeable, almost certainly volcanic. He guessed that it formed a bowl within which the garden sat, surrounded by magma, a ring of fire, sealing it off from the outside world. But it hadn't always been sealed. If his theory was correct there had been a time, billions of years ago, when this place had leaked its life force into a then barren planet, seeding all that was to follow. Then the ring of fire had closed, the bowl of volcanic rock had cooled and hardened, locking everything within. The last leak had been sealed off a thousand years ago, when the spring in the lost city had dried up.