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Then she remembered that she’d just lost her ranch. To him. And all her warm-and-fuzzy feelings fled.
“Who cares if the Aztecs invaded the Southwest or not?” Gina asked. “They’re all dead and buried.”
“Not all. There are nearly a million descendants. I’m one of them.”
“Is that why your mom was so interested? Why you are?”
“Maybe.” He lifted a shoulder, and his shirt slid off. She got a tantalizing glimpse of bare honey skin before he yanked the garment up again. This time he absently buttoned the top few buttons to hold it in place. Gina tried to contain her disappointment.
“My mom spent her life studying the Aztecs.” He turned to the window. “She gave her life trying to prove her theories.”
Ah, at last they’d reached the root of that word was.
“It was my fault,” he said.
Gina remained silent. Either Teo would continue or he wouldn’t. Urging him to share his pain would only make him clam up about it. On this she was an expert.
“I should have been there. But I…” He lifted his gaze. She’d seen enough sadness and guilt in the mirror to recognize them instantly. “According to one of her assistants, someone thought they saw Aztec glyphs and called for her. The area was farther into the cavern, not well lighted yet. But she was excited—probably thinking that she could show me—” He broke off with a long, pained sigh. “She ran, her gaze on where she was going, not how she was going there, and—”
He slapped his hands together, the sound so sharp, so startling, Gina jumped.
“Low-hanging rock connected with her head.” He tapped his temple. “Out went the lights.” He swallowed. “And they never came on again.”
Silence settled between them, broken only by muted voices in the hall. Gina knew she should say she was sorry. She was. She also knew how worthless saying it would be.
“What about the glyphs?” she asked instead.
“Scratches from falling rocks. Water stains. Not really drawings at all.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen. It would have been my last dig before I left for college. We planned to keep searching every summer, working our way through a list of places she’d translated from ancient writings she found in the family library.”
“Aztec writings?” Gina couldn’t begin to imagine what those would be worth. Probably ten times more than whatever they’d find digging around in the earth.
Of course the Mecates didn’t need the money. Gina wondered what that might be like.
“Yes,” he said, then: “Well, not exactly. There are only two known codices—” He paused at her curious expression and translated, “Painted hieroglyphic books. Just two predate the Spanish Conquest: the Tonalamatl Aubin, or Book of Days, and the Codex Borbonicus. Some scholars aren’t even sure those are original.”
“What happened to the rest?”
“Spaniards burned them.”
Gina clucked her tongue, although she wasn’t surprised. From what she could remember of her history, the Spanish had burned a lot of things—including people.
“The conquistadors considered the codices idolatry. You know the Aztec language was Nahuatl, but their written language was direct representation.” He spread his hands. “If you were writing about a cat, you drew a cat. A drum, a deer, the water. Running.” He used his fingers to show the movement. “Flowing.” His hand made waves. “Up. Down. Big. Little.” He continued to act the words out with finger and hand and arm movements. “Nouns easy, verbs kind of hard. But you get the drift.”
“Then the Spanish showed up,” Gina continued. “Someone opened a book, which was to them just pictures—”
“Very beautiful pictures—artwork in many cases. They handed it to an Aztec priest, who probably still had the blood of his last sacrifice under his fingernails, and he started reading those pictures.”
“How very witchy of him.”
“Now you’re catching on.” Teo made a tossing motion. “‘Burn them all.’”
“Including the priests.”
“I’m sure they did. What my mother found in the family library was most likely a codex produced after the conquest, when the Spanish realized the Aztecs were on to something by using those freaky little pictures for words.”
