The Jaguar God (A Cash Cassidy Adventure Book 5)

  The Jaguar God

  A Cash Cassidy Adventure

  Book 5

  by

  K.T. Tomb

  Other Books by K.T. Tomb

  STANDALONE ADVENTURES

  The Last Crusade

  The Kraken

  The Adventurers

  The Swashbucklers

  The Tempest

  The Honeymooners

  Ghosts of the Titanic

  Curse of the Coins

  Drums Along the Hudson

  Jerusalem Gold

  Pandora’s Box

  The Snow Giants

  The Book of Thoth

  The Crystal Skull

  SHORT STORIES

  Wolfgang

  The Dragon

  SASQUATCH SERIES

  1. Sasquatch

  2. Sasquatch Found

  3. Bigfoot Mountain

  4. Sasquatch Hunter

  5. Bigfoot Winter

  THE CHYNA STONE ADVENTURES

  1. The Minoan Mask

  2. The Mummy Codex

  3. The Phoenician Falcon

  4. The Babylonian Basilisk

  5. The Aquitaine Armor

  6. The Ivory Bow

  7. The Rosary Riddle

  8. The Jeweled Crown

  THE PHOENIX QUEST ADVENTURES

  1. The Hammer of Thor

  2. The Spear of Destiny

  3. The Lair of Beowulf

  4. The Fountain of Youth

  5. The Ark of the Covenant

  6. The Seal of Solomon

  7. The Road to Shambhala

  THE CASH CASSIDY ADVENTURES

  1. The Holy Grail

  2. The Lost Continent

  3. The Lost City of Gold

  4. The Falcon Cloak

  5. The Jaguar God

  THE ALPHA ADVENTURES

  1. “A” is for Amethyst

  2. “B” is for Bullion

  3. “C” is for Crystal

  4. “D” is for Diamond

  5. “E” is for Emerald

  THE LOST GARDEN TRILOGY

  1. The Lost Garden

  2. Keepers of the Lost Garden

  3. Destroyers of the Lost Garden

  ISLANDS THAT TIME FORGOT TRILOGY

  1. Dinosaur Island

  2. Ape Island

  3. Snake Island

  The Jaguar God

  Published by K.T. Tomb

  Copyright © 2016 by K.T. Tomb

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The Jaguar God

  Chapter One

  “Don't go out on the beach alone, Paddy,” Cash Cassidy shouted to her young son. Paddy was toddling around the terrace of the little cottage Cash and Tim had been holidaying in on Lesbos. He was walking already and could even manage to negotiate the stairs if he wanted to. He still went down them on his bottom and he went up them crawling, but he could navigate them.

  The house belonged to Tim's parents. They had gone down there just before Christmas for a brief holiday and it was already a week after New Year. Tim had left them there on New Year's Day to go back to work at the university. Cash and Paddy had stayed behind. The weather in Wales was bleak and dreary this time of year and now there were floods all over the United Kingdom and Ireland. Of course, there were problems in Greece as well, but the weather wasn’t one of them.

  In a way, she had not wanted to go to Greece, given what was taking place there, but Barry wasn’t her favorite place to be over Christmas. She had spent her early childhood having Christmas in the sun. When they had moved to Wales, Christmas had still been a time to travel back to Oz, or to go to the Alps or Pyrenees. Since then she had spent quite a few holidays in Wales as well, but with everything dark, rainy, cold but not freezing, and everything turning to mud, she wasn’t too fond of doing that.

  Paddy was a worry for her at the moment, though. He was way too fast in everything. He had picked up his first words just before they left, and he was managing to string some of them together already. Sadly for Tim, they were in Cymraeg. Cash had insisted he go to a Welsh language nursery school and she intended for him to attend the local Welsh primary school after that. She had picked up the language over the years, though she wasn’t as fluent as she wanted to be, but Tim had never picked it up. The big problem now was how mobile Paddy was and how much he resembled his mother. He wanted to explore everything, and now he was able to do so as well.

  Tim had spoken about how he and his siblings would go down to the beach on their own and it was great to play there in the clean sand and the clear water of the Mediterranean. With Paddy, that simply wasn’t possible. The “migrant” crisis meant there were strange people roaming the beaches from time to time. At any moment, a group of them could wash up on the shore and the beach was littered with all sorts of crap. Sometimes literally crap. One of the big problems Cash had discovered both on the Lesbos beach and in the towns was the smell of feces. It wasn’t a problem she had ever thought about while watching the news, but when she asked a local about it, she couldn’t think why nobody had addressed this problem. The refugees were barely being put in tents or under any other sort of roof. There was little sanitation available for them. Cash herself never minded going without a shower for a week, but she had hardly thought about the problem of relieving one’s self. There were not enough toilets for the transient people and not enough public conveniences either. So they just ended up relieving themselves in the streets or on the beaches; where Paddy would easily handle it and perhaps, if he was in a curious mood, try to taste it.

  Cash sat at the desk in the study of the house. The desk was by the window, which faced east. It looked out over the elevated terrace, which had low fences all around it, so nobody could wander down into the abyss unwittingly and little tykes like Paddy couldn’t just disappear. Tim had installed a childproof gate to stop the boy from going down the steps, but Cash wasn’t fully convinced Paddy couldn’t open it.

  If she looked beyond the terrace, she could see the Anatolian mainland rising in the distance. It did her good to be there in that place; it relaxed her. But she was stuck. She had no idea what to write about, and another project was due. Her editor was breathing down her neck, demanding new ideas; meanwhile, she had none.

  Cash veered up suddenly. Paddy was nowhere to be seen and when she looked out, she saw the little gate at the top of the stairs lay open. The boy had managed to unlock it.

  Smart little bugger, she thought as she ran out of the room.

  She rushed down the steps of the terrace and looked around. Paddy couldn’t have gotten far either way. She looked down and saw the little footsteps heading down to the water. She followed the tracks and found they headed right just before the floodline. She looked over and saw her son sitting and splashing happily in the small waves that lapped up on the sand. A blonde woman squatted just beside him.

  Cash ran a few paces in their direction and then walked. She could hear Paddy explaining something to the woman.

  “Dŵr,” she heard Paddy say happily. “Tywod!” he said, slapping the sand as a wave retreated.

  “I'm sorry,” Cash said as she came closer. “He slipped out. He managed to open the gate.”

  The blonde woman looked up at her and waved away the apology. “No worries. Clever boy you have here.”

  “Yeah,” Cash said as she squatted down beside her son. Paddy looked up and smiled broadly at his mother. “Mam!” the boy cried as he grabbed some sand in his small fist. “Tywod
!” he shouted happily before throwing the sand into the waves.

  The blonde woman frowned. “What language does he speak?”

  “Welsh,” Cash answered, rubbing her son's small shoulder. “We're raising him bilingually.” She half picked up Paddy and looked at him. “Paddy, remember we try to speak English when there's people who don't understand Cymraeg?”

  “Daddy!” squealed the boy happily.

  Cash laughed, nodding. “Yeah, Daddy.”

  Paddy wriggled free from his mother's grip and turned to the blonde lady. He picked up another handful of sand. “Sand!” he crowed.

  The woman laughed and extended her hand to the boy. “And you're Paddy? I'm Laura.” Paddy gave her his hand and began shaking it vigorously.

  Cash extended her left hand, so Laura could take her hand as well. “Cash,” she introduced herself.

  “Not Welsh, though. Judging by your accent,” the woman said.

  Cash shook her head. “Australian, but I spent my teens in Wales.” She had been listening to the woman speak and detected a hint of Sydney in her voice, but she was clearly not a native English speaker, or a Greek or Turk for that matter. “What about you, Laura? Got a bit of an Aussie twang there.”

  Laura laughed. “I went backpacking in Australia and New Zealand some years ago. Eventually settled in Sydney for a year.”

  “Where are you from?” Cash kept interrogating her.

  “Belgium,” she answered. Anticipating the next question, she went on. “I studied the classics at Leuven. Been coming here for years to study Sappho. When I heard about the problems here, though, I volunteered to help.”

  “What are you doing on the beach then?” Cash was slightly puzzled, figuring she would be in one of the camps to help then.

  Laura shrugged. “There's only so much misery one can endure. I just needed to get away from it for a moment. And recite Sappho in my head.”

  There was something about the way Laura smiled at Cash that made her think Sappho had touched a nerve with her more than it did with Cash.

  “We're just up there.” Cash gestured up to the house. “It's about lunch time. Do you want to come and join us?”

  Laura thought about it for a moment. “Sure,” she said eventually.

  Back in the house, Cash put Paddy down in his high chair, from which there was no escape for him. She gave him a few cars to play with and then rummaged around some of the drawers, eventually coming up with some wire. With that, she secured the gate on the terrace. Paddy would never be able to undo the new locking mechanism.

  Then she went to the kitchen to prepare some lunch. Laura looked in and joined her at the counter. “Is there anything I can help with?”

  “I’d be grateful if you could help make some sandwiches.”

  “Sure.”

  Laura took over Cash’s spot at the counter and grabbed some slices of bread. She began spreading butter on them while Cash sliced cucumber and dug things out of the fridge to spread on the sandwiches. When done, they went to the table in the dining room, only to find Paddy half asleep. He had dropped his toys and instead of crying to demand his mother return them to him, he had begun to doze off.

  When Cash picked him up to put him in the playpen to sleep, though, he woke again and began babbling incessantly. He pointed to the cars and wanted to go down to grab them. Then he saw the sandwiches and reached for those.

  Cash put him back in his chair, got some wet wipes to clean his hands, then handed him one. He had been eating solids for a while now, even though he still got formula twice a day as well. He was as hungry a boy as he was a curious one.

  “So what do you do?” Laura asked Cash.

  “I'm a writer,” said Cash.

  “So, are you here to write or to get inspired?” asked Laura.

  Cash grinned, swallowing a bite of her sandwich. “Both of course, but the inspiration needs to come first.”

  “Should be a much more inspiring place than Wales at this time of year.” Laura grabbed another sandwich and drank some of her tea. “I spent some time in Cork as an Erasmus student; dreadful during winter. We get more rain over a year in Belgium, but that winter, it just seemed like it was raining all the time. Wales can't be much different.”

  “No, it isn't. That’s why we came here for the holidays,” Cash said.

  “So, got anything to write about yet?” Laura leaned forward a bit.

  Cash shook her head slowly. “Not really. Maybe it's just all the trouble around here. Not as peaceful as I would have wanted.”

  “I'd imagined peace and quiet might not always provide inspiration.”

  Cash laughed. “You're right about that. I usually do something to actually get the story going. But it's in peace and quiet I get the ideas about what to do in the first place.”

  “And there's really too much going on here?”

  Cash nodded. “Kind of. Though my main problem is that little troublemaker.” She pointed to Paddy, who grinned broadly at her, his face covered in jam. Cash grinned too. She pulled out a wipe and leaned over the table to sweep away the mess. Paddy recoiled and looked disgusted at his mother's attempt at cleanliness.

  Laura leaned back again and sipped her tea. “I think maybe that young boy and the refugees have something in common.”

  Cash frowned at her.

  “They both know there's heaps out there and they want to find out what it is. They want to discover and make more of everything. The moment they find out there is more and they can make more of it, they won't stop. No matter what other problems it can cause.”

  “Unlocking secret after secret and problem after problem,” Cash mused, looking at Laura.

  Laura nodded. “Like Pandora's Box.”

  Suddenly it was like a light went on in Cash's head. She leaned back too and looked at a joint between the rafters and the plastered wall. “Pandora's Box,” she muttered. Then she gave Laura an intense look. “Pandora's Box.”

  “I knew a girl at school called Pandora,” began Laura. Cash smiled as she recognized the joke from Notting Hill. “I never got to see her box though,” Laura finished and they both laughed.

  “Now there's a story in that too!” chuckled Cash. “A good one.”

  “True story too,” Laura said. She didn’t blink or blush.

  “Is it?” Cash asked. She had kind of suspected it. “You're a sapphist in more ways than one then?”

  Laura grinned at the pun. “Yes, something like that.”

  After lunch, Cash put her son in the playpen. She knew he would play for a bit and then just lay down to rest. When he did, she could cover him with his blanket and just let him sleep. Then she could go and do something else.

  Sure enough, Paddy played with his plastic cars for a bit, making them fight each other and talk to each other, then he parked them in a corner, lay down next to them and covered them and himself with a blanket. He mumbled something, almost singing. It sounded like Waltzing Matilda, which was the song Cash usually sang to him as she put him to bed.

  Cash suppressed a chuckle when she noticed her son was singing his toys to sleep. She waited a few minutes and then pulled the blanket over him properly.

  “Want to go and sit outside?” she asked Laura as she turned around. “I’ve got some lemonade and there are bound to be some snacks somewhere.”

  “Sure.” Laura nodded and headed out onto the terrace.

  Moments later, Cash followed her out with a jug of lemonade and some glasses. She set them down on the table and sat down on the chair left of it. Laura had been standing at the edge of the terrace, overlooking the strait, but now she sat down on the other side of the table. She smiled at Cash and nodded to the scene before them. “It's beautiful, isn't it?”

  Cash nodded in agreement. “It is.”

  She leaned back in the chair and gazed ahead.

  “Do you mind if I open that and have a read?” Laura asked pointing to the still rolled up newspaper that had been delivered that morning. Like most of the o
thers, it had remained tied neatly with twine and was destined for the rubbish bin; Cash rarely read the news when she was on holiday. Suddenly, it struck her that perhaps she should if an idea was going to come to her anytime soon.

  “Sure, go ahead. I don’t even usually untie them; just toss them out with the rest of the trash.”

  Laura smiled and unfolded the newspaper. As she did, Cash caught sight of the headline and just like that, the idea for her next book appeared in her mind like a light bulb illuminating a dark room. Ideas began to form in her head and the curiosity was sparked.

  “Hey! Let me have a look at the front page there.”

  Laura looked at her surprised and said, “I thought you didn’t care about the news.”

  “Well, in my defense, technically none of that is ‘new’ anymore but that headline just gave me a great idea.”

  Laura closed the paper to take a second look at the front page. It read, “Crete museum makes history.”

  Laura was intrigued and she decided to read the article out loud.

  January 18th will be the first time the Historical Museum of Crete has ever stayed open all night. Then again, it will probably also be the first time that any socio-economic establishment or event has ever been expected to draw in more than 400,000 people since the days of ancient Greece.

  The exhibition, fondly known as, ‘Civilizations of Europe: Lost and found,’ is scheduled to launch the first day of its two-year international tour from Heraklion, Crete. The main pieces to be featured are a series of mosaics depicting the Greek myths and a priceless golden statue of a jaguar which is thought to have been the boon animal of Julio-Claudian dynasty of ancient Rome.

  The statue, which dates back to 250 B.C.E., is said to have been a gift for Aurelia Cotta and her husband, Gaius Julius Caesar from Aurelia’s affluent uncle Marcus Aurelius Cotta to celebrate the birth of their son around 100 B.C.E. The jaguar was a strange, but well recognized, totem of the Cotta family.

  The Jaguar God is said to have originally been ensconced inside of an ivory box with the stories of Prometheus and Pandora ornately carved on it when it had first been presented to the couple. Mention is made in the exhibition of what has come to be known as the Cotta box, but the item has never been found or reunited with its original cargo.