Riddles in the Dark

Night on the airship is peaceful. The air is clear and crisp, the sky is bursting with stars, and the only sounds are the creaking of the ship and the gentle, constant stream of wind. I decided to take my constitutional to the aft of the ship, where a large window looks out over the ocean below. I brought with me some of the journals and clues I have gathered in my studies of the Kalumi. There is precious little information about them, and I hoped to glean some idea of where to begin our search.

With a mug of ale in one hand, and one of the journals of Lord Harrison's expeditions among the Yanomami in the other, I was deep in thought when I was suddenly and unceremoniously interrupted. "Nice night for a bit of reading," a boisterous voice boomed into the room, completely destroying my train of thought. I looked up, startled. "Captain," I replied. I marked the page I had been looking at and set down my ale. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" He smiled, and I saw his eyes crinkle pleasantly above his beard. I straightened my skirts and adjusted my posture in the large wooden chair I had settled into during my academic reverie. "I saw the gaslight on in here and was curious. What are you squinting at?"

"I wasn't squinting," I sniffed. "I was reading. Trying to figure out where to go once we land in Brazil. Or where we should land in the first place." I sighed. "It's hopeless though. The clues are so few and far between. All I have is a symbol of some strange bird, and some vague references to a city. If there is a city in the Amazon forest it's far deeper than anyone has searched before." I sat back, and contemplated my cup. The Captain started poking around my papers, and picked up one of my artifacts, a small object the size of an apple.

"What's this strange thing?" he exclaimed. I smirked. It seemed the Captain could be surprised after all. "It's a head," I remarked, and my smirk grew into a badly hidden smile as he dropped it on the table and wiped his hands on his coat. I picked it up. Indeed it was a head, a shrunken one, with a grotesque grimace and an inhuman pallor. "It's an artifact of the Yanomami. Lord Harrison brought it back himself. I came into possession of it during the course of my studies on the Kalumi people, whom we are trying to find. It is a mystery to me still, but according to his journals, Lord Harrison received the head when a chieftain spoke to him about the secretive Kalumi. They only appear in a few places in the journals, and so I brought anything I could connect to the tribe."

A Representation of the Shrunken Head

"What is the connection of the head to these natives you're looking for?" asked the Captain. I sighed again. "I'm not entirely sure. When the chieftain gave it to Harrison, he mentioned something about 'the head is the way. The city can be found through the eyes of the dead.' Very cryptic indeed." The Captain nodded, seemingly in thought. He sat across the table from me and looked at the head, not saying a word, his brow furrowing. I studied his face a moment. Indeed his beard was as well trimmed as at our first meeting, and tonight his hair was pulled back and tied. I could see line of his jaw where it met his neck, strong and firm. I had a strange desire to touch the swatch of skin behind his ear. Suddenly the ship lurched, and we were both startled. My mug tipped over and spilled across the table.

We
both jumped up and cleared papers away from the path of the spill, when a very strange and surprising thing happened. The ale had spilled on the shrunken head and it suddenly began to thrive and contort, and slowly peeled back, the skin curling up. It was disgusting, but strangely fascinating. Soon the entire scalp was turned inside out. What could be seen on the now exposed underside was incredible. Some sort of drawing and symbols were inscribed in a rusty pigment, probably blood. We bent down simultaneously. "What is it?" he whispered. I swallowed, unsure. I picked it up, and turned it around and around, trying to make sense of it.

The Map Inside The Head

"Wait," I said, and reached for the journal I had been reading when he came in. I flipped to a previous page, and laid the book next to the head. I pointed to one of the symbols on the scalp, and then to one in the book. The strange bird! There it was, plain as day! I gazed at the picture on the head, realizing that the bird was situated on top. I looked up at the Captain. "What does this look like to you?" I asked, and turned the head so he could see the pictographs right-side up. He looked at me, his eyebrow raised. "A map." He smiled. "This branching line could be a river. If the bird is a symbol of the tribe, it's probably functioning also as a compass rose, to tell you which end is up. These symbols," he pointed at a spiral and a triangle, "could mean some kind of structure or landmark." I smiled back at him.

"We have something to look for," I whispered. "We should land as close as we can to the mouth of the Amazon River. It is our path to the Kalumi."