The Idol Part 1 -

Elara looked down at the idol. The smirk on its lips seemed wider now. She wrapped it in a lead-lined cloth, her hands steady despite the tremor in her soul. She didn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t.

“Mateo!” she shouted, her voice cracking. “Get the recording equipment. Now.”

By the time he scrambled down the rope ladder, she had uncovered the idol’s torso. It was a full statuette, six inches tall, sitting cross-legged. The hum was now a whisper in her skull: take me up, take me up, take me up. the idol part 1

It was a face. No larger than her palm, carved from a single piece of jade so dark it seemed to swallow the lantern light. The features were alien: a high, sloping brow, eyes that were simple slits, and a mouth frozen in a smirk that was neither kind nor cruel—merely knowing. Around its head, a halo of carved tentacles or perhaps roots. Elara had never seen anything like it.

“That’s… not Taíno,” Mateo whispered, his camera light flickering. “The style is wrong. The iconography… those aren’t local gods.” Elara looked down at the idol

“Anything, Dr. Vance?” called a voice from above. It was Mateo, her grad student, his silhouette a dark blot against the grey sky.

“It’s older,” Elara breathed. “Much older.” She didn’t tell him the truth

The first seal is broken. And you are my new singer.

Elara didn’t answer. Her brush had just struck something smooth. Not stone. Not pottery. It was too regular, too cool. She switched to a trowel, scraping away the packed earth with increasing urgency. The hum grew stronger, resonating in her molars.