“Blood,” the Aztec prince whispered in the twilight.     “The gods will require it.”
     I knew then his intention to make a sacrifice.
     Annie Miller, a curator at Chicago’s Field Museum, sat at her desk engrossed in the Spanish soldier’s nearly four hundred year-old diary. A group of co-workers approached the hall by her office, and she prayed they wouldn’t stop to make the requisite once a month lunch invitation. Though they tried including her in their outings, even amidst this group of introverts Annie was a bit of an oddity.
     She leaned over the ancient book, letting her long brown hair fall like a privacy fence over her face. Thankfully, they passed by, and, in no time, the office white noise all but disappeared. She was lost in the wild jungles of Veracruz, Mexico. 1621.
     The right place. The right time.
    “Huitzilpochti!” The prince softly summoned his god of war and raised his arms to the sky. “Hear me. Defend your people!”
     Hidden amidst the brush, I was both mesmerized and frightened. Duty demanded I stop the prince, and yet had I not born witness to the heinous crimes perpetrated against his people? Native boys and men, beaten and slaughtered. Women, raped and enslaved.     Did this man not deserve a measure of revenge?
“Make all who would have this gold,” the prince cried aloud, now uncaring as to who might hear him, “those greedy of heart and wicked with intent, know your wrath and die! Make them suffer as they have made my people suffer!”
     I watched in horror as the young man set his shoulders and dug a sharp rock across each wrist. Thick, menacing clouds swirled above my head as he poured his lifeblood over a golden cross. His blood oozed over the pearls and emeralds set within the cross’s frame, casting the largest, clearest stones I had ever beheld in deep, red glory.
     Gold. Pearls. Emeralds.
     Annie’s neck tingled with dread. The Santidad Cross. It had to be.
    Having heard the disturbance, several guards came quickly to find the prince collapsing upon the cross. Lieutenant Sanchez kicked over the dying man and seized the cross. The storm gathered strength. Rain fell hard and fast. Lightning split a nearby tree, scattering the guards, but I remained rooted to the spot, watching as a large limb sundered from its trunk and crushed Sanchez, the cross still in his grasp.
     The gods had listened.
     Annie closed her eyes. Gripping the diary in her shaking hands, she remembered another time, another place. Other deaths. The curse was real, and this proved it.
     She picked up the diary, drew a small, heavy box from her briefcase, and went in search of the head curator. He had to see this.
     “Aaron!” She knocked on the way into his office, a large, white space filled with artifacts, book after oversized book, and curious pieces of what most normal people considered junk. “I need to show you something from these newest acquisitions.”
     Aaron stood behind his untidy desk sloughing on his suit coat. “You made it through that stuff already?”
Annie nodded. “A lot of what he owned belongs in antique stores,” she said, “but this—”
     “Annie, I’m sorry. I’m already late for a lunch meeting.”
     “Read this one passage. Please?” She held out the diary.      “It’ll only take a second.”
     Sighing, he scanned the excerpt and handed it back. “Intriguing. Let’s talk about this when I get back.” He didn’t believe her. No one did.
     Unwilling to give up, she followed him down the long, antiseptic hall. “I’ll walk out with you.” Though the museum was filled with rich historical artifacts and lavish decorations, its administrative offices lacked a speck of personality.
     “You’re thinking Santidad Cross,” he said, “aren’t you?”

    “What else could it be?”
     They reached the outside grounds and were greeted by a perfectly warmed summer day. As they came to Aaron’s parking spot, he slowed to face her. “I thought you’d decided to quit obsessing over that cross.”

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