Long moats of water enclose raised terraces of some kind of plant. Then he hears a girl singing, and he and Amelie turn.

The girl is bent over, picking beans and filling a reed basket. A long black braid snakes down her back and her skin is light brown, and she wears a flat hat and a long shawl over a full skirt. When she straightens, she lifts the basket to her shoulders and grunts. Her shawl and skirt are woven in elaborate geometric patterns in brilliant colors—red, turquoise, orange, and blue.

Isaac points. Amelie’s mouth makes a round O.

Winding, interlocking rings—the familiar eternity knot—are woven throughout the girl’s shawl in a bronze thread that shines.

She walks along the strip of earth, still singing, and they follow as she marches up a low hill. When they reach the top, Isaac pauses and points again.

About half a mile away a small city spreads across the plain. Or rather, a great stone temple (that’s what Isaac thinks it looks like) squats in the middle of a vast ring of buildings made of stone and clay with thatched reed roofs. It’s a riot of color, people dressed in brilliant clothes moving through the winding streets, the stones, too, painted and decorated. Smoke rises in spirals, people crowd the streets, chickens and dogs mill in the crowds. The girl makes for that city.

The temple at its center is long and rectangular and resting on a low terrace surrounded on all sides by broad steps. Men work on one section of the wall with hand tools. They hammer at the pale stones that are shaped and tightly fit. At the center of the complex is a blocky building with receding doors to a shadowed interior. It’s huge and, Isaac thinks, extraordinary, the complex geometric shapes of the doors and windows framing the inside. The walls are decorated with colorful frescoes.

A road leads away from the city to a stone quarry, and carts and people move back and forth on that road, which also winds away toward the lake in the distance.

The sun beats down, but the air is cold.

“Where do you think we are?” Amelie asks.

“I’ve never seen a place like this before,” Isaac answers.

They walk down the hill toward the city, following the girl at a distance.

Framing the entrance to the city is an enormous carved gate in a surrounding wall, and on either side of the gate are free-standing rock pillars—stone giants of men holding up the lintel.

“Wow,” Isaac says. “That is amazing. It is huge.”

“And snakes,” Amelie says, pointing at the carvings of what appear to be cobras that twine up and around the legs of the stone giants.

“Ah. Speaking of snakes,” Isaac says. He slips the bracelet from his arm and holds it on his free palm. “What do you suppose I say to it?”