The next morning finds Justine being shaken awake by Wan Li, his huge grin enough to have her smiling as well. "Anything happen while I was asleep," she asks, sitting up slowly. He sits back on his heels, smile dropping away.

"A little boy made it back here last night, he said that the others are still trapped in the palace. Doctor Jones says we need to leave right now." Willie's already outside, her evening gown and heels missing from where she'd stashed them the night before. "Miss Tina?"

"Yeah, Shorty, I'm coming." He nods and leaves the hut, shouting in excitement once he's back out in the sunshine. Justine manages a brief smile at the sound before she pulls on her clothes, the same clothes she'd worn yesterday since her suitcase had tumbled out of the raft. She pulls her hair up into a chignon as she walks outside, wanting the thick stuff off her neck. "Oh, my dear sweet lord."

"Elephants," Willie says, coming to stand next to her. "We're expected to ride elephants through the damn jungle."

"At least we're not walking." Justine marches forward and lets one of the men help her up on her elephant, a female with sun-warmed skin and small wisps of white hair on its head. "And what are you called, hmm? I think I'll call you Ginger." She pets the top of her elephant's head fondly, purposefully ignoring the trouble Willie's having. She'll be embarrassed enough as it is, she doesn't need another person gawking at her.

They keep moving well into the early evening, only stopping for bathroom breaks or when the heat starts to get too horrible.

A colony of bats fly overhead as they're crossing a river, the largest ones that Justine has ever seen. She likes bats, the way they navigate by echolocation and how fuzzy they are. "Oh, what big birds," Willie says, tilting her head back to ogle at them.

"Those aren't birds, sweetheart," Indiana calls from the front. "Those are vampire bats." She doesn't look any less fascinated by them as they fly overhead, lips parted.

"I wonder if one of them is a Count," Justine muses to herself. Willie looks to her and then back up to the sky, all blue with only a few wisps of clouds to be seen. "I wouldn't mind being whisked off to Transylvania. Maybe he could even eat my husband."

"I don't think your luck runs that way." Justine huffs out a sigh, though it morphs into a snort of laughter when Willie's elephant bucks her off into the water. The singer lets out an enraged shriek and slaps at the elephant's trunk.

"This isn't fair! I was just fine in Shanghai. I had a little house and a garden, and my friends were rich…." She lets out a high-pitched sob, slapping at the water. "Oh God, why did I take that stupid diamond? I could be dry right now. I could be at some fancy party in a nice dress and my French perfume wouldn't be floating down a godforsaken river." Justine sends Indiana a look and he attempts to smother his smile.

"I think we'll camp here tonight," he says.

Sunset finds Justine reclined on a low tree branch, a bare foot swinging back and forth in the air as she hums. In her mind, she's sitting on the veranda of her parents' home on the outskirts of Marseille, listening to her older brother sing as he checks on their vineyard. "Au clair de la lune," she sings, barely more than a whisper," mon ami Pierrot, prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot." It's one of her favorite songs, a simple lullaby that calmed all her ragged nerves and made her feel like a little girl again. "Ma chandelle est morte…." She trails off, giggling as Willie's elephant drapes its trunk over her shoulder again.

"I told you to stop that," Willie growls, shoving at the trunk. Wearing a blanket as a dress, Willie gets up and crosses their little camp to spread her partially dried clothes out on the branch next to Justine, running her hand over the delicate material to smooth it out. "So, how did you meet your little bodyguard?"

"I didn't meet him," Indiana says, dealing out a new hand for him and Li. "I caught Shorty pickpocketing me outside the Tai-Phung Theater a few years ago. Tina convinced me to keep him with us instead of shipping him straight to a boarding school in Connecticut."

"Boarding school isn't a good place for children," Justine says primly. "The boys there can be cruel, and I don't want to be in a completely different country if Li gets bullied." Indiana doesn't argue, but he does reach out to tweak Li's nose. The kid's basically like their child at this point, though none of them have admitted that fact out loud.

Willie shakes her head, reaching for her shirt and accidentally grabbing a bat instead. Her scream could wake Merneith all the way in her tomb. She tosses the bat aside and sprints to the far-left side of the camp, finding some other animal there that has her sprinting to the right and then diving to the ground near her elephant.

"We're surrounded," she breathes out. "There's wildlife everywhere."

"We're in a jungle, Willie," Indiana says. "What were you expecting?" She sends him a withering glare, pulling her blanket tighter around her. "Say, is Willie short for something?"

"It's my professional name, Indiana."

"Hey," Li calls," he's Doctor Jones to you." Indiana gives a dry smile and Justine can't hold back a soft laugh.

"And that's my professional name," he says. Willie frowns as she relaxes back against a log, batting her elephant's trunk away again.

"Tell me the truth, we're not really going to some deserted palace for fortune and glory, are we," Willie asks. Indiana shakes his head and pulls out a piece of worn tapestry, unfolding it to show Willie. "We're going to get the rest of whatever this was torn from?"

"No, this is a piece of an old manuscript. This pictograph represents Sankara, a priest." She bats the trunk away again, the elephant making a small noise. "The Sanskrit over here tells part of the legend of Sankara." He runs his finger along the line of old writing for Willie to follow along and Justine relaxes further as Indiana tells the story. "He climbs Mount Kalisa where he meets Siva, the Hindu god."

"So what's Siva handing to the priest?"

"The five sacred stones that will help him combat evil."

"Magic rocks? You know, my grandfather was a magician. He spent his entire life with a rabbit in his pocket and pigeons up his sleeves. He made a lot of children happy and died a very poor man. He might believe in your magic rocks, but I sure don't. And on that note, I'm going to bed." She gets up and moves closer to her elephant, spreading some leaves around to protect her from the cold dirt.

"I'd sleep closer if I were you. It's safer that way."

"I'd be safer with a snake." As if summoned, a python unfurls from one of the branches and curls over Willie's shoulder. Indiana jolts backwards with a choked off cry, and the pure horror on his face might have been amusing if there wasn't a good chance of Willie getting herself bit. She grabs ahold of the snake without even looking, tossing it back into the jungle. "Sweet Christ, I hate that elephant."

"I got room up here if you want to join me," Justine calls from her perch.

"Or you can stop being a monkey and come down here." She grins and rolls off the branch, landing on her feet. "Show off."

"I told you I was one." Willie curls up on her side, tugging Justine down beside her until they're snuggled together. "Hey, what's Willie short for? My curiosity won't let me sleep until it's satisfied."

"Wilhelmina. Are you going to tell Jones?"

"Nope, it'll be our little secret. For the record, though, I think Wilhelmina is a gorgeous name." Willie hums, patting the arm that Justine has thrown over her middle. "Sweet dreams, Willie."

The group is up and moving again before daylight, trying to beat the scorching heat by a few hours at the least. There's mild complaining on Willie's part, but she settles into the routine as they move slowly through the jungle with Sajnu clearing the way ahead of them. The odd hours don't affect Justine much, she's used to them after following her husband around and getting her own degree for Egyptology.

"How do you think Fay Wray is handling things," Indiana asks, nodding at the blonde behind them.

"This is all new to her," Justine shrugs. "All things considered, she could be worse." And there had been other women on these little detours, most of them seduced by Indiana's rakish good looks and his passion for archaeology. "Don't be so hard on her."

"You're just saying that because you want in her pants."

"Do I torment any of your potential lovers?"

"Tabitha Walters."

"Tabitha Walters ended up stealing your wallet and nearly stealing the jade statuette that you'd bought for me. I was right to torment her."

"You didn't have to shave her head."

"Short hair is the new style." Justine gives a prim little sniff, ignoring the way Indiana rolls his eyes. If he would just listen to her before taking strange women home then he'd still have that Glenn Miller record that he'd loved so much.

"You do realize you're a little bit of a sociopath, right?"

"I'm well aware, yes."

Color begins leaching into the sky as they come over a short hill, looking like a watercolor painting. With their new vantage point, they're able to see the white outline of a palace far above their heads, at least another six hours away. It looks like a shiny pearl that's been dropped among the lush greens of the jungle, though not nearly colorful enough to compare to the sunrise.

"Indy, look," Li says, bouncing excitedly. His elephant, Big Short Round, doesn't seem to mind, its tail twitching back and forth.

"I see it, Shorty," Indiana says. "That's Pankot Palace."

"How long until we get there?"

"Maybe around lunch."

"If we're lucky," Justine says under her breath. The time it takes to get there depends on the length of jungle still ahead of them, it could be easy to break through or it could be so thick that they have to find a new route.

"You sure you can handle this?"

"Don't be an idiot." With that, they continue onwards.

The sky is just starting to darken when they come to a stop at an actual path, the guides and Indiana moving forward to check for any boobytraps. Whatever they find has the guides almost hysterical, Sajnu stumbling away with the other two following him back towards the elephants. Justine dismounts and attempts to get closer, but Indiana holds up his hand.

"You don't wanna see this, Tina," he says.

"Why," she asks, though she doesn't move any closer. "What is it?"

"Spiders." She shrinks back at the mere mention of the little beasts, an old fear that she's battled with since childhood. It's one of the reasons she never pokes fun of his fear of snakes, she understands the bone-deep revulsion he feels whenever he sees one. Behind her, Sajnu is speaking rapidly as Willie and Li dismount, ushering the guides and elephants back into the jungle.

"Where are you going," Willie asks, trying to chase after them. "Wait, you can't leave us! Come back!" Justine swallows hard as she edges closer to Indiana, wrapping her arms around herself. Beyond him, half hidden by vines and foliage, is a tall statue of a woman wearing a necklace of heads. Kâli.

"Looks like we're walking from here."

Merneith was an Egyptian Queen whose tomb was discovered in 1900 by Flinders Petrie.