Tink. Tink.
Hollow . . . metal? The Peruvian man squeezed the shovel and tapped the dirt again.
Tink. Tink. Tink.
He threw the shovel aside. He knew what he was supposed to do next. First, as a good archaeologist, he was to report to the project leader his find. Then he was to begin the tedious work of gently removing the dirt away from the artifact with a soft brush for the next three days.
He did neither.
He clawed the ground. Bits of rock shoved under his fingernails. Dirt flew into nose, teeth, and eyes.
They gave up on the western site. Said I was an idiot, he thought, laughing to himself. Yes, yes. Cigar-shaped, self-emanating alloy, just as he told me. And here it is—the oldest artifact on the planet.
With one inhale, he blew
He let out a small gasp. There was an engraving, and it said:
READ ME
Read Me? Is that English? That can't be English. This artifact is over ten thousand years old. Long before the English language was around. Is this some kind of joke? He glanced over his shoulder. Only the ruins of Machu Picchu peered back at him. "Ha!" He laughed. English? Chinese? What do I care? Oldest artifact ever to be discovered, and I made the find. That project leader told me it would be worth more money than these Peruvian eyes had ever seen.
The idea swelled before he could stop it.
I could slip it into my pocket. Sneak out after nightfall. And I know just the buyer. The Peruvian loosened his pocket as he parted the object from its archaeological grave.
A shadow passed over.
He leapt to his feet. What is he doing down here?
There stood the crazy old project leader with his straw white hair and green trench coat. He never came groundside, preferring to stay in his hovertruck 24/7 to watch over the Machu Picchu dig like some Norse god of archaeology. What the Peruvian didn't know was the old man was Grand Lyons, posing as the project leader for their archeological dig.
"I—I think we've found it," the Peruvian said regretfully.
"Yes. I saw it from the truck. Bring it here, quickly now," Grand barked in a thick, foreign accent.
The Peruvian obeyed. He tapped the UP symbol on the auto-lift. Electromagnetic thrusters raised him twenty feet and eye level with the project leader. But he didn't make eye contact with the old man; he couldn't make eye contact with the old man.
The project leader frightened him.
No other way to put it. He was abnormally tall with the beard of a wild man and a temper to match. And he used big words like "forsooth" and "malcontent."
With a sigh, the Peruvian surrendered the oldest artifact on the planet into the old man's dirt-trailed hands.
I'm an idiot. Weak, stupid idiot, he thought.
Grand withdrew a monocle and, for the first time ever, smiled, saying, "Read me."
The Peruvian smiled back. "Wonder if the Smithsonian has my Friendbank address. You know, for follow-up questions."
Or a job promotion? He thought. Maybe even director? I suppose I should hire a publicist.
With the artifact cupped in his hand, the project leader raised his chest and spit.
"Ugh." The Peruvian covered his mouth.
He rubbed the artifact, spit again, and then scratched it with blackened nails. The Peruvian dug through his back pocket and offered up a bottle of hand sanitizer.
Grand ignored him. "Very good, Ludwig, very good. Couldn't have made the clue more difficult to find. You and your puzzles."
"It—it is quite strange," said the Peruvian. "This script, it is English, yes? Definitely not Incan."
Grand's face rounded on the object. "And why should it be? Laid here when Peru was nothing more than an ice sheet."
A stick cracked in the distance. In one motion, the project leader shoved the artifact into his coat, reached behind his neck, and unsheathed an axe.
"Woah." The Peruvian scrambled backward. "What? What?"
He traced a figure eight with the axe head. The jungle responded in silence. The axe was mysteriously hidden again.
"Wh—why do you have a battle axe at the dig . . . at all?" The Peruvian cocked his head. "And where do you keep that thing?"
Grand curled both fists around the artifact.
Snap.
He broke it in two.
"Are you crazy?" The Peruvian grabbed his hair. The oldest artifact in human history and he broke it like a twig.
The artifact released tendrils of yellow dust. A breeze swept most of it away, leaving a trace of letters behind.
"I, um, I . . ." the Peruvian mumbled.
"It's stardust. Now be quiet."
Mr. Lyons,
The Merfolk are in grave danger and in need of their steward, your grandson Nikolas Lyons. Return him home to Möon without delay. I have come to learn of the Merfolk's danger through one of my spies: a wallfly. Watch the memory-in-a-bottle and the wallfly.
You will understand all.
- Ludwig, Master Toymaker
"Memory-in-a-bottle and the wallfly?" Grand said to himself. "I don't see the—ah! There you are." He moved away a bit of straw and lifted up a green bottle. Then he pulled out a small vial. He untwisted the vial's top and a mechanical fly fell out. It looked to be made of tin.
"That'd be the wallfly." He held it up to his eye, inspecting it. "Now tell me what memory are you holding, you little bugger? What evil thing gives chase to the Merfolk?" He dropped the mechanical bug into the bottle, and a light flashed.
A scene appeared inside the bottle. It was a miniature version of a man driving a stagecoach along some unknown seacoast. Squinting, Grand put the bottle's mouth to his eyeball. Immediately he yipped and then yelled, "They almost got you there!" A minute passed, and he shook his head, growling some indiscernible word. He shouted again, "Oh, that's terrible!"
Watching the project leader respond to a hidden scene only frustrated the Peruvian. He felt like he was at the theater being forced to keep his back to some really good movie while the rest of the audience went on enjoying themselves.
The Peruvian plopped down onto a lone rock, suspecting that he would be awhile. He was right. Grand kept his eyeball glued to the memory-in-a-bottle for the next three hours. On and on, he yowled and tisked, gasped and shook his head.
Finally, he pulled the bottle away from his face, looked around dizzily and announced, "Doomed! All of them. The Merfolk have been attacked! That's it then. I left her exposed. . . . I should return Nikolas. I must return Nikolas . . . but the trackers? Take Nikolas through the timeway, and in so doing, abandon the trackers to this timeline. Kill two birds with one stone." He squeezed his palms. "Oh Huron, what is the way? What is the way? Confound it all! Why is the city quiet?" He locked eyes with the Peruvian. "Why will the woman not speak to me?"
"Women." The Peruvian shrugged back. "Take it from personal experience. They never call back. You just have to move on."
Grand's eyes searched the Peruvian's for a moment.
"Aagh." He waved him off and pulled out the artifact. "Is that all you have for me, Ludwig?" He shook the artifact and more stardust appeared, reading:
P.S. I left a few instruments to aid your journey home. First, a chronostone. It will open up a timeway so that you may return. Use it to bring Nikolas back. You should arrive on Augustist 12th, year 4570 of the 5th Epoch—the very day I have written this.
Second. I have included the steward's horn that Nikolas may speak to the city of Huron. I pray it still functions by the time you arrive. But more importantly, I pray the voice of Huron speaks to him.
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