Fantastical Ramblings (20 page)

“If he knew her to be legitimate, why didn’t he speak up at
the trial?” I asked.

“Uh...” Confusion flushed his face a deeper red.

“You’ve ruined it, Jed Marshall.”

“You don’t know that! You can’t prove I did anything just by
looking at it. You’re guessing. Those greedy east coast Carters who grabbed the
mill and the land away from my family pay your salary. They’ve got you in their
pocket. You don’t dare present evidence to contradict their ownership.”

“The Carters have nothing to do with it. The museum belongs
to the county now.”

“And the Carters are the biggest tax payers in the county.”

“Actually, the mill went public with their stock. The
Carters only own about fifteen percent of it now. I question the entry
because...” How did she know?

What was she doing? Her dissertation, her job. She put
everything in jeopardy because of a
feeling!

Truth. Know truth now
.
Cymorth looked at her. Those deep grey eyes held Gabby captive for a moment. An
entire world of understanding beyond normal senses opened before her.

What is truth without
proof
! Gabby wanted to shout at the dog.

Truth is truth. You
know. Cymorth know. Proof come later. You know where to look now
.

“It doesn’t matter how I know. I know. I’ll submit the
entire collection to experts for
thorough
examination. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Marshall. I’ll send a receipt to you for the
donation by registered mail, along with an estimate valuation for tax purposes.”

Gabby turned on her heel and retreated inside with her dog.
No, her familiar. She heaved a sigh of regret. The dissertation and the job
with the University would have to wait for lab results.

Better to be right
,
Cymorth told her. Her sentence structure and vocabulary improved with every
communication.

“Yeah, I guess. But it would have been nice to be right and
finish on schedule.”

Other opportunities
.

“Promise?”

Promise. Trust
Cymorth. Cymorth never lie
.

A whiff of potpourri tantalized Gabby as she entered her
museum again. With the scent came memory of her dream that morning.

“That old Gypsy was right. I stumbled three times this
morning. Once when I was getting dressed, again at the car, and a third time
greeting Mr. Marshall. My old life with limited perceptions has ended and a new
life begun with you, my dear. And I met a man who changed my life—Ian brought
you to me, Cymorth.”

More to truth than
proof
.

~THE END~

The Columbia River Gorge is one of those special places I
must return to on a regular basis. This story is as much an homage to
my
gorge as to my Celtic roots and love
of standing stones.

<<>>

Red and black swarms of energy bit and stung at my mind. I
brushed my filthy hand across my eyes to banish the memory of the last time I
got caught in a turf maze.

The watery sun and constant breeze of the Columbia River
Gorge brought me back to reality.

Slowly, inch by careful inch, holding my three inch
triangular trowel in my customary awkward grasp, I scraped centuries of
accumulated dirt away from the layer of granite, a huge, flat, slab of erratic
rock embedded in the prevailing basalt.

My enthusiasm for the project waned with the sun. For many
months now, I just didn’t care if I ever finished my PhD.

“This shouldn’t exist here,” Dr. Wendall Follmoth, our
distinguished leader whispered to the grad student with the cameras. They
huddled over a laptop with the latest pictures of the entire archaeological dig,
comparing them to satellite photos and geological surveys. “How do I explain a
Celtic knot maze in the middle of a Klickitat Indian burial ground?”

“It has to be a hoax,” I said. Something felt “off”. Something
more than the imbalance in myself. The granite in basalt could be explained as
a deposit from one of the Missoula Floods at the end of the last ice age.

“The depth of the turf indicates at least six centuries,”
Follmoth mused. “You’re a free thinker, in archeology, Monica. You’re the last
one I expected to hear the ‘H’ word from at this stage.”

That was why he’d brought me in on this project. I
specialized in Celtic knot symbolism. I’d proclaimed long and loud that the
twisted symbols had a more universal theme than just the traditional stomping
ground of the Celts. My beliefs had gotten me banned from a number of digs that
might force some more hidebound-by-the-book (meaning the very oldest texts)
colleagues to change their minds.

The deeper I delved into mazes, the further afield my
beliefs strayed. Until the last maze I’d walked.

“There are stories of Celtic missionaries setting out in
hide boats and never coming back. Some of them, or their descendants could have
wandered this far west,” I said, as much to placate him as my own fevered
memories of red and black energy sucking at my soul.

Around me, grad students and volunteers whispered. We had
one more week to study the anomaly. A bulldozer clearing ground for a new condo
development had revealed it. If we found nothing of value, the developer had
more digging permits than we did.

This field work and one revision of my dissertation away
from the coveted Ph.D. in archeology, I needed to complete this dig. The deeper
I delved, the more uncertain I became; the less I cared.

Too many anomalies reminded me of my esoteric adventures
with mazes. Red and black. Pulsing energy that robbed me of will and
motivation.

Through my years of study I’d flirted with pagan
philosophies and explored some of their natural energy theories. Part of the
job: understanding the people, their culture, and their religion.

Why had Sam Hill chosen to build his Stonehenge replica
memorial to the World War I dead two miles down river from
here
? Stonehenge was the greatest maze of all if you only knew how
to look at it

I exchanged my trowel for a whisk broom, then a toothbrush. My
weak and wayward thumb refused to wrap around the slender handle—I’d broken it
on a dig in the Yucatan three years ago, miles and days away from medical help
and it’d never healed properly. Still I persevered. The tiny bristles moved
particles away from solid rock revealing a groove six inches wide. It extended
to my right and left as far as I could see.

“Camera!” I called. Hoax or not, every bit of this dig
needed exacting documentation. As the photographer set up her gear, digital and
traditional film, I placed rulers across and along the groove I’d exposed. My
bare fingertips slid along the newly exposed granite.

Something sent a chill along my spine. I dismissed it as the
ever-present wind. Competing air masses tended to line up on either side of the
mountains and use the river gorge as their battleground for dominance. So far
we’d had one of those rare summer days of low clouds and dampness that kept us
from broiling. Portland, Oregon to the west, suffered driving rain. The high
desert plateau to the east simmered with one hundred degree heat and ninety
percent humidity.

I touched the groove again, firmly, deliberately.

The same frisson crawled along my back to the base of my
skull. My vision fractured with tiny lightning bolts.

Red and black.

A surprised voice called, “Hello?” A musical voice with a
hint of delicate chimes behind it.

The beginning of a migraine? Or something else?

While the photographer did her thing, I evaluated my body for
other symptoms. Just the act of stepping away from the dig brought light levels
back to a more subdued normal. My muscles relaxed after sitting and bending so
long in one place. Part of the job.

I stretched my back and bent my legs in long lunges. Then I
rotated my neck and shoulders. As my head bent to the left, my perspective
changed again and I caught a brief glimpse of rich, fertile land, brilliant
green, with trees and flowers and chuckling streams cascading down a series of
waterfalls.

Not in this climate and not in summer. Waterfalls yes, born
of mountain snow run off, but not the fresh smell of damp grass, or the twitter
of song birds and frogs croaking a springtime mating call.

“Hello,” the same voice said, a lot less surprised.

Must be a migraine coming on.

I drank deeply from the water bottle attached to my belt
pack. The strange vision disappeared as if it had never been. Silence resumed. I
forcibly denied my memory of red and black swirling around me in suffocating
spirals.

Back to work. Work was the cure for everything.

My back ached. My thighs screamed as I crouched down again. The
tension in my neck began tying itself into knots almost equal to the maze in
complexity.

I rose up again, knowing I needed more stretches. This time
I examined what we’d uncovered. Nearly half the outer boundaries of the maze
showed fresh and clean in the side light of a westering sun. I saw hints to the
pattern.

I’d seen it before. Time and again, in ancient earthworks
around Iron Age hill forts, in Eighteenth Century reconstructions, in the
floors of rotting cathedrals, and in the jewelry marketed throughout the world
as Celtic.

I’d also seen it on a grander scale in the layout of an
Olmec city in Mesoamerica (where I’d broken my thumb), Indonesian ruins, and in
artistic renditions of Atlantis.

Then there was the petroglyph upriver from here. The
aboriginal tribes called it “Tsagaglalal”. She who watches. Spiraled eyes set
in a square face. Those eyes drew you inward, ever inward, inviting you to see
other places, other times...

My heart skipped a beat. A lump lodged in my throat.

Maybe this wasn’t a hoax. Maybe... Oh ghods! What would I
find at the center of these twisted pathways? The grand finale of my research,
or just another hoax and delay? My salvation, or my doom?

My entire body trembled with excitement and fear. Red and
black. Hot, stinging, malicious.

Forget that
! It
couldn’t have truly happened.

“Wendell,” I called the director over to my sector.

He picked his way across the strings and markings that
separated precisely measured and numbered work areas. He moved with surprising
grace and silence for a man of his portly build. But then his performance on a
dance floor with swing music to guide him was nothing short of amazing.

“What?” His eyes immediately went to the ground, like any
well trained field archaeologist.

“Look at the whole,” I said quietly. My hand slipped inside
his of its own volition.

Goosebumps raced from me to him and back again.

Nothing is private on a dig. Everyone began twisting their
necks right and left. Some stood. Others preferred the lower perspective from
the crouch.

Follmoth let out a low whistle. “If it’s a hoax, it’s a damn
good one.”

I let my gaze trace the concentric circles that looped back
on themselves and twisted off into new directions at odd but almost expected
angles.

“It’s gonna rain, folks. Get the tarps out and cover the
whole field. We don’t want what’s in those thunderheads to muddy up what we’ve
already done,” Follmoth ordered. He bit his lip.

I figured we had an hour before the first drops hit. Wendell
wanted to quit early.

All the students and volunteers scrambled to do his bidding.
More than a few cast sidelong glances our way.

“The symbolism is all wrong for this area,” he whispered,
still holding my hand.

“Stonefaced Monica Warburtun and Dr. Follmoth?” I heard one
young man, an undergrad, ask his dig partner.

The partner shrugged. I’d rejected advances from both at the
beginning of the dig.

“You going to walk the maze?” Follmoth whispered as soon as
the others were out of earshot.

“I think I have to.” I wrapped my arms around myself to ward
off the shakes. “Later,” I reassured myself. I could wait until later.

I gathered up a van-load of students and volunteers and
drove us back to our motel ten miles up the road.

Wendell Follmoth joined us about an hour later in the café
adjacent to the motel. We exchanged a knowing look then tucked into the
substantial hamburgers with fresh cut fries and milkshakes.

“My turn to stand watch,” I announced to the group. A groan
of relief came from a dozen throats at once. The first couple of nights, people
clamored for the right to sleep in a tent alone, on site. After a week of hard
work in the heat, the prospect of sleeping on a real mattress outweighed the
lack of privacy in four to a room quarters. Archeology commands shoestring
budgets. The big bucks go to imaging equipment and lab tests. We save where we
can. Lodging and hot restaurant food is a luxury.

Follmoth drove back to the site with me. “You know the rest
of the crew will think we’re having an affair,” I said affably as he parked the
van.

He shrugged and continued working. “You wouldn’t be the
first doctoral candidate to sleep with her prof. Too bad I’m not on your
committee.”

“Too bad you’re gay.” We both laughed. Best friends.

“You shouldn’t do this alone, Monica,” he said seriously. “It’s
dangerous playing with strange energies. You don’t really expect to find a
portal into another dimension just by walking the maze; despite the legends.”

I had once before. He’d dragged me back from that escapade
and held my hand until my sanity returned.

“I have to do this alone. According to the mythology, it’s a
solitary trek and not everyone can bust through the barriers. I’ve trained for
this.” Resolutely I yanked on the cord to fire up the portable generator. Instantly
artificial light flooded our site.

“Shouldn’t you wait for dawn?” He stood in front of the
small opening that would lead me onto this path. “Powerful energies happen in
transition times, twilight, dawn, the equinoxes. Neither realm holds sway,
portals thin.”