A Special Find by Himring

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A Special Find

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Sally-Ann was at the end of her wits. This dig had been meant to be her fresh start. Her career had slowed down due to motherhood, then stalled while her first marriage fell apart. But life had resumed and she had picked herself up again. Then funding had come through for this major project! She had felt so very lucky, until she had set up here and things began to go wrong.

Such an absurd string of mishaps and accidents—it would have been enough to make her a conspiracy theorist, if she had been at all inclined that way. She had been able to prevent serious consequences or mitigate them, most of the time, so far but her team were not so unobservant as not to notice. Everyone was on edge, tempers fraying, and she had lost staff members, especially after that episode with the broken arm, as others got nervous and drifted away. She also had begun to worry about rumours among the locals.

And on top of that, she had arranged for her daughter and her friend to come visit, before all this began. She had so looked forward to showing the site to Alice! And then the invitation could not be rescinded and it turned out that Alice’s friend, Tiny, was going through a major crisis and needed to be away from home and family for a bit, Alice said.

Tiny, whose nickname was clearly originally humorous, unless it had been given before a massive growth spurt set in, had perfect manners, whatever the crisis was about. Sally-Ann had some ideas, but thought that part could safely be left to Alice—if Alice needed help or advice, she could be trusted to let her mother know. Nevertheless, Tiny was a vulnerable teenager and Sally-Ann worried about potentially unfortunate encounters, in the current situation, with people this volatile.  

She had attempted to deal with that problem by sending Alice and Tiny off to the beach, a safe distance away. In any case, it was their holiday, after all! What she had not expected was that they would return from the beach with a stranger asking for employment on the dig. While Alice was good with people, usually, Sally-Ann would hardly have sent her to hire archaeological staff. And a random beachcomber seemed unlikely hiring material. She could use a replacement for her losses, though. However, there was also something else…

As soon as she was alone with her would-be employee, she fixed him with a beady gaze.

‘You’ve got an ulterior agenda, haven’t you?’

The stranger lifted his hands, palms down, in a soothing manner.

‘If I do, you need not worry about it! I sincerely promise it doesn’t conflict with any of yours!’

She decided to hire him anyway. And, miracle of miracles, from that moment that inexplicable run of bad luck just—stopped.

Her new employee proved competent enough at his job during the daytime. Sally-Ann resolutely turned a blind eye to his habit of roaming around the edge of the excavation at odd hours during the night, singing softly at the pits and holes or even into them. None of her business and it did no harm she could see.

*

The page gleamed pale in the moonlight and suddenly writing appeared on it.

‘Did you know that was there?’ Sally-Ann asked in astonishment.

She peered at the marks on the page more closely.

‘I cannot read it. It doesn’t much resemble any of the scripts we’ve seen among our finds so far, here. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before. Is it some kind of cryptogram?’

‘It’s not a secret code,’ said Maglor, ‘merely a language spoken so long ago few remember it now.’

‘What does it say?’ she asked.

Maglor gave her a wry look.

‘Anything that can go wrong will,’ he translated.

She laughed out loud in surprise.

‘They knew that already! My guess is that they did not call it Murphy’s Law then!’

‘They proved it in the doing. And they had darker names for it.’

‘How do you know all that?’

Maglor did not answer. He turned the parchment over.

‘I prefer the name Murphy’s Law,’ he said, finally. ‘It sounds friendlier.’

Sally-Ann took a step back. Excitement had carried her away but now she had had a moment to reflect on this unexpectedly melodramatic turn of events.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me that this was the secret McGuffin that you were looking for all along and you need it to save the world, or something! This is an important archaeological find and I must insist…’

‘I wasn’t lying to you,’ said Maglor. ‘This site was once inhabited by black Numenoreans. I am not interested at all in anything they made or possessed. Or so I thought, at least. I came to make sure you and your people were safe, especially Alice and Tiny, because some subtle influences linger here, even after all this time. That is why the locals tend to avoid the area, although they no longer remember why.

‘I hadn’t expected to find—this. One of my people from Eregion was here, long ago. I cannot make out the circumstances, but they must have been very alone and very desperate to write this down, even using moon letters. I fear they ended badly. I do not think you will find any other trace of them here, even if they managed to escape.’

He sighed.

‘I suppose I could even let you have the page just as it is, as it cannot be read by any other moon and it will be long before one like this comes again. But having read what they wrote, it feels wrong, like a betrayal of trust…’

Sally-Ann dropped all caution and made a grab for the precious artefact. She might be prepared to listen to his point of view, but not while he was holding it and might destroy it at any moment. But Maglor was too fast for her and removed it from her grasp. He held the leaf quickly aloft and sang a short complex phrase that resonated strangely in the cool night air, sharp and soft at once. At once, the rays of the moon seemed to ignite the leaf with a silvery fire and for a moment it shimmered in a pale rainbow of light. The writing disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, although the page seemed otherwise unharmed.

‘It is sealed,’ said Maglor, ‘and cannot be read now by any moon. I do not think your people have any technology to reveal the writing again.’

And he courteously handed her the parchment.

‘I have said more than I should. But I think I can trust you not to put any of this in your reports. You have a better sense of professional self-preservation than that, I think?’

She regarded him steadily.

‘No mindwipe?’

‘None.’ Maglor smiled. ‘You could even write a fantasy novel, if you feel inclined. And don’t worry, Alice and Tiny and the rest are all quite safe now.’

And with that he disappeared into the night, leaving her holding an inexplicably well-preserved sheet of blank parchment of unimaginable antiquity. She knew he wouldn’t be back.

She reverted to more professional behaviour and put the parchment carefully back into proper storage. She stared at her find record for a long while and then added nothing to it.

The sun rose. She made tea. Her phone rang. It was her partner, Marjorie.

‘Everything all right, love?’

‘Yes,’ Sally-Ann said. ‘Yes.’

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Chapter End Notes

The original drabble is embedded, but I also am posting it here as a second chapter, as I think it gives a somewhat different effect, when it stands on its own.