Travelers (Stars Edge: Nel Bently Book 1)

by V. S. Holmes

  Her gaze flicked upwards at the sound of angry birds. A small flock rose from the hills bordering the site to the south. Her lips thinned and she rose. “Mikey, keep an eye out will you?” She jogged up the hill feeling the burn in her muscled thighs. The coastline arced away to her right, the line of hills and undulating scrubby grasslands falling away to her left. A small grove of twisted trees dotted the hilltop. Her eyes narrowed on the red, oozing wound carved across the closest tree. It was a single word, carved with a knife: Hereje. Her mouth twisted into a silent sneer. “You think carving 'heretic' on a fucking plant will scare me?” She spat the words into the shadows of the grove, but her heart lodged in her throat.

  •

  Nel needed to sort their finds from the day and file the paperwork, but anger still simmered and she would only make mistakes. Better late than wrong. She grabbed a six-pack from her paleo-aged mini-fridge and ducked out onto her fire escape.

  Mikey was already perched on the dark roof, despite being the second to shower. He eyed the bottles in her hand. “Either you've suddenly become generous with your precious rehydration or you really need to vent.”

  She tried to shrug and sit at once and ended in an ungainly pile on the warm concrete beside him. She laughed, but her eyes were steely. “I'm fine. Just frustrated.”

  “'Fuckers'?” He quoted her mid-shower outburst from the day before.

  “Heard that, did you?”

  “Nel, this site is your baby. It's okay to feel shitty about this, or rebellious. Just don't get yourself in trouble. These people are locals. Their families cook our food and make our beds.”

  Nel wrinkled her nose. “Never heard a-one of the locals defending the Founders. They don’t mess with them either.”

  “I dunno. We’ve been coming here forever, but I don’t know if I could say I know them much better than when I was a green.” He shrugged, tipping back his beer. “Today gave me the willies.”

  “They've never been violent before.” Nel picked at the calluses at the base of her fingers. He had a point. A good one.

  “They've never vandalized a site before. Not like this. Sure their symbol gets sprayed on our tents every summer and our shovels are usually sacrificed into the ocean, but this is weird.”

  “I know. Me too about the willies.” Laughter swelled as the students exited the house and paraded down the road. The sound only distanced Nel more from the excitement.

  “Did they watch today?”

  Nel shrugged. “I didn't see them. They carved 'hereje' into a tree today.” She heaved a sigh and drained her beer. “I was thinking about asking Maria about them.” She named the owner of their house.

  Mikey shot her a worried look. “They don’t bug us and we don’t bug them, Nel. Don’t screw this up. If you’re worried, call Martos.”

  “Fuck!” She shot to her feet. “I told him to call me last night!” She slid down the fire escape and through her window. Her phone blinked on the desk by the abandoned finds. She groaned and flipped it open. Martos’ number glared up at her and she scrolled to his message.

  “Nel, got your call. I was on the phone with our funders, actually. Sorry to hear about the site, as were they, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. The election down there probably has them all up in arms. I hope nothing was badly damaged. Shoot me an email when you can? Cheers.”

  She sighed and deleted the message before sinking onto her bed. Martos was great, but he had been out of the field long enough for the pain of looting and vandalism to have faded from his heart a bit. Even so, he was rarely so dismissive. After a moment, she logged into her computer and paged through her bookmarks. She tried not to make a habit of stalking the Founders, but times like this made her skin crawl with lack of information.

  Their site was much the same: crimson and gold official weight lent by the website’s .org suffix. The crisp black letters emblazoned across the top designated it the home of Los Pobladores. She had once been drunk enough to read most of the testimonials regarding the archaeologists “raping the most ancient of Chilean history.” She was too angry and too sober for that tonight. Instead, she flipped to the pictures of their protests. Right at the top were several of an achingly familiar valley. She had to admit, whoever they had snapping pictures was talented, a regular propaganda machine.

  “What’s up, Dirt-butt?” Mikey crouched on the fire escape, peering through the window. “I didn’t hear voices, so I figured you hadn’t gotten through to Martos.”

  “I called him yesterday, told him about the site. He called back but doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal.”

  “That bother you?”

  “It’s been years since that man put a shovel in the ground. He probably forgets how much it gets to us.”

  Mikey climbed in and handed her the beer she had forgotten on the roof before popping the top of one of his own. “Whatcha looking at?” He peered at the screen and groaned. “Nel, no.”

  “Look, I needed to know for sure. They’ve protested us before, but this is way out of bounds. I wanted to know if they were owning it. Just look at this mess. Their shutter bug is damned good. Our crew look like privileged, soft Americans, you look like a grunt out of Lara Croft, and I look like….” She shoved the computer away.

  Mikey took it from her carefully and flipped through the pictures, stone-faced. “You look angry, Nel, that’s all. And I am, basically, a grunt. And the crew is mostly greens -- soft and American. That’s how we all start. There’s nothing here that isn’t true. We’ve got our funding, so what are you so worried about?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea.” She set her elbows on her knees, peeling at the label of her still-unopened beer. “In undergrad I was walking back to my dorm from the SU. There were a few street-lights on the path, but it was pretty dark -- lots of trees. I got a third of the way through the green and felt like some electric shock went up my back. Way worse than any willies. I turned tail and ran back to the SU and called Jim -- you know, Jim Halen -- to give me a ride. Next day, turns out some poor girl was attacked by a creep on that same path.”

  “You’ve lost me, Nel.” He put aside the computer and edged closer to her.

  “I mean, I got the willies and listened to them.”

  “You’re worried you’re not listening to them now?”

  “This whole situation feels the same as that path did. I'm scared someone's gonna get hurt.” She glanced over at the site maps, the artifacts, the tiny collection that she hoped would answer her oldest question. “I’m a bit excited, though.”

  Mikey grinned. “There’s my stubborn girl.”

  She flashed him a smile that fell short of her eyes. “There’s a reason we’ve scared the Founders with this one, Mikey. And I want to find out why.”

  THREE

  The metallic kiss-sha of the screens echoed across the site. Nel pulled her field book out to plot the next transect. Four rows labeled A-D and 12 columns number 1-12 comprised the grid. It was an archaeological version of battleship — drop a meter square unit and cross your fingers for diagnostic artifacts.

  She pulled Mikey aside. “Keep an eye on Shiloh, she seems a bit overconfident.”

  Nel stopped by George's screen. “You finding anything?”

  George propped the screen on one knee, boot planted on the growing mound of dirt underneath, a land-locked Captain Morgan. He opened his hand to show her a nice collection of flakes. “Ten chert, six of this other stuff.”

  “Good job. You said you wanted to ask me something?”

  He grimaced. “Yeah.” He flicked the dirt from the screen before leading her back to his unit. Nel climbed into it, brow furrowed. The soil was dry and dense, the color of perfectly made coffee. “What’s up?”

  “I think I screwed up.” The boy pointed to the thick black band that slashed diagonally through the neat stripes of color. “The color’s all wrong. I think I dragged my boot across it.”

  Nel grinned. “George
, that wasn’t you. Looks like a burrow.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know stratigraphy, the stripes in the dirt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re not just any old color. They get lighter the further you go because you’re getting farther from organic stuff and closer to crumbled rock. The black-red fluff that has leaves and stuff, that’s organics. After that, you have a mixture of that stuff and whatever's further down. The deepest we go is the next layer, which is sand or bedrock, maybe silt if it’s a flood deposit, or sometimes clay. That stripe is from some animal digging a burrow and taking organics down with it. Tracking in the mud, you could say.” She scraped the offending color with her trowel. “See how it goes in, it’s not just a scuff mark.”

  He grinned. “Thanks! I got worried I screwed up everything.”

  “We can usually tell when something is from diggers or other people like looters or construction. The stripes are all mixed together, the top’s the wrong texture, and half the time they leave ciggs and coins and trash underneath everything. The colors are kind of how we determine rough eras too.” She rose with a groan. “Keep going down for another level or two, but if you don't find anything else we’ll call this one quits.”

  She paused at the camp table and flipped through the finds pages for that day. “There’s precious little here, Mikey.”

  “I know. I think we’re just not deep enough though. That biface frag they pulled from the embankment was pretty deep.”

  “A17 and 19 are almost on top of C. If they start going deeper than that we’ll have a whole ‘nother set of issues.” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe I should drop a China trench.”

  Mikey snorted. “The noobies always love that.”

  Nel’s first dig had dug a unit until they hit the bedrock to get a better idea of the soil composition and color. The students had joked that they were digging to China, and the name stuck. She pulled the maps out and unrolled the one already sporting a dozen hand-drawn corrections. “Where do you think would be best?”

  Mikey leaned on the table, blunt finger tracing the semi-circle of positive units. “Maybe at the peak of this arc here. Like a few meters off, between Grid A and the line of shovel tests you wanted to put in.”

  Nel nodded and began collecting the necessary paper work. “You want to do a walk over, see what we can find?”

  “Sure thing.” He dumped his pack and grabbed a water bottle and the camera. “Be back in a bit.”

  Nel hummed an answer, already elbow deep in the opening notes of the unit paperwork. She loved mapping, but the other paperwork was something that twisted in her gut like a knife. Why did I ever want to be a teacher? All it involves is paperwork. Finally she tapped it into order.

  She found the center of A Grid and hooked her tape on a corner nail before pacing out ten meters. She could see outcroppings of bedrock in the hills and behind her, so the China trench wouldn’t last too long, she hoped. She slipped in her earbuds and flicked on her walkman. Mikey teased her for being a hipster, but the truth was her Zune was more durable than any iPod. She cranked the volume, head bobbing to “Holy Horseshit Batman” as she laid in the unit. One gnarled finger held the tapes down where they crossed at 100 and 141cm. And I thought I’d never use geometry. She tapped in the second corner nail that held the string outlining the unit.

  Mikey’s hand on her shoulder startled an entirely too high yelp from her throat. She jerked the headphones out and whirled to glare at him. “Was I singing again?”

  He snorted. “Not loud enough to bother anyone. I like Gym Class Heroes, though, so I didn’t rightly mind.” He jerked his head behind him. “I’ve got something for you to see.”

  “Let me finish this?”

  “Yeah, it’s not going anywhere.” He crouched and held one end of the tape, watching as her eyes inspected the shape for tiny imperfections before she dropped the last nail. “It’s crazy how this becomes second nature, eh?”

  “Yeah, something that seemed so foreign and complex is like breathing.” She tied off the bright pink string that denoted the boundary of the unit before rising with a groan. “Oi, Annie!” she called across the site. “Keep an eye for a second, gotta check something.” She followed Mikey to the crest of the hill. “They probably think we’re hooking up.”

  Mikey made a face. “I doubt they think that. I’m pretty sure George just figured out you were female.”

  “Kind of,” she joked. “What did you find?”

  “We did the walk-over in the middle of the growing season, there were a shit-ton of plants, remember?”

  “Yeah we could barely get through half the site without a machete.”

  “Well I think I found something the bushes were hiding.” He paused at the crest of the hill and pointed. A line of brown-pink boulders marched away from them, straight and orderly. Another line arced away at an angle, like a narrow funnel. Nel’s eyes narrowed. “Huh. Old river bed?”

  “Look at the stones. Half of them are scoria.”

  “Did you take pictures?”

  “A few. Feel free to take more. You want to map it in?”

  “Yeah, and drop a transect down the middle. See what it looks like under there.”

  “You think it’s cultural?”

  “I think it could be.” She scuffed at the dirt with her boot, glaring through the sun at Mikey’s find. “I also think I’m artifact-starved and would label your fresh shit in the bushes proof of occupation.”

  Mikey laughed softly. “Alright, well let’s get China started and we can map this tomorrow.”

  “I take it the total station is fucking up again?” She nodded to the piece of survey equipment that seemed to cause more problems than it solved. When it worked, it allowed them to record the exact location of certain points.

  He grimaced. “Yep. I’ve never had this much trouble with it before. Might be the ocean or the altitude or something.”

  Nel flipped open her compass. “Yeah, I think my compass has sand in it. This site will be the death of our high budget if we keep fucking up our tools.” She glanced back to the site. Kat was finishing unit paperwork. Nel nodded toward him. “Get Kat started on China Trench, I’ll finish up this.”

  She jogged over to the first line of rocks and snapped a picture before tugging her field book out of her pack and quickly sketching the boulders. There were twenty-seven of them, all between 1 and 2 m in size. Blood surged through her limbs. This was what archaeology was about. Leaving Africa, crossing Beringia, crossing the Atlanic, finding the Moon. And archaeologists searching for where we began. Nel paced out the lines, marking particularly interesting rocks as she passed.

  Humans were explorers, right down to the base of whatever they called a soul.

  FOUR

  The Jeep made a good show of complaining as it hauled itself up the roads. Spinning tires and a fair amount of slamming gears between first and second soothed Nel’s inner badass-rebel. The crew had settled into a good dynamic, but 7:00am starts weren’t anyone’s friend, especially after a night of drinking. The ride was silent, those who had international data plans updating Facebook and Twitter while they still had signal.

  The car roared over the crest of the hills, jostling back into the ruts. Nel smelled the smoke before they rounded the bend. Fuck. It was one thing to tell greens about vandalism, to explain the heartbreak and the anger. When they didn’t see it, it was just a good story. Seeing it meant calls to parents, and inevitably Nel would get phoned and emailed about safety.

  She slowed the car and fumbled with the walkie-talkie that connected the Wrangler with Mikey's Neon. “You smell that? Over.” She was too worried to use their silly call-signs.

  She watched his mouth thin in the rear-view mirror, pressing all expression from his face. “It’ll look worse if we keep it from them. Over.” She sighed and turned in her seat. “Alright, you all smell that smoke? I’m sure you’ve heard the worst about the site’s
condition our first day back this season. Looks like we got hit again. Phones away and keep your eyes and ears open. The vandals aren’t violent, but they obviously lit something on fire -- let’s use our heads here. If the smoke’s really bad, wet a bandana and put it over your face.”

  Nel watched in the rear-view until everyone had pocketed their phones and looked suitably alert. She slid the Jeep around the bend. Oily, black smoke billowed from the ground. Nel parked as far away as their site boundary allowed and climbed down. “Unload the water. We can bug out for lunch to get more.” She snapped pictures, noting absently how steady her hands were around the warm metal of the camera.

  “We got this, too, Dr. Bently.” Annie held up the mini extinguisher.

  “That’s a last resort. I want stuff tested, not destroyed.” She heard the mean edge to her voice, the low rumble that bordered on a sneer. She hoped the girl understood. Two minutes and an entire cooler of their drinking water later, the fire smoldered sullenly, but low enough for Nel to examine closer. Rotting pieces of some animal—she would bet a goat, though it seemed to have died weeks ago—formed a symbol that they had then drenched in accelerant and ignited. It’s their goddamned logo. “They sacrificed a damn goat and blazed their symbol in fire across my site, Mikey.” Her voice was low enough so only he could hear.

  “Sacrificed? That’s not their style.”

  “OK, not sacrificed. The thing looks like it was butchered—like, for food—several weeks ago. Probably off of someone’s trash heap.”

  He rested a hand on her shoulder. To the crew it looked like a pat on the back. Truly, it was a firm anchor while her mind whirled in a roiling sea of anger. “I’ll take some pictures and clean this up. We need to open C-transect today.”

  She nodded once, then twice, finally clearing her throat and rubbing her palms together. “Alright gang. Mikey will take care of this. Everyone else, get caught up on paperwork, fill out your artifact tracking sheets, and we'll go through the typology book together.” Her voice was a distant sound through the rage roaring in her ears.