The Artifact Hunters

by Janet Fox

  The casket was lined with fabric, satiny and faded to pink from what must have been a deep blood-red, and it was falling to dusty bits. He leaned over. There it was, the object nestled inside, the orb he’d held in his fist when he’d had that nightmare. It glinted silver and his breath caught.

  It was a small skull, about the size of an apple, polished and decorated.

  The image of the Old Town Square’s astronomical clock and its skeleton of Death rose in his memory. When the skeleton of Death chimed the hour and the grinning skull stared down at him, his grandfather said, “Kostlivec is nothing to fear, Isaac.”

  Nothing? The skull inside the casket grinned up at him, the empty eye sockets staring.

  * * *

  * * *

  Miss Rachel was the sister of his schoolmaster. She had come sometimes to bring a food basket to her brother. She was quiet, one dark curl escaping her scarf, and Isaac had a crush on her.

  But on the last day she didn’t bring lunch. She came to say her brother was not coming to school any longer and they had to leave, leave at once, go straight home, do not stop for any reason.

  A van had pulled into the schoolyard as the boys were leaving. But Isaac paused at the gate, sliding to one side, his hand on the wall as soldiers ushered Miss Rachel toward the van. Isaac’s heart slowed to a crawl and his feet were encased in lead.

  Jan, behind him, whispered, “They’re monsters.”

  Don’t stand out. Isaac hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself small.

  “We must do something,” Jan whispered.

  “What can we do?” Isaac whispered back. “They’ll only take us, too.”

  The soldiers pushed Miss Rachel into the van.

  Jan shouted from behind Isaac, “Stop! Let her go.”

  The SS officer turned. He pointed his crop at Isaac. Isaac was the tall one. Isaac stood out. “You!” Isaac’s eyes fixed on the badge on the officer’s collar. The Totenkopf. The laughing skull.

  “No,” Miss Rachel cried. “He’s just a child.”

  The SS officer turned back to her, and Isaac ran.

  He didn’t wait for Jan. He didn’t stop, even when he heard the shouts. He ran and ran and ran.

  * * *

  * * *

  A Totenkopf. Isaac’s shame from the memory of running away.

  This skull in the casket. Memento mori. Isaac remembered the full Latin translation. Remember that you will die.

  There must have been a reason his parents gave him this object, and Isaac was certain it wasn’t to scare him. Steeling himself, sweating a little, he reached inside and lifted the skull out of the casket.

  It was as icy cold as he remembered. As he lifted it out, the skull moved as if alive and he dropped it back into the satiny fabric out of shock. Then he leaned over again.

  The skull was hinged at the jaw, and the jaw had fallen open.

  Isaac leaned closer. Ornate and tiny but detailed carvings covered the skull. Flowers and birds. A man and woman in a garden. An image of Death with a sickle, standing before a hut to its right and a castle to its left.

  If it hadn’t been carved on a skull, Isaac would have thought it beautiful.

  With one finger he pried the jaw all the way open, and inside, enclosed within the skull, was a watch.

  The clockface was fixed on the jaw’s underside with the movement beneath, all the tiny gears just visible. The hands, shining gold, were set at eleven o’clock. The crown at the top of the watch was filigreed. Isaac leaned closer still. The crown was in the shape of the eternity knot. Carefully, he lifted the skull with the watch out of the casket and set it on the floor, the jaw open.

  Then he saw that a piece of parchment lay at the bottom of the casket.

  A note?

  It crinkled in his fingers. Dear Isaac.

  The handwriting—there was no mistaking it—was his father’s. Isaac took a breath and rubbed his eyes hard.

  I cannot put this gently. You must not delay. You are, as we were in our last days in Prague, being hunted. By something that has been searching for us for a very long time. And I do not mean the Nazis.

  Isaac glanced at the window, at the swirling mist outside, the gray light.

  We must give you these lessons from afar because that will help throw off your pursuers for a little while. This watch is a time-travel device.

  A what?

  Wind the crown to set it in motion. We’ve set the first four travels for you. In each time and place, you must seek the next piece of information. Find the object or clue we have left for you. Be absolutely certain you hold the watch firmly in your hand when it chimes at the end of each travel.

  Your mother and I can’t help except in this way. We are now—in all probability—locked in a time-stream.

  A what? Isaac wanted to shout. His parents were locked in a what?

  It’s too dangerous to give you every clue at once. Protect the information. Discovery would be disaster, for you, and for everyone.

  Perhaps we shall see you again.

  Your loving father.

  P.S. Do not delay. Set the watch in motion as soon as you have read this.

  P.P.S. Do not give the watch away during your travels.

  P.P.P.S. Do not, for any reason, interact with the past.

  Isaac read and reread the letter to try to make sense of it.

  His mind flew to dinner table discussions. He’d often rolled his eyes at yet another of his father’s windy lectures on the benefits of Latin or the deeper principles of Greek democracy. He could see his father tamping his pipe before launching into another explanation of Aristotle’s discourses.

  Now Isaac would give anything to be lectured to boredom by his father.

  He stared at the skull that held the watch.

  Time travel.

  He’d like to travel, in fact, to another time and place, when he thought about it. It might really be fun. To see ancient Rome or Greece—maybe even sit and listen to Aristotle in the flesh. See woolly mammoths roaming across North America. Witness the building of the Great Wall of China, the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, or Machu Picchu in the Andes. Why, he could think of a million places he would go with a time-travel device.

  Could he even stop the Nazis, make the whole ugly war go away? Be back at home again, with his parents, in Prague, tell them how much he missed them? See his grandfather once more and say goodbye properly?

  Except for that admonition from his father: Do not interact with the past.

  But then again, all his time travels might be like that nightmare in Orkney and the ring of stones, which he was now certain must have been the first of the four set by his parents. And what should he have found there? What object or clue had he missed, in his ignorance, when he’d foolishly set the watch into motion by accidentally winding the crown?

  So, he’d already made one terrible mistake.

  Do not delay.

  Right, then. No more mistakes. He had to answer this call. For his parents. For himself.

  Isaac picked up the watch and turned the crown, setting the timepiece to ticking, closed the face, gripped it tight in his fist so the cold skull dug into his palm, and fell into a whirlwind.

  CHAPTER 22

  Isaac in the Library of Alexandria

  Circa AD 415

  It’s like plunging into the back end of a kaleidoscope, stripping away reality. As before, Isaac passes through moments in his own life, further and further back, and then before his life and still further back, with flashes of places he sort of recognizes and many he doesn’t. He lurches, his stomach trying to catch up with his mind and his eyes.

  Isaac stumbles and falls to his knees against cold stone, his free hand gripping a wall as he tries to steady himself. Colors and lights spin to a slow, slow stop. His head aches and he cl
oses his eyes, then opens them again, hoping to quiet his pounding heart.

  Isaac is outdoors and it’s warm. He’s in a colonnaded court, thick marble columns rising to three times his height on his left, and an open doorway set in a pale beige blocky stone wall on his right. Above him, the sky is cerulean blue. He’s bathed by a soft breeze that carries the salty, fishy smell of the sea. From a distance come the creaks and rumbles of wheels on stone, voices calling out and intermingling, bells and gongs, mules braying and dogs barking, and bird calls. Gulls.

  He rises to his feet. His fist encloses the skull watch that ticks against his palm. The sun is low over his shoulder, slanting on the wall and floor in such a way that he thinks it must be near sunset.

  Rustling noises come from behind him, and Isaac turns swiftly and braces.

  A girl a bit older than he is with dark skin and eyes and curling black hair, dressed in a simple white garment and carrying a small satchel over one shoulder, runs toward him, her face tight, feet in sandals slapping the stone.

  Isaac raises a hand, and says in English, “Hello, I wonder whether you can . . .”

  But she looks right through him.

  She can’t see me, Isaac thinks. I’m like a ghost. Then he thinks with relief, So maybe I can’t interact anyway.

  She runs past him and bolts through the doorway. Because he doesn’t know what else to do, Isaac follows the girl.

  She runs ahead of him down the enclosed corridor—all gray-white stone—toward another open wood door, and then through that, and Isaac follows her into an enormous room that is filled, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with shelves and cubbies crammed with paper.

  In the center of the room, standing at a great table and leaning over a stack of documents, is a woman. She, too, is dressed in a simple white garment, and she also has very dark skin and eyes, and hair streaked with gray. The paper on the shelves and in the cubbies is stacked neatly and bound as books or rolled into scrolls and tied. The shelves are organized and labeled with stamped clay but he can’t read the letters. But he knows the lettering, thanks to his father, and he thinks, That is Greek.

  The girl begins to talk to the woman, her voice pitched high, in a language Isaac doesn’t know. She pulls a codex book from her satchel and hands it to the woman, who places it on the table and braces her hands to read it. When she finishes and looks up again, her face is drawn.

  Isaac thinks her beautiful even in age, with her thin face and lively eyes and curling hair pulled into a winding crown. But her expression makes his heart hurt.

  She speaks to the girl, retrieves a stack of papers and sets it aside, then reaches into the depths of the shelf for something hidden at the back. From deep in the shadows she pulls out a large box, and after setting the box on the table she opens it and lifts out an object that she has to hold in two hands. An instrument made of brass.

  It’s about the size of a dinner plate. Layers and parts all made of tooled brass, stacked together with gears and cogs. She turns the instrument and shows the girl what it does, explaining in rapid speech, and as she moves it, the plates twist and wind and the hands on a clockface rotate.

  Isaac is reminded suddenly, sharply, of the great astronomical clock in the Old Town Square, with its complex gears and movements.

  “Our clock in the square is an astrolabe, Isaac,” his grandfather had said. He was working on one of his own mechanical devices, standing over his messy kitchen table showing Isaac how he put his pieces together. “It not only tells the time but also the positions of the stars in the zodiac, of the sun and moon, and it’s a calendar, with months and years. And, imagine! It’s almost six hundred years old.”

  And his grandfather added, “Long before that, the Greeks knew about astrolabes. The Antikythera mechanism that was found at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea not so long ago is one such device.” He shook his head. “Such wonders in the ancient world.”

  The Antikythera mechanism, Isaac thinks. The ancient world. This may be ancient Greece, then. That makes sense.

  The woman is still explaining the workings of the mechanism to the girl. She’s talking fast, as if she’s in a great hurry.

  Then she takes the instrument and moves to the far wall, the girl following, and stands before a blank space in the wall. She places her hand on the stone, leaning a little against it, her free hand on her chest.

  Isaac’s eyes widen.

  A carved wood door appears, as if out of a mist, forming itself right within the stone. The door opens, and the woman and girl go through it, and before Isaac can fumble his way across the room they disappear and the door disappears and Isaac is left standing facing a solid blank stone wall.

  Except . . .

  As Isaac stares at the wall, he sees a carving in the stone. He lifts one finger and traces it, looping and winding.

  The eternity knot.

  He blinks and tries to breathe. What kind of magic is this? Is this what he needs to find here?

  The watch in his fist tick-tick-ticks. Panic tightens his lungs. He’s afraid he’ll run out of time before he understands his purpose here.

  He turns back to the table and the documents scattered there and leans over them.

  Mathematics. Lots of complicated equations. Diagrams, measurements, calculations. Geometry. This is very sophisticated stuff, all written out in a fine neat hand. The woman had been working these equations.

  The book brought by the girl still lies on the table. Isaac sets down the watch, opening the skull so that he can see the watch face, and reaches for the book.

  He can touch it, feel it, pick it up. Aha.

  Isaac makes a connection. He must be a ghost only when he holds the watch, for as long as he holds the watch. When he doesn’t have hold of it, when he isn’t touching it, he becomes visible. He can interact with the past.

  Well, he’s alone, so what harm can he do?

  The paper of the book is thick and rough with long embedded fibers. There are words, and Isaac recognizes Latin. He can read at least some of the words.

  Closed. Expelled, he reads. And Iudaeum, which means “Jew.”

  Isaac’s stomach drops as he realizes. Expelled from this place in ancient Greece. Just like he was, from Prague. Just like his friends were. He takes a step back and has to pull himself together. Try to focus.

  If only he’d paid a little more attention when his father rattled on about ancient history, he’d understand where he was and what to look for.

  He moves away from the table, wondering what to do next. He glances at the watch that he left lying open on the table—if he reads it right, he has about twenty minutes left before the hand reaches the top of the hour.

  The sun is just at the brink of setting, the last rays piercing a low window, and Isaac has to shield his eyes and turn away. The sun’s rays strike a cubby on the far wall.

  Unlike any others in this room, this cubby has a pattern inscribed in the wood around it. He stares. The sun illuminates the cubby like an electric torch. Like a beacon. So that Isaac can’t miss it. It’s right there, the eternity knot carved into the wood, tracing the entire outline of the cubby, a sign.

  He runs across the room—the sun is dipping quickly below the window—and stares at the cubby with its pile of bound books and scrolls. One of them must be for him, he’s sure of it. He’ll have to look through them all, though his time is running short. He jerks them out of the cubby and lays them on the table. One by one he opens or unrolls them. Sweat beads on his forehead, as he stares at the jumble of what he now knows must be Greek. No, no, no, he thinks, as he sets them aside one by one, hearing from across the room the tick-tick-tick of the watch.

  He reaches the second-to-last scroll, despair filling him. As he unrolls this one, though, right away he sees that it’s different. For one thing, the paper is not the same, but it’s also not in Greek.

  It
’s not even in Czech.

  The words on this paper are English.

  The scroll is some kind of architectural drawing or map or both. Symbols and lines form a pattern, and words are scattered throughout, but they make no sense on a quick scan. It has to be a kind of puzzle that will take time for him to decipher. But when Isaac sees again the eternity knot, drawn in the upper corner, he’s sure this scroll is meant for him.

  He rolls it up and slides it inside his shirt and buttons his shirt over it.

  At that moment a creaking noise fills the room, and he turns. The carved wood door re-forms in the stone wall, and the woman and girl walk through the door, which disappears behind them.

  As does the sun, disappearing below the horizon, leaving a purple sky rimmed in orange, soft light in this room behind the woman and girl.

  Isaac stares at them, and they stare back, mouths open in surprise.

  They are empty-handed, and he thinks they must have left the astrolabe behind, wherever they were. On the table between him and them is the watch, tick-tick-ticking. The woman looks at him, looks at the watch, looks back at him. He has to fetch it. He must not interact. Has he already made a mistake, just by being seen by these two?

  A sudden noise grows from outside the room. Isaac begins to move toward the watch. Why did he leave it so far away on the table? The noise outside increases, then voices, urgent and angry, swell, and they, whoever they are, are in the corridor just outside this room. Someone yells and pounds on the actual door of this room, and then, just then . . .

  The watch begins to chime the hour. One, two . . .

  Be absolutely certain you hold the watch when it chimes at the end of each travel.

  . . . five, six. Isaac throws himself across the table to grab the watch but can’t quite reach it. Needles of panic sweep over his skin.

  The woman exchanges an anxious look with the girl, then reaches to her throat. She yanks a chain from around her neck and hangs it around the girl’s and speaks to the girl in hushed tones. The girl protests, but as the noises grow, she hugs the woman and then dives for the wall and vanishes once again through that magical door, leaving the woman behind.