The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2)

by Maslakovic, Neve

  Olof turned the crank harder.

  Nate elbowed me in the side.

  “Ow. What was that for?” I whispered to him.

  He nodded toward Dr. B, whose beige slacks had been darkened to just below her knees in the water, and who had the Callback out. She was moving it left and right, scanning for something, a frown on her face. Next to her, Dr. Payne’s eyes were glued to the action on the hill, his facial expression one of disdain as he recorded the event with the video camera in his hand. Jacob, in front of me, seemed dumbfounded by the experience of time traveling. He kept pinching the reeds nervously as if checking whether they were real. We hadn’t lingered long on the other runs, so this was his first chance to feel the past.

  Nate nodded toward Dr. B again. Was there an issue with the basket? Had it returned to the lab, and did that mean Quinn and Dr. Holm were here? I glanced around to see if I could spot Quinn’s blue eyes and blond hair peeking out from behind a barn, but didn’t see anything. I sent a small shrug in Nate’s direction and returned my attention to the hillside. It was impossible not to.

  The winch rope had tightened and the aspen was teetering, as if deciding whether it wanted to fall. After a moment of indecision, like everything was happening in slow motion, gravity took over and, with a great crack and a thud that carried over to where we were crouching, the aspen came crashing down, roots and all. Involuntarily I took a step forward in the water. A gray object had emerged from the ground, still clasped in the tree’s roots, its face now turned to the sky. Root and rock had come out in a single earthen lump, and I realized that the sensation that I was watching a play had vanished the moment the stone emerged from its resting place. It seemed like it had been underground forever.

  Olof Ohman stood back and wiped his hands on his overalls, giving us our first full look of his face as he took off his cap for a moment to cool off. I caught a glimpse of a strong chin and bushy eyebrows above a walrus mustache before the cap went back on.

  “I’ll be damned,” I heard Nate whisper next to me. “He was telling the truth. He did dig it up.”

  Olof had returned with the axe to hack away the roots, then used a grubbing hoe to flip the stone aside with one large heave. Once that was done, he wiped his forehead and focused his attention on detaching the winch from the fallen tree. Meanwhile, the boys took turns trying out the stone as a seat.

  There was laughter and jostling for a position on the rectangular slab.

  I wished I had a watch so I could check whether time had really stopped moving or whether it just seemed that way because I was impatient for the boys to notice the runic writing.

  The younger of the Ohman sons was scraping clay off the stone with his foot when he suddenly started shouting, his excitement carrying over to where we were hiding in the reeds. All three boys went down on their knees, sweeping away more clay and dirt, but now with purpose. Young Magnus Olsen had taken off his cap and his blond bangs slid onto his forehead, like Quinn’s were given to doing, as he helped the Ohman sons wipe off the stone, using his cap to accomplish his part. A conversation was held and the boys called for Olof Ohman, who was prepping the base of the next tree. They made room to let the farmer take a look. He bent down for a long moment, then straightened up and said something to the older of his sons. The boy fetched water from what looked like the remains of the farmer’s lunch on a nearby tree stump. It was poured onto the stone to further dislodge the dirt and expose what was underneath.

  Farmer Ohman stood still for a moment, clearly at a loss. Finally, with a shake of his head, he turned and, cupping his hands, called out to the hatted figure working on the neighboring farm. The neighbor didn’t hear him at first, so Olof Ohman called out again, louder, what sounded like a name: Niiiils. This time the neighbor heard and, seeming happy enough to take a break from working on his own field, clambered over the short wooden fence that separated his land from Olof’s. The new arrival took off his wide-brimmed hat, peered at the stone, touched it. He checked out the downed aspen and bent to look at the hole the tree and stone had left in the ground, shaking his head in wonder. The two men stood stroking their identical walrus mustaches, mulling over the matter in a reserved, classically Scandinavian kind of way. We could not hear what was being said.

  A thought occurred to me, an odd one, unconnected to the play we were watching. We were a small group from the future, observing and recording an event as it unfolded, and none of the participants were aware of our presence. Five of us, five of them. Audience and actors. Who was to say that someone from farther along in the future wasn’t around watching us watch Olof Ohman and his sons and neighbors? A traveler from a thousand years into the future using some sleek version of STEWie that documented all of the world’s past for future generations, chronicling every word, every action, every flutter of History’s pages in some overwhelmingly large database. I shook off the thought. I suspected that if I did this long enough, I would acquire the habit of looking over my shoulder to check for STEWie travelers from the future. Not that my life was overly interesting, but you never knew.

  Dr. Payne adjusted his position to get a better view of the hilltop with his video camera, and the gentle rustling of the reeds broke through my reverie. I noticed that Nate, standing near me, was staring intently at something, his body perfectly still, only his eyes moving. I elbowed him back, almost causing him to lose his balance.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “What do you see?”

  “There.”

  I followed the line of his arm to a sturdy oak in an as-yet-uncleared bit of land. Behind the autumn-hued leaves rustling in the still afternoon, I saw a flash of blue among the thick brown branches. How had I missed them? I even recognized the shirt, which Quinn had worn the morning we eloped on a beach in San Diego—it was dark blue, like Oscar had mentioned, with parrots on it. Above him, one branch up, a petite figure clung to the trunk. I had been too preoccupied with what was happening on the hill to notice them before.

  They didn’t seem to have spotted us yet.

  Nate and I both tried to make a move, but we were only able to take a few halting steps in the water before we were forced to a stop. History, protecting itself. Had we charged out of the lake in the direction of the oak and its two visitors, the men and boys on the hill would have seen us, and it would have taken their day in a completely different direction. Being prevented from moving by an invisible barrier was an odd sensation, but I knew that it wouldn’t last, so I made an effort to relax. In the worst case, we would be stuck until Olof Ohman finished for the day and could make our move then.

  Still, I hoped we wouldn’t have to wait long. I was itching to confront Quinn over the problems he had caused me at work. Not to mention that my feet and socks were sopping wet inside my shoes. I felt something brush against my leg and hoped it was a small fish and not a snake.

  The men on the hill had come to some sort of a decision, which seemed to be that they would put aside the stone and get back to work. The neighbor—Nils Flaaten, I suddenly remembered from my library reading—headed back to his own farm with a friendly wave to Olof.

  Another call came, I couldn’t see from where, and the golden-haired child, Magnus Olsen, left for home, too. The last we saw of him, he was trying to clean the dirt off his cap by rubbing it on his pant leg as he sauntered along.

  I wondered if Quinn was glad he’d come. What was I thinking? Of course he was glad. He had been proven right.

  In front of me Jacob, who was snapping pictures with his cell phone, jumped as if something had grazed his leg, probably another of the small fish. Nate and I both shot out a hand to steady him, but not before Jacob’s arm splashed the surface of the water, loudly, and his phone sank out of sight.

  I don’t know if it was the movement or the sound that alerted Quinn and Dr. Holm to our presence, or if the two had already gotten the footage they wanted and were ready to leave. In any case, we saw a
rustle of blue on the oak where they were perched, a flash of light like sunbeams reflecting off fresh snow…and then the two figures up the tree were gone, leaving the orange leaves stirring behind them as if in a sudden wind.

  Nate turned to Dr. B and asked in a hard whisper, “Are we stuck here? Did our basket leave?”

  We watched Dr. B press a sequence of keys on the Callback as if she was double-checking something she already knew.

  Nothing happened.

  “Bad luck,” she said. “We’ll have to wait for Steven to send another one.”

  I hoped Dr. Little would be quick about it. I felt a sneeze coming on, and what with the chill in the air and my damp feet, I didn’t want to catch a cold. And we had seen what, or rather who, we had come to see and had not been able to do anything about it.

  Dr. Payne looked a little shaken, and my guess was that it wasn’t over the basket issue. “We could try to, uh, explore a bit…though I doubt that History would let us. Not dressed like this, anyway. She’ll probably pin us in place.”

  Jacob tried to push through the reeds and of the water, but something stopped him short.

  “History doesn’t want us wandering around in the nineteenth century. My hat’s off to her,” Nate said. “Let’s not anger her by leaving anything behind.” Pondering the question of whether History really was a she, like an extension of Mother Nature, I shook off my chill and joined Nate in trying to help Jacob find his phone. We stuck our arms into the cold water and groped the bottom of the marshy lake.

  But the cell phone was gone, lost in the muddy, weedy bottom. There was nothing to be done but take a last look at the hill, where the day had reverted to ordinary, squeeze the excess water from our sleeves, and wait to be rescued.

  We had found out this much, however—Dr. Payne had been wrong and Quinn had been right. I gritted my teeth at the development. At least we had guessed correctly where our missing pair had gone…and we had a good idea of where to look for them next.

  13

  “And then the farmer pulled the tree out of the ground, and out came the roots and the stone, dirt flying…”

  I was relaying the day’s events between bites of takeout from Panda Palace. Helen had joined us at the house for a late dinner, eager to hear the story. She and Abigail had suggested that we might as well tell Sabina about Quinn’s blackmail threat, since the newest developments did not involve her, but I suspected that I already knew what her reaction would be. Sabina was as headstrong as her father, who had opted to stay in Pompeii and face the eruption on the off chance that he could save his mother and his shop. She’d probably make a curse tablet with Quinn’s name on it—or a replica with pen and paper. I wanted to discourage that sort of thing.

  “I hate to say it, but it looks like Quinn was right about the runestone.” I was utterly famished and still chilled to the bone. Dr. Little had sent another basket as soon as ours returned empty, but the bare minimum of time required for the equipment to cool off was fifteen minutes, which had translated into almost seven hours for us in 1898. At least after the first four had passed we had been able to squelch out of the water and wait out the remaining three on dry land in the fading light. My toes were still pruney.

  The first thing I had done once we had made it back to the present—that is, after a hot shower and coffee—was to add one more item on the Pro side of my list about the runestone. I had seen it come out of the ground with my own eyes. As had Quinn and Dr. Holm. Their next stop would be the fourteenth century. In the morning, we would regroup and come up with a strategy to find them. I pushed the thought aside and continued to describe for my audience the day’s adventure, Sabina interrupting between mouthfuls to have a word explained—marshland, aspen, overalls, walrus mustache.

  “We watched Olof Ohman pull the tree down, an old one—he would have hardly needed a winch otherwise. That’s a big crank that you turn by hand,” I added for Sabina’s benefit. “The roots were tightly wrapped around the stone, like it had been in the ground for a long time.”

  “So it’s real.” Abigail gave a little sigh of satisfaction. Having been brought up in a string of foster families, Abigail had a bit of a romantic streak and a soft spot for happy endings. Still, I felt compelled to reply, “Well, it might not be. Doctor Payne still thinks that Olof Ohman could have buried it under the tree, only to ‘discover’ it several years later.”

  “He would. I kind of want it to be true—oh, sorry.” Her cell phone had beeped. I belatedly remembered that I had meant to ask everyone to turn off their phones for the duration of the meal. I wanted to set a good example for Sabina.

  Abigail checked the message. “It’s Jacob—huh, he bought a new cell phone, he says. I wonder what happened to his old one.”

  “He dropped it into the lake on Olof Ohman’s farm,” I explained. “We couldn’t find it. He bought a new one somewhere this late?” It was almost ten by the kitchen clock, but much later for me. I fought a jaw-stretching yawn.

  “The Emporium was still open.” This was Thornberg’s carry-all store.

  “There is a word for that.” Helen did something she rarely did, scrunched up her nose; she wasn’t exactly a Luddite—without technology, there would be no STEWie—but she wasn’t the biggest fan of modern gadgets either. “Nomophobia. Anxiety experienced by cell phone users when they forget their phone at home or the battery dies and they are out of contact with friends and family. The term is a shortened version of no-mobile-phone-phobia. Researchers have found that the stress levels are similar to those experienced on a dentist visit.”

  Sabina scrunched up her nose. “Dentist, I no like.”

  “And Jacob no like being without his cell phone,” said Abigail, who was exchanging a series of text messages with her fellow grad student. “I don’t either…or without my laptop. Does that mean I have lapophobia? Jacob says he’s going to go borrow his parents’ car tomorrow so that he can go back to the lake to see if he can find his old phone.” Unlike most of his office mates, who had rooms in graduate residences, Jacob lived at home and biked to campus. His parents ran a combination bookstore/antique shop in town.

  “There’s no reason for him to retrieve the phone from the bottom of the lake, not from the point of view of History,” Helen said. “It’s already been there for over a hundred years without drawing any attention.”

  “And the warranty must have expired by now, right?” Abigail said with a snicker as another arriving text message beeped. “I think he has hopes of retrieving his list of contacts from it. He says he’s heard that if your cell phone gets wet and stops working, all you have to do is place the phone into a bag of uncooked rice overnight and the problem is solved…A bit optimistic, if you ask me, since his phone has been lying at the bottom of a muddy lake for more than a century.”

  Sabina leaned over to look as Abigail texted Jacob back, and I was momentarily amused by how quickly she had accepted cell phones. Really, if you thought about it, it was quite astonishing how Abigail’s typed letters turned into invisible waves that bounced off cell towers and into Jacob’s new phone, then became letters again.

  “Anyone want the last potsticker?” I asked as Abigail put the phone away. Celer, who was dozing in one corner of the kitchen, twitched in his sleep as if experiencing a pleasant dog dream. The potsticker was waved in my direction and I proceeded to dig into it.

  After Abigail and Sabina had cleared the table and taken the dishes into the kitchen, Helen said, “So Dagmar will take Quinn into the fourteenth century.”

  “Presumably.” Then Helen’s phrasing sank in. “Helen, you don’t believe Quinn made her go at gunpoint either, do you? Officer Van Underberg suggested it, and Nate seems to think it’s a real possibility given the text message she sent me.” Why had she sent it to me and not the police or someone in her own department? Had she grabbed her phone and texted blindly, sending the message to the most recent number in he
r history? I didn’t like the thought.

  “I don’t know if he made her go or not,” Helen said. “Even if he didn’t, I think that our Chief Kirkland will always be bothered by anything your ex does…except, perhaps, if Quinn leaves town for good.”

  I waved off her last comment. “I wish you had been with us today. I can’t tell if Dr. Payne is being contrary because he wants to be proven right, or if he’s just being cautious with the evidence at hand, as an academic should be. ‘Further runs are obviously warranted,’ ” I said, mimicking Dr. Payne’s snippy tone. “He spent most of the seven hours we were stuck in the mud explaining his position to us. And he wasn’t talking about Quinn and Dr. Holm. I don’t know how historians coped before STEWie, really I don’t.” It was maddening that we still didn’t know for sure if the stone was real after all we’d been through. “Relying only on documents and what’s left behind in the dirt—not being able to check things directly, in person—that would drive me crazy.”

  “Trying to figure out what really happened…well, that’s half the fun, Julia. STEWie is only a tool that helps us do that. As you found out, even something that you see with your own eyes needs to be interpreted and put into context.”

  There was a lot of truth to her words. If Quinn hadn’t been involved, I suspected that I would have greatly enjoyed solving the mystery of the runestone.

  “But yes, STEWie is a wondrous thing, there is no denying that,” Helen added. “Xavier’s certainly having fun. He’s up to his elbows in electronic parts and whatnot, building another Slingshot. Kamal is helping him.”

  “Nate asked him to hurry. We are all a little nervous about relying on STEWie alone and getting stuck in the fourteenth century after what happened tonight.”

  “Why don’t we just leave Quinn in the past?” Abigail called out from the kitchen. We could hear the clink of cups and plates as she and Sabina loaded the dishwasher. “Problem solved.”

  “Well, I think Dr. Mooney wants his Slingshot back. And we all want Dr. Holm to return safe and sound, don’t we?” I called back.