Fantastical Ramblings

by Irene Radford

  Today I married six men to their Indian wives, having first baptized all six women. They all chose the name Mary. Two McKays, one Stewart, and three Carters.

  Gabby’s heart skipped a beat. She forgot to breathe. This was the missing piece to her dissertation. What happened when old inheritance laws made a mistake? A multimillion dollar mistake that included a still prospering woolen mill, the house, other real estate, and small businesses. Wasn’t the local bank part of the original estate?

  Emile Carter’s friends and colleagues had described him as a man who wrote little and said less about himself. He considered his marriage a private matter, no one had any right to question it but himself and his God. He had no need to prove the legality of it. He probably never thought that his widow would have to prove it.

  Cymorth wedged her head beneath Gabby’s arm. Cymorth help Gabby.

  “Yes, my dear. You did help. But you’ll help more if you stay off these papers.”

  Trust Cymorth. No Trust man.

  “Whatever.” Gabby read on, hoping for more information. Nothing to indicate the first names of the men who had legalized their marriages that day. One of the big problems in tracking genealogy through the fur trades was a frequent repetition of names. Whole clans of Scots displaced by The Clearances, refugee Huguenots, and Quebecois farmers with itchy feet, enlisted at the same time. Fathers and sons, Brothers, Uncles, Cousins, all with the same last name and many with the same first names.

  “Mr. Marshall?” Gabby called as his long shadow passed her office door.

  “Hm?” He poked his head inside the doorway.

  “Do you have any idea where the parish registry went?” She tried to look curious rather than too eager. No sense getting excited until she had the evidence.

  “Isn’t it in there?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “It’s on the inventory.”

  “But I don’t see it.” Gabby looked into the trunk again. No big bound book.

  “Let me look in the back of my rig. I may have put it in the box of books to go to the used book store.”

  Gabby let go the breath she was holding.

  No trust, Cymorth reminded her. No trust.

  “He said he hadn’t looked at these documents in years, except to inventory them. So why would he put the registry in the wrong box?”

  Not knowing precisely why, she followed him to the parking lot. The prickles along her spine continued.

  “Why shouldn’t I trust him. He has nothing to gain in this,” she muttered to herself and to the dog who trotted at her heels.

  Watch him.

  “Here it is!” Jed Marshall proclaimed as Gabby approached his SUV. “I was in a hurry and put it in the wrong box.”

  He said he hadn’t read the journals since childhood, Gabby reminded herself. She took the fat book with the cracked leather cover from him silently. The moment her hands touched it a jolt of something... something negative coursed through her veins.

  “You altered it!” she blurted out without thinking.

  Pain and shock crossed his face before he masked it. “Why would I do such a thing?” His hurt was feigned.

  She knew it in her bones.

  Told you so, Cymorth reminded her.

  “Why indeed? The only person with something to gain would be a descendant of Hannah Carter, Emile’s and Mary’s daughter. She disappeared from the historical record the day the courts agreed with her disinheritance. July 15, 1852.” Two years before Peter Skene Ogden’s heirs proved the legitimacy of company marriages.

  “She married the eldest son of Josiah Marshall,” he said quietly.

  “Trouble is, Hannah was a very popular name at the time. Three men with the last name of Carter married women by the name of Mary on the same day. Who is to say they didn’t all name their daughters Hannah.”

  “My Great-grandmother was the Hannah Carter!” His face flushed a deep red.

  Gabby could almost feel the waves of anger and... and greed that poured off of him.

  Cymorth eased in front of Gabby and took a firm stance, teeth bared. One hundred pounds of dog ready to protect and defend her partner.

  “Since you’ve destroyed the provenance of the parish registry, that makes the journal suspect as well. You’ve destroyed your only hope of proving any claim to the heritage.” Inside, Gabby wept. Her dissertation would have to wait for extensive and time-consuming laboratory tests to prove the journal correct.

  “I defy you to prove anything in the registry is a forgery,” Marshal snarled.

  “I will know the truth. Your greed and impatience overcame good sense. The journal and your DNA would have been enough. But you had to cheat.”

  “The truth isn’t cheating.”

  Gabby opened the huge tome unerringly to a page near the middle. Three pages of a long and rambling reminiscence written by old Josiah during a long cold winter. She sensed by the vibrations in her fingertips that the center page had been altered. Four sentences had been added. The handwriting was a near perfect match, the ink properly faded, possibly even the same chemical composition of the old lampblack inks.

  I consider it a great honor to welcome into my family the daughter of my old friend Emile Carter. She took refuge with us when the world cast her out. My son fell in love with her and married her. They have given me three grandchildren to lighten my last years.

  “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~

  Not My Knot

  The Columbia River Gorge is one of those special p
laces 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.