Jasper Flint and the Dinosaur Saddle

by Jack Geurts

  Jasper swallowed, not knowing what to say.

  “There will be a day for vengeance,” she said. “But it is not today. Today, we have a more important mission. The fate of your entire species hangs in the balance. So...shall we?”

  Jasper nodded and took hold of her again, as he did before. They dropped over the edge and into the abyss. Down they went, Io kicking off and lowering them further, Jasper clinging to her back.

  In the light of her glove, Jasper saw the layers of rubble before him, laid out in a vertical timeline of the temple’s history – a physical representation of its growth from the simplest and most basic of shrines. With each new layer, the temple grew larger, more elaborate. He could almost see the builders and artisans honing their craft over generations and centuries. Not only did the construction of new temples on top of the ruins of old ones increase their height and save the builders from removing the debris, it also sealed in the holiness of those previous shrines. Thus, in the minds of the Sumerians, each temple became more sacred than the last.

  And here Jasper was burrowing through all of it.

  They touched down on the sandy floor of the pit, on ground which no man or woman had tread in over seven thousand years. Io unclipped the cable from her belt and as they turned, both of them stopped dead.

  “The first Marker...” Io breathed.

  And there it was.

  Illuminated by the blue light of her glove, at the centre of the pit, was a pyramid.

  It wasn’t just any pyramid – although that would have been strange enough. It was a metal pyramid.

  A metal pyramid that had been buried underground for ten thousand years, and somehow looked brand new.

  “Because it is brand new,” Io said when Jasper asked. “We are back at the time when this Marker had only recently been laid.”

  The sides were smooth and polished, glistening in the blue light. It rose to a point about twice as tall as Jasper.

  “It does exist...” Io said, smiling, apparently glad she hadn’t been sent on a wild goose chase.

  She seemed to be just as surprised as Jasper that the map was actually here, that it wasn’t just some story. She had wanted so sorely to believe it was true – now, with this evidence, she could put whatever doubts she had to rest. Her faith had been rewarded, and Jasper’s scepticism, reasonable though it was, had been nullified.

  There was a rustle of feathers as Dia landed in the same clumsy fashion as before. It slowed itself like a plane landing on a runway, then froze and stared at the great, shiny object, entranced.

  “What now?” Jasper said.

  Io’s smile vanished as she realised she had no idea. “I was only told that the map probably began here, but not where it might lead or what it would even look like.”

  “What about your radar thing? How’d you know it was here?”

  “I was simply scanning for Precursor alloy, but really I was just guessing.”

  All of this didn’t exactly fill Jasper with confidence. “Why not just do a scan of the whole world then? Find all the Markers.”

  Io shook her head. “It does not work that way. You have to be close enough that the alloy shows up on radar. The method you suggest would take far too long.”

  They both stared at the pyramid.

  “I s’pose the same metal was used in the saddle,” Jasper said. “The stirrups and buckles and that.”

  She began circling the Marker. “Indeed. It is a very resilient alloy. The same alloy used to build my ship. My people pride themselves on their metalworking abilities.”

  “They should.” He took a step toward the pyramid.

  “What are you doing?” Io said, suddenly alarmed.

  “Just having a closer look, calm down. Actually, could you bring the light over?”

  She hesitated, then followed him around the pyramid, using her glove to better illuminate it. They studied each of the four sides, but all four were identical. Perfectly equal, but blank. No inscriptions, no buttons. Nothing.

  “What do we do?” said Jasper.

  Io just stared at the pyramid, her confidence crumbling away as she struggled to figure out their next move. To admit that she didn’t know something was against her very nature, and Jasper could at least sympathise with that. Instead of waiting for her to make a call, he made his own. He reached out to touch the pyramid...

  “Jasper, what are you...?”

  But that was all she had a chance to say, for just as his fingers made contact with the polished metal, it exploded into a million tiny fragments. All of them shot outward, forming into a sphere around them – a ball of floating particles, suspended in mid-air.

  Jasper and Io ducked, while Dia squawked loudly and flapped itself backwards, falling over into a clumsy heap on the sand.

  The tiny metal fragments caught the light of the glove and seemed to reflect and amplify it, illuminating the entire pit. Jasper and Io squinted as their eyes adjusted to the sudden increase in brightness, and they straightened, checking themselves for damage, but finding none.

  They were mostly inside the floating orb, Jasper more so as he was closer to the pyramid when it exploded. The ball was roughly five metres in diameter and hovered about a metre above the ground, so the lower halves of their bodies poked through the bottom. It wasn’t solid, however – the tiny metal fragments parted as they moved around, then reformed again behind them.

  Through the gaps between fragments, they saw Dia pick itself up – apparently a little embarrassed at its overreaction – and shake the sand from its feathers. It hopped over to Io’s side, staring up at the sparkling orb in wonder.

  “Look,” Io said, pointing skyward.

  Jasper lifted his head and saw what she was talking about. A cluster of the particles were glowing red, just like the dot on Io’s radar that had signalled the Marker. All around the dot were lines forming strange shapes. He couldn’t quite make out what they were at first, then...

  “Is that...?”

  Instead of finishing his sentence, Jasper waded through the metal fragments and moved away from the orb. Io exchanged a glance with Dia, but the bird simply tilted its head to the side, not understanding. She looked back out at Jasper.

  “What?” she said. “What is it?”

  Once he was away from the sphere, Jasper turned and looked back on it. He recognised what it was immediately. A wide grin spread across his face.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She walked over to him, the tiny particles moving around her and reforming again as she passed through the orb’s shell. Io stood beside him and turned, realising herself what the sphere was...

  A giant globe of the earth.

  The lines had looked strange from within, but now Jasper could see that they were the shorelines of continents. Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, North and South America. Not to mention all the islands and archipelagos in between.

  Io frowned as she tried to place the glowing red dot. “Where is that? Somewhere in Asia, perhaps?”

  “China,” Jasper said. “The Yellow River region, to be more specific. You can see it crossing through the red dot right there if you look hard enough...”

  He pointed, tracing the river with his index finger. She squinted, trying to it. The tiny particles shimmered like dust motes, but gradually, the line of the river became visible to her.

  “Oh, yes. I see it. But why would the map lead us there? What significance does that place hold?”

  Jasper just smiled. “You know how this place is called the cradle of civilisation?”

  “Yes...”

  “Well...the Yellow River region in China is another cradle of civilisation.”

  “There is more than one?” she said.

  He nodded. “Yeah. There’s about six.”

  “Six?”

  “Yeah.” Jasper couldn’t hide a smile. He liked being able to teach her something after everything she had explained to him. “Mesopotamia’s one, where we are now. Then there’s Ch
ina, Egypt, the Indus Valley, Mexico, and Peru. Given that the map includes two of them already, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to visit more.”

  Io stared up at the red dot. “But where do we go on the Yellow River? There’s no way to zoom the map in.”

  “Take a photo.”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “What?”

  “Just take a photo of it – we’ll figure it out when we get there.”

  “A photograph?”

  Jasper couldn’t understand why she was so confused. “Yeah, a photograph.”

  “But I do not have a camera.”

  “You’re telling me that thing doesn’t take photos?” He gestured to her glove and tablet computer. “It can rewind time, but it doesn’t have a camera?”

  She looked at it, then back at him. “No,” she said, like it was blatantly obvious.

  Jasper gave up. “Okay, fine. You got a better idea?”

  If she did, she never got a chance to tell him, for right then, the pit started to collapse.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Sands Of Time

  There was a deep rumbling in the earth, and immediately, the floating globe was sucked back into its original form. With all the light-reflecting particles gone, the pit grew instantly darker, and pieces of stone and mudbrick began to fall from above.

  “No, no, no, no,” Io said, panic in her voice. “This can’t be happening.”

  She checked her wrist computer, but couldn’t figure out what was going on. Dia rushed to her side, clambering up her leg and onto her chest, clinging to her tunic like a baby in a pouch. It had its head tucked beneath her chin and Io stroked the creature to calm it, saying that everything was going to be okay.

  Jasper, meanwhile, was staring at the darkness overhead, trying to see where the next piece of debris was going to fall from. There was no way to tell. The light from Io’s glove didn’t illuminate very far above them – a few metres, at most. He wondered if he’d be able to dodge one in time.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Jasper called over the noise.

  “Quickly,” Io said. “Over here.”

  He followed her back to where the cable was dangling down and she hitched it to her belt. This time she didn’t need to tell him to hold on – he did that himself. Within moments, they were away, shooting skyward, the cable retracting and taking them with it. Once again, Jasper had the sense that he was flying.

  “Watch out!”

  Jasper looked up and saw a large stone slab plummeting straight towards them. He didn’t have time to think, let alone scream or tense up. But Io already had the gloved hand above her head, and she loosed a bolt of blue energy from the outfaced palm...

  The falling stone exploded, showering them with mortar dust and a few small pebbles. Far below, Jasper heard larger chunks clanging off the pyramid, and despite his mind reeling from the near-death experience, he couldn’t help but be impressed.

  Damn, Jasper thought. She was good.

  There was no time to tell her as much or breathe a sigh of relief, for as they clambered back up onto the temple floor, they realised the whole building was about to come down on top of them. The pillars were shaking, toppling like felled trees. A large portion of the roof crumbled away and broke into pieces on the floor with a loud, resounding boom.

  “Come on,” Io said, leading the way toward the entrance, Dia still clinging to her chest. They hadn’t gotten far when up ahead, Jasper saw something that made his stomach drop...

  One of the main columns holding up the roof above the entrance began to topple. It was going to fall down right in front of them and they’d be trapped.

  Io saw this, too. She grabbed Jasper’s hand, sprinting even faster and dragging him along with her. Pieces of the temple fell to the ground all around them like giant hailstones, breaking into pieces and forcing the two of them to dodge and weave through the barrage.

  Jasper dared to look up. The pillar was at a forty-five degree angle now, halfway down and falling fast...

  He realised with a sinking feeling that they weren’t going to make it, but he wasn’t about to slacken off the pace. If they didn’t make it they would either be dead or trapped, in which case they’d be dead soon anyway as the temple devoured itself.

  The only thing they could do was run, so they run – both of them harder than they ever had before. Behind them, blocks of stone crashed into the ground, chasing them out. In front of them, the column was falling into place to seal their doom. The gap was growing smaller, smaller...

  A second before the column slammed down to close off the entrance, Jasper and Io burst out onto the platform. The sheer force of the pillar colliding with the floor sent shock waves through the ground and launched them both forward.

  Jasper landed on his stomach, Io on her side, arms curled protectively around Dia. Both of them were winded by the impact and it took a few moments to get their breath back. Io picked herself up first and helped Jasper to his feet. Together, they staggered down the stairs. The guards on the platform below were gone, and it was shortly after Jasper noticed this that he noticed something else as well.

  The inlet was drying up, the water receding. As quickly as it had come in, the Gulf was being sucked back out toward the horizon. The crop fields and the mudbrick houses were being swallowed up by a ferocious sandstorm that raged in every direction.

  Jasper realised what was happening. Instead of time rewinding, it was now fast forwarding – back to when Eridu was just a mound of ruins in the desert. The ziggurat was about to be consumed and them along with it.

  Io seemed to understand this too, as she pried Dia away from her chest with both hands and tossed it up into the air. Surprised though it was, the bird unfurled its wings and hovered there by flapping them erratically. It looked so ridiculous, Jasper might have laughed if not for the circumstances.

  The Archaeopteryx turned back to face its master and Io said, “Fly, Dia. Fly! Stay above the storm!”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the creature turned and flew away. Io watched it go, wondering if she would ever see it again, Jasper wondering how the creature managed to stay aloft with such an odd flapping motion.

  He turned his attention back to the situation at hand, looking around for some kind of refuge. The only place that seemed to offer any was the inlet, and he made a snap decision to head for it.

  “Quick, this way!” Jasper called. He led Io toward the wide staircase going down to the harbour. The water was gone and the inlet was filling up with sand, but the top lip of the bank had eroded, and Jasper saw a small recess in the rocky outcrop. The two of them headed for it, running across the cracked, dry clay and into the wind. It lashed at them with grains of sand, and before Jasper could raise his hand to prevent it, the cowboy hat was lifted off his head and taken away by the gale.

  “No!” Jasper called. He turned to go back for it, but Io grabbed his arm, so he could only watch as the hat tumbled around in the air, before vanishing behind a wall of churning sand. The last memento he had of his parents, gone forever.

  There was no time to mourn the loss – Io tugged at his wrist and told him they had to move. The two of them pressed on toward the outcrop. Jasper lifted his arm to shield his face from the sand – he wasn’t sure if it stung Io the same way it did him, given her scales, but she still had her arm up and her eyes squinted like he did.

  They clambered up the opposite bank and took cover in the recess of the outcrop. It was calmer there, more still. They huddled close to each other, forming a kind of ball against the sandstorm. They squeezed their eyes shut as the storm continued to rage and the inlet filled up with sand.

  Soon, it began to cover their feet like a rising tide. Jasper and Io inched upwards, trying to stay on top of the sand, but it quickly got to a point where they couldn’t go any higher. The tops of their heads were just below the lip of the outcrop, and above it was even more dangerous – pieces of rock and mudbrick flying about. They didn’t dare poke their heads up.
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br />   Below, the sand was continuing to rise, covering their feet now, their ankles.

  “What do we do?” shouted Io, above the storm.

  Jasper thought for a moment, then came to the conclusion there was only one choice. “We have to let it bury us.”

  “What?” Io wasn’t sure she heard him right.

  “We can’t go up, we can’t go anywhere. We have to let it bury us and hope that by the time we run out of air, the storm is over.”

  Io didn’t have an alternative plan, but she wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea. Jasper wasn’t either. The idea of being buried alive was among with the most terrifying things he could imagine. The idea of allowing himself to be buried alive, even less agreeable.

  The sand was at their knees now, then their waists...

  They inched up as high as they could without exposing their heads to the raging storm above. They closed their eyes again and huddled close together. Jasper felt her soft feathers against his cheek and it calmed him somewhat.

  Their chests went under, then their necks...

  Both of them raised their chins as the rising tide of sand covered their throats.

  “Take a breath,” Jasper shouted, and they both inhaled deeply, filling their lungs with air.

  Their mouths went under, their noses, their eyes...

  Then they were gone.

  The world went black and soundless.

  Jasper recalled being drenched in diesel fuel in the small pit his father had dug for him, squeezing his eyes shut and blocking his eyes. Now he was buried again, but at least this time he was not alone.

  He felt Io’s scales beneath his hands, her feathers. He felt her hands squeeze his arms, as if making sure he was still there. He squeezed back to let her know that he was, that she was going to be alright and so was he.

  Jasper’s lungs burned. He needed air. The longest he’d ever held his breath was a minute and a half, but that was in a friend’s pool under somewhat more relaxed circumstances, knowing he could lift his head at any time.