Elemental Origins: The Complete Series

by A. L. Knorr

  "But I need it," I began, and then stopped myself. The secret to helping myself get what I wanted was to give him what he wanted. And what he was looking for was a competent and valuable team member. "Where will you be digging?"

  "Libya."

  My heart did a backflip, as this caught me by surprise. North Africa. Marvelous. My mind raced through my knowledge of Libyan geography and history. I took a stab in the dark. "Sabratha?"

  He chuckled. "Nowhere quite that glamorous. We'll be in the Acacus."

  "The mountains in the south?" This was even better than Sabratha. Most of the Acacus was remote and undiscovered. Excitement flared in my gut.

  "That's right."

  "Your bulletin didn't specify, but might you by chance be studying in the area of the black mummy?"

  He paused. "How do you know about that?"

  I let out a pent-up breath and smiled. "There is a relatively new theory that it was not the Egyptians that first used mummification. Seems to be the topic of most of the white papers coming out on Libya these days."

  "That's true," he said. "We're not studying mummification, but our excavation isn't very far from where the black mummy was found." He paused. "What did you say your name was?"

  "I didn't," I replied with a grin. Now we were getting somewhere. "But it’s Petra Kara."

  "Your name is Petra?"

  "Yes. And yes, I was named after the ancient city." This was one of the few things I did know to be true from my childhood. My biological mother had given me the name after the beautiful desert city built by the Nabataeans. "My mother was from Jordan."

  "But she settled in Saltford?"

  "She passed away when I was born."

  "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "It's all right." If I had a dime for every time someone apologized for my mother's death, I could have paid Cambridge's tuition twice over. I hadn't even known her.

  "Well, Miss Kara. We have never taken a teenage volunteer before, but you are legally an adult and you sound interested and interesting. Can you bring your resume by my office sometime in the next two days? We can have a little chat. I'm free between three and six either day."

  With thinly disguised glee, I said I would and scribbled down the address he gave me. I hung up the phone and tapped my fingers on the table, giddy. It was perfect. It was as though fate had handed this opportunity to me on a platter. Libya. It was better than I could have even hoped for. It was ancient. It was expenses paid and it was this spring. I got up and left the office in search of Mr. Hatley, the posting in my hand. I'd need to give him a heads up that I'd likely need some time off.

  On my way home from the museum, I was so distracted by the possibility of going on an actual archaeological dig that I made a mistake that I hadn't made in over a year. Instead of pedaling my rusty town bicycle (which used to be yellow but was now mostly bare steel and rust) through the park and down the back alley of my building, I went to Victoria Street. I was halfway down the block when I realized my mistake and applied the brakes. There, its two front windows with the shades at half-mast, looking like a half-asleep Lego-giant, was my old house. Beverly's old house.

  Beverly Hames had been my last foster parent, my best foster parent, and the only mother I ever really knew. A spinster with a gruff manner but a big heart had taken me in as a temporary foster child and I’d ended up staying with her until she died. Beverly was strict with me for the first little while. No scratching my itches in public, no leaving my bed unmade, no cursing.

  Beverly had chosen to renovate my bedroom to expand the closet and replace soggy floor-boards. During that time, we had shared her room. At first, I thought she intended to put me on the squeaky pull-out sofa in her living room. I didn’t want to sleep in the living room. I hated the otherworldly glow the streetlights cast in the front windows. The traffic going slowly by the house never failed to rouse me from even the deepest sleep. It wasn't the sound of the cars engines that woke me, but the random thoughts of the drivers that drifted into my dreams like fog. I had been only ten at the time but by then I knew what those random images and vignettes were.

  As though it was Beverly who could read minds, she set up a cot in her bedroom with flannel sheets and one of her handmade quilts. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was used to being around Beverly's mind. It rarely snuck up on me and if it did, her thoughts were never disturbing. More often than not, they had something to do with looking after me.

  I gripped my bike's handlebars, remembering how I had woken in the pitch black of her bedroom, her blackout curtains blocking out all light. I'd needed to pee but didn't want to wake Beverly, so I'd ignored the lamp she'd placed on the floor beside my cot. I toed my way slowly in the direction of the door, hands out, blindly feeling in front of me for the doorknob. I'd bumped an elbow against the open closet door, and then tripped over the fan in the corner.

  "Just turn on the light, pet," Beverly had mumbled from her cocoon of blankets, her voice heavy and sweet with sleep. "It's quieter."

  I had smiled in the dark. Turning on the light would wake her for certain, but she'd rather I wake her up than smash my toes against something unforgiving. She had a way of saying I love you without ever saying the words. Her 'I love you's' were found home-cooked, steaming, and fragrant on my plate every day, or in the fridge and ready to be heated if she wasn't going to be home for some reason. Her 'I love you's' were the previously holey socks that would appear darned and tucked into my laundry basket, lined up like sleeping mice. Her 'I love you' was the homely face in the back of the crowd at my school recitals, her warm brown eyes approving and her expression proud.

  Life with Beverly had been simple and safe. Both of us being introverted and studious meant not much talk filled the air. Winter evenings found me curled up with a history text and Beverly either reading her Bible or knitting something useful—mittens, a scarf, or a brightly colored tea-cozy. The soft clacking of her knitting needles became my white noise and for a time, after her death, I found it difficult to read without it.

  Beverly was admitted to hospital just after Halloween when a blinding headache took her sight away. She'd had headaches a lot that year, but being Beverly Hames meant she didn't go the hospital unless she'd chopped off a finger. She would take some medication and go to bed, and most times the pounder would slink back to wherever it came from. Turned out that where it had come from was an 8.25-centimeter inoperable tumor. She never recovered her sight and she never left the hospital. She passed away twelve days after my seventeenth birthday. It still hurt. Maybe it would never stop hurting.

  At seventeen, I was not yet considered a legal adult, but my case-worker convinced the board that I was responsible enough to live on my own, with support from them, until I turned eighteen. They paid for a comfortable basement suite near the high school and gave me an allowance for living expenses. When I turned eighteen, all of that stopped. That was when I moved into my drafty old studio in the apartment complex.

  The wind put its cold lips against my neck and I shivered, pulling my collar up around my ears as I stared at my old house. One of the curtains moved and a child's dirty face poked out. I smiled at her and she stared back with no expression. The child's mother appeared shortly with a washcloth in hand, to tackle the girl's face.

  I bore down on the pedals and redirected for home. Beverly Hames didn't live there any more, and neither did I.

  Chapter 3

  The address Ethan had given me led me to small bungalow in an older neighborhood of Saltford. A cold, sloppy rain had blown in off the Atlantic so I drove my beat-up 1991 Toyota Tercel stick-shift to the meeting.

  "Come on, baby." I patted the steering wheel while turning the key. The car coughed to life and I grinned. "When I said I'd drive you into the ground, I meant it. Better than rusting in a scrap yard. Don’t you think?"

  I had used some of the money Beverly left me to buy the old car after I'd graduated high school. I used my bike all summer unless I had to go somewhere across the city, b
ut during the freezing Atlantic winters, a car was an absolute necessity. I had also paid for a block-heater to be installed, and it was the best money I had ever spent after one year of driving for part of the winter without one. I still had to wear gloves to handle the steering wheel but at least my feet no longer turned into ice-cubes and my breath didn't hang in the air in front of my face. My hope these days was that nothing on the car would break until I made the move to England for school.

  I killed the car outside of a navy bungalow with a red door and got out. Pulling my hat down over my ears, I scampered up the walkway and onto the front porch to ring the doorbell. The March afternoon was bitingly cold and the damp put shivers right into my bones.

  A shape appeared through the frosted glass in the door and it swung open to reveal a portly man with a trim white beard and thick glasses with red rims. He wore plain khaki pants and a wool turtleneck the color of emeralds.

  "You must be Miss Kara.” He swung the door open and stepped to the side. "I'm Ethan Rich. Come in, come in. It's wretchedly cold and wet today, isn't it?"

  "Thanks, yes indeed." I stepped inside and took off my frosty hat and damp gloves. I extended a hand and we shook.

  "Let me take your things and hang them by the fire," he said as I wormed out of my jacket. I handed him my coat and hat and followed him into a sitting room where a large window overlooked the front yard. A fire crackled in the narrow fireplace where overstuffed chairs had been pulled close. Ethan draped my things over a quilt rack and gestured to one of the chairs. "Have a seat."

  "Thanks." I opened my backpack and pulled out my resume, carefully preserved inside a plastic sheet protector. I handed it to him. "My resume and letters of recommendation. I've worked at the nautical museum here in Saltford for almost two years now. Do you know Mr. Hatley?" I sat in one of the chairs and crossed my ankles.

  Ethan took my resume and peered at it through his bifocals. "I haven't had the pleasure, I'm afraid. I'm not from here. Our sponsor has set me up here in Saltford to organize the dig, but I'm actually from Toronto." He slid my resume and letters out of the sheet and I waited patiently while he scanned them. "Well, Miss Kara—"

  "Call me Petra, please."

  "Sure, and you can call me Ethan." He looked at me over the tops of his glasses. "Quite an impressive presentation you have here for one so young."

  "Thank you."

  He slid my papers back into the protector. "May I keep these?"

  "Of course."

  He set them on the small coffee table between us and sat back in his chair. "When did you become interested in archaeology as a profession?"

  "It's the only thing I have ever wanted to do. For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by history. Every era is interesting to me, but I am drawn to the beginning of recorded history up to the Postclassical era. As you can imagine, your upcoming excavation in Libya got me very excited." I scooted forward to the edge of the couch. "What else do you need to know about me to grant me your final spot?"

  Ethan chuckled. "It's yours. I have a feeling that you'll be an excellent addition to the team."

  A grin split my face. "Really?"

  "I'll lay out the situation for you and if you still want to come, we'll consider the position filled."

  I couldn't imagine any situation that would make me not want to go on this dig, but I nodded and sat back in the chair. It was all I could do not to grin at Ethan stupidly as he walked me through the details.

  "As I mentioned on the phone, this excavation takes place in the Acacus mountain range, not far from the city of Ghat. The volunteer positions are obviously not paid but all of the expenses are covered, including flights. Do you anticipate any issues getting six weeks off work this spring?"

  "I already discussed the possibility with Mr. Hatley, and my dog-walking service is easily suspended. It won't be a problem." The only problem was that I wouldn't be making any money while I was away and this would put me behind in my savings schedule. I'd have to pick up a third job when I returned to make up for it.

  Ethan went on. "It's a privately funded dig, done in association with my own little non-profit as well as the partnership of an antiquities authority in Libya. Excavations in Libya have been at a minimum these past several years, simply because of the civil unrest. But we've been granted permission from Libyan authorities, along with a security team. Every precaution has been taken to minimize risks." He snugged his glasses up his nose and raised bushy white brows. "Do you have any concerns about traveling to Libya?"

  I shook my head. I would have gone to any number of dangerous places for excavation experience of this type.

  Ethan laughed at my enthusiasm. "You remind me a bit of myself when I was your age. I would have gone into a black hole for the right dig."

  "Sounds about right." I smiled. "What can you tell me about the site?"

  "You'll learn all about that at our next team meeting, but I can give you some highlights. A skull was discovered near a cave system in the Acacus, initially by a paleontologist. The find was then reported to the police in Ghat. It takes some time to determine how old the remains are, but it was eventually confirmed to be ancient. As you know, archaeology is a very destructive process. We needed a very good reason to convince the Libyans and our sponsors that this dig is worthwhile. The skull proved interesting enough.” He spread his hands. “So here we are. The area is marked by beautiful basalt monoliths and the rock-art that the Tadrart Acacus is known for. Test pits were dug in the sand where the skull was found. An old water source was discovered along with what we believe are the remains of walls and foundations…and what we're hoping are several grave sites."

  My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my temples. The excavation of human remains was what I most dreamed of. There was so much to be learned if this site really did turn out to be a grave. Ethan was still talking and I shook myself and focused, threading my hands in my lap to keep my fingers from trembling.

  "There is a team at the site already, using GPR to flag anomalies and to stake out the excavation. By the time we arrive, we should be able to walk on site and excavate properly."

  "A tag team effort?"

  "That's right."

  "Where is the funding coming from? I noted the name of the sponsor. The Group of Winterthür, who are they?"

  Ethan nodded. "We're very lucky that someone on their board has taken a personal interest in the dig site. Winterthür is in Switzerland, but the group is made up of people from all nations. It’s basically a global think tank that deals with international issues." He leaned in conspiratorially, as though sharing some great secret. "They've got a lot of billionaires in the group. If you'd like to learn more about them, they have a Wikipedia page and a website. The dig will start the last week of April. We're scheduled to leave Libya in early June, before the real heat sets in. But make no mistake, it will be hot there. We'll discuss preparations and how to fend off heat, dehydration, and fatigue at the orientation. I'm very much looking forward to this excavation, but my primary goal will be safety and health." He gave me a fatherly smile. "I've never lost a dig team member to illness or anything else and I don't intend to start now. Previous team members have called me Papa Paranoid."

  I laughed. "How flattering."

  Ethan glanced at his watch. "I've got a conference call in ten minutes." He got to his feet. "It's been lovely meeting you, and welcome to the team."

  "Thank you! I still have so many questions." I got to my feet as well.

  He picked my coat and hat off the quilt rack and handed them to me. "You can ask as many as you like at the team meeting, which will take place at Saltford High. We've been given access to one of the classrooms." He cocked his head. "Is that where you went to school?"

  I shook my head. "No, I grew up on the other side of town. But I know where Saltford High is."

  Ethan walked me to the foyer as I put my coat on.

  "When is the meeting?" I asked.

  "Tuesday evening at
seven."

  "Should I bring anything?"

  "You might want a notebook for your own note taking, but I’ll have a few handouts that will help. Otherwise, no. Just bring your keen self." Ethan tucked a hand into one of his pockets and opened the door. "I'll see you Tuesday. If you run into any issues before then, give me a call. I'll have some paperwork for you to sign when next we meet."

  This was unbelievable. The dig of my dreams, handed to me on a silver platter. I didn’t need my therapist’s help or my boss’s influence—it had just happened.

  I knew there was more to it than that; I had been preparing for and working toward finding something like this for years. Still, up until a few days ago, prospects had been pretty bleak. And now, I could hardly believe my good fortune.

  I jammed the hat on my head and gave Ethan a glimmering smile. "Sounds great. See you then!"

  Chapter 4

  I opened the doors to Saltford High and stepped through the foyer and into the large lobby. I had never set foot in this high school, as Beverly and I had lived on the far West side of town. I glanced at the pie-faced clock above the office doors. I was a few minutes early.

  It was weird being back among the bricks of a high school. I wandered along trophy cases filled with glittering icons of achievement. I passed the list of honors students, their names framed in heavy oak and matted in a royal purple velour fabric. Beyond that were the photographs of the graduating students and the school photos of the younger grades. I walked slowly along the silent hall, taking in the smiling faces, the not so smiley faces, and the downright dour.

  I paused before the image of a Japanese girl in grade eleven. There was something familiar about her. I scanned the name. Akiko Susumu. I didn't recognize the name, but I recognized the face. I squinted at her features, searching my memory. Surely this girl was the doppelganger of a girl who had been in her final year in my own high school when I'd been in grade nine. Grade nine students rarely made friends with graduating students. Her face had a compelling, ageless quality and a wisdom that seemed out of place on a student. I had never hung out with this girl or even said two words to her, but I knew her face.