"The Witch's Grave"
"I can't believe you pulled this off."
"It wasn't that hard, Rupert. Stop sneering."
"Superstitious lot. What did you tell them?"
"Surprisingly," Daria said, "they responded quite well to respect and genuine curiosity. Moving her, that was the real battle. Since the City has to move her anyway, we get to watch. You gonna take the pictures?" She bent close and peered at a series of little Xs on the side of the vault. Of course she was imagining it, but if you held your breath you could almost, almost feel the supplication, sometimes the desperation in those simple symbols.
"Right, right. And then we collect all this... junk?"
"You're doing it again. Besides, it's not all junk. These shoes cost $120, easy."
Rupert backed away and went into the contemplative mode he always assumed when framing a picture. The hobby was, he claimed, a very useful one to have as a cultural anthropologist, and had everything to do with geometry and nothing to do with mood.
Neither of those excuses explained the rapturous glow on his face when he was behind the camera, but Daria carefully didn't smile as she watched the transformation.
The mausoleum was festooned with offerings of every imaginable sort - and some not so imaginable, Daria thought as she spied an alligator foot. The shoes, countless beads, candles, books, pictures, trinkets and stuffed animals, all placed carefully before this final resting place. Legend had it the witch still wielded power from the beyond. Other legends said she wasn't beyond at all, but kept tabs on her tomb. Either way, many believed she still took requests.
Rupert documented the gifts and the vault itself while Daria made a circuit around it. She meandered, marveling at the X marks and wishing she knew what was behind it all, what the power was that made people keep coming here, that made the air tangible with possibility. Some of the symbols looked more like infinity signs, a couple were names. Most of these were so worn they were nearly impossible to decipher. She decided to come back with a blacklight, different equipment.
When he was done, they started to carefully load the gifts ("artifacts," as Rupert insisted on calling them) into crates. Daria said a silent apology for each one, promising to return them to the new grave site after the move. Rupert sneered. The bastard could probably tell what she was doing. Daria didn't care. She wasn't scared of him. But if she was being brutally honest with herself, which she only did for a split second, she was a little bit afraid of the witch whose things they were disturbing.
"There's no reason not to be respectful," she said aloud. That's what she was doing, after all. She afforded this same respect to all the sites they went to, witch or not. She had a different approach to anthropology than her partner did.
"Right," he said. "While we've been dawdling with this, they've opened it. Shall we?" He unslung the camera again and ducked inside.
All was dust and quiet in the crypt. No bright feathers, no wind singing mysteriously through cracks.
It was a little disappointing.
"Check these out," Rupert said. "You seen these symbols on a grave before?"
Daria traded places with him so she could get a better look. "No, they... actually yes. Today. Some of them anyway - this one looks sort of like an infinity symbol, but not." She shone her penlight on the wall, throwing the carvings into looming relief. "Is that an atom? Waves... Rupert, that's not infinity, that's a torus! This witch was a physicist?"
He snorted. "Almost as bad. Sneaky particles and parallel universes and electrons. String theory."
"Like you understand any of it. Quit complaining or I'll wish you to a parallel universe."
"Nothing to understand! They're making it up. As if the - "
Daria turned with her eyebrow pre-raised to hear the rest of Rupert's scathing remark, but he wasn't there. Startled, she jumped in her skin and was startled again to find a camera hanging around her neck. Did her mind expand for a second? Did she feel ripples? She took a slow breath and all the electrons in the megaverse breathed with her and...
She couldn't get out quickly enough. Rupert wasn't outside, but she already hadn't expected him to be.
"You done, ma'am? We need to get on with it."
"Ah... yes. Is there... can someone help me with these crates?"
A man came forward and piled boxes on the hand cart for her. She scanned through the photos while he did so, hoping for... something. She didn't know what she was hoping for, exactly.
She was in none of them. The... someone had been taking pictures while she walked around the mausoleum, hadn't they? So where was she? She became conscious of an odd taste in her mouth. She didn't feel so good.
Now Daria was even more grateful to the man loading her crates. It had been selfish of her not to bring Rupert with her to do that, and she apologized. She had brought someone. Had he canceled at the last minute?
But that was silly. She always worked alone. Daria zipped the case onto her camera and pushed the cart out to the van.
Why was the seat so far back? It must have slipped, and she didn't care. She needed an aspirin and a nap as soon as she got these things back to her lab. "Note to self: hire an assistant."