Mica bounded out of the bathroom, barreling past a waiter balancing a load of dirty dishes as though she barely saw him, and slid full force beside Wick in the booth, pushing aside the flatware. Jacqueline noticed that a fork -- not one that matched the rest of the set -- was etched with the word "Oneida." She wasn't sure that it meant anything. It tottered into her lap and, deciding it might have meant to, put it in her bag.
"Guess what I saw in the bathroom?"
Jacqueline could imagine few objects she would care to encounter in a public restroom, fewer still that would excite her (particularly artful and filthy graffiti, maybe). She trusted that the punchline to Mica's setup might veer to the scatological.
Mica snickered at Jacqueline's uncomfortable inability to answer promptly. "No, you goose."
She pulled a pamphlet from her pocket, one folded and refolded by different hands, speckled with a fluid Jacqueline hoped was water. The steward pushed it across the table toward her, who did not pick it up for fear of being impregnated by toilet germs (unlike Houdini, whom Jacqueline had rinsed off. It was likely sanitary by dint of being godly -- which everyone knew was next to cleanly).
She did not need physical contact to read the pamphlet's dog-eared cover. Herkimer Diamond Mining.
A boyfriend in high school had gifted her a Herkimer diamond necklace. She had come to hate it when the boyfriend teased her one too many times for mistaking it for an actual diamond, which would have cost him in the thousands rather than simply in the tens. She had dumped him soon after and lost the necklace at some point she had not cared enough to notice. "Why would we do this?" asked Jacqueline, not averse or even doubting but curious.
"She enjoys crystals," answered Wick. Did Wick and she have an inside joke now? That was quick and felt undeserved.
"Crystals are cool, and you know it," said Mica. "We should go mine them! I bet it's fun and it doesn't cost that much. You get to keep whatever you find. Unless you happened to have been whispered to from on high while I pissed?"
Jacqueline swirled the ice in her drink, selecting the best cube. "Okay, I'll give you that, but it wasn't my idea. Isn't that what we are doing? You brought us here. Now you are bringing this pamphlet out. This seems more like your adventure than mine."
"And I invited myself along and brought you into the spooky cave when it was closed. Don't forget those."
Jacqueline hadn't.
"But I am a steward, so I am probably in your karass, wampeter though you are in this journey. You've got to figure, maybe you were supposed to pick up a stowaway."
Jacqueline crunched a piece of ice, bordering on frustration that this day was derailing. "You have to assume that I don't know your mystical jargon by now, yet you keep using it."
"Not mystical," said Wick. "Kurt Vonnegut Jr. She is telling you that you remain the hub around which we are having this experience, but she proposes that she is a spoke, and you need her, ergo this serendipity falls under the umbrella of your divine inspiration."
That didn't seem fair, though Jacqueline also felt the possibility resonate. She looked the mildly smug steward over as though for the first time, shifting her perceptions from faint resentment to acknowledgment that Mica might belong here as much as the scarabs, trying to like her at least as much as Houdini. This did not come easily. Jacqueline felt protective of her dung beetles in a way she would never Mica, but she could knit Mica into the tapestry of this day.
Jacqueline squared away the lunch bill, as only Mica and she had ordered anything, and the steward promised that she would get them into the Herkimer Diamond Mine.
Jacqueline assumed foolishly that this would involve money, but Mica breezed past the person in front taking admission, walking to the eye protectors and hammers. Jacqueline could only scamper after.
"Did you magic that person?"
"Nah," said Mica, handing her eye protection. "No need for that. I don't like bewitching anyone who doesn't need it. If they sassed me, I would offer them free admission to Howe Caverns -- a fair trade if I ever heard one. Failing that, I would give them money, but you don't ever want to lead with that. They didn't put the crystals in the ground, only set up a fence around them, right? So, all I am doing is not paying to cross a fence. It's not like we are stealing, right?"
"You said it wasn't expensive," Jacqueline reminded her. She looked behind them. "Seriously, it's not even $20 per person."
"Free is not expensive."
"I bought you lunch!"
Mica said, handing Jacqueline a small hammer, "And I thank you for it. We are in either way, so what does it matter how?"
Jacqueline did not think, particularly on a quest, that Mica ought to be leaning on utilitarianism. The ends couldn't justify the means. Being here without paying wasn't ethical. Ordinarily, Jacqueline couldn't imagine caring about a few bucks and a field of rocks, but she found Mica abrasively carefree. Anything the steward did outside the bounds of good taste -- even of these bounds would not have otherwise constrained Jacqueline -- could be grounds for booting Mica from her wampeter. Or karass? Or Jacqueline wasn't sure of the term. She wished that she had written it on a napkin so it would not surprise her should it come up again.
The sun glared overhead, though the heat was not much. Jacqueline wished that the protective glasses were tinted against it, though that might defeat their purpose.
The field around them held at least twenty people, some on their knees, using spades to unearth unremarkable clumps of dark gray stone. A few appeared to hit anything around them with hammers to no evident success.
Jacqueline had not planned to spend part of her day rooting in the dirt for rocks. This was not commonplace road trip behavior. She granted that these were pretty rocks, so that must count for something in the grand scheme of the world. A pocketful of glittery crystals appealed to some girlish whim better than a fist of gray slate. Looking over at Mica, she warranted that glittery rocks weren't always worth much.
Jacqueline didn't care particularly about these clothes, but it still seemed unseemly to cover them in muck midway into this trip -- if this was still midway. There was no way to know, no sign that they were even on the right track. Why couldn't the supernatural just give a street address?
Jacqueline picked a spot, figuring that it might as well be the right one. A guy ten feet away, covered in grime, audibly scoffed to his companions at her choice. He jerked his thumb her way, the universal sign of "Get a load of this rube."
She held up her hammer, meeting his eye, then slammed it onto a rock as a threat.
Wick called her name, nodding down. A crystal.
She held it up to the thumb-jerker, which deflated his mockery.
It wasn't much of a crystal, but she liked that the universe had allowed her to use a mineral to flip off that guy.
The three of them rooted about, not saying much to one another, aside from Jacqueline occasionally noting how long this was taking and setting time limits on this activity that she kept extending when one found a Herkimer diamond. None of the finds were exciting, none seeming like the reason for this detour, but it did encourage the continued hitting of rocks.
A shadow fell after an hour as though a thundercloud meant for them alone. Jacqueline peered up as the man holding an umbrella over her, shielding her from the afternoon sun.
"Ah, you're Jacqueline, are you?"
Jacqueline was not proud to admit that she flailed away from the man and, before she was through reacting, smacked the handle of her hammer against his shin three times with increasing severity.
In the contrast between the sunlight and his shade, his features were notional at best, so her limbic system resorted to the contours of the person's voice to judge how in danger she was. Soft but frayed on the edges like a reformed smoker. He'd used her name, and she hardly felt she had advertised her visit here. That did mark him as threatening, potentially an agent.
Mica stood, dusting off her pants to no effect. "You will scare the poor girl half to death, Ingi!" she teased, "Weren't you raised better than that?"
"Do you work here?" Jacqueline asked with little hope.
"I've helped in the gift shop. I've seen many worthless stones turned into fetching pendants."
She stood beside Mica, but she still could not distinguish the man's features.
Jacqueline knew it was foolish and wrong to do, but she already had her phone slipped out of her pocket. She wouldn't use the flashlight, but she couldn't pass up seeing better.
She held the phone near him. He flinched away as anyone might. She saw his face but could not remember it a moment later. She looked again and tried to study it. The umbra cast by the cloth was close to night now, the inverse of a spotlight. Again, his face slipped away.
Mica pointed her finger at Jacqueline's phone, which obligingly went dark.
Jacqueline waited to feel a fright, anxious at the proximity to obvious magic and the person -- creature? -- who cast it. The day beyond the black umbrella took on an almost tactile aspect, as though it were fine, luminous sand. Instead, only giddiness welled up in her chest as though in the presence of a skilled stage magician.
"Your associate is no more," Ingi said. "I was asked to tell you."
"My associate?" Had her father died already? She could feel guilty about that, having spent what must have been his dying hours on cave tours, french fries, and rock collecting. Though terming her godly father an associate was colder than she would have thought.
"The beetle."
Now, Jacqueline felt honest grief, even though she hadn't bothered giving it a name. "How did it die? Or do I not want to know? Did it get squished?" That did seem to be the natural fate of dead bugs.
"Dead?" asked the landvaettir, as he so plainly must be given how Mica regarded him. "I was unclear. Or I was too clear, but it is not how you speak. The scarab stopped existing. It did not die. I was told to tell you."
Jacqueline has no idea what this nonexistence meant and whether it was more peaceful than the bottom of a shoe. "Were you told by some hive mind or mystical--"
"On the telephone. Mica left a message at the caverns, saying that you would be coming here and would want to know."
"Thank you," said Jacqueline, but already her mind had turned this conversation over for hidden gems.
She waited until the man, bowing, the darkness under his umbrella casting backward, returned to the gift shop. Mica was already poking through a pile of detritus in hopes of discoveries.
"You called the landvaettir to tell them where I would be?"
"You wanted to know about the bug, so I left a forwarding address. Why?"
"When did you tell them this? In the bathroom at the diner?"
Wick stood now. He had acted as though the landvaettir had never been over them, but these questions piqued his interest.
Mica gave a wry smile which might well be her default expression. "My book. I did a little spell -- tiny one -- and it suggested that you needed to come here. I wanted food on the way. Where is the issue?"
"The Codex wanted us here?" asked Wick. Jacqueline blinked, but, yes, Wick was uneasy with this. Tense.
"No," said Mica, stretching out her fingers in a fashion Jacqueline hoped was not magical. "You must chill. The agents did not want this. They are not -- I don't know -- hanging on your every exploit, and I don't know many stewards who are exactly thrilled that agents have us by the short hairs. The Codex is capable of giving me the sort of folk magic that I am sure you find beneath you. This is rank basic divination."
"We are not following the Codex again," said Jacqueline. "I don't know your agents, but I am positive from everything you've both said that I do not want to."
"Do you want to leave?" asked Wick.
Jacqueline knew that neither of her companions would contradict her if she said yes. However, it was not her decision alone to make.
"Did you have that pamphlet in your pocket?" asked Jacqueline.
Mica squinted. "Oh, the one for here? Hell no. It originated on the sink in the bathroom."
It would have meant nothing except that Mica had already divined that Jacqueline needed to come here. A coincidence, only it wasn't any longer. This water warped trifold of shiny paper became a message from on high.
"You swear that the agents don't know about this?" Jacqueline asked.
"If they do, it isn't from me," said Mica.
That would be good enough. "We haven't found what we are looking for. Keep searching."
Jacqueline, having ordered this, sat down a moment to examine her haul so far. She had six of them, the largest no more significant than her pinky nail and the smallest able about the size of a shelled sunflower seed. She did not know how many Wick and Mica had found -- him especially, as Mica tended to yip whenever she unearthed a new one.
She rolled them individually between her thumb and forefinger. A point on each end, six sides on each point, and six around the center. Did eighteen have some supernatural significance? Not that she could recall, but this was barely her world. More likely, this was merely how the math of nature had constructed them.
She stuck her load back into her jeans pocket, but one slipped out and bounced into a hole. She considered just leaving an easy find for some kid, but she had chipped it out of the dolomite with her hammer and didn't want to give up a sparkling boon.
She reached in, recovering hers but feeling another point. She wiggled it free, pulling them both out at once.
She slipped the original crystal into her pocket but examined the new one. It was as big as the joint of her thumb. She brushed the crystal off with her sleeve, but the dirt wouldn't go away. She held it up to the sunlight, turning it and watching the black fleck move through the crystal.
"Oh, it has a bubble in it with dirt." She began to push it back into the hole for her presumptive child explorer.
The jerk from before stomped up to her, now holding a yellow-handled sledgehammer over his shoulder. Jacqueline flinched as though the hammerhead might be destined for her temple. He stopped in the mud beside her. "Can I see what you got there?"
He was older than her, the skin of his face lined and rough like a leather sofa that had been chiefly well-treated. Still, his expression persisted in being far from friendly. She clutched the rock more tightly in her fist.
"Just a moment?" he asked, though it had a whine like begging. "I will give it back."
She looked to her companions for confirmation that she should trust a stranger with a hammer -- it did not seem like a wise move -- but they gave no obvious ruling.
"Do you know what you have here?" he asked, the begging now more akin to awe. "This is an enhydro with anthraxolite!"
Jacqueline did not understand any of the critical words in the declaration, but she could translate the tone into "This is something rare and valuable that I wish I had found instead."
Jacqueline put out her hand to examine it as closely as he did, then put it in her hoodie pocket. If it was something special, let the scarabs protect it.
Hammer Man frowned, but he wouldn't have taken it from her and seemed perturbed by her unspoken accusation. "I've been looking for something like that. I don't suppose you are keen to sell it?"
Had he not approached her, she would have left it in the hole -- who wanted a dirty crystal? -- but she now would not have given it up without a fight. "I'm going to keep it. Maybe make a necklace."
He was disappointed but not surprised. "You're one hell of a lucky gal, I'll tell you what. I come here every few weeks when the weather is nice enough, looking for something like that. I have some big pieces -- my wife would tell you too many -- but not so many enhydros, and none with anthraxolite!"
"I am feeling damned lucky today," she said, wanting to at least mimic how excited he was by her find.
The man was hardly out of earshot before Mica said, "Enhydro means it has water in it. Anthraxolite is a kind of coal. Your crystal is reasonably cool, but it will not serve as a down payment on a house. Maybe a bird feeder, but a nice one."
"You knew all that?"
The steward lifted her phone. "It wasn't hard to search. I could buy you a bigger one. It could be at your house this week." Mica gave a pert smile. "But we only have today."
Jacqueline nodded.
"So, we have a rock now. Tower, cave, rock."
"But a cool rock," said Jacqueline, pulling it out again. She twisted it in the sunlight, the mote of dirt -- or coal -- floating in an oval pocket of water a centimeter long. "Any insight, Wick?"
She handed it to him, her forefinger and thumb on each point. He brought it within inches of his eye, too close for her to imagine he could even focus.
"It is a cool rock," he confirmed.
"But not mystically cool?"
He handed it back to her. "Few things inherently are."
Jacqueline didn't care to be surprised later. She called out her scarabs, Houdini and his buddies. "One of you is staying behind?"
They all wiggled affirmatively.
"Have you picked which one?"
The one to the left of Houdini wiggled.
"Anywhere special you'd like to be left?"
It twitched from leg to leg as though avoiding too hot sand before inclining his abdomen backward. Its exterior wings pressed close to one another, the tan cellophane of its flight wings peeking out as though crumbled tissues. He dropped to a crouch, fluttering its wings a second and gaining not even an inch of liftoff before landing again on Jacqueline's sleeve. Its flight wings remained peeking out beneath its carapace, then flared to either side like a bat, the creases between the membrane even resembling that animal's slender fingers. Now the beetle's wings flapped with purpose, flying directly up, as if into the sun.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.
