Fossil Find

               Colleen slipped on a wet rock. She grabbed a tree root for stability. She marked her path off the top of the limestone cliff with care. She loved going to the abandoned quarry after a rain. All those lovely gray fossils were easy to see against the gray matrix they eroded from.

                She reached a slope of rocks and slid down to a small ledge. She stopped abruptly. Her foot caught on a strap. She untangled herself all the while scanning the wall in front of her. A complete crinoid from its branches down to its holdfast was right next to the bag she caught her foot on. She remembered her professor saying, “This is an animal, they only call it a sea lily because it floats like one.” The class field trip yielded plenty of crinoid parts, but not the whole. She knew then that the day would come when she would slip into the back of the forbidden quarry, the one where its fossils showed up in books. No one was allowed in since that incident last century. A couple of the workers disappeared during lunch one day. At Halloween locals told stories based on whispers. Whatever really happened, the company kept it quiet.

There were a rusty rock hammer and chisel lying on the ledge. She picked up the bag to get a better look. It was old and weathered. When she opened it a mouse popped out and ran. It startled Colleen and she jerked back into the crinoid.

Everything was wet. She grabbed the rock in the wall and it squished. Colleen was floundering in a few feet of water. She had a live extinct animal in her one hand. Her own bag was still hanging off of her shoulder. In her other hand was the bag she found. The water was teaming with life. She found her footing and stared at a tall purple pole planted firmly next to her. She looked at the shore. It was shimmering under the heat of two suns. The trees were more colorful than the artist’s rendition in her books. They were also much smaller.

Colleen felt faint. She watched the water for anything big as she plunged her way toward the shoreline. Something snapped at her foot once. She kicked hard and kept moving. She landed on the beach outstretched and exhausted. She was on the sand for a minute or a day. With two suns in the sky time became impossible to gauge.

A shadow covered her head and she cringed trying to guess what creatures were on land here. Then she heard voices and felt herself floating. She woke in a decent sized hut. Fresh fish chowder awaited her in an earthenware bowl. The crinoid floated in a bowl of water.

“Good, she’s awake. Hank, you talk to her first,” said someone across the room.

“My name’s Hank, these are Rob and James. They’re the two quarry men that disappeared some thirty years ago. And you are?” He shook hands with her.

“I’m Colleen. What just happened?” she asked. She stared at this hippie. In real time he was old enough to be her granddad. He doesn’t look a day over 20, and the quarry men were still in their 40’s.

Hank An ancient Tupperware™ container with now broken edges lay open. He meticulously dried a pipe and other paraphernalia while he talked.

“As far as we can tell, that crinoid,” he pointed to the bowl, “that’s the same one I touched and these guys touched. Problem is none of us still had a hand on it when we came up for air.” He paused staring at the creature. “We think this has to be another planet not just because of the two suns but the three moons we have at night. Oh, I just thought of something, you didn’t move the stick did you?” He sounded panicky.

She sipped her soup while he talked. She didn’t ask what kinds of things were in it. The stick did he say? What stick? “Oh, right, the one in the water. No, I don’t think I moved it,” she said.

They decided to leave in the morning. Colleen would need to rest up for the arduous walk back into the sea. In the morning it rained. All the next day it rained.

Time here was funny. Rob and James didn’t know thirty years had passed until they met Hank. It seemed like just a few months. Hank was the one to notice they hadn’t aged. And now they marveled at these strange toys Colleen had in her bag. Her cell phone was the biggest marvel. She showed them photos and videos saved to the phone. She knew time was starting to slide when the battery ran down.

The conversation turned to more serious matters. Would the guys bodies go on or would they be instantly old? They all reassured Colleen they had this talk more than a few times. They were ready for whatever.

James noticed the crinoid dying. So now they would have to brave bad weather and hope to find a purple stick in the storm.

Colleen asked, “What happens if someone’s hand slips and isn’t touching that thing when we go through?”

“Good question,” said Hank. “We need to make another hole in it” He picked a basket off a wicker hook. He pulled at some of the weaving until a gap appeared. It matched three other gaps only slightly smaller. “Put your hand in here,” he said.

Colleen squeezed her hand in. “Now what?”

Hank said, “We put this little fellow in the basket and all keep our hands on him until we come out the other side.”

“And this will work?” asked Colleen.

Rob spoke up. “It just has to work.” He sighed, “It just has to.”

It was a hard walk in the heavy rain. The basket was wrapped in a leaf to keep the crinoid from sliding out. Hank put it in his bag. The four of them set course from their landmarks toward the purple stick. They locked arms and marched into the shallow sea. Eventually James bumped into the stick.

They drew into a circle around it. Hank pulled out the basket. They put their hands in. Hank yelled, “Ready!” The four took deep breaths and dropped the five feet to the floor and sat down.

Colleen gasped air. It was wet, rainy, and smelled green. They were on a ledge in an abandoned quarry. The guys didn’t turn instantly old. That was a relief. Finding live relatives might be a problem, but they were all home.

One day Bando was flying his new car around the scablands. Nothing grew here anymore. The desolation was a fun place to have flying races without the eye in the sky monitoring and ticketing everyone. Bando flew close to a gray rock shelf. Something caught his eye. He opened his window and hovered next to the wall.

“I never saw anything like that in a museum.” Sticking out of the rock was a fossilized crinoid. It was covered with the imprint of a woven basket. Fibers stuck out of the rock as acid rain washed the surface. Bando reached out of the window and touched it. Him and the flying car were gone.