The Heirloom

Two children had discovered Wilma’s discarded heirloom in the mud of the evaporating lake. Now she would have to get it away from them and leave the place she had lived all her life, where her ancestors had fought the original inhabitants to take the land, where they had chopped trees with ancient axes to build crude homes and clear the land for farming. She’d lived here ninety years. The last twenty years, she’d lived alone. Her husband was buried in an oak-shaded grave on the northern-most corner of her seventy acres. He lay near her parents, her three dead children, and dozens of ancestors who had lived and died in this place. She had thought she’d lie beside them when her time came, but now, she would probably die on her journey, and there was no one left to care enough to return her remains to her home. Did they still bury bodies at sea? Probably not; so perhaps she could request in her will that her body be returned and buried in the family cemetery.

But before she left, she would have to steal the little sphere from the children who considered it only an amusing play thing. It was not safe in their hands. It was not safe in anyone’s hands, not even hers. That’s why she’d thrown it in the lake the night her husband died. In a fit of anger, she’d thrown it as far out as she could, but when she calmed herself, she’d tried to find it, and after weeks of searching in vain, she decided the deep, wide lake would keep its secrets forever. Now she would have to find another sanctuary for her unwanted heirloom.

Wilma considered simply offering to buy the sphere from the children, but she did not want to call attention to its value, and, more so, she did not want anyone to know where it was or who had owned it and disposed of it. The children’s find had been examined by dozens of neighbors, friends of the children, their relatives. If she did not reclaim it soon, someone could find a way to open it. Now that so many knew of its existence, there was nothing she could do but disappear with it, and quickly, before the children’s parents or someone else declared it was an artifact that needed to be examined by experts.

She would watch them for a few days, and when they lost interest, they would put it down to play with something else. Then she could quietly, quickly, surreptitiously, remove it from their possession. Chances are, the children would think they had forgotten where they had put it.

So far, those who knew about the discovery—and everyone for miles around knew about it by now—did not seem to know the sphere could be opened. To them, it seemed to be simply a shiny black metal ball with strange writing in raised letters, letters so strange they appeared to be random designs. The heirloom appeared to be made of iron, but it was non-magnetic and had no rust despite being left in water for two decades. Of course the finders did not know how long it had been in the lake. It did not look old, though it was old, older than Wilma, older than anyone knew. If she could get it back—when she got it back—she’d travel to the ocean, go on a cruise, and drop the thing overboard. It would be safe until the Atlantic dried up, and at that point the sphere would not matter; nothing would.

After her mother died, her father had given the sphere to her and Wilbur. He explained how to use it, taught them both to read the strange writing, and told them that when one of them died, the other must pass this heirloom and its instructions on to their oldest married child and his or her spouse. For countless decades, two, three, or four people had always known its secret. But when Wilber died, he left Wilma no children. Twin girls had died in infancy, days after their birth, and the third, their son Edward, had died far away in a useless war before he had a chance to love, to marry, and to father a child. Wilma knew of no one she could pass the sphere on to. She might be the last of her line, the last of her family, the last of her kind, and now the last to know the secrets of the sphere.

Passing the heirloom on to Katherine’s children, if there were any, was not an option. Her older sister, older by two years, had married a boy she met in high school, and they’d left for the city, or for places unknown, rather than face the wrath of Wilma’s parents. Marriages were arranged in their family. A descendant of Sing did not run off with an outsider. Katherine was disowned, and Wilma became heir to the sphere. Because Katherine’s offspring, if there were any, would not be pure bloods, it was unlikely they would have inherited the mental power to open the container safely. And even if by some small chance one did have the power, finding a child of Katherine would be an enormous difficulty, and persuading this improbable person to return to New Quinsing would most likely be insurmountable.

Wilber’s family was abundant, all were congregates, suitable partners for Wilma’s non-existent offspring, but the blood of Sing did not flow in their veins. They did not have the mental power to control the device even though they could be told of its power, could know its secrets. The sphere must be passed only to the chosen heirs of Sing, and for the first time in centuries, there were none.

While waiting to steal the children’s little treasure, Wilma went through her possessions, deciding what to put into the small canvas bag she would carry when she left. “You can’t take it with you,” she told herself, thinking of her ninety years as she surveyed her ornate ancient silver, her china, her paintings, her jewelry both old and new. She would take only some clothes, toiletries, one thick novel to read, and one single photograph, one of her and Wilbur and Edward, taken when Edward was five. The only jewelry to go with her was her gold wedding band, always on her finger. She put her passport into her handbag along with the usual paraphernalia women carry about daily.

She tried to think of other options—burying the sphere, passing it on to someone—but nothing was safe and sure. She worried that, given her advanced years, she might not make it to the coast to get a cruise. She dare not fly; the sphere could not be taken on a plane, of course. It would be a long, lonely drive. When she threw the unwanted item overboard into the Atlantic perhaps she would follow it. Why make the drive back? Why face the unanswerable questions about her sudden disappearance and the near simultaneous disappearance of the children’s strange find? The bottom of the ocean was as good a place as any for her body to rest if it could not rest next to her kin.

Wilma sat down and wrote her will with a blue ballpoint on a sheet of white paper that she pulled from the printer. The will had to be hand-written, she thought. She would go into town to get it notarized just to be safe, not that it mattered. If she did not get back, the state could take possession of everything for all she cared. However, she thought it only fair to leave her land, her house, and its contents to the children because she was stealing the sphere from them, and it was worth more than all she owned, though the children would never know this. Leaving everything to them was right. The children who found the sphere were among the select; they were the great-great-grandchildren of Wilbur’s sister. The will was short and simple with no instructions regarding disposal of her body. She left all her worldly possessions to be divided equally between the two children. The sphere was not a worldly possession, and it would soon belong to Neptune.

It was three days before Wilma was able to filch the sphere. As soon as it was in her possession, she threw it into her bag, put the bag in the car, locked her house doors—no one ever locked doors in New Quinsing or the farms nearby—and drove away. She’d left a notarized copy of her will on the kitchen table and carried a second copy—not a copy, but a second handwritten, notarized page with the same wording—to be mailed from New York City to the parents of the children.

She did not die on the journey, but arrived safely in New York City in four days, dropped her will into a mailbox, and booked herself on a cruise to the Azores. The sphere made it through security. The ship’s agent examined it carefully, even x-rayed it, and believed it a solid mass. She might have made it through the airline security after all—though she was afraid the sphere might interfere with some of the plane’s instruments, so driving had been the safest option.

About midnight on the second day of the cruise, Wilma took the sphere from her satchel and sat turning it in her hands as she sat on the bed in her cabin. She wondered when it had last been opened and why, never in her lifetime nor her parents’ time. Her father had not opened it when he passed it on to her. Though he was a descendant of Quin and may have had some mental powers, he was not the chosen one; it was her mother, Sing’s descendant, who could operate the box, and now only Wilma could, or her sister were she living still. Soon there would be no one left who could operate the transporter, but it no longer mattered. None of the select would ever wish to return to their place of origin. Over so many generations, the select had integrated so thoroughly most did not know their own history. They believed themselves natives of this once-new place, and many, like her sister, had married outsiders. Some had left New Quinsing, but a larger number had settled on their old family farms with those not of the congregation. Intermarriage was not forbidden to those who were not descendants of Quin or Sing—not forbidden to commoners. Wilbur’s family were not commoners. To breed with Sing’s pure line, there must be no earthly blood diluting the blood of Quin.

There were no visible controls on the sphere, only the instructions written in the strange alphabet. Once opened, the container was sensitive to the thoughts of its holder, if the holder had the mental power needed for control. If the sphere were left open and uncontrolled for too many minutes, it would self-destruct, taking a whole city with it. However, if Wilma opened it, she could return to Quinsing. She could take someone with her, or she could send someone else. That was what her father had told her. Earlier on, centuries ago, the device had been used to return to Quinsing those settlers who did not fit into the group, who could not be happy on the new planet, and also to return those who broke laws, those who did not do their share of work, those who stole, or fought, or lied. But if she left the planet, the sphere would stay, and getting rid of the sphere was her number one goal, her only goal.

Wilma took the transporter with her and walked to the top deck, to the stern of the ship. She leaned her elbows on the rail, holding the sphere in both hands. Instead of tossing it overboard as she had planned, out of curiosity, she opened it carefully, as she had been taught, keeping her mind blank, staring at the starry sky. A couple walked by, but they did not take any notice of the old lady looking over the rail as she held a small object in both hands. As soon as they went inside and Wilma was again alone, she slipped under the rail, and sitting only a moment on the edge of the deck to push the nine letters in a sequence that activated the open container, she hoisted herself over the side. She stared at the glowing, green interior of the little sphere and thought of Quinsing as she fell into the ocean far below, taking the transporter to its safe resting place and perhaps herself to her ancestors’ home—if it still existed.