The Explorers Part 2 | A Romantic Short Story
Tempers flare on a journey to find a mysterious text for a driven professor aiming to protect history and an overzealous archaeologist with uncertain alliances. A LVNDR Romantic Short Story. 18+
From the broken leather of the reconnaissance vehicle’s passenger seat, Margaret desperately tried to protect the map from the sandy gusts as they sped through the desert.
Henry told as if his voice were fueling the car itself as they drove toward the spot on the map Margaret had discreetly marked with a smudge of lipstick.
It was an educated guess, of course. While the exact location of The Lost Library — emphasis on lost — was unknown, it was described as being among the phantom ships.
To her knowledge, the description had only been written down on a single text sitting in a locked box of her private office. It had been passed down to her from her mentor just as it’d been passed down to her. 500 words of Arabic from a time centuries prior, when Egypt was conquered and, with the new regime, historians sought to preserve knowledge. While libraries were burned to the ground, one remained, but its existence became a ghost of lore passed through academics to ensure it stayed such.
Margaret was thinking of how to ask Henry more about his note, leading them to their current adventure, when the car lurched to a full stop. Pulling herself upright, Margaret jumped from the car to follow the Archeologist up a dune.
She was so focused on the climb that she hadn’t even looked up until physically running into Henry. She followed his gaze and gasped at the sight of the Red Sea sprawled out before them. Between them and the water sat a series of rocks that once served to keep visiting ships in place during their travels.
“That’s it,” Henry said, serious now as he pointed toward a dune.
Not a dune, Margaret realized with a start. A cave.
The Professor pulled an electric torch before stepping into an entryway that seemed to defy physics. Each wall dripped in waterfalls of sand, as if the desert around her were alive, like any ocean. A few dozen footfalls of their bare feet and the narrow hallway opened up to reveal an ornate cavern.
The walls continued to drip around them, but their attention shifted to the center, where, underneath a large crystallized structure that was more chandelier than ceiling, sat a single wooden chest. Around it sat a miniature moat only about a stride’s length from one side to the other. The Professor kneeled to examine it.
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”
Margaret whirled toward where Henry stood just steps behind her. Both hands raised in false surrender.
“The text very specifically states to use words, not actions.” The Archaeologist’s eyes roamed across the cavern in awe.
“That’s not true,” Margaret argued, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the enclosure, her stubbornness ignoring how her intuition yelled at her to listen to him. “How would you know anyway?”
She went to step across the moat but was stopped by a hand around her bicep. Whipping her head towards him, the Professor was surprised to see that Henry’s eyes were wide with fear.
“Yours might have left that tiny detail out,” Henry said, not letting go of her arm. “But mine didn’t.”
“Yours?” The Professor whirled toward him, eyebrows scrunched in confusion.
“There are three texts,” The Archaeologist stated, the humorous lilt to his voice replaced with something more thoughtful. “One before you. One in your office. And one in mine.”
Before Margaret could respond, the sound of a car rattled from just outside the cave.
Henry pulled her against an alcove etched into the far wall, partially hidden by the cascade of sand as three men entered the cave. All were tall and broad-shouldered except for one — a lean and well-dressed man who commanded the room despite his smaller stature. Ferguson, the Curator of the museum.
The largest of the men approached the chest first, easily stepping over the barrier to place a meaty palm on its surface. He began to feel around as if looking for a trigger or weak point before jumping back.
Despite looking as if he were composed of pure steel rather than human flesh, the man cried out as if he’d been bitten. No, not bitten. Burnt.
“I told you.” Henry gently nudged Margaret from where they sat crouched beside each other.
Her groan was louder than she’d anticipated. In a flash, Henry’s hand was wrapped around her mouth.
“Is someone there?” The Curator had his hands up as if to silence the two men still standing at his side. Margaret and Henry didn’t breathe as the men’s eyes glazed past their hiding spot, only relaxing when Ferguson’s attention turned to his fallen comrade.
“You’ll need to get its permission,” Henry explained to Margaret while the men had their backs turned away from them, now walking around the perimeter as if looking for a key or other method to open the chest. It was only a matter of time before the Professor and the Archaeologist were found. “I’m going to distract them.”
Before Margaret could argue how idiotic the plan was, Henry had already run out of their hiding spot. She watched as he made it to the center of the room without being spotted. The Archaeologist would probably have made it to the mouth of the cave if it weren’t for the man lying on the ground.
“Ferguson!” As if to get back into The Curator’s good graces, his shouts of pain turned into those of alarm. “He’s here!”
Henry took off, somehow faster than before, towards the men’s car. Margaret stifled a laugh as she heard their car engine come to life.
Visibly angry, the men took the bait.
When the sounds of their shouts had turned to distant echoes, Margaret cautiously approached the wooden chest once more with a newfound respect — and fear — for the object after what it’d done to the man twice her size.
“Hello,” Margaret started in the sake of humoring the Archeologist’s hypothesis while scanning the perimeter of the trove’s island for a more logical solution, “I understand you require sweet-talking. Which, frankly, I’ve never been very good at.”
Something about saying that sentence out loud made her realize this task may require a subsequent appointment with a psychoanalyst.
“Listen,” she continued, choosing to stick to what she knew, “I’m here so that they don’t lock you up somewhere for overstimulated tourists to walk past when the dinosaur bones become boring.”
She was on her knees digging, eyeing every grain of sand the box rested on, when she heard a single click. To her surprise, the lid sprang open. Within it, a single key.
“Thank you,” The Professor breathed, gratitude dripping from her fingertips as she took the tiny golden token in her hand and ran out of the cave.