Cooper felt a bit like an idiot as he followed Dr. Warner out of the tent and across what was left of the one end of the football field that hadn’t been bombed. He’d made some stupid assumptions and acted like a jerk. He wanted to blame it on a lack of sleep, but he knew it was more than that. He wanted to punish someone for the way his perfect life had suddenly become a chaotic mess. But Dr. Warner wasn’t the right one to punish, that much he knew, which brought him right back around to where he started, which wasn’t gaining him anything. He was going to have to accept this was his new reality and get over the disappointment.
He'd never failed at anything in his life and he wouldn’t fail at this. If he had to play archaeologist for the next six weeks, then he would; it couldn’t be that bad. A little digging around in the dirt, a little sketching, the truth was, it might be relaxing, and he would have something interesting to put on his resume when it was all over.
Lost in thought, he almost crashed into Dr. Warner when she stopped at a big metal gate with a big lock hanging from the latch. “Hold on, I’ve got the key right here,” she said, pulling on one of the chains around her neck. “We keep the site locked atnight, we haven’t needed security yet, but when word gets out what we’ve got here, we’ll probably will.”
Once they were through the gate, he followed her over to a big hole in the ground. “That’s where we’re going?” he asked, hesitating. “I thought…well, I don’t know, that it was like a tunnel or something.”
Dr. Warner laughed. “Don’t worry, this isn’t the way we’re going in,” she said. “I just wanted to show you where the construction crew broke through and found the settlement.”
He walked up to the hole and looked down, surprised to find himself looking at the roofs of several houses. “Those are full-size houses,” he said. “How big is the cave?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” she said. “Come on, the entrance is this way.”
They hiked into the woods to a huge pile of boulders that looked like they’d been thrown there by a giant, and Dr. Warner stopped for a second so they could catch their breath. “The entrance is right over there,” she said, pointing to a shadow in the rocks. “It’s impossible to see if you don’t know that it’s there.”
He walked toward it, surprised when the shadow turned into a dark opening in the rocks, and he felt a slight breeze ruffle his hair. “The opening is just big enough for a grown man to slip through,” Dr. Warner said, walking up behind him. “Do you want to go first?”
“Sure, why not?” he said, stepping up to the opening, a strange feeling that his life was about to change suddenly descending on him.
He hesitated a second, just long enough for the feeling to go away, then slipped into the opening in the rocks. He found himself in a long tunnel. Dr. Warner stepped through right behind him, forcing him to go forward a few steps, but he stopped again, his head suddenly full of a buzzing sound. Helooked over at the doctor, wondering if she heard it, but she was already starting down the tunnel as if she didn’t hear anything.
“This tunnel only goes for a short way,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, just a little ringing in my ears,” he said, shaking his head, hoping it would stop. “I’m right behind you.”
The buzzing slowly faded as they walked away from the entrance to the tunnel, but his relief didn’t last long; it was soon replaced by the throb of magic in the air. It drew him forward even as it began to awaken the dragon inside him, and for a few seconds he was afraid he might be overwhelmed by the combination. Taking deep breaths, he sent the dragon deeper inside himself, putting it back to sleep, then used his magic as a shield to push the foreign energy away until it faded.
When they stepped out of the tunnel, he was still distracted by the internal battle raging inside him. It took him a few seconds to realize what he was looking at, and a few more to completely absorb the scene. He took a few stumbling steps on a dirt path that ran between two houses, his eyes taking everything in, then took a second look.
He turned around and looked at Dr. Warner over his shoulder, still too stunned to speak, not at all offended when she started to laugh. “I told you this was going to be an important site,” she said. “Nothing like this has ever been discovered on the North American continent. I don’t know who built it or why, but we’re going to find out.”
“I had no idea, I thought it would just be a pile of dirt, but these are houses,” he stammered, turning in a circle. “A lot of people could have lived here.”
“At least fifty is my guess,” Dr. Warner said, an amused smile on her face. “Do you want to see the rest? We’ve got a few minutes before Kendra gets here.”
He was both intrigued and wary about seeing the rest of the site. He could still feel the magic in the air around him, felt its ancient pull, and knew that he was hooked. “That would be great, and maybe you can explain a little more about what you want me to do,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen this, I think I understand a bit more why I can be useful to the dig. Someone designed these houses, someone like me who loved beautiful buildings.”
“I think you’re finally beginning to understand,” Dr. Warner said, beaming at him. “Beautiful architecture isn’t just about what’s new, it’s about what’s old as well.”
***Stephanie***
After putting her equipment away in the storage locker, Stephanie took a few seconds to stretch, then looked around, smiling when she realized everyone had already left. It didn’t surprise her, after a long, grueling week of measuring, charting, and mapping, they were all exhausted and ready for a break. When she’d announced right after lunch that they’d finished the first stage of the dig, there was some celebration, but what really got everyone going was her announcement that she was taking everyone out for pizza and a round of miniature golf as a reward for all their hard work.
She had a couple of hours before they were supposed to meet out on the edge of town at the little amusement park. Her first stop was going to be the shower, then she was seriously considering a nap. It seemed like a shame to waste the first free time she’d had in weeks sleeping, but she was so tired she felt like she could curl up in the dirt and sleep right there. Instead, she closed up the locker, secured it with the lock, then turned tothe log book to make sure everyone had signed out, but as she scanned the day’s entries, Cooper’s name caught her attention.
Thinking back to the meeting after lunch, she realized that he hadn’t been there, and let out a long sigh, wondering how someone who’d been so against the job could now be so wrapped up in it. Checking to make sure her flashlight was still in the pocket of her jeans, she set off to look for Cooper for the third time that week, wondering if she should consider making him start wearing a homing device so it would be easier to track him down at the end of the day.
She found him in the oldest part of the cave, staring at a small log home, his sketchbook in his hands, a dreamy look on his face. Not wanting to scare him, she cleared her throat as she approached, and he turned to look over at her. A smile spread across his face when he saw her. Ignoring the way her heart did flip-flops when he smiled at her like that, she took a deep breath, reminding herself this was a professional relationship and could never be anything more.
“This is the third time I’ve had to come looking for you at the end of the day,” she said, shaking her head. “If you’re not careful, one of these days you’re going to get locked inside here for the night.”
Cooper looked around, a surprised look on his face. “It can’t be that late already,” he said. “It feels like I just got here. Have I really been here all day?”
“I think so, you missed lunch and the meeting afterward,” she said. “We’re finally done with phase one, and we’re all going out tonight to celebrate, pizza and miniature golf on me. Everyone’s already left.”
“It’s so easy to lose track of time when I’m working on the sketches,” he said, holding up the spiral notebook. “I start imagining the people who lived here and pretty soon it feels like I’m back there, seeing what they saw, feeling what they felt.”
“You’ve got the bug and you’ve got it bad,” she said, shaking her head. “It happens to all of us when we first start out. You need to get out of here, spend some time out there in the real world, it will help.”
