Resznik Speaks

"He who treads softly goes far."

---Chinese proverb

Lucy was at a loss for words from the moment she stepped off the yacht until she arrived at the entrance to the site after riding a battered yellow Jeep. The island was as large as London itself, according to John, and not very mountainous. After so many years buried underwater, corals and bones of marine life were scattered on the ground. John told her that most of their finds were the remains of marine life.

"But what about this?" she asked, showing him the front page of the less-than-detailed summary of the dig. It said BATTLEFIELD SITE. John nodded.

"Well, the first layer did yield more of fish bones and even the jaw of a whale. Half of the first layer going into the second and third layer was riddled with weapons. Swords, bows, arrows, shields, helmets, mail, and so on. There's a whole tent here dedicated to studying and storing the lot. The strange thing was that none of them bore any resemblance to the art detail of any civilization we know. They look Celtic, some say Scandinavian or even Arab, but most of us here doubt it. None of us has ever seen such material before. If you've gone to the museum in London, you would have seen an area there with markings like the stuff we found here. Miklaes believes that aside from being a fishing town, this island had seen a great war before it sank under the sea. Hey, have I told you that he hates calling this place Numenor?"

She did not even bother to ask why Miklaes would. Lucy could not wait to get out of the Jeep. When the Jeep finally halted, Lucy jumped out and walked as fast as she could through the open gates, John hurrying after her. John led her towards the largest white tent in the area. Not even seeing Miklaes' one-hundred-seventy-pound aging image in the flesh dampened her mood.

"Ah! So the prodigal student has finally arrived," Miklaes blurted out. But Lucy was undaunted. She smiled at him and even thanked him for including her in the team.

Miklaes, surprisingly, was not in the mood to banter with her. He immediately led her out of the tent and into another one where a long box was laid on a long table. Two archaeologists were at hand.

"Open it," he instructed them. They removed the box lid and Miklaes let Lucy take a peek inside.

"What do you think?" asked Miklaes.

Lucy had no idea what to think. Her mind went blank. She had no idea what she was looking at. Miklaes then led her out of the tent and back to the larger tent. He made her sit down and placed a large portfolio in front of her. They were blown-ups of the corpse—or mummy—he showed her.

"This is…"

Miklaes peeked out of the tent and shouted for someone. In a few moments, a young man in his mid-twenties came in. He was tall, with a Slavic face, and a poker face. His black hair was powdered with dust and he was still wearing working gloves.

"Ivan Resznik, Lucy Diornan, my student from America," Miklaes introduced them. Lucy smiled at Ivan Resznik but it was not returned. Lucy pursed her lips.

"Ivan Resznik was the one who found the mummy," said Miklaes.

Lucy looked up admiringly at Resznik. Resznik shrugged at took a seat.

"It was in the third layer," he told Lucy, removing his working gloves. "Buried under a bed."

"It looks very well-preserved," remarked Lucy.

"The cold Atlantic water did that," he said. "This is land that knew habitation and civilization and sunk beneath the ocean ages ago."

"The civilization is highly advanced, making it difficult for us to categorize the time period," said Miklaes, pointing to a blackboard hung with a timeline. "The craftsmanship equals that of the Dark Ages, possibly earlier than that but carbon dating is askew. It dates the artifacts beyond the Iron Age and that's not possible with this kind of detail."

Lucy remembered her trip to the museum in London and the woman who spoke with her there. "What is your theory, then?"

Miklaes pushed his spectacles up his nose. "There could be Celtic influence, yes. My theory is that the Vikings and Gauls have come here, possibly to raid the land, then inhabited it in the long run, living here undetected and undisturbed for many centuries…"

"And what of the mummy?" interrupted Resznik. Lucy had to commend the man. No one interrupted when the Great Miklaes spoke. But Miklaes looked like a humbled sheep and merely shrugged. Who was this Ivan Resznik? Lucy thought.

"What of the mummy?" Lucy repeated the question to Ivan Resznik. The man pointed to the pictures before her.

"Look closely, Miss Diornan," he said. "Look at the face."

Lucy did as she was told. It did not come to her immediately but the longer she looked, the more she became mystified.

"The ears…"

Miklaes grunted. "The ears! Yes! Pointed!"

"Like elv--" Lucy looked up to see Resznik staring at her and Miklaes shaking his head.

"A deviated mastoid bone and even the petrous bone of the temporal bone of the skull is dissimilar to that found in normal human anatomy," said Resznik, tapping the bony prominence behind his right ear. "We all know that the hearing apparatus is located within the petrous bone in humans. In non-human beings such as these, the petrous bone is wider and has more intimate connections to the base of the skull, possibly the brain. The hearing sense of these beings are far more spohisticated than our own."

"That is one theory I refuse to believe and one that will never hold water in the scientific community," Miklaes declared, standing. "It is just one body! One corpse! Until we find others like it, then whatever you children are thinking of are impossible and mere figments of your imaginations!"

A female in a lab coat entered the tent and told Miklaes there was a phone call for him. Miklaes left Lucy and Resznik. Resznik was unperturbed by Miklaes' outburst and turned his head to look at Lucy.

"So, you're a Diornan," he said when Miklaes was out of earshot.

Lucy shrugged. She did not like being compared to her grandfather or father. "Is that important?"

"I was one of your father's students," he said.

Lucy raised an eyebrow. What did he think? That she could not do simple algebra? "Mister Resznik, you would have to be in your forties to have been my father's student," she told him coldly.

He stood and smiled coldly at her. "Well, not everything is what it seems, Luthien." With a slight bow, he turned and left the tent. Lucy stared open-mouthed. What was that all about? How did he know…?

But Lucy did not have the time to ponder on Resznik's peculiarity or Miklaes' attitude towards her. She eagerly buried herself in work and endured the heat in the day and the biting cold in the evening. Everyone worked day and night. Rest was not an option.

Lucy worked for the next two weeks. One day, the entire team was gathered by Miklaes. Lucy found out he was running the show for someone else, a man named Richard Bancroft, an English multimillionaire. He was funding the project. A man with a megaphone stood above them and announced that they will have to leave the island the next day. There were a lot of protests from the team. Lucy stayed silent. She glanced sideways and saw Ivan staring up at the man with the megaphone. He, too, did not react. When the man spoke again, she brought her attention back to the makeshift platform.

"There's a storm coming by tomorrow evening," he told them. If the storm breaks and we are trapped here, we do not what will happen."

"So we'll just leave everything, all our work, to the waves?" one asked angrily.

"That problem is left to Mr. Bancroft, Dr. Mortimer."

Lucy whispered to a young woman also on the team. "Who's Mr. Bancroft?"

"See that tall, handsome old guy beside Miklaes? That's Mr. Bancroft. He's a multimillionaire, trades diamonds in Africa, so I heard. He's the one funding the entire project. He used to work for de Beers and then went solo. He's very good with designs they say."

Lucy craned her neck and saw Miklaes talking to a tall man with a shock of snow white hair and beard. He looked every bit a CEO. A businessman. Lucy wondered how many Africans died to make him rich.

"We apologize but for the safety of the entire team, we cannot leave anyone here," said the man with the megaphone. The team groaned and everyone scattered out to gather their belongings. Lucy felt said and disappointed to leave. If the island is reclaimed land, there was a huge possibility that the ocean will claim it again.

Several hours later, the team was on its way out of the island and towards the Inner Hebrides to an island called Tiree. They boarded a plane going back to Glasgow. They stayed in a small hotel. While the rest of the team went with their own friends, Lucy decided to eat some fish and chips on a park bench near the hotel. When a shadow fell over her, she almost ran but realized it was just Ivan Resznik.

"Oh! It's you," she said, relieved. He sat down on the other end of the bench. They did not talk for a while until he broke the ice.

"When your grandfather was in Oxford before the war, he wrote several essays on archaeology and the Celtic culture," he began. "I read them when I was sent to study in Oxford on scholarship in 1991. That's how I came to know your father."

Lucy frowned. "My father taught in Oxford from 1975 to 1991. He died in 1995. I'd say you're about in your late twenties. You would have to be only eleven…"

Lucy stopped in mid-sentence. She narrowed her eyes at him. "You were sent to Oxford when you were only eleven, weren't you?"

Ivan did not answer. Lucy relaxed and sighed. "Sorry for ever doubting your word." So Ivan Resznik was a boy-genius. Nice.

"Your grandfather's treatises taught me many things and so did your father in the short time we knew each other," Ivan continued. "Your grandfather knew Tolkien, did you know that?"

"Well, Tolkien was a famous man. Everyone knew him."

"No, your grandfather knew him well, as well as Lewis and the rest of the Inklings did. They all shared the same passion for history and things make-believe."

Lucy laughed. "So they were a bunch of old men reliving fairy-tales."

Ivan did not laugh. He regarded Lucy with an air of distaste. "They were not just fairy-tales. You would be careful not to dismiss oral history so easily, Miss Diornan. Much of what we know as fairy-stories is grounded in truth. Some people forget truth so quickly, especially if it has gone for ages."

Lucy turned her head to look at Ivan. He was really serious. "You think the bones found at the dig and the mummy you found are not human?"

"No."

"Miklaes seemed afraid of your theory about the pointy ears," she said.

"He is. All his life he wanted to disprove your grandfather and father's theories on the ancient civilization that preceded that of Africa. Finding a corpse that defied the laws of human physiology made a dent in his argument. Miklaes was your grandfather's student in Oxford before the war and your father was Miklaes' student. He could never detract them from their childish notions of elves and ancient human beings far advanced for their counterpart in the Iron Age. There was no Atlantis for Miklaes. No Numenor. He could not fail your father in his class for the simple reason that your grandfather died a hero. It made the old man bitter as hell."

Lucy could not believe that anyone outside the Diornan family could know so much about it, more than she did. "Elves? Numenor? Tell me, then, Mister Resznik, why would Miklaes name the island after one that was a figment of an old British professor's imagination?"

"Miklaes has no control over what is to be done in Numenor," said Ivan. "Everything is controlled by Richard Bancroft, my uncle."

At last, Lucy understood why Miklaes never contradicted Ivan hard enough. Lucy never thought politics ran strong even in archaeological digs. "Well, you're a very lucky man, Mister Resznik, to have an uncle like Mister Bancroft."

"My uncle has his own agenda for funding the dig. Whatever it is could not be good. I know my uncle. He is unscrupulous. He is up to something."

Before Lucy could ask him what that something was, he said, "If you want to know more about who your grandfather was, there is one person still alive who can tell you the truth about his life and his theories. The truth, Miss Diornan, is your quest."

He stood and slowly walked away. Lucy did not know whether to follow after him or stay where she was. Who's to say he was not a psychopath waiting for her to run into his trap? But some outside force pushed her to her feet and run after him so that soon they were walking side by side, seated in the passenger seat of his car, and on their way out of Glasgow to a town called Elvanfoot to the south.