A building of ideas

The first time he entered into a museum, she was holding his hand. He had no idea what he was entering.

He looked around astonished at how time had obtained a different meaning in those walls. It had suddenly transformed into space and it had teleported him somewhere else, to another era.

It was in there that he learnt how to search for the beauty, truth and meaning in his life.

She held his hand throughout the entire visit. Whenever she could, she shared some trivia about a famous painting or sculpture and the artist behind it.

It was in there that he saw more to the empty hallways and exhibits on the walls. It was not the artefacts he saw, but the ideas behind them.

He discovered that art is what Edgar Degas said: “art is not what you see, but what you make others see”.  

Also part of Weekend Writing Prompt

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Nature’s work

© Sandra Crook

“Look at the pretty seashells and corals over here”. The little girl approached the so-called “Nature Table” barely tall enough to look over it. She stared at the natural sponge, the hardened corals and the various sized- and shaped- seashells. She looked perplexed.

“Under the water they look more alive”.

The museum guide suddenly felt helpless for words.

“Well,” he began, desperately trying to say something positive.

“Water is their natural habitat. But out here, we can observe them better, right?”

“Strange,” the little girl said.

“Despite the waves and the water pressure look how pretty and strong they are”.

 

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

A day of discovery

©Roger Bultot

It was a day they had taken off work, one of the few they could ‘steal’ during this period. They decided to spend it productively: visiting a museum. She was convinced that no one could change their future or better manage their present if they could not understand where they had come from and what had happened in the past. “We have a rich history and it is worth exploring”. He was persuaded.

The day turned out to be a discovery of things he never even knew existed. And that was more than enough to change his entire life perspective.

 

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

The ring, the stranger, and the spiders

The golden ring was stolen on a Monday. Lewis couldn’t sleep until he had figured out a way to get it back. It was already Wednesday by the time he had devised a plan that might work.

He knew who had stolen it. He remembered a dark, sinister strange, brushing against him as he hastily left the room that day.

It only took a minute. He still did not know how it had happened. But the golden ring with the sapphire-shaped heart in the middle had somehow disappeared along with the stranger that day.

It was an extravagantly dressed, corpulent woman who had noticed it first, as her shrieks even scared the guard dogs outside. It did not seem that the glass surrounding the luxurious and exorbitant ring was cracked at all. So how on earth did they manage to steal it?

Lewis remembered following the stranger into an alley behind the Museum. But there was absolutely nothing there, other than three walls leading to a dead-end. And the stranger was gone.

All day Tuesday Lewis contrived his plan and suitably equipped himself for the mission that lay ahead. Two special policemen accompanied him to the end of the alley, but from there he would continue alone. It was his responsibility and he would be the one to retrieve the ring.

They scanned the area for a whole five minutes before they found it. The stranger’s escape route.

It was a trapdoor at the left side – the darkest part – of the alley. But the minute Lewis shed his torch light on the dark abyss that opened up below, his heart stopped.

A hairy-legged black spider crawled slowly out of the darkness onto the grey-stoned alley road. And then another. And another.

Lewis hated spiders. And most importantly he feared them. He shivered all over with disgust as he dreaded the idea of climbing down there with these awful creatures.

No, he would not. He could not. There must be another way. This would simply be a decoy. The real exit was elsewhere.

Soon the left side of the alley was slowly being taken over by spiders.

Lewis shuddered and jumped up with such a yell that the museum guard dogs ran to his rescue. They had been trained to react with every scream.

Lucky for him that they did not have the same problem with spiders. They quickly forced them all back under the trap door.

But the most fortunate coincidence of all was when one of the dogs chased around one spider which was pretty fast for its genre, crashed out of excitement onto the back wall, and revealed the real exit.

The back wall was simply plaster. Thick layers of plaster.

After that, it all fell into place quite easily.

The wall opened up to a wooden, poorly constructed shed, where apparently the stranger-thief had hidden the priceless jewel in a shoebox until he returned from somewhere. All it took from now on was a hideout until the stranger came. He didn’t take long; only 40 minutes.

The ring was returned to the Museum. And the dogs given a life supply of bones and treats.

What was most surprising though, was that the ring thief was actually the extravagantly-dressed, corpulent woman’s husband, who also happened to be the ex-director of the Museum who had been fired for misconduct and embezzlement a year ago.

Revenge can truly take astonishing turns.

But payback does belong to a dog.

 

Inspired by Story-ideas-three elements

The tomb of a king and the trouble of a peasant

It was not every day you would visit a King. No matter if he was no longer alive. A King would forever be a King. And that was important and majestic in its own right. Billy had learnt to live with the bare necessities, as his farm would produce all he needed to live and some extras to sell at the market. That was all his income and how he managed to scrape by. So, to him, an audience with a King was something extraordinary. A true privilege. At least he thought so.

The discovery of the royal tomb found deep underground by archaeologists who had devoted a large part of their careers excavating in search of this, had taken the country by surprise. No-one expected they would be lucky enough or even blessed with the honor of witnessing at least some of the riches a past monarch had lived with. And to everyone’s delight, it was announced that this was the Warrior King, the General, the one who had united their country and who had made it the most prosperous in the region, at least during his reign. He was the figure that adorned their national currency, whose name was on countless of streets, buildings and auditoriums. He was the King children first learned about during their history lessons. And now, Billy would go see for himself the magnitude of his greatness.

Even that, though, was no easy task.

It was winter and a heavy one for that matter. The town had never been so snowed down for at least twenty years now. But it was a day when Billy did not have a market to go to and he wanted to escape the frost. The royal tombs were located an hour’s drive away, he was told.

So he went to the train station and purchased a return ticket. It wasn’t too expensive and he was already excited about his venture. Then the delay came.

The train had ran into some bad weather, which caused it to slow down. But it was not too bad, Billy thought. A half-hour delay would only mean he would have to read the inscriptions that accompanied each relic a bit faster now. The museum, after al,l was only open for five hours during the day. It was located in the very space the tomb was found, especially constructed so as to preserve and properly exhibit the findings. So it was only right that it would be open while still daylight – because, really, who would want to be touring a tomb after dark?

So, anyway, Billy had an enjoyable train ride to his destination, although the heating seemed to not be working properly because by the time he had arrived he could not feel his feet. He thought two icicles were attached to his lower ends instead. Once off the train, he looked around, hoping to at least find a café where he could grab a hot drink to get his blood flowing normally again. But there was nothing.

Absolutely nothing. This station might as well have been located in the middle of his field. There was no sign of civilization around it. Nor any other train for that matter. There was only a bus, whose driver was hastily announcing that it was departing any minute now. Billy ran up to him and enquired how he could get to the royal tombs. The bus driver said it was another half hour from there but this bus would take him to the centre of the town and from them he would have to take another bus to go to the Museum.

Billy was already getting a headache. But there was no other way, so he took a seat on the bus (after paying of course) and tried to understand how his route would fan out now.

It took Billy three and a half hours to finally arrive at the museum. You see, he unfortunately got on the wrong bus at the town centre and was driven off somewhere else, so by the time the next bus came he was already waiting for 20 minutes in the cold. And in this next bus, which rattled like a wooden cart drawn to market, the bus driver said that he should obtain his own ticket from the machine, but the machine would not cooperate, and he could not make any sense out of what the old men on the bus were trying to tell him. In the racket that was going on, he sensed that the stone gates and the large sign that said “Royal Tomb – Museum” was where he should get off. He thanked everyone, still not understanding their response and jumped off.

Billy was awed by the Museum. The Royal Tombs were strategically camouflaged under a hill that had turned white from the snow that was now falling heavily. As you walked inside, you could feel the imperialness overwhelm you. The gold jewelry, together with the silver blades, shields and weapons and other precious ornaments that were found in the sealed-off tomb sparkled in the darkness of the museum. It was all too much for words. It was so much more than Billy ever imagined. There was even the exact entrance of the royal burial chamber, left just as it was found by the archaeologists. You could just feel the magnificence it emanated and the chills that would have filled the very people who first discovered this.

Billy was enthralled and enraptured by every piece of that museum. So much, that he did not even realise he had seen it all, twice, and that it was now time to go. He had to hurry back if he was to catch the last train home.

But did he have to scramble with bus routes again? Fortunately, there was a tourist group leaving the museum at the same time, and he was smart and lucky enough to smuggle into the back of the bus without being seen; he was small enough and looked foreign so he could easily be assumed to be one of the group. The only problem was, he didn’t know where the bus was heading to.

The group stopped for lunch somewhere, and Billy jumped off, noticing that a bus with the same number as the one that brought him from the station was about to depart across the street. He ran again and jumped in. “I bet the Kings didn’t have such problems,” he thought to himself as he arrived at the train station still panting.

Just as he got off the bus, the train stationmaster appeared, straightening his thick white moustache, and pulling up his trousers to cover his oversized belly. It was snowing very heavily now and the train tracks could not even be seen.

“I’m afraid you’re gonna have to find alternative transport, young man. There are no trains passing tonight.”

Billy froze. Literally. You could stick a hat on him and call him a snowman.

The bus driver who had just dropped him off felt pity for him and offered to take him to the suburban bus station, where after more expenses and another couple of hours, Billy was finally back home, wrapped under a blanket in front of the fireplace.

It’s no easy task visiting a King!

 

N.B. 1 This story was inspired by a visit to the Macedonian Royal Tombs in Vergina, Greece and the adventure to get there.

N.B. 2. The photos are mine, taken in Aegae (Vergina) and Veria respectively on 30 December 2014.