The Old Wayfarer - Chapter 2

Chief Molu sat at an old, wooden desk thumbing through a thick stack of files before a rapid knock on the door disrupted his focus. His round, mustached face shook as he grumbled.

"What is it?" he yelled.

A small, bookish woman entered. It was Nelma, the chief's secretary.

"Chief, there's a young man here to see you. He said his name is Orion. He said you'd know..."

"Yes, yes!" Molu barked. "Send the boy in!"

"Yes, Chief," Nelma sheepishly replied as she slunk out of the room.

A few minutes later, Orion opened Chief Molu's door without knocking. He couldn't wait any longer to learn about his father and grandfather.

"Welcome, boy!" the corpulent chief thundered. "Have a seat."

Without saying a word, Orion bowed and quickly pulled a shabby chair in front of the chief's desk before sitting down.

"Now, how can I help you, Orion?" Chief Molu asked with mock confusion.

"Chief, my grandmother gave me a letter from my father this morning. The letter said that you would know more about my grandfather, that he had a file or something. Can you help me?"

The chief gently put down the folders in his hands and rested his arms across his great belly. As he thought, he could see Orion's left leg rapidly twitching like a jackrabbit on the run. The darkness of the office belied the sweltering humidity that enveloped the entire island, both inside and outside of its primitive dwellings.

"Son, I have a file in my cabinet that no one else has ever seen. If I show it to you, you must promise to never mention its contents to anyone else. Understood?" Chief Molu sternly asked.

"Yes," Orion solemnly vowed. His eyes widened as they followed the sluggish chief to a tall, wooden cabinet. After unlocking its doors and retrieving a thick, yellowed folder, the chief sighed and dropped the file on his desk in front of Orion, who eagerly snatched it up.

"That's your grandfather's research folder. He started his work nearly fifty years ago and continued to take notes right up until he disappeared for good," the chief explained.

Orion half-listened as he thumbed through the messy notes on parchment that his grandfather speedily etched as he sojourned various islands across the world.

"I don't get it," Orion complained. "What was Grandpa doing?"

"I think it would be better if I showed you," the chief replied.

After setting up an old film projector, the chief loaded a thick film reel and started turning the power lever to generate electricity in the device. Black and white moving images flickered across a screen on the wall while the chief spoke.

"One night fifty years ago, when your grandpa wasn't much older than you, several villagers witnessed some abnormally large shooting stars blazing across the night skies. Several days later, Portsmouth merchants brought in news that several large objects had impacted on nearby islands. That's what you're seeing on the screen right now. See how big those holes are?"

Orion's eyes were glued to the grainy images of pulsating mile-wide black holes surrounded by destroyed homes and fallen palm trees.

"Why are the holes glowing?" Orion fearfully inquired.

"Ah, well that's what your grandpa wanted to find out. He was a university student training to be a geologist, so he joined a local expedition to check out the hole in this island. Shortly after his team arrived at the local impact site, they planned an excavation. Those two students on the screen there went down the hole but never came back up."

Orion felt a thick lump in his throat. "What happened to them?"

"No one knows," the chief sighed. "After that, the island chief and elders sealed off the site and reported the tragedy to neighboring islands, hoping they'd close off their sites as well."

"And did they?" Orion asked.

"Half of them did. Luna and Delfino kept their sites open, and, of course, they also lost scientists who went down to explore the holes but never came back up. Even worse was when a group of school children decided to play near the site on Luna and three of them fell in. The island nearly broke out into a panic after that."

"So, if the islands closed up all their sites, how could my grandpa study them?"

"Well, first he checked the historical records to see if something like this had happened before. He found nothing. Being the, er, bold man that he was, he decided to investigate for himself in violation of island law."

"You mean Grandpa went down into the holes himself?" Orion asked in disbelief.

"That's what his reports say. Of course, no one in the scientific community believed him because he was still present, and authorities refused to arrest him for the same reason, but your grandpa said he visited all of the local islands to study their impact sites before branching out further across the ocean."

"Is that what Grandpa did during the twenty-five years after the shooting stars first appeared?"

"Essentially. He spent the first two or three years investigating the local islands. After we received news about islands across the ocean, he decided to travel further out, often for years at a time, to investigate their impact sites. As the years went on, the shooting star phenomena continued to occur in other parts of the world, prompting your grandpa to travel farther and wider to understand why they were happening."

Orion sat and thought for a few seconds before asking another question.

"So, when Grandpa left twenty-five years ago, was that because of more shooting stars?"

The chief shut off the projector but kept the lights dimmed in his office as he spoke in a low, deep tone.

"No. It was something far more bizarre than the shooting stars."

Orion swallowed another lump in his throat and asked,

"What was it?"

"On that day, your grandpa ran into my office all in a panic. He'd just come back from Neptunia in the Orient Seas when he said he made a staggering discovery: the pattern of shooting star impacts followed some kind of ancient legend that predicted great danger arising from the glowing holes in the earth."

"W...What kind of danger?" Orion stuttered as goosebumps emerged on his neck and arms.

"I wish I knew," the chief lamented. "Your grandpa was in such a hurry that he didn't tell me what the legend was before he stormed out. He apparently didn't tell anyone, including your grandmother, where he was going. The man could be at any of the 250 impact sites around the world, though they're all supposed to be sealed off and hidden from the public."

Orion was overwhelmed. He never expected to hear anything like this.

"Do you think my dad went to find Grandpa because he learned something that no one else knows about?"

The chief bit his lip nervously and sighed.

"I don't know, son. I just don't know. It's anyone's guess where they could be now. You can keep your grandpa's file if you'd like, but just keep it to yourself. No one but your father's heard anything about him these past twenty-five years."

Orion blankly gazed at the pages before him and closed them up in the old folder.

"Thank you, Chief Molu. I really appreciate your help."

"You're welcome, son. I only wish I knew more."

Orion picked up his grandfather's folder and left the chief's office. He decided to return home to study Grandpa's notes in the hope that they would guide him to his next destination.