Banish
by Elizabeth Averay
Digging slowly carelessly one thin layer at a time, just as our professor instructed. Sifting, photographing, and cataloguing everything. It has been drummed into us there can be no mistakes; this dig is far too important for the college. Mind you, we students don’t get to dig anywhere near where they suspect anything of note or value. No, we get to dig where they believe the stables used to be. We have found lots of horseshoes, nails, hair, and scraps most likely from saddles. That’s all we are going to find.
In the pub that night all students take a vote that if we find anything at all worth our time we will take it to the Head, because the professor is a self-entitled shit who thinks we are all going to fail. He wants us to fail. Last week Jessie found a ring and the professor took all the credit.
It’s been two weeks and I found something – not sure what it is. It’s oval with a large opal in the exact centre and strange holes on the back. As we’ve agreed, I don’t tell the professor.
The Head comes round at the end of the day as usual so I show him my find.
He goes white, starts to shake, and backs away, eyes wide and bulging. ‘God, no, that can’t be here!’ He turns and runs. The professor comes over, no doubt to berate me, takes one look at the strange oval in my hand and drops dead. We were later told heart attack but I don’t think so. It’s because of the oval disc with the opal.
I’ll see what I can find online and in the library…
Haven’t found much on it. It is meant to be three thousand years old and came from Australia but that’s it. I showed our historian, she went green and passed out.
I think I need to get rid of it. I’ll not show it to another – but I need to know why I keep getting these reactions. I place the oval in a postal box to send to an elder with a note saying who I am and where I found it, and that I didn’t know where else to send it to ensure it returned to its people.
A few weeks later I get a reply from said Elder, thanking me. It was part of a sacred totem that had been broken, its pieces scattered, and the curse laid on the ones that did this carried on to their descendants until its return. The curse was death or extreme illness to any who lay eyes upon it. Now I can lay this piece with the rest of the others that have been returned and banish the curse.
Thank you.
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