Memory Lane

By Lauryn Christopher

A collection of short, historical fiction. Includes:

• Memory at Lascaux
  With the world covered in ash and clouded in despair, there are only two choices: lie down in the ash, or find a way to survive. And perhaps, a way to thrive... 
• Stolen Moments
  In the long-ago days, when the Old Gods walked freely among the men of Midgard, Eirik Alreksson gained their attention and favor. 
• El Tío Supay

  On their way to work each day, the miners of Bolivia routinely say prayers and pay homage to the statue of The Virgin Mary in its niche outside the mine, asking her blessing in their labors. But when they enter the mine, the miners make a second offering. There, beyond reach of the light of day, they leave their gifts of coca leaves, alcohol, and cigarettes at the shrine of El Tío, the Devil of the Mine. 

• Last Sigh of the Moor
  There is a place, outside the walls of Granada, and in the shadow of the mighty Alhambra, where history tells us the city's last caliph turned and wept at the sight of his beautiful, lost city… and, perhaps, at the loss of the friend who betrayed her. 
• The Unflattering Portrait  of Jiang Zhaojun
  The daughter of a merchant, and lady-in-waiting in the Emperor's court, Jiang Zhaojun is recorded as one of the "Four Beauties of Ancient China." But she is not celebrated merely for her beauty, but also for her bravery. 
• Fences
  This story of the Old West illustrates the conflicts between a group of homesteading farmers and the local cattle ranchers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Camden Park Press
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393336099

Book preview

Memory Lane

short, historical fiction

by

Lauryn Christopher

A picture containing drawing Description automatically generated

Camden Park Press

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Memory at Lascaux

Stolen Moments

El Tío Supay

Last Sigh of the Moor

The Unflattering Portrait of Jiang Zhaojun

Fences

About the Author

Also by Lauryn Christopher

Copyrights

Author’s Note

MY READERS KNOW ME as a mystery writer. But long before I discovered mysteries, I cut my teeth on historical fiction. Some of my earliest reading memories took me to Marie and Pierre Curie’s laboratory, sent me to Troy with the Achaean fleet, and let me fight alongside my ancestors in the American Revolution with Johnny Tremain. All these years later, I still cherish the memories of those shared, if fictional, experiences.

More recently, historical fiction has let me gallop across the steppes with the Golden Horde, and wander the streets of Paris in the 1920s. Well-researched glimpses of the past, and the people who lived then have always fascinated me, and I have several wonderful historical novels on my shelves.

So it should come as no surprise to me that from time to time a story idea comes to mind that steps outside the conventions of the mystery genre and plants itself firmly in the historical – like the stories in this collection, many of which take their inspiration from actual events.

I’ve organized these stories in roughly chronological order, beginning in the distant past and moving forward through history. And, because I am a mystery writer at heart, my regular readers can be reassured that the majority of these stories have some sort of wrongdoing at their core.

So, without further ado, I invite you to join me as we wander down Memory Lane, in search of the past that might have been.

– Lauryn Christopher

Sandy, Utah

November 28, 2020

❖❖

Memory at Lascaux

IN THE SPRING OF 1980, I left the Pacific Northwest barely two weeks before the Mount St. Helens eruption rained 540 million tons of ash across an area of nearly 22,000 square miles. In 1991, the Mount Pinatubo eruption injected more particulate matter into the stratosphere than any eruption since Krakatoa in 1883, and caused global temperatures to drop by 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) for two years. In 2010, the volcanic eruptions in Iceland disrupted air travel across western and northern Europe.

So when I read about major eruptions during the Pleistocene and Middle Paleolithic eras, I could easily imagine the devastating impact of these events on early humans.

I freely admit to having taken some liberties with the timeline in this story. The Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) volcanic eruption in what we now know as southern Italy, and which scientists theorize may have resulted in the demise of the Neanderthals and subsequent human migration into Europe, occurred 37-40,000 years ago, while the cave paintings at Lascaux, France are dated much more recently (17,000 - 15,000 BCE). I chose to combine the two events – after all, this is fiction, not a textbook.

Besides, with the world covered in ash and clouded in despair, there are only two choices: lie down in the ash, or find a way to survive. And perhaps, a way to thrive.

❖❖

Memory at Lascaux

❖❖

His eyes flickered open, but there was nothing to see. Around him, all was darkness.

The darkness pressed in on him, as heavy as the weight of the dirt and rocks that surrounded him, holding him down. He strained to see, something, anything, but there wasn’t a glimmer of light. He struggled to shift, but was trapped.

Was he dead?

He could move his thumb.

The dead didn’t move.

He tried to lift his hand, but he couldn’t. There was something pressing down on the back of his hand; something hard and large and heavy. His fingers involuntarily tightened, making a fist around the rubble. He wanted to hit something in his frustration.

It was only after his hand closed on something warm and soft and wet, that he realized he had found someone else.

Someone who didn’t move.

He smelled dirt, ash, and death.

He panicked, twisting his head around, sending showers of dirt down into his eyes, his nose, his mouth.

Coughing. Choking.

He would not stay here with the ones who didn’t move. He would not become one of the dead.

He forced himself to calm down. Breathe easily. Think.

Then, he began to move more deliberately; consciously squirming his feet until they moved freely, wriggling his legs, forcing his hands downward to loosen the dirt around his body. Keeping his eyes and mouth closed while he pushed his way out from under the layers of debris under which he was buried.

Finally he was free of the earth, forcing his way out of his would-be tomb and gasping for air like a newborn babe laboring for its first breath.

The air was thick with ash.

It burned his eyes, burned his throat, burned his lungs. He didn’t want to breathe it in, but he had to have air, so he put his head down, covered his face with his hand, and sucked the air in through closed fingers and clenched teeth. It still burned, but less.

Only a little less, but less.

But still he saw nothing. Heard nothing beyond the ringing in his ears that had begun in that terrifying moment when the sky exploded with sound, and the ground rocked and tossed him into the air like a leaf. Then the sky had filled with rushing wind and roiling clouds, and a blanket of darkness had settled over the world.

He blinked his eyes, trying to make sense of the nothing around him.

The world, once full of sight and sound and color was now gray and silent and broken. He stumbled forward, tripping on something, catching himself on something else. It all looked the same.

In the thick gray ash, nothing was what it had been before.

His foot sank in a tangle of rough edges, and he fell. Ash puffed up around him in a cloud, revealing the face of his daughter. He dug through the ash and debris, calling her name, pulling her small body to him, but there was no life there.

She was gone.

He stood there, in the ash, holding his tiny child, looking for her mother, tears streaming down his face, leaving black trails in the ash. He was strong, they were not; it was his job to protect them.

He didn’t know what to do.

The ash was still falling. Falling. Falling. Settling on his daughter’s body, hiding her face. Somewhere in all the sameness, her mother was also hidden, buried in the ash.

He knelt, reaching out with one hand to make a place to lay his daughter, holding her tightly to him one last time before placing her on the ground. Watching the ash cover her like a silent shroud.

He pulled some debris over the spot where he’d laid her; to protect her from scavengers. Though what might come sniffing through the ash he couldn’t imagine.

But he wouldn’t leave her there, exposed.

He knelt by her graveside for some time, watching the ash settle on it, bury it. Held up his hand, and watched the ash cover it, coating it in a matter of seconds. If he sat there for too long, he, too, would become part of the nothing.

He pulled himself to his feet, finding a long, straight stick that – like him – had somehow remained unbroken, and used it to test the way as he walked.

This was no longer his home. His child and her mother were gone. Now it had become a place for the dead. He did not belong here.

He would go. Away from the death and the darkness.

Away from the ash.

⬧

He walked for days, or perhaps only for a day.

It was difficult to tell, but it seemed to him that there were times when the sky was black instead of gray. Times when a hint of brightness that he thought might be the sun suggested the difference between the sky and the ground.

That was how he came to define the day.

And there were times when he couldn’t walk any further, and it was easier to curl up against something solid and close his eyes and hope that death didn’t come for him while he slept. Dreamed of his daughter and her mother, reaching cold gray arms out to him from beneath the ash.

That was how he came to define the night.

⬧

There was no food.

Once he found a small animal, burned and buried in the ash, and he tore into it with his teeth and ate the charred flesh. He tore strips of seared meat from the carcass and carried them with him, chewing on them when he felt his strength giving out.

There was no water.

Sometime after his second sleep, or maybe it was his third, his foot sank through the ash into wetness. He dug through the ash like an animal, looking for the water below, lapping it off the rocks, spitting