Satisfied he’d covered the most interesting parts of the festival, Owen cut up to Market Street. He scooted his bike with one foot on so he could glide down the street westward, until the six dirty-yet-sturdy columns of the old Hall of Records rose before him.
Owen had asked around about this Duncan Jones, the man on the talisman Noke gave him. He spoke with a teacher at trade school, talked with the mailman, and even asked his mother. They all said his name sounded familiar, but only his mother could offer more insight. It made some sense. She was a bit of a Seeville history buff and had catalogued many of the historical records.
She told him Duncan Jones was actually a Seeville lord for a time. He had also been heavily involved in the temple of Adherents. But after disagreements on the lord’s council, Jones and other prominent lords had decided to leave to join other communities. Unfortunately, his mother had no idea where Jones might live, or even where his relatives might live.
So here he was. In the Hall of Records Owen hoped to find the addresses of any relatives, or perhaps even information on where Duncan Jones might have gone.
It did seem like it could be a fool’s errand. Why would this Duncan Jones, a Seeville lord, need a copy of his own talisman? Surely he could just create a replica any time like everyone else in Seeville? And why didn’t Noke deliver it himself? There were so many things that didn’t make sense about Noke’s request.
Belinda waved him in at the front desk. Owen knew her from visiting his mother at work. She wouldn’t bat an eyelash at him making a sojourn to the records section.
Thankfully the Hall looked quiet today with everyone distracted by the festival. As far as he knew, he wasn’t doing anything illegal, but the way in which Noke had given him the talisman seemed to suggest discretion. For that reason, it was probably for the best Preston hadn’t come. Two of them skulking around the Hall would be more conspicuous than one.
At the far end of the public records room there was a vaulted door to gain access to the personal records section. Here he used his mother’s key and entered the archive. He made his way through the contracts, bylaws and legal documents, and arrived at the huge bank of turnstiles laden with brass talismans that could be spun around for easy perusal and access. He walked through the lot and looked for the J turnstiles.
When he found the right turnstile, he pushed the massive leaves of brass forward and scanned the rows of talismans on the Jones leaf, comparing them to the talisman rubbing Noke had given them.
Duncan Jones’s talisman was fairly standard. The name and birthday were written in tall letters at the bottom. These thin, blocky fonts were popular in the old days when rubbings were used more often than hand-drawn paper copies. The talisman image showed several pine trees and a series of knolls next to a log cabin, and in the top left corner was an oversized bald eagle that looked to have flames emanating from behind it.
There were indeed several Jones talismans, but they were from more than seventy years ago, long before Duncan would have been born. There was no sign of Duncan’s.
The Hall of Records was supposed to have a talisman for every adult person ever born in Seeville. Could it be he changed his name? Owen stepped away from the Jones leaf and scanned the bank of turnstiles. It would take days to examine all the talismans.
Then he remembered they kept another batch of talisman records down in the archives. These other records didn’t contain any brass plates. Instead they kept a paper copy of rubbings of all the talismans as a backup.
He moved deeper into the basement, past the remaining turnstiles to the large antechamber with shelves of books that climbed up to the ceiling. Owen climbed two rungs up on a moving ladder and grabbed the tome labeled Talismans: Jo-Ju.
There was no sign of Duncan in these records either. The Jones talismans in the backup records looked to be the same ones as the turnstiles. Strangely, there were rectangular contours on blank entries in the Jones section, as if a number of the Jones talismans had been removed. Indeed, when he looked closer, he could see there was even an additional layer of white pasted on the missing talisman rectangles.
It would be simple to remove the brass templates from the turnstiles, as the remaining templates could be easily reordered, but in these archival records it would be harder to cover up. You couldn’t reorder them easily when they were in a large volume like this. In fact, it would be an impossible task… unless you just blanked them out.
Curious, Owen looked through a few more of the paper tomes to see if these sorts of talisman gaps were common. There weren’t any other gaps he could find.
He paged carefully through the tomes of books, searching for relatives of Duncan Jones. Often descendants had one or two images in their talisman that remained consistent over several generations. In this case the log cabin, the pine-tree formation, and the flaming eagle were particularly unique, and might be discernable in other relatives’ talismans. The cabin and trees were visible in several of the much older Jones’ talismans, but they didn’t appear anywhere else. Of course, he only sampled a few tomes. He might have to look through hundreds of tomes just to find one other relative.
The only other option was to try to look up Noke’s relatives, but that would require a trip all the way down to Lynchburg, since he had no family in Seeville. And who was to say Noke’s relatives had anything to do with this Duncan Jones person, anyway?
Owen wanted very much to honor Noke’s wishes, but it was beginning to seem like a lost cause.
After perusing one more tome to no avail, he put the Duncan Jones rubbing carefully back in his wallet, next to his own, and proceeded up the stairs. He gave a curt nod to Belinda as he was leaving, and she nodded back at him congenially.
He hesitated at the door, and then backtracked to the counter. “Hey Belinda, do you know if they ever remove talisman records for any reason?”
She gave him a deadpan look. “The whole point is to have as detailed records as possible. If we start removing them it kind of defeats the purpose.”
He pushed further. “I don’t know, maybe if they were entered wrong…”
“A talisman? Entered wrong?” she said, sounding offended.
She was right. Talismans were carefully crafted, and only entered into the record when someone turned sixteen. They were verified and perfected prior to being placed into the brass molds. It didn’t make any sense that one could be entered erroneously.
“Sorry. You’re right, Belinda.”
At a loss, he tried to shrug off his failure and focus on his next errand.
His next stop was the more conventional bike parts stalls that were set up a block down from the main stands on the downtown mall. He needed a new set of tires and tubes, and you could always find the best deals during the Festival.
THE CURATOR’S OFFICE
Curator Luna Pais greeted Flora at the doorway and escorted her into her office, gesturing to a seat across from her desk. Her head looked to be freshly shaven, and new piercings adorned her ears and nose. The green make-up contouring her eyes flared out onto her temples, matched in color by a green pendant hanging from her neck. She wore a dark brown frock made of dyed wool, common to those emigrating from the Tucson Union.
It was a more modest office than the huge suite used by the former curator. Yet the distribution of curious books on a diverse set of topics remained, as well as the diorama-like arrangements in all corners of the room. Flowers and incense permeated the air, although the smell of fermentation from the caverns lingered as well.