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Featured Excerpt: The Union of Soil and Sky
by Gregory Norman Bossert
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Greg Bossert spent twenty years as a software developer, starting in his native Cambridge, Massachusetts, and roaming to Manhattan, New Jersey, Berlin, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Eight years ago, his passions overwhelmed his day job; since then, he’s done research and design for a handful of feature films (including Beowulf and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland); built and played experimental musical instruments, worked on sound design, editing, animation, and screenwriting for independent film and video projects; and has recently been focused full-time on writing. Examples of all can be found at his website, www.suddensound.com. His very first sale is a thrilling story about a group of archeologists and their desperate race against time to uncover the secret of . . .
The loop around Winifred’s braid finally gave way with a snap and the sting of uprooted hairs. She cursed, reflexively, but she had a much better view of the chalice rim with her head actually in the hole, and anyway, who exactly on this dig was going to complain about the state of her hair? Or even notice it, despite the brilliant magenta dye she had refreshed just the night before. Well, Inanna, perhaps, might, but there was a long list of reasons why her regard didn’t count. Starting with, Inanna kept her observations to herself, and only the careful application of patience and alcohol could get her to express an opinion on one of her fellow archaeologists. Or an opinion at all, for that matter, except when it came to lumps and bumps in the landscape, on which she could be tediously persistent.
These thoughts floated on the surface of her mind, barely heeded, a useful distraction from the gut-churning work her hands were performing. Alternating the tip of her trowel with a coarse-haired brush, she was tracing the edge of the chalice back around to the high point she had first revealed. Another few centimeters, and the rim would be clear, and she could start the careful process of lifting it free of the dirt. The last chunk of soil came away in one piece, claylike and gritty with silicates; it bore an impression of the tracery around the rim of the glass bowl, which was sitting bottom up in the center of the burial pit she had been excavating for the last day and a half. The piece, an “offering chalice type four” in Mort’s nomenclature, or a “top hat” to everyone else on the dig, was in almost perfect condition, the rim embossed with the writhing shapes ubiquitous to these burials, shapes they’d dubbed “dragons” after their resemblance to the mythical Chinese creature. Definitely the best find of the season for her, possibly, she mused, the best find of the dig so far, as the trowel point slipped under the rim, highlights spilling across the green-gold glass as it shifted, just slightly, and . . .
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Guest Editorial Brian Bienioski: B-Side Mentality
