Preston Child - The Fountain of Youth

“You were taking pictures of where the Brits and Americans had their lookout, right?” one of the men asked Sam.

“Aye, and some other historical landmarks,” Sam replied as Heri passed him a shot of Eldvatn, a drink he would regret long after swallowing.

“Now, that Black Sun you told us about…did you know that they were up here looking for the Empty Hourglass less than sixty years ago?” the tipsy fisherman asked Sam. “But they couldn’t find it, so they took off,” he gestured wildly with his free arm, almost knocking a wind chime off its hook outside the porch where they gathered, “all the way down to the Bahamas, then to Greece, the stupid Jerries!”

Some of the men laughed heartily, but a woman among them did not look comfortable with the exposition. Blond and beautiful, she hastened to the peppered fisherman and implored him to be quiet.

“Hello, I’m Sam,” the journalist said, smiling at her.

“I know who you are, Sam Cleave. Unlike my father and cousin here, I follow world politics and keep a close watch on foreigners with Nifty 50’s waiting on our Grind beaches for a bit of bloody smearing. And I’m not talking about the whale hunting. Go back to Scotland and stop exploiting the hospitality of the locals!” she said, sneering at Sam while Heri and his brother held her back.

“Come on, Johild. Don’t be a bitch,” her cousin reprimanded. But she jerked her hand free and gave them all a hard look. “If you keep entertaining the vultures, you’ll soon end up having your bones picked clean. Are you all blind? They’ve been doing this to us for centuries and you still permit them our hospitality?” Done for the moment with her tirade, Johild stormed off into the night, heading to her home down the street.

“Just ignore her,” Heri told Sam. “Women!”

“Aye,” Sam replied in shock, “women!”

“Come, have some more beer,” the woman’s father chuckled and gave Sam a pat on the back.

“I really can’t. You’re killing me,” Sam objected, but the people roared in disapproval and slammed another bottle of beer against the Scotsman’s belly.

“Drink! Aren’t the Scots known for being alcoholically inclined?” Johild’s father shouted, evoking a chorus of cheer from the others.

Sam sighed. “Well, can’t very well let the side down, can I?” he said to himself before chugging down on the beer. But he couldn’t help but feel that the angry woman had had some valid trust issues — issues he wished he could have asked her about. She seemed very upset about what he was doing there and that he was even remotely involved with the thugs of the Black Sun. Maybe that was it. Maybe the reminiscence of her land being occupied in World War II cultivated some sort of hatred toward any outside interference, even the presence of a tourist.

Then again, she’d used photography slang, so Sam decided to look into her reasons, whether she liked it or not.

Feeling dreadful after a sleepless night of sobbing about her fate, Nina tried no less than four cups of black coffee before leaving for her ten o’clock lecture. The dark circles under her eyes deceived her faux cheer, but thankfully the morning promised that the day would be a very cold one. It meant that she could wear her thick-knitted beanie without having to explain anything. Feeling miserable both mentally and physically, she dragged her diminishing body over the lawn that led into the botanical beauty of the small courtyard garden where an old, lonely cement fountain stood abandoned.

At night Nina could not help but be freaked out by the stone ornament that resembled a human shape when the light fell just right against it. The curtains on her window facing the garden were always drawn for this very reason. But during the day it was clearly a shapely, hand-sculpted fount. Corrosion and age had chipped away at it, but the trough at its bottom was still leak-free and watertight.

The frigid air was biting at Nina’s frail cheeks, coloring her nose with a deep pinkish hue. It ravaged her ears and neck, forcing her to push up her already plump scarf to shield her skin from the cold, since her hair was not providing cover anymore. Hastily she rushed into the lobby and headed straight for the kitchen to get a hot cup of coffee into her body. Oddly, nobody was in yet from the faculty, and neither was the Dean. His office was shut tight, unlike all of the other mornings when the door had been left wide open for the inviting morning light to push through the open curtains and into the hallway.

“Weird,” Nina whispered before continuing on to the kitchen, which she found locked. Deeply disappointed, she swung around hoping to find someone with a key or perhaps someone from the cleaning staff who might direct her to another kitchen somewhere in the substantial labyrinth of corridors, if such a thing existed. “Anyone here?” she cried, sniffling from the effects of the cold weather she’d just braved. “Gertrud! Are you in yet?”

Nina’s small frame crept along the walls as she peeked into every office and storeroom on the floor, finding all of them vacant or locked. She checked her watch. It was ten minutes to class. Fearing that she’d be late, she left for the lecture hall. Fortunately for Nina, her students, all of seven present, were as indolent as she was and respectfully indifferent to discussing the new material.

“You look pooped, Dr. Gould. If you don’t mind me saying,” one of her female students remarked. “I know how you feel. Must be the weather, or the hostel cooking.”

Some of the group chuckled at the assumption, but others just sank into their desks and stared blankly at her. One of the more outspoken lads in the class said, “Why don’t we just download a movie based on the modern history of biological weapons and spare the lovely Dr. Gould from having to waste her breath trying to keep us interested?”

“Hey!” Nina scowled, pointing at the young man. “Are you insinuating that my classes are boring? Because if you are, I will have no qualms about re-evaluating your recent submission.” Her left eyebrow lifted inquisitively while she waited for some wise retort, but the loud student seemed too weary and he just smiled.

Nina took a good look at her tiny class and noticed that each of them looked a bit like she felt. Of the five males and two females, three appeared immensely sluggish. Her illness afforded her the excuse of fatigue — and even the cold weather could bear some blame for the sloth of the students — but she could not fathom the profuse lack of energy between the whole bunch of them.

“Listen, guys, off the record,” she said sincerely, “are you just lazy from the low temps and baby-making weather? Or do you feel unusually tired? Aside from possible late night excursions and such, I mean.”

“I did play GTA until 3 a.m.,” one replied, “but it’s not like I got up at the crack of dawn.”

Another student, one of the three that were noticeably weak, shifted in her chair. “You know, I’m not one to goof off for no good reason, but I almost didn’t come into class this morning, Dr. Gould. I mean, you know I love history studies, but if it weren’t for the nightmares last night and this morning that chased me outdoors, I’d still be sleeping, I’m sure.”

“Nightmares?” the other female student asked her friend. “Me too, chick. Me too. And you wake up more tired.”

“Wait a minute,” Nina interrupted, folding her arms and tapping her pen, “are both of you staying at the hostel or are you townies?”

“Hostel, but separate rooms,” one girl affirmed. The exhausted looking young man in the second row lifted his hand. “Me too. Hostel. All three of us.”

“So you all get the same food served every night, right?” Nina pried.