Quite Ready To Go On Another Journey by Grundy

Quite Ready To Go On Another Journey

Henry Jones looked around his small cottage.

Since his return from the Canyon of the Crescent Moon last year, he had felt increasingly set apart from the rest of the world.

He had neither wanted nor expected to drink from the Grail; immortality had not ever been something he sought. At least, not that kind. The Grail had been a puzzle, an intellectual problem, and in the end, a quest in the finest tradition. He hadn’t expected it to irrevocably change him as it had.

Or his son.

Indiana – he’ll use the name, if that’s what the boy prefers, it’s time to let go of old arguments now that he’s seen the lengths his only child will go to for him, claiming the entire time not to care or understand – had not come back the same man who had left New York either. And he can’t help but worry that immortality will sit even less well on his restless boy than it did on him.

His son may not tell him much, but he’s heard enough over the years. Multiply by years beyond human count…

Perhaps it was time for another quest. If the boy wants to chase him again – and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he did – at least this time they’ll end up somewhere they won’t be a danger to everyone around them. Doubtless Indiana would still manage to find any trouble going, but surely that place was well-equipped to handle restless immortals.

Henry smiled to himself as he stepped over to the still concealed hidey-hole beneath the antique Persian rug. The advantage of being a bumbling medieval literature professor was that no one expected you to actually have effective hiding places for things you didn’t intend others to see, not even Nazis ransacking your house looking for things that did not belong to them. The false floorboard blended in so perfectly that even if one was aware of its existence, it wasn’t obvious.

There were some advantages to immortality, it seemed.

He tapped just so, releasing the false board, and opened the safe. This was where his diary about his other, even more esoteric, quest resided. Notes regarding ancient beings and their deeds. Descriptions of silmarils and other fantastic works of craft – the prime reason he’d made sure these papers were kept entirely secret. As an added precaution, he’d learned not only the languages of the elves, but their letters as well. Just to be sure that even if the papers were found, he wouldn’t be setting irresistible temptation in front of his son.

Indiana would surely have taken up the quest for the artifacts before the quest he ought to take up, one that was now open to them as it had not been before.

Yes, there it was – in the notes from his conversation regarding the fragment of that curious lament he’d stumbled across with the man who had installed his safe in the first place.

malle téna lende númenna ilya sí maller raikar

“The Straight Road is not open to mortals. Do not seek it – many a Man has gone mad in that search.”

Well, he may still be a Man, but that cup had conferred immortality. The way West should be open to him. And to Indiana.

He had not been seeking it at the time, but now that he was, he knew where he needed to begin. He needed better advice – and a travelling companion or two would not go amiss either. They might well be weary of life surrounded by mortals and unwilling to sit through yet another war.

But he couldn’t run off to Oxford willy-nilly. This quest, should it succeed, was to be a one-way trip. He would arrange things neatly. If Indiana followed him, so much the better. If he did not, he’d find things already in order, and a cover story for his ‘death’ at the ready.