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A Summer Quest

Lloyd Mullins hated the fact that he was being sent to live with his grandparents for the summer.

He hated the fact that his dad was going on an international business trip for six weeks.

He hated that his mom thought it would be a good idea to tag along.

He hated his grandmother for suggesting that Lloyd stay with her instead of going with them.

Most of all, though, he hated the fact that he would be spending his summer on a ranch in Montana rather than at his oceanfront home in Southern California. It meant no friends, no beach, and probably a lot of really smelly animals.

The flight to Billings, Montana did nothing to improve Lloyd’s mood. It took two plane changes to get there, the last of which was an old propeller-driven plane that someone else on board called a “puddle jumper.” It was a shaky, rickety mess and Lloyd didn’t think he could be any more terrified. Until he saw the runway they were approaching, that is.

Unlike the wide, concrete runways that Lloyd was accustomed to whenever he and his parents traveled out of LAX, this runway was more of a strip of dirt, and not a very long one at that. The landing was so bumpy, he found himself wondering if his seatbelt would hold or if he’d be pitched around the inside of the cabin.

Thankfully, the plane finally slowed and came to a stop. Rather than disembarking on a jetway and heading into a terminal, Lloyd found himself descending the plane’s staircase directly onto the dirt runway, with his grandmother standing a few dozen yards away.

“Lloyd!” she gushed, running up to him and embracing him in a big bear hug. “Oh my goodness, you’ve gotten so big!”

Lloyd endured the hugs and kisses and cheek pinching and sizing up that always came with visiting relatives he hadn’t seen in a while. After the pleasantries, they climbed into her old GMC Sierra and headed for the ranch.

Lloyd’s grandmother lived a good thirty miles outside Billings, in what Lloyd could only describe as the middle of nowhere. Grandma’s nearest neighbor was at least a mile away in every direction. The ranch house itself was set back from the road more than two hundred yards. All the space gave Lloyd an uneasy feeling; if anything were to happen to him out here, how long would it take help to arrive?

Grandma showed Lloyd to his room at one end of the house; hers was at the other end and, since it was just the two of them, Lloyd had, for all intents and purposes, an entire wing of the house to himself.

It was the side of the house that his grandfather had used for his hobbies and odd projects; there was a library, a workshop, a bedroom and attached bathroom, and more closets and storage spaces than Lloyd could imagine a use for. He didn’t remember much about his grandfather; the man had passed away a couple years ago when Lloyd was too young to really remember anything about him. In the time since, Grandma had never gotten around to cleaning out her husband’s things. Or maybe she just didn’t want to. Either way, they were there for Lloyd to explore and, with a few hours until supper, he had the time to delve into them.

The library didn’t have anything the held much interest to Lloyd, just shelves and shelves of old dusty books that hadn’t even been opened in forever. He skimmed some of the titles on the spines, but they were all beyond him. No cool stories about wizards or spaceships or, Lloyd’s personal favorite, treasure hunters and other adventure stories; just a bunch of boring sciencey stuff.

The workshop proved to be a little more interesting. Nearly the entire room was filled with tables and countertops that each had a number of devices, doodads, and knick knacks on them. Lloyd wondered if his grandfather had been an inventor of some kind. Everything looked really old, though. So maybe things his grandfather had found? Lloyd had never really taken the time to ask a lot of questions about his grandfather, but he remembered his parents saying something about how his grandfather loved to travel and explore the world. Maybe these were souvenirs he brought back from his trips.

Grandma stuck her head in the room while Lloyd was poking around.

“You know,” she said, nodding toward a wooden box in the corner. “That one was always his favorite. He would fidget with that thing for hours at a time.”

Lloyd moved over to inspect the object. It looked like a gigantic Rubik’s cube made of smooth, carved wood. Each facet of the surface had symbols on it, and Lloyd discovered that he could manipulate the tiles and move them around by twisting the box at its joints.

“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything,” his grandmother said as she left him to it.

For the better part of an hour, Lloyd twisted the box this way and that, trying to figure out the secret to solving it. At first he tried lining up all the same symbols on the same face of the box and, when that didn’t work, he tried moving the different faceted tiles around so that there was one of each on each side of the box. That was easier said than done, though. Every time he thought he had the solution, his final move would push one of the other tiles to another side of the box.

Lloyd had nearly given up and had spent the last several minutes desperately spinning the facets around with no rhyme or reason. As he set it down on the table, he looked at it one more time and realized that, by some miracle, he was only a couple more twists from solving it! He delicately picked up the box and made one slight adjustment... and then another... and then the last one... and then he heard a loud click from somewhere deep inside the box. Lloyd noticed that one of the sides of the box had come away from the rest. It was a hinged lid and the inside of the box was a secret compartment!

Peering inside, Lloyd found a folded up piece of paper. It was a note in his grandfather’s handwriting. Or at least what he assumed was his grandfather’s handwriting. He wouldn’t know; he’d never actually seen before.

The note read:

To whomever may find this letter, it is the key to finding my hidden treasure. Years ago, during my adventures in far off lands, I found a secret treasure that I brought home with me. Afraid that someone might steal it, I buried this treasure somewhere on this ranch and created a treasure map to find it. In order to find the map and reach the treasure, you’ll have to be strong and clever and brave. I hid the map somewhere in my library, in a book about the study of rocks.

Lloyd scratched his head at the clue. Suddenly, his face brightened and he ran to the kitchen.

“Grandma! Grandma!” Lloyd yelled, screeching to a halt on the tile floor. “What’s the study of rocks?”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, confused.

“What do people call the study of rocks?”

“You mean geology?”

“Yeah, thanks!” he said and scampered off again.

Grandma moved through the house and back to her husband’s study, where Lloyd was eagerly looking through the volumes of her husband’s collection. Seeming to find what he was looking for, Lloyd yanked a book off the shelf and began pawing through it. He yelped with glee as he procured a folded piece of cloth from somewhere between its pages.

After studying the map for a moment, Lloyd sprinted past his grandmother and out the back door. His grandmother moved to the back porch and watched her grandson head for the branches of the old oak tree that still had the old bird feeder hanging from it that her husband had helped their kids hang up all those years ago. From there, Lloyd would go to the garage... and then the attic... and then the barn.

Eventually he’d end up at the orchard where he’d find what she hoped would be a treasure worthy of the quest. Sure it was just a bunch of old coins and keepsakes she had found around the house, but to Lloyd they’d feel like a king’s ransom.

She knew a kid who lived in a fancy house right by the beach probably wasn’t too enthusiastic about spending time with his grandmother in rural Montana while his parents traveled the world, but maybe this little treasure hunt would give him reason to look back on this time with a little fondness and excitement rather than boredom.

Grandma moved back into the kitchen and started preparing dinner. Lloyd was probably going to be hungry after his afternoon adventures!

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1,506 words

Originally written for "Invalid Item"

and "I Write in 2018"

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