The Yakutia Mystery

Chapter One - Finding it

Yuri Vasiliev, at 55 years old, was surprisingly tough as nails. A stocky build with graying hair, his body a mass of sinewy muscles sculptured by years of digging for mammoth remains in the hills. In his local village in Yakutia, Russia, he was affectionately known as "the bull," a nickname his wife Nadia found rather amusing. Yuri and Nadia were poor, childless mammoth hunters who lived at the bottom of the Sakha mountain frontier. For centuries, this northern region of Russia had been an unforgiving and desolate permafrost once teeming with giant mammoths before their demise and disappearance from the face of the earth. Shifting weather patterns have recently led to a significant thaw of the permafrost, revealing what Yakutians referred to as a "treasure trove" of mammoth remains, highly prized in China. First described in the Siberian Times as the mammoth rush, mammoth hunting has recently exploded into a thriving local economy, attracting hunters from all over Russia into Yakutia, the kingdom of permafrost.

"Today is going to be our lucky day," Yuri said as he and Nadia finally reached the digging grounds.

"Everyday is lucky day!" Nadia snapped back, glaring at him under her straw hat. He didn't reply as Nadia began preparing a fire. Yuri climbed up the steep rock face about ten metres up before he started digging—deep powerful swings of the pick-axe! Soon his face was dripping with beads of sweat, which he occasionally wiped with his left hand. Down below, Nadia was cooking their afternoon meal of boiled wild boar. She added cut vegetables she had brought from home, covered the small blackened pot to simmer, before settling down a few feet away. Suddenly above, a guttural scream rang down. It was Yuri!

"NADIA!" His voice sounded clipped and shallow! She leapt to her feet and started scrambling up the rockface towards her husband, almost losing balance. She reached him. He was standing over a freshly dug hole, his face animated with excitement.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Mammoth" he said, pointing into the shallow hole. "Told you today is lucky day," Yuri said, his face alive with excitement. Nadia stepped closer and peered into the hole. She moved the pickaxe to one side and looked in. Her face drained of colour and she started shaking, her eyes unblinking.

"Yuri," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "This is not mammoth!" Nadia's legs buckled beneath her as she stared at the object.

"Nadia," Yuri said as he rushed to catch his wife. He set her down before approaching the shallow dig and looked in. The half-exposed object was not a mammoth bone! Mammoth bones did not have a pulsating glow! Yuri began to notice a low humming sound coming from the object...

(Story continued in Chapter Two - Mysterious find)