The Isolde

Ana prided herself in being good at her job, but she was fully aware that she was no Sherlock Holmes. For all her knowledge and ability in finding things, she was no mystery solver.

At least, not really.

Yes, she could recover ancient relics for museums, and she was able to reunite lost children with their loving parents. Still, she couldn’t figure out the Isolde's enigma. All she had to so far was an old book Mr. Somerset had given her in their last encounter.

She had been staring at it for close to ten minutes now, as if she could order the book to tell her the answers she was looking for.

It was a massive brochure encased in old leather, with the words ‘The Travels and Memoirs of Isolde’ engraved in the cover. Some of the letters were faded due to the centuries of handling, but the tome was impressively well-preserved, most of the golden details framing the cover and words were present and clear.

Inside, she had found a message from the author, one Arthur Glover, wishing a joyful reading and good tides to someone called Edward. The book had been published in 1802 and was written in verse. The seven cantos were about the adventures Arthur had on board the Isolde for close to ten years, half of which as the vessel’s captain, sailing through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean in the search of riches and beauties. It had ended badly for Arthur if the sixth canto was anything to go by – the Isolde had hit hidden rocks and had sunk in the ocean.

That was what Mr. Somerset – or rather, his employer – was interested in. Where, exactly, had the shipwreck occurred? He was ready to send professional divers into the ocean to find the Isolde and all its riches.

Ana doubted any existed. Worse, she doubted the memoir had any factual account in it. For all their richness in details, the poems could not be completely historical for one reason: there had been no ship called Isolde sailing those parts of the globe in the 18th century.

The finder had put in several requests to get information on shipping vessels named Isolde – and all of its variations – from the national archives and libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland. None of her contacts had given her a positive answer. Not a single one of them had reported that a ship called Isolde existed during the time Arthur Glover might have been alive.

No Isolde.

Arthur had invented everything. It was the only thing that made sense.

Ana was not keen in telling that to Mr. Somerset though, because one: he had come to expect good results from her in every-single-one of their transactions, and two: there was no way in heavens or hell that the man would send her on a wild goose chase. He was absolute certain the Isolde existed, otherwise he would have never hired her to find it.

But, where was it? And, when had the Isolde existed?

Her next logical step would be to look into Arthur Glover himself, but Ana was not ready to give up on the ship just yet. So, she was waiting for the answer from her last resort. There might be something in the book itself that she had overlooked, some sort of clue she was missing. Only a professional on antique works of art and books would be able to help and she knew just the guy.

Her cellphone vibrated and pinged with a message.

‘Did you check the edge?’

Ana frowned after reading it, replying with a simple ‘yes’. Of course she had checked the edge. Fore-edge painting was one of the first things she verified on this kind of books. The practice of hiding painting in the sides of book pages had always fascinated her because of its precision and finesse. When she had fanned the pages of the tome, she had seen one of the most beautiful paintings she had ever found in book edges: silver had given place to shades of blue, grey and white, and a ship sailing on the horizon of a turbulent sea had appeared. The tempestuous waters were a mirror of the dark skies, and the waves were vicious and high, hiding the treacherous rocks. Still, the three-masted ship – the Isolde, she had believed – remained stoic and graceful, braving the seas to its untimely end.

She had become even more motivated to find the vessel after seeing the painting. As if that made the Isolde irrefutably real.

But it wasn’t.

The cellphone came to life again with another message.

‘Both sides?’

The question made her heart skip one beat, paralyzing her for a long moment. No, she hadn’t checked both sides, she hadn’t even thought about it.

‘And you call yourself a finder. You don’t even know how to look properly for clues’, she thought, berating herself and grabbing the book at the same time.

Carefully, she turned the book, putting its front cover against the table. Placing her hands on the top and bottom of the pages, Ana made sure to hold all of them, using her fingers to move the pages from one side to the other, fanning them.

And another drawing appeared.

It wasn’t a ship in a tempestuous sea. It wasn’t a painting at all. It had been crudely made on the back-edges of the pages – and Ana would bet her own book collection she wouldn’t find it in any other copy of the book.

There were rock formations with names she didn’t know, a coast she recognized as part of the African continent, a major blank expanse that had to be the ocean. And an X.

‘X marks the spot’, the phrase everybody said when talking about finding a treasure popped in her mind. ‘I will be damned’, she thought.

Ana reached for her cellphone as another message arrived.

‘So?’, her last resort asked.

‘Thanks, dad!’, she replied, smiling.

‘Anytime, dearest’, the answer came in less than 5 seconds. To have an art curator as father had its many perks for a person in her profession.

Fanning the pages again, Ana held them in place with one hand, while she snapped a photo. She wanted to send this to Mr. Somerset, but her work was not done yet. She needed to find out where that spot was in a real map.

And she needed to figure out who those memories and trips actually belonged to, because there was no way Arthur Glover had been on board the Isolde. Unless that was not the ship’s real name…

Ana didn’t know. She needed to learn more about Arthur Glover. Then, she would be able to figure out if the Isolde was real and what was its true story.

Ana smirked. She could feel her energies being renovated. She knew there was something to find, and that she could definitely do.