Leprechaun Gold: An IPMA Adventure for St. Patrick's Day 2015



  Leprechaun Gold

  An IPMA Adventure for St. Patrick’s Day 2015

  By P. Edward Auman

  Copyright 2015 P. Edward Auman

  Cover Art Image by Paul Fleet - Fotolia.com

  ISBN: 9781310449918

  Discover other titles by P. Edward Auman at online e-book retailers, in print, and www.PEdwardAuman.com.

  Learn more about stories featuring faerie folk and the IPMA (The Institute for the Preservation of Magical Artifacts) at www.TrollBrother.com.

  Follow the creative media company founded upon Eddie’s works: www.IPMACreative.com

  Dedicated to those of us who were suckered into a snipe hunt ourselves when we were young. And…I’m sorry I’m the one who did it to you.

  MEMORANDUM

  March, 17th

  To: Board of Directors, Institution for the Preservation of Magical Artifacts

  CC: Dr. Wilhelmina Rheinhart, President

  From: P. Edward Auman, Historian

  IPMA, Eastern U.S. Regional Offices

  Subject: Discovery of living Leprechaun (colloquial US: Snipe) and only known occurrence of alchemy.

  Dear Madam President and Members of the Board:

  It is my pleasure to relay to you our findings of true, living leprechauns. While I am most excited to detail said finding, credit must be duly given to junior agent, James Peterson, for his diligence in following up and investigating a referral.

  As his explanation of his findings is far more entertaining than any explanation I could possibly provide, I am including his narrative for your edification. However, please note that one source of my excitement in this reported discovery is the potential for domesticating and harvesting actual gold from said Leprechauns to help balance our internal budgets when our patents and proceeds from private artifact showings for our primary benefactors fails to do as much.

  -Excitedly awaiting your directions on this matter.

  Sincerely,

  Eddie

  The Hunt

  James hadn’t really taken old Professor Byrne seriously when he had offered the young IPMA agent an adventure pursuing real, living, honest-to-‘Lijah Leprechauns in the foothills before the great Sierra Nevada near Sacramento. In fact, he thought that if he’d told any of his roommates back at the college apartments at the university what he thought he was headed off to do with Professor Byrne they would have ostracized him for the rest of his education. And had he tried to discuss with his mentor or any of the other full time agents at the Institute for the Preservation of Magical Artifacts they probably would have terminated his internship immediately. But, he had researched for so many years, and had hoped so many hopes that he couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity, no matter how slim, to catch a glimpse of a real Leprechaun.

  It was his internship with the IPMA, and all their tests, documentations and secrecy about his employ that had convinced him Leprechauns, in some form or another, just had to be true. For he had actually witnessed what the senior agents he had been with for a ride-along termed a Jogah. One of the agents couldn’t actually see it, and the other had to view it by special lenses affixed to some contraption attached to her own glasses. But James could see the little white-ish, ghostly spirit-fairie out right, flitting quickly beneath bushes until it scurried out of view. After that experience, young Agent Peterson was convinced he would be able to find more evidences of the various fairies he had studied nearly all his life, especially his favorite, the Leprechauns.

  “So, not that I’m trying to be pushy or anything, Professor, but I’m wondering how long you’re planning to hunt tonight? I mean…is there a point at which we determine whether or not we are successful?” James asked quietly as they wadded through hip-high grasses in a meadow.

  They’d been looking for nearly forty-five minutes already and James honestly had no idea what it was they were looking for as signs of the Leprechauns. Even after all that time traipsing away from the park and ride where they had left the professor’s twenty-year old AWD hipster wagon loaded with nets and equipment, they could still hear the large semi’s rushing past on highway 80 on their way down from Truckee and points beyond. The professor seemed to pause looking about in a bare patch of dirt for a moment before replying.

  He finally looked up with the night-vision goggles pushed back on his forehead and asked in a craggy, dry voice, “How long would you like to stay, James?”

  James wondered if the professor’s shoulder-length silver hair or long, scratchy beard should have been an indicator of how much he trusted the old professor of history.

  “Well, I’m happy to stay as long as you are willing to show me. I’d really, really like to find something tonight and I’m willing to stick it out.”

  Professor Byrne eyed him and scratched his chin behind his beard with the backside of his wrist appraisingly. “You know I’m not going to publish, even if I did find anything tonight, right, son? I mean…I like my job at the university.”

  He turned back to what he was poking at on the ground and finished with, “I don’t need those science department nerds running me out after thirty-seven years just because they didn’t make the observation. And they’d say I was out of my rocker.”

  James reminded himself why he’d agreed to go out with Professor Byrne. All the evidences he’d shown him of Leprechauns, and of Trolls, and even of Yeti, (even though Sasquatch turned out to appear a little bit counter to many of the misconceptions James had learned early in life), were very convincing. And generally, Byrne didn’t speak like a crackpot. He just…spoke like an angry, frustrated old man.

  Then the professor found something. Or at least James assumed so, for he inhaled sharply and stood staring at a spot. The younger man hurried in big steps around clumps of grasses to where the older stood and in a harsh whisper asked, “What is it?”

  Byrne just pointed at the ground where he was directing his fairly sharply pointed LED flashlight. James bent down to one knee to look more closely. He first noticed a couple very oddly shaped foot prints about one and a half inches across or so, featuring only three toes, apparently with claws as the points of them had embedded in the prints and left distinct holes in the powdery, dry soil.

  But that was not what Professor Byrne wanted him to notice most. He knelt and pointed to a central, very small pile of soil in the middle of which flickered the tiniest of golden sparkles. James looked into his face and saw he was grinning ear to ear and that the professor was giving short, abbreviated nods. So James grinned back, though he knew not exactly why.

  “Pick up that little nugget!” Byrne whispered.

  James did as he was asked and found it was bigger than the first glint would have made one believe. It was about the size of a pea, but it had course and pitted surfaces and was not perfectly round at all. Although even a small amount of gold would have pretty significant value, he knew better than to blurt out something like, “We’re RICH!” at the sight. Still it was very exhilarating.

  “Now…” said the professor. “This is a pretty lucky find all around, for I’ve found a deposit once or twice like this, although usually smaller. But mine have never been so fresh. This, young student, is very strong indication that we’re near a Leprechaun or two at this very moment!”

  The professor stood up and looked around the field practically holding his breath. James stood as well, rolling around the golden nugget in his palm with a finger on his other hand.

  “What do you mean by fresh?” James asked somewhat absentmindedly.

  The professor giggled with as ti
ght a restriction as he could to keep his voice from carrying. “Well, it’s just thrilling, isn’t it? That we found foot prints, and even the excrement was still piled about the little nugget. In fact, I suppose that means we could potentially be within feet of the little buggar right now!”

  The professor turned, shining his LED light on the area again and trying to make out which direction the foot prints may have lead off to. James followed, each taking very long, carefully-planted steps as they searched for prints or anything else that might indicate the prey for which they were hunting.

  “Wait…Did you say excrement?” James asked.

  “Oh indeed,” Byrne whispered back over his shoulder. “The little pile of soil and the gold is the leprechaun’s very feces and we’re very lucky to have come across it!”

  James stopped dead in his track, and clenched the golden pea very angrily, but not quite so in disgust as to have immediately dropped it. “Poop! You had me handling poop!”

  It was difficult to keep his voice down and the professor turned about quickly and shushed him, reminding him of the task at hand.

  “Of course it is, Mr. Peterson,” the professor replied in his classroom lecture tone. “A Leprechaun’s gold is merely a bi-product of its digestion after all. Alchemy, or the turning of one thing, usually assumed to be minerals or other metals, into gold, it turns out exists in only one place in the entire planet, perhaps even in the Universe. This, I think, is because it may actually require a touch of what we presently call magic…”

  The professor stopped and stroked his beard for a moment as though thinking, while James again held out the pea in his palm and stared, still excited, but with much less appeal behind the finding of the poop-nugget/gold thing.

  “…which of course magic is likely merely physics on a level we don’t yet understand, I’m sure. But still, it’s quite an interesting process and must have been the reason ancient philosophers first started looking for a chemical means of performing alchemy in their pots and fireplaces.” Byrne smiled, shrugged and turned back to stepping through the grasses.

  James followed, but mumbled, “Yes, but you made me touch its poo.”

  “Oh! Quite right,” the older gentlemen hissed and turned back yet again. “Tell me Mr. Peterson, are you feeling any strange effects? Any hallucinations, drowsiness, or dizziness at all?”

  “Wuh?” James stumbled, a little surprised. “I’m not…no. No I don’t think so at all.”

  He had to pat himself down a little once the professor turned around and headed off through the grasses again just to make sure, such was his self-conscious feeling the question created in him.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Oh…no reason. Just a theory I had about that Rip Van Winkle story from early Americana.” The professor had whipped out a handkerchief and seemed to be wiping his face quickly and then his hands with it. “You’ll let me know if you do, of course?”

  “Oh, sure,” James nodded and replied sarcastically. “Of course.”