The Book of Sight (8 page)

As Eve’s pause lengthened, Alex looked up. “Do you recognize that?” she asked the Dund.

“Of course, of course,” he almost squeaked, a little shiver going over his whole trunk. “’It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ Everyone knows the language of awakening.”

“So it
is
a language!” exclaimed Adam wonderingly. “And you speak it? But then how did we understand it when none of us has ever learned it?”

“Hold your horses, there, young man. Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said I
speak
the language of awakening. I said I know it. Everyone knows it. You know it. Though you didn’t know you knew it, as you say. But ‘the proof of the pudding is in the tasting,’ as I said, and you understood this book, so it is clear that you know the language.”

“And do you know what this book is called?” asked Alex.

“You’ve put your finger on it there,” said the Dund. “You have hit the nail on the head. It may be that I do know its name, but can’t be sure. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions’ is my motto. So don’t get your hopes up. Better to keep all hopes down. Still, wait just a bit (patience is a virtue, you know) and I will tell you something I heard once.”

He paused for a moment as if trying to remember each detail of his story. Eve waited, fascinated.

“It was late in the afternoon,” he continued in such a different tone that they all stared, “must have been many years ago now. A young man, older than you children but still quite young with brown hair and brown skin (lovely skin, I thought at the time), was walking through this field. He would have passed right by me, I think, but just as he arrived at this spot, another man, older and fairer, came dashing towards him from the opposite direction. The young man stopped and waited. When the older man reached us, he was panting from his sprint and it was several moments before he could speak. When he had caught his breath, he said to the young man, ‘They found it. Cristina said to tell you right away.’ And the young man said, ‘Are you sure it’s the one we’re looking for?’ ‘Yes,’ replied his friend, ‘it has all the signs.’ The young man began to look excited. ‘We should all meet tonight then.’ ‘So soon?’ asked the other, frightened. ‘There is no time to lose,’ responded the young man. ‘We have to get back what he took from us. We have to find the Book of Sight. Without it the language of awakening is lost to us.’ ‘But we still don’t know what this pilpi creature may be capable of!’ argued the older man. ‘Gendel sea, Harold,’ whispered the young man. And he repeated, ‘gendel sea.’ And then the two walked away together.”

There was a silence as the kids each tried to digest this new information.

“Gendel sea,” said Eve after a moment. They all nodded.
Gendel sea
, part of the prophecy from the story. Just saying the words out loud again made Eve’s heart swell.

“Do you think they were talking about this book?” said Adam. “The Book of Sight?”

“The name does fit,” Alex said.

“But who were those men? If they live around here, they could answer a lot of our questions.”

Turning to the Dund, Adam demanded, “Is that all you remember? Did you ever see them again?”

“I only saw them that one time. I thought at the time it was very interesting, and I waited to see if they would come back. But ‘the watched pot never boils,’ you know, and they never returned. After a while I forgot about it. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ you know. But when you read from that book it came back to me.”

“What do you suppose the pilpi thing was he was talking about?” asked Logan. “There wasn’t anything like that in the story, was there?”

“No,” said Adam, “although it might be farther along in the book. None of us has read more than the first part.”

“Whatever it is, it sounded like the older man was scared of it,” said Alex. “That makes it seem more like it was something they met, not just something in a story.”

“And they were going to see it,” Logan added. “And they never came back.”

“They never came back here, but that doesn’t mean anything happened to them,” protested Adam. “They never met here intentionally in the first place. Why would they have come back here again? Obviously they didn’t know about the Dund.”

Eve was irritated at Adam’s tone. “I wouldn’t say that anything here is exactly obvious,” she said. “We don’t know anything for sure, and we won’t unless we happen to meet those men some day.”

She could feel Adam bristle, but his words belied any anger he might feel. “Eve’s right. The main point is that this “Book of Sight” must be the red book, and we need to find anyone else who may have it. If there are others, they might know more than we do. Then we could figure out what's going on.”

“But I don’t know how we do that besides just waiting in the circle of trees,” said Alex.

They all fell silent again.

“Well, as I said before, ‘patience is a virtue,’ filled in the Dund. “Waiting isn’t so bad, you know. Take it from me. I can tell you all about waiting. ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth,’ as they say.”

“I know, but I feel like we’re supposed to
do
something,” said Alex.

“That may be, that may be. They do say that man is always the pot-stirrer, the rabble-rouser, the dangerous one. ‘Man is born to trouble as sparks fly upward.’ So I suppose you’ll do as men do. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ you know. Still, watch and wait, watch and wait, is my motto, and there could be worse.”

None of the kids answered that.

“Well,” broke out Adam finally. “If that’s the only option we have, we’d better get back there. We could be missing someone right now.”

He made as if to walk away, but Eve turned to the Dund. “Thank you so much for talking with us. You were very helpful.”

“Oh, well,” blustered the Dund, “Of course, of course. ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’ is my motto. I was very glad to talk with you all. It was a very interesting experience. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ is my motto, and I’m glad I’ve tried this at least once. I always say…”

“We need to go now,” Eve interrupted, “but we’ll definitely come back and talk again sometime, okay?”

“Of course, of course, fine, fine. ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’ as they say, and I can’t say about the sweetness but I am sorry to see you go. Still, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ you know, so I’m sure we’ll all soon be very fond. And if you’ll come back again, as you say… well, that would be very nice.”

“We will come back,” said Alex. “It was very nice to meet you.”

The boys repeated this, and the Dund watched them away with a smile. Still, Eve felt sorry for him standing there immovable and alone. He had obviously enjoyed talking to them. She couldn’t even imagine not ever talking to anyone, just listening and listening and being ignored. It was too awful to think about. They would have to come back and visit him again very soon. And not just for him, either. Someone that listened that much was bound to know a lot if they just knew what questions to ask.

Her thoughts strayed to the conversation he had recounted for them. It was comforting to know that there were others who had read this book and probably experienced similar things to what they were going through now. It was not so comforting to hear that there was something out there they were afraid of, though.

In all the excitement over the new things she’d been discovering, it hadn’t really occurred to her that there might be dangers, too. Or enemies even. Now that she thought of it, it seemed pretty obvious (after all someone had to be keeping this stuff a secret from everyone), but it was disturbing. It gave everything a new edge.

It made her more interested in these other kids, too. Her desire to laugh at their earnestness seemed stupid now. She thought of Alex’s eerie intuition about the danger on the junk pile, of Adam’s insatiable curiosity and quick thinking, and of that way Logan had of looking at you like he was reading your mind. If there was some sort of danger out there, they were going to be the ones facing it with her.

Eve was happy to realize that she had no problem with that at all.

T
he old sword shone in the bright sunlight coming through the window. Adam turned it this way and that, marveling again, as he had so many times since that day he had first read the Book of Sight, at the way the light tripped and danced and played tag with the shadows like a living thing. He was waiting in his room for the others, who were coming over to see the newly cleaned up sword.

Two weeks had passed since the day they first visited the Dund, and still no one new had come to the ring of trees, and they had made no progress in discovering anyone else who knew anything about the Book of Sight. Mostly, the kids tried to stay close to the Redoubt, waiting for anyone new. But they had also made a few more visits to the Gylf and to the Dund. Their latest visit to the Gylf had been yesterday and when they had passed the place where they had swung on the vines, Adam had told them about the sword.

With great difficulty he had smuggled it into his house when his mother wasn’t looking, and he had spent a lot of hours since then scouring off the rust. It was undeniably cool to have his own sword, even if it wasn’t a particularly dangerous one. Adam had searched the internet, and he was pretty sure it was a foot artillery sword from the civil war era. It was short and straight and had a brass hilt. From what he’d read, it was more of a weed-whacker than a weapon, but it was still pretty sweet to have an antique sword hidden in his room. He was looking forward to showing it off to his friends.

Though he really wanted them to see it, he didn’t want to risk smuggling it out of the house and back in again. As long as it was in his room, his mom would never find it. Other than the occasional harangue about cleaning it up, she was too busy to bother much with his room, but in other places around the house she had a disturbing tendency to pop up when you least expected her. A sword wasn’t exactly something you could stick in a backpack or tuck out of sight under a sweatshirt, so they’d arranged for everyone to come by his house after meeting up at the Redoubt that morning.

Right on time, the doorbell rang. Stashing the sword carefully under his bed, Adam ran down and opened the door. Then he stopped short.

Instead of Alex, Logan and Eve, it was his best friend James waiting there. Adam quickly recovered.

“Dude! You’re back!”

James grinned and stepped inside. “Didn’t you get my text?”

Adam shrugged, realizing that he hadn’t turned his phone on in days, and James laughed and headed automatically upstairs to Adam’s room. James and Adam had been best friends since they were in kindergarten. They played video games, traded books, and liked all the same movies. James was over at Adam’s house so much, he practically lived there.

“Yeah, I should have known better. So, what have you been up to?”

Adam didn’t even know where to start, but he was temporarily saved from the necessity when the doorbell rang again. This time it really was Alex, Eve, and Logan.

“No one was there again,” said Alex. “I’m starting to think…” She broke off as she saw James over Adam’s shoulder.

To cover the awkwardness, Adam quickly invited them all inside and started on the introductions. “This is my friend, James. He’s been on vacation the last couple of weeks in Florida. James, this is Alex and Logan and Eve.” James’s eyes registered their surprise at Eve’s name. “They’re…well, we just met a few weeks ago.” He glanced toward the family room where the television could be heard. “Let’s head up to my room, and I’ll tell you about it.”

All the way up the stairs, Adam’s mind was racing. He had been looking forward to showing the Book of Sight to James and to having him read it. But now that the moment was here, he felt nervous. For the first time, it occurred to him that James might think he was a little crazy. He tried not to think about that. After all, James had been his friend forever, and they pretty much always agreed. He was bound to be excited about all the possibilities here. It was stupid to feel weird about it. Still, it would have been nice if he could have persuaded that twisting in his stomach to go away.

Once they were all settled in Adam’s room and the door was closed, Adam turned to James. “So, this is pretty nuts,” he began, and he told James all about the man delivering the book and how it seemed like nonsense at first but eventually made sense. “These guys all got the same book on the same day, and since then there have been a lot of weird things happening.”

He looked around at the other kids. Eve was fiddling with the zipper of her backpack, and Alex was staring at the floor. Logan was watching James, who wore a closed and guarded expression that made Adam nervous.

“Just read the book,” Adam ended lamely. “It may take some time, but once you can read it, you’ll see what I mean.”

James opened the book and studied the first page. He glanced back to Adam a second later. “Is this some kind of joke? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. That’s what I said. It’s like that at first, but then you’ll see it.”

James just kept staring at him like someone waiting for a punchline.

To Adam’s relief, Logan spoke up. “We know how it looks. It was like that for all of us at first. But Adam’s not lying, and this isn’t a joke. It’s a story, and you’re going to really like it.”

His endorsement didn’t seem to help at all. If anything, James now looked more uncomfortable.

After a pause, Adam said, “Um, so you guys want to see the sword?”

There was a general motion of assent, but he still noticed that no one was really looking at anyone else. Even Logan shifted his gaze and was now staring out the window. Obviously it was going to take time for everyone to get used to each other. Determined to break through the tension in the room, he pulled the sword from its hiding place under the bed, talking all the while.

“It took me forever to get all the rust off. It was in pretty bad shape. But I finally found this solution that worked really well. I was surprised how great it looked when I was done.”

The complete lack of any response was beginning to get to him. Eve was nodding along a bit, and Alex and Logan were at least examining the sword, but James was actually looking away. Adam was irritated. Still, he carried on as if he hadn’t noticed. “I’ve checked out the style of the sword, and it seems to me like it’s a civil war era short sword. It looks almost exactly like the pictures I’ve seen, but they were all just drawings, so I can’t be sure. Plus, I don’t know if it is actually that old or if it’s some sort of remake, but it’s still pretty cool.”