Wordscapist: The Myth (The Way of the Word Book 1) (14 page)

     Akto looked at me, obviously having trouble digesting all of this. “Dew said she saw your scape sign, and that it was more powerful than any she had seen before.” He spoke again in a dead, careful voice. He was saying things to watch how I would react. I realised then that my words were the only thing preventing him from going for whatever he kept going for under his poncho. No pressure! 

     “I heard that from her too. I have no clue what she was saying. I didn’t want her getting excited and hostile, so I just kept quiet about it.” I decided that this bluff was going to work only if I stayed as honest as I could. This man was dangerous and I had to be very careful indeed to make it unscathed through this conversation.

      He went back to glancing through the book, stopping to read some sections. “Breakfast?” he growled out, without looking at me.

     I looked at him rather incredulously. Was this the fattening part that came before the slaughter? I gave in. “Sure, why not! That English breakfast on your menu sounds good. I would appreciate it though if you did not charge me season rates.”

     He looked up at me and let out a gruff chuckle. “Sit, sit. First we will eat, and then we will talk.” He walked off inside to give the order. I collapsed into a chair and turned my attention inward. In my exhaustion yesterday, I had let the voice be. I had even let myself believe that it was a figment of my imagination. But it was becoming more and more obvious that it was a lot more. It felt almost like a person.

     “Just what are you about?” I screamed silently, in my head, “What’s with these comments? I can hear each and every one of them, you know! And you can try to pretend, but I know that these are not my thoughts! I know this is you!”

    There was silence again, but it was a different kind of silence. It was the silence of someone listening to me.  I continued, at a lower mental volume and pitch, if that makes sense, “I am not used to talking to voices in my head, and if it had not been for the demon incident, I would not even have noticed that something was different. I would probably have assumed that you are just part of my overworked imagination. But now I know you’re there. What are you? What are you doing in my head!”

     “Who am I,” the voice gently corrected, “Not what.”

     I was dumbstruck. I could not believe it. The voice had responded. I was having an actual conversation with a voice in my head! Before I could continue the conversation, Akto returned. I shot a mental be-right-back at the voice before turning my attention to the gypsy. He came with a huge tray loaded with food. We both sat opposite each other, giving our full attention to the food. Yesterday’s meal was ancient history and I was ravenous again. I steadily worked my way through fried eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, buttered toast and a bowl of fruit, washed down with two glasses of orange juice and a cup of strong, black coffee. Akto was taciturn but his attitude was a tad warmer during breakfast. Perhaps it was the food, or maybe he was warming up to me. I guess I was quite an optimist back then.

     I started a conversation, making an effort to loosen things up. I asked him questions about his shack and Dew. He was talkative enough about the shack but completely ignored my questions about Dew. He didn’t want to talk to me about her, and I half understood. I didn’t press the issue. I did learn however that Akto had been in Goa for almost six years and did a lot of ‘business’, apart from managing the shack. He also ran a stall at the Saturday night flea market, whatever that was. I studiously avoided mentioning Andy or the book though. I wanted to ensure he stayed in a good mood. After a bit, somewhere around the coffee, he started asking questions, random queries about my life and work. Somehow, I had the feeling he didn’t like the answers one bit. They were quite obviously completely in conflict with the kind of life a wordsmith would be expected to live. What did wordsmiths do anyway? If I really was one of them, I should try and learn more about their way of life. I could not escape the feeling that he was not too convinced about what I had told him. He was looking for something specific. And I had an uncomfortable knot in my stomach because I suspected I knew what it was.

     The coffee was presently replaced with pints of chilled beer. We strode out to the sea and settled in the sand just beyond the waves, swigging beer and staring out at the colours on the sea as the sun rose in the sky.

     “Andy was my brother.”

     I turned to Akto at these words. They came as a surprise. I had not expected him to bring it up. He did not wait for a reaction. He just kept speaking.

     “We are not… were not related. But he was closer to me than my bastard brothers.”

     “I’m sorry,” the words came out, hopelessly inadequate and graceless.

     “I will not grieve him…yet. I will grieve once I nail Silvus’s hide to my cabin wall.”     Loon said the words in a matter-of-fact way. I looked at him to see if he was being metaphorical and then I noticed that he was fingering the edge of a wicked-looking knife. So that’s what the poncho hid! I tried to recollect what the shack’s walls looked like and wondered if there were other such ‘hides’ on the walls. I noticed that he was looking at me, trying to see how I reacted to it. Another test to see if I was with the Guild. First Dew, and now this crazy Gypsy with a knife!

     “Who is Silvus?” I asked, trying to move the conversation away from hide-nailing.

     “He is Mastersmith of the blasted Guild.” The answer was growled back at me, like it was supposed to be the most obvious thing in the world. Again, the same look. He was watching me, trying to catch me in a lie.

     “Akto, I am afraid all these words do not make sense to me. Wordsmith, Guild, Mastersmith, Wordscapist…”

     Suddenly, Akto was at my throat and I was flat on my back on the sand, the point of the knife threatening to penetrate my delicate skin. It was another one of those surreal moments; the type that I had read so often about but had never come close to experiencing. Big threatening man pinning me down, knife suspended at my throat, back pressing against the sand, waves coming within inches of my face, cool breeze on my skin. All these thoughts passed through my head in a split second as I considered the possibility that I was on the verge of dying for the second time in 24 hours. What scared me even more was what was happening inside my head. The voice almost screamed in outrage, “How dare he! A norm! Punish him! Come on boy! What are you waiting for!”

     “How do you know about the Wordscapist?” Akto growled the words in my ear, distracting me from the voice’s tirade. I was too terrified though, to respond.

      “How do you know?” Akto repeated, increasing the pressure on my throat.

      It was all a little bit too much to take, but I decided to prioritise. The voice could wait. I had to take Akto’s question first.

     “The notebook… I read it in the notebook…” I could not recognise the strangled words said in a voice choked with fear. I realised that it was I who had responded. My baritone had deserted me and I had begun to sound like a thin alto on the verge of breaking into a falsetto. Operatic analysis; I was going nuts!

     “Why don’t you just make him into a nice little piglet!” the voice demanded. I continued ignoring it, tough as it was given that it was in my head.

     “You tell me you can read Esperanto?” Loon asked, the voice becoming all the more hostile, the knife pressing down an infinitesimal bit more. “You, who are not a wordsmith!”

     “Esperanto? I don't know what that is.” I gasped out. My voice was almost a shriek now.

     “The notebook was written in Esperanto; a language you apparently do not know about. And you say you read about the Wordscapist in the notebook?” I felt a fleeting bite at my throat and a trickle of warm wetness.

     “No!” I screamed. “Don’t kill me! Don’t… Don’t!” I was beginning to get hysterical.

     “Calm down!” the voice was clear and loud in my head. “He is not going to kill you! He is nothing, just a norm. Why would you fear him?”

     I had no clue what the voice meant, but it worked. I did calm down, marginally. I spoke slowly, coherently and carefully, “Akto, I have no clue what’s Esperanto and what’s not. I remember that word because it sounded like English. A few others because they sounded like names.”

     The knife eased up a bit. I could almost hear Akto thinking that part through.

     “Get up,” he said as he got off me. I took a couple of moments to catch my breath. I pushed myself up into a sitting position. I touched my throat and my fingers came away red from the trickle of blood. “You’re crazy. You’re fricking mad,” I said in a strangely dead and hoarse voice, looking at my fingers smeared with my blood. This was beyond unreal!

     Akto gave me a long, hard look. “What is ‘fricking’?” he asked.

     I could not believe his question. I squinted at him as he stood above me, his form silhouetted against the sun. “I say ‘frick’ instead of the f-word. And it’s none of your goddamn business!”

     “F-word?” he asked. This conversation was getting more and more surreal.

     “Fuck, man! I do not say ‘fuck’! Is that clear now? You understand?”

     “You should say ‘fuck’ when you feel like saying ‘fuck’ instead of saying stupid things like ‘frick’.” He dispensed this advice in a very matter-of-fact way, completely ignoring the fact that he had tried to kill me half a minute ago.

     “The man has a point,” the voice said, also rather matter-of-factly. I could not believe this bullshit!

     Akto offered me his hand, rather reluctantly. I refused to have anything to do with it. I glared at him as I continued to rub my throat.

     “I’m sorry,” he said with great difficulty, “It just felt suspicious when you used that word. I had not mentioned it, and there was no way that someone who did not know anything about the Way of the Word could have heard about the Wordscapist.” Akto looked straight into my eyes as he said these words. The words still sounded too much like an explanation and not enough like an apology. But it looked like the best I was going to get for almost having my throat cut out. I took his hand and pulled myself up. We settled down again, and picked up our bottles of beer, going back to swigging and staring at the sea, trying to pretend that nothing had happened.

     “Well, ask your questions,” he said after a while, “It’s obvious that you’re not a wordsmith. Not a good one at least. You let me get close enough to kill you, and your skin is not protected from my steel. No wordsmith worth his salt would have allowed that.”

     I digested that. Skin not protected from steel…poetic but scary. I had to figure out how to do this skin protection.

     “Well… so what is the Way of the Word?” I asked, absent-mindedly rubbing sand off my elbows.

     “You really do not know?” he asked, looking at me carefully. I kept up a deadpan expression and look back at him.

     “I still can’t make up my mind about you,” he continued, “You could be lying, but could just be really good at it…wordsmith good. I have a good nose for the gift, and I can feel it in you; strong. You have the stench of a wordsmith on you.” Akto fingered his knife as he looked at me. The sun was in my eyes as I looked at him, and I couldn’t figure out if he was staring at my eyes or my throat.

     “Akto, I do not know what you are talking about,” I said, keeping my voice cautiously steady, “That will not change, no matter what you think.”

     He gave it some thought, and then went on, “I’ll play along for now. I’ll answer your questions. But listen well, boy. If you are playing with Akto Loon, you will be skinned and fed into the meat grinder. You will be part of the hundreds of pink sausages we sell in our deli.”

     My stomach did a little flip at the thought of the sausages I had just had. I stopped myself from thinking about where that meat had come from. I gulped and managed an ‘appreciate it’.

     “I do not believe you’re taking this from a norm,” the voice sounded disgusted. “Shut up!” I retorted, careful to keep it in my head. I wanted to hear Akto talk. I wanted to try and make sense of all this.

     “For thousands of years, ever since Man discovered speech, there have been wordsmiths, those who can weave reality with words, and there have been norms, those who can’t. You are a norm, or at least, claim to be one. The wordsmiths follow what is called the Way of the Word; a world that is woven around the gift of the Word, and all that had to do with it.”

     I felt my stomach dropping as I heard the words. Weaving reality with words…that sounded a lot like what I did with the strange warp. I had never stopped to consider the implications of what I wrought as changes to reality. But it sure sounded like it. It was confirmed now, I definitely was a wordsmith! I could not let Akto know! He would kill me!

      “Hallelujah! The boy realises he’s a wordsmith!” the voice exclaimed in mock glee.

      Once again, I let the voice be. However, the voice soon reaffirmed my suspicions. Wordsmith. I tasted it in my head. It felt right. Wordsmith. I could do this later. I had to come up with a reaction and quick. Akto was looking at me strangely.

      “Considering I know nothing about the Way of the Word, I guess I am not a wordsmith. So I would be a norm?” I was desperately trying to avoid becoming a long string of sausages.

     “Norm, a normal. Wordsmiths are abnormal, freaks,” Akto explained. “When nature goes crazy, it allows some men and women to meddle with it. That is what wordsmiths are. Dew sensed it in you, and though I don’t have the curse, I can feel it in you too. There is a small chance that you are a cipher; a wordsmith who has not been discovered by the Guild. In that case you are not lying, and I will not kill you.” Akto said this with his by-now-familiar deadpan expression, looking me straight in the eyes. “But then, ciphers are usually not so strong. Dew made you out to be the most powerful wordsmith she had ever seen. With that kind of power, a cipher would plain explode, not knowing how to control the power and channel it.”

     A cipher. There. I had found another word that described me in this crazy world. The Guild, whatever that was, had definitely not discovered me. And I was beginning to realise that I was most definitely a wordsmith. There was some comfort in that. But I could not celebrate yet. I had to find out more. I decided to bluff some more. “First you tell me that I am a wordsmith. Then I am a cipher,” I almost shouted at Akto, getting a little aggressive, “Next you will be calling me the chosen one or something. Akto, do me a favour. Why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell me what this Guild does. Also, tell me what a wordsmith is, especially considering you think I am one.”