Ch8

A Dead Language and a Priceless Book

Corinne wasn't in school for the rest of that week, and Aidan worried about her. That night at the hospital was haunting him. He couldn't get those words out of his mind. Amin naa maranwelle. Amin naa irmolle. What did they mean? Could they be just gibberish? And if they were, why did they give him a feeling like there was some hidden secret within him? Trying not to think about it seemed to spur the thoughts even more. Something inside him wanted him to pursue this, but he didn't know what he was pursuing or even why he was.

That Friday afternoon, Aidan was home watching TV in his room, flipping through the channels and wondering where HBO was. There was a knock on the door downstairs and he crept to his hallway to eavesdrop. His father answered.

"Hello, can I help you with something?" he asked.

The man standing before him was big and bulky, dressed in mostly leather and a bandanna. He answered him in a gruff voice. "Yeah, I'm looking fer the Sheep."

"Sheep?" asked Mr. Wittmeyer, surprised. "I'm sorry, I don't know anything about any sheep."

"Er... he goes by the name of Aidan?"

"Oh! You mean my son! Honey," he called to Mrs. Wittmeyer. "Would you get Aidan? One of his new friends is here." He turned back to the biker. "May I ask why you call him Sheep?"

"Er... I don't think ya'd understand." He turned away, looking up to the driveway where his bike and a girl waited for him.

Mr. Wittmeyer noticed her hair. "My, she certainly has interesting hair, doesn't she?"

"That ain't all that's interesting, believe me!" the biker replied. "She's got an ass on her like you wouldn't believe. God. And she's fantastic in the sack."

"I beg your pardon?" asked Mr. Wittmeyer, shocked.

Aidan came rushing down the stairs to stop the conversation from going any further. "Hey, Dad, I can take it from here, okay?"

"Uh... yeah," replied his father as Aidan pushed him back into his office.

Aidan looked at Alex as his father disappeared and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"She wants her bike back," Alex said with an undertone of detest in his voice. He pointed to Corinne who sat sideways on Alex's bike kicking random pebbles.

"Uh... her bike?"

"Yeah... you have it. She says you put it in the back of yer truck when you forced her to the hospital."

"Oh! Right! I forgot I had it!" Aidan thought about how he'd found it in his truck and put it in the garage for safe keeping until he could return it to her. Then it occurred to him: he could get back at her with her bike. "Uh, can I talk to her?"

Aidan pushed past Alex before he could stop him. He walked up the walkway to her. She looked surprised to see him. She stood and put on her most contemptible face. "Afternoon, Corinne. I hear you want your bike back."

"Yeah, that's right. What's the problem?"

"Well, you see the problem is I don't want to give it back."

"Eh? Excuse me?" she asked.

"You see, I never got my winnings from the bet we made at the game. I would have held up my end of the bargain if--"

"You bloody rigged the game! I'm not paying up my end of the deal unless it was fairly won!" she screamed.

"I completely understand. But see, to me, that bet was won by me and no matter how hard you try, you can't ever prove that I had a hand in what happened -- which I didn't. So, until you pay up, I keep the bike."

"I knew someone like you wouldn't show any compassion unless there was something in it for you. You had this all planned, didn't you!"

"Actually, to be honest I just came up with it now." He smiled triumphantly.

"You asshole! That's blackmail! You can't do that!"

"Uh yes I can. But, if you won't do the whole cheerleader bit, then here's another offer: you tell me exactly what you said to me Monday night and why you kept calling me Alexander and then I'll consider giving it back."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I didn't say shite to you."

"Uh, yes you did, and I want it translated or else I keep the bike."

"Listen, mate, I'm telling you I have no idea what you're talking about!" She glared at him, nostrils flaring. "Fine. Keep the bike! I was thinking about getting a new one anyhow." She signaled to Alex and they got on his bike, speeding off into the distance.

There was only one thing to do now: talk to Herbert. Maybe he would know what was going on.

Not far from Aidan's house, Verdai and the old woman were sitting in an apartment discussing some secret plan. "But, Hodoer, who was that boy we saw her with? He looks familiar."

"He was no one. Remember, she is all we are after. We must get in touch with her before it's too late. She must not be swayed by the knowledge of her previous life. It is still possible that her powers could return as well. The order's laws were not all-powerful no matter how strongly they believed they were. She is living proof."

Verdai -- her hood down exposing long blonde hair and gray eyes -- sat flipping through a large, torn, old leather-bound book. "How could they have bestowed so much responsibility on such a young child? They should have known what would happen. And with that man around to sway her--"

"Enough, Verdai! We cannot change the past; we can only prevent the future." The old woman pulled back her hood to reveal a young face with brown eyes, yet her hair was as silver as the ring on her finger. She closed her eyes and began to rock back and forth, trying to put herself in a trance.

Verdai stopped suddenly on a page with a drawing of two people: one was the same face she had searched out of the crowd; the other was a man whose face matched with the boy she'd seen with the girl. "Hodoer! Could it be that he would come back as well? Could he follow her soul here just as we have?"

Snapping out of whatever trance she had reached, she whipped her head around to look at Verdai. "There is always a possibility of anything, Verdai. Remember that anything is possible. But why do you ask? I didn't think that he would be here as well."

Verdai handed her the book and pointed to the two faces. "This is the girl we have been following, and each time we see her she is followed by a mysterious boy. But look -- is the resemblance not justification enough?"

The old woman stared at the pictures in awe. "You are right, Verdai. If we could follow, so could others. We may already be too late."

Aidan went quickly to Herbert's house to discuss the weird occurrences. Herbert directed him to his room upstairs in the corner of the house. "Now what's all this about speaking in tongues?" he asked, shutting the door behind him.

"Well, after I brought her to the hospital, she started calling for Alexander, but Alex was right there. It was like she was calling me Alexander. But who uses the full name anyway?"

"But what about the different language? Was it gibberish or actual words?"

"Well, I don't really know. I could only decipher a few words that she repeated. They were 'Amin naa maranwelle' and 'Amin naa irmolle.' When she said them... I don't know. It was weird. I felt... different."

Herbert's brow furrowed and he began to think. "I think I know it..."

"You know the language? I wasn't just imagining it?"

"No, but we have to be sure. We have to go to the city library to be certain."

They took Aidan's truck to the center of town where they found the library. "Where are we going to find stuff on that language? I've never heard anything like it before."

"Of course not. It's a dead language. It hasn't been spoken for hundreds of years -- possibly thousands." Herbert led Aidan down some dark stairs to a lower basement level of the building. Hardly anyone was there.

"Where are we going?"

"Shh, you'll see in a minute." The entire floor was filled with books that were older than any Aidan had ever seen. "I used to come down here just to read about old myths and legends about this country. You wouldn't believe some of the folklore in these books." He stopped at a particular shelf and bent down to the bottom, picking out a black leather book with silver lettering. It seemed to be in immaculate condition. There was no dust and the binding was as perfect as it would have been at its creation. "This book caught my eye one day when I noticed it was the only one with no dust."

"Yeah, I see that. Do many people read it?"

"No, that's the weird part. I don't think anyone knows it's here. And look at this," Herbert said, opening to a particular page. "There's a bit cut out and another book is inside it."

"Why hide a small book like that in another?"

"I think it holds some special significance to whoever owned it first. There's no title, but read some of the pages." He handed the book to Aidan who flipped through.

"It looks like a school book for languages, like it translates from one to English on each page. But... after a certain point, everything is in that other language."

"Exactly. I think this book taught people how to speak the dead language. It even has spells -- as if it were a book for sorcerers and such."

Aidan was impressed. "But what about that stuff I heard Corinne saying?"

"Tell me it again," said Herbert, flipping to the back of the book.

"Amin naa maranwelle and amin naa irmolle."

"Right... here. Amin means 'I' or 'me'. Naa is the conjugation of the verb 'to be,' and the last ones... maranwelle is a compound word -- I think it means something like 'destiny.' Irmolle is another compound meaning something like 'desire.' That's weird, don't you think?"

"Why would she be saying 'I am destiny?'"

"Wait... lle... that word by itself means 'you' or 'your.' She was saying 'I am your destiny.'" Herbert looked at Aidan in wonder. "Now I'm confused. You say she was talking to you or was it just the fever talking?"

"I think it may have been a little bit of both. How would she know the language?"

"She doesn't. You said it yourself, she didn't know what you were talking about when you asked her today. It couldn't be coincidence that she would form whole sentences like that using just gibberish. The probability is astronomical. This is something bigger." Herbert put the books back and went searching through the other shelves in that area.

"What are you looking for now?" asked Aidan. "I thought the language was all we were concerned about."

"No, not anymore. If she knows the language in her subconscious but not her conscious, then there's got to be something bigger -- something more powerful -- in control here." He reached the corner of the room and began tapping floorboards. A hollow sound resonated from one, which he quickly pulled from the floor, reaching into a deep hole. Aidan joined him at floor level and peered into the dark hole -- he couldn't see anything. "Reach in and help me."

"What? Wait! I don't even know what you're reaching in for!"

"It's a stack of papers, like an unbound book. They're quite heavy, so an extra hand would be much appreciated."

"Fine," said Aidan reaching in. He felt around, grabbed hold of Herbert's arm and followed it down to the stack he held. He grabbed the opposite corner and said, "Got it. Pull."

Lifting it from its hiding place, Aidan saw it was exactly like an unbound book. In fact, it was as if someone had made full-sized copies of every page of a great book and stashed it here to hide. "What is this?"

"I found a book about three years ago collecting dust over on the other side of the library. It was so interesting; it had ancient stories of kings, magicians, and strange creatures that seemed like they were straight from an overactive imagination. In fact, that's exactly what I thought it was for a while -- just a fairy story, right? One story in particular was fantastic: it spoke of a forbidden love that ended in tragic death--"

"I don't want to hear about the story, Herb. Just tell me what this all had to do with that language."

"Well, they used it. They talk about special incantations and spells and stuff. The exact ones in that book. But the reason why this story is significant is because out of all the others, this one actually seemed like it could have happened. There are even some pictures of different characters. It's all treated like a history. It even has a group of different writers all in succession of one another. Here, you take it for a while and read some. You'll see what I mean."

"But why? If it's just some fairy tale, then why would it have any importance with our lives?"

"Oh, fine. If you need it spelled out for you, let's go back to my house."

And so they did. They returned to Herbert's room to group up around the book and to have him explain everything in detail to Aidan. "So why is this so vital?"

"Because of a few things. One: I had only gotten to the middle of the book when these people come in asking about it. They want to take it and destroy it. These people -- both women -- are dressed in long black robes with hoods covering their faces. I'm thinking "Who the hell dresses like that nowadays?" But they insist on finding this book -- which I discovered is an only copy. So, I copied it quickly without anyone's knowledge and stashed it before they destroyed the book. These people are strange -- I mean really strange. They're never seen in public places or in crowds or nothing. They never remove their hoods, and they never go to the same place twice.

"After they took the book, though, I read the story about this mystical Child Priestess who has special powers and is part of this magical order of priestesses and all that. She dresses exactly like the women who came to take the book. She was very influential to the younger priestesses who came to defy their elders later on. Rules were broken and separate sects were created following separate sets of regulations. It's amazing. The two women took the book the week after I copied it, but I don't think they destroyed it."

"And the second thing?"

"The second: One of the characters -- he's known as The Deceiver -- was called Alexander," said Herbert expecting this to be earth shattering news.

Aidan rolled his eyes. "A mere coincidence like everything else. So Corinne knows the language and called her boyfriend by his full name in the peak of a fever. I highly doubt that this bullshit has any real significance to us."

"Then why the hell would those women take the only copy of the book out of the library?"

"They wanted it for their own collection. They like fiction and fantasy."

"And their disguises?"

"Halloween costumes. They were going to some sort of costume party or something." Aidan crossed his arms.

"I really think you should look into this more, man. At least it would explain things a little."

"But what does it explain? Corinne speaks in tongues and starts yelling out for a man in a book? Does she even know where the library is in this town?"

"Well, I see your point. Just take it for a while, okay? Read through it? Maybe it would help you keep your parents off your back. They think you're doing homework and you're really just dicking around."

"Fine. I'll read it." Aidan sighed. He didn't understand it. At first, the way Herbert had sounded so interested, he thought that maybe he could help. But now that thought was dashed and Aidan had homework assignments from his friend. He returned home and collapsed into his bed. What good was reading a book? That never solved any of his problems before.

On to the next chapter!

I've had enough...

<<<- Previous

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws