Page 42 of Fractured
Something moved to the far right, close to the very edge of the built-in shelf. A book with a slim spine. Its dark blue cover wasshimmering,and it was vibrating in place.
I’d lie if I said I wasn’t scared shitless, but only for a moment. My legs carried me forward, and I didn’t allow myself to think at all until I was in front of it.
The book stopped vibrating, and the shimmer on it faded away right in front of my eyes. By the time I grabbed it and pulled it from the shelf, it looked like every other book in this place.
Until I opened it.
Thick yellowish pages were full of symbols I didn’t understand, written in black ink. They were big and they were unlike anything I’d seen before, but…
“It isn’t empty.” This fucking book wasn’t empty.
“Sit,” Vair said, and I did. Without thinking, I pulled back the chair near the table and I sat on the dust-covered cushion, the book in front of me, my eyes on those symbols.
“What is this language?” I whispered, and the lynx jumped right over the table. It didn’t scare me at all—I was too focused.
“Old Veren,” he said, and I could have guessed it myself. The first language of Verenthians.
I looked up at Vair who’d sat near my left side as he looked at the next page I turned—full of the same symbols in the same handwriting. “Can you read it?”
“No,” he said, and Iflinched.
“So, what now? Do we have like a dictionary or something here? English to Old Veren, and vice versa, or something like that?” I looked behind at the shelf. “Do we?”
Yes, I was askingthe roomthat.
Nothing moved. Nothing vibrated. No book shimmered that we could see, and we waited a good moment, too.
“Guess not,” I muttered and turned back to the symbols. “All right, maybe I can decipher this. These kind of look likeHs…”
I picked up an old pencil I found discarded at the edge of the table, the lead tip rounded, well used, and I unrolled a scroll. They were all empty, and I doubted anybody would mind if I wrote on them. Vair said nothing as he watched me, and so I began to try to identify the symbols that looked close enough to the alphabet I knew.
My mind worked, and I actually believed that I could decipher whatever was written in these pages like this, that I could pick apart the letters I thought I understood, then guess the words they were trying to make accurately.
Of course, Icouldn’t.No matter how hard I tried, and howrelievedI was to have something concrete to do for once, I couldn’t just pick letters and try to make up words from scratch. It didn’t work that way.
That’s why I ended up throwing the pencil across the room in frustration, my tongue between my teeth so I wouldn’t scream.
The lynx didn’t make a single sound, only sat there and watched me torturing myself, cursing under my breath, trying to calm myself down.
“What the hell—what the hell—what do youwant from me?!” I spit—at the book, at the lynx, at the whole damn room.
Why was I there? What the hell did these…thingswant from me?!
Nobody said a single thing. Nothing made a sound. The starlight-colored flames burned around the torches, and I was left staring at that book without a clue what to make of any of this.
More.There had to be more books in this room that weren’t empty. There had to beonethat could tell me what the hell this room wanted me to know.
“What else? What more do you have here?Whyare you keeping me here—what do you want me to know?!”
Again, well aware that I was trying to argue with a damnroomhere, but things were as they were, and nobody bothered to answer me. Even the lynx had decided to stand perfectly still now as he watched me, like he wasn’t alive at all.
Cursing under my breath, I slammed both hands on the table with all my strength, hoping to release some tension.
But my right hand fell right in the middle of those thick yellow pages full of symbols, and a split second before I pulled it up again, I saw the movement.
It was small, and it was very possible that I just made it up, but the ink had moved. The ink of those damn symbols moved when my hand was on that paper, and now my heart took a long pause, and I didn’t breathe at all.
Vair leaned closer, sniffing the edges of the book, which made me think he’d seen it, too.
