Airel - Aaron Patterson [88]
I put the book on my lap and opened the front cover. There on the flyleaf were the softly glistening letters of the name of Kreios, fading as if they were not sure if they wanted to be there or disappear completely.
I turned the page, but it was completely blank. I turned to the next, and the next, until I was flipping through the book, beginning to feel either dumb or hopeless. The voice came to me so loudly that I almost jumped up: “Stop.” Again, I heard it: “Stop.” This time the voice was softer. I knew who had said it. She was becoming so familiar that it was getting difficult to tell the difference between her voice and my own.
I took a few deep breaths, calming myself, and tried to respond as best I could. “Okay. Just what am I supposed to do with an empty book?” I cracked it open again, this time to the middle, and looked up at the huge tree standing guard over me.
“Close your eyes and search with your heart.” I shut my eyes, trying to clear everything out. I opened them after a while and looked at the textured creamy white page. Still nothing. I persisted, though, and began to see that there was something there. I couldn’t distinguish it, but it was there, hidden with great care.
I touched the page. My hands trembled. In the sunlight, if I held a single page open, I could see the imperfections in it. To me, imperfections went beyond character or charm. Imperfections were what made something real. I felt almost as if I had died and gone to heaven. Perhaps I have.
Letters seemed to grow from my touch on the page. Like the flyleaf, they appeared and disappeared as if underwater, or as if they were being viewed through a cloud. As they became more recognizable, though, I could see plainly that they were not English. Of course not! It made perfect sense, but it frustrated me.
Though you see though a glass darkly…
I closed my eyes again and focused on the positives. I thought of the day I had first seen Michael Alexander; how gorgeous he was, how he said my name, how we had so much in common with each other, how he seemed to accept me for who I was. The real question was, though, precisely who had I been? And much more importantly, who was I now? I well enough knew what Kale had told me …and I was sitting in an impossible place reading an impossible book with impossible figures on the page that probably spoke about impossible things…which were impossible for me to read.
I opened my eyes to find that I had been crying, and that a single tear had dropped onto the page, soaking in instantly with a rainbow of color. I was so worried that I had somehow destroyed an irreplaceable book that I couldn’t see straight—butI realized that I was able to understand the text on the page now. It was a smooth script, a beautiful hand, and the ink was so dark and crisp that I thought I might be sucked into the world within the words. The world I had known seemed so thin. Now, as I read, I was sure that it was somehow. Thin—and unreal.
B.C. 1250; New Moon full and low.
The battle ahead weighs upon my mind as a heavy stone. Part of me desires nothing more than to flee, taking Eriel as far away from the Seer as possible. But another part of me desires nothing more than to remove the Seer’s head from his body and place it on a pike on the highest hill for all to see. How is it possible for evil to so completely fill up such an empty vessel? There seems to be no end to this madness. I must take my stand against him, though I remain uneasy. I trust El; but it is difficult to do so. Though the Sword of Light has returned to me, I find no rest for my tortured soul.
Kreios
It was a journal. Kreios. I had heard that name when I had touched the Book the first time, too, as if the Book spoke for itself as to who owned it. I had been given the secret history of his life. I flipped through