Chapter 1
The book was heavy. That meant that it was important. The weight pulled down on his arms and made his muscles tingle with a thousand little pricks. The huge volume of a book was open in roughly the middle. He held it on the palms of his two open hands. His fingers spread out over the front and back covers giving him more support. He could feel the texture of the leather, rough and worn. It was the feel of protection to the hundreds of delicate pages within. It was the first time he had lifted the book. He had hefted it from the stand where it had lain every day for as long as he could remember. He wasn’t supposed to lift it off from the stand, but had felt compelled. The feeling was one of empowerment. So much collected knowledge was held in his hands. He felt the power of it. And at the same time he felt a knot forming in his stomach. It was the nervous feeling of impending danger. What if he were to drop it? What if his father were to walk in and catch him in his disobedience? He slowly and delicately replaced the book on the carved wooden stand making sure that he lined the edges up with its outline of dust, to conceal evidence of his tampering. With the book safely back in its place, the knot in his stomach untied itself and the taste of fear in his mouth went away. But the feeling of power did not go. He could feel the magic of the book flowing through his veins. It must have seeped into his finger tips and from there into his blood. He decided that it was his imagination that gave him the feeling of being full of magic. His mind was only playing tricks on him. He turned around and took in his surroundings with new perspective.
He was in the study, or the library. It actually could have been an apothecary or physician’s office. There was a desk covered in papers and books in one corner. There were bookshelves covering four of the six walls of the L shaped room. They were full of leather bound volumes displaying names of every subject imaginable. Some had not been used in years, others in decades, it seemed. There was dust covering many of the books and the smell of dust was one of the many that occupied the room. There was also a table in one corner that was covered in a various bottles and glass containers, there were tubes connecting some of the bottles as well as pots and clay jars some with lids laying beside them. It could have passed for the laboratory of an alchemist. On the two walls around the table there were countless maps and diagrams hanging. They were pinned one on top of another in what must have resulted from a random frenzy of activity. They were organized by a mind thinking of a thousand things other than order. The floor was old and wooden and parts of it creaked under the weight of a walking. It had faded stains that had been worn into the wood by pacing feet. The boy’s eyes circled the room and took everything in, though he had seen it all a thousand times before. It was on the book that his eyes stopped and came to rest.
It lay on a wooden stand to the left of the desk. The workmanship of the stand was impressive. It was carved wooden column a foot and a half wide and a foot deep. The sides were covered in scenes of the kingdom’s past. Dragons, castles, strange ceremonies and people. As a very young child the boy had looked at the pictures for hours upon hours. They followed no pattern that he could identify, but were also not random. He often wondered at their significance. On the front in the middle of the right side was a keyhole. The boy had never seen what might be opened when a key was turned within it and didn’t know what might be inside. The top of the stand held the book, angled toward the reader. It was the perfect height for a man to read from while standing in front of the open book. For the boy it was nearly eye level. Without a stool he had to stand on tip toes to get a good look. He would rather pull up a stool to sit comfortably and read and look at pictures.
He found that the pictures were the most intriguing part. The words didn’t make any sense, there were so many that he didn’t know, strange words hard to pronounce. The pictures were easy though. There were diagrams and charts and drawings of plants and animals and their various parts. Even the letters that started each page were decorative and interesting; entangled vines and fairies, pictures of shields and swords, ships and serpents.
After returning the book to its proper place he began to flip listlessly through the pages. He didn’t really have any interest in what he was seeing; the feeling of power that came from having held the book was too distracting. His eyes were on the pages but not really seeing. He was simply staring blankly. But his eyes snapped into focus as his eyes noticed something that he had never seen before.
Tune in tomorrow as the story continues.
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