“My eyes . . .” he said, and then the room was spinning. Everything went nightish, but the noisemaker’s hum continued. His face and shoulder pained him sharply just before he passed from consciousness.
Andrius came back to himself slowly. He was hot—burning up. He could feel the sweat beaded on his arms as he opened his eyes. He was in his bed, on top of the blankets.
In his daze, none of this made less sense than the Prophet, who was seated at the foot of his bed, listening.
“To be fair,” the Prophet began, “you said that you were up for a little walk.”
He smiled, and in spite of himself, Andrius chuckled. He quickly regretted it. His throat was like fire.
“Father,” he wheezed. His voice was scratchy and hoarse. “Do I have the disease?”
He rose and sat beside Andrius. “No, my son. No, the disease kills very quickly. You were inoculated when you were born, besides. None here may ever fall prey to it again because of the cure.”
Andrius nodded. The Prophet tilted his head.
“You do have a nasty fever, however. How are you feeling?”
“I’m not sure . . . It’s like—”
“You’ll feel better soon. I’m sure of it. Andrius, tell me. What did the book say?”
“The book?”
The Prophet lowered his voice.
“You know the book I speak of, my son. Before you passed out. I hate to press you like this, but it is very important.”
And then Andrius remembered. He could recall its shape in his mind.
“I don’t know.”
“You said it wasn’t empty.”
“It wasn’t, but . . . the writing was different. It wasn’t made for fingers. I don’t know what it said.”
The Prophet, who had been leaning forward, now sat erect and nodded knowingly. “It was made for eyes.”
Andrius coughed. It was a bad spell that lasted nearly two whole minutes. He thought that he might vomit, but there was no food for his stomach to expel.
“I’m sick, Father.”
“Of course. You shall be cared for. I will send up Solveiga to attend to your needs.” He stood, then fished the big skeleton key out of his sleeve. “Andrius, do you think you might be able to figure out what those books mean?”
Andrius was feeling faint. He could hardly keep his eyes open.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” the Prophet repeated, and then he laughed. He lay the skeleton key on the table beside Andrius’s bed. “When you feel up to it,” the Prophet said, “find out if you can. Do not allow anyone else inside the sacred chamber. It’s only for the special ones, Andrius.”
“Special ones?”
“People like me and you.” The Prophet patted his head. “Get some rest. You must be hungry. I’ll send for Solveiga.”
Andrius tried to thank him, but a violent fit of coughing robbed him of words. When he was through, the Prophet was gone.
The sun was silent and no one stirred. It must have been the middle of the night, and from the sound of it, a bad storm. Winter had arrived early this year, and it had arrived with a vengeance.
Andrius’s teeth chattered as he descended the cold, marble steps. He pulled his bristling fur coat tighter, wishing that he had worn shoes.
A shaking hand felt for the lock, then inserted the Prophet’s key, and just like that Andrius was inside the secret chamber again, this time fully awake and aware. He bent down to pick up his wooden pitcher, then entered the room, closing the door behind him.
He felt along the dead walls, whispering of memory and secrets. His hand touched the protrusion, and the nightishness was driven away. There was nothing hidden from Andrius’s eyes.
“Where do I start?” he wondered aloud. Shelves and shelves lined the room, filled with strange objects. Some he recognized—a child’s ball, some sort of six-stringed instrument, and lots of books—but most of the objects were foreign to him.
He meandered through the aisle, unable to decide where to begin. He bent down to remove an open box from a bottom shelf and was baffled by the contents.
“What is this?”
He reached inside and removed a nightish, metallic rectangle, but it wasn’t metal exactly. It certainly wasn’t wood.
“The whole box is filled with them . . .”
He dug through the box of small rectangles. Some were encased in a sticky material of various notes. There were markings on the front and back. He held the rectangle up to his face.
The pattern was beautiful. Seven shapes in a neat row.
“I haven’t worked on my patterns since I got sick,” he said to himself. He felt strange about it. He made a mental note to get back to them as he let the rectangle fall from his hand.
In all, a confusing and rather uninteresting box.
A thought stopped Andrius as he was reaching up to another shelf: the Prophet wants the book translated.
Andrius swallowed hard, feeling guilty for having been distracted. There would be plenty of time to explore. He looked toward the central pedestal, upon which the Book of Emptiness rested.
The sun, or the sacred chamber’s false sun, sang particularly strong over the Book of Emptiness. It was large, ornate, primarily grassentree but bound with dirtyshoe straps of leather.
Reverently, he took a breath and touched the relic dating back to the time of Zydrunas himself. It was rough under his hands.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to read it,” Andrius whispered, but suddenly the fear in his chest was gone, as if some unseen thing had swept it away.
He took a deep breath and opened the book.
It was beautiful.
Complex and flowing markings scratched onto the page, nightish patterns on a milkoud background. Andrius ran his fingers over the writing. It was mostly flat. Nothing seemed punched out or raised, and there were only occasional dots. He turned the page to find the same situation repeated, only differently. He tried to read the dots, but there were too few and they were spaced too far apart. They made no sense.
Deep in thought, Andrius raised the wooden pitcher to his lips and took a drink. He pointed defiantly at the book.
“I’m going to figure you out.”
He set down his pitcher, pulled the fur up on his neck, and got to work.
Andrius’s failure was not for lack of effort. He stared at the scared pages for hours, trying to find any kind of a pattern. There was repetition occasionally, but he couldn’t figure out what it meant. The pages were turned first one way, then another, even upside down. It was like no writing Andrius had ever looked upon—if, in fact, it was writing at all.
Finally he retreated to his room to sleep. The sacred chamber was actually warmer than his bedroom, but he missed his covers.
Jehena brought him hot soup when he awoke, and then he returned to the sacred chamber to study again. Once more, the book made no logical sense.
He studied it intensely nonetheless. The Prophet had entrusted him with a task. He was one of the special ones. He could not fail.
Yet his fever caught up with him eventually, and racked by whole-body coughs, Andrius dragged himself wheezing back to bed, where he dreamed of his father Aleksandras, and he hoped that he was faring well through the storm.
He had other dreams too, but he did not remember them.
“. . . We have no news. How could we? The world—”
“Petras, listen to me—”
“The world is covered in snow. Do you want to go out and take a census?”
“No one is suggesting—”
Andrius woke up suddenly, feeling groggy. He kept his eyes closed. People were arguing in hushed voices outside of his room.
“You were suggesting, just this moment, Tadas. He almost died, and you would have him do it again.”
“Preparations . . .”
“We can’t help that now,” the voice said curtly. Andrius recognized the Regent of Stone—his Regent. Andrius opened his eyes. Petras continued. “We could not
have known winter would come so soon. When the weather breaks, we will—”
“Who almost died?”
The two men stopped. Petras and Tadas, the Regent of Brick, tilted their ears when Andrius spoke. He was sitting up in bed, leaning to look out the door.
“Andrius?” Tadas asked hesitantly.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I shouldn’t have interrupted. I just heard that someone almost died. Who was it?”
Petras mopped his brow.
“It was you, Andrius. You almost died of cold. Even now, I am told that your fever persists.”
Andrius reached up and touched his own forehead. It was hot. His hand came away with sweat.
“I don’t know much about diseases . . .” Andrius replied.
“Fevers kill, Andrius,” Petras said gravely. He grabbed Tadas’s arm and squeezed tightly. “That’s why you have to stay in bed, where it is warm and we can take care of you.”
“He doesn’t have to—”
“I don’t think that is your decision, Tadas!” Petras said abruptly.
Andrius was confused. He felt very small.
Tadas sighed. “Yes, Petras, you’re right. But you don’t need to be so morbid. Andrius is . . . unique. A fever won’t rob us of him. And we’ll find out how much of the village is dead when the sun comes out again.”
Andrius slowly laid back on his pillow and tried to shut out the noise. The two men continued to bicker softly about the winter’s toll on the village and what should be done.
It had been well over a week since anyone had gone outside.
The air was cool all around him as Andrius ran his eyes over the text of the Book of Emptiness for the thousandth time. No epiphany seemed forthcoming.
He recognized patterns, but then they would change. It made very little sense.
There was one symbol that he was fairly certain to be an “a,” and another that was either an “o” or an “i” if he was doing this right, but he wasn’t sure.
He thought of Milda. She would be able to help, but she would not be allowed inside the chamber. She wasn’t one of the special ones.
“She’s special to me,” Andrius muttered. A fit of coughing took him then, and he sank to the floor. The weight of his task sat heavy on his shoulders. “How can I do this?” He shook his head. “It’s impossible.”
The grassentree book sat upon its stand in an impenetrable aura of mystery. It was so long and foreign; the thought of ever trying to understand it filled Andrius with despair.
He put his head in his hands. He wanted to cry, but nothing came. Not long after, the familiar cloak of sleep began to descend upon him, and he was whisked from the world.
When he woke up he was shivering, but he did not want to leave.
Andrius stood up and shook out his chilled limbs. He took a few steps, and then his eyes lighted upon the shelf of lesser books of emptiness. He gravitated toward them.
There were so many of them. He reverently removed a thick hardcover book from the second shelf. It had the same kind of markings as the Book of Emptiness and a pattern on the front. There were two men screaming on top of something in the water, like a house. A monster was emerging from the river at them, milkoud teeth matching its milkoud skin. Andrius could not stop staring at it.
“I could put people in my patterns . . .” he whispered to himself. He would work on his patterns today. He was decidedly inspired. Maybe he would even make one like the front of this book.
Andrius looked at the milkoud monster and wondered if it lived beyond the barriers of their civilization, in the Regions of Death. There was no way to know for sure.
He was moving to replace the book when a glance through the gap broke his concentration. Something rested against the wall, on the other side of the bookcase.
“Is that what I think it is?”
But it would have been too incredible.
The book went back into its slot, and Andrius made his way around the back of the line of shelves, stepping over dilapidated boxes.
He gasped.
There it was—right where Andrius had noticed it. It was kind of fuzzymum in note, but bands of skyhigh abounded in many places, and a patch of nightish and milkoud crowned the top, near the handle.
It was Daniel’s backpack. Daniel from across the fence—or the crazy man named Drunas, as the Prophet had said.
“They told me he ran away . . .” Andrius bent down to touch the smooth material. Something wasn’t making sense, but then he had a thought that explained everything. His face grew animated as he stood upright.
“Daniel?” he whispered, and then he listened to the silence of the sacred chamber. His smile faded as he listened. “Daniel?” he said again, louder this time. It was a large room but not that large.
“He must be away right now,” Andrius said. “He’s living down here.”
He looked around, trying with all of his might to imagine how Daniel could have accomplished such a task. His long disappearance from the village was starting to make sense—though Andrius wondered how he got his food. Maybe he was stealing from the kitchen.
Andrius didn’t care. He was excited to talk with him again, and the Prophet would be relieved to know he was found.
For the moment, however, Daniel seemed to be absent. Andrius looked all around the chamber, but he could find no other signs of the man with eyes like his own.
He was drawn to the bookshelf again. This time he bent down to examine the bottom row. The books here looked different from the others. They were taller and skinnier and made out of a different kind of material.
Andrius selected a milkoud volume and set it on the floor, sitting down cross-legged to analyze it. It was much different from the others. It had been heavy for such a small book, and it was covered in patterns. It had the strange writing on it as well, but instead of just nightish, the markings were sudaisy, bloodnote, and skyhigh.
“Maybe you’ll be easier to figure out,” Andrius mumbled. He was curious, but not optimistic. He grabbed the corner of the cover and opened the book.
It was beautiful, breathtaking. Spread across both pages was such a pattern! Grass and hills and trees and a herd of sheep grazing by a fence. Underneath several parts of the pattern were the markings, but in short bursts—not like the other books of emptiness that went on and on.
On the right side of the book were boxes in a row, from the top of the page to the bottom, each bearing the face of a different kind of animal. Andrius scratched his head.
He grabbed the book by both sides and picked it up, then dropped it in terror as an unearthly voice came forth from the book.
“Sheep! Baaah!”
“Agh!”
Andrius turned and ran, accidentally ramming his knee against a large black box. He winced, then ducked behind the obstruction and peered over the top.
The book was still there, lying face down. It wasn’t talking anymore.
Andrius’s heart was racing and his breath came in gasps, then in a violent cough.
When it subsided, he peered over the top of his bunker again.
“Who was that?” he demanded. No reply seemed forthcoming. The book had not moved.
He looked around.
“It’s mean to scare people.”
The room seemed to be vacant. Andrius was its only occupant. Yet he had heard a voice.
Slowly, tentatively, and without ever taking his eyes off of the book, Andrius approached.
Nothing happened. The false suns continued to whine overhead as they sang over the room.
Andrius leaned over to touch the book, but the voice did not speak again.
Warily, he turned it upright and sat down, spreading the book over his lap. He studied it closely, looking first at the pattern, then up and down the line of animal boxes.
There was a horse, then a chicken, then a fox, a pig, a sheep, a cow, and then a man wearing a straw hat.
Andrius stared for a long time, but nothing happened. He began to calm down, e
ventually laughing to himself.
He grabbed the edges of the book to hold it up once more as he reassured himself.
“My fever must be worse than I thought. My imagination—”
“Sheep! Baaah!”
“Agh!”
Andrius kicked back violently at the mysterious voice, launching himself into a metal shelf and flinging the book away. He screamed again and covered his head as a box fell from the shelf, bumping his shoulder on the way down.
He curled into a tight ball and held himself, trying to hide. He waited, trying not to focus on the pain in his head, back, and shoulder. He listened.
Silence.
“Hello?” He waited. No one was speaking.
The box blocked his eyes from the rest of the chamber, so after a while he pushed it a few inches out of the way and looked around carefully.
The book had landed across the room by the closed chamber door, still face down.
Andrius took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then he pushed up from the ground. He crept over to the book and picked it up, not bothering to sit this time. As he held it up once more, he flinched but did not drop it.
“Sheep! Baaah!”
Andrius lifted his thumb, then coughed a few times. He let his thumb press against the book again.
“Sheep! Baaah!”
He moved his hand and saw a sheep’s head in the little box he had been touching.
“Sheep,” Andrius repeated, looking at the markings under the sheep, then back to the pattern inside the box. “What kind of a book is this?” He turned it over, but the back appeared unremarkable, though it had more notes than most of the other books.
He looked down the line of animal faces again, hovering his thumb over the sheep. Slowly, he pressed down.
“Sheep! Baaah!”
“I don’t know how you’re doing this,” Andrius said quietly, “but I think I know what you’re doing . . .”
Taking a deep breath, Andrius shifted his grip and held a thumb over the chicken.
“Chicken! Cluck cluck cluck!”
There were markings under the chicken, different from those under the sheep.
He turned the page and pressed down again.
For Whom the Sun Sings Page 17