Head scratcher… head scratcher, indeed.
Michael has left a wooden sword leaning just beside my desk. It is in my best interest to pick it up when I rise to refill my coffee cup, lest I am defenseless against an imminent attack. Outside, the backyard is shaded beneath the canopy of a walnut tree. Moving patterns of electric blue sky wink between the leaves. It is hot. Michael and I should be at the beach, but there’s a book that needs to get written. There is so much to do. So much to tie up.
The messy baggage of the roommates of my mind… these characters of mine. I have shared the very small place that is my head with Loche, and Basil, and William Greenhame, and Albion, and Julia, and Helen for over twenty years now. Their stuff is scattered everywhere. I have Loche’s earliest thoughts, Basil’s first paintings, William’s history drawn from countless sources. There are so many pieces and parts that I have decided to include an appendices at the end of this final installment, The Shape of Rain. Call it excessive. Call it Tolkienesque. Call it what you want. All I know is—these things need a place. They need to stay.
In order to begin telling Loche’s story it was necessary for me to complete the back history of the Wyn Avuquain Immortal race, their belief systems and their heritage. At the same time it enabled me to offer the Pacific Inland Northwest of the United States a mythology of its own. Included in the appendices are maps, character lists, historical timelines, treatises on Immortal culture, charts outlining the Itonalya influence upon astrology as we know it, rules for the game of Shtan, and various definitions and footnotes.
Also, I’ve made room for a few of the earliest Itonalya folk tales—for example the Lay of Melithion and Endale which tells of the love story between the Earth and her guardian, the Moon.
The final section of the appendices is dedicated to the Itonalya language, Elliqui. Included are usage rules, grammar, pronunciation tables, letter and tone charts along with both English to Elliqui and Elliqui to English dictionaries. The effort is a culmination of work that I began, I think I can safely say, when I was fourteen. Since then, the language has grown considerably in both its depth and sophistication. But in the last decade the lexicon has taken on a life of its own. Words have begun to link larger meanings—metaphorical if not etymological.
FALL
Scarred, Stained and Perfect
The sun’s light slants and adds a little extra shadow to everything. Trees along the street explode into reds and golds. Mornings are brisk. Frost on my windshield.
Days roll together as I face the final few chapters not yet written. I rise before Michael to make his lunch. I brew coffee. I wake the boy and we wrestle into clothes, brush hair and teeth, and on the way to school discuss the finer points of swordplay, dragon culture, why leaves turn colors. When I return, I notice how the house looks more like a home. I’ve managed to pull together some furniture. There’s art on the walls. There are coats hung on pegs, clothes in the closets and things placed where things should be placed. At least for now.
Truth is, I don’t have any idea how to do this whole house/home thing. I don’t really understand how my furnace works, or how to fix a sink or if the sofa is really in the right place. And this thought occurs to me: there will always be loose ends. Each year, the leaves will pile up and they will need to be raked. The washer and dryer will break down. We’ll change the paintings on the walls and swap out the pictures on the shelves. There’s no end to what we’ll do here. Things will always be a little scarred, stained—and perfect.
I settle in behind my desk, scan emails, put fires out, then I fill the screens with the book. I read, edit, work a few sentences. I stand and pace. The coffee is bitter. I try a thread, pull it through the fabric of the story. It tangles an hour later—I pull it out—cut it—try another. Sometimes I move the story forward: Astrid Finnley to Venice—Loche through the gates of Wyn Avuqua in the year 1010AD. Fausto’s shop. Hours pass.
Truth is, I don’t have any idea how this book will end—not until I arrive there. Rain taps at the roof. In the back of the house I think I hear the bedroom door creak ever so slightly. The thought occurs to me that I’ve been listening to that recording voices saying, “Boy, there’s a lot of things to tie up,” over and over since I began Part Three, and now I suddenly question if this vein of logic is true. Do all stories have to end neat and tidy, wrapped with a bow? How tidy is a life after all? And how beautiful is the ragged hem that is our story? A rage and defiance rises up within me. Embrace the unexpected, and what is natural. Don’t over think. Let go and accept the chaos—take the non novel path—as in life, so too it is in fiction. “Yes!” I tell the Burrow. “Yes!” I shout at the lines of text on the screen. Maybe it is not about tying it all together, but rather, unraveling it—to find what is inside. Pull back layers. Find the floor.
When Michael bounds up to my desk with sword in hand, “Are you done yet, Dad? How does it end?” now for the first time since I began, I truly believe I have an answer for him. “Dad, how does it end?”
I tell him, “It ends scarred, stained and perfect.”
APPENDICES
With the recent discovery of historic Wyn Avuqua and its vast underground libraries of lore and history, the following collected material for this appendices, in comparison, will likely one day be seen as trivial, if not erroneous. However, until scholars deliver their findings from the Heron Atheneums, this material is meant to provide readers of The Newirth Mythology access to some of the available background and foundations of Itonalya culture in order to fill in and enrich Loche’s story. All the following information has been mined from three sources: the writings of Loche Newirth, the research of Dr. Astrid Finnley, and the Toele from Albion Ravistelle’s collection.
The enigmatic, supernatural writing of Loche Newirth and its effect on existence is questionably a problematic and delicate subject: a riddle not for the faint of heart (nor the impatient thinker). In an attempt to solve the riddle of Loche Newirth’s work, I have tried to learn as much as possible about his life and his art. Like his brother Basil Fenn, Loche kept his art secret. However, prior to writing Part One, The Invasion of Heaven, I was granted access to his collected notebooks and journals, most of which were recovered from Albion Ravistelle’s Venetian compound—and others that were still secure, deftly hidden by Loche himself within his modern castle in Sagle, Idaho. Numbering in the hundreds, some novel length, some only a few pages of scrawled notes and sketches, the books contain much concerning Itonalya history, linguistics and life stories of individual immortals living in different time periods and places all over the globe. There are several notebooks dedicated solely to Loche’s poems, while others were filled with maps, Wyn Avuquain heraldry and cultural mores. Even the Itonalya game of Shtan was contained within its own set of booklets. The Newirth canon was, of course, captured by Albion Ravistelle (a character he created—certainly one of many freakish happenings—see the first sentence of this paragraph). The work was purportedly studied by Albion, Dr. Marcus Rearden, and a few others in the course of events told in The Newirth Mythology. The Newirth canon, however, must be distinguished from the supernatural volume he produced known as The Journal or The Priest Lake Journal.
Photo courtesy of Allison Bogart from The Newirth Artifacts1, ©2017
The Journal of Loche Newirth (The Priest Lake Journal)
From the Albion Ravistelle Collection, Venezia, Italy.
By having access to this powerful work along with the rest of the Newirth canon, I managed to thread together a humble string of novels (The Newirth Mythology) to share Dr. Newirth’s tale, or, more accurately, to tell what was most important to him: a story about stories. But to this day, the effect of his words and how they have shaped reality is still perplexing—the lie awake at night kind of perplexing (again, see the first sentence to this paragraph).
After months of pouring over Loche’s poetry, histories and early Elliqui linguistics, all written prior to The Journal, I realized that I was searching for a kind of cy
pher—some key to the mystery that is Loche Newirth. It wasn’t until I finished Part Three, The Shape of Rain that the cypher appeared: Professor Astrid Finnley.
For a brief time it was believed that Loche’s canon and The Journal were the sole sources for Itonalya history—but soon after Dr. Marcus Rearden (to whom the work was dedicated) read The Journal, books on the subjects of Wyn Avuqua, lost immortal civilizations and Elliqui suddenly appeared in the market place. Stranger still, these subjects seemed to insert themselves into the consciousness and memory of a vast human (and immortal) collective—as if some vague knowledge of Wyn Avuqua has always been there—like Atlantis or Delphi. Largely regarded as pseudo-history, Itonalya myth found a group of impassioned voices. Over time enthusiasts began to uncover evidence and artifacts. Findings led to reports, reports to books, websites, et cetera. The search for the lost city of Wyn Avuqua captured the fascination of fringe writers as well as conspiracy theorists.
Photo courtesy of Jones, Johnston and Fryless (JJF) Helicopter Service, LTD.
Dig site at Wyn Avuqua, 2018. Upper Priest Lake, Idaho. USA.
It also attracted the talent of serious academics like Professor Astrid Finnley. Her early work has been published in over thirty countries and translated into twenty-five languages. Nearly all of her work has been centered on ancient myth (Greek, Roman, Sumerian, Celtic) and how those historic narratives still inform our current technological age. Dr. Finnley claims that she first learned about the Wyn Avuquain immortals when she was a girl and she did not take any of the stories seriously until she uncovered an Elliqui scroll during an archeological dig in Germany in 1992. Since then she has written three books on Itonalya culture.2 A portion of this appendices is drawn from Dr. Finnley’s thoughtful work.
Finally, the Toele (ancient story) has become known as the holy grail of Itonalya literature. Of course, that distinction has since been undercut by the incredible wealth of Itonalya lore recently uncovered within the Heron Atheneum at Priest Lake, Idaho.
Photo courtesy of Allison Bogart from The Newirth Artifacts, ©2017 Itonalya Toele #2
From the William H. Greenhame collection. The Burrow Museum, Cd’A, ID.
Nevertheless, for centuries it was rumored there were only two surviving texts from the fallen city. Albion Ravistelle’s coveted Toele came into his possession when he lived in London around 1300. Albion claims Eloise Smith (Alice of Bath) came upon the book during her overseas pilgrimages. According to Albion, Eloise would not divulge where or how she attained the book. The other Toele and its whereabouts have been unknown until now. After the entombment of Dr. Marcus Rearden, and the reconciliation between the Orathom Wis and Albion Ravistelle, the second Toele was revealed to be in the possession of William Greenhame. William claims that the book was willed to him in 1531 by his dear friend, the Immortal, Redairic Cedars. The story in brief: because Redairic failed to host a long-awaited and promised celebration, three disgruntled (rightfully so) and insidious revelers from the North brought their deadly grievance and challenge to Redairic’s house. Redairic and all of his followers were killed in the quarrel. Ironically, a year later, Redairic’s Toele was bequeathed to William at the party Redairic was meant to host.
The information contained in the Toele is extensive. I have included here mere seedlings that are pertinent and most hopefully, entertaining.
Since Part One and Part Two of The Newirth Mythology were published, there have been many requests for more information about Itonalya culture, both early, late and times in between; questions about Loche Newirth, his euprophecy3, his enigmatic place in existence, and most notably, the language of Elliqui. These appendices are meant to fulfill those requests. It is also my goal to provide a preview to the wealth of Itonalya knowledge now being unearthed at the ruins of Wyn Avuqua, and many other places around the globe. In the coming years I anticipate an explosion of new works on the ancient belief systems, culture and influence of immortal thought and perspective from the Wyn Avuquain Heron Atheneum. I look forward to delving deeper and learning more from all doing research on these topics.
Michael B. Koep
January, 2018
APPENDICES
Contents
I. Characters of the New Earth Mythology
II. Itonalya Myth: Of the Court of Thi and the making of Dellithion and Endale
i. Of Mighty Chalshaf, First Born
ii. Of Ashto The Timekeeper Summaries
iii. Of Agyar The Purifier
iv. Of Unlifso The Messenger
v. Of Shivtiris The Killer
vi. Of Cervalso The Seeker
vii. Of Ressca The Magician
viii. Of Fenor The Lover and Mellithions Return to the Sky Court of Dellithion Sky Charts
III. The Game of Shtan
IV. Miscellaneous Translations and Terms
i. Albion Ravistelle’s song
ii. Anglo Saxon Translations
iii. Encris
iv. Gavress Linnasisg
v. Rathinalya
V. Of Loche Newirth’s Poetry
VI. Elliqui: On Translation, Pronunciation and Use
i. Pronunciation
a. Consonants Tones i-iv
b. Vowels Tones v
ii. Using the Elliqui a. Writing
b. Tenses
c. Sentence structure
iii. The Written Tones (chart)
iv. The Elliqui Lexicons a. Pronunciation Key
b. English to Elliqui
c. Elliqui to English
APPENDIX I.
CHARACTERS
OF THE
NEWIRTH MYTHOLOGY
Alphabetical
What follows is a complete list of characters in The Newirth Mythology along with brief character descriptions. By accessing the list, readers risk spoilers. To avoid spoilers, please take note and proceed with caution when seeing this spoiler identifier: Δ.
Δ : spoiler ahead
i : The Invasion of Heaven
ii : Leaves of Fire
iii : The Shape of Rain
Ithea : mortal
Itonalya : immortal
Aethur • Δ iii, Ithea. The Elliqui name given to Loche Newirth by Queen Yafarra of Wyn Avuqua. The name means, new earth. (see Loche Newirth.)
Adamsman, Talan • iii, Itonalya. Orathom Wis. Born in Sicily sometime around 1900. His father was a merchant fisherman from Favignana. George Eversman found him when he heard the tale of a stout young Italian boy that survived a fishing accident. At twelve, Talan was yanked off the back of the boat by a tangled line. He was underwater for nearly an hour while his father and two other fishermen struggled to save him. The boy awoke completely unharmed from the incident minutes after he was laid on the deck. George Eversman trained him as Orathom Wis and he became widely known among the Itonalya as the Talan the Fisher King, who used fishing wire to garrote Godrethion. He was given the task of watching over Helen Newirth while in the custody of the Orathom Wis during the New Earth War. Adam killed Etheldred the High Captain under Cynthia the Godrethion Summoner before the omvide Dellithion in 1010 AD.
Alin, Bishop, Walter • i, Ithea. Born 1949 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, educated in California, student at California State University, Los Angeles and Immaculate Heart College. Ordained to the priesthood in may of 1972, he was appointed (by Pope John Paul II) Titular Bishop of Cell Ausaille and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1989. Bishop Alin had heard of the supernatural paintings of young artist Basil Pirrip Fenn through Catholic Priest, John Whitely. Bishop Alin, after (purportedly) seeing the work for himself, contacted Albion Ravistelle.
Athelstan • ii, iii, Itonalya, Orathom Wis. Born 1491 in Ireland, County Cork. Athelstan’s immortality was discovered by his elder brother, Perkin, who witnessed eight year old Athelstan’s arm break from falling out of a tree, and then miraculously heal minutes later; the elder brother believed Athelstan to be a sorcerer. Perkin helped to conceal the secret and assist his brother until he died in
1531. Athelstan, devastated by his brother’s passing moved to Germany where he met Albion Ravistelle. Ravistelle brought him into the Orathom Wis in 1539. Athelstan was Loche Newirth’s door warden during the battle of Mel Tiris in the New Earth War. He also fought against The Board during the battle of Masques.
Bannuelo of the House of Wings • iii, Itonalya, Orathom Wis. Born sometime around 1528 BCE. It is written in the Toele that Bannuelo of the House of Wings was the oldest Itonalya known when Wyn Avuqua fell. There is some mention of Bannuelo being a direct descendent of one of the earliest creators of the written and oral language Elliqui, the Silent Author. She became Wings Minister in the year 357 BCE and served both King Althemis Falruthia and his daughter, Queen Yafarra. Bannuelo was loyal to the Old Law, but she was also a proponent for change knowing of the augured brothers. She was slain in the year 1010 AD at Tiris Avu defending Queen Yafarra and the lower halls.
Alice of Bath • ii, iii, Itonalya, Orathom Wis. (see Eloise Smith.)
Bonin, Yorick, Dr. • ii, Ithea. Born 1943 in Milan. College professor. Close friend to Albion Ravistelle. Helen Craven’s teacher during her stay in Venice between 1975-1987.
Bytor, Gary • Δ iii, Itonalya, Orathom Wis. Born 1221 in the village of Willowdale, Essex. Gary’s immortality was discovered when bystanders observed a simple cut heal itself over the course of a few seconds. He was then told by his mother that he was one of the Old People from over the sea. Willowdale, it has been documented, produced several immortals over the centuries. Instead of fearing the mysterious condition, the families of Willowdale embraced it and supported immortals and the Orathom Wis plight through the centuries. Gary Bytor was slain in the year 1010 AD after crossing omvide Menkaure to assist Loche Newirth during the New Earth War.
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