The Black Book

by George Shadow

  * * *

  “Nora,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Wake up. We’ve got to leave now.”

  “What of Peter?”

  “He’s here with us, but you must stop talking and start whispering,” he advised her, looking out at the many foot soldiers marching behind them through the very narrow slits between the bars of their prison.

  “What happened?” she obeyed conspiratorially. “My cheek hurts.”

  “A gift from Xerxes, himself,” was the accusing reply. “You were so daring.”

  “Where is Peter?”

  “Here, beside me. I’ve touched him.”

  “He smells of blood,” she discovered. “What happened to him? Is—Is he dead?”

  “Nope. Guess he got beaten up! They want to punish him with us.”

  Nora tried to get up but realized her hands were still tied behind her back. Their cage was also moving. “Where are we going?” she asked her brother.

  “Athens?”

  “Why?”

  “To burn it up?” he dryly suggested. “Xerxes style?”

  “So how do we get out? Our hands are still tied.”

  “I was hoping you would know,” Matthew blamed himself.

  “Peter?”

  “His hands are tied as well,” he pointed out.

  “The cage? We could cut . . .”

  “Too risky! Bars closely placed! Those outside . . . ,” Matthew said. “If only you could help me loosen my shirt, then maybe I can . . . get out the book?” He was trying to do this without success.

  “But it’s not a book now,” Nora objected, pushing herself round to help him. “What now?”

  “It’s held in place by a sash,” he directed her hands. “You just have to untie it and . . .”

  “Done.”

  The papyrus fell out from inside Matthew’s attire and unfolded itself, but he couldn’t reach it with his hands and his sister had to pick it up for him.

  For a moment, he feared she would crawl back away from him with it and dare him to come and get it, but she simply gave it back to him. “Thanks,” he gladly told her, embarrassed by his aforementioned thought, but then the cage’s door swung open and a huge Persian lumbered in through it and snatched the scroll from him, leaving him in a very bad state of despondency.

  In their excitement, the children had failed to realize that the cage had stopped a few moments ago. Nora had been holding Peter as the next step and the fat boy stirred a little. “That guard must have been watching us,” she sadly said, staring at the soldier through the bars as he pushed the scroll into his belt.

  “Why?” a new voice asked.

  “Peter!” Nora brightened. “You’re alive.” And she placed her head on the Jew’s shoulder, because she couldn’t hug him.

  Peter didn’t miss this for the world. “Nora?” he questioned, squinting. “What are you doing that for?”

  “I—We—We thought we’ve lost you,” Nora stammered, blushing and sitting up.

  “We thought you were dead,” Matthew grimly added.

  “Why did you think so? Why is it so dark? Where are we?” Peter asked, trying to sit up like Nora and realizing he couldn’t. “And why am I so . . . tied up?”

  The brass cage started moving again.

  “You won’t believe us,” Matthew stated outright.

  “Why won’t I?” Peter asked with a squint. “You’re the . . . never mind. What’s happening?”

  “He’s my adopted brother, Peter,” Nora helped the fat boy with and Matthew started. Did he just notice a tint of the old hatred in her voice? Was their ‘honeymoon’ over? It’s been quite a while since she appended that cursed word to the ‘brother’ she’d reserved for him. Had she really learnt to look out for others like he’d erroneously thought these past few hours?

  Peter was asking after his name.

  “My name’s Matthew . . . with a double ‘t’ as in the New Testament?” Matthew provided. “Sorry I didn’t tell you this at the door . . .”

  “Yeah, the door,” the Jew exclaimed. “Your door! What happened after that? Why do I . . . hurt all over?”

  “You won’t believe us,” Nora said.

  The brass cage suddenly stopped again and Matthew turned to look outside. Dawn was just breaking.

  “What’s happening?” Nora asked him. “Are we there already?” Was she glaring at him?

  “Nope,” he supplied. “The path ahead looks narrow . . . and dangerous! It’s like . . . the soldiers are moving ahead of us! There are dead bodies everywhere.”

  “Soldiers?” Peter demanded. “Dead bodies?”

  “Persians, actually,” Matthew corrected.

  “Persians?”

  “It’s Thermopylae,” Nora said when she looked out and saw for herself. She didn’t cringe back from the bodies littered everywhere as Matthew had thought she would. They looked like relief sculptures on the flat canvass of a gigantic mosaic work of art and this was why she admired them rather than abhor them, although the putrid stench coming from them was unbearable!

  The track was about fifty feet wide and passed above a cliff. It lay between a high mountain and a wide gulf. “Can’t believe this,” Nora whispered to herself. “I am seeing this myself! It’s like being in a movie.”

  “A movie? Are we in a movie?”

  They seemed to have forgotten all about Peter.

  “You could still see this in Greece, right?” Matthew asked Nora.

  “Not like this, no you won’t,” she whispered. “Mr. Heaver said it’s now a broad, swampy plane.”

  “Great, Mr. Heaver! Now, we’re getting somewhere,” Peter snapped, grimacing from pain, and the other two shamefully turned back to him.

  Their mobile prison started forward again.

  “What’s happening?” Peter demanded. “Where are we going?”

  “Matthew, tell him,” Nora pressed. “You’re in charge of this.”

  “You tell him,” Matthew persuaded her. “He’s your friend.”

  “But you caused all this,” she hissed. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Yuk! What’s that smell?” Peter wanted to know.

  It was the smell of burning flesh. The smell of death. Nora stole a glance through the brass and looked away. This was more than just dead, decaying bodies. “It’s horrible,” she said.

  Matthew turned to see what his sister had seen and gulped. A heap of bodies was being incinerated in the distance. Persian soldiers were slicing these dead men open and spewing out their entrails and that, in addition to the burning flesh, was the raw reek that hit him. No wonder the disgusting odor was worse than the one from those decomposing bodies strewn around their path—the Persians were literally ‘cooking’ the decaying flesh of these dead geeks! “Know . . . who—who they are?” he asked his sister, trying to hold his breath.

  “Could—Could be the Spartans and . . . their allies,” Nora replied, trying to do the same thing.

  “The Spartans?” Peter asked her. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, it’s not, Peter,” Matthew said. “Told you . . . you won’t believe us.” The morning sun had come up and he could clearly see the fat boy’s battered face. It wasn’t nice.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, no,” Nora whimpered when she noticed it. “Did—Did they . . . do that to you? Oh, Peter.”

  “I feel like I was run over,” Peter confessed, grimacing in pain. “Now, are you two gonna tell me what’s happening or not?”

  Matthew gave up. “I wrote your name in . . . the book.”

  “He didn’t mean to,” Nora surprisingly said in support.

  “The . . . book?” Peter looked confused. “And what’s with the book? Why is it so important that you mention it?”

  Matthew sighed. “It’s—It’s magical,” he stumbled. “Took us back a long time in history.”

  “Back to the Persian Wars now,” Nora pinpointed.

  “The Persian Wars?” Peter was
astounded. “Are you saying we went back . . . to 480 B.C.? Leonidas and Xerxes? Thermopylae?”

  “We’re just passing through it,” Nora dryly enlightened him, rolling her eyes.

  Peter turned to peer out from the bars. Huge mountains jutted out from all sides, but he couldn’t make out any other thing of interest.

  “We’re Persian prisoners,” Matthew continued. “Slaves of Xerxes, himself.”

  “So why was I beaten up?” Peter asked. “How come I’m the only one with a black eye, and why can’t I remember anything else but your door and then this?”

  “The book gives us a kind of dual personality,” Matthew explained. “First yourself and then someone else’s. In your case, a member of the king’s personal army of bodyguards.”

  “The Immortals? So how come I’m in here with you two?”

  “You helped us escape and got punished for it,” Nora responded.

  “And you’ll become the guard again if you touch any other person but us while we’re still here,” Matthew warned.

  “I see,” the fat Jew said, nodding. “So, where is this book? We could all go back home with it, right?”

  Matthew sighed again.

  “Actually, we can . . . but it’s not in our possession right now,” Nora explained. “And you’re not the only guy whose name is on it,” she quickly added.

  “We—We stumbled into you while saving someone else,” Matthew clarified.

  “I . . . see,” Peter repeated, slowly breathing out. “So, what do we do now? We can’t just wait for the worst to happen, right?”

  As if in answer to his question, they suddenly felt the ground beneath them give way and the cage seemed to fall off its wheels, rudely taking them with it. Shouts were heard outside and some slaves appeared close to the brass bars as they tried to properly sit up from the jumble they were in.

  “What just happened?” Nora asked with fright.

  “Guess the wheels gave way,” Matthew ventured. “Those things are wood, you know.”

  Almost before he stopped talking, a thunderous roar of many voices erupted from the many mountains surrounding them and they saw many foot soldiers racing down from the hills.

  “They are dressed like Greeks,” Nora noticed, moving away from the bars like the others. The Persian men had turned away to ward off the attacking force. A spear jutted into the cage and she shrieked. “Mr. Heaver never told us about this,” she cried. Of course Mr. Heaver never knew about the book!

  “What can we do now?” Peter exclaimed. “We can’t just wait here and die.”

  “Try outside,” Matthew suggested. The metal doors shook violently and clanging swords were heard behind it. A grunt was followed by a thud and a second thud. An arrow slipped through the brass bars beside Matthew’s left ear to bury itself on the structure’s wooden floor, and he hopelessly stared at it without a word. Piercing screams came from both sides of the pathway, which continued for some time, and then . . .

  Nothing.

  Silence, troubled with the occasional persuasive pleas of fallen, wounded men, whose adversaries had no intention of ever granting their mercy and frequently troubled the silence the more by forcing these Persians to let out a final death cry now and then with the aid of their sharp weapons.

  The door swung open and the three children quickly moved away from it.