The Book of Nonsense

by David Michael Slater

  A boy answered. “I wish I could live with you.”

  Unless Daphna was crazy, which wasn’t out of the realm of possibility at this point, that was her brother’s voice. But it couldn’t be. It had to be someone’s grandson with a voice— exactly—like Dex’s.

  Daphna pushed her ear harder into the door.

  “Oh, my dear boy, if only that were—”

  The door was suddenly opened by an old woman. Daphna must have rattled it. And she was with—Dex.

  Unglued at the sight of his sister, Dexter leapt from a couch. The woman, who had exquisitely wrinkled skin and brilliant white hair, stood looking at Daphna, who was looking at Dexter, astonished.

  “Daphna!” the woman said, breaking into a smile. But as far as Daphna knew, she’d never seen this person before.

  “Dex, what are you doing here?” Daphna blurted, finding her voice at last.

  Defeated, Dex slumped back onto the couch. He’d completely forgotten she was supposed to come today. “Perfect,” he spat.

  “Perfect indeed!” the woman declared. She was heavyset, but spry, and she bowed formally. “Daphna Wax,” she said, “my name is Ruby Scharlach. I have been looking forward to meeting you for a very long time. Your brother here, I have known for many months now.”

  “Wait a minute!” Daphna exclaimed. “I do know you! I’ve seen you in the ABC!”

  “The bookshop? Indeed, though I doubt you’ve seen me as often as I’ve seen you there! You hardly notice a thing but the books!”

  “I—I don’t understand,” Daphna said, turning to her brother, but he wouldn’t meet her eye.

  “Let me illuminate,” said Ruby. “Have a seat, Daphna. Have some tea. There are extraordinary things to impart, and I sincerely hope you are ready to hear them.”

  There was nothing else to do. Daphna sat down next to her brother and poured herself a cup of tea from a kettle sitting on the coffee table.

  Ruby waited for Daphna to finish pouring. “Today, your birthday,” she said, “is the perfect day for us all to finally meet and talk! You both mean so very much to me.”

  “But—I don’t understand,” said Daphna.

  “You will,” Ruby assured. “The first thing you should know—and I was just about to share this with your brother—is that I am well aware that something dreadful is afoot at Asterius’ bookshop. As you so keenly noted, Daphna, I’ve been keeping an eye on it for some time. The second thing you should know is that long before she took the name Shimona or Wax, I was a dear, dear friend of your mother’s.”

  Dex bolted upright from the corpse-like position he’d assumed.

  “What?” he cried. “You knew our mom? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “That is part of what I was planning to tell you today, Dex. A conflict long at rest has been set in motion once again, and I need your help.”

  Daphna shook her head as if trying to wake herself from a dream.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “How do you two know each other? I don’t understand.”

  “I was Dexter’s tutor last semester,” was Ruby’s simple reply. Daphna’s mouth fell open, which caused Ruby to turn toward Dex. “I’m sorry to expose our little secret,” she said softly, “but I trust you will soon see this as an insignificant betrayal.”

  Humiliated, Dex looked down.

  “I wanted to get to know you twins,” Ruby explained. “When I moved to town, the first thing I did was call. Dex here picked up the phone and—I’m sorry not to have told you of my little deception before Dexy—I offered my tutorial services to both of you. He told me you could probably tutor me, but he agreed to come. I was going to think of another sneaky way to get to know you, Daphna dear, this year. The truth is, though, I don’t think you need any preparation to hear what I have to say.” Daphna couldn’t help but feel pleased to be told she was already prepared for—whatever it was.

  Dex was anything but pleased, but at least now he understood why not much tutoring ever actually happened during his tutoring sessions. He and Ruby usually just talked about life, which was fine by him. She listened to everything he had to say. She believed him when he said his father didn’t care about him. She believed him when he told her he couldn’t hang out with anyone at school. The way Ruby knit her amazingly wrinkled brow and nodded at his complaints was worth a dozen ‘ F’s. She was the only person in the world he’d told about the Clearing.

  “So what’s going on?” Daphna asked, trying now not to look at Dexter, whose expression looked like an open wound.

  “I wish I could tell you exactly what Asterius is planning,” Ruby said, “but there is much I can share that might help.”

  “We figured some of it out,” Daphna said.

  Ruby looked intrigued. “Please,” she invited.

  “It’s all about a book,” Daphna explained. “Rash is after some kind of book, maybe one full of, I guess, magical words. He’s already got one book with a list of words that hypnotize people, a ledger—or, he had one. Dex stole it and threw it out. He—I guess he was coming here to kidnap me, to make me learn them or something, I guess ‘cause his assistant is going blind, I’m not sure, but then my father might have given him this book he’s really after, a book Mom was after, too.”

  “He read some news story about Mom getting killed and figured she’d found it and destroyed it,” Dex put in, suddenly thinking well of his trashing the ledger. Ruby hadn’t shown any reaction more than a raised brow upon learning its fate.

  “For some reason,” Dex continued, “Rash figured if Mom had gotten married and had a kid, she must have done that.”

  “But Rash still wants me to go away with him, after he remembers how to see through my eyes. He wants me to study this book, if it is the book, and look for something called the First Tongue, but we have no idea what that is. I just don’t see why he wants me for all this.”

  Ruby looked impressed. The twins found this reassuring, but hearing themselves tell their story made them both suspect they’d gone round the bend.

  “I don’t think he came for you specifically, dear,” Ruby said to Daphna. “I’m sure either of you would have sufficed. It’s just that you got delivered, it seems, along with that book. Tell me about it, would you?”

  “Well,” Daphna said, her tone faltering slightly.

  Dexter smirked. He’d seen it—it was only for a second—but Daphna definitely looked crestfallen to hear Rash wasn’t especially after her. Dex wanted to ridicule her for all he was worth, but now was obviously not the time.

  “I do know my Dad found it in Turkey,” Daphna was saying. “Wait a sec! That’s where Mom got killed! Why didn’t I think of that before!”

  “The book is full of nonsense,” Dexter said, wondering if this coincidence meant something.

  “Rash made me read the same line in it, like a million times,” said Daphna. “Do you know what it is? Do you know what the First Tongue is? There was nothing on the Web. I haven’t had a chance to check the library—”

  “You’d find nothing,” Ruby said. “But you’ve come to the right place.”

  “Tell us!” the twins begged.

  “The First Tongue is a language, quite possibly the first,” Ruby explained. “Regardless, what’s important is that it possesses power. It moves people’s minds.”

  “It is a magic language,” Daphna whispered.

  Dex offered no comment. His thoughts soared.

  “I’m not sure the word ‘magic’ does it justice,” Ruby replied, “but it’ll do. Knowledge of the First Tongue gives one the power to do virtually anything. It is a great and terrible thing. Fortunately, the language was lost, as they say, in the sands of time.”

  “But it’s not real, is it?” Daphna asked. Despite everything they’d already seen, she just wasn’t ready to accept this.

  “Oh, it is real, Daphna,” Ruby assured. “It is real.”

  “But, how do you know all this?”

  “Well, I’m not as young as I look,” was Ru
by’s odd reply. She brushed back her white hair a bit and touched her intricately etched cheek. “Believe it or not,” she continued, “before the First Tongue vanished, words of power rolled quite fluently off this tongue.”

  She paused a moment, then added, “As they did your mother’s.”

  a troublesome rash

  Awestruck, the twins gaped at Ruby Scharlach, their suddenly unfathomably old host.

  “At some point in history, children,” she said, “humans learned to speak the First Tongue. How this came to pass is unknown, though there is an ancient myth that God himself read from a book containing this language when he created the world, but that later the book was lost, or stolen, and that is how the words of power reached Mankind. You are probably familiar with the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to Man. The expression ‘tongues of fire’ may actually connect the two. There are many variations of the theme.”

  Daphna was jolted. Were they now talking about God? This was not a subject she’d ever given much thought to before. Any thought, actually.

  “Can—can that be true?” she stuttered.

  “Useless to speculate,” Ruby answered, brushing the topic aside. “What we do know is that the results were disastrous, though not immediately so. When people first learned the language, they used it to fuel great leaps forward in every field of human endeavor: agriculture, navigation, astronomy and the like. But soon enough, inevitably some might say, the words of power were used as weapons. Arguments previously settled, however unsatisfactorily, escalated rapidly into outright war. Entire populations were destroyed, and many civilizations were woefully stunted. Perhaps it was fortunate that the First Tongue was very difficult to master. The words of power were not easy to pronounce, you must understand. People don’t develop the capacity to speak, or even hear, the words until the age of thirteen.”

  “Wait a minute,” Daphna said. Her mind was whirling with this staggering new conception of history, but something suddenly clicked for her. “Yesterday,” she said, “when I was spying on Rash and my father, it looked like Rash was mouthing silent words at him—and whatever he was doing was making my dad act really strange. I was twelve yesterday! And today, when he had me in his cubby I could hear the weird words he was mumbling to make me do what he wanted. And I’m thirteen today! He’s been waiting for thirteen years to be able to control me—I mean, I guess, one of us. He isn’t hypnotizing people!” she realized. “Rash speaks the First Tongue!”

  Ruby shook her head. “Thankfully,Asterius can by no means speak the First Tongue,” she said, “but yes, he has managed to acquire some words of power over the years.”

  “That’s why he collects books on magic!” Dexter announced.

  Ruby nodded, then continued with her story. “Because the First Tongue was so difficult to speak,” she explained, “people began to neglect and mispronounce it, and in their foolishness, it seemed the words were failing them. Eventually, the language was forgotten by all but a few who retained it only in part, and they were regarded with fear and suspicion for the meager powers they possessed. Some were called devils or witches. A good number were killed, and in terrible ways, as you probably know. As you might expect, this caused many to give up their knowledge out of fear for their lives, and so the number of people who knew any part of it dwindled further still. You see, children, ignorance in all forms spreads faster than fire, and soon enough, even the very idea of the First Tongue was lost except in various forms of legend and myth.”

  “Wait, but not everyone forgot the language,” Dex assumed. “What about you and our mom?”

  “Several thousand years ago,” Ruby said, “the thirty-six most intelligent thirteenyear-old children in the world were identified and invited to a secret academy. Your mother and I were among these children.”

  “The most intelligent children in the whole world?” Dex asked. “How did they manage that?”

  “It was a mysterious processs,” Ruby admitted. “I can only tell you that in my case, our teacher asked me to solve a difficult riddle. When I succeeded, he ruffled my hair and said I’d been selected. Our parents were told we’d be trained to become peacemakers among the nations. What they weren’t told was that we’d become so by mastering the First Tongue. When our families departed, our teacher told us the truth: he’d discovered the language in an old book, but was too old and weak to make use of it. He’d decided to recruit and train us so that together we could bring, in his words, Heaven to Earth.

  “But it was no easy task. Our teacher never gave voice to the words himself, but rather left us to puzzle each one out for ourselves. It took nearly a year for us to master the very first word, but it was critical, for it enabled us to prolong our lives. If it took us ten thousand years to accomplish our task, our teacher was willing to wait.”

  “You mean,” Daphna gasped, “a word for immortality?”

  Ruby shook her head again. “No,” she said. “That is the one word of power not in the book. Our word prolonged our lives prodigiously, but as you can see, time, even for us, is limited.”

  “Rash was one of the kids, too!” Dexter declared.

  “Indeed,” Ruby confirmed. “During our many years of study, he plotted a rebellion. He secretly won over all but nine of us—the Nine we were later called. His plan was to use the First Tongue to enslave the world. And now I can only assume he had the idea of training you—the surely talented children of one of us—to do it for him all these lifetimes later.”

  This struck the twins hard. Phrases like “enslave the world,” were only for stories. They both had the same feeling just then—that they’d gotten themselves into something way over their heads.

  “But you won. The Nine won, right?” Daphna knew it had to be that way.

  “Indeed,” Ruby confirmed. “We prevailed in what was known as the War of Words. All of Asterius’ co-conspirators were crushed, all but Asterius himself because he was the most skillful among us. We did, however, manage to seal him in a stone cell after defeating him. Afterward, the Nine formed a Council because we had some terrible thinking to do. We’d lost so much, you see. Our teacher’s dream was destroyed.”

  “What happened to him?” Dex asked.

  “It is my personal belief that Asterius killed him because he disappeared the day the War began—and later we learned that Asterius had his book. We never heard from him again.”

  “How did Rash get away?” asked Daphna.

  “After much deliberation, the Council reached a difficult decision,” Ruby explained. “This was that the First Tongue was best forgotten. We brought Asterius before us and told him we would use a word of Forgetting to wipe the words of power from our memories and then set him free. He agreed, and so we immediately began the ceremony on the misty mountaintop where we met.”

  “He was lying,” Dex predicted.

  “Yes. But fortunately one among us found him out. Her name was Sophia Logos. You see, as the word of Forgetting was taking effect, she used a word of Insight still within her mind’s eye to inspect Asterius’ heart. She was nearly as skillful as he. Sophia perceived his final scheme, then acted swiftly and with cunning. As the final few words of power drifted from us all, she grasped one last word and used it the best way she could. It was a word of Changing, and she directed it at the book she realized was hidden in the folds of Asterius’ robe.”

  “He was going to try to learn the First Tongue again!” Daphna shouted. “And then he’d be the only one—”

  Ruby nodded.

  “What happened when he realized what Sophia did?” Dexter asked.

  “When the Forgetting was complete,” said Ruby, “Asterius found his book contained pages that changed—the words on the pages, changing from this to that, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but forever changing.”

  Now Daphna leapt to her feet, nearly spilling her tea. “That’s why he made me keep reading the first page, to see if anything changed! That’s why he got so excited when I m
isread a word! But— they are! Some of the words are moving! I thought I was just carsick!” Daphna paused a moment, thinking. “But—my dad, when he brought the book to Rash—wouldn’t he have mentioned it if the words were actually moving?”

  Ruby did not look encouraged. “It is likely,” she said, “that at most times, it looks like an ordinary, if very strange, book.”

  “How did it get lost?” Dexter asked.

  “When Asterius realized it might take centuries for the First Tongue to reappear on its pages,” Ruby explained, “he went into a rage. First, he dashed the book to the ground. Then he attempted to pull it to pieces, and finally hurled it off the cliff. The book fell many hundreds of feet into a river dotted with boats. It was impossible to see whether it landed in the water or on some craft that took it to places unknown, though it soon became obvious that the latter is what occurred.”

  “How did you know?” Daphna asked, sitting back down.

  “We knew the book was not destroyed because, as time passed, we began to notice that certain common folk throughout the world were developing modest powers. The book was making its way here and there, revealing at times some lesser words of power, but no instructions on how to pronounce them of course. People tried to use them to change base metals to gold, or tell the future from the stars. Some fashioned themselves into magicians and performed tricks for money; others became master thieves. Some were noble enough to cure the sick.

  “But once in a while, a commoner found a truly dangerous word and used it to gain extraordinary power over their fellow men, setting themselves up as great leaders and putting their people’s collective energies toward evil ends. Thankfully, this was rare, and the words eventually failed the tyrants.

  “Consequently, the Council agreed that keeping an eye on Asterius was less important than finding that book. After all, he no longer knew the language any better than we did. I agreed to continue monitoring him alone, and the rest of the Council split up to track news of magical events around the world.