Dear Ancients, I’ve lost my damn mind.
My fingers shake as I timidly reach out for the black book in front of me. I slowly pull the spine out of the shelf and move it to my lap, watching as it now starts to shake in my hands. I don’t know what kind of magic this book contains that makes it move so vividly, but-
Wait…
That’s not the book shaking.
It’s me.
My body is trembling,violently. Everything about it fighting so hard to stay awake.
I skim my shaking fingers over the cover and gasp at the feel of it, the black front as soft as goose feathers and surprisingly warm to the touch. It’s also solid in color entirely, with no title or text to give away what it’s about.
I look down at the book more closely and notice that the softness I felt is because it’s actually littered in small feathers- the entirety of the book mimicking that of a bird.
My brows furrow at the obvious magical item in my hands.
In any other setting, this is a book I’d stay well away from, but that hum in my bones has never been stronger as I hold it. I take another deep breath and slowly open the cover, frowning once more when I find the first page completely blank.
Huh.
I flip to the next tanned page and notice it’s blank as well, no words or text written within the warm pages. My heart thuds in my chest as confusion starts to take over, my fingers flipping through the blank pages again and again.
This can’t be right, I close the book with a heavy thud,who in the Old World would create a blank book?
I open it again, willing the words Zander gave me to materialize on one of the pages. Iknowthis is the book I’m searching for, can feel it in every one of my chilled bones, but there’s absolutely nothing on these pages, nothing that I can provide to my King to justify this gut feeling. In fact, if I was to bring this blank book back to him, he’d probably release me from my employment on the spot.
Ancients.
I start to panic. Thoroughly panic.
I bring the book back to its cover and hastily turn through the pages once again, hoping that this time, by some magic I know rests within, the text will somehow appear. My gaze grows frantic along each page, not understanding why they’d be blank and hating myself for following a gut feeling that was founded in no logic. I become angry of each turn of no text, my heart continuing its wild beat as my brows furrow so severely that I think I might cry.
“Why are you blank!”I yell.
My shaking fingers start from the cover again and skim over every single page. I almost rip through the spine in my furor when I reach the end of the book, every part of me wanting to break the stupid thing as hard as it’s breaking me down right now. I clench my fists and flip through the pages again, reaching the end in another cry of desperation. But just as I’m about to close it and throw it down the deepest pit of the library, the hint of black ink begins to form on the last page.
What in the Old World?
The ink is so barely visible that I nearly don’t catch it, but I hold onto that page like my life depends on it. I watch as a paragraph of sorts begins to form, the text appearing as it would on an oak slab…
Born of greed and desperation, through no fault of their own,
Settled into the Old World, forgotten and alone.
Protected by fire, deceived by water, harbored at times by earth,
Air awaits their long-lost abilities in hopes of a new rebirth.
The Ancients sleep while the world collides, but one hero lover remembers to provide. She who is touched by the Bird of Ash will see them all reborn,
The consequences of which, however, are yet to be learned.
My body visibly goes into tremors as I read this, but I stay seated on the ice and glance over the text again, committing the words to memory. I read them again for another safe keeping and then scowl at the text, hating the way it’s resting on the page as if it were there all along.
This book, if I can even call it that, has all the words given to me by King Zander, yet it’s not even a book in the most common sense. I can bring it back to him and present this one page, but how will I explain the rest of the blank pages that surround it? My very being knows without a doubt that this is what he’s looking for, but I can’t even fathom the conversation to come. Zander is looking for a book of deep knowledge, while I’m going to present him with less than half a page of text.
Save that problem for another day.
