The Book of Sight (15 page)

He continued in the direction of home until he was quite sure they were gone. Then, looking around quickly, he turned and headed toward Elm St.

Stubbornly determined not to follow Dominic’s hunch about the dark spot on the map, Adam scouted the farms around Elm street for over an hour, getting hot and tired before he was finally forced admit that Dom must have been right. He’d seen several creeks, and even one that was low enough to be almost dry, but there were no caves that he could find. Now the only farm he hadn’t visited was the one marked with the shaded square. That fact did not improve his mood.

The property line of the farm in question was marked with a shoulder-high barbed wire fence. The first field Adam saw was just grass with a few cows grazing far back from the road. Beyond that he could see a field of some kind of grain. The farmhouse was not in sight, but Adam thought it must be further down the road where he could see a small cluster of trees. He wasn’t sure whether he felt disappointed or vindictively satisfied that there was no creek in sight.

With no way over the fence, Adam took to the road again and headed toward the trees in the distance. As he approached, he could see the small, neat farmhouse sheltering beneath their branches. A pick-up truck was parked in the gravel drive, but there was no one in sight. Once he had passed the trees, he could make out a dark green line on the other side of another grassy field. It had to be a creek of some kind. Adam turned off the road.

Closer up, the bushes growing along the creek bed looked dry and brittle. He quickened his pace through the tall grass. Pushing his way through the bushes, Adam found himself on the top of a fairly steep drop off to the all but dry creek bed below. It was only about six feet down, so he grabbed hold of some roots and slid down.

It was hard to see very far in either direction, as the creek did not run straight, but he decided to head away from the farmhouse, walking slowly along the dry bed and looking carefully for any signs of a cave.

Adam had braced himself for a long search, but as it turned out, it was right around the first bend in the creek. On the far embankment, mostly covered with drying vines but still plainly visible, was a hole, big enough that he could have walked through it without even having to hunch over.

Adam stopped dead in his tracks. This was it. He had no doubt about it. But what should he do now? His intention had been to find the cave and then go tell the others. But now that he was here, it seemed like such a waste to just turn around and walk away. For several minutes, he stood there staring at the cave mouth. Then his good sense took over and he turned away.

Once through the trees on the top of the embankment, he looked around for something to mark the spot, so he could easily find it when they all came back together. But before he found anything suitable, he saw a little house, a shack actually, only about fifty feet from where he was standing. It was covered by thickly growing trees all around and there were no lights on, but Adam was positive that someone was standing in the doorway looking at him.

He froze, thinking of trespassing charges and vicious dogs.

After a few minutes of nothing happening, he began to think he had just imagined the shadowy figure. Telling himself he was being paranoid, he turned and spotted a big stone, perfect for marking the location. He picked it up and carried it over to the gap in the bushes that he had just come through. In front of the stone, he laid a long stick pointing from the road to the creek and the cave. It was the best he could do.

He was still kneeling next to the stick when a voice made him jump.

“It looks suspiciously like you are marking something.”

Adam leapt to his feet and left his stomach behind on the ground.

“Thought we were being oh-so-secret, did we?”

Turning this way and that in startled confusion, Adam couldn’t see anyone. Then a very nasty chuckle from the direction of the wooden shack clued him in. Now he could see the figure in the doorway quite clearly, a short, masculine figure with long straggly hair. The man’s attempt at laughter was more like gravel in a blender than like anything resembling humor. Adam’s initial panic settled into real fear.

“That look on your face is about the most entertaining thing I’ve seen in years. It’s almost a pity that you’re leaving now and never coming back.”

A pointed silence followed this statement, and Adam quickly turned to go.

“Now that I think of it,” the voice stopped him, “you can move that little marker, too. You won’t be needing to remember this place. Whatever you’ve got floating around in your adolescent brain, you can forget it. Throw that junk off into the trees before you go. Come on now. Hop to it.”

Adam hesitated but didn’t see any help for it. He returned to his marker and threw the stick back in to the woods. The rock proved more tricky. It was too heavy to throw, so he settled for rolling it back to its original location. In the end, it wouldn’t really matter, he thought as he worked. He wasn’t going to forget this place. They’d just have to climb down to the creek at another spot and then follow it along to the cave.

Everything would have been fine if his backpack hadn’t slipped off his shoulder. With a grunt of frustration, he dragged it along with rock and then yanked it back up on his shoulder as he turned to go. Unfortunately, one of the straps was caught under the rock, and the backpack tore open as he turned spilling all the contents onto the ground. Adam cursed under his breath.

The cackle from the shack was cut short as Adam hurriedly gathered up his stuff. He scarcely had time to hear the heavy breathing of the man coming toward him before a thin hand with filthy nails snatched the Book of Sight from his hands.

“Gods of stone! You have the book.” There was a long pause, while Adam stared at the bearded man and the man stared at the book. Then without warning, the man turned and hobbled back into his house, taking the book with him.

Adam sprinted after him without even thinking but was forced to pause when he reached the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to a gloom deeper than any he had ever experienced before. He was still straining to see some movement in the black room before him when a spark suddenly illuminated a pair of trembling hands.

The man was standing over a table, holding the large red book away from his body. It was on fire.

With a cry, Adam launched himself at the man. There was a brief scuffle, in which Adam got a little singed, but the dirty stranger was clearly not in a condition to put up much of a fight. A few minutes later, Adam was backing towards the door, beating the smoking book against his leg to put out the last of the fire.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, kid.” The man slumped breathlessly into a rickety chair, his face turned away. “You’d be better off rid of that gods-cursed thing.”

Adam stopped short. “You…you’ve read it?”

“Have I read it?” The man gave a demented laugh. “Oh, I’ve read it, curse the day I ever laid eyes on it.”

“But the Book of Sight…”

“Sight? Sight?! You don’t want that kind of sight, kid. Take my word for it. Oh I see you, eyes shining, oh-so-eager. I know what you’re thinking. It’s so special, so wonderful, like being a privileged member of a secret club. I am different. I know things others don’t. I can see.
See
.” He spat the word. “But you haven’t seen it all yet, kid. Not even close. Wait long enough and you’ll start seeing the other things. The dark things. The ugly things. The things you’ll wish you could forget. And then you’ll realize that they can see you, too.”

Adam stood transfixed.

“Scared? You have no idea what you’ve gotten into. You should let me finish off that book before it’s too late.”

This brought Adam to life. “Are…are you the one who stole our other books?”

“
Our other books
? There are others? There are others…” A spasm passed over the man’s body. Then he suddenly burst out, “Fools! Get out!
Get out
!”

But Adam was unable to walk away from so many possible answers. “How did you…”

“GET OUT!” The man practically jumped across the table, lunging at Adam, and for the first time Adam saw his face. The word deformed did not begin to describe it. A criss-cross of raised scars obliterated any expression and the hair on his forehead was entirely burned off. One eye had been brutally slashed and stared white and blind in the darkness.

Adam turned and ran.

E
very time he was with the Gylf, Logan felt like he was in a dream. He had thought after that first time that he would eventually get used to it, that it would all start feeling more normal, but it didn’t. So far, the feeling that he had crossed over into another world when he entered their forest was stronger each time.

This time was particularly strange since they were introducing Dominic to the Gylf for the first time. Logan hated showing other people things that were important to him. He tried to soothe the twisting in his stomach by reminding himself that Dominic had shown them the village, that if he loved that place he would love this one, too. It didn’t help much. A sidelong glance at Alex told him she was nervous, too.

Dominic was better than most at hiding his feelings. All through his first sight of the Gylf home and the introductions to Celana and Terra and the others he was polite, but his face was impassive. Adam was partially right, though when he called Logan ‘the mind reader.’ Dominic may have been expressionless, but Logan could see the fire that burned deep in his eyes. Logan relaxed. Dominic got it.

The whole day was close to perfect. After welcoming Dominic with a rousing welcoming dance, the Gylf scattered to their respective tasks. A young Gylf named Flax, red-haired and wearing clothes the exact shade of a blade of grass, was their guide for the day, spending several hours walking through the forest, teaching them the names of the different kinds of vines and how to identify the seven patterns of vine weaving. They were joined for lunch next to the stream by several other Gylf who were in the area. A few of these were gray-haired, though very young, and took them after to a flat rocky area to teach them a game called stone tumbling.

As far as Logan could tell, it was a cross between bowling and pool. You made a stack of eight stones and then used another one to knock them down, trying to make them land on certain marks that had been carved into the rocky ground. Logan was just taking his first turn, a round flat stone fitted perfectly in his palm, when Adam burst into the clearing, looking wild. Logan dropped the rock with a dull thud.

“What happened to the book?”

Adam’s eyes widened at the question, and he backed away a step. There was a moment’s silence. Then wordlessly Adam turned and took Alex’s book out of his bag amid a small cloud of dust. The once red cover was mostly black.

Alex cried out and snatched it from his hands, opening it frantically. The edges of each page were totally burned, and soot had obliterated nearly all that was left. She sank to the ground, staring at it in horror. The Gylf crowded comfortingly around her.

“What happened?” asked Logan as calmly as he could.

Adam began to recount his whole adventure in faltering words. He was clearly ashamed to admit that he had lied to them and searched for the cave on his own, but no one was concerned with much other than what had happened to the book. When Adam had told it all, he knelt down next to Alex.

“I’m so sorry, Alex. I should never have been there. I should never have borrowed your book and I shouldn’t have lied to you. I’m so sorry this happened.”

Alex had tears on her face, but she nodded.

“So is this one-eyed man our thief, then?” asked Dominic, carefully avoiding looking at Alex.

“I don’t think so,” said Adam.

“You don’t think so?” said Alex. “He burned my book!”

“I know, but you didn’t see him. He was so shocked to see it at first. And when I mentioned others, he just… Well, there’s no way he had any idea.”

“But he could have been lying, pretending. He’s obviously capable of...” She held up the book.

“Yeah, but I don’t think anyone could pretend that well.” Alex started to reply, but Adam cut her off. “And even if they could, this guy could not have stolen the books the way they were stolen. He was… I’m telling you, you didn’t see him. It’s not just his eye. There’s no way this guy has been more than ten feet from his little shack in years.”

Alex was silent.

“So that brings us back to the cave,” said Dominic.

“It’s the one,” said Adam. “I know it. I don’t know who or what is in there, but I know it’s the one.”

“I still think we need to worry about this one-eyed man before we worry about the cave,” said Alex. “We wanted to find someone else who had read the book, and now we have. We can’t just skip over that.”

“If you’d been there, you wouldn’t be so anxious to go back,” muttered Adam.

“What?”

“Look,” Adam burst out. “I’ve been thinking about it all the way over here. This book is amazing and I wouldn’t want to have missed the stories or the things I’ve seen for the world. But what if this guy is right? What if seeing these things is a lot more dangerous than we know? What if there’s no way to realize how bad it is until it’s too late? I don’t know what I think about it all, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but someone has to. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s something in that cave, only we don’t have a clue what it is. It could be deadly, for all we know. Do we really want to risk our lives to recover a book that we know next to nothing about?”

Logan could feel the silence in the pit of his stomach.

Alex set her destroyed book on the grass as carefully as if it were made of glass.

“Yes,” she said.

No one responded.

“Why don’t we ask the Gylf?” said Logan turning to the three who stood grouped around Alex’s knee. “Do you know anything about this cave or this thief?”

“We do not,” answered the one called Pedlan, “but it may be that the grandfathers know something that we are unaware of.”