Meadow Whisp's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

Morning light leaked through the board walls. Meadow sat up and tested his foot. The pain had faded to a dull ache. He could stand now, if he leaned on the wall. The lizard watched from its basket, orange light flickering under burned scales. Aldric was gone. His pot sat cold by the dead fire. Meadow decided to search the shelter. Aldric knew the tree creature. The truth must be here somewhere. He limped to a shelf of old things. There he found a stack of scrolls, tied with cord. He untied them and spread them flat. The paper was worn soft. Lines of cramped writing filled every inch. Some of it he could read. It was the same words his village spoke. But the sentences made no sense. They were riddles. One said the answer lay within. Another said to seek the pattern no one sees. Meadow traced a finger down the page. Strange marks sat between the words. Arrows. Circles. Little drawings he did not know. He read a riddle twice, then a third time. It twisted back on itself every way he turned it. He set the scrolls down, frustrated. Whatever Aldric hid here, the man had locked it behind puzzles. Meadow could read the words but not the meaning. The truth stayed shut. He searched on. Behind a cloth he found a thick book. A deer's face stared up from the cover, two heads joined, antlers wide. The eyes glowed like dim coals. He opened it. The pages were worse than the scrolls. Row after row of symbols he had never seen. No village letters at all. Just marks, like the one Aldric said appeared overnight on the stones. Meadow turned page after page. His chest tightened. These were the notes on the creature. He was sure of it. The tree thing, the teeth, the pit. The answer to everything he had suffered lay in this book. And he could not read a word of it. He wanted to throw it across the room. Instead he set it down with shaking hands. Then he saw the cage. It stood in a dark corner, iron bars thick as his thumb. Inside hung a sword. Purple light ran along its blade like water. Faint marks curled up the metal, the same strange symbols from the book. A brass lock held the door shut. Meadow stepped closer, leaning hard on the wall. The lizard rose from its basket. It crawled to the cage and pressed its nose between the bars. Where its glow touched the blade, one symbol lit up gold. Then the matching symbol lit on the open book behind him. The two shone the same. Meadow caught his breath. The lizard knew the marks. Its light answered them. He could not read the symbols. The book stayed locked, the sword caged, the truth out of reach. But he understood something new. The lizard was the key. If he kept it close and followed its glow, it could read what he could not.