The Book of Sight (12 page)

“So you didn’t have any trouble understanding it?” Alex asked.

“No, I recognized it right away.”

They looked at each other with a mixture of amazement and excitement.

“And, um, have you ever seen anything that you would say really shouldn’t be there?” asked Adam.

“What do you mean?”

“Just things that you can see that maybe no one else can see,” explained Eve.

A hard, closed look came into Dominic’s dark eyes. “Maybe.”

“So maybe it isn’t just the book. Maybe it’s the stories,” said Adam to the others.

“What are you guys talking about?” asked Dominic, that suspicious tone back in his voice.

“We have a story to tell you that might be interesting to you,” said Alex.

“And maybe you can help us figure out what comes next,” added Adam.

E
veryone was already at Alex’s house when Dominic showed up the next day. They had agreed to meet at ten, and Alex knew he would come, to return her book if nothing else. She got the distinct feeling that this was a guy who always showed up when he said he would.

He did, though not until he was late enough to make Adam start asking nervous questions. Dominic’s face was impassive, but the look in his eyes said clearly that he had read the first chapter. Without anyone needing to say anything, they knew he was one of them now.

Not that a lack of need was going to hinder Adam from saying something. Or Eve, for that matter.

“You read it?” asked Adam.

“Yeah.”

“And what did you think?”

Dominic shrugged. “It was my grandmother’s story. But, you know…”

“And did you read the second one, too?” Eve asked.

“It didn’t make any sense. None of the other stories did.” And when they all shared a knowing look. “What? Is there something you didn’t tell me?”

“We just wanted to see if it would be the same with you,” Alex explained. “We have only been able to read the first two stories. But the second one we can only read when we’re together.”

“You mean you read it to each other?”

“Not necessarily. We just have to be with each other when we’re reading it or else we don’t understand the words.”

Dominic gave her a skeptical look that made Alex briefly wish she had the Mist’s flame throwing ability, but then he shrugged and took out the book. Flipping to the second chapter he began to read. Two lines in, he glanced up in surprise. Alex smiled as he dropped his head again and kept on reading.

Adam flashed Alex a conspiratorial grin and picked up Eve’s book off the bed. Very quietly, Logan took his book out, too, and they all began to read.

Dominic finished first. Alex heard his book snap shut, but she didn’t stop reading until she came to the end of the story. When she finally looked up, she saw that he was staring out the window, dry-eyed and motionless. Adam caught her eye again with a questioning look. Alex shrugged.

“I could read that a thousand times and never get tired of it,” Eve’s voice broke in. Dominic seemed to come back from far away.

“Believe us now?” Alex couldn’t help but ask.

“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Dominic.

“Yeah, tell us about it,” said Adam. “We were hoping maybe your grandmother would know something about all this. Did you tell her about the book?”

“She was asleep when I got home last night and in her garden when I left this morning. But I really don’t think she has seen a book like this. She told me that story was one her father used to tell her.”

“Still,” said Adam. “It’s worth asking, isn’t it? If she knows anything at all, that’ll be more than we know now. All this weird stuff keeps happening to us, but we don’t seem to get any closer to figuring out how or why.”

Dominic nodded. “We can go and talk to her. But like I said, I’m pretty sure that she hasn’t read this book. She doesn’t even speak much English.”

“Well, this book isn’t exactly English, is it?” said Eve. “As the Dund would say, ‘You never know until you try.’”

The house where Dominic lived with his grandparents was in the foothills outside of town. It was made from adobe and was obviously very old, but an inviting wooden porch looked over a beautiful garden surrounded by a homemade wooden fence.

Dominic’s grandmother was in the garden, using a hoe to dig weeds out from around a row of perfect rose bushes. She was a little woman with long white hair in a braid down her back and a slight curve to her spine, but she wielded the hoe with as much energy as Alex could have done. On the porch, an old man with the most wrinkled brown skin Alex had ever seen was asleep in a rocking chair.

The old woman in the garden looked up as they approached and leaned on her hoe, smiling widely. “
Dominico, mijo. Trajiste unos amigos
.”

Dominic leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “
Si, abuela. Son unos chicos que conocí ayer. Le presento a Adam y a Alex y a Eve y a Logan
.” They all smiled at the mention of their names. “Guys, this is my abuela.
Abue, tenemos unas preguntas para usted
.”

“
Preguntas para mi? Que tiene una vieja como yo que interesa a los jovenes
?”

“
Tiene que ver con el cuento que siempre me contabas cuando era niño, lo del rey y el círculo de arboles. Ellos tienen un libro con ese cuento
.”

“
En serio? Un libro? Entonces no hace falta que yo cuente la historia. No sé que mas tengo para ayudarlos. Pero contesto todas las preguntas que tienen…si puedo. Vamos adentro. Si no tengo respuestas, por lo menos tengo galletas y limonada
.”

She turned and began to hobble quickly into the house.

“She says to come inside,” said Dominic. “She has cookies and lemonade, but she doesn’t think she knows anything that will help you.”

Us
, thought Alex.
You mean that she doesn’t know anything that will help us. You’re a part of this, too, you know, whether you like it or not
.

Inside the big kitchen, they all took seats around the wooden table while Dominic’s grandmother quickly poured tall glasses of lemonade and set out a plate of sugar cookies. They each smiled and thanked her as she handed the glasses around. Finally, when Dominic convinced her that they were all comfortable and had everything they needed, she sat down. Her own glass held plain water.

“
Ahora, que quieren saber de esta viejita
?”

“She’s ready for your questions,” translated Dominic.

After a moment’s awkward pause, Adam spoke up. “We mostly want to know if she’s ever seen a book like this before.” He slid it across the table.

The old woman picked up the book in her gnarled hands and felt the soft leather cover. “
Es lindo. Un libro hermoso
.” She looked inside. “
Nunca vi un libro asi. No lo puedo leer. Esta en ingles
?”

“
No se, abue. Me parece que es otra idioma. Pero se puede leer un poquito igual
.”

She looked at it some more and then shook her head. “
No entiendo nada. Lo siento, no conozco este libro
.”

“She’s never seen anything like it before. And she can’t read it, either.”

Alex could see how disappointed Adam was. She wasn’t surprised, though. After all, Dominic had said his grandmother only heard the story from her father.

“The story you used to tell Dominic,” she said. “You heard it from your father?”

Dominic translated and listened to her reply. “She says yes, that he told her the story when she was a little girl. She thinks he heard it from his father. It is a very old story.”

“What about the painting?” asked Logan. “You said she has a painting with the words
gendel sea
on it.”

Dominic asked his grandmother something in Spanish. She replied, and he got up and went up the stairs.

Left alone with the old
abuela
, the kids felt a little awkward. She began to offer around the plate of cookies again, urging them in her beautiful Spanish to eat more. Alex wasn’t hungry, but the cookies were really good, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice to take another one.

In a moment, Dominic came back with the painting held in both hands. It was bigger than Alex expected and had what looked like a hand-carved wooden frame. When he turned it toward her, Alex sucked her breath in quickly. It was beautiful. The dark cave that gaped in front of the young man was terrifying, but his face showed no fear. The colors were exquisite and the light from the torch in the man’s hand seemed to actually glow, but Alex couldn’t take her eyes off the man’s face. Why did it seem so familiar?

“Can you ask her where she got this painting?” breathed Adam.

After a short exchange in Spanish, Dominic looked surprised. He said nothing until Adam prompted him, “What did she say?”

“She said this one isn’t the one she brought from Mexico with her. She said my mother brought this one home not long before I was born.”

There was a silence. Alex turned from the painting to look at Dominic, but she couldn’t read anything in his face. None of them knew what had happened to Dominic’s parents. He’d mentioned that first night that he lived with his grandparents but had never said anything about his mom or dad.

Alex could tell that no one knew what to say or do. But she hated how people always seemed afraid of offending her by mentioning her mother, so she decided to just be direct.

“Did your mother die?” she asked.

Adam looked down uncomfortably, but Alex kept her eyes fixed steadily on Dominic’s face.

“No,” he said. “She’s still alive, but she’s very sick. A couple of years ago, she started getting worse, so they sent her to live on my great-grandfather’s farm in Mexico. I stayed here to be in school and help my grandparents.”

“Do you get to talk to her often?” asked Alex.

“There’s no phone in the village where she’s at. Once a year she goes to the city to call me for my birthday. She writes me letters pretty often, though.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alex. “You must miss her.”

“Yeah.”

After another pause, Dominic leaned the painting against the wall. “So, you’re no closer to understanding anything that you were when you came. Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said Eve. “You told us that would happen. And we did get some awesome cookies and lemonade. Gracias, Mrs. Valterra.”

“Hernandez,” said Dominic. “Valterra was my dad’s name.”

“Oh, right. Gracias, Mrs. Hernandez.”

The little lady smiled as they all thanked her, and before anyone could protest, she’d taken another dozen cookies from the cupboard and wrapped them in paper. She handed these to Eve and shook her head firmly to indicate that she would not be refused. Alex left the cozy kitchen feeling like she’d just met the definition of the word “grandmother”.

On the front porch, Adam looked around at everyone. “So where to now? Should we take Dominic to see the Gylf?”

“Actually,” said Logan. “I think he has something to show us.”

Dominic whirled around. “How did you know that?”

Logan shrugged. “You looked like you were trying to decide something. And you kept looking at that one spot off in the woods over there.”

“Logan’s a little bit psychic,” said Adam.

Dominic smiled, but Alex thought he looked uncomfortable with the idea.

“So what do you have to show us?” asked Eve.

“Well, you asked if I’d ever seen anything that no one else could see.” He was leading the way through the garden gate and toward the trees across the dirt road. “I found this when I was a little kid and I used to love to play here. But one time I showed it to a kid from school, and he said it was just a bunch of tree roots. It’s…well, you’ll see.”

Beyond the tree line, the ground dropped away sharply. Alex soon found herself half sliding down a leaf-covered embankment.

They all finally came crackling and crunching to a stop at the bottom, and Dominic led the way off to the left. About fifty feet from where they started, a huge tree blocked the way. Dominic skirted this and stopped on the other side. Alex was the last in line, so she heard the others’ exclamations of wonder before she saw anything. Then she, too, rounded the tree and felt her heart constrict.

There in front of her was a tiny village. On this side, the giant tree’s roots looped up out of the ground in weird natural formations. But these had been shaped and carved into small houses, and beyond the roots, the embankment was also full of tiny doorways and windows. There were smoothed places that must have been roads and broken down fences around what might have once been gardens. Whoever had lived here had been very small. The doorways were only about two feet tall. The occupants were obviously long gone though. Weeds had grown up over most of the fences and the houses in the embankment were beginning to crumble.

“It looks like something from a movie,” said Eve. “Like hobbits are going to come out of those doors or something.”

“Looks a little small for hobbits,” said Adam absently.

Eve laughed. “Sorry I’m not up on my hobbit dimensions.”

“So you found this years ago?” asked Logan.

Dominic nodded.

“And that kid you brought here couldn’t see a village? That’s crazy. You’d have to be blind to miss it,” said Adam.

“That’s pretty much what I thought,” said Dominic. “But I never brought anyone else here anyway. Then last night you guys were talking about meeting little people in the woods and I thought maybe they were the same sort of people who made this place.”

“I don’t think so,” said Alex. “These places would be a little too big for them, I think. Besides, their home didn’t look anything like recognizable houses. They seem to like to…blend in more.”

“Just because we recognize these as houses doesn’t mean they’re obvious to everyone,” said Eve.

“True,” Adam said. “But I agree with Alex. These don’t feel like Gylf houses.”

“So who did make them?” asked Logan.

Adam shrugged.

“I guess we can add that to our list of mysteries,” said Dominic, and Alex noticed that he was including himself with them now. “I’m just glad you guys saw what I saw.”