“I wonder when it will be dry enough to take the bicycle out again,” he said. Benja said nothing, watching him. Illya looked back at the book and scowled.
“You think Impiri’s right. They…” Benja said.
“They all died. They must have done something wrong,” Illya said.
Benja chewed on his lip for a minute then glanced up from the book at Illya.
“After you left, Impiri told everyone that we lost Jannica’s boy because of the corruption in the village. The gods punished us, and that’s why the roots ran out too soon,” he said.
“But… that’s—“
“Stupid.” Benja nodded. “But not everyone thinks so.” Illya opened his mouth but could find no words to say.
“Jannica went sort of… crazy,” Benja said. He stopped and swallowed. Illya held his breath, his shoulders tensing slightly. They had not spoken of madness or of Rachel in many years. Benja looked up, met his eyes briefly, then looked out across the river and deftly skipped a stone, succeeding despite the speed of the current. He cleared his throat.
“She took her boy and left, opened the gates and ran off into the woods,” Benja said. “It was long past dark by then.”
Illya stared down at the picture. The bright colors had taken on a slightly sinister cast. Benja shivered as if shaking off a chill.
“The worst thing is people were saying it was good riddance,” he muttered. He breathed in, then out, sharply, looking up to meet Illya’s eyes with sudden intensity. He held Illya’s gaze for a long moment.
“You haven’t lost it,” he said finally. “The gift.”
Illya shook his head. Benja seemed to relax slightly. He grabbed the book and pulled it closer.
“What’s it say then?” he said.
“This word,” Illya said, pointing, “is ‘chicken.’” Benja burst into laughter, all remaining tension dissolving from his posture. Illya grinned and let go of his breath.
“That’s what they’re afraid of? Chicken?”
“Well, there is a lot more, but I have a key to almost all these symbols. Each one stands for a sound. They repeat over and over, you see? There are only about thirty of them.”
“But have you read anything else?” Benja asked.
“A few. I started with the short ones. Chicken was hard to get actually. The sounds run together,” Illya said.
Benja shook his head and stared at him in wonder.
“How do you keep it all straight in your head? I never could,” he said. Illya shifted uncomfortably.
“You know that song the littles sing at each other? When they jump rope or play patty cake.”
Benja shook his head. “Sure, but there’s lots of those,” he said.
“It’s the one that goes A, B, C, D, E, F, G.”
Everyone knew that song. It was just a string of nonsense sounds. Littles liked to compete to sing it as fast as they could so that parts of it made silly words. When Molly had been a little younger, she had loved to yell, “ELEMENOPEE!” at the top of her voice, which would always send her into a fit of giggles.
“Sure,” Benja said and shrugged.
“I actually didn’t figure this out until after I had most of the sounds, but that song is letters,” Illya said. “There’s this place at the end of the book where there are long lists of words that all start with the same letter.” Benja stared at him.
“I thought it was weird, so I’d been looking at it a lot, and then I realized it was the same as that song, all those letters in the same order, one after another,” Illya said.
“A, b, c…” Benja said, and ran his fingers through his short, sandy hair, scratching his head.
“They are a little bit different. It’s like the song takes a sound and makes a whole word out of it to make it easier to say. Instead of just ‘buh’, it’s ‘bee’.”
“Do you think that song was made to help people read then?” Benja asked. “Way back in the Olders’ days?”
Illya nodded.
“That’s what I thought, but there are places where the sounds don’t fit when you read them. I could just have it all wrong.”
“I don’t think you have it wrong.” Benja was looking at him, wide-eyed. Illya studied his feet, more embarrassed than ever. Benja had grown up beside him and had been Illya’s closest friend for as long as he could remember, but Illya couldn’t remember a time when Benja had been impressed by anything he had done.
“These pictures are something too,” Benja said. “There aren’t huts in any of them, just big houses, like the stone house.” Illya shook his head, thinking of what it could mean. What if all of the Olders had lived in houses? There were ruins nearby, all of them houses, but they had always assumed that the huts that ordinary people had lived in had been swept away by time. Their own huts were flimsy things. Every few years they were damaged by storms and floods and had to be rebuilt.
“What’d that be like? You would always be safe.”
“Don’t know,” Benja said.
They sat together for some time, working out the first line of the passage.
“Can you imagine a regular, egg-laying hen turning into a crowing rooster?” Illya sounded out.
“That’s it? That’s what it’s about?” Benja snickered. Illya went on.
“It happened to a chicken belonging to Jeannie and John Howard, whose prize hen, Gertie, started crowing instead of clucking, and grew a wattle,” he read. He pressed his lips together. After all his work, it was nothing but a bunch of nonsense.
“That can’t be right, maybe I did it wrong,” he mumbled. Painstakingly, he checked over each letter. There were a few places where he wasn’t sure. Still, even the difficult words were close enough to recognize what they were.
“No, that’s right,” he said finally. Benja laughed.
“What?”
“Well, you have to admit it’s kind of funny,” he said. “They knew so many things, and they had so much, but this is what they wrote about. Chickens.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN THEY PULLED in the trap, there were two wriggling fish inside.
“Whoo!” Benja yelled and punched the air. Illya held them up, their silver scales flashing in the sunlight. The river was a tricky spirit, sometimes giving nothing, sometimes giving plenty. At times, it took from them to pay for what it had given. It could take a boat, a hut, or even a person. Not five years before, Illya’s father had been lost that way.
He struck each one with a rock until it stopped flopping. They were a decent size for this early in the spring, one of them two hands long, and the other just a little shorter. They gutted the fish and ran twine through their gills, Illya tying one to his belt, and Benja taking the other.
“Back in a minute,” Benja said, nodding toward a stand of trees. Illya folded the book into a soft buckskin and slid it into his pack.
A yell followed by the sound of a struggle came from the direction that Benja had gone. Illya dropped his bag and ran towards the sound, but before he reached the trees, there was a splash. He whipped around just in time to see Benja swept down the current, struggling to keep his head above water. Illya froze, visions of his father disappearing under muddy rapids flashed through his mind, paralyzing him.
Benja fought the waves, splashing to keep his head above water. Illya shook himself out of his stunned state. He ran along the bank and picked up the fish trap as he ran. He would not lose Benja too.
He flung the fish trap across the water to Benja. The trap fell a few stride lengths short. Benja fought to reach it. His strokes were not enough against the current. Illya pulled with all his might, dragging the rope back in as fast as he could. Benja was swept downstream; he gulped then went under the water.