4

Lyra walked next to the shelves that lined the walls of the small temple, trailing her fingers across the spines of the books. They weren’t dusty; someone must have been coming in to clean them regularly, and tend to the cat, and do whatever they did with the offerings on the table outside.

She selected a book at random and pulled it out, opening it carefully. The books were all hand-bound with leather or wood, and were printed on old, thick paper. One of them had even been handwritten. This was the fifth one she had opened, and the text inside was the same as all the rest.

Foreign.

She traced her fingers across the text on the title page.

𐑔𐑣𐑧 l𐑦𐑑𐑑𐑤𐑧 ·𐑪𐑛𐑕 𐑪𐑓 𐑑𐑣𐑧 𐑸𐑦𐑝𐑧𐑮 𐑼𐑧𐑤𐑑𐑩; 𐑩 𐑕𐑑𐑳𐑛𐑭 𐑪𐑓 𐑑𐑣𐑧 𐑗𐑳𐑤𐑑𐑳𐑮𐑧 𐑪𐑓 𐑑𐑣𐑧 𐑯𐑪𐑥𐑩𐑛𐑦𐑗 𐑐𐑧𐑪𐑐𐑤𐑧𐑕 𐑪𐑓 𐑑𐑣𐑧 𐑨𐑒𐑧𐑑𐑦𐑩𐑯 𐑸𐑦𐑝𐑧𐑮 𐑼𐑧𐑤𐑑𐑩 𐑩𐑯𐑛 𐑣𐑪𐑢 𐑑𐑣𐑧𐑭 𐑢𐑪𐑮𐑕𐑣𐑦𐑐 𐑢𐑦𐑑𐑣𐑪𐑳𐑑 𐑑𐑧𐑥𐑐𐑤𐑧𐑕.

It wasn’t any script she recognized, not that she was an expert, but she was pretty sure she would know if it was Russian or Chinese or something. It made sense, of course. A different world would have alien languages far different from anything she could find on Earth. This language didn’t share any roots with anything she knew. Even if she was a polyglot and knew a hundred languages, it wouldn't be much help here.

She closed the book and put it back with a sigh. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for; she hadn’t really expected to find a book written in English, but she had been hoping she would find something useful.

Narrowing her eyes, she turned to the… woman who was still standing in the center of the room. It felt too odd to think of her as a god. She had never been religious. She couldn’t imagine praying to this transparent grey woman with no face.

Was asking for help the same as praying if the one you were asking was a god?

“Excuse me,” she said. The woman’s face turned slowly toward her. “Can you read these books?”

“I possess all of the knowledge of each of the books that has been donated to my temple, priestess. What is it you wish to know?”

“Is there anything in any of them that might help me find my way home, or learn to speak whatever the local language is?”

“No, priestess. In the past, I had some children’s learning books, but they have been borrowed and not yet returned.”

“You loan books out?” Lyra asked, blinking. “This is, like, a public library?”

“Anyone who wishes may borrow one of my books, so long as they leave a sufficient offering. You may read them at your pleasure, priestess, so long as you do not remove them from the temple without making an offering.”

“I can’t read,” she said. Her temper was fraying. Sure, the temple seemed safe, and that was all well and good, but it had been hours by this point. The sun was beginning to go down outside, and she hadn’t miraculously been transported back to Boston yet. She had no idea what to do. “Well, I can’t read these. I can’t even talk to anyone but you!”

“If I may make a suggestion, priestess. It might be wise to learn the local dialect.”

Lyra glared at the g—woman. “I’ll get right on that. Except, if I go out there again and try to talk to people, that guy with the sword will probably march up and cut my head off. I just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the road. The locals probably think I’m a witch or something.”

“If you wear the holy garb, none will harm you.”

“Yeah, I’ll just go to the fucking holy garb store and buy some with my credit card, shall I?”

“Your predecessor left several outfits behind, priestess.”

Lyra paused. “Oh. Sorry. Is it okay for me to wear whatever she left here?”

The woman inclined her head. “Yes. You are welcome to anything she has left in the living chamber. You may also examine the treasures in the crypt, and if you believe any would be of use to the temple, we may consider the expenditure.”

“The crypt… is that the room downstairs with the bar across the door?”

“Yes, priestess.”

She hesitated, not sure of she wanted to know. Though, maybe that was where her ‘predecessor’ was, so it might be good to know after all. “Are there… bodies in it?”

“My temple has not yet been honored with the presence of relics or saints, priestess. Perhaps in many years, you shall become the first.”

The conversation was beginning to weird her out. At least she knew she wouldn’t end up face to face with a rotting corpse if she opened that door; that was good enough for now.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Well… thanks. I’m going to go see if any of the clothing you mentioned fits me.”

She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to trust the woman’s claim that if she was wearing special clothes, no one would hurt her, but the fact of it was, she couldn’t hide in here forever. She needed to leave eventually, and she would put on whatever outfit was offered to her if it even slightly lessened her chances of being impaled or decapitated.

The candle, which she had left burning when she went upstairs, was still flickering merrily. There was a shallow pool of melted wax at the base of the wick, but it didn’t look like it had burned very much at all. Maybe it really was a magic candle that wouldn’t go out if she left it burning all the time. She hoped she wouldn’t end up being here long enough to find out.

The candle let off enough light so the room wasn’t pitch black, but even with the mirror behind it, it couldn’t light the room sufficiently to give her a clear look at anything past the desk it was on. As she approached the armoire against the far wall, she pulled her phone out of her back pocket and turned it on so she could use the flashlight again.

She tried not to think about the fact that she had no way to charge it, or wonder what she would do when it died.

The armoire held more clothing than she expected. There were knitted socks that looked far too warm for the baking summer heat outside, underwear that was more like little cotton shorts than the bikini panties she usually wore, and a few mysterious pieces of cloth that she thought might be some sort of bra or chest wrap. She decided to figure it out later, if she was here long enough for it to come to that. At least everything seemed clean, though the entire wardrobe had a musty scent of disuse.

On the lower shelves were folded pants and shirts and some longer tops — tunics, maybe — that looked like they were meant to be worn over the simple cream colored shirts. Everything was sturdy and functional. There was one thing in grey that might have been a dress or a robe, she couldn’t tell which, but for the most part, none of it was too ostentatious. She hadn’t been sure what to expect, so this was something of a relief.

It was even more of a relief when she peeled her own jeans off and pulled a pair of sturdy, light brown trousers on to find that they fit her. They were a hair too tight, but she could put up with a muffin top if the trousers were part of an outfit that would somehow keep her safe.

The cream colored shirt fit her well enough too, though it was a bit loose over her chest. There were multiple pairs of both the trousers and the shirt in the same colors, so she figured they were part of the standard outfit, but the tunics were all different colors. There were three in the same grey as the clothing the woman upstairs wore, one in sky blue with golden stitching, and another, way back in the corner, that was a deep, forest green.

The woman hadn’t told her which color to wear, and she wasn’t sure if it mattered. Since she liked wearing green — she thought it helped bring out the faint reds and golds of her otherwise boring dark brown hair — she selected that tunic and unfolded it.

The front was simple; a double row of ten large, tan buttons ran from the neckline down to about where her waist would be, and the tunic's fabric extended another foot or two past that, a length that would hang to just above mid-thigh on her, making it look a little like a peacoat. The stitching was all done in tan thread that matched the buttons and stood out against the green.

The back, however, featured an embroidered design of an eye gazing down from the sky with rays of light — indicated by multicolored thread — coming from it as if it was the sun. Beneath the eye were stylized, embroidered renderings of people, animals, plants, and water.

The imagery definitely meant something, but she had no idea what. Hoping that one of the other tunics would be plain, she examined them, but found that they all had some sort of design on the back. The grey ones featured books and what looked a lot like the front of the temple she was hiding in, and the blue one was the most complex of all, with that same eye at the top, and too many other designs to count beneath it, all embroidered in shining gold thread.

She decided to stick with the green tunic after all. If the grey woman thought she should wear one of the other ones, she could just come back down here and change it out for something else.

The tunic fit like it had been made for her, and she actually felt a bit better once she had it on and buttoned up. At least she wouldn’t stand out so much anymore. There was a pair of straw sandals that were a little too small for her on the bottom shelf, but she took her socks off and put them on anyway because it was better than running around barefoot or trying to make her rain boots work with the old-fashioned outfit, where they were sure to stand out.

There wasn’t a full length mirror in the room, but she used the reflective silver behind the candle to get a glimpse of her appearance, and while she would have looked like she was on her way to a LARP event back home, she thought she could pass for a local here.

She left her own clothes in a messily folded pile on the desk, then turned her attention toward the barred door. The woman had called it a crypt, but apparently there weren’t any bodies buried in it, so she had no idea what to expect. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to open it, but she was even less sure that she wanted to sleep in here tonight without having opened it, so she forced herself to move forward, her glowing phone held out in front of her as if the light could chase away anything that leapt out at her.

But nothing did. After she wrestled the heavy wooden bar out of the metal brackets it was resting in, she pulled the door open and found herself in a dark, damp room made entirely of stone. The center of the room was taken up by a pillar that was twice as wide as she was, with rivulets of water running down the outside of it from holes in the ceiling above.

It took her a few, confused seconds to realize that this room was directly under the basin of water in the temple. Whatever plumbing or natural well supplied it with water must go up through the column, then when the basin overflowed, the water drained through the holes in the floor above, dripped down the pillar, and vanished into the rusted grating at the pillar's base.

Shelves were carved into the stone walls all around the pillar. There was enough room for two people to walk side by side around it, though it would be cramped. Sure enough, there were no bodies, though there were some larger shelves that she suspected could hold a body if one was provided.

Instead of a burial place, the crypt seemed to function as a treasure receptacle. Small piles of coins were sorted by metal. The largest pile by far was some sort of small bronze or copper coin. There was a handful of ten or twelve silver coins — many of which were corroded — beside it, then three shiny gold coins next to that. Another shelf held some sparkly rocks. Not gems, just what looked like quartz and maybe fool’s gold.

Other than that, the crypt was empty.

Lyra backed out of the strange room and replaced the bar on the door before she turned toward the stairs.

It was time to put the woman’s claim to the test and see if her new outfit would keep her safe when she ventured outside.