Chapter 11: Waiting for the Eastern Glow

The journey out of the small valley which contained Binna and Raph's Meadowvale clan burrow had been uneventful. The uneventfulness continued on into the pass and all the way to the plateau and the forest valley there. The atmosphere was relaxed and Akansha was never one to leave amicable silence alone. She always felt the need to fill any quiet period with chatter, and this seemed to be a good time to pump her new companions for some information that she was lacking.

"Can someone explain to me what exactly is going on? I mean, I get it, we're trying to find the 'maw' and stop it from spewing out smoke or whatever, but what exactly is it?"

Michael who had been lost in thought up until now offered some explanation, "We don't quite know. It's only referred to as the 'maw' in the fragmentary texts available in the archive. Even the few storystones I have so far been able to translate from the clan's library just refer to it as that."

"So, is it like a volcano or something?" Akansha asked.

Michael considered for a moment then answered, "It sure sounds like that. What we know so far is that it spews out an increasingly thick column of black smoke of some sort that's been slowly blocking out the sunlight here on the continent. And recently even started impacting us all the way over at Origin. There's also passages that speak of great heat and the glow of red embers at the bottom of the maw."

"But then there's other passages that mention a passage and a great evil, the 'dark ones' trapped there by the 'old ones' at the bottom. There's also no mention of the maw rising above anything else. Every passage speaks of it being deep, not tall. We also know that it is under the dwarven capital, and that it was not always there. It appeared suddenly at some point before the great war and caused great calamity in the city."

"The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep." Charlotte quoted from her position at the rear of the party.

"Oh, I know that reference! I read those books in high school. Zeppelin's 'Battle for Evermore' got me interested." Akansha then corrected herself, "Well, I skimmed those books when I was in high school. I was always more of a rocker than a reader, I just couldn't get into them. Though, if Robert Plant thought there was something worthwhile in there, I figured I should at least skim them."

Charlotte was considering whether or not she should tease her friend over that admission, but Akansha moved on to her next question before she decided. "OK, so 'dark ones' and 'old ones', I've heard you and the rabbits talking about 'the old tongue' and 'the old script' and it sounds like you're just talking about English."

Michael had obviously been considering this question already because he had a quick answer. "Yeah, it's basically just English. I've run across a few words here and there that don't have an Earth equivalent, but they seem to be mostly proper names from this world. And it's not even that old, even though these fragments are supposed to be coming from the era of the great war, which would make them at least like a thousand years old there's words in there that weren't coined until the early nineteen hundreds. Yesterday I ran across a reference to a zipper in one of the storystones I was translating. That word wasn't coined until the nineteen-twenties. But I haven't seen any words that were coined in the nineteen fifties or later. The 'old script' is just 'spencerian script', a version of cursive english in heavy use through the early nineteen-thirties. There's some differences, but it's basically the same lettering as the Coca-cola logo. So we have records from over a thousand years ago using english from the nineteen-thirties and forties. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

"Well, that doesn't seem too weird to me, Charlotte and I have been here about the same length of time, but she's from about forty years later than I am." Akansha made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "What was it that guy who kept trying to get me to date him was always saying... 'time is a flat circle'? I don't know, but if Charlotte and I can be from forty years apart but we arrived on nearly the same day, then surely that other stuff can be explained."

Michael tilted his head to the side to consider that as Akansha continued, "So, all of that aside, 'old ones', 'old tongue', 'old script'... if the 'old tongue' is English does that mean that the 'old ones' were humans that spoke English?

Michael and Charlotte both stopped dead in their tracks, stunned by that simple connection that they hadn't made before.

After a moment, Michael continued walking and responded, "That's not something I had considered before. It could very well be, but if so, what does that mean?"

(End of Chapter 11 )

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Written by Charles Caplan, all characters and situations are fiction.