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Sylas’s eyes ran over the neat folds of worn leather and the carefully tied twine that bound it. As he took hold of it, he felt the same stirrings of excitement that he had experienced when he had first entered the shop. It was surprisingly warm to the touch, the leather soft and yielding against his skin.
With a glance at Mr Zhi, he took hold of one end of the twine and pulled. The knot untied itself instantly and both the twine and the soft leather wrapping fell away as though they were made of silk.
Sylas’s eyes widened. “Wow...” he whispered.
Between his palms lay the most exquisite book he had ever seen. The cover was made of mottled brown leather that had seen better days, its once smooth finish now dented and grazed by its many years of use. But into this drab leather had been laid the most beautiful decorations of gold, silver and dark red stones. Sylas turned it so that it caught the candlelight and saw that they formed a pattern: a row of gems, seven on each edge, placed on the outside of a stitched, golden zigzag that ran along the four sides, the thread sewn so tightly that the stitches could hardly be seen. Within this border a superbly adorned symbol had been laid into the leather: a large snaking S made of gold at the top and silver at the bottom. The back cover was beautiful too, with the same zigzagging border around its four edges, this time in silver.
He looked back at Mr Zhi and saw that the old man was also transfixed by the book. It took a moment for their eyes to meet.
“It’s beautiful,” said Sylas in a whisper. “Is it old?”
“Very old.”
“And what does the S mean?”
“Most people who know about this book call it the Samarok, and it is thought that the S comes from that name. Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Yes – yes, of course.”
Sylas allowed the book to fall open. The pages turned in a flurry of paper until they settled on what must have been the weakest part of the binding, towards the end of the book. The first thing to strike him was the wonderful woody, rich aroma of old books – much more intense than he had smelt before – like dry oak leaves on a forest floor. Then he saw the words, written in black lettering that marched a little irregularly across the page, the lines undulating slightly as they went. It was not a printed book, but one written by hand.
He looked up at Mr Zhi, who was placing some spectacles on his nose.
“Someone wrote this by hand?”
“Not one person, Sylas, many,” replied the shopkeeper, clearly enjoying Sylas’s amazement. He leaned over and peered through his spectacles at the open book. “Have a look.”
Sylas turned the page with great care and saw that the next was written in strange looping tails and graceful lines. The page opposite was written in another crowded, huddling scrawl. He flicked through towards the front of the book and, sure enough, almost every page was written in a new hand, with smudges here and crossings-out there, giving the appearance of some sort of collected journal. But when he reached a point around halfway through, the style changed and it was written in one measured, unremarkable hand in almost perfectly straight lines. There were still errors, and parts of pages were faded and illegible, but it looked far more like a normal book.
“There are two parts to the book,” explained Mr Zhi. “The first part is a copy of an ancient text that has now been lost. These few pages are all that remain of many volumes, which were written to provide answers to some of the questions we have spoken about. The second part is a collection of writings by many people, each of whom followed a path not unlike the one that lies ahead of you.”
Sylas frowned and looked up. “What path?”
Mr Zhi simply smiled. “We’ll come to that. Read me a line or two,” he said.
Sylas shrugged, pressed down two pages and ran his eyes along the first line. The shapes of the letters and even the words seemed familiar, but they made no sense. He started at the beginning again, but for some reason the letters did not form words.
“Strange…” he mumbled.
He turned to a page at the back of the book, which was written in an old-fashioned, slanting hand. Again, he stared at the first line, trying to make sense of it. He shook his head, turned the page and began running his finger over the first sentence of another entry, but after a few moments he stopped and let out a sigh.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “The words look familiar, but they don’t make sense. Is it another language?”
“Not a language,” replied Mr Zhi, smiling once again. “A cipher. A code.”
Sylas’s eyes leapt back to the page. “A code?”
“Yes. Time is short, but let us just try one final thing before you go. Close the book.”
Sylas pressed the ancient covers shut.
“Now, clear your mind, and remove all thoughts of what you have just seen in the book. When I say so, I want you to open the book again, but this time don’t expect to be able to read what you find. In fact, I want you to think of something else entirely – anything, as long as it is not to do with books or writing of any kind.”
Sylas knew that he would find that very easy. He closed his eyes and the image of his mother’s face instantly filled his mind.
“When you have that thought in your head, you may open the book,” said Mr Zhi in a whisper.
Sylas clung to the image of his mother, then quickly opened his eyes and picked up the book. He turned to a page somewhere in the second part and cast his eyes over the strange, carefully drafted script.
It looked as it had before, written in a strange hand in a dark ink, but as his eyes focused on the first word, he saw to his amazement that it was not made up of letters as he had previously thought, but strange symbols. They were not familiar – they were not even similar to those in the alphabet, but were much more complex, forming patterns that rose and fell from each line. Sylas looked up at Mr Zhi in astonishment.
“But... the words didn’t look like this a minute ago.”
“What did they look like?” asked Mr Zhi, clearly enjoying himself.
“I’m not sure…” said Sylas. “Like normal words, I suppose.”
“That’s right, because that is what you thought you would see. The brilliance of this cipher is that it tricks your eye into seeing whatever you expect. You thought you would see words written in English, so that is what you saw. But they were meaningless. In truth you were looking at one of the world’s most ancient codes: a cipher known as Ravel Runes.”
Sylas repeated the words under his breath.
“The problem for anyone trying to read Ravel Runes is that they must first learn to see the symbols as they really are, before they can even begin to work out what they might stand for.”
Sylas looked back at the book and, sure enough, the writing once again looked encouragingly familiar and easy to read. But it made no sense. He blinked hard.
“That’s weird,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “Just weird!”
“Weird is one way of putting it,” said Mr Zhi with a smile, “and wonderful is another. Ravel Runes are difficult enough to read, but just imagine how hard they are to write. Think of the time it takes.” He leaned over the counter and for a while they both stared in silence at the writing, admiring the hand that wrote it.
“Time!” cried Sylas suddenly. He scrambled for his wrist-watch. “The time! I’ll miss the post! My uncle will kill me!”
To miss the post was unthinkable. His uncle had two major topics of conversation: the importance of timeliness and the supreme importance of his correspondence. He would see a failure to catch the post as a conspiracy to overturn all that was good in the world: a capital offence punishable by interminable lectures on both topics for at least a week.
Sylas snatched up his rucksack and in a blind panic started off down one of the dark corridors of Things. As he left the sphere of candlelight, he found himself peering into the darkness of several passages, none of which looked familiar.
He heard a kindly chuckle behind him.
“Calm yourself, Sylas,” said Mr Zhi, walking up. “I’ll show you out, but first, take this.”
He pushed the Samarok into Sylas’s hands.
Sylas looked at him in surprise. “You mean… to keep?”
“To keep. You have much more use for it than I.”
“But I… I can’t!” cried Sylas as he followed Mr Zhi towards the front of the shop.
“But it’s already yours, Sylas, I’ve given it to you.”
Sylas hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, “really, but I don’t know what I’d do with it! I don’t understand the code.”
“You will,” replied Mr Zhi.
As they emerged from the warren of parcels and stepped into the light, the shopkeeper turned and smiled.
“I have a motto, young man, one that has served me very well: ‘Do not fear what you do not understand.’ You have much to learn about the world you live in, but most of all about yourself – about who you are and where you are from. The Samarok will help you on that journey.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that – what journey?” asked Sylas, more confused than ever.
Mr Zhi took hold of the door handle and let the great din of the passing road into the shop.
“The Samarok is yours, and its journey of discovery will be yours too. Only you will know when that journey has begun, and where it is taking you. All I can offer you is this.” He pulled a small white envelope from his pocket and held it out to Sylas.
“What is it?”
“It will help you to decipher the runes,” said Mr Zhi. He held out his gloved hand and grasped Sylas’s in a handshake. “Now, you must go.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then say nothing,” said the shopkeeper.
Sylas paused for a moment and looked into Mr Zhi’s kindly eyes. He felt he had made a friend and he wanted to say that he would be back, but somehow he knew that Mr Zhi had shown him the Things that he wanted to show, and that was the end of it.
He walked through the doorway and peered into the street beyond. It looked even colder and gloomier than it had before. The sky was bleak and threatening and the blanket of cloud seemed to brush the top of Gabblety Row. Rain lashed the passing cars, which threw it angrily back into the air to form a silver-grey mist above the road. The noise was a shock after the quiet seclusion of the Shop of Things: the hiss of tyres on the wet road, the growl of ill-tempered engines and the splatter of rain on the pavement. Sylas could hardly bring himself to step outside.
“Go now.” Mr Zhi’s voice was gentle but firm.
Sylas pushed the book inside his jacket and stepped into the street, gasping slightly as the first cold raindrops splattered on his face. He turned to look one more time at the old man in the half-darkness of the doorway. The shopkeeper was leaning against the door frame in a way that only emphasised the untidiness of his dishevelled grey suit.
“Thank you, Mr Zhi,” said Sylas. And then with sudden determination he added, “I’ll try to understand. I will.”
Mr Zhi smiled broadly and gave a low bow. “That is all that I can ask. And that is all your mother would ask.”
With one last wink, he let go of the handle and the old glass door swung closed.
Sylas stood stock-still for some moments, dumbfounded by Mr Zhi’s final words.
Then something made him glance back up at the shop sign.
The new wooden board above the door had been repainted entirely in a dark green. It was as if ‘the Shop of Things’ had never been there.
(#ulink_d3fb2996-4d11-5115-b2e2-6ebd9e56d01f)
“Of beasts they spoke, of feral servants chained;
Born to the yoke of man, yet sent forth untamed.”
TOBIAS TATE SAT BACK in his leather chair watching the rain pouring down his grimy office window, reflecting on his day. He found it impossible to imagine a worse one, though, as he was unusually short of imagination, that was not particularly surprising. He had decided to devote the day to visiting his clients in Gabblety Row, which was a task so disagreeable to him that he forced it upon himself but once a year. The problem was that such visits demanded contact with people and, even worse, with people who considered that they knew him.
But what had made this day quite unbearable was that he had been subjected to a long and heated encounter with Herr Veeglum, his oldest client. The problem arose because the undertaker claimed that he had embalmed two more dead bodies than appeared in the accounts. Tate had pointed out that this was quite impossible. Veeglum had replied that one does not imagine embalming one corpse, let alone two, as it is a very vivid affair. The conversation had become increasingly strained until, with some irritation, Tate had suggested that perhaps Veeglum had inhaled too much embalming fluid.
And so the meeting had ended on a very sour note.
This was his dark mood as he sat back in his old office chair, large hands clasped behind his head and eyes fixed intently on the dripping windowpane. At that moment there came a soft knock on one of his two doors: the one that opened into the corridor.
Tate expelled all the air from his lungs in a blast of exasperation. He closed his eyes as though to shut out whatever it was that threatened to intrude, but only a moment passed before he heard the knock again.
Sweat pricked his brow.
“What is it?” he barked.
There was a brief silence. “Uncle, it’s me,” came the reply. “Can I come in?”
Tate’s shoulders and head slumped into a stoop of depression. “That door’s for customers,” he sighed. “Come through the apartment!”
There was a brief pause as Sylas obediently let himself into the apartment via the next door along the corridor and made his way across the kitchen and finally tapped on the other door to the office. It was a rule that made so little sense that he never remembered it.
“Yes! Yes!” snapped his uncle. “Come IN already!”
The door opened and Sylas slid into the room. It was clear at once that something was wrong. He was drenched from head to foot: his hair plastered to his face, his clothes baggy and misshapen. As he stood staring up at the darkening face of his uncle, drops of water fell around his feet.
Tate lunged for some papers that lay just inches from the gathering pool. “You’re raining on my documents! Back! Back!”
He pushed Sylas to the wall in an attempt to contain the damage. Sylas waited with a look of resignation until the floor around him had been cleared and his uncle had removed his bony hand from his chest.
“So? What do you want?” demanded Tate, still caressing one of the stacks of ledgers.
“Well,” began Sylas, slowly bringing his eyes up to meet his uncle’s. He swallowed hard. “It’s just that…” He drew a breath and squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m very sorry, but I missed the post.”
Time stood still.
Tobias Tate stared at Sylas without changing his expression and Sylas winced, waiting for the inevitable explosion. The first sign of the impending storm came when his uncle’s face began to twitch in an alarming manner, pulling his features into entirely new and unbecoming shapes. Then his right eyelid closed and his head began jerking to one side as if gesturing to something outside the window. Sylas knew better than to look. He pressed himself back against the wall and braced himself.
“You…” Tobias Tate swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “You fool! Idiot! Imbecile! Are you some kind of vegetable? Is there… How…”
There was a pause while he gathered himself. He clutched a spike of his hair and pulled at it until Sylas thought it might come clean out, then marched away towards his desk, turned and began pacing up and down, muttering to himself.
“Never have I… never… such incompetence… fool… moron…” and so on, and so on, until Sylas wondered if he might be able to slip away without being noticed. But suddenly his uncle whirled about, marched up to Sylas and thrust his face squarely into his.
“What were you doing instead of posting my mail?” he snarled, raising one eyebrow.
“I – I went into the new shop, the Shop of Things,” ventured Sylas. “And uncle, it was so wonderful, so magical... I saw such amazing Things that I just lost track of the time…”
“Shut up!” roared Tobias Tate. “SHUT UP! You dare to make excuses when you have shown absolute disregard for the trust I placed in you? When you have possibly cost me my good name with valuable clients? When you have quite probably cost me…” he paused to emphasise the scandal of this final crime, “…MONEY!”
“I know, it was stupid and I’m really very sorry, uncle, but…”
“But? BUT? No buts! You must say nothing further to me! You – must – not – speak!” He banged the wall as he spat out each word. “You’re as bad as your mother! A dreamer – a careless, foolish, deluded—”
