Woodbury, Minnesota
Prophecy of Days—Book One: The Daykeeper’s Grimoire © 2010 by Christy Raedeke.
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E-book ISBN: 9780738725895
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For Juliet
They must find it difficult …
Those who have taken authority as the truth,
Rather than truth as the authority.
—GERALD MASSEY
All of the prophecies of the world,
All the traditions, are converging now.
There is no time for games …
The world will not end. It will be transformed.
—CARLOS BARRIOS, MAYAN ELDER
When you think island and summer you generally think of warm breezes and palm trees, but not here. Even in June, most days the wind sandblasts your face and the sea spits at you as it thrashes against the rocky shore. So this morning after breakfast when I can’t take the cold any more, I grab Mr. Papers and go back to my bedroom to light a fire in my fireplace.
I don’t have a fireplace in my room in San Francisco—we are pretty well off by most standards, but only the super-rich, I-have-my-own-helicopter-pad kind of kids have fireplaces in their bedrooms in the city. Every bedroom at Breidablik has one because it gets so cold here, and they’re all really big, too; a mid-sized ten-year-old could probably stand upright in any one of them.
Actually, everything here is oversized. I remember when we first drove up I was shocked by how big this place was. Breidablik Castle is definitely not one of those pretty, princessy castles that you see at Disneyland. It’s more boxy. It looks like it was built in three pieces; on one side there’s a big square stone tower, about ten stories high that is linked to the castle itself by a four-story wing. The main part of the castle ranges from about three stories to seven stories and it’s all made out of a light grey stone. The roofline is all over the place, with some cone roofs and some steep pointy roofs.
You might even consider Breidablik ugly if the grounds were not so nice. There’s a big stone wall around the whole castle that ivy is making a good attempt to take over. Metal gates close off the tall, rounded entrance to the inner courtyard and garden and immediately inside the wall a small stream, only about five feet wide, circles the castle. The driveway is made of tiny pebbles that make a nice crunch under your feet.
The word “Breidablik” is carved into the enormous front door that has lots of heavy iron straps. If you stand where the door is at the top of the stairs and turn around you get a good view of the large pond and the formal garden, where everything is super symmetrical and the bushes are cut so tightly they seem like sculptures.
The inside of the castle looks like a museum. There’s lots of big wooden furniture, and tons of exotic rugs everywhere. The walls are covered with these twelve-foot-high portraits of men in kilts and white knee socks with their skinny little dogs and women who look like they’ve never seen sunlight, glowing ghost-white in their fancy clothes with their hair pulled back severely. Thank God bronzer and bangs were invented.
Thomas told us the best bedrooms were in the East Wing, so that’s the part of the castle he had wired first by Scottish TeleCom (Dad’s first priority, naturally). The East Wing is the bridge between the castle and the tower. Thomas encouraged me to take the room I’m in, but I think I would have chosen it anyway because the furniture is cartoonishly big.
Mom and Dad fell in love with the room next to mine; Mom was sold on the twenty-foot blue velvet curtains and Dad was attracted to the dangerous-looking fireplace tools. He picked up the heavy iron fire poker, did a quick fencing move and said, “Touché.” That was our first hint that the Laird thing was going to his head.
So now I have this room the size of a basketball court with supersized furniture. The bed is so big that I have to use this mini staircase to even get into it.
The bedposts are as thick around as telephone poles and a purple tufted-velvet canopy and purple curtains drape the whole thing. It’s so over the top. I love it though; when I get in bed and close all the curtains, I feel like I’m in a genie’s bottle.
Anyway, as I wad up printer paper and stuff it under the logs to start a fire, Mr. Papers comes over to help. He probably thinks wadding up paper is my lame version of origami. It’s hilarious to watch a monkey do human things, especially a monkey as cute as Mr. Papers. He’s not as big as you’d expect—about the size of a small house cat. His fur is long and silky, coffee colored on his body but white around his neck and face with another little coffee-colored patch on the top of his head like a cap. He wears this strange outfit of striped shorts and a vest with diamond shapes on it that must’ve come from a doll. His humanlike hands are small like a newborn baby’s, but the fingers are long and wrinkled, a contrast that often freaks me out. I Googled capuchin monkeys once I got here and found out they’re the ones that get trained to be helpers for paraplegics. There are picture on the web of these little guys microwaving food and opening mail and stuff for people who have no use of their arms and legs. It’s amazing.
Once Mr. Papers and I get the fire going, I sit down in one of the old leather chairs by the fireplace, but it’s hard and cold. The funky lime-green velvet fainting couch in the secret room comes to mind.
Finding the secret chamber on my own was a pretty major discovery. I was looking at this carved wood panel in my room and saw a cool optical illusion of three rabbits, all joined at the ears. I drew them in my sketchbook because I love optical illusions. When I first started working with charcoal I went through a serious Escher phase; I could look at that “hands drawing hands drawing hands drawing hands” thing forever.
So as I was sketching these rabbits, I noticed that the ears looked a lot like the silver pendant that Hamish had sent as a baby gift. I never wore it around my neck because it’s really bulky, but I had put it on a key chain and hung it on my backpack. It gives off a little Goth vibe because it’s chunky and metal and
looks hand carved.
Removing it from my backpack, I placed it over the rabbit’s ears on the wall and found it was a perfect match! I was stunned that this thing I’d had since I was a baby, what had looked to me like a circle with random carvings on it, actually became rabbit’s ears in this weird carved optical illusion. The most amazing part, though, was that when I pressed it in, I heard a slight whoosh and then the sound of a shell scraping the sidewalk as the panel slid to the side and revealed a short doorway.
It was all very exciting—isn’t it every girl’s dream to have a secret hideout?
The room behind the panel is the size of a small bedroom. The walls are covered in intricately carved wood and all that’s in there is a big oriental rug, a side table that holds a magnifying glass and a lamp, and the green fainting couch. Which brings me back to why I was even explaining all of this in the first place: it’s cold today and I want to replace my creaky leather chairs with the fainting couch so I can lounge by the fire.
Placing my key over the carving of the rabbit ears, I give it a good push and enter. When I turn on the lamp, Mr. Papers jumps off my shoulder and starts chattering, running around pointing excitedly to the carvings on the walls.
The first time I’d been in here I never really looked closely at the carvings. From far away it just looks decorative, but when I start looking closely at the wall I see there’s definitely a pattern, and repetition. It’s basically a series of symbols, almost like runes, but instead of being carved in rows or columns they’re arranged into the shape of square spirals. Like if you wrote one big long sentence, but started it at the top of a piece of paper and kept turning the paper and kept writing on all four sides over and over again until it made a big square spiral.
“What is this?” I say out loud as I run my fingers over the carvings.
Mr. Papers scampers out of the room and goes to my desk for origami paper, then returns. He takes one piece and folds it in half like a book, and then he rolls up the other piece like a pencil and pretends to write in his book. He motions to the wall with his head.
“This is writing?” I ask as I mime that I’m writing on my hand. He nods.
Back in my room, I gather a pencil, a piece of tape, some white paper, and a few more sheets of origami paper for Mr. Papers and hurry back to the chamber. I hand Papers the small colored sheets to keep him occupied and then tape a piece of white paper over one of the middle spirals. Once it’s secure, I run the pencil over the white sheets, like in art class at the Academy of Cruelties when we made wax rubbings of old gravestones at Mission Dolores. It seems magical when the symbols appear in negative space, white against the grey of the pencil marks.
I finish and look over at Mr. Papers, who is busy with some intricate origami. I’ve never seen him do something so complicated, so I sit on the fainting couch to watch. It takes him awhile to finish, then he hands me his work. It’s incredible—a man wearing a long robe with a tiny monkey on his shoulder. He grabs it from me and takes it over by one of the spirals, sets it on the floor, and then points from it to the wall and back, like he’s saying they are connected.
It still freaks me out that he communicates with origami and I have to rub my arms to get the goose bumps down. All of a sudden I want out, so I pick up Mr. Papers and the rubbing and rush out of the room, leaving the origami man in the chamber.
I sit on my bed looking at the paper with the symbols on it. For the first time since we arrived I feel like I have something interesting to do other than wander around the castle grounds. If I show this to Mom and Dad they will ask where the symbols came from, and then my secret room won’t be secret anymore.
My best friend Justine’s grandfather is a professor of Egyptology at Princeton and I suspect he may know enough about other old languages to decipher this. I scan the rubbing and then attach the scan to an email:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Need a favor …
Hi J, huge favor, please! Can you forward this rubbing to your Grandpa at Princeton and ask him if he knows what it says? It might be some kind of old language. There’s a bunch of these symbols carved into the walls of this hidden room that’s attached to my bedroom here (yes, I have a hidden room AND a monkey, thank you very much. I can officially die now …)
After I send the email I go back to stoke the fire. Mesmerized by the flames and the warmth, I poke mindlessly at it until the new-mail chime on my computer startles me. It’s Justine.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Need a favor …
Hi C—Got your attachment, weird! Doesn’t look anything like the reproduction Egyptian stuff Gramps has at his house, but maybe he’ll know what it is. I’ll email you the minute I hear. Cruelties is unbearable without you and it’s only the fourth day of summer session. The only ray of sunshine in my bleak existence is that I got paired with David von Kellerman in chemistry. He’s hotter than ever with his summer tan and he smells soooooo good. We’re always doing experiments wrong even tho I know the right way because I can’t make myself correct him. Very un-feminist of me, I’m like a 1950s housewife. You’d hate me. “Yes David, sure David, I’ll mix those two things that I know will have a nasty chemical reaction for you David, and may I cook you a meatloaf David?” Ewww. I’m pitiful.
XO, Justine
Justine has to go to summer session just because she got a B in Chemistry. At Cruelties if you retake a class in the summer, they will erase your other grade, which she has to do because her parents won’t allow anything less than As. But at least she gets to sit next to David von Kellerman each day. A pang of jealousy stabs me in the solar plexus.
To keep from checking my email every five minutes, I go back in the room and take a few more rubbings of the spirals on the wall. I’d love to do it all at once, but it’s not super easy; holding your arms up for that long while rubbing a pencil over the paper is really hard.
I go about my day, bumping in to my parents and Thomas and Mrs. Findlay as if nothing unusual has happened, as if I haven’t just stumbled upon the coolest thing ever.
It’s not until the next morning that I get an email from Justine:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: That rubbing you took …
Hey C, Check out the reply from Gramps below. (Sorry, I pretended I took the rubbing so he’d think I was into this kind of thing—I guess I’ll have to come clean now.) So what’s the big mystery anyway? Looks like you’ve got all the old guys at Princeton pretty excited. Today in Chem I splashed some water on my face while I was washing out our beakers (so domestic!) and David wiped it away with his thumb. Do you think he likes me? I mean, that’s pretty unusual to use your thumb, isn’t it?
Here’s what Gramps has to say:
My Dearest Justine,
How wonderful that you are taking an interest in archaeology and antiquities! I found your rubbing absolutely fascinating, as I had never seen anything like it. I sent it on to Dr. Tenzo in Ancient Languages. He is very anxious to hear where you took the rubbing; so much so that he wanted your email address to reach you directly. I promise I won’t sic Tenzo on you, but do tell me dear, where did you find those symbols?
Much love, Grandfather
It’s exciting that some guy at Princeton may know what these symbols are, but I’m a little freaked out that they want more info. All I really needed was to know what it said. I guess I have to ask Justine to try to nip this in the bud.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: That rubbing you took …
Wow, so they think they know what it says but they won’t tell you? And now they want more info? Yikes, let’s just forget the whole thing. Sorry I even got you involved … can we make it die?
And yes, wiping your face with his thumb is
totally intimate—he’d only do that if he wanted part of his palm to touch your face too. Clearly: he’s so into you.
I wish I could get an instant reply but based on the time difference I know Justine is asleep and I won’t get one until tomorrow, which is frustrating.
Deciding to go back into the room to check out the symbols again, I use my rabbit-ears key to open the panel and then enter. I take a seat on the fainting couch to soak it all in, to try to see what the guy from Princeton saw. Mr. Papers goes over to the wall and slowly traces some carvings with his fingers. He seems almost sad; there’s none of the excitement he had yesterday. He picks up his origami man and puts the little paper monkey that has fallen to the floor back on its shoulder. I guess he misses his friend in the robe.
I pick up the big antler-handled magnifying glass from the side table, surprised to find that it is much heavier than it looks. When Mr. Papers comes over to see what I’m doing I hold the glass up to my eye and look right at him. Seeing my magnified eyeball, he squawks and jumps back, knocking the side table over.
After a loud crack, the top of the table pops off the base and lands upside down to reveal a small leather-bound book attached to the underside. For a moment I wonder if it’s a private journal and I try to resist opening it up; I would hate for someone to read my private journal, even if I were long gone. There’s a small title on it, so I move the twine just enough to read it. Embossed in gold and slightly off-kilter like it was stamped by hand are the words: The Daykeeper’s Grimoire.
The Daykeeper's Grimoire Page 1
