The Fifth Codex

by J. A. Ginegaw

  – Komnena, Sapien Historian

  – Winter, Year 4,273 KT

  As my eyes pull themselves away from Komnena’s world and back into my own, time becomes still. All sound is silence. All sight is blindness. My throbbing brain begs me by way of a silent screech to impart a gift I cannot: Allow it but a moment’s rest outside the bony prison that is my skull trying like mad to keep it held in. These heartfelt passages will haunt my thoughts until the same insanity that gripped Komnena steals them away. As I struggle to wrap such a lonely scene around a heart so saddened by it, I take in and let out many breaths. I then stumble to my feet. My bearings finally more straight than not – barely – my misted eyes focus on the many hundreds of other copper plates on the marble table.

  Like any histories, there is suffering, there is chaos, but there are triumphs as well – there must be!

  Stories where every word is soaked in sorrow alone are impossible to scribe. I now think of the triumphs we have yet to read of, and then focus on the great triumph of the moment:

  WE HAVE DONE IT!

  From here on out, it is simply a matter of letting the computers finish and me telling the stories of those who lived so long before us and so far below our feet. As my dreamy haze clears, the excited voices of the others replace it. Suddenly all alone, the time has come for me as well to exit the frigid translation room and make my way into the balmy CIC.

  “It’s true, Admiral! It’s true! It’s true! It’s true!” Victor roars through smacking gums, his arms waving wildly in every direction. “There really was a time of Mermaids and Centaurs. Of Gryphons that soared through the sky, mystics, and huge spiders too. The land beneath us glacier free; magic, wars, grand buildings, grander cities – I cannot believe it!”

  Admiral Vanderbilt rises to his feet as soon as our eyes meet. “There she is! There’s my Alexys Élisabeth!”

  I simply stand in place and take in his beaming smile, but do not return it. My face feels as hard as the copper plate I have just read and probably looks as difficult to decipher. And this is why: More than my brave soldiers, more than any of these four scientists that I have grown so fond of, even more than the Admiral whom I will forever adore, my father deserves to be here with me. Yet he cannot. And my heart is breaking because of it. Although I believe in God as strongly as I do anything, it takes all the strength in the form of faith I have in me to not cry out and curse Him.

  I blink through salty tears seeping into my mouth – Father’s chiseled face is suddenly where the Admiral’s face had just been.

  I run straight for it. No words needed, I throw myself into waiting arms as if the happiest little girl in the world. And in so many ways, I am. A journey spanning most of my life nearly fulfilled, I could die right now and be perfectly content. Death thankfully leaving me alone on this day, the rest of me about to burst will have to do.

  Father gazes proudly at me and sets an open palm against my tear-stained cheek. With a heaving cry, I then bury my head in the shoulder I have cried into so many times before. After three decades of endless searching and death cheated more than once, I have earned at least this much.

  “It’s all here,” I stammer through trembling lips as Admiral Vanderbilt and I separate. “We know of what happened – everything! Of almost anything important written in one codex, at least one other confirms it. The translations are not perfect; I have and will continue to add a bit of my own flavor in random spots to make sense when needed. Despite this, the full context is just as these ancients scribed. Defined timelines, maps, many names, descriptions of the land, flora, fauna – all of it.”

  One by one, my eight soldiers – unsung heroes who have been with me for so much of this long journey – give me a heartfelt embrace.

  As I turn away after the last hug, a searing pain suddenly races through me. And just as suddenly, the crimson gem burns white hot inside my pocket. I wrap the fingers of my right hand around it in the hope that this will temper its burn. Eyes darting wildly about the room, I again set my sights on the Admiral. Father gazes proudly at me once more, offers one last kind smile, and nods a final time. The sharp pain subsides and my father’s face now begins to fade back into the face of Admiral Vanderbilt.

  With a gasp, I realize why the jewel had burned as it did; realize that my father, the great Maximilien Rothschild, is gone. Not just from my sight, but forever from this world. Father is now at peace … and so am I. No longer wanting to lash out at God, I want to do just the opposite. With a whisper only the two of us can hear, I thank Him for finally putting an end to the suffering, for finally taking back what is His. After some time to deal with this sudden swirl of sorrow and relief, I again focus on those around me.

  “Just from what I have heard,” Dr. Leitz crows, “these ancient beings possessed a near maniacal obsession when it came to documenting their history!”

  “‘Maniacal obsession’ barely scrapes the surface!” Saddlebirch blurts back as he tosses a friendly arm around Alfred. In turn, Dr. Ravensdale does the same to the brilliant cowboy. “A hopelessly poor choice of words, Alfred,” Chance continues excitedly, “yet I can think of none better myself! Amazing, just amazing – I still can’t get over the details they wrote down.”

  “I want to hear more! I want to know more!” Victor pleads as he turns to me. “Please, please tell us!”

  “Your life’s work is at its glorious end,” Alistair declares in his best television voice. “Do tell, Dr. Rothschild, do tell us what the texts say.”

  Alfred simply nods and hugs me once more.

  “The stage is all yours,” Chance drawls. He points at me as if I am a game show host and he the announcer. “You’re the star. Now just time to put on the show.”

  “Well … I don’t really know where to start,” I say quietly, still wiping away tears. My eyes and those of Major Sinclair meet, but he offers no answers. I am sure everyone else expects something better to begin with, but this mumbling is all I can think of.

  Where do I start?

  “Perhaps you should start at the beginning,” the Admiral suggests with a chuckle and friendly eyes. Despite such a simple premise, I gawk at him with a dumbfounded stare. He smiles warmly. “Yes, that’s it … perhaps you should start at the beginning.”

  I take in a trio of deep breaths and whisper the words of his suggestion with each one. Little more than mumbles seep from my lips at first, but then a few words spill out.

  “The Sapiens – well, everything starts with them. Little more than hunter-gatherers, they entered what they called the … the ‘Knowing Time’. What fell from the sky, it was this that tainted the drinking water in their land … in Terra Australis ––”

  “Terra Australis?” Admiral Vanderbilt gasps as he leans closer. You mean Terra Australis Incognita?”

  Dangerously close to falling into a trance, these last three words and how the Admiral spoke them gives me the jolt I need – and ten times more. A rush of energy now forces its way into and through my body. A sly smile then creeps across my face.

  “Incognita – Latin for ‘unknown’. To the rest of the world who see nothing more than two kilometers of glacier ice covered by a frigid, windswept desert at the bottom of the world, this is indeed true. Many generations of a select few have suspected another world existed before the one we now know, but it is this generation, this very one and we the chosen few! Terra Australis Incognita no more – we have found it!”

  As everyone in the room digests such far-reaching words amidst this far-reaching world, I spin around. The sound of a sweeping whoosh comes next. With a flick of my wrist, I victoriously pull the cloak away from a large stand. A throng of gasps and stares follows right after. A reconstructed map of how we determined Terra Australis appeared at its peak stares back. This map – as big as the hood of an auto – sits at a thirty-degree angle and rests on a sturdy easel. Curiously, Drs. Leitz and Ravensdale look at it as if they have never seen it before. As if some other two scientists had spent days painsta
kingly constructing its every detail.

  “Oh, this world, this stunning world – not only of majestic Mermaids and clever Centaurs, but also loyal Gryphons, noble Arachna Majora, savage Yeturi, and of course, the cold, calculating Sapiens who started it all!”

  Most of us now huddle around the map. Dozens of busy fingers begin to trace the terrain of Terra Australis before ice thousands of meters thick hid this grand world from all.

  “What are these lava fissures at each end of the map?” Major Sinclair asks as he points at one fissure and then the other.

  “Beneath Terra Australis,” I answer, “an underground river of lava flows from west to east. The ancients could see this always moving river of molten lava by peering into either one of two fiery fissures. The first lies in the far west. The second – many times larger – is the Great Gorge of the Everlasting Inferno.” I motion to the southeastern part of the map. “This massive crack marks where the Guardian Mountains end their southern jaunt and the Pillars of Fire begin theirs west.

  “Now, these horrid swathes of rock and flame hold a rather ironic place in this world. Without them and the rushing lava beneath, the wondrous variety of life on Terra Australis could not exist. More to the point, without these molten lava flows, no flora or fauna, not even a bug, stands a chance here. Luckily, Terra Australis is far from normal – it borders on the supernatural!”

  Most of those gathered around the map laugh politely at my giddy enthusiasm.

  “There are darkened circles on the map,” Dr. Leitz suddenly notices. “It appears as if pieces are missing.”

  I answer his serious, questioning look with nothing more than a playful grin. Next, his eyes move to the leather bag holding six modeling pieces in my raised left hand.

  “We are not quite ready for these, but soon will be – I promise,” I tell him with a wink. Just one more method in a series on my way to blissful madness, Alfred winks back his acceptance of my eccentric ways.

  After another ten or fifteen minutes spent discussing the map, Admiral Vanderbilt pulls us back into the actual telling of our discovery. “So, just when are we going to hear about these fantastic creatures and the lives they lived? You are our leader, honey. You are our storyteller.”

  As would perfectly polite children on the first day of school, thirteen curious minds gather around me. Some with laptops, some with digital tablets, others with little more than poorly chewed off fingernails; all own star-crossed looks. I, too, sit down on the carpet, withdraw my own two digital tablets, and offer up a nervous smile.

  “Our entire lives spent learning everything we could about the past, what we learn over the very near future just might change it all. The truth hidden no more, those brave enough to hear it now gathered – shall I tell it to you?”

  A chorus of “Yes!” rings out all around me.

  The Admiral and scientists closest to me to share credit with, every one of my men desperate to know what they have guarded all these years; they all sit motionless and ready to hear the story of Terra Australis. And I sit ready to tell it. I have never before felt more in control, have never before felt more ready to do anything. The apex of all our life’s work, a great adventure – nothing could be grander. I bow my head in quick prayer to thank my grand-mère for giving me such purpose these last thirty years. Finished and my father’s ethereal embrace around me, I raise my head and look at each person in the eye one last time. A few final words before the past sweeps us away all that remains, the pure glory of this moment quivers my lower lip and rattles every bone.

  “For 9,500 years …” I pause to let this sink in, “these scripts and hieroglyphs of copper and gold have awaited our discovery of them. Another world that existed before the one we now know – listen close! As can you, I too hear these ancient words plead with us to learn what they wish to teach us. Do we make them wait any longer?”

  Intense stares set inside shaking heads answer back.

  “To step with our own feet into the footprints of gods who once walked among us, to dare walk along the paths they walked – will each of you walk with me?”

  They all nod in a trance. I swallow hard and nod back.

  I reach into a pocket, wrap the wispy necklace around each finger, and clutch tight my gem. No longer fearful of it or its power, with each passing moment this scarlet jewel becomes more precious to me. A swell of equal parts excitement and command overtakes my mind. It then grips my voice. How I speak clearly – despite shaking from head to toe – I will never know.

  “Our journey to another world eagerly awaiting our arrival, here we go. Long before Rome; long before Mesopotamia, Egypt, or the Indus; even long before the founding of Jericho … there were others. 12,900 BC, it is this ancient time from whence our story begins:

  “For reasons long lost to history, or simply before it, their ancestors at the southernmost point of Patagonia exiled a small group of humans. Forced from their homeland in late spring by way of makeshift rafts, those banished drifted south across a sea none yet knew owned land on its other side. Many drowned in the treacherous strait, but a quarter of them somehow survived. Once the exiled survivors reached the Antarctic Peninsula, all nearly froze to death before they discovered a much warmer, milder climate to the southwest.”

  I pause and look up at Admiral Vanderbilt as if a child eagerly awaiting her father to say it is okay to continue. His warm eyes meld into a proud face and his next words tell me it is.

  “We are with you, Granddaughter, until the end,” he confirms kindly.

  Each joyous finger grips my tablet to the point they ache – I could not care less. I suck in one more deep breath. It is now time to read directly from the first copper plate.

  “As for what comes next, it is not I who need tell you their tales, but they themselves.…”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE KNOWING TIME

  Every eye faced forward to the future, the time has come for two to look back. Not just to the past, but to the very start of this past. As our first historian, the telling of our beginning has fallen to me. A man living in the time that is tasked to scribe of those living in a time that was increases the heft of this burden, but also makes sweeter the glory awaiting its fulfillment. By way of crude paintings upon rock, gathered scraps of stories passed down from long ago, and listened to songs sung by the fading memories of the eldest among us, the following is how Sapiens – once the weakest of wretches – have come to rule this world.

  – Patremeus, Sapien Historian

  For desperate eyes aimed by numbed minds that held but a handful of hope, Terra Australis was paradise found. Banished from a cruel world a season earlier, this one warmly welcomed the few who survived. Still in his or her native, virgin skin, each weary body dropped in disbelief onto scabbed knees sharpened by hunger. For swollen eyes just a few more shed tears away from turning hopeless, nothing could be more welcome, nothing could be more glorious.

  An oasis in a wintery desert, this fertile strip of land cradling their crippled toes was like nothing any of these miserable wanderers had ever seen. Countless trees sprawl skyward from sweeping fields whose grasses appear as if spun gold. Plants and bushes with all manner of fruits and flowing fresh water tempt to no end hungry, thirsty mouths. Mammoths, sloths, buffalo, horses, antelope, lions, bears, wolves, and birds of all shapes and sizes blanket the land. Even giant pandas are free to frolic about their own pocket of paradise. From the most fearsome to the most charming, field and forest alike overflow with all manner of life.

  These grateful men and women with weak minds dim as night settled mostly in the western shadows of the Agathis Australis. Their canopies tickling the sky, the Kauri trees of the Agathis are a handsome backdrop to lush coastal plains. From here, they drank from the most convenient fresh water lake and river they knew of. This wide, rushing river flows from the northern sea, snakes through the western edge of the Agathis Australis, and extends far into the interior of what those to come would call Lapith Fields. These flowi
ng fields of golden grasses peppered with woodlands make up the heart of Terra Australis. For the time being, this area was indeed best.

  In truth, what choice did they have?

  Their feeble minds did not dare explore far away lands such as the southern wall of towering, fiery volcanoes – the Pillars of Fire – or the equally majestic Guardian Mountains to the east.

  A century as if a child birthed by time, ten such epochal children came and went. From birth to death, each wept more than the last as it passed by. Aside from growing in numbers, these men and women achieved nothing of note atop this lush, gifted land 1,000 years after their ancestors found it. They labored through short life spans of forty, forty-five years at most and numbered around 2,000. Pathetic beings the lot of them, they knew barely more than that needed to continue drawing breath for at least one more day. In regards to all else about their world, they were beyond blind and stunningly stupid. These aimless souls not only learned little of their world, they wondered about it even less. Unlearned and happily so, their impenetrable ignorance swaddled them snug.

  Could any living being that could become so much more, but did not yet know it, suffer a harsher curse?

  Perhaps the approaching horror was random, perhaps something more. Did this rich, fruitful land simply wish to rid itself of the wretched mortals who had done so little with it? Or maybe, could it have been this day, when Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, claimed his crown? Two thousand souls for the taking – although near worthless – they would still make a handsome bounty for a first day’s reign.

  Brown and orange of rock and flame suddenly consumed the skies. Until this day, those who trembled below had only known the color of these same skies as blue, black, or grey. Every day for a full month, stone ablaze bombarded Terra Australis. All cowered in rightful terror. Some took cover, but most scattered in panic. Too dim-witted to stay hidden, these wretches fled in every direction and from every direction were turned into ash. A fog not of mist, but of fire, swept across the land and consumed all life foolish enough to cross its path. Most, the weak, did indeed die, but a few of the strongest survived.