“I know what diez y siete means!” Dex snarled. He was squinting at the figures, which wouldn’t hold steady for him. He was going to lose it. He could feel rage actually vibrating his bones. He didn’t understand it, which made him angrier.
Daphna, squinting at the figures herself, was losing it, too.
“What are we doing here!” she demanded. “Who cares if he has a tattoo of a number on his head! Let’s go! Right now, Dexter! Let’s go!” Daphna reached for the Aleph, which she only now realized was in her brother’s hand, but he moved it away.
“Dexter!”
“It wasn’t a tattoo,” Dex said. “I could see that much.”
Daphna looked at him, confused. “What do you mean? What could it be then?”
“It’s a birthmark or something.”
“He has a birthmark of the number seventeen on his head.”
“Or welts or something.”
This made both twins remember Dexter’s hand. They’d completely forgotten about the Hebrew letters burned into his flesh by the first talisman. But when they looked at it, there was nothing to see. It had healed completely.
“Could he have gotten a number burned on his head?” Daphna speculated, wondering at the lack of scarring on her brother’s hand. Was it because of the month that had somehow gone by without them? But then she shook the questions off. “Please,” she said. “It’s not right for us to be here—this poor man. We’re treating him like some kind of specimen. Dex?”
Dexter was still staring at his hand. It was without blemish of any kind. It looked—perfected.
“Dex!”
“What?”
Daphna thought a moment. Then she said, “Let’s look back at that temple, or whatever it was. Let’s see if we can find out where that talisman went. Maybe it’s still there. Dex!”
Dex finally looked away from his hand and tried to process what his sister was suggesting. They hadn’t discussed what they needed to do. But they both knew. They’d both seen the Eye, and though they’d not discussed it, they both understood exactly who was watching, from wherever He, or She, or It, actually was. They needed to find both remaining fragments of the talisman, and they needed to use them to destroy Lilit once and for all.
Dexter, his inexplicable hostility fading now, nodded and opened the Aleph in his hands. An explosion of light enveloped his face, a drenching rainbow that made the specks in his eyes sparkle. He looked inside.
“Hold on,” Daphna said. She bent down and removed her shoe, then felt down into the toe until she found the little round disc. She dropped the bug on the floor, put her sneaker back on, then crushed it with her heel.
“Okay,” she said.
Without taking even one more look at the gruesome scene they’d dropped in on, Daphna and Dexter went back into the light.
CHAPTER 6
up & down
A child, in bed, dead under a sheet.
A woman covered with sores holding a gun to her own head.
Hospitals overflowing with the dead and dying.
Then they saw that sign, the giant one in Times Square. It was showing the picture of Lilit at the lodge. The picture was also on all the billboards in the area. And along other streets as well, and in other cities, all around the world.
But now the vision shimmered and changed. There was a cave, one cave among many. It was too dark to see much inside, but there was someone—something—screaming in the shadows, a visceral screaming that came in waves. And then the twins could see a bit more.
A figure lay splayed on the ground in the dark, scarcely alive, gasping. All around it lay those mounds, those sickening, pulsating mounds of quickened tissue mass. They were dripping a viscous bloody liquid and steaming in the gloom.
There was a sound, a rumbling from below—the twins recognized it instantly. With no further warning the cave floor ripped apart and a jagged zigzagging tear opened in the midst of the repulsive globs. The figure on the floor cried out, but it seemed unable to rise. It managed to get to its knees as the masses began to fall. It reached out, but the attempt was both feeble and useless.
In only seconds, they were gone, every one of them. The chasm shrank as underground plates shifted and scraped. Then the crack was gone, too, and nothing was left in the cave but the figure on its knees letting loose yet another scream, this one beyond what seemed the limit of pain.
Chilled, the twins forced themselves to look up. Immediately, they saw the long and sinuous perforation in the sky, an impossibly thin thread of amber inside the light.
Daphna felt her brother somehow pulling her toward it.
Dex! she thought. The talisman! We’ve got to find—
But it was too late. They were through.
CHAPTER 7
in & out
The peace, the preternatural peace, spread over them at once, dissolving every trace of angst and ire. The fear, the stress, the horror—it was all simply gone. Dex and Daphna had no bodies, yet they felt calm in a physical way. They had no sense of being anywhere, yet they knew they were somewhere even so. They didn’t try to move. They didn’t try to speak.
They just somehow were.
Slowly, the pattern of rectangles they’d glimpsed before began emerging around them. And figures of some kind seemed to be moving through them, or between them, figures scarcely separated from the light.
Dexter was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to enter the grid. Something was in there. Something somehow his.
But then the images outside the amber emanations began to flash around the twins. Daphna tried to search for the shrine. She saw it! There were the stone steps and the altar. There was the old man in the blue robe polishing the railing around it. He was alive!
Despite her desire to stay, never to leave, never to know herself in any other way ever again, Daphna pulled at Dexter. The action was purely mental, but in her mind she could feel the link between them strain.
Dexter did not want to leave. He wanted to find what was his. He needed to find what was his.
The old man kept polishing, polishing. He was weeping softly as he worked. Daphna saw him reach into a pocket and take out the talisman, which he just looked at in his hand.
“Dex!” she cried.
Dexter resisted, but Daphna was determined. As he’d pulled her into the light inside the light, by force of will alone, she yanked him back out.
CHAPTER 8
arabesque
Dexter and Daphna found themselves on a small octagonal platform in the center of what was clearly a temple. It was dark, but moonlight streaming through windows around the perimeter of an upper floor illuminated the interior quite well. The long rectangular space was divided lengthwise into three sections by towering pillars, marble maybe. The platform the twins were on was ringed by a rail, open at both ends, and supported by miniature pillars.
There, in front of them, were the stone steps leading onto the large dais that held the shrine, or altar, which was flanked by two giant multi-branched candelabras. The meticulous detail of every inch of wall in the great hall was astounding. Delicately wrought geometric shapes enveloped them, making the twins feel as if they’d somehow merged with the eternal geometry of an infinite mind.
“Those are Stars of David,” Daphna whispered, pointing. Above the two ornate doors of the shrine were two mounted panels with large six-pointed stars situated above several lines of foreign text. Daphna squinted at the letters. They were Hebrew. She was sure of it.
“Weird,” she whispered. “I think those are the Ten Commandments. This must be a synagogue, even though it looks—what’s the word? Arabesque?” Daphna turned to see what Dex thought, but he was collapsed in a heap at her feet.
Daphna did not even have time to panic because, a moment later, she was in a heap right next to him.
CHAPTER 9
azir
There were sirens fading in and out like headlights on a cloudy road. Dexter opened his cloudy eyes, already forgetting the sound. He
was lying on a worn wooden bench in a dim and stuffy little room. With extreme difficulty, he worked his way up to a sitting position. Daphna was just opening her eyes on a second bench. She blinked at him helplessly, struggling upright herself.
Once vertical, the twins saw the old man was there, tipped forward, his back arching up behind his crazy head of hair. He was standing between them holding out two mugs of steaming liquid, his bearded, olive-skinned face solemn but not severe, his slightly protuberant eyes probing but not mistrustful.
The twins’ arms were nearly useless. It was all they could do to take the mugs without immediately dropping them. But they managed. To their astonishment, their first sips of the hot liquid—it was a bit granular but with the taste of the sweetest honey—worked like magic on their almost total exhaustion. It even curbed the massive hunger they only noticed as it quickly faded away. The old man remained standing, watching as they continued to sip the miraculously fortifying drink.
It occurred to Daphna that they ought to be frightened by such a, well, frightening looking man. But in fact, she wasn’t. Not at all. She was only curious. Yes, that calm had returned with her. She closed her eyes a moment and let it warm her soul as the drink warmed her body.
I’m not afraid either, Dex said. Or thought.
Daphna heard it. She opened her eyes behind her mug at Dex. It’s back! she thought. We’ve got to find out why he’s still alive, but let’s wait. And this is the best thing I’ve ever swallowed in my entire life.
Dex nodded in agreement with both of Daphna’s statements. But he wasn’t ready to launch any kind of interrogation. Daphna wasn’t either, so the twins continued sipping the tea. The man simply continued to watch them, though with an increasing sense of expectation on his highly expressive face.
“Thank you,” Daphna finally said, doing her best to hold out her empty mug.
“English!” the man blurted, taking the mug and setting it down hastily onto a tray resting atop a primitive wooden desk behind him. There was a newspaper lying there as well. On the tray was a bowl of nuts or seeds the man lifted momentarily, but set down again, evidently too excited to offer them.
“Not Hebrew or Latin!” he cried, taking Dexter’s mug. “You are speaking English! Azir is speaking Hebrew and Latin, and Arabic of course, but he is also speaking English! I am speaking many languages. I am Azir. We can communicate to ourselves! So beautiful are you both.”
He’s loony, Dex thought. Though when he looked at Daphna to share this thought, he saw that she looked rather radiant. Her skin had a burnished glow about it, and she seemed serene, profoundly so. He wondered if he looked the same.
You do, Daphna thought to him. Then she turned to Azir. “Where—where are we?” she asked.
“We are being in Cairo, of course!” the man replied. “You are not knowing this?”
“Egypt?” Dex gasped. But he saw something. “Wait a second.” He tried to get up, but didn’t have the strength. “That newspaper—”
Azir picked the paper up and showed the twins the picture on the front page. It was that same picture of Lilit at the lodge, the one they’d just seen in the Aleph plastered who knew how many places.
“Ach,” Azir said. “This man having so much money is showing Lilit to the world. It is being here every day, and on our signs and in our radios and televisions. Like in every country now. A fool with means is very much the most foolish kind.”
He knows about Lilit! Daphna thought. She almost said it out loud. But of course, she realized, he has a talisman.
Dex didn’t respond because he was still staring, thrilled, at the paper. I can read that, he thought. I mean, I can’t read that, but I can see the letters!
“This is a synagogue, right?” Daphna asked, smiling briefly at her brother’s pleasure.
“The Ben Ezra Synagogue!” Azir announced. He waited a moment after this dramatic pronouncement. “The oldest in Egypt!” he added, crestfallen to see the twins’ lack of reaction. “Azir is the caretaker of here. My name is Azir. It was in this place that the box inside with the baby Moses was found! You are not knowing this? Perhaps what is happening here is not of your business to care for, yes? Perhaps you are having other assignments.”
Who does he think we are? Dex thought.
I have no idea, Daphna replied. She turned to Azir and asked, “Would you mind answering a few questions?”
“Of course!” the old man cried. “Azir is ready from the waiting. I have lied. Yes, yes, it is true that I have lied, and I am much ashamed! But I will never lie to such as you at this terrible time!”
The twins exchanged glances, but neither asked for clarification of these strange remarks.
“Lilit was here,” Daphna said.
In response to this, before Daphna could formulate exactly what she wanted to ask, the stooped old man seemed to crumble right in front of them.
“Azir has failed,” he blurted. Then he began pacing around the little room, which seemed to be some kind of office. It was rather spartan, with just the desk and a single bookshelf lined with dark, unreadable spines. A lopsided chair sat behind the desk. “I am so much with shame,” he moaned.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Dex asked.
“The demon!” cried the old man, looking up with huge, fearful eyes. “Lilit! After the discovery was found, my father, he feels sure it must fall to him. When he died, he was sure it must to fall to me! Azir was certain it was true when the news from University of England is coming, but—I am failing absolutely.”
“What fell to you?” Daphna asked. “What discovery? What news?”
Loony, Dex thought.
“The geniza!” Azir cried. When he saw the twins’ looks of incomprehension, he seemed troubled, but he explained. “The Jews,” he said, “as you know, have rules against to destroy any document with on it the name of God. In medieval ages this was also anything with on it Hebrew characters at all! Which this could be in prayers or legal matters or even common papers like letters or bills of sale!” He looked at the twins as if expecting this to have jogged their memories. He could see it did not, and so continued. “When any paper with the name on it was no longer to be used, it was put into a geniza, a storage space in the attic or basement of a synagogue. Sometimes they were being sealed spaces in walls or buried in the underground!”
Daphna would normally have been thrilled by the mere suggestion of hidden caches of ancient texts, but for some reason she saw no romance in the story. She felt only a desire to find out what they needed to know so they could do what had to be done. If there was nothing useful to be learned, they’d simply move on. “And was there one here?” Daphna asked, “A ganitza?”
“Geniza,” Dex said.
“The most famous in all of the world!” Azir cried. “It was when my grandfather was here the caretaker, in 1890. A ceiling in a storeroom crashed to make found thousands of original papers from Middle Ages. Many ancient texts, holy and not, were among with them. Many secret and unknown things to be found.”
“About Lilit?”
“Of course not!”
“But,” Daphna said, “you have a talisman.”
At first Azir seemed stunned to hear this. His hand shot protectively into the pocket of his robe, but then he nodded, looking reassured.
“After the finding,” he said, “many papers were very much unfortunately to be stolen, so the rest were taken away, most to the University of English Cambridge. But then—”
“Lilit went there,” Dex realized. “That room. I saw it. It was in a library. It was a total disaster. All those little fragments scattered everywhere—like a tornado passed through.”
“Yes,” Azir confirmed. “I saw this on the news, and I knew it would come here to be next. And so it was, the very next of days.”
“Why?” Daphna asked, recalling the distraught group of librarians beholding the scene they’d glimpsed in the Aleph. “Did you know he wouldn’t find what he was looking for there?”
&nbs
p; Azir nodded.
“Of course,” he said. “For still it was here with me. I, like my father and his father, and his father being before him back to the time of the church being built, we were chosen protectors. Honored protectors.”
“Did you say ‘church?’” Daphna asked.
“Yes,” Azir said, “this was originally first a church, El-Shamieen, building in the sixth century. It was not becoming as a synagogue until the ninth.”
“El-Shamieen!” Dex said. “Brother Joe told Lilit about this place right before he killed him!”
“You aren’t Jewish?” Daphna asked, shaking her head at how much damage that vengeful monk had caused.
“No,” Azir said. “I am a Christian. I was to be protecting a Christian secret. Non Jews are typical to be having jobs as caretakers in synagogues, so they can be working on the Sabbath.”
“And I’m betting,” Dex said, “they have no idea you’ve been caretaking more than just the synagogue.”
Azir smiled slightly and nodded. “No, they are never knowing this.”
“So Lilit went to England because the contents of the—geniza—discovered here were stored there,” Daphna said, trying to put the pieces together. “But what he wanted wasn’t part of the collection. He assumed it was never found and came here. And he was right. And he made you give it to him.”
Azir nodded sadly. “I was giving it to him. But not because I am being a coward! I was giving it because I knew he would destroy this precious place if I am resisting. And I could see plain he was eager and would be reading it right now. I thought if it was so much busy, I would have a chance to kill it. I was very much afraid. I have failed.”
“It’s not your fault,” Daphna said. “He was too fast.”
This seemed to have a great effect on Azir, who straightened up a bit.
The Book of All Things Page 4
