David Michael Slater
Children’s Brains are Yummy Books
Austin, Texas
p
David Michael Slater
Children’s Brains are Yummy Books
Austin, Texas
For Heidi, the apple of my eye
Children’s Brains are Yummy Books
www.cbaybooks.com
The Book of Knowledge
Sacred Books, Volume II
Copyright © 2009 David Michael Slater
ISBN (10): 1-933767-02-2
ISBN (13): 978-1-933767-02-4
eISBN: 978-1-933767-06-2
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form without express written permission. For more information write to:
Rights Department
CBAY Books
PO Box 92411
Austin, TX 78709
I have always imagined Paradise to be a kind of library.
— Jorge Luis Borges —
Part I
The Infinite
CHAPTER 1
not a bad man
“Adem Tarik—Adem Tarik—I—I—”
“Here we go again,” Dexter groaned, turning away from the early morning TV talk show he’d been half watching. He shot an irritated look at his sleeping father.
“But it sounded like he was going to say something else that time,” said Daphna. She hauled herself off the couch where she’d been slumped next to her twin brother and approached Milton’s bedside. A glimmer of hope had surfaced in her speckled green eyes, but it faded when he failed to say anything further. Daphna huffed and spun around.
“We need to do something, Dex,” she said. “I think we should wake Dad and tell him everything we know.”
Dexter’s own speckled green eyes were skeptical. “But what if that makes him worse?”
“How could it?” Daphna said. “Besides, Latty will be here with his stuff from home soon. You’ve seen how paranoid she’s getting again. Who knows when we’ll get another chance.”
Dex closed his eyes. Up until a second ago, everything had been going fine. The trip from the hospital to the Multnomah Village Rest and Rehabilitation Home had gone off without a hitch, and more importantly without a single mention of the name Adem Tarik.
Milton, worn out by the transfer, passed out the second he’d been settled into bed, so the twins had seized the opportunity to plop onto the room’s guest couch and veg out in front of the TV. For nearly five minutes, they’d been able to relax. But now that exasperating name was on their father’s lips again.
The surgeon who’d operated on Milton’s broken hip said he’d been raving the name when the ambulance attendants wheeled him into the emergency room. He’d stopped when they’d administered the anesthetic before surgery but then started again as soon as it wore off. Back in his hospital room, groggy on pain medication, Milton had kept it up, repeating the name over and over for almost two days.
“Adem—Tarik,” Milton mumbled once again. Dex rolled his eyes, but Daphna put a finger to her lips. “I—I am—” their father continued, “I am not a bad man—I—Adem—”
“Hey!” Dex exclaimed, “that’s what I told you he said in his sleep at home!”
Daphna thought a moment. “He’s been blaming himself for being a bad father,” she said, “for neglecting us all the time to scout books, like Latty told us. Or maybe he feels badly for not catching Mom before she fell in the caves.”
“Or maybe there’s something else going on,” Dex protested. “We still have no idea why his mattress is stuffed with all that money. What if he did something illegal and feels bad about it?”
Daphna sighed. No matter how much they learned there was always something left to baffle them. But the suggestion that their father did something criminal was unacceptable.
“If you think that, Dexter,” Daphna snapped, “then you should want to tell him what we know so we can get to the bottom of it!”
Dex rubbed his temples, which hurt. His whole face still hurt: black eye, split lip and all.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “But he’s probably going to have us committed.”
Daphna shrugged, then turned back to her father, eager to ease his mind. She touched his shoulder with a gentle hand. “Dad?”
Milton stirred, opened his brown speckled eyes partway under their bristly gray brows and murmured, “Um?”
“Dad, Dex and I want to talk to you. We want to tell you something.”
“Hmrm,” Milton murmured, drifting away already.
“We know the truth about Mom,” Dex declared, now standing behind his sister.
At this, Milton seemed to rouse himself. His eyes weren’t exactly lucid, but they were all the way open now. “What’s that?” he asked.
Daphna felt sure they were doing the right thing. “Well—” she said, suddenly at a loss where to begin. “First we need to tell you about that book you were trying to get back from the ABC, the new shop in the Village that burned down. Where that disgusting boy knocked you—”
“Daphna,” Milton said, “there are no new bookshops anywhere in Portland.” Then he fell straight back to sleep.
Daphna’s face fell. He still didn’t remember, and he wasn’t pretending. A psychologist who’d come to talk with Milton in the hospital confirmed that. Her first theory was that he was suffering from an “adjustment disorder,” which meant he was having trouble dealing with a recent traumatic event. Being thrown to the ground by a giant, demented red-eyed boy certainly qualified, especially since he wound up with a broken hip and a concussion.
But when she learned that Milton had forgotten not only the incident, but also the events leading up to it, she said something more significant was involved. Given the endless repeating, it was more than likely something connected to Adem Tarik.
Latty seemed to confirm this by sharing the history of the name. Dex and Daphna were there for the whole conversation.
“For many years,” Latty told the psychologist, “the twins’ mother, Shimona, had a rare book business in Israel. I was her manager and best friend.” Latty stopped a moment, struggling to maintain her composure, but then she went on.
“Just a few months after the kids were born,” she said, “someone calling himself ‘Adem Tarik’ phoned me with a tip. He said some caves had been discovered in Eastern Turkey containing books far older than the oldest ever found before. He even gave directions. We didn’t know what to make of it, of course, but we also didn’t see the harm in investigating.
“Shimona, Milton and I dropped the kids off with a friend and flew right there. We followed the instructions to a small opening in the side of some craggy hills not too far from a town called Malatya. We’d been inside for less than fifteen minutes when the caves started collapsing. There was an earthquake. Apparently, they’re quite common in that area.”
Latty acknowledged that going into those caves so unprepared, even going into that region of Turkey, was foolish and irresponsible, but she said bookscouts often did foolish and irresponsible things in pursuit of rare finds.
Of course, since becoming Milton’s business manager and taking over as caretaker for the twins—and turning into the biggest worrywart of all time—Latty never did anything remotely like that again. She told the psychologist it was a miracle any of them survived.
“Milton escaped with a blow to the head,” she said, “and I collected more nasty bruises and cuts than I could count. But Shimona—she fell into a chasm.”
Other than Adem Tarik’s involvement, none of this was news to the twins. But there was more.
“We were all together,” Latty continued, choking up, “the three of us, making our way along the edge of some sort of crevasse. Milton
lit a torch, but he dropped it over the ledge when the earthquake hit.”
“Go on,” the psychologist gently urged.
“Milton got a hold of Shimona and me, but the cave floor was shifting,” Latty said. “We all got thrown in different directions, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground bleeding and couldn’t get up. Some light was coming down from high above, and I could see Shimona. Her arms flailed as she teetered on the edge. It was so loud and chaotic and terrifying with rocks falling everywhere.” Latty’s voice went almost too low to hear.
“Milton desperately tried to keep Shimona from falling,” she whispered. “He grabbed at her. It looked like he got a hold of her again, but then he was knocked out and—she fell.”
Dexter and Daphna had both found themselves staring at the shiny white hospital floor while they absorbed these alarming details, details clearly kept from them all their lives.
Latty, struggling to hold back tears, managed to explain that when Milton came to, he didn’t remember anything that had happened.
“Of course he was told that Shimona was lost,” she said, “but I didn’t tell him how I’d seen him fail to save her. I never told anyone. It was so horrible. I dream about it all the time. Those flailing arms. It was like they were trying to fly.”
Since Milton had hit his head on the sidewalk when he’d broken his hip the other day, the psychologist suggested that the blow might’ve triggered the return of all his dreadful memories, and that he was fighting to fend them off.
But when Daphna mentioned he’d been acting oddly even before he’d hit his head, she proposed that Milton’s memories had begun returning on their own, something that eventually happened to a lot of people with traumatic events in their past. The new blow might actually be holding them back.
The psychologist asked Latty if there had been something Milton was planning or looking forward to way back before the accident in the caves, something that happened recently.
Latty nodded. “Well,” she sniffed, “in the caves, before the quake, we were talking about time, about how quickly it goes, and about how little time parents have before their children are grown. Milton felt quite strongly that children are really only children for thirteen years. He was telling us how he wasn’t going to waste any of them and that he’d have a great celebration for the kids on their thirteenth birthday. And all this recent craziness did seem to have started when he came back just before they turned thirteen.”
“That’s very likely it, then,” the psychologist decided. “The approach of the kids’ birthday may well have punctured a hole in the dam blocking this memory. I’d say the second hit on the head is clogging that hole. If I’m right, it’ll be a temporary obstruction. It’s only a matter of time before the whole dam breaks.”
That’s when Latty’s dam broke. She began sobbing outright. She said she’d do anything to save Milton from having to relive such horrors, but the psychologist said he had to if he was ever going to have a genuinely healthy mental life.
Latty was obviously not convinced, but she didn’t press the issue. Instead, she walked unsteadily from the room with a wad of tissues pressed to her streaming green eyes. When she’d gone, the psychologist warned the twins not to pressure their father to see things clearly too soon.
All of this ran back through Daphna’s mind as she looked at her sleeping father, but she decided a little pressure wouldn’t kill him.
“Dad, think,” she said, nudging him until an eye opened to her. “You brought a strange book back from Turkey. It was beaten up and full of all kinds of crazy nonsense words—”
“Daphna,” Milton said, producing a patient but wavering smile. “I haven’t gone to Turkey yet.” His eyes, pools of foggy brown now, closed again.
“Dad,” Dexter said, “Mom isn’t who you thought she was.” Milton didn’t reply to this, but he looked at his son.
“You’re probably going to think we’re a couple of lunatics,” Dex said, “but she was old, really old—not like you, I mean.” Dexter hesitated, then took the plunge. “She was thousands of years old.”
“Listen, Dad,” Daphna put in, trying not to give her father a chance to tell them to stop being ridiculous, “I know this is all going to sound very weird. Just promise you won’t say anything until we’re totally done. Promise?”
“But it sounded like Dex said she was thous—”
“Promise, Dad!”
“Okay, okay, I promise.”
“Good,” Daphna sighed. “Right. Mom was part of a group, a Council, searching for a book,” she said quickly, “a book that could someday show people a dangerous language called the First Tongue.” Then she added, almost under her breath, “It’s also called The Language of Power. It’s sort of magic—or mystical, I guess.”
Milton raised an eyebrow, but at least he was listening.
Daphna forged ahead. “See, there’s this ancient myth that says God read from a book to create the world. No one knows if that’s true,” she hastened to add. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The point is that people got hold of the book, early people. They used it to do good things for a while but then mostly to wipe each other out. But the book kept getting lost, and eventually everyone forgot the language because it’s really hard to learn and use.”
“But somebody found the book again,” said Dex. “And he tried to train a group of thirty-six child geniuses to use the language to bring peace to the world. Mom was one of them! He wanted to make Heaven on Earth. He taught the kids a Word to give themselves super long lives so they could do it.”
“But there was a war between the kids,” Daphna said, “The War of Words it was—”
Milton’s eyes fluttered. They were losing him.
“Anyway,” Daphna hurried, “the book wound up getting changed. The words, on the pages, they change. Mom did it to hide the language! So the Words of Power can still show up on the pages, but maybe not for a million years.”
The eyes were nearly closed.
“But it got lost again!” Daphna shouted. “That’s why Mom was searching for it! To destroy it once and for all!”
“But she finally gave up on the search to marry you!” Dex cried.
“But then she got that call that made you guys go to Turkey!”
“Dad! You found the book on your trip to Turkey this summer! That was it! That was the book everyone was searching for!”
“But you gave it to Asterius Rash at the ABC! He made you! He was the kid who started the war!”
“But we got it back before the store burned down!”
“But Emmet, his assistant, got it from us in the park after all the Councilors were killed! They lived here! He’s the one who knocked you—Wait!” Daphna cried, realizing she had some proof of all this. She fumbled her mother’s letter out of her pocket.
“Dad!” she nearly screamed, “we found the letter Mom wrote before she went to the caves! Here, read it!”
But Milton didn’t take the crumpled paper. He only looked at it trembling in Daphna’s hand for a moment. Then he regarded his breathless children with a thoughtful expression.
The twins looked at their father with wide, anxious eyes, waiting.
“You kids,” Milton finally said. He chuckled, and then he fell asleep.
Dex and Daphna tried to shake him awake, but he was beyond reach. “Adem Tarik—” he muttered when they gave up and fell back onto the couch, “I am not a bad man—”
CHAPTER 2
food for thought
The twins slouched back over to the couch, sank into it and stared up dumbly at the TV. But no sooner had they settled in, a voice called out urgently from the hall, “I’m coming! I’m coming!”
Latty.
She swept into the room, a frizzy-haired whirlwind of stress hauling two suitcases, a grocery sack and a shoulder bag with Milton’s laptop.
“Oh, thank goodness!” she said after casting a worried look over both the twins and their fitfully sleeping father. “It looks like you t
wo have everything under control—not that I’m surprised, mind you.” Without a moment’s pause, she began unpacking and toting neat piles of clothes to the various dressers around the room.
“We’re fine,” Daphna said, trying not to sound as annoyed as she felt. “You said you weren’t going to worry about us so much anymore.”
“I know,” Latty conceded. “But it’s not easy.”
“He started up again,” Dexter said, dejectedly. “And now he keeps trying to say he isn’t a ‘bad man.’”
Latty looked horrified. “Listen, kids,” she said, dropping some shirts into a drawer. “I don’t care what that psychologist said. I don’t think it would be good for your father to remember. I remember, and I’ve never put what happened behind me. It was too terrible. What I wouldn’t give to forget what I saw! I don’t think we should say anything, anything at all, about Adem Tarik, or the accident, or your mother. I’m so afraid of what it’ll do to him if it all comes back. Listen, I want you both to promise me something.”
“What?” both Dex and Daphna nervously asked.
“I can’t be here twenty-four hours a day,” Latty said. “When you kids are here, and he starts in on this—this nonsense, I want you to discourage it. Change the subject if he starts to realize what he’s talking about. Okay?”
“Ah—” Daphna said.
“Um—” was the best Dex could do.
“Promise me.”
“Okay,” two sheepish voices agreed.
Latty tried to smile. “Everything will be okay,” she said. “I’m sure Milton Adam Wax will be up and at ’em in no time at all.” But this was hardly convincing from a world-champion fretter.
“What do you think Dad’ll do?” Dexter asked, hoping both to change the subject and get some answers. “I mean, if he gives up scouting?”
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