October 15

            Trey and Greta awoke to the sound of a rattling percolator; the smell of frying bacon. G stepped out of her room in pink PJ’s with tiny green flowers that were losing their color. She knocked on her brother’s door.

            “Hey,” she half-whispered. “You awake?” She opened the door and climbed into his bed. “Mom’s makin’ bacon,” she stated.

            “Smells good,” he answered, stretching.

            “You want to show me the fort after breakfast?” she asked.

            “You bet!” he smiled. “You’re gonna love it. I’m gonna put up a couple turrets on the sides, like a castle, and I’m gonna have a lookout post in one of the trees. It’ll be so neato!”

            “Bacon first,” she assured, jumping out of the bed. Trey followed her down the short hallway to the kitchen, all the while singing a song about bacon.

            “One or two?” Jan asked, draining the grease into a steel can.

            “Two!!” the twins urge.

            “Why do I even bother asking?” she sighs, smiling. “How’d you sleep?” Jan places plates of bacon and scrambled eggs on the bar where the kids at in tall stools.

            “Good,” they answer. Jan pours some OJ, passing the small glasses to the kids.

            “I’m gonna take G to the fort after breakfast,” Trey confirms.

            “Enjoy your freedom while you have it,” Jan warns, “because it’s back to school on Monday.”

            “Don’t remind me,” Megan says, entering. “Bacon?”

            “Morning, Sunshine,” Jan sasses. “It won’t be as bad as you might think.” She passes the platter to Megan, who grabs three slices and crams one of them into her mouth. Meg takes a seat at the end of the bar and pours a cup of coffee.

            “It’s only my senior year, and I have to start all over with a whole group of total strangers,” Meg pouts. “How bad can that be?”

            “Princess, don’t get all huffy about it, you haven’t even been there, yet,” her mother responds calmly. “Besides, there’s only about fifty kids in the whole school.”

            “Oh, that’s right,” Megan fires back, annoyed. “At T-High, I had maybe thirty classmates in each class. Now, I’ll have less than half of that in my whole graduating class.” She bit into another piece of bacon in defiance.

            “Well, that’s fewer names that you’ll have to learn,” Jan offered, swinging out to the dining room to grab some apples. On her way, she noticed the strange books Dale was talking about lying beside his chair. She wandered over to the chair and picked them up, balancing the apples on top as she brought the bundle into the kitchen.

            “Apples,” she stated, more of a demand than a suggestion. Each child obediently grabbed one and started munching. The books she sat down on the kitchen counter on the opposite side of the room beside the sink. The note from John Stull dropped out of one of the books and she gave it a read. Wow. No need to get the kids involved in this, she thought. The kids continued bantering at the table about school as Jan peeked into each book in curiosity. The one that started with those strange words “Novus Ordo Seclurum” looked like a series of Latin translations into English, the first titled Secretum: mostly, a dialogue between Petrarch and St. Augustine. There were a couple of other Latin-to-English translations in this volume, too, but at a first glance, she couldn’t tell where one ended and the others began. The English parts looked like something she might want to pass on to her Bible study circle in Topeka, she thought. Interesting.

            The second book looked like it was some kind of registry: one column of titles, another of codes, a third of strange symbols, and a fourth of numbers. Every now and then the columns would end in the middle of a page and start a new sequence on the next. It looked like some kind of historical record of some kind, she supposed, though to what, she could not even guess. The titles were all over the place, too. Some she recognized as authors, some artists, some were just items. She noticed that the language of the text would change from English to Italian to Latin and back again, seemingly at random; it was all over the place. Pretty meaningless, she thought, without a point of reference.

            The third book was written pretty much entirely in English, though the spelling was awful, and appeared to be the personal journal of someone who called himself Custos Arcanorum. The name sounded strange enough, but what surprised Jan even more was the date listed: 1180 November 10? No way, she thought. If these dates were right, then this thing was certainly strange, if not also very valuable.

            “‘No way,’ what, Mom?” Megan replied.

            Jan caught herself. Did she say that aloud? “Oh,” she shook her head, “it’s nothing.”

            “Is that what Dad was looking at last night?” her daughter asked, intrigued.

            “Yeah, it’s just old boring books,” her mother noted. “Nothing you’d be interested in.” She closed the journal and put the books to the side, sliding the note into a hanging apron.

            “Secrets don’t make friends,” Meg suggested, smiling. “Come on, lemme see.”

            Jan hesitated, then grabbed the journal and brought it over. “Okay,” she accepts. “Look, but don’t touch.” The children gather around the ancient pages. “This journal, here, says it was written in 1180.”

            Megan laughed derisively. “No way, let me see.” After checking, she started to put her fingers on the corners of the pages before her mother gingerly slapped them away.

            “Don’t,” her mother insisted, “touch!” The twins backed away nervously.

            Meg thought for a moment. Her eyes moved furtively around the page, noting a few things, before she decided her verdict. “It’s gotta be fake,” she declared.

            “What makes you say that?” her mother posed, a bit relieved.

            “Because it’s written in English,” explained her daughter. “English didn’t even really exist as a written language until the 1400’s.” She was pretty sure of herself. “It’s the spelling,” she pointed.

            “The spelling is O-F-A-L,” Jan remarked jovially.

            “But it’s still recognizable as English. There’s no way that the spelling of these words could be like this in 1180. You remember my history project on Gutenburg? First, he didn’t ‘invent’ the printing press at all, really, he invented movable type, and that wasn’t until 1450. Second, William Caxton didn’t bring movable type to England until 1476.”

            “So what does movable type have to with the spelling?” Jan asked.

            “That’s why I got an A,” beamed Meg. “Movable type standardized your spelling, your grammar, punctuation,” she went on. “Because the press was located in London and the south midlands dialect was used in London, the spelling of all documents, including the Bible, the world’s first dictionaries, newspapers, and things like that got all standardized using the south midlands dialect. Given this spelling, the formation of the letters, the grammar the punctuation, all of it, it’s impossible that this was written in 1180. I mean, the guy would have had to use a crystal ball or a time machine to look into the future in order to know how to spell these words this way.”

The twins had checked out. Trey saw the opportunity to seize the moment. “Can we go outside?” he sighed.

            “Sure, go on,” Jan agreed, impressed with Megan’s retention of information. “It’s cold out there, though, so heavy jeans, jackets, and scarves, please.” The twins hopped out of their stools and ran back to their rooms. “And a hat!” she called after them. By the time they came out bundled up, Megan had certainly covered the bases disproving the book’s authenticity, but Jan still had some questions. “But if this is hand-written, which it appears to be, then could it be possible that this was just written by a very eloquent hand?” she suggested.

            “Mom,” Megan spelled out, “what is more likely: that the dates and text are accurate, disproving countless records of the history of the English language, or that they were forged by someone trying to make something look cooler and older than it really is?” Megan rested her case, biting into the last piece of bacon. The twins hopped through the kitchen and jetted out the back door towards the woods.

            “I love you,” called out Jan.

            “Love you, Mom!” the twins chimed in time.

“Be careful out there,” she reminded them. The door slammed shut. She sighed. “I don’t know that it proves anything,” her mother stated. “It might point to one direction as far as likelihood, but I don’t know what it proves.” She opened the book again, examining the pages closely.

“What about those other ones?” Meg pressed. She crossed the room to give them a look.

“Please be careful,” urged Jan. “If they are as old as they say they are, they’re probably worth a lot of money.” Jan cleared away the plates from breakfast and wiped off the counter with a clean cloth. Megan brought the remaining volumes to the counter and set them side by side, looking at the covers.

“No titles on the spines,” she noted. She opened the first one and read the spooky poem aloud. “Now comes the final era of the Sybil’s Song. What’s the Sybil’s song?” she asked.

“Don’t know, Sweety. The fact is, I don’t know much about any of these.” Jan pointed at the third book. “I remember something about St. Augustine in this one,” she offered, “and that’s a name that I heard before in my Bible study circles.” She switched books to identify the passage. “This one looks like it’s a conversation between St. Augustine and this guy Petrarch.”

“What’s it about?”

“Here’s the first bit,” she read aloud:

Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure. When I was ruminating lately on this matter, not in any dream as one in sickness and slumber, but wide awake and with all my wits about me, I was greatly astonished to behold a very beautiful Lady, shining with an indescribable light about her.

Then it goes on with a conversation between the author and this lady,” she continues, flipping through a page or two. “Here, take a look.” She handed the book to her daughter.

            Megan thought carefully for a moment, then stood the book up on its spine to where it would fall open. It immediately flipped to a passage that appeared to have been read and studied, even dog-eared.

            “Please be careful,” she warned.

            “I’m just looking,” she said. Megan read aloud.

“St. Augustine. What have you to say, O man of little strength? Of what are you dreaming? For what are you looking? Remember you not you are mortal?

Petrarch. Yes, I remember it right well, and a shudder comes upon me every time that remembrance rises in my breast.

St. Augustine. May you, indeed, remember as you say, and take heed for yourself. You will spare me much trouble by so doing. For there can be no doubt that to recollect one's misery and to practice frequent meditation on death is the surest aid in scorning the Seductions of this world, and in ordering the soul amid its stoles and tempests, if only such meditation be not superficial, but sink into the bones and marrow of the heart.

Sounds old and boring to me,” Megan offered. “I wonder what Lancelot would say about it.”

Jan scoffed. “That kid has more knowledge than he knows what to do with.” Lance Flott had been one of Megan’s more educated bookworm-type friends in Topeka. He was a couple of years older and worked at the public library, which made Jan all the more nervous. In Jan’s eyes, Lance was the only reason Megan even got her hands on all that trashy romance fiction in the first place.

“Maybe I could ask him,” suggested Meg. “I mean,” she added, recognizing the cross look on her mother’s face, “I know you don’t particularly care for the guy, but I’m sure he would know more about this stuff than we do.”

“I don’t dislike Lance,” her mother wavered, “but he did kind of steer you down a different path.”

“I do my own steering, thank you very much,” she scoffed. “He didn’t do anything except answer my questions honestly.” Her mother looked back at her, mildly offended. “Tell me he didn’t cross your mind, reading all this.”

Jan couldn’t be mad at her. She was doing the same thing that she, herself, did to Dale. Megan knew she was right, and, unfortunately, so did Jan.