TWENTY-ONE

Present Day

Sterling, Massachusetts

    It was almost midnight when I threw the copied journal pages onto the table. They slid toward the edge, and Val saved them from falling to the floor.

    “Any luck?” she asked me.

    “None.” I slumped in my chair. “Maybe the alphabet is from outer space. Does Soul Identity believe in extra-terrestrials?”

    She smiled. “Don’t be silly.”

    “Just in case, I’ll search for alien alphabets.” I opened my laptop and ran a search. The results spanned from Klingon to cartoon alphabets to characters drawn by those claiming to have been abducted by aliens. None of the characters matched ones in the journal.

    Then I clicked on a link for Alien Adventure, a 1999 Belgian movie. The plot summary told how a space gypsy tribe called the Glagoliths stumbled onto a not-yet-opened amusement park on Earth.

    “Hold on-Glagoliths?” Val asked. “I’ve heard that word before.” She typed on her laptop, then smiled at me. “You found it.”

    I leaned over and looked at the same style characters from the journal on her screen. “Found what?”

    “Glagolitic writing.”

    “Is it alien?”

    She threw a pencil at me. “It’s an ancient Slavic writing language-the precursor to Cyrillic. We learned about it in Soviet History class.” She clicked her mouse. “Here’s the full alphabet.”

    I grabbed the pencil and the first page of the journal. “Let’s see what it says.”

    After a couple minutes, I smiled and held up the sheet.

    Val pointed at the last four characters. “That’s not a word.”

    “It’s got to be a date,” I said. “Look up Glagolitic numbers.”

    Val typed at her keyboard, then turned the laptop so I could read it.

    The old Slavs used letters to represent each number, similar to the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. I added them to the journal.

    “Where was Glagolitic writing used?” I asked.

    She looked at her screen. “The Yugoslav coastal area.”

    “Like Istria?” Madame Flora’s homeland, according to the twins.

    “Especially Istria.”

    I flipped through the pages and saw the journal contained four entries, all from 1946.

    Thirty minutes later, I read the first sentence out loud: “Bengeski niamsi, te bisterdon tumare anava.”

    “That’s not English. And it’s not Slavic-sounding, either,” Val said.

    “Or Italian or German,” I added.

    She smiled. “Is it alien?”

    I thought about that movie again…the plot mentioned a space gypsy tribe.

    Flora was a Gypsy. “It must be Romany,” I said.

    Val typed on her keyboard. Then she frowned. “Did you know that Romany’s an ever-shrinking language? They only have three thousand words left.”

    “You found an online dictionary?”

    “I did.” She took the sheet from me.

    After a bit, Val grinned. “You’re such a smarty. Here’s your translation-Cursed Germans, may your names be forgotten.”

    “If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear that bit of melodrama coming out of the mouth of a seventeen-year-old Flora,” I said. I rubbed my hands together. “This may take us a while.”

    By sunrise we had completed the first two entries. Flora had extended the limited Romany vocabulary with a mix of Italian, Croatian, German, and English, and we were able to translate almost every sentence.

    I looked at Val and rubbed my eyes. “It sure starts with a bang.”

Flora’s Journal

28 September 1946

Cursed Germans, may your names be forgotten. May malignant diseases waste your bodies. And may your grasp at immortality fall short.    

    Once upon a time a young princess lived with her father the king and her fairy godmother in a beautiful castle by the sea. The fairy used her magic to bring people joy and comfort.

    Then disaster struck. Evil wolves killed the king and captured the castle. The princess and her godmother escaped and hid, alone and starving, deep in the woods.

    The wolves destroyed many more castles, and they killed many more good people. A vast army joined together to fight against them. After many years, they defeated the wolves, and they rounded up the surviving leaders and put them in a cage so they could kill them.

    The strongest wolf in the cage had fierce magical teeth, made out of the bones of his victims.

    The princess and her godmother still starved in the woods, for although the people had won and they had rescued the beautiful castle, they kept it for themselves.

    One day a knight in shining armor sent a message to the fairy godmother and the princess. He offered them a new castle in a land far away. But to get there, he wanted the fairy godmother to use her magic and make the strongest wolf immortal.

    The princess didn’t want to help the wolf who killed her father. She didn’t want to help the wolf use his magical teeth forever and ever.

    But her fairy godmother said they would perish if they remained in the woods, so they agreed to help, and they traveled to the wolf cage. While the fairy prepared a special talisman for the wolf, the princess decided to destroy the magical teeth before they too became immortal.

    The captain refused to help her, even though she pleaded with him many times. One brave knight did volunteer, and he and the princess set off together on a quest to destroy the teeth. But although they tried valiantly, cunning wolves tricked them and almost killed the brave knight.

    Now the princess doesn’t know what to do. The wolf still needs to be defanged. The captain doesn’t care. And time is running out.

    But the princess will never give up. Never.

1 October 1946

When you are given, eat. When you are beaten, run away.

    The captain came to the princess, who had been hiding in her room for the three days since the brave knight was wounded. The talisman was ready, and the wolf’s magical teeth would soon be deposited in a safe place, there to await his return from death.

    The captain asked the princess to befriend a guard and pass messages to the wolf. She didn’t want to help, but the captain forced her to by swearing that he’d harm her fairy godmother if she didn’t.

    So the princess searched for other ways to destroy the wolf’s magical teeth. Her fairy godmother made a special truth-telling potion to use against the captain.

    When the princess gave the captain the potion, he told her where the magical teeth would be hidden. He told her he had to save them so he could become a general and help kill future wolves. And then he confessed his love for her.

    When the captain left, the princess was horribly confused. She wanted to help the captain, but she was still determined to destroy the wolf’s magical teeth.