Ian Johnstone - The Bell Between Worlds

“I don’t get it,” he said. “The words look familiar, but they don’t make sense. Is it another language?”

“Not a language,” replied Mr Zhi, smiling once again. “A cipher. A code.”

Sylas’s eyes leapt back to the page. “A code?”

“Yes. Time is short, but let us just try one final thing before you go. Close the book.”

Sylas pressed the ancient covers shut.

“Now, clear your mind, and remove all thoughts of what you have just seen in the book. When I say so, I want you to open the book again, but this time don’t expect to be able to read what you find. In fact, I want you to think of something else entirely – anything, as long as it is not to do with books or writing of any kind.”

Sylas knew that he would find that very easy. He closed his eyes and the image of his mother’s face instantly filled his mind.

“When you have that thought in your head, you may open the book,” said Mr Zhi in a whisper.

Sylas clung to the image of his mother, then quickly opened his eyes and picked up the book. He turned to a page somewhere in the second part and cast his eyes over the strange, carefully drafted script.

It looked as it had before, written in a strange hand in a dark ink, but as his eyes focused on the first word, he saw to his amazement that it was not made up of letters as he had previously thought, but strange symbols. They were not familiar – they were not even similar to those in the alphabet, but were much more complex, forming patterns that rose and fell from each line. Sylas looked up at Mr Zhi in astonishment.

“But... the words didn’t look like this a minute ago.”

“What did they look like?” asked Mr Zhi, clearly enjoying himself.

“I’m not sure…” said Sylas. “Like normal words, I suppose.”

“That’s right, because that is what you thought you would see. The brilliance of this cipher is that it tricks your eye into seeing whatever you expect. You thought you would see words written in English, so that is what you saw. But they were meaningless. In truth you were looking at one of the world’s most ancient codes: a cipher known as Ravel Runes.”

Sylas repeated the words under his breath.

“The problem for anyone trying to read Ravel Runes is that they must first learn to see the symbols as they really are, before they can even begin to work out what they might stand for.”

Sylas looked back at the book and, sure enough, the writing once again looked encouragingly familiar and easy to read. But it made no sense. He blinked hard.

“That’s weird,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “Just weird!”

“Weird is one way of putting it,” said Mr Zhi with a smile, “and wonderful is another. Ravel Runes are difficult enough to read, but just imagine how hard they are to write. Think of the time it takes.” He leaned over the counter and for a while they both stared in silence at the writing, admiring the hand that wrote it.

“Time!” cried Sylas suddenly. He scrambled for his wrist-watch. “The time! I’ll miss the post! My uncle will kill me!”

To miss the post was unthinkable. His uncle had two major topics of conversation: the importance of timeliness and the supreme importance of his correspondence. He would see a failure to catch the post as a conspiracy to overturn all that was good in the world: a capital offence punishable by interminable lectures on both topics for at least a week.

Sylas snatched up his rucksack and in a blind panic started off down one of the dark corridors of Things. As he left the sphere of candlelight, he found himself peering into the darkness of several passages, none of which looked familiar.

He heard a kindly chuckle behind him.

“Calm yourself, Sylas,” said Mr Zhi, walking up. “I’ll show you out, but first, take this.”

He pushed the Samarok into Sylas’s hands.

Sylas looked at him in surprise. “You mean… to keep?”

“To keep. You have much more use for it than I.”

“But I… I can’t!” cried Sylas as he followed Mr Zhi towards the front of the shop.

“But it’s already yours, Sylas, I’ve given it to you.”

Sylas hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, “really, but I don’t know what I’d do with it! I don’t understand the code.”

“You will,” replied Mr Zhi.

As they emerged from the warren of parcels and stepped into the light, the shopkeeper turned and smiled.

“I have a motto, young man, one that has served me very well: ‘Do not fear what you do not understand.’ You have much to learn about the world you live in, but most of all about yourself – about who you are and where you are from. The Samarok will help you on that journey.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that – what journey?” asked Sylas, more confused than ever.

Mr Zhi took hold of the door handle and let the great din of the passing road into the shop.

“The Samarok is yours, and its journey of discovery will be yours too. Only you will know when that journey has begun, and where it is taking you. All I can offer you is this.” He pulled a small white envelope from his pocket and held it out to Sylas.

“What is it?”

“It will help you to decipher the runes,” said Mr Zhi. He held out his gloved hand and grasped Sylas’s in a handshake. “Now, you must go.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then say nothing,” said the shopkeeper.

Sylas paused for a moment and looked into Mr Zhi’s kindly eyes. He felt he had made a friend and he wanted to say that he would be back, but somehow he knew that Mr Zhi had shown him the Things that he wanted to show, and that was the end of it.

He walked through the doorway and peered into the street beyond. It looked even colder and gloomier than it had before. The sky was bleak and threatening and the blanket of cloud seemed to brush the top of Gabblety Row. Rain lashed the passing cars, which threw it angrily back into the air to form a silver-grey mist above the road. The noise was a shock after the quiet seclusion of the Shop of Things: the hiss of tyres on the wet road, the growl of ill-tempered engines and the splatter of rain on the pavement. Sylas could hardly bring himself to step outside.

“Go now.” Mr Zhi’s voice was gentle but firm.

Sylas pushed the book inside his jacket and stepped into the street, gasping slightly as the first cold raindrops splattered on his face. He turned to look one more time at the old man in the half-darkness of the doorway. The shopkeeper was leaning against the door frame in a way that only emphasised the untidiness of his dishevelled grey suit.

“Thank you, Mr Zhi,” said Sylas. And then with sudden determination he added, “I’ll try to understand. I will.”

Mr Zhi smiled broadly and gave a low bow. “That is all that I can ask. And that is all your mother would ask.”

With one last wink, he let go of the handle and the old glass door swung closed.

Sylas stood stock-still for some moments, dumbfounded by Mr Zhi’s final words.

Then something made him glance back up at the shop sign.

The new wooden board above the door had been repainted entirely in a dark green. It was as if ‘the Shop of Things’ had never been there.

“Of beasts they spoke, of feral servants chained;

Born to the yoke of man, yet sent forth untamed.”

TOBIAS TATE SAT BACK in his leather chair watching the rain pouring down his grimy office window, reflecting on his day. He found it impossible to imagine a worse one, though, as he was unusually short of imagination, that was not particularly surprising. He had decided to devote the day to visiting his clients in Gabblety Row, which was a task so disagreeable to him that he forced it upon himself but once a year. The problem was that such visits demanded contact with people and, even worse, with people who considered that they knew him.