The Book Without Words: A Fable of Medieval Magic by Avi
Not knowing where else to go, she wandered among the stones, now and again stumbling and tripping on the slippery graveyard mire. Once, she caught sight of something gleaming—a wee bit of pallid, broken bone.
When the fog lifted briefly, she saw a shape distinct from stone. She gazed at it intently, gradually realizing it was the shape of a man. Brother Wilfrid, she told herself. Wanting to feel relief, but unsure if she should, she edged forward. The fog shifted. She could see. It was Thorston.
10
Inside the church, Alfric sat motionless with the Book Without Words resting heavily on his knees. The church’s emptiness unsettled him, making him almost afraid to breathe. It did not help that the large eyes of Saint Elfleda seemed to fix upon him. He squeezed his hands over the stone so tightly his fingers ached.
To ease the pain he relaxed his hands and let his fingers uncurl. The stone lay in his palm, glowing. A sweet, springlike smell suffused the air. Alfric’s head teemed with images of bright flowers, fields of wheat, and leafy trees. He recollected something he had seen in the book: a magic for making food. Just to think of it made his mouth water; his stomach churned. He began to open the book, only to be held by a sound.
Someone had entered the church. The images in his head vanished. His hands clapped tightly over the stone and book. He strained to see into the darkness.
“Sybil?” Alfric called. “Is that … you?”
Alfric strained to see. Gradually, a figure emerged out of the darkness. It was Brother Wilfrid. Alfric sprang to his feet.
11
The monk halted before him. His green-hued eyes seemed to glow. The strands of his pale hair stirred. “Do you have the book?” he asked.
“I won’t betray her!” cried Alfric. “I won’t!”
“I must have it,” said Brother Wilfrid. “It’s what you agreed to get for me.” He sniffed. “You have the stone too, don’t you?”
Alfric nodded dumbly.
Wilfrid extended his frail, clawlike hand. “Give me the book and the stone,” he said.
“Please, I promised …”
“The book and the stone,” Wilfrid repeated as he drew closer, his eyes fixed on Alfric’s face.
Alfric tried to back up, only to be impeded by the altar. “Please,” he cried, “she’s been kind to me. She?”
“Listen to me, boy. When I have them,” said the monk, “I will help her.”
“Does … she need help?”
“She’s in great danger. Now, give me what I asked for so I may go to her.”
“I just want to help her,” said Alfric. He was trembling, and sobbing softly, clutching the book to his chest, a tight fist clinging to the glowing stone. “Can I truly trust you?”
“Of course you can!” cried the monk, and he reached out until his thin fingers touched Alfric’s hands with an icy coldness that made the boy gasp. In an instant, his grip on the stone loosened. It dropped, pinging on the stone floor.
Wilfrid bent over and snatched up the stone. Then he brought the stone to his mouth and swallowed it.
For a moment he stood unmoving until he reached out again, and this time gently pulled the book from Alfric.
Then the monk turned and began to walk away, taking the Book Without Words with him.
“Please!” Alfric cried through his sobs. “You promised to help her.”
When the monk did not reply, Alfric smeared away his tears and hugged himself. A sensation that something was gone filled him. He looked around. The image of Saint Elfleda was no longer there.
12
In the cemetery a shocked Sybil shrank back from Thorston. He was very different from when she had seen him last: he had become a young man.
“Stupid girl!” he cried. “How dare you leave the house! You’re my servant and nothing but my servant. Who gave you permission to come here?”
“No one,” said Sybil.
“Look what I’ve done for you,” Thorston went on. “An orphan girl, I gave you a home. I gave you food. Protected you. Is this the way you repay my kindness? Must I punish you?”
Sybil could not speak.
“But I will forgive you,” said Thorston, his voice softening. “Just give me the book and the last stone.”
Sybil backed up a step.
“Come now. Without the Time stone I have nothing. Do you have it?”
“No.”
“Liar! Give it to me.”
The measure of anxiety in his voice made Sybil look at him in a different way: what she saw was something she had not seen before in him—fear.
“Did you not hear me?” cried Thorston. “I must have the stone.”
“Where is Odo?” she managed to ask.
“Dead,” cried Thorston, his face suffused with rage. “Let it be a warning to you,” he said, pointing at her. His hand shook. “Just give me the stone,” he shouted. “I must continue to live.”
“Why?” asked Sybil.
“Because I do not want to die!” Thorston screamed and took a step toward her.
“But why should I die for you?” Sybil said, backing up against a grave marker.
Thorston lunged. Sybil spun around, only to slip in the mud. The next moment, she felt Thorston’s hand on her back, her neck. He held her tightly until, with a grunt, he flung her backward into the mire. She fell hard and turned just in time to see that Thorston had snatched up a rock and was holding it high, about to bring it down on her. With a sudden twist, she rolled away. The rock came down by her side, deep into the graveyard mud.
Desperate, Sybil reached up and clutched the nearest marker and tried to pull herself up. Thorston grabbed her, forced her around, and pressed cold hands around her neck. “The stone!” he screamed. “I must have the stone!”
It was then that Sybil, sure she was about to die, heard another voice: “And if I have it?”
13
Thorston gasped. His hands went slack. He spun around. “You!” he cried.
Sybil, struggling for breath, looked around, too.
It was Brother Wilfrid.
“I have the stone and the book,” said the monk, his voice stronger than Sybil had heard it before.
“Then I’ll take it from you as I did before,” cried Thorston, and he flung himself at the monk. Wilfrid met Thorston with equal force, the two coming together with a crush of bodies.
Feet braced among the grave markers, arms encircled around each other, they tried to hold their places in the mud even as they shuddered with exertion. Thorston strained to his fullest, his youthful muscles bulging as he struggled to hold the monk in his grip. Wilfrid shook with his own great effort. They stood trembling, locked in one another’s grasp, caught in the tension of mutual strength.
Sybil, watching, held her breath.
Thorston’s grip began to weaken. His fingers lost their hold. His legs sagged. “Time!” cried Thorston, “I must have Time!”
Abruptly, the monk threw his arms wide open. Thorston, no longer supported, fell. As he dropped, he tried to snatch at the monk to bring him down. With one blow, Wilfrid struck Thorston’s hands away.
Thorston, on his hands and knees, turned to Sybil. The look upon his face was filled with dread and pain. He held out a shaking hand toward her. “I’m dying,” he whimpered. “Pity me. I only wanted to live.”
When a terrified Sybil made no move or reply, Thorston’s begging hand dropped. He began to age, his body shrinking and shriveling rapidly. In a matter of moments he became old, older, older still, more ancient than he had ever been. His flesh loosened upon his bones. His muscles unhinged. His skin became a mottled blue and green and then turned to rot, collapsing. In moments, what had been a man became a mound of quivering flesh, fused into a foul lump of putrid muck, which quickly bled into the graveyard earth until not the slightest trace remained.
14
Weak and sore, Sybil picked herself up from the mud. She looked around. Brother Wilfrid was standing still, not looking at her, but at the place on the ground w
“Is … is he gone?” she asked.
“He is. At last.”
“How did you know to come here?” she asked.
“The boy.”
“Is he all right?”
“He is.”
Sybil saw the book beneath his arm. “Did he give you the book?”
“He did.”
“And Odo?”
“The raven? I don’t know.”
“Do you have the stone?” asked Sybil.
“I took it,” said Wilfrid. “I could not have resisted Thorston without. Time overwhelms all. Now I must return the book to where it belongs.”
“Where is that?”
“Saint Elfleda will guide me.”
“And then?”
“I shall have my rest.” That said, Wilfrid turned about and made his way out of the cemetery. As the fog wrapped around him, Sybil was sure she saw a white-clad figure by his side: Saint Elfleda. Now it was she who carried the Book Without Words.
15
Sybil made her way into the church. Alfric was where she had left him, sitting before the altar. When he saw Sybil he jumped up. “Brother Wilfrid came,” he cried.
“I know.”
“The stone,” he said. “He took it. He said he would help you. Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Was I wrong to give it to him?”
“No, Alfric. Thorston is no more.”
“What happened?”
She told him.
“What about Odo?”
“We need to go back and find out.”
CHAPTER SIX
1
THE FIRST crowing of a cock could be heard as Sybil and Alfric made their way back to the old house on Clutterbuck Lane. They went the same way they had come, along the outside of the old city wall. When they reached the house, they found a hole.
“Do you think Odo made it?” said Alfric.
“I suspect it was Thorston,” said Sybil.
They went through the hole, Alfric first, then Sybil. They went up to the room.
The raven was not there. Instead, there was only a scruffy goat, his short brown hair dirty, his horns crumpled, and his dangling beard rather thin. His brown eyes were full of woe.
Sybil and Alfric stared at him.
“It’s me,” said the goat. “Odo. I’m not certain, but I believe Thorston murdered me. But then I woke. Saint Elfleda was standing before me. She had done what she had promised me she’d do: transformed me back to what I used to be. But I’m not what I’d hoped to be. Look at me! I’m a goat! Now I shall never fly. What happened to the book? Perhaps there’s magic in it to transform me back.”
“Odo,” said Sybil, “the monk took it away.”
“And Master? The stone? What became of them?”
Sybil told him.
“Then I am what I am,” Odo bleated.
Sybil put her arms around his neck. “I shall care for you.”
Alfric looked out the window. “There are more and more soldiers,” he announced. “Bashcroft is there, too. They look like they’re getting ready to break in.”
Sybil said, “We can get out through the back.”
There was a pounding on the door.
“It’s time to go,” said Sybil.
2
Bashcroft allowed the soldiers to smash in the front door of the house. He strode forward, followed by a press of soldiers. They found the ground floor empty. The reeve banged his staff-of-office on the floor and bellowed, “I, Bashcroft, the city reeve, am here!”
There was no reply.
“The steps,” he announced, and marched up. There was no one to be found. There was only Thorston’s bed, the chest, which contained a few pennies, and the work space filled with the alchemist’s apparatus.
The soldiers spread through the house. That is how they found the chests in the basement.
“Open them,” cried Bashcroft. The locks were forced, the lids thrown back.
“Dura lex, sed lex!” cried Bashcroft. “The law is hard, but it is the law. And since I am the law, it therefore follows, I must be hard.” He pushed his hands through the soft sand.
3
Sybil, Odo the goat, and the boy Alfric tramped along a dirt road some miles south of Fulworth. Though the wind was somewhat blustery, skies were blue, the sunlight clean and bright.
“Where do you think we should go?” bleated Odo.
“It was you who said the land called Italy is wonderful,” said Sybil.
“Consider the expense!” said Odo.
Sybil touched fingers to her purse. “I have the Damian coin.”
“So in the end, the poor boy shall provide for us,” said Odo. “But how shall we ever find the place?”
“I may not know anything about Italy,” said Alfric, “but I know how to get there.”
“How could you?”
“Please, Mistress, remember you said it was what you wished. That moment, as we went along the wall, I looked in the book and saw the way.”
Sybil smiled. “Then,” she said, “as long as you don’t use magic to get there, that’s where we should head.”
“Why no magic?” said Alfric.
“Because magic takes what it gives,” said Sybil, “but life gives what we take.” “I agree,” said Odo. And they started off.
4
On a windswept and deserted island off the Northumbrian coast, Brother Wilfrid and Saint Elfleda stood in the midst of the ruins of the old monastery.
Brother Wilfrid had dug a deep hole in the sandy soil. He looked at Saint Elfleda. She nodded. Kneeling, the old monk placed the Book Without Words into the hole and covered it with earth.
For a moment, the two stared down, and then, side by side, they walked into the North Sea, where the roiling waves washed over them.
The Book Without Words remained where they left it—as unmarked as its pages.
NOTES TO THE BOOK
WITHOUT WORDS
FABLE: I have called this book a fable, a word that came into the English language in the fourteenth century. Deriving from the Latin word fabula, meaning a story, its English usage has come to suggest a supernatural tale in which animals speak and act like human beings. A fable is meant to exemplify a useful truth.
THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES: Brother Wilfrid’s description of the events in the year of Thorston’s birth is based on the entry for the year 973 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. This extraordinary work, a compilation by many hands, provides the history of Britain from the start of the Christian era until 1154. It is believed to have been originally commissioned by King Alfred the Great.
ALCHEMY: The best way to describe alchemy is to think of it as early science, in particular the science of chemistry. Its practitioners sought a physical and spiritual understanding of the nature of existence. Much of their work focused on the making of gold and the finding of the “philosopher’s stone,” which would restore youth and prolong life. From a modern perspective, alchemy seems full of magic and superstition, but while there were no doubt charlatans in the field, there were many who were serious students of the natural world. While alchemy might have been viewed with suspicion and even fear, it would not have been illegal. Alchemists discovered alcohol, and nitric, sulfuric, and hydrochloric acids. The Book Without Words is sometimes referenced as a source of alchemic knowledge.
FULWORTH and NORTHUMBRIA: Though the town of Fulworth is imaginary, as is the monastery described in this story, the Kingdom of Northumbria did exist. Founded in the seventh century by Anglo-Saxons, it lies in modern-day northern Great Britain, between the Humber River to the south, and the Firth of Forth to the north. As a kingdom, it existed in one form or another until the tenth century.
SAINT ELFLEDA was a real person. Born in 714, she was the sister of King Osway of Northumbria. A nun, she eventually became abbess at Whitby convent and played an important role in church affairs.
For information about the saints referred to in the story, s
DISCUSSION GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
ACTIVITY ONE: PROVERBS
ACTIVITY TWO: FABLES
GLOSSARY
AN INTERVIEW WITH AVI
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How does the author establish a sense of time and place in this book? What are the images, the smells, the sounds that come into your mind as you think about Fulworth, Thorston’s workroom, the apothecary’s shop, and the churchyard?
2. “It is not death I fear, but life,” says Sybil in 3:9. What does she mean by this statement? Avi’s central theme is clearly stated in the proverb at the beginning: “A life unlived is like a book without words.” Describe how Sybil’s attitude toward life changes throughout the book.
3. Odo and Sybil learn that “magic takes what it gives.” What is another way of saying that in today’s terms? Why is this point so important to the story? How is this idea of magic different from magic you have encountered in other stories?
4. Reread the monk’s tale in 3:16 about the Book Without Words and how the book came into Thorston’s possession. Where do you think Brother Wilfrid spent the intervening years? Imagine how he must have searched for Thorston, where he must have gone, and what he must have had to endure.