Songweaver's Awakening

Chapter 23 - Rajheem

The letters marched across the yellowed page in a somber procession.  They jumbled together in a combination of black marks; they no longer made any sense to Rajheem.  He squinted, his pen poised above his fresh sheet of parchment.  Just shapes and curves.  He lowered his pen and copied the last word onto the parchment.  “Finished.”  Rajheem sat back and beckoned to Haman.

Haman was up and hovering over Rajheem’s shoulder in a moment, the book he had been reading hanging limp from one hand.  “Very good,” he said, his eyes skimming the parchment.  “You’ve steady fingers, boy, I’ll give you that.”

“Rajheem,” Rajheem interjected automatically.  He’d long since lost any fear he might have had of Haman.  “What does it say?  Do you know?”

Haman took a seat next to Rajheem.  “I was going to ask you the same question.”

Rajheem set the brush down next to the inkwell.  “How should I know?  It’s not Hajinni, whatever it is.  These words, they’re just shapes—lines and curves.”

“Look more closely.”

Rajheem didn’t even bother to turn his gaze back to the parchment.  He’d been obliging, at first, staring at parchment after parchment until his eyes grew watery.  There was nothing there in the paper that he could understand.  Sometimes a word would catch him, its shape vaguely familiar, but then the sensation would fade and he would once again be staring at a nonsensical mess of black marks.  “I’ve already copied it down letter for letter.  How much more closely can I look at it?  Should I stick my nose in it?  Will that make me understand it?”

“That’s no way to speak to him, Rajheem,” Eris said from the corner in disapproving tones.  “But, little as I like to admit it, you’re right, in a way.  We don’t have the luxury of time.”

Haman sat in the chair next to Rajheem and pointed at a word on the still-drying parchment.   “Does this look familiar to you at all?”

Rajheem looked at the word and shrugged.   “I can barely tell the difference between that and the one next to it.”

“This one here,” Haman pointed again, “this one means ‘music’.  Look again.”

Rajheem did as he was told.  Something in his mind slid into place.  Why hadn’t he seen it before?  It was not Hajinni writing, no, but it was similar in small, subtle ways.  The old writing was more jagged, more angular than Hajinni, but the way the lines and dots fell was vaguely familiar.  “I see it,” Rajheem said.  He leaned in closer.  “And this word here, this must be ‘door’.”

“Yes.”  Haman nodded and smiled, one of the rare times Rajheem had seen that expression on his face.  “Not all of the words are as easy to discern as that.  Our language has changed much since the founding of this country.  Still, this was the first step.  You’ll be able to fill in most of the gaps now that you see it.”

Rajheem skimmed the rest of the document.  “This is about your doors, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure.  It could be.”  Haman took the older parchment and set it aside.  “The doors I have are very old, but they could be replicas or imitations of the doors mentioned in this document.”

“What does it say?”  Rajheem asked again.  He could pick out a few words, and those were only enough to give him a vague idea of what the entire document was about.

Haman shifted, his eyes on the original document.  “Our ancestors believed that music held a certain kind of power over people and events.  Instruments themselves were useless to the untrained hand, but when combined properly with the voice, they believed that things could happen that wouldn’t happen under normal circumstances.”