“Good luck, Smith.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need any luck.”
“Well, so long then.”
“So long!”
John Smith, Kyiv-based detective, sets out on his journey into the hills of Podil. He first takes the climb up Andreyevskiy Spusk, cutting short this route midway by engaging a steep black metal staircase that leads to a ridge overlooking the unhidden city. From there he makes his way into the underbrush, littered with beer bottles and plastic packaging as it is, until he comes upon the stone sarcophagus.
This sarcophagus, disguised as a Soviet-era bomb shelter, water treatment facility or hangout for stray dogs, is known to a select few, including Smith and an elderly Ukrainian archeologist currently confined to the insane asylum on Frunze Street.
Smith enters the sarcophagus through a heavy, rust-laden panel, which is bolted into the stone and padlocked at the handle. Smith easily slides it to one side and descends the short brick staircase into the subterranean chamber.
Inside, he lights a lantern and crouches near the far wall, where he picks up a large birch tube covered with moss and twigs. Smith brushes off the debris to reveal its contents: dozens of scrolls made from thin sheets of tree bark, all rubber-banded together and tagged with red stickies.
The script consists of a series of lines and dots overlaid with a flowing pattern of intricately carved and overlapping circles of various sizes, some elliptical and almost flat. Smith retrieves the decoder from his pale gray overcoat, holds it beneath the uncertain light and begins to read.
“Fourth Day, Seventh Moon, Year of the Bear: I Perdun, son of Pekun, Darwar, Bawal and so on, write the writing of this day with a heavy hand. A dark shadow is cast across the land, evil is sown underfoot, our people, The People of the Hills above the River Bend, live in fear of tomorrow. A stranger now moves among us, from western lands he came. The old ways are under threat, the trees stand still, the grass grows stiff, the birds of the air hold silence high above, below the sky. The Stranger has revealed himself to be a Wizard. He walks among the People without shame, sometimes defecating in the sight of old women, other times fornicating out of season…”
Smith double checks the decoder, then briefly consults his field manual of ancient Indo-European roots.
“He healed a maiden fallen ill, snatched her from the jaws of death. Now she lives outside her kin, neither married nor virgin no more. The old ones shriek at the moon.”
Smith removes his eyeglasses, thoroughly padding the perspiration beaded up on the temples and frame front. He puts aside the scroll he’s been reading and starts rummaging through the large birch tube again.
“Five and Ten Days, Seventh Moon, Year of the Bear: I Perdun… etc., etc.
“The elders and keepers of the law have held council in the appointed place, many grave words were spoken. The Stranger then spoke too, with authority and much art. Some of his words were noble and fine, others deceitful and sweet. I Perdun, Darwar, etc., Bawal, am also permitted to speak. With heavy heart, I measure my every word, call upon the truth to strengthen my tongue. I speak of old, both good and bad, the times our tribe has endured. I speak of our ways, our people, our place between heaven and earth.”
Smith scratches his ankle just below the sock line. There are bugs crawling around in the chamber.
“All of a sudden, the air grows dark, the sun blackens out overhead. The wind goes mute and no animal dares make a sound. The people of the Hills above the River Bend cry out as one, the elders look in askance, terror descends on the day. The Stranger does not stir. His arms hang limp along his loose-fitting lower garments, the head dropped in reverence to the moment. Then, with no advance notice or eloquent recitals befitting such an event, he raises those very same arms – scrawny, tawny, almost chicken-like – while all around have dropped to their hands and knees in supplication to everything sacred in nature to spare their miserable hides; the Stranger, the Wizard, the Evil One whose intentions still remain concealed, reaches up and outward to the very firmament of existence, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, his legs firm, bony and bent, and all grows still. The people are filled with tears, the elders stand subdued, and I Perdun, etc. etc. etc. am driven from the land like a worthless dog.”
Smith curses to himself and lets the hand holding the birch scroll drop to his side. That hand is covered in a green plastic glove, and Smith’s mouth is dressed in a gauze mask. The environs of the chamber –a cellar really – are dank with little to no light, and the detective feels he’s lost track of time. But his sight is still sharp, and Smith notices among the dozens of scrolls made from thin sheets of tree bark, all rubber-banded together and tagged with red stickies, that one is labeled with a yellow stickie and is not a sheet of tree bark after all, but rather a piece of notepaper covered in carefully composed crayon writing.
“To whom it may concern, and to John Smith, Kyiv-based detective, in particular:
“Please note in the entry ‘Fourth Day, Seventh Moon, Year of the Bear’ Section one, paragraph two, during mention of the ‘Stranger’s’ apparent carnal contact with a young female member of the proto-Indo-European tribe ‘People of the Hills above the River Bend,’ that the presumed author of the entry, one ‘Perdun son of Pekun,’ is presumed to have a romantic interest in the said young woman and therefore the objectivity of this particular entry and indeed much of that which follows could be highly apocryphal from a purely academic point of view… I make this assumption based on the author’s use of the informal ‘Zee’ in reference to the girl, which unfortunately is completely lost in the given translation…”
Smith skims down to the bottom of the letter.
“Sincerely, Professor Olexander Ostrich Ostrovsky, formerly head of the Kyiv Academy of Archeological Sciences, Department of Ancient Eastern Indo-European Literature.”
To be continued
Filed March 17, 2015