Down | Tyrus

VI

At first, we think the library must be closed again, because there it no light coming from inside, but the door is unlocked, so we go in. It's completely silent, but motion from the front counter turns us all to see Mr. Cutler's smiling face. 

"Hello, children!" he says. "Come to learn, have you?"

"Hi, Mr. Cutler," Buffy says. "Are you feeling better?"

"Oh, yes," he replies. "Much better. I just have to keep the lights out. Doctor's orders."

Some sunlight is still able to shine in through the many windows, although the level above us blocks most of it, so much of the light entering from outside is actually from the lamps that hang over the streets from above. Reading might be difficult without something brighter, but I suppose I don't want Mr. Cutler's concussion to get worse.

"Can I help you kids find anything?" he asks. 

"Do you have any books on morse code?" Buffy wonders. 

"Well, that's an interesting thing to be searching for. Yes, check isle 9."

Buffy gives him a smile. "Thank you."

Jonah, Andi and I follow Buffy down the isle he stated, and right away, we all start checking the shelves. 

"I can hardly see anything," Andi whispers. 

"Same, but this is as much light as we have," Buffy responds. 

I scan the spine of a leather-bound book on the shelf right of me. It reads nothing more than just 'Fish'. The farther down the isle I get, the harder it is to see, and pretty soon I'm relying on my sense of touch to feel the letters engraved on the books. 

"I'm gonna need glasses after this," I mutter. 

Suddenly, Andi shouts, "I found it!" 

The rest of us all swarm her like bugs, looking down at the book in her hands. It's hard to see, but I'm trusting that it's the one we need. She carries it down the isle, toward table by the window so that we can all see it better, and Buffy takes out her pencil and piece of paper that she brought to get ready to decipher the messages. 

"Ready?" Andi says, and Buffy nods. "Cyrus, do you have the paper?"

I take out the drawing from my coat pocket. Some of the edges are crinkled, so I try to press them flat on the table. Andi looks back and forth between the book and the page, matching the dots and lines to figure out the letters, and as she does, she says them aloud. 

"Okay, the word at the top of the page is E...S...Z...A...K...I."

"Yeah?" Buffy says, having finished writing that down. 

"That's the whole word," Andi responds. 

"What?"

Buffy takes the book from Andi and looks at it herself, comparing the code chart to what she's written and to what's on the paper. 

"That can't be right," Buffy mumbles. 

"Maybe it's gibberish," Jonah says. 

"Seems like it," Buffy mutters. 

"Maybe not gibberish," I say, "but it could be a different language." 

"You're right," Andi says. "Let's finish decoding the rest, and then we can see if we recognize anything."

Her and Buffy continue the process of talking and writing, until the whole page has gone from random dots and lines to random letters. The words on each of the four edges, going clockwise, read, "Eszaki," "Nyugat," "Deli," and "Keleti." In the top left corner is "Junius 6," and over the green-brown blob is "Fold."