The Bloodstone Prophecy - Book 2 (complete)

Chapter 5 - The Lost Language

Kami stretched and yawned. She could see the sun rising in the distance, a brilliant orb casting pinkish rays into a pale blue sky. She hoped that the light would limit the shadow creatures’ ability to attack. Besides, the necklace wasn’t glowing any more. If her theory was correct, that meant the danger had passed.They heard a scraping sound coming toward them from inside the cave and Haji shone a flashlight on it.

“Ouch,” Chris said. “You’re blinding me.”

“Sorry,” Haji said, turning it off.

“Kami, you’ve got to see this.”

She looked at Haji questioningly.

“Go ahead,” he said, holding up his whip and laser saber. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

She crawled into the belly of the cave behind Chris. She was shocked to see Gedo sitting up, staring at his arms and chest in wonder. The angry black lesions covering his body were crusting over. Some of the scabs had even fallen away to reveal the pink scars beneath. His body was healing itself at a miraculous rate.

“How is this possible?” he asked. His voice still sounded weak, but clearly he was going to recover from his ordeal.

Kami held up her necklace.

“With this. It released some kind of oil,” she said.

“I remember,” Gedo exclaimed. “I remember feeling this excruciating pain, then your hands were rubbing something into my skin. It immediately eased the pain and I was able to fall asleep. It doesn’t hurt anymore.” He reached for his shoes and groaned. “I’m a little sore still, but that excruciating pain is gone. I can’t believe it! Let me see it.”

She unfastened it and handed the necklace to him.

“Remarkable,” Samuel said. “First the shield, now this. Where do you suppose it gets its healing powers?”

Kami shrugged.

“I’m going to take Haji’s place so he can see this,” Chris said, crawling back down the tunnel.

“Wait a minute,” Gedo said as he examined the bottom of the scarab, his voice taking on a harsh tone. “I recognize this. Where did you get it? Did you take it from my home?”

Kami struggled with the angry feelings rising within her. A thank you would have been nice. Instead he was accusing her of stealing his property. He was always assuming the worst in her.

“You gave it to me as a birthday gift,” Kami said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in her voice. “Neina sent it, but based on your reaction, I take it that was another one of those ‘without your permission’ kind of things.”

Gedo’s face turned purple.

“That woman! She knows we could be thrown into jail for shipping a valuable artifact out of the country! If she sent it…”

“If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here, and you’d be dead,” Kami snapped, then stopped herself. She could hardly believe the words coming from her mouth. What was happening to the timid girl she’d always been? She was dying, Kami realized. Somewhere between the exhaustion of the fight and chase and the heartbreak over Liam and Yasmin being taken captive and the little Egyptian girl almost dying, something had cracked. She didn’t have the patience for her grandfather’s crap anymore. She wondered why she had cried for him anyway. Because he was her grandfather, that was why. Even if sometimes she wished he wasn’t involved in her life.

Gedo huffed and pushed away the jacket.

“Is it too much to expect a little respect from my own granddaughter?” He grumbled.

“It would nice to get a little respect over here,” Kami said. “You should be grateful to be alive. Instead you’re criticizing me. Weren’t you the one telling me last night to never give up hope? It’s hard to hang on to hope when you’re constantly around someone who’s so blasted negative.”

Samuel cleared his throat.

“Sorry to break up this little lovefest, but I’ve been dying of curiosity ever since the scarab protected us from the cobras. I may have an insight or two, if I could just examine…” Samuel held out his hand.

Gedo hesitated, then handed the necklace over.

“Bloodstone,” Samuel announced.

“I know that much,” Kami said. “Haji told me.”

“What else did he tell you?” Samuel asked.

“He had seen a similar stone on a friend of his father’s. The man claimed the necklace had magic powers.”

“The bloodstone was called the ‘Stone of Courage’ by the ancients for its ability to increase personal strength,” Samuel said. “Supposedly the Babylonians used it in divination, and the Egyptians used it to magically defeat enemies. The Leyden Papyrus claimed it was the greatest stone. Most interestingly, it is known as the Mother Goddess stone because of its link to the Egyptian goddess Isis and Horus. It is also the stone of the Black Madonna. Some people use stones like these for channeling. You haven’t heard anything interesting, have you? Had any significant dreams?”

Kami opened her mouth, then hesitated. She didn’t feel like telling the whole group about her dream, or vision, or whatever it was, especially Gedo. His disbelief was palpable, and she felt it strongly.

“What do you mean by defeat enemies?” Kami asked instead. “Like what happened with the cobras?”

Samuel shrugged.

“Who knows? I did use a bloodstone once for a flaming case of hemorrhoids. I found it to be quite potent.”

“TMI,” Kami groaned.

“This scarab,” Gedo said, clamping the necklace in a beefy hand and taking it back from Samuel, “is nothing more than an artifact passed down on your grandmother’s side of the family. It has no voodoo magic powers. I don’t want you to encourage my granddaughter with this ridiculous talk.”

“How do you explain the rodeo with the cobras then?” Samuel asked.

“Perhaps you were all hallucinating. Perhaps it is the witch’s evil sorcery. I want nothing to do with any of it,” Gedo said. “The necklace remains with me. I don’t want you using what you don’t understand, Kami. You remember what happened to the man who meddled with the jar, don’t you?”

“Isn’t it possible there’s such a thing as good magic?” Kami asked. “The oil healed you, after all. Who knows how I could help people.”

Gedo opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by Haji.

“If you’re feeling up to it, we should leave as soon as possible,” he said. “Take advantage of the daylight hours and hopefully outrun the shadow creatures.”

They gathered up their belongings, leaving behind Samuel and Haji’s bloody jackets that had been both bed and blanket to the dying Gedo. Kami’s eyes lingered on them, still finding it hard to believe that he was up and back to his ornery self so quickly.

They knew now that they would not be enough to save Neina, much less stop the Shadow Queen from whatever she was doing. Their best bet was to regroup and recruit help. Samuel offered to let them stay at his compound, which they all agreed was probably for the best. They would return and try again. Hopefully his compound was out of the way well enough. Samuel had hinted at creating some additional weapons.

When they’d fled from the wax cave, Kami had completely lost her sense of direction. But Haji assured them that he knew where they were. His father had taken him through the desert several times as child.

They trudged the desert, the wind whipping up the sand around their ankles. The sun beat down on them relentlessly. Kami licked her parched, dry lips. They had used up the last of the water in the cave. At least there was more water in the vehicles, but that didn’t quench the thirst that plagued her. With their heads and faces wrapped in scarves, the trip was silent other than an occasional exchange between Samuel and Haji. Kami walked behind them and felt her mind wandering to Yasmin and Liam. She wondered how they were holding up. In her darker moments she wondered if they were even still alive. Sometimes she imagined them in a dungeon cell plotting an elaborate escape plan.

Other times her imagination betrayed her and she imagined them comforting each other, imagined Liam falling for Yasmin. The thought sent a white hot streak of jealousy through Kami, and she realized she was starting to attach to him. She knew too well the danger in being attracted to someone. When you risk opening your heart to love, you open it to the possibility of pain.

They never had got the chance to talk. Liam had been too tired, and the next thing she knew he’d been captured. It was hard to trust in what they had. Their bond was so newly formed, so fragile still. She needed to be careful where her imagination wandered, reign it back and focus on what he said. What had he told her? To stop thinking of all the reasons they couldn’t work? She needed to trust in them, but it was so hard with him so far away and no way for them to reassure each other. Besides, there were far more important things to worry about right now, like rescuing the captives. She felt the loss of the necklace, almost like she was exposed and powerless without it.

They reached their vehicles. Hidden behind a rocky outcropping, they were covered in a thin layer of sand. As they waited for Haji to collect the injured girl, the conversation turned to the jar fragments. Gedo told the others what he had told Kami in the cave about the screaming girl and the cloud.

“I’ve been thinking about it, but I can’t figure out the connection between the Shadow Queen and the jar,” he said, opening his green notebook and showing them the drawing he had made of the jar. "It looks like a Greek vessel, but it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen. In some ways it’s similar to the Dipylon inscription. It’s written from right to left in a circle around the shoulder of the jar, but I can't translate it.”

“Yes, but the Dipylon jar is nothing more than a dancing trophy,” Samuel said impatiently. “Clearly this thing is more of a ‘magic’ jar. Healing one man? Blinding another? Could it have been a canopic jar?”

“There was no sign that any organs were placed inside it,” Gedo said.

“Why would you store organs in the jar?” Kami questioned.

“Canopic jars were funerary jars,” Gedo explained. “When the bodies were embalmed, the Egyptians removed the intestines, the lungs, the liver, the stomach. They washed them, coated them with resin, wrapped them with linen and placed them in the jars. That way they were protected for the next life. They thought the heart was the seat of intelligence, and that you both felt and thought with it, so they almost always left it in the body. The brain was removed and thrown away since they didn’t think it had any great value and wouldn’t be needed in the afterlife.” Samuel nodded.

“It wasn’t until a Roman physician named Galen noticed that his gladiator patients would go cuckoo when their brains were injured that they finally figured out brains might be useful,” Samuel said. “How old do you think the jar was?”

“We are not positive,” Gedo said. “If it was used to hold organs, it probably would have to be older than the first millennium BC. After that they quit using them.”

“Here, let me see the inscription closer. I recognize these characters!” Samuel said excitedly. “Look.”

He dug into his backpack and pulled out his leatherbound journal and flipped through several pages. He pointed to a picture of a stone tablet with letters inscribed on it.

“The Emerald tablets of Thoth. It was written in the lost language,” Samuel said.

“Lost?” Kami asked.

“In the beginning, supposedly there was a pure language,” he said. “Some call it the Adamic language, after Adam, supposedly the first man to walk the earth. Many mythologies have an Adam-type figure - the Egyptians have Atum, the Norse have Ask, the Zorastrians have Mashya, the Hindus have Atman. But getting back to Jewish tradition, some claim there were two sets of tablets. The Ten Commandments were supposedly inscribed on the Sapphire tablets and kept in the Ark of the Covenant.

"But the Emerald tablets date back before the days of Moses. Some believe the son of Adam, possibly Seth wrote the tablets. I believe that they are older than Biblical history. I think they were brought to Egypt by Thoth the Atlantean for the use of man. Wisdom from the one God. But then, according to tradition, the people built a tower to get to heaven, angering God. He knocked down the tower of Babel, scattering them and confusing their languages so they could no longer communicate, so they were no longer one. The pure language became a lost language.”

Kami looked at Samuel's journal. Scrawled to the side of the image was the words Zephaniah 3:9, “I will turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord.”

“The word pure comes from the Hebrew berurah, from barar, ‘to cleanse’ or purify, or ‘to choose,’ Samuel explained. “So the lost language was also the most pure, because it came from the source and had not yet been diluted.”

Gedo folded his arms and rolled his eyes.

“Right,” Gedo said. “How thoughtful of Thoth to bring the wisdom of Atlantis to us lowly struggling Egyptians who, I don’t know, only had created one of the greatest civilizations of all time and built incredible monuments like the Great Pyramids.”

“About that—” Samuel said.

Haji walked toward them carrying the girl in his arms.

“How is she?” Kami asked, cutting Samuels off.

“It’s bad,” Haji said. “Can I use the oil in the scarab? I think it’s the only chance she has.”

Kami turned to Gedo, hating that she even had to ask permission.

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If you enjoyed this chapter, please click that little star!

If you find the subject of a universal language interesting, you may want to check out the PBS documentary "In Search of the First Language." Also, check out the breakdown of languages in the media section.

This dedication goes out to @gedefam - my sis-in-law Amanda who whipped through the first book and is now reading the second. I have so loved hearing her comments and encouragement. Thanks Amanda!!