The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

The Lay of the Last Survivor, pt. 1

            

I tried to convey some of the more important messages, yes. Lizzie had said.

            I'd replayed our vitriolic conversation over and over again in my head, repeated it, even, word for word to the entire Winter clan when I returned to our house on the square. And that's the line that stuck out to me because the rest of the conversation was about hate and denial and how I was wrong and how I was selfish and how I was awful and how Lizzie believed Raven was good and the world out there, bad. So there was just that one piece that didn't fit.

I tried to convey some of the more important messages, yes.

But Beowulf? Theogony? Macbeth? Were these the more important messages, a story of a hero and monsters, of the gods and their evolution, and of a kind of evil, both human and inhuman? Mainly, were they among the more important messages to Lizzie?

I allowed myself sleep that night. The last few weeks of research and revelations had given us such momentum that I had been running at full speed, but my conversation with Lizzie had sent me headlong into a stone wall at 200 miles an hour. Crushed my bones. Killed my spirit. Left me maimed in the snow. I needed the rest.

But the next morning, I took the three books and all my notebooks back into the forest where I could think. For safekeeping, I brought the other messages Lizzie had conveyed to me: her book of incantations and elixirs, and the Bible. I knew that somewhere inside the things I knew, and the secrets I'd uncovered was a way to find Alexander Raven. Now I wondered if they were in Lizzie's books.

Everett and Mark sat with me now, their eyes intently watching me.

            I opened up my Moleskine journal first, and I read everything I'd ever written in it. Keeping it open to the list of qualities about Sam, I bent down to lay it on the ground.

            "I got it," Mark said. "Let go."

            I did as he said, and the book floated off the ground, waist-high, open to the page. He smiled faintly. I nodded in thanks. Everett thanked him too.

            I did this with each of the books. I leafed through the elixirs and incantations book. I left the Bible open to the book of Revelations. I reread Theogony and Macbeth.

            Finally, the new copy of Beowulf. It was a new translation that I hadn't read yet, and so I began reading the epic tale again. It wasn't too different from other versions I'd read in the human world, but it was practically a different language than Ben's 17th century edition.

            And then, on the 121st page, at the 1,749th line, I involuntarily spoke, "Oh my God."

            Everett and Mark both jumped. "What is it?" Everett asked hurriedly.

            I read aloud, "'He covets and resents; dishonors custom and bestows no gold; and because of good things that the Heavenly Powers gave him in the past he ignores the shape of things to come.'"

            Mark jumped to his feet. "Mom's prophecy."

            "It's here. It's, word-for-word, in this version of Beowulf," I cried. "Mark, what did Adelaide tell you when she told you the prophecy?"

            "She said there was a prophecy we needed to remember, that it would be a key, and Lizzie knew it was."

            "Lizzie knew?" I asked. How many leads would dead end at Lizzie's silence?

            "According to Mom," he said.

            "Why didn't I know about this?" Everett asked him, heat in his voice.