Illuminated

Read Illuminated Online

Authors: Erica Orloff

Table of Contents
 
 
 
one moment, one kiss . . .
 
The car was hot, and I felt even warmer against him. At one point, the train lurched, and we were shoved together even closer, my chest pressed against his.
I shut my eyes for a minute, not sure whether I wanted him to kiss me so we could get that first kiss over, or whether I was terrified because I had never wanted someone to kiss me so much in my entire life. And terrified that I didn’t have a whole lot of kissing experience. I kept my eyes closed until we came to our stop. Then I opened them. He was staring at me. “Come on,” he whispered.
Holding my hand, we slid through the crowd and up the steps to the street above.
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SPEAK
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
 
First published in the United States of America by Speak,
an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011
 
Copyright © Erica Orloff, 2011 All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE
 
ISBN : 978-1-101-55289-6
 
 
 
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any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To my children, may each of you find something that means as much to you as the Book
1
 
I had another dream . . .
—A.
 
L
ike the breath of a ghost against an icy window, the scrawl whispered to us across the centuries.
“Even a book has its secrets. Come on, then, tell us more,” Uncle Harry spoke to the manuscript, as if willing it to illuminate. He leaned over its fragile pages like an ancient scholar, staring intently at the parchment.
“Secrets?” I asked him, my voice echoing in the cavernous room of the auction house, its marble floors and twenty-foot-high ceilings carrying even a soft hush like a tree rustling its leaves.
“Callie, everyone, everything, has secrets. Even books. My job is to coax them out.” He aimed the ultraviolet light more closely and exhaled audibly.
“What is it?” I whispered, and peered over his shoulder, feeling a tingle like the delicate legs of a spider skittering up my neck and across my shoulders.
He pointed. “In the margin!”
And there, in a spidery scrawl, ethereal words emerged under the bluish light.
“It looks like someone wrote over old handwriting,” I said softly, squinting to make out the words. I knew that as the medieval illuminated manuscripts expert at Manhattan’s Royal Auction House, Uncle Harry lived for these parchment books, illustrated by monks, that whispered stories from across the centuries. He talked about them over breakfast and over dinner. He read about them. He wrote about them. Whatever that writing was in the margin, it was the stuff of Uncle Harry’s dreams.
“Do you know what this means?”
“Not really.”
“It’s a palimpsest.”
“A what?”
He grinned at me. About six feet tall, with pale blue eyes and dimples, and just the first hints of silver strands in his sandy blond hair, Uncle Harry is the smartest man I know. He has a photographic memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of history. But he’s not boring. With him, history is alive.
“A palimpsest! Centuries ago, a
thousand
years ago, paper was rare. So people wrote on papyrus or on goat skin or on vellum. They wrote on parchment and scrolls. Then, when they didn’t need that book or information anymore, they washed out the old writing with oat bran and milk or some kind of wash, or sometimes a pumice stone. Then they would write on the parchment or vellum again. And the old writing was lost. They thought forever.”
I stared at the feathery script in the margin barely visible in the glow of the bluish ultraviolet light.
“So I’m looking at hidden writing from a thousand years ago? That someone covered over. Secret writing?”
He nodded. “Sometimes we get lucky. The stars align, princess, and you get a gift . . . one of these. They’re priceless. Usually time and the elements disintegrate them.”
I stared at the book. The strokes in ink were precise, elegant, and each one perfect. No letter was higher than the other—they aligned, no ink blotches, each a work of art. The picture on the page was gilded, the gold not faded by time, and deep blues and greens depicted a knight and a lady, the colors as rich as a peacock’s feathers.
“It is beautiful,” I said.
“But what makes this even more extraordinary is the hidden writing. Secrets don’t stay shrouded forever, Callie. Not really. They always leave a trail, even a thousand years later.”
“Did the collector who brought it to the auction house know it was a palimpsest?”
He shook his head. “No. He inherited his father’s collection of rare books and manuscripts. The son just wants the cash.” Uncle Harry stared wistfully at the manuscript. “Little did he even imagine what secrets were on these pages. The auction for this will go into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions. I’ll have a better idea once I know more about the manuscript’s history.” He paused and shook his head. “It’s rather sad, really.”
“Why?”
“A person spends their whole life amassing a collection of books or antiques. They think it will help them live on forever. And then it gets sold by their kids, who don’t really care one way or the other about their parents’ stuff. Maybe an obsession can never be shared.”
“Maybe. But then... here we are,” I said. “The words in the margin have lived on.
You
care.”
“I still can’t believe it. And I know someone else who’s going to be elated. I need to go call Dr. Peter Sokolov.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s a rare-book dealer. The world’s foremost expert on medieval manuscripts.”
“More of an expert than you? That’s hard to believe.”
“He was my mentor. And yes, he knows more than even I do. He’s someone who understands your crazy old uncle and his love of these ancient papers.” Uncle Harry kissed the top of my head. “I told you this was going to be a good summer.”
I rolled my eyes. “All right. You found an old manuscript. A
really
old one. One that has secrets. But still I don’t think you can count this as a good summer—yet. My father ditched me and took off for Europe with his latest blond girlfriend. Is it me or do they seem to be getting younger and blonder?”
“It’s not you. I’ve never understood your father. Never understood why my sister married him in the first place.” Uncle Harry frowned. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? It’s true. And as
exciting
as this is, it’s, well, a dusty old manuscript.” Could I tell him I was hoping for a summer romance? Or an adventure?
“Patience, Callie.” He winked at me. “Secrets . . .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You never know where a secret will take you. It’s like playing hide-and-seek throughout history.” He said it in a mysterious, yet playfully obnoxious kind of way. “I’ve got to go make some calls. You can look at the palimpsest. But don’t touch it.” He walked to his office, and with a backward glance added, “Or breathe on it.”
I leaned over and stared at the tiny scrawl that was just barely visible. I squinted. The script was old-fashioned. I couldn’t really make out any words.
Then I saw it. At the bottom it was signed.
 
I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.
—
A
.
 
2
 
Touch the stars. Dream of them.
—A.
 
M
y mother was my palimpsest. She died when I was six, and I’ve spent my life searching for hidden secrets about her, hoping she would whisper to me the way the scrawl in the margin whispered to Uncle Harry. It’s a longing that never goes away. Sometimes, when I see one of my friends hug their mom, I feel an actual ache in my heart. That night, I curled my knees under me and pored over old photos of her when I was alone in my room in Harry’s apartment.

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