Page 9 of A Fractured Song

“What is it?”

“That.” Azai pointed.

Following his gaze, Zev squinted at the object caught in the trees. It was a large, white rectangle, although it had lost its shape somewhat, tangled as it was in the branches.

“Is that parchment?” He frowned at it.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Azai agreed.

Zev raised an eyebrow at his brother. “A loose bit of parchment is what made you call for me like you were under attack?”

Azai rolled his eyes. “You’re exaggerating. And it’s not just a loose bit of parchment. There’s something not natural about it.”

“Why do you say that?” Zev asked.

“I saw it get tangled up,” Azai said. “It was wafting back and forth, like a kite on a string, but there’s no string, and there was no wind. Barely a breeze, definitely nothing that matched the parchment’s movement.”

“That is strange,” Zev acknowledged.

Maybe Azai could hear in his tone that he wasn’t entirely convinced, because he added, “It’s not just that. I could feel something when it was approaching. Something in me responded to it.”

“Something in you?” Zev repeated.

“Not in me, exactly.” Azai seemed to be searching for words. “In…”

“The land,” Zev finished for him. He turned his eyes back to the parchment, taking his brother more seriously. The connection he felt to the land didn’t belong just to him. It played out differently for other members of his family, but it was just as real. If Azai said that the land had given some kind of indefinable response to the presence of the strange object, Zev believed him.

“Come on,” he said, vaulting the section of fence on which he’d been leaning. “Let’s have a closer look.”

Azai followed him across the wide strip of dirt that served as the road to their farm. Zev pulled himself up onto a boulder lying on the far side, to better search the branches above him.

He knew instinctively where the family’s property ended, and it didn’t seem coincidental to him that the parchment was just outside the boundary line. Squinting at it, he realized that it didn’t look like normal paper.

“It’s sort of waxy,” he commented to Azai, who was climbing the boulder. “To make it weatherproof, I suppose.”

“Is it a proclamation of some kind, intended to be posted in a village square or something?” Azai speculated.

Zev shook his head slowly, grabbing a nearby branch tosteady himself as he leaned upward. “I don’t think so. Look—there’s writing on it, but it’s too small for a proclamation. It looks more like lists.”

It was hard to read any of the words, especially with the way the parchment was twisted around a branch, but Zev could see that the page was about half full. Straining his eyes, he caught a few words.

“It looks like an inventory of the area,” he said. “Crops, acreage…”

He trailed off as Azai swung himself into the relevant tree, climbing up until he was close to the parchment.

“You’re right!” Azai declared, scanning a line of the neat, even writing. “I think this last part is describing the farm just west of here! And—” Azai’s words cut off with a gasp after this mention of their neighbor.

“What is it?” Zev asked sharply.

“More words are appearing!” Azai said. “At the bottom here! But it’s slow, like the words are struggling.”

Zev scaled the tree quickly, holding his balance on a branch just below the parchment. “You’re right,” he breathed. It was like watching someone trying to write by the light of a candle that was sputtering out. Except there was no someone. The words were just appearing.

And disappearing, he realized with a start as he watched a word erase itself letter by letter, replaced sluggishly with a correction. Zev’s gaze was drawn to his brother’s movement, and he held out a restraining hand.

“Stop, Azai! Don’t touch it.”

Azai paused, his fingers an inch from the edge of the parchment. “Why not?”

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