Chapter II.



“This book was re-written by my mother, my mother translated the first two books and since the first book was written by Accalia and was written through her eyes, it might end up confusing some people. Instead, my mother re-wrote the style of writing but there was one thing that she did not change and that was the history of our town.”
Knowing this, I can only think that there would be a lot of people who would be mad for changing the style of the writing but then I can also understand the fact that this book is read by students of our school and some will defiantly get confused. I smiled and looked at the book. The writing was so hard to read.
“Marsha, what language is this?”
She turned to me with a slight shock. She looked confused about my question.
“Arabella, I am stunned to here this coming from you. You have read all of the books and you can’t recognize this?”
I shook my head. She was frozen. It was silent for a short while until she gave in; Marsha sighed and turned back to the book.
“This is Latin, the language that English inherited. A lot of English words come from Latin, like, our names. For example my name, Marsha. It has the meaning for ‘Belonging to Mars’, my name was originally male but in the Roman times, women will get there names from their father’s but it will sound slightly different. Let’s say my father’s name was Marsh, and well, the name Marsha just got an extra letter to make it sound more, feminine. And males got their names from their fathers, no changes made. But the reason for my name is because my parents, when I was born; they saw the red star in the sky. This was Mars.”
She turned a few pages, seeing this writing; I knew that I had seen it before.
As Marsha searched the book, I looked back at the book shelf, I got my hopes up but I had to face the facts. There was no XIII.
“Here it is! See! Look!”
The sound of Marsha’s voice was quick, loud and exited; I turned to her and saw a picture that had covered half the page. It was a picture of the moon’s reflection in the water and a baby floating in the water, the baby looked like it was reaching for the real moon which wasn’t shown in the picture, just it in the water. This baby was a boy.
“This is Niarad; he was a baby, he was born with the same appearance as you.”
I looked closely at the picture, it still made no sense and the name was unusual for our culture too. I focused my eyes on the picture but saw nothing. Then after a while I closed my eyes and faced Marsha. She was smiling.
“I don’t see it, this looks like a normal baby to me!”
Marsha placed her finger gently onto the handwritten text that was next to the picture.




“My darling boy whose hair is black.
The moon rises,
just for you
and the sun sets,
just for you.
You were born with more than just two eyes and hands,
you grew too quickly but never aged.
No matter what they say,
you are a miracle from God himself.”

I watched as her finger stopped on what looked like the last word. I looked again at the baby boy. The description matched but the note didn’t make sense, what did this mean and who wrote this? Who was Niarad? I turned Marsha and she still had that heart-warming smile of hers.
“Marsha, who was Niarad?”
She turned to the picture and spoke to me in a gentle voice.
“Niarad has a name like no other, this name has never made sense, some say it’s a name that Accalia invented and this was the meaning but it had always made not much sense. Niarad was believed to be Accalia’s first and only child who had died at the age of only three days. That’s probably what it means by ‘you grew too quickly but never aged.’ But there are also so many things that we still ask about this boy.”
“Wait, I thought that Accalia couldn’t have children?”
This was so strange, she was ‘the foster mother’ and how many people in our town knew this information? I looked at the picture, the baby, as adorable as he was, looked nothing like Accalia. Accalia had long, beautiful black hair and was short and slightly young no matter how much she aged.
“Who else knows about Accalia and why aren’t we taught this in school and why isn’t this information in the copies?”
Marsha turned the page. My eyes were glued to the next picture. It was a picture of a priest at an alter, he was talking with his arms stretched out and in front of him, kneeling, was what looked like Accalia. I tried to read the words again but I failed. Before I could ask, Marsha had answered the question for me.
“This is Accalia asking the priest and God to forgive all of her sins, she couldn’t handle it. She didn’t know what she had done so wrong that made god want to take away her child. She didn’t confess properly but she was forgiven because of the loss of her baby boy. It says here that she didn’t understand why God had to take Niarad away from her after he had just given him to her but the priest’s theory was that God may have made a mistake with him and that it may take time to fix the problem. I don’t under most of this page and not many people do but these were truly the thoughts of Accalia.”
I walked over to the books and looked at them; the second was in also in Latin. A thought had clicked into my head, I didn’t know why it did but I raised my wrist into the air and looked at my watch, it was just after noon. I looked back at the books and lost my train of thoughts. Marsha called my name and I came to her. She had changed the page again and this time there weren’t any pictures. I took a few deep breaths and tried to speak to Marsha in a calm voice.
“Why was all this information hidden and why am I allowed to see this?”
It was quiet, not a sound. This would have usually have frightened me but this new information and maybe conspiracy were keeping me distracted.
“I think this isn’t the room to talk in. Too cold. What do you say; you want to go in the lounge area? It’s only for staff and well, I’m the only one on break.”
I nodded and watched Marsha gently close the book and lock it away.