Chapter 2The Mysterious Parchment

"I’m telling you," my uncle practically yelled, slamming his fist on the table, "it’s Runic - and it holds some seriously cool secret, which I need to figure out, no matter what."

I was just about to say something when he cut me off.

"Sit down," he said, super intense, "and write what I say." I did what he asked.

"I’m gonna swap out the Runic letters for our alphabet," he explained. " Then we’ll see what that does. Now, start writing and don’t mess it up."

He started dictating, and the result was totally gibberish: mm.rnlls esruel seec Jde sgtssmf unteief niedrke kt,samn atrate S Saodrrn emtnae I nuaect rril Sa Atvaar .nscrc ieaabs ccdrmi eeutul frantu dt,iac oseibo Kedii Y

Without even letting me finish, my uncle grabbed the paper and stared at it like it was the most amazing thing ever.

"I’m dying to know what it means," he said after a long pause.

I had no clue, and he didn't expect me to - he always answered his own questions.

"It’s like a secret code!" he exclaimed.

"Unless, of course, the letters are just random. But why would someone go through all this trouble? Maybe I’m about to make a huge discovery!"

Honestly, I thought it was all a waste of time. But I kept that to myself - my uncle got really cranky easily. All this time, he was comparing the book with the parchment.

"The manuscript and the smaller document were written by different people," he said.

"The code is way newer than the book; it totally proves I’m right." ["It's a rock-solid proof," I thought.]

"The first letter is a double M, which wasn’t even added to Icelandic until the twelfth century - that means the parchment is two hundred years later than the book."

It all sounded pretty convincing, but to me, it was just a bunch of guesses.

"Looks like someone wrote this in the book," Professor Hardwigg said.

"Now, who owned it? That's the next big question. Maybe, if we’re lucky, it’s written somewhere in here."

With that, he took off his glasses and grabbed a magnifying glass, checking the book carefully.

On the flyleaf, there was what looked like an ink blot, but when he looked closer, it was a line of writing, faded by time. That's what he was looking for, and after a while, he made out the letters:

"Arne Saknussemm!" he shouted, super excited.

"That’s not just an Icelandic name, it’s a learned professor from the sixteenth century, a famous alchemist!"

I nodded to show I was listening.

"These alchemists," he continued, "Avicenna, Bacon, Lully, Paracelsus - they were the smartest people around. They made crazy discoveries. Maybe this Saknussemm, my relative, hid something amazing on this piece of paper? I think this code has a serious meaning - and I need to figure it out."

My uncle was pacing around the room, totally hyped.

"Maybe," I said quietly, "but why hide it from everyone if it's a good discovery?"

"How should I know?" he asked.

"Didn't Galileo keep his discoveries about Saturn a secret? But we’ll see. Until I crack this sentence, I won’t eat or sleep." "Uncle - " I started. "You neither," he added.

I was glad I’d eaten a ton earlier that day.

"First things first," he went on, "there has to be a clue. If we find that, the rest will be a breeze."

I started thinking hard. Skipping food and sleep wasn’t looking great, so I decided to give it my best shot. My uncle kept talking to himself.

"Figuring it out isn't that hard," I said.

"This document has one hundred and thirty-two letters - seventy-nine consonants and fifty-three vowels. It’s close to the ratio you see in most southern languages. Northern dialects are way heavier on consonants, though."

"So, we can pretty confidently say it's a southern dialect," he finished. Nothing made more sense.

"Alright," Professor Hardwigg said, "let's trace the language."

"Like Shakespeare said, 'that is the question,'" I quipped, trying to be funny.

"Saknussemm," he went on, "was a seriously smart guy. Since he didn’t write in his native tongue, he probably wrote in Latin - like most scholars did back in the sixteenth century. If I’m wrong, we’ll try Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, even Hebrew. But I really think it's Latin."

That threw me for a loop. Latin was my absolute favorite subject, and it felt wrong to think this weird text was connected to Virgil's world.

"Probably some rough Latin," my uncle added, "but still Latin."

"Yeah, probably," I said, not wanting to argue.

"Let's dig into it," he said. "Here’s a jumble of one hundred and thirty-two letters, just thrown on the page, no order. You're gonna see words made up of just consonants, like mm.rnlls, others with mostly vowels - like unteief, the fifth one - and oseibo at the very end. It’s a crazy mix."

"It looks like it's arranged according to some math thing. Maybe a sentence got written out and then scrambled up - a code where some number is the key. Okay, Harry, show me what you got - what’s that number?"

I couldn't give him a clue. My mind was totally somewhere else. While he was talking, I'm glancing at the portrait of my cousin Gretchen, wondering when she's coming back.

We were engaged, and we really loved each other. But my uncle, who never even thought about stuff like that, was clueless. Without realizing I was zoning out, the Professor started reading the crazy cryptograph every which way, following his own weird theory.

He shook me back to reality eventually, and had me write down one attempt.

I just handed it over. It said: mmessunka Senr A. icefdo K. segnittamurtn ecertserrette, rotaivsadua, ednecsedsadne lacartniiilr Jsiratrac Sarbmutabiledmek meretarcsiluco Ysleffen Sn I.

I could barely keep from cracking up, but my uncle? He totally lost it. He slammed his fist on the table, stormed out of the room, out of the house, and then just took off running. He disappeared pretty quickly.