The book.(Elizabeth Aldam) The room looked different, it always did when she woke up. Things were the same and yet different. Clarissa could not tell what the difference was but it was there, something she felt every morning.

Still, it only took her a few minutes to start her usual routine. It was then, when she was fully dressed and ready to go downstairs to share breakfast with her mother that the eerie sensation faded away. The room looked as it had looked the night before, the air seemed to have lifted somehow, to be lighter and cleaner.
Everything looked so commonplace once she was ready for breakfast.

Her mother talked little, she was this small elusive person she had always been. Once, ages ago, she had been a young girl full of expectations who had married her boyfriend against her family's wishes. For some reason her expectations had withered away and the years had taken their toll. She had aged fast after her husband´s death and had accepted widowhood as she accepted all things in life.

To Clarissa her mother was a conundrum she had despaired to solve and as a result of this,. had given up on it and had also learnt to accept her mother as she was..
They lived together,shared their meals and some outings and kept each other company in the evenings. If they felt the lack of friends or some kind of social life they kept it to themselves.
This life and restraint suited them both.

After breakfast Clarissa left for work, praying her small pupils would behave passably well that day, they usually did. She knew they found her a little odd but not so odd as to put them off..
Her day passed quickly, she enjoyed her work with the children, they kept her busy, free from obtrusive memories of times not lived and yet strangely real.
Also, her job kept her mother and herself going. Her mother had a small pension but Clarissa insisted on her mother using it mostly on herself, something her mother did with some reluctance.

Once at home, there was little to do, her mother took care of the household chores with the devotion of a Buddhist monk in charge of cleaning his monastery.
They had an early dinner, watched the telly and after an hour or so retired to their rooms
“Good night, mother”
“Good night, dear”
That was their usual dialogue before going to bed.
It was not an exciting life but to them it was pleasant in its lack of strong emotions and its
absence of adventure..

Once in bed, she picked up her book. It was an old book, bound in some burgundy fabric. It had an unknown symbol embroidered on its cover and its pages were thick and yellowing with the passing of time.




The book had belonged to her father and had remained forgotten on the upper shelf of the small bookcase in the living room. Clarissa had picked up the day her mother announced they had to clean up the bookcase.
“So many old books I am sure no one wants such as this one on the Middle Ages”
“If I remember well that one was one of my father´s favourite books, why do you want to get rid of it?
“No one reads it and your father is long gone, I am sure he would not us to burden ourselves with the dusting of his old books”
Clarissa had never expected such words from her mother, her pragmatic coldness struck her painfully.
“I want this book, I will not throw my father´s books away.”
And that was that. The bookcase remained as it was and Clarissa took the book she had rescued to her room.

It became her treasure and she always read some pages before falling asleep. The book spoke of a castle up on a very high mountain, of men ,women and also children living there,of a siege and also of a massive pyre in a valley at the bottom of the mountain. The pyre awaited the inhabitants of the castle.who refused to forsake their beliefs. The pyre fed on all of them, they had marched to their deaths with a strange calmness that baffled their murderers..
The book also spoke of their principles and of their precepts and also of their tolerance for human weaknesses. Clarissa wondered if this had not hidden a deep despair of the material world.

Many times she had fallen asleep with the book on her chest so sometimes she placed it there before dozing off. The book seemed to accompany her in her night journey until one night she woke up feeling her chest was burning, she was burning..
There was only a dim light in the room and it emanated from the book. Still, the book was cold to the touch, burning her like fire and yet cold as ice. She placed it on her night table and the light disappeared. The burning sensation also faded away and she fell asleep again.

When morning came the room looked as it had always looked , there was nothing unusual. She got up, she did not want to be late either to breakfast or to school.
It was only when she picked up the clothes she had prepared the night before that she realized they had changed..There was a long tunic, a thick cape and a headscarf.
She put them on quickly, they were her size and she felt she had worn these clothes all her life.
She went downstairs as fast as her long tunic would allow her and found her mother baking some bread . Her mother also wore a tunic and her hair was covered by a simple headscarf.

When her mother spoke it was in an old language. Still, Clarissa understood every word and replied accordingly. The words flowed easily into their ears, through their brains and out of their mouths,it was a language they had treasured in their hearts.




They spoke in a way they had never spoken before in those other times when Clarissa had been a teacher in some school and her mother had waited for her every evening to have dinner and watch television.
They spoke of crops, of the coming harvest, of the weather, and of the fear they had of some Dominican friars they had seen in the village.
And they also spoke of the castle up on the high mountain where they would go the following morning to join their brothers and sisters.

Elizabeth Aldam, April 2nd, 2025.

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