By the time they dared step forward, the watcher was gone.
Jude unwrapped the object. It was a thick, sealed scroll , parchment of a kind none of them had ever seen. Dark, flexible, warm to the touch. On the outer surface, a glyph they had not yet encountered. An eye with three lines crossing it. Beneath that, smaller script , not glyphs, but a language. And at the very bottom, one word in English.
"Jude."
His heart stilled.
Grace took his hand. "It knows your name."
"No," he whispered. "It remembers it."
They did not open the scroll that night. They agreed, silently, that it was not yet time. Instead, they burned sweetwood and sang old lullabies. They held one another close and whispered promises as the watchers returned to the trees and the scroll sat waiting, heavy with secrets.
Much later, when the children were asleep and the fire only embers, Jude sat with Grace beneath the fig-glyph tree again. The rain had stopped. The orchard smelled of ash and earth.
