Now it’s a nearly forgotten language, with hardly any Trylle even bothering to learn it. Finn knew it, and he wanted me to study it because he thought it was important to remember our heritage and that it might be useful, the same reasons he had me learn Norse and Swedish. I had hated learning it at the time, but now it was literally saving my life.

I still wasn’t fluent in it, not by a long shot, and I hadn’t read any Tryllic in quite a while. Lemak and Indu had gathered me various old documents to do comparisons and help decipher it.

The main scroll that I had spent the most time on—days? Weeks? How long had we been there? I could feel memories overlaying it, a dozen different days at that desk, my wrists healing only to be bloodied and raw again, the flowers crumbling in their beakers replaced by fresh ones that wilted again—was called “A Recipe for the Journey Back.”

In my attempts to finish the recipe, I made a few “unrelated” translations, or at least, that’s what Lemak would say each day I didn’t solve the puzzle they’d been working on for years. Lemak would lean over me, his long bony fingers on my shoulder, his breath reeking of fermented elk meat with his words in my ear: “You’re wasting time, and we’re losing patience. You need to stick to what truly matters.”

I had futilely tried to explain to him that I didn’t know if a passage or word was relevant until I translated it, and the archaic wording made it very hard to decipher without some time and effort. But he wouldn’t listen, so I merely said, “I’m doing my best.”

Then I’d uncovered the passage that made Lemak lose it—he struck me across the face, twice, and when I crouched down on the floor, trying to hide from more blows, he began hitting me over the head repeatedly with an old book. Dazed and in pain, I tried to fight back, but he hit me with a PSG before I had the chance.

That had been my punishment for translating about the formation of Áibmoráigi:

“Frey took the kingdom and was called the King by the Swedes, and they paid taxes to him. He built a great temple in Áibmoráigi. Then began the Älvolk domains, which have been ever since.”

Another passage that earned me a beating on a different day: “The sky last will turn green on the most violent night, but good morning brings light to us all.”