“You make an excellent espresso,” Francesca lied. Clay knew she was lying, but he graciously accepted the false compliment. She had wanted to make the espresso herself, but he had insisted, trying to continue the tradition begun by Julia – to keep some sense of continuity. He understood that he was no replacement for Julia, but there was no reason to belabour the point.
“Have you made any headway with the nouns?” he asked.
Francesca frowned. “It is difficult. I sense there is something about your language, some subtlety that I miss. In Italian it is so simple. Our language comes down to us from the Latin — we are children of Romance. But English, it has so many roots — words have different meanings. And I sense that there are meanings here which are beyond my ability to see.”
“Let me take a look,” Clay suggested. His eyes scanned down the several dozen words on the list, allowing each one a chance to jump out at him. “Interesting. ‘caper’, ‘count’, ‘date’, ‘gin’, ‘pen’, ‘quarry’…. Indeed, an odd assortment of words. But they do have one thing in common.”
“What is that?” Francesca perked up.
“Each word on this list is has two completely different meanings, with each meaning derived from a different root. They sound the same, are spelled the same, but they are not really the same word. Take ‘quarry’ for example.”
“But my dear,” Francesca objected. “Surely you don’t mean that the two meanings of ‘quarry’ in your language are so different. Whether it is the thing one hunts or the place from which one takes the marble, the two must be in some way connected.”
“Actually, no,” Clay said, shaking his head. “‘Quarry’ in the sense of ‘the thing that is hunted’ comes from quirre in the original Anglo-French, the entrails of a deer given to hunting dogs to reward their success.”
Francesca looked at him in astonishment. “How do you come to know such a thing?”
Clay smiled sheepishly. “Not really sure. The origin of words is something I just seem to know — it’s always been a gift, something my mind does without really thinking.”
“And the other meaning?” Francesca asked, now intrigued.
“Ah, that’s pretty much straight from the Latin — quadrare — ‘to square’. The quarry has always been the place where excavated stones are squared.”
“Most remarkable!” Francesca exclaimed with genuine delight. “Is this the case for all of these words?”
Clay looked over the list one more time. “Yes,” he nodded, “I’m fairly certain of it. In each case we are actually looking at two different words. Same spelling, same pronunciation, but two different words derived from two different languages.”
“Ah,” she nodded. “It is like the frog and the toad.”
“Excuse me?” Clay looked confused.
“I remember learning, as a girl, of a species of frog and a species of toad that look absolutely identical. Except they are genetically quite different. Both species have adapted, over time, through the forces of Darwinian selection, to a similar environment. Now they look the same in every way, and yet have extremely different DNA.”
Clay nodded slowly, lost in thought. “It is a sort of message — not by what it says in words, but by what it says about words. Strange as it seems, this reminds me of nothing so much as SunMoon. Umbry and Julia always insist that they are not related, and yet they seem like sisters. ”
“Closer than sisters,” Francesca agreed. “Could this be a message about them?”
“But what are we talking about here?” Clay looked puzzled. “The letters were placed in the three boxes long before either Julia or Umbray was born How could it be possible that the message is about them?”
“I believe we must explore the possibility,” Francesca said, “that we are looking at a prophesy.”