“We’ll have to start burning words,” she said, and cold steam curled up from her mouth as she spoke. She hugged her knees to her chest as she sat in front of the dark fireplace, where a pot of ice hung above a forlorn grate. Her hair blazed red but gave no heat.
He nodded sadly and turned to look up at the walls. The room was a moonlit panopticon of bookshelves, a circle of walls insulated by thousands of volumes, a vertical city of language, millions of lexemes waiting only for their chance to breathe life in a reader’s mind. So much potential, so much cold potential, but here were two still-warm bodies that soon would be cold and still if they could have no heat and drink no water. And then whose eyes and minds would give life to the words anyway?
He turned his onyx eyes back to her. “I have never lit any on fire. Which words must die, that the rest might yet live?”
She unfolded, stood, walked to a wall, brushed her fingertips along the spines huddled there. Pulled one volume out. “The ones that are already dead.”
She turned and held the sacrificial victim solemnly before her: a dictionary of obsolete words. His mouth opened, but the small sound that came out fell as snow to the floor.
“They have had their life,” she said. “They’re gone. This is Lenin’s tomb, relics of the saints, a display of zombies. No one will use these words in earnest again. Let them rest in peace.” She walked over the fireplace, sat down, and laid the book down in front of her, spatchcocked on its spine. She gripped the back flyleaf in her hand, pulled it and peeled it away from the binding, creased it and set it in the grate.
He watched as she peeled the next page, creased it, and laid it in the grate. “They have never had a funeral,” he said. “They have never had a memorial.” She peeled another, creased it, laid it in the grate. He reached forward and picked it up and read from it. “Yekth. Yarringle. Yark.” He turned to her. “Let us sing a litany.”
She raised a thin red eyebrow. “A litany of sorrows, a litany of complaints?”
“A litany of saints. A long responsive prayer, an entreaty. A litany on fire. That these words may one last time illuminate us.”
“That they may keep us warm,” she said. “Give us the breath of life. Melt the ice and sustain us.”
“Let us remember what they meant to someone at some time.” He looked over his shoulder at the thousands of books full of frozen meaning, silent in the late night moonlight that leaked down through the cupola clerestory to land on his page. He turned to the fireplace again, cleared his throat, raised his head, and sang in the tones of the Great Litany: “May all the words lost to the worlds… light and enliven us.” He looked at the page. “Yark, that meant to prepare…”
She joined in: “…light and enliven us.”
“Yarringle, a yard-winder…”
“…light and enliven us.” She peeled another page and laid it creased in the grate.
“Yekth, that was itchiness…” he sang.
“…light and enliven us.” She peeled another page.
He laid the page he had been holding into the grate and, as she peeled one more page, took it from her and looked. “Wyndre, that meant to embellish…”
“…light and enliven us.” Another page.
“Winx, to bray like an ass…”
“…light and enliven us.” Another page.
“Vectigal, taxation…”
“…light and enliven us.” One more page. Two.
“Umthink, to ponder…”
“…light and enliven us,” she sang, but he had paused. He glanced back for a moment, as if the word might be in one of those volumes, hearing its end announced. Who would know what it meant? But she kept peeling, a page, a page, a page, each one slowly and solemnly but without stop. The paper was thick and would burn well, and there were many pages still to go. Soon there would be enough to start.
He turned back and took another page and looked at it and chanted: “Stelligerate, that was exalted to the heavens…”
“…light and enliven us.”
“Sprunt, that meant short and hard to bend…”
“Unlike that definition,” she offered, but he was singing “…light and enliven us.” He looked at her, and for a moment his eyes sucked in light, but then he smiled and chuckled once. “A last breath for it,” he said.
Another page. “Shindle, that meant to scratch…”
“…light and enliven us.”
Another. He looked over it for a moment. “Scrute, that was scrutinize…”
“…light and enliven us.”
The pages kept coming, and it was a decent size of pile now. She handed him another page and put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a box of matches. She took one out and scratched it against the emery on the side and it awoke into flame. “Scratch,” she said. “What was that word?”
He shook his head sadly. Too late. She touched the match to light the papers and they quickly came to life.
By the light of the growing fire he looked at the next page that she peeled. He gasped a little and darted his glance once more over his shoulder. Then he steamed a short breath of resignation and sang. “Philobiblist, that meant bibliophile…”
“…light and enliven us,” they sang together. He placed the page with its obsolete word for book-lover in the flames. The fire burned a short time, and then she peeled a few more pages. He took one. He read it, and his eyes lost focus and he gazed at the fire through it.
She took the page from him; he surrendered it lightly. She saw what he had seen, and she cleared her throat and sang: “Owsell, meaning unknown, origin unknown…”
“…light and enliven us,” he joined in with her. She fed the page into the fire. Oh well.
They warmed themselves for a few minutes, and he lifted the pot from its hook. A bit of the ice was melted. He offered it to her, she drank a little, then he drank a little and put it back. She peeled out a few more pages and looked at one. “Lutarious, living in mud,” she sang.
“…light and enliven us.” To the fire.
A pause, a page, a page. “Labant, that meant sliding…”
“…light and enliven us.”
A page, a page. “Kneck, the twisting of a running rope…”
“…light and enliven us.”
A page. “Kenodoxy, the study of vainglory…”
“…light and enliven us.” She placed the page in the fire; the oxygen combusted the oxy and, as they watched, the last letters to go into ashes were no.
The next: “Javel, that meant vagabond,” she sang, and “light and enliven us” they intoned together.
And so it went, by page, by quire, as the cold night drew on:
“Gowl, weep with anger… light and enliven us.”
“Gorm, a gormless fool… light and enliven us.”
“Genge, that meant valid… light and enliven us.”
“Furchure, where the legs fork… light and enliven us.”
“Fulculency, dreggy refuse… light and enliven us.”
“Fletiferous, causing weeping…”
As he sang “light and enliven us” she looked at the glowing ashes of thousands of lost words, lost to all time, no one ever to utter or think them again, and she laid the page to add to the pyre and wept for a moment. He took the pot and served her water, and some for himself.
At the next time of peeling, she handed the page to him. He looked at it, and looked up at the clerestory, where the pre-dawn glow was starting to grow, and sang, “Fenester, that meant window…”
“…light and enliven us.” The word joined the flames, burnt down to nest, flew away.
There was not so much left now, of the book or of the night, and the ice was mostly water. But they kept on.
“Ewage, a waterway toll… light and enliven us.”
“Eslargish, extend the range or scope… light and enliven us.”
“Empyre, that meant worsen… light and enliven us.” The page ignited; the pyre became smoke and the em fluttered up in the flame.
“Catamidiate, put to open shame and punishment… light and enliven us.”
“Brattice, ventilation partition in a mineshaft… light and enliven us.”
Pages, pages, pages. At last they were almost through. She peeled one and handed it to him, and peeled the last few and fed them in, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, she lifted the book’s cover and set it at the side of the fire, so it might burn at its own rate without smothering it all.
He looked at the page he held, and as the first rays of the sunrise began to bless the cupola dome, he handed it to her with his thumb at one word. She read it, and then, in a quiet voice, intoned the last of their litany:
“Apricity, warmth of the sun in wintertime…”
“…light and enliven us,” he joined in.
She started to reach the page into the fire, but then she stopped. And then she drew it back, and folded it neatly, and folded it again, and one more time, and put it in her pocket, next to the matchbox.
The last black flakes of pages of lost words glowed in the grate with the little worms of fire, and the faint remaining heat rose to meet the resurgent apricity.
———
All of these words are ones I’ve written about here over the years, and yes, they’re all at least supposedly obsolete:
Sesquiotica 