The book lay on the stone table, its leather binding cracked with age, golden-edged pages catching what little light filtered through the basement’s single, dust-covered window. I hesitated before approaching it, stories of its power hanging in my mind like cobwebs in the corners of the room.
When I finally opened it, the air shifted. A darkly luminous hand materialized above the pages, skeletal, with elongated fingers ending in pointed black nails. It hovered there, vapor-like, waiting.
I had heard whispers about this book for years. No need to read it in its entirety, they said. Simply ask your question and be shown the answer.
“What path should I take?” I whispered, the words escaping before I could reconsider.
The pages began to turn as if caught in an invisible breeze, the spectral hand flexing gently with each passing leaf. Finally, the pages settled, and the hand descended, one pointed nail touching the page. The text beneath it glowed, pulsing with otherworldly light, words burning themselves into my consciousness:
“The trail forks not because there are two paths, but because you believe there must be. Look instead at what lies between.”
I closed the book, convinced I’d found wisdom, and rushed back to apply this cryptic message to my dilemma. For days, I dissected the meaning, certain I’d uncovered the solution to my problem.
Yet nothing changed.
A week later, I returned to the basement, the wonder of my first visit diminished. The floating hand, the glowing pages… they remained impressive, but familiarity had dulled their magic. I asked a more specific question this time, and again the pages turned, the hand pointed, and I received an answer that seemed perfect.
Until it wasn’t.
Days passed, and the clarity I thought I’d gained dissolved into more questions. The answer that had seemed so complete now felt like a half-truth at best, a distraction at worst.
And so it continued. Each visit brought temporary satisfaction followed by deeper confusion. Until one evening, as I prepared to descend the basement stairs again, a friend placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Why don’t you try reading it?” she asked. “Not just the passages the hand selects, but the whole book.”
The thought had never occurred to me.
The book was massive, impossibly heavy as I dragged it up the winding stairs to my quarters high in the castle’s turret. It landed with a resonant thud on my oak table, dust dancing in the thin shafts of evening light that sliced through the thatched roof.
When I opened the book, the hand appeared as before, but I waved it away. I turned to the first page and began to read the title. As I did, the pages dimmed, the luminescence fading with each word I consumed.
By the third page, it was clear: the magic was leaving the book. It was becoming what it appeared to be… just a dusty, ancient tome.
Through my small window, I could see friends in the courtyard below, laughing, living. The book would take months, perhaps years to read in its entirety. Was it worth it? Perhaps the magical glow had simply been a trick of the basement light.
I closed the book, hurried down the stairs, and joined my friends, promising myself I’d return to it later.
That night, I read a single chapter before sleep claimed me. The next evening, two more. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and I maintained my discipline, reading each night until the words blurred and my candle burned low.
Years passed this way, until finally, I turned the last page, closed the cover, and sat in silence as dawn broke over the castle walls.
I packed minimally and set out for the desert, seeking the solitude needed to process what I had read, to distill meaning from the thousands of pages I had consumed. For forty days and forty nights, I sat beneath the open sky, wrestling with the book’s contents.
The conclusion I reached was both devastating and liberating: the book was pointless. All the answers it had given me, whether through the ghostly hand’s selection or through my complete reading, were meaningless distractions. I had applied its words as if they were profound wisdom, when they were merely empty phrases, cruel jokes played on a naive soul.
Anger surged through me, at the book, at myself for wasting so many years. I grabbed a nearby rock, my arm pulling back to hurl it at my patient donkey who grazed nearby, completely unaware of my existential crisis.
The absurdity of my rage struck me suddenly, and laughter burst from my chest, echoing across the canyon. The donkey continued eating, undisturbed.
I was no longer young. The fury that had briefly possessed me belonged to a younger version of myself, one who hadn’t yet learned the patience that comes with age. Throughout the years of reading, I had become respected in my community, found satisfaction in small acts of kindness and connection. Even if the book’s words were nonsense, my diligence in studying them had shaped how I approached the rest of my life.
But still, the question nagged: Would I have been more successful without the distraction of the book? Would I have accomplished more, seen more, experienced more?
These thoughts brought a flash of anger again, but it faded quickly into something else, an awareness of my current contentment. Whether despite the book or because of it, I had found my way to this moment of peace.
Perhaps even now, I was wasting time dwelling on might-have-beens when I could return to town, to friends and warmth and life.
I climbed onto my donkey, preparing for the slow descent down the talus slope toward home. As we turned, the spectral hand appeared before me, pointing toward the distant town. Where it pointed, the horizon glowed with the same luminescence that had once filled the book’s pages.
Understanding washed over me like the desert sunset. The answers had never been in the book. They had been in the journey the book inspired, in the questions asked, the discipline learned, the life lived while seeking meaning.
I smiled and urged my donkey forward, toward home, toward whatever questions and answers still awaited.