Chapter 6 — The Creeping Tongue
Snow had covered Val-d’Enbas in a deceptive calm. The cottages had relit their garlands, families had resumed their singing, and children were running around the Christmas tree again as if nothing had happened.
But Naïma knew: it wasn’t over.
She could feel it in the air, in the overly bright eyes of the passersby, in Junon’s nervous barks that refused to settle.
Abel snapped his suitcase shut with a sharp gesture.
“The Book closed one breach,” he said, “not all of them.”
Louvel, sitting on a bench, his voice broken, looked up.
“The Mother-History is gone. I saw her eyes shatter in the snow. We should be rejoicing, shouldn’t we?”
Abel fixed him with his grey stare.
“She isn’t dead. She left roots behind.”
Naïma had confirmation a few minutes later. While helping volunteers lift unconscious runners, she noticed their lips. All of them, without exception, were mumbling in their sleep. A string of syllables intertwining in the icy air:
“Ra… sha… no… kal…”
The new tongue.
And that wasn’t all. Passersby, mere spectators, were unconsciously repeating the sounds, as if they came to them naturally. A chestnut seller murmured them dreamily. A grandmother rocked her grandson, humming those syllables. Even a group of street musicians, without realizing it, slipped them into their melody.
The tongue was creeping.
Naïma grabbed Louvel by the arm and shook him.
“Do you recognize these sounds? Do they come from your stories?”
The storyteller trembled.
“No… and yes. They are fragments. Whispers of tales never finished. That’s what makes them so powerful: everyone thinks they recognize something familiar in them.”
He struck his chest.
“And they’re using my voice to spread. I’m an antenna against my will.”
Abel placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Then you’ll have to choose: either you learn to tell stories differently, or you will be their prison.”
Louvel paled.
The mice of the multiverse, however, weren’t wasting any time. They had gathered around a piece of wood they had carved with astonishing speed. It was a sort of miniature totem, shaped like a stylized wheel of cheese. The small pocket watch at the top was vibrating, its hands clicking at full speed.
The stockiest mouse looked up at Naïma and spoke, its voice tiny but clear:
“The Ultimate Cheese was only a brake. But not a cure. The new tongue has already taken root. It will spread from mouth to mouth, from ear to ear. And when a whole town speaks it, the Mother-History will return, stronger.”
Naïma clenched her fists.
“And what do you propose?”
The mouse sighed.
“Find the core. The source from which the tongue sprang. And destroy it.”
Abel stepped forward, grave.
“I know where it’s hiding.”
All eyes turned to him.
He opened the suitcase, but this time the Book remained silent. Abel pulled out a small, yellowed envelope, folded dozens of times, like a relic handled too often.
“Before it was the Book of Beginnings,” he explained, “there was a first page. Just one. Written by an unknown hand. A blank page stained with four syllables. The new tongue comes from it. It was torn from the Book, lost… and now, it seeks to recompose itself.”
Naïma frowned.
“Are you suggesting we have to find this page?”
Abel nodded.
“And burn it.”
Louvel started.
“Burn a story? But that’s… sacrilege!”
“Better to sacrifice a page than a world,” said Abel.
Junon suddenly began to growl. Her snout was pointed toward the church, illuminated at the end of the square. The stained-glass windows were vibrating. From inside rose a deep, powerful chant that made the crowd shiver.
Naïma stiffened. She knew that tune.
It wasn’t a hymn.
It was the new tongue.
The church door swung open abruptly. A procession emerged: parishioners, altar boys, the priest at the head, all chanting the same litany of incomprehensible syllables. Their eyes were glassy, but their steps were sure.
Abel froze.
“It has already found a choir.”
Naïma drew her weapon reflexively, but Abel raised his hand.
“It’s no use. Bullets do nothing to stories.”
Louvel nearly collapsed.
“If the church already speaks the tongue… then tomorrow it will be the school, the day after the town hall. And soon, the whole town will be singing.”
The crowd screamed, recoiled, but some townsfolk spontaneously joined the procession, as if drawn by the chant. Their lips moved, their voices added to the echo.
The mice looked at Naïma gravely.
“Captain. If you let the tongue spread, you will lose Val-d’Enbas before dawn.”
Abel closed his suitcase.
“Time is short. The original page is here, somewhere. And I fear it is already in the wrong hands.”
Naïma gripped her weapon, Junon at her side. She felt the weight of the decision crushing her shoulders.
“Then we find it. Before this town becomes the first cathedral of a tongue that doesn’t exist yet.”
And, in the distance, the town hall clock began to chime again… backwards.
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