Free Trove (The Katie Walsh Mysteries) by KJ Montgomery

knitted together as she looked intently at the symbol. “I’d have to agree, it’s definitely not normal. Where was this found?”
    “In the British Isles, the southern part, I believe. Does that make any difference?”
    “It could. The two more well-known rune alphabets are the Elder Futhark and the Anglo-Saxon. The Elder Futhark alphabet contains twenty-four characters while the Anglo-Saxon alphabet contains thirty-three.”
    “So,” he asked, “are they very different?”
    “Well, clearly the Anglo-Saxon has many characters in common with the Elder Futhark, having derived from it, but you have to remember that for the longest time, ‘reading and writing’, for lack of a better term, were not part of the everyday life of people. Add to that the fact that runes were often etched into stone and were subject to weathering and erosion over the course of many hundreds of years, if not near a thousand in some instances.”
    Noticing his puzzled look, how his eyebrows almost formed a unibrow, she could tell she was losing him. Don’t make him uncomfortable, just help him understand , she warned herself. Don’t shut him out.
    She continued, “What I’m trying to say is that there was no one school for learning runes. Individuals were taught, and over time, small regional variations crept in. Also, if there wasn’t a rune that conveyed a meaning, they might have been tempted to add a rune, hence this difference in the number of Anglo-Saxon runes versus the Elder Futhark runes.” She angled her body so that she faced him, resting her hand on the dossier. “Runes are a contextual alphabet, like hieroglyphics and Mayan carvings. You need to understand the message based on the surrounding characters in order to decipher the meanings. You don’t add them together to equate to a word the way the English language works. If I wanted to convey the English word ‘rich,’ I would simply write r-i-c-h. If I further wanted to say you are very rich, I would simply add the word ‘very’ in front of rich. With runes, I would need to add the rune ‘auroch’ which can be translated as ‘shower’ in front of the rune ‘feoh’ meaning ‘wealth.’ The context would be shower of wealth, which could be interpreted as ‘very wealthy.’ ”
    He still looked puzzled.
    She thought for a moment and then grinned. “Think in terms of accents. Sort of like a Southern accent versus a Midwestern accent. Clearly both are based on English, but just as clearly there are regional variations, dialects if you will. Add to that the differences in language as time progresses, for example English from the Middle Ages versus modern English. Some words, though having the same pronunciation, would have different contextual meanings. Try saying ‘that’s cool’ to someone in the Middle Ages and they would think you were talking about the temperature.”
    “Ah,” he said, “so now I can understand the lack of consensus of the translations. But,” he continued as he shifted his body to face her straight on, “no one seemed to have recognized some of the runes. The one I pointed out has no known translation and there about a dozen more.”
    “It doesn’t mean they aren’t legitimate. It just means more contextual research is needed. They may turn out to be sort of a ‘runic slang,’ for lack of a better term. Or, maybe the person who etched these particular runes added a few of his own. I’ve actually created a few of my own, a personal shorthand, if you will. The bulk of these are Anglo-Saxon runes, based on a quick look at them.”
    “Interesting,” he said as he rubbed his chin. “I like the way you think.”
    She looked at him and smiled, feeling that perhaps she could work with him. She could prove herself to him with this translation and let him know that she still wanted his job but would not undermine his authority while going after it. She needed to prove to Dr. Austin and herself that they’d made a terrible mistake and