Page 53 - DivineSparkRisingFinal

Nicholas Boothman
Henry’s jaw tightened. Serpa. Of course it was
Serpa who had walked these paths with her, not
him.
A faint shift in the air made him stop: no wind,
just a presence. Then, from the trees ahead, a
woman appeared without a sound, as if she’d been
standing there all along.
She was in her sixties, sun-worn and regal,
wrapped in a shawl stitched with ancient
alphabets. Her dark eyes lingered on Henry before
sliding to Carolina, measuring them both with
unsettling precision.
“I am Sofia,” she said, her English thick with
accent. Then she smiled faintly, though it didn’t
quite reach her eyes. “Henry, you’ve come a long
way.”
He hadn’t given her his name.
Her fingers drifted to the shawl, tracing one of
the stitched letters as if it were a talisman: a single,
looping character Henry recognized instantly. It
was a symbol from the God Word fragments. He
saw now that the shawl was arranged in twelve
arcs, each curve a path of letters, not decoration but
a map, worn close to her body.
“The fragment,” she said softly, “is not in a
museum. It is in the chapel of Quinta da Regaleira.”
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