4 Hemmed In Read Online Free PDF

professor Ezra Pudhomme, the expert on Runology, met them at his on-campus office. He was a fat man, a human Jabba the Hutt. At a quick guess, he probably weighed in at 400 pounds. Two metal canes helped him waddle to his desk, where he deposited his bulk onto a couch that served as his office chair. “What’s this question you have about runes?” he wheezed. “Dan Sokolowski didn’t give me many details.”
    Cookie Bentley laid the color photograph of the Wilkins Witch Quilt onto the professor’s desk blotter. “Are the symbols around the quilt’s border runes or some other half-forgotten language?” she got straight to the point.
    “Ahem, runes are not a language per se . They are a form of writing developed by Germanic people before the adoption of the Latin alphabet.” You’d think he was teaching Communications History 101, one of his more popular freshman courses. “These are indeed runes, the Scandinavian variant known as Futhark . The name comes from the first six letters in that alphabet – Fehu , Uruz , Thurs , Ansuz , Ræið , and Kaun . The symbols originally meant wealth, water, giant, god, journey, and fatal disease.”
    “That’s fascinating,” said Bootsie, barely able to hide her sarcasm. “But what has that to do with the price of ice in Iceland?”
    Ezra Pudhomme sniffed haughtily, but refused to acknowledge her snide remark. “If you look at the photograph of your quilt, you will see some of those same runes. I’d say a loose translation might go like this –” He squinted over the image, using a magnifying glass because the inscriptions were small, even in this 8” x 10” color print. “‘ After a long journey, we are befallen by a fatal disease, so we hide our wealth in this deep water .’”
    “Wealth?”
    “The rune also means cattle, that being a common source of wealth. But here I’d say it refers to some kind of money or treasure.”
    “Viking money?”
    “Vikings did use this form of writing, so possibly.”
    “What kind of money did the Vikings use?” asked Liz Ridenour, ever the banker’s wife. “Paper currency, metal coins, what exactly?”
    “ The Vikings did sometimes strike coins, but their basic exchange was what we call ‘hack silver,’ small bars that could be carried and easily cut – or hacked – to the size needed. The Norse did not place a face value on coins. Value was based entirely on the weight of the silver.”
    Maddy tried to pin the professor down. “So you think this writing around the edge of the quilt is talking about silver bars?”
    “Well, yes. But of course, it’s meaningless here.”
    “Meaningless?” huffed Cookie. She would not allow the quilt’s authenticity to be challenged. There was an established chain of ownership – provenance, it’s called – from Matilda Wilkins to her relative to the Historical Society.
    “What I’m saying, th e runes on this quilt are likely decorative, taken from somewhere else. Vikings never would’ve left a message on a flimsy quilt. They carved their messages onto runestones and other solid structures. Bells, bracelets, horns, buildings.”
    “This quilt was stitched in 189 7,” said Cookie. “Where would a turn-of-the-century witch woman learn how to write in – what did you call it? – Futhark ?”
    Pudhomme sat up, his body moving like a geological upheaval. “Witch, you say? That changes things. Perhaps the rune symbols were handed down as an occult tradition. Some people believed runes were not simply letters to spell words, that they also had deeper meanings ... magical or divinatory uses. The word rune itself means ‘secret, something hidden.’ Prior to their use as an alphabet, runes were used for different magical purposes, such as casting lots or casting spells.”
    Bootsie crossed herself. More out of superstition, for she wasn’t even a Catholic. “Heaven help us,” she said. “To think th is witch’s quilt has hung in our Town Hall for over a hundred