The sigil on the card was like the bottom half of a handwritten capital R, with a straight stroke vertical on the left but a sloping one on the right.
"It makes an "u" sound," I said. I knew it wasn"t much, and I wouldn"t be surprised if he was rolling his eyes at me. But I didn"t look up at him. I traced my fingertip over the shape on the card. The charcoal came off on my finger a little bit, but I had never minded getting my hands a little messy.
"And if I told you its name was Ur?" he asked.
"Well, that means the oldest thing, or the first thing, right?"
"Actually, not in this case. The Germanic prefix you"re thinking of derives from something else," he said.
"It feels old," I said, still stroking the charcoal. "Maybe all runes do, though."
"The one Ur didn"t lead to the other, bu
