Drawings of the Land of the Beltös

The compiler of these notes, whose doctoral advisor in linguistics was Professor Akelo —— at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and whom he counted as one of his closest personal friends, was given the unenviable task of sifting through Akelo’s office files after his unexpected death, and archiving whatever appeared significant for the university library. Much to this compiler’s surprise, he discovered, wedged between two hardcover books by Umberto Eco (The Search for the Perfect Language and The Book of Legendary Lands), two colored pencil drawings. Clearly the work of an amateur artist, he is convinced that these drawings represent the land of the Beltös, drawn from memory, doubtlessly by Sarah, Akelo’s mother, some years after her visit there, and with whose story the reader is surely familiar as it appears as the final entry in Five-Visitors.

It was not without a soupçon of hesitation that this humble compiler of these notes submits, as an afterthought, these drawings to the public view. He is unsure whether this publication is something that either Akelo or his mother would have approved, but in the interests of the advancement of science and truth, he has convinced himself that open publication is better than obscurity and rumor. It is his sincere hope that these drawings of the Land of the Beltös may assist us all to draw aside the veils of unbelief that shroud our inner sight from the “realms somewhere real.”