What is this? In classic ciphers

I have a challenge that i am trying to resolve where I have a 181 character cipher message and I also have 40 characters of plain text that are spread throughtout the cipher. Along with the cipher was a piece of paper that is connected to the puzzle which has words on it of
H H
A O
I E
L S
Each letter has an arrow pointing between the two letters ie H points to H and in reverse,
A points o but the arrows point to each other and so on for i and E and l and S.
I am lost to think of these might fit in the crypto. I figured they would be substitutions but you would substitute H for H. I thought they might be keys but my statistical analysis through index of coincidence and key length estimation didnt help, It is not a vigenere cypher. The IOC indicates the cipher is random letters so looks to be polyaplhabetic. I considered they might be stekker board settings on enigma but again you would map H to H.
The plain text is known to be Enlglish. Any ideas