The Name of This Book Is Secret (23 page)

“Roxana, sweetheart, stand, will you—so we can all see your lovely face...?”

A young woman—she looked, anyway, not much older than a girl—stood up, and smiled shyly at the crowd.

“How old are you today—ninety-seven? Still so young! Look at her, everyone—no more than a teenager!”

They applauded politely—and she blushed prettily. Then sat down.

“Now, Itamar, darling, where are you?” asked Ms. Mauvais, looking out at her audience. “Will you please indulge your old student and stand up?”

An old man raised himself up on his cane. He was ghost-pale and almost expressionless, as if human emotion cost him too much effort. But his eyes were alive and watchful; and he wore a sleek black suit so impeccably tailored it seemed by itself to hold up his skeletal frame.

“Today, Itamar turned four hundred and eighty-nine! Four hundred and eighty-nine years old! Can you believe it? Our very own Renaissance man. Take a bow, Itamar.”

The room applauded more vigorously this time. Itamar bowed his head—ever so slightly—then lowered himself back into his seat.

“All of you here—all of you brave souls—you are all testimony to our success. Every year our elixirs grow stronger, and our lives grow longer. And yet—” Ms. Mauvais’s tone turned somber. “And yet—we must face it—the ultimate triumph has eluded us. We call ourselves the Masters of the Midnight Sun—but still we chase the sun! We have not won—” Here her eyes lit up and she proclaimed with a flourish of the arm, “Until now!”

Back in the passageway, Max-Ernest was shaking his head. “It isn’t possible. It just isn’t. I mean, a hundred and fifty maybe—”

“You saw her hand!” whispered Cass.

“Yeah, but, people would know. It would be in books.”

“Shh—”

The audience had fallen quiet—Dr. L was taking his place on the other side of the fire. This was what they’d all been waiting for.

“To a baby, there are not five senses but one,” Dr. L announced in a tone that was part doctor and part priest. “The world is a blur of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch—and maybe of senses we don’t even know about. As the baby grows older, the senses separate from each other and forget that they all once sang the same song.”

As he spoke, Dr. L looked searchingly at his audience, measuring their reactions, making sure he had everyone’s full attention; it was as if he were still the circus performer he’d been as a boy. And yet the white smock he wore was more appropriate for a ritual sacrifice than a magic trick.

“We think of this new adult world as ‘reality.’ But what if it is reality that is lost? What if the real world were the baby’s world, a world where everything and everyone were interconnected?” Dr. L paused dramatically, then gestured to a spot behind the fire. “There are a few, like this boy here, who hold on to that world, the
real
real world, well into adulthood.”

Max-Ernest gasped—and Cass covered his lips with her hand.

Dr. L had stepped to the side, allowing the fire to illuminate his young patient. Benjamin was strapped inside a strange and intricate contraption that combined the most sadistic features of a dentist’s chair with the most lethal elements of an electric chair. His bald head was restrained at an unnatural angle, and his closed eyes twitched continuously. A jumbled maze of glass tubing surrounded him like a long and twisted IV.

He appeared to be asleep—but hardly restful.

“These lucky people experience life as a rainbow of sensation called synethesia,” Dr. L continued. “Their brains are living treasures. For they hold the key to the Secret we have sought so long.”

As if to illustrate Dr. L’s words, Benjamin trembled violently in his seat. In the passageway, Cass and Max-Ernest watched, transfixed: it was easy to imagine that Benjamin’s brain was seeing indescribable things.

“For centuries, we—we followers of the True Science—we have searched for our so-called Philosopher’s Stone by melting metals or mixing chemicals or digging in the dirt. We have looked everywhere except the one place we might have found it—in the mind of the philosopher himself.”

Dr. L held up a stick. It was long and slender and bent at the end. It appeared very old.

“With this reed the Egyptians vacuumed the internal organs of the dead. We will use it in much the same way—although tonight we won’t be making a mummy. Well, not exactly.”

His audience chuckled leeringly, as if he were describing an amusing but tasty dish.

“First, we will enter through the sinuses, here— Then we travel upwards to extract cerebrospinal fluid from the patient’s ventricular system, here—”

Dr. L touched the reed to the bridge of Benjamin’s nose, then traced a line upward and around to the back of Benjamin’s head. Unconsciously, Max-Ernest touched his own head; Dr. L, he remembered, had had similar plans for him.

“In essence—a spinal tap through the nose,” Dr. L summarized. “For this boy, I’m afraid brain death is a near certainty. But a price worth paying, I think. Because what
we
get in return is nothing less than life itself. Everlasting life.”

As he said these words, he pulled a small vial out of his pocket, and poured its contents into the fire beside him. The fire flared up high, its flames bright yellow—and suddenly the pyramid filled with the smell of sulfur.

“Everlasting life,” Dr. L repeated.

“Cass,” whispered Max-Ernest.

“Shh. I’m thinking.”

“But—”

“I’m trying to think of a way to save Benjamin. They’re gonna suck his brains out any second!”

“I know—”

“Then let me think! Remember how I let you—”

“I was just going to say—that vial, it looks like he got it from the Symphony of Smells.”

“That’s it!”

“What?”

“That’s how we save him. C’mon, we’re going up there—” She pointed to the open skylight at the top of the pyramid.

Max-Ernest stared. “Up there? How?”

“From the outside—now follow me!” said Cass, already starting to retrace their steps.

When they got to Ms. Mauvais’s office, Cass stopped to take the Symphony of Smells out of the closet.

“I thought you said it was too heavy,” said Max-Ernest.

“It’s for my idea—”

They were about to exit the office when they heard footsteps coming their way.

Putting her finger to her lip, Cass silently re-closed the office door.

“Hello? Is someone there?” Daisy’s voice called out.

They crouched down behind Ms. Mauvais’s desk, their hearts thumping in their ears. If Daisy entered, they would be caught—for certain.

“Ms. Mauvais? Doctor?” Daisy addressed the office door. “I’m just—I had to get some food for those kids. I’m on my way back right now. Won’t be a second—”

The big woman hesitated. Then, hearing nothing, she continued on her way.

Cass and Max-Ernest exhaled.

“I think she was scared she was going to get in trouble,” Cass whispered, stifling what would have been a giggle in more relaxed circumstances.

A moment later, they stood in front of the moat. The drawbridge had been pulled up.

“Oh no,” said Max-Ernest. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“This—” said Cass, pushing him into the moat.

“But I can’t swim—!”

“You don’t have to—see, you’re standing!”

“I am?”

The water was only about waist deep. But that didn’t prevent Max-Ernest from complaining that he was drowning as they waded across.

“C’mon, hurry!” said Cass. “He’s gonna be brain-dead any second!”

When they got to the other side, they started scrambling up the pyramid without pausing to dry off.

The stone block steps were big and slippery, and sometimes Cass and Max-Ernest had to use their hands to pull themselves up. But somehow they managed to climb the pyramid in less time than it would take most of us to climb a staircase at home.

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Max-Ernest, panting, when they got to the top.

As you’ve seen—or heard, depending on how you want to put it—the acoustics inside the pyramid were especially good. This was one of those places in which you don’t want to make any embarrassing sounds. Forget sneezes and coughs— even the smallest, was-that-breakfast-or-lunch belch, or the softest, nobody-will-know-it’s-me fart, could be heard on the other side of the room.

Which brings me—by a somewhat unpleasant route—to my point.

The interior of the pyramid was not only a space where
sounds
reverberated, it was also a space where
smells
reverberated. With so many people in a single room, ventilated only at the top, the air became a little, well, humid.

The smell of sulfur—that old stink of
huevos podridos
—was still lingering as Ms. Mauvais stepped in front of the fire and raised her arms in the air, her long sleeves hanging like golden wings. She seemed to address the sky itself as she cried:

“Thrice Great Hermes—hear me!”

With the entire assemblage fixing their attention on Ms. Mauvais, very few people noticed the small object—actually a glass vial—that dropped out of nowhere as if in response to her words. And only a slightly larger number noticed the small violet flare that erupted when the vial landed in the bowl of fire.

But nearly everyone noticed the sweet, flowery smell that flooded the room. Most eyed their neighbors accusingly, as if someone was wearing a particularly odiferous perfume.

Dr. L—who was bent over Benjamin, prepping the boy’s nostrils for the operation—raised his head briefly, and sniffed. Then he returned his focus to Benjamin, presumably coming to the same conclusion.

Ms. Mauvais didn’t seem to notice the smell at all.

“The Egyptians called you Thoth. The Greeks called you Hermes. The Romans called you Mercury,” she intoned, her arms still raised in supplication.

The next vial to drop out of the sky—several more people saw this one—caused a pale green, sparkling flare when it fell into the fire. It filled the room with a light, herbal, faintly medicinal scent that, if you’d had a lot of colds, you might have recognized as echinacea.

Again, Dr. L raised his head, but this time he held it up a little longer and inhaled thoughtfully. Then, he shook his head as if to shake off some dark fantasy, and started to prod Benjamin’s nose with the reed. He was about to begin the operation.

Ms. Mauvais faltered only briefly before continuing, “Hermes Trismegistus, we call upon you now. Give up at last your Secret!”

As the third vial dropped, several people pointed to it—their attention wholly diverted from the altar. When a dark blue-black flame jumped up from the fire, the entire room gasped. And, as the curling black smoke filled the room with the scent of licorice, everyon-e sniffed in unison.

Then they broke into loud applause. It was all part of Dr. L’s show. Or so they assumed.

Dr. L, too, had turned his attention away from the imminent operation. But he wasn’t clapping. He looked stunned, almost sick, as if he had just heard some terrible news.

“What’s happening?” Ms. Mauvais asked him anxiously. “Who’s doing this?”

Up on top of the pyramid, Max-Ernest turned ex–citedl-y to Cass. “It’s working! How ’bout that? Now do
P
!”

“I don’t see it—”

“It was peanut butter, remember. H–E–L–P. Heliotrope. Echinacea. Licorice. Peanut butter.”

“I know it was peanut butter. It’s just not here. It’s supposed to be in number twenty.”

She showed him the open Symphony of Smells case and pointed to the empty slot. Max-Ernest quickly started overturning vials, reading labels.

“It has to be here. It has to—”

“Oh wait!” said Cass. She tore into her backpack, reaching down to the very depths, and pulled out a zip-lock bag full of old, smashed-up trail mix. Inside, there were five ancient, shapeless peanut-butter chips. Cass showed them to Max-Ernest.

“Think these will work?”

“I don’t know—it doesn’t really look like enough. How ’bout if you mix them with one of the others?” He looked through the vials and pulled one out. “Here. Butter-flavor.”

“Try it.”

“Me?”

Cass nodded.

Max-Ernest pushed the peanut butter chips into the vial, then held it over the open skylight.

“Here goes— Oh no!”

In his nervousness, he let it drop a little sooner than he meant to.

The vial veered off to the side and looked like it would miss the fire altogether.

At the last second, it hit the rim of the bowl and fell into the fire.

Cass and Max-Ernest waited breathlessly until a small yellowish flame flared up. Soon, the smell of peanut butter was released, not as strong as the other scents, but strong enough to waft all the way up to them.

Our two friends sighed in relief.

Down below, Dr. L staggered as if he’d been shot.

“Pietro! Fratello mio! Venga qua!”
he cried. “
Quanto tempo devo aspettare?
Where are you? Speak to me!”

Completely overwrought, he spun around the altar, then looked up toward the skylight.

Cass and Max-Ernest jerked their heads out of view.

“You think he saw us?” asked Max-Ernest, panicking.

“No. He thinks we’re his brother. For sure.”

As if to underline her point, Dr. L shouted his brother’s name again.
“Pietro! Pietro!”