The Riddles of Epsilon (24 page)

I turned away from his eyes, sickened.

He shuffled up the garden path after the doc. They stood there just staring at each other while Mrs. Shilling shrugged herself back into her smelly old cardigan.

Mrs. Shilling.

The cat. The cat who loves to eat fish but hates getting her feet wet. Someone whose job it is to make sure the right things were hooked on to, reeled into the right hands.
Someone whose job wasn't to be the one to do the work herself. But a guide. A helper. A hostile friend, as prickly as a wet cat but a friend all the same.

I went and gave her smelly old face a kiss.

“G'night, Mrs. Shilling,” I said.

She turned around and those sandy, rheumy eyes glared at me.

“My name is not Mrs. Shilling,” she said unexpectedly.

I blinked in surprise.

“No? What is it then?”

“Come and see me in three days' time,” she said. “Bring your mother. When you've all recovered from your colds. Then I will tell you.”

“From our colds? But I haven't got a cold!” I said.

She rolled her eyes in despair.

“You really are a very
shortsighted
girl!” she said. “In three days' time then.”

She gave a smug little smile and was gone.

 

Mrs. Shilling was right. We all got colds. Me first—then Mom—then Dad.

Three days of misery and shivering and coughing and spluttering and blowing our noses, and we must have gone through fifty thousand tissues between us all, I kid you not.

I shook it off first, but even so, I didn't go after three days
after all. It was just so cozy there in the kitchen with Mom and Dad. We drank honey-and-lemon tea until it came out of our ears. (The doctor brought tons of lemons over, left over from the Greet. He blustered and pretended, but I knew that he knew that I
knew
. He could never quite meet my eye, but he still did all the things a good doctor does. We always got rid of him as soon as we could.)

So we sat and drank lemon and honey and we ate stuff from cans and we talked and talked and talked. Mom and Dad talked when I was in bed. Dad and I talked when Mom was sleeping. Mom and I talked every chance we got.

She couldn't stop talking about the cavern. It was hard, to have this one secret from Dad. She said there had been enough secrets between them to last a lifetime. But somehow we knew it was right to keep it to ourselves. And lots of it Mom didn't recall anyway—just a vague dream, a summer of strange visions.

Even after I'd gone to bed, I could still hear them, Mom and Dad, whenever I went down to the bathroom. Their soft voices went on and on. Talking about last summer. Talking about Mom's affair. Talking it all out. Talking themselves well again.

MY DIARY

On the second night, with the hum of their talk droning on, I took my file into the small library. I settled myself in and opened the file, meaning to tidy it up, to finish it off. But when I opened it, I got a shock. Some of the clues were missing. I checked again, but it was true.

Not all of the clues were gone.

Just the ones Sebastian had left for me—the clues written in Lumic and his map. The document labeled “The Key,” with its symbols. “The Riddle of the Two” that Sebastian had left in his secret compartment in the swan bed. Gone.

I ransacked my room, searched under the bed, in between the pages of all my study files. But I knew I wouldn't find them. I never kept them anywhere but in the same box file. I didn't know how they could possibly have vanished. No one had been up here—no one. In the end, I decided it must be Epsilon.

But why would Epsilon remove every one of Sebastian's clues? I racked my brains but couldn't come to any conclusion.

Eventually I gave up. I thought of each clue that was gone. I could remember them all. They were imprinted in my mind.

So I took up my pen and rewrote the first one that came to mind.

The document labeled “The Key.” I rewrote the symbols carefully, evenly. I even turned over the paper and scribbled the shopping list down on the other side. I did my best to copy Mom's funny “practice” writing. The careful, experimental one she does when she's testing out a new paintbrush or pen. “Lemon Sq.,” I wrote. “Ecclusad 5.” And “Cloves—tooth.”

As to the map, I already had a rough tracing I'd done, so that was easy enough. Then “The Riddle of the Two”—how could I forget those words? I'd stared at them often enough, puzzling. It all took a while, redoing them and putting the whole file in order. But it gave me an enormous feeling of satisfaction. Of something coming full circle.

Now the file was complete again. So the next morning—early, when only Domino was awake—I carried the whole thing down to the cottage and hid it in the bottom drawer, along with the empty boxes. I came back feeling dramatic and a bit wobbly—I should have been resting, really, recovering from my cold. Even that little walk set me back
another day. More lemon and honey. Another five miles of tissues.

 

So it was four days before Mom and I wrapped up warm and walked Domino over to the village. (Wrapped up too warm, actually—it was a beautiful sunny day. We were sweating before we even reached the village.)

“And why are we going to see Mrs. Shilling exactly, Jess?” asked Mom.

“Because she told us to” was all I could come up with.

So on we walked—to the very end cottage.

The door opened at once.

“You're a day late!” snapped Mrs. Shilling. “Leave the dog in the garden. I don't like dogs.”

Like I said—as bad tempered as a wet cat.

She only let us in as far as the smelly hallway, where she pointed to a grimy rug on the floor.

“Stand there,” she said. “I'll be back in a minute.”

Mom tried not to hold her nose as Mrs. Shilling dragged herself upstairs. The smell was appalling.

“She's not fit to look after herself!” whispered Mom. “Let alone the doctor!”

“Shh, Mom! She's coming back.”

In her hands was a strange, old case. A battered leather dressing case, a faded blue—the size of a medium-sized
suitcase. This she handed to me. Mom and I stared at her, puzzled, but she took no notice.

“Follow me,” she said.

We thought she meant into the living room. But she just walked to the coat stand, put on her coat, and beckoned us out into the garden. Domino took one sniff of the hem of that coat and kept a wide distance from then on.

Down the street she led us, surprisingly spry for her age. In fact, both Mom and I panted more than she did, after our heavy colds. We followed her obediently, silently, along the path toward our land. Halfway along, she stopped at a bank of wildflowers. She glared at us.

“Well?” she said. “Pick some!”

So we did, all three of us. We picked flowers all the way along the path to our land. But once there, she walked straight past our gates. Over the little bridge and onto the cliff path. Then down the windy path and onto Long Beach. Right to the end of the beach, to where Coscoroba Rock was sticking out into the mad, white waves.

We had stopped at the remnants of the fire. The breeze stirred its gray ashes around.

Mrs. Shilling looked all around, satisfied that we had the shore to ourselves.

Then she laid the case onto the sand and opened it.

Inside was a brand-new, modern camping lantern. It was
enormous—the sort that can light up whole campsites in the dark. It looked strange there, lying against that faded blue silk lining. Mom stared down at it and frowned. Then she lifted her eyes to the cliff face—to where the dark slit of the tunnel opening stood in shadow.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I am
not
going back in there!”

“But you must!” said Mrs. Shilling. “I certainly can't. At my age!”

Mom shook her head and gave a huge shudder. Mrs. Shilling sat down in the sand and laid her wildflowers carefully by her side. Then she sat there, obviously waiting for us to do the same.

I shrugged at Mom, then sat down. Domino arrived and sat a little way off. (He kept shuffling round—I swear he was trying to get downwind of her.) Mrs. Shilling looked far out to sea. When she finally spoke, it was as if she was talking to the ocean, not to us.

“You look very like her, Elizabeth,” she said at last.

“Like who?” said Mom.

“Like your mother,” came the reply.

I sat between them quietly.

I was beginning to see. At least I thought I was.

“My mother? But . . . how did you know my mother?” said Mom. “She never came here—she hated the place!”

“As I did.” Mrs. Shilling smiled. “We both did. We vowed
never to come here—ever, she and I.”

Mom shook her head, bewildered.

“Who? You and who?”

Mrs. Shilling turned away from the sea then and looked into Mom's eyes.

“I and my sister. Your mother.”

Mom's eyes pooled out, wide with shock.

“Your sister? Was my
mother
?”

Mrs. Shilling settled herself more comfortably on the sand. She raised her old face to the warm sun, then took her scarf off. She fingered one tattered hem of the scarf as she began to speak.

“Now I will tell you a story—a proper story.” She smiled. “Once, a long time ago, there were two little girls. Twins. Their names were Libby and Bridie. They lived in their girlhoods in Ireland, in County Cork. With their mother, Beth. Another Elizabeth, you see? Libby and Beth—both short for Elizabeth. The name was handed down to you. It's a good Irish name.”

She turned to fix me with that glare. Sniffed in disdain.

“Where the name Jessica came from, I really don't know!” she said. “A name should be passed down through the family. Kept in the family. Like family secrets. Anyway, Beth did her best with the two little girls. She wasn't short of money, it wasn't that—they had a small house and money
from Beth's husband. But she was never very strong, and she was sad and alone. For her husband had deserted her.”

Mrs. Shilling gazed out to sea again, her old eyes flashing with anger.

“Libby and Bridie grew up and looked after their mammy. She told them of a great big house over the sea. A large house, with a sundial in the garden and a lake nearby. That was the house her husband lived in, although Beth never saw it for herself. She was never invited there. Not once.”

“A sundial in the garden? The Big House?” asked Mom.

“The Big House. The house you now live in. Beth told her daughters such wonderful things about that house where their daddy lived! She received letters from her husband, and money, all the time they grew up. But as they grew up, the two little girls grew bitter. They hated their father—they thought him weak. They never forgave him for the sorrow he had brought to their mother's eyes. And so they made a vow—a very solemn vow, as only little girls can do. They would never visit their father in the Big House over the sea. Never! He could rot in it forever, all alone, like their mammy was alone.”

Mrs. Shilling sighed and stared at me intently.

“They were very young and very angry. The young can be very unforgiving.”

I dropped my eyes. But she just went on, her cracked old voice warming to her tale.

“So the years went by and they grew up. Their mother never revived, not really, after her husband had gone. The two girls did their best, but she eventually just gave up and died. It was as if all the life had gone out of her. And Libby kept her side of the bargain. When their father wrote to them after his wife had died, she refused to read or to answer the letters. She tied them all up in a bundle and hid them in an old dressing case of her mother's. This case, in fact. But Bridie found them and read them all.”

Mrs. Shilling put her hand deep into her pocket and fumbled about. She brought out a bundle of letters, tied with a dirty pink hair ribbon. I recognized the handwriting on the envelopes—that thin, spidery scrawl. Her gnarled old finger reached out and touched the ribbon gently.

“Bridie read them all. She still blamed her daddy, but she loved to hear about the Big House. For he wrote about it all the time. Wrote all about the house and the gardens, and about his mother and what had happened to her when he was just a little boy himself. I expect he thought that because no one ever replied, he could get it all out of his system. Like keeping a diary. So he told his strange tale about his mother, Martha, going missing. And it haunted Bridie, the thought of that lady, wandering around in the dark. She could not get it out of her mind. Oh, she got on with her life, but she never got away from it—not really. She saw that woman in her
dreams. Her grandmother, lost, long ago. It became part of her, that image.”

Mom leaned forward intently.

“Me, too!” she whispered. “It was like that for me.”

Mrs. Shilling nodded.

“So it went on, until on the day of their eighteenth birthday, when Libby found out that Bridie had kept all the letters and cherished them. They had a terrible quarrel. They were twins, you see—twins are not supposed to have secrets. By now, Bridie knew enough about the island with the lake and the Big House. She had enough money of her own—each of them had been left money by their mother. But Bridie wasn't ready to go there yet. She was a loner. She moved away, she traveled. She went to the very same places her father had mentioned in his letters. She kind of—trailed him. Egypt. Arabia. Africa. Germany. And when she was twenty-seven, she met a German man—Otto Schilling.”

Here Mrs. Shilling gave a great sigh.

“I don't know why I'm telling it all to you like this,” she said. “In the third person. Maybe it makes it a little easier. I loved Otto very much—but it was a hard time to do so. It was 1944. He was killed in action.”

Mom reached out and took one old hand in hers.

“I am so sorry,” said Mom. Her eyes were very kind.

But I was bursting with curiosity. I blurted my question out.

“And did you ever contact him, Mrs. Shilling, while you were traveling? Did you contact Sebastian?”

Mom glared at my outburst, but Mrs. Shilling just shook her head.

“I was still too angry. After Otto died, I took his name in his memory, even though we were never married. But I anglicized it when I went back to Ireland. Not Schilling with an Sch, but just Sh. It was a good, respectable name—Mrs. Shilling. I shared the same little house with Libby for a while. But it didn't last long. We argued about our father all the time. How she hated him! It almost ate her alive. I could never stand listening to it for long. So I traveled again—all over the world, working for a year here and there.

“I even lost my Irish accent, picking up a bit of everywhere, really. But I could never settle, and the thought of my lost grandmother never left me. Eventually Libby married, too, late in life. She, too, was widowed early, poor Libs. But she had one daughter—Elizabeth. You, my dear.”

Mom smiled at her. But Mrs. Shilling's eyes were still far away, still sad.

“But even when I visited my sister, we never made up our
differences. I told her again and again I hated Sebastian and didn't want anything to do with the Big House. But she noticed the places I'd visited, in my album. I'd made little notes in there, linking me with him. I didn't hate him after a while, you see. I wanted to feel close to him. But I knew Libby would never understand. And she didn't.”

I thought of all I'd heard about my grandmother. Granny Libby, whose black jet necklace I'd always treasured. Half mad, by all accounts, Dad had said. Bitter as they come. Mom spoke of her rarely.

Poor Mom. But Mrs. Shilling went on, determined to finish her tale.

“Maybe madness has always been in the family. After all, our own mother lived only in the past. It is a kind of madness, that. In the end, Libby got ill with it, too. It was all she could think of—trying to get me to promise never to visit here, never to visit him. It was an obsession with her. After all, she already
knew
I could never
live
in the Big House!”

“Knew? But how?” said Mom.

“Because I'd already given in to her, years before. When I first returned to Ireland, just after Otto died. At that time, I think I was half mad myself. I didn't really care about inheriting. In the end, I just gave in. In a moment of weakness, I legally signed all my share of the house over to my
twin. Then, when Sebastian died and divided it equally between us, she got my share, too.”

Mom frowned, appalled.

“My mother let you do that? Even though she never wanted it
herself
?”

“Let me do it? She
made
me do it. She just wore me down with it all in the end. Everything had to be her way. I hope you never saw that side of her, Elizabeth.”