The Riddles of Epsilon (25 page)

Mom sighed. She wouldn't answer. That in itself was answer enough. Then Mom shook her head.

“She only mentioned you once to me, Mrs. Shilling. Just once, when I was quite young.”

“She did? What did she say?”

Mom hesitated.

“She said you were dead. I am sorry.”

Mrs. Shilling nodded, her mouth set in a grim line.

“Well, it won't do to blame her, I suppose. She wasn't very well in the end, was she? Not well in the head, I mean. It was all this business, her hatred of her father. It consumed her. Then when she died, she left it all to you. That was ten years ago. I sometimes thought you would never move into it!”

The sea had grown quiet, a soothing lapping near our feet.

Far out to sea, a gull cried out—was joined by others—
and then became quiet again.

A thought occurred to me.

“But Mrs. Shilling—when
did
you come here?”

She smiled widely for the first time since I'd met her. Her arrival on Lume was clearly one of the happiest things that had ever happened to her.

“Nine years ago. I outsmarted my sister in the end!” she said. “After I got tired of traveling, I came here anyway. I used the last of my savings to buy that damp little cottage at the end of the village. Even though I was too late, I heard about my father from the villagers. Heard what a recluse he was. The mad old man. It was a link of sorts. It was enough. I even used to sneak into the Big House—very occasionally. I got in through the back scullery door; it was broken for years.”

Mom nodded. “I'm still nagging Richard to mend it!” She smiled.

Mrs. Shilling shrugged.

“It was an odd thing to do. But being in the Big House just made me feel close to him. I used to wander around, cleaning all those old things. I read many strange things in that small library. Then you came here, and the rest—you know.”

I shifted in the sand. Domino was snoring slightly, stretched out on the sand, a little way off.

“So you are . . . my what?” I said.

“I am your great-aunt,” said Mrs. Shilling. “And
your
aunt Bridie, Elizabeth.”

We all grinned at one another, a little embarrassed. Then I spotted the faded dressing case at our feet.

“But I still don't get it, Mrs. Shilling—what's the suitcase for?”

She rolled her eyes in despair.

“Oh, explain to her, will you, Elizabeth? She makes me tired.”

She closed her eyes as Mom explained what we had to do.

MY DIARY

It was colder in the tunnel this time. A distinct breeze was coming down from the cavern. The gaping hole left by the Miradel let the wind come in and sweep through the whole thing.

Mom and I didn't talk. We just inched along the tunnel, holding hands. Until we came to the entrance to the cavern.

The bright camping light lit the whole of the cavern.

The waterfall was still nothing but a few drips, barely a trickle.

The lake was littered with stones and debris from the fallen tower. Mom held up the lantern and pointed to the easiest route across.

A faint scent came to me as we crept over the fallen stones. The scent of spring flowers. I stiffened, remembering Yolandë and her posy to Mom. Mom smelled it, too, and
paused astride a rock. We exchanged glances, then moved nervously on toward the thin, steady dripping where the waterfall had been.

Then we stood, and Mom lifted the lantern.

There was the little bundle of black, all curled up on its side. The small tattered bonnet. The tiny leather shoes. The thin fingers of bone in their little half mittens.

But entwined in the fingers was a small posy of pure-white flowers. The tallowy scent came from them clearly.

“Epsilon!” I whispered.

Mom opened the dressing case.

Together we bent down to gather up the mortal remains of Martha Wren.

 

We carried the bones onto Coscoroba Rock—Mom, Mrs. Shilling, and I.

“She has been trapped long enough,” said Mrs. Shilling. “No grave in the earth for her.”

“I am drawn to the sea,” Martha had always said.

So we decided to place her in its huge hands forever.

We stood together, all holding the case. Even though none of us spoke, I knew we were all thinking the same thing. Wondering if any words were needed.

Eventually, Mrs. Shilling shook her head.

“No,” she said. “There are no words.”

We bent down to the surface of the water and gently tipped the case.

The churning waves around Coscoroba Rock took her at once, swallowing the fragile bones, the delicate silken gown in all its shreds.

We watched her disappear into the blue—this woman, ancestor to each of us.

I reached out and took hold of Mrs. Shilling's hand. She had waited such a long time for this. Her hand gripped mine tightly.

On her other side, Mom took something out of her pocket. The little heart-shaped locket. She opened it, and we all gazed down at the two faces inside. Martha's and Sebastian's. Mom gave the locket to Mrs. Shilling.

“Look,” she said. “A picture of your grandmother. And of your father.”

A huge smile spread over Mrs. Shilling's face as she looked into the eyes of Sebastian at last.

Then we cast the wildflowers into the sea. Bloom after bloom of them we threw out. Yellow flowers and white, summer flowers with their rich and heady scents.

They floated on the surface of the water gently.

We watched the sun come out and light up their sweet faces.

It is typical that in this strange tale, there would be one last thing to report.

It happened exactly one summer later. And to me, it is the strangest thing of all. The one that keeps me awake at night, my mind boggling.

Mrs. Shilling was now living with us. She insists on cleaning for us, although we all protest. But as she says, it is important to her that she pay her way. After all, she said, Mom and Dad work so hard as it is—Mom with her portraits and Dad with his endless photography commissions. Besides, she's loved this Big House for so long from afar, she likes pottering round it, dusting all those old things. “Father's things,” she says with a smile.

Then one day—about a week after Avril's summer visit—she came out of the small library with her hands behind her back.

It'd been a hectic month for Mrs. Shilling, with Avril staying here and bringing “all her wild ways.” Such a lot of
sniffing for Mrs. Shilling to do, such a lot of glaring! But oddly enough, a lot of laughing, too. She and Avril had got on like a house on fire, although they both pretended not to.

Now, her old face looked smug as she stood at the small library door. She just stood very still and gave me that funny little cat-got-the-cream smile she has. Her hands were behind her back, like a child hiding a secret.

“What? What is it, Mrs. Shilling?” I said. (I couldn't ever bring myself to call her Great-Aunt Bridie. Not that she'd have permitted it.)

She held out her hand. In it was a tiny posy—five flowers wrapped together. She handed it to me with the usual sniff.

“Yours, I presume,” she said. “I found it on that small shelf table thing in there, shedding pollen all over my dusting! Is someone trying to tell you something again?”

I stared down at the tallowy flowers and my heart leaped.

Epsilon! It had been months since there had been anything like this.

Epsilon wanted me back again.

Time to go back to the cottage, to the place where all this began.

 

All the way down, I thought of the file. I still hadn't worked out how those three documents had vanished, last summer. At the time, I'd just rewritten them and tucked them into
their right places again. The whole thing was still there, safe in the drawer in Epsilon's desk. I hadn't looked at it since.

Now I was strangely eager to see it and to read it all through again.

 

The cottage was still and dim, as usual. Domino raced upstairs, barking joyfully. He leaped onto the hammock and sat there, tail wagging madly. But he soon settled down.

The room smelled of candles and spices. I went over to the desk, sniffing that particular smell of Epsilon's room. I was smiling as I pulled open the bottom drawer.

There were the boxes, empty. And there was the file, now with a thin layer of dust over it.

I pulled out the pages and began to leaf through them. Idly, I turned to the document labeled “The Key” and did a double take.

I stared down at it, astonished.

I was expecting to see my newly written document, fresh on the page. Instead, I was staring down in disbelief at a yellowed paper, the ink faded with age.

I leafed through the rest of the file quickly—to the copies I'd made of the other two documents that had gone missing. “The Riddle of the Two.” And the map.

The originals of these, too, had returned! It didn't make sense. Those papers Sebastian had left for me—the ones that
had vanished—here they were, back again.

But how? I turned the pages, one by one.
Each
document—each clue—was now browned and crackly. Each one was at least a hundred years old.

Who had taken my more recent copies and replaced them?

“Epsilon?” I said.

As soon as I spoke his name, I felt it in the air. That crackling. That strange energy.

I turned around, expecting to see him fully standing there. But there was just a warmth, and the faintest of strange shadows over in the corner. I peered at them, seeing the way they shimmered oddly.

“Epsilon.” I smiled. “Why have you taken all my copies out and replaced them with the originals?”

His voice came from out of the shimmering.

“I have not.”

I turned back to the papers—lifted them up.

“But you have! Look! All my copies, the ones I made last year! Every single document, replaced!”

I held them out, showed him how crinkly and aged they were.

“What's going on, Epsilon?” I said. “Why on earth would you take these very pages from me last summer, so I had to make copies? Only to then take
those copies
and replace them
with the originals again? It doesn't make sense!”

“Look closer,” he said.

“What?”

The shadows shimmered. I felt as if he was laughing.

“Look closer. Are you sure these are the documents you call ‘the originals'?”

I held them up, puzzled.

“Of course they are!” I said. “Look—they're old and faded! These are the ones Sebastian left for me! You know they are!”

“Sebastian left them for you?” he said. “Are you sure?”

I stood there with my mouth open, wondering if he'd gone mad. But Bright Beings don't go mad. I tried again.

“Look, Epsilon. You know as well as I do that Sebastian wrote these, more than a century ago! He wrote them all down to help me. You saw what he'd written in his diary!”

I turned to the right page and read it out.

“Listen!
‘This girl, he also says, I must assist when the time comes. But how can I help a girl from within a dream?'
So he did it the only way he knew how. He wrote the clues down. He left them for me to find.”

“There is one more thing he left you to find,” said Epsilon. “Look in the first box.”

“But—the boxes are empty. You know they are! I emptied them myself.”

His silence went on and on.

Slowly I put down the papers—reached into the drawer. Found the little silver Epsilon key and the first box.

The box opened easily. Inside it—one last document. A diary page, written by Sebastian long ago.

Slowly I took it out. Unfolded it.

This is what it said:

 

Last night, the girl with the world in her hands came to me again.

It was the same as the other times—a dream that is not a dream. Each time she comes, I know that she will leave something. The first time, it was in one of the little boxes in Epsilon's desk drawer. But this time, I dreamed she was tapping and fumbling at the swan carved at my bed head. She tapped and tapped, and one of the swans glided out, revealing a space hidden there! So as soon as I awoke, early this morning, I, too, tapped on the same swan. It opened. And sure enough, there was another missive from her.

It is even stranger, this one, than the one she labeled “The Key.” This one she has called “The Riddle of the Two.” It talks about a feathered bird with something hidden under the head and the breast and the wing. As usual, I cannot make it out. I do not know what she is trying to tell me.

Last week she left a map. I dreamed she was in the small library, poring over that huge book
The Cartography of the Island of Lume.
In her hands, she held two documents. So I went to the small library and opened the book. In between its pages, I found them. The map. And a strange letter from Mama, in which she bids me go to a London solicitor if anything should happen to her.

How does this dream girl know where Mama has placed such a letter for me? It is as if the girl is trying to help me, trying to tell me how to piece all these things together. And what danger is Mama in? For I fear her strange affliction is getting worse.

All this is frightening me to a great degree. Epsilon tells me all will be well, so long as I trust him and trust in the name of the One he works for—Agapetos. But there are times I do not trust Epsilon at all. There are times when all I want to do with all this strange information is hide it. Bury it.

I may hide them all. Maybe in the pretty boxes in Epsilon's desk, with their tiny curly key. Lock them all away. The three documents she has left—the map, and “The Key,” and “The Riddle of the Two.” The map and the strange letter I will just return to the heavy book. Likewise, “The Riddle of the Two” I shall replace in my swan bed. I shall rest easier, knowing they are all hidden
away again, for they unsettle me greatly. I know that I should persevere, should try to work it out. But I cannot. I am not gifted with the ways of riddles and ciphers.

Also there is the ring she wears in her nose. In ancient times, so Epsilon once told me, followers of Cimul and of the Ouroborus also wore a nose ring—it was their sign. Is there some link between her and the dark ways? I fear that Papa is also involved in these dark ways, he and his visitors. There is always the symbol of the 'Borus on their mysterious documents. They read them closely, they mutter with their heads together, they stop speaking when I draw near. I mistrust them and their secrets.

So I will hide these things, I think. I cannot solve “The Riddle of the Two.” I cannot solve any of it. I prefer to sit with Mama, as I did this evening. I sat at her knee in the candlelight and held my hands out while she looped her skein of wool over them. Then she slowly wound her wool into a ball, until less and less was on my skein and more and more was on the ball. She did not speak; her eyes were troubled and far away. But at least we were together.

So I have made my decision. I will ignore this latest message from the girl with the world in her hands. I will lock it all away, for to use it is to trust it, and that I cannot do.

So signed by my hand on this 14th day of July in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-four.

—Sebastian Wren, aged thirteen years

As I stared down at it, tears came into my eyes.

“But I don't understand!” I wailed. “I didn't leave the messages for him! He left them for me!”

The shimmering in the corner was growing brighter.

“So whose handwriting are the documents written in?” he said. “Look closer.”

I looked again. Lifted the papers up, one by one.

Mine.

My writing on the shopping list—my attempts to copy Mom's hand, that funny writing she does when she's trying out a new pen.

The map I'd traced and then filled in from memory—even down to adding that date in the corner—1894.

My carefully drawn symbols.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

Yet there they were—
aged.

I sat down, frowning.

“Are you trying to tell me that Sebastian did not leave these for me? That Sebastian had
never seen
these documents—until I wrote them down?”

“Yes. Until you wrote them down. He dreamed of you
each time, reading them, handling them. Then he found them the next day.”

“But . . . I didn't
write
them—I just
found
them!”

“Yet they are in your handwriting—the way you write the Lumic symbols. They are in your handwriting. They always were.”

“But only because I lost them! So I rewrote them. That's what these are, here in this file—my copies.”

“Yet they are very old. Well over a century old.”

Round and round in circles. Epsilon's light was growing brighter, but all I could do was stare down at the papers. My head felt like it was bursting. I shook my head and tried one last time.

“But Epsilon—if I wrote them—if these three documents did not exist until I wrote them down . . . then—
where did the information come from?
Where did the rhyme come from, labeled ‘The Key'? Where did ‘The Riddle of the Two' come from?”

“Maybe you wrote those rhymes yourself?”

The shimmering grew, and I heard it again—that fond laughter.

“But . . . even if I did—which I didn't—how could I have found them myself, found them old and faded? If I only wrote them
down
myself—later? How can Sebastian have found them a hundred years ago—if I hadn't even
written them yet? And where did the information come from?”

There was no answer. I looked up.

Epsilon's light shone out onto a picture on the wall.

A round picture in a square frame.

The golden symbol of O. The One. The symbol of perfection.

The symbol of eternity. The One without beginning or end.

The One who
is
the beginning and the end.

The One to whom time is meaningless. The One who could do whatever he wanted with time. What had Mrs. Shilling said, in the kitchen, a year ago?

“Time is nothing. Not to Him. A moment in time. What is that to him?”

Quivering from head to foot, I stared up at that simple O.