The Riddles of Epsilon (3 page)

MY DIARY

Still very hot. Headache weather. I'm not sure I can work all this out. It's all happening so fast—first the cottage, the doorstep, the symbols, then the arrow, which led to the bucket, which led to some signs on a wall. To say nothing of V, whoever he/she/it is—someone Avril can't even see in the chat room—and neither can the PC security check! It's all crazy. My head's spinning.

Still, I just ran back down to the cottage, copied down the symbols on the door stone. Had a closer look at the stone itself. It's really unusual—shiny black glass. I suppose the mysterious V is right—it's volcanic. Strange choice for a doorstep—glass!

They think I'm doing my homework now, and anyway They've gone to look for fossils on the beach. So.

1. Here are the symbols from the cottage doorstep:

2. Here are the English words that are written under them:

 

WHERE --SILON DWELLS

 

3. And here are the symbols from my bedroom wall:

So there they all are. They look strange in this diary, out of place, like something you might come across in an old archive office. Not something you find in the average teenage bedroom. I'm reluctant to begin working them out.

Yet I can't just keep on sitting here, staring at them. Okay, I'll admit it. I'm scared, really. I keep wondering what might happen if I do decipher them?

But I can't
not
decipher it—can I? Who in the whole world would be able to crumple all this up and throw it
away? What choice do I have, really? No choice at all.

I'm pretty good at puzzles and things. But there isn't a lot to go on. Probably not enough to crack the whole alphabet. I've worked out that some of the little dots and squiggles
under
and
over
other symbols must be letters in themselves. (Vowels, in fact—E and I.) That alone took me forever—maybe I'm not as clever as I thought. Still, only one way to find out. Here goes . . . .

 

This is not easy. Like I said—those dots and squiggles threw me for a while. For a start, there are five letters in the word “where.” But only three symbols in the word carved right above it, from the cottage doorstep.

It's the same with the last word—“dwells.” Six letters in “dwells,” only five symbols.

So . . . the funny little dots (or squiggles)
below or above
another symbol must be separate letters in themselves. Yes. So back to the word “where.” The dots below must be the vowel
E
—because there are two of them, just like in the word “where.”

And so that small curly blob under a letter in the second word must be another vowel—I. (Something something “silon.”)

Now it makes more sense.

As to the “--silon,” what else could it be but “epsilon”?
This is the only other word I know connected to the cottage. Epsilon, carved on the base of the bucket. That gives me the P also. The A's are easy, too—a single-letter word! It can't be I, as the I's are already accounted for.

So what I can decipher of the message so far is this:

 

WI_H A _IRRORED DREA_

A _OLLOWED SO_ND

_H_S LE_ I_ _E_IN

 

Going through the alphabet to try out the missing letters; there are some things they cannot possibly be and some things they
must
be.

DREA_ must be “dream.” It can't be any other word. Therefore M is
.

I_ must be “it,” since I already have the N so it's not “in,” and I have S so it's not “is.” T must be
.

TH_S must be “thus,” since I already have the I, so it's not “this.” Therefore U is
.

_OLLOWED must be “followed,” since I already have the H, so it's not “hollowed.” Therefore F is
.

And _E_IN must be “begin,” 'cause I can't think of another word that fits! Therefore B is
and G is
.

So even though I haven't got the whole of the alphabet, I have got the whole of this message (or whatever it is). Not that it makes much sense, though.

 

WITH A MIRRORED DREAM

A FOLLOWED SOUND

THUS LET IT BEGIN

 

What's that supposed to mean?!

Oh, darn it! Mom's on the second floor, yelling up the attic stairs. They've found a whole belemnite, whatever that is. Them and their fossils. Gotta go.

MY DIARY—5
A.M.

I've just dreamed of my room. This room. This attic bedroom, but with different furniture. There was this heavy table with a small model boat on it, and a blue-tiled washstand in the corner. The whole floor was bare boards—no swirly blue carpet at this end. Only the bed was the same, my huge bed with a swan carved in each corner of the headboard. My bed. But there was a stranger asleep in it!

It was a boy—a brown-haired boy, about thirteen years old. I keep trying to sketch what he looked like.

He woke up suddenly, sat up in my bed, and lit a candle. He leaped out of bed. He was wearing a nightie! He ran to the table. He grabbed a nib pen, dipped it in some ink. “Quick, quick!” he kept muttering. But he kept fumbling, kept dropping the pen. Three small blots splashed sideways across the paper. He tutted, wiped one of the blots away with his finger, and went on scribbling. No—not just scribbling—
drawing!

I couldn't see what he was drawing. But whatever it was, he drew it fast, a sketch of some sort. Then he turned the paper over and began to write. More and more words, scrawled fast. Then he ran to the window—my window, only there were these heavy brocaded curtains hanging up—and looked out. Dawn was coming. He rolled the paper up and ran out of the room.

He was still in his nightie.

Down the two flights of stairs he ran, into the scullery. He worked a pump till water came, then he drank straight from the pump, wetting his nightie. But he didn't seem to notice—he just ran full speed out the back door.

He ran and ran, away from the house, in the direction of the cottage. The sound of his feet thumping the grass, getting fainter. Then another sound came, a soft, eerie sound. Haunting.

Like a flute, being played far away. It came from the direction of the cottage.

I tried to follow it, but in my dream I couldn't move any faster, and the sound of the flute grew fainter and fainter. Until all I could hear was the sound of the sea over the headland.

Then I woke up.

I put on my lamp—to be honest, I was a bit scared of the dark, which is NOT like me at all. The strongest feeling
gripped me, that I had to write it all down in full, sketches, too. Then I would put it in the file from the library. It all seemed so real.

But—sitting here—
I can still hear the flute!

Very, very faint. All the time I've been writing this, it's been fading, bit by bit. Yet the fainter it gets, it seems to be more and more—Oh, I don't know . . . insistent? Soon it may fade altogether.

It's definitely coming from the direction of the cottage.

It's no good. I have to go there before the music stops.

I have to get down there. Now.

ONE HOUR LATER

I've just got back from the cottage. Can hardly hold the pen. Still shaking. What on earth is going on? I'm terrified.

 

The cottage was still in shadow. Cold shadows. Creepy. The birds began to sing—but the flute was the loudest sound now. Coming from behind the cottage door.

The door was closed! I'd left it open, three days ago. Who had closed it? Maybe the wind? Ridiculous—it was too stiff for the wind to move it at all.

Domino didn't like it either. He wouldn't come close—not even up the little path to the door. He sat in the garden,
whined a bit. I called and called him, but he just sat and bristled.

I reached out for the handle, decided to do it quickly—shoved the door open.

The flute music stopped.

But the flute was there. It fell from midair. It clattered to the table. It rolled onto the floor. As if whoever had been playing it had just dropped it. Yet there was no one there.

My legs turned to jelly.

Behind my back, Domino growled.

I can't describe how sick I felt, sweaty, clammy. But I couldn't run. I had to go and get that flute! It was as if I had no choice.

Somehow I went and picked it up.

It was made of wood. Something was carved on the mouthpiece. The scraggly, thin symbol of Epsilon. Like half a feather, toppled over.

It was dry, dusty. It didn't look as if anyone had played it for a hundred years, let alone played it a minute earlier.

I lifted it to my mouth and blew. Nothing. Blocked—years of dust and muck. I peered inside. Something was curled up in there. Paper, maybe? I took a deep breath, blew it out. It came out with a piercing shriek.

The paper was whispery dry and yellowed with age. It must be fifty, a hundred years old. I unrolled it, turned it the
right way round. As I stared at it, my knees went to water. I knelt down slowly, into the dust of the kitchen floor.

It was a sketch.

A sketch of a girl.

A girl in a bed.

A bed with four swans carved on it.

The girl in the bed was me.

 

This is what I read on the back of the sketch:

 

Just now I have dreamed of a girl. She was sleeping in my bedchamber, in my swan bed. Just as Epsilon had said: “Look for a dream that is not a dream.” This genteel girl was exceedingly real. I have sketched on the back of this paper what she looked like.

She woke up—reached out in the dark—and the earth lit up at her hand! The earth, but very small, it lit up under her fingers. Blue seas, green Africa—oh, everything, very small and bright, brighter than candles, brighter even than the great chandelier downstairs!

And there was this timepiece by her bed—a fine silver thing. Only the very rich have timepieces. And the very gown she wore was silken, with exceeding fine lace, but pale blue.

There was a rug. Blue, too—blue like the sea—but it
covered half the floor! It reached all the way to the edges of the walls! One rug, or many rugs cunningly sewn together? I could not tell. But I could feel it soft under my feet.

She wrote something with a pen that was black but did not need an inkwell to make it work. She wrote for a long time, not once needing to dip in. At last she ran to the window and looked out. But the drapes were not the drapes Mama made for me. They were fine as cobwebs—they floated like silver flags. She looked out at the dawn, then put on BREECHES! She was rushing, as if in great alarm.

Then downstairs, where there was a great beast of a dog waiting, a black dog with three white spots along his back. The girl ran into the scullery and drank water from a silver pump that did not need to be pumped! She used the best crystal to drink from, as the gentry do. Then she ran out with the dog, in the direction of the cottage.

But no one else knows about the cottage. Just me and Epsilon.

Maybe she is magic, too? Or whatsoever Epsilon is—maybe she is one of his kind. She has a small, pretty face, with hair as black as a rook's wing. In her nose, she wore a silver ring. In ancient times, so Epsilon told me, followers of the 'Borus also wore this ring, as a sign to
each other. This sign has alarmed me greatly. I have written down all that I saw, as commanded by Epsilon, who bade me commit all these strange happenings to a journal. Whatever Epsilon is, I think it best to trust him. So I must take this at once to Epsilon and ask him what to do.

As Agapetos is my witness, so signed by my hand, this 14th day of July, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-four. Sebastian Wren, aged thirteen years.

 

Across the page, splashed clumsily in his hurry, there were three black inkblots. And one smudged fingerprint. A real fingerprint, with whorls and swirls. A real print. Not the print of a boy from a dream at all. The print of a boy whose name I now know.

Because, over a hundred years ago, a boy called Sebastian Wren dreamed of a girl in an attic. A girl who put on her globe lamp and wrote with her ballpoint pen and ran over her fitted carpet and opened her Ikea curtains and drank from an ordinary faucet and then ran down to the cottage. As I did, not two hours ago—after dreaming of HIM!

It's easy to work out what “a followed sound” means. The flute. But now I know what “a mirrored dream” means, too. Our dreams were the same. The same things happened in each.

I drew him, just as he looked when he woke after dreaming of me.

He drew me, just as I looked when I woke from a dream about him.

What now will begin?

Oh, I can't
can't
wrap my brain around it all. I think I'm going to be sick.