The Riddles of Epsilon (7 page)

Of the whale.

 

So there it is. Clear as mud.

And there are more clues, written in English on the back. I almost missed them.

 

Lemon Sq.

Ecclusad 5

Cloves—tooth

 

Which tells me absolutely nothing!!! Apart from the fact that the Lemon Squire is mentioned in Yolandë's song.

Ecclusad sounds a bit like Latin or something. But I looked it up in the dictionary and it's not there, so it
must
be a name.

As to cloves and tooth—well, on the other side of the paper, The Key mentions a tooth—a map to the tooth.

Gotta go . . . Dad's yelling up the stairs, yakking on about garden chairs or something. Why can't They just leave me alone?!!! Back soon.

 

Later. Oh, no. What's happening?

Just ran downstairs, to find Dad in the garden, pulling stuff out of the shed.

“So there you are! At last—didn't you hear me calling?”

(Yessss!!! He's talking to me again! Thank goodness for that.)

“Need a hand, Dad?”

“I'll say, kitten. Just wriggle your way in there, will you? You're thinner than me. Gotta get those deck chairs out. Sorry, but they're all the way at the back.”

They were, too—seven, eight, nine,
ten
deck chairs! And one old bench.

“What you doing, Dad? Having a party?”

“Not me, worse luck. The doctor and his flaming Greet thing. Been here the whole week—every time I turn round, there he is again! Wants us to take these over, says half the
village'll be sitting on their thumbs if not.”

I thought of Seb's benches and settles, going to the Greet. My mouth went dry.

“What's up, old girl? Still feeling sick? Maybe I shouldn't have asked you to do this . . . . Your mother will probably have a fit!”

“I'm fine. Really. So—don't you like the doctor then?”

“Like him? Course I like him! Seems like a decent chap. Just want to get on in the darkroom—I've films waiting to develop. No rest for the wicked, and all that. Okay—that the last of them?”

I handed the last deck chair out.

Just then, the garden gate went
sneak! sneak!
on its hinges, as it always does. We both turned round and watched Mom come up the path carrying a plastic shopping bag.

She was wearing a dress! In the day! Now that
is
a first is all I can say.

“Tsk. Must oil those hinges,” muttered Dad. He stared at her, a little frown between his brows. Then she looked up and saw us watching.

“Hello, you two! Just had a lovely walk with Domino—right along the bay! His tongue's nearly lolling out of his mouth, poor pet, and I could do with a cup of tea myself. What about it, Jess?”

I was just about to say “Oh, why me?” when she opened
the bag and tipped it upside down—right over the flower bed.

Shells came pouring out—hundreds of shells, of all shapes and sizes.

She smiled down at them fondly. Dad's mouth fell open.

“Did you have to dump them just there?” he said quietly. “I rather liked those hollyhocks . . . .”

THERE ARE TWO PEOPLE IN THE CHAT ROOM:

J
ESS AND
A
VRIL

JESS:
You must be CRAZY!!!

AVRIL:
Oh, listen to you—after all the bunkum you've been going on about for weeks, I'm the one that's crazy all of a sudden?

JESS:
Yes, but—to smoke pot at your mom's house—
no wonder she went berserk!

AVRIL:
Oh, don't you start! How was I to know she was going to come back a day early? You should have heard her: How dare I throw a party when she'd trusted me to stay here alone, and that your parents had the right idea, to send you away from it all and get rid of the problem once and for all. She didn't stop yelling for an hour!

JESS:
They didn't send me away.

AVRIL:
What?

JESS:
My parents. They didn't send me away.

AVRIL:
Course they did!

JESS:
They came with me.

AVRIL:
Yeah, more fool them. I mean, I can always
send
you some wacky backy. Where do they think they are, Timbuktu? If you want some drugs, I'm your man!

JESS:
Avril, have you ever come across the word “Ecclusad”? Or Ecclusad 5?

AVRIL:
That a drug? Never heard of it. Do you want me to look it up? Baz has a copy of the
Druggies' Bible.
He'll be here in a minute—I can ask him.

JESS:
I doubt it's a drug—not up here.

AVRIL:
So why you asking? Sounds more like a plant to me—or a Latin verb.

AVRIL HAS NOW LEFT THE CHAT ROOM

E:
You are following a red herring there, dear. Just thought I'd tell you.

JESS:
<> Did you
have
to kick Avril off just to tell me that?

E:
No. I had to kick her off because your mouth is too big.

JESS:
Well, thank you very much!

E:
You are welcome.

JESS:
Look, what do you want?

E:
I want you to reread Yolandë's ballad. You haven't much time—the Greet is getting nearer. You need to understand the words.

JESS:
Why?

E:
And I told you before, you also need to go back to the cottage.

JESS:
Why?

E:
It is time to open the second box.

JESS:
Admit it. You work for the FBI.

E:
I work for someone far more powerful than that.

JESS:
Don't tell me. The CIA? Captain Kirk of the Starship
Enterprise
?

E:
You are being foolish. Just read “The Ballad of Yolandë” again.

JESS:
I can't boldly go where I've
gone before
! I've
read
it. Time and time again.

E:
Read it once more. It is important—take it from me. From Epsilon. From E. Or should I say, from V?
From V!

JESS:
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, RIGHT!!! Five! How incredibly stupid of me!

E:
I agree.

JESS:
I find the fifth word, then the fifth word after that, and so on?

E:
At long last! Well—what are you waiting for?

JESS HAS NOW LEFT THE CHAT ROOM

MY DIARY

 

So. Back to, let's see . . . page fifty-nine of this rapidly growing file!!! “The Ballad of Yolandë.”

“V then V then V then V.”

Start at the fifth word, then the fifth after that, then the fifth after that. And so on!

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

It started as fun. This Yolandë with her lovely song. (I had actually wished I could hear the music—thought it'd make an amazing dance!) But now the words are starting to look plain nasty.

So this is what I got. Every fifth word of the Yolandë song says something quite opposite to the words of the song itself.

 

I awake in the time of dark choices

I stir in my wrath

For the treasures of the deep

Are hidden from my eyes.

The workers of my enemy are busy.

I will call my faithful out

From east, west, north, and south.

I sip weakness like nectar—

Crush honesty to dust.

My bone hands bring lies and death.

I must possess!

My black heart sows ruin;

To ruin is my delight.

Mark my chanting, travelers—

Flee from my song of beauty!

 

Oh, YUCK!

Whoever this Yolandë is—I'm dreading meeting her.

TWO DAYS LATER

Just when I think I can handle all of this, something else happens that really freaks me out.

Mom and Dad had gone to bed early, so I sneaked downstairs for a midnight feast. All that working out the “V then V” bit left me tired and hungry. But halfway through a box of chocolate cookies, I heard it. The weirdest, eeriest singing I've ever heard. Muffled, as if behind several doors. It set my hair on end.

I opened the kitchen door very quietly—and there was Mom, sneaking out the front door. She had her dressing gown on. She was humming in a secret, happy way. Instantly, rage rose up inside my chest and grew and grew. Just like before—sneaking off to meet someone. And I'd followed her that time last summer and caught them at it.
Told Dad. So I followed her again.

In the moonlight, she walked straight down the driveway and out of the big front gates. Here she turned left, taking the path that leads to the lake.

I followed her a little distance away, keeping to the shadows. But even when the clouds came to cover the moon so that I lost her for an instant, I always knew where she was. Because she was humming that same tune, over and over. A haunting tune, and what with the wind whispering in the trees and the creeping about in the dark, it started to really spook me.

Along the lake path she went, not even shivering, although there was a white mist over the water and I was a bit chilly. I had to clench my teeth together to stop them from chattering. Then, suddenly, she left the path and walked straight across the open ground. Now we were going uphill.

I kept slipping and stumbling on stones, but Mom seemed to be able to see in the dark. She didn't trip or hesitate—she just walked with an eerie sureness of foot, as if she knew this path and had walked it many times before.

I stopped a minute to catch my breath, trying to get my bearings. I've only been out of the grounds a few times since we arrived, walking Domino—usually I just take him down to the cottage with me. So although I've seen the lake from a distance, from near our big front gates, I'd never been out
this far before. Suddenly I saw where she was heading. The moon came back out—lit up the whole of the hillside.

There, at the top of the hill, was a tower. She was already halfway there.

As I struggled to catch up, I thought about what I knew about this tower. Precious little. But Dad had taken some photos there and showed them to me. “It's the oddest place, kitten,” he'd said. “A folly. You'll have to go and take a look. No door. No windows. No way in, no way out. Must be solid. Just a solid tower with no purpose, with four nasty-looking gargoyles on top.”

When I reached the top of the hill, I looked up and saw two of these gargoyles, moonlit and gleaming against the sky. The other two were hidden, round the far side of the tower. Ugly things with open mouths and bulging eyes, they stared outward on two different directions—east and north. The north gargoyle had its scaly hands—or were they wings?—up to its eyes, as if peering intently through the dark.

It occurred to me that this north gargoyle faced our land, and I got the sudden impression that even though it was made of stone, it could see our house and our gardens. And had been watching us, all the time.

But the thing that scared me the most was—now that I was standing right at the foot of the tower—I could hear voices. Not Mom's voice, not her humming. She wasn't
humming at all now, anyway. She just stood at the base of the tower and stared back toward the lake. Her eyes were open, but now I saw why she'd been able to walk so calmly, so sure-footedly, even without a flashlight. Her eyes were glassy and fixed.

She was sleepwalking.

She didn't even notice me as I crept up to her. She just stared with those wide, eerie eyes into the darkness, toward the lake. And all around, those faint voices rose and fell. Male voices, chanting, singing, speaking, and then answering one another. Behind these sounds, another—a sort of low
shhhing
. Like . . . running water? But lots of water, not a trickle—a great body of water, whispering to itself. At first these sounds seemed to be coming from the air or the earth itself—but then I realized that they were echoing out of the gargoyle heads.

Even though I knew that wasn't possible, I stared up, looking for a way to
make
it possible. Maybe there was a space at the top of the tower where people could gather? A kind of hidden parapet all around? But even if there was, the sound of those people would be very different from this. Their chants would come straight out, cleanly, into the open air. As it was, it was as if the very depths of the tower were chanting.

I put my ear to the round wall. The sound intensified.

Men's low voices, mumbling strange words. Speaking
and answering, and chanting. A low, echoey chant going on and on, but it was hard to understand the words. Something about the “time of dark choices,” about the “four eyes of the compasses.” Something about Yolandë
.
But the voices didn't sound as if they were coming from just the other side of this wall. They seemed far away, echoing—as if they were traveling from somewhere else and were being distorted along the way. It just didn't make sense.

Round the tower I went, puzzled, feeling my way. Nothing. Nothing but nettles that stung my hands, and the wind carrying those voices away, and a faint whistling hum from the top of the tower, like some giant was blowing across the neck of a huge bottle and making it vibrate.

I moved underneath the west gargoyle and heard the voices rise and chant—“Yolandë, Yolandë!” Round to the south gargoyle, with its wild hair streaming. Round to the east gargoyle, with its stone mouth wide open in a viscious snarl. Back again, to the other side of where Mom stood, staring, her dressing gown flapping in the wind.

Then, as the wind dropped, I understand more words. They chilled me to the bone.

 

“Ours is for the Ouroborus!

Ours is for to be empowered!

Tooth to tail we chant in chorus—

The innocent will be devoured!

One is nought and One is dead,

Because the tail is at the head!

Ours is for the Inverted Law.

Ours the jewel from Cimul's jaw.”

 

Mom heard them, too.

At first she just gave a small moan. I went and stared up at her face, not knowing what to do. You should never waken a sleepwalker, I thought. Never. But how to take her away from this eerie place with that awful chanting, rising and rising?

When the chant began again, Mom looked up. She saw the gargoyles with their ugly mouths agape and their eyes wide open. Her lips began to move. I leaned closer, trying to hear what she was starting to whisper. It was the same words, and as the men's voices rose and grew in urgency, Mom's whisper also grew.

“Ours is for the Ouroborus! Ours is for to be empowered!” she said, and her voice rose.

“Shh, Mom! No—they'll hear you!”

A huge, sickly feeling grew and grew in me, along with the voices and Mom's whispering. A feeling of danger, of evil. Whoever these men were, they met in secret and did not want to be seen or heard. Somehow they knew the way
into the tower that had no doors and no windows. Somehow they met in a hidden place and chanted dreadful words. They must not hear Mom—they must not find us up here, eavesdropping.

“Mom! Wake up—be quiet! Oh, please be quiet!”

But she couldn't hear me at all. Her voice rose and rose and then abruptly stopped. But the voices of the men went on with the next line of the chant.

“The innocent will be devoured!”

Hearing those words, Mom gave a hideous scream. It echoed out over the lake, coming back creepily to where we stood.

The men's chant ceased abruptly.

Then their voices rose, disturbed, confused, questioning—the sound of a gathering of people taken by surprise.

They'd heard her.

I dragged her by the arms then, pulled her from the tower, pulled her back down the hill, quickly, quickly! But she kept stumbling and falling; she couldn't seem to hurry. I dragged her back down the slope toward the lake. Back into the mist around the still water. She stumbled and fell a dozen times, and each time it took her an age to get up and start again. I had to almost hold her up—her legs kept giving way.

“Come on, Mom! Stand up! Run!”

But it was too late.

Someone was coming—but not from behind us, not from the tower.

Our way was blocked. Someone stood in front of us. Someone with a flashlight.

I stopped still, hung on to Mom, panting and gasping for air.

Footsteps came closer. Two sets of footsteps. Two beams from two flashlights.

“Jessica? And Elizabeth? What on
earth
are you doing out here?”

“Who are you?” I yelled, blinking into the light.