The Strange Round Bird: Or the Poet, the King, and the Mysterious Men in Black

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  “Of course you may, and it is a very interesting read. However, much of what you want to know now will come from reading Sir Edward’s introduction to his book.”

  “The introduction?” asked Faye.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Bell. “Be sure you start there.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Wallace said, his voice cracking. “Um, would it be possible to borrow any other books?”

  “Of course, Master Banneker,” said Mr. Bell. “You may borrow and read what you like. The doors are not locked.” He turned to Noah. “Master Canto-Sagas, I am sorry to hear your father has taken ill. Please know that the physician training we employ here is beyond what is done in most places. Your father is in good hands and will make a strong recovery. That, like many things we face now, will take time. I am off to check on him now.”

  Mr. Bell looked deeply into Noah’s eyes until both felt there was an understanding. Mr. Bell looked at the others. “Please be gentle with the ancient tomes and with the books on the highest shelves. They tend to be fragile. I’ve done a bit of tidying so not so many books are piled up on my desk.” And with a gesture of his hand, Mr. Bell nodded and shuffled off down the hall.

  “All things considered, there might be a book by this mysterious poet,” Jasper said, in hopes of connecting some of the puzzle pieces.

  “And we might as well read up on this King Suleiman the Magnificent, or whatever his name is,” added Faye. “Whatever we’re dealing with has been around a long time. Maybe it goes back farther than we think. There must be something in the past that can lead us in the right direction.”

  The children pushed open the great wooden doors to Mr. Bell’s office. Noah wondered if tiny Mr. Bell could open and close them without assistance.

  “Uh oh, where are the books?” said Lucy, pointing to Mr. Bell’s desk. It was uncluttered and well dusted. The books previously piled on the desk were now neatly placed, invisible among the thousands of their kind on the shelves.

  “Well, Lucy, you look for Sir Edward’s book,” suggested Faye. “You remember what it looks like. We can all look for other books that might offer clues. Let’s each take a bookcase and search, top to bottom.”

  “What kind of clues?” asked Lucy.

  “Clues that lead us somewhere. Maybe there’s some connection between the poet, the king, the librarian, and the rest of this craziness,” said Faye. “There must be something in all of this history that will tell us something about the present. We’re trying to find anything that will lead us…to Noah’s mother. Maybe she was looking for something—something she didn’t know could be dangerous. Maybe that can tell us where she was taken.” Until that moment, Faye had never considered the possibility that something Ariana was asking about had gotten her into trouble. Faye did not mention this, though a quick exchange of glances told her that Jasper was thinking the same thing.

  Mr. Bell’s library was vast. They discovered that many books were in Arabic or some other unreadably ornate language written in swirling calligraphy. They knew there was nothing they could do with those books. Sticking to English and French, there was plenty to look through, though. With so many books and so much to investigate, finding the one shelf that contained the history of the mysterious brothers in black did not seem to be important. But finding out what was important proved challenging. There was so much to read.

  Noah was distracted as he climbed the ladder in front of his chosen bookcase. Halfway up, he found a book with a long title: Preliminary Notice of Some Facts (Heretofore Unperceived) Which Will Be Shown to Aggregate into Certain Cosmic and Metric Systems in the Great Pyramid When Taken with Other Facts to be Subsequently Considered by W.M. Flinders Petrie. What a find! Petrie was an Egyptologist, world famous for his work. This would be something Noah would love to read, if his mother wasn’t in mortal peril and his father fallen ill. Noah blew a cloud of dust from his top shelf. Pieces of parchment fluttered around him like so many moths.

  “It could be anywhere,” Wallace said, looking up at the towering shelves that seemed to go on forever. Not a lover of heights, Wallace swallowed hard as he climbed the ladder to the top shelf.

  Faye looked at Wallace. She crossed her arms. “What could be anywhere? We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “We could find the missing shelf,” suggested Lucy.

  “We don’t need to read about Mr. Bell or the mysterious men in black right now, Lucy,” said Faye. “We’ve got enough here to feel like we are just wading through endless pages without direction.”

  “That isn’t exactly true.” Jasper pulled a rather stout book from his upper shelf and checked the cover and inside the cover. “We are looking for things we recognize, like the poet or Suleiman or even a mention of the Young Inventors Guild, and that other symbol, the one that looks like special writing, like the one on the wooden box full of those little scrolls and that old poem, with the swirls and—”

  “You mean like this?” asked Noah, pointing to the floor, where a torn piece of paper had fluttered down when he tugged at a book. Jasper picked it up. On the old and yellowed parchment was a symbol—the artfully drawn word, the turgha, that they had seen before.

  “Oh, that’s not just from the boxes. We’ve seen this one ages ago, too,” said Lucy, excitedly, looking down at the page from her perch on the desk. “We saw it in Solemano. Remember?”

  “Lucy’s right. We have seen it,” Faye remembered.

  “It’s connected to the Strange Round Bird poem,” said Noah.

  “It’s the poet,” said Lucy, looking at the parchment in Jasper’s hand. “It’s probably his name. See the letters?”

  When Lucy traced the lines of the script on the page, the others could see that the design was really calligraphy, but none of them could read what it said.

  “What does that mean?” asked Noah, who was now climbing higher on the ladder. He saw a lot of the fancy Arabic script on the books up there. He pulled another dust-covered book from the shelf. It had a design on the front. It was similar to the other, but he could not tell if it was the same. He tilted it down to Lucy, who shook her head. He replaced it and pulled out another.

  “No, that’s a different turgha,” she said with a sneeze.

  Faye brushed dust from her eyes. “Watch it up there! You’re raining dust upon us.”

  Noah blew off the dust more gently from the next few books. He showed another book to Lucy, who again shook her head. Close didn’t count. It had to be the same name.

  “Where did this page come from, Noah?” asked Jasper.

  “I don’t know,” said Noah, trying to see the shelf above him. “It floated down when I blew the dust from the shelf. It might have just been sitting there.” He now could recognize the turgha, or calligraphy signature. So far, no luck.

  “We should start a pile of pertinent tomes and papers,” Wallace said, carefully descending his ladder with a small pile of books. He reached the bottom and placed them on Mr. Bell’s desk “There’s room here now.” He perused a small, roughly-bound book on a lower shelf, replacing it and grabbing another.

  “So far, this is it for the symbol.” Faye took the piece of parchment from Jasper and put it next to Wallace’s pile of books.

  “And this,” said Lucy, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor. With the ladders in use, she had started at the bottom. She held up an old notebook. It appeared to be a common book or commonplace book, something people kept for writing ideas and proverbs and poems, thoughts and philosophies. Like the parchment, it had the familiar symbol. Flipping through it, they found pages of beautiful script on the fragile parchment. There were a few pages written in other languages, perhaps Latin, and something in East Asian script.

  “Look!” cried Lucy pointing to the character ‘ .’ It’s the Chinese word for ‘bird’!”

  Many characters were very hard to read. Jasper flipped through the pages of Lucy’s notebook. It was smaller than their green leather Young Inventors Guild journal. It was bound
in fine black leather and tied with leather straps. Many pages contained artistic script, beautifully done, in a myriad of languages. On other pages, there were maps and diagrams. Still others had drawings.

  “I believe several of these are poems,” said Jasper, noting how the words were often shaped—stanzas together, and signed at the end. “This is the writing of the poet, perhaps. But who is the poet?”

  “Muhabi,” said Wallace. “Or Muhibi, as it says on this other page. Here’s the connection.”

  “What?” Faye moved over to see what he had found.

  “This is a book describing the writing of Muhabi,” said Wallace, checking the title page. “It is by the author of The Lost Library of Alexandria. Sir Edward Romer, GCMG, Royal Librarian. And it is considerably newer, written only twenty years ago. According to the biography of the author, Sir Edward Romer was working in Egypt…See, it says ‘resides in Cairo, Egypt.’”

  “He might still be here in Cairo,” said Noah, climbing down. “Maybe we can find Sir Edward after all. Maybe he has answers. What else does it say about him?”

  “Well, he wrote about the library in Alexandria and the poet, too,” said Lucy. “He wrote about lost books and found poets.”

  “It’s a clue, isn’t it?” said Wallace. “The poet might be the poet Madame Ariana mentions in her diary.” He handed the book to Jasper.

  “He does describe poetry by the poet named Muhabi, or Muhibi, who wrote during the 16th century. And look! There’s the symbol, the turgha, as Lucy calls it. Here’s a translation.” Jasper released the book to Faye since she was trying to tug it out of his hands anyway.

  “‘As it is the sea is dull/The desert dark and the/Songbird silent/All in the gaze of your eyes upon me, /the warmth of your love beside me/ And the sound of your voice when you/ Claim my love,’” read Faye, her face flushing hot.

  “He loves her,” Lucy cried. “The poet loves her. Oh, do read another, Faye.”

  Faye gulped. “That one was a bit, well, sentimental. ‘Love is not something soft and simple/It pushes through the very earth to/ bloom in the heart/ It is strong and fierce/ But it knows and cannot be unknown/ It holds and is held/ Though it feels as if it cannot be touched.’” She looked up and caught Jasper’s eye. It was as if their eyes locked. He tried to move his head away but his eyes would not budge. Faye broke the gaze, blushing, and closed the book.

  “Are they all love poems?” asked Wallace, wiping his glasses.

  Faye cleared her throat and opened the book again. After perusing it for a time, her eyebrows went up. “Goodness! It’s here! Listen to this: ‘They stand together/their will and faith the only wall/ the double devil lurking ever near/ the world around them/never knowing that it leans/upon their black sleeves.’”

  “It’s the poem from the box and satchel!” cried Lucy.

  “My mother was looking for the poem,” said Noah, leaning to read the words for himself.

  “I think we can guess what it’s about,” said Wallace, adjusting the glasses on his nose.

  “It certainly is clear,” Noah said. “It seems the poet knew the brothers in black.”

  “Or knew about them,” Wallace said.

  “And, perhaps, knew who they were and why they were formed,” added Jasper. “The poet might have been living during the time of Suleiman.”

  “That was around three hundred and fifty years ago,” said Noah. “We know the brothers came to be at that time, too.”

  “And that your mother was looking into it,” said Faye. “Any idea why she might have been interested?”

  “No idea,” said Noah. “She likes stories. Maybe it had to do with researching a role in an opera.”

  “Can you check the dates on that book about the poet?” Jasper asked Wallace.

  “Oh, the book is not just about the poet.” Wallace closed it and showed it to the group. “It’s titled The Reign of the Magnificent. It seems to be more about a historic era.”

  Jasper turned the book over. “Suleiman the Magnificent,” he read.

  Lucy clasped her hands together. “The king who put hats on the brothers in black.”

  “We have to get these translated,” said Faye, picking up the common book of Muhabi. “The poet may have more to tell us.”

  “Maybe it’s a lost treasure,” said Lucy.

  Everyone else stopped. A lost treasure? Could this whole thing be about some lost treasure and Ariana was getting too close?

  “What if it is all to do with the poem she was investigating and not about us,” said Noah.

  “Should we take her common book to Sir Edward Romer?” asked Noah. “We can find out if he’s still in Cairo.”

  Two of the young brothers in black robes came into the room.

  Noah held up the book. “We’re going to get this translated. We think it may—”

  “It cannot be,” said the brother, who was tall and thin.

  “What does that mean?” Faye asked.

  “Nothing to leave,” said the smaller brother. “Safe here.”

  “Nothing is safe,” Noah said, “especially my mother. We mean to find her, and we believe getting answers is what is required.”

  “No, you not take,” said the taller brother.

  “Books cannot,” said the other. “Home books safe stay. Cannot take.”

  But the members of the Young Inventors Guild decided that was exactly what they were going to do.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOAH STANDS ALONE

  OR

  THE YOUNG INVENTORS GUILD

  WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS

  As the piles of books grew, the children felt unsure if they were getting any closer.

  “We know that something fishy has been going on around here,” said Wallace. “And it has been going on for a very long time.”

  “And this is going to lead to my mother?” said Noah, looking at the books and, avoiding the eyes of his friends. He was feeling anger rising inside. Every minute he was not out there looking for his mother, it might be too late. But where should he look? Was the answer in these books? He felt trapped. The others could not understand.

  Wallace adjusted his glasses. “Well, we know—”

  “What, Wallace?” asked Noah. “What do we know?”

  “We cannot simply steal a book and expect everything to be fine,” said Jasper. “Noah, think about it.”

  But Noah had been thinking, and now was the time for action.

  “Please, Noah, we really need to ask Mr. Bell first.” Jasper’s hand was on his friend’s shoulder as the two boys sat on Noah’s bed. “We don’t even know if Sir Edward is still in Cairo or even still alive. A lot can happen in twenty years.”

  “A lot can happen in one and a half,” Wallace said softly from small wooden chair in the corner.

  “A lot can happen in one moment,” said Noah, not looking at anyone.

  “Mr. Bell may not tell us anything,” said Faye as she paced the stone floor.

  “He’s already given us answers when no one else has,” said Jasper. “He’s on our side. He let us in his library.”

  “He’s never going to agree to translate something we’ve stolen,” Faye whispered loudly. “You can forget that.”

  “I wouldn’t ask him,” Noah said. “I have another plan.”

  “Really?” Faye’s eyebrows rose. “And what would that be?”

  “Mr. Bell is not the only translator, archivist, or historian in the city of Cairo,” Noah said. “I plan to hunt down someone who can read this ancient thing and tell me if it can lead me to Komar Romak.”

  “Lead you to Komar Romak?” It was Jasper’s turn to raise his eyebrows.

  “Look, I know there is something that no one is telling us, and I know that there are bigger things out there that drive this whole horrid mess. There is something our parents and the mysterious men in black think is more important to the world than anything else. But for me…I’m sorry, I just cannot care about any of that. You are my friends and I care fo
r you all. I love you, I trust you. But everything has changed. For me. My father is ill. Yes, I know, he’ll recover. But nothing is certain. My mother is in danger and that is all that matters. Maybe it is a lost treasure, maybe Komar Romak, maybe both. But it is all that matters to me.”

  Faye put her hand on his shoulder. “We are your friends. Maybe we don’t understand exactly how you feel, Noah, but we can imagine. It doesn’t take much for us to imagine, does it? You must know that we are here with you. We can fight this thing, together, and solve this mystery, fulfill this…mission…and other missions we choose to accept.”

  Noah wiped his eyes on the back of his hands. “I’m sorry, but for me, there is only one mission.”

  “Fine. But think of this and your one mission…What if this—all of this—is all about one thing? It’s my thinking that everything we’ve been facing is made up of pieces of one thing,” said Faye. “Your mother, Solemano, our inventions, and whatever it is Komar Romak is after—it’s all part of one thing.”

  “If that is true, then my mother is a victim of all this nonsense. Maybe there is some scientific reason, something the other parents have done or created that has sparked this nightmare. But my mother has nothing to do with all of this. She’s nothing like them, nothing like us. She’s just caught up in all of this ugly science.” Noah was no longer crying.

  Faye patted him on the shoulder. “But she was investigating the poem. She found something that interested her. And this poetry is all over this place. We must figure out how it all fits together and, really, Noah, I am sure that it does. It’s not simply that there is an evil and we’re caught in the midst of two sides. There is something Komar Romak wants. We thought it was the flying machine, but we were wrong. Komar Romak must be trying to steal something.”

  “Komar Romak must have always wanted something,” said Wallace.

  “What do you mean?” Jasper said. He had been thinking the same thing.

  “We know that we are not the first,” Wallace reasoned. “The Young Inventors Guild has been around for a long time. We’ve all seen the journal. We know that we are just the most recent. We know, too, that the parents know about it, and were likely a big part of it.”