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

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  Faye beamed at the little girl. “Lucy is right. If we attach wires to the sextant and use a reliable compass, protected from the magnet, it can help adjust the wings so the butterflies follow a course we want. We would, in fact, be creating a remote pilot or automatic navigator. It can work.” Faye furiously drew a design that showed how the whole mechanism would function. The head of the butterfly would contain a tiny compass, and the back would be a thin lead barrier to protect it from the battery magnet. Once they had the coordinates, they would lock them into the compass so that, if the butterfly flew off course, the wires on its rudders or ailerons would adjust back to get it headed in the right direction.

  “Lucy…do the butterflies really need to have little antennae?” Faye had asked when they were first making the butterfly bodies.

  “Butterflies have antennae, Faye,” said Lucy. A glare let everyone know that the answer was an emphatic “yes.” Faye bit her tongue and refrained from asking about tiny tusks on the flying elephants. Yes, there were flying elephants, after all.

  Nikola Tesla was very helpful. He had been absorbed in his work on his bladeless turbine, wanting to complete it for his 50th birthday the following July, but he took time to help the children check the transmission capacity before retreating to his own work.

  They rehearsed by having Wallace stand on one side of the garden and Miss Brett on the other. Lucy elected herself “net handler” and stood in the middle with a butterfly net, just in case. Wallace would release the butterfly at one end of the garden. The copper creature would have to navigate through the trees and arrive in the hands of Miss Brett on the other end.

  They quickly realized that there would be a problem getting through the trees and other obstacles. Since the butterflies were being released from on high, most trees should be less of a problem. Still, there were hills and wind to consider. The built-in coordinates did the job. The children found a fairly treeless spot and released a butterfly, slightly off course. It adjusted itself and flew directly into Miss Brett’s hands. The plan worked.

  “We still need a way to mark the coordinates so we know where each photo is from,” said Jasper, immediately thinking of a solution. “We can mark each camera lens.”

  “Though it would have to be in tiny writing,” said Faye.

  “And backwards,” noted Jasper.

  “I can do it through my microscope,” said Wallace, “using a drop of ink and a pin.”

  “Ink will be too thick. You should just etch it,” suggested Faye.

  “It might not be dark enough to read,” said Wallace. And then he had an idea.

  Wallace carefully picked up a tiny glass lens with a pair of tweezers. He placed the lens under the microscope and, writing backwards, carefully etched the coordinates onto the lens. He then dipped the end of a long but very fine pin in the ink beside him and filled in the tiny etching with ink. When the ink was dry, they tried a photograph using the marked lens. It was a total blur.

  “It needs to be farther from the camera,” said Jasper, picking up a butterfly.

  Jasper looked at Faye and smiled. She smiled back. Faye knew exactly what he was going to say.

  “The antennae,” said Jasper “We can use them to hold another lens a bit farther away. Now they have a job, Lucy.”

  With some minor adjustments, the new lens worked. Each butterfly would carry a signature coordinate so they could trace it back. One of them must surely lead them to Ariana, or so they hoped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A FLIGHT TOWARDS FREEDOM

  OR

  DINING WITH THE ENEMY

  Jasper, Lucy, Faye, Wallace, and Miss Brett stood on the tallest turret of the castle. At even intervals around the edge of the turret roof were chalk marks designating where each butterfly had to be released. The chill of the evening still hung about them. In the light of the early morning sun, they could see cliffs and jagged ledges in the rocks in the light of the early morning sun. They could see a stretch of Cairo, but obscured through a maze of stone walls and gnarled brush and trees that seemed to defy the dryness of the desert.

  Jasper thought of how invisible this place was from anywhere below. He had been amazed by the clever design of the ancient architects who built this castle. There they stood, on the highest turret, invisible, prepared to send off their army of butterflies.

  Faye grabbed Jasper’s arm. “What if it doesn’t work?” she whispered. “What if this is all for nothing?”

  Jasper put his hand on Faye’s. “It is not for nothing,” he whispered back. “We have no choice but to try. And this is the best course of action. We’ll cover miles and miles. It is the right thing.”

  Faye nodded. She knew that Jasper was right, but she feared failure. Taking a deep breath, she banished those feelings and looked only at the wide circle around them into which they were sending their tiny fluttering soldiers. It was a strange world when your hopes were placed in an army of mechanical butterflies.

  “You must have hope, sweet angel,” said Miss Brett, “and we must let it guide us.” She put her arms around Faye, who returned the embrace.

  Jasper drew one hundred vectors out from the center of the turret. Each vector had a coordinate written upon it.

  “So each of us will release one butterfly per vector,” Jasper explained for the benefit of Miss Brett. “The etched coordinates on the butterfly will match the vector on the map. We marked the top of each butterfly so we can see which goes with which. Make sure you each stand on your chalk X.”

  Four children and one teacher each held a basket of twenty butterflies—elephant butterflies, piglet butterflies, and flying horses. Lucy, alone, held the one flying giraffe.

  “I will miss you, my little flying friends. All of you,” she whispered, nodding to each of the other baskets now being carried to one of the five places marked with an X.

  The five basket holders each stood facing out, poised and ready to send off their twenty creatures. Jasper checked his watch. Timing was crucial. There could not be more than a few seconds between butterfly flights.

  Wallace closed his eyes and let a gentle wisp of air hit his face. “We’re lucky there is no strong wind today.”

  Jasper checked his watch again. “On the count of three,” he said, and began counting.

  Within seconds, the air was filled with the tinny buzzing of one hundred copper butterflies. Fanning out like rays of hope, the flying photographers seemed to be headed along the straight lines they were sent. Lucy had one hand clutching the single butterfly that remained in the pocket of her pinafore. She stood at the edge of the turret, her other hand waving until the last soaring butterfly was no longer in sight.

  The throbbing in his head and horrible ache in his shoulder told Noah he was still alive. He was not sure that was a good thing considering the excruciating pain. He was afraid to open his eyes. Something hard had hit him on the shoulder and he had gagged from the agony. He was dizzy and sick to his stomach.

  This cannot be good, he thought. Then, he screamed. He could hear the pop of his own shoulder, bone against bone. As suddenly as it hit, the wrenching throb eased. His shoulder was almost numb from the lack of pain.

  Because his head was spinning, Noah kept his eyes closed and counted to ten. Someone squeezed his shoulder.

  “Ouch.” Noah’s eyes opened. A man turned and walked to the other side of the room. Noah tried to move his arms, but realized he was strapped into a chair. The man brought him a glass of water from a small table. Noah leaned his head over, but the man began to pour it just out of reach of Noah’s face. Noah struggled to get any of it into his mouth. The man turned around and walked back to the table.

  “I want to thank you for fixing my arm,” Noah said in earnest. “It was awfully painful.”

  “You were screaming,” said the man. “It was a distraction.” He turned and walked back to Noah.

  “I can imagine,” Noah said. “Well, thank you for saving me from the blast.”

  “Sh
ut up, you fool,” said the man, loosening Noah’s straps. “We did nothing of the kind.”

  Another man entered. The two exchanged some inaudible words and the second man unstrapped Noah and dragged the boy out of the chair. Noah gave an involuntary shiver as he was led out of the room and through the dank and uninviting corridors. Other than the sound of their feet on the cold stone floor, there was silence.

  Noah tried to look at the men holding his arms. They were hulking men who never looked directly at him. He saw them only in profile. One was dark haired, with a scraggly mop on his head. The other was fair and substantially younger.

  As they walked, Noah felt the beating of his heart in his neck. The back of his throat was swelling, and the few drops of water were barely enough to reach beyond his lips. His breath came with labor. He wiped his cheek, and blood was swept across his face onto the back of his hand. His face was cold and his hands were sweating. Confusion and fear made a mess of his senses and he had no idea what lay ahead for him. In the face of the unknown, Noah could sense his automatic silly babble reflexively taking over.

  “Ah, we must be going for a dinner feast. I’m quite a fan of a rare roast beef,” said Noah to his captors, for that is what he knew them to be, “though I’ve also been known to enjoy a well-prepared chicken fricassee.”

  There was no response from the men.

  “I’d fancy a nice steak, too,” said Noah. “A steak with a side of grilled onions—the yellow ones or the red, maybe even those long green onions—and buttery mashed—”

  “Shut up,” growled the younger of his captors.

  “Ah, you were listening,” said Noah. “I knew you cared.”

  The man growled again but said nothing. The two men seemed to be walking for ages and ages. Noah’s throat was no less tight and his urge to babble no less controllable.

  “It’s ok to admit we’re lost, my good man,” said Noah, sympathetically. “It happens to us all.”

  Another grumble and then silence from the man.

  “Is it a toothache, then?” asked Noah, tilting his head, as if to examine the man’s mouth. The man ignored him, so Noah tapped him on the shoulder. “I can probably take care of that for you. If you open up and—”

  The impact from the punch in the face shut Noah’s mouth. His voice left an echo in the corridor. His cheek stung from the blow, but what Noah saw stung more—dark cruel eyes and a bushy moustache—a moustache that covered only half of the man’s upper lip.

  “It’s you,” Noah whispered, ignoring the swelling cheek. This time, the fair-haired man looked directly at Noah. An evil grin began to spread over a face on which a fair moustache also appeared.

  “Yes,” he growled, “it is we.”

  Noah gulped and before he could stop himself, he said, “I’m not sure if the correct grammar would be ‘it is us’ because it is at the end of the sentence. Perhaps you can say, ‘It is we who are so horrid,’ and that would make sense. Or, if the whole sentence was, ‘It is a matter of fact that there isn’t a full moustache among the lot of us,’ then you can see how the grammatical—” A strong thick hand squeezed Noah’s throat.

  “Shut up, you stupid little child,” the man growled, “or we shall do it for you.”

  The man let go and Noah nearly fell to the floor. Catching his step, Noah brushed himself off and looked, defiant and accusing, into the face of the fair-haired man. “Not a surprise that Komar Romak would bully women and children. You are pathetic.”

  The man shoved Noah and they continued down the hall. The nervous humor fled from Noah’s system as fast as the blood had rushed out of his strangled face. He could breathe again, but Noah could still feel the man’s grip upon his neck. He did not wish to feel it again and remained silent as they walked, wherever they were going.

  Noah kept his head down and was startled when the man jerked him back by the shoulder. Noah almost fell over. The man, stopping briefly at a massive arched door, forcibly pushed the doors open.

  Noah shielded his face. It was a reflex, for light came in from the hall on the other side of the door. He expected something terrible to assault his eyes or, worse, assault his face. Peeking through his finger, Noah dropped his protective hand.

  It was a dining hall. A long table was set with pairs of seats together along either side. Around the table were baskets of bread, bowls of fruit, and settings with silver goblets. Noah could smell the delicious roasts and baked goods. His stomach made a loud protest. A feast seemed to be in preparation.

  “Please don’t tell me that I’m on the menu,” said Noah, sarcastic but somehow worried. “I’m rather chewy and can leave a bitter aftertaste, or so I’ve been told.”

  The man simply shoved him forward. Noah saw but one man already sitting at the far end of the table, practically hidden behind a tall bowl of fruit. Noah walked reluctantly towards the sitting man. As he approached, he saw the familiar detail present in every incarnation of Komar Romak. The man had only one half of a very thick, peppered gray moustache.

  “Komar Romak,” hissed Noah at the sitting man.

  “We are,” said the man, neither gesturing for Noah to approach nor keeping Noah at bay.

  “What do you want?” Noah asked. “Everyone knows that I’m—”

  “No one knows where you are, Mister Canto-Sagas,” said the sitting man. “No one knows where we are.”

  The man took a sip from a wineglass. The wine was a dark red and Noah imagined it to be blood from all of Komar Romak’s victims. Noah bit his tongue and continued to stare at the sitting man.

  “You will take this meal,” said the sitting man, “and we will discuss what is required of you.”

  Noah opened his mouth, ready to reject the food, reject the conversation, and reject any idea of doing anything for Komar Romak. But he stopped. He would listen and gain information. He would reveal nothing and learn more. He would observe and escape and bring the brothers back to crush this devil.

  The sound of a moving chair made Noah jump. He had been so busy planning, he had not noticed the arrival of several pairs of men, now seating themselves at the table. The fair-haired man grabbed Noah’s shoulder and forced him to sit next to the sitting man. As Noah looked around the table, he saw how different these men looked, yet they each had one thing in common. The moustache. Or, rather, half of one.

  The men raised their glasses of wine. Noah was neither given wine nor, clearly, expected to raise a glass of anything.

  “Komar Romak,” said the sitting man. “Komar Romak,” repeated the rest.

  They began to eat and speak. Noah had no idea what language it was. Only the sitting man was still holding his wine glass. He continued to look at Noah, who was furious at his own grumbling stomach. With the back of his hand, Noah wiped drool from his mouth. The sitting man sat stone still. Noah wondered, for a moment, if the man had fallen asleep with his eyes open.

  “We know all, Noah Canto-Sagas,” said a man from across the table.

  Noah jumped in his seat. He had been focused on the sitting man. They were all sitting men now, thought Noah. They were Komar Romak.

  “Really?” said Noah. “What am I thinking, then?”

  “We know all that is important,” said another. “All that we will seek and find.”

  “Nope, that is not what I’m thinking. I haven’t a clue what you are thinking,” said Noah, dismissively.

  “You perhaps know more than you think,” said another man.

  While the answers came from different men, Noah had the impression that he was talking to a single being.

  “Well, if that were true,” said Noah, as if he was speaking to a very small child, “then I would not know that I knew it, would I?”

  “Do not be any more of an idiot than we believe you to be,” said Komar Romak.

  “If I was an idiot, you wouldn’t want me to teach you things.” Noah now picked up a warm piece of bread and stuffed the entire thing in his mouth.

  “We do not want you to teach u
s anything,” growled Komar Romak. “We demand that you do as we say.”

  “Why should I do anything you say?” Noah now picked up a bunch of grapes and began to pop one by one into his mouth.

  “We will make it very clear,” said Komar Romak, “and you will know one way or the other.” The short round man twirled the end of his half-moustache around his finger.

  “What does that mean?” said Noah, managing to clean an entire drumstick in one big bite.

  “Unless you are a complete imbecile,” said Komar Romak, “you must know what is at stake. We are powerful. We are ancient. We are everywhere. You cannot escape us. You know that Il Magna cannot remain hidden or strewn across the globe. It belongs to us. We are the power. We shall lead and master the world.” The tall, fierce man was now standing, pounding his fist into the table, his half-moustache quivering against his sneering upper lip.

  “What was that?” asked Noah, pretending to have been paying more attention to his potato.

  The tall man was drawn out of his fierceness and stopped for a moment. “What? What do you mean ‘what’?’”

  Noah truly did not know what Komar Romak was talking about. He asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Which…what part of…which thing did you not understand?” The man seemed confused by Noah’s confusion.

  “Mostly the whole bit,” said Noah. “The ancient power, the world domination, the half-moustache.”

  Komar Romak, small and rather stout, now pounded a fist against the table. “How dare you insult the ancient heredity of Komar Romak!”

  “I don’t know,” said Noah. “Did I?”

  Around the table was heard a mumble, along with looks of confusion and a general deflating of fierceness. Komar Romak was not happy. The men kept looking towards the original elderly man sitting at the end of the table, next to Noah. He simply shook his head.

  “The sign is revealed in all who descend of Komar Romak. The hereditary half follows the paternal line. We who are mightier than—”