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

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  Faye nodded. “I am glad you now understand, Father.”

  “Perhaps I understand more than you know,” he admitted. “You see, it was my family—my parents and theirs—who had been among Suleiman’s assigned timekeepers. For generations, they were charged with the task of keeping account of Komar Romak. During the years when the power builds, it has always been vital to know where the enemy is.”

  “What?” Faye stopped her father. “What power?”

  “It is the way of things. It is how each generation works. For thirty years, the power builds, then once again needs to be released.”

  “What will need to be released?” Faye asked, now looking at her mother.

  Her father continued, “My parents would shut me out of that room off of the laboratory, the room you know. It is the very room for which you have had such resentment and from which we have shut you out. That room was built by Suleiman. It is that room which contains the most sophisticated equipment for tracking, contacting, communicating. It is one way to keep safe.”

  “Keep safe?” Noah could not keep the mocking tone from his voice.

  “The system has been in place for generations,” explained Dr. Tobias Modest. “It is clear that every generation of us must handle guarding, the assembly, and the dismantling.”

  “The what?” asked Faye. “I am sorry, but you are all speaking in riddles. Will someone speak clearly and tell us what you are talking about instead of talking around?”

  Wallace looked up. “Il Magna,” he said, looking at the faces around the room.

  “Did you know about Il Magna when you were us?” asked Lucy.

  “No, Lucy,” said Dr. Banneker. “We did not.”

  “But you all became friends then,” said Lucy, “and that was while our grandmamas and grandpapas were you when their parents were them.”

  “Yes, Lucy,” said her father. “Well done. That is exactly right. Our parents and their parents had all been like you and like us. We were all thrown together, but we became something of a family of strangers.”

  “Or a strange family,” said Dr. Canto-Sagas.

  “Like you children, we all became very close, very quickly,” explained Dr. Banneker. “We knew we had to bond together. The meals of our Celtic caregivers—Poppy, Petunia, Posey, and Philodendron—were as amazing as any of their Celtic kin.”

  “Celtic kin?” Jasper thought of their Rosie, as well as Camelia, Myrtle, and Daisy, who had been there to greet the Young Inventors Guild when the children first arrived into this strange new world. These were the women who had fed them and cared for them at the houses in Dayton, Ohio. They had also prepared the feast last Christmas in Solemano.

  “Yes, there have always been Celtic caregivers, I believe. It has something to do with Suleiman’s visit to the British Isles and the saving of an Irish village.” Dr. Tobias Modest scratched his chin.

  “There seem to be a lot of traditions,” noted Miss Brett.

  Mr. Bell merely smiled and nodded, but offered no further insight into the history of Celtic caretakers. He just waited patiently.

  Dr. Banneker smiled. “That is true. And we had Miss Bird, our own kind and loving teacher whom we all adored. A teacher is a truly magical, a truly lovely—”

  “Oh, she was lovely,” said Lucy, beaming, “when we met her at Christmas in Solemano.”

  “She made the most fabulous treats for us,” said Dr. Vigyanveta. “She fed us all with gusto, that woman. She even made all of the very particular foods for Nikola when he was in one of his periodic food phases. And never an octopus anywhere.”

  “Ickle Rajikins.” Faye remembered what the old lady in Solemano had called her father. She laughed and hugged him.

  “Nonsense,” mumbled Dr. Rajeesh Vigyanveta with no conviction whatever.

  “I remember,” cried Lucy. “She knew you all. ‘Benjamin, Isobel, Clarence, Raj, Louisa,’ and she started to say ‘Nikola,’” said Lucy, “and Dr. Banneker called him ‘Niki’! And Miss Bird knew your mummy, too, Noah! At least, that’s what it seemed to me.”

  “She did?” asked Noah. Of course, she did, if his mother had been one of the Young Inventors Guild.

  “Miss Bird, the old lady, was telling us about her ‘gilded children’ and that she knew Ariana.”

  “Yes, Miss Bird was wonderful,” said Dr. Isobel Modest. “Quite like your wonderful Astraea Brett here.” The two women exchanged smiles of gratitude.

  “We became friends, brothers, and sisters after we found one another,” said Ariana,

  “Like us,” said Lucy, clapping her hands, her bracelet then going to her mouth.

  “Oui, oui, ma chère. We found a strange green leather journal with dates from the past,” said Dr. Isobel Modest, easing the bracelet from her daughter’s lips. “We called ourselves—”

  “The Young Inventors Guild?” said the members of the Young Inventors Guild in unison.

  “Mais oui, bien sur, comme vous,” said Dr. Isobel Modest. “Of course, as you have done.”

  “And Ariana Canto was our resident chemist and our most accomplished physicist,” said Dr. Tobias Modest. “Ariana led us in the most exciting investigations and made us all feel that we were true scientists.”

  Ariana looked at Noah. Her eyes were glistening with tears, though she smiled as if she was unsure how she felt about that. She held her son’s hand. Noah looked at his mother.

  “But you never said a word,” Noah said to his mother. He then looked to his father. “And you never said anything, either.”

  “It was because of a promise,” said Dr. Clarence Canto-Sagas.

  “We all promised,” said Dr. Isobel Modest. “After the terrible—” Her hand flew quickly to her mouth to prevent any further words from escaping.

  “It is true,” said Ariana, now standing and looking into the fire. “We all found pleasure in our science. We found our cleverness to be a distraction from the strange mysteries from which we had been excluded. Our parents had vanished, only to reappear, as if out of nowhere, on that train to Istanbul.

  “We all were together and it seemed that life was full. We didn’t even care that we didn’t know why we had been thrown into the mysterious world of the brothers in black. Often, at holidays, our parents would come back, too. It was like this for almost two years. Life was magic, until…until …” Ariana stared into the fire.

  Tears fell silently from her eyes. No one spoke.

  “Let us say there was a tragic event,” said Dr. Canto-Sagas, “that left Ariana alone in the world. It was then that Ariana turned away from the Young Inventors Guild.”

  “But we wanted you to be with us,” Dr. Isobel Modest said to Ariana. “We wanted you to stay. You were part of our family.”

  “As it turned out, it didn’t matter,” said Dr. Canto-Sagas. “Within days of the tragedy, we were taken to ships and told that we must remain apart and never share what we know. For the safety of our parents, ourselves, and each other, we had to remain silent.”

  “And then we grew up,” said Dr. Vigyanveta. “We, too, became scientists, and heirs to this legacy. We rarely came together, though sometimes at a conference or university event. We were always friendly, but because speaking of that time and the Young Inventors Guild was forbidden, we never did.”

  “I was in love with Ariana from the moment I saw her,” explained Dr. Canto-Sagas, now standing next to his wife. “After the tragedy, my parents made the arrangements. Ariana came to stay with us for a few months before she started her musical education at École Royale de Chant, The Royal School of Singing, at the Conservatoire de Paris. She returned to teach at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto before being called to the stage.

  “Once, before she left, I asked her if this was truly what she wanted, to leave her love of science in the past. She never answered in words, but she left for the conservatoire the next day. When I finished graduate school, we married.”

  “Clarence,” said Ariana, “was always so kind. He never held my decisi
on against me. He understood.” She looked long and deeply into her husband’s eyes. Recovering the moment, she smiled at the others. “And we were not the only ones to find love among the burettes, beakers, test tubes, and microscopes,” she said, smiling fondly at the Modests and Dr. Banneker. “Isobel and Tobias rediscovered one another. And Ben, you and Louisa wrote letters and kept in touch. I know you proposed to her by post. She showed me the letter when I was in Boston.”

  “And Louisa was…like a shining light,” said Dr. Banneker.

  “We all loved her so,” said Dr. Isobel Modest to Wallace.

  “Even Niki had his eye on her,” said Dr. Banneker with a chuckle.

  “Nikola Tesla?” asked Wallace. “He had a fancy for Mother?”

  “She was so beautiful and brilliant,” said Dr. Banneker. “I proposed—”

  “You proposed on the ship when you were twelve,” said Dr. Tobias Modest with a laugh. He looked at Isobel. “And I proposed to you. The three smitten gents proposed to the three beautiful geniuses. Nikola was not a happy fellow.”

  “Ah, Nikola had been smitten with Louisa, Ariana, and Isobel,” said Dr. Rajeesh Vigyanveta with a laugh. “I remember he and I sharing a room on the dirigible, that fabulous zeppelin, that time. He was making lists why each would be the woman of his heart. He made a meticulous count of each girl’s special gifts, such as beauty and brilliance, making in advance a decision to choose one as a a wife. But he could never do the needful and propose! What a hullabaloo there was when Ben asked Louisa. Did Nikola expect to marry the three of you?”

  “I thought I had better make my move before he did,” admitted Dr. Banneker.

  “Of course, Louisa, Ariana, and I did not agree with your idea for the marriage when you first proposed, Ben,” said Dr. Isobel Modest, with a wink. “But that is another story, n’est-ce pas? Yes, what a time. En fait, Tobias looked quite charmant in the costume he chose for Halloween. To celebrate, we made our own silliness on the boat.”

  “You had Halloween on the ship?” asked Lucy. “So did we! We could have all had Halloween together.”

  Everyone laughed—everyone except Noah. He was looking from parent to parent, adult to adult, still stunned by what he was hearing.

  “You…you were a scientist…all this time?” he asked again. He had not let go of the shock he felt. My mother, the angel of the opera, was also a scientist?

  “Noah, it…it’s been difficult,” said Ariana, “but, yes. That was how I was able to use the strontium from the beads in the gown to make the glowing letters and how I was able to create the manure explosion.”

  “Of course! The strontium letters were a great idea,” said Wallace. “Very clever, Madame Ariana.”

  “Thank you, Wallace,” said Ariana. “I take that as a compliment. When the costume was being made, I asked that the gems be made with strontium so they would shine onstage. When a gem fell off and was left in the sun, I realized it had to be strontium to hold the glow. I ground down the gem with glass and dirt and made a paint.”

  Noah could see the twinkle in his mother’s eyes. She was talking science, and she did so as if she had never left it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Noah. “It could have been something else we could have shared. You shut me out of such a big part of you.”

  “Because I didn’t want to share it with anyone. I didn’t want it to be a part of me. I wanted it to go away. To me, it was only a reminder of pain and sorrow. Your father…well, your father was an unstoppable force. As long as I could keep moving, staying clear of science, I felt that we were all safe,” said Ariana, speaking more softly now.

  “I worried about your love of science, Noah. I was thus happy you chose to play violin. You are brilliant, but I feared that brilliance would draw you into this horrid world that had betrayed me and ruined my life.”

  Noah thought back to her love of books and fiction and the desire to get him away from science. “Ruined your life?” he said.

  “So I believed,” said Ariana. “I always felt as if standing still might bring bad things again. I wanted to remove all traces of the scientist and run from them whenever they felt too close. I was a fool to let the burden of the past darken the wonderful present and keep you from that part of me. But I also felt that it had all somehow been my fault—the disaster, the tragedy.”

  “Your fault?” Noah was stunned. “Komar Romak is no one’s fault. The evil that comes of Komar Romak seeps in and ruins lives. It breeds sorrow and pain and…We have all felt the sting of guilt that is not ours to feel.”

  Ariana embraced her son. They all believed they knew what Noah meant, that they had all fallen victim to Komar Romak.

  “Only you might not realize you weren’t the first Young Inventors Guildmates,” said Lucy. “I still don’t understand why we are all still sneaking around, getting kidnapped and glowing. Please, Mr. Bell, tell us.”

  “Mr. Bell.” Faye did not disagree with Lucy. She just didn’t want to miss anything. “I’d rather know the whole story. Do you mind? We know there was a danger. We know there was Suleiman. But what happened?”

  Mr. Bell had been very quiet. They had almost forgotten he was there. He had remained quiet, allowing the long conversation to unfold, smiling at the sharing and understanding that was growing between parents and children. But Lucy’s question brought him back into the spotlight. He smiled at each one of them, then opened the great volume that sat upon his desk.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bell,” said Lucy, leaning forward in excitement, “You are the leader, and the leader should tell the story.”

  “Mr. Bell is more than the leader,” said Dr. Banneker. “Mr. Bell is The Archivist.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A VERY SELECT FEW

  OR

  THE WORLD COMES TO ISTANBUL

  “You are the one?” asked Noah, forgetting to finish his thought. “The Archivist who is noted in all those books?”

  “I have spent the better part of my life caring for the archives and researching history, in all its fragments,” said Mr. Bell. “For want of protection, I simply use that moniker. Many outside only know me as The Archivist. And, Miss Brett, as you know, many at the college only knew me as Mr. Bell.”

  “So you know everything about the pieces of the past?” asked Lucy, not waiting for an answer, “Please, please, Mr. Bell. Please tell us the story.”

  “I fear,” said Mr. Bell, “it is not a happy tale. But, in truth, it is your tale. It belongs to you, so you should know it.”

  “Is it scary?” asked Lucy, now unsure if she really wanted to know everything.

  “Well, Miss Modest,” considered Mr. Bell, “it is a history of betrayal and heartbreak. And at the center is the most brilliant and terrifying invention ever to exist. Suleiman dreamed of a way to give unending energy to the people of the world.”

  “Unending energy? You mean a perpetual motion machine? That’s impossible!” said Jasper.

  “Perhaps not impossible, Master Modest,” said Mr. Bell. “Suleiman sent agents out into the world in search of the greatest scientists working, as he was, on radical inventions. They found seven of the most brilliant minds on the planet, each perfecting a single piece of the puzzle.”

  “It’s like our flying machine,” said Lucy, looking at the other children. “We each made a different part, and the parts all secretly fit together into one overall invention none of us could have created on our own.”

  “Indeed, Miss Modest,” said Mr. Bell.

  “Why did he think it was so important, this energy machine?” asked Wallace.

  “Because, Master Banneker,” said Mr. Bell, “like our own Nikola Tesla, Suleiman believed that the power of nature should be available to help mankind. He believed that we should be able to take just the smallest piece of the power that creates lightning and the stars to create our own light and warmth.

  “Hundreds of years ago, he envisioned what we now call electricity, long before James Bowman Lindsay or e
ven Humphry Davy created the first electric light. Suleiman imagined engines that would power mills and waterwheels.”

  “But Suleiman’s great invention could be used for anything,” said Wallace, mortified. “It could be used to power terrible things, unstoppable weapons even.”

  “You are quite right, Master Banneker,” said Mr. Bell. “The young Suleiman became entangled in the excitement of the idea. He did not think of the danger it might pose.”

  “So what did he do? What did he do?” Lucy was on the edge of her seat, her bracelet in her mouth. Jasper reached for her arm without turning from Mr. Bell.

  “Things did not go as he had hoped, Miss Modest. When his father died, everything changed for the young leader. Suleiman had to go back to Istanbul and assume the throne, to lead his people as king, sultan, emperor. After he became the strongest of leaders, beloved by his people, he again turned to science. By then, his agents had found the seven great scientists. Together, these scientists, in tandem or alone, were working on five inventions that Suleiman believed would serve as part of his own overall creation. The young Suleiman made elaborate plans to bring the scientists to Istanbul.

  “First, a group of brothers went to the north of India, where Maharaja Hemu Rajesh Khan Vigyanveta, son of a king and heir to a great fortune, worked tirelessly in his laboratory. Vigyanveta packed his tools. The brothers then went to Alexandria, in Egypt, to find two scientists: a noblewoman, brilliant chemist, geologist, and inventor, the beautiful Greek-Egyptian Amina Omorfi Zakia; and the prince Sheriff Bannak O-sze Mbatu Salaam who had come from Nubia to work with his colleague. They, too, collected what they would need before coming to Istanbul.

  “Another group of brothers traveled to France to retrieve Mlle. Veritée Caitin Becquerel. At the same time, a ship was sent to the Firthe of Clyde and the brothers set off into the Scottish Highlands to the laboratory of Hugh Naraigh Fial. By then, other brothers had arrived in Italy to collect Vespucci Canto and Vincitore Sagas.”