The Daykeeper's Grimoire

by Christy Raedeke

  I wake to a knock on the door and promptly roll over and put the pillow over my head. A few moments later there’s more knocking. “Who is it?” I yell through the pillow.

  “Caity it’s me, Uncle Li.”

  I put on my robe and unbolt the door.

  “Tenzo is creeping around,” he says as he closes the door behind him.

  I rub the sand from my eyes, “Already? Where? Inside the castle?”

  “No, outside. By the tower,” he says quickly. “I was out for my walk this morning down by the loch and as I was coming back up the path, I saw him by the tower drinking from the water spigot with a large object in his hand.”

  “What was it?” I ask as I sit down on the edge of the bed.

  “It was a disc the size of a Frisbee with a digital readout. As I made my way up the path—quietly so he wouldn’t notice me—I saw him running it over the walls of the tower.”

  “What could he be doing?”

  “Well, when I came up behind him and said hello, he nearly jumped out of his boots. I asked him what his machine was and he stalled before telling me that it was a metal detector.”

  “A metal detector? Do you believe him?”

  Uncle Li shakes his head. “I asked him why he was using a metal detector on a stone wall and he gave me some fool story about finding interesting ‘ores’ in the rocks around these parts.”

  “Ores! Yeah, right. What do you think he was doing?”

  Uncle Li scratches his head and then shoves his hands in his pockets. “I think it was a radar-type device to detect depth. I think he was trying to find a way into the core of the tower.”

  “What I don’t get is how he knows about the tower.”

  “I suppose if you looked through the castle you’d realize the tower is the only place anything could be hidden,” Uncle Li says. “All other space is accounted for in common areas and bedrooms.”

  “I guess you’re right—but that means he’s been poking all through this place.”

  “We’ll just have to keep an eye on him,” he replies. “But now you must excuse me, I have a meeting with your parents to present my initial feng shui analysis of the property.”

  I give him a wide-eyed look but he smiles reassuringly. “Don’t worry Caity, I won’t let on about any of this. There are definitely enough interesting features to talk about even without mentioning the tower.”

  Uncle Li leaves and I take a bath to wake myself up. Mom bought tons of cool Swiss bath products for the guests and gave me a whole basket of them too. I use a big brick of creamy white soap that has wildflowers from the Alps mixed in, and every so often a tiny yellow or purple flower springs from the bar and floats up. As I slip all the way under and stare at the ceiling through a veil of water and wildflowers, I hear Alex’s voice from last night: You look stunning tonight … I remember that he’ll be here for breakfast, so I pop up, rinse off, and get out of the bath.

  Breakfast is over by the time I get downstairs, but Alex is still there, carrying the big silver trays in from the dining room. “Hey Alex,” I say casually.

  “Caity! We missed you at breakfast, mate.”

  Before I can even reply, I feel a clammy hand on my shoulder and look around. Tenzo. “Good morning, Caity,” he says with a smile.

  I can’t take my eyes off his thick yellow teeth. I shrug my shoulder from under his hand.

  Alex turns to him and says, “Dr. Tenzo, I’ll be done in a few minutes and then we can go.”

  “Fine, fine,” he says, looking at me with a smile. “I’ll just talk to Caity while you’re finishing up.”

  I breathe in sharply. “Oh, I have to help Mrs. Findlay. Bye.”

  Alex looks at me sideways as I run to the kitchen. He says to Tenzo, “Ten minutes tops, sir. I’ll come find you.”

  When Alex comes in I try not to yell as I say, “What are you doing with him today?”

  “Who, Tenzo?” he asks. “He just wanted a guided tour of the castle grounds.”

  I point to the dining room. “That guy is trouble. Thomas already gave him a tour yesterday, you know. What more could he want to see?” I realize I sound hysterical.

  Alex puts his hands up in a surrender position. “Easy Caity, ’tisn’t a big deal; I don’t mind showing him around again. He is a paying guest.”

  Mrs. Findlay comes over and stands in front of me with her brow furrowed. “What do you mean by ‘he’s trouble’ dear?”

  “I know him. He works with my best friend’s grandpa. He’s a well-known kleptomaniac.”

  Mrs. Findlay looks at Alex and says, “Hide the silver, boy!” and they both bust up laughing.

  “I’m dead serious you guys. Just be very careful about what you show him, Alex. No hidden doors, no secret spots, nothing,” I say, irritated that no one is taking me seriously.

  Mrs. Findlay tousles my hair like I’m a two-year-old. “Aw lassie, I’m sure a professor from Princeton University is not going to ruin his reputation by taking a trinket from Breidablik.”

  “Alex,” I say as calmly as I can, “just promise you’ll tell me everything he asks about.”

  “Absolutely, Caity,” he says with a smile, backing away like I’m a lunatic hobo asking him to donate a kidney to me.

  I walk over to Mr. Paper’s cubby, but it’s empty. “Is Mr. Papers with Thomas?” I ask.

  The two of them look at each other. Mrs. Findlay says, “Oh, uh … Dr. Tenzo wanted to play with him a bit this morning.”

  “You allowed—” I feel myself getting hysterical so I take a deep breath and collect myself. “Okay then,” I say slowly. “Where is Mr. Papers now? When I saw Dr. Tenzo in the dining room, he was alone.”

  Mrs. Findlay bites the corner of her lip. “I’ll go ask; ’twas me who agreed to let him take Mr. Papers.”

  When Mrs. Findlay is gone, I put both my hands on Alex’s shoulders and look him in the eyes. It’s a bold move, but I need him to listen to me. He looks a little perplexed as I pin him in place and say, “I can’t tell you everything right now, but you must not tell Dr. Tenzo a thing about this place.”

  He doesn’t say anything, but I sense he’s getting it, so I continue, “You can talk about general stuff, weather, dates it was built, the community, stuff like that, but nothing about the family, or the tower, or that Chinese guy who helped Fergus build it. Got it?”

  He nods like I’m a cop asking him to stay out of trouble.

  “Thanks,” I say, releasing him from my grip. Once out of the kitchen, I can’t help but put my hands to my nose. These hands have touched Alex’s shirt, I think as I breathe deeply.

  I drop them immediately when I see Mrs. Findlay.

  “It’s all sorted out,” she says, seeming pleased with herself. “Dr. Tenzo told me he put Mr. Papers in your room. Since you weren’t there, he just slipped him through the door and left.”

  “He went into my room?” I yell. This guy has nerve!

  Mrs. Findlay looks bothered by my shouting. “Child, you really must calm down.” She puts her arm around my shoulder. “Really dear, what could a grown man want in your room? It was a harmless mistake, returning Mr. Papers to your room instead of the kitchen. I’m sure he thought he was doing both of you a favor.”

  “Whatever,” I say under my breath as I walk away.

  The door of my room is closed, and I’m almost too scared to go in. I crack the door an inch and say, “Psst, Mr. Papers. You there?”

  a squawk relieves my tension, so I throw open the door and run over to hug him. He’s on my desk by yet another origami creation: a man in a robe with a tiny monkey. This one isn’t made from origami paper, though; it looks like it might be a page from a magazine. I pick it up and point to Mr. Papers. “You made this?” I ask and he nods and points to his chest.

  I gently unfold a corner so I can see what magazine it’s from. At the bottom of the page it says Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Languages. Tenzo!

  What is that guy trying to get Mr. Papers to tell him with origa
mi? I’m too creeped out to be up here alone, so I take Mr. Papers downstairs and wait for Uncle Li to finish with my parents.

  All the guests are sitting in the parlor, reading newspapers and drinking coffee. Seems like old people can read newspapers all morning. I pass them and walk toward the library, but then decide not to go in and interrupt. There’s a nice velvet-covered chair outside the library door with a small, shiny wood table next to it. Mrs. Findlay has placed a crystal dish full of those little puffy square pastel-colored mints on it. Mom calls them pillow mints. They’re only good when you’re absolutely desperate for candy. Sitting in the chair with Mr. Papers on my lap, I start melting mints in my mouth as I listen to their conversation through the open door.

  “The site is nearly perfect, from a feng shui perspective,” I hear Uncle Li say. “The hill behind the castle acts as a good protective dragon. The castle itself sits just at the flat spot beneath the hill; you see, energy gathers where the momentum stops and that’s right where we are. The forest on the left makes the Dragon, or Yang side, stronger and the Tiger, or Yin side, weaker—as it should be. The tower is rightly placed on the Yang side, and the wing with the restful guest rooms is on the Yin side. The stream that circles the inner wall of the castle is perfect; it reminds me of the Inner Golden River at the Forbidden City in Beijing.”

  “Wow, really?” Dad says. “I never considered the feng shui of the Forbidden City.”

  “Oh, the Forbidden City is the largest feng shui project in the world!” says Uncle Li. “The best feng shui masters in China helped design it back in the 1400s. What surprises me,” he continues, “is how many feng shui principals were used when building this castle.”

  Dad says, “You know, Fergus spent a lot of time in China before he came back to build the castle. Maybe he picked up some tips.”

  “And I’ll bet that fellow who came back from China to help Fergus had some feng shui knowledge as well,” Mom adds.

  “I didn’t know someone from China helped build this castle. How did that come to pass?” Uncle Li asks, pretending never to have heard of this.

  Dad explains, “Well, my great-great-great-great grandfather Fergus left Scotland when he was just eighteen. He traveled around China, learning the languages and customs. He was able to get his good friend Xu Bao Cheng to come back with him to build the tower, and then later the castle.

  “Why would Cheng do this? What was his motivation for coming here?” Uncle Li asks.

  “Who knows?” Dad says. “He must’ve been a good friend—he wasn’t paid and this was hard labor. After all, it was just the two of them who built the tower, if you can believe it.”

  “The fact that good feng shui was employed in its construction makes this castle very auspicious,” Uncle Li says. “And the island as a whole is very good, too. Lots of old, low hills, very nourishing. And a surprising number of springs and clean streams.”

  Mom sounds cheery “That’s great; let’s hope we can make it pay for itself so we can keep it. We’re probably idiots to try and run an Inn in this economy.” I can hear her knock the wood table for luck.

  “Plus, Caity’s doing so well here; it’s as if her brain has expanded,” Dad says.

  “Really … how so?” Uncle Li asks, trying to see how much they know.

  Mom says, “She’s been doing the most interesting work, making up this code—”

  “And she’s finally taken an interest in what Fiona and I do. She asked me to teach her about encryption technology.”

  “Well, the energy of a natural spring under the tower is a great feature for fostering intellectual growth,” Uncle Li says. “That might be what’s going on.”

  “Whatever it is,” Mom says, “we like it.”

  “I’ll do a detailed analysis of each room next,” Uncle Li says, trying to wrap things up.

  “We should get going, Angus. These guests are expecting a walk around the grounds with the Laird and Lady of the Manor.”

  “Aye, aye matey,” Dad replies.

  “That’s pirate, honey, not Scottish.”

  I pop another mint in my mouth and scramble over to the parlor where all the guests and their newspapers are so they won’t know I’ve been eavesdropping. Mom and Dad come out of the library and seem surprised to see me reading The Scots Independent among the older folks.

  “Hi Caity, are you going to join us on our walk today?” Mom asks hopefully.

  “Oh, I was going to go with Uncle Li to do more analysis on the castle,” I reply.

  Mom and Dad look at each other with raised eyebrows as if to say, See, she is so much more intellectual here in Scotland. “We’ll see you at dinner then,” Dad says.

  Taking Uncle Li by the arm, I escort him out of the room. “We have a problem,” I whisper. “Tenzo came in my room. Mrs. Findlay let him take Mr. Papers from the kitchen this morning, and he had Mr. P doing origami for him! I think he’s trying to get info from him.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because the piece—a guy in a robe with a monkey on his shoulder—was made from a page of a magazine called the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Languages.”

  “Do you know where he is now?” Uncle Li asks.

  “He asked Alex for another tour of the grounds.”

  “The houseboy?”

  Somehow that word sounds demeaning. “Alex is not really the houseboy. I mean, he’s helping us while the guests are here, but he’s a friend, too. And he’s Mrs. Findlay’s grandson.”

  “Have you told him or Mrs. Findlay anything?”

  “No, just to watch out for Tenzo because he might be a thief. I asked them not to give him any information about the place other than the stuff he could get out of a guide book.”

  “Well done, Caity.”

  “Hey, since everyone is going out walking today let’s head back into the tower,” I suggest. “We should take lunches, so Mrs. Findlay doesn’t try to come find us.”

  I take two of the boxed lunches in the kitchen. Mrs. Findlay always has a pot of water on the stove, so Uncle Li removes a thermos from the shelf and fills it. He carries this small tin of tea with him; he never goes anywhere without his personal stash. His sister who still lives in China has a tea plantation and she sends Uncle Li the cream of the crop. He is a total tea snob and says that the stuff in tea bags is the garbage they sweep off the floor at the tea factory. His tea leaves are hand rolled into little pearls, and after sitting in water they unroll themselves and become leaves again. The tea is so pale you can hardly tell it from water, but man is it good.

  Once in the tower, I walk Mr. Papers over to the magnet area so he can play while we look around. Then, as I head toward the fountain, I see that it isn’t a figure eight, it is two interlocking circles, one with the magnet and one with the fountain. Kind of like the Venn diagrams we studied last year.

  As I step between the two circles where they overlap, something happens.

  I feel the ground move.

  Hey, Uncle Li, come here,” I say, trying to keep balanced. It’s like being on a surfboard.

  Uncle Li walks over and looks down. “Well look at that! A vesica pisces,” he says.

  “What?”

  “A vesica pisces. It’s that middle part of two overlapping circles—an old mystical symbol that ancient cultures thought to be a source of immense power and energy.”

  “I don’t mean look at the symbol, I mean look at it move!” I shift my weight a bit so it wobbles.

  “Oh, my—”

  “Step on it, it feels weird,” I say, crouching down to keep my center of gravity low. Mr. Papers is perched on my backpack, tightly holding on to my shoulders.

  When Uncle Li steps on the slab, it begins to sink. We both instinctively drop to our knees. It lowers as slowly as an elevator and stops about eight feet below the floor above. I hold up my lantern to look around, and see that we have been lowered into another dark chamber. The walls are rock, like a cave, as if this had been carved out below the tower.
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  Uncle Li gets on his stomach and holds his lantern over the edge. I do the same. We both turn them up as high as they will go and look down; beneath us is a massive set of stone gears.

  “What is it?” I ask Uncle Li. “Some kind of machine?”

  “I have no earthly idea,” he replies. “How many pieces are there?”

  We start counting. They’re all different sizes, some are nested inside each other and others are interlocked so that they could move together. We count twenty.

  “Do you see the faint carvings on them?” Uncle Li asks.

  “I can barely even see the wheels. Do you think we should go down?” I ask, wanting to check it out more closely. “It’s only about seven feet. I could jump that.”

  “As much as I’m anxious to find out what this is, I’m afraid that if we get off this vesica pisces it will rise again and trap us down here.”

  “Oh my God, you’re right.” A shudder goes through my body.

  “This platform seems precisely weighted. I think it’s just a viewing station.”

  “I wish we could lower our lanterns to light it up.” Dying to see what’s down there, I try to think where we could get rope and then remember the long elastic cord laced through the front of my backpack. I remove the toggle, pull out the cord, and tie it to the lantern.

  Because the cord is stretchy, the heavy lantern lowers almost to the floor and illuminates the wheels. “Look, you’re right; there really are carvings on them!” I say.

  “They aren’t anything like the carvings in the chamber; this is a true pictographic script.”

  “Like Egyptian writing?” I ask, scooting over to light up a different wheel.

  “Not Egyptian, more like South or Central American,” says Uncle Li. Then he snaps his fingers. “Of course! I think I know what this is!”

  “What, what?”

  “Back when I taught philosophy, I had a graduate student who was doing his thesis on Mayan cosmology.”

  I sit up to listen. “And …”

  He pauses and looks up at the ceiling trying to remember. “I don’t recall much about it—this was years ago, you see—but I do remember that much of the Maya’s focus was on advanced astronomy and these elaborate calendars. And,” he says with emphasis, “there were twenty of them!”