Map of the Passages: 3 (Enchanted Emporium)

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

“Okay,” my brother said. He remained silent for a long time before saying, “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “I’ve never been more serious in my life,” I said.

  Aiby nodded. To convince Doug, she pulled the wooden key out of my backpack, slipped it into the door’s keyhole, and then paused. “Stay back, you two. Especially you,” she said to Doug.

  “Why especially me?” my brother asked. “Are there any more surprises?”

  “There might be,” I said.

  Aiby turned the key. One, two, three times. Five times. Ten times. It kept turning and turning but didn’t catch the locking mechanism.

  Aiby stopped after turning it at least twenty times. “I think something isn’t working,” she said. She banged on the door, but it stayed firmly locked. She pulled the key out of the keyhole and slid it in a second time. She tried again, but no change. She passed it to me and I gave it a shot, but the results were identical.

  “Maybe she gave you the wrong key,” Doug said. “Here, let me give it a try.”

  I shrugged and handed him the key. Doug spun it around and around in the lock while Aiby and I circled the perimeter of the mill in search of a side entrance. We found nothing. The ground floor of the old house had only one entrance, which Doug was snorting in front of like an angry bull.

  “Do you hear that?” I said. “Listen.” Two audible clicks sounded with every turn of the key. “It clicks twice with each revolution, but nothing happens.”

  “Maybe it’s a Magical Threshold like the one at the Emporium,” Aiby said, bending over to feel the stone at the bottom of the door. “Maybe we can’t get in because it doesn’t recognize us, or because we’re missing something.”

  Aiby told me to turn around. She dug through my backpack, pulled out a case, and opened it. In it was a pair of glasses kind of like the ones that Meb had shown me that morning. However, on both sides of these glasses was a selection of colored filters that could be snapped into place in front of the lenses. There were seven sets, one for each color of the rainbow. Aiby put them on and immediately her face took on an expression of deep concentration.

  “Hey, those make you look like a movie star,” I joked.

  “Never underestimate the Fludd Lenses,” Aiby mumbled. She chose the violet filter and quickly used it to examine the stone doorstep. “There is magic here.” She rapidly changed filters, moving to the orange one. “And I’d say it’s the Voice of Friends.”

  “Ah-ha! Now everything’s as clear as a glass of ink on a dark and moonless night,” I joked.

  Aiby glared at me from behind the colored lenses. “Excuse me?”

  I turned red. “Sorry,” I said. “It just came out of me without warning.”

  She sighed. “Anyway, now we know this needs to be opened magically.”

  “Like with a two-headed coin?” I asked.

  “That’s a Borderpassing coin,” Aiby said, as if speaking about the most normal thing in the world.

  “You getting any of this?” I asked Doug.

  Doug scratched his neck. “Um,” he said. I could always count on Doug to be just as confused as I was, if not more so, when it came to magical things. “The most magical method of opening locks that I know of is to call the locksmith.”

  “Or my father,” Aiby muttered, slipping off the Fludd Lenses.

  I turned toward the sea and watched the waves, quiet and calm. My still-wet hair made me think back to my dive and the coin with two heads. I turned back to face the door and tried turning the key while clutching the coin. I put the coin on top of the key and placed it on the doorstep. The lock just kept turning in circles.

  “We’ll be here all night,” Doug grumbled. “And I have to go back to the farm to help Dad soon.”

  Aiby made one last attempt, trying all the different lenses again while putting the key into the lock very carefully. She seemed to be looking for an unusual mechanism or special contact point that would make the mechanism release, but nothing worked.

  A wooden door. An iron lock. A wooden key. The solution had to be something simple, because I couldn’t see a slightly crazy old lady carrying out a complicated routine every time she wanted to get inside her own house.

  I couldn’t even remember ever seeing the door open or close. Cumai always seemed to be either outside or inside whenever I’d passed by.

  I leaned over the river and focused on the mill mirrored in the pool of water.

  Think, Finley, I thought. Reflect. How might a magic door to a mill be opened?

  With a special word, I realized with dismay. It could be any word in the world. Or the other world, too.

  “How do you say ‘open up’ in the Enchanted Language?” I asked.

  Aiby tilted her head. She tried turning the key while saying, “Recluditur!”

  Then Doug tried, and failed. I saw both of them mirrored in the river.

  Maybe it’s not a magical door to a normal mill, I thought. Maybe it’s a normal door to a mill that a magical being lived in.

  Which didn’t solve the problem at all, but rather reversed it.

  “What if we do it backward?” I asked Aiby. “Did you try turning it the other way already?”

  “Of course!” they both answered. “And that didn’t change anything,” Aiby added.

  “Not in reverse,” I mumbled without looking away from the river. “Well, not exactly in reverse, but more like . . .”

  Doug stared at me. “Well?” he asked, growing impatient.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Doug?” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Can you bring me the key?” I asked.

  “Where?”

  “Here. Right where I am,” I said.

  “What? Why?” Doug asked.

  “Can you please just bring me the key?” I asked.

  Aiby passed it to him, and in the blink of an eye Doug was standing next to me. When I stretched out my hand to take the key, the hair on my arm stood up, too.

  “Do you notice something weird about this stream?” I asked my brother.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Look at the reflection of the mill,” I said.

  Doug began to inspect the pools of water from the river. After a couple of seconds, he grabbed my wrist. “Whoa,” he whispered.

  “Exactly,” I whispered back. “The mill that’s mirrored in the river has all its windows open, and —”

  “And there’s someone looking out the window at us!” Doug said, finishing my thought.

  We both looked up at the window in the middle of the second floor, but there was no one looking back at us. The shutters were closed.

  “Let’s go home, okay?” Doug said, his voice shakier than I’d ever heard it.

  “The door isn’t what’s magic here,” I said to Aiby. “It’s the mill. It’s this whole place.”

  “I bet it was built on an Indian burial ground or something,” Doug said, as if there could’ve been an Indian burial ground in Scotland, though I had to admit I’d been thinking something similar. “We need Reverend Prospero,” Doug added. “We need him here.”

  I don’t know why, but I was suddenly reminded of my image in the mirror that morning. I’d looked at myself and asked, So what will happen today? And then I’d brushed my teeth while watching myself in the mirror.

  I took a step away from both Aiby and Doug, held out the wooden key as if it were a toothbrush, and approached the water. Carefully, I tried to match the reflection of the key to the reflection of the door.

  The reflection of the lock on the surface of the water was tiny. The pool was rippling a little, but I managed to guide the key into the hole. I heard a click! come from the actual door to the mill.

  “Finley?” Aiby said.

  I turned the key in the air. The reflection in the river turne
d along with it, and the door to the mill let out a second click!

  “Finley?” Aiby said a little louder.

  Finally, with a third turn and a third click!, the door to Cumai’s mill opened. I dropped the wooden key to the ground, inexplicably exhausted from the effort.

  “Wow!” said Doug. “You really are a magician, Viper. Who would’ve thought?”

  “How did you think of that?” Aiby asked. Her look seemed like one of admiration, which caught me completely off guard.

  I shrugged and smirked. “I reflected on it,” I said simply.

  Aiby rolled her eyes, and we went inside.

  It was completely silent inside the mill. The fragrance of herbs, lavender, foxglove, and aromatic spices wafted through the air. The electric lights vibrated softly and gave off heat from days of running constantly. I turned off all the lights by gently flipping the switches. With each light turned off, it felt more and more like I was taking care of the place.

  We passed a small hallway with some stairs heading up to the second floor and found ourselves in a large kitchen. The mid-afternoon light flickered vibrantly through the closed shutters. Parsnips, zucchini, and potatoes were halfway sliced atop a cutting board. Copper pots hung along the white walls. An old refrigerator hummed faintly in a corner.

  As I moved through the rooms, the house started to seem like it’d been left only a few hours prior. The kitchen’s second door was open, which led to an inner cloister very much like a courtyard. An array of columns and small archways surrounded the lawn, with a little vegetable garden highlighted by a skylight. In the center of the lawn was a large apple tree. Its branches filled much of the space. A few words were written on the white marble threshold in the Enchanted Language:

  HINC NON POSSIS IRE

  Aiby used the violet lenses in her glasses to examine it. “It’s a Glyph of Protection,” she said. “With a strong Voice of Magic.”

  I nodded, pretending to completely understand what all that meant while wondering if Aiby would fall for it. She passed her fingers over the letters and said, “It’s a very ancient dialect. I can’t figure out what it says.”

  Obviously, the letters were incomprehensible to me, as well. “Do you want me to ask Doug?” I said.

  My brother had just picked up the lid from one of the pots that had been left on the stove. He immediately put it back down with a disgusted look. “Someone needs to come and clean this up as soon as possible.”

  I showed him the marble doorstep Aiby was leaning over. “What do you make of this?” I asked.

  Doug’s eyebrows pinched together. “Why do you two want to enter a closet?” he asked.

  “Wait — what?” I asked.

  “It’s a closet,” Doug said, pointing to the wide-open door of the cloister.

  Aiby lightly touched my shoulder, which was just enough to make me realize that Doug couldn’t see it. He wasn’t a Borderpasser like we were.

  “A closet, of course,” I said, and then nodded. “Perhaps while Aiby and I check what’s inside this closet, you could search the other rooms?”

  “Okay,” he said. “But what should I be looking for?”

  “Photos, diaries, appointments — anything that can help us figure out who Cumai’s brother is or where he might be,” Aiby said.

  My brother nodded and headed off.

  “And Doug?” I said as he was leaving the kitchen.

  “What is it now, Viper?”

  “Watch out for the, um, closets,” I said.

  Doug rolled his eyes at me and left.

  With Doug gone, Aiby crossed the magical threshold, then turned and held out her hand to me. As my fingers joined hers, I could feel her skin vibrate.

  Together, we entered Cumai’s magical cloister. If I had to describe what it felt like, I’d say it was like getting goose bumps, the heebie-jeebies, and the willies all at the same time.

  While it was a peaceful place, it was clear it’d recently been broken into. In the magical stillness, the apple tree in the middle seemed more like a sculpture than a living thing. In one corner were two straw cushions that had been thrown onto the ground. Nearby was an upended table and some overturned bowls. When we got closer, I noticed a sewing basket with spools of thread, needles, and balls of wool scattered all around it. A rocking chair was tilted forward with its back resting unnaturally on the edge of a stone fireplace. The fire had recently gone out, judging by the glowing embers.

  Aiby looked around cautiously, alternating between the various colored filters of the Fludd Lenses. I slipped between the columns to get a better look at the little vegetable garden in the middle. The apple tree stood out against the vegetables and fragrant flowers. It was a real-life secret garden if I’d ever seen one.

  Aiby called me over. She turned me around and pulled something from my backpack — this time it was an amber pouch with the words Remember Embers written on it.

  “Let’s see if they still work,” she said. She stooped down in front of the fireplace, stirred the ashes with a stick, and then blew on the embers. As soon as she saw they were glowing again, she poured the contents of the pouch over them. “Stand back,” she warned, quickly getting to her feet.

  The fire in the fireplace burst to life as a black, flickering flame leapt out from the embers. Eerie shapes danced in the flames.

  Patches barked. Aiby quickly changed the colored lenses in her glasses from orange to indigo. She bent down, so I followed suit. The black flames in the fireplace flickered until they transformed themselves into dark figures like you might see in a shadow puppet theater. I saw a man with a hooked nose pass by, wearing a strange cloak. I immediately recognized him as Semueld Askell.

  “The shapes in the flames are showing the events that took place in front of the fireplace before it went out,” Aiby explained.

  It was then that I finally understood a detail in Somerled’s story. She had mentioned hearing the noise of someone who made a clinking noise in the cloister. I figured it’d end up being a woman wearing heels, but I was wrong. The noise had to have come from the tinkling mirrors on Askell’s magical cloak.

  Semueld’s shadow passed in front of the fireplace a second time, and then a third, as if Askell had been pacing back and forth without stopping. Next to him, I recognized the outline of old lady Cumai. The two shadows came close to each other, waving their arms around in fierce argument. Cumai shoved Askell, whose cloak came undone after getting caught on something. He tugged on it violently to free it.

  I watched the black flames, trying to imagine the conversation occurring during this silent replay. Aiby took my hand and squeezed, and I realized that we were about to see a reenactment of Cumai’s murder.

  Just then, the argument between Askell and Cumai calmed down as the two turned away from each other. Cumai’s shadow exited the scene via the left side of the fireplace. Askell, however, quickly produced a tiny cylinder from inside his cloak, brought it to his lips, and blew into it.

  “A blowgun!” I exclaimed. “He used a blowgun!”

  Aiby covered her mouth with both hands and went even paler than normal. “That’s how he used the Sidhe Strike,” she murmured.

  We watched Askell’s shadow blow into the tube a second time, then conceal the blowgun back beneath his cloak. With that, the embers and shadows vanished, leaving behind a pile of lifeless gray soot.

  We got up slowly, looking around to see where Cumai had been found after the Sidhe Strike struck her. Aiby changed the lenses on the glasses from indigo to red. She examined the rocking chair, the table, and the spools of thread scattered on the ground. I stayed where I was, contemplating the macabre scene that took place not long before in front of this very hearth.

  I moved away from the basket of firewood and saw a tiny flash of light on the ground. I reached down and picked up a shard from Askell’s Cloak of Mirrors.

&
nbsp; “Aiby,” I called. “I found something.”

  “Come here,” she said. “I found something, too.”

  “Better than a shard from Askell’s cloak?”

  “Maybe,” Aiby said.

  I joined her. Aiby was holding a silver arrow the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.

  “Apparently Askell missed with one of his two darts,” Aiby said. She pointed to my backpack again. “You should have some Essential Pouches in there. Let’s put these things inside one so we can ask my dad about them later.”

  “Maybe we aren’t the right ones to be doing this,” I said. “I mean, we aren’t exactly trained for it.”

  “Oh?” Aiby said. “Do you know a Magical Detective?”

  I squinted at her. “They exist?” I asked.

  “I know two of them,” Aiby said. “Professor Bell and Edgar Allan. Three, if we include Edgar’s raven. But I don’t think any of them can help us at the moment.”

  “They live too far away?” I ventured.

  “No, but they have been dead for more than a century,” Aiby said, holding up the arrow between her fingers.

  We had just placed the arrow and the shard of mirror safely into separate pouches when I heard Doug’s alarmed voice from just outside the kitchen door.

  “Finley, Aiby!” said, somewhere between a whisper and a scream. “There’s someone outside!”

  We hid in the kitchen amongst the shadows. Doug was perplexed by the way we’d suddenly materialized out of the closet, but he said nothing. Patches growled softly and aimed his snout at the window like a pointer. Aiby was still wearing those ridiculous glasses with the colored lenses.

  I listened to the footsteps outside the mill with a fair amount of anxiety. The intruder stopped in front of the entrance, cleaned off his shoes with something, and then rested a hand on the half-open door. Patches tilted his head and wagged his tail.

  The intruder gently pushed on the door and took a single step inside. “Is anyone there?” a masculine voice asked — one that I knew I should recognize.

  “Is someone there?” the man at the door repeated, coming a step closer.