So—who is V? What did he mean, “V is a letter that is not a letter”?
And how does he know I’m on this island? Is V on Lume, too?
Gotta go—Mom’s calling me, lunch is ready. Smells like leftover spaghetti bolognese from last night. Great. More later.
Chapter Five
MY DIARY—NEXT DAY
This is getting weirder! Maybe I am going crazy? But hang on, let me start at the beginning.
First off, last night I was grounded. Again. What a rotten day yesterday was! I am so sick of Mom. Her and her baseboards. She made me do two really long ones, to make up for not helping the day before! Witch.
Dad was still angry—even when his precious chickens arrived. Big deal. Lots of flapping and squawking, I thought at least a hundred chickens had come, but no—there were only two! Noisy little things. Rhode Island Reds, apparently. Still, they are funny. Kinda cute. Dad put them in the new run—not dug in the right way at all, since I’d stolen the shovel. Which is why he isn’t really speaking to me. He has this horrible habit of talking to anything nearby, instead of to me, when he’s angry. Last night it was the chickens.
“So, what are you fine auburn ladies called then, eh?”
I nearly threw up on the spot, but the chickens just scurried about, boc-boc-bocking.
“Pardon? What did you say? Your names are Boc and Boc-Boc? Splendid, splendid! I’m sure Jess will come to like you, once she stops sulking. As it is, she can just stop glaring at me and go and make me a nice cup of tea. Can’t she, Boc-Boc? And she can do it without that scowl. You’ll never lay any eggs at this rate, poor things!”
My dad. He is sooooooo embarrassing.
And so it went on, all evening. Supper was horrible, really strained. Mom’s back was bothering her, what with all the painting and sanding. It always makes her bad tempered. Dad kept jumping up from the table to dash to the back door and snap the sunset (which, I have to admit, does look good against the sea).
Each time he got up, Mom tutted, ever so slightly.
She kept asking me did I like it here, and what did I like, and what did I think of all the old stuff left in the house, and did I want any of it for my room? “For your penthouse suite.” She smirked. On and on and on, questions, questions. Didn’t I like the patio and gazebo at the back? Didn’t I even like the natural swimming pool? Acres and acres of ancient land, didn’t I like anything at all, for crying out loud?!
In the end, she just sat still and stared. Dad rushed back, cameras swinging, knocking the saltshaker over. I went on shoveling in rice pudding, knowing it was coming. Sure enough, here it came: Mom’s formal voice.
“Jessica. If you are completely determined to dislike it here, that is quite all right by me. But I refuse to communicate with my daughter in the sulky language of shrugs. If you cannot utter words like a normal human being, then take your silence up to your room and sulk alone. Do not inflict it on me.”
Same old thing. Her Head Teacher head on again.
Not to be outdone, Dad picked up his precious Canon EOS-1n and spoke into it.
“Shutters down again, eh? All systems closed? Ah well. Bed, I think is the best place for her—don’t you, Elizabeth? We’ll all try again tomorrow.”
So that’s how I came to be in bed, stupidly early, watching the sun go down.
And so I saw the message. I don’t know what else to call it. I wonder what Avril will make of it? Whatever she thinks, I know what I think. I think this whole place is creepy. And now I can’t ignore the fact that something very, very strange is going on.
THERE ARE TWO MEMBERS IN THE CHAT ROOM:
AVRIL AND JESS
AVRIL: So what happened then? You said something weird happened! TELL!!!
JESS: Well—I lay on my bed. The walls are slanted—you know, they’re attic walls?
AVRIL: Well, yeah. They would be attic walls. Being in an attic. Duh!
JESS: Shut up or I won’t tell you.
AVRIL: Okay. Get on with it then.
JESS: Well, promise not to laugh.
AVRIL: You have my solemn word.
JESS: Well, maybe I dozed. Maybe the light was playing tricks. But suddenly, something appeared on the corner of the wall.
AVRIL: Appeared?
JESS: Well . . . kind of . . . flashed. On and off.
AVRIL: A reflection or something?
JESS: That’s what I thought. Like—you know Mom’s crystals? The ones she hangs in every window?
AVRIL: Yep.
JESS: At first, I thought it was that. ’Cause the sun was setting, kind of slanting through the window. But Avril—there ARE no crystals hanging up in here!
AVRIL: What about mirrors?
JESS: There’s only the barre mirror, and that’s miles away, all the way at the other end.
AVRIL: And?
JESS: And so I checked the window. But there’s nothing shiny there, to reflect lights onto the wall!
AVRIL: Oh, gawd. Is this tale actually going anywhere?
JESS: Listen!!! There’s nothing on my windowsill. Just the bucket.
AVRIL: Ah—the famous bucket. <
JESS: Shut up and LISTEN! The light flashed again, and this time, it stayed. Only there were more of them! Lots of lights, about two inches high.
AVRIL: Don’t tell me. You have been abducted by aliens and are writing this from the planet Zog.
JESS: Do you want to hear this or not?
AVRIL: Not.
AVRIL HAS NOW LEFT THE CHAT ROOM
JESS: Avril? Avril?
V: She has gone.
JESS: Gone? But she never goes without three kisses!
V: I made her go.
JESS: You little creep! But why? And anyway, when did you enter the chat room?
V: I’ve been here all the time.
JESS: How come there’s no trace of you in the PC?
V: Tell me about the lights. What did you do?
JESS: Why should I tell you? You apparently don’t exist!
V: Tell me. Hurry—we don’t have much time.
JESS: No time? Who are you? What’s going on?
V: The lights, Jess. What did you DO?
JESS: Okay, okay, keep your hair on. I stood on a chair to see them better, and I worked out where they were coming from, okay?
V: And where were they coming from?
JESS: The bucket. The bucket I dug up from under an arrow at the cottage. The bucket that you told me to put in my window. The bucket that is solid wood and brass and has no glassy pieces to reflect anything onto a wall.
V: What did it reflect onto the wall?
JESS: << . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . >>
V: Stop ignoring me and tell me—what was it, Jess?
JESS: << . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .>>
V: <
JESS: Okay. Symbols. They were symbols. Thirty-seven of them, projected onto the wall by the bucket, and I stood on a chair risking my neck to see them, and I copied them down, and then the sun went down and they vanished. Okay, now will you please tell me what is going ON!!!
V: So—you copied them down. That is good. Well, the rest is simple. Now all you have to do is translate them.
JESS: Oh, yeah, right, is that all?
V: Do it. Hurry.
JESS: How? And why the big hurry?
V: The volcano stone.
JESS: Pardon?
V: The black doorstep, of course. At the cottage.
JESS: Look. Who are you? How did you know about the black doorstep? I didn’t even mention that to Avril!
V HAS NOW LEFT THE CHAT ROOM
Chapter Six
MY DIARY
Still very hot. Headache weather. I’m not sure I can work all this out. It’s all happening so fast—first the cottage, the doorstep, the symbols, then the arrow, which led to the bucket, which led to some signs on a wall. To say
nothing of V, whoever he/she/it is—someone Avril can’t even see in the chat room—and neither can the PC security check! It’s all crazy. My head’s spinning.
Still, I just ran back down to the cottage, copied down the symbols on the door stone. Had a closer look at the stone itself. It’s really unusual—shiny black glass. I suppose the mysterious V is right—it’s volcanic. Strange choice for a doorstep—glass!
They think I’m doing my homework now, and anyway They’ve gone to look for fossils on the beach. So.
1. Here are the symbols from the cottage doorstep:
2. Here are the English words that are written under them:
WHERE --SILON DWELLS
3. And here are the symbols from my bedroom wall:
So there they all are. They look strange in this diary, out of place, like something you might come across in an old archive office. Not something you find in the average teenage bedroom. I’m reluctant to begin working them out.
Yet I can’t just keep on sitting here, staring at them. Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m scared, really. I keep wondering what might happen if I do decipher them?
But I can’t not decipher it—can I? Who in the whole world would be able to crumple all this up and throw it away? What choice do I have, really? No choice at all.
I’m pretty good at puzzles and things. But there isn’t a lot to go on. Probably not enough to crack the whole alphabet. I’ve worked out that some of the little dots and squiggles under and over other symbols must be letters in themselves. (Vowels, in fact—E and I.) That alone took me forever—maybe I’m not as clever as I thought. Still, only one way to find out. Here goes . . . .
This is not easy. Like I said—those dots and squiggles threw me for a while. For a start, there are five letters in the word “where.” But only three symbols in the word carved right above it, from the cottage doorstep.
It’s the same with the last word—“dwells.” Six letters in “dwells,” only five symbols.
So . . . the funny little dots (or squiggles) below or above another symbol must be separate letters in themselves. Yes. So back to the word “where.” The dots below must be the vowel E—because there are two of them, just like in the word “where.”
And so that small curly blob under a letter in the second word must be another vowel—I. (Something something “silon.”)
Now it makes more sense.
As to the “--silon,” what else could it be but “epsilon”? This is the only other word I know connected to the cottage. Epsilon, carved on the base of the bucket. That gives me the P also. The A’s are easy, too—a single-letter word! It can’t be I, as the I’s are already accounted for.
So what I can decipher of the message so far is this:
WI_H A _IRRORED DREA_
A _OLLOWED SO_ND
_H_S LE_ I_ _E_IN
Going through the alphabet to try out the missing letters; there are some things they cannot possibly be and some things they must be.
DREA_ must be “dream.” It can’t be any other word. Therefore M is .
I_ must be “it,” since I already have the N so it’s not “in,” and I have S so it’s not “is.” T must be .
TH_S must be “thus,” since I already have the I, so it’s not “this.” Therefore U is .
_OLLOWED must be “followed,” since I already have the H, so it’s not “hollowed.” Therefore F is .
And _E_IN must be “begin,” ’cause I can’t think of another word that fits! Therefore B is and G is .
So even though I haven’t got the whole of the alphabet, I have got the whole of this message (or whatever it is). Not that it makes much sense, though.
WITH A MIRRORED DREAM
A FOLLOWED SOUND
THUS LET IT BEGIN
What’s that supposed to mean?!
Oh, darn it! Mom’s on the second floor, yelling up the attic stairs. They’ve found a whole belemnite, whatever that is. Them and their fossils. Gotta go.
Chapter Seven
MY DIARY—5 A.M.
I’ve just dreamed of my room. This room. This attic bedroom, but with different furniture. There was this heavy table with a small model boat on it, and a blue-tiled washstand in the corner. The whole floor was bare boards—no swirly blue carpet at this end. Only the bed was the same, my huge bed with a swan carved in each corner of the headboard. My bed. But there was a stranger asleep in it!
It was a boy—a brown-haired boy, about thirteen years old. I keep trying to sketch what he looked like.
He woke up suddenly, sat up in my bed, and lit a candle. He leaped out of bed. He was wearing a nightie! He ran to the table. He grabbed a nib pen, dipped it in some ink. “Quick, quick!” he kept muttering. But he kept fumbling, kept dropping the pen. Three small blots splashed sideways across the paper. He tutted, wiped one of the blots away with his finger, and went on scribbling. No—not just scribbling—drawing!
I couldn’t see what he was drawing. But whatever it was, he drew it fast, a sketch of some sort. Then he turned the paper over and began to write. More and more words, scrawled fast. Then he ran to the window—my window, only there were these heavy brocaded curtains hanging up—and looked out. Dawn was coming. He rolled the paper up and ran out of the room.
He was still in his nightie.
Down the two flights of stairs he ran, into the scullery. He worked a pump till water came, then he drank straight from the pump, wetting his nightie. But he didn’t seem to notice—he just ran full speed out the back door.
He ran and ran, away from the house, in the direction of the cottage. The sound of his feet thumping the grass, getting fainter. Then another sound came, a soft, eerie sound. Haunting.
Like a flute, being played far away. It came from the direction of the cottage.
I tried to follow it, but in my dream I couldn’t move any faster, and the sound of the flute grew fainter and fainter. Until all I could hear was the sound of the sea over the headland.
Then I woke up.
I put on my lamp—to be honest, I was a bit scared of the dark, which is NOT like me at all. The strongest feeling gripped me, that I had to write it all down in full, sketches, too. Then I would put it in the file from the library. It all seemed so real.
But—sitting here—I can still hear the flute!
Very, very faint. All the time I’ve been writing this, it’s been fading, bit by bit. Yet the fainter it gets, it seems to be more and more—Oh, I don’t know . . . insistent? Soon it may fade altogether.
It’s definitely coming from the direction of the cottage.
It’s no good. I have to go there before the music stops.
I have to get down there. Now.
ONE HOUR LATER
I’ve just got back from the cottage. Can hardly hold the pen. Still shaking. What on earth is going on? I’m terrified.
The cottage was still in shadow. Cold shadows. Creepy. The birds began to sing—but the flute was the loudest sound now. Coming from behind the cottage door.
The door was closed! I’d left it open, three days ago. Who had closed it? Maybe the wind? Ridiculous—it was too stiff for the wind to move it at all.
Domino didn’t like it either. He wouldn’t come close—not even up the little path to the door. He sat in the garden, whined a bit. I called and called him, but he just sat and bristled.
I reached out for the handle, decided to do it quickly—shoved the door open.
The flute music stopped.
But the flute was there. It fell from midair. It clattered to the table. It rolled onto the floor. As if whoever had been playing it had just dropped it. Yet there was no one there.
My legs turned to jelly.
Behind my back, Domino growled.
I can’t describe how sick I felt, sweaty, clammy. But I couldn’t run. I had to go and get that flute! It was as if I had no choice.
Somehow I went and picked it up.
It was made of wood. Something was carved on the mouthpiece. The scraggly, th
in symbol of Epsilon. Like half a feather, toppled over.
It was dry, dusty. It didn’t look as if anyone had played it for a hundred years, let alone played it a minute earlier.
I lifted it to my mouth and blew. Nothing. Blocked—years of dust and muck. I peered inside. Something was curled up in there. Paper, maybe? I took a deep breath, blew it out. It came out with a piercing shriek.
The paper was whispery dry and yellowed with age. It must be fifty, a hundred years old. I unrolled it, turned it the right way round. As I stared at it, my knees went to water. I knelt down slowly, into the dust of the kitchen floor.
It was a sketch.
A sketch of a girl.
A girl in a bed.
A bed with four swans carved on it.
The girl in the bed was me.
This is what I read on the back of the sketch:
Just now I have dreamed of a girl. She was sleeping in my bedchamber, in my swan bed. Just as Epsilon had said: “Look for a dream that is not a dream.” This genteel girl was exceedingly real. I have sketched on the back of this paper what she looked like.
She woke up—reached out in the dark—and the earth lit up at her hand! The earth, but very small, it lit up under her fingers. Blue seas, green Africa—oh, everything, very small and bright, brighter than candles, brighter even than the great chandelier downstairs!
And there was this timepiece by her bed—a fine silver thing. Only the very rich have timepieces. And the very gown she wore was silken, with exceeding fine lace, but pale blue.
There was a rug. Blue, too—blue like the sea—but it covered half the floor! It reached all the way to the edges of the walls! One rug, or many rugs cunningly sewn together? I could not tell. But I could feel it soft under my feet.
The Riddles of Epsilon Page 2
